Weir of Hermiston, by Robert Louis Stevenson 9781474405263

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• T H E n e w e d i n b u r g h e d i t i o n o f the w o r k s o f r o b e r t l o u i s s te v e n s o n • to be complete in thirty-nine volumes Published so far

Prince Otto, edited by Robert P. Irvine Weir of Hermiston, edited by Gillian Hughes

In preparation

Kidnapped, edited by Caroline McCracken-Flesher St Ives, edited by Glenda Norquay More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter, edited by Penny Fielding Short Stories IV: The Bottle Imp, Fables and Other Short Narratives, edited by William Gray Essays I: Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, edited by Robert-Louis Abrahamson Essays II: Familiar Studies, edited by Robert-Louis Abrahamson and Richard Dury Essays III: Memories and Portraits, edited by Alexander Thomson Essays IV: Uncollected Essays and Reviews, 1868–1879, edited by Richard Dury Essays V: Uncollected Essays, 1880–1894, edited by Lesley Graham The Amateur Emigrant, edited by Julia Reid

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• T H E n e w e d i n b u r g h e d i t i o n o f the w o r k s o f r o b e r t l o u i s s te v e n s o n •

General Editors stephen arata, richard dury, penny fielding, anthony mandal

Weir of Hermiston

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• T H E n e w e d i n b u r g h e d i t i o n o f the w o r k s o f r o b e r t l o u i s s te v e n s o n •

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General Editors

Stephen Arata Richard Dury Penny Fielding Anthony Mandal

Research Fellow

Lena Wånggren

Advisory Editor

Gillian Hughes

Editorial Board

Richard Ambrosini (University of Rome-III) Gerard Carruthers (University of Glasgow) Nicholas Frankel (Virginia Commonwealth University) Peter Garside (University of Edinburgh) Roslyn Jolly (University of New South Wales) Roger Luckhurst (University of London) Alison Lumsden (University of Aberdeen) Adrian Poole (University of Cambridge) Andrew Stauffer (University of Virginia) Kathryn Sutherland (University of Oxford) Chris Vanden Bossche (University of Notre Dame) Alexis Weedon (University of Bedfordshire)

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• r o b e r t l o u i s s te v e n s o n •

Weir of Hermiston edited by Gillian Hughes

edinburgh universit y pr ess 2017

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© The University Court of the University of Edinburgh 2017 The Tun – Holyrood Road 12 Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh eh8 8pj Typeset in Adobe Arno Pro at the Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research, Cardiff University and the University of Edinburgh and printed and bound in Great Britain on acid-free paper at CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon cr0 4yy isbn 978 1 4744 0525 6 (hb) 978 1 4744 0526 3 (epdf) A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing from the publisher.

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Contents Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . Preface by the General Editors. . . . . . List of Abbreviations. . . . . . . . . Chronology of Robert Louis Stevenson . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . Genesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . Composition . . . . . . . . . . . Early Reception. . . . . . . . . . WEIR OF HERMISTON Dedication. . . . . . . . . . . . . Weir of Hermiston. . . . . . . . . . Chapter 1. Life and Death of Mrs. Weir . . . Chapter 2. Father and Son. . . . . . . . Chapter 3. In the Matter of the Hanging of Duncan Jopp . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 4. Opinions of the Bench . . . . . Chapter 5. Winter on the Moors. . . . . . 1. At Hermiston . . . . . . . . . . 2. Kirstie. . . . . . . . . . . . 3. A Border Pedigree. . . . . . . . . Chapter 6. A Leaf from Christina’s Psalm-Book. Chapter 7. Enter Mephistopheles. . . . . Chapter 8. A Nocturnal Visit. . . . . . . Chapter 9. At the Weaver’s Stone . . . . .

ix xiii xvii xx x xvii x xvii x xxii xl 3 5 6 17 22 33 40 40 42 45 57 76 89 95

Appendices. . . . . . . . . . . . 101 1. Sidney Colvin’s Editorial Note . . . . . 101 2. The Plot Development of Weir of Hermiston. 110 Essay on the Text. . . . . . . . . . . 117 The Dedication . . . . . . . . . . 118 Draft Material for the Novel. . . . . . 121 The Final Manuscript for the Novel. . . . 129 Arranging to Publish Weir of Hermiston . . 132 The Missing Typescript. . . . . . . . 138 vii

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contents

American Newspaper Syndication. . . . . British Serialization in Cosmopolis . . . . British Volume Publication. . . . . . . American Copyright Edition. . . . . . American Volume Edition. . . . . . . Weir of Hermiston in the Edinburgh Edition. The Present Text. . . . . . . . . . Emendation List. . . . . . . . . . . End-of-Line Hyphens. . . . . . . . . Historical and Geographical Note. . . . . Explanatory Notes. . . . . . . . . . Glossary. . . . . . . . . . . . .

146 148 152 154 158 160 162 173 189 190 200 255

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Acknowledgements General Editors’ AcknowledgEments

The General Editors would like to express their thanks to The Royal Society of Edinburgh for their generous award of a Workshop Grant and an Arts and Humanities Major Research Grant which made it possible to establish the New Edinburgh Edition. A Research Associateship generously awarded by the Modern Humanities Research Association has been crucial for the continued work of the edition, and we are also greatly indebted to The John Liston Trust for a generous donation. The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland funded travel and the Moray Endowment Fund enabled digitization through an equipment grant. The edition has been supported in many ways by the Robert Louis Stevenson Club of Edinburgh including financial contributions towards the acquisition of images of manuscripts. The edition has benefited from an EU-funded internship programme administered at the University of Mainz and we would like to extend our thanks to Sigrid Rieuwerts. We would especially like to thank Roger S. Swearingen for advising and generously sharing his encyclopaedic knowledge of Stevenson, his works and his manuscripts. A large edition is always a collaboration across institutions and we acknowledge the support of the National Library of Scotland for their assistance with digitization and public events, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Huntingdon Library, the Archive of British Publishing and Printing at the University of Reading and the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum, St Helena, California. For their partnership in public events associated with the edition we are glad to thank the Edinburgh Writers’ Museum and Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature. The Universities of Edinburgh, Cardiff and Virginia have supported the edition in many ways, and we would like to acknowledge the support and assistance of Jackie Jones and Edinburgh University Press Special thanks must to go Mr Tate Schieferle of Florida, the current representative of Stevenson’s family and owner of Stevenson’s surviving copyrights, for his interest and co-operation in the New Edinburgh Edition. ix

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acknowledgements Volume Editor’s Acknowledgements

In editing Weir of Hermiston I have been the recipient of great generosity from the community of Stevenson scholars for which I am profoundly grateful. Roger S. Swearingen’s knowledge of Stevenson and his novel is illimitable, and equalled only by his kindness and patience in answering all my numerous questions. Richard Dury has been a constant resource for all things Stevensonian, and I have greatly enjoyed our exchanges on the details of textual editing as well as benefiting from his specific help and advice. I have been fortunate enough to be working on Weir of Hermiston at the same time as Glenda Norquay has been researching St Ives, so that I have gained not only from the details of her research into Stevenson’s posthumously published novels but also from her conversation and encouragement. I would also like to thank the other volume editors, as well as the General Editors, of the New Edinburgh Edition collectively. Anthony Mandal has advised on many presentational conventions and made a number of typesetting refinements to the draft volume. Penny Fielding, as the allocated General Editor for the volume, has acted with her characteristic good humour and patience, as well as intellectual acuity, and has made time to discuss the volume with me throughout an exceptionally busy phase of her scholarly career. The Edinburgh office of the New Edinburgh Edition has been a lighthouse for the seas of editing Weir of Hermiston, and always manning that beacon has been the edition’s Research Fellow, Lena Wånggren. I also thank the edition’s Research Assistants Sarah Ames, Sarah Sharp and Brian Wall, and its project interns, particularly those who have worked specifically on this volume, namely Marina Held, Stefanie Grimm, Tessa Deiss and Isabelle Stinner, but Désirée Buchinger and Hanne Bergfelder too. I am grateful to the University of Edinburgh for granting me the status of a Visiting Scholar during the progress of this edition, and to the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland for awarding me a grant that allowed me to examine Stevenson’s manuscript material for the novel at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York and at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Thanks also to those great research institutions and their staff for facilitating my research there. No scholarly edition can be undertaken without the co-operation of many libraries and other institutions. For permission to cite manuscript material in their care I would like to thank the Rare Book x

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acknowledgements

Department, Free Library of Philadelphia; The National Library of Scotland; the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum, St Helena, California; Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library; The Random House Group Ltd for permission to cite material from the Chatto & Windus archive within the Random House Group archives; The Stevenson House Museum Archive Collection, Monterey State Historic Park, California; The Stevenson Cottage, Lake Saranac. Thanks also to the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds for help and advice. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to make the necessary acknowledgement at the first opportunity. I am most grateful to Mr Tate Schieferle for his friendly cooperation and enthusiastic support for this particular volume of the New Edinburgh Edition. I am thankful to have been able to consult the individual expertise of John Cairns, of Mike Delahant, of James Hamilton of the Signet Library, of Iain Milne of the Royal College of Physicians, of AnnaLee Pauls, of Camille Peri, of Kris Quist and of Vivian Jokl Shipley. My daughter, Rachel Sweet, has checked individual points for me in libraries ranging from Chicago to London in the course of her own scholarly travels. My friends Gillian and Peter Garside have been kindly hosts during my numerous research trips to Edinburgh. And last, but by no means least, thank you to my husband, David Sweet, for every kind of support with my studies, always.

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Preface by the General Editors In the thirty years after Robert Louis Stevenson’s death in 1894, no fewer than eight collected editions of his works were published. Even in an age when such projects were more common (and economically feasible) than they are now, that is an unusually high number, and it testifies to the endurance of Stevenson’s popularity over the first portion of the twentieth century. For the publishers involved, these were commercial rather than scholarly ventures, understandably so. Little effort was made to establish the accuracy of individual works. In most cases the editions reprinted texts that drew, either directly or at several removes, on the twenty-eight-volume Works of Robert Louis Stevenson [Edinburgh Edition] (1894–98) overseen by Stevenson’s literary executor, Sidney Colvin. With good intentions and what now looks like questionable judgment, Colvin actively re-edited all of the works, altered some, and suppressed others. He also had neither the means nor any compelling motivation to try to untangle the often complicated transmission history of many of the texts in his care. As a result, though the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson [Edinburgh Edition] gathered and made widely accessible nearly all of Stevenson’s numerous literary productions, it preserved them in forms that deviate in countless ways from what Stevenson actually wrote. The New Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson pays titular tribute to Colvin’s foundational assemblage. It aims, though, to provide what cannot be found in his or any subsequent collected edition, namely accurate texts for all of Stevenson’s substantial oeuvre. The New Edinburgh Edition is designed to appeal both to the general reader and the scholar. Each volume supplies attractive, uncluttered reading texts. Individual works are thoroughly annotated, allowing readers to grasp the full range of Stevenson’s allusions as well as to recover the myriad ways in which he responded to the contemporary world and his cultural heritage. Introductory essays trace composition and publication histories while providing contextual information designed to extend readers’ understanding and, we hope, enhance their appreciation. Textual essays describe the extant witness texts (e.g. manuscript, proof-sheet, periodical publication, single or multiple book editions) for each work as well as the relations among xiii

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pr eface

them, while laying out the rationales for the copy texts chosen for the New Edinburgh Edition. In each volume, the textual apparatus provides a full listing of emendations and substantive variants. Overall, we trust that these volumes will help throw into higher relief Stevenson’s distinctive achievements as a creative writer. Those achievements extend across virtually all literary genres. During his lifetime Stevenson was known as a writer of exceptional versatility and skill. His output—in a career of only twenty years—included not just short and long prose fiction, but travel writing, essays, journalism, biography, poetry, drama, and—near the end of his life—ethnographic and political studies of the South Seas. Much of this writing has fallen from view, and for some time now Stevenson’s reputation has rested, sturdily enough, on a small number of works: Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, a few essays, a handful of poems and short stories. By bringing back into print works once highly regarded but long unavailable, the New Edinburgh Edition provides a more complete picture not only of Stevenson’s career but of his place in modern literary history. While it would of course be disingenuous to claim the same high aesthetic merit for each of his works, few are of mere historical interest. In this edition, readers will also find collected in one place pieces, most notably essays and short stories, that for various reasons were either never published or never reprinted after their initial periodical publication. Five volumes of Essays and four of Short Stories for the first time gather together in a uniform critical edition Stevenson’s substantial output in these genres. Henry James called Stevenson ‘a Scotchman of the world’, meaning that while his imagination remained rooted in his homeland—‘it is a good fortune for a genius to have had such a country as Scotland for its primary stuff ’, James notes—he was also a thoroughly cosmopolitan writer who drew inspiration from many literary and cultural traditions outside his own. In his life, too, Stevenson travelled through large portions of the habitable globe without ever losing sight, as it were, of his birthplace. As befits so peripatetic a writer, the volume editors for the New Edinburgh Edition are themselves drawn from across Europe, North America, and the South Pacific. In a sense, nothing less than a global effort would suffice for an undertaking such as this one. For one thing, Stevenson’s manuscripts and other materials are scattered in archives, libraries, and personal collections around the world. For Colvin and his immediate successors, the inaccessibility of much of this material would have frustrated any aspirations—had they had any— to produce an authoritative collected works. Since the 1970s, a numxiv

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ber of excellent editions of individual works have been published (and are acknowledged in the appropriate volumes here), but the far-flung dispersal of the relevant sources has until now discouraged efforts to produce a coordinated series of texts covering Stevenson’s entire oeuvre, all prepared by careful study of manuscripts and variant readings in lifetime editions and following unified scholarly procedures. Stevenson’s travels are relevant to the New Edinburgh Edition in another way. All evidence indicates that Stevenson, when he had the chance, preferred to be—indeed, insisted on being—minutely involved in the production of his works. An inveterate reviser and meticulous proofreader, at every stage from manuscript to final publication, Stevenson not only made changes but cancelled those made by, for instance, copy editors or typesetters. Unlike the vast majority of nineteenth-century authors, who happily ceded to printers the task of tidying up their manuscripts to conform to a particular house style, Stevenson resisted efforts to regularize the punctuation or even the grammar of his texts. One of his American editors, Edward Bok, wrote that ‘no man ever went over his proofs more carefully than did Stevenson’. This level of oversight, however, was seldom possible even in the best of circumstances. After 1887, as the Stevenson household moved from upstate New York to California to various locations in the South Pacific, it became virtually impossible. The sheer distances involved compelled Stevenson to relinquish much of his control once a work left his desk. Colvin’s editorial hand was heaviest, but errors and ‘corrections’ could creep in at multiple points in the line of transmission. Add to this the fact that Stevenson contracted with many different publishers in Great Britain and the United States, that his works often were issued more or less simultaneously in both countries under different imprints, that many of his shorter pieces appeared in periodicals before being revised and collected in volumes, that his more popular works went through multiple editions in short spaces of time, and that pirated editions abound, and the task of producing authoritative texts can be seen in all its fascinating, daunting complexity. With these considerations in mind, we have sought to devise editorial principles marked by rigour and consistency, but also flexibility. No single policy for copy text can be adopted because of the varying conditions of production that obtained at different moments in Stevenson’s career. Editors will normally take as copy text the most authoritative early edition—that is, the edition corresponding to the period in which Stevenson worked with greatest concentration and most sustained effort on the piece in question. In most but far from all cases, xv

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this means the first book edition of a work. For short texts (stories, essays, poems), the first publication in volume form is preferred to periodical publication as the version most carefully prepared and overseen by the author. In all cases, our aim is to publish accurate versions of texts as mediated by the differing circumstances of production and publication in which Stevenson collaborated. The New Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson thus makes available, often for the first time, authoritative texts that scholars and critics can use in their work and that all readers can rely on.

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List of Abbreviations Listed below are abbreviations of works used recurrently throughout the current volume. Balfour

Graham Balfour, The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, 2 vols (London: Methuen, 1901)

Beinecke

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. All references are to GEN MSS 664 (the Edwin J. Beinecke Collection of Robert Louis Stevenson), citing box and folder number (followed, where this is useful, by ‘B’ and the item number in the McKay catalogue, for details of which, see below, 172)

Burns

The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, ed. James Kinsley, 3 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968)

Chambers Robert Chambers, Traditions of Edinburgh, 2 vols (Edinburgh: W. & C. Tait, 1824–5) Chatto

Weir of Hermiston: An Unfinished Romance (London: Chatto & Windus, 1896): first British volume edition

Chicago

The text as syndicated in American newspapers, represented by the Chicago Tribune, daily from 5 to 12 Apr 1896

Cosmopolis ‘Weir of Hermiston’, in Cosmopolis, 1 (Jan, Feb, Mar 1896), 1–20, 321–62, 641–63 and 2 (Apr 1896), 1–27: British serialization CW Archive Chatto & Windus Archive, Random House Group Archive, University of Reading, Special Collections. All references are to letter or stock book and page number

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list of abbr eviations

Dallas

The text as syndicated in American newspapers, represented by the Dallas Morning News on 15, 22, 29 Mar and 5, 12, 19 Apr 1896

EdEd

‘Weir of Hermiston A Fragment’, in The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Edinburgh Edition, 28 vols (Edinburgh: Chatto & Windus, 1894–8), xxvi, 123–307

Groome

Francis H. Groome (ed.), Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: A Survey of Scottish Topography, 6 vols (Edinburgh: T. C. Jack, 1882–5). Citations from Groome in editorial matter are from the alphabetical entries for the various places under discussion

Letters

The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. Bradford A. Booth and Ernest Mehew, 8 vols (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994–5). For reasons of clarity, a colon is used to separate volume from page numbers

Lucas

E. V. Lucas, The Colvins and their Friends (London: Methuen, 1928)

Minstrelsy Walter Scott, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 2nd edn, 3 vols (Edinburgh and London: Longman, 1803) Morgan

The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York

New SA

The New Statistical Account of Scotland, 15 vols (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1845)

NLS

National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh

Los Angeles The text as syndicated in American newspapers, represented by the Los Angeles Herald on 22, 29 Mar, 5, 26 Apr and 3 May 1896 ODEP

The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, ed. F. P. Wilson, 3rd edn (1970; rptd Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982)

Paradise Lost

John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) xviii

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list of abbr eviations

Parrish

M. L. Parrish Collection of Victorian Novelists, CO171, Series 1b, no. 25, Princeton: three draft openings to the first chapter

Peter’s Letters

John Gibson Lockhart, Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Blackwood, and London: Cadell & Davies, 1819)

Princeton

Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Manuscripts Collection, Princeton University Library

Scribner’s

Weir of Hermiston: An Unfinished Romance (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1896): American volume edition

Smout

T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People 1560–1830, 2nd edn (London: Collins, 1970)

Speculative William K. Dickson et al., The History of the Speculative Society, 1764–1904 (Edinburgh: Speculative Society, 1905) Stone

Weir of Hermiston (Chicago: Stone & Kimball, 1896): American copyright edition

Swearingen Roger Swearingen, The Prose Writings of Robert Louis Stevenson: A Guide (London: Macmillan, 1980)

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Chronology of Robert Louis Stevenson 1848 28 Aug: Thomas Stevenson, youngest son of the lighthouse engineer Robert Stevenson, marries Margaret Isabella Balfour, youngest daughter of the Reverend Lewis Balfour, minister at Colinton near Edinburgh. 1850 13 Nov: Robert Lewis (‘Louis’ from c. 1869) Balfour Stevenson, only child, born at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh. The family later move to 1 Inverleith Terrace (1853), then 17 Heriot Row (1857). 1852 Alison Cunningham (‘Cummy’) enters the family as Stevenson’s nurse (until Nov 1872). 1860 Stevenson’s Balfour grandfather dies: end of childhood visits to Colinton Manse. 1866 Nov: The Pentland Rising. 1867 Thomas Stevenson leases Swanston Cottage at the foot of the Pentland Hills (until 1880); Nov: Stevenson enters Edinburgh University as student of engineering (abandoned 1871), then law (graduates 1875). 1868 Visits harbour works at Anstruther (July) and Wick (late Aug–early Oct). 1869 Mar: elected to Speculative Society (fellow members include Charles Baxter, James Walter Ferrier and Walter Simpson); June: accompanies his father on an official tour of inspection of the lighthouses of the Orkney and Shetland islands. 1870 Apr–May: engineering site inspection at Dunoon; Aug: on the islet of Earraid, base for the building of the Dhu Heartach lighthouse.

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chronology 1871 Apr: abandons engineering studies for law; June: tour of Cockermouth and Keswick. Jan–Apr, Edinburgh University Magazine essays: ‘Edinburgh Students in 1824’, ‘The Modern Student Considered Generally’, ‘The Philosophy of Umbrellas’, ‘An Old Scotch Gardener’, ‘Debating Societies’, ‘The Philosophy of Nomenclature’. 1872 July–Aug: in Frankfurt with Walter Simpson, walking tour in the Black Forest. 1873 Jan: tells his father that he no longer believes the Christian religion; July: in England meets Fanny Sitwell and Sidney Colvin (who becomes his literary advisor and later editor); Nov: to Mentone as a cure for nervous exhaustion. Dec: ‘Roads’ (Portfolio—first professionally published essay). 1874 Mentone; Apr: Paris (from now until autumn 1878 he spends a third of his time in France), then Edinburgh; June: elected to Savile Club; July–Aug cruise of the Inner Hebrides with Walter Simpson aboard the schooner Heron; Oct: walking tour in Buckinghamshire. May: ‘Ordered South’ (Macmillan’s Magazine); June: ‘Lord Lytton’s Fables in Song’ (Fortnightly Review); Aug: ‘The Ballads and Songs of Scotland’ and ‘Scottish Rivers’ (Academy), ‘Notes on the Movements of Young Children’ (Portfolio); ‘Victor Hugo’s Romances’ (Cornhill Magazine—first of twenty Cornhill essays); Nov: ‘On the Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places’ (Portfolio); Dec: ‘A Quiet Corner of England’ (Academy). 1875 Feb: Leslie Stephen introduces Stevenson to W. E. Henley; Mar: article on Burns for Encyclopædia Britannica rejected; Mar–Apr: Paris and Barbizon (returns to the Fontainebleau area six more times 1875–78); July: called to the Scottish bar, receives £1000 from his father; Aug: Barbizon, walking tour of the Loing Valley with Simpson. Jan: ‘The Works of Edgar Allan Poe’ (Academy); Feb: An Appeal to the Clergy of the Church of Scotland; Apr: ‘An Autumn Effect’ (Portfolio); Sept–Oct: ‘John Knox and his Relations to Women’ (Macmillan’s); late 1875: ‘Pierre Jean de Béranger’ (Encyclopædia Britannica); Nov: ‘The Measure of a Marquis’ (Vanity Fair), ‘Mr Browning Again!’ (Vanity Fair).

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chronology 1876 Jan: ‘Winter’s Walk’ from Ayr along the coast of sw Scotland; Aug–Sept: ‘Inland Voyage’ canoe trip from Antwerp to Pontoise; Sept: to Paris then Grez, where he meets Fanny Osbourne. Feb: ‘The Poets and Poetry of Scotland’ (Academy); Apr: ‘Salvini’s Macbeth’ (Academy); May: ‘Forest Notes’ (Cornhill); June: ‘Jules Verne’s Stories’ (Academy), ‘Walking Tours’ (Cornhill); July: ‘The Comedy of the Noctes Ambrosianæ’ (Academy); Aug: ‘Virginibus Puerisque’ (Cornhill); Dec: ‘Charles of Orleans’ (Cornhill). 1877 In Paris and Grez with Fanny Osbourne: Jan–Feb, June–July, Aug–Sept, Sept–Oct, and Dec to Mar 1878. Feb–Mar: ‘An Old Song’ (London—first published fiction); Feb: ‘On Falling in Love’ (Cornhill); Feb: short pieces in London: ‘A Salt-Water Financier’, ‘Mr Tennyson’s Harold’, ‘A Ball At Mr. Elsinare’s’, ‘A Studio of Ladies’, ‘The Paris Bourse’, ‘Wallace’s Russia’; July: ‘An Apology for Idlers’ (Cornhill); Aug: ‘François Villon, Student, Poet, Housebreaker’ (Cornhill); Oct: ‘A Lodging for the Night’ (Temple Bar—first fiction published under his own name). 1878 Paris; Mar: to London, visits George Meredith at Box Hill (further visits in 1879, 1882, 1886); June: Paris; July: Barbizon and Grez, then to London with Fanny Osbourne; Aug: Fanny Osbourne returns to her husband in California; Sept–Oct: Cévennes journey. Jan: ‘Will o’ the Mill’ (Cornhill), ‘The Sire de Malétroit’s Door’ (Temple Bar); Mar: ‘Crabbed Age and Youth’ (Cornhill); Apr: ‘Æs Triplex’ (Cornhill), ‘A Plea for Gas Lamps’ (London); May: An Inland Voyage (first published volume), ‘Pan’s Pipes’ (London), ‘El Dorado’ (London); June–Oct: ‘Latter-Day Arabian Nights’ (London); June–Dec: ‘Notes on Edinburgh’ (Portfolio); July: ‘The English Admirals’ (Cornhill); Sept: ‘Child’s Play’ (Cornhill); Oct: ‘The Gospel According to Walt Whitman’ (New Quarterly); Nov: ‘Leon Berthilini’s Guitar’ (London); Dec: Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes. 1879 Mar: writes much of ‘Lay Morals’; 7 Aug: sails from Glasgow on the Devonia; 17 Aug: arrives in New York; 30 Aug: arrives in Monterey after a train journey across North America; Dec: Fanny Osbourne (now in East Oakland) obtains a divorce; Dec: to San Francisco.

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chronology May: ‘Truth of Intercourse’ (Cornhill); June: Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes; Oct: ‘Some Aspects of Robert Burns’ (Cornhill), ‘The Story of a Lie’ (New Quarterly). 1880 Living poorly in San Francisco, writes ‘Memoirs of Himself ’; Mar: moves to East Oakland, first lung haemorrhage; 19 May: marries Fanny Osbourne in San Francisco; May–July: honeymoon at Calistoga and at an abandoned mining cabin at Silverado; Aug: returns to Scotland with Fanny and her son Lloyd, agrees to withdraw The Amateur Emigrant; Nov: to Davos; Nov– Dec: reading for projected history of the Highlands. Mar: ‘Yoshida-Torajiro’ (Cornhill); June: ‘Henry David Thoreau’ (Cornhill); Sept–Oct: ‘The Pavilion on the Links’ (Cornhill); Nov: ‘The Old Pacific Capital’ (Fraser’s Magazine). 1881 Davos (to May); June–Aug: Pitlochry, writes ‘Thrawn Janet’ and most of ‘The Merry Men’; Aug–Sept: Braemar, begins Treasure Island and first ‘Child’s Garden’ verses; Oct: returns to Davos; Nov: unsuccessfully applies for Chair of History and Constitutional Law at Edinburgh University. Feb–Mar, short essays in the Pall Mall Gazette: ‘Health and Mountains’, ‘Davos in Winter’, ‘Alpine Diversions’, ‘The Stimulation of the Alps’, ‘The Misgivings of Convalescence’; Mar: ‘Samuel Pepys’ (Cornhill); Apr: ‘The Morality of the Profession of Letters’ (Fortnightly Review), Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers; Oct: ‘Thrawn Janet’ (Cornhill), ‘Treasure Island’ (Young Folks, to Jan 1882). 1882 Davos (to Apr); June–Sept: Scotland; Sept: Montpelier; Oct: Marseille, lung haemorrhages. Feb: Familiar Studies of Men and Books, ‘Bagster’s Pilgrim’s Progress’ (Magazine of Art); Mar–Apr: Moral Emblems; Apr: ‘Talk and Talkers’ (Cornhill); May: ‘The Foreigner at Home’ (Cornhill); June–July: ‘The Merry Men’ (Cornhill); July: New Arabian Nights; Aug: ‘Talk and Talkers (a Sequel)’ (Cornhill), The Graver and the Pen; Nov: ‘Two Japanese Romances’ (Magazine of Art), ‘A Gossip on Romance’ (Longman’s Magazine); Nov–Dec: ‘The Silverado Squatters’ (Century Illustrated Monthly—his first work published first in the USA). 1883 Marseille; Feb: Hyères (to June 1884). May: ‘A Modern Cosmopolis’ (Magazine of Art); Apr–May: ‘The Treasure of Franchard’ (Longman’s); July–Aug: ‘Across the Plains’ (Longman’s);

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chronology June–Oct: ‘The Black Arrow’ (Young Folks); Nov: Treasure Island, ‘A Note on Realism’ (Magazine of Art). 1884 Hyères. Jan: seriously ill (lung haemorrhages); June: Royat, then London; July: Bournemouth (to Aug 1887), first London performance of Deacon Brodie (written with W. E. Henley). Jan: The Silverado Squatters; Feb: ‘The Character of Dogs’ (English Illustrated Magazine); Apr: ‘A Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured’ (Magazine of Art); May: ‘Old Mortality’; May–June: ‘Fontainebleau: Village Communities of Painters’ (Magazine of Art); Dec: ‘A Humble Remonstrance’ (Longman’s), ‘The Body Snatcher’ (Pall Mall Christmas Extra). 1885 Bournemouth; in poor health (serious lung haemorrhages Apr, Aug–Sept); Apr: moves into the house renamed ‘Skerryvore’ in Bournemouth, begins close friendship with Henry James. Mar: A Child’s Garden of Verses (published in the USA by Scribner’s, their first Stevenson title); Apr: (with Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson) More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter, ‘On Style in Literature: Its Technical Elements’ (Contemporary Review); Nov: Prince Otto (and Apr–Oct, Longman’s); Dec: ‘Olalla’ (Court and Society Review), ‘Markheim’ (The Broken Shaft: Unwin’s Annual 1886). 1886 Bournemouth; Thomas Stevenson depressed and in ill health; May: learning the piano; July: first musical composition. Jan: Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; July: Kidnapped (and May–July, Young Folks); Nov: ‘Some College Memories’ (New Amphion). 1887 Bournemouth; May: Thomas Stevenson dies, Stevenson in Edinburgh for the last time; Aug: sails for New York with his mother, Fanny and Lloyd; Sept: agrees to write twelve monthly essays for Scribner’s Magazine; Oct: Saranac Lake, upper New York State (to Apr 1888). Feb: The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables; Apr: ‘Pastoral’ (Longman’s), ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ (Contemporary Review); May: ‘Books Which Have Influenced Me’ (British Weekly), ‘The Manse’ (Scribner’s Magazine); June: ‘Thomas Stevenson, Civil Engineer’ (Contemporary Review); July: Underwoods; Nov: Memories and Portraits; Dec: ‘The Misadventures of John Nicholson’ (Yule Tide […] Cassell’s Christmas Annual).

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chronology 1888 Saranac Lake; Feb: withdraws ‘Confessions of a Unionist’ from Scribner’s Magazine; Mar: quarrel with Henley, McClure offers to syndicate letters written on a Pacific cruise; Apr–June: New York and Manasquan; May: signs contract for Fables; 28 June: leaves San Francisco with Fanny, Lloyd and his mother aboard the Casco; Aug: Marquesas; Sept: Paumotus; Sept– Dec: Tahiti, haemorrhages. Jan: Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin; June: The Black Arrow. Jan–Dec, monthly essays in Scribner’s Magazine: ‘A Chapter on Dreams’, ‘The Lantern-Bearers’, ‘Beggars’, ‘Pulvis et Umbra’, ‘Gentlemen’, ‘Some Gentlemen in Fiction’, ‘Popular Authors’, ‘Epilogue to An Inland Voyage’, ‘A Letter to a Young Gentleman who Proposes to Embrace the Career of Art’, ‘Contributions to the History of Fife’, ‘The Education of an Engineer’, ‘A Christmas Sermon’. 1889 Jan–June: Hawaii; May: visits leper settlement at Molokai; June: leaves Honolulu aboard the Equator with Fanny, Lloyd and Joe Strong on a trading cruise through the Gilbert Islands; 7 Dec: arrives in Apia, Samoa. June: (with Lloyd Osbourne) The Wrong Box; Sept: The Master of Ballantrae (and Nov 1888–Oct 1889, Scribner’s Magazine). 1890 Jan: buys land at ‘Vailima’; Feb–Mar: Sydney; seriously ill, abandons idea of returning to Europe for a holiday; Apr–July: with Fanny on the Janet Nicoll cruise from Sydney through the Cook, Ellice, Gilbert and Marshall Islands to New Caledonia; Aug–Sept: Sydney; Sept: moves into a cabin on the Vailima estate. Mar: ‘Father Damien’; Dec: Ballads. 1891 Jan–Mar: Sydney; Apr: moves into the main house at Vailima. Feb–Mar: ‘The Bottle Imp’ (Herald; and Mar–Apr: Black and White); Feb– Dec: ‘The South Seas’ (Sun and Black and White). 1892 June: Belle Strong becomes his amanuensis; July: Belle obtains divorce from Joe Strong; Oct: starts Weir of Hermiston. Apr: Across the Plains with Other Memories and Essays; June: (with Lloyd Osbourne) The Wrecker (and Aug 1891–July 1892, Scribner’s Magazine); July–Aug: ‘The Beach of Falesá’ (Illustrated London News), A Footnote to History. (With W. E. Henley) Three Plays.

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chronology 1893 Jan: second wing of Vailima completed, starts St Ives; Feb–Mar: Sydney; July: civil war in Samoa. Feb: ‘The Isle of Voices’ (National Observer); Apr: Island Nights’ Entertainments; Sept: David Balfour/Catriona (and Dec 1892–Sept 1893, Atalanta). 1894 Oct: Samoan chiefs build the Road of Gratitude to Vailima; Nov: first volume of the Edinburgh Edition published; 3 Dec: dies of cerebral haemorrhage. Aug: ‘My First Book: Treasure Island’ (The Idler; and Sept, McClure’s Magazine); July (USA; Sept in UK): (with Lloyd Osbourne) The Ebb-Tide (and Nov 1893–Feb 1894, To-day; Feb–July 1894, McClure’s Magazine). 1895 The Amateur Emigrant. 1895, 1899, 1911 Letters. 1896 Weir of Hermiston, In the South Seas, ‘Lay Morals’, Fables, Songs of Travel. 1897 St Ives.

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Introduction Genesis

The roots of Stevenson’s final novel, Weir of Hermiston, lie back as far as what he subsequently termed his ‘Covenanting childhood’ under the care of his devoted nurse Alison Cunningham. His first publication was a historical essay published in 1866 at his father’s expense entitled The Pentland Rising: A Page of History, 1666. Writing to J. M. Barrie on 7 December 1893 Stevenson described his recent reading of ‘little else but Wodrow, Walker, Shields, etc’ as a return ‘to my wallowing in the mire. When I was a child and indeed until I was nearly a man I consistently read Covenanting books’. He opined, ‘My style is from the Covenanting writers’ (Letters 8: 205). Perhaps as early as 1873 he had written to his old nurse intuiting that in spring she might ‘happen to think that you might have had a child of your own, and that it was hard you should have spent so many years taking care of some one else’s prodigal’ (Letters 1: 279–80), a sympathy for childlessness that is surely connected with his powerful portrayal of the elder Kirstie Elliott in Weir of Hermiston. More generally the novel springs from Stevenson’s upbringing in Victorian Edinburgh in which he moved daily among the legends, buildings, and tangible art-works of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Weir of Hermiston mentions a number of these Edinburgh artefacts specifically, for instance, the rooms of the Speculative Society at the University which Stevenson attended regularly during his student days, and at a meeting of which society he had himself opened in the affirmative an 1870 debate on the question, ‘Is the Abolition of Capital Punishment desirable?’ (Balfour, i, 78). The statue of Duncan Forbes of Culloden by the eighteenth-century French sculptor Roubillac standing in Edinburgh’s Parliament House was also familiar to Stevenson as an apprentice lawyer. He had been profoundly impressed by Raeburn’s portrait of John Macqueen, Lord Braxfield (the Lord Hermiston of Weir) and had written perceptively about it in his essay on ‘Some Portraits by Raeburn’ in Virginibus Puerisque (1881). Writing to Andrew Lang on 1 December 1894, shortly before his death, Stevenson expressed his thanks for Lang’s gift of an engraving of this xxvii

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portrait for his study: he recalls seeing the original in Edinburgh ‘in ’76 or ’77 with so extreme a gusto that I have ever since been Braxfield’s humble servant, and am now trying, as you know, to stick him into a novel’ (Letters 8: 395). Stevenson’s Edinburgh youth is also reflected, to a limited extent, in the troubled relations between Archie Weir and his stern father. Stevenson’s own loving and much-loved father, who had been devoted to his nightmare-haunted and sickly child, is obviously a far cry from the Lord Hermiston whom Archie cannot remember ever having touched him. However, Thomas Stevenson’s violent emotional reaction to Stevenson’s confessed lack of Christian faith in the early 1870s and his consequent alienation from his son does seem to inform the relations of the fictional father and son. Stevenson had written to Colvin on 23 October 1873 of ‘the cost of keeping up a continual, cold distance, that is very unlovely and unpleasant’ between himself and his parents (Letters 1: 348). If the frustrated maternity Stevenson sensed in his old nurse, Alison Cunningham, informed the figure of the elder Kirstie Elliott in his novel, then certain features of the younger Kirstie may have derived from the women of his own household. Her dark complexion and small, trim figure recall those of Stevenson’s wife, Fanny, in her youth. In describing the first impression made by young Kirstie Elliott on Archie, Stevenson had written in a draft manuscript that she appeared in Hermiston kirk ‘like a bed of tiger lilies in a city garden’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 29). Nellie Sanchez in her biography of her sister recalls how Fanny was criticized as a child for her dark complexion and was comforted by her mother’s description of her as not a lily but ‘a little tiger lily’: Fanny afterwards included tiger lilies in the many gardens she had in the course of her life (Van de Grift Sanchez, 14). Stevenson’s step-daughter and amanuensis Belle Strong, from photographs inherited her mother’s dark complexion, and by her own account, not only helped him in picking out suitable clothes for the younger Kirstie Elliott but was herself a model for the character: He once said he was going to take me for Kirstie. I can’t tell anybody for she’s a most immoral little person—and I don’t like to ask him again for fear he has changed his mind, but it makes it very interesting to follow the character. He has made her dark and vain and her bare arms ‘shimmer’ (as he once said mine did in a black silk dress) (Beinecke 49, 1073, f. 31) The Hermiston scenes of the novel relate to the Scottish countryxxviii

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side as experienced by Stevenson in his youth and in the literature of the early nineteenth century. As Colvin pointed out in his Editorial Note of 1896, the parish of Hermiston seems to be an amalgam of various disparate southern Scottish country places known to Stevenson in youth.1 A generic Borders is the result, though with clear parallels to the historical Peebles and the country to the north of it. The Elliotts of Cauldstaneslap were in one sense kin to the author, who referred now and then to his own Elliott ancestry. In his essay ‘The Manse’, he declared, ‘I have shaken a spear […] and shouted the slogan of the Elliots’ (Memories and Portraits, 117), a view of Border reiving which obviously owes a great deal to Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, to The Lay of the Last Minstrel and to certain of the Waverley Novels, particularly to Redgauntlet with the inset ‘Wandering Willie’s Tale’. Scott himself is alluded to in Weir of Hermiston as the improving landowner who encouraged Lord Hermiston to plant trees on the Rutherford estates, and as the patron of Dandie Elliott as ballad source and local bard. Dandie himself owes a good deal to Stevenson’s conception of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who is described as a mixture of patron and drinking-partner to him and is very much the roisterer of the Noctes Ambrosianæ symposia of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.2 It is interesting to follow through various revisions of Weir of Hermiston Stevenson’s tempering of his verdict on Dandie’s talents, which becomes somewhat less dismissive. Stevenson’s responses in his drafts to Dandie’s declaration that ‘my kingdom is no of this world. Ayther I’m a poet, or I’m naething’ are that ‘he was niether, but something betwixt and between’ and that it was strange that a man ‘who was a born shepherd to his toes’ should stake all his ambition on a little minor verse, ‘Not that it was bad minor verse’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 18). This was softened in his final manuscript, where the verdict on Dandie’s inferiority as poet by comparison to his excellence as shepherd has been eliminated and the narrator simply states, ‘No question but he had a certain accomplishment in minor verse’.3 A historical novel set in Scotland, Weir of Hermiston inevitably looks back to Walter Scott. The opening reference to ‘the chisel of Old Mortality has clinked on that lonely gravestone’ recalls the stonemason who tends the memorials of Covenanters and gives Scott the title for his novel The Tale of Old Mortality. The Borders setting and use of folk motifs and stories as well as the power of fate recalls The Bride of Lammermoor and Redgauntlet—particularly, ‘Wandering Willie’s Tale’. But where Scott marked off his use of a Scots folk narrative xxix

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in Redgauntlet, Stevenson allows his folk narrative to flow in and out of the main narrative perspective. Stevenson’s wide reading of previous nineteenth-century novels is inevitably echoed in certain aspects of Weir of Hermiston, just as Weir of Hermiston in turn influenced the work of early twentieth-century novelists like D. H. Lawrence and Lewis Grassic Gibbon and is thus a key transitional work in the history of realism. Archie Weir’s attraction to Christina, for example, refreshes the theme of the pursuit of a lower-class young woman by a young man trained as a lawyer in novels such as Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend (1864–5). As Ian Duncan indicates, Stevenson’s fictions are experimental works involving ‘a critical refusal of the Victorian novel and its protocols, rather than a failure to master them’, and this naturally had a profound effect upon his successors (15).4 Strangely enough, however, one of the most immediate literary influences on the love-plot of Weir of Hermiston seems to have been a novel which Stevenson strongly disliked, Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891). Stevenson wrote to Henry James on 5 December 1892: I should tell you in fairness I could never finish it; there may be the treasures of the Indies further on; but so far as I read, James, it was (in one word) damnable. Not alive, not true, was my continual comment as I read; and at last—not even honest! was the verdict with which I spewed it from my mouth. (Letters 7: 450) Yet Hardy’s novel was plainly read and discussed in Stevenson’s household,5 and he mentions it several times in his correspondence, once, in his letter to Barrie of 1 November 1892, directly comparing the younger Kirstie Elliott with Tess: I will not betray my secret or my heroine. Suffice it to breathe in your ear that she was what Hardy calls (and others, in their plain way, don’t) a Pure Woman. Much virtue in a capital letter […] (Letters 7: 414) Like Hardy, Stevenson was attempting to depict female sexuality in a publishing context of severe censorship. Initial sales of novels were heavily dependent upon the purchasing power of circulating libraries such as Mudie’s, which demanded a standard of decorousness suited to family reading and drawing-room display, as both novelists and publishers were well aware. Nor was it possible to avoid these rexxx

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straints through serial publication, since magazines were even more stringent in their demands. Stevenson was amused by Barrie’s anecdote about the Graphic’s refusing to let Angel Clare in Hardy’s Tess carry the three dairymaids across a flooded path in his arms and causing him to transport them in a wheel-barrow instead, calling it an ‘exquisite story’ in his letter of 1 November (Letters 7: 413). This extreme prudery was less entertaining, however, when it impacted adversely upon his own work, as it had when Cassell’s objected in May 1892 to the sham marriage certificate in ‘A Beach of Falesá’. After this episode Stevenson plainly worried about the acceptability of the love stories in his fiction, writing to Colvin on 12 September 1892 of the virginal loves of David Balfour and the heroine of Catriona ‘Will it do for the young person? I don’t know; since “The Beach”, I know nothing, except that men are fools and hypocrites, and I know less of them than I was fond enough to fancy’ (Letters 7: 369). But in the case of Weir of Hermiston it seems, he was prepared to meet such opposition head on: determining in a letter to Baxter of 1 December 1892 to write a story in which his heroine ‘is seduced by one man and finally disappears with the other man who shot him’, he recognized that this ‘don’t look much like serial publication—if the worst comes to the worst we shall of course do without that’ (Letters 7: 441), a considerable financial sacrifice since an author in the 1890s would often gain more by the initial magazine publication of a novel than by the subsequent volume republication. He was clear-eyed in recognising that from a magazine editor’s perspective Weir of Hermiston was ‘in rather the guttery rut’, and Belle was undoubtedly correct in pronouncing that he had in this case decided to join the band of ‘modern writers who were defying Mrs Grundy and trying to say damn’.6 Stevenson’s approach in Weir of Hermiston was to differ sharply from that of Hardy in Tess, however. Tess is the innocent and passive victim of a rapist rather than a girl who is seduced, and Hardy keeps this act very much unrealized. In contrast, the vain and passionate Kirstie Elliott deliberately shuts her eyes to the threat of seduction implicit in secret love-trysts with a man of a higher social class. In marked contrast with Angel Clare’s rejection of Tess when she tells him her story on their wedding-night, Archie (according to the plot summary provided by Belle) was to retain his chivalrous love for Kirstie, after knowing that she was with child by another man. Contrasting himself with Hardy, Stevenson described himself to Colvin on 18 May 1892 as ‘a realist and a prosaist, and a most fanatical lover of plain physical sensations plainly and expressly rendered; hence my perils’ (Letters 7: 284). xxxi

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When Christina’s readiness to be admired by Archie in church meets with the desired response she is subsequently described as ‘dwelling intoxicated among clouds of happiness’ (63). Her subsequent reflections in her attic bedroom are compared to the effects of mesmerism (67), she seeks him out that evening probably without real awareness that she is doing so, indirectly provides for future meetings by telling him ‘It’s a habit of mines to come up here about the gloaming when it’s quait and caller’ (71), and through her song releases in herself the power of the ‘dramatic artist’ that lay dormant within her but had now ‘sprung to his feet in a divine fury’ (72). Sexual attraction becomes a kind of fate, Kirstie equally disregarding the cautions given to her by ‘Dandie’s ill omened words, and a hundred grisly and black tales out of the immediate neighbourhood’ (66) and by her awareness as Archie approaches her that the ‘difference in their social station was trenchant; propriety, prudence, all that she had ever learned, all that she knew, bade her flee’ (70). Unlike Tess she has been dominated by her feelings, the prudential considerations that occur to her existing on another plane of reality. On a social reading she shares responsibility with Archie for the illicit relationship that develops between them, but in another sense is fated or beglamoured. Stevenson’s ‘Fate played his game artfully with this poor pair of children’ (74) may superficially recall Hardy’s famous conclusion that ‘the President of the Immortals […] had ended his sport with Tess’ (iii, 277), but Kirstie’s fate comes from deep within and not from without. Writing to his cousin Bob in September 1894 Stevenson expressed his continued bewilderment at the contrast between the ‘prim obliterated polite face of life, and the broad, bawdy, and orgiastic—or maenadic—foundations’ (Letters 8: 362). composition

Stevenson’s young cousin and future biographer, Graham Balfour, made the first of his three long visits to the family at Vailima from August until mid-November 1892 and recalled Stevenson’s enthusiastic commencement of his new novel: Weir of Hermiston was begun, and for three or four days Stevenson was in such a seventh heaven as he has described: he worked all day and all evening, writing or talking, debating points, devising characters and incidents, ablaze with enthusiasm, and abounding with energy. No finished story was, xxxii

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or ever will be, so good as Weir of Hermiston, shown to us in those days by the light of its author’s first ardour of creation.   Then he settled down, and a few days later read aloud to the family, as was his custom, the first draft of the opening chapters. (Balfour, ii, 142) Stevenson wrote to Sidney Colvin on 29 October 1892, telling him about ‘my new novel’ and giving him a number of possible titles and a list of characters that makes it plain that the general outline of the story was already clear in his mind. Stevenson’s alternatives hover interestingly between the Edinburgh and the Borders characters of the novel, ‘Weir of Hermiston | The Lord Justice-Clerk | The Two Kirsties of the Cauldstaneslap | or | The Four Black Brothers’. It is to be set ‘about Hermiston in the Lammermuirs or in Edinburgh. Temp. 1812’ (Letters 7: 408–9). A few days later, on 1 November, he wrote a more detailed account to fellow Scottish novelist Barrie, describing it as all moorland together and is to have for a centrepiece a figure that I think you will appreciate—that of the immortal Braxfield. Braxfield himself is my grand premier—or since you are so much involved in the British drama, let me say my heavy lead. […] Braxfield—only his name is Hermiston—has a son who is condemned to death; plainly there is a fine tempting fitness about this; and I meant he was to hang. But now on considering my minor characters, I saw there were five people who would—in a sense who must—break prison and attempt his rescue. They were capable hardy folks too, who might very well succeed. Why should they not then? Why should not young Hermiston escape clear out of the country? and be happy, if he could, with his—but soft! I will not betray my secret or my heroine. (Letters 7: 412–14) By early November he was requesting his Edinburgh friend Charles Baxter to send him books and information to assist in the composition of his tale: Robert Pitcairn’s Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland (1833), ‘an absolutely correct text of the Scots judiciary oath’, and any book that might assist him to determine whether Archie’s trial could be held at the circuit court in the Scottish Borders rather than in Edinburgh (Letters 7: 424). On 1 December he also asked Baxter to send a copy of Henry Cockburn’s Memorials. By that date Stevenson had clearly been writing with gusto the initial Edinburgh chapters in which Hermiston apxxxiii

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pears, for he declared, quoting Keats: ‘My Braxfield is already a thing of beauty and a joy forever, and, so far as he has gone, far my best character’ (Letters 7: 441). By 5 December he was able to tell Henry James that he had drafted ‘three chapters of […] The Justice-Clerk’ (Letters 7: 449). It would probably be mistaken, however, to conclude that by early December 1892 Stevenson had written to the end of the third chapter in Weir of Hermiston as published, which concludes with the interview between Archie and his father at which it is settled that Archie is to abandon his Edinburgh legal studies and settle in the Scottish Borders as a laird-in-training. Stevenson seems to have been unclear initially on how his material was to be shaped and ordered. Each of the three draft openings to the first chapter now in Princeton University Library are in Stevenson’s hand and were paginated by him, beginning with page 2, which suggests that even at this early stage there was once an equivalent of the introductory section of the finished novel that describes the cairn near the Praying Weaver’s stone and its uncanny local reputation (Parrish). The first draft of Chapter 1 opens with the family return to Hermiston that precedes the death of Jean Rutherford and describes her ineffectual housekeeping in Edinburgh. The second draft also opens with the return to Hermiston but then turns immediately to Jean’s ancestry and her courtship by Adam Weir. The third draft is closer to the sequencing of the final manuscript. Other draft material in the Morgan Library also reveals that Stevenson took a while to determine the ordering of his material in its final form. The second chapter, headed ‘In the matter of the Hanging of Duncan Jopp’, begins with the material later incorporated into the chapter of the published novel called ‘Father and Son’ (Morgan, MA 1419, f. 17), which suggests that this division was a later thought (particularly as none of the various early lists of projected chapter titles for the novel in the draft material include one with this title). This manuscript also indicates that at some point Stevenson intended to begin his third chapter with the evening following Jopp’s execution (f. 31) and his fourth chapter in Hermiston parish (f. 36), although he subsequently changed his mind in both cases.The precise point Stevenson had reached in writing his story by 5 December 1892 therefore remains unclear. He was plainly still dissatisfied with the opening of the novel, however, for around the end of the year he told Sidney Colvin: ‘With incredible labour, I have rewritten the First Chapter of The Justice-Clerk, it took me about ten days, and requires another athletic dressing after all’ (Letters 7: 461). Less than a month later Stevenson had begun another work of fiction, St Ives, dictating it to Belle Strong, and reported to xxxiv

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Colvin on 24 January 1893 that they were ‘getting on splendidly with it’ (Letters 7: 462–3). On 30 January 1893 he described ‘The Justice-Clerk’ as ‘in gremio’ (literally ‘in my lap’, held for future development), while he had about one-third of St Ives drafted (Letters 8: 20). For several months after that a period of sustained illness succeeded and of ‘heartbreaking anxiety over Fanny’ (Letters 8: 52). By 17 May he reported to S. R. Crockett that ‘Weir of Hermiston is as yet scarce begun. It’s going to be excellent, no doubt; but it consists of about 20 pp.’ (Letters 8: 76). This break in the physical work of drafting, however, does not mean that Stevenson was resting from Weir of Hermiston altogether, especially while he was working on St Ives, since both works were set in Scotland during the early 1810s and he was therefore reading and gathering material for both at once. Among these books were the ­Annual Register for 1812, and several volumes of the magazine La Belle Assemblée sent by Charles Baxter.7 It seems likely that he still had Weir of Hermiston very much in mind, even though the writing of it went on only intermittently during 1893. Although Stevenson had the proofs of Catriona (or David Balfour, as the American edition was entitled) to correct that year, and also made a visit to Sidney, so that he was away from home and in poor health between 18 February and the end of March, he was evidently under some pressure to complete either the one novel or the other. As early as March Colvin and Baxter were negotiating serial publication for either one of them on his behalf.8 Most of the draft material for Weir of Hermiston is in Stevenson’s own hand, but before the end of July 1893 it would appear that Belle Strong was acting as his amanuensis. Her diary entry for 25 July 1893 records that ‘Louis and I have taken a new start on “The Hanging Judge” a story that is going to be his strongest work if it keeps up to the high standard of the beginning’.9 While almost all of the draft material for the novel is in Stevenson’s hand, the final manuscript is in Belle’s handwriting with Stevenson’s hand evident in additions and corrections. The surviving manuscript material reveals much about the composition of Weir of Hermiston. Most obviously, it is plain that Stevenson revised his work while it was in progress rather than drafting the entire novel and then revising subsequently, for the draft material continues the story for only a few pages after the final manuscript breaks off. Clearly, he pared and cut back substantially on every level during the process of composition. There are two drafts, for instance, of a scene occurring shortly after Archie’s arrival at Hermiston in which he goes out with the shepherd in a snowstorm to rescue the sheep and which is the making of his fortune as a laird. The implied purpose xxxv

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of the scene was surely to account for the respect in which Archie is held by his dependants at Hermiston. In the subsequent version of the novel Stevenson contents himself with simply stating that they had ‘a sensitive affection and respect’ for him (79) without stating how this came about. A similarly interesting passage extends Archie’s visit to Lord Glenalmond after his submission to his father, by relating how Glenalmond with the consent of Lord Glenkindie offers to draw up a written note of Archie’s concern for the offence he has given to his father’s judicial colleagues and to show it to Hermiston. However interesting, such scenes were plainly rejected by Stevenson in revision. His economy of method is revealed by the existence of many details in the draft material that do not appear in the later version. Stevenson was always stimulated by collaboration. Belle’s participation as his amanuensis for Weir of Hermiston seems to have had a greater impact than merely the substitution of her large, plain, legible handwriting for his smaller and more difficult hand. The entry in her journal for 25 July 1893 that records this ‘new start’ on the novel suggests that a state of heightened emotion accompanied the progress of the work in both parties: This morning I refused to rest—which I generally do every two pages; I saw that Louis was in fine flow, and I was too deeply interested to lose a word so we tore on at full speed till we were both in a fever by the time we had to stop. (Beinecke 49, 1072, f. 92) Belle wrote, in the days immediately succeeding Stevenson’s death, that she hurried through her household jobs every day to be ready to write for him and that on the last day we worked steadily till nearly twelve, and then he walked up and down the room talking to me of his work, of future chapters, of bits of his past life that bore on what he had been writing—as he only could talk.10 Stevenson not only dictated the day’s instalment of his work but also confided his plans for its continuation to his amanuensis, thus increasing her interest and maintaining and displaying his own. He seems to have worked from a series of notes drawn probably in part from earlier drafts. Balfour reported on Belle’s authority that Stevenson generally made notes in the early morning, ‘which he elaborates as he reads them xxxvi

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aloud. In Hermiston he has hardly more than a line or two to keep him on the track, but he never falters for a word, but gives me the sentences with capital letters and all the stops, as clearly and steadily as though he were reading from an unseen book’ (Balfour, ii, 153, citing Belle’s journal of 24 September [1894]). Getting ready for these sessions with Belle, Stevenson would also probably read over the manuscript produced on the previous day, correcting any errors and revising, as part of his preparation for what he intended to dictate during the new session. Belle’s Samoan name, Teuila, Stevenson glossed as ‘adorner of the ugly’ (Letters 7: 388) and she was plainly interested in dress. She related that the detail of young Kirstie’s fashionable clothing was arrived at through collaboration: We had such an interesting time looking over old fashion books for the heroine’s clothes, and I think he has used them with telling effect. One time Louis rushed in to my room with the news that that [sic] in her afternoon walk she wore pink stockings to match her pink kerchief. Her dress was gray and I suggested the pink kerchief—and he was very much pleased with himself about the stockings especially as he has used the incident artfully in an interview with her brother, to develop her character.11 The final manuscript seems to confirm her account, in that the passage where Dandie, looking after Kirstie as she climbs up to Cauldstaneslap, notices her silk stockings is a subsequent addition paginated 147a and 147b with the place where it should be inserted noted in the margin of page 147. It was obviously dictated very soon after the scene into which it was to be inserted, however, since Dandie’s questioning of Kirstie about these stockings and her subsequent lie to him are written only a few pages later in the main pagination sequence. Other insertions are less fully documented, but are also identified by being marked as additions to the main pagination sequence. Several sentences describing young Kirstie’s inspiration in singing to Archie at Cauldstaneslap occupy only a third of a separate sheet of paper paginated 155a, while the text of 193a also occupies only part of the paper and suggests Stevenson had second thoughts about the way in which the elder Kirstie should enter Archie’s chamber for their midnight conference in the chapter called ‘A Nocturnal Visit’. Evidence of uncertainty about this particular chapter also survives in the form of draft material in Belle’s hand in the Morgan Library, xxxvii

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the final leaves of MA 993, paginated 189–93 and thus corresponding roughly to the pagination sequence of the revised version in the final manuscript. Stevenson had at a relatively late stage rejected the idea (embodied in his own previous draft of the passage in MA 993, f. 35v) of beginning the chapter with Archie rather than Kirstie, and revised his description of her appearance to remove the direct comparison of her beauty with that of Athene (f. 38v). It is possible that, besides the surviving draft material, almost all in Stevenson’s own hand, there were versions of other scenes (or parts of scenes) in Belle’s hand also which have not survived. An isolated leaf of draft material in Belle’s hand towards the end of Morgan, MA 993 (preceding the similar ones for ‘A Nocturnal Visit’) covers part of Archie’s encounter with Dr Gregory and is paginated 58: this implies that at one time there was perhaps another version of the entire episode, since in the final manuscript the equivalent passage occurs instead on page 52.12 It seems clear that there were layers of revision of which little or nothing can now be determined, and that Stevenson’s last manuscript for Weir of Hermiston was still in process of revision in December 1894 until fixed and halted by the author’s sudden death. It is not possible to reconstruct a minutely detailed account of the progress of the final manuscript. Belle’s records in her journal of the days on which she was ‘writing for Louis his Hermiston story’ are disappointingly sparse. After the ‘new start’ of 25 July 1893 she mentions on 6 February 1894 that they had then ‘been at it several days’ (Beinecke 49, 1072, f. 116). On 24 November she records that, ‘Louis’ had put aside St Ives for a while and that they have been ‘writing away every morning’ on Weir of Hermiston, which is mentioned again as occupying the pair on 30 November and on 3 December, the day of Stevenson’s sudden death (ff. 31, 33, 36). Stevenson’s letters support Belle’s references but provide only a limited amount of additional information about progress after the ‘new start’ of August 1893. On 5 August he told Colvin, ‘I have been recasting the beginning to The Hanging Judge or Weir of Hermiston’ (Letters 8: 143), while he mentions his current immersion in Covenanting literature in letters written in December. In a subsequent letter to Colvin of 26 February 1894, Stevenson was reassured by a re-reading of The Ebb-Tide: ‘It gives me great hope, as I see I can work in that constipated, mosaic manner, which is what I have to do just now with Weir of Hermiston’, and towards the end of the following month he was able to indicate to Barrie that he now had around fifty pages written (Letters 8: 250, 259). His letter to Baxter of 18 May 1894 gives the text of the poetic dedication to Fanny Stevenson xxxviii

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that he had intended ‘for The Justice-Clerk when it should be finished’ (Letters 8: 291). In particular it is not at all clear how much of the writing of the novel was accomplished in the early months of 1894, before being set aside for St Ives. When Stevenson resumed work on Weir of Hermiston in the autumn of 1894 he seems to have done so with great energy and excitement. An entry in Belle’s journal made during the last days of Stevenson’s life conveys an impression of their writing sessions as febrile: on 30 November 1894, for instance, they were ‘pegging away at Hermiston like one o’clock’ and she ‘hardly drew breath but flew over the paper’ (Beinecke 49, 1073, f. 33). Colvin in his Editorial Note for the volume edition also writes, presumably on the authority of various members of the Stevenson household, of the ‘sudden heat of inspiration’ of Stevenson’s work on the novel in his final weeks: No wonder if during these weeks he was sometimes aware of a tension of the spirit difficult to sustain. ‘How can I keep this pitch?’ he is reported to have said after finishing one of the chapters; and all the world knows how that frail organism in fact betrayed him in mid effort.13 At Stevenson’s death the fair-copy manuscript on which he was working with Belle’s assistance was of course left unfinished, to be brought back to Britain by his friend and executor Charles Baxter and prepared for publication by his literary editor, Sidney Colvin. Colvin, both in his comments about Weir of Hermiston and his interventions as editor, works to represent Stevenson’s manuscript as being more consistent and finished than it was. This is understandable, since his aim was to maximize the financial return on Stevenson’s various writings for the benefit of his surviving family and to promote and safeguard the literary reputation of his deceased friend. He and Charles Baxter had to sell the incomplete novel to various publishers as fit for a separate (and lucrative) publication, and he took great pains in shifting it towards a state of completion that would appeal to contemporary publishers and contemporary readers. For instance, two chronological inconsistencies of the manuscript were removed by changing the date of the Edinburgh scenes from 1811 to 1813 and Archie’s age from seventeen to nineteen years old, and by eliminating the disparity of Frank Innes’s first seeing the younger Kirstie in church on the twenty-seventh day and on the second Sunday of his stay at Hermiston. Nervous, no doubt, about possible breaches of stringent xxxix

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Victorian notions of propriety for heroines, Colvin also toned down references to the vanity and sexuality of the younger Kirstie. Colvin also considered himself at liberty to change Stevenson’s paragraph and sentence divisions and punctuation to suit his own personal preferences, to omit or alter obscure or unusual words and allusions, and to substitute for a word of Stevenson’s one he considered more appropriate. His editing of the manuscript illustrates his own lexical preferences, which were very different from those of Stevenson. He refined a number of colloqualisms, made implied metaphors overt ones, and spelled out ideas succinctly yet effectively conveyed by Stevenson to the reader. He also made a number of inconsistent changes to Stevenson’s use of Scots. Colvin’s interventions (which increased from the initial London serial publication to the first British volume publication and from that to the work’s appearance in the collected Edinburgh Edition of Stevenson’s works) go far beyond the simple tidying of the text of Stevenson’s manuscript. Cumulatively they tend to undermine Stevenson’s work rather than completing it, and a modern editor is naturally less inclined to resolve inconsistencies in the manuscript that only the author could properly have resolved, less affected by late Victorian standards of decorum, and more intent on Stevenson’s work than on Colvin’s modification of it. The present text returns to Stevenson’s final manuscript. Early Reception

Stevenson’s close friends Charles Baxter and Sidney Colvin did their best from the beginning to ensure that Weir of Hermiston received the favourable reception that they sincerely felt it deserved and that would encourage substantial sales to benefit his surviving family. Baxter, for instance, in his April 1895 interview with the Chicago Evening Post during his return journey to London from Samoa, described it as a ‘splendid fragment (about 50,000 words), complete in itself ’ that would be published ‘as the first episode of what was to be his masterpiece’. Colvin, in his ‘Epilogue’ to Vailima Letters (1895), stated that it gave, both in his opinion and in Stevenson’s own, ‘for the first time the full measure of his powers’, adding ‘if in the literature of romance there is to be found work more masterly, of more piercing human insight or more concentrated imaginative vision and beauty, I do not know it’ (358). It was prominently featured in advertisements for the new halfcrown international magazine Cosmopolis as ‘The Last Romance of Robert Louis Stevenson, entitled Weir of Hermiston’ in letters almost xl

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as large as those for the magazine title itself and with a list of the other articles following after a rule and in very much smaller type.14 During the serialization in Cosmopolis in the early months of 1896 there was much positive comment in the press, particularly in America. Andrew Lang, reporting on ‘The Month in England’ in April 1896, pronounced that in parts he thought it ‘almost a new revelation of Mr. Stevenson’s powers’, praising the characterization of the elder Kirstie Elliott and Lord Hermiston and declaring that ‘the Black brothers would do honor to the finest work of Scott’. Furthermore the author of Stone & Kimball’s new best-seller The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896), Harold Frederic, weighed in, deploring Stevenson’s untimely death as ‘A Literary Catastrophe’ in the New York Times and opining that Weir of Hermiston, had he but lived to complete it, ‘would have been one of the great books of the language’, the six chapters he had read to date giving Frederic ‘the bitterest and most implacable grievance against death that I have ever felt’, since as far as it went it was ‘all gold’. Syndication as ‘The Last Story of Robert Louis Stevenson’ in American newspapers would have given the work a widespread currency there, particularly among an extensive readership that would read a daily or weekly newspaper but was not in the habit of buying new novels. The synopsis and illustrations provided reflect popular American interpretations of Scottish culture: for instance, the four Borders Elliott brothers and their dying father are depicted in kilts, while Archie tends to alternate between knee-breeches and full Highland dress. In this popular American setting Scots words and Scottish culture are sometimes misunderstood or misinterpreted, so that the Puritan expression ‘a cloud of witnesses’ becomes ‘a crowd of witnesses’ (6 April 1896).15 Failing to understand that when the Elliott father speaks of ‘Brocken Dykes’ this is a Scottish pronunciation of ‘Broken Dykes’, the surrounding narrative refers to ‘Brocken Dykes’ as well (9 April), while an allusion to Burns’s ‘The Cottar’s Saturday Night’ is missed when Gilbert is ‘waiting the portions’ rather than ‘waling the portions’ (12 April). An awareness of the importance to advertisers of the domestic female readership of the newspaper surely led to the softening of Hermiston’s uncompromising ‘whure’ to ‘girl’ (5 April) and the representing of ‘Damn’ by a dash (12 April). Scribner’s volume edition of Weir of Hermiston was roughly half the price of the British volume edition, at $1.50 as opposed to 6s., with a number of stores offering it at a discount, like Wanamaker’s of Philadelphia which advertised it at only $1.10.16 This modest selling-price must also have assisted the creation of a relatively popular American market xli

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for the novel. The periodical The Bookman ran a feature listing the six most popular titles in terms of sales during the preceding month by region: Weir of Hermiston was included for June 1896 (Boston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles and St Louis, Missouri) and for July (Indianapolis and Worcester, Massachusetts).17 It also appears to have been a popular library choice. The New York State Library at Albany submitted a list of almost 500 books published in 1896 to 800 librarians asking each to select fifty that they considered most valuable for a village library, and compiled a list from the 200 responses received: Weir of Hermiston was one of the twelve selected works of fiction (Academy, 5 June 1897). Prestige as well as popularity was indicated, however, by the terms of Scribner’s advertisement, which beside citing Stevenson’s own view of the novel as his best work and Colvin’s endorsement, also included several sentences of warm praise by Henry James: The beauty of the thing had the effect of rendering doubly heart-breaking, as one read, the extinction of a talent that could still give one such a sense of freshness and life, of not yet having played, as it were, its highest card. I got from it a sense of new resources altogether; of his striking a new chord […]. What I allude to more particularly is what he seems to have been intending in the figure of the elder woman. That intention was surely one of the finest—poetically, pictorially speaking, wasn’t it quite the finest that ever guided his pen?18 A number of other American reviews followed James in praising the characterization of the elder Kirstie Elliott. To the New York Times the character was ‘divined with genius and presented with perfect art’ (28 June 1896), while Pierre la Rose writing in The Chap-Book noted as masterful ‘the way she gradually emerges from the inconspicuous moorland housekeeper of the Rutherfords of Hermiston to the heroic incarnation of the tragedy of love and age’. Equally high praise was given to the characterization of Lord Hermiston by The Congregationalist (975) and by the Literary World, which termed it ‘one of the strongest pieces of work Stevenson has ever done’. There was also acclaim for Stevenson as stylist, The Critic singling out in particular the descriptions of the road to Hermiston and of Duncan Jopp’s piece of flannel about his neck. The Independent went so far as to declare that ‘Stevenson was not a great novelist; but he was a great writer’, the unfinished story showing him ‘at his greatest as a master of style’. Dissenting voices seem to have been few on that side of the Atlantic, although Peterson Magazine xlii

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pronounced that the ‘digressions are annoying, the detail tiresome, and that portion of the book that is given to the public is not of sufficient power or originality to add the least bit of fame to Stevenson’s reputation’. Much of the negative comment in the American press appears to have taken the form of reprinted reviews from British magazines. The publisher of the British volume edition, Chatto & Windus, had high hopes of the work previous to publication, writing to Charles Baxter on 23 October 1895, ‘[w]e are receiving many enquiries respecting Weir of Hermiston in response to our advertisements announcing it, and we are booking a very satisfactory number of orders to the volume when it appears’.19 Initially ten thousand copies were printed, and on the strength of these advance orders the firm ordered an additional five thousand copies about a month before publication date.20 Writing to W. G. Blaikie, of the firm of Constable who printed the novel, the publisher stated: ‘We are glad you like the appearance of “The Weir” of which we have great expectations’.21 Unfortunately these hopes do not appear to have been fulfilled, at least initially, as the firm reported to Colvin on 25 August 1896: I am sorry to say that the sale of ‘Weir of Hermiston’, after commencing so promisingly that we prepared a second edition in expectation of the demand continuing, suddenly stopped; and we still have on hand about 800 copies of the first edition as well as the whole of the impression of the second Edition.22 In the longer term, however, the novel obviously did have a permanent sale and was added, for example, to the firm’s St Martin’s library in 1909, a popular edition selling at 2s. per volume cloth-bound and 3s. bound in leather.23 It was also available within a short period from first publication on the continent, H. B. Baildon remarking in the Eclectic Magazine that although few of Stevenson’s works had been translated into German ‘and hardly half of them appear in the Tauchnitz Edition’ Weir of Hermiston and St Ives had been promptly issued in that series (123). There are signs that, in London at least, Colvin’s efforts to secure a favourable reception for Weir of Hermiston may have been partially counterproductive. The Athenæum referred to Colvin’s ‘ex parte statement’, pronouncing that in its unfinished state ‘the story does not reach a point at which Stevenson would have competed with the great masters of romance’, warmly praising the characterization of Hermiston but considering Frank Innes ‘too facile and flimsy a rogue’ to bear the xliii

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weight that the plot was to have laid upon him, and considering that the portrayal of the heroine ‘would have taxed Stevenson’s powers to the utmost’, though conceding the elder Kirstie and Mrs Weir as successful female portraits. While judging Weir of Hermiston ‘a further stage towards maturity in Stevenson’s art’ the reviewer notes that ‘Stevenson’s friends have made such exaggerated claims for it that one is called upon to judge it from the standpoint of the highest, and to indicate its failings when so judged’. The Speaker put it more brutally, that there was a danger of Colvin’s ‘oracular attitude’ rousing ‘a mild and wondering resentment among those […] who have not yet enjoyed a course of critical instruction at Mr. Colvin’s feet, and are quite unprepared to be lifted so complacently on Mr. Colvin’s avuncular knee’ (613). Resentment of the Englishman Colvin’s instructions as to the merit of the novel seems to have segued into a wrangle about the partiality of Scottish critics towards Scottish romances and the Scots language itself, with Edward Purcell in The Academy and Andrew Lang in Longman’s Magazine sounding the keynotes in this dispute about Weir of Hermiston. Purcell, with a glancing reference to Scott’s The Lay of the Last Minstrel, declared that ‘Caledonia […] has ever been to each poetic child of her own not only a fit nurse, but a most partial, indulgent, and boastful one’, and added that so far as the Scots language is concerned it was ‘time we refused to be hectored into confusing it with genius’ (521–2). To this Lang riposted: ‘Friends and fellow-countrymen may have been betrayed by feelings not ungenerous, but Mr. Purcell’s protests are not remarkable for taste, sense, or knowledge’. He also argued that while those acquainted with a writer’s country and language naturally gain most pleasure from his writings, anyone can appreciate Scottish writers who knows enough of English to understand Scots (418–19). Somewhat surprisingly, the Saturday Review placed Weir of Hermiston below Prince Otto among Stevenson’s longer works of fiction, arguing that (despite the magnificent portrayal of Hermiston himself) had it been completed the novel would merely have been ‘another brilliant testimony to the ultimate mastery of Scott, with gleams here and there […] of all that Stevenson might have been had not the Scott tradition laid hold of him’ (604). Only Bow Bells, however, went so far as to regret that the novel ‘in its fragmentary form ever saw the light’. At the opposite end of the critical spectrum Richard Le Gallienne in The Idler, after terming Weir of Hermiston ‘the incomparably important book of May’ thought that the work had wiped out for ever the criticism that Stevenson was unable to depict female characters effectively, praised the portrait of Lord Hermiston, and remarked that ‘this xliv

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vigorous fragment’ had finally convinced him of Stevenson’s greatness (890). Comparisons with the Venus de Milo were rife, John Buchan being far from alone in considering Weir of Hermiston a ‘magnificent torso’. Stephen Gwynn argued that the novel demonstrated how Stevenson’s devotion to his art was at the time of his death ‘on the point of being rewarded by such a success as he had always dreamed of ’ (575), he then recognizing in himself a fresh ‘ability to treat subjects which he had hitherto avoided’ (567). The figures of both Kirstie Elliotts are praised and also the way in which Archie’s protest against the hanging of Duncan Jopp is depicted as ‘the explosion of pent-up forces that have been at work for years’ (572). The Bookman considered the novel ‘a marvel for the sustained dignity, the succinct force, and the austere beauty of its style’ and particularly praised the delineation of Mrs Weir as ‘a masterpiece of portraiture’ (79–80). To the Pall Mall Gazette the work was ‘powerfully stimulating in its vivid descriptiveness and fascinating in its tragic human interest’, and to the Standard one of ‘epical strength’ focused particularly around the strategic reversions to the site of the Weaver’s stone and the overall ‘pervading sense of predestined calamity’ throughout. This reviewer also praised the three female characters of the work, and the Morning Post concurred that the work ‘disposes once and for ever of the stale assertion’ that Stevenson could not successfully depict women. On balance, despite initially disappointing sales, the publisher of the novel was able to refer justly to the ‘favourable consensus of the reviews’.24 The contemporary estimation of a Stevenson work, however, cannot be gauged simply in terms of periodical reviews—whether favourably or unfavourably reviewed, Weir of Hermiston was plainly regarded as a significant cultural production that eminent people in different walks of life were aware of and regarded as influential. A circular sent to ‘a number of prominent men and women’ asking them for the title of the two books ‘which had most pleased and interested him [sic] in 1896’, produced returns in which Weir of Hermiston was named not only by writers such as H. G. Wells and ‘Lucas Malet’, but also the actress Ellen Terry and the clergyman Canon Scott Holland, a future Oxford Regius Professor of Divinity.25 Although Weir of Hermiston never achieved the diffused popular awareness of works such as Treasure Island, Kidnapped or Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (which is often strangely independent of actually reading the books), it was obviously considered at the time of publication as of general cultural importance. Unsurprisingly, Weir of Hermiston was particularly valued in Scotland as a national work, as Scott’s Waverley novels had been. As The xlv

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Scotsman put it, ‘for a reader in this part of the country the book can have no greater charm than its pronounced Edinburgh accent’, presenting localities ‘strangely idealised yet recognisable’. The Aberdeen Weekly Journal added to its praise of Stevenson’s extraordinary powers of depicting evanescent feeling an appreciation of ‘its faithful transcript of Edinburgh legal character’. The obverse of the London-centred press complaint that the novel was artificially boosted by Scottish partiality is recognition of its importance to a national or regional tradition of fiction, that made Weir of Hermiston particularly meaningful to readers outside the metropolis. Within Scotland Stevenson thus stands between Scott and Lewis Grassic Gibbon, and in regional Britain in a line from the Brontë sisters and George Eliot through Thomas Hardy and on to D. H. Lawrence. The novel appears to have sold particularly well, for instance, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Academy, 16 January 1897). Moving outwards again from regional Britain the widening international appeal of Weir of Hermiston may be indicated by translations into Dutch in 1900, French in 1912, German in 1927, Spanish in 1944 and Italian in 1945.26 The Long John Silver who became the archetypical storybook pirate and the Dr Jekyll who became a Hollywood mad scientist to rival Victor Frankenstein himself are the most obvious evidences of Stevenson’s mysterious power to generate a myth, but the same ability is also evident to a more limited extent in the reception of Weir of Hermiston. Renewed attention was given to the historical judge Lord Braxfield (memorably characterized previously by Scottish lawyer–writers such as Henry Cockburn and J. G. Lockhart) as ‘The Original Weir of Hermiston’.27 When the ‘Literary Gossip’ of Outlook jocularly reported, on 10 September 1898, an attack on Stevenson by Fraser-Mackintosh in his history of Clan Chattan for maligning the ‘infamous Lord Braxfield’ in Weir of Hermiston, two letters followed, the one protesting that Braxfield was ‘one of the ablest men and greatest lawyers who ever sat on the Scottish bench’ and the other that Stevenson’s character being superior to the historical Lord Braxfield could hardly be a vilification of him (17 September 1898). A 1901 book about Raeburn’s paintings referred to the artist’s sitter Braxfield as ‘the original of R. L. Stevenson’s “Weir of Hermiston” ’, and the biographical information summary about Robert McQueen (1722–99) in the ‘Famous Scots’ archive feature of the official ‘Scotland’s People’ website reveals that Braxfield is still strongly identified with Stevenson’s fictional judge.28

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notes Notes 1. See Appendix 1: Sidney Colvin’s Editorial Note, 109–10. 2. For details see Historical and Geographical Note, 195. 3. This bound manuscript (Beinecke 45, 1011) is the copy text for the present edition, to which references are therefore most conveniently made here. 4. Stevenson’s influence on the young D. H. Lawrence is indicated by his recollection, for instance, when convalescing in Bournemouth early in 1912 before resuming work on Sons and Lovers, that ‘Robert Louis Stevenson had also gone thither as an invalid’: see his letter to Stewart Robinson, [ante 3 Feb 1912] (Boulton, 361). 5. Belle mentions that both she and her brother had read it and that it is ‘repudiated with scorn by all hands’ in a letter to Stoddard of 20 June 1892: cited from Letters 8: 46n. 6. Stevenson to J. M. Barrie, [?late Mar 1894], Letters 8: 259; Belle’s statement comes in an entry in her ‘Grouse in the Gun-Room’ written on her return from Sydney in 1893, in Beinecke 49, 1072, f. 58. 7. Stevenson’s copy of the Annual Register for 1812 survives at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Beinecke 1851), and he told Colvin in his letter of 30 Jan 1893 that he ‘got onto St Yves while going over the Annual Register for the other’ (Letters 7: 465). Baxter replied on 16 Mar 1893 to Stevenson’s request for a book on contemporary fashion and manners by promising to send ‘two or three volumes of the Belle Assemblée’—see Letters 8: 20n. 8. See Swearingen, 174–5, to which the present account of the composition of Weir of Hermiston is generally greatly indebted. See also in a volume of copies of letters one from Colvin to Baxter, 14 Mar 1893 (Beinecke 11, 181, f. 88), recommending acceptance of an offer from Methuen for the serial rights in either Weir of Hermiston or St Ives. 9. See Belle’s journal, entitled ‘Grouse in the Gun-Room’, Oct 1892 to May 1894 (Beinecke 49, 1072, f. 92). 10. See the second volume of Belle’s journal, Beinecke 49, 1073, f. 37. A note to the passage in Letters 8: 401 dates the entry to 4 or 5 Dec 1894. 11. See the second volume of Belle’s journal, 24 Nov 1894 (Beinecke 49, 1073, f. 31). 12. See the sequence of six sheets in Belle’s hand, paginated 58 and 189–93 at the end of Morgan, MA 993. 13. See Appendix 1: Sidney Colvin’s Editorial Note, 108. 14. For an example see the Pall Mall Gazette, 3 Jan 1896.

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introduction 15. All citations are from the Chicago Tribune, in which the novel was serialized 5–12 Apr 1896, with the date of the relevant issue appearing in parentheses. 16. See the store’s advertisement in the Philadelphia Inquirer of 3 June 1896, which listed this as one of twenty-six available books. 17. See ‘Sales of Books During the Month’, The Bookman: A Review of Books and Life, 3 (Aug 1896), 565 and 4 (Sept 1896), 88 respectively. 18. Cited from Scribner’s advertisement in the Literary World, 27 ( June 1896). 19. Chatto & Windus to Baxter, 23 Oct 1895 (copy in letter book), CW Archive, A/31, 767. 20. Chatto & Windus Stock Book, 19 Mar and 18 May 1896, CW Archive, B/2/16, 234. 21. Chatto & Windus to Blaikie, 18 May 1896 (copy in letter book), CW Archive, A/32, 702. 22. Chatto & Windus to Colvin, 25 Aug 1896 (copy in letter book), CW Archive, CW A/33, 110. 23. The firm’s stock books reveal that in this format more than 35,000 copies were printed between 1909 and 1913—see CW Archive, B/2/17, 819 and B/2/19, 125 and 606. 24. Chatto & Windus to Colvin, 25 Aug 1896 (copy in letter book), CW Archive, A/33, 110. 25. ‘Popular Books of 1896. Opinions of Readers’, The Academy, 16 Jan 1897, 77–8, additional replies being noted under ‘Notes and News’ in The Academy, 23 Jan 1897, 124. 26. I am indebted to Richard Dury for information concerning the following translations: Weir of Hermison en andere verhalen (Haarlem, [1900]); Hermiston, le juge-pendeur, trans. Albert Bordeaux (Paris, 1912); Die Herrn von Hermiston, trans. Marguerite Thesing (Hamburg, 1927); Los aventuras de David Balfour; seguidas de, Weir de Hermiston, trans. José Farrán y Mayoral (Barcelona, 1944); and Il Guidice, trans. Giovanna Saffi (Milan, 1945). 27. Francis Watt’s article of that title appeared in the New Review, 15 (Oct 1896), 437–50. 28. See J. L. Caw’s descriptive catalogue of Raeburn’s portraits in Sir Walter Armstrong, Sir Henry Raeburn (London, 1901), 97, and also the ‘Famous Scots’ archive feature at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk. works cited Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 8 July 1896, 3: ‘Literary Leisure Hour’. The Academy, 16 Jan 1897, 83: ‘The Books that are Selling’.

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wor ks cited The Academy, 16 Jan 1897, 77–8 and 23 Jan 1897, 124: ‘Popular Books of 1896. Opinions of Readers’. The Academy, 5 June 1897, 596: ‘For a Village Library’. Armstrong, Sir Walter. Sir Henry Raeburn (London, 1901). The Athenæum, 23 May 1896, 673: ‘Weir of Hermiston’. Baildon, H. B. ‘Robert Louis Stevenson: Essayist, Novelist and Poet’, Eclectic Magazine, 70 ( July 1899), 123–40. The Bookman: A Review of Books and Life, 10 ( June 1896), 79–80: ‘Weir of Hermiston’. The Bookman: A Review of Books and Life, 3 (Aug 1896), 565: ‘Sales of Books During the Month’. The Bookman: A Review of Books and Life, 4 (Sept 1896), 88: ‘Sales of Books During the Month’. Boulton, James T. (ed.). The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Volume I: September 1901–May 1913 (Cambridge, 1979). Bow Bells, 34 (May 1896), 499: ‘Art and Drama’. Buchan, John. ‘The Apologetics of Romance’, Academy, 11 Sept 1897, 203. Chicago Evening Post, 25 Apr 1895: ‘Left by Stevenson’. Chicago Tribune, 5–12 Apr 1896: Weir of Hermiston. Colvin, Sidney. ‘Epilogue’, Vailima Letters Being Correspondence Addressed by Robert Louis Stevenson to Sidney Colvin November 1890–October 1894, 2nd edn (London, 1895), 355–9. The Congregationalist, 18 June 1896, 975–6: ‘Stories’. The Critic, 25 ( June 1896), 422: ‘A Stevensonian Aftermath’. Duncan, Ian. ‘Stevenson and Fiction’, The Edinburgh Companion to Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. Penny Fielding (Edinburgh, 2010), 11–26. Frederic, Harold. ‘A Literary Catastrophe’, New York Times, 15 Mar 1896, 22. Gwynn, Stephen. ‘The Posthumous Works of Robert Louis Stevenson’, Fortnightly Review, 63 (Apr 1898), 561–75. Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented, 3 vols (London, 1891). The Independent, 23 July 1896, 18: ‘Recent Fiction’. la Rose, Pierre. ‘Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston’, The Chap-Book, 15 July 1896, 226. Lang, Andrew. ‘At the Sign of the Ship’, Longman’s Magazine, 28 (Aug 1896), 416–24. ——. ‘The Month in England’, The Cosmopolitan, 20 (Apr 1896), 673. Le Gallienne, Richard. ‘Wanderings in Bookland’, The Idler, 9 ( July 1896), 886–91.

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introduction Literary World, 27 ( June 1896), 196: ‘Stevenson’s Last’. Morning Post, 20 May 1896, 3: ‘Weir of Hermiston’. New York Times, 28 June 1896, 27: ‘Stevenson’s Posthumous Masterpiece’. Outlook, 10 Sept 1898, 181–2: ‘Literary Gossip’. Outlook, 17 Sept 1898, 203: ‘Lord Braxfield’. Pall Mall Gazette, 30 May 1896, 3: ‘Stevenson’s Last Work’. Peterson Magazine, 6 (Sept 1896), 985: ‘Book Notes’. Purcell, Edward. ‘Literature’, The Academy, 27 June 1896, 521–2. Sanchez, Nellie Van de Grift. The Life of Mrs Robert Louis Stevenson (London, 1920). Saturday Review, 13 June 1896, 603–4: ‘The Lost Stevenson’. The Scotsman, 25 May 1896, 3: ‘Fiction’. The Speaker, 6 June 1896, 613–14: ‘A Literary Causerie’. The Standard, 20 May 1896, 4: ‘R. L. Stevenson’s Unfinished Romance’. Stevenson, Robert Louis. Memories and Portraits (London, 1887). Watts, Francis. ‘The Original Weir of Hermiston’, New Review, 15 Oct 1896, 437– 50.

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TO MY WIFE

I saw rain falling and the rainbow drawn On Lammermuir. Hearkening I heard again In my precipitous city beaten bells Winnow the keen sea wind. And here afar, Intent on my own race and place, I wrote. Take thou the writing: thine it is. For who Burnished the sword, blew on the drowsy coal, Held still the target higher, chary of praise And prodigal of counsel—who but thou? So now, in the end, if this the least be good, If any deed be done, if any fire Burn in the imperfect page, the praise be thine.

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Weir of Hermiston In the wild end of a moorland parish, far out of the sight of any house, there stands a cairn among the heather, and a little by east of it, in the going down of the braeside, a monument with some verses half defaced. It was here that Claverhouse shot with his own hand the Praying Weaver of Balweary, and the chisel of Old Mortality has clinked on that lonely gravestone. Public and domestic history have thus marked with a bloody finger this hollow among the hills; and since the Cameronian gave his life there, two hundred years ago, in a glorious folly, and without comprehension or regret, the silence of the moss has been broken once again by the report of firearms and the cry of the dying. The Deil’s Hags was the old name; but the place is now called Francie’s Cairn. For a while it was told that Francie walked. Aggie Hogg met him in the gloaming by the cairn-side, and he spoke to her, with chattering teeth, so that his words were lost. He pursued Rob Todd (if anyone could have believed Robbie) for the space of half a mile with pitiful entreaties. But the age is one of incredulity; these superstitious decorations speedily fell off; and the facts of the story itself, like the bones of a giant buried there and half dug up, survived, naked and imperfect, in the memory of the scattered neighbours. To this day, of winter nights, when the sleet is on the window and the cattle are quiet in the byre, there will be told again, amid the silence of the young and the additions and corrections of the old, the tale of the Justice-Clerk and of his son, young Hermiston, that vanished from men’s knowledge; of the two Kirsties and the Four Black Brothers of the Cauldstaneslap; and of Frank Innes, ‘the young, fool advocate,’ that came into these moorland parts to find his destiny.

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Chapter 1 LIFE AND DEATH OF MRS. WEIR

The Lord Justice-Clerk was a stranger in that part of the country; but his lady wife was known there from a child, as her race had been before her. The old ‘riding Rutherfords of Hermiston,’ of whom she was the last descendant, had been famous men of yore, ill neighbours, ill subjects, and ill husbands to their wives though not their properties. Tales of them were rife in twenty miles about; and their name was even printed in the page of our Scots histories, not always to their credit. One bit the dust at Flodden; one was hanged at his peel door by James the Fifth; another fell dead in a carouse with Tam Dalyell; while a fourth (and that was Jean’s own father) died presiding at a Hell-Fire Club of which he was the founder. There were many heads shaken in Crossmichael at that judgement, the more so as the man had a villainous reputation among high and low, and both with the godly and the worldly. At that very hour of his demise, he had ten going pleas before the Session, eight of them oppressive. And the same doom extended even to his agents: his grieve, that had been his right hand in many a left hand business, being cast from his horse one night and drowned in a peat hag on the Kyeskairs; and his very doer (although lawyers have long spoons) surviving him not long and dying on a sudden in a bloody flux. In all these generations, while a male Rutherford was in the saddle with his lads, or brawling in a change house, there would be always a white faced wife immured at home in the old peel or the later mansion house. It seemed this succession of martyrs bided long, but took their vengeance in the end; and that was in the person of the last descendant, Jean. She bore the name of the Rutherfords, but she was the daughter of their trembling wives. At the first she was not wholly without charm. Neighbours recalled in her, as a child, a strain of elfin wilfulness, gentle little mutinies, sad little gaieties, even a morning-gleam of beauty that was not to be fulfilled. She withered in the growing and (whether it was the sins of her sires or the sorrows of her mothers) came to her maturity depressed and as it were defaced; no blood of life in her, no grasp or gaiety; pious, anxious, tender, tearful and incompetent. 6

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It was a wonder to many that she had married; seeming so wholly of the stuff that makes old maids. But chance cast her in the path of Adam Weir, then the new Lord Advocate, a recognized, risen man, the conqueror of many obstacles, and thus late in the day beginning to think upon a wife. He was one who looked rather to obedience than beauty, yet it would seem he was struck with her at the first look. ‘Wha’s she?’ he said turning to his host; and when he had been told, ‘Ay,’ says he, ‘she looks menseful. She minds me—’ and then, after a pause, which some have been daring enough to set down to sentimental recollections, ‘Is she releegious?’ he asked; and was shortly after, at his own request, presented. The acquaintance, which it seems profane to call a courtship, was pursued with Mr. Weir’s accustomed industry; and was long a legend, or rather a source of legends, in the Parliament House. He was described coming, rosy with much port, into the drawing room, walking direct up to the lady, and assailing her with pleasantries, to which the embarrassed fair one responded, in what seemed a kind of agony, ‘Eh, Mr. Weir!’ or ‘Oh, Mr. Weir’ or ‘Keep me, Mr. Weir!’ On the very eve of their engagement, it was related that one had drawn near to the tender couple, and had overheard the lady cry out with the tones of one who talked for the sake of talking, ‘Keep me, Mr. Weir, and what became of him?’ and the profound accents of the suitor reply, ‘Hangit, mem, hangit.’ The motives upon either side were much debated, Mr. Weir must have supposed his bride to be somehow suitable; perhaps belonged to that class of men who think a weak head the ornament of women: an opinion invariably punished in this life. Her descent and her estate were beyond question. Her warfaring ancestors and her litigious father had done well by Jean; there was ready money, and there were broad acres, ready to fall wholly to the husband, to lend dignity to his descendants, and to himself a title, when he should be called upon the bench. On the side of Jean, there was perhaps some fascination of curiosity as to this unknown male animal that approached her with the roughness of a ploughman and the aplomb of an advocate. Being so trenchantly opposed to all she knew, loved, or understood, he may well have seemed to her the extreme—if scarcely the ideal—of his sex. And besides he was an ill man to refuse. A little over forty at the period of his marriage, he looked already older, and to the force of manhood added the senatorial dignity of years; it was perhaps with an unreverent awe, but he was awful; the bench, the bar, and the most experienced and reluctant witness, bowed to his authority: and why not Jeannie Rutherford? 7

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The heresy about foolish women is always punished, I have said; and Lord Hermiston began to pay the penalty at once. His house in George Square was wretchedly ill-guided; nothing answerable to the expense of maintenance but the cellar, which was his own private care. When things went wrong at dinner, as they continually did, my lord would look up the table at his wife. ‘I think ye must have given over to the grumbletonians, Mrs. Weir,’ he would say. ‘I think these broth would be better to sweem in than sup.’ Or else to the butler, ‘Here, McKillop, awa’ wi’ this radical gigot—tak’ it to the French, man, and bring me some puddocks! It seems rather a sore kind of a business that I should be all day in court haanging raadicals, and get nawthing to my denner.’ Of course this was but a manner of speaking, and he had never hanged a radical in his life; the law, of which he was the faithful minister, directing otherwise. And of course these growls were in the nature of pleasantry, but it was of a recondite sort; and uttered as they were in his resounding voice, and commented on by that expression which they called in the Parliament House ‘Hermiston’s hanging face’—they struck mere dismay into the wife. She sat before him speechless and fluttering; at each dish, as at a fresh ordeal, her eye hovered toward my lord’s countenance and fell again; if he but ate in silence, unspeakable relief was her portion; if there were complaint, the world was darkened. She would seek out the cook, who was always her sister in the Lord. ‘Oh, my dear, this is a most dreidful thing that my lord can never be contented in his own house!’ she would begin; and weep and pray with the cook; and then the cook would pray with Mrs. Weir; and the next day’s meal would never be a penny the better—and the next cook (when she came) would be worse, if anything, but just as pious. It was often wondered that Lord Hermiston bore it as he did; indeed he was a stoical old voluptuary, contented with sound wine and plenty of it. But there were moments when he overflowed. Perhaps half a dozen times in the history of his married life—‘Here! tak’ it awa’, and bring me a piece bread and kebbuck!’ he had exclaimed, with an appalling explosion of his voice and one of his rare gestures. None thought to dispute or to make excuses; the service was arrested; Mrs. Weir sat at the head of the table whimpering without disguise; and his lordship opposite munched his bread and cheese in ostentatious disregard. Once only, Mrs. Weir had ventured to appeal. He was passing her chair on his way into the study. ‘Oh Edom!’ she wailed, in a voice tragic with tears, and reaching out to him both hands in one of which she held a sopping pocket handkerchief. 8

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He paused and looked upon her with a face of wrath, into which there stole, as he looked, a twinkle of humour—‘Noansense!’ he said. ‘You and your noansense! what do I want with a Christian faimily? I want Christian broth! Get me a lass that can plain boil a potato, if she was a whure off the streets.’ And with these words, which echoed in her tender ears like blasphemy, he had passed on to his study and shut to the door behind him. Such was the housewifery in George Square. It was better at Hermiston where Kirstie Elliott, the sister of a neighbouring bonnet-laird and an eighteenth cousin of the lady’s, bore the charge of all, and kept a trim house and a good country table. Kirstie was a woman in a thousand, clean, capable, notable; once a moorland Helen, and still comely as a blood horse and healthy as the hill wind. High in flesh and voice and colour, she ran the house with her whole intemperate soul, in a bustle, not without buffets. Scarce more pious than decency in those days required, she was the cause of many an anxious thought and many a tearful prayer to Mrs. Weir. Housekeeper and mistress renewed the parts of Martha and Mary; and though with a pricking conscience, Mary reposed on Martha’s strength as on a rock. Even Lord Hermiston held Kirstie in a particular regard. There were few with whom he unbent so gladly, few whom he favoured with so many pleasantries. ‘Kirstie and me maun have our joke,’ he would declare, in high good humour, as he buttered Kirstie’s scones and she waited the table. A man who had no need either of love or of popularity, a keen reader of men and of events, there was perhaps only one truth for which he was quite unprepared: he would have been quite unprepared to learn that Kirstie hated him. He thought maid and master were well matched; hard, handy, healthy, broad Scots folk, without a hair of nonsense to the pair of them. And the fact was that she made a goddess and an only child of the effete and tearful lady; and even as she waited at table, her hands would sometimes itch for my lord’s ears. Thus, at least, when the family were at Hermiston, not only my lord, but Mrs. Weir too, enjoyed a holiday. Free from the dreadful looking for of the miscarried dinner, she would mind her seam, read her piety books, and take her walk (which was my lord’s orders) sometimes by herself, sometimes with Archie, the only child of that scarce natural union. The child was her next bond to life. Her frosted sentiment bloomed again, she breathed deep of life, she let loose her heart, in that society. The miracle of her motherhood was ever new to her. The sight of the little man at her skirt intoxicated her with the sense of power and froze her with the consciousness of her responsibility. She 9

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looked forward; and seeing him in fancy grow up and play his diverse part on the world’s theatre, caught in her breath and lifted up her courage with a lively effort. It was only with the child that she forgot herself and was at moments natural, yet it was only with the child that she had conceived and managed to pursue a scheme of conduct. Archie was to be a great man and a good; a minister if possible, a saint for certain. She tried to engage his mind upon her favourite books, Rutherford’s Letters, Scougal, Grace Abounding, and the like. It was a common practice of hers (and strange to remember now) that she would carry the child to the Deil’s Hags, sit with him on the Praying Weaver’s stone, and talk of the Covenanters till their tears ran down. Her view of history was wholly artless, a design in snow and ink; upon the one side, tender innocents with psalms upon their lips; upon the other, the persecutors, booted, bloody minded, flushed with wine: a suffering Christ, a raging Beelzebub. Persecutor was a word that knocked upon the woman’s heart; it was her highest thought of wickedness; and the mark of it was on her house. Her great-great-grandfather had drawn the sword against the Lord’s anointed on the field of Rullion-Green, and breathed his last (tradition said) in the arms of the detestable Dalyell. Nor could she blind herself to this, that had they lived in these old days, Hermiston himself would have been numbered alongside of Bloody McKenzie and the politic Lauderdale and Rothes, in the band of God’s immediate enemies. The sense of this moved her to the more fervour; she had a voice for that name of persecutor that thrilled in the child’s marrow; and when the mob hooted and hissed them all in my lord’s travelling carriage, and cried ‘Down with the persecutor! Down with Hanging Hermiston!’—and Mamma covered her eyes and wept, and Papa let down the glass and looked out upon the rabble with his droll formidable face, bitter and smiling, as they said he sometimes looked when he gave sentence—Archie was for the moment too much amazed to be alarmed, but he had scarce got his mother by herself before his shrill voice was raised demanding an explanation: Why had they called Papa a persecutor? ‘Keep me, my precious!’ she exclaimed, ‘Keep me, my dear! this is poleetical. Ye must never ask me anything poleetical, Erchie. Your faither is a great man, my dear, and it’s no for me or you to be judging him. It would be telling us all, if we behaved ourselves in our several stations the way your faither does in his high office; and let me hear no more of any such disrespectful and undutiful questions! No that you meant to be undutiful, my lamb; your mother kens that—she kens it well, dearie!’ and so slid off to safer topics, and left on the mind of the 10

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child an obscure but ineradicable sense of something wrong. Mrs. Weir’s philosophy of life was summed in one expression: tenderness. In her view of the universe, which was all lighted up with a glow out of the doors of hell, good people must walk there in a kind of ecstasy of tenderness. The beasts and plants had no souls; they were here but for a day, and let their day pass gently! And as for the immortal men, on what black, downward path were many of them wending, and to what a horror of an immortality! Are not two sparrows, whosoever shall smite thee, God sendeth his rain, judge not that ye be not judged, these made her body of divinity; she put them on in the morning with her clothes and lay down to sleep with them at night, they haunted her like a favourite air, they clung about her like a favourite perfume. Their minister was a marrowy expounder of the law, and my lord sat under him with relish; but Mrs. Weir respected him from far off;—heard him (like the cannon of a beleaguered city) usefully booming outside on the dogmatic ramparts; and meanwhile, within and out of shot, dwelt in her private garden which she watered with grateful tears. It seems strange to say of this colourless and ineffectual woman, but she was a true enthusiast and might have made the sunshine and the glory of a cloister. Perhaps none but Archie knew she could be eloquent; perhaps none but he had seen her—her colour raised, her hands clasped or quivering—glow with a gentle ardour. There is a corner of the policy of Hermiston, where you come suddenly in view of the summit of Black Fell, sometimes like the gross top of a hill, sometimes (and this is her own expression) like a precious jewel in the heavens. On such days, upon the sudden view of it, her hand would tighten on the child’s fingers, her voice rise like a song. ‘I to the hills!’ she would repeat. ‘And, oh Erchie, arenae these like the hills of Naphtali?’ and her easy tears would flow. Upon an impressionable child, the effect of this continual and pretty accompaniment to life was deep. The woman’s quietism and piety passed on to his different nature undiminished; but whereas in her it was a native sentiment, in him it was only an implanted dogma. Nature and the child’s pugnacity at times revolted. A cad from the Potter-Row once struck him in the mouth; he struck back, the pair fought it out in the back stable lane towards the Meadows, and Archie returned with a considerable decline in the number of his front teeth, and unregenerately boasting of the losses of the foe. It was a sore day for Mrs. Weir; she wept and prayed over the infant backslider until my lord was due from court and she must resume that air of tremulous composure with which she always greeted him. The judge was that day in an 11

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observant mood, and remarked upon the absent teeth. ‘I am afraid Erchie will have been fechting with some of they blagyard lads,’ said Mrs. Weir. My lord’s voice rang out as it did seldom in the privacy of his own house. ‘I’ll have nonn of that, sir!’ he cried—‘Do you hear me?—nonn of that! No son of mine shall be speldering in the glaur with any dirty raibble.’ The anxious mother was grateful for so much support; she had even feared the contrary. And that night, when she put the child to bed—‘Now, my dear, ye see!’ she said, ‘I told you what your faither would think of it, if he heard ye had fallen into this dreidful sin; and let you and me pray to God that ye may be keepit from the like temptation or stren’thened to resist it!’ The inimitable womanly falsity of this was thrown away. Ice and iron cannot be welded; and the points of view of the Justice-Clerk and Mrs. Weir were not less unassimilable. The character and position of his father had long been a stumbling-block to Archie; and with every year of his age the difficulty grew more instant. The man was mostly silent; when he spoke at all, it was to speak of the things of the world, always in a worldly spirit, often in language that the child had been schooled to think coarse, and sometimes with words that he knew to be sins in themselves. Tenderness was the first duty, and my lord was invariably harsh. God was love, the name of my lord (to all who knew him) was fear. In the world, as schematised for Archie by his mother, the place was marked for such a creature. There were some whom it was good to pity and well (though very likely useless) to pray for; they were named reprobates, goats, God’s enemies, brands for the burning; and Archie tallied every mark of identification, and drew the inevitable private inference that the Lord Justice-Clerk was the Chief of Sinners. The mother’s honesty was scarce complete. There was one influence she feared for the child and still secretly combatted; that was my lord’s; and half unconsciously, half in a wilful blindness, she continued to undermine her husband with his son. As long as Archie remained silent, she did so ruthlessly, with a single eye to Heaven and the child’s salvation; but the day came when Archie spoke. It was 1801, and Archie was seven, and beyond his years for curiosity and logic, when he brought the case up openly. If judging were sinful and forbidden, how came papa to be a judge? to have that sin for a trade? to bear the name of it for a distinction? ‘I can’t see it,’ said the little Rabbi, and wagged his head. Mrs. Weir abounded in commonplace replies. 12

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‘No, I cannae see it,’ reiterated Archie. ‘And I’ll tell you what, Mamma, I don’t think you and me’s justifeed in staying with him.’ The woman awoke to remorse; she saw herself disloyal to her man, her sovereign and bread-winner, in whom (with what she had of worldliness) she took a certain subdued pride. She expatiated in reply on my lord’s honour and greatness, his useful services in this world of sorrow and wrong, and the place in which he stood, far above where babes and innocents could hope to see or criticise him. But she had builded too well. Archie had his answers pat: Were not babes and innocents the type of the kingdom of Heaven? were not honour and greatness the badges of the world? And at any rate, how about the mob that had once seethed about the carriage? ‘It’s all very fine,’ he concluded, ‘but in my opinion, papa has no right to be it. And it seems that’s not the worst yet of it. It seems he’s called The Hanging Judge—It seems he’s crooool. I’ll tell you what it is, Mamma, there’s a tex’ borne in upon me: it were better for that man if a milestone were bound upon his back and him flung into the deepestmost pairts of the sea—’ ‘O, my lamb, ye must never say the like of that!’ she cried. ‘Ye’re to honour faither and mother, dear, that your days may be long in the land. It’s Atheists that cry out against him—French Atheists, Erchie! Ye would never surely even yourself down to be saying the same thing as French Atheists? It would break my heart to think that of you. And O, Erchie, here are na you setting up to judge? And have ye no forgot God’s plain command—the First with Promise, dear? Mind you upon the beam and the mote!’ Having thus carried the war into the enemy’s camp, the terrified lady breathed again. And no doubt it is easy thus to circumvent a child with catchwords, but it may be questioned how far it is effectual. An instinct in his breast detects the quibble, and a voice condemns it. He will instantly submit, privately hold the same opinion. For even in this simple and antique relation of the mother and the child, hypocrisies are multiplied. When the Court rose that year and the family returned to Hermiston, it was a common remark in all the country that the lady was sore failed. She seemed to loose and seize again her touch with life, now sitting inert in a sort of durable bewilderment, anon waking to feverish and weak activity. She dawdled about the lasses at their work, looking stupidly on; she fell to rummaging in old cabinets and presses, and desisted when half through; she would begin remarks with an air of animation and drop them without a struggle. Her common appearance was 13

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of one who has forgotten something and is trying to remember; and when she overhauled, one after another, the worthless and touching mementoes of her youth, she might have been seeking the clue to that lost thought. During this period, she gave many gifts to the neighbours and house lasses, giving them with a manner of regret that embarrassed the recipients. The last night of all, she was busy on some female work, and toiled upon it with so manifest and painful a devotion that my lord (who was not often curious) inquired as to its nature. She blushed to the eyes. ‘Oh, Edom, it’s for you!’ she said. ‘It’s slippers. I—I hae never made ye any—’ ‘Ye daft auld wife!’ returned his lordship. ‘A bonny figure I would be palmering about in bauchles!’ The next day, at the hour of her walk, Kirstie interfered. Kirstie took this decay of her mistress very hard; bore her a grudge, quarrelled with and railed upon her; the anxiety of a genuine love wearing the disguise of temper. This day of all days, she insisted disrespectfully, with rustic fury, that Mrs. Weir should stay at home. But ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘it’s my lord’s orders,’ and set forth as usual. Archie was visible in the acre bog, engaged upon some childish enterprise, the instrument of which was mire; and she stood and looked at him awhile like one about to call; then thought otherwise; sighed and shook her head, and proceeded on her rounds alone. The house lassies were at the burnside washing, and saw her pass with her loose, weary, dowdy gait. ‘She’s a terrible feckless wife, the mistress!’ said the one. ‘Tit,’ said the other, ‘the wumman’s seek.’ ‘Weel, I canna see nae differ in her,’ returned the first. ‘A füshionless quean, a feckless carline—’ The poor creature thus discussed rambled a while in the grounds without a purpose. Tides in her mind ebbed and flowed, and carried her to and fro like sea weed. She tried a path, paused, returned, and tried another; questing, forgetting her quest; the spirit of choice extinct in her bosom, or devoid of sequency. On a sudden, it appeared as though she had remembered or had formed a resolution, wheeled about, returned with hurried steps, and appeared in the dining room, where Kirstie was at the cleaning, like one charged with an important errand. ‘Kirstie!’ she began, and paused; and then with conviction, ‘Mr. Weir isnae speeritually minded, but he has been a good man to me.’ It was perhaps the first time, since her husband’s elevation, that she had forgotten the handle to his name, of which the tender inconsistent woman was not a little proud. And when Kirstie looked up at the 14

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speaker’s face, she was aware of a change. ‘Godsake, what’s the maitter wi’ ye, mem?’ cried the housekeeper, starting from the rug. ‘I do not ken,’ answered her mistress, shaking her head. ‘But he is not speeritually minded, my dear.’ ‘Here, sit down with ye! Godsake, what ails the wife?’ cried Kirstie, and helped and forced her into my lord’s own chair by the cheek of the hearth. ‘Keep me, what’s this?’ she gasped. ‘Kirstie, what’s this? I’m frich’ened.’ They were her last words. It was the lowering nightfall when my lord returned. He had the sunset in his back, all clouds and glory; and before him, by the wayside, spied Kirstie Elliott waiting. She was dissolved in tears, and addressed him in the high, false note of barbarous mourning, such as still lingers modified among Scots heather. ‘The Lord peety ye, Hermiston! the Lord prepare ye!’ she keened out. ‘Weary upon me, that I should have to tell it!’ He reined in his horse and looked upon her with the hanging face. ‘Has the French landdit?’ cried he. ‘Man, man,’ she said, ‘is that a’ ye can think of? The Lord prepare ye, the Lord comfort and support ye!’ ‘Is onybody deid?’ says his lordship. ‘It’s no Erchie?’ ‘Bethankit, no!’ exclaimed the woman, startled into a more natural tone. ‘Na, na, it’s no sae bad as that. It’s the mistress, my lord. She just fair flittit before my e’en. She just gied a sab and was by with it. Eh, my bonny Miss Jeannie, that I mind sae weel!’ and forth again upon that pouring tide of lamentation in which women of her class excell and overabound. Lord Hermiston sat in the saddle beholding her. Then he seemed to recover command upon himself. ‘Weel, it’s something of the suddenest,’ said he. ‘But she was a dwaibly body from the first.’ And he rode home at a precipitate amble with Kirstie at his horse’s heels. Dressed as she was for her last walk, they had laid the dead lady on her bed. She was never interesting in life; in death, she was not impressive; and as her husband stood before her, with his hands crossed behind his powerful back, that which he looked upon was the very image of the insignificant. ‘Her and me were never cut out for one another,’ he remarked at 15

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last. ‘It was a daft-like marriage.’ And then with a most unusual gentleness of tone, ‘Puir bitch,’ said he, ‘puir bitch!’ Then suddenly: ‘Where’s Erchie?’ Kirstie had decoyed him to her room and given him ‘a jeely-piece.’ ‘Ye have some kind of gumption too,’ observed the judge, and considered his housekeeper grimly. ‘When all’s said,’ he added, ‘I micht have done waur—I micht have been marriet upon a skirling Jezebel like you!’ ‘There’s naebody thinking of you, Hermiston!’ cried the offended woman. ‘We think of her that’s out of her sorrows. And could she have done waur? Tell me that, Hermiston—tell me that before her claycauld corp!’ ‘Weel, there’s some of them geyan ill to please,’ observed his lordship.

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Chapter 2 FATHER AND SON

My Lord Justice-Clerk was known to many; the man Adam Weir perhaps to none. He had nothing to explain or to conceal; he sufficed wholly and silently to himself; and that part of our nature which goes out (too often with false coin) to acquire glory or love, seemed in him to be omitted. He did not try to be loved, he did not care to be; it is probable the very thought of it was a stranger to his mind. He was an admired lawyer, a highly unpopular judge; and he looked down upon those who were his inferiors in either distinction, who were lawyers of less grasp or judges not so much detested. In all the rest of his days and doings, not one trace of vanity appeared; and he went on through life with a mechanical movement, as of the unconscious, that was almost august. He saw little of his son. In the childish maladies with which the boy was troubled, he would make daily inquiries and daily pay him a visit, entering the sick-room with a facetious and appalling countenance, letting off a few perfunctory jests, and going again swiftly, to the patient’s relief. Once, a court holiday falling opportunely, my lord had his carriage and drove the child himself to Hermiston, the customary place of convalescence. It is conceivable he had been more than usually anxious, for that journey always remained in Archie’s memory as a thing apart, his father having related to him from beginning to end, and with much detail, three authentic murder cases. Archie went the usual round of other Edinburgh boys, the High School and the College; and Hermiston looked on, or rather looked away, with scarce an affectation of interest in his progress. Daily indeed upon a signal after dinner, he was brought in; given nuts and a glass of port; regarded sardonically, sarcastically questioned. ‘Well, Sir, and what have you donn with your book today?’ my lord might begin, and set him posers in law Latin. To a child just stumbling into Corderius, Papinian and Paul proved quite invincible. But papa had memory of no other. He was not harsh to the little scholar, having a vast fund of patience learned upon the bench; and was at no pains whether to conceal or to express his disappointment. ‘Well, ye have a long jaunt before ye yet!’ 17

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he might observe, yawning, and fall back on his own thoughts (as like as not) until the time came for separation, and my lord would take the decanter and the glass, and be off to the back chamber looking on the Meadows, where he toiled on his cases till the hours were small. There was no ‘fuller man’ on the bench; his memory was marvellous, though wholly legal; if he had to ‘advise’ extempore, none did it better; yet there was none who more earnestly prepared. As he thus watched in the night, or sat at table and forgot the presence of his son, no doubt but he tasted deeply of recondite pleasures. To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life; and perhaps only in law and the higher mathematics may this devotion be maintained, suffice to itself without reaction, and find continual rewards without excitement. This atmosphere of his father’s sterling industry was the best of Archie’s education. Assuredly it did not attract him; assuredly it rather rebutted and depressed. Yet it was still present, unobserved like the ticking of a clock, an arid ideal, a tasteless stimulant, in the boy’s life. But Hermiston was not all of one piece. He was besides a mighty toper; he could sit at wine until the day dawned, and pass directly from the table to the bench with a steady hand and a clear head. Beyond the third bottle, he showed the plebeian in a larger print; the low gross accent, the low foul mirth, grew broader and commoner; he became less formidable and infinitely more disgusting. Now, the boy had inherited from Jean Rutherford a shivering delicacy, unequally mated with potential violence; in the playing fields and amongst his own companions, he repaid a coarse expression with a blow; at his father’s table (when the time came for him to join these revels) he turned pale and sickened in silence. Of all the guests whom he there encountered, he had toleration for only one: David Keith Carnegie, Lord Glenalmond. Lord Glenalmond was tall and emaciated with long features and long delicate hands; he was often compared with the statue of Forbes of Culloden in the Parliament House; and his blue eye, at more than sixty, preserved some of the fire of youth. His exquisite disparity with any of his fellow guests, his appearance as of an artist and an aristocrat stranded in rude company, riveted the boy’s attention; and as curiosity and interest are the things in the world that are the most immediately and certainly rewarded, Lord Glenalmond was attracted by the boy. ‘And so this is your son, Hermiston?’ he asked, laying his hand on Archie’s shoulder. ‘He’s getting a big lad.’ ‘Hut!’ said the gracious father. ‘Just his mother over again—daurna say Boo to a goose!’ 18

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But the stranger retained the boy, talked to him, drew him out, found in him a taste for letters and a fine, ardent, modest, youthful soul; and encouraged him to be a visitor on Sunday evenings in his bare, cold, lonely dining room, where he sat and read in the isolation of a bachelor grown old in refinement. The beautiful gentleness and grace of the old judge, and the delicacy of his person, thoughts and language, spoke to Archie’s heart in its own tongue. He conceived the ambition to be such another; and when the day came for him to choose a profession, it was in emulation of Lord Glenalmond, not of Lord Hermiston, that he chose the bar. Hermiston looked on at this friendship with some secret pride, but openly with the intolerance of scorn. He scarce lost an opportunity to put them down with a rough jape; and to say truth, it was not difficult, for they were neither of them quick. He had a word of contempt for the whole crowd of poets, painters, fiddlers, and their admirers, the bastard race of amateurs, which was continually on his lips. ‘Signor Feedle-eerie!’ he would say: ‘Oh, for Goad’s sake, no more of the Signor!’ ‘You and my father are great friends, are you not?’ asked Archie once. ‘There is no man that I more respect, Archie,’ replied Lord Glenalmond. ‘He is two things of price. He is a great lawyer, and he is upright as the day.’ ‘You and he are so different!’ said the boy, his eyes dwelling on those of his old friend, like a lover’s on his mistress’s. ‘Indeed so,’ replied the judge: ‘Very different. And so I fear are you and he. Yet I would like it very ill if my young friend were to misjudge his father. He has all the Roman virtues: Cato and Brutus were such; I think a son’s heart might well be proud of such an ancestry of one.’ ‘And I would sooner he was a plaided herd!’ cried Archie, with sudden bitterness. ‘And that is neither very wise, nor I believe entirely true,’ returned Glenalmond. ‘Before you are done, you will find some of these expressions rise on you like a remorse. They are merely literary and decorative; they do not aptly express your thought, nor is your thought clearly apprehended; and no doubt your father (if he were here) would say “Signor Feedle-eerie!”’ With the infinitely delicate sense of youth, Archie avoided the subject from that hour. It was perhaps a pity. Had he but talked—talked freely—let himself gush out in words, the way youth loves to do and should, there might have been no tale to write upon the Weirs of Hermiston. But the shadow of a threat of ridicule sufficed; in the slight 19

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tartness of these words, he read a prohibition; and it is likely that Glenalmond meant it so. Besides the veteran, the boy was without confidant or friend. Serious and eager, he came through school and college, and moved among a crowd of indifferents, in the seclusion of his shyness. He grew up handsome, with an open, speaking countenance, with graceful, youthful ways; he was clever, he took prizes, he shone in the Speculative Society. It should seem he must become the centre of a crowd of friends; but something that was in part the delicacy of his mother, in part the austerity of his father, held him aloof from all. It is a fact and a strange one that, among his contemporaries, Hermiston’s son was thought to be a chip of the old block. ‘You’re a friend of Archie Weir’s?’ said one to Frank Innes; and Innes replied, with his usual flippancy and more than his usual insight: ‘I know Weir, but I never met Archie.’ No one had met Archie, a malady most incident to only sons. He flew his private signal, and none heeded it; it seemed he was abroad in a world from which the very hope of intimacy was banished; and he looked round about him on the concourse of his fellow students, and forward to the trivial days and acquaintances that were to come, without hope or interest. As time went on, the tough and rough old sinner felt himself drawn to the son of his loins and sole continuator of his new family, with softnesses of sentiment that he could hardly credit and was wholly impotent to express. With a face, voice, and manner trained through forty years to terrify and repel, Rhadamanthus may be great, but he will scarce be engaging. It is a fact that he tried to propitiate Archie but a fact that cannot be too lightly taken; the attempt was so inconspicuously made, the failure so stoically supported. Sympathy is not due to these steadfast iron natures. If he failed to gain his son’s friendship, or even his son’s toleration, on he went up the great, bare staircase of his duty, uncheered and undepressed. There might have been more pleasure in his relations with Archie, so much he may have recognized at moments; but pleasure was a by-product of the singular chemistry of life, which only fools expected. An idea of Archie’s attitude, since we are all grown up and have forgotten the days of our youth, it is more difficult to convey. He made no attempt whatsoever to understand the man with whom he dined and breakfasted. Parsimony of pain, glut of pleasure, these are the two alternating ends of youth; and Archie was of the parsimonious. The wind blew cold out of a certain quarter—he turned his back upon it; stayed as little as was possible in his father’s presence; and when there, averted his eyes as much as was decent from his father’s face. The lamp 20

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shone for many hundred days upon these two at table, my lord ruddy, gloomy, and unreverent; Archie with a potential brightness that was always dimmed and veiled in that society; and there were not perhaps in Christendom two men more radically strangers. The father, with a grand simplicity, either spoke of what interested himself, or maintained an unaffected silence. The son turned in his head for some topic that should be quite safe, that would spare him fresh evidences either of my lord’s inherent grossness or of the innocence of his inhumanity: treading gingerly the ways of intercourse, like a lady in a by-path gathering up her skirts from maculation. If he made a mistake, and my lord began to abound in matter of offence, Archie drew himself up, his brow grew dark, his share of the talk expired; but my lord would faithfully and cheerfully continue to pour out the worst of himself before his silent and offended son. ‘Well, it’s a poor hert that never rejoices!’ he would say, at the conclusion of such a nightmare interview. ‘But I must get to my plew-stilts.’ And he would seclude himself as usual in the back room, and Archie go forth into the night and the city quivering with animosity and scorn.

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Chapter 3 IN THE MATTER OF THE HANGING OF DUNCAN JOPP

It chanced in the year 1811 that Archie strayed one day into the Justiciary Court. The macer made room for the son of the presiding judge. In the dock, the centre of men’s eyes, there stood a whey-coloured, misbegotten caitiff, Duncan Jopp, on trial for his life. His story, as it was raked out before him in that public scene, was one of disgrace and vice and cowardice, the very nakedness of crime; and the creature heard and it seemed at times as though he understood—as if at times he forgot the horror of the place he stood in, and remembered the shame of what had brought him there. He kept his head bowed and his hands clutched upon the rail; his hair dropped in his eyes and at times he flung it back; and now he glanced about the audience in a sudden fellness of terror, and now looked in the face of his judge and gulped. There was pinned about his throat a piece of dingy flannel; and this it was perhaps that turned the scale in Archie’s mind between disgust and pity. The creature stood in a vanishing point; yet a little while, and he was still a man, and had eyes and apprehension; yet a little longer, and with a last sordid piece of pageantry, he would cease to be. And here, in the meantime, with a trait of human nature that caught at the beholder’s breath, he was tending a sore throat. Over against him, my lord Hermiston occupied the bench in the red robes of criminal jurisdiction, his face framed in the white wig. Honest all through, he did not affect the virtue of impartiality; this was no case for refinement; there was a man to be haanged, he would have said, and he was haanging him. Nor was it possible to see his lordship, and acquit him of gusto in the task. It was plain he gloried in the exercise of his trained faculties, in the clear sight which pierced at once into the joint of fact, in the rude, unvarnished jibes with which he demolished every figment of defence. He took his ease and jested, unbending in that solemn place with some of the freedom of the tavern; and the rag of man with the flannel round his neck was hunted gallowsward with jeers. Duncan had a mistress, scarce less forlorn and greatly older than himself, who came up, whimpering and curtseying, to add the weight 22

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of her betrayal. My lord gave her the oath in his most roaring voice and added an intolerant warning. ‘Mind what ye say now, Jonet,’ said he. ‘I have an e’e upon ye, I’m ill to jest with.’ Presently, after she was tremblingly embarked on her story, ‘And what made ye do this, ye auld runt?’ the court interposed. ‘Do ye mean to tell me ye was the pannel’s mistress?’ ‘If you please, ma loard,’ whined the female. ‘Godsake! Ye made a bonny couple,’ observed his lordship; and there was something so formidable and ferocious in his scorn that not even the galleries thought to laugh. The summing up contained some jewels. ‘These two peetiable creatures seem to have made up thegether, it’s not for us to explain why.’—‘The pannel who (whatever else he may be) appears to be equally ill set-out in mind and boady.’—‘Neither the pannel nor yet the auld wife appears to have had so much common sense as even to tell a lie when it was necessary.’ And in the course of sentencing, my lord had this obiter dictum: ‘I have been the means, under God, of hanging a great number, but never just such a disjaskit rascal as yourself.’ The words were strong in themselves; the light and heat and detonation of their delivery, and the savage pleasure of the speaker in his task, made them to tingle in the ears. When all was over, Archie came forth again into a changed world. Had there been the least redeeming greatness in the crime, any obscurity, any dubiety, perhaps he might have understood. But the culprit stood there with his sore throat, in the sweat of his mortal agony, without defence or excuse: a thing to cover up with blushes: a being so much sunk beneath the zones of sympathy that pity might seem harmless. And the judge had pursued him with a monstrous, relishing gaiety, horrible to be conceived, a trait for nightmares. It is one thing to spear a tiger, another to crush a toad; there are aesthetics even of the slaughter-house; and the loathsomeness of Duncan Jopp enveloped and infected the image of his judge. Archie passed by his friends in the High Street with incoherent words and gestures. He saw Holyrood in a dream, remembrance of its romance awoke in him and faded; he had a vision of the old radiant stories, of Queen Mary and Prince Charlie, of the rooded stag, of the splendour and crime, the velvet and bright iron of the past; and dismissed them with a cry of pain. He lay and moaned in the Hunter’s Bog, and the heavens were dark above him and the grass of the field an offence. ‘This is my father,’ he said. ‘I draw my life from him; the flesh upon my 23

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bones is his, the bread I am fed with is the wages of these horrors.’ He recalled his mother, and ground his forehead in the earth. He thought of flight, and where was he to flee to? of other lives, but was there any life worth living in this den of savage and jeering animals? The interval before the execution was like a violent dream. He met his father; he would not look at him, he could not speak to him. It seemed there was no living creature but must have been swift to recognise that imminent animosity, but the coriaceous hide of the Justice-Clerk remained insensible. Had my lord been talkative, the truce could never have subsisted; but he was by fortune in one of his humours of sour silence; and under the very guns of his broadside, Archie nursed the enthusiasm of rebellion. It seemed to him, from the top of his seventeen years’ experience, as if he were marked at birth to be the perpetrator of some signal action, to set back fallen Mercy, to overthrow the usurping devil that sat, horned and hooved, on her throne. Seductive Jacobin figments, which he had often refuted at the Speculative, swam up in his mind and startled him as with voices; and he seemed to himself to walk accompanied by an almost tangible presence of new beliefs and duties. On the named morning he was at the place of execution. He saw the fleering rabble, the flinching wretch produced. He looked on for awhile at a certain parody of devotion, which seemed to strip the wretch of his last claim to manhood. Then followed the brutal instant of extinction, and the paltry dangling of the remains like a broken jumping-jack. He had been prepared for something terrible, not for this tragic meanness. He stood a moment silent—and then . . . ‘I denounce this God-defying murder!’ he shouted; and his father, if he must have disclaimed the sentiment, might have owned the stentorian voice with which it was uttered. Frank Innes dragged him from the spot. The two handsome lads followed the same course of study and recreation, and felt a certain mutual attraction, founded mainly on good looks. It had never gone deep; Frank was by nature a thin jeering creature, not truly susceptible whether of feeling or inspiring friendship; and the relation between the pair was altogether on the outside, a thing of common knowledge and the pleasantries that spring from a common acquaintance. The more credit to Frank that he was appalled by Archie’s outburst and at least conceived the design of keeping him in sight, and if possible in hand, for the day. But Archie, who had just defied—was it God? or Satan?—would not listen to the word of a college companion. ‘I will not go with you,’ he said. ‘I do not desire your company, sir. I 24

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would be alone.’ ‘Here, Weir, man, don’t be absurd,’ said Innes, keeping a tight hold upon his sleeve. ‘I will not let you go until I know what you mean to do with yourself; it’s no use brandishing that staff.’ For indeed at that moment Archie had made a sudden, perhaps a warlike movement. ‘This has been the most insane affair; you know it has, you know very well that I’m playing the good Samaritan, all I wish is to keep you quiet.’ ‘If quietness is what you wish, Mr. Innes,’ said Archie, ‘and you will promise to leave me entirely to myself, I will tell you so much that I am going to walk in the country and admire the beauties of nature.’ ‘Honour bright?’ asked Frank. ‘I am not in the habit of lying, Mr. Innes,’ retorted Archie. ‘I have the honour of wishing you good day.’ ‘You won’t forget the Spec.?’ asked Innes. ‘The Spec.?’ said Archie. ‘Oh, no, I won’t forget the Spec.’ And the one young man carried his tortured spirit forth of the city and all the day long by one road and another, in an endless pilgrimage of misery: while the other hastened smilingly to spread the news of Weir’s access of insanity, and to drum up for that night a full attendance at the Speculative, where farther eccentric developments might certainly be looked for. I doubt if Innes had the least belief in his prediction; I think it flowed rather from a wish to make the story as good and the scandal as great as possible; not from any ill-will to Archie— from the mere pleasure of beholding interested faces. But for all that, his words were prophetic. Archie did not forget the Spec., he put in an appearance there at the due time, and before the evening was over had dealt a memorable shock to his companions. It chanced he was the president of the night. He sat in the same room; only the portraits were not there—those now represented were then but beginning their career; the same lustre of many tapers shed its light over the meeting; the same chair perhaps supported him that so many of us have sat in since. At times he seemed to forget the business of the evening; but even in these periods he sat with a great air of energy and determination. At times, he meddled bitterly and launched with defiance those fines which are the precious and rarely used artillery of the president. He little thought, as he did so, how he resembled his father; but his friends remarked upon it, chuckling. So far, in his high place above his fellow students, he seemed set beyond the possibility of any scandal; but his mind was made up, he was determined to fulfil the sphere of his offence. He signed to Innes (whom he had just fined and who had just impeached his ruling) to succeed him in the chair; stepped down 25

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from the platform; and took his place by the chimney piece, the shine of many wax tapers from above illuminating his pale face, the glow of the great red fire relieving from behind his slim figure. He had to propose, as an amendment to the next subject in the casebook: ‘Whether capital punishment be consistent with God’s will or man’s policy?’ A breath of embarrassment, of something like alarm passed round the room; so daring did these words appear upon the lips of Hermiston’s only son. But the amendment was not seconded, the previous question was promptly moved and unanimously voted, and the momentary scandal smuggled by. Innes triumphed in the fulfilment of his prophecy. He and Archie were now become the heroes of the night; but whereas everyone crowded about Innes, when the meeting broke up, but one of all his companions came to speak to Archie. ‘Weir, man! That was an extraordinary raid of yours!’ observed this courageous member, taking him confidentially by the arm as they went out. ‘I don’t think it a raid,’ said Archie grimly. ‘More like a war. I saw that poor brute hanged this morning, and my gorge rises at it yet.’ ‘Hut-tut,’ returned his companion, and dropping his arm like something hot, he sought the less tense society of others. Archie found himself alone. The last of the faithful—or was it only the boldest of the curious?—had fled. He watched the black huddle of his fellow students draw off down and up the street, in whispering or boisterous gangs. And the isolation of the moment weighed upon him like an omen and an emblem of his destiny in life. Bred up in unbroken fear himself, among trembling servants, and in a house which (at the least ruffle in the master’s voice) shuddered into silence, he saw himself on the brink of the red valley of war and measured the danger and length of it with awe. He made a detour in the glimmer and shadow of the streets, came into the back stable lane, and watched for a long while the light burn steady in the Judge’s room. The longer he gazed upon that illuminated window blind, the more blank became his picture of the man who sat behind it, endlessly turning over sheets of process, pausing to sip a glass of port, or rising and passing heavily about his book-lined walls to verify some reference. He could not combine the brutal judge and the industrious dispassionate student; the connecting link escaped him; from such a dual nature, it was impossible he should predict behaviour; and he asked himself if he had done well to plunge into a business of which the end could not be foreseen? and presently after, with a sickening decline of confidence, if he had done loyally to strike his father? For he had struck him—defied him twice over 26

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and before a cloud of witnesses—struck him a public buffet before crowds—who had called him to judge his father in these precarious and high questions? The office was usurped. It might have become a stranger; in a son—there was no blinking it—in a son, it was disloyal. And now, between these two natures so antipathetic, so hateful to each other, there was depending an unpardonable affront; and the providence of God alone might foresee the manner in which it would be resented by Lord Hermiston. These misgivings tortured him all night and arose with him in the winter’s morning; they followed him from class to class, they made him shrinkingly sensitive to every shade of manner in his companions, they sounded in his ears through the current voice of the professor; and he brought them home with him at night unabated and indeed increased. The cause of this increase lay in a chance encounter with the celebrated Dr. Gregory. Archie stood looking vaguely in the lighted window of a book shop, trying to nerve himself for the approaching ordeal. My lord and he had met and parted in the morning as they had now done for long, with scarce the ordinary civilities of life; and it was plain to the son that nothing had yet reached the father’s ears. Indeed, when he recalled the awful countenance of my lord a timid hope sprung up in him that perhaps there would be found no one bold enough to carry tales. If this were so, he asked himself, would he begin again? and he found no answer. It was at this moment that a hand was laid upon his arm, and a voice said in his ear, ‘My dear Mr. Archie, you had better come and see me.’ He started, turned round, and found himself face to face with Dr. Gregory. ‘And why should I come to see you?’ he asked, with the defiance of the miserable. ‘Because you are looking exceedingly ill,’ said the doctor, ‘and you very evidently want looking after, my young friend. Good folk are scarce, you know; and it is not every one that would be quite so much missed as yourself. It is not everyone that Hermiston would miss.’ And with a nod, and a smile, the doctor passed on. A moment after, Archie was in pursuit, and had in turn, but more roughly, seized him by the arm. ‘What do you mean? What did you mean by saying that? What makes you think that Hermis—my father would have missed me?’ The doctor turned about and looked him all over with a clinical eye. A far more stupid man than Dr. Gregory might have guessed the truth; but ninety-nine out of a hundred, even if they had been equally inclined to kindness, would have blundered by some touch of charitable 27

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exaggeration. The doctor was better inspired. He knew the father well; in that white face of intelligence and suffering, he divined something of the son; and he told, without apology or adornment, the plain truth. ‘When you had the measles, Mr. Archibald, you had them geyan ill; and I thought you were going to slip between my fingers,’ he said. ‘Well, your father was anxious. How did I know it? says you. Simply because I am a trained observer. The sign that I saw him make, ten thousand would have missed; and perhaps—perhaps, I say, because he’s a hard man to judge of,—but perhaps he never made another. A strange thing to consider! It was this. One day I came to him: “Hermiston,” said I “there’s a change.” He never said a word; just glowered at me (if ye’ll pardon the phrase) like a wild beast. “A change for the better,” said I. And I distinctly heard him take his breath.’ The doctor left no opportunity for anticlimax; nodding his cocked hat (a piece of antiquity to which he clung) and repeating ‘Distinctly!’ with raised eye-brows, he took his departure, and left Archie speechless in the street. The anecdote might be called infinitely little, and yet its meaning for Archie was immense. ‘I did not know the old man had so much blood in him.’ He had never dreamed this sire of his, this aboriginal antique, this adamantine Adam, had even so much of a heart as to be moved in the least degree for another:—and that other himself, who had insulted him! With the generosity of youth Archie was instantly under arms upon the other side; had instantly created a new image of Lord Hermiston, that of a man who was all iron without and all exquisite sensibility within. The mind of the vile jester, the tongue that had pursued Duncan Jopp with unmanly insults, the unbeloved countenance that he had known and feared for so long, were all forgotten; and he hastened home, impatient to confess his misdeeds, impatient to throw himself on the mercy of this imaginary character. He was not to be long without a rude awaking. It was in the gloaming when he drew near the doorstep of the lighted house, and was aware of the figure of his father approaching from the opposite side. Little daylight lingered; but on the door being opened, the strong yellow shine of the lamp gushed out upon the landing and shone full on Archie, as he stood, in the old-fashioned observance of respect, to yield precedence. The judge came without haste, stepping stately and firm; his chin raised, his face (as he entered the lamplight) strongly illumined, his mouth set hard. There was never a wink of change in his expression; without looking to the right or left, he mounted the stair, passed close to Archie, and entered the house. Instinctively, the boy, upon his first 28

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coming, had made a movement to meet him, instinctively, he recoiled against the railing, as the old man swept by him in a pomp of indignation. Words were needless: he knew all—perhaps more than all—and the day of judgement was at hand. It is possible that, in this sudden revulsion of hope and before these symptoms of impending danger, Archie might have fled. But not even that was left to him. My lord, after hanging up his cloak and hat, turned round in the lighted entry, and made him an imperative and silent gesture with his thumb. And with the strange instinct of obedience, Archie followed him into the house. All dinner time, there reigned over the judge’s table a palpable silence, and as soon as the solids were dispatched he rose to his feet. ‘McKillup, tak’ the wine into my room,’ said he; and then to his son: ‘Erchie, you and me has to have a talk.’ It was at this sickening moment that Archie’s courage for the first and last time entirely deserted him. ‘I have an appointment,’ said he. ‘It’ll have to be brocken, then,’ said Hermiston, and led the way into his study. The lamp was shaded, the fire trimmed to a nicety, the table covered deep with orderly documents, the backs of law-books made a frame upon all sides that was only broken by the window and the doors. For a moment, Hermiston warmed his hands at the fire, presenting his back to Archie; then suddenly disclosed on him the terrors of the Hanging Face. ‘What’s this I hear of ye?’ he asked. There was no answer possible to Archie. ‘I’ll have to tell ye, then,’ pursued Hermiston. ‘It seems ye’ve been skirling against the father that begot ye and one of his Maijesty’s Judges in this land; and that, in the public street and while an order of the court was being executit. Forbye which, it would appear that ye’ve been airing your opeenions in a Coallege Debatin’ Society—’ he paused a moment; and then, with extraordinary bitterness, added: ‘Ye damned eediot!’ ‘I had meant to tell you,’ stammered Archie. ‘I see you are well informed.’ ‘Muckle obleeged to ye,’ said his lordship, and took his usual seat. ‘And so ye disapprove of Caapital Punishment?’ he added. ‘I am sorry, Sir, I do,’ said Archie. ‘I am sorry, too,’ said his lordship. ‘And now, if you please, we shall approach this business with a little more parteecularity. I hear, that at the hanging of Duncan Jopp—and, man! ye had a fine client there— 29

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in the middle of all the riff-raff of the ceety, ye thought fit to cry out, “This is a damned murder, and my gorge rises at the man that hangit him.” ’ ‘No, sir, these were not my words,’ cried Archie. ‘What were yer words, then?’ asked the Judge. ‘I believe I said “I denounce it as a murder”, ’ said the son. ‘I beg your pardon—a God-defying murder. I have no wish to conceal the truth,’ he added and looked his father for a moment in the face. ‘God, it would only need that of it next!’ cried Hermiston. ‘There was nothing about your gorge rising, then?’ ‘That was afterwards, my lord, as I was leaving the Speculative. I said I had been to see the miserable creature hanged, and my gorge rose at it.’ ‘Did ye, though?’ said Hermiston. ‘And I suppose ye knew who hangit him?’ ‘I was present at the trial, I ought to tell you that, I ought to explain. I ask your pardon beforehand for any expression that may seem undutiful. The position in which I stand is wretched,’ said the unhappy hero, now fairly face to face with the business he had chosen. ‘I have been reading some of your cases. I was present while Jopp was tried. It was a hideous business—Father, it was a hideous thing! Grant he was vile, why should you hunt him with a vileness equal to his own? It was done with glee—that is the word—you did it with glee; and I looked on, God help me! with horror.’ ‘You’re a young gentleman that does nae approve of Caapital Punishment,’ said Hermiston: ‘Well, I’m an auld man that does. I was glad to get Jopp hangit, and what for would I pretend I wasnae? You’re all for honesty, it seems; you couldn’t even steik your mouth on the public street. What for should I steik mines upon the bench, the King’s officer, beering the sword, a dreid to evil-doers, as I was from the beginning and as I will be to the end? Mair than enough of it! Heedious? I never gave twae thoughts to heediousness. I have no call to be bonny. I’m a man that gets through with my day’s business, and let that suffice.’ The ring of sarcasm had died out of his voice as he went on; the plain words became invested with some of the dignity of the justice seat. ‘It would be telling you, if you could say as much,’ the speaker resumed. ‘But ye can not. Ye’ve been reading some of my cases, ye say. But it was not for the law in them, it was to spy out your faither’s nakedness, a fine employment in a son. You’re splairging; you’re running at lairge in life like a wild nowt. It’s impossible you should think any longer 30

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of coming to the bar. You’re not fit for it; no splairger is. And another thing: son of mines or no son of mines, you have flung fylement in public on one of the Senators of the Coallege of Justice, and I would make it my business to see that ye were never admitted there yourself. There is a kind of a decency to be observit. Then comes the next of it— what am I to do with ye next? Ye’ll have to find some kind of a tred, for I’ll never support ye in idleset. What do ye fancy ye’ll be fit for? The pulpit? Na, they could never get diveenity into that bloackhead. Him that the law of man whammles is no likely to do muckle better by the Law of God. What would ye make o’ Hell? Would nae your gorge rise at that? Na, there’s no room for splairgers under the fower quarters of John Calvin. What else is there? Speak up. Have ye got nothing of your own?’ ‘Father, let me go to the Peninsula,’ said Archie. ‘That’s all I’m fit for—to fight.’ ‘All? quo’ he!’ returned the Judge. ‘And it would be enough too, if I thought it. But I’ll never trust ye as near the French, you that’s so Frenchifeed.’ ‘You do me injustice there, sir,’ said Archie. ‘I am loyal; I will not boast; but any interest I may have ever felt in the French—’ ‘Have ye been so loyal to me?’ interrupted his father. There came no reply. ‘I think not,’ continued Hermiston. ‘And I would send no man to be a servant to the King, God bless him, that has proved such a shauchling son to his own faither. You can splairge here on Edinburgh street, and where’s the hairm? It does nae play buff on me! And if there were twenty thousand eediots like yourself, sorrow a Duncan Jopp would hang the fewer. But there’s no splairging possible in a camp; and if you were to go to it, you would find out for yourself whether Lord Well’n’ton approves of Caapital Punishment or not. You a sodger!’ he cried, with a sudden burst of scorn, ‘Ye auld wife, the sodgers would bray at ye like cuddies!’ As at the drawing of a curtain, Archie was aware of some illogicality in his position, and stood abashed. He had a strong impression besides of the essential valour of the old gentleman before him, how conveyed it would be hard to say. ‘Well, have ye no other proposeetion?’ said my lord again. ‘You have taken this so calmly, sir, that I cannot but stand ashamed,’ began Archie. ‘I’m nearer voamiting, though, than you would fancy,’ said my lord. The blood rose to Archie’s brow. 31

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‘I beg your pardon. I should have said that you had accepted my affront . . . I admit it was an affront; I did not think to apologise, but I do, I ask your pardon; it will not be so again, I pass you my word of honour . . . I should have said that I admired your magnanimity with— this—offender,’ Archie concluded with a gulp. ‘I have no other son, ye see,’ said Hermiston. ‘A bonny one I have gotten! But I must just do the best I can wi’ him, and what am I to do? If ye had been younger, I would have wheepit ye for this rideeculous exhibeetion—The way it is, I have just to grin and bear. But one thing is to be clearly understood. As a faither, I must grin and bear it; but if I had been the Lord Advocate instead of the Lord Justice-Clerk, son or no son, Mr. Erchibald Weir would have been in a jyle the night.’ Archie was now dominated. Lord Hermiston was coarse and cruel; and yet the son was aware of a bloomless nobility, an ungracious abnegation of the man’s self in the man’s office. At every word, this sense of the greatness of Lord Hermiston’s spirit struck more home; and along with it that of his own impotence, who had struck—and perhaps basely struck—at his own father, and not reached so far as to have even nettled him. ‘I place myself in your hands without reserve,’ he said. ‘That’s the first sensible word I’ve had of ye the night,’ said Hermiston. ‘I can tell ye, that would have been the end of it, the one way or the other; but it’s better ye should come there yourself, than what I would have had to hirstle ye. Well, by my way of it—and my way is the best— there’s just the one thing it’s possible that ye might be with decency, and that’s a laird. Ye’ll be out of hairm’s way at the least of it. If ye have to rowt, ye can rowt amang the kye; and the maist feck of the Caapital Punishment ye’re like to come across, ’ll be guddling trouts. Now, I’m for no idle lairdies; every man has to work, if it’s only at peddling ballants: to work, or to be wheeped, or to be hangit. If I set ye down at Hermiston, I’ll have to see you work that place the way it has never been workit yet; ye must ken about the sheep like a herd; ye must be my grieve there, and I’ll see that I gain by ye. Is that understood?’ ‘I will do my best,’ said Archie. ‘Well, then, I’ll send Kirstie word the morn, and ye can go yourself the day efter,’ said Hermiston. ‘And just try to be less of an eediot!’ he concluded, with a freezing smile, and turned immediately to the papers on his desk.

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Chapter 4 OPINIONS OF THE BENCH

Late the same night, after a disordered walk, Archie was admitted into Lord Glenalmond’s dining-room where he sat, with a book upon his knee, beside three frugal coals of fire. In his robes upon the bench, Glenalmond had a certain air of burliness: plucked of these, it was a may-pole of a man that rose unsteadily from his chair to give his visitor welcome. Archie had suffered much in the last days, he had suffered again that evening; his face was white and drawn, his eyes wild and dark. But Lord Glenalmond greeted him without the least mark of surprise or curiosity. ‘Come in, come in,’ said he. ‘Come in and take a seat. Carstairs,’ (to his servant) ‘make up the fire, and then you can bring a bit of supper.’ And again to Archie, with a very trivial accent: ‘I was half expecting you,’ he added. ‘No supper,’ said Archie. ‘It is impossible that I should eat.’ ‘Not impossible,’ said the tall old man, laying his hand upon his shoulder, ‘and if you will believe me, necessary.’ ‘You know what brings me?’ said Archie, as soon as the servant had left the room. ‘I have a guess, I have a guess,’ replied Glenalmond. ‘We will talk of it presently—when Carstairs has come and gone, and you have had a piece of my good Cheddar cheese and a pull at the porter tankard: not before.’ ‘It is impossible I should eat,’ repeated Archie. ‘Tut, tut,’ said Lord Glenalmond. ‘You have eaten nothing today, and I venture to add, nothing yesterday. There is no case that may not be made worse; this may be a very disagreeable business, but if you were to fall sick and die, it would be still more so, and for all concerned—for all concerned.’ ‘I see you must know all,’ said Archie. ‘Where did you hear it?’ ‘In the mart of scandal, in the Parliament House,’ said Glenalmond. ‘It runs riot below among the bar and the public, but it sifts up to us upon the bench, and rumour has some of her voices even in the divisions.’ 33

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Carstairs returned at this moment, and rapidly laid out a little supper; during which Lord Glenalmond spoke at large and a little vaguely on indifferent subjects, so that it might be rather said of him that he made a cheerful noise, than that he contributed to human conversation; and Archie sat upon the other side, not heeding him, brooding on his wrongs and errors. But so soon as the servant was gone, he broke forth again at once. ‘Who told my father? Who dared to tell him? Could it have been you?’ ‘No. It was not me,’ said the judge; ‘although—to be quite frank with you, and after I had seen and warned you—it might have been me. I believe it was Glenkindie.’ ‘That shrimp!’ cried Archie. ‘As you say, that shrimp,’ returned my lord; ‘although really it is scarce a fitting mode of expression for one of the senators of the College of Justice. We were hearing the parties in a long, crucial case before the Fifteen; Creech was moving at some length for an infeftment; when I saw Glenkindie lean forward to Hermiston with his hand over his mouth and make him a secret communication. No one could have guessed its nature from your father; from Glenkindie, yes, his malice sparked out of him a little grossly. But your father, no. A man of granite. The next moment he pounced upon Creech. “Mr. Creech,” says he “I’ll take a look of that sasine.” And for thirty minutes after,’ said Glenalmond, with a smile ‘Messrs Creech and Co. were fighting a pretty uphill battle, which resulted, I need hardly add, in their total rout. The case was dismissed. No, I doubt if ever I heard Hermiston better inspired. He was literally rejoicing in apicibus juris.’ Archie was able to endure no longer. He thrust his plate away and interrupted the deliberate and insignificant stream of talk. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘I have made a fool of myself, if I have not made something worse. Do you judge between us—judge between a father and a son. I can speak to you; it is not like . . . I will tell you what I feel and what I mean to do; and you shall be the judge,’ he repeated. ‘I decline jurisdiction,’ said Glenalmond with extreme seriousness. ‘But, my dear boy, if it will do you any good to talk, and if it will interest you at all to hear what I may choose to say when I have heard you, I am quite at your command. Let an old man say it, for once, and not need to blush: I love you like a son.’ There came a sudden sharp sound in Archie’s throat. ‘Ay,’ he cried, ‘and there it is! Love! like a son! And how do you think I love my father?’ ‘Quietly, quietly,’ says my lord. 34

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‘I will be very quiet,’ replied Archie. ‘And I will be baldly frank. I do not love my father; I wonder sometimes if I do not hate him. There’s my shame; perhaps my sin; at least, and in the sight of God, not my fault. How was I to love him? He has never spoken to me, never smiled upon me; I do not think he ever touched me. You know the way he talks? You do not talk so, yet you can sit and hear him without shuddering, and I cannot. My soul is sick when he begins with it; I could smite him in the mouth. And all that’s nothing. I was at the trial of this Jopp. You were not there, but you must have heard him often; the man’s notorious for it, for being—look at my position! he’s my father and this is how I have to speak of him—notorious for being a brute and cruel and a coward. Lord Glenalmond, I give you my word, when I came out of that court, I longed to die—the shame of it was beyond my strength: but I—I’ he rose from his seat and began to pace the room in a disorder. ‘Well who am I? A boy, who has never been tried, who has never done anything except this twopenny impotent folly with my father. But I tell you, my lord, and I know myself, I am at least that kind of a man—or that kind of a boy if you prefer it—that I could die in torments rather than that anyone should suffer as that scoundrel suffered. Well, and what have I done? I see it now. I have made a fool of myself as I said in the beginning; and I have gone back, and asked my father’s pardon, and placed myself wholly in his hands— and he has sent me to Hermiston,’ with a wretched smile, ‘for life I suppose—and what can I say? he strikes me as having done quite right and let me off better than I had deserved.’ ‘My poor dear boy!’ observed Glenalmond. ‘My poor dear, and if you will allow me to say so, very foolish boy! You are only discovering where you are; to one of your temperament, or of mine, a painful discovery. The world was not made for us; it was made for ten hundred millions of men, all different from each other and from us: there’s no royal road there, we just have to sclamber and tumble. Don’t think that I am at all disposed to be surprised; don’t suppose that I even think of blaming you; indeed I rather admire! But there fall to be offered one or two observations on the case, which occur to me and which (if you will listen to them dispassionately,) may be the means of inducing you to view the matter more calmly. First of all, I cannot acquit you of a good deal of what is called intolerance. You seem to have been very much offended because your father talks a little sculduddery after dinner: which it is perfectly licit for him to do, and which (although I am not very fond of it myself) appears to be entirely an affair of taste. Your father, I scarcely like to remind you, since it is so trite a commonplace, 35

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is older than yourself. At least he is major and sui juris, and may please himself in the matter of his conversation. And do you know, I wonder if he might not have as good an answer against you and me? We say, we sometimes find him coarse, but I suspect he might retort that he finds us always dull. Perhaps a relevant exception.’ He beamed on Archie, but no smile could be elicited. ‘And now,’ proceeded the judge, ‘for “Archibald on Capital Punishment.” This is a very plausible academic opinion; of course I do not and I cannot hold it; but that is not to say that many able and excellent persons have not done so in the past. Possibly, in the past also, I may have a little dipped myself in the same heresy. My third client, or possibly my fourth, was the means of a return in my opinions. I never saw the man I more believed in; I would have put my hand in the fire, I would have gone to the cross for him; and when it came to trial, he was gradually pictured before me, by undeniable probation, in the light of so gross, so cold-blooded and so black-hearted a villain that I had a mind to have cast my brief upon the table. I was then boiling against the man with even a more tropical temperature than I had been boiling for him. But I said to myself: “No, you have taken up his case; and because you have changed your mind, it must not be suffered to let drop. All that rich tide of eloquence that you prepared last night with so much enthusiasm, is out of place, and yet you must not desert him, you must say something.” So I said something, and I got him off. It made my reputation. But an experience of that kind is formative. A man must not bring his passions to the bar—or to the bench,’ he added. The story had slightly rekindled Archie’s interest. ‘I could never deny,’ he began—‘I mean I can conceive that some men would be better dead. But who are we to know all the springs of God’s unfortunate creatures? who are we to trust ourselves, where it seems that God himself must think twice before he tread?—and to do it with delight? Yes, with delight. Tigris ut aspera.’ ‘Perhaps not a pleasant spectacle,’ said Glenalmond. ‘And yet—do you know?—I think somehow a great one.’ ‘I’ve had a long talk with him tonight,’ said Archie. ‘I was supposing so,’ said Glenalmond. ‘And he struck me . . . I cannot deny that he struck me as something very big,’ pursued the son. ‘Yes, he is big. He never spoke about himself; only about me. I suppose I admired him. The dreadful part . . .’ ‘Suppose we did not talk about that,’ interrupted Glenalmond. ‘You know it very well, it cannot in any way help that you should brood upon it, and I sometimes wonder whether you and I—who are a pair 36

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of sentimentalists—are quite good judges of plain men.’ ‘How do you mean?’ asked Archie. ‘Fair judges, I mean,’ replied Glenalmond. ‘Can we be just to them? Do we not ask too much? There was a word of yours just now that impressed me a little, when you asked me who we were to know all the springs of God’s unfortunate creatures. You applied that as I understood, to capital cases only. But does it—I ask myself—does it not apply all through? Is it any less difficult to judge of a good man, or of a halfgood man, than of the worst criminal at the bar? And may not each have relevant excuses?’ ‘Ah, but we do not talk of punishing the good,’ cried Archie. ‘No, we do not talk of it,’ said Glenalmond. ‘But I think we do it. Your father for instance.’ ‘You think I have punished him?’ cried Archie. Lord Glenalmond bowed his head. ‘I think I have,’ said Archie. ‘And the worst is, I think he feels it! How much, who can tell, with such a being? But I think he does.’ ‘And I am sure of it,’ said Glenalmond. ‘Has he spoken to you, then?’ cried Archie. ‘Oh no,’ replied the judge. ‘I tell you honestly,’ said Archie, ‘I want to make it up to him. I will go, I have already pledged myself to go to Hermiston. That was to him. And now I pledge myself to you, in the sight of God, that I will close my mouth on Capital Punishment and all other subjects where our views may clash, for . . . how long shall I say? when shall I have sense enough? . . . ten years. Is that well?’ ‘It is well,’ said my lord. ‘As far as it goes,’ said Archie. ‘It is enough as regards myself, it is to lay down enough of my conceit. But as regards him, whom I have publicly insulted? what am I to do to him? How do you pay attentions to a—an alp like that?’ ‘Only in one way,’ replied Glenalmond: ‘Only by obedience, punctual, prompt, meticulous.’ ‘And I promise you that he shall have it,’ answered Archie. ‘I offer you my hand in pledge of it.’ ‘And I take your hand as a solemnity,’ replied the judge. ‘God bless you, my dear, and enable you to keep your promise—God guide you in the true way, and spare your days, and preserve to you your honest heart.’ At that, he kissed the young man upon the forehead in a gracious, distant, antiquated way; and instantly, launched, with a marked change of voice, into another subject: ‘And now, let us replenish the 37

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tankard; and I believe, if you will try my Cheddar again you would find you had a better appetite. The court has spoken, and the case is dismissed.’ ‘No, there is one thing I must say,’ cried Archie. ‘I must say it in justice to himself. I know—I believe faithfully, slavishly, after our talk—he will never ask me anything unjust. I am proud to feel it, that we have that much in common; I am proud to say it to you.’ The judge, with shining eyes, raised his tankard. ‘And I think perhaps that we might permit ourselves a toast,’ said he. ‘I should like to propose the health of a man very different from me and very much my superior—a man from whom I have often differed, who has often (in the trivial expression) rubbed me the wrong way, but whom I have never ceased to respect and I may add, to be not a little afraid of. Shall I give you his name?’ ‘The Lord Justice-Clerk, Lord Hermiston,’ said Archie, almost with gaiety; and the pair drank the toast deeply. It was not precisely easy to reestablish, after these emotional passages, the natural flow of conversation. But the judge eked out what was wanting with kind looks, produced his snuff-box (which was very rarely seen) to fill in a pause, and at last, despairing of any further social success, was upon the point of getting down a book to read a favourite passage, when there came a rather startling summons at the front door, and Carstairs ushered in my lord Glenkindie, hot from a midnight supper. I am not aware that Glenkindie was ever a beautiful object, being short, and gross-bodied, and with an expression of sensuality comparable to a boar’s. At that moment, coming in hissing from many potations, with a flushed countenance and blurred eyes, he was strikingly contrasted with the tall, pale, kingly figure of Glenalmond. A rush of confused thought came over Archie: of shame that this was one of his father’s elect friends; of pride, that at the least of it Hermiston could carry his liquor; and last of all, of rage, that he should have here under his eyes the man that had betrayed him. And then that too passed away; and he sat quiet, biding his opportunity. The tipsy senator plunged at once into an explanation with Glenalmond. There was a point reserved yesterday, he had been able to make neither head nor tail of it, and seeing lights in the house, he had just dropped in for a glass of porter . . . and at this point he became aware of the third person. Archie saw the cod’s mouth and the blunt lips of Glenkindie gape at him for a moment, and the recognition twinkle in his eyes. ‘Who’s this?’ said he. ‘What? is this possibly you, Don Quickshot? 38

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And how are ye? And how’s your father? And what’s all this we hear of you? It seems you’re a most extraordinary leveller by all tales. No king, no parliaments, and your gorge rises at the macers, worthy men! Hoot toot! Dear, dear me! Your father’s son too! Most rideekulous!’ Archie was on his feet, flushing a little at the reappearance of his unhappy figure of speech, but perfectly self-possessed. ‘My lord—and you, Lord Glenalmond, my dear friend,’ he began, ‘this is a happy chance for me, that I can make my confession and offer my apologies to two of you at once.’ ‘Ah, but I don’t know about that. Confession? It’ll be judeecial, my young friend,’ cried the jocular Glenkindie. ‘And I’m afraid to listen to ye. Think if ye were to make me a coanvert!’ ‘If you would allow me, my lord,’ returned Archie, ‘what I have to say is very serious to me; and be pleased to be humorous after I am gone!’ ‘Remember, I’ll hear nothing against the macers!’ put in the incorrigible Glenkindie. But Archie continued as though he had not spoken. ‘I have played, both yesterday and today, a part for which I can only offer the excuse of youth. I was so unwise as go to an execution; it seems, I made a scene at the gallows; not content with which, I spoke the same night in a college society against capital punishment. This is the extent of what I have done, and in case you hear more alleged against me, I protest my innocence. I have expressed my regret already to my father, who is so good as to pass my conduct over—in a degree, and upon the condition that I am to leave my law studies.’

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Chapter 5 WINTER ON THE MOORS

1. At Hermiston The road to Hermiston runs for a great part of the way up the valley of a stream, a favourite with anglers and with midges, full of falls and pools, and shaded by willows and natural woods of birch. Here and there, but at great distances, a byway branches off and a gaunt farm house may be descried above you in a fold of the hill; but the more part of the time, the road would be quite empty of passage and the hills of habitation. Hermiston parish is one of the least populous in Scotland; and by the time you came that length, you would scarce be surprised at the inimitable smallness of the kirk, a dwarfish, ancient place, seated for fifty, and standing in a green by the burn side among two score gravestones; the manse close by, although no more than a cottage, is surrounded by the brightness of a flower garden and the straw roofs of bees; and the whole colony, kirk and manse, garden and graveyard, finds harbourage in a grove of rowans, and lies all the year round in a great silence broken only by the drone of the bees, the tinkle of the burn, and the bell on Sundays. A mile beyond the kirk, the road leaves the valley by a precipitous ascent and brings you a little after to the place of Hermiston, where it comes to an end in the back yard before the coach house. All beyond and about is the great field of the hills; the plover, the curlew and the lark cry there; the wind blows as it blows in a ship’s rigging, hard and cold and pure; and the hill tops huddle one behind another like a herd of cattle into the sunset. The house was sixty years old, unsightly, comfortable; a farm-yard and a kitchen garden on the left, with a fruit wall where little hard green pears came to their maturity about the end of October. The policy (as who should say the park) was of some extent but very ill reclaimed; heather and moor-fowl had climbed the boundary wall and spread and roosted within; and it would have tasked a landscape gardener to say where policy ended and impolitic nature began. My lord had been led by the influence of Mr. Sheriff Scott into a considerable design of planting; many acres were accordingly set out with fir; 40

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and the little feathery besoms gave a false scale and lent a strange air of a toy-shop to the moors. A great, rooty sweetness of bogs was in the air, and at all seasons an infinite melancholy piping of hill birds. Standing so high and with so little shelter, it was a cold exposed house, splashed by showers, drenched by continuous rains that made the gutters to spout, beaten upon and buffetted by all the winds of heaven; and the prospect would be often black with tempest, and often white with the snows of winter. But the house was wind and weather proof; the hearths were kept bright and the rooms pleasant with live fires of peat; and Archie might sit of an evening, and hear the squalls bugle on the moorland and watch the fire prosper in the earthy fuel and the smoke winding up the chimney, and drink deep of the pleasures of shelter. Solitary as the place was, Archie did not want neighbours. Every night, if he chose, he might go down to the manse and share a ‘brewst’ of toddy with the minister—a hare-brained ancient gentleman, long and light and still active, though his knees were loosened with age and his voice broke continually in childish trebles—and his lady wife, a heavy, comely dame without a word to say for herself beyond good even and good day. Harum scarum clod-pole young lairds of the neighbourhood paid him the compliment of a visit. Young Hay of Romanes rode down to call on his crop eared pony, young Pringle of Drumanno came up on his bony gray. Hay remained on the hospitable field and must be carried to bed; Pringle got somehow to his saddle about three a. m. and (as Archie stood with the lamp on the upper door-step) lurched, uttered a senseless view halloa, and vanished out of the small circle of illumination like a wraith. Yet a minute or two longer, the clatter of his break-neck flight was audible; then it was cut off by the intervening steepness of the hill; and again, a great while after, the renewed beating of phantom horse-hoofs, far in the valley of the Hermiston, showed that the horse at least, if not his rider, was still on the homeward way. There was a Tuesday club at the Cross Keys in Crossmichael where the young bloods of the country side congregated and drank deep on a percentage of the expense, so that he was left gainer who should have drunk the most. Archie had no great mind to this diversion; but he took it like a duty laid upon him, went with a decent regularity, did his manfullest with the liquor, held up his head in the local jests; and got home again, and was able to put up his horse to the admiration of Kirstie and the lass that helped her. He dined at Driffel; supped at Windielaws; he went to the New Year’s ball at Huntsfield, and was made welcome, and thereafter rode to hounds with my lord Muirfell, upon whose name, as that of a legitimate Lord of 41

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Parliament, in a work so full of Lords of Session, my pen should pause reverently. Yet the same fate attended him here as in Edinburgh. The habit of solitude tends to perpetuate itself; and an austerity of which he was quite unconscious, and a pride, which seemed arrogance and perhaps was chiefly shyness, discouraged and offended his new companions. Hay did not return more than twice, Pringle never at all; and there came a time when he even desisted from the Tuesday club, and became in all things—what he had had the name of almost from the first—the Recluse of Hermiston. High nosed Miss Pringle of Drumanno and high stepping Miss Marshall of the Mains were understood to have had a difference of opinion about Archie the day after the ball— he was none the wiser, he could not suppose himself to be remarked by these entrancing ladies. At the ball itself my lord Muirfell’s daughter, the Lady Flora, spoke to him twice and the second time with a touch of appeal, so that her colour rose and her voice trembled a little in his ear like a passing grace in music. He stepped back with a heart on fire; coldly and not ungracefully excused himself; and a little after, watched her dancing with young Drumanno of the empty laugh, and was harrowed at the sight, and raged to himself that this was a world in which it was given to Drumanno to please, and to himself only to stand aside and envy. He seemed excluded, as of right, from the favour of such society; seemed to extinguish mirth wherever he came; and was quick to feel the wound, and desist, and retire into solitude.—If he had but understood the figure he presented and the impression he made on these bright eyes and tender hearts, if he had but guessed that the Recluse of Hermiston, young, graceful, well spoken, but always cold, stirred the maidens of the county with the charm of Byronism before Byron—it may be questioned whether his destiny might even yet have been modified. It may be questioned, and I think it should be doubted. It was in his horoscope to be parsimonious of pain to himself, or of the chance of pain, even to the avoidance of any opportunity of pleasure; to have a Roman sense of duty, an instinctive aristocracy of manners and taste; to be the son of Adam Weir and Jean Rutherford. 2. Kirstie Kirstie was now over fifty, and might have sat to a sculptor. Long of limb and still light of foot, deep breasted, robust loined, her golden hair not yet mingled with any trace of silver, the years had but caressed and embellished her. By the lines of a rich and vigorous maternity, she seemed destined to be the bride of heroes and the mother of their children; 42

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and behold, by the iniquity of fate, she had passed through her youth alone, and drew near to the confines of age, a childless woman. The tender ambitions that she had received at birth had been, by time and disappointment, diverted into a certain barren zeal of industry and fury of interference. She carried her thwarted ardours into housework, she washed floors with her empty heart. If she could not win the love of one with love, she must dominate all by her temper. Hasty, wordy and wrathful, she had a drawn quarrel with most of her neighbours, and with the others not much more than armed neutrality. The grieve’s wife had been ‘sneisty;’ the sister of the gardener who kept house for him had shown herself ‘upsitten;’ and she wrote to Lord Hermiston about once a year demanding the discharge of the offenders and justifying the demand by much wealth of detail. For it must not be supposed that the quarrel rested with the wife and did not take in the husband also—or with the gardener’s sister and did not speedily include the gardener himself. As the upshot of all this petty quarrelling and intemperate speech, she was practically excluded (like a lightkeeper on his tower) from the comforts of human association; except with her own indoor drudge who, being but a lassie and entirely at her mercy, must submit to the shifty weather of ‘the mistress’s’ moods without complaint, and be willing to take buffets or caresses according to the temper of the hour. To Kirstie, thus situate and in the Indian summer of her heart, which was slow to submit to age, the gods sent this equivocal good thing of Archie’s presence. She had known him in the cradle and paddled him when he misbehaved; and yet, as she had not so much as set eyes on him since he was eleven and had his last serious illness, the tall, slender, refined and rather melancholy young gentleman of twenty came upon her with the shock of a new acquaintance. He was ‘Young Hermiston,’ ‘The laird himsel’—he had an air of instinctive superiority, a cold straight glance of his black eyes, that abashed the woman’s tantrums in the beginning—and therefore the possibility of any quarrel was excluded. He was new and therefore immediately aroused her curiosity, he was reticent and kept it awake. And lastly he was dark and she fair, and he was male and she female, the everlasting fountains of interest. Her feeling partook of the loyalty of a clanswoman, the hero worship of a maiden aunt, and the idolatry due to a god. No matter what he had asked of her, ridiculous or tragic, she would have done it and joyed to do it. Her passion, for it was nothing less, entirely filled her. It was a rich physical pleasure to make his bed or light his lamp for him when he was absent, to pull off his wet boots or wait on him at dinner 43

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when he returned. A young man, who should have so doted on the idea moral and physical of any woman, might be properly described as being in love, head and heels, and would have behaved himself accordingly. But Kirstie—though her heart leaped at his coming footsteps—though, when he patted her shoulder, her face brightened for the day—had not a hope or thought beyond the present moment and its perpetuation to the end of time. Till the end of time she would have had nothing altered, but still continue delightedly to serve her idol, and be repaid (say twice in the month) with a clap on the shoulder. I have said her heart leaped—it is the accepted phrase. But rather, when she was alone in any chamber of the house, and heard his foot passing on the corridors, something in her bosom rose slowly until her breath was suspended, and as slowly fell again with a deep sigh, when the steps had passed and she was disappointed of her eyes’ desire. This perpetual hunger and thirst of his presence kept her all day on the alert. When he went forth at morning, she would stand and follow him with admiring looks. As it grew late and drew to the time of his return, she would steal forth to a corner of the policy wall and be seen standing there sometimes by the hour together, gazing with shaded eyes, waiting the exquisite and barren pleasure of his view, a mile off on the mountains. When at night she had trimmed and gathered the fire, turned down his bed, and laid out his night gear—when there was no more to be done for the king’s pleasure, but to remember him fervently in her usually very tepid prayers, and go to bed brooding upon his perfections, his future career, and what she should give him the next day for dinner—there still remained before her one more opportunity, she was still to take in the tray and say good night. Sometimes Archie would glance up from his book with a preoccupied nod and a perfunctory salutation which was in truth a dismissal; sometimes—and by degrees more often—the volume would be laid aside, he would meet her coming with a look of relief; and the conversation would be engaged, last out the supper, and be prolonged till the small hours by the waning fire. It was no wonder that Archie was glad of company after his solitary days; and Kirstie, upon her side, exerted all the arts of her vigorous nature to ensnare his attention. She would keep back some piece of news during dinner to be fired off with the entrance of the supper tray, and form as it were the lever de rideau of the evening’s entertainment. Once he had heard her tongue wag, she made sure of the result. From one subject to another she moved by insidious transitions, fearing the least silence, fearing almost to give him time for an answer lest it should slip into a word of separation. Like so many people of 44

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her class, she was a brave narrator; her place was on the hearth rug and she made it a rostrum, mimeing her stories as she told them, fitting them with vital detail, spinning them out with endless ‘quo’ he’s and ‘quo’ she’s, her voice sinking into a whisper over the supernatural or the horrific; until she would suddenly spring up in affected surprise and, pointing to the clock, ‘Mercy, Mr. Archie!’ she would say. ‘Whatten a time o’ night is this of it! God forgive me for a daft wife!’ So it befell, by good management, that she was not only the first to begin these nocturnal conversations, but invariably the first to break them off; so she managed to retire and not to be dismissed. 3. A Border Pedigree Such an unequal intimacy has never been uncommon in Scotland, where the clan spirit survives; where the servant tends to spend her life in the same service, a helpmeet at first, then a tyrant, and, at last a pensioner; where besides she is not necessarily destitute of the pride of birth, but is perhaps, like Kirstie, a connection of her masters, and at least knows the legend of her own family and may count kinship with some illustrious dead. For that is the mark of the Scot of all classes: that he stands in an attitude towards the past unthinkable to Englishmen; and remembers and cherishes the memory of his forbears, good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation. No more characteristic instance could be found than in the family of Kirstie Elliott. They were all, and Kirstie the first of all, ready and eager to pour forth the particulars of their genealogy, embellished with every detail that memory had handed down or fancy fabricated; and behold! from every ramification of that tree, there dangled a halter! The Elliotts themselves have had a chequered history; but these Elliotts deduced besides from three of the most unfortunate of the Border clans, the Nicksons, the Ellwalds and the Crozers. One ancestor after another might be seen appearing a moment out of the rain and the hill mist upon his furtive business, speeding home perhaps with a paltry booty of lame horses and lean kine, or squealing and dealing death in some moorland feud of the ferrets and the wildcats. One after another closed his obscure adventures in mid-air, triced up to the arm of the royal gibbet or the Baron’s dule tree. For the rusty blunderbuss of Scots criminal justice, which usually hurt nobody but jurymen, became a weapon of precision for the Nicksons, the Ellwalds and the Crozers. The exhilaration of their exploits seemed to haunt the memories of their descendants alone, 45

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and the shame to be forgotten. Pride glowed in their bosoms to publish their relationship to ‘Andrew Ellwald of the Laverockstanes, called Unchancy Dand, who was justifeed wi’ seeven mair of the same name at Jeddart in the days of King James the Sax.’ In all this tissue of crime and misfortune, the Elliotts of Cauldstaneslap had one boast which must appear legitimate: the males were gallows birds, born outlaws, petty thieves and deadly brawlers, but according to the same tradition, the females were all chaste and faithful. The power of ancestry on the character is not limited to the inheritance of cells. If I buy ancestors by the gross from the benevolence of Lion King at Arms, my grandson (if he is Scottish) will feel a quickening emulation of their deeds. The men of the Elliotts were proud, lawless, violent as of right, cherishing and prolonging a tradition. In like manner with the women. And the woman, essentially passionate and reckless, who crouched on the rug, in the shine of the peat fire, telling these tales, had cherished through life a wild integrity of virtue. Her father Gilbert had been deeply pious, a savage disciplinarian in the antique style, and withal a notorious smuggler. ‘I mind when I was a bairn getting mony a skelp and being shoo’d to bed like pou’try,’ she would say. ‘That would be when the lads and their bit kegs were on the road. We’ve had the riff-raff of two-three counties in our kitchen, mony’s the time, betwix’ the twelve and the three; and their lanterns would be standing in the forecourt, ay, a score o’ them at ance. But there was nae ungodly talk permitted at Cauldstaneslap; my faither was a consistent man in walk and conversation; just let slip an aith and there was the door to ye! He had that zeal for the Lord, it was a fair wonder to hear him pray, but the faimily has aye had a gift that way.’ This father was twice married, once to a dark woman of the old Ellwald stock by whom he had Gilbert, presently of Cauldstaneslap; and secondly to the mother of Kirstie. ‘He was an auld man when he married her, a fell auld man wi’ a muckle voice—you could hear him routing from the top o’ the Kyeskairs,’ she said; ‘but for her, it appears she was a perfit wonder. It was gentle blood she had, Mr. Archie; for it was your ain. The country side gaed gyte about her and her gowden hair. Mines is no to be mentioned wi’ it, and there’s few weemen has mair hair than what I have, or yet a bonnier colour. Aften would I tell my dear Miss Jeannie—that was your mother, dear, she was cruel ta’en up about her hair, it was unco’ tender, ye see—“Houts, Miss Jeannie,” I would say, “just fling your washes and your French dentifrishes in the back o’ the fire, for that’s the place for them; and awa’ doun to a burn side, and wash yersel in cauld hill water, and dry your bonny hair in the 46

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caller wind o’ the muirs, the way that my mother aye washed hers and that I have aye made it a practice to have wishen mines—just you do what I tell ye, my dear, and ye’ll give me news of it! Ye’ll have hair, and routh of hair, a pigtail as thick’s my arm,” I said, “and the bonniest colour like the clear gowden guineas, so as the lads in kirk ’ll no can keep their eyes off it.” Weel, it lasted out her time, puir thing! I cuttit a lock of it upon her corp that was lying there sae cauld. I’ll show it ye some of thir days if ye’re good: But as I was sayin’, my mither . . .’ On the death of the father, there remained golden haired Kirstie who took service with her distant kinsfolk, the Rutherfords; and black-a-vised Gilbert, twenty years older, who farmed the Cauldstaneslap, married, and begot four sons between 1773 and 1784 and a daughter, like a post-script, in ’98, the year of Nelson and the Nile. It seemed it was a tradition in the family to wind up with a belated girl. In 1804, at the age of sixty, Gilbert met an end that might be called heroic. He was due home from market any time from eight at night till five in the morning, and in any condition from the quarrelsome to the speechless, for he maintained to that age the goodly customs of the Scots farmer. It was known on this occasion that he had a good bit of money to bring home; the word had gone round loosely; the laird had shown his guineas; and if any body had but noticed it, there was an ill-looking, vagabond crew, the scum of Edinburgh, that drew out of the market long ere it was dusk and took the hill road by Hermiston, where it was not to be believed that they had lawful business. One of the countryside, one Dickieson, they took with them to be their guide, and dear he paid for it! Of a sudden, in the ford of the Broken Dykes, this vermin clan fell on the laird, six to one, and him three parts asleep, having drunk hard. But it is ill to catch an Elliott! For awhile, in the night and the black water that was deep as to his saddle-girths, he wrought with his staff like a smith at his stithy, and great was the sound of oaths and blows. With that the ambuscade was burst, and he rode for home with a pistol ball in him, three knife wounds, the loss of his front teeth, a broken rib and bridle, and a dying horse. That was a race with death that the laird rode! In the mirk night, with his broken bridle and his head swimming, he dug his spurs to the rowels in the horse’s side; and the horse, that was even worse off than himself, the poor creature! screamed out loud, like a person as he went, so that the hills echoed with it, and the folks at Cauldstaneslap got to their feet about the table and looked at each other with white faces. The horse fell dead at the yard gate, the laird won the length of the house and fell there on the threshold. To the son that raised him, he gave the bag of money. 47

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‘Ha’e,’ said he. All the way up, the thieves had seemed to him to be at his heels; but now this hallucination left him—he saw them again in the place of the ambuscade—and the thirst of vengeance seized on his dying mind. Raising himself and pointing with an imperious finger into the black night from which he had come, he uttered the single command—‘Brocken Dykes’—and fainted. He had never been loved; but he had been feared in honour. At that sight, at that word, gasped out at them from a toothless and bleeding mouth, the old Elliott spirit awoke with a shout in the four sons. ‘Wanting the hat,’ continues my author, Kirstie, whom I but haltingly follow, for she told this tale like one inspired, ‘wanting guns—for there wasnae twa grains o’ pouder in the house—wi’ nae mair weepons than their sticks into their hands, the fower o’ them took the road. Only Hob, and that was the eldest, hunkered at the door-sill where the blood had rin—fyled his hand wi’ it—and haddit it up to Heeven in the way o’ the auld Border aith. “Hell shall have her ain again this nicht!” he raired; and rade forth upon his earrand.’ It was three miles to Broken Dykes, downhill and a sore road. Kirstie has seen men from Edinburgh dismounting there in plain day to lead their horses. But the four brothers rode it as if Auld Hornie were behind and Heaven in front. Come to the ford, and there was Dickieson. By all tales, he was not dead, but breathed and reared upon his elbow, and cried out to them for help. It was at a graceless face that he asked mercy. As soon as Hob saw, by the glint of the lantern, the eyes shining and the whiteness of the teeth in the man’s face—‘Damn you!’ says he, ‘Ye hae your teeth, hae ye?’ and rode his horse to and fro upon that human remnant. Beyond that, Dandie must dismount with the lantern to be their guide; he was the youngest son, scarce twenty at the time. ‘A’ nicht long they gaed in the wet heath and jennipers— and whaur they gaed, they neither knew nor cared, but just followed the bluid stains and the foot-prints o’ their faither’s murderers. And a’ nicht, Dandie had his nose to the grund like a tyke, and the ithers followed and spak naething, neither black nor white. There was nae noise to be heard, but just the sough of the swalled burns, and Hob, the dour yin, risping his teeth as he gaed.’ With the first glint of the morning they saw they were on the drove road; and at that the four stopped and had a dram to their breakfast, for they knew that Dand must have guided them right, and the rogues could be but little ahead, hot foot for Edinburgh by the way of the Pentland Hills. By eight o’clock they had word of them: a shepherd had seen four men ‘uncoly mishandled’ go by in the last hour.—‘That’s yin a piece,’ says Clem, 48

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and swung his cudgel.—‘Five o’ them!’ says Hob. ‘God’s death, but the faither was a man! And him drunk!’ And then there befell them what my author termed ‘a sair misbegowk,’ for they were over-taken by a posse of mounted neighbours come to aid in the pursuit. Four sour faces looked on the reinforcement. ‘The Deil’s broughten you!’ said Clem, and they rode thenceforward in the rear of the party, with hanging heads. Before ten they had found and secured the rogues; and by three of the afternoon, as they rode up the Vennel with their prisoners, they were aware of a concourse of people bearing in their midst something that dripped. ‘For the boady of the saxt,’ pursued Kirstie, ‘wi’ his heid smashed like a hazel nit, had been a’ that nicht in the chairge o’ Hermiston water, and it dunting it on the stanes, and grunding it on the shallows, and flinging the deid thing heels-ower-gurdie at the Fa’s o’ Spango; and in the first o’ the day, Tweed had got a hold o’ him, and carried him off like a wind, for it was uncoly swalled; and raced wi’ him, bobbing under brae-sides; and was long playing with the creature in the drumlie lynns under the castle; and at the hinder end of all cuist him up on the starling of Crossmichael brig. Sae there they were a’ thegither at last (for Dickieson had been brought in on a cart long syne) and folk could see what mainner o’ man my brither had been that had held his head again sax and saved the siller, and him drunk!’ Thus died of honourable injuries and in the savour of fame, Gilbert Elliott of the Cauldstaneslap; but his sons had scarce less glory out of the business. Their savage haste, the skill with which Dand had found and followed the trail, the barbarity to the wounded Dickieson (which was like an open secret in the county) and the doom which it was currently supposed they had intended for the others, struck and stirred popular imagination. Some century earlier, the last of the minstrels might have fashioned the last of the ballads out of that Homeric fight and chase; but the spirit was dead, or had been re-incarnated already in Mr. Sheriff Scott; and the degenerate moorsmen must be content to tell the tale in prose, and to make, of the Four Black Brothers, a unit after the fashion of the Twelve Apostles and the Three Musketeers. Robert, Gilbert, Clement and Andrew—in the proper Border diminutives, Hob, Gib, Clem and Dand Elliott—these ballad heroes— had much in common, in particular their high sense of the family and the family honour; but they went diverse ways and prospered and failed in different businesses. According to Kirstie, ‘they had a’ bees in their bonnets but Hob.’ Hob the laird was indeed essentially a decent 49

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man. An elder of the kirk, nobody had heard an oath upon his lips, save perhaps thrice or so at the sheep washing, since the chase of his father’s murderers. The figure he had shown on that eventful night disappeared as if swallowed by a trap. He who had ecstatically dipped his hand in the red blood, he who had ridden down Dickieson, became, from that moment on, a stiff and rather graceless model of the rustic proprieties; cannily profiting by the high war prices and yearly stowing away a little nest egg in the bank against calamity; approved of and sometimes consulted by the greater lairds for the massive and placid sense of what he said, when he could be induced to say anything; and particularly valued by the minister, Mr. Torrance, as a right hand man in the parish and a model to parents. The transfiguration had been for the moment only; some Barbarossa, some old Adam of our ancestors, sleeps in all of us till the fit circumstance shall call it into action; and for as sober as he now seemed, Hob had given once for all the measure of the devil that haunted him. He was married and (by reason of the effulgence of that legendary night) was adored by his wife. He had a mob of little lusty, barefoot children who marched in a caravan the long miles to school, the stages of whose pilgrimage were marked by acts of spoliation and mischief, and who were qualified in the countryside as ‘fair pests.’ But in the house, if ‘faither was in,’ they were quiet as mice. In short Hob moved through life in a great peace: the reward of anyone who shall have killed his man, with any formidable and figurative circumstance, in the midst of a country gagged and swaddled with civilization. It was a current remark that the Elliotts were ‘guid and bad like sanguishes;’ and certainly there was a curious distinction, the men of business coming alternately with the dreamers. The second brother, Gib, was a weaver by trade, had gone out early into the world at Edinburgh, and come home again with his wings singed. There was an exaltation in his nature which had led him to embrace with enthusiasm the principles of the French Revolution and had ended by bringing him under the hawse of my lord Hermiston in that furious onslaught of his upon the liberals which sent Muir and Palmer into exile and dashed the party into chaff. It was whispered that my lord, in his great scorn for the movement, and prevailed upon a little by a sense of neighbourliness, had given Gib a hint. Meeting him one day in the Potter Row, my lord had stopped in front of him. ‘Gib, ye eediot,’ he had said, ‘what’s this I hear of you? Poalitics, poalitics, poalitics, weaver’s poalitics, is the way of it, I hear. If ye arenae a’ thegether dozened with eediocy, ye’ll gang your ways back to Cauldstaneslap, 50

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and ca’ your loom—and ca’ your loom, man!’ And Gilbert had taken him at the word and returned, with an expedition almost to be called flight, to the house of his father. The clearest of his inheritance was that family gift of prayer of which Kirstie had boasted; and the baffled politician now turned his attention to religious matters—or as others said to heresy and schism. Every Sunday morning, he was in Crossmichael where he had gathered together, one by one, a sect of about a dozen persons, who called themselves ‘God’s Remnant of the True Faithful,’ or for short ‘God’s Remnant.’ To the profane, they were known as Gib’s Deils. Baillie Tweedie, a noted humourist in the town, vowed that the proceedings always opened to the tune of The Deil fly Away with the Exciseman, and that the sacrament was dispensed in the form of hot whisky toddy: both wicked hits at the evangelist, who had been suspected of smuggling in his youth and had been overtaken (as the phrase went) on the streets of Crossmichael one Fair day. It was known that every Sunday they prayed for a blessing on the arms of Bonaparte. For this, God’s Remnant, as they were ‘scaling’ from the cottage that did duty for a temple, had been repeatedly stoned by the bairns; and Gib himself hooted by a squadron of Border volunteers in which his own brother, Dand, rode in a uniform and with a drawn sword. The Remnant were believed besides to be ‘Antinomian in principle:’ which might otherwise have been a serious charge, but the way public opinion then blew, it was quite swallowed up and forgotten in the scandal about Bonaparte. For the rest, Gilbert had set up his loom in an out-house at Cauldstaneslap where he laboured assiduously six days of the week. His brothers, appalled by his political opinions and willing to avoid dissension in the household, spoke but little to him: he less to them; remaining absorbed in the study of the Bible and almost constant prayer. The gaunt weaver was dry nurse at Cauldstaneslap, and the bairns loved him dearly. Except when he was carrying an infant in his arms, he was rarely seen to smile; as indeed there were few smilers in that family. When his sister-in-law rallied him, and proposed that he should get a wife and bairns of his own, since he was so fond of them.— ‘I have no clearness of mind upon that point,’ he would reply. If nobody called him in to dinner, he stayed out. Mrs. Hob, a hard unsympathetic woman, once tried the experiment; he went without food all day but at dusk, as the light began to fail him, he came into the house of his own accord, looking puzzled. ‘I’ve had a great gale of prayer upon my speerit,’ said he. ‘I canna mind sae muckle’s what I had for denner.’ The creed of God’s Remnant was justified in the life of its founder. ‘And yet I dinna ken,’ said Kirstie. ‘He’s maybe no more stockfish than his 51

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neeghbours! He rade wi’ the rest o’ them and had a good stomach to the work, by a’ that I hear! God’s Remnant! The Deil’s clavers! There wasnae muckle Christianity in the way Hob guided Johnny Dickieson, at the least of it; but Guid kens! Is he a Christian even? He might be a Mahommedan or a Deevil or a Fireworshipper, for what I ken.’ The third brother had his name on a door plate, no less, in the city of Glasgow: ‘Mr. Clement Elliott’ as long as your arm. In his case, that spirit of innovation which had shown itself timidly in the case of Hob by the admission of new manures, and which had run to waste with Gilbert in subversive politics and heretical religions, bore useful fruit in many ingenious mechanical improvements. In boyhood, from his addiction to strange devices of sticks and string, he had been counted the most eccentric of the family. But that was all by now; and he was a partner of his firm, and looked to die a baillie. He too had married and was rearing a plentiful family in the smoke and din of Glasgow; he was wealthy and could have bought out his brother, the cock laird, six times over, it was whispered; and when he slipped away to Cauldstaneslap for a well earned holiday, which he did as often as he was able, he astonished the neighbours with his broadcloth, his beaver hat and the ample plies of his neck-cloth. Though an eminently solid man at bottom after the pattern of Hob, he had contracted a certain Glasgow briskness and aplomb which set him off. All the other Elliotts were as lean as a rake, but Clement was laying on fat, and he panted sorely when he must get into his boots. Dand said chuckling: ‘Ay, Clem has the elements of a corporation.’—‘A provost and corporation,’ returned Clem. And his readiness was much admired. The fourth brother, Dand, was a shepherd to his trade, and by starts, when he could bring his mind to it, excelled in the business. Nobody could train a dog like Dandie; nobody, through the peril of great storms in the wintertime, could do more gallantly. But if his dexterity were exquisite, his diligence was but fitful; and he served his brother for bed and board, and a trifle of pocket money when he asked for it. He loved money well enough, knew very well how to spend it, and could make a shrewd bargain when he liked. But he preferred a vague knowledge that he was well to windward, to any counted coins in the pocket; he felt himself richer so. Hob would expostulate. ‘I’m an amature herd,’ Dand would reply. ‘I’ll keep your sheep to you when I’m so minded, but I’ll keep my liberty too. There’s no man can coandescend on what I’m worth.’ Clem would expound to him the miraculous results of compound interest, and recommend investments. ‘Ay, man?’ Dand would say. ‘And do you think, if I took Hob’s siller, that I would nae 52

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drink it or wear it on the lassies? And anyway my kingdom is no of this world. Either I’m a poet or else I’m nothing.’ Clem would remind him of old age. ‘I’ll die young like Robbie Burns,’ he would say stoutly. No question but he had a certain accomplishment in minor verse. His Hermiston Burn with its pretty refrain: I love to gang thinking, whaur ye gang linking, Hermiston burn, in the howe, his ‘Auld, auld Elliotts, clay-cauld Elliotts, dour, bauld Elliotts of auld,’ and his really fascinating piece about the Praying Weaver’s stone, had gained him in the neighbourhood the reputation, still possible in Scotland, of a local bard; and though not printed himself, he was recognized by others who were, and who had become famous. Walter Scott owed to him the text of The Raid of Wearie in the Minstrelsy; and he made him welcome at his house and appreciated his talents, such as they were, with all his usual generosity. The Ettrick Shepherd was his sworn cronie; they would meet, drink to excess, roar out their lyrics in each other’s faces, and quarrel and make up again till bedtime. And besides these recognitions, almost to be called official, Dandie was made welcome for the sake of his gift through the farmhouses of several contiguous dales, and was thus exposed to manifold temptations which he rather sought than fled. He had figured on the stool of repentance, for once fulfilling to the letter the tradition of his hero and model. His humorous verses to Mr. Torrance on that occasion— ‘Kenspeckle here my lane I stand’—unfortunately too indelicate for further citation, ran through the country like a fiery cross; they were recited, quoted, paraphrased and laughed over, as far away as Dumfries on the one hand and Dunbar on the other. These four brothers were united by a close bond, the bond of that mutual admiration—or rather mutual hero-worship—which is so strong among secluded families who have much ability and little culture. Even the extremes admired each other. Hob, who had as much poetry as the tongs, professed to find pleasure in Dand’s verses; Clem who had no more religion than Claverhouse, nourished a heartfelt, at least an open mouthed, admiration of Gib’s prayers; and Dandie followed with relish the rise of Clem’s fortunes. Indulgence followed hard on the heels of admiration. The laird, Clem and Dand, who were Tories and patriots of the hottest quality, excused to themselves, with a certain bashfulness, the radical and revolutionary heresies of Gib. By another division of the family, the laird, Clem and Gib, who were 53

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men exactly virtuous, swallowed the dose of Dand’s irregularities as a kind of clog or draw-back, in the mysterious providence of God affixed to bards, and distinctly probative of poetical genius. To appreciate the implicit simplicity of their mutual admiration, it was necessary to hear Clem, arrived upon one of his visits, and dealing in a spirit of continuous irony with the affairs and personalities of that great city of Glasgow where he lived and transacted business. The various personages, ministers of the church, municipal officers, mercantile bigwigs, whom he had occasion to introduce, were all alike denigrated, all served but as reflectors to cast back a flattering side-light on the house of Cauldstaneslap. The Provost for whom Clem by exception entertained a measure of respect, he would liken to Hob. ‘He minds me o’ the laird there,’ he would say. ‘He has some of Hob’s grand, whunstane sense, and the same way with him of steiking his mouth when he’s no very pleased.’ And Hob, all unconscious, would draw down his upper lip and produce as if for comparison, the formidable grimace referred to. The unsatisfactory incumbent of St. Enoch’s kirk was thus briefly dismissed: ‘If he had but twa fingers’ o’ Gib’s, he would waken them up.’ And Gib, honest man! would look down and secretly smile. Clem was a spy whom they had sent out into the world of men. He had come back with the good news that there was nobody to compare with the Four Black Brothers, no position that they would not adorn, no official that it would not be well they should replace, no interest of mankind, secular or spiritual which would not immediately bloom under their supervision. The excuse of their folly is in two words: scarce the breadth of a hair divided them from the peasantry. The measure of their sense is this: that these symposia of rustic vanity were kept entirely within the family like some secret ancestral practice. To the world, their serious faces were never deformed by the suspicion of any simper of self-contentment. Yet it was known. ‘They have a guid pride o’ themsels!’ was the word in the country-side. Lastly, in a Border story, there should be added their ‘to-names.’ Hob was The Laird, ‘Roy ne puis prince ne daigne;’ he was the laird of Cauldstaneslap—say fifty acres—ipsissimus. Clement was Mr. Elliott as upon his doorplate, the earlier Dafty having been discarded as no longer applicable, and indeed only a reminder of misjudgement and the imbecility of the public; and the youngest, in honour of his perpetual wanderings, was known by the soubriquet of Randy Dand. It will be understood that not all this information was communicated by the aunt, who had too much of the family failing herself, to appreciate it thoroughly in others. But as time went on, Archie began 54

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to observe an omission in the family chronicle. ‘Is there not a girl too?’ he asked. ‘Ay. Kirstie. She was named for me, or my grandmother at least, it’s the same thing,’ returned the aunt, and went on again about Dand whom she secretly preferred by reason of his gallantries. ‘But what is your niece like?’ said Archie at the next opportunity. ‘Her? As black’s yer hat! But I dinna suppose she would maybe be what you would ca’ ill-looked athegither. Na, she’s a kind of a handsome jad—a kind o’ gipsy,’ said the aunt, who had two sets of scales for men and women—or perhaps it would be more fair to say that she had three, and the third and the most loaded was for girls. ‘How comes it that I never see her in church?’ said Archie. ‘Deed, and I believe she’s in Glesgie with Clem and his wife. A heap good she’s like to get of it! I dinna say for men folk, but where weemen folk are born, there let them bide. Glory to God, I was never far’er from here than Crossmichael.’ In the mean while it began to strike Archie as strange, that while she thus sang the praises of her kinsfolk and manifestly relished their virtues and (I may say) their vices like a thing creditable to herself, there should appear not the least sign of cordiality between the house of Hermiston and that of Cauldstaneslap. Going to church of a Sunday, as the lady housekeeper stepped with her skirts kilted, three tucks of her white petticoat showing below, and her best India shawl upon her back (if the day were fine) in a pattern of radiant dyes, she would sometimes over-take her relatives preceding her more leisurely in the same direction. Gib of course was absent: by skriegh of day he had been gone to Crossmichael and his fellow heretics; but the rest of the family would be seen marching in open order: Hob and Dand stiffnecked, straight-backed six-footers with severe dark faces and their plaids about their shoulders—the convoy of children scattering (in a state of high polish) on the wayside and every now and again recollected by the shrill summons of the mother—and the mother herself, by a suggestive circumstance which might have afforded matter of thought to a more experienced observer than Archie, wrapped in a shawl nearly identical with Kirstie’s but a thought more gaudy and conspicuously newer. At the sight, Kirstie grew more tall—Kirstie showed her classical profile, nose in air and nostril spread, the pure blood came in her cheek evenly in a delicate living pink. ‘A braw day to ye, Mistress Elliott,’ said she, and hostility and gentility were nicely mingled in her tones.—‘A fine day, mem,’ the laird’s wife would reply with a miraculous curtsey, spreading the while her plumage— 55

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setting off, in other words, and with arts unknown to the mere man, the pattern of her India shawl. Behind her, the whole Cauldstaneslap contingent marched in closer order and with an indescribable air of being in the presence of the foe; and while Dandie saluted his aunt with a certain familiarity as of one who was well in court, Hob marched on in awful immobility. There appeared upon the face of this attitude in the family the consequences of some dreadful feud. Presumably the two women had been principals in the original encounter, and the laird had probably been drawn into the quarrel by the ears, too late to be included in the present skin-deep reconciliation. ‘Kirstie,’ said Archie one day, ‘what is this you have against your family?’ ‘I dinna complean,’ said Kirstie with a flush. ‘I say naething.’ ‘I see you do not—not even good day to your own nephew,’ said he. ‘I hae naething to be ashamed of,’ said she, ‘I can say the Lord’s Prayer with a good grace. If Hob was ill or in preeson or poverty, I would see to him blithely. But for curtchying and complimenting and collogueing, thank ye kindly!’ Archie had a bit of a smile, he leaned back in his chair. ‘I think you and Mrs. Robert are not very good friends,’ says he slyly, ‘when you have your India shawls on?’ She looked upon him in silence with a sparkling eye but an indecipherable expression; and that was all that Archie was ever destined to learn of the battle of the India shawls. ‘Do none of them ever come here to see you?’ he inquired. ‘Mr. Airchie,’ said she, ‘I hope that I ken my place better. It would be a queer thing, I think, if I was to clamjamfry up your faither’s house . . . that I should say it!—a dirty, black-a-vised clan, no ane o’ them it was worth while to wear soap upon but just mysel! Na, they’re all damnifeed wi’ the black Ellwalds. I have nae patience wi’ black folk.’ Then, with a sudden consciousness of the case of Archie, ‘No that it maitters for men sae muckle,’ she made haste to add. ‘But there’s naebody can deny that it’s unwomanly. Long hair is the ornament o’ woman ony way; we’ve good warrandise for that—it’s in the Bible—and wha’ can doubt that the apostle had some gowden haired lassie in his mind—apostle and all, for what was he but just a man like yersel?’

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Chapter 6 A LEAF FROM CHRISTINA’S PSALM-BOOK

Archie was sedulous at church. Sunday after Sunday he sat down and stood up with that small company, heard the voice of Mr. Torrance leaping like an ill played clarionet from key to key, and had an opportunity to study his worm eaten gown and the black thread mittens that he joined together in prayer and lifted up with a reverent solemnity in the act of benediction. Hermiston pew was a little square box, dwarfish in a proportion with the kirk itself, and enclosing a table not much bigger than a footstool. There he sat, an apparent prince, the only undeniable gentleman and the only great heritor in the parish, taking his ease in the only pew, for no other in the kirk had doors. Thence he might command an undisturbed view of that congregation of solid plaided men, strapping wives and daughters, oppressed children and uneasy sheep dogs. It was strange how Archie missed the look of race; except the dogs, with their refined foxy faces and inimitably curling tails, there was no one present with the least claim to be genteel. The Cauldstaneslap party was scarcely an exception; Dandie perhaps, as he amused himself making verses through the interminable burden of the service, stood out a little by the glow in his eye and a certain superior animation of face and alertness of body; but even Dandie slouched like a rustic. The rest of the congregation, like so many sheep, oppressed him with a sense of hob-nailed routine, day following day, physical labour in the open air, oatmeal porridge, peas bannock, the somnolent fireside in the evening, and the night long nasal slumbers in a box bed. Yet he knew many of them to be shrewd and humorous, men of character, notable women, making a bustle in the world, radiating an influence from their low browed doors. He knew besides they were like other men; below the crust of custom, rapture found a way; he had heard them beat the timbrel before Bacchus—had heard them shout and carouse over their whisky toddy, and not the most Dutch bottomed and severe face, not even the solemn elders themselves, but were capable of singular gambols at the voice of love. Men drawing near to an end of life’s adventurous journey—maids thrilling with fear and curiosity on the threshold of entrance—women who had borne 57

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and perhaps buried children, who could remember the clinging of the small dead hand and the patter of the little feet now silent—he marvelled that among all those faces there should be no face of expectation, none that was mobile, none into which the rhythm and poetry of life had entered. ‘O, for a live face,’ he thought; and at times he had a memory of Lady Flora; and at times he would study the living gallery before him with despair, and he would see himself go on to waste his days in that joyless, pastoral place, and death come to him, and his grave be dug under the rowans, and the Spirit of the Earth laugh out in a thunder peal at the huge fiasco. On this particular Sunday, there was no doubt but that the Spring had come at last. It was warm, with a latent shiver in the air, that made the warmth only the more welcome. The shallows of the stream glittered and tinkled among bunches of primrose. Vagrant scents of the earth arrested Archie by the way with moments of etherial intoxication. The gray, Quakerish dale was still only awakened in places and patches from the sobriety of its winter colouring; and he wondered at its beauty: an essential beauty of the old earth it seemed to him, not resident in particulars but breathing to him from the whole. He surprised himself by a sudden impulse to write poetry—he did so sometimes, loose, galloping octosyllabics in the vein of Scott—and when he had taken his place on a boulder, near some fairy falls and shaded by a whip of a tree that was already radiant with new leaves, it still more surprised him that he should find nothing to write. His heart perhaps beat in time to some vast indwelling rhythm of the universe. By the time he came to a corner of the valley and could see the kirk, he had so lingered by the way that the first psalm was finishing. The nasal psalmody, full of turns and trills and graceless graces, seemed the essential voice of the kirk itself upraised in thanksgiving. ‘Everything’s alive,’ he said; and again cries it aloud, ‘Thank God, everything’s alive.’ He lingered yet awhile in the kirk-yard. A tuft of primroses was blooming hard by the leg of an old, black table tombstone, and he stopped to contemplate the random apologue. They stood forth on the cold earth with a trenchancy of contrast; and he was struck with a sense of incompleteness in the day, the season, and the beauty that surrounded him—the chill there was in the warmth, the gross black clods about the opening primroses, the damp earthy smell that was everywhere intermingled with the scents. The voice of the aged Torrance within rose in an ecstasy. And he wondered if Torrance also felt in his old bones the joyous influence of the Spring morning; Torrance, or the shadow of what once was Torrance, that must come so soon to lie outside here in 58

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the sun and rain with all his rheumatisms, while a new minister stood in his room and thundered from his own familiar pulpit? The pity of it, and something of the chill of the grave shook him for a moment as he made haste to enter. He went up the aisle reverently and took his place in the pew with lowered eyes, for he feared he had already offended the kind old gentleman in the pulpit and was sedulous to offend no farther. He could not follow the prayer, not even the heads of it. Brightnesses of azure, clouds of fragrance, a tinkle of falling water and singing birds rose like exhalations from some deeper, aboriginal memory, that was not his, but belonged to the flesh on his bones. His body remembered; and it seemed to him that his body was in no way gross but etherial and perishable like a strain of music; and he felt for it an exquisite tenderness as for a child, an innocent full of beautiful instincts and destined to an early death. And he felt for old Torrance—of the many supplications, of the few days—a pity that was near to tears. The prayer ended. Right over him was a tablet in the wall, the only ornament in the roughly masoned chapel—for it was no more; the tablet commemorated, I was about to say the virtues, but rather the existence of a former Rutherford of Hermiston; and Archie, under that trophy of his long descent and local greatness, leaned back in the pew and contemplated vacancy with the shadow of a smile between playful and sad, that became him strangely. Dandie’s sister, sitting by the side of Clem in her new Glasgow finery, chose that moment to observe the young laird. Aware of the stir of his entrance, the little formalist had kept her eyes fastened and her face prettily composed during the prayer. It was not hypocrisy, there was no one farther from a hypocrite. The girl had been taught to behave: to look up, to look down, to look unconscious, to look seriously impressed in church, and in every conjuncture to look her best. That was the game of female life, and she played it frankly. Archie was the one person in church who was of interest, who was somebody new, reputed eccentric, known to be young and a laird, and still unseen by Christina. Small wonder that, as she stood there in her attitude of pretty decency, her mind should run upon him! If he spared a glance in her direction, he should know she was a well behaved young lady who had been to Glasgow. In reason he must admire her clothes, and it was possible that he should think her pretty. At that her heart beat the least thing in the world; and she proceeded, by way of a corrective, to call up and dismiss a series of fancied pictures of the young man who should now by rights be looking at her. She settled on the plainest, a pink short young man with a dish face and no figure, at whose 59

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admiration she could afford to smile; but for all that, the consciousness of his gaze (which was really fixed on Torrance and his mittens) kept her in something of a flutter till the word amen. Even then, she was far too well bred to gratify her curiosity with any impatience. She resumed her seat languidly—this was a Glasgow touch—she composed her dress, rearranged her nosegay of primroses, looked first in front, then behind upon the other side, and at last allowed her eyes to move, without hurry and with perfect, haughty unconsciousness, in the direction of Hermiston pew. For a moment, they were riveted. Next she had plucked her gaze home again like a tame bird who should have meditated flight. Possibilities crowded on her; she hung over the future and grew dizzy; the image of this young man, slim, graceful, dark, with the inscrutable half-smile, attracted and repelled her like a chasm. ‘I wonder, will I have met my fate?’ she thought and her heart swelled. Torrance was got some way into his first exposition, positing a deep lair of texts as he went along, laying the foundations of his discourse, which was to deal with a nice point in divinity—before Archie suffered his eyes to wander. They fell first of all on Clem, looking insupportably prosperous and patronising Torrance with the favour of a modified attention, as of one who was used to better things in Glasgow. Though he had never before set eyes on him, Archie had no difficulty in identifying him and no hesitation in pronouncing him vulgar, the worst of the family. Clem was leaning lazily forward when Archie first saw him. Presently he leaned nonchalantly back; and that deadly instrument, the maiden, was suddenly unmasked in profile. Though not quite in the front of the fashion (had anybody cared!) certain artful Glasgow mantua-makers, and her own inherent taste, had arrayed her to great advantage. Her accoutrement was indeed a cause of heart-burning and almost of scandal in that infinitesimal kirk company. Mrs. Hob had said her say at Cauldstaneslap. ‘Daft-like!’ she had pronounced it. ‘A jaiket that’ll no meet! whaur’s the sense of a jaiket that’ll no butten upon you, if it should come to be weet? What do ye ca’ thir things? Demmy brokens, d’ye say? They’ll be brokens wi’ a vengeance or ye can win back! Weel, I have naething to do wi’ it—it’s no good taste.’ Clem, whose purse had thus metamorphosed his sister and who was not insensible to the advertisement, had come to the rescue with a ‘Hoot, woman! What do you ken of good taste that has never been to the ceety?’ And Hob, looking on the girl with pleased smiles, as she timidly displayed her finery in the midst of the dark kitchen, had thus ended the dispute: ‘The cutty looks weel,’ he had said, ‘and it’s no very like rain. Weer them the day, hizzie; but it’s no a thing to make 60

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a practice o’ .’ In the breasts of her rivals, coming to the kirk, very conscious of white under-linen and their faces splendid with much soap, the sight of the toilet had raised a storm of varying emotion, from the mere unenvious admiration that was expressed in a long drawn ‘Eh!’ to the angrier feeling that found vent in an emphatic ‘Set her up!’ Her frock was of straw coloured jaconet muslin, cut low at the bosom and short at the ancle, so as to display her demi broquins of Regency violet, crossing, with many straps, upon a yellow cobweb stocking. According to the pretty fashion in which our grandmothers did not hesitate to appear, and our great-aunts went forth armed for the pursuit and capture of our great-uncles, the dress was drawn up so as to mould the contour of both breasts, and in the nook between a cairngorm brooch maintained it. Here too, surely in a very enviable position, trembled the nosegay of primroses. She wore on her shoulders, or rather on her back and not her shoulders which it scarcely passed, a French coat of sarsenet, tied in front with Margate braces and of the same colour with her violet shoes. About her face clustered a disorder of dark ringlets, a little garland of yellow French roses surmounted her brow, and the whole was crowned by a village hat of chipped straw. Amongst all the rosy and all the weathered faces that surrounded her in church, she glowed like an open flower, girl and raiment, and the cairngorm that caught the daylight and returned it in a fiery flash, and the threads of bronze and gold that made her hair precious. Archie was attracted by the bright thing like a child. He looked at her again and yet again, and their looks crossed. The lip was lifted from her little teeth; he saw the red blood work vividly under her tawny skin; her eye, which was great as a stag’s, struck and held his gaze. He knew who she must be—Kirstie, she of the harsh diminutive, his housekeeper’s niece, the sister of the rustic prophet, Gib—and he found in her the answer to his wishes. Christina felt the shock of their encountering glances; and seemed to rise, clothed in smiles, into a region of the vague and bright. But this gratification was not more exquisite than it was brief. She looked away abruptly, and immediately began to blame herself for that abruptness. She knew what she should have done too late—turned slowly with her nose in the air. And meantime his look was not removed but continued to play upon her like a battery of cannon constantly aimed; and now seemed to isolate her alone with him, and now seemed to uplift her, as on a pillory, before the congregation. For Archie continued to drink her in with his eyes, even as a wayfarer comes to a well-head on a mountain, and stoops his face, and drinks with thirst unassuageable. 61

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In the cleft of her little breasts, the fiery eye of the topaz and the pale florets of primrose fascinated him. He saw the breasts heave and the flowers shake with the heaving, and marvelled what should so much discompose the girl. And Christina was conscious of his gaze—saw it perhaps with the dainty plaything of an ear that peeped among her ringlets; she was conscious of changing colour, conscious of her unsteady breath. Like a creature tracked, run down, surrounded, she sought in a dozen ways to give herself a countenance. She used her handkerchief—it was a really fine one—then she desisted in a panic— ‘He would only think I was too warm.’ She took to reading in the metrical psalms, and then remembered it was sermon-time. Last she put a ‘sugar bool’ in her mouth and the next moment repented of the step. It was such a homely-like thing! Mr. Archie would never be eating sweeties in kirk. And with a palpable effort, she swallowed it whole, and her colour flamed high. At this signal of distress, Archie awoke to a sense of his ill-behaviour. What had he been doing? He had been exquisitely rude in church to the niece of his housekeeper; he had stared like a lackey and a libertine at a beautiful and modest girl. It was possible, it was even likely, he would be presented to her after service in the kirkyard, and then how was he to look? And there was no excuse; he had marked the tokens of her shame, of her increasing indignation; and he was such a fool that he had not understood them. Shame bowed him down; and he looked resolutely at Mr. Torrance, who little supposed, good, worthy man! as he continued to expound justification by faith, what was his true business: to play the part of derivative to a pair of children at the old game of falling in love. Christina was greatly relieved at first. It seemed to her that she was clothed again. She looked back on what had passed. All would have been right, if she had not blushed, a silly fool! There was nothing to blush at, if she had taken a sugar bool. Mrs. MacTaggart, the elder’s wife in St. Enoch’s, took them often. And if he had looked at her what was more natural than that a young gentleman should look at the best dressed girl in church? And at the same time, she knew far otherwise, she knew there was nothing casual or ordinary in the look and valued herself on its memory like a decoration. Well, it was a blessing he had found something else to look at! And presently she began to have other thoughts. It was necessary, she fancied, that she should put herself right by a repetition of the incident, better managed. If the wish was father to the thought she did not know or she would not recognise it. It was simply as a manoeuvre of propriety, as something called for to lessen the significance of what had gone before, that she 62

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should a second time meet his eyes, and this time without blushing. And at the memory of the blush, she blushed again, and became one general blush burning from head to foot. Was ever anything so indelicate, so forward, done by a girl before? And here she was, making an exhibition of herself before the congregation about nothing! She stole a glance upon her neighbours; and behold! they were entirely indifferent and Clem had gone to sleep. And still the one idea was becoming more and more potent with her, that in common prudence she must look again before the service ended. Something of the same sort was going forward in the mind of Archie, as he struggled with the load of penitence. So it chanced that, in the flutter of the moment when the last psalm was given out, and Torrance was reading the verse, and the leaves of every psalmbook in church were rustling under busy fingers— two stealthy glances were sent out like antennae among the pews and on the indifferent and absorbed occupants, and drew timidly nearer to the straight line between Archie and Christina. They met, they lingered together for the least fraction of time, and that was enough. A charge as of electricity passed through Christina, and behold! the leaf of her psalm book was torn across. Archie was outside by the gate of the graveyard, conversing with Hob and the minister and shaking hands all round with the scattering congregation, when Clem and Christina were brought up to be presented. The laird took off his hat and bowed to her with grace and respect. Christina made her Glasgow curtsey to the laird, and went on again up the road for Hermiston and Cauldstaneslap, walking fast, breathing hurriedly with a heightened colour and in this strange frame of mind that when she was alone she seemed in high happiness, and when anyone addressed her, she resented it like a contradiction. A part of the way she had the company of some neighbour girls and a loutish young man; never had they seemed so insipid, never had she made herself so disagreeable! But these struck aside to their various destinations or were out-walked and left behind; and when she had driven off with sharp words the proffered convoy of some of her nephews and nieces she was free to go on alone up Hermiston brae, walking on air, dwelling intoxicated among clouds of happiness. Near to the summit she heard steps behind her, a man’s steps, light and very rapid. She knew the foot at once—and walked the faster. ‘If it’s me he’s wanting, he can run for it,’ she thought, smiling. Archie overtook her like a man whose mind was made up. ‘Miss Kirstie,—’ he began. ‘Miss Christina, if you please, Mr. Weir,’ she interrupted. ‘I cannae 63

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bear the contraction.’ ‘You forget it has a friendly sound for me. Your aunt is an old friend of mine and a very good one. I hope we shall see much of you at Hermiston?’ ‘My aunt and my sister-in-law doesnae agree very well. No that I have much ado with it. But still when I’m stopping in the house, if I was to be visiting my aunt, it would not look considerate-like.’ ‘I am sorry,’ said Archie. ‘I thank you kindly, Mr. Weir,’ she said. ‘I whiles think myself it’s a great peety.’ ‘Ah, I am sure your voice would always be for peace!’ he cried. ‘I would nae be too sure of that,’ she said. ‘I have my days like other folk I suppose.’ ‘Do you know? in our old kirk, among our good old gray dames, you made an effect like sunshine.’ ‘Ah, but that would be my Glasgow clothes,’ she cried. ‘I did not think I was so much under the influence of pretty frocks.’ She smiled with a half look at him. ‘There’s more than you!’ she said. ‘But you see I’m only Cinderella. I’ll have to put all these things by in my trunk; next Sunday I’ll be as gray as the rest. They’re Glasgow clothes you see, and it would never do to make a practice of it. It would seem terrible conspicuous.’ By that, they were come to the place where their ways severed. The old gray moors were all about them; in the midst a few sheep wandered; and they could see on the one hand the straggling caravan scaling the braes in front of them for Cauldstaneslap, and on the other, the contingent from Hermiston bending off and beginning to disappear by detachments into the policy gate. It was in these circumstances, that they turned to say farewell and deliberately exchanged a glance as they shook hands. All passed as it should, genteelly; and in Christina’s mind, as she mounted the first steep ascent for Cauldstaneslap, a gratifying sense of triumph prevailed over the recollection of minor lapses and mistakes. She had kilted her gown, as she did usually at that rugged pass; but when she spied Archie still standing and gazing after her, the skirts came down again as if by enchantment. Here was a piece of nicety for that upland parish, where the matrons marched with their coats kilted in the rain, and the lassies walked barefoot to kirk through the dust of summer, and went bravely down by the burn-side, and sat on stones to make a public toilet before entering! It was perhaps an air wafted from Glasgow; or perhaps it marked a stage of that dizziness of gratified vanity, in which the instinctive act passed unperceived. 64

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He was looking after! She unloaded her bosom of a prodigious sigh, that was all pleasure, and betook herself to run. When she had overtaken the stragglers of her family, she caught up the niece whom she had so recently repulsed, and kissed and slapped her, and drove her away again, and ran after her with pretty cries and laughter. Perhaps she thought the laird might still be looking! But it chanced the little scene came under the view of eyes less favourable; for she overtook Mrs. Hob marching with Clem and Dand. ‘You’re shürely fey, lass!’ quoth Dandie. ‘Think shame to yersel, miss!’ said the strident Mrs. Hob. ‘Is this the gate to guide yoursel on the way hame frae kirk? You’re shürely no sponsible the day! And anyway I would mind my guid claes.’ ‘Hoot!’ said Christina, and went on before them head in air, treading the rough track with the tread of a wild doe. She was in love with herself, her destiny, the air of the hills, the benediction of the sun. All the way home she continued under the intoxication of these sky-scraping spirits. At table she could talk freely of young Hermiston; gave her opinion of him off hand and with a loud voice, that he was a handsome young gentleman, real well mannered and sensible-like, but it was a pity he looked doleful. Only—the moment after—a memory of his eyes in church embarrassed her. But for this inconsiderable check, all through meal time she had a good appetite and she kept them laughing at table, until Gib, (who had returned before them from Crossmichael and his separative worship) reproved the whole of them for their levity. Singing ‘in to herself ’ as she went, her mind still in the turmoil of a glad confusion—the most beautiful of her sex by her victories at the kirk—the gayest by her more recent triumphs in the bosom of her own family—she rose and tripped upstairs to the little loft, lighted by four panes in the gable, where she slept with one of her nieces. The niece, who followed her, presuming on ‘Auntie’s’ high spirits, was flounced out of the apartment with small ceremony, and retired, smarting and half tearful, to bury her woes in the byre among the hay. Still humming, Christina divested herself of her finery and put them by one by one in her great green trunk. The last of these treasures was the psalm book; it was a fine piece, the gift of Mistress Clem, in distinct old-faced type, on paper that had begun to grow foxy in the warehouse, not by service; and she was used to wrap it in a handkerchief every Sunday after its period of service was over, and bury it end wise at the head of her trunk. As she now took it in hand, the book fell open where the leaf was torn, and she stood and gazed upon that evidence of her bygone 65

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discomposure. There returned again the vision of the two brown eyes staring at her, intent and bright, out of that dark corner of the kirk. The whole appearance and attitude, the smile, the suggested gesture, of young Hermiston, came before her in a flash at the sight of the torn page. ‘I was surely fey!’ she said, echoing the words of Dandie; and at the suggested doom, her high spirits deserted her. She flung herself in her shift prone upon the bed, and lay there, holding the psalm book in her hands, for hours; for the more part in a mere stupor of unconsenting pleasure and unreasoning fear. The fear was superstitious; there came up again and again in her memory Dandie’s ill omened words, and a hundred grisly and black tales out of the immediate neighbourhood read her a commentary on their force. The pleasure was never realized. You might say the joints of her body thought, and remembered, and were gladdened; but her essential self, in the immediate theatre of consciousness, talked feverishly of something else like a nervous person at a fire. The image that she most complacently dwelt on was that of Miss Christina, in her character of the Fair Lass of Cauldstaneslap, carrying all before her in the straw-coloured frock, the violet mantle and the yellow cobweb stockings; Archie’s image on the other hand, when it presented itself, was never welcomed—far less welcomed with any ardour—and it was exposed at times to merciless criticism. In the long vague dialogues she held in her mind often with imaginary, often with unrealized interlocutors, Archie, if he were referred to at all, came in for savage handling. He was described as ‘looking like a stork,’ ‘staring like a caulf,’ ‘a face like a ghaist’s.’ ‘Do you call that manners?’ she said; or, ‘I soon put him in his place,’—‘Miss Christina, if you please, Mr Weir! says I, and just flyped up my skirt tails.’ With gabble like this, she would entertain herself long whiles together; and then her eye would perhaps fall on the torn leaf, and the eyes of Archie would appear again from the darkness of the wall, and the voluble words deserted her, and she would lie, still and stupid, and think upon nothing with devotion, and be sometimes raised by a quiet sigh. Had a doctor of medicine come into that loft, he would have diagnosed a healthy, well-developed, eminently vivacious lass lying on her face in a fit of the sulks; not one who had just contracted—or was just contracting—a mortal sickness of the mind which should yet carry her to death and despair. Had it been a doctor of psychology, he might have been pardoned for divining in the girl a passion of childish vanity, self-love in excelsis, and no more. It is to be understood that I have been painting chaos and describing the inarticulate. Every lineament that appears is too precise, almost every word used too strong. Take a finger post in 66

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the mountains on a day of rolling mists; I have but copied the names that appear upon the pointers, the names of definite and famous cities, far distant and now perhaps basking in sunshine; but Christina remained all these hours at the foot of the post itself, not moving, and enveloped in mutable and blinding wreaths of haze. The day was growing late and the sunbeams long and level, when she sat suddenly up, and wrapped in its handkerchief and put by that psalm book, which had already played a part so decisive in the first chapter of her love story. In the absence of the mesmerist’s eye, we are told nowadays that the head of a bright nail may fill his place, if it be steadfastly regarded. So that torn page had riveted her attention on what might else have been but little and perhaps soon forgotten, while the ominous words of Dandie—heard, not heeded, and still remembered—had lent to her thoughts or rather to her mood a cast of solemnity and that idea of Fate—a pagan Fate, uncontrolled by any Christian deity, obscure, lawless and august,—moving indissuadably in the affairs of Christian men. Thus even that phenomenon of love at first sight, which is so rare and seems so simple and violent—like a disruption of life’s tissue—may be decomposed into a sequence of accidents happily concurring. She put on a gray frock and a pink kerchief, looked at herself a moment with approval in the small square of glass that served her for a toilet mirror, and went softly down stairs through the sleeping house that resounded with the sound of afternoon snoring. Just outside the door, Dandie was sitting with a book in his hand, not reading, only honouring the Sabbath by a sacred vacancy of mind. She came near him and stood still. ‘I’m for off up the muirs, Dandie,’ she said. There was something unusually soft in her tones that made him look up. She was pale, her eyes dark and bright, no trace remained of the levity of the morning. ‘Ay, lass? Ye’ll have yer ups and downs like me, I’m thinkin’, ’ he observed. ‘What for do ye say that?’ she asked. ‘Oh, for naething,’ says Dand. ‘Only I think ye’re mair like me than the lave of them. Ye’ve mair of the poetic temper, tho’, Guid kens! little enough of the poetic taalent. It’s an ill gift at the best. Look at yoursel’. At denner you were all sunshine and flowers and laughter, and now you’re like the star of evening on a lake.’ She drank in this hackneyed compliment like wine, and it glowed in her veins. 67

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‘But I’m saying, Dand—’ she came nearer him—‘I’m for the muirs. I must have a braith of air. If Clem was to be speiring for me, try and quaiet him, will ye no?’ ‘What way?’ said Dandie. ‘I ken but the ae way, and that’s leein’. I’ll say ye had a sair heed, if ye like.’ ‘But I havenae,’ she objected. ‘I daur say not,’ he returned. ‘I said I would say ye had; and if ye like to nay-say me when ye come back, it’ll no mateerially maitter, for my chara’ter’s clean gane a’ready past reca’. ’ ‘Oh, Dand, are ye a leear?’ she asked, lingering. ‘Folks say sae,’ replied the bard. ‘Wha says sae?’ she pursued. ‘Them that should ken the best,’ he responded. ‘The lassies for ane.’ ‘But, Dand, you would never lee to me?’ she asked. ‘I’ll leave that for your pairt of it, ye girzie,’ said he. ‘Ye’ll lee to me fast eneuch, when ye hae gotten a jo. I’m tellin’ ye and it’s true: when you have a jo, Miss Kirstie, it’ll be for guid and ill. I ken: I was made that way mysel, but the deil was in my luck! Here—gang awa’ wi’ ye to your muirs, and let me be—I’m in an hour of inspiraution, ye upsettin tawpie!’ But she clung to her brother’s neighbourhood, she knew not why. ‘Will ye no gie’s a kiss, Dand?’ she said. ‘I aye likit ye fine.’ He kissed her and considered her a moment; he found something strange in her. But he was a libertine through and through, nourished equal contempt and suspicion of all womankind, and paid his way among them habitually with idle compliments. ‘Gae wa’ wi’ ye!’ said he. ‘Ye’re a denty baby, and be content wi’ that!’ That was Dandie’s way; a kiss and a comfit to Jenny—a bawbee and my blessing to Jill—and goodnight to the whole clan of ye, my dears! When anything approached the serious, it became a matter for men, he both thought and said. Women, when they did not absorb, were only children to be shoo’d away. Merely in his character of connoisseur, however, Dandie glanced carelessly after his sister as she crossed the meadow. ‘The brat’s no that bad!’ he thought with surprise, for though he had just been paying her compliments, he had not really looked at her. ‘Hey! what’s yon?’ For the gray dress was cut with short sleeves and skirts and displayed her trim strong legs clad in pink stockings of the same shade as the kerchief she wore round her shoulders, and that shimmered as she went. This was not her way in undress; he knew her ways and the ways of the whole sex in the country side, no one better; 68

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when they did not go barefoot, they wore stout rig and fur woollen hose of an invisible blue mostly, when they were not black out-right; and Dandie, at sight of this daintiness, put two and two together. It was a silk handkerchief, then they would be silken hose; they matched— then the whole outfit was a present of Clem’s, a costly present, and not something to be worn through bog and briar or on a late afternoon of Sunday. He whistled. ‘My denty May, either your heid’s fair turned, or there’s some on goings!’ he observed and dismissed the subject. She went slowly at first, but ever straighter and faster for the Cauldstaneslap, a pass among the hills to which the farm owed its name. The Slap opened like a doorway between two rounded hillocks; and through this ran the short-cut to Hermiston. Immediately on the other side it went down through the Deil’s Hags, a considerable marshy hollow of the hill tops, full of springs, and crouching junipers, and pools where the black peat-water slumbered. There was no view from here. A man might have sat upon the Praying Weaver’s stone a half-century, and seen none but the Cauldstaneslap children twice in the twenty-four hours on their way to the school and back again, an occasional random shepherd, the irruption of a clan of sheep, or the birds who haunted about the springs, drinking and shrilly piping. So, when she had once passed the Slap, Kirstie was received into seclusion. She looked back a last time at the farm. It still lay deserted except for the figure of Dandie, who was now seen to be scribbling in his lap, the hour of expected inspiration having come to him at last. Thence she passed rapidly through the morass, and came to the further end of it, where a sluggish burn discharges and the path for Hermiston accompanies it on the beginning of its downward path. From this corner a wide view was opened to her, of the whole stretch of braes upon the other side, still sallow and in places rusty with the winter, with the path marked boldly, here and there by the burnside a tuft of birches, and—three miles off as the crow flies—from its enclosures and young plantations, the windows of Hermiston glittering in the western sun. Here she sat down and waited, and looked for a long time at these far away bright panes of glass. It amused her to have so extended a view, she thought. It amused her to see the house of Hermiston; to see ‘folk’—and there was an indistinguishable human unit, perhaps the gardener, visibly sauntering in the gravel paths. By the time the sun was down and all the easterly braes lay plunged in clear shadow, she was aware of another figure coming up the path at a most unequal rate of approach, now half running, now pausing and seeming to hesitate. She watched him at first with a total suspension 69

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of thought. She held her thought as a person holds his breathing. Then she consented to recognise him. ‘He’ll no be coming here, he cannae be; it’s no possible.’ And there began to grow upon her a subdued choking suspense. He was coming; his hesitations had quite ceased, his step grew firm and swift; no doubt remained; and the question loomed up before her instant: what was she to do? It was all very well to say that her brother was a laird himself; it was all very well to speak of casual intermarriages and count cousinship, like Auntie Kirstie. The difference in their social station was trenchant; propriety, prudence, all that she had ever learned, all that she knew, bade her flee. But on the other hand the cup of life now offered to her was too enchanting. For one moment, she saw the question clearly, and definitely made her choice. She stood up and showed herself an instant in the gap relieved upon the sky line; and the next, fled trembling and sat down glowing with excitement on the Weaver’s stone. She shut her eyes, seeking, praying for composure. Her hand shook in her lap, and her mind was full of incongruous and futile speeches. What was there to make a work about? She could take care of herself she supposed! There was no harm in seeing the laird. It was the best thing that could happen. She would mark a proper distance to him once and for all. Gradually the wheels of her nature ceased to go round so madly, and she sat in passive expectation, a quiet, solitary figure in the midst of the gray moss. I have said she was no hypocrite, but here I am at fault. She never admitted to herself that she had come up the hill to look for Archie. And perhaps after all she did not know, perhaps came as a stone falls. For the steps of love in the young and especially in girls are instinctive and unconscious. In the meantime Archie was drawing rapidly near, and he at least was consciously seeking her neighbourhood. The afternoon had turned to ashes in his mouth; the memory of the girl had kept him from reading and drawn him as with cords; and at last, as the cool of the evening began to come on, he had taken his hat and set forth, with a smothered ejaculation, by the moor path to Cauldstaneslap. He had no hope to find her; he took the off chance without expectation of result and to relieve his uneasiness. The greater was his surprise, as he surmounted the slope and came into the hollow of the Deil’s Hags, to see there, like an answer to his wishes, the little womanly figure in the gray dress and the pink kerchief sitting little, and low, and lost, and acutely solitary, in these desolate surroundings and on the weatherbeaten stone of the dead weaver. Those things that still smacked of winter were all rusty about her, and those things that already relished 70

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of the Spring had put forth the tender and lively colours of the season. Even in the unchanging face of the death-stone, changes were to be remarked; and in the channeled lettering, the moss began to renew itself in jewels of green. By an afterthought that was a stroke of art, she had turned up over her head the back of the kerchief; so that it now framed becomingly her vivacious and yet pensive face. She leaned on her bare arm, which showed out strong and round, tapered to a slim wrist, and shimmered in the fading light. Her feet were gathered under her on the one side, where they showed but a peep of the pink stocking, and repeated and continued the same note as the kerchief. Young Hermiston was struck with a certain chill. He was reminded that he now dealt in serious matters of life and death. This was a grown woman he was approaching, endowed with her mysterious potencies and attractions, the treasury of the continued race. And he was neither better nor worse than the average of his sex and age. He had a certain delicacy which had preserved him hitherto unspotted, and which (had either of them guessed it) made him a more dangerous companion when his heart should be really stirred. His throat was dry as he came near; but the appealing sweetness of her smile stood between them like a guardian angel. For she turned to him and smiled, though without rising. There was a shade in this cavalier greeting that neither of them perceived; neither he, who simply thought it gracious and charming as herself; nor yet she, who did not observe (quick as she was) the difference between rising to meet the laird and remaining seated to receive the expected admirer. ‘Are ye stepping west, Hermiston?’ said she, giving him his territorial name after the fashion of the country-side. ‘I was,’ said he a little hoarsely, ‘but I think I will be about the end of my stroll now. Are you like me, Miss Christina? the house would not hold me. I came here seeking air.’ He took his seat at the other end of the tomb-stone and studied her, wondering what was she? There was infinite import in the question alike for her and him. ‘Ay,’ she said. ‘I couldnae bear the roof either. It’s a habit of mines to come up here about the gloaming when it’s quait and caller.’ ‘It was a habit of my mother’s also,’ he said gravely. The recollection half startled him as he expressed it. He looked around. ‘I have scarce been here since. It’s peaceful,’ he said, with a long breath. ‘It’s no like Glasgow,’ she replied. ‘A weary place, yon Glasgow! But what a day have I had for my hame-coming, and what a bonny evening!’ 71

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‘Indeed it was a wonderful day,’ said Archie. ‘I think I will remember it years and years until I come to die. On days like this—I do not know if you feel as I do—but everything appears so brief, and fragile, and exquisite, that I am afraid to touch life. We are here for so short a time; and all the old people before us—Rutherfords of Hermiston, Elliotts of the Cauldstaneslap—that were here but a while since riding about and keeping up a great noise in this quiet corner—making love too, and marrying—why, where are they now? It’s deadly commonplace, but after all, the commonplaces are the great poetic truths.’ He was sounding her semi-consciously, to see if she could understand him; to learn if she were only an animal the colour of flowers, or had a soul in her to keep her sweet. She, on her part, her means well in hand, watched, woman-like, for any opportunity to shine, to abound in his humour whatever that might be. The dramatic artist, that lies dormant or only half awake in most human beings, had in her sprung to his feet in a divine fury and chance had served her well. She looked upon him with a subdued twilight look that became the hour of the day and the train of thought; earnestness shone through her like stars in the purple west; and from the great but controlled upheaval of her whole nature, there passed into her voice, and rang in her lightest words, a thrill of emotion. ‘Have you mind of Dand’s song?’ she answered. ‘I think he’ll have been trying to say what you have been thinking.’ ‘No, I never heard it,’ he said. ‘Repeat it to me, can you?’ ‘It’s nothing wanting the tune,’ said Kirstie. ‘Then sing it me,’ said he. ‘On the Lord’s day? That would never do, Mr. Weir!’ ‘I am afraid I am not so strict a keeper of the Sabbath, and there is no one in this place to hear us, unless the poor old ancient under the stone.’ ‘No that I’m thinking that really,’ she said, ‘by my way of thinking, it’s just as serious as a psalm. Will I sooth it to ye then?’ ‘If you please,’ said he, and drawing near to her on the tombstone, prepared to listen. She sat up as if to sing. ‘I’ll only can sooth it to ye,’ she explained. ‘I would nae like to sing out loud on the Sabbath. I think the birds would carry news of it to Gilbert,’ and she smiled. ‘It’s about the Elliotts,’ she continued, ‘and I think there’s few bonnier bits in the book-poets, though Dand has never got printed yet.’ And she began, in the low clear tones of her half voice, now sinking almost to a whisper, now rising to a particular note which was her best, 72

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and which Archie learned to wait for with growing emotion: ‘Oh they rade in the rain, in the days that are gane, In the rain and the wind and the lave. They shoutit in the ha’ and they routit on the hill But they’re a’ quaitit noo in the grave, Auld, auld Elliotts, clay-cauld Elliotts, dour, bauld Elliotts of auld!’ All the time she sang, she looked steadfastly before her, her knees straight, her hands upon her knees, her head cast back and up. The expression was admirable throughout, for had she not learned it from the lips and under the criticism of the author? When it was done, she turned upon Archie a face softly bright and eyes gently suffused and shining in the twilight; and his heart rose and went out to her with boundless pity and sympathy. His question was answered. She was a human being tuned to a sense of the tragedy of life; there were pathos and music and a great heart in the girl. He arose instinctively, she also; for she saw she had gained a point and scored the impression deeper, and she had wit enough left to flee upon a victory. They were but commonplaces that remained to be exchanged; but the low, moved voices in which they passed, made them sacred in the memory. In the falling grayness of the evening, he watched her figure winding through the morass, saw it turn a last time and wave a hand, and then pass through the Slap; and it seemed to him as if something went along with her out of the deepest of his heart. And something surely had come, and come to dwell there. He had retained from childhood a picture, now half obliterated by the passage of time and the multitude of fresh impressions, of his mother telling him, with the fluttered earnestness of her voice and often with dropping tears, the tale of the Praying Weaver, on the very scene of his brief tragedy and long repose. And now there was a companion piece; and he beheld, and he should behold forever, Christina perched on the same tomb, in the gray colours of the evening, gracious, dainty, perfect as a flower, and she also singing Of old unhappy far off things And battles long ago —of their common ancestors now dead, of their rude wars composed, their weapons buried with them—and of these strange changelings, their descendants, who lingered a little in their places, and should 73

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soon be gone also, and perhaps sung of by others at the gloaming hour. By one of the unconscious arts of tenderness, the two women were enshrined together in his memory. Tears, in that hour of sensibility, came into his eyes indifferently at the thought of either; and the girl, from being something merely bright and shapely, was caught up into the zone of things serious as life and death and his dead mother. So that in all ways and on either side, Fate played his game artfully with this poor pair of children. The generations were prepared, the pangs were made ready, before the curtain rose on the dark drama. In the same moment of time that she disappeared from Archie, there opened before Kirstie’s eyes the cup-like hollow in which the farm lay. She saw, some five hundred feet below her, the house making itself bright with candles, and this was a broad hint to her to hurry. For they were only kindled in a Sabbath night with a view to that family worship, which rounded in the incomparable tedium of the day and brought on the relaxation of supper. Already she knew that Robert must be within-sides at the head of the table ‘waling the portions;’ for it was Robert in his quality of family priest and judge, not the gifted Gilbert, who officiated. She made good time accordingly down the steep ascent, and came up to the door panting as the three younger brothers, all roused at last from slumber, stood together in the cool and the dark of the evening with a fry of nephews and nieces about them chatting and awaiting the expected signal. She stood back; she had no mind to direct attention to her late arrival or to her labouring breath. ‘Kirstie, ye have shaved it this time, my lass!’ said Clem. ‘Whaur were ye?’ ‘Oh, just taking a dander by mysel,’ said Kirstie. And the talk continued on the subject of the American War, without further reference to the truant who stood by them, in the covert of the dusk, thrilling with happiness and the sense of guilt. The signal was given, and the brothers began to go in, one after another, amid the jostle and throng of Hob’s children. Only Dandie, waiting till the last, caught Kirstie by the arm. ‘When did ye begin to dander in pink hosen, Mistress Elliott?’ he whispered slyly. She looked down; she was one blush. ‘I maun have forgotten to change them,’ said she; and went in to prayers in her turn with a troubled mind, between anxiety as to whether Dand should have observed her yellow stockings at church and should thus detect her in a palpable falsehood, and shame that she had already made good his 74

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prophecy. She remembered the words of it, how it was to be when she had gotten a jo, and that that would be for good and evil. ‘Will I have gotten my jo now?’ she thought with a secret rapture. And all through prayers, where it was her principal business to conceal the pink stockings from the eyes of the indifferent Mrs. Hob— and all through supper, as she made a feint of eating and sat at the table radiant and constrained—and again when she had left them and come into her chamber, and was alone with her sleeping niece, and could at last lay aside the armour of society—the same words sounded within her, the same profound note of happiness, of a world all changed and renewed, of a day that had been passed in Paradise and of a night that was to be Heaven opened. All night she seemed to be conveyed smoothly upon a shallow stream of sleep and waking and through the bowers of Beulah; all night she cherished to her heart that exquisite hope; and if, towards morning, she forgot it awhile in a more profound unconsciousness, it was to catch again the rainbow thought with her first moment of awaking.

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Chapter 7 ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES

Two days later, a gig from Crossmichael deposited Frank Innes at the doors of Hermiston. Once in a way, during the past winter, Archie, in some acute phase of boredom, had written him a letter. It had contained something in the nature of an invitation, or a reference to an invitation: precisely what, neither of them now remembered. When Innes had received it, there had been nothing farther from his mind than to bury himself in the moors with Archie; but not even the most acute political heads are guided through the steps of life with unerring directness. That would require a gift of prophecy which has been denied to man. For instance who could have imagined that, not a month after he had received the letter, and turned it into mockery, and put off answering it, and in the end lost it—misfortunes of a gloomy cast should begin to thicken over Frank’s career. His case may be briefly stated. His father, a small Morayshire laird with a large family, became recalcitrant and cut off the supplies; he had fitted himself out with the beginnings of quite a good law library which, upon some sudden losses on the turf, he had been obliged to sell before they were paid for; and his bookseller, hearing some rumour of the event took out a warrant for his arrest. Innes had early word of it and was able to take precautions. In this immediate welter of his affairs, with an unpleasant charge hanging over him, he had judged it the part of prudence to be off instantly, had written a fervid letter to his father at Inverauld, and put himself in the coach for Crossmichael. Any port in a storm! He was manfully turning his back on the Parliament House and its gay babble, on porter and oysters, the race course and the ring; and manfully prepared, until these clouds should have blown by, to share a living grave with Archie Weir at Hermiston. To do him justice, he was no less surprised to be going than Archie was to see him come; and he carried off his wonder with an infinitely better grace. ‘Well, here I am!’ said he, as he alighted. ‘Pylades has come to Orestes at last. By the way, did you get my answer? No? How very provoking! Well, here I am to answer for myself, and that’s better still.’ 76

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‘I am very glad to see you of course,’ said Archie. ‘I make you heartily welcome of course. But you surely have not come to stay with the courts still sitting; is that not most unwise?’ ‘Damn the courts!’ says Frank. ‘What are the courts to friendship and a little fishing?’ And so it was agreed that he was to stay, with no term to the visit but the term which he had privily set to it himself—the day, namely, when his father should have come down with the dust and he should be able to pacify the book-seller. On such vague conditions there began for these two young men (who were not even friends) a life of great familiarity and, as the days drew on, less and less intimacy. They were together at meal times, together o’ nights when the hour had come for whisky toddy; but it might have been noticed (had there been anyone to pay heed) that they were rarely so much together by day. Archie had Hermiston to attend to, multifarious activities in the hills, in which he did not require, and had even refused, Frank’s escort. He would be off sometimes in the morning and leave only a note on the breakfast table to announce the fact, and sometimes, with no notice at all, he would not return for dinner until the hour was long past. Innes groaned under these desertions; it required all his philosophy to sit down to a solitary breakfast with composure, and all his unaffected good nature to be able to greet Archie with friendliness on the more rare occasions when he came home late for dinner. ‘I wonder what on earth he finds to do, Mrs. Elliott?’ said he one morning, after he had just read the hasty billet and sat down to table. ‘I suppose it will be business, sir,’ replied the housekeeper dryly, measuring his distance off to him by an indicated curtsey. ‘But I can’t imagine what business!’ he reiterated. ‘I suppose it will be his business,’ retorted the austere Kirstie. He turned to her with that happy brightness that made the charm of his disposition, and broke into a peal of healthy and natural laughter. ‘Well played, Mrs. Elliott!’ he cried, and the housekeeper’s face relaxed into the shadow of an iron smile. ‘Well played indeed!’ said he. ‘But you must not be making a stranger of me like that. Why, Archie and I were at the High School together, and we’ve been to college together, and we were going to the bar together, when—you know! Dear, dear me! what a pity that was! A life spoiled, a fine young fellow as good as buried here in the wilderness with rustics; and all for what? A frolic, silly if you like, but no more. God, how good your scones are, Mrs. Elliott.’ ‘They’re no mines, it was the lassie made them,’ said Kirstie; ‘and 77

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saving your presence, here’s little sense in taking the Lord’s name in vain about idle vivers that you fill your kite wi’. ’ ‘I dare say you’re perfectly right, ma’am,’ quoth the imperturbable Frank. ‘But as I was saying, this is a pitiable business, this about poor Archie; and you and I might do worse than put our heads together like a couple of sensible people and bring it to an end. Let me tell you, ma’am, that Archie is really quite a promising young man, and in my opinion he would do well at the bar. As for his father, no one can deny his ability and I don’t fancy any one would care to deny that he had the deil’s own temper—’ ‘If you’ll excüse me, Mr. Innes, I think the lass is crying on me,’ said Kirstie, and floated from the room. ‘The damned, crossgrained, old broom-stick!’ ejaculated Innes. In the mean time, Kirstie had escaped into the kitchen, and before her vassal gave vent to her feelings. ‘Here, ettercap! Ye’ll have to wait on yon Innes! I cannae, I cannae haud myself in. “Puir Erchie!” I’d “puir Erchie” him, if I had my way! And Hermiston with the deil’s ain temper! God, let him take Hermiston’s scones out of his mouth first. There’s no a hair on ayther o’ the Weirs that hasnae mair spunk and dirdum to it than what he has in his hale dwaibly body! Settin’ up his snash to me! Let him gang to the black toon where he’s mebbe wantit—birling in a curricle—wi’ pimatum on his heid—making a mess o’ himsel’ wi’ nesty hizzies—a fair disgrace!’ It was impossible to hear without admiration Kirstie’s graduated disgust as she brought forth, one after another, these somewhat baseless charges. Then she remembered her immediate purpose, and turned again on her fascinated auditor. ‘Do ye no hear me, tawpie? Do ye no hear what I’m tellin’ ye? Will I have to shoo ye in to him? If I come to attend to ye, mistress!’ And the maid fled the kitchen, which had become practically dangerous, to attend on Innes’ wants in the front parlour. Tantæne iræ? Has the reader caught the idea? Since Frank’s coming there were no more hours of gossip over the supper-tray! All his blandishments were in vain; he had started handicapped on the race for Mrs. Elliott’s favour. But it was a strange thing how misfortune dogged him in his efforts to be genial. I must guard the reader against accepting Kirstie’s epithets as evidence; she was more concerned for their vigour than for their accuracy. Dwaibly, for instance: nothing could be more calumnious. Frank was the very picture of good looks, good humour and manly youth. He had bright eyes with a sparkle and a dance to them, curly hair, 78

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a charming smile, brilliant teeth, an admirable carriage of the head, the look of a gentleman, the address of one accustomed to please at first sight and to improve the impression. And with all these advantages, he failed with everyone about Hermiston; with the silent shepherd, with the obsequious grieve, with the groom who was also the ploughman, with the gardener and the gardener’s sister—a pious, down-hearted woman with a shawl over her ears—he failed equally and flatly. They did not like him, and they showed it. The little maid, indeed, was an exception; she admired him devoutly; probably dreamed of him in her private hours; but she was accustomed to play the part of silent auditor to Kirstie’s tirades and silent recipient of Kirstie’s buffets, and she had learned not only to be a very capable girl of her years, but a very secret and prudent one besides. Frank was thus conscious that he had one ally and sympathiser in the midst of that general union of disfavour that surrounded, watched and waited on him in the house of Hermiston; but he had little comfort or society from that alliance; and the demure little maid (twelve on her last birthday) preserved her own counsel and tripped on his service, brisk, dumbly responsive, but inexorably unconversational. For the others, they were beyond hope—and beyond endurance. Never had young Apollo been cast among such rustic barbarians. But perhaps the cause of his ill success lay in one trait which was habitual and unconscious with him, yet diagnostic of the man. It was his practice to approach any one person at the expense of some one else. He offered you an alliance against the someone else; he flattered you by slighting him; you were drawn into a small intrigue against him before you knew how. Wonderful are the virtues of this process generally; but Frank’s mistake was in the choice of the some one else. He was not politic in that; he listened to the voice of irritation. Archie had offended him at first by what he had felt to be rather a dry reception, had offended him since by his frequent absences. He was besides the one figure continually present in Frank’s eye; and it was to his immediate dependents that Frank could offer the snare of his sympathy. Now the truth is that the Weirs, father and son, were surrounded by a posse of strenuous loyalists. Of my lord they were vastly proud. It was a distinction in itself to be one of the vassals of the Hanging Judge, and his gross formidable joviality was far from unpopular in the neighbourhood of his home. For Archie, they had one and all a sensitive affection and respect which recoiled from a word of belittlement. Nor was Frank more successful when he went farther afield. To the Four Black Brothers, for instance, he was antipathetic in the high79

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est degree. Hob thought him too light, Gib too profane. Clem, who saw him but for a day or two before he went to Glasgow, wanted to know what the fule’s business was? and whether he meant to stay here all session time? ‘Yon’s a drone,’ he pronounced. As for Dand it will be enough to describe their first meeting, when Frank had been whipping a river and the rustic celebrity chanced to come along the path. ‘I’m told you’re quite a poet,’ Frank had said. ‘Wha’ tell’t ye that, mannie?’ had been the unconciliating answer. ‘Oh, everybody!’ says Frank. ‘God! Here’s fame!’ said the sardonic poet, and he had passed on his way. Come to think of it, we have here perhaps a truer explanation of Frank’s failures. Had he met Mr. Sheriff Scott he could have turned a neater compliment, because Mr. Scott would have been a friend worth making. Dand, on the other hand, he did not value sixpence, and he showed it even while he tried to flatter. Condescension is an excellent thing, but it is strange how one sided the pleasure of it is! He who goes fishing among the Scots peasantry with condescension for a bait will have an empty basket by evening. In proof of this theory, Frank made a great success of it at the Crossmichael Club, to which Archie took him immediately on his arrival; his own last appearance on that scene of gaiety. Frank was made welcome there at once, continued to go regularly, and had attended a meeting (as the members ever after loved to tell) on the evening before his death. Young Hay and young Pringle appeared again. There was another supper at Windielaws, another dinner at Driffel; and it resulted in Frank being taken to the bosom of the county people as unreservedly as he had been repudiated by the country folk. He occupied Hermiston after the manner of an invader in a conquered capital. He was perpetually issuing from it, as from a base, to toddy-parties, fishing-parties and dinner-parties, to which Archie was not invited or to which Archie would not go. It was now that the name of the Recluse became general for the young man. Some say that Innes invented it; Innes at least spread it abroad. ‘How’s all with your Recluse today?’ people would ask. ‘Oh, reclusing away!’ Innes would declare, with his bright air of saying something witty; and immediately interrupt the general laughter which he had provoked much more by his air than his words, ‘Mind you, it’s all very well laughing, but I’m not very well pleased. Poor Archie is a good fellow, an excellent fellow, a fellow I always liked. I think 80

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it small of him to take his little disgrace so hard and shut himself up. “Grant that it is a ridiculous story, painfully ridiculous,” I keep telling him. “Be a man! Live it down, man!” But not he. Of course it’s just solitude, and shame, and all that. But I confess I’m beginning to fear the result. It would be all the pities in the world if a really promising fellow like Weir was to end ill. I’m seriously tempted to write to Lord Hermiston and put it plainly to him.’ ‘I would if I were you,’ some of his auditors would say, shaking the head, sitting bewildered and confused at this new view of the matter, so deftly indicated by a single word. ‘A capital idea!’ they would add, and wonder at the aplomb and position of this young man, who talked as a matter of course of writing to Hermiston and correcting him upon his private affairs. And Frank would proceed, sweetly confidential: ‘I’ll give you an idea now. He’s actually sore about the way that I’m received and he’s left out in the county—actually jealous and sore. I’ve rallied him and I’ve reasoned with him, told him that everyone was most kindly inclined towards him, told him even that I was received merely because I was his guest. But it’s no use. He will neither accept the invitations he gets, nor stop brooding about the ones where he’s left out. What I’m afraid of is that the wound’s ulcerating. He had always one of those dark, secret, angry natures—a little underhand and plenty of bile—you know the sort. He must have inherited it from the Weirs, whom I suspect to have been a worthy family of weavers somewhere; what’s the cant phrase?—sedentary occupation. It’s precisely the kind of character to go wrong in a false position like what his father’s made for him, or he’s making for himself, whichever you like to call it. And for my part, I think it a disgrace,’ Frank would say generously. Presently the sorrow and anxiety of this disinterested friend took shape. He began in private, in conversations of two, to talk vaguely of bad habits and low habits. ‘I must say I am afraid he’s going wrong altogether,’ he would say. ‘I’ll tell you plainly and between ourselves, I scarcely like to stay there any longer; only, man! I’m positively afraid to leave him alone. You’ll see, I shall be blamed for it later on. I’m staying at a great sacrifice. I’m injuring my chances at the bar, and I can’t blind my eyes to it. And what I’m afraid of is that I’m going to get kicked for it all round before all’s done. You see, nobody believes in friendship nowadays.’ ‘Well, Innes,’ his interlocutor would reply, ‘it’s very good of you, I must say that. If there’s any blame going you’ll always be sure of my good word for one thing.’ 81

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‘Well,’ Frank would continue, ‘candidly, I don’t say it’s pleasant. He has a very rough way with him, his father’s son, you know! I don’t say he’s rude—of course I couldn’t be expected to stand that—but he steers very near the wind. No, it’s not pleasant; but I tell ye, man, in conscience I don’t think it would be fair to leave him. Mind you, I don’t say there’s anything actually wrong, what I say is that I don’t like the looks of it, man!’ and he would press the arm of his momentary confidant. In the early stages I am persuaded there was no malice. He talked but for the pleasure of airing himself. He was essentially glib as becomes the young advocate, and essentially careless of the truth which is the mark of the young ass; and so he talked at random. There was no particular bias, but that one which is indigenous and universal, to flatter himself and to please and interest the present friend. And by thus milling air out of his mouth, he had presently built up a presentation of Archie, which was known and talked of in all corners of the county. Wherever there was a residential house and a walled garden, wherever there was a dwarfish castle and park, wherever a quadruple cottage by the ruins of a peel tower showed an old family going down, and wherever a handsome villa with a carriage approach and a shrubbery marked the coming up of a new one—probably on the wheels of machinery—Archie began to be regarded in the light of a dark, perhaps a vicious mystery and the future developments of his career to be looked for with uneasiness and confidential whispering. He had done something disgraceful, my dear. What, was not precisely known, and that good kind young man, Mr. Innes, did his best to make light of it. But there it was. And Mr. Innes was very anxious about him now; he was really uneasy, my dear; he was positively wrecking his own prospects because he dared not leave him alone. How wholly we all lie at the mercy of a single prater, not needfully with any malign purpose! And if a man but talks of himself in the right spirit, refers to his virtuous actions by the way, and never applies to them the name of virtue, how easily his evidence is accepted in the court of public opinion! All this while, however, there was a more poisonous ferment at work between the two lads, which came late indeed to the surface but had modified and magnified their dissensions from the first. To an idle, shallow, easy-going customer like Frank, the smell of a mystery was attractive. It gave his mind something to play with, like a new toy to a child; and it took him on the weak side for—like many young men coming to the bar and before they have been tried and found wanting—he flattered himself he was a fellow of unusual quickness 82

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and penetration. They knew nothing of Sherlock Holmes in these days, but there was a good deal said of Talleyrand. And if you could have caught Frank off his guard, he would have confessed with a smirk that, if he resembled anyone, it was the Marquis de Tallyrand-Périgord. It was on the occasion of Archie’s first absence that this interest took root. It was vastly deepened when Kirstie resented his curiosity at breakfast. And that same afternoon there occurred another scene which clinched the business. He was fishing Swingleburn, Archie accompanying him, when the latter looked at his watch. ‘Well, goodbye,’ said he. ‘I have something to do. See you at dinner.’ ‘Don’t be in such a hurry,’ cries Frank. ‘Hold on till I get my rod up. I’ll go with you, I’m sick of flogging this ditch.’ And he began to reel up his line. Archie stood speechless. He took a long while to recover his wits under this direct attack; but by the time he was ready with his answer, and the angle was almost packed up, he had become completely Weir, and the hanging face gloomed on his young shoulders. He spoke with a laboured composure, a laboured kindness even; but a child could see that his mind was made up. ‘I beg your pardon, Innes, I don’t want to be disagreeable but let us understand one another from the beginning. When I want your company, I’ll let you know.’ ‘Oh!’ cries Frank, ‘you don’t want my company, don’t you?’ ‘Apparently not just now,’ replied Archie. ‘I even indicated to you when I did, if you’ll remember—and that was at dinner. If we two fellows are to live together pleasantly—and I see no reason why we should not—it can only be by respecting each other’s privacy. If we begin intruding—’ ‘Oh, come! I’ll take this at no man’s hands. Is this the way you treat a guest and an old friend?’ cried Innes. ‘Just go home and think over what I said by yourself,’ continued Archie, ‘whether it’s reasonable or whether it’s really offensive or not; and let’s meet at dinner as though nothing had happened. I’ll put it this way, if you like: that I know my own character, that I’m looking forward (with great pleasure I assure you) to a long visit from you, and that I’m taking precautions at the first. I see the thing that we—that I, if you like—might fall out upon, and I step in and obsto principiis. I wager you five pounds you’ll end by seeing that I mean friendliness, and I assure you, Francie, I do,’ he added relenting. Bursting with anger but incapable of speech, Innes shouldered his rod, made a gesture of farewell, and strode off down the burn-side. 83

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Archie watched him go without moving. He was sorry, but quite unashamed. He hated to be inhospitable, but in one thing he was his father’s son. He had a strong sense that his house was his own and no man else’s; and to lie at a guest’s mercy was what he refused. He hated to seem harsh. But that was Frank’s look out. If Frank had been commonly discreet, he would have been decently courteous and there was another consideration. The secret he was protecting was not his own merely: it was Hers; it belonged to that inexpressible she that was fast taking possession of his soul, and whom he would soon have defended at the cost of burning cities. By the time he had watched Frank as far as the Swingleburnfoot, appearing and disappearing in the tarnished heather, still stalking at a fierce gait but already dwindled in the distance into less than the smallness of Lilliput, he could afford to smile at the occurrence. Either Frank would go, and that would be a relief—or he would continue to stay and his host must continue to endure him. And Archie was now free—by devious paths, behind hillocks and in the hollow of burns—to make for the trysting-place where Kirstie, cried about by the curlew and the plover, herself the rarest and fairest flower of the moorlands, waited and burned for his coming by the Covenanter’s stone. Innes went off downhill in a passion of resentment, easy to be understood but which yielded progressively to the needs of his situation. He cursed Archie for a cold-hearted, unfriendly rude rude dog; and himself still more passionately for a fool in having come to Hermiston when he might have sought refuge in almost any other house in Scotland. But the step once taken, was practically irretrievable. He had no more ready money to go anywhere else; he would have to borrow from Archie the next club-night; and ill as he thought of his host’s manners, he was sure of his practical generosity. Frank’s resemblance to Tallyrand strikes me as imaginary; but at least not Talleyrand himself could have more obediently taken his lesson from the facts. He met Archie at dinner without resentment, almost with cordiality. You must take your friends as you find them, he would have said. Archie couldn’t help being his father’s son, or his grandfather’s the hypothetical weaver’s grandson. The son of a hunks, he was still a hunks at heart, incapable of true generosity and consideration; but he had other qualities with which Frank could divert himself in the meanwhile, and to enjoy which it was necessary that Frank should keep his temper. So excellently was it controlled, that he awoke next morning with his head full of a different, though a cognate subject. What was Archie’s little game? Why did he shun Frank’s company? What was he keeping 84

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secret? Was he keeping tryst with somebody, and was it a woman? It would be a good joke and a fair revenge to discover. To that task he set himself with a great deal of patience, which might have surprised his friends for he had been always credited not with patience so much as brilliancy; and little by little, from one point to another, he at last succeeded in piecing out the situation. First he remarked that, although Archie set out in all the directions of the compass, he always came home again from some point between the south and west. From the study of a map, and in consideration of the great expanse of untenanted moorland running in that direction towards the sources of the Clyde, he laid his finger on Cauldstaneslap and two other neighbouring farms, Kingsmuirs and Polintarf. But it was difficult to advance farther. With his rod for a pretext, he vainly visited each of them in turn; nothing was to be seen suspicious about this trinity of moorland settlements. He would have tried to follow Archie, had it been the least possible, but the nature of the land precluded the idea. He did the next best, ensconced himself in a quiet corner, and pursued his movements with a telescope. It was equally in vain, and he soon wearied of his futile vigilance, left the telescope at home, and had almost given the matter up in despair, when on the twenty-ninth day of his visit, he was suddenly confronted with the person whom he sought. The first Sunday Kirstie had managed to stay away from kirk on some pretext of indisposition, which was more truly modesty; the pleasure of beholding Archie seeming too sacred, too vivid, for that public place. It was not until the second, accordingly, that Frank had occasion to set eyes on the enchantress. With the first look, all hesitation was over. She came with the Cauldstaneslap party; then she lived at Cauldstaneslap. Here was Archie’s secret, here was the woman, and more than that—though I have need here of every manageable attenuation of language—with the first look, he had already entered himself as rival. It was a good deal in pique, it was a little in revenge, it was much in genuine admiration; the devil may decide the proportions! I cannot, and it is very likely that Frank could not. ‘Mighty attractive milk-maid,’ he observed on the way home. ‘Who?’ said Archie. ‘Oh, the girl you’re looking at—aren’t you? Forward there on the road. She came attended by the rustic bard; presumably, therefore, belongs to his exalted family. The single objection! for the Four Black Brothers are awkward customers. If anything were to go wrong Gib would gibber, and Clem would prove inclement, and Dand flie in danders and Hob blow up in gobbets. It would be a Helliott of a business!’ 85

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‘Very humorous, I am sure,’ said Archie. ‘Well, I am trying to be so,’ said Frank. ‘It’s none too easy in this place and with your solemn society, my dear fellow. But confess that the milkmaid has found favour in your eyes, or resign all claim to be a man of taste.’ ‘It is no matter,’ returned Archie. But the other continued to look at him, steadily and quizzically, and his colour slowly rose and deepened under the glance, until not impudence itself could have denied that he was blushing. And at this Archie lost some of his control. He changed his stick from one hand to the other and—‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be an ass!’ he cried. ‘Ass? That’s the retort delicate without doubt,’ says Frank. ‘Beware of the homespun brothers, dear. If they come into the dance, you’ll see who’s an ass. Think now, if they only applied (say,) a quarter as much talent as I have applied to the question of what Mr. Archie does with his evening hours? and why he is so unaffectedly nasty when the subject’s touched on . . .’ ‘You are touching on it now,’ interrrupted Archie with a wince. ‘Thank you. That was all I wanted, an articulate confession,’ said Frank. ‘I beg to remind you . . .’ began Archie. But he was interrupted in turn. ‘My dear fellow, don’t. It’s quite needless. The subject’s dead and buried.’ And Frank began to talk hastily on other matters, an art in which he was an adept, for it was his gift to be fluent on anything or nothing. But although Archie had the grace or the timidity to suffer him to rattle on, he was by no means done with the subject. When he came home to dinner, he was greeted with a sly demand, how things were looking ‘Cauldstaneslap ways;’ Frank took his first glass of port out after dinner to the toast of Kirstie; and later in the evening he returned to the charge again. ‘I say, Weir, you’ll excuse me for returning again to this affair. I’ve been thinking it over and I wish to beg you very seriously to be more careful. It’s not a safe business, not safe, my boy,’ said he. ‘What?’ said Archie. ‘Well, it’s your own fault if I must put a name on the thing; but really, as a friend, I cannot stand by and see you rushing, head-down, into these dangers. My dear boy,’ said he, holding up a warning cigar, ‘consider! What is to be the end of it?’ ‘The end of what?’—Archie, helpless with irritation, persisted in this dangerous and ungracious guard. 86

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‘Well, the end of the milkmaid, or to speak more by the card, the end of Miss Christina Elliott of the Cauldstaneslap?’ ‘I assure you,’ Archie broke out, ‘this is all a figment of your imagination. There is nothing to be said against that young lady; you have no right to introduce her name into the conversation.’ ‘I’ll make a note of it,’ said Frank. ‘She shall henceforth be nameless, nameless, nameless, Grigalach! I make a note besides of your valuable testimony to her character. I only want to look at this thing as a man of the world. Admitted she’s an angel, but, my good fellow, is she a lady?’ This was torture to Archie. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, struggling to be composed, ‘but because you have wormed yourself into my confidence, . . .’ ‘Oh, come!’ cried Frank. ‘Your confidence? It was rosy but unconsenting. Your confidence indeed? Now look! This is what I must say, Weir, for it concerns your safety and good character and therefore my honour as your friend. You say I wormed myself into your confidence. Wormed is good. But what have I done? I have put two and two together, just as the parish will be doing tomorrow, and the whole of Tweeddale in two weeks, and the Black Brothers—well! I won’t put a date on that—it will be a dark and stormy morning! Your secret, in other words, is poor Poll’s. And I want to ask of you as a friend, whether you like the prospect? There are two horns to your dilemma, and I must say for myself I should look mighty ruefully on either. Do you see yourself explaining to the Four Black Brothers? or do you see yourself presenting the milkmaid to papa as the future lady of Hermiston? Do you? I tell you plainly, I don’t!’ Archie rose. ‘I will hear no more of this,’ he said in a trembling voice. But Frank again held up his cigar. ‘Tell me one thing first. Tell me if this is not a friend’s part that I am playing?’ ‘I believe you think it so,’ replied Archie. ‘I can go as far as that. I can do so much justice to your motives. But I will hear no more of it. I am going to bed.’ ‘That’s right, Weir,’ said Frank heartily. ‘Go to bed and think over it, and I say, man, don’t forget your prayers! I don’t often do the moral— don’t go in for that sort of thing—but when I do there’s one thing sure, that I mean it.’ So Archie marched off to bed, and Frank sat alone by the table for another hour or so, smiling to himself richly. There was nothing vindictive in his nature; but if revenge came in his way, it might as well be good; and the thought of Archie’s pillow reflections that night, was indescribably sweet to him. He felt a pleasant sense of power. 87

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He looked down on Archie as on a very little boy whose strings he pulled—as on a horse whom he had backed and bridled by sheer power of intelligence, and whom he might ride to glory or the grave at pleasure. Which was it to be? He lingered long, relishing the details of schemes that he was too idle to pursue. Poor cork upon a torrent, he tasted that night the sweets of omnipotence and brooded like a deity over the strands of that intrigue which was to shatter him before the summer waned.

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Chapter 8 A NOCTURNAL VISIT

Kirstie had many causes of distress. More and more as we grow old—and yet more and more as we grow old and are women, frozen by the fear of age—we come to rely on the voice as the single outlet of the soul. Only thus, in the curtailment of our means, can we relieve the straitened cry of the passion within us; only thus, in the bitter and sensitive shyness of advancing years, can we maintain relations with those vivacious figures of the young that still show before us and tend daily to become no more than the moving wall-paper of life. Talk is the last link, the last relation. But with the end of the conversation, when the voice stops and the bright face of the listener is turned away, solitude falls again on the bruised heart. Kirstie had lost her ‘cannie hour at een;’ she could no more wander with Archie, a ghost if you will but a happy ghost, in fields Elysian. And to her it was as if the whole world had fallen silent; to him, but an unremarked change of amusements. And she raged to know it. The effervescency of her passionate and irritable nature rose within her at times to bursting point. This is the price paid by age for unseasonable ardours of feeling. It must have been so for Kirstie at any time when the occasion chanced; but it so fell out that she was deprived of this delight in the hour when she had most need of it, when she had most to say, most to ask, and when she trembled to recognise her sovereignty not merely in abeyance but annulled. For, with the clairvoyance of a genuine love, she had pierced the mystery that had so long embarrassed Frank. She was conscious, even before it was carried out, even on that Sunday night when it began, of an invasion of her rights; and a voice told her the invader’s name. Since then, by arts, by accident, by small things observed, and by the general drift of Archie’s humour, she had passed beyond all possibility of doubt. With a sense of justice that Lord Hermiston might have envied, she had that day in church considered and admitted the attractions of the younger Kirstie; and with the profound humanity and sentimentality of her nature, she had recognised the coming of fate. Not thus would she have chosen. She had seen, in imagination, Archie wedded to some tall, powerful and rosy heroine of the golden 89

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locks, made in her own image, for whom she would have strewed the bride-bed with delight; and now she could have wept to see that ambition falsified. But the gods had pronounced, and her doom was otherwise. She lay tossing in bed that night, besieged with feverish thoughts. There were dangerous matters pending, a battle was toward, over the fate of which she hung in jealousy, sympathy, fear, and alternate loyalty and disloyalty to either side. Now she was re-incarnated in her niece and now in Archie. Now she saw, through the girl’s eyes, the youth on his knees to her, heard his persuasive instances with a deadly weakness, and received his over-mastering caresses. Anon, with a revulsion, her temper raged to see such utmost favours of fortune and love squandered on a brat of a girl, one of her own house, using her own name— a deadly ingredient—and that ‘didnae ken her ain mind and was as black’s your hat.’ Now she trembled lest her deity should plead in vain, loving the idea of success for him like a triumph of nature; anon, with returning loyalty to her own family and sex, she trembled for Kirstie and the credit of the Elliotts. And again she had a vision of herself, the day over for her old-world tales and local gossip, bidding farewell to her last link with life and brightness and love; and behind and beyond, she saw but the blank butt end where she must crawl to die. Had she then come to the lees? she, so great, so beautiful, with a heart as fresh as a girl’s and strong as womanhood? It could not be, and yet it was so; and for a moment her bed was horrible to her as the sides of the grave. And she looked forward over a waste of hours, and saw herself go on to rage, and tremble, and be softened, and rage again, until the day came and the labours of the day must be renewed. Suddenly she heard feet on the stairs, his feet, and soon after the sound of a window-sash flung open. She sat up with her heart beating. He had gone to his room alone, and he had not gone to bed. She might again have one of her night cracks; and at the entrancing prospect, a change came over her mind; with the approach of this hope of pleasure, all the baser metal became immediately obliterated from her thoughts. She rose, all woman, and all the best of woman, tender, pitiful, hating the wrong, loyal to her own sex—and all the weakest of that dear miscellany, nourishing, cherishing next her soft heart, voicelessly flattering, hopes that she would have died sooner than have acknowledged. She tore off her night cap, and her hair fell about her shoulders in profusion. Undying coquetry awoke. By the faint light of her nocturnal rush, she stood before the looking-glass, carried her shapely arms above her head, and gathered up the treasures of her tresses. She was 90

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never backward to admire herself; that kind of modesty was a stranger to her nature; and she paused, struck with a pleased wonder at the sight. ‘Ye daft auld wife!’ she said, answering a thought that was not; and she blushed with the innocent consciousness of a child. Hastily she did up the massive and shining coils, hastily donned a wrapper, and with the rush light in her hand, stole into the hall. Below stairs she heard the clock ticking the deliberate seconds, and Frank jingling with the decanters in the dining room. Aversion rose in her, bitter and momentary. ‘Nesty, tippling puggy!’ she thought; and the next moment she had knocked guardedly at Archie’s door and was bidden enter. Archie had been looking out into the ancient blackness, pierced here and there with a rayless star; taking the sweet air of the moors and the night into his bosom deeply; seeking, perhaps finding peace after the manner of the unhappy. He turned round as she came in, and showed her a pale face against the window frame. ‘Is that you, Kirstie?’ he asked. ‘Come in!’ ‘It’s unco late, my dear,’ said Kirstie, affecting unwillingness. ‘No, no,’ he answered, ‘not at all. Come in, if you want a crack. I am not sleepy, God knows!’ She advanced, took a chair by the toilet table and the candle, and set the rush light at her foot. Something—it might be in the comparative disorder of her dress, it might be the emotion that now welled in her bosom—had touched her with a wand of transformation and she seemed young with the youth of goddesses. ‘Mr. Airchie,’ she began, ‘what’s this that’s come to ye?’ ‘I am not aware of anything that has come,’ said Archie, and blushed, and repented bitterly that he had let her in. ‘Oh, my dear, that’ll no dae!’ said Kirstie. ‘It’s ill to blend the eyes of love. O, Mr Airchie, tak a thocht ere it’s ower late. Ye shouldnae be impatient o’ the braws o’ life, they’ll a’ come in their saison like the sun and the rain. Ye’re young yet, ye’ve mony cantie years afore ye. See and dinnae wreck yersel at the outset like sae mony ithers! Hae patience— thae telled me aye thot was the owercome o’ life—hae patience, there’s a braw day coming yet. Güde kens it never cam to me; and here I am wi’ nayther man nor bairn to ca’ my ain, wearying a’ folks wi’ my ill tongue, and you just the first, Mr. Airchie!’ ‘I have a difficulty in knowing what you mean,’ said Archie. ‘Weel, and I’ll tell ye,’ she said. ‘It’s just this, that I’m feared. I’m feared for ye, my dear. Remember your faither is a hard man, reaping where he hasnae sawed and gaithering where he hasnae strawed. It’s easy speakin’ but mind! Ye’ll have to look in the gurly face o’m, where 91

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it’s ill to look and vain to look for mercy. Ye mind me o’ a bonny ship pitten oot into the black and gowsty seas; ye’re a’ safe still, sittin’ quait and crackin’ wi’ Kirstie in your lown chalmer; but whaur will ye be the morn, and in whatten horror o’ the fearsome tempest, cryin on the hills to cover ye?’ ‘Why, Kirstie, you’re very enigmatical the night—and very eloquent,’ Archie put in. ‘And, my dear Mr. Airchie,’ she continued with a change of voice, ‘ye maunae think that I cannae sympathise wi’ ye. Ye maunae think that I havenae been young mysel. Langsyne, when I was a bit lassie, no twenty yet—’ She paused and sighed—‘clean and caller, wi’ a fit like the hinney bee,’ she continued. ‘I was aye big and buirdly, ye maun understand; a bonny figure o’ a woman, though I say it that suldnae— built to rare bairns—braw bairns they suld hae been and grand I would hae likit it!—But I was young, dear, wi’ the bonny glint o’ youth in my een, and little I dreamed I’d ever be tellin’ ye this, an auld, lanely, rudas wife! Weel, Mr. Airchie, there was a lad cam courtin’ me, as was but naetural. Mony had come before, and I would nane o’ them. But this yin had a tongue to wile the birds frae the lift and the bees frae the foxglove bells. Deary me, but it’s lang syne. Folk have deed sinsyne and been buried and are forgotten, and bairns been born and got merrit and got bairns o’ their ain. Sinsyne woods have been plantit, and have grawn up and are bonny trees, and the joes sit in their shadow, and sinsyne auld estates have changed hands, and there have been wars and rumours of wars on the face of the earth. And here I’m still—like an auld droopit craw—lookin on and craikin! But, Mr. Airchie, do ye no think that I have mind of it a’ still? I was dwalling then in my faither’s house; and it’s a curious thing that we were whiles trysted in the Deil’s Hags. And do ye no think that I have mind of the bonny simmer days, the lang miles o’ the bluid-red heather, the cryin’ o’ the whaups, and the lad and the lassie that was trysted? Do ye no think that I mind how the hilly sweetness ran about my hert? Ay, Mr. Airchie, I ken the way of it—fine do I ken the way—how the grace o’ God takes them, like Paul o’ Tarsus, when they think o’t least, and drives the pair o’ them into a land which is like a dream, and the warld and the folks in’t are nae mair than clouds to the puir lassie, and Heeven nae mair than windlestraes, if she can but pleesure him! until Tam deed—that was my story,’ she broke off to say, ‘he deed, and I wasnae at the buryin’. But while he was here, I could take care o’ mysel’. And can yon puir lassie?’ Kirstie, her eyes shining with unshed tears, stretched out her hand towards him appealingly; the bright and the dull gold of her hair 92

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flashed and smouldered in the coils behind her comely head, like the rays of an eternal youth; the pure colour had risen in her face; and Archie was abashed alike by her beauty and her story. He came towards her slowly from the window, took up her hand in his and kissed it. ‘Kirstie,’ he said hoarsely, ‘you have misjudged me sorely. I have always thought of her, I wouldnae harm her for the universe, my woman!’ ‘Eh, lad, and that’s easy sayin,’ cried Kirstie, ‘but it’s nane sae easy doin’! Man, do ye no comprehend that it’s God’s wull we should be blendit and glamoured, and have nae command over our ain members at a time like that? My bairn,’ she cried still holding his hand, ‘think o’ the puir lass! have pity upon her, Airchie! and O be wise for twa! Think o’ the risk she rins. I have seen ye, and what’s to prevent ithers? I saw ye ance in the Hags, in my ain howf, and I was wae to see ye there— in pairt for the omen for I think there’s a weird on the place—and in pairt for puir nakit envy and bitterness o’ hairt. It’s strange ye should forgather there tae! God! but yon puir, thrawn, auld Covenanter’s seen a heap o’ human natur since he lookit his last on the musket barrels, if he never saw nane afore,’ she added with a kind of wonder in her eyes. ‘I swear by my honour I have done her no wrong,’ said Archie. ‘I swear by my honour and the redemption of my soul that there shall none be done her. I have heard of this before. I have been foolish, Kirstie, not unkind and above all not base.’ ‘There’s my bairn!’ said Kirstie rising. ‘I’ll can trust ye noo, I’ll can gang to my bed wi’ an easy hairt.’ And then she saw in a flash how barren had been her triumph. Archie had promised to spare the girl, and he would keep it; but who had promised to spare Archie? What was to be the end of it? Over a maze of difficulties she glanced, and saw, at the end of every passage, the flinty countenance of Hermiston. And a kind of horror fell upon her at what she had done. She wore a tragic mask. ‘Airchie, the Lord peety you, dear, and peety me! I have buildit on this foundation—’ laying her hand heavily on his shoulder—‘and buildit hie, and pit my heart in the buildin’ of it. If the hale hypothec were to fa’, I think, laddie, I would dee! Excüse a daft wife that loves ye, and that kenned your mither. And for His name’s sake keep yersel’ frae inordinate desires; haud your heart in baith your hands, carry it canny and laigh; dinnae send it up like a bairn’s kite into the collie-shangie o’ the wunds! Mind, Maister Airchie dear, that this life’s a’ disappointment, and a mouthfu’ o’ mools is the appointed end.’ ‘Ay, but Kirstie, my woman, you’re asking me ower much at last,’ said Archie profoundly moved and lapsing into the broad Scots. ‘Ye’re 93

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asking what nae man can grant ye, what only the Lord of Heaven can grant ye if He see fit. Ay! And can even He? I can promise ye what I shall do, and you can depend on that. But how I shall feel—my woman, that is long past thinking of!’ They were both standing by now opposite each other. The face of Archie wore the wretched semblance of a smile; hers was convulsed for a moment. ‘Promise me ae thing,’ she cried in a sharp voice. ‘Promise me ye’ll never do naething without telling me.’ ‘No, Kirstie, I cannae promise ye that,’ he replied. ‘I have promised enough, God kens!’ ‘May the blessing of God lift and rest upon ye, dear!’ she said. ‘God bless ye, my old friend,’ said he.

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Chapter 9 AT THE WEAVER’S STONE

It was late in the afternoon when Archie drew near by the hill path to the Praying Weaver’s stone. The Hags were in shadow. But still, through the gate of the Slap, the sun shot a last arrow, which sped far and straight across the surface of the moss, here and there touching and shining on a tussock and lighted at length on the gravestone and the small figure awaiting him there. The emptiness and solitude of the great moors seemed to be concentered there, and Kirstie pointed out by that figure of sunshine for the only inhabitant. His first sight of her was thus excruciatingly sad, like a glimpse of a world from which all light, comfort and society were on the point of vanishing. And the next moment, when she had turned her face to him and the quick smile had enlightened it, the whole face of nature smiled upon him in her smile of welcome. Archie’s slow pace was quickened; his legs hasted to her though his heart was hanging back. The girl, upon her side, drew herself together slowly and stood up, expectant; she was all languor, her face was gone white; her arms ached for him, her soul was on tip-toes. But he deceived her, pausing a few steps away, not less white than herself, and holding up his hand with a gesture of denial. ‘No, Christina, not today,’ he said. ‘Today I have to talk to you seriously. Sit ye down, please, there where you were. Please!’ he repeated. The revulsion of feeling in Christina’s heart was violent. To have longed and waited these many hours for him, rehearsing her endearments—to have seen him at last come—to have been ready there, breathless, wholly passive, his to do what he would with—and suddenly to have found herself confronted with a grayfaced, harsh school-master—it was too rude a shock. She could have wept but pride witheld her. She sat down on the stone, from which she had arisen, part with the instinct of obedience, part as though she had been thrust there. What was this? why was she rejected? Had she ceased to please? She stood here offering her wares, and he would none of them! And yet they were all his! His to take and keep, not his to refuse though! In her quick petulant nature, a moment 95

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ago on fire with hope, thwarted love and wounded vanity wrought. The schoolmaster that there is in all men, to the despair of all girls and most women, was now completely in possession of Archie. He had passed a night of sermons, a day of reflection; he had come wound up to do his duty; and the set mouth, which in him only betrayed the effort of his will, to her seemed the expression of an averted heart. It was the same with his constrained voice and embarrassed utterance; and if so—if it was all over—the pang of the thought took away from her the power of thinking. He stood before her some way off. ‘Kirstie, there’s been too much of this. We’ve seen too much of each other.’ She looked up quickly and her eyes contracted. ‘There’s no good ever comes of these secret meetings. They’re not frank, not honest truly, and I ought to have seen it. People have begun to talk; and it’s not right of me. Do you see?’ ‘I see somebody will have been talking to ye,’ she said sullenly. ‘They have, more than one of them,’ replied Archie. ‘And whae were they?’ she cried. ‘And what kind o’ love do ye ca’ that, that’s ready to gang round like a whirligig at folk talking? Do ye think they havenae talked to me?’ ‘Have they indeed?’ said Archie, with a quick breath. ‘That is what I feared. Who were they? Who has dared . . . ?’ Archie was on the point of losing his temper. As a matter of fact, not any one had talked to Christina on the matter; and she strenuously repeated her own first question in a panic of self-defence. ‘Ah, well! what does it matter?’ he said. ‘They were good folk that wished well to us, and the great affair is that there are people talking. My dear girl, we have to be wise. We must not wreck our lives at the outset. They may be long and happy yet, and we must see to it, Kirstie, like God’s rational creatures and not like fool children. There is one thing we must see to before all. You’re worth waiting for, Kirstie! worth waiting for a generation; it would be enough reward—’ And here he remembered the school-master again, and very unwisely took to following wisdom. ‘The first thing that we must see to, is that there shall be no scandal about for my father’s sake. That would ruin all; do ye no see that?’ Kirstie was a little pleased, there had been some show of warmth of sentiment in what Archie had said last. But the dull irritation still persisted in her bosom; with the aboriginal instinct, having suffered herself, she wished to make Archie suffer. And besides there had come out the word she had always feared to 96

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hear from his lips, the name of his father. It is not to be supposed that, during so many days with a love avowed between them, some reference had not been made to their conjoint future. It had in fact been often touched upon, and from the first had been the sore point. Kirstie had wilfully closed the eye of thought; she would not argue even with herself; gallant, desperate little heart, she had accepted the command of that supreme attraction like the call of fate and marched blindfold on her doom. But Archie, with his masculine sense of responsibility, must reason; he must dwell on some future good, when the present good was all in all to Kirstie; he must talk—and talk lamely, as necessity drove him—of what was to be. Again and again he had touched on marriage; again and again been driven back into indistinctness by a memory of Lord Hermiston. And Kirstie had been swift to understand and quick to choke down and smother the understanding; swift to leap up in flame at a mention of that hope, which spoke volumes to her vanity and her love, that she might one day be my lady Hermiston; swift, also, to recognise in his stumbling or throttled utterance, the death-knell of these expectations, and constant, poor girl! in her large-minded madness, to go on and to reck nothing of the future. But these unfinished references, these blinks in which his heart spoke and his memory and reason rose up to silence it before the words were well uttered, gave her unqualifiable agony. She was raised up and dashed down again bleeding. The recurrence of the subject forced her, for however short a time, to open her eyes on what she did not wish to see; and it had invariably ended in another disappointment. So now again, at the mere wind of its coming, at the mere mention of his father’s name—who might seem indeed to have accompanied them in their whole moorland courtship, an awful figure in a wig with an ironical and bitter smile, present to guilty consciousness—she fled from it head down. ‘Ye havenae told me yet,’ she said. ‘Who was it spoke?’ ‘Your aunt for one,’ said Archie. ‘Auntie Kirstie?’ she cried. ‘And what do I care for my Auntie Kirstie?’ ‘She cares a great deal for her niece,’ replied Archie in kind reproof. ‘Troth, and it’s the first I’ve heard of it,’ retorted the girl. ‘The question here is not who it is, but what they say, what they have noticed,’ pursued the lucid schoolmaster. ‘That is what we have to think of in self-defence.’ ‘Auntie Kirstie indeed! A bitter, thrawn auld maid that’s fomented trouble in the country before I was born, and will be doing it still, I daur say, when I’m deed! It’s in her nature; it’s as naetural for her as it’s 97

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for a sheep to eat.’ ‘Pardon me, Kirstie, she was not the only one,’ interposed Archie. ‘I had two warnings, two sermons, last night, both most kind and considerate. Had you been there, I promise you you would have grat, my dear! And they opened my eyes. I saw we were going a wrong way.’ ‘Who was the other one?’ Kirstie demanded. By this time Archie was in the condition of a hunted beast. He had come, braced and resolute; he was to trace out a line of conduct for the pair of them in a few cold, convincing sentences; he had now been there some time, and he was still staggering round the outworks and undergoing what he felt to be a savage cross-examination. ‘Mr. Frank!’ she cried. ‘What nex’ I would like to ken?’ ‘He spoke most kindly and truly.’ ‘What like did he say?’ ‘I am not going to tell you, you have nothing to do with that,’ cried Archie, startled to find he had admitted so much. ‘Oh, I have naething to do with it!’ she repeated springing to her feet. ‘A’body at Hermiston’s free to pass their opinions upon me, but I have naething to do wi’ it! Was this at prayers like? Did ye ca’ the grieve into the consultation? Little wonder if a’body’s talking, when ye make a’ body yer confidants! But as you say, Mr. Weir—most kindly, most considerately, most true, I’m sure—I have naething to do with it. And I think I’ll better be going. I’ll be wishing you good evening, Mr. Weir.’ And she made him a stately curtsey, shaking as she did so from head to foot, with the barren ecstasy of temper. Poor Archie stood dumbfounded. She had moved some steps away from him before he recovered the gift of articulate speech. ‘Kirstie!’ he cried. ‘O, Kirstie, woman!’ There was in his voice a ring of appeal, a clang of mere astonishment that showed the schoolmaster was vanquished. She turned round on him. ‘What do ye Kirstie me for?’ she retorted. ‘What have ye to do wi’ me? Gang to your ain freends and deeve them!’ He could only repeat the appealing ‘Kirstie.’ ‘Kirstie, indeed,’ cried the girl, her eyes blazing in her white face. ‘My name is Miss Christina Elliott, I would have ye to ken, and I daur ye to ca’ me out of it. If I cannae get love, I’ll have respect, Mr. Weir. I’m come of decent people, and I’ll have respect. What have I done that ye should lightly me? what have I done? what have I done? Oh, what have I done?’ and her voice rose upon the third repetition. ‘I thocht— I thocht—I thocht I was sae happy!’ and the first sob broke from her like the paroxysm of some mortal sickness. 98

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Archie ran to her. He took the poor child in his arms, and she nestled to his breast as to a mother’s, and clasped him in hands that were strong like vices. He felt her whole body commoved by the throes of distress, and had pity upon her beyond speech. Pity, and at the same time a bewildered fear of this explosive engine in his arms, whose works he did not understand, and yet had been tampering with. There rose from before him the curtains of boyhood and he saw for the first time the ambiguous face of woman as she is. In vain he looked back over the interview; he saw not where he had offended. It seemed unprovoked, a wilful convulsion of brute nature.

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Appendices 1. sidney colvin’s editorial note

In preparing Stevenson’s unfinished manuscript of Weir of Hermiston for publication his friend and literary editor Sidney Colvin (1845– 1927) wrote an editorial note for its first readers, providing information about the circumstances of its composition, the probable course of the plot, and the historical and geographical background, as well as expressing his personal sorrow for Stevenson’s untimely death and his high opinion of the novel itself. This was first published as ‘A Note on “Weir of Hermiston” ’ in the May 1896 issue of Cosmopolis (323–33) following the serialisation of the novel in the previous four issues of that magazine, and was subsequently slightly revised for inclusion in a volume publication. Colvin’s note, which provides a great deal of helpful information gleaned from Stevenson’s own contemporaries and the reminiscences and views of his surviving family and friends, is reprinted here from the first British edition of Weir of Hermiston, published by Chatto & Windus in May 1896, 267–86. With the words last printed, ‘a wilful convulsion of brute nature,’ the romance of Weir of Hermiston breaks off. They were dictated, I believe, on the very morning of the writer’s sudden seizure and death. Weir of Hermiston thus remains in the work of Stevenson what Edwin Drood is in the work of Dickens or Denis Duval in that of Thackeray: or rather it remains relatively more, for if each of those fragments holds an honourable place among its author’s writings, among Stevenson’s the fragment of Weir holds certainly the highest. Readers may be divided in opinion on the question whether they would or they would not wish to hear more of the intended course of the story and destinies of the characters. To some, silence may seem best, and that the mind should be left to its own conjectures as to the sequel, with the help of such indications as the text affords. I confess that this is the view which has my sympathy. But since others, and those almost certainly a majority, are anxious to be told all they can, and since editors and publishers join in the request, I can scarce do 101

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otherwise than comply. The intended argument, then, so far as it was known at the time of the writer’s death to his step-daughter and devoted amanuensis, Mrs. Strong, was nearly as follows:— Archie persists in his good resolution of avoiding further conduct compromising to young Kirstie’s good name. Taking advantage of the situation thus created, and of the girl’s unhappiness and wounded vanity, Frank Innes pursues his purpose of seduction; and Kirstie, though still caring for Archie in her heart, allows herself to become Frank’s victim. Old Kirstie is the first to perceive something amiss with her, and believing Archie to be the culprit, accuses him, thus making him aware for the first time that mischief has happened. He does not at once deny the charge, but seeks out and questions young Kirstie, who confesses the truth to him; and he, still loving her, promises to protect and defend her in her trouble. He then has an interview with Frank Innes on the moor, which ends in a quarrel, and in Archie killing Frank beside the Weaver’s Stone. Meanwhile the Four Black Brothers, having become aware of their sister’s betrayal, are bent on vengeance against Archie as her supposed seducer. They are about to close in upon him with this purpose when he is arrested by the officers of the law for the murder of Frank. He is tried before his own father, the Lord JusticeClerk, found guilty, and condemned to death. Meanwhile the elder Kirstie, having discovered from the girl how matters really stand, informs her nephews of the truth; and they, in a great revulsion of feeling in Archie’s favour, determine on an action after the ancient manner of their house. They gather a following, and after a great fight break the prison where Archie lies confined, and rescue him. He and young Kirstie thereafter escape to America. But the ordeal of taking part in the trial of his own son has been too much for the Lord Justice-Clerk, who dies of the shock. ‘I do not know,’ adds the amanuensis, ‘what becomes of old Kirstie, but that character grew and strengthened so in the writing that I am sure he had some dramatic destiny for her.’ The plan of every imaginative work is subject, of course, to change under the artist’s hand as he carries it out; and not merely the character of the elder Kirstie, but other elements of the design no less, might well have deviated from the lines originally traced. It seems certain, however, that the next stage in the relations of Archie and the younger Kirstie would have been as above foreshadowed; and this conception of the lover’s unconventional chivalry and unshaken devotion to his mistress after her fault is very characteristic of the writer’s mind. The 102

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vengeance to be taken on the seducer beside the Weaver’s Stone is prepared for in the first words of the Introduction; while the situation and fate of the judge, confronting like a Brutus, but unable to survive, the duty of sending his own son to the gallows, seem clearly to have been destined to furnish the climax and essential tragedy of the tale. How this last circumstance was to have been brought about, within the limits of legal usage and possibility, seems hard to conjecture; but it was a point to which the author had evidently given careful consideration. Mrs. Strong says simply that the Lord Justice-Clerk, like an old Roman, condemns his son to death; but I am assured on the best legal authority of Scotland that no judge, however powerful either by character or office, could have insisted on presiding at the trial of a near kinsman of his own. The Lord Justice-Clerk was head of the criminal justiciary of the country; he might have insisted on his right of being present on the bench when his son was tried: but he would never have been allowed to preside or to pass sentence. Now in a letter of Stevenson’s to Mr. Baxter, of October 1892, I find him asking for materials in terms which seem to indicate that he knew this quite well:—‘I wish Pitcairn’s “Criminal Trials,” quam primum. Also an absolutely correct text of the Scots judiciary oath. Also, in case Pitcairn does not come down late enough, I wish as full a report as possible of a Scots murder trial between 1790–1820. Understand the fullest possible. Is there any book which would guide me to the following facts? The Justice-Clerk tries some people capitally on circuit. Certain evidence cropping up, the charge is transferred to the Justice-Clerk’s own son. Of course in the next trial the Justice-Clerk is excluded, and the case is called before the Lord Justice-General. Where would this trial have to be? I fear in Edinburgh, which would not suit my view. Could it be again at the circuit town?’ The point was referred to a quondam fellow-member with Stevenson of the Edinburgh Speculative Society, Mr. Graham Murray, the present Solicitor-General for Scotland; whose reply was to the effect that there would be no difficulty in making the new trial take place at the circuit town; that it would have to be held there in spring or autumn, before two Lords of Justiciary; and that the Lord Justice-General would have nothing to do with it, this title being at the date in question only a nominal one held by a layman (which is no longer the case). On this Stevenson writes, ‘Graham Murray’s note re the venue was highly satisfactory, and did me all the good in the world.’ The terms of his inquiry seem to imply that he intended other persons, before Archie, to have fallen first under suspicion of the murder; and also—doubtless in order to make the rescue by the Black Brothers 103

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possible—that he wanted Archie to be imprisoned not in Edinburgh but in the circuit town. But they do not show how he meant to get over the main difficulty, which at the same time he fully recognises. Can it have been that Lord Hermiston’s part was to have been limited to presiding at the first trial, where the evidence incriminating Archie was unexpectedly brought forward, and to directing that the law should take its course? Whether the final escape and union of Archie and Christina would have proved equally essential to the plot may perhaps to some readers seem questionable. They may rather feel that a tragic destiny is foreshadowed from the beginning for all concerned, and is inherent in the very conditions of the tale. But on this point, and other matters of general criticism connected with it, I find an interesting discussion by the author himself in his correspondence. Writing to Mr. J. M. Barrie, under date November 1, 1892, and criticising that author’s famous story of The Little Minister, Stevenson says:— ‘Your descriptions of your dealings with Lord Rintoul are frightfully unconscientious. . . . The Little Minister ought to have ended badly; we all know it did, and we are infinitely grateful to you for the grace and good feeling with which you have lied about it. If you had told the truth, I for one could never have forgiven you. As you had conceived and written the earlier parts, the truth about the end, though indisputably true to fact, would have been a lie, or what is worse, a discord, in art. If you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly from the beginning. Now, your book began to end well. You let yourself fall in love with, and fondle, and smile at your puppets. Once you had done that, your honour was committed—at the cost of truth to life you were bound to save them. It is the blot on Richard Feverel for instance, that it begins to end well; and then tricks you and ends ill. But in this case, there is worse behind, for the ill ending does not inherently issue from the plot—the story had, in fact, ended well after the great last interview between Richard and Lucy—and the blind, illogical bullet which smashes all has no more to do between the boards than a fly has to do with a room into whose open window it comes buzzing. It might have so happened; it needed not; and unless needs must, we have no right to pain our readers. I have had a heavy case of conscience of the same kind about my Braxfield story. Braxfield— only his name is Hermiston—has a son who is condemned to death; plainly there is a fine tempting fitness about this—and I meant he was to hang. But on considering my minor characters, I saw there were five people who would—in a sense, who must—break prison and attempt 104

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his rescue. They are capable hardy folks too, who might very well succeed. Why should they not then? Why should not young Hermiston escape clear out of the country? and be happy, if he could, with his— but soft! I will not betray my secret nor my heroine. . . .’ To pass, now, from the question how the story would have ended to the question how it originated and grew in the writer’s mind. The character of the hero, Weir of Hermiston, is avowedly suggested by the historical personality of Robert Macqueen, Lord Braxfield. This famous judge has been for generations the subject of a hundred Edinburgh tales and anecdotes. Readers of Stevenson’s essay on the Raeburn exhibition, in Virginibus Puerisque, will remember how he is fascinated by Raeburn’s portrait of Braxfield, even as Lockhart had been fascinated by a different portrait of the same worthy sixty years before (see Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk); nor did his interest in the character diminish in later life. Again, the case of a judge involved by the exigencies of his office in a strong conflict between public duty and private interest or affection, was one which had always attracted and exercised Stevenson’s imagination. In the days when he and Mr. Henley were collaborating with a view to the stage, Mr. Henley once proposed a plot founded on the story of Mr. Justice Harbottle in Sheridan Le Fanu’s In a Glass Darkly, in which the wicked judge goes headlong per fas et nefas to his object of getting the husband of his mistress hanged. Some time later Stevenson and his wife together wrote a play called The Hanging Judge. In this, the title character is tempted for the first time in his life to tamper with the course of justice, in order to shield his wife from persecution by a former husband who reappears after being supposed dead. Bulwer’s novel of Paul Clifford, with its final situation of the worldly-minded judge, Sir William Brandon, learning that the highwayman whom he is in the act of sentencing is his own son, and dying of the knowledge, was also well known to Stevenson, and no doubt counted for something in the suggestion of the present story. Once more, the difficulties often attending the relation of father and son in actual life had pressed heavily on Stevenson’s mind and conscience from the days of his youth, when in obeying the law of his own nature he had been constrained to disappoint, distress, and for a time to be much misunderstood by, a father whom he justly loved and admired with all his heart. Difficulties of this kind he had already handled in a lighter vein once or twice in fiction—as for instance in the Story of a Lie and in The Wrecker—before he grappled with them in the acute and tragic phase in which they occur in the present story. 105

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These three elements, then, the interest of the historical personality of Lord Braxfield, the problems and emotions arising from a violent conflict between duty and nature in a judge, and the difficulties due to incompatibility and misunderstanding between father and son, lie at the foundations of the present story. To touch on minor matters, it is perhaps worth notice, as Mr. Henley reminds me, that the name of Weir had from of old a special significance for Stevenson’s imagination, from the traditional fame in Edinburgh of Major Weir, burned as a warlock, together with his sister, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity. Another name, that of the episodical personage of Mr. Torrance the minister, is borrowed direct from life, as indeed are the whole figure and its surroundings—kirkyard, kirk, and manse— down even to the black thread mittens: witness the following passage from a letter of the early seventies:—‘I’ve been to church and am not depressed—a great step. It was at that beautiful church’ [of Glencorse in the Pentlands, three miles from his father’s country house at Swanston]. ‘It is a little cruciform place, with a steep slate roof. The small kirkyard is full of old grave-stones; one of a Frenchman from Dunkerque, I suppose he died prisoner in the military prison hard by. And one, the most pathetic memorial I ever saw: a poor school-slate, in a wooden frame, with the inscription cut into it evidently by the father’s own hand. In church, old Mr. Torrance preached, over eighty and a relic of times forgotten, with his black thread gloves and mild old face.’ A side hint for a particular trait in the character of Mrs. Weir we can trace in some family traditions concerning the writer’s own grandmother, who is reported to have valued piety much more than efficiency in her domestic servants. The other women characters seem, so far at least as I know, to have been pure creation, and especially that new and admirable incarnation of the eternal feminine in the elder Kirstie. The little that he says about her himself is in a letter written a few days before his death to Mr. Gosse. The allusions are to the various moods and attitudes of people in regard to middle age, and are suggested by Mr. Gosse’s volume of poems, In Russet and Silver. ‘It seems rather funny,’ he writes, ‘that this matter should come up just now, as I am at present engaged in treating a severe case of middle age in one of my stories, The Justice-Clerk. The case is that of a woman, and I think I am doing her justice. You will be interested, I believe, to see the difference in our treatments. Secreta Vitæ [the title of one of Mr. Gosse’s poems] comes nearer to the case of my poor Kirstie.’ From the wonderful midnight scene between her and Archie, we may judge what we have lost in those later scenes where she was to have taxed him with the fault that 106

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was not his—to have presently learned his innocence from the lips of his supposed victim—to have then vindicated him to her kinsmen and fired them to the action of his rescue. The scene of the prison-breaking here planned by Stevenson would have gained interest (as will already have occurred to readers) from comparison with the two famous precedents in Scott, the Porteous mob and the breaking of Portanferry jail. The best account of Stevenson’s methods of imaginative work is in the following sentences from a letter of his own to Mr. W. Craibe Angus of Glasgow:—‘I am still “a slow study,” and sit for a long while silent on my eggs. Unconscious thought, there is the only method: macerate your subject, let it boil slow, then take the lid off and look in—and there your stuff is—good or bad.’ The several elements above noted having been left to work for many years in his mind, it was in the autumn of 1892 that he was moved to ‘take the lid off and look in,’—under the influence, it would seem, of a special and overmastering wave of that feeling for the romance of Scottish scenery and character which was at all times so strong in him, and which his exile did so much to intensify. I quote again from his letter to Mr. Barrie on November 1st in that year:—‘It is a singular thing that I should live here in the South Seas under conditions so new and so striking, and yet my imagination so continually inhabit the cold old huddle of grey hills from which we come. I have finished David Balfour, I have another book on the stocks, The Young Chevalier, which is to be part in France and part in Scotland, and to deal with Prince Charlie about the year 1749; and now what have I done but begun a third, which is to be all moorland together, and is to have for a centrepiece a figure that I think you will appreciate—that of the immortal Braxfield. Braxfield himself is my grand premier—or since you are so much involved in the British drama, let me say my heavy lead.’ Writing to me at the same date he makes the same announcement more briefly, with a list of the characters and an indication of the scene and date of the story. To Mr. Baxter he writes a month later, ‘I have a novel on the stocks to be called The Justice-Clerk. It is pretty Scotch; the grand premier is taken from Braxfield (O, by the by, send me Cockburn’s Memorials), and some of the story is, well, queer. The heroine is seduced by one man, and finally disappears with the other man who shot him. . . . Mind you, I expect The Justice-Clerk to be my masterpiece. My Braxfield is already a thing of beauty and a joy for ever, and so far as he has gone far my best character.’ From the last extract it appears that he had already at this date drafted some of the earlier chapters of the book. He also about the same time composed the dedica107

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tion to his wife, who found it pinned to her bed-curtains one morning on awaking. It was always his habit to keep several books in progress at the same time, turning from one to another as the fancy took him, and finding relief in the change of labour; and for many months after the date of this letter, first illness,—then a voyage to Auckland,—then work on the Ebb-Tide, on a new tale called St. Ives, which was begun during an attack of influenza, and on his projected book of family history,—prevented his making any continuous progress with Weir. In August 1893 he says he has been recasting the beginning. A year later, still only the first four or five chapters had been drafted. Then, in the last weeks of his life, he attacked the task again, in a sudden heat of inspiration, and worked at it ardently and without interruption until the end came. No wonder if during these weeks he was sometimes aware of a tension of the spirit difficult to sustain. ‘How can I keep this pitch?’ he is reported to have said after finishing one of the chapters; and all the world knows how that frail organism in fact betrayed him in mid effort. The greatness of the loss to his country’s letters can for the first time be fully measured from the foregoing pages. There remains one more point to be mentioned, as to the speech and manners of the Hanging Judge himself. That these are not a whit exaggerated, in comparison with what is recorded of his historic prototype, Lord Braxfield, is certain. The locus classicus in regard to this personage is in Lord Cockburn’s Memorials of his Time. ‘Strong built and dark, with rough eyebrows, powerful eyes, threatening lips, and a low growling voice, he was like a formidable blacksmith. His accent and dialect were exaggerated Scotch; his language, like his thoughts, short, strong, and conclusive. Illiterate and without any taste for any refined enjoyment, strength of understanding, which gave him power without cultivation, only encouraged him to a more contemptuous disdain of all natures less coarse than his own. It may be doubted if he was ever so much in his element as when tauntingly repelling the last despairing claim of a wretched culprit, and sending him to Botany Bay or the gallows with an insulting jest. Yet this was not from cruelty, for which he was too strong and too jovial, but from cherished coarseness.’ Readers, nevertheless, who are at all acquainted with the social history of Scotland will hardly have failed to make the observation that Braxfield’s is an extreme case of eighteenth-century manners, as he himself was an eighteenth-century personage (he died in 1799, in his seventy-eighth year); and that for the date in which the story is cast (1814) such manners are somewhat of an anachronism. During the generation contemporary with the French Revolution and 108

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the Napoleonic wars—or to put it another way, the generation that elapsed between the days when Scott roamed the country as a High School and University student and those when he settled in the fulness of fame and prosperity at Abbotsford,—or again (the allusions will appeal to readers of the admirable Galt) during the interval between the first and the last provostry of Bailie Pawkie in the borough of Gudetown, or between the earlier and the final ministrations of Mr. Balwhidder in the parish of Dalmailing,—during this period a great softening had taken place in Scottish manners generally, and in those of the Bar and Bench not least. ‘Since the death of Lord Justice-Clerk Macqueen of Braxfield,’ says Lockhart, writing about 1817, ‘the whole exterior of judicial deportment has been quite altered.’ A similar criticism may probably hold good on the picture of border life contained in the chapter concerning the Four Black Brothers of Cauldstaneslap, namely, that it rather suggests the ways of an earlier generation; nor have I any clue to the reasons which led Stevenson to choose this particular date, in the year preceding Waterloo, for a story which, in regard to some of its features at least, might seem more naturally placed some twenty-five or thirty years before. If the reader seeks, further, to know whether the scenery of Hermiston can be identified with any one special place familiar to the writer’s early experience, the answer, I think, must be in the negative. Rather it is distilled from a number of different haunts and associations among the moorlands of southern Scotland. In the dedication and in a letter to me he indicates the Lammermuirs as the scene of his tragedy. And Mrs. Stevenson (his mother) tells me that she thinks he was inspired by recollections of a visit paid in boyhood to an uncle living at a remote farmhouse in that district called Overshiels, in the parish of Stow. But though he may have thought of the Lammermuirs in the first instance, we have already found him drawing his description of the kirk and manse from another haunt of his youth, namely, Glencorse in the Pentlands; while passages in chapters v. and viii. point explicitly to a third district, that is, Upper Tweeddale, with the country stretching thence towards the wells of Clyde. With this country also holiday rides and excursions from Peebles had made him familiar as a boy: and this seems certainly the most natural scene of the story, if only from its proximity to the proper home of the Elliotts, which of course is in the heart of the Border, especially Teviotdale and Ettrick. Some of the geographical names mentioned are clearly not meant to furnish literal indications. The Spango, for instance, is a water running, I believe, not into the Tweed but into the Nith, and Crossmichael as the name of a 109

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town is borrowed from Galloway. But it is with the general and essential that the artist deals, and questions of strict historical perspective or local definition are beside the mark in considering his work. Nor will any reader expect, or be grateful for, comment in this place on matters which are more properly to the point—on the seizing and penetrating power of the author’s ripened art as exhibited in the foregoing pages, the wide range of character and emotion over which he sweeps with so assured a hand, his vital poetry of vision and magic of presentment. Surely no son of Scotland has died leaving with his last breath a worthier tribute to the land he loved. S. C. 2. the plot development of weir of hermiston

When a great novelist dies leaving his current work uncompleted, editors and readers are naturally tempted to turn detective to finish the story, tooth-combing the work as it stands for clues to plot resolution and evidencing supporting material from the recollections of the author’s friends, from his letters, and from earlier drafts of the work where these have survived. However, as Sidney Colvin pointed out in providing the readers of the first edition of 1896 with Isobel Strong’s recollections of what was to have been the development of Stevenson’s novel: ‘The plan of every imaginative work is subject, of course, to change under the artist’s hand as he carries it out’ (Appendix 1, 102). It is likely that at the time of his death even important details of the plot were still unclear to Stevenson himself, and that only as he wrote would they have been finally decided. The possible ending of Weir of Hermiston is most fruitfully considered, therefore, as part of an ongoing process of plot development taking place during composition— not as something finally decided but as part of a process abruptly cut short in December 1894. Something of this process can be seen by analysing the surviving drafts. Certain key elements seem to have remained constant, namely the seduction of young Kirstie by Innes, Archie’s murdering him in the Deil’s Hags, and the severe shock endured by Lord Hermiston as a result of his son’s action. Composition appears to have begun in October 1892, from Stevenson’s letter to Colvin of [29 October 1892] (Letters 7: 408–9), at which time Archie was to be hanged for his crime. But by the time Stevenson wrote to J. M. Barrie on 1 November that year he had decided that his hero should instead be rescued by five ‘capable 110

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hardy folks’ (presumably the Four Black Brothers and the elder Kirstie Elliott), and subsequently escape the country with the younger Kirstie (Letters 7: 414). A month later he told Baxter pithily, ‘The heroine is seduced by one man and finally disappears with the other man who shot him’ (Letters 7: 441). In none of the surviving manuscript drafts of the introductory section of the novel is young Hermiston’s fate mentioned as execution, and in one (Morgan, MA 1419, f. 3), as in the final manuscript, he has specifically ‘vanished from men’s knowledge’.1 The Edinburgh scenes seem to have expanded and increased in importance during the process of composition. A torn leaf of early notes (in which Stevenson toys, for instance, with the names Adam Grier for Lord Hermiston and Tabitha for the elder Kirstie) includes a list of chapter titles relating to locations about Hermiston and Cauldstaneslap but no mention of ‘In the Matter of the Hanging of Duncan Jopp’ (Beinecke 45, 1013). The first three chapter titles of a later list, in Morgan, MA 1419, f. 1, are ‘Life and Death of Mrs Weir’, ‘The Hanging of Duncan Jopp’ and ‘The Moors in Winter’, with no mention of either ‘Father and Son’ or ‘Opinions of the Bench’. The narrative contained in ‘Father and Son’, however, was included originally at the beginning of ‘In the Matter of the Hanging of Duncan Jopp’, Stevenson’s separation of it into a fresh chapter coming only after his initial dictation of the final manuscript to Belle Strong. The new title of ‘Father and Son’ in Stevenson’s hand replaces the deleted title on page 28 of the manuscript and he has had to squeeze the heading ‘In the Matter of the Hanging of Duncan Jopp’ into the margin of page 38. The material forming the chapter entitled ‘Opinions of the Bench’, by contrast, was probably not part of Stevenson’s early plot sequence at all, since Morgan, MA 1419, f. 36r has the heading ‘Chapter iv’ and a sentence describing a winter sunset in Hermiston valley following immediately after Archie has promised his father that he will go to Hermiston. Archie’s Edinburgh encounter with Dr James Gregory seems also to have been a later development, for it is missing from its place in several versions of the narrative in Morgan, MA 1419, which proceed straight from Archie’s misgivings after Jopp’s execution and the Speculative Society meeting to his return home on the evening of the next day to be confronted by his displeased father (see ff. 28, 29, 32). One final change of mind in the Edinburgh sequences of Weir of Hermiston may be deduced from a single draft manuscript leaf which continues the ‘Opinions of the Bench’ chapter beyond its conclusion in the final manuscript, with Archie requesting Glenalmond and Glenkindie to make his apology to his father’s colleagues on the bench and Glenal111

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mond offering to draw up a written memorandum of it and to express to Hermiston his sense of the handsome way in which Archie has retracted his false step (Morgan, MA 993, f. 1). Progressive development may also be detected in the Borders scenes of Weir of Hermiston, with Stevenson sometimes adding new scenes and sometimes deleting those which achieve his objectives clumsily or imperfectly or which, on further consideration, he must have deemed artistically redundant. It seems that the ‘Winter on the Moors’ chapter, after describing the house at Hermiston, had once proceeded to give an account of Archie’s manner of life there. In view of his later shooting of Frank Innes, for instance, it seems significant that the ‘opponent of capital punishment came, not without reluctance, into the habit of carrying a gun’ and his isolation on the moors, with its strange hallucinatory quality, making the sheep seem ‘something spectral’ amid his ‘moments of delight, surprise and fear in the face of nature’ prepare the way for his immediate attraction to young Kirstie as distinct from the rusticity of the congregation of Hermiston kirk (see Morgan, MA 993, f. 3). This account of Archie’s pursuits at Hermiston appears to be leading into another episode in which Archie earns the respect of the countryfolk by going out in a snowstorm with the shepherd to search among the snow-drifts for the Hermiston sheep, a beautifully written scene that was presumably abandoned in order to achieve greater economy of effect (compare Morgan, MA 993, ff. 43, 46). Changes to the details of the plot for the following chapter, ‘A Leaf from Christina’s Psalm-Book’, can also be traced. Probably Mrs Hob’s parenthetical criticism in the Cauldstaneslap kitchen of the fashionable Glasgow clothes which young Kirstie wears in Hermiston kirk (see 60 above) was a later thought, for in one drafting Archie’s first sight of Kirstie in the church is immediately succeeded by a detailed description of her dress without the intervening, down-to-earth commentary provided by her sister-in-law’s reactions (Beinecke 45, 1021). Stevenson also apparently had second thoughts about how best to describe the development of a private intimacy between his young lovers following their significant first sighting of one another during the Sunday service. Initially, after being formally introduced in the churchyard afterwards, Archie and Kirstie walk together from there down the road that leads towards their respective homes: Hob introduced herself and the young deity said some indifferent words, that she could not hear, took off his hat to her with grace 112

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and respect. And somehow, you could not have told why, you could not have said who did the removing, they two were walking together on the road. (Morgan, MA 993, f. 32v) In another manuscript version their conversation on the road leads directly into Kirstie’s performance of her brother’s song about the Elliotts of old. As Archie mentions his sense of the fragility of their present lives to her during their walk, she asks if he knows Dand’s song, and they both hang back from the other church-goers and retreat into the hollow of a burn so that she can sing it to him without incurring rebuke from her family for Sabbath-breaking (Beinecke 45, 1021). Stevenson must have decided that this was too public a demonstration of mutual interest, for in his final manuscript Kirstie leaves the churchyard with her usual country companions and Archie joins her only after she has separated from them (see 63 above). The remainder of the scene is postponed until later that same day when they meet at the Praying Weaver’s stone and their intimacy develops in the course of a second, extended, and more secluded, interview (see 71–4 above), taking place in the location which recalls Archie’s relations with his dead mother and was subsequently to be that of his murder of Frank Innes. That Stevenson continued to develop his material for this particular chapter very late into the composition process is indicated by leaves in the manuscript numbered 147a–147b, which contain Dandie’s noticing that Kirstie is wearing expensive silk stockings for her afternoon walk upon the moors and his easily-dismissed speculation as to its significance. This was clearly drafted after the main manuscript sequence, as an afterthought, since a direction in the margin of page 147 in Stevenson’s own hand reads ‘take in 147a’. ‘Enter Mephistopheles’, the chapter in which Frank Innes appears as a visitor to Hermiston, had also been subjected to revision during composition. Dandie’s dislike of Frank, for instance, had formerly been described as the natural repulsion felt by the poet from the shallowness of the orator (Beinecke 45, 1022, leaf paginated 20). More significantly, Frank’s rivalry for young Kirstie and Archie’s murderous rage against him were once anticipated in a different version of the scene where Frank first sees Kirstie in Hermiston kirk. Archie avoids Frank’s request to introduce him to the ‘lovely rustic’ and Frank then introduces himself to Kirstie on the walk home, while Archie breaks off their interview, ‘surprised at the shock of jealousy and rage that overcame him’. Perhaps Stevenson felt that this was accounted for a little too explicitly in the sentence ‘For as strong as he was in most circumstances, a man self-contained as his father, there was a joint of 113

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weakness in him—a weak violence—that was dangerous but not aweful, not even respectable’ (Beinecke 45, 1023). Kirstie, greatly offended by Archie’s behaviour, takes her brother’s arm and walks away, leaving him to accompany Mrs Hob up Hermiston brae. The final and unfinished chapter of Weir of Hermiston, known as ‘At the Weaver’s Stone’, originally opened the morning after Archie’s nocturnal conversation with the elder Kirstie, with him walking in the garden at Hermiston reflecting on what he should do and watched anxiously from a distance by the housekeeper (Morgan, MA 993, f. 39r). Draft manuscript material also extends the interview between Archie and the younger Kirstie beyond the final manuscript’s last words, ‘a wilful convulsion of brute nature’ (see 99 above), where the author’s death suddenly broke the novel off short. In this possible continuation Archie rallies from the shock he receives at Kirstie’s resentment at his refusal of her caresses, takes her in his arms, and explains himself in a more affectionate and intimate way. Having decided that their relationship must go no further until Lord Hermiston has been informed of it, he asks Kirstie whether he should write to his father or wait until he visits Hermiston. Kirstie again startles him by wondering aloud why Hermiston should be informed of it at all (Morgan, MA 993, ff. 41–2). However, given Stevenson’s careful reassessment of the details of his plot and arrangement of his material during the composition process for other chapters of Weir of Hermiston, it is impossible to say whether all (or indeed any) of this would have been incorporated eventually into the final version or not. The only safe assumption is to regard every piece of draft material or report of plot development past the point at which the final manuscript breaks off as merely provisional possibilities.2 As Colvin demonstrates in his Editorial Note to the novel, the surviving accounts by family and friends of how the story of Weir of Hermiston was to continue are occasionally contradictory, suggesting that Stevenson’s intentions varied at different times. While the various suggestions that follow may be gleaned from these and from surviving manuscript material they therefore come with an emphatic caution as to their provisional, perhaps in some cases evanescent, nature. Of the four lists of chapter titles in the surviving draft manuscript material, two seem particularly relevant (Beinecke 45, 1013 and Morgan, MA 993, f. 45), particularly the second with which a number of draft passages that might have been included in some of these future chapters are associated. In general their witness accords with the account given by Belle Strong to Colvin for his Editorial Note (Appen114

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dix 1, 102) and the qualifications that he suggested should be made to it. It seems that after the murder of Innes the Four Black Brothers blame Archie for the seduction of their sister, since a marginal note to what appears to be the earliest list of chapter titles, in Beinecke 45, 1013, reads: ‘I want him hangit for my sister’s whoredoms!’ The chapter title ‘Aunty Kirsty at Cauldstaneslap’ implies that the Hermiston housekeeper sets her nephews right as to the facts. The other list (Morgan, MA 993, f. 45) includes ‘The Trial’ and a brief passage of text implying that there is a trial for the murder of Innes at which Hermiston presides and during which he receives some great shock. As Stevenson was well aware that Hermiston could not have presided at the trial of his own son, the accused, as Colvin indicated, was almost certainly someone other than Archie. (Given their legendary readiness to revenge family injury by violence and bloodshed, it seems not impossible that one or more of the Elliott brothers might initially be suspected of the murder of their sister’s seducer.) After disposing of the elder Kirstie, presumably as a witness, Hermiston demands of the macer that the next case be called, but is barely able to continue his duty: ‘The tall old man stood up trembling like a paralytic, his head visibly nodding on his body; and it was in a shaken voice’. This is followed by the title ‘Archie in prison’, a sequence which appears to confirm Colvin’s supposition, based on Stevenson’s legal enquiry to Charles Baxter, that at a first trial presided over by Hermiston evidence crops up which leads the murder charge to be transferred to Hermiston’s own son, who is subsequently arrested. In this paper there are several fragments that appear to be memory aids for the development of subsequent scenes in the novel. In the first jotting Hermiston dismisses the elder Kirstie from her post as housekeeper telling her, ‘Ye had a braw chance to be silent, ye wouldnae tak it, and ye must tak the consequences’. In another Hermiston visits Archie in prison and Archie asks his father to kiss him, ‘maybe […] for the last time’, also requesting that the elder Kirstie should be reinstated in her post at Hermiston after his death. A reference to ‘the other one’ perhaps suggests that he also wished his father to extend some protection to the younger Kirstie. In the following text Archie, presumably planning flight, asks the elder Kirstie to pack a bag for him at what is perhaps considered to be their final meeting. In addition, Sidney Lysaght recalled years afterwards that on his visit to Stevenson in Samoa in March 1894 Stevenson, besides reading him the first chapter of Weir of Hermiston, gave the outline of what was to be ‘[t]he strongest scene in the book’, in which the younger Kirstie 115

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visited Archie in prison ‘and confessed to him that she was with child by the man he had murdered’.3 Despite all these fascinating hints, however, there is no detailed and complete resolution of the plot of Weir of Hermiston that can be uncovered and known. notes 1. Citations from draft manuscript material are reading transcriptions, while the text of the final manuscript is generally referred to by reference to that of the present edition, as most easily accessible to the reader. 2. The present edition does not, therefore, extend Stevenson’s text in the final manuscript by adding this draft material as, for instance, does Weir of Hermiston, ed. Catherine Kerrigan (Edinburgh, 1995), 115–17. 3. See ‘A Visit to Robert Louis Stevenson’, Times Literary Supplement, 4 Dec 1919, 713.

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Essay on the Text At Stevenson’s death on 3 December 1894 the manuscript for Weir of Hermiston on which he was working was left incomplete and the author had no influence from this point upon the process by which his work was produced for publication. His old Edinburgh friend and the appointed executor of his will, Charles Baxter, was then en route for Samoa to pay him an eagerly-awaited visit and to deliver in person advance copies of the first two volumes of the collected Edinburgh Edition that was intended to consolidate Stevenson’s writings and make financial provision for himself and his extended family. Stevenson’s mother wrote to Sidney Colvin on 4 February 1895 of Baxter’s arrival: Mr. Baxter arrived on 31st Jany. What a different visit it is from what we had all anticipated! He brought us our copies of the 2 first vols. of the Edinr. Edition with which we are all much pleased. It did seem hard that my dear Lou should not even see it & that he should lose Mr. Baxter’s visit which he had looked forward to with so much pleasure. (Lucas, 241) During his visit Baxter naturally began to initiate plans for the intended sale and publication of Stevenson’s hitherto unpublished writings for the benefit of his widow and other dependents, and chief among these were the two unfinished novels eventually published as Weir of Hermiston and St Ives. His situation was not altogether novel, since Stevenson, who was now removed from involvement by death, had previously been substantially removed from involvement by his remote location in Samoa. For the Edinburgh Edition itself Baxter acted as negotiator and man of business and Sidney Colvin as literary editor. Stevenson had written to Colvin on 18 June 1894, for instance, ‘You and Baxter are having all the trouble of this Edition, and I simply put myself in your hands for you to do what you like with me’ (Letters 8: 309). What Baxter must have found at Vailima, so far as Weir of Hermiston is concerned, is the unfinished fair-copy manuscript Stevenson was in the process of dictating to his step-daughter Belle Strong at the time of his death and a mass of draft material of various dates, mostly 117

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but not entirely in Stevenson’s own hand, which he had probably retained for reference in preparing the revised copy. the dedication The verse dedication of Weir of Hermiston to Stevenson’s wife, Fanny, was first published in the volume editions of the novel published posthumously in 1896 in Britain by Chatto & Windus and in America by Scribner’s and did not appear in the previous serialization of the novel. Nor does it form part of the final manuscript (described on 129–32), almost certainly because the preliminaries to a volume would normally be finalized after the body of the text had been completed. It seems clear, however, that Stevenson intended to dedicate the novel to his wife, and that he probably wrote a first version of the dedication as a gift to her not long after beginning the work, for in his ‘Editorial Note’ Colvin, after referring to letters of November and December 1892 in which Stevenson outlined his plans for his new novel, adds that he also ‘about the same time composed the dedication to his wife, who found it pinned to her bed-curtains one morning on awaking’ (see ­Appendix 1, 107–8). Stevenson himself recorded his intention to dedicate the novel to Fanny in a letter to Charles Baxter of May 1894, which also included a version adapted for its possible appearance in the extended context of the whole Edinburgh Edition: I shall send—no, come to think of it, I send now with some blanks which I may perhaps fill up ere the mail goes, a dedication to my wife. It was not intended for the E. E. but for The Justice-Clerk when it should be finished, which accounts for the blanks.1 This part of Stevenson’s letter is in the hand of his step-daughter and amanuensis, Belle Strong, except for some pencil additions by himself that show that he had indeed found time to fill in the blanks he alludes to before posting his letter. Stevenson adds to the heading after ‘To my wife’ the words ‘I dedicate | This Edinburgh Edition of my works’ and there are also two and a half new lines in the poem which allude to ‘looking back | Upon so much already endured and done’, a retrospective statement about his writing career as a whole. Sidney Colvin was clearly unhappy about the poem appearing as the dedication to the Edinburgh Edition: for one thing, he thought it ‘not historically true, as concerns the earlier works’ written before Stevenson had met and 118

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fallen in love with the then Fanny Osbourne.2 In a letter to Stevenson of 13 July Colvin carefully argued that Fanny’s interests as dedicatee for the Edinburgh Edition as a whole would be better served by a simple prose dedication, and that the lines should stand at the head of his new novel as originally intended: […] they have the air of having been written, not for the whole set of books, but for one in particular: the Lord Justice-Clerk, was it not? What would you & she say to letting the plain prose monumental inscription stand at the head of the Collected Ed., and reserving the verses for a special dedication of the LJC when it appears? (Beinecke 11, 284) The Stevensons obviously concurred, since in the early volumes of the Edinburgh Edition published just before the author’s death no such verse dedication appears. This dedication was clearly valued by Fanny Stevenson and admired in the Stevenson household. Belle Strong, for instance, included it twice in her account of the Stevenson household at Vailima, partly a journal and partly a common-place book, that she called ‘Grouse in the Gun-Room’ (Beinecke 49, 1073). In both cases, however, the poem is placed after her account of Stevenson’s death, dated 4 December 1894, and within the context of a group of poems written by Stevenson about the members of the household. Clearly these represent transcriptions of authorial manuscripts by a grieving stepdaughter rather than manuscripts dictated by the author to his amanuensis. There are also two surviving authorial manuscripts of the dedication among the draft materials for Weir of Hermiston, both in Stevenson’s own hand. Neither is dated, but it is clear that Stevenson tailored his poem according to context. The first manuscript, now the second leaf of MA 1419 in the Pierpont Morgan Library, probably represents the poem Stevenson wrote as a personal gift for his wife. This version consists of fourteen lines, written on a laid, unwatermarked paper and without corrections—a fair copy, except that there was originally no heading or title, the words ‘Dedication to his wife’ having been added in pencil subsequently in another hand. This is consistent with its having been intended as a personal gift where the recipient was obvious and unmistakable, though unfortunately no tiny holes from its having been pinned to Fanny Stevenson’s bed-curtains were discernible when the leaf was examined by the present editor. The opening of the poem (‘The indefeasible impulse of my blood | Summoned me sleeping in 119

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this isle’) refers directly to Stevenson’s residence in Samoa, while its description of Fanny as ‘prodigal of censure’ is perhaps too personal a remark for publication. The second authorial manuscript, now at Yale (Beinecke 45, 1015 (B 7113)), appears to be much more clearly marked out for future publication, since it has a heading which indicates the work for which it was intended and the name of the person to whom that work was to be dedicated, besides being written on the paper watermarked ‘E TOWGOOD | FINE’ employed for substantial sections of both the draft material and the fair-copy manuscript for the novel. Underneath the dedication on this leaf of paper, after a double rule, is the word ‘contents’ followed by three draft chapter titles for the novel itself, ‘Life and death of Mrs Weir’, ‘The Hanging of Duncan Jopp’ and ‘The Young cock and the old’. The leaf, in other words, plainly contains draft material intended for the preliminaries of Weir of Hermiston. While the text of the dedication itself agrees substantially with that of the first volume editions of Weir of Hermiston there are a number of deletions and insertions, particularly in the tenth of its twelve lines, probably indicating that the dedication also is only a draft. The ninth line also has ‘prodigal of censure’ as in the presentation dedication rather than ‘prodigal of counsel’ as in the version in Stevenson’s letter to Baxter of May 1894 and in the published dedication. Colvin, as the person preparing the text of Weir of Hermiston for volume publication, clearly saw two manuscripts of the verse dedication, for in her anxiety in July 1895 to have it included Fanny Stevenson sent him the original copy Stevenson had written as a gift to her and at the same time referred to another copy already in his hands: In looking over further papers to give Mr Balfour to carry to you, I found the dedication to me as Louis first [sic] it for Hermiston. Please put it as he meant it to be. He pinned it to my bed curtains when I was asleep with other explanatory verses. Please do not leave it out. I send you the original, though I believe you have a copy already. I would like to have this back again when you have finished with it. (Beinecke 8, 192) It is possible that the dedication already in his possession in July 1895 was the manuscript now in the Beinecke, but not certain. What is clear, however, is that given the choice between two versions, Colvin correctly chose the one intended for publication rather than the one appropriate for a personal gift. 120

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In the absence of further evidence it is not possible to distinguish whether variations between the Beinecke manuscript and the published text can be ascribed to Stevenson himself, are the result of inadvertent errors of transcription, or are traces of Colvin’s editorial hand. Colvin’s chosen copy text may possibly have been a subsequent fair-copy manuscript related to this draft. For this reason, the present text adopts the dedication given in the first British volume edition without emendation. draft material for the novel The draft material for the novel itself is now divided among a number of archives, as a result of gifts made by Stevenson’s heirs and subsequent auction sales of their Stevenson manuscripts and memorabilia. This division is therefore essentially arbitrary and contingent, the result rather of historical accident than of any intrinsic division. There are continuities across the material deposited in different archives, for instance, and yet one deposit may superficially unite material representing different stages in the composition process. Vivian Jokl, in her valuable thematic study of the novel through various surviving manuscripts, while acknowledging that together the scattered draft materials ‘form practically a consecutive version of the novel’, also points to their disparate nature: ‘Stevenson wrote and rewrote sections of Weir of Hermiston before he continued rather than finishing the book and then revising’ (9, 54). 3 For convenience of reference, however, this draft material may here be briefly described according to the archive in which it is now located. Princeton University Library (Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Manuscripts Division: M. L. Parrish Collection of Victorian Novelists, CO171, Series 1b, no. 25) Three draft openings for the first chapter of Weir of Hermiston in Stevenson’s own hand survive in Princeton University Library.4 All three are on laid paper with a watermark ‘E TOWGOOD | FINE’ and countermark of a seated Britannia in a crowned circle, each leaf measuring approximately 320 x 202 mm, paper which was also used in other draft material and in the final manuscript for the novel. Together they reflect Stevenson’s initial uncertainty how to order the material for this opening chapter, although it is clear (as they all begin at page 2) that the chapter was already intended to follow on from the novel’s introductory section. 121

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The first draft, on the recto only of the first of two conjugate leaves, opens with the family return to Hermiston that precedes the death of Jean Rutherford and describes her ineffectual housekeeping in Edinburgh. The second draft, also on the recto only of the first of two conjugate leaves, also opens with the return to Hermiston but then turns immediately to Jean’s ancestry and her courtship by Adam Weir. The third draft, on the rectos of two single leaves paginated 2 and 3, is closest to the ordering of material in the final manuscript though less detailed in specifics. Robert Louis Stevenson Museum, St Helena, California This is written in Stevenson’s hand on a single sheet of laid paper without a watermark, folded to make two leaves each measuring approximately 174 x 112 mm: it is a common letter paper similar to that used for odd leaves both in the final manuscript and in other draft material. A note by the recipient, Charles Warren Stoddart, records that this fragment was a gift to him from Belle Strong. The brief text, describing Kirstie’s feelings when about to sing to Archie in chapter 6, ‘A Leaf from Christina’s Psalm-Book’, is unpaginated and on the recto of the first leaf only. Rare Book Department, Free Library of Philadelphia This is a single sheet of unwatermarked laid paper folded to make a four-page booklet, each page of which measures approximately 175 x 115 mm, and is written on all four sides in Stevenson’s hand. The text covers Archie’s reaction to the younger Kirstie’s performance of her brother’s song and continues to the end of chapter 6, ‘A Leaf from Christina’s Psalm-Book’. It probably represents a late draft, since it is clear from Belle’s commonplace book that the introduction of Kirstie’s lie to Dandie about her pink stockings here was a very late addition to the chapter (see Introduction, xxxvii): it seems likely that Stevenson wrote out a preliminary version of the scene in preparation for dictating the final version to his step-daughter. Stevenson Cottage, Lake Saranac This is a single leaf of yellowish wove paper, measuring approximately 175 x 111 mm, containing eleven lines written in Stevenson’s hand. The text, which has several deletions, is a rough draft of the description of the Hermiston maid’s silent sympathy with Frank Innes from chapter 7, ‘Enter Mephistopheles’, and presumably represents an intermediate stage between her characterization as stupid in the draft in Beinecke 45, 122

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1022 (B 7122), leaf paginated 19 and as capable and discreet in the final text (79). It shows Stevenson’s careful reconsideration of a very minor character, rendering the little maid more sympathetic. Stevenson House Museum Archive Collection, Monterey State Historic Park This is a single leaf written in Stevenson’s hand, paginated 24 on the recto, which describes Frank Innes leaving Swingleburn in a temper, and 26 on the verso, which gives the after-dinner conversation between Innes and Archie about the latter’s relations with the younger Kirstie from chapter 7, ‘Enter Mephistopheles’. The paper is a blue, laid paper without a watermark measuring approximately 320 x 200 mm, and is one not employed in the final manuscript, though used for other draft material relating to the later chapters of Weir of Hermiston. A note in Belle Strong’s hand records that it was a gift from her in June 1910 to Frank Unger, and dates the writing of it to ‘the latter part of 1894’. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Beinecke 45, 1013, 1015, 1021–4 (B 7107–8, 7111, 7113–4, 7121–4)) Besides the final, bound manuscript of Weir of Hermiston in the Edwin J. Beinecke Collection of Robert Louis Stevenson (discussed below), the Beinecke Library also has fourteen leaves of draft material for it. This includes a torn leaf containing Stevenson’s early notes and list of fifteen chapter titles (Folder 1013 (B 7111)) and a draft dedication of the novel to his wife (Folder 1015 (B 7113)). There are two leaves of the blue laid paper similar to that of the fragment now in the Stevenson House Museum Archive Collection at Monterey: the first contains a discarded episode from the chapter ‘A Leaf from Christina’s PsalmBook’ in Stevenson’s hand, written on the recto only and paginated 25 (Folder 1023 (B 7123)), while the second (Folder 1024 (B 7124)), also in Stevenson’s hand, contains on the recto, paginated 32, and the verso, paginated 34, several passages from drafts for the chapter ‘A Nocturnal Visit’. There is a single leaf of a similar paper to that of the manuscript material at Princeton, written on both recto and verso in Stevenson’s hand, paginated 5 and 6 and containing material relating to ‘A Leaf from Christina’s Psalm-Book’ (Folder 1021 (B 7121)), including a description of the heroine’s church-going finery, and of her conversation with Archie after the service that, in this version, leads straight to her performance of Dandie’s song. Folder 1022 (B 7122) contains a more substantial and consecutive amount of draft material. There are two conjugate leaves of paper simi123

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lar to that of the Princeton fragments, containing text in Stevenson’s hand on the verso of the second leaf and recto and part of the verso of the first leaf, paginated 6–8, containing the conclusion of the service in Hermiston kirk and the after-church encounter of Archie and Kirstie. Three single sheets of wove paper, approximately 287 x 220 mm and paginated 10–12, are apparently written on rejected pages of manuscript from St Ives, and are followed by two single sheets of the same paper with text for Weir of Hermiston on both recto and verso paginated 13, [14], 15, 16. These carry the story forward from Kirstie’s reflections in her attic chamber to her subsequent encounters firstly with Dandie and afterwards with Archie that same Sunday, with the interruption of the opening of the next chapter (here entitled ‘Pete enters’) midway down page 16. The remaining two single leaves are of the first paper, and contain on both the recto and verso a sequence of text in Stevenson’s hand, paginated 19–22, covering Innes’s breakfast-time encounter with the elder Kirstie Elliott, the responses of the country and the county folk to him, and the start of the scene between him and Archie at Swingleburn. Pierpont Morgan Library (MA 1419, MA 993 with MA 1582) By far the greatest amount of surviving draft material for Weir of Hermiston, more than eighty leaves, is to be found in two bound and imperfect sequences in the Pierpont Morgan Library MA 1419 and MA 993 (the latter with a single inserted leaf, MA 1582). Together the two bound volumes provide non-sequential material covering most of the published novel. The first (MA 1419), in Stevenson’s hand, takes the story from its opening to the end of the third chapter, ‘In the Matter of the Hanging of Duncan Jopp’, and also contains a draft opening for the Hermiston scenes. The second (MA 993) is also in Stevenson’s hand with the exception of a final sequence of six leaves in the hand of his amanuensis Belle Strong. It opens with a single leaf describing the encounter of Archie with Lord Glenkindie at the end of the fourth chapter, ‘Opinions of the Bench’, and then (ff. 2–34) begins the Hermiston scenes, which it continues to up to young Kirstie’s reflections in her attic room in the sixth chapter, ‘A Leaf from Christina’s Psalm-Book’. MA 1582 is bound into MA 993 at this point, a single leaf containing Archie’s rebuff to Innes at Swingleburn in the seventh chapter, ‘Enter Mephistopheles’, and Innes’s first sight of young Kirstie at Hermiston kirk. MA 993 then continues (ff. 35–42) with the two verbal assaults by Innes on Archie about this relationship that conclude the chapter 124

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‘Enter Mephistopheles’, and proceeds up to and somewhat beyond the ending of the novel as published from the final manuscript.5 The remaining leaves of MA 993 in Stevenson’s hand comprise material not used in the final manuscript. There are two pages for a scene in which Archie goes out in a winter snowstorm with the Hermiston shepherd to look for the flocks (ff. 43r, 46r), a leaf containing sections for the end and then the beginning of the fifth chapter, ‘Winter on the Moors’ (f. 44), and a sheet folded to make a four-page booklet (f. 45) which contains a list of chapter titles for the novel, a family tree for the Elliotts and brief passages clearly intended to act as aide-mémoires for the composition of scenes subsequent to Archie’s murder of Frank Innes. MA 993 then concludes with a sequence of six leaves in Belle’s hand with corrections by Stevenson himself, the first leaf of which, paginated 58, contains part of Archie’s meeting with Dr Gregory from the novel’s Edinburgh scenes, and the rest a sequence from the eighth chapter, ‘A Nocturnal Visit’, paginated 189–93. Taken together the Morgan manuscripts are an incomplete representation of the novel. There is no account of young Kirstie going out to meet Archie on Sunday evening following their initial encounter at Hermiston kirk (chapter 6), or of Innes’s first arrival at Hermiston and his relations with the countryfolk and local gentry, or of most of Innes’s evening discussion with Archie about Kirstie (chapter 7). Some of these gaps in the narrative can be filled by draft material in the Beinecke Library, confirming the supposition that a mass of draft material for Weir of Hermiston has been arbitrarily divided for sale and binding. For instance, text on MA 993, f. 34 (paginated 9) leads into that of Beinecke 45, 1022 (paginated 10), and text on Beinecke 45, 1022 (paginated 22) leads into that of MA 1582 (paginated 23). These four leaves, incidentally, are each of a different type of paper, showing that Stevenson was trying out versions on any paper to hand. A variety of papers was used for the Morgan Library draft material. The two most frequently used here were also used for substantial sections of the final manuscript in the Beinecke Library. The first was a thinner, wove paper with feint-ruled small oblongs, of a kind that seems suitable for engineering drawings, measuring approximately 285 x 215 mm, which is found in MA 993, ff. 1–5, 33–4, 43, 46 and the final sequence of six leaves in the hand of Belle Strong. (Stevenson also used the same paper extensively for St Ives.) The second was a laid paper with a watermark ‘E TOWGOOD | FINE’ and a countermark of a seated Britannia in a crowned circle, measuring approximately 320 x 202 mm, which is found in MA 993, ff. 3–36 and MA 993, ff. 6–32, as 125

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well as in draft material at the Beinecke (Folders 1021 and 1022 (B 7122, 7121)) and at Princeton. Such good-quality paper had been used by Stevenson for fair copies throughout his career, and he clearly found it conducive to writing whereas the cheaper ‘engineering’ paper may simply have been more readily available. Apart from these two predominant papers, a blue laid paper without a watermark measuring approximately 320 x 200 mm is associated with a cluster of draft sections concentrated in the seventh to ninth chapters, that is MA 1582 and MA 993, ff. 35–42, as well as for the leaf at Monterey and leaves in Beinecke 45, 1023 and 1024 (B 7123, 7124). An initial two leaves in MA 1419, containing a list of chapter headings, some notes, and the verse dedication (titled in pencil in another hand), employs a standard laid letter-paper without watermark. From the fact that a variety of papers was used in this draft material it seems clear that this is a haphazard collection of drafts from various points in the composition of Weir of Hermiston and not any coherent early version. It has simply been arranged for binding in a way that maximizes the narrative sequence of a number of different drafts. Further examination of the Morgan draft material confirms that it is a series of surviving drafts rather than a single version that predates the one embodied in the final manuscript. Pagination is non-continuous, with some page numbers duplicated. MA 1419, for example, after the initial two leaves of notes and prefatory material presents a relatively coherent sequence of text on the rectos of each leaf (ff. 3–30) paginated [1], 2, 2–18, 18a, 19–22, 22a, 23, 23a and 24. Within this there are two pages 2, the first clearly the rejected draft since the verso of the leaf has been used for a rough draft of potential chapter titles for the novel and the second provides a text continued on page 3. Page 18a substantially reworks material already given on pages 17 and 18 before attempting to continue the narrative. Pages 22, 22a, 23, 23a contain different attempts to bridge the interval between Archie’s outburst at the Speculative Society meeting and his father’s evening confrontation of him. There are also signs of working on the best ordering of elements. In MA 993, ff. 15–17, for instance, a sequence of five paragraphs have been numbered to indicate re-ordering, with 1 then 3 (f. 15), 2 (f. 16), then 4 and 5 (f. 17). Some material seems to verge on a personal reminder of things to be developed later. For instance, in the episode where Archie watches his father from the mews lane in his lighted George Square study and tries to comprehend him Stevenson uses the shorthand expression ‘No go &c’ (f. 32), indicating a reaction to be detailed more fully subsequently. 126

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Although the Morgan Library draft material cannot be precisely dated, clearly some chapters were written separately (perhaps at an early stage) and kept with their own pagination sequence. The opening of the fifth chapter (‘Winter on the Moors’) in MA 993, ff. 2–5, for instance, is paginated [1]–4. On the other hand f. 1, the leaf which precedes it, containing text that appropriately concludes the fourth chapter (‘Opinions of the Bench’), is paginated 77 and thus marked as part of a longer pagination sequence for the novel as a whole. Those leaves that contain continuous text on recto and verso (for example, MA 993, f. 24) must date from a relatively early stage of composition, since Stevenson only records draft material in such a way. Those written in Stevenson’s hand on the verso of draft material for St Ives (MA 993, ff. 33, 34), on the other hand, must be draft material, written on any paper to hand, but cannot date from before 1893, when composition of that novel was begun. Cross-reference to the pagination sequence of the final manuscript also indicates a relatively late composition date for a few leaves in the Morgan draft material. As already mentioned, MA 993, f. 1 is paginated 77, close to the numbering of the equivalent page number (79) in the final manuscript, suggesting a late date; f. 36 of the same manuscript has a late-draft number (191) added by Stevenson; and the final sequence of five leaves, in Belle Strong’s hand and relating to the eighth chapter (‘A Nocturnal Visit’) is paginated 189–93, again suggesting a late date. The discontinuous nature of the draft manuscript material at the Pierpont Morgan Library makes it evident that this is not a coherent earlier version of the final manuscript for Weir of Hermiston. Even where there is an uninterrupted sequence of pagination the beginning of a page of text often redrafts material from the foot of the previous leaf and there are pages where the text on a previous page is reworked. Sequences have many crossings-out, moving of passages, insertions of fresh thoughts, deletions immediately followed by freshly-written passages or alternative versions of a passage immediately following one another without one being deleted. This makes it hard for anyone but the author himself to follow. It is highly probable that the Morgan manuscripts, like the other surviving draft material for the novel, represent sections of a variety of drafts retained by Stevenson to assist him in producing a revised and improved version. Or it may be that he was simply reluctant to discard these disparate drafts until he considered his final manuscript to be complete. 127

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The manuscript material at the Pierpont Morgan Library is therefore deceptively sequential and cannot serve as copy for an edition of Weir of Hermiston. However, it does provide fascinating indications of Stevenson’s methods of work and of the genesis of the novel. The two fragments of the winter snowstorm scene, for instance, suggest that Stevenson may originally have intended to provide a section of narrative accounting for the respect in which Archie is held by his dependants at Hermiston that later arms them against Frank Innes’s depreciation of him. Also of particular interest is the extension of Archie’s visit to Lord Glenalmond after his submission to his father, in which Glenalmond with the consent of Lord Glenkindie offers to draw up a written note of Archie’s concern for the offence he has given to his father’s judicial colleagues and to show it to Hermiston. Yet however fascinating, these scenes were plainly rejected by Stevenson in revision. Stevenson’s working towards concision is also illustrated by details here that do not appear in the final manuscript. In the Edinburgh scenes the author describes, for instance, how he has come across second-hand copies of Scott’s The Lay of the Last Minstrel and The Lady of the Lake containing inscriptions that prove them to have been gifts from Glenalmond to Archie (MA 1419, f. 18). He relates that Archie worries how his father’s displeasure will be expressed, whether by turning him into the streets, by verbally abusing him, or even by striking him (MA 1419, f. 27). The draft material suggests a Weir of Hermiston that began by being much richer in the circumstantial detail that is characteristic of nineteenth-century realism, and which Stevenson subsequently pared, concentrated, and streamlined to produce his later text. Delightful as this material may be, it was rejected by the author and cannot be integrated into the later, revised version of the text. It is also unsafe to assume where the draft material for the final unfinished chapter extends beyond the point reached by the final manuscript that this would necessarily have been used in its present form (or indeed at all) in the final text. Stevenson’s draft manuscript material for Weir of Hermiston, however, inevitably contains words and phrases duplicated in the later manuscript and as these are almost entirely set down in the draft material in his own hand they are helpful in correcting the misunderstandings of Belle Strong, Stevenson’s amanuensis, as she wrote out the final manuscript to his dictation. It is also a rich source of information about the genesis of the novel and the background to it, and as such may enrich the reader’s understanding of Stevenson’s later revised text. 128

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the final manuscript for the novel Besides the mass of draft material described above Baxter also found a later and more coherent manuscript of Weir of Hermiston on his arrival at Vailima (Beinecke 45, 1011 (B 7116)), confirmed as Stevenson’s revised and latest version by his amanuensis and step-daughter, Belle Strong. This manuscript is a full draft of the surviving novel (minus the dedication) written on the rectos of consecutively numbered leaves of paper and carefully paginated.6 It is in Belle’s hand, with corrections by Stevenson himself, mostly in a darker ink, a wider left-hand margin having been left for these by still-visible folds in the paper. (Some pencil marks in another hand and blue or red pencil corrections of misspellings were probably made subsequently in preparing it for the typist.) Apart from the initial leaf with the list of chapters and 108–9, both of laid paper with no visible watermark, the manuscript is composed of two types of paper. Firstly there is the chequered woven paper, approximately 285 x 215 mm, also used for sections of Morgan, MA 993 and described as suitable for engineering drawings: this was used for two sequences, from pages 1–79 and from pages 123–211. Secondly, there is the laid paper with a watermark ‘E TOWGOOD | FINE’ and countermark of a seated Britannia in a crowned circle, also used for draft material now at Princeton and the Beinecke, as noted above, and for sections of both Morgan, MA 1419 and 993: this was used for sequences from pages 80–107 and from pages 110–22 of the final manuscript (B 7116). This manuscript is essentially a fair copy of the novel, for it not only includes a number of corrections in Stevenson’s own hand but also some directions for the guidance of the printer. Stevenson has carefully marked revisions to paragraph breaks in the manuscript (B 7116): on 36, for instance, he indicates the start of a fresh paragraph and on 81 and 168 directs the printer to ‘run on’ and fills the existing spaces with lines. Directions as to the precise point at which the additional material on 147a, 147b, 155a, 193a is to be placed in the sequence are also provided either by Belle or by Stevenson himself. It is clear from both Belle’s statements and her practice that Stevenson was in the habit of providing punctuation as part of his dictation of the manuscript: Graham Balfour cited her as referring to Stevenson’s giving her ‘the sentences with capital letters and all the stops’ (Balfour, ii, 153), and on page 40 of the manuscript itself, obviously feeling tired, Belle has initially written ‘comma’ instead of inserting one: ‘Presently, after she was tremblingly embarked on her story’. 7 129

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Belle wrote a very clear, legible hand and Stevenson was obviously pleased by and accustomed to her services as his amanuensis. Perhaps composition under these circumstances reminded him of his earliest story-writing, when, as a child not yet able to write fluently, he had dictated his first efforts to some indulgent adult relation at Colinton manse.8 Nevertheless, there were occasional problems with this method of production and Stevenson’s revisions were sometimes not altogether thorough and comprehensive. It should also be noted that the last clear intervention in Stevenson’s hand is on page 175 of this manuscript, so that it is not clear how much of the rest of it he was able to overlook before his sudden death. There are some inconsistencies here and there with the naming of characters: Lord Muirfell’s daughter, for instance, is ‘Lady Flora’ on page 85 and ‘Lady Janet’ on page 123; the surname of the Cauldstaneslap family is mostly ‘Elliott’ but sometimes ‘Elliot’ (for instance on 9 and 103); and while Innes’s Christian name eventually settled down from the variation between ‘Patie’, ‘George’, and ‘Frank’ of earlier drafts to being ‘Frank’ there are several uncorrected instances of ‘George’ in this manuscript (for instance, on 163, 169, 177); the ‘rustic prophet’ Gib Elliott is once referred to as ‘Sim’ (131). It may be that Stevenson failed to mark other inconsistencies because he knew that the printer would eventually normalize them in the subsequent course of production of the work. At times, for instance, Belle tended to use the American spelling that came most naturally to her rather than the British spelling that was natural to Stevenson. On occasion she wrote, for instance, ‘center’ (38), ‘behavior’ (49) and ‘humourous’ (78), so that the orthography of the final Beinecke manuscript is inconsistent. Stevenson would have known that a British printer would have normalized the spelling of the manuscript to British conventions, and probably anticipated that an American printer would consistently apply the spelling conventions of his own country. Belle is also often unclear about the use of apostrophes: she sometimes fails to insert them for contractions (‘its’ for ‘it’s’ on 38), inserts them wrongly into plurals (‘the Weir’s’ on 169) or writes possessives as plurals (‘enemies’ instead of ‘enemy’s’ on 21). Belle was much less literate than Stevenson, and lacked his early familiarity with the Bible and Covenanting literature as well as his knowledge of written French and of Latin. She has many characteristic misspellings of her own such as ‘decendants’ (6), ‘apalling’ (8) and ‘existance’ (126). The manuscript has ‘levér de ridoux’ for ‘lever de rideau’ (91), ‘ipsisimus’ for ‘ipsissimus’ (115) and ‘connosieur’ for ‘connoisseur’ 130

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(147a). She corrupts Biblical allusions like ‘the beam and the mote’ to ‘the beam and the moat’ (21), and refers to ‘the good Samaratan’ (45). On the whole, however, it is clear enough when a reading is the result of her carelessness or ignorance. It is also clear in several places that Belle occasionally misheard what Stevenson told her or misinterpreted what she heard. Sometimes she corrected herself almost at once, as, for instance, when writing of ‘the politic Lauderdale’ (13) or ‘By ↑all↓ tales’ (99), and sometimes Stevenson corrected her error subsequently as for instance, ‘ ↑un↓diminished’ (16). There are other places where it is likely that she misunderstood Stevenson but her error remains uncorrected. For instance, Mrs Hob reproves young Kirstie for her frivolity by asking rhetorically ‘Is this the gait to guide yoursel on the way hame frae kirk?’ (139). Kirsty’s manner of walking is not the worst part of her lack of deportment and it seems probable that Stevenson intended the Scots word ‘gate’ here, meaning way. Errors common to any literary manuscript naturally also occur in this one, such as the odd duplication of words caused by page or line breaks or more simply by a pause in writing. Words required by the sense have been accidentally omitted on occasion. Opening or closing speech marks are not supplied though plainly required, or a full stop indicates that the next word begins a sentence but that word begins with a lower-case instead of an upper-case letter. Occasionally a full stop is supplied where a question mark is demanded, and so on. Stevenson’s chronology for Weir of Hermiston is generally consistent, though there are two unresolved issues in the novel that, had he lived, he would no doubt have sorted out in final revisions or at the proof stage. Young Kirstie is born in 1798 and her father is killed in 1804 at the age of sixty (47 in the present edition), leaving her upbringing to the care of her much older brothers, a fact that the text reflects sensitively since she is sometimes referred to as Dandie’s sister and sometimes as Clem’s sister, reflecting her ambiguous placing between Glasgow and Cauldstaneslap. Archie is seven years old in 1801 (12), the year in which his mother dies (13), and accordingly when the trial and execution of Duncan Jopp take place in the autumn of 1811 (22) he is able to refer to ‘his seventeen years experience’ (ms, 43). He spends the following winter at Hermiston and first meets Kirstie in the succeeding spring, which must mean early in 1812 though Archie is now ‘twenty’ (43 in the present edition). This chronology is rather startling in view of the love affair between Archie and Kirstie, however, since, while Archie must then be quite suitably either seventeen or eighteen 131

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years old, Kirstie cannot be more than thirteen or fourteen, which may place a rather different emphasis on Archie’s (and Stevenson’s) occasional infantilizing of her. The second issue of chronology relates to the interval between the arrival of Frank Innes at Hermiston and his first sighting of Kirstie during a Sunday service in Hermiston kirk. Archie himself first sees her in church on a Sunday, and Frank arrives at Hermiston two days later (76 in the present edition), that is to say, on a Tuesday, which fits with Archie’s introducing him at the Tuesday club at Crossmichael ‘immediately on his arrival’ (80). Kirstie stays away from church on one subsequent Sunday (the sixth day of Frank’s visit), so he would then see her on the following Sunday (the thirteenth day of his stay at Hermiston). However it is specifically stated that Frank first sees Kirstie at church ‘on the twenty-ninth day of his visit’ (85), a day that is not even a Sunday and by which time two more Sundays have passed. Plainly Stevenson wanted Innes to arrive shortly after the commencement of Archie’s love affair with Kirstie, but felt that it would take more than a fortnight to forge a strong bond between his young lovers. The contradiction is never resolved in the manuscript, and Stevenson’s sudden death meant that all the errors in the unfinished manuscript remained. Obviously, Stevenson himself could have no further input on the way it was prepared for publication. arranging to publish weir of hermiston Charles Baxter seems to have intended rapid publication of St Ives (which he sent ahead to Britain), but to have taken the fair-copy manuscript of what he envisaged as Stevenson’s unfinished masterpiece back with him. The Idaho Statesman of 12 April 1895, citing a report from San Francisco of the previous day, informed readers of Baxter’s arrival there and imminent return to Britain with Stevenson’s unpublished manuscripts, except that he ‘has already sent on home for publication the manuscript of St. Ives’. In Chicago later that month, Baxter gave a newspaper interview in which he specified that among the Stevenson manuscripts he was taking back with him to Britain was ‘Weir of Hermiston’, a ‘splendid fragment (about 50,000 words), complete in itself ’ and which was to be published ‘as the first episode of what was to be his masterpiece’.9 His projected strategy was outlined in a subsequent letter to Stevenson’s stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, of 24 July 1895:

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My contention is, that the second class matter should come first, and that Louis’ literary life should be wound up with a blaze of Glory; instead of being allowed to ‘fizzle out with’ second class matter. […] Supposing St Ives to be ‘second class’ […] conceive the head shaking, with which the ‘second class’ matter would be received, after the ‘Blaze of Glory’! ‘Poor fellow! evidently declining power,’—instead of ‘Ah, magnificent! Died in the full amplitude of his matured genius.’ That seems to me very clear. (NLS, MS 9894, f. 86) On his return, Baxter evidently sent the manuscript of Weir of Hermiston to Sidney Colvin, who promptly set about collecting opinions on the work from Stevenson’s literary friends. Chief among these was the novelist Henry James, who may perhaps have been entrusted with the manuscript itself, not only as a close friend of the dead author but as the person named along with Baxter himself as an executor of Stevenson’s will. Although James had declined this responsibility, explaining his unfitness as a man of business in a letter of 26 December 1894 to Stevenson’s widow, Fanny, he had at the same time regretted that it had not been ‘something in my line, in the line of my aptitude and possibility, in the line of his papers, his relics, his genius, his renown, that Louis had dreamed of asking me! Then I would have performed the job with joy to the last extremity!’ (Edel, iii, 500). From his letter to Sidney Colvin of 5 July 1895, Henry James had then already read the work and referred to ‘sending you back the MS’. Terming it ‘this magnificent thing’ he also expressed a fear (‘gathered from what you said’) that publication might be ‘postponed to treat of other things—may not take place until the “psychological moment” is passed’.10 Colvin obviously disagreed with Baxter’s plans, preferring that Weir of Hermiston should be published before St Ives, and he clearly made sure that Fanny Stevenson knew Henry James’s opinion. Writing to Colvin on 19 August [1895] she mentions a letter from him ‘enclosing one from Henry James’ and states, ‘What you say of Hermiston is exactly what I have thought all along. I insist that it comes out as soon as possible’ (Beinecke 8, 192). Upset by Baxter’s apparent high-handedness and his heavy drinking, she had in fact already decided to ask Stevenson’s young cousin, Graham Balfour (an intimate of the whole Vailima household who was returning to Britain) to intervene and had armed him with a power of attorney. Reporting to Fanny in a letter of 16 August [1895] Balfour wrote: 133

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I landed in the night between the 12th & 13th: next day Colvin and I telegraphed at one another all day long: and the day after I went to Buxton and had a six hours talk with him, returning here in the evening. I have written to Charles to arrange a meeting some morning early next week as soon as I get to Town. […] Charles learned from Lloyd’s letter (which I read & approved at S. F., on 7th or 14th July, I think) that Colvin had asked you to demand priority for Hermistoun [sic]. It seems that Colvin had not made this clear to Charles. On 7th August C. B. wrote to Colvin remonstrating with him for having gone behind his back […]11 Balfour, in other words, immediately became embroiled in a quarrel between Colvin and Baxter, the two men who were to arrange the posthumous publication of Stevenson’s unfinished works, with Fanny Stevenson predisposed to support Colvin. Energetic and capable, Balfour was an excellent intermediary and he was encouraged by Henry James, whom he had seen on 20 August 1895 (as he reported in his letter of 21 August to Fanny Stevenson), as he ‘chanced to be passing through. He is strong on getting Hermiston out’. Balfour carefully remained in friendly communication with both Colvin and Baxter and successfully restrained Fanny from an outright quarrel with the latter. On his raising the question of priority of publication for Weir of Hermiston Baxter was initially inclined to wash his hands of the affair altogether but was brought to agree that if Colvin could ‘arrange for the publication of Hermistoun in a good magazine at a fair price at an early date’ he would acquiesce in it.12 A second point of contention concerned the American publication rights for the novel. Colvin favoured Scribner’s, with whom he had already been in private communication and from whom he had received an offer.13 Baxter, however, had previously promised the young Chicago firm of Stone & Kimball at the time of their publication of The EbbTide that they should have the first offer of the American rights to all future Stevenson works. Colvin argued that this was an informal understanding only, one that Balfour himself could overturn as agent for Fanny Stevenson. He wrote to Balfour on 19 August 1895 ‘I expect a few judicious letters and interviews on your part, explaining that C. B. had mistaken the wishes of the family in this particular, would put all right’ (NLS, MS 9894, f. 94). With Colvin’s permission Balfour then informed Baxter of Scribner’s offer. In a meeting on 27 August, Baxter 134

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told Balfour that ‘he remained of the same mind & was not responsible’, but Balfour understood him to say that Stone & Kimball had nothing on which they could sue and that he would be safe in accepting Scribner’s offer. Baxter agreed to write to the Chicago firm himself, ‘that matters had been taken out of his hands by the family & the book had been sold by them to Scribners’.14 Balfour immediately cabled an acceptance to Scribner’s, as he informed Colvin in a letter written later the same day. At the same time, he made it clear to Colvin that Baxter was to arrange with Chatto & Windus for the British book rights, and continued, ‘It is very desirable, or indeed urgent, I think to get H. copied (typewritten, I suppose) as soon as possible. You have the M. S. S. I believe. Can you arrange this, or can I help you in the matter?’.15 Colvin’s reply of 28 August makes it clear that he had indeed got the manuscript and that he had already had two typewritten copies made, one intended for the novel’s British and one for its American publisher: As to Weir, I have the original MS and two typewritten copies. The first is safe locked up at the B. M. [British Museum] […] Of the typewritten copies, I have one with me, and propose to send it to Scribner’s by this Saturday’s mail, considering from your letter that the bargain with them may be looked on as concluded. The other is locked up in the B.M., and I will hand it to Chatto when I get back (Septr 26) or arrange to have it sent them sooner if desirable. (NLS, MS 9894, ff. 106–7) Unfortunately, Baxter’s previous agreement with Stone & Kimball did prove to be legally binding. When he heard from Baxter of the agreement with Scribner’s, Robert McClure wrote to Balfour on 9 September: Messrs. Stone & Kimball of Chicago, whose agent I am in this country, hold a contract whereby it is agreed that they shall have the first offer of all Mr. Stevenson’s books in America. […] I do not wish to anticipate any action on your part but I think it well to let you know that Messrs. Stone & Kimball mean to insist upon the due observance of the terms of the contract referred to […] (NLS, MS 9894, f. 120) Thoroughly wrong-footed, Balfour then turned to Baxter, as a lawyer and experienced man of business, who advised him on 11 September, 135

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the same day he received this letter, that if Stone & Kimball ‘can establish a legal right under the contract with me, then it will be necessary to get out of the Book arrangement with Scribner. That would not, as far as I can see, affect the serial proposal. But dont tie yourself up, as long as there is this hint of trouble from S & K in the wind’. He also expressed the view that he personally should have considered himself morally bound by the Stone & Kimball agreement even if legally it had been voided by Stevenson’s death (NLS, MS 9894, ff. 131–3). He then promptly disappeared on a business trip to the Hague, and Balfour saw the Stone & Kimball contract in question only on 23 September.16 Enclosing a copy in a letter to Fanny Stevenson on 25 September, Balfour concluded that it ‘seems to me to bear out all they say. It binds L and his heirs extrs and his assignees & the terms are such that I could only secure the bookrights for Scrib by a course of commercial trickery that wd be as distasteful to you & me as it wd be degrading to Louis’. The repugnant commercial trickery was no doubt along the lines suggested by Colvin in a telegram of 27 September, that Scribner’s might cap any offer from Stone & Kimball by specifying a large proportion of their total price for the American book rights and a lesser sum for the serial rights for which their Chicago rivals were not in treaty.17 Balfour concluded that the American book rights must be offered to Stone & Kimball, and attempted to negotiate with Scribner’s for serial rights alone. Burlinghame’s reply for Scribner’s of 8 November was decidedly unfavourable, pointing out that their original offer had now lapsed since it presupposed ‘a serial publication in the first half of the year’ and that the delay had materially injured the novel’s chances of success (NLS, MS 9894, f. 182). After some haggling over the price Baxter eventually signed an agreement with Stone & Kimball of Chicago for the American book rights of Weir of Hermiston for which they agreed to pay £650, allowing free inclusion subsequently in the Edinburgh Edition.18 Meanwhile an agreement had been concluded for the serial rights to Weir of Hermiston both in Britain and America with a new magazine called Cosmopolis. Colvin again seems to have initiated negotiations, writing to Balfour on 2 November 1895: The managers of the new international magazine, Cosmopolis, have been with me this morning. They have lots of money, and are starting with contributions by Bourget, Anatole France, &c. &c. They are very anxious to have Weir, and to bring him out in January, February, & March: offering £1000 for serial 136

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rights, wholly independent of book rights: they could easily be screwed up to £1200, I feel sure. But there is one condition which they make, and that is one somewhat hostile to the interests of the publishers in book form: namely that the book should not appear till two months after its conclusion in the Magazine:—that would mean May (NLS, MS 9894, ff. 171–2) Cosmopolis was specifically designed to be an international monthly magazine (a third written in English, a third in French and a third in German), and originally an edition was also to be produced for the American market. Although Stone & Kimball might potentially have felt, therefore, that the advance publication of the novel in Cosmopolis would affect their sales in book form, their London agent Robert McClure was reassuring: The backers apparently have plenty of money, and they have offered £1000 for the serial rights of this story, which they intend to publish in three numbers. The price here will be 2/6, and, I suppose, 50 cents in America. I cannot believe that it will achieve a large circulation in any country, and I do not think that the serialization of the story in its pages will tend in the least to diminish the value of the book.19 Baxter saw no objection to the Cosmopolis offer and undertook negotiations with the magazine’s editor and manager, Fernand Ortmans. His task was indeed a complicated one, since he had to co-ordinate serial and volume publication in both Britain and America, and ensure the maintenance of copyright throughout. As he told Balfour, ‘Be thankful you are not arranging this publication! It’s a damned nuisance to keep the whole team running together’.20 However, by 19 November Colvin was able to report to Edmund Gosse that whether Cosmopolis was successful or not ‘we have got Fisher Unwin’s cheque for the full price of “Weir” safely pocketed since yesterday: no name appearing on the contract except his as buyer’ (Gosse). The novel was to appear in instalments in successive issues of Cosmopolis from the magazine’s first appearance on 1 January 1896, and Stone & Kimball were to secure the copyright in America by printing portions of the text in concert with that. They were then to publish a volume edition in America to coincide with first British volume publication on 20 May 1896.21 A protracted period of dispute between Stevenson’s heirs and agents 137

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had eventually been resolved, but not without a significant time-lag between the death of the author and the publication, more than a year later, of the first instalment of Weir of Hermiston. Meanwhile other preparations had been underway in order to secure it a firm place among the highlights of Stevenson’s literary productions and to emphasize that, although unfinished, it was well worthy of a lucrative separate volume publication. Baxter had set the ball rolling by his remarks to the American press, describing it as a ‘masterpiece’ and emphasizing that although unfinished the extant portion ‘is complete as a part’.22 On receiving the manuscript Colvin consulted various literary friends of Stevenson about publication, partly no doubt with the idea of forming a supportive coterie. His enlisting of Henry James has already been noted, but either the manuscript or a typescript made from it was also sent to J. M. Barrie, Andrew Lang and W. E. Henley. Barrie, in an undated letter, said it was ‘most disappointing to hear that the publication is delayed’ and that he would pass the novel on to Lang. Henley, returning a typescript to Colvin on 4 November 1895, stated that he had read it ‘with great admiration’ (Lucas, 248, 244). Colvin was thus able to state in a trailer for both the volume publication of Weir of Hermiston and the serialization in Cosmopolis, ‘The Posthumous Writings of Mr. R. L. Stevenson’, published in November 1895, ‘Those who have read it are agreed in thinking it, so far as it goes, by far his best’ (Athenæum, 719). A similar purpose surely animated his statement in the Epilogue to Vailima Letters, published at the end of October, that Weir of Hermiston ‘gives to my mind (as it did to his own) for the first time the full measure of his powers’.23 the missing typescript Colvin’s letter to Graham Balfour of 28 August 1895 (see 135) referred to his having made two typewritten copies of Stevenson’s final manuscript, one for the use of the British and one for the use of the American publishers and it seems certain that neither of them worked from the manuscript itself, particularly as there are no printer’s marks on it. Unfortunately neither of these typewritten copies have survived, so it is impossible to state in detail how careful and accurate a representation they were or how far Colvin as literary editor had already intervened in the text. It is, however, clear from discussions of preparations for the Edinburgh Edition between the author, Baxter and Colvin himself in the final year of Stevenson’s life that Colvin was an interventionist editor 138

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who nevertheless wished to minimize the significance of his own role in producing Stevenson’s work. Since the teamwork for producing the Edinburgh Edition (where Stevenson was absent in Samoa) acted as a template for producing his posthumous works of fiction, this debate is highly relevant to understanding the production details for Weir of Hermiston. From Stevenson’s letter to Colvin of 18 June 1894 the text of this edition was very much in Colvin’s hands. Although he was willing to defer to Colvin’s editorial decisions, Stevenson would have preferred Colvin’s role to be openly acknowledged on the title page of the new edition: You and Baxter are having all the trouble of this Edition, and I simply put myself in your hands for you to do what you like with me, and I am sure that will be the best, at any rate. Hence you are to conceive me withdrawing all objections to your printing anything you please. On the question of your name on the false title, I should like it there, but of course if you think the position ‘foolish’ I say no more. (Letters 8: 309) In replying to Baxter’s question ‘Do you approve Colvin being named as Editor on title page of Collected Edition?’ Stevenson returned a firm ‘Yes by God’.24 Colvin himself, on the other hand, was anxious to minimize his editorial interventions, and a slip was inserted in the first volume of the Edinburgh Edition which, while acknowledging him as editor, stated that ‘additions, omissions, and corrections (other than those merely of press) have the sanction and approval of the author’. On 4 November 1894 Stevenson had vigorously objected to this fiction, and he had also shown that he was more concerned with common parlance than with a pedantic correctness in his work: I take an extremely emphatic view against your proposed slip. Really, if you consider your letter of this month and the various corrections which you there indicate it must appear to the meanest capacity that you are the editor, and that I did not make all excisions, alterations and additions. I am afraid, my dear fellow, that you cannot thus play fast and loose. And again, in the matter of ungrammatical sentences, I’m afraid I must be regarded in the light of the unrepentant thief. One of the three examples Stevenson gave was of Colvin’s substitution of the word ‘vigour’ for ‘vim’ on the grounds that ‘vim’ was a word ‘always used in my family—and I suspect always used in Scotland—and is 139

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in consequence familiar and dear to my ears’ (Letters 8: 383–4). Stevenson was equally outspoken in a letter to Baxter written that same day: As to the proposed slip, I put my foot down absolutely. It shall not appear. I have nothing to do with the Edition; no proofs have ever reached me; so far as I can hear no attempts are being made that any should reach me; Colvin writes me by this mail that he has been cutting and carving on my immortal text; I do not say that he is wrong: I do say that ‘all excisions, alterations and additions’ have not been made by me. They have been made by him and he must stand the responsibility. (Letters 8: 389–90) With regard to the Edinburgh Edition, therefore, Stevenson acquiesced in Colvin’s editorial changes, but there are clear signs that he did not whole-heartedly approve of them. They were simply a consequence of the production of the edition in the absence of the author, a situation that is in many ways a parallel to that of the publication of Weir of Hermiston, where the author was dead rather than in the distant Pacific. With this parallel in mind the reader has, therefore, every reason to be sceptical of Colvin’s statement prefacing both the serialization of Weir of Hermiston in the London-produced magazine Cosmopolis and in the copyright edition produced in Chicago by Stone & Kimball: None of his earlier work had been produced at such a sustained pitch of invention, or with so little labour in the way of correction or recasting, and the amount of editorial revision which the text has required has been slight in the extreme. (Cosmopolis 1, 1) While it is true that Stevenson’s corrections to the final manuscript are slight, the nature of the draft material previously discussed proves that Stevenson underwent a great deal of ‘labour in the way of correction or recasting’. Nor is it likely that Colvin’s editorial intervention would be less in a posthumous edition than in those of the Edinburgh Edition volumes produced in Stevenson’s lifetime. When Colvin sent the unfinished work initially to Stevenson’s influential literary friends it is clear that some of them, at least, saw a typescript rather than the manuscript itself.25 Probably Colvin emended his typescripts at this stage to take account of the suggestions of his literary advisors. The manuscript, for instance, refers to the younger Kirstie’s hope that she might one day be Lady Hermiston. Henley 140

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had objected in his letter of 4 November 1895, ‘Kirstie Junior could never have been “Lady Hermiston”: the Scots law lordships are for the wearers alone; Hermiston’s wife was Mrs. Weir, & Archie would have been plain Weir of Hermiston’. Accordingly, all the published versions have either ‘Mistress Weir, of Hermiston’ or ‘Mrs. Weir of Hermiston’.26 Colvin also implemented his own choice of title for the novel, which in Stevenson’s final manuscript was headed ‘The Justice-Clerk’. The latter seems to have been Stevenson’s own preferred title and the one by which he most often referred to the novel in his correspondence. In his letter to Baxter of 16 April 1893 Stevenson had stated: ‘Before the autumn, I hope to send you some Justice-Clerk, or Weir of Hermiston, as Colvin seems to prefer; I own to indecision’ (Letters 8: 53). In late March 1894 he referred in a letter to J. M. Barrie to ‘The Justice Clerk (or else Weir of Hermiston)’ (Letters 8: 259). However, the initial leaf of the manuscript, consisting of chapter titles in Stevenson’s own hand, is headed ‘Weir of Hermiston’ and indicates that, reluctantly or not, Stevenson had finally adopted that title. It is possible to date this leaf in relation to the body of Stevenson’s manuscript. Since it gives cross-references by page number for six of the seven chapters listed but gives no page reference for the seventh and does not mention the eighth or the unfinished ninth at all, it was probably drawn up by Stevenson after the initial six chapters of the manuscript had been written down and at an early stage in the production of the seventh, called there ‘The idyl and a Serpent’ which closely resembles the original reading of ‘An Idyl and a Serpent’ on page 161 of the manuscript itself, before Stevenson changed that in his own hand to ‘Enter Mephistopheles’. The chapter titles and subtitles given in this listing and in the body of the manuscript are not always consistent with one another, and if he had followed Stevenson’s final wishes throughout Colvin would have adopted the chapter titles and subtitles given in the chapter listing for the novel up to that point, but preferred those given in the body of the manucript after it. However, in a number of instances he apparently followed his own personal preferences instead. In neither the body of the manuscript nor the chapter listing was the initial description of the Deil’s Hags headed ‘Introductory’, so it was presumably Colvin who was responsible for this heading. In the body of Stevenson’s manuscript not all the three divisions of the ‘Winter on the Moors’ chapter are given titles as well as numbers: while it was appropriate for Colvin to supply the subtitles given in the chapter listing, for the third one he inconsistently preferred that of the manuscript itself, ‘A Border Family’ (ms, 91) to that of the chapter listing, ‘A 141

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Border Pedigree’. He correctly chose the revised manuscript title for the seventh chapter of ‘Enter Mephistopheles’ since it postdates that given in the chapter listing, and had no choice but to follow the manuscript itself in calling the eighth ‘A Nocturnal Visit’. A title for the last unfinished chapter had then to be supplied by the editor, and in this case Colvin appears to have consulted Fanny Stevenson as to an appropriate title as well as for permission to make another change in the text, asking her to decide whether this (unfortunately unidentified) alteration should be footnoted as an editorial correction. Her letter to Colvin of 15 August [1895] is clearly a reply to one from him of 31 July which does not appear to have survived: I have just received your letter of July 31st. I think it much better that you should make the small change you suggest in the MSS. Just as Louis would have liked you to do It seems to me too slight a thing to make a note necessary. Were it of any importance, I should let it stand. As to the name of the chapter, I remember there was one to be called ‘By the Cauldstaneslap’: If this title has not been used (Belle thinks it has) then I should take it for this chapter; otherwise what you suggest. (Beinecke 8, 192) Since the lovers’ meeting of the chapter occurs not at the natural opening in the hills that is called the Cauldstaneslap but at the tombstone in the morass beyond it, Colvin called it ‘By the Weaver’s Stone’ for the serialization in Cosmopolis, which was altered to ‘At the Weaver’s Stone’ for volume publication. Other changes made by Colvin in preparing printer’s copy are harder to identify. The compositors at each of the printing houses that prepared the various early versions would naturally impose their own house style and preferences on the text they produced and this fact will account for a good deal of variation between them. However, where a reading from the final manuscript is not present in any of the earliest printed versions there is a high probability that it had previously been removed by Colvin in preparing the typescript that acted as printer’s copy. Similarly, misreadings or changes common to them all are likely to have been introduced there. There are also passages where the different printers seem to have variously tackled a perceived difficulty, presumably carried over from the manuscript to the typescript. 142

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The syndicated serial version of Weir of Hermiston published in American newspapers (Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News and Los Angeles Herald) is particularly helpful in determining changes made by Colvin for his typescript, since it appears that the syndicator was working from a copy of the typescript supplied by Colvin as printer’s copy for America and did not implement all of the changes made at the proof stage for Cosmopolis and subsequently incorporated in the American copyright edition produced by Stone & Kimball. Where the syndicated version agrees with the manuscript and the other early printed versions do not, then the assumption must be that the typescript originally supplied by Colvin as printer’s copy also retained the manuscript reading and the change was made at a later stage of production. Many of the changes made in typescript appear to have been motivated by Colvin’s awareness of chronological inconsistencies and by his nervousness about the sexuality of the younger Kirstie Elliott. In all the printed versions (including the syndicated text) the date of Duncan Jopp’s trial has accordingly been altered from ‘the year 1811’ (22) to ‘the year 1813’ (Cosmopolis 1, 321) and Archie’s ‘seventeen years experience’ (ms, 43) to his ‘nineteen years’ experience’ (Cosmopolis 1, 324). It seems likely that Colvin preferred to raise the ages of the hero and (especially) the heroine at the time of their youthful love affair, in view of the recent Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, which had raised the legal age of consent from thirteen to sixteen, and had been preceded by W. T. Stead’s shocking series of articles about child prostitution in the Pall Mall Gazette. Stevenson gives the year of Kirstie’s birth as 1798 (47), which would make her either thirteen or fourteen years old in the spring of 1812, while by the spring of 1814 she would have reached a more appropriate fifteen or sixteen years old. (Interestingly, in both the British and American volume editions that followed the serialization in Cosmopolis Kirstie’s age is further increased to a firm sixteen by changing the year of her birth to 1797.) Kirstie’s childishness is, however, frequently referred to both by Archie and by Stevenson’s narrator and Colvin’s revisions have the unfortunate effect of making this appear less a statement of fact than a characteristic (and all too familiar) Victorian tendency to infantilize women in general. At this stage Colvin failed to address less morally-sensitive chronological problems, such as the reference to ‘Byronism before Byron’ (42) that was less appropriate to the winter of 1813–14 than to that of 1811–12, since the syndicated text has this manuscript reading rather than the ‘Byronism when Byronism was new’ of both the Stone & Kimball and Cosmopolis texts.27 Nor does he seem to have addressed the timing of 143

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Frank Innes’s first sight of Kirstie in Hermiston kirk, since the American newspaper versions agree with the final manuscript in placing this on the twenty-ninth day and the second Sunday of Frank’s visit, without further explanation. Colvin did, however, tone down sexual references in the various descriptions of Kirstie. Having put her churchgoing finery into her trunk in her room at Cauldstaneslap Kirstie ‘flung herself in her shift prone’ on her bed (66): Colvin removed the words ‘in her shift’ (­Cosmopolis 1, 652). The description of Kirstie’s posture, seated on the Weaver’s Stone to greet Archie later that Sunday afternoon, is also censored to remove a reference to her pink stockings being visible. Stevenson’s text reads: She leaned on her bare arm, which showed out strong and round, tapered to a slim wrist, and shimmered in the fading light. Her feet were gathered under her on the one side, where they showed but a peep of the pink stocking, and repeated and continued the same note as the kerchief. (71) The printed versions read: Her feet were gathered under her on the one side, and she leaned on her bare arm, which showed out strong and round, tapered to a slim wrist, and shimmered in the fading light. (Cosmopolis 1, 658) Colvin was also distinctly uncomfortable with Stevenson’s allusive use of metaphors. A need for explicitness lies behind his alteration to Stevenson’s description of the glow from Kirstie as she reflects the sunlight in Hermiston kirk in ‘the threads of bronze and gold that made her hair precious’ (61), to read ‘the threads of bronze and gold that played in her hair’ (Cosmopolis 1, 646). He sometimes also removed what he must have seen as obscure allusions and unusual words from Stevenson’s novel. Lord Hermiston’s complaint to his wife about the broth served at his Edinburgh table is a notable example: Colvin eliminated the reference to the grumbletonians (cf. 8 and Cosmopolis 1, 5), not expecting this to be readily comprehended by a contemporary readership. Presumably he also changed Stevenson’s ‘the coriaceous hide of the Justice-Clerk remained insensible’ (24) to ‘the hide of the Justice-Clerk remained 144

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impenetrable’ (Cosmopolis 1, 323) in order to eliminate an unusual or unfamiliar word. As an Englishman Colvin was at times perplexed by the Scottish background Stevenson drew upon for Weir of Hermiston. One of the ‘old radiant stories’ connected with Holyrood that Archie calls to mind after the trial of Duncan Jopp, for example, is that of ‘the rooded stag’ (23), an allusion to the foundation of the ancient abbey by King David I of Scotland, supposedly following the appearance to him of a stag with a crucifix. Colvin, plainly unaware of the legend, made of the phrase ‘the hooded stag’ (Cosmopolis 1, 323). His treatment of Lord Hermiston’s Scots is also inconsistent, although it is possible that some anglicizations in Hermiston’s speeches may simply be the result of Colvin’s mistaking a Scots word or pronunciation in the manuscript for a scribal error, so that, for example, ‘beering the sword’ (30) becomes ‘bearing the sword’ (Cosmopolis 1, 331). Colvin also attempted to improve Stevenson’s accuracy and style, altering for instance, Stevenson’s ‘the day of judgement was at hand’ (29) to ‘the hour of judgment was at hand’ (Cosmopolis 1, 329) because Archie’s confrontation with his father takes place in the evening. Other cuts and changes appear arbitrary, as when Colvin has young Kirstie looking towards the Hermiston pew in church simply ‘without hurry’ (Cosmopolis 1, 645) whereas in the manuscript she does so ‘without hurry and with perfect, haughty unconsciousness’ (60). In addition to these deliberate changes the typescript must have contained the usual inadvertent errors made in the course of transcription, some of which were carried through to the early printed versions so that Stevenson’s original words were lost. Among the most interesting of these misinterpretations are Jean Rutherford’s ancestors as being ‘wayfaring’ (Cosmopolis 1, 4) rather than ‘warfaring’ (7), Glenkindie’s drunken countenance being comparable to ‘a bear’s’(Cosmopolis 1, 341) rather than ‘a boar’s’ (38), and Kirstie’s allusion to the futility of trying to wash the black-a-vised white in her comment that she was the only Elliott it was worth while to ‘wear’ (56) rather than ‘mar’ (Cosmopolis 1, 362) soap upon. Weir of Hermiston was produced five times within a very tight time frame, being printed in London for serialization in Fisher Unwin’s new magazine Cosmopolis, in Edinburgh for the first British volume publication by the London-based publisher Chatto & Windus, in Chicago in order to secure the American copyright for Stone & Kimball, as an American newspaper syndication, and for the first American volume publication by Scribner’s. Each of these versions must be briefly 145

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described, beginning with the American newspaper text, which has already been mentioned as, in certain respects, closer to the missing typescript than other early published versions. american newspaper syndication Those who arranged for the publication of Stevenson’s posthumous works had not originally intended an American newspaper syndication of Weir of Hermiston, which was generally seen as a low-prestige form of publication and one that might well have an adverse effect on volume sales. In discussing the publication with Baxter as early as 1 June 1893, for instance, Colvin had advised that when ready it should not ‘appear promiscuously in a lot of newspapers first’, but be ‘confined to one good periodical or so in each country’.28 Balfour had intended Scribner’s to have both serial and book rights in the novel, with it first appearing in America in Scribner’s Magazine.29 Although Stone & Kimball purchased only the book rights, the American serial rights of the novel seem originally to have been included by implication in the agreement with Cosmopolis, the original plans for which included an American edition as Robert McClure explained in his letter to Stone of 12 November 1895 (see 137). A syndicated newspaper text was likely to be very imperfect. Syndicates, such as the Associated Literary Press of S. S. McClure, effectively acted as agents for regional newspapers hoping to boost their circulation and advertising revenue by the provision of original and prestigious fiction at moderate cost. The syndicator supplied copy in the form of galley proofs, edited in-house and divided into suitable instalments, with a synopsis and with specially commissioned illustrations. The local newspaper would then typeset the fiction along with the rest of the paper.30 Besides editing the text the syndicator would have his individual misunderstandings and make his own transcription errors, and these would be compounded when individual newspapers typeset it from the galley proofs with which he provided them, particularly as newspapers were produced to a tighter schedule than monthly magazines or volume fiction. Weir of Hermiston was published as a six-part serial (‘The Last Story of Robert Louis Stevenson’) in at least three different American newspapers with a common masthead, synopsis and illustrations. It appeared in the Chicago Tribune each day from Sunday, 5 April to Sunday, 12 April 1896 (some of the weekday issues containing only half a part, and the final Sunday issue carrying two of its six parts). It was 146

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also published in the Dallas Morning News on six successive Sundays, beginning on 15 March and concluding on 19 April. Rather oddly, five of the six syndicated parts appeared in the Los Angeles Herald on 22, 29 March, 5 and 26 April and 3 May, the third part apparently never being published there and its absence neither receiving an explanation in the newspaper nor being objected to in printed readers’ letters. This was, it seems, not a unique occurrence, since ‘Talcott Williams of the Philadelphia Press, for instance, told S. S. McClure in 1885 that his paper “cut one [serial] in the middle and did not get a single complaint from a single reader” ’ ( Johanningsmeier, 185). With this glaring exception, however, none of the three newspapers notably shortened the instalments they had received from the syndicator. The name of the syndicator in question is not known, although it may well have been McClure himself, since he had previously syndicated works by Stevenson (such as The Black Arrow and South Sea Letters) and his brother Robert was Stone & Kimball’s London agent. The syndication was obviously done with the consent of the Chicago publishing firm, since their copyright ownership was carefully acknowledged and publication scheduled to occur between their securing of American copyright (under the Chace Act of 1891 only possible for a foreign work if typeset in America) and 20 May 1896, when an American volume edition was intended to appear. The inclusion of the final uncompleted chapter of Weir of Hermiston and of information drawn from Colvin’s longer editorial note (neither included in the American copyright edition) is also suggestive, since the latter would not be widely available until the appearance of the May issue of Cosmopolis. Had American newspaper publication been originally intended before American volume publication then the typesetting of Stone & Kimball’s copyright edition would have been an unnecessary expense since their rights could presumably have been secured through that. The opportunity for a separate sale of American serial rights opened up once it had become clear that Cosmopolis did not, after all, have its own American edition. It seems likely that Stone & Kimball realized at this point that by publishing their copyright edition they had in effect secured both serial and book rights to Weir of Hermiston in America, and sought to recoup some of the costs of producing it. Stevenson’s agents, Baxter and Colvin, probably had little or no control over this. The interest of this syndicated text lies partly in its illustrations and in its accompanying synopsis of the plot, both of which provide evidence for the ways in which Stevenson’s novel was read and understood in late nineteenth-century America. The synopsis, for exam147

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ple, refers to the Black Brothers as ‘a wild set, but now leading quiet lives’ and to the Hermiston estate as situated ‘at the Scottish village of Crossmichael’.31 It is otherwise significant as being undoubtedly closer to the manuscript than any of the other early printings. For instance, Stevenson’s narrator here as in the manuscript, after describing the elder Kirstie’s resentment of Frank Innes at Hermiston, enquires ‘Has the reader caught the idea?’ where the Stone & Kimball copyright edition has ‘Has the reader detected the springs of Kirstie’s wrath?’ and Cosmopolis ‘Has the reader divined the springs of these emotions?’.32 In other places, however, it is closer to the Stone & Kimball copyright edition or Cosmopolis text, demonstrating that the syndicator was not simply reproducing the American typescript of the novel. For example, the manuscript, giving the narrator’s personal reminiscences of the Speculative Society where Archie presides, states ‘He sat in the same room; only the portraits were not there—those now represented were then but beginning their career’ (25). The newspaper reading of ‘He sat in the same room where the society still meets—only the portraits were not there; the men who afterwards sat for them were then but beginning their career’ is closer to that of Cosmopolis (1, 325) and the Stone & Kimball text (54).33 The newspaper printers made a noticeably greater number of typographical errors than are present in other early published versions of Weir of Hermiston, some of which have a distinctly comical air, such as ‘Jacob in figments’ for ‘Jacobin figments’ and ‘He reigned in his horse’ for ‘He reined in his horse’, both of which appear in the Chicago Tribune of 5 April. Partly because of the conditions under which it was produced the newpaper syndication version of Stevenson’s novel is overall decidedly inferior textually to any of the other early published versions. british serialization in cosmopolis As previously mentioned, Stevenson’s estate received a thousand pounds in advance for serialization of Weir of Hermiston in Fisher Unwin’s new international magazine Cosmopolis. Obviously a new serial by so renowned a writer as Stevenson would be a great attraction for launching the new magazine, to which it was also well suited thematically, being like many of its other articles ‘equivocal about the power of culture to unite’ (Reid, 269). According to Colvin’s letter to Edmund Gosse of 19 November 1895, payment had been made (and presumably the contract signed) on the preceding day (Gosse). The novel was published in four monthly parts in Cosmopolis, from January to April 148

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1896, prefaced by a brief note initialled ‘S. C.’ in the first instalment and followed by Colvin’s more substantial ‘A Note on “Weir of Hermiston” ’ in the May issue. (This served, when revised, as the afterword to the British volume edition.) Resident in London where the magazine was produced and heavily invested in presenting Stevenson’s novel to its readership, Colvin plainly exercised a high degree of control over the text. It is clear that he introduced another level of editorial revision into Weir of Hermiston at the proof stage. Although in the absence of a surviving typescript and magazine proofs it is not possible to detect all the changes made between the typescript supplied as copy to the magazine and the text published there, where the American newspaper text and the manuscript agree and the Cosmopolis text contains a substantially different reading, proof alteration is the most obvious explanation. For instance, the elder Kirstie’s ire against Frank Innes in Stevenson’s colloquial words ‘Has the reader caught the idea?’ (78) was replaced by the somewhat affected ‘Has the reader divined the springs of these emotions?’ (Cosmopolis 2, 4). Plainly some of these changes were advisable. When Lord Muirfell’s daughter has been previously named as ‘Lady Flora’ (42), for instance, she should not be subsequently called ‘Lady Janet’ (ms, 123), and the Cosmopolis text makes the appropriate correction (1, 642). It was also natural that Colvin should address the chronological problem of the date on which Frank Innes first sees young Kirstie at church. He alters the impossible references to this as being on ‘the twenty-ninth’ day and the ‘second’ Sunday (85) of Frank’s stay at Hermiston, changing the first to ‘the twenty-seventh’ (which unlike the twenty-ninth day is a Sunday), and the second to the ‘fourth’ Sunday of the visit. To account for Innes’s failure to see Kirstie in church on the second and third Sundays of his visit he then added after the mention of the first Sunday, ‘On the two Sundays next following, Frank had himself been absent on some of his visits in the country-side’ (Cosmopolis 2, 12). Other changes, however, are quite unnecessary departures from Stevenson’s manuscript and suggest a mixture of inadvertent error by the magazine printer’s compositors and, in a number of cases, attempts at stylistic improvement at the proof stage by Colvin as editor. Stevenson had described Kirstie’s self-image as she goes to her attic room at Cauldstaneslap on the day of her first encounter with Archie as ‘the most beautiful of her sex by her victories at the kirk—the gayest by her more recent triumphs in the bosom of her own family’ (65), a description omitted in Cosmopolis. In similar fashion ‘inimitable womanly falsity’ (12) becomes ‘womanly falsity’ (Cosmopolis 1, 10) and ‘all 149

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exquisite sensibility’ (28) becomes ‘all sensibility’ (Cosmopolis 1, 329). Occasionally one word is substituted for another, so that the Hermiston kirk settlement ‘is all the year round’ in a great silence (Cosmopolis 1, 342) rather than ‘lies all the year round’ (40). A repetition surely made for emphasis by an angry man is deleted wrongly when Innes terms Archie an ‘unfriendly rude rude dog’ (84; cf. Cosmopolis 2, 11). How effective a representation of the text of Stevenson’s novel is its first serial publication in Cosmopolis? While many differences between the two may be attributed to either the typescript acting as printer’s copy, to the work of the printers, or to Colvin’s changes in proof, Stevenson can have been responsible for none of them. Some ignore manuscript corrections made in his own hand in the final manuscript. He had, for instance, carefully inserted a second ‘n’ into two instances of the word ‘panel’ during the scene of the trial of Duncan Jopp (ms, 41), but Cosmopolis nevertheless has ‘panel’ not ‘pannel’ (1, 322). Others demonstrate misunderstanding. When Kirstie tells the little maid she will have to wait upon Innes, adding ‘I cannae, I cannae haud myself in’ (78) her meaning is plainly that she cannot wait upon him because she cannot control an outbreak of temper, so the Cosmopolis text’s deletion of the second ‘I cannae’ (2, 4) is in error. Among the most damaging alterations of this kind is the description of the cessation of Archie’s late-night conferences with the elder Kirstie as ‘an unremarkable change’ of amusement (2, 16) rather than the more percipient ‘unremarked change’ (89) that emphasizes how much greater the loss is to Kirstie than to Archie. Another kind of change seems to elaborate unnecessarily an idea that it was unlikely the reader should misunderstand. Archie’s presiding at a Speculative Society meeting prompts a personal reminiscence from Stevenson: ‘He sat in the same room; only the portraits were not there—those now represented were then but beginning their career’ (25). The Cosmopolis text draws this out to, ‘He sat in the same room where the Society still meets—only the portraits were not there: the men who afterwards sat for them were then but beginning their career’ (1, 325). Other substantive changes (noted above as deriving from the typescript that was the printer’s copy) work in the interests of sexual propriety, removing allusions to the younger Kirstie’s undergarments or raising the age at which she engages in a love affair. Occasionally the Cosmopolis text also changes paragraph breaks. These were clearly important to Stevenson for in places he has marked with his own hand a correction of what Belle Strong had written: as 150

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indicated above he has on occasion marked the start of a fresh paragraph where one did not exist before (ms, 36) or filled in with lines and the instruction ‘run on’ the space created by a paragraph break existing where he did not want one (ms, 81, 168). One example of an extra paragraph break in the Cosmopolis text occurs after the word ‘humour’ in ‘He paused and looked upon her with a face of wrath, into which there stole, as he looked, a twinkle of humour—“Noansense!” he said’ (ms, 9). Punctuation is traditionally regarded as largely the province of the printer, with many authors (such as Scott, for example) punctuating their manuscripts only sketchily, on the assumption that the printer would complete the process in the course of production. Stevenson also expected the printer to supplement the punctuation of his literary manuscripts, but was annoyed when his own careful punctuation was ignored or superceded. In November 1887 he had expressed his irritation with the printer’s proofs of Jekyll and Hyde to Edward Burlinghame: Possibly a word from you might help: depict me as a man of a congested countenance and the most atrabilious disposition; you will only anticipate the truth, for if they go on making hay of my punctuation, I shall surely have a stroke. (Letters 6: 50) While the manuscript of Weir of Hermiston was not in his own hand, it is clear that Stevenson’s dictation to Belle Strong included punctuation as well as words, and the corrections in his hand show occasional changes to its punctuation. One clear-cut instance is where Belle had written down that Jean’s father died presiding at a ‘hell-fire club’, and Stevenson has doubly underlined the first letter of each word and written ‘caps.’ in the margin (ms, 3). Another occurs in a marginal addition in Stevenson’s hand about Archie’s walk after the hanging of Duncan Jopp, which he first described as undertaken ‘in an endless pilgrimage of misery and temper’, but subsequently not only deleted the final two words but also added a semicolon after ‘misery’ (ms, 46). It is therefore a matter of moment when the Cosmopolis text significantly changes the punctuation of the manuscript. For instance, this describes the elder Kirstie as ‘a connection of her masters’ (45) and Cosmopolis adds an apostrophe to make the final word ‘master’s’ (1, 348). The one member of the present Hermiston family to whom Kirstie is not related, however, is Lord Hermiston, so that the plural ‘masters’, which would include the former Jean Rutherford and her son, is correct. The elder Kirstie after discussing the hair of Archie’s dead 151

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mother reverts to her original subject with ‘But as I was sayin’, my mither . . .” ’ (ms, 96). When the ellipsis is replaced by a dash (Cosmopolis 1, 350) it seems as though the speech is cut off or interrupted, removing the impression that the narrator tunes out of a continuing speech. A longer sentence divided by Stevenson into a three-part unit by two semicolons is sometimes turned into three separate sentences in the Cosmopolis text. For example, in describing young Kirstie in Hermiston kirk the manuscript reads, ‘The lip was lifted from her little teeth; he saw the red blood work vividly under her tawny skin; her eye, which was great as a stags, struck and held his gaze’ (ms, 131), which then becomes three separate sentences in the magazine (Cosmopolis 1, 646). Colvin and the other intermediaries whose responsibility it was to turn an unfinished manuscript into a printed text obviously had to make some necessary changes. It was essential to normalize Belle Strong’s somewhat eccentric spelling, changing ‘hypocracy’ and ‘hypocrit’ (ms, 127) to ‘hypocrisy’ and ‘hypocrite’ (Cosmopolis 1, 644), for instance, and regulating her wayward use of apostrophes. It was also natural, in view of the need to make money from Stevenson’s literary estate for his dependents, to regularize plot details in order to make the manuscript of the novel appear a carefully considered and revised work so far as it extended. The changes that were made, however, go far beyond what was required, rendering the Cosmopolis text of Weir of Hermiston a far from satisfactory interpretation of Stevenson’s manuscript. british volume publication Charles Baxter had carefully arranged for the serial publication of Weir of Hermiston from January to April 1896 in Cosmopolis to be closely followed by volume publication in Britain on an agreed date of 20 May 1896. The edition was to consist of 10,000 copies, the retail price to be 6s. (McKay, i, 286). The publisher was the London-based firm Chatto & Windus, but the imprint of the volume reveals that the printing was undertaken in Edinburgh by T. & A. Constable. This is a completely distinct and fresh setting of type from the Cosmopolis text, with the serial’s double speech marks becoming single ones throughout. The foot-of-page glosses of Scots words were eliminated, since the Chatto & Windus edition contains a separate glossary at the back of the volume. Colvin acted as editor, however, in both cases and it is reasonable to assume that he would make some use of proofs or final text from the instalments in Cosmopolis in preparing the text of the volume publication. He did not, however, simply use the serialized text as printer’s 152

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copy for there are numerous differences between the two texts, not all of which can be ascribed to inadvertent printer’s errors or to the imposition of a different in-house style by the printer. Clearly Colvin in his editorial role made a further attempt at revising Stevenson’s text. The year of birth of the younger Kirstie was changed from ‘’98, the year of Nelson and the Nile’ to ‘’97, the year of Camperdown and Cape St. Vincent’.34 ‘Mure and Palmer’ (Cosmopolis 1, 355) was corrected to ‘Muir and Palmer’ (Chatto, 129), and ‘Lion King at Arms’ (Cosmopolis 1, 349) to the correct, but less colloquial, ‘Lyon King of Arms’ (Chatto, 116). The sentence which originally read ‘Has the reader caught the idea?’ (78) and had been altered in Cosmopolis (2, 4) to read, pretentiously, ‘Has the reader divined the springs of these emotions?’ is now toned down to ‘Has the reader perceived the reason?’ (Chatto, 210). Similarly, Colvin reformulated the sentence in which in Cosmopolis (2, 12) he had tried to account for Frank Innes’s failure to see young Kirstie in church during the second and third Sundays of his visit at Hermiston (Chatto, 230). There is a clear error in the form of Kirstie’s Biblical analogy in the manuscript (‘like Paul o’ Tarsus, when they think at least’: ms, 197) and this had been corrected in Cosmopolis to read ‘o’t least’ (2, 20), but was now changed again to read ‘it least’ (Chatto, 249). Such changes demonstrate Colvin’s excessive, if well-intentioned, editing of his deceased friend’s work. Another group of changes correct misunderstandings and errors by the typist or by the printers of Cosmopolis. Sometimes the volume edition effectively restores a manuscript reading that had been lost in the Cosmopolis text, such as ‘vast indwelling rhythm’ (Chatto, 152) for ‘vast indwelling rhyme’ (Cosmopolis 1, 643), and ‘unseasonable ardours’ (Chatto, 239) for ‘unreasonable ardours’ (Cosmopolis 2, 16). While in these respects the British volume edition is a more careful rendering of Stevenson’s manuscript, however, it also continues to move the text away from it. There are further omissions of words from the manuscript, changing, for instance, a reference to Mrs. Weir’s ‘easy tears’ (Cosmopolis 1, 9) to simply ‘tears’ (Chatto, 20). Changes such as these may have been made inadvertently, but others are less likely to be so and alter the feel of a sentence significantly, as when the elder Kirstie waiting on Frank Innes at breakfast ‘flounced’ (Chatto, 208) rather than ‘floated’ (Cosmopolis 2, 4) from the room. The reason for some changes is hard to determine, such as altering the distance of Hermiston from the Deil’s Hags to ‘two miles’ (Chatto, 185) instead of ‘three miles’ (Cosmopolis 1, 656). The speeches of Scots speakers are sometimes shifted in the direction of their speaking less and some153

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times more Scots. Young Kirstie’s ‘habit of mines’ (Cosmopolis 1, 659) becomes ‘habit of mine’ (Chatto, 191), for instance, but Dandie’s ‘I daur say not’ (Cosmopolis 1, 654) becomes ‘I daursay no’ (Chatto, 180). Some punctuation is also altered, again sometimes bringing the volume publication text closer to Stevenson’s manuscript but more often moving further away from it. ‘Hay of Romanes’ and ‘Pringle of Drumanno’ (Chatto, 102) are restored, removing the fussy commas in ‘Hay, of Romanes’ and ‘Pringle, of Drumanno’ in Cosmopolis (1, 344). On the other hand the volume edition adds an ellipsis at the end of the chapter entitled ‘Opinions of the Bench’ (Chatto, 97), and adds hyphens that alter, for instance, ‘good even and good day’ (Cosmopolis 1, 343–4) to ‘good-even and good-day’ (Chatto, 101–2). Weir of Hermiston in volume form has additional punctuation and more editorial intervention from Colvin. Though some individual readings bring the text closer to Stevenson’s work than the version in Cosmopolis others move it in the opposite direction. american copyright edition The passage of the Chace Act of 1891, by placing Britain and various European countries in copyright relations with the United States, had effectively ended the wholesale unauthorized printing of Stevenson’s work in America, and afterwards a number of his works were published there by arrangement with Charles Baxter by the young Chicago firm of Stone & Kimball, including The Ebb-Tide (1894), The Amateur Emigrant (1895) and Vailima Letters (1895). The partnership had been formed in 1893 while Herbert Stone and Hannibal Kimball were students at Harvard University. John Tebbel describes them as drawing their inspiration from the English revival of printing craftsmanship exemplified by the Kelmscott Press, and emphasizes their careful application of the decorative arts to their books (ii, 402–3, 430–6). As outlined above, after some initial confusion an agreement was reached by Charles Baxter as Stevenson’s executor for volume publication of Weir of Hermiston by the young Chicago firm. A draft memorandum of the agreement specifies that Stone & Kimball would be furnished ‘with corrected proofs in due time’ and that they ‘bind themselves to protect copyright, by timeous publication in the United States, in concert with publication in a Magazine entitled Cosmopolis, the first number of which will be published in London, by Mr T. Fisher Unwin, on or about 1st January 1896’.35 Accordingly, at the foot of the first page of each of the four instalments of Weir of Hermiston in Cosmopolis, from 154

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January to April 1896 and of Colvin’s note in the May issue, is a declaration ‘Copyright (in U. S. A.) 1896 by Stone & Kimball’. The Chicago firm arranged that the well-known local printer R. R. Donnelley & Sons should typeset the novel and print a small number of copies initially for the purpose of securing their copyright. A note by Kimball on the fly-leaf of one of these copies, now at Harvard, states that the number printed was ‘about six copies’ (Widener Catalogue, 186). Stone & Kimball’s copyright edition of Weir of Hermiston was received by the Library of Congress in three parts, intended to coincide with the monthly British serialization, on 4 January, 6 February and 6 March 1896 respectively (Swearingen, 174–5). Each part was supplied with its own paper wrapper, but the text is continuously paginated so that the same setting of type could also be used for the subsequent volume edition. Part i works in tandem with the instalment in the January issue of Cosmopolis, but after this the synchronicity of the two breaks down. The February issue of Cosmopolis consisted only of the chapters entitled ‘In the Matter of the Hanging of Duncan Jopp’, ‘Opinion of the Bench’, and ‘Winter on the Moors’, and the March issue contained ‘A Leaf from Christina’s Psalm-Book’, whereas Part ii of the Stone & Kimball edition contains all this material and even continues with part of the next chapter, ‘Enter Mephistopheles’, finishing somewhat abruptly with ‘Poor Archie is a good fellow, an excellent fellow, a fellow I always liked’ on a recto (197). It seems odd to end a part of what was eventually to be continuous text on a recto with a blank verso following, and to begin Part iii with a verso at page 198, for the reissue as a book would naturally require that pages 197 and 198 should occupy a single leaf. Part iii of the Stone & Kimball edition finishes after the completion of the chapter entitled ‘A Nocturnal Visit’, and does not include the unfinished chapter of Archie’s confrontation with young Kirstie at the Weaver’s Stone that is included in all the other early versions of Weir of Hermiston. Nor does Colvin’s essay in the May issue of Cosmopolis appear in this American copyright edition, despite the prefatory magazine note that the US copyright to this also belonged to Stone & Kimball. It looks rather as though Stone & Kimball had decided to include as much of the text as possible in their February instalment, and that after the thinner March instalment was printed they had lost heart in the enterprise. Despite apparent prosperity the young partners were over-extending themselves financially to an extent that alarmed the father and financial backer of one of the partners, Herbert Stone, into demanding more liquidation of its investments. The firm came to an abrupt end 155

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in April 1896 when Kimball bought out Stone’s interest in the firm for $20,000, Stone’s father subsequently setting him up as a publisher on his own (Kramer, 74, 56). Kimball was soon in difficulties and had to sell his Stevenson copyrights to the New York firm of Charles Scribners’s Sons, a transfer he informed Baxter of in a letter of 7 May 1896 (Kramer, 84). No Stone & Kimball publications were issued after July 1897 and a public sale of their remaining copyrights took place that October (Kramer, 87). It is hardly surprising that Kimball was losing interest in continuing a printing of roughly six copies of Weir of Hermiston as he realized that he might not be able to publish the commercial volume edition that would allow him to recoup his expenditure. Kimball’s correspondence with the Scribner’s firm reveals that the American copyright edition had been produced by means of either stereotype or electrotype plates.36 In either case the cost of producing plates from the typeset text would be economically viable only for large editions or for editions that were likely to be printed more than once. Plates could be physically altered to allow for corrections to the text, but this would involve cutting or punching out faulty areas and soldering pieces of type in their place so that correction was a cumbersome process. In creating plates for their copyright edition Stone & Kimball had plainly expected that the text of their subsequent volume edition would be substantially the same as for their copyright edition. However, for the British volume edition (a fresh setting of type from the Cosmopolis serialization) a great many changes were in fact made, and Robert McClure’s letter to Herbert Stone of 7 April 1896 shows that Colvin expected that they would be incorporated into the equivalent American volume edition: On Saturday last, April 4th, I sent you one set complete, revised sheets of ‘Weir of Hermiston’. I now enclose the letter which Colvin sent with the sheets. No doubt you will find it to your advantage to follow the English copy and the same method of printing the glossary. (Scribner’s Archive) The American firm that prided itself on its handsome book production was then faced with heavy costs or the alternative of producing a much less elegant edition of the novel. They could either scrap their existing plates and make new ones or print from the existing plates after they had been heavily cut and altered, which would badly affect the existing spacing of the text, particularly as the copyright edition, like Cosmopolis, included foot-of-page glosses of Scots words and the first 156

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volume edition was to have a separate glossary. This may have been another reason why the firm lost enthusiasm for the novel. The copyright edition produced by Stone & Kimball, from a typescript and consultation of proofs from Cosmopolis, is in some respects closer than Cosmopolis to Stevenson’s manuscript: it retains ‘inimitable’, for instance, in ‘The inimitable womanly falsity’ (Stone, 21), and reproduces Stevenson’s spelling of ‘pannel’ (Stone, 48). It also has its own solutions to perceived problems of the text. The colloquial sentence ‘Has the reader caught the idea?’ (78) had been changed by Cosmopolis to the more pretentious ‘Has the reader divined the springs of these emotions?’ (2, 4), and the Stone & Kimball edition appears to compromise with ‘Has the reader detected the springs of Kirstie’s wrath?’ (Stone, 192). It also avoids a number of errors in the Cosmopolis text, returning a speech to Dandie Elliott, for instance, that the Cosmopolis punctuation had wrongly given to Hob. Following the manuscript this edition reads, ‘Hob would expostulate: “I’m an amature herd,” Dand would reply’ (Stone, 125), where Cosmopolis has ‘Hob would expostulate, “I’m an amature herd.” Dand would reply’ (1, 357). Earlier in the same chapter this edition correctly has ‘the woman […] who crouched on the rug’ (Stone, 108), referring to Kirstie, rather than ‘the women […] who crouched on the rug’ (Cosmopolis 1, 349). Unfortunately, however, it also introduces new errors of its own, for instance, that ‘the days grew on’ (Stone, 187) rather than ‘the days drew on’ (77) and ‘his separate worship’ (Stone, 159) for ‘his separative worship’ (65). Occasionally words are, presumably accidentally, omitted, Frank Innes, for instance, being described as ‘the picture’ (Stone, 192) rather than ‘the very picture’ (78) of manly youth. As an American production this edition also pushes the text of Weir of Hermiston further from Stevenson’s manuscript, with words being given American spellings where the manuscript has British ones, such as ‘fervor’ (Stone, 16) and ‘traveling’ (Stone, 17). The cultural distance between Britain and America may also perhaps be reflected in the supposed correction of spellings that are attempts to reproduce a Scottish pronunciation, such as ‘swim’ (Stone, 10) for ‘sweem’ (8). Altogether, the American copyright edition, though a careful production, also moves Weir of Hermiston further away from Stevenson’s own work and introduces more changes in the text.

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american volume edition For all their care in securing the American copyright of Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston and their expenditure in procuring the plates from which a commercially-available volume edition could be produced, that volume was not published by the Chicago firm of Stone & Kimball but by that of Charles Scribner’s Sons of New York. An agreement between Stone & Kimball and Scribner’s appears to have been reached during early April 1896. An undated draft note states that for ‘$1000 to us in hand paid, receipt of which is hereby acknowledged, and other good and valuable considerations hereafter enumerated we hereby sell assign transfer and set over to Messrs Charles Scribners Sons, of New York all our rights to the following named works by R. L. Stevenson’, the list including Weir of Hermiston.37 On 8 April Kimball wrote to Scribner’s estimating that his firm would be owed about $3000 altogether for various Stevenson works and asking for the balance of $2000 to be paid at once. He specifies that the debt includes ‘about $300.00 for the “Ebb Tide”, and about the same for the “Weir of Hermiston.” […] The stock and plates are at your disposal at any time’. On 13 April he wrote again with ‘freight receipts’ for the firm’s Stevenson stock and told Scribner’s ‘I am directing Messrs. Donnelley to ship you the plates of “Weir of Hermiston” ’. In the meantime Robert McClure in London, unaware of the imminent transfer of American copyright in Weir of Hermiston from Stone & Kimball to Scribner’s, had written to Herbert Stone on 7 April, as noted above, sending complete, revised sheets of the British volume edition of the novel. These were duly forwarded to Scribner’s by Kimball, according to his letter of 22 April 1896, which states: ‘Here is a letter from Mr. Colvin about “Weir”, as you know the plates are complete with the exception of the added matter, which I sent you the other day’. The transfer of Weir of Hermiston from Stone & Kimball in Chicago to Charles Scribner’s Sons in New York was therefore undertaken only a few weeks before the agreed publication date for the volume, which was to be 20 May 1896 to agree with that of the first British volume publication. Colvin’s extended ‘Note on “Weir of Hermiston” ’, which was published in the issue of Cosmopolis for May 1896, still bore the note of Stone & Kimball’s ownership of the American copyright. A careful examination of the Stone & Kimball copyright edition and the volume edition published by Scribner’s confirms that the plates of the former were used for both editions even though the print158

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ed sheets are not identical. Reuse of the plates is indicated by the fact that each page of both texts begins and ends at the same point, with only four exceptions: pages 110/111, 127/128, 135/136, 191/92. These exceptions can be accounted for by the fact that a revision was made to the text near the foot of a page or head of the one following, or because the elimination of footnote glosses left one page of text noticeably shorter than that of the facing page. Besides the removal of foot-of-page glosses, alterations were also made to the plates of Weir of Hermiston so that the text of the American volume edition should agree with that of the first British volume edition, to be published simultaneously with it. McClure’s letter to Herbert Stone of 7 April 1896, cited above, shows that Stone & Kimball had been sent printed sheets of the British volume edition of Weir of Hermiston on 4 April, and that it was expected that their edition should ‘follow the English copy’. In one instance, such a revision was imperfectly made so that the copyright edition’s ‘think o’t’ (Stone, 227), supposedly emended to follow the British volume’s ‘think it’ (Chatto, 249), actually reads ‘think oit’ (Scribner’s, 227). Alterations to the plates to incorporate revisions are responsible for some ugly spacing in the Scribner’s edition: on page 89, for instance, the end of line 20 is not properly aligned with the margin because an end-of-line comma has been taken out. Given that Stone & Kimball were in the process of selling Weir of Hermiston to Scribner’s by the time the sheets of the British volume edition reached them it seems unlikely (though not, of course, impossible) that the Chicago printer, Donnelley, was responsible for implementing these changes. The printer’s imprint on the verso of the title page of the Scribner’s edition reads ‘Norwood Press | J. S. ­Cuching & Co.—Berwick and Smith | Norwood Mass. U. S. A.’, presumably a printer employed by Scribner’s. Kimball’s letter to Arthur Scribner of 22 April 1896 implies that Scribner’s printer was responsible for the typesetting of the new material for the volume edition (which included the final unfinished chapter, Colvin’s ‘Editorial Note’, and the separate glossary, together with the dedication and contents leaves), and probably he also corrected the existing plates. The American first edition bears two copyright declarations on the verso of the title page, one for Stone & Kimball, covering the material previously included in their copyright edition, and one for Charles Scribner’s Sons, presumably for the additional material in the volume. It may also reflect some uncertainty as to whether or not the sale would be finalized by the agreed publication date of 20 May. 159

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A very few typographical errors were eliminated in the plates, so that, for instance, ‘drunk the msot’ was corrected to ‘drunk the most’ (96), and some obvious errors such as ‘shaking hand all round’ were corrected to ‘shaking hands all round’ (153). On the other hand, some of the deficiencies (accidental or otherwise) of the British volume, are now introduced into the American text in Scribner’s edition, so that ‘The inimitable womanly falsity’ becomes ‘The womanly falsity’ (21) and ‘the woman […] who crouched on the rug’ becomes ‘the women […] who crouched on the rug’ (108). In adopting readings from the British volume edition, the Scribner’s text does effectively restore some readings from the manuscript. Middle-aged Kirstie, for instance, now has ‘unseasonable ardours’ (218) rather than ‘unreasonable ardours’. However, the same process simultaneously moved the American text away from the manuscript. Young Kirstie’s birth, for example, is no longer ‘in ’98, the year of Nelson and the Nile’ but ‘in ’97, the year of Camperdown and Cape St. Vincent’ (110–11), and the elder Kirstie who had ‘floated from the room’ now ‘flounced from the room’ (190). Oddly enough, there are even places where adopting the British volume reading removes a Scotticism from the American text, as when ‘a habit of mines’ is changed to ‘a habit of mine’ (175). Textually, the Scribner’s volume mixes the faults and virtues of the American copyright edition with those of the British volume edition and is, besides, a less attractive piece of printing than either. weir of hermiston in the edinburgh edition When Charles Baxter arrived in Samoa early in 1895 he brought copies of the first two volumes of the Edinburgh Edition, the projected collected works of Robert Louis Stevenson, with him. It was always envisaged that Weir of Hermiston should be included in the series and careful provision for this was made in contracts relating to previous publication of the novel. The draft memorandum of agreement between Baxter and Stone & Kimball for the American volume edition, for instance, had included a clause stating that the ‘price shall include right of republication in the Edinburgh Edition of the said R. L. ­Stevenson’s works without extra charge’ (Scribner’s Archive). The Edinburgh Edition, a finely printed collected works of 1035 copies published between 1894 and 1898, numbered twenty volumes as originally planned, to which eight supplementary volumes were subsequently added. Weir of Hermiston was included in Volume xxvi, 160

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dated December 1897, the seventh volume of the subset entitled ‘Romances’. It was preceded in the volume by other unfinished fictions, the half-title accordingly reading ‘Weir of Hermiston and Other Fragments’. ‘Weir of Hermiston’ occupies pages 123–307, and is preceded by a second half-title reading ‘Weir of Hermiston | A Fragment’. Like the first British volume edition of Weir of Hermiston this volume was printed by T. & A. Constable of Edinburgh, and among the list of publishers following Longmans on the title page is Chatto & Windus. The Edinburgh Edition volume appears to have been typeset from a copy of the first British volume edition of Weir of Hermiston, published by Chatto & Windus the preceding year: although the Edinburgh Edition is a fresh setting of type, there are few differences between the punctuation of the two editions and both employ single speech marks. The printers of the Edinburgh Edition did their work well, supplying the odd missing speech mark and adding a space between words where one had been inadvertently omitted. One or two obvious errors in the first British edition were corrected, such as ‘women […] who crouched on the rug’ (Chatto, 116) to ‘woman […] who crouched on the rug’ (EdEd, 199). The printer may also have been responsible for intelligent emendations such as Kirstie’s going ‘in to prayers’ at Cauldstaneslap (EdEd, 250) rather than ‘into prayers’ (Chatto, 199). An Edinburgh printer familiar with Scots usages might well have corrected ‘two-names’ (Chatto, 141) to ‘to-names’ (EdEd, 215), or have changed the nonsensical ‘howl’ (Chatto, 250) to ‘howf ’ (EdEd, 281). Unfortunately, on one occasion, faced with the inconsistently punctuated ‘breakfast. and’ (Chatto, 222–3) the printer, clearly without recourse to the manuscript, has decided upon ‘breakfast, and’ (EdEd, 264) rather than the original reading ‘breakfast. And’ (83). The printer created a great many more hyphenated compound words in this edition, such as ‘book-shop’ (166), ‘drove-road’ (204) and ‘upstairs’ (234), and he introduced apostrophes in Scots words, for instance, ‘do ye no’ think’ (280), implying that the Scots form was an incomplete English word (rather than an independent form in its own right). Some extra commas are also introduced, giving the text overall a slightly fussier look and feel than the first British volume edition. Other changes to the text involve the addition of initial upper-case letters to signal specific rather than generic reference: Archie, for example, attends not ‘the high school and the college’ (Chatto, 35–6) but ‘the High School and the College’ (EdEd, 150); Kirstie alludes to the forgiveness of trespasses in ‘the Lord’s Prayer’ (EdEd, 218) rather than in ‘the Lord’s prayer’ (Chatto, 146); and Archie goes to the ‘New Year’s 161

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ball’ at Huntsfield (EdEd, 191) rather than the ‘new year’s ball’ (Chatto, 103). There is some uncertainty in the application of this to the Cauldstaneslap males, who in the ‘Introductory’ section are the ‘four Black Brothers’ (EdEd, 130) but after their legendary chase become the ‘Four Black Brothers’ (206): afterwards they are sometimes the one and sometimes the other, and on one occasion simply the ‘four black brothers’ (272). Occasionally the representation of Scots forms of speech is altered, apparently arbitrarily, so that ‘are nae’ (Chatto, 20) becomes ‘arena’ (EdEd, 141) and ‘cannae’ (Chatto, 24) becomes ‘canna’ (EdEd, 143). Other alterations are more than simply presentational, and suggest that Sidney Colvin as editor may have revised Stevenson’s text once again for the Edinburgh Edition, with mixed results. Among the less intelligible alterations is young Kirstie’s pejorative description of Archie from ‘looking like a stork’ (Chatto, 176) to ‘looking like a stirk [young bullock]’ (EdEd, 236) when he is no longer cricitized for slenderness but for stupidity. Mr Weir judges his bride to be ‘somewhat suitable’ (EdEd, 133) rather than ‘somehow suitable’ (Chatto, 8), and Hermiston’s colloquial speech pattern is diminished when ‘a sore kind of a business’ (Chatto, 10) becomes ‘a sore kind of business’ (EdEd, 134). Occasionally Colvin thinks, mistakenly, that he is better informed than Stevenson. With Scott’s Rob Roy in mind he changes ‘Grigalach’ (87; Chatto, 234) into ‘Gregarach’ (EdEd, 272), failing to recognize Stevenson’s allusion to Scott’s song of ‘Macgregor’s Gathering’, in which the ‘nameless’ clan declare ‘We’re landless, landless, landless, Grigalach!’ (Scott, 732). Altogether, while the Edinburgh Edition corrects some previous errors in the text it also introduces new ones of its own. the present text Weir of Hermiston is famously an unfinished novel, one in which its author gave signs of (as he wrote of one of its characters) ‘a promise that was not to be fulfilled’. The New Edinburgh Edition of Weir of Hermiston accepts and recognizes its nature as an unfinished work, rather than (as Stevenson’s earliest editor, Sidney Colvin, had done) trying to render it a consistent and finished one. The source of Weir of Hermiston of 1896 is the dictated continuous manuscript (Beinecke 45, 1011 (B 7116)), the only one that seems designed for the reading of a compositor, clearly ordered and consecutive and bearing some of the characteristic signs of having been prepared as 162

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a fair-copy manuscript, particularly its careful pagination and revisions that include instructions on paragraphing and punctuation. It is not, however, Stevenson’s completed fair-copy manuscript for his novel, and it seems likely that after ending his story Stevenson would have reread the entire manuscript and made further revisions to render it fully coherent—what might have been is now unknowable. Equally, the normal processes of turning the author’s final, faircopy manuscript into a published novel were also changed by the fact of the author’s death. Stevenson himself could not have been responsible at the proof stage for any alterations to the text of his manuscript for publication, nor could he express his doubts about or approval of any of the changes made between his manuscript and the proofs. An author would normally expect his novels to be printed, and for his published work to take account of the labour of the printers in tidying and smoothing his fair-copy manuscript. A printer’s contribution lies in correcting minor errors, normalizing spelling and supplementing the author’s own punctuation in accordance with a house style. A general authorial approval can normally be assumed for the first edition text of a work, and the New Edinburgh Edition rightly views this as the result of an expected collaborative process and usually gives it the preference over the author’s fair-copy manuscript in the choice of copy text, correcting for printing errors and reinstating a number of manuscript readings where Stevenson’s text had been misinterpreted by the intermediaries who prepared it for publication. Sidney Colvin’s intervention in producing the early versions of Weir of Hermiston went, however, far beyond simple tidying of Stevenson’s manuscript. For instance, he changed the time of the novel’s setting from the winter of 1811–12 to that of 1813–14, shifting readerly perceptions of the key love affair between Archie and the younger Kirstie by making her less of a child and more of a young woman. He added entire sentences to the novel, removed individual phrases and words, and on occasion made Stevenson’s allusive and concentrated style explicit and laboured. It is true, however, that the text of the first British volume edition and that of its successor, the Edinburgh Edition, form the basis of Weir of Hermiston’s reputation both at the close of the nineteenth century, and ever since. The early published versions also contain contemporary spelling and punctuation, which a first-edition-based text could include while allowing for the incorporation of those manuscript readings that were lost through accident, error, or misunderstanding in the production process. There are, however, a multitude of editions of the 163

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novel readily available to the reader who wishes to read what was available to Stevenson’s near-contemporaries, and the intermediaries who produced the early versions of Weir of Hermiston were no more content to follow and complete Stevenson’s punctuation than they were to follow implicitly the wording of his novel. It has been shown, for instance, that sentences were divided and paragraph divisions altered. It seems reasonable to prefer the contemporary punctuation of the author to that of the intermediaries, not least because Stevenson on previous occasions had shown considerable annoyance over misrepresentation of his punctuation. Editions which base themselves on first-edition texts are most satisfactory for authors with an unusual amount of control over the production process that transformed a manuscript into a published work: Stevenson in this instance had none. Colvin, both in his comments about Weir of Hermiston and his interventions as editor, worked to represent Stevenson’s manuscript as being more consistent and finished than it was. This is understandable, since his aim was to maximize the financial return on Stevenson’s various writings for the benefit of his surviving family and to promote and safeguard the literary reputation of his deceased friend. He and Charles Baxter had to sell the incomplete novel to various publishers as fit for a separate (and lucrative) publication, and he took great pains in shifting it towards a state of completion that would appeal to contemporary publishers and contemporary readers. A modern editor is also able to take advantage of the established reputation of Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston in the literary canon. Rather than attempting to remove or to disguise the incompleteness of Stevenson’s novel she can openly acknowledge it. For all these reasons, the copy text for the novel itself in the New Edinburgh Edition is Stevenson’s last surviving manuscript. This edition is not, however, simply a facsimile or an unmodified transcription: the manuscript requires interpretation of the kind that a set of intermediaries might have provided during the publication process had they been working in ideal circumstances, without the constraints applied, for instance, by haste in production, contemporary censorship, or the personal preferences of intermediaries such as Sidney Colvin. A soundly edited text will aim to follow Stevenson’s latest wishes throughout, and will silently implement corrections to the manuscript made in Stevenson’s own hand. There are points, however, at which Stevenson clearly changed his mind during the time that the manuscript was constructed, notably in the matter of the title and chapter headings for his novel. He generally thought of this as ‘The Justice-Clerk’, the title which stands at the head 164

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of the text. It might well confuse readers, however, to abandon the well-known title of a celebrated work. In the present case, fortunately, the prefatory list of chapters in Stevenson’s own hand is headed ‘Weir of Hermiston’ and this has been deduced (see 141 above) to have been written at some point during the composition of the seventh chapter. It therefore provides a sufficient indication that he finally accepted and adopted the title preferred by Colvin: Weir of Hermiston. On the other hand the preliminary paragraphs of the novel that precede chapter 1 are untitled in the manuscript and are not included in Stevenson’s chapter listing, so the present edition does not adopt the heading ‘Introductory’ given to them in the early published versions of the novel. Where the body of the manuscript and the list of headings disagree about chapter titles and subtitles this edition follows the listing, as representing Stevenson’s final thoughts, except for the seventh, eighth and ninth chapters. In the case of the seventh Stevenson appears to have changed his mind in the course of or after drafting the chapter so that his alteration in the body of the manuscript probably represents his final thoughts, the eighth chapter title is not included in the listing, and the ninth and incomplete chapter is altogether untitled. Colvin chose a title for this himself, in consultation with Fanny Stevenson and, indirectly, Stevenson’s amanuensis Belle Strong, and called it firstly ‘By the Weaver’s Stone’ and secondly ‘At the Weaver’s Stone’. A title is required to match those for the other numbered chapters in the novel, and there seems no reason to reject Colvin’s final solution, which appeared in the first British volume edition and was transmitted from that to subsequent editions. The New Edinburgh Edition recognizes the unfinished status of the novel to the extent of not attempting to resolve the two chronological inconsistencies of the text, that Archie is apparently seventeen in ­Edinburgh but twenty on arrival at Hermiston and that the indications of the date at which Frank Innes first sees the younger Kirstie are not coherent. There is no indication of precisely how Stevenson would have chosen to resolve these issues, which are, however, noted and discussed in the editorial apparatus. While the present edition accepts the unfinished nature of Stevenson’s work, it distinguishes instances of this firmly from the accidental imperfections of the manuscript copy text and corrects these errors in a variety of ways. Belle Strong’s idiosyncrasies of presentation have been eliminated, since there is every reason to suppose that they were not intended for transmission into the published work. On some occasions Stevenson 165

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corrected her transcription in his own hand (although he failed to recognize her errors and eliminate them on other occasions), and he would undoubtedly have expected a printer to regularize her eccentric spelling and her wayward use of apostrophes in the course of production. The New Edinburgh Edition performs the printer’s work, taking the British spelling that would have been most natural to Stevenson himself as the model for orthographic correction. Proper names such as Elliott have been regularized, Innes consistently has the forename of ‘Frank’, Lord Muirfell’s daughter is ‘Lady Flora’ on both occasions when she is mentioned in the novel, and the rustic prophet of the Elliotts is ‘Gib’. Redundant repetitions of words coinciding, for instance, with the commencement of a new page or a new line in the manuscript or obviously caused by a pause on the part of the transcriber have been eliminated. Such changes have been made conservatively, however, allowing for the natural repetition of rhetorical emphasis and for characteristic rhythms of speech, so that Innes still terms Archie an ‘unfriendly rude rude dog’ (84). Obvious lacunae in the manuscript have been filled. Missing full stops and speech marks have been provided. Where a missing word in the manuscript had to be supplied for the meaning of a phrase or a sentence to be coherent the source of the missing word is given in the emendation list. Sometimes an identical or similar phrase in the draft material for the novel provides the missing word. For example, when the elder Kirstie tells Archie her own youthful love story she refers to her lover as having ‘a tongue to wile the birds frae the lift and the frae the foxglove bells.’ (ms, 196) Clearly a word has been accidentally omitted between ‘the’ and ‘frae’. Draft material at this point is very close to the final manuscript, reading ‘a tongue to wile the birds frae the lift and bees frae the foxglove bells!’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 38), suggesting that the missing word in the later manuscript is probably also ‘bees’. The text of the present edition reads ‘a tongue to wile the birds frae the lift and the bees frae the foxglove bells’ (92), its emendation list referring to draft material, even though the early printed versions of the text also have ‘bees’. Stevenson himself could not have been responsible for changes made to any of the early printed versions of Weir of Hermiston and so none of them have any authority textually. Nevertheless the emendations made in the present text do sometimes (as in the example above) agree with the reading of one or all of them. In such cases the emendation list includes a note that this is so, using the form ‘as’ to re166

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fer to the relevant early printed text. Where all agree this reads ‘as PT’, and where they differ a note of which texts are in agreement follows. Where a revision to the manuscript, made either by Stevenson himself and/or by Belle Strong presumed to be acting in accordance with his wishes, has been imperfectly implemented this has been corrected and the change duly noted in the emendation list. For instance, when young Kirstie in her attic chamber recalls the image of Archie in church, the manuscript has in Belle’s hand ‘ at the torn page’ (ms, 141), with Stevenson having added ‘at the sight of the’ in the margin. The corrected text then actually reads ‘at the sight of the at the torn page’. The present text implements the intended correction fully and reads ‘at the sight of the torn page’ (66). The New Edinburgh Edition has emended its copy text conservatively, accepting the point made by Stevenson in his letter to Sidney Colvin of 4 November 1894 that he preferred words ‘always used in my family—and I suspect always used in Scotland’ that were ‘familiar and dear’ to his heart to a more pedantic accuracy (Letters 8: 384). Colvin was undoubtedly correct in thinking that the title of the officer who has responsibility for all matters of heraldry in Scotland on behalf of the Crown is Lord Lyon King of Arms, but ‘Lion King at Arms’ (46) has been allowed to stand as representing colloquial usage. Similarly, young Kirstie’s envisaging of her future self as Lady Hermiston (97), a usage typical of her time and social class, has been retained. Editorial emendation does seem to be required, however, to indicate by the use of initial upper-case letters where Stevenson refers to a specific rather than a generic person or place: ‘the high school and the college’ (ms, 29) could be any educational establishments, but ‘the High School and the College’ (17) convey what Stevenson had in mind, Edinburgh High School and Edinburgh University, known colloquially as the Town’s College. The allusion to forgiving us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us is not to any ‘Lord’s prayer’ (ms, 119) but to the prayer of Jesus known to churchgoers like Kirstie Elliott as the Lord’s Prayer (56). It has also been decided to refer to the male Elliott siblings as the Four Black Brothers throughout, on the basis of Stevenson’s describing them by this collective name as ‘a unit after the fashion of the Twelve Apostles and the Three Musketeers’ (49). Finally, although passages from the draft material for Weir of Hermiston cannot be directly incorporated into a text based on that of the later manuscript, the New Edinburgh Edition recognizes that they are 167

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of considerable interest to the reader in following the development of the novel. The Explanatory Notes is where the reader can learn that previously copies of Scott’s poems were found by the narrator with inscriptions showing them to have been gifts to Archie from Lord Glenalmond, that Archie is initially fearful that his father’s resentment at his public opposition may take the form of blows or turning his son into the street, or that the chapter entitled ‘Opinions of the Bench’ had once been concluded with Lord Glenalmond taking down in writing an expression of Archie’s regret at his behaviour to be shown to Lord Hermiston’s colleagues on the judicial bench. In these ways the New Edinburgh Edition presents a text of Weir of Hermiston based on Stevenson’s most finished manuscript while acknowledging fully that it was not indeed altogether finished. It does not attempt to resolve inconsistencies that only the author was capable of resolving, and only tidies up his text to the limited extent that he would have expected a printer to do for publication, respecting the existing punctuation of the manuscript by completing it rather than extending or overriding it. The resulting text is thus a clearer representation of Stevenson’s work than those derived from the early printed versions, in which, with the best of intentions, Colvin’s editorial hand was sometimes a heavy one. notes 1. Stevenson to Baxter, [18 May 1894], in Letters 8: 291. The original is in a bound volume of his letters to Baxter in Beinecke 91. While describing Fanny as ‘prodigal of counsel’ in this version of the dedication, Stevenson had, perhaps hesitantly, added ‘censure’ as an alternative reading in the margin. 2. See the transcript of Colvin’s letter to Baxter, 6 July 1894 (Beinecke 11, 281, f. 164). 3. In developing her argument on the novel’s thematic and structural development, Jokl details the many differences between draft material and final manuscript (see particularly 26–7 and 188–90). 4. Described in Robert Louis Stevenson: A Catalogue of […] the Stevenson Section of the Morris L. Parrish Collection of Victorian Novelists […] (Princeton, 1971), 104 (item 40). 5. In this, Archie displays more tenderness to Kirstie and asks whether he should write to his father or wait until he visits Hermiston to inform him of their relationship, and Kirstie expresses reluctance to have him informed at all (Morgan, MA 993, ff. 41–2).

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notes 6. See the bound volume (Beinecke 45, 1011 (B 7116)). Successive leaves, after an initial leaf listing chapters and the page numbers at which they begin in the manuscript that follows, are paginated [1]–147, 147a, 147b, 148–55, 155A, 156–93, 193a, 194–211. These are referred to here by page numbers, which are easier to follow since the manuscript has not been numbered by folio. The binding into a volume was probably done by Sidney Colvin, who wrote to Graham Balfour on 28 Aug 1895 (NLS, MS 9894, ff. 106–7) that the manuscript was then in his possession and that at Baxter’s suggestion ‘I propose to have it nicely bound and sent to Belle, who begs to have it for her own’. 7. For convenience of reference the text of the present edition (based upon this manuscript) is given wherever the reading of this agrees with that of the manuscript itself. Where the two differ due to emendation in the present text the manuscript itself is referenced, and potential ambiguity is avoided by the abbreviation ‘ms’ where appropriate. Quotations from draft manuscript material are generally reading transcriptions, except for a few instances (like the present) where references to corrections are necessary, and then deletions are represented and insertions ↑thus↓. 8. Cited from Balfour, i, 45. Balfour prints an abridged version of ‘Reminiscences of Colinton Manse’ (see Swearingen, 8). The full text will appear in the forthcoming New Edinburgh Edition volume, Essays IV: Uncollected Essays and Reviews, 1868–1879, ed. Richard Dury. 9. ‘Left by Stevenson’, Chicago Evening Post, 25 Apr 1895. 10. The letter is cited from Lucas, 248–9. It is not included in Edel’s edition of the letters of Henry James. 11. Balfour’s copy of his letter to Fanny Stevenson of 16 Aug [1895], a loose paper in NLS, Acc. 9700/7. 12. Copy of Balfour to Fanny Stevenson, 21 Aug 1895, NLS, Acc. 9700/7, 7–11. 13. Balfour’s letter to Fanny Stevenson of 16 Aug [1895] reports that Colvin’s approach to Scribner’s agent Burlinghame had resulted in an offer to publish ‘early next year in the Magazine’ and that they ‘would give for it in magazine and book form £1000 and 20% royalty’ (NLS, Acc. 9700/7, loose paper). 14. This account of events is taken from Balfour’s notes, made later that same day: see his notebook in NLS, Acc. 9700/7, 11–13. 15. Copy of Balfour to Colvin, 27 Aug [1895] in Balfour’s notebook, NLS, Acc 9700/7, 15. 16. See Balfour to Colvin, 24 Sept 1895, NLS, Acc. 9700/7, 42–3. 17. Copies, Balfour to Fanny, 25 Sept 1895 and Colvin to Balfour, 27 Sept 1895, NLS, Acc. 9700/7, 45 and 56.

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essay on the text 18. Balfour reported these terms in a letter to Fanny Stevenson on 11 Dec 1895 (copy), NLS, Acc. 9700/7, 154. 19. Robert McClure to Stone, 12 Nov 1895 (cited in Kramer, 83). 20. On 13 Nov 1895, Baxter wrote to Balfour, ‘I have I think practically concluded with Ortmans for Weir but he would not go beyond the £1000’— see NLS, MS 9894, ff. 184–5, which also includes the general comment cited. 21. These details are set out in a Memorandum of Agreement for the novel between Stone & Kimball and Charles Baxter (Scribner’s Archive). 22. See his remarks in San Francisco in April, as reported in the Idaho Statesman, 12 Apr 1895. 23. See Colvin’s ‘Epilogue’ to Vailima Letters (London, 1895), 358. The American edition of Vailima Letters was a Stone & Kimball publication, as Weir of Hermiston was intended to be. 24. For Baxter’s paper with a list of questions about the Edinburgh Edition of 14–18 May to which Stevenson added his replies, see Letters 8: 334. 25. Henry James refers to an ‘MS’ (though an authorial typescript could be so described), but Henley, for instance, in his letter of 4 Nov 1895 was plainly returning ‘the typewritten copy of Weir of Hermiston’ to Colvin as it was ‘immediately wanted’ to send off to the printer (see Lucas, 244). 26. See Lucas, 246. The emended text is cited from, respectively, Cosmopolis 2, 25 and Chatto, 260. 27. See, for instance, Cosmopolis 1, 345. Where, on the contrary, the reading of the syndicated text and Cosmopolis agree and both derive from the missing typescript, the more easily traced reference to Cosmopolis is alone given. 28. Transcript, Colvin to Baxter, 1 June 1893, Beinecke 11, 281, f. 103. 29. See Burlinghame’s letter to Balfour, 3 Sept 1895, NLS, MS 9894, ff. 112–13. 30. This account of American newspaper syndication at this time is based upon that of Charles Johanningsmeier in Fiction and the American Literary Marketplace: The Role of Newspaper Syndicates, 1860–1900 (Cambridge, 1997). 31. As printed at the head of Part vi in the Dallas Morning News, 19 Apr 1896. 32. Compare 78 above, Stone, 192 and Cosmopolis 2, 4. 33. See, for instance, the Chicago Tribune, 6 Apr 1896. 34. Compare ms, 96 and Cosmopolis 1, 351 with Chatto, 119. In similar examples the Cosmopolis text alone will be referenced where this and the manuscript agree. 35. For this draft memorandum of the agreement for American volume publication of Weir of Hermiston, see Scribner’s Archive.

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wor ks cited 36. Kimball wrote to Arthur Scribner on 13 Apr 1896, ‘I am directing Messrs. Donnelley to ship you the plates of “Weir of Hermiston” ’ (Scribner’s Archive). The processes by which stereotype and electrotype plates were produced are explained in Gaskell, 201–6. 37. This note and the following letters from Kimball to Scribner’s quoted here are in Scribner’s Archive.

Works cited Early Printed Texts of Weir of Hermiston ‘Weir of Hermiston’ as syndicated in American newspapers, represented by the Chicago Tribune, daily from 5 to 12 Apr 1896 (Chicago). ‘Weir of Hermiston’ as syndicated in American newspapers, represented by the Dallas Morning News on 15, 22, 29 Mar and 5, 12, 19 Apr 1896 (­Dallas). ‘Weir of Hermiston’ as syndicated in American newspapers, represented by the Los Angeles Herald on 22, 29 Mar, 5, 26 Apr and 3 May 1896 (Los ­Angeles). ‘Weir of Hermiston’, in Cosmopolis, 1 ( Jan, Feb, Mar 1896), 1–20, 321–62, 641–63 and 2 (Apr 1896), 1–27 (Cosmopolis). Weir of Hermiston (Chicago, 1896) (Stone). Copy cited from Parrish. Weir of Hermiston: An Unfinished Romance (London, 1896) (Chatto). Weir of Hermiston: An Unfinished Romance (New York, 1896) (Scribner’s). ‘Weir of Hermiston A Fragment’, in The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Edinburgh Edition, 28 vols (Edinburgh, 1894–8), xxvi, 123–307 (EdEd). Manuscript Sources and Other Printed Items A Catalogue of the Books and Manuscripts of Robert Louis Stevenson in the Library of the Late Harry Elkins Widener, with a Memoir by A. S. W. Rosenbach (Philadelphia, 1913) (Widener Catalogue). Chicago Evening Post, 25 Apr 1895: ‘Left by Stevenson’. Colvin, Sidney. ‘Epilogue’, Vailima Letters Being Correspondence Addressed by Robert Louis Stevenson to Sidney Colvin November 1890–October 1894, 2nd edn (London, 1895), 355–9. Colvin, Sidney. ‘The Posthumous Writings of Mr R. L. Stevenson’, Athenæum, 23 Nov 1895, 719. Edel, Leon (ed.). Henry James: Letters, 4 vols (Cambridge ma, 1975–84). Gaskell, Philip. A New Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford, 1972; rptd 1974).

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essay on the text Edmund Gosse Archive, Brotherton Collection, Leeds University Library Special Collections: Robert Louis Stevenson, Correspondence and Literary Manuscripts, BC MS 19c Stevenson (Gosse). Idaho Statesman, 12 Apr 1895: ‘Stevenson’s Works. Manuscript Being Taken to England for Publication’. Johanningsmeier, Charles. Fiction and the American Literary Marketplace: The Role of Newspaper Syndicates, 1860–1900 (Cambridge, 1997). Jokl, Vivian. ‘The Central Themes and Structure of Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston: Based on a Study of Extant Manuscripts’ (PhD dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1974). Kramer, Sidney. A History of Stone & Kimball and Herbert S. Stone & Co. (Chicago, 1940). McKay, George L. A Stevenson Library Catalogue of a Collection of Writings by and about Robert Louis Stevenson Formed by Edwin J. Beinecke, 6 vols (New Haven, 1951–64). Reid, Julia. ‘The Academy and Cosmopolis: Evolution and Culture in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Periodical Encounters’, in Culture and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Media, ed. Louise Henson et al. (Aldershot, 2004), 263–73. Robert Louis Stevenson: A Catalogue of […] the Stevenson Section of the Morris L. Parrish Collection of Victorian Novelists […] (Princeton, 1971). Scott, Sir Walter. Poetical Works, ed. J. Logie Robertson (London, 1904; rptd 1971). Scribner’s Sons Archive, CO101, Series 3a, box 143, folder 7, Princeton University Library, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Manuscripts Division (Scribner’s Archive). Tebbel, John. A History of Book Publishing in the United States, 4 vols (New York, 1972–81).

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Emendation List The following list gives the emendations made to the copy text to produce this volume’s text of Weir of Hermiston, that copy text being the manuscript dictated by Stevenson to Belle Strong and now in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (Beinecke 45, 1011 (B 7116)). Stevenson’s verse dedication of his novel to his wife is reprinted from the first British edition of the novel, without emendation. All Stevenson’s own corrections to Belle’s manuscript have been silently implemented, but all emendations are listed with the following exception: throughout the present text of Weir of Hermiston the double speech marks and quotation marks of the manuscript have been changed to single speech marks to suit the presentational conventions of the New Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, and in the same way single speech marks for speech-withinspeech have been changed to double speech marks throughout. Since Stevenson himself had no hand in any of the early printed versions of Weir of Hermiston all emendations to the manuscript are editorial and this is not therefore repeated for each individual entry. Frequently, however, it is helpful to the reader to be able to see where the new reading agrees with a reading in draft material in Stevenson’s hand (indicating his own similar usage) and this is noted with the phrase ‘as RLS draft’. Quotations from draft manuscript material in the present volume are generally reading transcriptions, but where references to corrections are necessary here deletions are represented and insertions ↑thus↓. It is also helpful at times to see where an editorial emendation agrees with the reading of the early printings of the text: this is noted using the phrase ‘as PT’ (to signal that the new reading is as in the printed texts). Where the early printed texts differ from one another they are individually referred to in the form given in the List of Abbreviations (see xvii–xix). Where the text of the American newspaper syndication agrees in its different printings this is noted by Chicago (for Chicago Tribune), and only where they differ are the individual printings separately indicated. The reading of the present text is given first, by page and line number (which include chapter headings and subheadings in the count): this is followed, as appropriate, by a note of where the readings of draft 173

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material or early printed texts are in agreement. Following a square bracket the reading which it replaces in the manuscript copy text is then given. Any further explanation intended to inform and assist the reader follows the entry. The abbreviation eop signals the end of a page in the copy text and that of eol signals the end of a line. 5.1

Weir of Hermiston (MS chapter listing) ] The Justice-Clerk.

6.1–2 6.6 6.11

Chapter 1 | life and death of mrs. weir ] Chapter i | Life and Death of Mrs. Weir last descendant ] last decendant Tam Dalyell (as RLS draft) ] Tom Dalyell

6.27 7.14 7.16 7.29 8.33 9.2–3 9.8

last descendant ] last decendant He was described ] He was decribed embarrassed ] embarassed his descendants ] his decendants an appalling explosion ] an apalling explosion he said. ‘You ] he said “You George Square (as Chatto, Scribner’s) ] George square

Stevenson’s final decision—see 141.

‘Tam’ is the usual Scots abbreviation of ‘Thomas’ for this man.

As at 8.3.

9.9 Kirstie Elliott ] Kirstie Elliot

The predominant MS spelling is ‘Elliott’.

9.21–2 Kirstie and me maun (as RLS draft; as PT) ] Kirstie and me, maun 10.2 world’s theatre ] worlds theatre 10.8 Scougal, Grace Abounding (as RLS draft) ] Scougal’s Grace Abounding Two works by different authors—see Explanatory Notes.

10.16 10.17 11.2

woman’s heart ] womans heart great-great-grandfather (as PT) ] great great grandfather Mrs. Weir’s ] Mrs Weir’s

12.4 12.29

My lord’s voice ] My lords voice Lord Justice-Clerk (as PT, except Chicago, Dallas) ] Lord Justice Clerk

The predominant MS convention is ‘Mrs.’

‘Lord Justice-Clerk’ is the predominant convention.

13.13 13.14

‘It’s all ] “Its all that’s not ] thats not 174

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13.16 13.21 13.23

there’s a tex’ ] theres a tex’ It’s Atheists ] Its Atheists French Atheists ] French atheists

13.26

the mote!’ (as RLS draft; as PT) ] the moat!”

13.27

the enemy’s camp (as RLS draft; as PT)] the enemies camp

13.36 14.1 14.6 14.10 14.39 14.40–1 15.15 15.25 15.25 16.1 16.4 16.6 17.1–2

seize ] sieze remember; and (as PT) ] remember; And embarrassed ] embarassed it’s for you!’ ] its for you!” husband’s elevation ] husbands elevation inconsistent woman ] inconsistant woman high, false note (as RLS draft; as PT)] high, false, note it’s no sae ] its no sae It’s the mistress ] Its the mistress marriage.’ And then (as RLS draft; as PT) ] marriage.” and then ‘a jeely-piece.’ ] ‘a jeely-piece’ grimly. ‘When all’s ] grimly “When alls Chapter 2 | father and son ] Father and Son

17.17 17.19 17.22 17.25–6

appalling ] apalling patient’s relief ] patients relief always remained ] always remaind the High School and the College (as RLS draft; as EdEd) ] the high school and the college

Capitalized as it is in the surrounding speech. A scriptural allusion—see Explanatory Notes. Archie is Mrs Weir’s only opponent.

Chapter number given in chapter listing—see 141.

Specific institutions are meant here —see Explanatory Notes.

17.27 17.31

an affectation ] an an affectation law Latin ] law latin

17.32 18.35 20.8 20.22 20.24 21.10 21.10 21.15

invincible ] invincable riveted ] rivetted centre of a crowd ] center of a crowd softnesses ] softnessess repel ] repell by-path (as PT) ] by path from maculation ] from macculation it’s a poor ] its a poor

The proper name of a language.

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21.16 22.1–2

nightmare ] night mare Chapter 3 | in the matter of the hanging of duncan jopp ] In the Matter of the Hanging of Duncan Jopp

Chapter number given in chapter listing—see 141.

22.3–4

Justiciary Court (as RLS draft; as EdEd) ] Judiciary Court

22.5 22.22 22.27 23.7

centre of men’s eyes ] center of men’s eyes my lord Hermiston (as RLS draft) ] My Lord Hermiston acquit ] aquit pannel’s mistress (as RLS draft; as Stone, Scribner’s) ] panel’s mistress

The proper name of Scotland’s supreme criminal court.

Stevenson corrected two following instances of ‘panel’ to ‘pannel’.

23.8 23.13–14 23.14 23.32 24.5 24.13 24.14

ma loard,’ (as PT, except Chicago alone) ] Ma loard,” it’s not ] its not why.’ ] why” slaughter-house ] slaughter house the execution was (as PT) ] the execution, was seventeen years’ experience ] seventeen years experience Mercy (as PT) ] mercy

24.27 24.37 25.2 25.4 25.5–6 25.7

murder!’ he shouted (as RLS draft; as Stone)] murder” he shouted appalled ] apalled Weir, man (as PT, except Cosmopolis, Chicago) ] Weir man it’s no use ] its no use movement. ‘This ] movement “This Samaritan (as PT) ] Samaratan

25.14 25.14

‘You won’t ] “You wont the Spec.?’ (as PT) ] the Spec’?”

25.15

The Spec.?’ (as PT) ] The Spec’?”

Initial upper-case letter for a personification.

A scriptural allusion—see Explanatory Notes.

Stevenson employs the usual form of abbreviation elsewhere. Stevenson employs the usual form of abbreviation elsewhere.

25.15 I won’t ] I wont 25.24–5 But for all that, his ] But for all that his The sentence opening is adverbial.

25.25 25.39 26.5

Spec., he ] Spec. he fulfil ] fulfill God’s will or man’s ] Gods will or mans 176

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26.6 26.10 26.11 26.12

embarrassment ] embarassment fulfilment ] fulfillment his prophecy ] his prophesy Innes, when (as PT) ] Innes; when

26.16 26.38 27.40 28.4

went out. ] went out behaviour ] behavior ninety-nine ] ninety nine geyan ill (as RLS draft)] gey and ill

28.10 29.38 30.1

“Hermiston,” said ] ‘Hermiston’ said I do,’ said Archie. ] I do” said Archie. riff-raff ] riff raff

30.2–3

“This is […] hangit him.” ’ (as PT) ] This is […] hangit him.”

30.5 30.29

yer ] ye’re mines ] mine’s

31.1 31.14 31.19 31.19 31.31

for it; no (as RLS draft) ] for it; No Peninsula,’ said ] Peninsula” said there, sir’ ] there sir” I will not ] I will will not the sodgers (as RLS draft; as Chicago (except Dallas, Los Angeles), Scribner’s, EdEd) ] the sodjers

A semicolon precedes the deletion: the manuscript has ‘Innes; when’.

As at 16.13.

As at 46.21.

A speech within a speech.

The predominant convention is ‘mines’.

See ‘sodger’ earlier in this speech.

32.20 reserve,’ he said. ] reserve” he said. 32.21 the night ] the the night 32.34 said Archie.] said Archie 32.35 Kirstie ] Kirsty

The predominant manuscript spelling is ‘Kirstie’.

32.37 33.1–2

a freezing smile ] a [eol] a freezing smile Chapter 4 | opinions of the bench ] Opinions of the Bench

Chapter number given in chapter listing—see 141.

33.12 Carstairs,’ ] Carstairs” 33.21 guess,’ replied ] guess” replied 34.9–10 frank with you, and (as PT) ] frank with, and 177

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34.14–15 the College of Justice (as PT, except Dallas) ] the college of Justice A proper name—as at 31.3.

34.15–16 case before the Fifteen (as Chicago alone, punctuation) ] case, before the fifteen

The collective name for the judges of the Court of Session as a body.

34.22 34.27 34.32 34.41 35.24 35.36 36.7 36.16 36.19 36.37 37.3 37.11 37.12 37.18 37.19 37.39–40 38.1

of that sasine.” And ] of of that sasine.’ and Archie was able (as PT) ] Archie, was able he repeated. ] he repeated my lord.] my lord what can I say? (as PT)] what can I say acquit you ] aquit you judge, ‘for (as PT) ] judge, “For black-hearted ] black hearted said to myself: “No (as PT) ] said to myself: ‘no big,’ pursued ] big” [eol] pursued mean,’ replied ] mean” replied good,’ cried ] good” cried it,’ said ] it” said it,’ said ] it” said then?’ cried (as PT) ] then,” cried gracious, distant (as PT) ] gracious distant my Cheddar (as PT, except Chicago) ] my cheddar

38.22 39.1 39.2 39.14 39.23 39.25 40.1–3

favourite ] favorite what’s all this ] whats all this you’re a most ] your a most humorous ] humourous I have expressed ] I have have expressed studies.’ ] studies Chapter 5 | winter on the moors | 1. At Hermiston ] Winter on the Moors | i

A proper name—as at 33.23.

Chapter number and subheading with number given in chapter listing—see 141.

40.5 40.14 40.24 41.41

a favourite ] a favorite gravestones (as PT) ] grave stones a ship’s rigging ] a ships rigging my lord Muirfell (as RLS draft) ] my Lord Muirfell 178

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Lords of Session (as RLS draft; as PT, except Dallas) ] lords of session 42.34 2. Kirstie ] ii. 42.1

The number and title given in chapter listing—see 141.

42.38 vigorous ] vigourous 43.9–10 The grieve’s wife ] The Grieve’s wife 43.15–16 include the gardener (as PT) ] include to the gardener The manuscript has ‘ ↑include↓ to the gardener’.

43.16 44.35 44.37

quarrelling ] quarelling vigorous nature ] vigourous nature lever de rideau (as RLS draft; as PT) ] levér de ridoux

French spelling has been corrected—see Explanatory Notes.

45.11 3. A Border Pedigree ] iii. A Border Family

The number and title given in chapter listing—see 141–2.

45.29 45.35 45.39 46.10 46.25 46.26

Border clans ] border clans mid-air ] mid air descendants ] decendants benevolence of ] benevolence of [eol] of a consistent man ] a consistant man the Lord (as RLS draft; as PT) ] the lord

46.32

the Kyeskairs (Cosmopolis, Chatto, EdEd Kye-skairs; Chicago, Stone, Scribner’s ‘kye-stairs’) ] the kye-skares

Upper-case initial letter, as God is intended.

Cf. 6.20: the proper name is intended. The manuscript has ‘kyeskares’, RLS draft in Morgan, MA 993, f. 10 has ‘Kyescairs’.

46.38 47.35–6 48.17 48.30

‘Houts, Miss Jeanie,’ (as PT) ] “Houts Miss Jeanie,” horse’s side ] horses side downhill ] down hill their faither’s (as PT)] my faither’s

48.40 49.6 49.31 49.36

‘That’s yin ] “Thats yin thenceforward ] thence forward Mr. Sheriff ] Mr Sherriff Dand Elliott ] Dand Elliot

50.26

were ‘guid ] were “Guid

Gilbert is Kirstie’s brother but the father of the Cauldstaneslap brothers.

The predominant manuscript spelling is ‘Elliott’.

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50.32

French Revolution (as RLS draft; as PT, except Chicago) ] French revolution

A specific revolution, that of 1789, is intended.

50.33

my lord Hermiston ] My Lord Hermiston

50.34

Muir and Palmer (as Chatto, Stone, Scribner’s, EdEd) ] Mure and Palmer

The predominant convention is ‘my lord Hermiston’.

The radical’s name was Thomas Muir.

50.38 51.13

my lord (as RLS draft; as PT) ] my Lord whisky toddy (as RLS draft) ] whiskey toddy

51.25 51.26 51.28 51.32 51.41 52.3 52.3 52.25 52.38 52.40 53.3

assiduously ] assidiously appalled ] apalled the Bible (as PT) ] the bible When his ] When his his stockfish (as RLS draft; as PT) ] stock fish Christianity (as PT) ] christianity the way Hob ] the way way Hob ‘A provost ] “a provost coandescend ] coandecend ‘Ay, man?’ (as PT) ] “Ay man?” Robbie Burns (as PT) ] Robie Burns

53.6–7

I love to […] the howe, (as Chicago alone) ] “I love to […] the howe,”

Although the distinction between Scotch whisky and Irish/ American whiskey did not apply rigidly in the 19th century Stevenson’s own preferred spelling has been adopted.

Cf. 5.17: RLS draft in Morgan, MA 993, f. 18 has ‘Robby’.

RLS draft has closing but not opening quotation marks.

53.13 53.13

The Raid of Wearie ] the Raid of Wearie Minstrelsy (as PT, Chicago inverted commas) ] Minstrelsy

53.23 53.25 53.37

humorous ] humourous fiery cross (as PT) ] fiery-cross Tories (as PT, except Dallas) ] tories

54.2–3 54.8–9

God affixed to (as RLS draft; as PT) ] God, affixed to big-wigs (as PT) ] big wigs

Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border is intended—see Explanatory Notes.

The name of a political grouping is intended.

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54.11

The Provost (as RLS draft; as PT, except Dallas) ] The provost

The Provost of Glasgow specifically is intended.

54.17 54.31 54.32

incumbent ] incumbant themsels!’ (as RLS draft; as PT; Chatto, Scribner’s, EdEd ‘themsel’s!” ’) ] them sels!” their ‘to-names.’ (as RLS draft; as EdEd) ] their “two-names”

54.34

ipsissimus (as RLS draft; as PT) ] ipsisimus

See Explanatory Notes.

Latin spelling is corrected here.

55.3–4 it’s the same ] its the same 55.16 Crossmichael.’ ] Crossmichael” 55.28–9 stiff-necked, straight-backed six-footers (as PT) ] stiff necked, straight backed six footers

RLS draft in Morgan, MA 993, f. 22 has ‘stiff-necked, straight backed six-footers’.

56.3 indescribable ] indescribeable 56.15–16 the Lord’s Prayer (as EdEd) ] the Lord’s prayer

A specific prayer of that name is intended—see Explanatory Notes.

56.32 56.33 56.34 56.34 57.1–2

add. ‘But ] add, “But it’s unwomanly ] its unwomanly it’s in ] its in the Bible (as PT)] the bible Chapter 6 | a leaf from christina’s psalm-book ] A Leaf from Christina’s Psalm-book

Chapter number given in chapter listing—see 141.

57.19 57.23–4 57.24 57.26 57.27 57.27 57.31

interminable (as RLS draft; as PT) ] intermidable day, physical ] day physical porridge (as RLS draft) ] porrige humorous ] humourous character, notable (as PT) ] character notable world, radiating ] world radiating whisky (as RLS draft; as PT) ] whiskey

58.6

Lady Flora (as RLS draft; as PT, except Chicago) ] Lady Janet

58.9

Earth laugh (as PT) ] Earth, laugh

Although the distinction between Scotch whisky and Irish/ American whiskey did not apply rigidly in the 19th century Stevenson’s own preferred spelling has been adopted. She is Lady Flora at 42.14.

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58.16 58.27–8 58.29 58.30 58.32 58.34 58.37 58.39 59.7 59.9 59.19 59.26 59.27 59.28 60.2

dale was (as PT) ] dale, was psalmody ] psalmedy alive,’ he ] alive” he ‘Thank God (as Stone, Scribners) ] “thank God tombstone (as RLS draft; as PT) ] tomb [eop] stone trenchancy ] trenchency everywhere (as RLS draft; as PT) ] every where ecstasy ] extacy farther. He ] farther He fragrance ] fragrange existence ] existance hypocrisy ] hypocracy hypocrite ] hypocrit to look seriously ] to look [eol] look seriously Torrance (as RLS draft; as PT) ] Torrence

60.15

Torrance (as RLS draft; as PT) ] Torrence

60.34 60.37 60.40 61.6 61.23 61.27 61.29

it’s no ] its no ‘Hoot, woman! (as RLS draft; as PT, except Chicago, Los Angeles)] “Hoot woman! it’s no ] its no jaconet (as RLS draft; as PT) ] jaconot precious. ] precious as a stag’s ] as a stags Gib (as PT, except Chicago) ] Sim

61.34 62.16 62.17 62.25 63.10–11 63.20

abruptly ] abrubtly ill-behaviour ] ill-behavior niece ] neice derivative ] derivitive with the load of penitence (as PT) ] with load of penitance graveyard ] grave-yard

63.23 63.32 63.33

took off his hat (as PT)] took of his hat out-walked ] out walked proffered convoy ] froffered convoy

While the historical original was ‘Torrence’, the manuscript has an overall preference for ‘Torrance’. While the historical original was ‘Torrence’, the manuscript has an overall preference for ‘Torrance’.

The name of the rustic prophet of the Elliott brothers is ‘Gilbert’ or ‘Gib’.

As at 40.17.

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63.37 63.41 64.9–10 64.18 64.30 65.7 65.11 65.12 65.17 65.21 65.29

faster. ‘If it’s me ] faster “If its me please, Mr. Weir (as PT) ] please Mr. Weir it’s a great ] its a great ‘There’s more ] “Theres more genteelly ] genteely overtook ] over took the gate (as RLS draft) ] the gait my guid ] my [eop] my guid sky-scraping spirits (as PT) ] sky scraping spirits embarrassed her ] embarassed her to the little loft (PT, ‘to a little loft’) ] to little loft

65.32 66.4

apartment ] appartment at the sight of the torn ] at the sight of the at the torn

67.16 67.32 67.36

deity, obscure ] deity obscure yer ups and downs ] ye’re ups and downs tho’, Guid kens! (PT tho’ Guid kens) ] tho’, guid kens

68.4 68.16 68.16 68.19 68.21 68.32 69.1 69.2 69.13 69.16 69.21

that’s leein’ ] thats leein’ eneuch ] eneuh it’s true ] its true inspiraution, ye ] inpiraution ye her brother’s neighbourhood ] her brothers neighbourhood connoisseur ] connosieur woollen ] woolen invisible ] invisable the Deil’s Hags ] The Deil’s Hags the Praying Weaver’s stone ] the praying weaver’s stone the Slap (as PT)] the slap

70.2 70.3 70.4 70.41 71.39 72.1 72.8 72.10

him. ‘He’ll ] him “He’ll it’s no ] its no suspense ] suspence winter were (as RLS draft; as PT) ] winter, were It’s peaceful ] Its peaceful day,’ said ] day” said It’s deadly ] Its deadly semi-consciously ] semi consciously

RLS draft in Morgan, MA 993, f. 33 has ‘to the little ↑lopsided↓ loft’.

The manuscript has ‘↑at the sight of the↓ at the torn’.

A softened oath: as at 52.4.

A specific slap, Cauldstaneslap, is intended.

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72.25 72.27 72.35 72.37 73.2–6

It’s nothing ] Its nothing Mr. Weir ] Mr. Wier explained. ‘I ] explained “I ‘It’s about ] “Its about In the rain […] Auld, auld (RLS draft has closing speech marks only; as PT, except Chicago alone) ] “In the rain […] Auld, auld

Speech marks removed from start of subsequent lines of song.

73.18 73.37 74.7

commonplaces ] common places descendants ] decendants Fate played his game (as RLS draft; as PT, except Dallas) ] fate played his game

Initial capital for personification.

74.10 74.28 74.29

time that (as PT) ] time, that by mysel ] by my [eol] sel the American War (as Cosmopolis, Chatto, EdEd) ] the American war

A specific conflict, that of 1812, is intended.

74.33 74.38

another ] anoher in to prayers (as RLS draft; as Chicago (except Dallas, Los Angeles), EdEd) ] into prayers

Kirstie is entering the house for prayers, not immediately praying.

74.41–75.1 his prophecy ] his prophesy 76.1–2 Chapter 7 | enter mephistopheles ] Enter Mephistopheles

Stevenson has revised the title in the manuscript: number added to match those of previous chapters in chapter listing—see 142.

76.11 76.15 76.21 76.35 77.4

gift of prophecy ] gift of prophesy career ] carreer warrant ] warrent that’s better ] thats better Frank (as PT) ] George

Innes’s forename is finalized as ‘Frank’ in the manuscript.

77.24 do, Mrs. Elliott?’ ] do Mrs. Elliott?” 77.29 Kirstie (as PT) ] Kirsty

The predominant manuscript spelling is ‘Kirstie’.

77.32 Elliott!’ he cried (as PT) ] Elliott!” He cried 77.39–40 are, Mrs. Elliott.’ ] are Mrs. Elliott.” 78.3 right, ma’am (as PT, except Dallas) ] right ma’am 184

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78.6

and bring it to an end. (as PT)] and bring it to an end to it.

78.22 78.35 79.5 79.5 79.6 79.31–2

mebbe (as PT) ] mebbi Mrs. Elliott’s favour ] Mrs. Elliotts favour the obsequious grieve (as PT) ] the obsequious Grieve ploughman ] plowman down-hearted (as PT) ] down hearted Frank’s eye (as PT) ] George’s eye

79.32

Frank (as PT) ] George

79.33 79.36 79.41

the Weirs ] the Weir’s the Hanging Judge (as RLS draft) ] The Hanging Judge the Four Black Brothers ] the four black brothers

80.3 80.28

80.40 81.3 81.23 81.25 81.31

fule’s business ] fules business the county people (as RLS draft; as PT, except Chicago which has ‘country’) ] the County people the Recluse (as RLS draft; as Chicago (except Dallas, Los Angeles) ] The Recluse it’s all very well ] its all very well it’s just ] its just the Weirs ] the Weir’s what’s the cant ] whats the cant low habits. (as PT) ] low habits;

81.32 81.39 81.39 81.39–40 82.1 82.4 82.13 82.23 82.36 82.37

I am afraid he’s (as RLS draft) ] I afraid his interlocutor ] interloqutor ‘it’s very good ] “its very good you, I must (as RLS draft; as PT) ] you I must it’s pleasant ] its pleasant it’s not pleasant ] its not pleasant indigenous ] indiginous developments ] developements dissensions ] dissentions Frank (as PT) ] George

The manuscript has ‘ ↑and bring it to↓ an end to it’.

Innes’s forename is finalized as ‘Frank’ in the manuscript. Innes’s forename is finalized as ‘Frank’ in the manuscript.

Described as a legendary unit at 49.33–4.

80.33

The semicolon precedes a deleted passage originally ending the sentence.

Innes’s forename is finalized as ‘Frank’ in the manuscript.

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83.4

Talleyrand-Périgord (as PT, except Chicago) ] TalleyrandPerigord

Correct spelling of name of historical personage—see Explanatory Notes.

83.6 Kirstie (as PT) ] Kirsty

The predominant manuscript spelling is ‘Kirstie’.

83.32 83.32 84.13

it’s reasonable ] its reasonable it’s really offensive ] its really offensive Lilliput (as PT) ] Liliput

84.14 84.22 84.23 84.26

occurrence ] occurrance yielded ] yeilded cold-hearted (as PT) ] cold hearted the step once taken, was (as PT, with Chicago, Stone, Scribner’s, EdEd varying punctuation) ] the [eop] once taken, was

Correct spelling of Swift’s fictional country—see Explanatory Notes.

RLS draft in Morgan, MA 1582 has ‘the step was’.

85.7 85.29 85.34 85.38–9

the compass ] the compas manageable ] managable milk-maid,’ he ] milk-maid” he the Four Black Brothers ] the four black brothers

86.1 86.2 86.11 86.23 86.34 86.36 87.19

humorous ] humourous ‘It’s none ] “Its none don’t be ] dont be buried.’ ] buried. It’s not ] Its not it’s your own ] its your own the Black Brothers ] the black brothers

87.21

poor Poll’s (RLS draft: Poor Poll’s; as PT) ] poor poll’s

87.24

the Four Black Brothers ] the four black brothers

87.30 87.33 89.1–2

Archie. ‘I can ] Archie. I can ‘That’s right ] “Thats right Chapter 8 | a nocturnal visit ] A Nocturnal Visit

Described as a legendary unit at 49.33–4.

Described as a legendary unit at 49.33–4.

A personal name commonly given to parrots. Described as a legendary unit at 49.33–4.

Chapter number added to match those of previous chapters in chapter listing—see 142.

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89.25 90.5 90.9 90.14–15

embarrassed ] embarassed besieged ] beseiged the girl’s eyes ] the girls eyes and was as black’s (as RLS draft: PT ‘an’ was as black’s’) ] as was as black’s 91.17 ‘It’s unco late ] “Its unco late 91.24 goddesses ] godesses 91.29 it’s ower late ] its ower late 91.36 first, Mr. Airchie!’ ] first Mr. Airchie!” 91.38 ye,’ she said ] ye” she said 92.1 it’s ill to look ] its ill to look 92.8 ‘And, my dear (as PT, except Dallas)] “And my dear 92.13 I say it that (as RLS draft; as PT) ] I say that 92.14 suld hae (as RLS draft; as PT, except Dallas) ] suldhae 92.19–20 the bees frae the foxglove bells (as RLS draft; as PT) ] the frae the foxglove bells 92.20 it’s lang syne ] its lang syne 92.27–8 faither’s house (as PT) ] fayther’s house The predominant manuscript spelling is ‘faither’.

92.28 92.32 92.34 93.7 93.8 93.13 93.15 93.35 94.2

it’s a curious thing ] its a curious thing Ay, Mr. Airchie (PT Ay, Mr. Erchie) ] Ay Mr. Airchie when they think o’t least (as RLS draft; as Cosmopolis, Stone) ] when they think at least universe, my woman!’ ] universe my woman!” it’s nane sae easy ] its nane sae easy what’s to prevent ] whats to prevent in pairt for ] in pairt, for His name’s sake ] His names sake can even He? ] can even he?

95.1–2

Chapter 9 | at the weaver’s stone ] [no title]

95.35 96.1

petulant ] petulent with hope ] with with hope

96.7 96.10

embarrassed ] embarassed off. ‘Kirstie (as PT) ] off, “Kirstie

Initial upper-case letter, as God is intended, as in the preceding sentence. Colvin’s final title is adopted, and the chapter number added to match those of previous chapters in chapter listing—see 142.

The manuscript has ‘with with hope’.

RLS draft has ‘off, and spoke slowly. “Kirstie,’.

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96.14 96.18 96.27 97.16

it’s not right ] its not right that’s ready ] thats ready people talking ] people taking my lady Hermiston ] My Lady Hermiston

To accord with the predominant convention of ‘my lord Hermiston’.

97.18 constant, poor girl! (as RLS draft; as PT) ] constant poor girl! 97.18–19 large-minded madness (as PT) ] large minded madness 97.23 recurrence ] recurrance 97.35 it’s the first ] its the first 97.41 It’s in ] Its in 97.41–98.1 as it’s for ] as its for 98.4–5 grat, my dear! (as PT) ] grat my dear! 98.10 outworks (as RLS draft; as PT) ] out works 98.11 cross-examination. ] cross-examination 98.21 yer confidants (as EdEd) ] ye’re confidantes The Hermiston people are not exclusively female.

98.21 98.23 98.24 98.25 98.30 98.31

say, Mr. Weir (as RLS draft; as PT) ] say Mr. Weir evening, Mr. (as PT)] evening Mr curtsey (as RLS draft; as PT) ] curtesy ecstasy ] extacy schoolmaster ] schoomaster she retorted. ] she retorted eyes.

98.32 98.34 98.36 98.41 99.2

to do wi’ me? (as RLS draft; as PT) ] the do wi’ me? girl, her eyes (as PT) ] girl her eyes respect, Mr. Weir (as PT) ] respect Mr. Weir paroxysm ] paroxysim as to a mother’s ] as to a mothers

A deletion in the manuscript has not been completed: ‘she retorted eyes ’.

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End-of-Line Hyphens Listed below are ‘hard’ end-of-line hyphens, not produced accidentally by typesetting, but intended to be retained whatever the format in which the text is typeset and therefore to be retained also in making quotations. The entries are listed by page and line number. 16.11 clay-cauld 37.8 half-good 43.17 light-keeper 50.20 country-side 54.8 big-wigs 54.13 whun-stane 55.28 stiff-necked 62.19 kirk-yard 70.39 weather-beaten 95.28 gray-faced

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Historical and Geographical Note Neither the geography nor the chronology of Weir of Hermiston are entirely consistent with historical reality. Literal accuracy of this kind was not what Stevenson aimed at, as he wrote somewhat testily on 19 February 1893 to Sidney Colvin, who had clearly pointed out that Lord Braxfield had died in 1799 while the novel in which he features is set during the Napoleonic era: The Justice-Clerk. I don’t seem to be able to get it into your head that my Lord Hermiston is Lord Hermiston—a person who never existed, which sets me free from any little irksome question of date. As for calling it ‘Braxfield’, why man, I know the man’s family!1 Lord Hermiston, in other words, is a fictional person with whom the historical original that suggested him should not be too literally identified. Nevertheless, Stevenson described himself to the end as ‘trying […] to stick him [Braxfield] into a novel’ (Letters 8: 395). Robert Macqueen, Lord Braxfield (1722–99) was an Edinburgh legal legend. He had built up a lucrative practice as an advocate, based on ‘intricate cases of feudalism proceeding from forfeitures after the last Jacobite rising’, and from 1754 he had served as advocate-depute to the Lord Advocate, Robert Dundas of Arniston, so that when he became a judge of the Court of Session in 1776 it was at a considerable financial sacrifice. In 1780 he was promoted to the High Court of Justiciary, and in 1788 he became Lord Justice-Clerk, head of the criminal judiciary of Scotland.2 Stevenson largely follows the picture of Braxfield given by early nineteenth-century writers like Henry Cockburn: Strong built and dark, with rough eyebrows, powerful eyes, threatening lips, and a low growling voice, he was like a formidable blacksmith. His accent and his dialect were exaggerated Scotch; his language, like his thoughts, strong, short, and conclusive.3

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Cockburn’s account of Braxfield as a judge who bullied advocates and joked as he condemned prisoners to death is disputed by modern historians such as Michael Fry, who argue that in cases such as the trial of the notorious housebreaker Deacon Brodie Braxfield was forbearing with the rudeness of the defence and thoughtful in his sentencing. The view taken by a Whig lawyer of a later generation like Cockburn was inevitably coloured by Braxfield’s role in the trials for sedition during the 1790s, when he had stated from the bench that only the landed interest had the right to be represented in the government of Britain. Stevenson’s own view of Braxfield was more complex, for he had reacted powerfully and in many ways sympathetically to seeing the earlier of the two portraits of Braxfield painted by Henry Raeburn when it was shown in the Raeburn Exhibition at the National Galleries in Edinburgh in 1876.4 In his essay on ‘Some Portraits by Raeburn’, published in Virginibus Puerisque in 1881, he describes the ‘tart, rosy, humorous look of the man’ with the ‘half-youthful, half-frosty twinkle’ in his eyes that evokes ‘some movement of sympathy on the part of the spectator’.5 Braxfield, like the fictional Lord Hermiston, besides being closely associated with the celebrated sedition trials of the early 1790s, had a house in George Square in Edinburgh and was also associated with Peeblesshire, having purchased an estate at Broughton.6 Hermiston’s want of decorum in his language and manners also resembles that of Braxfield, who, according to Cockburn, once ‘apologized to a lady whom he damned at whist for bad play, by declaring that he had mistaken her for his wife’.7 Such roughness was, however, not uncharacteristic of Edinburgh lawyers of the time. Another eighteenth-century Scottish judge, Lord Kames, on his retirement from the bench took a formal farewell of his colleagues, shaking their hands and making them a solemn speech, but afterwards ‘in going out at the door of the Court-Room, he turned about, and, casting them a last look, cried, in his usual familiar tone,—“Fare ye a’ weel, ye bitches” ’ (Chambers, ii, 171). Hermiston’s strong opinions and hard drinking were also characteristic both of Braxfield and of his legal contemporaries. J. G. Lockhart, for instance, notes that ‘Braxfield was very fond of cards and of claret, and it was no very unusual thing to see him take his seat upon the Bench, and some of his friends take their’s at the Bar, within not a great many minutes of the termination of some tavern-scene of common devotion to either of these amusements’, though he adds, ‘I have never heard, that any excesses committed by Braxfield had the least power to disturb him in his use of his faculties’ (Peter’s Letters, ii, 113–14). 191

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Stevenson’s Lord Hermiston has obvious differences from Braxfield, however, as well as resemblances. Braxfield was not of labouringclass origins but the son of a law agent and of a woman from a minor gentry family. He first married when he was thirty-one and had four children by his first wife, marrying again in 1792, his bride, Elizabeth Ord, being apparently quite as spirited a character as himself. Fry relates that when the butler resigned because he was unable to stand her continual scolding Braxfield told him that, not being married to her, he had little to complain about. Such a wife (whose portrait was also included in the 1876 Edinburgh Raeburn exhibition) is obviously a far cry from the fearful and tremulous Jean Rutherford. Far from despising all artistic pursuits, Braxfield was a mainstay of the Edinburgh Musical Society. In draft material Stevenson seems to have hinted at a wider culture, when Hermiston remarks to Archie, ‘God, I was once a great reader of novelles myself ’ (Morgan, MA 1419, f. 19). The historical figure of the celebrated physician Dr James Gregory (1753–1821) makes a cameo appearance in the novel’s Edinburgh scenes. He was the effective head of the university’s medical faculty as well as practising in the city, known to Robert Burns and depicted both by John Kay and by Henry Raeburn, whose portrait of him was also included in the 1876 Edinburgh Raeburn exhibition. He was appointed King’s Physician for Scotland in 1799, and was the author of the standard work Conspectus medicinæ thematicæ (1788). The Edinburgh scenes of the novel apparently take place between the early 1790s and the winter of 1811–12, during the long conflict firstly with revolutionary France and then from 1804 with the French empire of Napoleon (1769–1821). No date is given for the marriage of Jean Rutherford and Adam Weir, but since their only child, Archie, is seven years old in 1801 he must have been born in either 1793 or 1794. It is in 1801 that he informs his mother of the harsh view he has arrived at of his father’s standing as a judge, formed partly on the basis of the religious viewpoint she has instilled and partly on an undated incident when a mob surrounds Lord Hermiston’s carriage and calls him a persecutor. This latter incident recalls the political situation in the early 1790s at the time of Archie’s birth. Hermiston’s active participation as a judge in the suppression of Scottish radicalism also belongs to the early 1790s, evoking in particular the trial under Braxfield of the advocate-turned-reformer Thomas Muir (1765–99) in the autumn of 1793. Mrs Weir’s reference to French atheists also seems more relevant to the complete dechristianization of France in 1793 than to 1801 when, under Napoleon, a concordat was signed between France and 192

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Rome, recognizing Roman Catholicism as the religion of the majority of French citizens, though placing the church under the authority of the state. Fears of a French invasion were strongest in 1797–8 and again after 1803: at the time of Jean Rutherford’s death during the summer and autumn legal vacation of 1801 when Hermiston apparently fears that an invading French army has landed, negotiations for the shortlived Peace of Amiens between Britain and revolutionary France were generally known to be well advanced. Gib Elliott’s time in Edinburgh must have coincided with the Conventions of the Friends of the People in 1792 and 1793 in which weavers with levelling views were notable participants (Smout, 443), but even during the autumn of 1811 Glenkindie persistently interprets Archie’s personal protest against the public spectacle of a judicial hanging to his being a ‘leveller’. Stevenson thus depicts by a process of historical compression Archie’s earliest childhood experiences and those of his youth as taking place in a period of intense fear of revolution. The Regency period in which Duncan Jopp’s trial takes place is glancingly indicated in various ways. Frank Innes, for example, is fashionable in driving a curricle and supporting prizefighting. Hob’s farming at Cauldstaneslap profits from high food prices during the prolonged war with France. Obliged to think of another profession than the law in the course of the evening confrontation with his father, Archie wishes to go to Spain to fight in Wellington’s army for the liberation of the Iberian peninsula from the Emperor Napoleon. His slender dark elegance of appearance marks him as a member of another generation than that of his weighty and plain-spoken father. The Edinburgh locations of Weir of Hermiston are geographically precise. Hermiston’s home is a self-contained house in elegant George Square with mews stabling to hand and the green public space of the Meadows beyond. Hermiston’s law-courts are in the complex of buildings close to the St Giles kirk originally designed to house the Scottish Parliament before the Treaty of Union of 1707. The ruined abbey and more recent royal palace of Holyrood are also accurately placed, at the foot of the Canongate, a street continuing Edinburgh’s High Street downwards and eastwards. Stevenson’s familiarity with the university buildings on the South Bridge, however, misled him into thinking that the premises of the Speculative Society in his own youth were the same ones Archie Weir would have frequented: the rooms known to Stevenson were not opened until 1819. The Rutherford estate of Hermiston is harder to place geographically, as Colvin pointed out in his Editorial Note, where he concludes 193

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that it is a place ‘distilled from a number of different haunts and associations among the moorlands of southern Scotland’ (109), some of which are contradictory. Hermiston kirk and the minister Mr Torrance are described in much the same terms that Stevenson had used for Glencorse kirk and its aged minister Mr Torrence while staying at Swanston in the early 1870s, and the novel’s dedication refers to ‘Lammermuir’. The Spango named in the text is a water falling into the Nith rather than the Tweed, and Crossmichael is the name of a town in south-west Scotland. Stevenson’s mother claimed to recognize Overshiels in Stow parish, about twenty-five miles south and east of Edinburgh, where Stevenson in his youth had visited an uncle. In the revised version of his Editorial Note included in the Edinburgh Edition Colvin added the information that the name of Hermiston ‘is taken from a farm on the Water of Ale, between Ettrick and Teviotdale, and close to the proper country of the Elliots’, that is in the south-east Borders. He was then much clearer than before that the market town of Crossmichael ‘may be taken to all intents and purposes as standing for Peebles’, prompted by Sir George Douglas having told him that in Peebles ‘there existed in the early years of the century a well-known club of the same character as that described in the story’ (EdEd, 303). The name of the Deil’s Hags may perhaps have been suggested by that of the Devil’s Beef Tub, a dramatic hollow of five hundred feet in the hills north of Moffatt in Dumfriesshire (roughly fifty miles south of Edinburgh), a site which also has a Covenanter’s memorial. In spite of the various geographical anomalies of the setting of the Borders scenes of Weir of Hermiston it seems clear that they do indeed relate chiefly to the northern and western parts of Peeblesshire, the alternative name for which county, Tweeddale, is mentioned by Frank Innes when he refers to ‘the whole of Tweeddale’ gossiping in the immediate future about Archie’s relations with the younger Kirstie (87). Hermiston is in a high, mountainous district that is sparsely populated and seems to be purely pastoral and agricultural. Cauldstaneslap is the name of an opening between the East and West Cairn hills where the drove-road southwards from Edinburgh crosses into Peeblesshire. The location of the Cauldstaneslap farm in the novel, in moorland running ‘towards the sources of the Clyde’ (85), also seems characteristic of the county, since Medwin Water in the north of Peeblesshire is a tributary of the Clyde and the source of that river is often thought to be Little Clydes burn, about three miles north of the meeting point of Lanarkshire, Peeblesshire and Dumfriesshire. 194

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Crossmichael as a post-town on the river Tweed, with its bridge, its volunteer forces of soldiers and its traditional markets, its vennel and its celebrated Cross-Keys Inn distinctly recalls Peebles itself, located twenty-one miles south of Edinburgh on the northern bank of the Tweed. The castle nearby was surely suggested by Neidpath Castle on a steep bank of the Tweed not far from the old town of Peebles and in a straight line with its principal street. According to William Chambers it was used during the Napoleonic era to store the clothing and accoutrements of the local militia. Chambers also comments on the strength of volunteer bodies of soldiers in the town, ‘about 700 strong, mustered once a year for fourteen days in Peebles’, young men often no doubt enrolling to gain exemption from the ballot for the militia.8 The Cross-Keys Inn on the High Street of Peebles is an ancient building, once the town-house of the Williamsons of Cardrona: the Tweeddale Shooting Club, instituted in 1790, dined there before the opening of the new Tontine Hotel in 1808.9 Other Peeblesshire place names are used in the novel, though not for their actual locations: Polintarf Water, for instance, is a tributary of the Lyne, while Kingsmuir is a tract of land close to Peebles itself that was once owned by the burgh. Stevenson portrays a traditional way of life in the Scottish Borders that is reminiscent of the one depicted by Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) and James Hogg (1770–1835), both of whom are specifically mentioned in the novel. The Hermiston congregation sleeps in box beds, eats oatmeal porridge, and the girls walk to church barefoot, while government taxes on spirits are evaded by means of private stills and widespread smuggling networks. The robbery and pursuit that gives the Four Black Brothers their fearsome reputation is described by Stevenson as worthy of being turned into a ballad (the best-known collection being Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border of 1802–3). In addition the narrator’s ‘the last of the minstrels’ (49) evokes Scott’s first long narrative poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805). The shepherd–poet Dandie Elliott, as both typical and an outstanding figure in this society, is partly modelled on the historical figure and representative works of James Hogg, who is mentioned in the novel as his crony (and to some extent his patron). Their idolization of Robert Burns (1759–96), their association with the notable feats of dogs and with heroic rescues of flocks in winter storms is similar, and both have experienced the public shaming of a church appearance on the stool of repentance for fornication. The legend of the Four Black Brothers resembles a Hogg tale in which a farmer is set upon by robbers on the evening of a convivial fair day.10 195

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This rooted society looks back to the time of the Covenanters, memorialized in both landscape and legend. Following the introduction by Charles I in 1637 of a Scottish Prayer Book based on an English model large numbers of Scots signed a National Covenant in 1638. This declared opposition to interference by the Stuart kings with the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and maintained that the head of the church was not the king but Christ alone. Severe government repression ensued, with ministers of Covenanting persuasion being ejected from their charges and parishioners savagely punished for attending them, persecution which intensified after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 and continued until the accession of William I in 1688–9 ended the Stuart monarchy and the Presbyterian Church of Scotland achieved official recognition as the established national religion. The gravestone of the Praying Weaver is tended by Robert Paterson (baptized 1716 and died in 1801), a Dumfriesshire stonemason who abandoned his wife and children to travel the countryside for around forty years refurbishing the graves of Covenanters. The template provided by the radicalism of Covenanters such as the Praying Weaver and government repression by figures like the historical Claverhouse and the fictional Rutherfords is superimposed on the government-led repression of revolutionary political radicalism at the period of the novel’s setting in which Lord Hermiston is a key agent. This is a parallel of which Hermiston’s Rutherford wife is well aware. This traditional society of the Scottish Borders is, however, shown as in the process of change. Lord Muirfell’s hunt seems to hint at the anglicization of the local aristocracy that resulted from the education of their sons at English public schools. Gib Elliott’s political radicalism wafts a revolutionary breeze from France, as he and his co-religionists pray for the military success of the French emperor Napoleon, while his aunt Kirstie has an occasional sense of living in the prophesied biblical end-times. Even the socially complacent Frank Innes models himself on the ultimate French politician Talleyrand (1754–1838). Perhaps even more significantly Clem Elliott and his kind bring Glasgow influences to bear. Clem is rumoured to be wealthy enough to buy up his elder brother, the possessor of the inherited family property, six times over. Among the genteel society of the county there is obviously an influx of other such men, who typically use the profits of ‘the wheels of machinery’ to build ‘a handsome villa with a carriage approach and a shrubbery’ (82). The younger Kirstie occupies an anomalous social position as both the sister of Hob, a landowner only to the limited extent of owning the land he farms rather than renting it, and 196

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of Clem, a wealthy Glasgow merchant. She is distinguished from the local farmers’ daughters by her fashionable clothes and her knowledge of Glasgow ways but, as Frank Innes points out, is not therefore to be regarded as the kind of young lady who would be a fitting match for the future owner of the Hermiston estate. The chronology of the Hermiston scenes is not perfectly dovetailed with that of the Edinburgh episodes, so that Archie, for instance, is seventeen in Edinburgh at the time of Duncan Jopp’s trial which takes place ‘in the year 1811’ (22), but is a ‘young gentleman of twenty’ on his arrival at Hermiston (43) when consistently he cannot be more than eighteen years old. The Hermiston scenes generally seem less bound by the calendar and more by the seasons than those set in Edinburgh, and specific date references such as this are fortunately rare. Stevenson seems to have patterned the younger Kirstie’s church-going clothes on those described in La Belle Assemblée for the autumn of 1811 and to have consulted the Annual Register for 1812 for other details during the novel’s composition. Particularly after he began writing St Ives he perhaps occasionally grouped both novels together in his mind as taking place in 1814.11 Sidney Colvin in revising Weir of Hermiston for publication altered all the specific date references in the novel to refer to 1813–14 rather than 1811–12 for the sake of consistency and perhaps also, as the Essay on the Text in the present edition argues (143), to increase the younger Kirstie’s age at the time of her seduction from at most fourteen years old to suit the relatively recent legal age of sexual consent of sixteen years. Stevenson’s chronology also seems confused in fixing the Sunday on which Frank Innes sets eyes on the younger Kirstie in Hermiston kirk, which firstly is said to take place on the twenty-ninth day of a visit to Hermiston which began on a Tuesday and secondly on the second Sunday he was there (85). However, the chronological inconsistencies of the later chapters of Weir of Hermiston hardly mar the reader’s enjoyment of what was arguably to have been Stevenson’s masterpiece, and as they stand are timely reminders of the fact that what he left was an uncompleted and unfinished work. As well as the Regency period and the closing decade of the eighteenth century, Weir of Hermiston is inevitably flavoured by Stevenson’s own life experiences, most obviously, as Colvin indicates in his Editorial Note, the painful conflict Stevenson endured in his youth with his own father. Even in the chapter entitled ‘Winter on the Moors’, which frequently adopts a collective folk voice in its narration, the minister is named as ‘Mr Torrance’, indicating Alexander Torrence (1789–1877) observed preaching by Stevenson in 1873, while ‘Enter Mephistoph197

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eles’ mentions Sherlock Holmes, the fictional detective of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) as a possible role model for Frank Innes in another age. This tendency is at its clearest in the scene where Archie attends a meeting of the Speculative Society, and Stevenson as narrator directly addresses his University of Edinburgh contemporaries, referring to the President’s chair which ‘so many of us have sat in since’ (25). Artefacts such as the President’s chair, the Raeburn portraits exhibited in 1876 and Roubillac’s statue of Duncan Forbes in the Parliament buildings are signs that, among other things, Stevenson in Weir of Hermiston is reckoning up the remembered Scotland of his youth, historical, geographical and (inevitably) literary. Notes 1. See Letters 8: 30. Colvin reiterated his own view in his Editorial Note for the first edition (see 108–9). 2. This summary of Braxfield’s career is largely based on Michael Fry’s article in the Oxford DNB, in which the quotations appear. 3. See Henry Cockburn, Memorials of his Time (Edinburgh, 1856), 113. Stevenson requested Charles Baxter to send him a copy of Cockburn’s Memorials to Samoa in his letter of 1 Dec 1892 (Letters 7: 441), and Baxter duly obliged, according to his reply of 20 Jan 1892 (Beinecke 10, 239). Stevenson had cited Cockburn’s description of Braxfield’s ‘growling, blacksmith’s voice’, however, as early as 1881—see ‘Some Portraits by Raeburn’, in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (London, 1881), 229. 4. This was not the portrait of Braxfield in his judicial robes, painted c. 1798 (National Galleries of Scotland, PG 1615), but one of him painted in 1770 as a younger man wearing dark clothing: see Stevenson’s letter to Andrew Lang of 1 Dec 1894 (Letters 8: 395). 5. ‘Some Portraits by Raeburn’, 227–8. 6. William Chambers, A History of Peeblesshire (Edinburgh and London, 1864), 442. 7. Cockburn, Memorials of his Time, 38. 8. William Chambers, Memoir of Robert Chambers (London and Edinburgh, 1872), 54. See also his History of Peeblesshire, 276. 9. See Alexander Williamson, Glimpses of Peebles or Forgotten Chapters in its History (Selkirk, 1895), 292–6.

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histor ica l and geogr aphica l note 10. See ‘Dogs’ and ‘Storms’ in The Shepherd’s Calendar, ed. Douglas S. Mack (Edinburgh, 1995), 57–67 and 1–21 respectively. See also, for instance, Hogg’s ‘Story of Adam Scott’, in Contributions to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 2: 1829–1835, ed. Thomas C. Richardson (Edinburgh, 2012), 112–21. 11. Stevenson refers to the Annual Register for 1812 in this connection in his letter to Colvin of 30 Jan 1893, but at the same time describes both Weir of Hermiston and St Ives as taking place in the ‘fated year’ of 1814 (Letters 7: 464–5). This copy of the Annual Register is now at the Beinecke (Stevenson 1851). He also appears to envisage an 1814 setting in a marginal note on the paper on which he drew up a family tree for the Elliotts of Cauldstaneslap, in deducting the elder Kirstie’s year of birth in 1764 from 1814 to give her age as fifty—see Morgan, MA 993, f. 45.

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Explanatory Notes The following notes offer a comprehensive attempt to identify Stevenson’s sources, in addition to quotations, references, historical events and personages, proverbial phrases and obscure or specialist language. They supply information rather than critical analysis or expository discussion, referring to first editions, standard editions or editions Stevenson himself used or with which he would have been familiar. While phrases are discussed in these Explanatory Notes, single words are generally dealt with in the Glossary. For a list of abbreviations of frequently cited works see xvii–xix. Quotations from the Bible are from the Authorized Version (except, where relevant, from the metrical Psalms of David approved by the Church of Scotland). Shakespeare quotations and references are to The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al., 2nd edn (New York, 2008). The notes are greatly indebted to the following standard works: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford English Dictionary, and the Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk). Quotations from draft manuscript material are reading transcriptions. Where a quotation or allusion has not been identified this is stated: the editor welcomes any new information from readers. Notes are keyed to page and line numbers in the text, the line count including chapter titles and subtitles. 3.1  TO MY WIFE  Fanny Stevenson (formerly Osbourne, née Vandegrift, 1840–1914). Stevenson had met her at Grez in France in the autumn of 1876, not long after the conclusion of the canoeing trip with Walter Simpson that was the basis of An Inland Voyage, and followed her subsequently to Monterey, California, and then to San Francisco where the couple married on 19 May 1880. 3.3 Lammermuir a broad range of moorland hills to the south of Edinburgh, running from close to the coast westwards towards the English Border, in East Lothian and Berwickshire. 3.4  my precipitous city  Stevenson’s native Edinburgh is built on ridges extending from east to west and on the valleys between and slopes beyond them. The city is dominated by nearby Arthur’s Seat, 200

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while the Old Town is centred on a rocky spine stretching upwards from Holyrood Palace in the east to Edinburgh Castle in the west. 3.5  here afar  Weir of Hermiston was written at Stevenson’s home of Vailima in Apia, Samoa, where he had moved in 1890. 3.10  prodigal of counsel  an allusion to Fanny’s role as a reader and critic of her husband’s work. Stevenson had originally written the somewhat harsher phrase ‘prodigal of censure’ here—see his drafts in Beinecke 45, 1015 and in Morgan, MA 1419, f. 2. 5.2  a moorland parish  No specific location can be identified for the original of Hermiston parish as the indications provided by the text are mutually conflicting—see Appendix 1 and the Historical and Geographical Note to the present edition (109–10 and 194–5). The name Hermiston, according to Sidney Colvin, ‘is taken from a farm on the Water of Ale, between Ettrick and Teviotdale, and close to the proper country of the Elliots’ (EdEd, 303). There are many indications, however, that Stevenson often had Peeblesshire in mind. 5.5 Claverhouse John Graham, subsequently Viscount Dundee (c. 1648–89) was a royalist military leader, known as Claverhouse (‘bluidy Clavers’) from his family estate near Dundee. He was active against the Covenanters, or adherents of the National Covenant of 1638 (see Historical and Geographical Note, 196). According to Covenanting historians, Claverhouse was a leading figure in the imposition of a brutal regime of repression involving summary execution, torture, imprisonment and banishment. 5.6  Praying Weaver of Balweary  Balwearie is a ruined tower in Fife, two miles from Kirkcaldy, across the firth of Forth from Edinburgh. It is the setting of Stevenson’s ‘Thrawn Janet’ and his unfinished ‘Heathercat’. Stevenson’s letter to S. R. Crockett of c. 15 August 1893 (Letters 8: 153) in stating that his novel ‘actually centres about the gravestone of the Praying Weaver of Balweary’ may seem to imply an historical original, who has not hitherto been identified. His fate perhaps also recalls that of William Graham, a tailor from Crossmichael in Kirkcudbright, sw Scotland, of whose summary execution Claverhouse was accused. In one draft of this passage the weaver is ‘suspected of complicity with the Sweet Singers’ (Beinecke 45, 1013), followers of John Gibb, a sailor from Bo’ness. The name of the group came from their practice of frequently meeting together and lamenting with psalm-singing the corrupt state of the Scottish church. 201

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5.6  Old Mortality  the nickname of Robert Paterson (c. 1716– 1801), a Dumfriesshire stonemason, who abandoned his wife and children to travel the countryside refurbishing the graves of Covenanters. He is depicted at his task in the opening chapter of Scott’s novel Old Mortality (1816). 5.9  the Cameronian  a member of an extreme Presbyterian sect, named after their original leader Richard Cameron (d. 1680). 5.9  two hundred years ago  Stevenson intends the Weaver’s execution to have taken place in the 1680s, the Killing Time of extreme persecution of Covenanters by James, Duke of York (later James VII and II). 5.13  The Deil’s Hags  A hag is a hollow of marshy ground in a moor. Landscape features thought to be particularly impressive or gloomy are often attributed to the Devil, such as the Devil’s Beef Tub or the Devil’s Punch Bowl. 5.13–14  Francie’s Cairn  Scott noted in 1803 that a heap of stones was commonly raised on the spot where a murder had been committed, adding ‘This practice has only very lately become obsolete in Scotland’—see Minstrelsy, i, 91. 5.20  bones of a giant  Fossil remains of dinosaurs were once widely thought to provide evidence that giants formerly inhabited Britain. 5.23  told again  In the fragments of an earlier version entitled ‘The Hanging Judge’ Stevenson focuses on his own hearing of the tale at the scene of the Praying Weaver’s gravestone and on his current attempt to retell it in Samoa to a wider audience: ‘If I seek to tell it again, in so far a place and before so great an audience, be my courage rewarded!’ (Morgan, MA 1419, f. 34v). 6.3 The Lord Justice-Clerk  the second most senior Scottish judge, after the Lord President of the Court of Session, and one of the great Officers of State of Scotland. He is in charge of the second division of the Inner House of the Court of Session in Edinburgh. 6.5  riding Rutherfords of Hermiston  Like the other ‘riding’ clans of the 15th and 16th centuries the Rutherfords were tacitly supported by the Scottish government in their raids for cattle into England. They are associated with various places in the remote uplands of the central Borders area. Several Rutherfords are buried in Jedburgh Abbey, and 202

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they also feature in the ballad ‘The Raid of the Reidswire’. See Minstrelsy, i, 111–28 and note to 53.13. 6.10 Flodden the catastrophic Scottish defeat in battle in Northumberland (ne England) of 9 September 1513, during which James IV of Scotland and many of his nobles were killed fighting against the English forces of Henry VIII. 6.10–11  hanged … by James the Fifth  James V (1512–42) made strenuous efforts to bring the Scottish Borders under royal control rather than that of the heads of local families. The ballad of ‘Johnie Armstrang’ tells of Armstrong of Gilnockie’s execution by the King around 1529 (see Minstrelsy, i, 48–73). Stevenson alludes specifically to this ballad on 48. 6.11  carouse with Tam Dalyell  General Thomas Dalyell (c. 1615– 85) was a devoted royalist, who had sworn on hearing of the execution of Charles I that he would not cut his hair or beard until the monarchy was restored. He had served as a soldier in Russia. He was responsible for the suppression of the Pentland Rising at Rullion Green on 28 November 1666, and after the Covenanting defeat of Bothwell Bridge in 1679 became Commander-in-Chief of the royal forces in Scotland. In the years that followed he gained a reputation as one of the chief persecutors of the Presbyterian rebels for his summary executions and use of torture to extract confessions. 6.12–13  a Hell-Fire Club  Societies of aristocratic rakes, with a reputation for orgies, heavy drinking, and blasphemy, were formed in various parts of Britain in the 18th century. 6.14 Crossmichael There is a village and parish of Crossmichael in Kirkcudbrightshire in sw Scotland, but, as Colvin states, Crossmichael ‘may be taken to all intents and purposes as standing for Peebles, where I am told by Sir George Douglas there existed in the early years of the century a well-known club of the same character as that described in the story’ (EdEd, 303). 6.17  the Session  The Court of Session is the highest civil court of law in Scotland, and sits only in Edinburgh. There were originally fifteen judges, known as the Lords of Session. 6.19  left hand business  sinister, underhand business. The left hand is superstitiously associated with evil and wrong-doing. 203

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6.20–1  lawyers have long spoons  an allusion to the proverb ‘He should have a long spoon that sups with the devil’ (see odep, 480–1). 6.21–2  a bloody flux  an abnormally copious flow of blood from the bowels or other organs, often what would now be termed dysentery. 6.33  the sins … of her mothers  Exodus 20. 5 mentions God’s ‘visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children’, while God’s curse on Eve as the mother of all women in Genesis 3. 16 is that ‘in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children’. 7.3  Lord Advocate  the chief law officer of the crown in Scotland, who has full discretion over criminal prosecution and advises the government on Scottish legal affairs. 7.13–14  the Parliament House  a series of buildings behind St Giles Kirk in Edinburgh, built between 1632 and 1639 to house the Scottish parliament, or Estates. After the Treaty of Union of 1707 it became the home of the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary. 7.17–18  Keep me, Mr. Weir!  As Stevenson had pointed out in the draft entitled ‘The Hanging Judge’: ‘(This mild oath of hers, was a sin of which she constantly repented, but the habit stuck to her, as you will hear, up to the end.)’—see Morgan, MA 1419, f. 36v. 7.22  Hangit, mem, hangit  In one draft opening to the novel this is followed by a passage reading, ‘It was said he had begun his offer of marriage in the sacramental words: “Hold up your right hand.”  ’ (Parrish). 7.30  a title … upon the bench  Two previous drafts of this passage now at Princeton (Parrish) emphasize Mr Weir’s own lowly descent, the one stating he was ‘sprung from nobody’ and the other that ‘he was himself sprung from the dregs, and valued her descent the more’. J. G. Lockhart states, ‘Formerly it was looked upon as quite inconsistent with the proper character of an Advocate, to say nothing of a Judge, to want some piece of land, the superintendence of which might afford an agreeable, no less than profitable relaxation, from the toils of the profession’ (Peter’s Letters, ii, 122). 8.2  Lord Hermiston  Stevenson based Lord Hermiston on the legendary figure of Robert Macqueen, Lord Braxfield (1722–99). See Appendix 1 and Historical and Geographical Note.

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8.3  George Square  a Georgian square developed to the south of Edinburgh’s Old Town, and completed on the north, east and west sides by 1779. Lord Braxfield lived at 13 George Square. 8.7  the grumbletonians  a nickname after the 1688 Revolution for the members of the party opposed to the royal court in English politics, who were supposedly actuated by dissatisfied personal ambition. It was patterned on the name of the earlier sect of the Muggletonians. Stevenson had mentioned Braxfield calling radicals Grumbletonians in ‘Some Portraits by Raeburn’, in Virginibus Puerisque and Other ­Papers (London, 1881), 230. 8.10 some puddocks  (Scots) frogs. The badly cooked leg of mutton served at Hermiston’s table is inferior even to the despised French dish of frog’s legs. 8.17–18  Hermiston’s hanging face  an expression perhaps intended to recall the hereditary and ill-omened frown of the Redgauntlet family in the ‘Wandering Willie’s Tale’ of Scott’s novel Redgauntlet (1824). 8.23  sister in the Lord  Puritans and Evangelicals often referred to a co-religionist thus, presumably from Jesus’s saying, ‘For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother’ (Matthew 12. 50). 8.39 Edom a Scots pronunciation of Adam, though Edom was also another name for Jacob’s brother Esau and afterwards of his descendants (see Genesis 25. 30). The name, therefore, is applied to those who, like Esau, are not the true inheritors. 9.12  moorland Helen  Helen was the most beautiful woman of ancient Greece, whose elopement with Paris from her husband Menelaus was the cause of the fall of Troy. 9.16–17  a tearful prayer to Mrs. Weir  Stevenson had made this more theologically explicit in an earlier draft, stating that ‘Mrs Weir was sometimes exercised as to her calling and election’ (Morgan, MA 1419, f. 8). 9.18  Martha and Mary  two sisters visited by Jesus, Mary sitting at his feet to hear his word while Martha ‘was cumbered about much serving’ (Luke 10. 38–42).

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10.6  a saint  a self-description by members of puritanical sects, indicating one of the elect under the new covenant of faith who are saved by Christ’s sacrifice. 10.7–8 Rutherford’s Letters  Samuel Rutherford (1600?–61) was a convinced Presbyterian, one of the Scottish commissioners to the Westminster Assembly and the author of Lex, Rex, or the Law and the Prince (1644), a defence of armed resistance to Charles I and which advocated a limited, constitutional government. His letters, first published posthumously in the Netherlands in 1664, quickly became a classic of evangelical protestant piety. 10.8 Scougal The best-known work of the Presbyterian divine Henry Scougal (1650–78) is Life of God in the Soul of Man (1677), an affectionate and concerned letter to a friend who had lost his faith and expresses a mixture of intense spirituality, mystical piety, and latitudinarian theology. 10.8  Grace Abounding  The spiritual autobiography of John Bunyan (1628–88), Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666) relates the author’s spiritual history, including his conversion experience, temptations, and call to the ministry. 10.13  tender innocents with psalms  In the draft entitled ‘The Hanging Judge’ these specifically included the Sweet Singers: ‘Even the Sweet Singers (those wild fanatics) she made something beautiful of, as indeed they have a beautiful name; and would tell of their sitting all night long in moors and mosses with a perpetual voice of psalmody [. . .] But the rough, mad and ugly side she would leave out; she did not tell how Cargill himself trembled for his life in conference with these fanatics’ (Morgan, MA 1419, f. 35v). Stevenson had long been familiar with the account of them in ‘Remarkable Passages in the Life and Death of Mr Daniel Cargill’, in Patrick Walker et al., Biographia Presbyteriana, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1827), ii, 1–54 (15–21). His copy had been a gift from his father in 1869. 10.15 Beelzebub the prince or chief of devils, as in, for instance, Matthew 12. 24. 10.15  Persecutor  a term by which the Scottish Covenanters could connect their own sufferings at the hands of government forces during the 1680s with the early Christians who suffered for their faith under the Roman Empire. 206

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10.18  the Lord’s anointed  originally the Kings of Israel (see, for instance, David’s reluctance to destroy Saul as such in i Samuel 26. 9), but more generally one consecrated by God for a particular purpose or destiny. 10.18 Rullion-Green At the battle of Rullion Green of 28 November 1666 in the Pentland Hills south of Edinburgh the Covenanters were defeated by Royalist forces commanded by General Tam Dalyell. 10.21  Hermiston himself  Patrick Walker, for instance, reflected on ‘the Danger of high stations in the World, and publick Posts, especially in evil Times’. See Biographia Presbyteriana, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1827), ii, 53. 10.22  Bloody McKenzie  Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh (1636/8–91) was appointed Lord Advocate in 1677, and was known as ‘Bluidy Mackenzie’ for his ruthless prosecution of prominent Covenanters. He features among the ghostly spectres of ‘Wandering Willie’s Tale’ as ‘the Bluidy Advocate MacKenyie, who, for his worldly wit and wisdom, had been to the rest as a god’. See Walter Scott, Redgauntlet, ed. G. A. M. Wood and David Hewitt, Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels 17 (Edinburgh, 1997), 96. 10.22  the politic Lauderdale  John Maitland, 2nd Earl and 1st Duke of Lauderdale (1616–82) switched from being one of the Covenanters’ foremost supporters to one of their foremost persecutors. He had been one of the main figures of the early Covenanting alliance with the English parliamentarians and then was at the head of the Scottish administration for twenty years after the Restoration of Charles II. He was perceived as a ruthless, skilful and selfish politician. 10.22 Rothes John Leslie, 7th Earl and 1st Duke of Rothes (c. 1630–81) was appointed a Lord of Session at the Restoration of Charles II and enjoyed various high offices as a personal friend of the monarch, including those of Lord High Commissioner, Lord High Treasurer and Keeper of the Privy Seal. He was a brutal repressor of the Covenanters by military force. 10.22–3  band of God’s immediate enemies  Patrick Walker, for instance, recounts the fearful ends of these persecutors of the Covenanters: ‘The Duke of Lauderdale turned a Belly-god, and died upon the Chamber-box […] The Duke of Rothes died Raving, under the dreadful Terrors and Sense of that Sentence binding upon him, making his Bed shake, to the Affrightment of all that heard and saw him. 207

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[…] Bloody Sir George Mackenzie died at London, with all the Passages of his Body running Blood’. See Biographia Presbyteriana, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1827), ii, 9. 11.8  Are not two sparrows  See Matthew 10. 29: ‘Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall to the ground without your Father’. 11.8–9  whosoever shall smite thee  Matthew 5. 39: ‘but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also’. 11.9  God sendeth his rain  In Matthew 5. 45, God ‘sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust’. 11.9  judge not that ye be not judged  See Matthew 7. 1. 11.13  a marrowy expounder  a preacher who gets to the pith or core of his subject, perhaps with a reminiscence of Puritan classics like Edward Fisher’s The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645). Stevenson’s first thought, deleted in a previous draft of this passage (Morgan, MA 1419, f. 11), had been to describe him as ‘a boanerges’, which Mark 3. 17 defines as a son of thunder. 11.27  I to the hills!  Mrs Weir is quoting the opening of Psalm 121 in the metrical version used by the Church of Scotland: ‘I to the hills will lift mine eyes, | from whence doth come mine aid’. 11.28  the hills of Naphtali  Naphtali was one of the twelve sons of Jacob (and later one of the twelve tribes of Israel), the deathbed prophecy of Jacob concerning him being ‘Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words’ (Genesis 49. 21). From this the Cameronian minister Alexander Sheilds (1659/60–1700) took the title of his Covenanting apologia A Hind Let Loose, first published in Utrecht in 1687. 11.34  cad from the Potter-Row  a rough boy from a poor street to the south of Edinburgh’s Old Town, near the elegant George Square. 11.36  the Meadows  an open public space to the south of George Square. 12.17  a stumbling-block  an allusion to Romans 14. 13: ‘Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling-block or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way’. 12.27  reprobates, goats … brands  those destined for damnation. Matthew 25. 32–3 describes how God will separate the sheep from the 208

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goats, placing the sheep on his right hand but the goats on his left. The common sermon phrase ‘brand for the burning’ derives from Joshua’s being declared ‘a brand plucked out of the fire’ in Zechariah 3. 2. 12.29  the Chief of Sinners  The phrase is one of self-reproach both in Bunyan’s spiritual autobiography Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners and in i Timothy 1. 15 where Paul declares ‘that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief ’. 12.37–8  sinful and forbidden  Stevenson had written in a previous draft, ‘If judging were sinful and forbidden, if “Vengeance is mine saith the Lord I will repay”, how came papa to be a judge and punish?’ (Morgan, MA 1419, ff. 12–13). 12.40  the little Rabbi  A rabbi is a Jewish doctor of the law. Stevenson frequently uses the term to indicate an inflexible teacher or a person who applies moral laws rigidly. In Part ii of ‘Virginibus Puerisque’, for instance, he contrasts ‘the apostle of laxity’ and ‘the rabbi of precision’—see Virginibus Puerisque, 38. 13.8  babes and innocents  Jesus rebuked the chief priests of the Temple by alluding to Psalm 8, ‘have ye never read, Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?’ (Matthew 21. 16). 13.10  the type of the kingdom of Heaven  See Matthew 19. 14: ‘But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of Heaven’. 13.16  a tex’ borne in upon me  an expression learned from Covenanting literature, suggesting not something merely recalled by the believer but impressed upon his mind from outside. Robert Wodrow, for instance, notes that a friend told him ‘in wrestling anent the publick, that word has been born strongly in upon him, “He dealt not with us as we sinned” ’. See Analecta; or, Materials for a History of Remarkable Providences, Mostly Relating to Scotch Ministers and Christians, 4 vols (Edinburgh, 1842–3), i, 306. 13.17–18  a milestone … pairts of the sea  Jesus, after emphasizing that to enter the kingdom of heaven his disciples must become like children, adds ‘But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea’ (Matthew 18. 6). Archie’s ‘milestone’ for ‘millstone’ reflects his imperfect childish understanding. 209

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13.20  honour faither and mother  The fifth commandment given by God to Moses was ‘Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee’ (Exodus 20. 12). 13.23  French Atheists  France was steadily dechristianized during the Revolution, with a culminating ceremony in November 1793 during which the goddess Reason was celebrated in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. 13.25  First with Promise  The commandments which precede the fifth are simply instructions, the fifth being the first to imply a reward for observing it. Question 66 of the Shorter Catechism, ‘What is the reason annexed to the fifth commandment?’ has the reply, ‘The reason annexed to the fifth commandment, is a promise of long life and prosperity […] to all such as keep this commandment’. 13.26  the beam and the mote  Jesus, following his instruction ‘Judge not that ye be not judged’, says ‘And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?’ (Matthew 7. 3). 13.34  When the Court rose that year  The Lammas term of the Court of Session generally ended early in July while the Martinmas term began in mid-November: in 1801 these dates were 5 July and 24 November. See Edinburgh Almanack and Scots Register for 1801 (Edinburgh, [1800]), 44. During this interval lawyers like Hermiston would retire to their country estates. 14.40  the handle to his name  a colloquial expression for his title of Lord Hermiston. 15.20  Has the French landdit?  Fears that Britain was about to be invaded by a revolutionary French army were strongest in 1797–8, and again once hostilities were renewed in May 1803 after the short-lived Peace of Amiens. 16.2  Puir bitch  Henry Cockburn reports Braxfield’s want of decorum in his language, instancing that he once ‘apologized to a lady whom he damned at whist for bad play, by declaring that he had mistaken her for his wife’.—see Memorials of his Time (Edinburgh, 1856), 38.

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16.7  a skirling Jezebel  the wife of King Ahab of Israel, who encouraged him to worship Baal and set herself in opposition to the prophet Elijah: her fate was to be eaten by dogs (i Kings 18–21). 17.15  He saw little of his son  In a previous draft Stevenson had elaborated the point as follows: ‘His son saw him but little. That was a severe and silent house; the tall clocks ticked and struck there, the bell rang for meals; and beyond these periodic sounds, and the clamour of an occasional deep drinking dinner, it was a house in which a pin might have been heard dropping from one room to another. […] When my lord was at home, the servants trembled and hasted on noiseless feet, the child kept himself trembling company in the tall rooms, and had but the one concern—to avoid his father’s notice’ (Morgan, MA 1419, f. 17). 17.24  three authentic murder cases  Probably recounted in a legalistic rather than sensational manner, since an earlier draft adds ‘one of which turned upon a technical point’ (Morgan, MA 1419, f. 17v). 17.25–6  the High School and the College  An education at these two foundations would have been the usual one for a well-to-do Edinburgh lawyer’s son in the early 19th century. Edinburgh’s Royal High School was located on Infirmary Street between 1777 and 1829. The University of Edinburgh, known as the ‘Town’s College’ and founded by James VI of Scotland, was located in a complex designed by Robert Adam (the ‘Old Quad’) on the South Bridge. 17.28  nuts and a glass of port  In wealthy 19th-century homes the children would be brought in to share the dessert that concluded the evening dinner and to socialize with their parents and any guests. 17.31 Corderius the Latin name of the Swiss schoolmaster Mathurin Cordier (1479?–1564), whose Colloquia was used as a Latin textbook in schools for three centuries after his death. 17.31–2  Papinian and Paul  two famous Roman jurists, extensively quoted by the Emperor Justinian (ad 527–65) in his Digest of civil law. 18.5  fuller man  in allusion to the essay ‘Of Studies’ of Francis Bacon (1561–1626): ‘Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man’. See Francis Bacon, The Major Works, ed. ­Brian Vickers (Oxford, 1996; rptd 2002), 439–40. 18.6  advise  in the legal sense of taking counsel together with colleagues.

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18.18–19  a mighty toper  Hermiston’s drinking is representative of a generation of Edinburgh lawyers. Lockhart noted, for instance, that ‘Braxfield was very fond of cards and of claret, and it was no very unusual thing to see him take his seat upon the Bench, and some of his friends take their’s at the Bar, within not a great many minutes of the termination of some tavern-scene of common devotion to either of these amusements’ (Peter’s Letters, ii, 113–14). Robert Chambers states that it was formerly not unusual ‘to find the half of his Majesty’s most honourable Lords of Council and Session mounting the Bench, in the forenoon, in a state little removed from absolute civilation’ (Chambers, ii, 237–8). 18.23  infinitely more disgusting  Stevenson had previously drafted that Hermiston’s pleasantries were objectionable to Archie because of ‘the horrid and incongruous intermixture of an element that was not so much libertine as it was uncomely, crude and low-born’ (Morgan, MA 1419, f. 22). 18.29  David Keith Carnegie, Lord Glenalmond  The surname Carnegie suggests that Glenalmond, in contrast to Hermiston, comes from an old Scottish family with a legal background. Sir Robert Carnegie of Kinnaird (who died in 1566) was a diplomat and lawyer in the time of Queen Mary and the preceding Regency of Mary of Guise. 18.31–2  statue of Forbes … Parliament House  This statue of the Scottish politician and supporter of the Hanoverians, Duncan Forbes of Culloden (1685–1747) is by the 18th-century French sculptor LouisFrançois Roubillac (1702–62). Lockhart, describing it, refers to ‘the earnest attitude of the Judge, stooping forward and extending his right hand, and the noble character of his physiognomy’ (Peter’s Letters, ii, 39). 18.41  say Boo to a goose  a proverbial expression for timidity, going back as far as the 16th century (odep, 701). 19.2  a taste for letters  In an earlier draft Stevenson had included details of Glenalmond’s subsequent encouragement of Archie’s literary tastes, in that he ‘lent him books from his library which was of great extent; and introduced him to the new authors, for whom he watched with an eager if critical eye. It was my fortune to see long ago, on the shelves of Mr Stillie, first editions of the Lay and the Lady of the Lake with dedications from Lord Glenalmond to his “young friend, Archibald Weir.”  ’ 212

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(Morgan, MA 1419, f. 18) Stillie’s was a circulating library and book-dealer’s shop in central Edinburgh between 1826 and 1893. 19.16  Signor Feedle-eerie  a sneer at classical music and musicians, often denigrated as Italian and adversely compared with a native tradition of Scots song and fiddle-music. They became a symbol of foreign interference with Scottish life—for further details of this 18th-century controversy see David Johnson, Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1972), 187–200. 19.27  Cato and Brutus  stern and austere Roman heroes. Cato the Censor (234–149 bc) tried to reform the lax morals of the Roman nobility. His great-grandson, Cato (95–46 bc) was the chief political antagonist of Julius Caesar. Lucius Junius Brutus was the nephew of Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome and one of the two first Roman consuls of the Republic that was afterwards instituted in 510 bc. He is said to have put to death his two sons, who tried to overthrow the republic. 19.28  an ancestry of one  a phrase implying that on his father’s side Archie has only one notable ancestor, that father himself. 20.7  the Speculative Society  Founded in 1764, the Speculative Society rapidly became a training ground for eminent lawyers and politicians. It was unusual among the city’s many debating societies for having chambers within the university complex on the South Bridge. The Society’s characteristic features were ‘weekly meetings, the limited membership, admission by ballot, compulsory duty, and the rigid exclusion of strangers’ and from 1779 onwards the maximum number of ordinary members was thirty (Speculative, 2, 7). 20.12  a chip of the old block  very similar to his father, having a strong resemblance to him (odep, 121). 20.15  flew his private signal  The analogy is with a flag flown from a Royal Navy ship, to show that an admiral or other flag officer is on board. 20.24 Rhadamanthus a son of Zeus and Europa in Greek mythology, who became a judge of the dead and ruler of Elysium. 20.29  the great, bare staircase of his duty  An earlier draft continues ‘and if at intervals, upon a landing, he made a signal which was disregarded, his foot would be already on the upward step’ (Morgan, MA 1419, f. 22). 213

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21.15  it’s a poor hert that never rejoices  a proverbial expression (odep, 638). 21.16  my plew-stilts  an allusion to Hermiston’s humble origins. 22.3  the year 1811  Colvin altered the year to 1813 for the published version of the novel (see Chatto, 47). 22.3–4  the Justiciary Court  Scotland’s supreme criminal court which is presided over by the Lord Justice General and the Lord Justice-Clerk. As a court of first instance it dealt with the most serious crimes such as murder. 22.17  vanishing point  in perspective drawing the point at which receding, though apparently parallel, lines meet. 22.23  red robes of criminal jurisdiction  Raeburn painted a portrait of Braxfield wearing splendid flowing judicial robes in a warm red colour with a white spotted cape and cuffs, and ornamented with large bows of red. 23.3–4  I’m ill to jest with  perhaps an allusion to the proverb, ‘It is ill jesting with edged tools’ (odep, 411). 23.11  the galleries  These may be seen in an engraving of the Justiciary Court in James Grant, Old and New Edinburgh, 3 vols (London, 1880?–3), i, 172. 23.18  obiter dictum  (Latin) an incidental remark, a judge’s expression of opinion uttered during his judgement but which is not essential to the decision and so not legally binding as a precedent. 23.34  High Street  Archie, emerging from the Parliament House, would find himself on Edinburgh’s High Street, the spine of the Old Town stretching from beneath Edinburgh Castle in the west downhill and continuing down Canongate to Holyrood Palace. 23.35 Holyrood The ruined abbey of Holyrood founded by ­David I of Scotland (1084–1153) at the foot of the Canongate (an extension of Edinburgh’s High Street). The palace, the official residence of the monarch in Scotland, had evolved from the royal guesthouse once attached to the abbey itself. 23.37  Queen Mary  Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–87), is particularly associated with Holyrood Palace. 214

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23.37  Prince Charlie  Charles Edward Stuart (1720–88), the grandson of James II and VII, held court at Holyrood Palace during the 1745 Rising against the Hanoverian British monarchy, an event which was famously depicted in Scott’s Waverley (1814). 23.37  rooded stag  an allusion to the foundation of Holyrood Abbey by David I of Scotland, who was supposedly wounded in the thigh by a stag he was hunting in the vicinity. In grappling with its antlers to save himself, a crucifix, or rood, came into his hands. The stag fled, and in a subsequent dream David was instructed to establish a house of religion devoted to the cross. 23.39  Hunter’s Bog  a secluded valley in the King’s Park surrounding Holyrood Abbey. 23.40  the heavens were dark ... grass of the field an offence  perhaps recalling Biblical comminations such as ‘I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering’ (Isaiah 50. 3) or ‘A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness’ ( Joel 2. 2). Withering of the grass is a common biblical expression for famine or for death, as is ‘grass of the field’—see, for instance, ii Kings 19. 26 where the enemies of Israel were ‘dismayed and confounded; they were as the grass of the field’. 24.11 broadside the simultaneous discharge of the whole array of guns on one side of a ship of war. 24.16  Jacobin figments  The Jacobins were members of a French political club that met in Paris in an old convent of Jacobin friars, and favoured principles of extreme democracy and absolute equality. The expression came to signify any political radical or reformer. 24.20  the place of execution  The traditional site for Edinburgh executions had been the Grassmarket, but according to Robert Chambers, ‘No execution has taken place in the Grassmarket since the year 1784, when the west end of the Old Tolbooth was fitted up for this melancholy purpose’ (Chambers, i, 140). 24.25 jumping-jack a traditional wooden children’s toy: a small flat figure of a man with jointed arms and legs connected to a pullstring underneath the figure. When suspended in one hand by a loop at the top and the string is pulled downwards, the figure’s arms and legs jerk up and down. 215

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24.38–9  if possible in hand, for the day  In an earlier draft Stevenson does have Innes keep Archie company all day, taking him to dinner at Leith before the Speculative Society’s meeting (Morgan, MA 1419, f. 25). 25.7  the good Samaritan  Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. 30–7 to answer the question ‘Who is my neighbour?’. The Samaritan assists an injured traveller when more respectable Israelites pass by and do nothing to help. 25.26  at the due time  In a previous draft Stevenson noted that ‘the hanging of Duncan Jopp had taken place on a Tuesday morning’ (Morgan, MA 1419, f. 25). From 1770 onwards the meetings of the Speculative Society were held on Tuesday evenings, from 1791 at 7 pm although this was changed to 8 pm in 1859 (Speculative, 3, 31). 25.28  the president of the night  The Speculative Society had five Presidents, a secretary, and a librarian all elected annually, and the Presidents took charge of the meetings in rotation. ‘The duty of the President is to preserve order in the Society and to enforce the laws. He has somewhat formidable powers of fining; any possible abuse of his authority is kept in check by the Society’s power to pass a vote of censure on his conduct […] If he should wish to take part in debate he must leave the chair’ (Speculative, 50). Stevenson was himself elected a President for the 1872–3 and 1873–4 winter sessions (41). 25.28  the same room  Stevenson was mistaken in his belief that in 1811 the Speculative Society met in the room familiar to himself in the early 1870s. The Society’s old hall was taken down in 1817 and the new Playfair buildings dedicated to its use opened at the start of 1819. In ‘A College Magazine’ Stevenson describes the premises of his own time as consisting of ‘a hall, Turkey-carpeted, hung with pictures, looking, when lighted up at night with fire and candle, like some goodly diningroom; a passage-like library, walled with books in their wire cages; and a corridor with a fireplace, benches, a table, many prints of famous members, and a mural tablet to the virtues of a former secretary’. See Memories and Portraits (London, 1887), 65. 25.28  the portraits  These included oil paintings of Francis Horner, Walter Scott and Lord Brougham, a bust of Francis Jeffrey, caricatures by John Kay (1742–1826) and Benjamin Crombie (1803–47), and also many engravings and photographs of past members (Speculative, 56).

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25.30  lustre of many tapers  The sixteen-candle chandelier of the Speculative Society was one of its oldest possessions and even survived the introduction of gas lighting into the premises (Speculative, 25–6). 26.4  the next subject in the casebook  At each meeting of the Speculative Society a member read an essay and afterwards a debate ensued. The subjects for debate ‘are taken from the printed case-books. In each case-book a certain number of debates are left blank; these are generally filled up with questions of the day’ (Speculative, 52). 26.4–5  Whether capital punishment … man’s policy?  The wisdom and expediency of capital punishment was debated at Speculative Society meetings nine times between 1793 and 1811. See the list of debates for these years in History of the Speculative Society of Edinburgh from its Institution in mdcclxiv (Edinburgh, 1845), 382–406. 26.21  Archie found himself alone  A deletion in the manuscript has Archie suffering the ‘isolation of a leper’(ms, 48). As a new member of the Speculative Society in the early 1870s Stevenson’s own sense of exclusion and isolation appears to have been similar. See The Best Thing in Edinburgh: An Address by Robert Louis Stevenson to the Speculative Society of Edinburgh in March 1873, ed. Katharine D. Osbourne (San Francisco, 1923), 6. 26.32–3  illuminated window blind … sheets of process  The process is the bundle of case papers relating to a High Court trial rather than the transcript of the trial. It consists of a copy of the indictment (setting out the charges against the accused), depositions, confessions, and other information on the accused and the crime, together with information about witnesses and jurors. There may also be statements by the accused and other papers presented in evidence. Archie’s feeling of unease at witnessing unusual industry perhaps recalls Lockhart’s famous story of his host at a youthful after-dinner drinking session in Edinburgh in 1814 being disturbed by seeing from his window Walter Scott’s right hand endlessly writing in his Castle Street study to the north. See J. G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., 7 vols (Edinburgh, 1837–8), iii, 128–9. 27.1  a cloud of witnesses  those who, in the history of Israel, suffered for their faith and were helped by God. In Hebrews 12. 1 Paul declares himself and his readers to be ‘compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses’. The Scottish equivalent of John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs is A Cloud of Witnesses for the Royal Prerogative of Jesus Christ; 217

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Being the Last Speeches and Testimonies of Those Who Have Suffered for the Truth in Scotland since the Year 1680, first published in 1714. 27.7–8  the manner … resented by Lord Hermiston  Stevenson had specified the possibilities in a deleted passage of an earlier draft as ‘Would my lord turn him into the streets? would he strike him? would he unpack the bitterness of his resentment in a tirade of Billingsgate?’ (Morgan, MA 1419, f. 26). Billingsgate fish-market in London was notorious for its vituperative language. 27.14–15  the celebrated Dr. Gregory  James Gregory (1753–1821) was Professor of the Institute of Medicine in Edinburgh from 1776. He was the author of the standard work Conspectus medicinæ thematicæ (1788), but is best remembered for Gregory’s Powder, a mixture of rhubarb, ginger and magnesium oxide used for stomach upsets and complaints. In 1799 he was appointed King’s Physician in Scotland. Stevenson would have seen Gregory’s portrait by Raeburn in the Edinburgh exhibition of 1876. 27.16  a book shop  Archie is probably on the High Street of Edinburgh. Even in 1819 Lockhart described this as ‘where, indeed, the greater part of the Edinburgh Booksellers are still to be found lingering (as the majority of their London brethren also do,) in the neighbourhood of the same old haunts to which long custom has attached their predilections’ (Peter’s Letters, ii, 174). 27.39–40  might have guessed the truth  In an earlier draft in Belle Strong’s hand it is explicitly stated that ‘The young man’s whole attitude smelt of domestic discord’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 1 of the final sequence in her hand). 28.14–15  his cocked hat  a three-cornered hat, or one with points at the front and back which rises to a peak at the crown. 28.19–20  I did not know the old man had so much blood in him  Cited from Lady Macbeth’s sleep-walking reflection on the murder of King Duncan (Macbeth, v. 1. 34–5). 28.21  this adamantine Adam  a pun, since Lord Hermiston’s impregnable hardness might be thought to find expression in his Christian name. The biblical name Adam, however, is thought to mean ‘ruddy’ or ‘earth’.

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28.35  upon the landing  The houses in George Square have between three and six stone steps leading from the pavement up to a landing-place immediately before the front door. 29.4  the day of judgement  alluding both to Lord Hermiston’s occupation and to the biblical Last Judgement. 30.19–20  I have been reading some of your cases  As a law student Archie would presumably have access to the minute-books of both the High Court of Session (for civil cases) and of the High Court of Justiciary (for criminal cases). 30.30  beering the sword  having the authority to adminster penal justice. 30.30–1  as I was from the beginning and as I will be to the end  perhaps echoing Revelation 1. 8, positioning Lord Hermiston as a kind of judicial alpha and omega. 30.39  spy out your faither’s nakedness  In Genesis 9. 22 Ham, one of the sons of Noah, ‘saw the nakedness of his father’ and was subsequently cursed. 31.3  Senators of the Coallege of Justice  The Senators of the College of Justice are the judges who sit in the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary. 31.6  Ye’ll have to find some kind of a tred  Among several indications that Stevenson softened Hermiston’s role in this encounter in rewriting is a deleted passage that followed these words in an earlier draft, ‘The only peety is I should have waired my guid siller on your classes’ (Morgan, MA 1419, f. 34). 31.11–12  under the fower quarters of John Calvin  in the world of John Calvin. The Biblical ‘four quarters of heaven’ (see Jeremiah 49. 36) means everywhere in the world. The doctrines of the Church of Scotland are based on those of the Reformer Calvin (1509–64), as expressed in his Institutio Christianæ religionis (1536). 31.14  the Peninsula  The winter of 1811–12 saw dramatic developments in the campaign being fought by the British army and its allies against the French in the Spanish peninsula, with Wellington seizing a chain of fortresses that commanded the roads between Spain and Portugal. By the winter of 1813–14 (to which Colvin uniformly changed the setting of Weir of Hermiston), although fighting in the Peninsula 219

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continued, it was clear that the victory would go to the allied forces. Before the end of April 1814 Wellington had accepted the post of British Ambassador to Paris after Napoleon’s abdication. 31.26  It does nae play buff  To stand buff is to stand firm and not flinch under blows; Hermiston indicates that it makes no impression on him. 31.29–30  Lord Well’n’ton  Although Arthur Wellesley (1769–1852) did not become Duke of Wellington until after the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815, he had become Lord Wellington in September 1809 when raised to the peerage as Baron Douro of Wellesley and Viscount Wellington of Talavera. 32.12  in a jyle the night  Archie has presumably rendered himself liable to be charged with contempt of court, in the sense of bringing the administration of justice into disrepute. 32.24  to hirstle ye  ‘hirstle’, apparently invented by Stevenson himself, probably derives from ‘hirsel’, a flock of sheep. Hermiston means that he would have shepherded Archie towards this decision. 32.24  my way is the best  An earlier draft follows this phrase with ‘ye think me a gomeral, and you’re wrong. I’ve made a gentleman of ye—there was my mistake—ye’re spun so fine, ye’re fit niether for warp nor woof; ye gotten so many splairging ideas in your bloakhead, that ye cannae tell a bee from a bull’s foot’ (Morgan, MA 1419, f. 35). 32.28  guddling trouts  Fishing with the hands rather than a fishing-rod. There is a definition and a fine description in James Hogg’s tale ‘The Wool-Gatherer’—see The Brownie of Bodsbeck; and Other Tales, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1818), ii, 167–70. 32.33  my grieve there  An earlier draft has Hermiston acting more harshly. He had told Archie ‘ye must be my grieve in that place, and I’ll see that I gain by ye, or there’ll be a different grieve there that does better or the year’s done’. A deleted passage also implies sharp legal practice on his part in omitting in his wife’s case the customary provision of a woman’s marriage settlement that would secure her landed property to her child, with her husband then having only a life-interest in it: ‘And another thing. Hermiston’s no entailed; it’s mines: I drew the settlement. I was determined never to be at the maircy of any son of mines, and it’s you that’s at my maircy’ (Morgan, MA 1419, f. 36). 220

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33.34–5  the divisions  While originally all the judges of the Court of Session (‘the Fifteen’) sat together upon the same bench, from 1808 there was ‘a separation of the Civil Court into two Divisions, each of which now exercises the full powers formerly vested in the whole body; the Lord President of the Session retaining his place as President of the First, and the Lord Justice-Clerk (who acts also, as his title denotes, as head of the Criminal Court,) being President of the Second of these Divisions’ (Peter’s Letters, ii, 97–8). See also Francis Watt, R. L. S., 2nd edn (London, 1913), 199. 34.11 Glenkindie There is a Glenkindie in western Aberdeenshire in ne Scotland. Groome describes Glenkindie House as ‘a commodious old mansion with some fine trees’ on the left bank of the Don. 34.15–16  the Fifteen  all the judges of the Court of Session, used slightly anachronistically since the court had been split into two divisions in 1808 (see note to 33.34–5). 34.16 Creech Stevenson probably adopts for the name of this lawyer that of William Creech (1745–1815), a well-known bookseller whose shop was close to St Giles kirk in the vicinity of the courts. He was a co-founder of the Speculative Society, and from 1811 to 1813 Provost of Edinburgh. 34.26  in apicibus juris  (Latin) a legal tag, indicating the subtle points of the law, but here perhaps more literally indicating the summits of the law. 35.8  smite him in the mouth  besides emphasizing Archie’s pugnacity, perhaps also alluding to his mother’s favourite text, ‘whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also’ (Matthew 5. 39). 35.29  The world was not made for us  In a deleted passage in the manuscript (ms, 70) Glenalmond emphasizes his similarity to Archie in his youth, before making this plea for exceptionalism drawn from Romeo’s address to the Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, v. 1. 72: ‘The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law’. 35.31  royal road  a proverbial expression for a smooth and easy way, royal roads being supposedly better than most others (see odep, 686). 36.1  major and sui juris  of full age and legally independent and so able to make binding transactions. Glenalmond reminds Archie indi221

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rectly that he is still a minor, the age of majority in Britain being then twenty-one years old. 36.5  Perhaps a relevant exception  in the legal sense an exception is an objection made to the ruling of a court in the course of a trial, or a plea tending to evade the force of an opponent’s argument. 36.7–8  “Archibald on Capital Punishment”  Glenalmond jocularly refers to Archie’s objection to capital punishment as if it were a standard legal work or the title of the Latin thesis submitted by an applicant to become a member of the Faculty of Advocates. 36.13–14  put my hand in the fire … gone to the cross  common expressions for martyrdom and enduring suffering on behalf of another, the first perhaps with a secondary allusion to the prudential warning against putting one’s finger in the fire (odep, 657). 36.31  Tigris ut aspera  (Latin) like the savage tiger. Archie alludes to Horace’s address to Chloe in Odes, i. 23: ‘Atqui non ego te tigris ut aspera | Gætulusve leo frangere persequor’ (‘However, I do not pursue with hostile intent to tear you apart like the savage tiger or the Gaetulean lion’). 37.38  spare your days  a covert allusion perhaps to Archie’s promise, which is in accordance with the Fifth Commandment in Exodus 20. 12: ‘Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee’. 38.23–4  a midnight supper  In the manuscript the following word, ‘party’, has been deleted. Lockhart refers to the recollections of older Edinburgh citizens, who in former days ‘formed, at a few hours’ notice, little snug supper-parties’, adding that the gentlemen ‘never thought of committing any excess, except in taverns and at night’ (Peter’s Letters, i, 103). 38.26  comparable to a boar’s  A pig is a traditional emblem for gluttony and self-indulgence. 38.26–7  hissing from many potations  The expression ‘hissing hot’ derives from iron taken from a blacksmith’s forge and plunged into the water of his cooling trough. In Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 5. 104–5, Falstaff describes himself thrown into the Thames as ‘cooled, glowing-hot, in that surge, like a horseshoe. Think of that—hissing hot—think of that, Master Brooke!’

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38.35  a point reserved yesterday  A point is reserved when a court is not entirely satisfied as to how to decide the question: it will then rule in favour of the party making the point but its decision will be subject to revision on a motion for a new trial. If the point is found to have been ruled correctly the verdict is supported, but otherwise it will be set aside. 38.41  Don Quickshot  Glenkindie’s pronunciation of Don Quixote, the hero of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (1605 and 1616) by Miguel de Cervantes (c. 1547–1616). 39.2 leveller a person who would level all differences of position or rank, named from the Levellers, a radical religious and political movement in the English Civil War of the 17th century. 39.10  It’ll be judeecial  A judicial confession is one made before an accredited magistrate or before a judge in the course of a trial. A guilty plea is substantiated by a judicial confession, since this does not rest upon hearsay. 39.18  both yesterday and today  a chronological inconsistency, since both Duncan Jopp’s execution and the Speculative Society meeting took place on the previous day. 39.25  I am to leave my law studies  In its previous draft the chapter did not end with these words but continued with Archie’s requesting Lords Glenalmond and Glenkindie to inform the rest of his father’s colleagues of his regret for his actions. Glenalmond responds, ‘we shall reduce a note of it to writing after you are gone; and I shall make it my pleasure to see that each of our colleagues is informed correctly. I shall also, if Lord Glenkindie sees no objection, report the same to your father; adding, what I very strongly feel, that it is impossible a false step should be more handsomely retracted’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 1v). 40.12–13  a dwarfish, ancient place, seated for fifty  Stevenson wrote to Frances Sitwell on 4 July 1875 of attending Sunday service at Glencorse kirk in the Pentland Hills south of Edinburgh: ‘It is a little cruciform place, with heavy cornices and string course to match, and a steep slate roof. The small kirkyard is full of old gravestones; one of a Frenchman from Dunkerque, I suppose he died prisoner in the military prison hard by. And one, the most pathetic memorial I ever saw: a poor school-slate, in a wooden frame, with the inscription cut into it evidently by the father’s own hand. In church old Mr Torrence preached, over eighty and a relic of times forgotten, with his black 223

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thread gloves and mild old foolish face’ (Letters 2: 147). For further information about Alexander Torrence see note to 57.4. 40.16  straw roofs of bees  the traditional straw skep, soon to be overtaken in the 19th century by the wooden hives that can be dismantled in sections. 40.17  grove of rowans  The rowan was traditionally supposed to offer protection against witchcraft. 40.21  the place of Hermiston  The mansion house of the Rutherfords is mentioned as succeeding to an old peel tower, or fortified dwelling, in the first chapter of Weir of Hermiston. 40.27  fruit wall  The kitchen garden of a country mansion was often surrounded by a high brick wall against which fruit trees would be trained for shelter from the wind and so that the warmth could help the fruit to ripen. In more favourable localities one might expect pears to be ready for picking in August or September. 40.32  impolitic nature  meaning nature outside the policy as well as unsuitable or inexpedient nature. 40.33–4  Mr. Sheriff Scott … planting  Walter Scott’s enthusiasm for forestry and his eagerness in encouraging his landowning neighbours to plant trees on their own estates is shown, for example, in his letter to the Duke of Buccleuch of 24 September 1818: ‘It is curious that we are sticking riding switches into the ground to produce such monsters of wood some centuries after we are dead & gone’—see The Letters of Sir Walter Scott, ed. H. J. C. Grierson et al., 12 vols (London, 1932–7), v, 194. Scott’s planting was, however, of mixed varieties of trees many of them deciduous, rather than the uniform planting of conifers characteristic of Victorian planting in the Scottish Borders. 41.15  the minister  For further information regarding Alexander Torrence (1789–1877) of Glencorse parish see the note to 57.4. 41.20–1  Hay of Romanes  Hay is an important name in the Scottish Borders, and the family name of the Marquesses of Tweeddale. Romanes appears to be a fictional place name, but perhaps recalls Romanno on the old drove-road from Edinburgh through the Scottish Borders. 41.21–2  Pringle of Drumanno  Pringle is one of the oldest names in the districts of Roxburghshire and Selkirkshire in the Scottish Bor224

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ders. Drummanno appears to be a fictional place name, but perhaps recalls Romanno (see note to 41.20–1). 41.25  view halloa  the shout made by a fox-hunter on seeing the fox break cover and come into the open. 41.31  Tuesday club at the Cross Keys  The Cross-Keys Inn on the High Street of Peebles is an ancient building once the town-house of the Williamsons of Cardrona. The Tweeddale Shooting Club, instituted in 1790, dined here before the opening of the Tontine Hotel in Peebles in 1808—see Alexander Williamson, Glimpses of Peebles or Forgotten Chapters in its History (Selkirk, 1895), 292–6. Peebles is an ancient Borders town about twenty-one miles south of Edinburgh. 41.35  like a duty laid upon him  a point that was made specifically in a previous version: ‘He was sent down to be popular; he would carry out his orders’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 4). 41.39  Driffel … Windielaws  fictitious but plausible Borders place names, reflecting the landscape and weather (‘drizzle’ and ‘windy-hills’ perhaps) along the lines of place names in Scottish songs such as ‘Let me in this ae night’, in one version of which the male protagonist terms himself ‘the laird o’ windy-wa’s’. See David Herd, Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs Heroic Ballads etc., 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1776), ii, 168. 41.40–1  rode to hounds with my lord Muirfell  a fictitious but plausible Borders title, reflecting the moorland landscape depicted in this novel. In the early 19th-century pursuits such as fox-hunting were increasingly adopted by Scottish aristocrats educated at English public schools. 41.41–42.1  legitimate Lord of Parliament  A Lord of Parliament originally indicated the lowest rank of the nobility that was automatically entitled to attend the pre-Union Scottish parliament and was roughly equivalent to the English rank of Baron. It is probable, however, that Stevenson intends to indicate that Lord Muirfell was one of the sixteen representative Scottish peers who sat in the House of Lords of the British parliament during the early 19th century, particularly as his daughter is the Lady Flora, her title implying that her father has the rank of duke, marquis or earl. 42.10  the Mains  normally the home farm of an estate, often farmed by the proprietor, though here it seems to be the name of the estate itself. 225

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42.16  a passing grace in music  a musical ornament or additional decoration to a melody. An earlier draft provides the detail that Lady Flora’s voice was a ‘rare contralto’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 5). 42.21  stand aside and envy  An earlier draft makes it explicit that Archie had a ‘low view of his own appearance, founded on his father’s disparagement’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 5). 42.27–8  Byronism before Byron  Archie’s dark, reserved, and melancholy appearance during the winter of 1811–12 just preceded Byron’s celebrated waking to find himself famous on the publication of the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in March 1812. In writing Weir of Hermiston Stevenson consulted a copy of the Annual Register for 1812 (which was actually published the following year), and this included an extract from the second canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage concluding with lines appropriate to Archie’s situation that distinguish true solitude as to be among human society with ‘none who bless us, none whom we can bless’—see Annual Register for the Year 1812 (London, 1813), 548–50. 42.32  a Roman sense of duty  The republican period of classical Rome (510 bc to ad 30) was characterized by primitive austerity and simplicity. 42.39  the bride of heroes  A preceding manuscript deletion (ms, 86) had specified: ‘You might so figure a Penelope, rejoicing at once in a grown son and a troop of emulous suitors’. In Homer’s Odyssey Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, is beset by suitors. Telemachus is her adult son. 43.17–18  like a light-keeper on his tower  In June 1869 the young Stevenson had accompanied his father on his annual tour of Scottish lighthouse inspection. 43.22–3  Indian summer  A period of calm, dry, mild weather with a hazy atmosphere that sometimes occurs in late autumn. 43.28  young gentleman of twenty  a chronological inconsistency, since Archie was seventeen during the preceding scenes in Edinburgh. 44.37  lever de rideau  (French) curtain-raiser, the one-act play opening the theatrical evening before the main play. 45.27  The Elliotts  a notorious Border clan settled around Upper Liddesdale, a remote valley in the Scottish Borders, who, before the Union of Crowns in 1603, held the part of the frontier with England 226

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known as the Middle March. The chief of the Elliots of Redheugh was often Captain of Hermitage Castle on the moors to the south of Hawick. Elliots feature largely in ballads in Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802–3). 45.29–30  the Nicksons, the Ellwalds and the Crozers  all Border clans associated with the Armstrongs and Elliots and also operating from Liddesdale. As Scott points out (Minstrelsy, i, lxi–lxii), the dying Border raider Commoun Thift (i.e. Theft) in Sir David Lyndsay’s ‘Interlude viii. The Punishment of the Vices’ lists among the friends he takes leave of at his death the ‘Niksonis’ and the ‘Elwandis’, whom he describes as ‘Speidy of flicht, and slicht of handis’. 45.35–6  the Baron’s dule tree  Until 1747 feudal landowners were entitled to administer justice in their own local courts. A ‘dule tree’, or tree of dolour or sorrow, is a tree used as a gibbet or gallows. 46.4 Jeddart a Borders pronunciation of Jedburgh, the county town of Roxburghshire and the seat of the Circuit Court for several Borders counties. It is situated on the left bank of Jed Water in Teviotdale, about forty-one miles southwards from Edinburgh. Jeddart justice is commonly understood as first to hang a man, and then judge whether he was guilty or not. 46.4  the days of King James the Sax  James VI of Scotland (1566– 1625) also became James I of England on the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. 46.5 Cauldstaneslap the name of a pass at which the drove-road southwards from Edinburgh through the Pentland Hills enters Peeblesshire. The track then continued southwards past Peebles towards the English Border. See A. R. B. Haldane, The Drove Roads of Scotland (Newton Abbot, 1973), 153–5. 46.10  Lion King at Arms  The Lord Lyon King of Arms is the head of the Scottish college of heraldry. Stevenson’s formulation was also common in the early 19th century, for instance, in Canto iv of Marmion. See Sir Walter Scott, Poetical Works, ed. J. Logie Robertson (London, 1904; rptd 1971), 128. 46.32  the Kyeskairs  (Scots) cow pastures, skairs being plots of common land shared among inhabitants. 46.34  it was your ain  Notes and a family tree drawn up by Stevenson among the draft materials for the novel (Morgan, MA 993, f. 45) 227

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name Kirstie’s mother as Lucy Rutherford who married Gilbert Elliot of the Cauldstaneslap in 1760, and ‘counted cousinship with Simon Rutherford of Hermiston’, presumably Archie’s maternal grandfather. 46.39  French dentifrishes  A dentifrice is, in fact, toothpaste rather than a hair-wash. Kirstie shows her lack of familiarity with fashionable cosmetics. 47.13  in ’98, the year of Nelson and the Nile  The Battle of the Nile, a decisive British naval victory by Nelson against the French, was fought in Aboukir bay near Alexandria in Egypt in 1798. 47.18–19  the goodly customs of the Scots farmer  The heavy drinking of the 18th-century Scot affected Borders farmers as well as Edinburgh lawyers such as Braxfield. James Hogg reported: ‘A party of farmers never met without getting gloriously drunk. I have known instances, and I can prove it, of a club of farmers, meeting on the evening of a market-day, on the west border, and on parting that night eight nights, several of them never knew but it was the evening of the same day they met’—see ‘Memoir of Burns’, in The Works of Robert Burns, ed. James Hogg and William Motherwell, 5 vols (Glasgow, 1834–6), v, 192. 48.7  feared in honour  an allusion to the Fifth Commandment in Exodus 20. 12 to ‘Honour thy father and thy mother’. 48.15  in the way o’ the auld Border aith  An oath is a promise rendered binding by an appeal to God. According to Scott, the accused party in a Border trial was occasionally required to swear ‘by heaven above you, hell beneath you, by your part of Paradise, by all that God made in six days and seven nights, and by God himself ’—see The Lay of the Last Minstrel (London, 1805), 281. 48.19  Auld Hornie  a nickname for Satan, as in the opening of Robert Burns’s ‘Address to the Deil’: ‘O thou, whatever title suit thee! | Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie’ (Burns, i, 168). 48.22–3  at a graceless face that he asked mercy  For the proverb ‘Ye seek grace of a graceless face’ see Allan Ramsay, A Collection of Scots Proverbs (Edinburgh, 1776), 86. More specifically, Stevenson alludes to Johnie Armstrong of Gilnockie’s response to King James V’s denial of his appeal for mercy in the ballad of ‘Johnie Armstrang’: ‘I have asked grace at a graceless face, | But there is nane for my men and me!’ (Minstrelsy, i, 67). 228

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48.35  the drove road  See note to 46.5. 48.38  Pentland Hills  a broken range of hills about sixteen miles long, stretching westwards from just south of Edinburgh. 49.3  a sair misbegowk  a disappointment. The Dictionary of the Scots Language gives this passage as a sole citation of usage. There is probably also an implication of trickery or being cheated since the root of the word is ‘gowk’, meaning a cuckoo or by transference a fool, and the verb to begowk (for which Stevenson’s Kidnapped is cited as an early usage) means to befool. 49.8  the Vennel  a common word in Scottish street names, indicating a narrow lane between houses. 49.13–14  Fa’s o’ Spango … Tweed  There is a Spango Water in Dumfriesshire in sw Scotland, but it does not flow into the Tweed. 49.17  the castle  Neidpath castle is about a mile west of Peebles on the north bank of the Tweed, standing on a rock at the lower end of a semi-circular bend of the river. The riverbank on that side is very steep and high. 49.18  the starling of Crossmichael brig  Stevenson’s education as an engineer comes out in his use of the technical word starling, for an outwork of piles projecting in front of the lower part of the pier of a bridge, so as to protect it from the force of the stream or from collisions. Peebles is built mainly on a peninsula formed by the Tweed and Eddleston Water: there is a stone bridge of five arches over the Tweed, built originally in the 15th century but widened in 1834 (Groome). 49.23  Gilbert Elliott of the Cauldstaneslap  A deletion in an earlier draft had referred to his being ‘sixth of the same style’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 14). 49.28–9  the last of the minstrels  The expression recalls Scott’s narrative poem The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), the framing narrative of which concerns the refuge given by the Duchess of Buccleuch to an old wandering minstrel who has survived into the late 17th century after the death of all his companions and rivals. 49.29 Homeric characteristic of the political, social and economic conditions of a Greek state as depicted in the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, when injuries were more often redressed by acts of individual revenge than by the law. 229

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49.31  Mr. Sheriff Scott  Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), editor of Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border and author of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, had been appointed Sheriff Depute of Selkirkshire in 1799. 49.33–4  the Twelve Apostles and the Three Musketeers  The Twelve Apostles are the twelve witnesses sent by Jesus to preach his Gospel. Les Trois Mousquetaires (1844) by Alexandre Dumas, père, relates the adventures of four King’s Musketeers in 17th-century France. 49.39–40  bees in their bonnets  A proverbial expression for having a craze on some particular point (odep, 39). 50.1  An elder of the kirk  The elders of a Presbyterian congregation operated mostly through the kirk session, the lowest in the hierarchy of church courts. Along with the minister they exercised oversight over the moral behaviour of the people of the parish and often had some say in ministerial appointments. 50.2  the sheep washing  the process of successively dipping the farmer’s flocks in order to rid their fleeces of ticks and other parasites, a tricky operation by the shepherds and their dogs who had to get them into the water and safely out again. 50.7  high war prices  ‘The wars against France, which broke out in 1793 and lasted until 1815, were associated with steep inflation, rising grain prices and several catastrophically short harvests. They were not bad years for farmers: profits rose as well as rents, and there was fast change in enclosure and farming techniques to take advantage of the buoyant market for food’ (Smout, 318). 50.13  some Barbarossa  There is a legend that the Emperor Frederick I (1122–90), who was known as Barbarossa or Red Beard, did not die but, like the British King Arthur, is simply sleeping. ‘It is said that Barbarossa sleeps in the caverns of the Unterberg (near Salzburg), to rise again and lead the armies of Germany to victory and rule over a free and united German nation’—see ‘German National Poetry’, Tinsley’s Magazine, 7 (Oct 1870), 334–5. 50.13  some old Adam  Adam was the first man whose creation by God is described in Genesis 1. 26–7. Paul in i Corinthians 15. 21–49 argues that since mankind fell into sin by Adam’s disobedience to God so it will be redeemed by Jesus, that ‘as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive’. The ‘old Adam’ therefore refers to man in a sinful, unregenerate state. 230

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50.26–7  guid and bad like sanguishes  apparently a dialect pronunciation of the word ‘sandwiches’, implying alternating layers, in this case of the practically-minded brothers Hob and Clem with the visionaries, Gib and Dand. 50.32  principles of the French Revolution  Following events in France and inspired by Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791–2), a society of Friends of the People was formed in Edinburgh in July 1792 and quickly imitated in other Scottish towns and cities. Between December 1792 and October 1793 it held three general conventions, which became successively more proletarian as the middle-class lawyers who had participated in the first withdrew their support. Smout comments that ‘the weavers were there in force’, specifically mentioning ­Alexander Wilson the Paisley weaver–poet (443). 50.34 Muir The Glasgow advocate Thomas Muir (1765–99) was the effective leader of the radical wing of the first Convention of Scottish Friends of the People held in Edinburgh from 11 to 13 December 1792. He was arrested the following January for sedition but released on bail and was in Paris when France declared war on Britain. Unable to return to Edinburgh for trial in February 1793, he was outlawed and removed from the roll of the Faculty of Advocates. He was tried in August 1793 on his return to Scotland before five judges, most notably Braxfield, found guilty, and transported for fourteen years to Australia. After escaping he returned to France, where he died. 50.34 Palmer Thomas Fyshe Palmer (1747–1802) was an English Unitarian minister. In 1793 in Dundee, Palmer became associated with a society called the Friends of Liberty, composed mainly of artisans. He was found guilty of sedition at the circuit court in Perth in August 1793 (the presiding judges being Lord Eskgrove and Lord Abercromby rather than Braxfield), and sentenced to seven years’ transportation. In Australia, Palmer published an account of the treatment he and fellow radicals had met with en route, A Narrative of the Sufferings of T. F. Palmer and W. Skirving, during a Voyage to New South Wales, 1794 (1797). He died returning to Britain after the expiry of his sentence. 51.1  ca’ your loom  drive your loom: that is, mind your trade. 51.8  God’s Remnant of the True Faithful  The upheaval of the French Revolution triggered belief that the last days preceding the Second Coming of Christ were imminent. According to Revelation 14. 6–12 this would be a time of widespread apostacy, when only a rem231

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nant of believers would be saved. Apocalyptic references were also common in Covenanting discourse. Alexander Peden, for instance, is supposed to have prayed that ‘the Lord would spare a Remnant, and not make a full End in the Day of his Anger’—see Biographia Presbyteriana, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1827), i, 75. 51.11–12  The Deil fly Away with the Exciseman  For Robert Burns’s version of this convivial drinking song, see Burns, ii, 655–6. 51.15  one Fair day  The charters of royal burghs often specified the right of the burgesses to hold a certain number of fairs each year, and social meetings and convivial drinking would automatically succeed to the business of the day. According to the minister, John Elliot, writing in 1834, Peebles had four fairs annually ‘for hiring servants, and the sale of cattle and sheep’ each lasting for a single day (New SA, iii, 23). 51.16  a blessing on the arms of Bonaparte  Since Britain was officially at war with France this was treasonable. The French general Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) had become Emperor of France in 1804. 51.19  squadron of Border volunteers  Companies of volunteer soldiers were formed in many counties of Scotland in the early years of the 19th century in order to repel the threatened French invasion, young men often joining volunteer bodies in order to gain exemption from the ballot for the militia. Peebles, for instance, in the recollection of the minister, John Elliot, ‘mustered no less than 682 effective officers and men as an infantry corps, and two troops of cavalry, making a total of 820 soldiers’ (New SA, iii, 6). 51.21  Antinomian in principle  literally, against the law. An Antinomian holds that the believer is not supposedly bound by the moral law, his salvation proceeding solely from the grace of Christ, and that he is pardoned by God for his future and present as well as his past sins. 51.38  gale of prayer  a common expression, characteristic of evangelical discourse, used to signify spontaneous uninterrupted praying. 51.41  no more stockfish  a person insensible to impressions, by analogy with fish that is extremely hard through having been dried in the air without the use of salt. 52.4–5  a Mahommedan or a Deevil or a Fireworshipper  Mahommedan is a 19th-century expression for a Muslim. Fire-worship232

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pers are Zoroastrians, adherents of an ancient Persian religion that used sacred fire-altars in its rituals. 52.14  looked to die a baillie  The burgesses of Glasgow, a royal burgh, had the right to elect their own magistrates or bailies. Smout describes the early 19th-century town council as ‘self-seeking and corrupt […] an oligarchy of merchants and tradesmen from the old guilds’ (381). 52.19–20  his broadcloth, his beaver hat and the ample plies of his neck-cloth  Clem’s clothes bear witness to his wealth, broadcloth being a fine-quality woollen cloth and a beaver hat being made of beaver fur or an imitation of it. His neckcloth of many folds would be made of fashionable fine starched muslin: folding and tying it accurately would be an elaborate business and it would need frequent laundering to retain a pristine appearance. 52.25  A provost and corporation  The word corporation is a pun on Clem’s rounded belly and his aspiration to become a member of the corporation or Town Council of Glasgow, the head of which is the Provost. 52.27  The fourth brother, Dand  In earlier drafts Stevenson had stated that ‘the fire of the Elliotts burned more brightly and wildly’ in him than in Clem and that in him ‘the family had almost, but not quite, attained its culmination and fulfilment’ (Morgan, MA 993, ff. 17–18). 52.34  a shrewd bargain when he liked  A previous draft gave the explicit detail ‘When money was actually wanted, Dand would train a sheep dog and sell it; his fame for this business being known far and wide’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 18). 52.40  compound interest  an investment where the interest is automatically added to the principal sum invested so that it also earns interest. 53.1–2  my kingdom is no of this world  alluding to Jesus’s reply to Pilate’s questioning in John 18. 36. 53.2  Either I’m a poet or else I’m nothing  In an earlier version Stevenson had followed these words with ‘As a matter of fact he was niether, but something betwixt and between’, and commented that it was odd that a man who was a ‘born shepherd to his toes’ should stake his whole ambition on a little minor verse, ‘Not that it was bad minor verse’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 18).

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53.3  like Robbie Burns  The Scots poet Robert Burns (1759–96) had died at the age of thirty-six. He was a role model for labouringclass poets, particularly in Scotland, for several generations. Scott deplored the explosion in the numbers of Burns’s would-be successors in his article ‘Of the Living Poets of Great Britain’ in the Edinburgh Annual Register, 1. 2 (1808), 417–43: ‘The success of Burns had the effect of exciting general emulation among all of his class in Scotland who were able to tag a rhyme. The quantity of Scottish verses with which we were inundated was absolutely overwhelming. Poets began to chirp in every corner like grasshoppers in a sunshine day. The steep rocks poured down poetical goatherds, and the bowels of the earth vomited forth rhyming colliers’ (441). 53.13  the text of The Raid of Wearie in the Minstrelsy  No ballad of this title appears in Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border of 1802–3. In an earlier version Stevenson had listed the ballads Dandie supplied Scott with as ‘Bluidy Hermiston and the Piper, and the Raid of Wearie’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 17). The former title could be an alternative description of the plot of ‘Wandering Willie’s Tale’ in Scott’s novel Redgauntlet (1824). It is possible that Stevenson had in mind for the second ballad something like ‘The Raid of the Reidswire’ (Minstrelsy, i, 111–28), in which the Rutherfords lead the men of Jedburgh in a Border skirmish of 1575. This ballad also features the Elliots. 53.14  made him welcome at his house  Scott had a town-house at 39 Castle Street in Edinburgh’s New Town, but also a country house in the Borders which is the most likely location for Dandie to visit. Stevenson may have in mind either Ashestiel on the river Tweed, or the Abbotsford estate near Melrose to which Scott removed in May 1812. 53.15–16  The Ettrick Shepherd was his sworn cronie  The poet, novelist and magazine-writer James Hogg (1770–1835) was a significant literary figure in his lifetime and is now considered as a major figure in Scottish literature, though his reputation approached its nadir in Stevenson’s lifetime when only bowdlerized versions of most of his works were available and he was known primarily through the caricature of the Shepherd in the Noctes Ambrosianæ symposia originally published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Hogg’s bestknown work is The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824). 53.20–1  manifold temptations  The addressees of i Peter 1. 6 are described as being ‘in heaviness through manifold temptations’. 234

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53.21–2  the stool of repentance  Fornication was disciplined by the kirk session of a Scottish parish, with the offenders generally having to perform public penance in church on one or more Sundays, seated on a special stool and often wearing a robe of sackcloth as well while the minister rebuked them. 53.25  like a fiery cross  a signal sent round his clansmen by a Highland chieftain to muster in an emergency. It consisted of a light wooden cross the ends of which were dipped in the blood of a goat slain for the purpose. It would be carried from settlement to settlement by swift runners. The fiery cross is best known by the graphic account given in the third canto of Scott’s long narrative poem The Lady of the Lake (1810). 53.26–7  Dumfries … Dunbar  Dumfries is a port and town in sw Scotland, overlooking the Solway Firth and Dunbar an east-coast port, roughly thirty miles eastwards from Edinburgh. Dandie’s verses, then, are known throughout the Scottish Borders. 53.33  no more religion than Claverhouse  See note to 5.5. Scott recalls several legends showing that Claverhouse was popularly believed to have sold himself to Satan. ‘It is still believed, that a cup of wine, presented to him by his butler, changed into clotted blood; and that, when he plunged his feet into cold water, their touch caused it to boil. The steed, which bore him, was supposed to be the gift of Satan; and precipices are shewn, where a fox could hardly keep his feet, down which the infernal charger conveyed him safely, in pursuit of the wanderers’ (Minstrelsy, iii, 194–5). Claverhouse was also supposed to have been killed with a silver bullet, the demonic pact having rendered him impervious to lead. 54.2–3  affixed to bards  The Scots poets Robert Fergusson (1750– 74) and Robert Burns (1759–96) in particular were popularly associated with dissipation. 54.11  The Provost  the head of the corporation of Glasgow. 54.17  St. Enoch’s kirk  St Enoch’s was built on ground at the foot of Buchanan Street in Glasgow in 1780–2. The square in front of the church contained the homes of some of Glasgow’s leading merchants. 54.32  their ‘to-names’  As Scott explains, ‘Owing to the marchmen being divided into large clans, bearing the same sirname, individuals were usually distinguished by some epithet, derived from their 235

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place of residence, personal qualities, or descent. Thus, every distinguished moss-trooper had, what is here called a to-name, or nom de guerre, in addition to his family name’ (Minstrelsy, i, cliii). While Gib does not have a ‘to-name’ here, in an earlier draft his is ‘The Pope’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 18v). 54.33  Roy ne puis prince ne daigne  (French) ‘King I cannot be, Prince I would not want to be’. 54.34 ipsissimus in person, emphatically himself. Initially, the extent of Cauldstaneslap was 150 acres, which Stevenson had then revised in the final manuscript to fifty (ms, 115). 54.38  the soubriquet of Randy Dand  A previous version of the passage had described this as ‘less respectful’ but ‘perhaps even admiring’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 18v). 55.23  India shawl  Intricate, tapestry-woven fine wool shawls imported from Kashmir in India had been a fashionable wrap for European ladies throughout the 18th century, with supply always falling behind demand. They were expensive, luxury items associated with the social elite and to be regarded as heirlooms. Indian shawls were copied in Paisley, near Glasgow, after the invention of the Jacquard loom at the beginning of the 19th century, and it is possible that Kirstie Elliott’s shawl in fact originated from there. 56.4  in the presence of the foe  a biblical expression, perhaps most familiar to a Scottish pastoral parish such as Hermiston from the metrical version of Psalm 23. 5: ‘My table thou hast furnished | in presence of my foes’. 56.5  well in court  a variation of the proverbial ‘friend at court’ (odep, 289). 56. 15–16  say the Lord’s Prayer with a good grace  Kirstie argues that she does not condemn herself in petitioning God to forgive her her trespasses as she forgives them that trespass against her (see Matthew 6. 9–13). 56.16  ill or in preeson  According to Matthew 25. 36 God says to the saved at the Last Judgement, ‘I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me’.

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56.34–5  it’s in the Bible … the apostle  Paul in i Corinthians 11. 15 says, ‘But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her’, with no mention as to the colour of the hair, of course. 57.3  Archie was sedulous at church  A deletion in an earlier draft emphasized that ‘everyone had to be in 1814’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 24). 57.4  Mr. Torrance  Stevenson’s minister is based on Alexander Torrence (1789–1877), from 1818 assistant minister and subsequently minister of Glencorse in the Pentlands. Unlike Stevenson’s fictional character Torrence died unmarried. See Hew Scott, Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ, 9 vols (Edinburgh, 1915–61), i, 322. See also note to 40.12–13. 57.8  Hermiston pew  From the description this was a box pew, which provided privacy and allowed the family to sit together. By the middle of the 19th century, box pews had largely been replaced by bench pews. 57.26  box bed  a bed enclosed by wooden panelling, access being through a sliding door. They protected sleepers from the cold in stonebuilt houses and also gave some privacy, since sleeping quarters would often be in public rooms such as farmhouse kitchens rather than in separate bedrooms. 57.30  beat the timbrel before Bacchus  Bacchus or Dionysus was the god of wine, which relaxes care and inspires music and poetry. He was accompanied by a rout of intoxicated or possessed followers, dancing about him. 57.31–2  Dutch bottomed  A Dutch bottom is a ship built in the Netherlands, probably here signifying solidity and with a possible secondary allusion to the stolid appearance of people in Dutch paintings. 58.9  Spirit of the Earth  perhaps the Erdgeist, or Spirit of the Earth described in the first part of Goethe’s Faust, but perhaps simply a pagan force of Nature. 58.16  Quakerish dale  Members of the Society of Friends, known as Quakers, were distinguished by their dress, which was in plain sober colours and without fashionable ornament. 58.21  galloping octosyllabics in the vein of Scott  In writing to George Ellis in May or June 1810 Scott defended his use of verse with eight syllables to a line as opposed to the iambic pentameter of heroic 237

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verse with ten syllables to a line. He thought ‘this “false gallop” of verse’ was ‘more congenial to the English language’. See The Letters of Sir Walter Scott, ed. H. J. C. Grierson et al., 12 vols (London, 1932–7), ii, 346–8. Scott’s own narrative poems of The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Marmion (1808) and The Lady of the Lake (1810) were unprecedented best-sellers. 58.25  vast indwelling rhythm of the universe  In a previous version Archie was accordingly ‘tempted to worship for that day “in the kirk o’ Fields,” as we say in Scotland’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 24v). 58.27  the first psalm  The order of service in the Church of Scotland normally begins with a call to worship, followed by a psalm sung by the congregation, and then prayers. 58.27–8  nasal psalmody … graceless graces  A characteristic style of psalm-singing had evolved in Scottish churches during the early 18th century that in some ways resembled folk-singing. Voice production was in a nasal, reedy style, and tunes were embroidered with complicated melodic decorations known as ‘quavers’. David Johnson remarks that ‘they soon reached such complexity that it became difficult to pick out the original tune among the mass of notes’— see Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1972), 171–2. 58.40  joyous influence of the Spring morning  Phrased previously as ‘the dithyrambic influence of the Spring morning’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 26). A dithyramb is a choric hymn in honour of the god Bacchus, harking back to the previous mention of the Hermiston parishioners as beating ‘the timbrel before Bacchus’ (57). 59.25  the little formalist  a stickler for forms and etiquette, a solemn pretender to wisdom. 60.12  slim, graceful, dark  Kirstie’s reaction to Archie’s appearance had been more forcibly expressed in an earlier draft: ‘He was handsome; He was beautiful. She had never seen anyone so beautiful’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 27v). 60.24–5  that deadly instrument, the maiden  a pun, the name for a young girl being the same as that Scott defines as a ‘rude sort of guillotine, called the maiden’ (Minstrelsy, i, xlvii). 60.25  in profile  In a previous draft Stevenson had expressed his sense of novelty in describing fashionable female clothing in an ironic 238

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allusion to the opening lines of Milton’s Paradise Lost, ‘Sing ye, heavenly muse, things unattempted yet’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 30). 60.33  Demmy brokens  an anglicized version of the French demibroquins, defined as quarter-boots rather than half-boots in La Belle Assembleé, 4 (Oct 1811), 212. Kirstie is wearing footwear appropriate to the warmer, drier months, which adds to the impression that her appearance echoes the coming of spring. The ‘General Observations on Fashion and Dress’ in La Belle Assembleé, 4 (Nov 1811), 270 note: ‘Our London fashionables love to preserve the fine rose on their cheek by wholesome exercise, the demi broquin has been therefore laid aside till more mild and arid weather: the half-boot is again adopted for the promenade’. 60.41–61.1  no a thing to make a practice o’  An earlier draft emphasized Kirstie’s uncertain social status, adding after these words Hob’s pronouncement ‘I wad have ye to remember, wife, that she’s Clem’s sister as weel’s mines, and Clem is a man of substance’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 30). 61.6  jaconet muslin  a cotton fabric of medium thickness or weight, of a type formerly imported from India. Its name supposedly derives from its place of origin, in Urdu, Jagannāth. 61.7–8  Regency violet … yellow  The ‘General Observations on Fashion and Dress’ in La Belle Assembleé, 4 (April 1811), 157 say that the ‘prevailing colours for the season are purple, primrose […]’. A description of a Parade or Carriage dress in the same magazine for October 1811 (4, 212) mentions ‘Regency purple velvet’ and ‘purple kid gloves, and demi-broquins, or quarter boots of the same’. 61.12  cairngorm brooch  one containing a yellow semi-precious stone found in the Cairngorm mountains in Scotland. The ‘General Observations on Fashion and Dress’ of La Belle Assembleé, 4 (Aug 1811), 101–2 single out for notice, ‘Bouquets of natural flowers in the centre of the bosom’, while including ‘violet, and amber’ among the colours for the season. 61.15–16  French coat of sarsenet  probably designed to be worn over a short-waisted dress of the type made fashionable at the French court of Napoleon Bonaparte and which is still known as ‘empire line’. Sarsenet is a fine, soft, silky fabric, the name supposedly deriving from ‘Saracen cloth’. 239

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61.16  tied in front with Margate braces  a device worn around the waist to secure a coat not otherwise secured sufficiently at the shoulders, and named after a fashionable seaside resort. A walking dress depicted in La Belle Assembleé, 4 (Aug 1811), 101 includes a ‘short round French coat in green sarsnet, falling back from the shoulder, trimmed round the arm-holes with lace, confined at the waist with Margate braces’. 61.19  village hat of chipped straw  A promenade dress depicted in La Belle Assembleé, 4 ( July 1811), 47 includes a ‘village hat of white chip, with a crown of blended crape and sarsnet, bound and tied under the chin with ribband, over a lace cawl, and raised from the face by a short wreath of small French roses’. 61.23  made her hair precious  An earlier draft added ‘—like a bed of tiger lilies in a city garden’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 29). 61.27  her eye, which was great as a stag’s  A deletion in an earlier version had included other details to emphasize Kirstie’s voluptuousness: ‘She was plump as a peach and slender as Diana: her eye great as a stags’ (Morgan, MA 993, fol. 29). 62.1 topaz Kirstie’s brooch was a cairngorm rather than a topaz, though both are yellow stones. Topazes are mentioned as particularly fashionable in the ‘General Observations on Fashion and Dress’ of La Belle Assemblée, 6 (Sept 1812), 102. 62.10–11  reading in the metrical psalms  Church of Scotland services included congregational singing of psalms translated into vernacular verses that could be sung to a variety of well-known hymn tunes. Many worshippers as well as a Bible would own a book of The Psalms of David in Metre according to the Version Approved by the Church of Scotland and Appointed to Be Used in Worship. 62.24  justification by faith  A basic tenet of Calvinism was that a person was not saved by obedience to the moral law or by good works but only by faith in Christ’s atonement. Question 33 of the Shorter Catechism, ‘What is justification?’ has the response: ‘Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone’. 62.28  She looked back on what had passed  In an earlier version Kirstie’s thoughts include a fear that she had discouraged Archie too 240

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much: ‘And O what a fool she now appeared in her own eyes, who had dashed down so radiant a possibility, who had shunned the opening door of hope, who had shut herself in prison with ploughmen and shepherds and bonnet lairds’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 32). 62.38–9  the wish was father to the thought  a proverbial expression for believing what we desire, most familiar from Shakespeare’s 2 Henry iv, iv. 3. 220: ‘Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought’ (odep, 43). 63.11–12  the last psalm was given out  After the sermon in a Church of Scotland service a psalm would be sung and finally a benediction would be given. 63.19  her psalm book  Describing the women of Glasgow dressed for church, Lockhart states ‘every one carries a richly-bound Bible and Psalm-book in her hand, as the most conspicuous part of all her finery, unless when there is a threatening of rain, in which case the same precious books are carried wrapt up carefully in the folds of a snow-white pocket-handkerchief ’ (Peter’s Letters, iii, 264–5). 63.25  the road for Hermiston and Cauldstaneslap  In an earlier version Stevenson had Archie and Kirstie, after they have been introduced, walking together from the churchyard rather than Archie overtaking Christina further along the road (Morgan, MA 993, f. 32v). Several details of their meeting later in the afternoon at the Deil’s Hags (including her performance of her brother Dand’s song) seem to have been envisaged originally as taking place during this walk (see also Beinecke 45, 1021). 64.19 Cinderella a hint at the social aspirations of Kirstie expressed in her adoption of fashionable rather than country clothes. In the folk-tale Cinderella is provided with fine clothes by her fairy godmother in order to attend a ball where she will meet a prince who is in search of a wife. 64.30  as they shook hands  During the Regency period, R. W. Chapman argues, ‘Handshaking had not yet universally supplanted the bow and the curtsey, but was a mark of intimacy or affability’. See Emma, ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford, 1933; rptd 1974), 508. Archie’s acquaintance with Kirstie has progressed since their bow and curtsey in the kirkyard.

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64.36–7  their coats kilted in the rain  coats in the sense not of an outer garment but of skirts and petticoats, tucked up so that they should not get splashed or muddy. 64.37–9  barefoot to kirk … a public toilet before entering  The girls walked barefoot to save their shoes and stockings from dust and mud. Describing a typical country sacrament Lockhart states: ‘A beautifully clear little burn ran rippling along the side both of the churchyard and the field; and on the green turf of its banks I saw the country maidens who had come a-foot seat themselves immediately on their arrival, and begin dipping their hands and their feet into its refreshing stream. It is the universal custom of the females in this quarter to walk their journeys bare-footed; and even in coming to church, with all their finery in other respects, they do not depart from this custom. Each damsel, however, carries in her hand a pair of snow-white stockings, and shoes, and these they were now preparing themselves to put on, by the ablutions I witnessed’ (Peter’s Letters, iii, 311). 65.26  Singing ‘in to herself’  The qualification ‘in to herself’ was added to the manuscript in Stevenson’s hand, presumably in view of Kirstie’s later concern that her singing would be viewed as Sabbath-breaking. 65.36  in distinct old-faced type  A rough draft states that Kirstie’s psalm-book was produced by ‘Foulis of Glasgow’ (Morgan, MA 993, ff. 33–4). Robert and Andrew Foulis were printers to the University of Glasgow between 1746 and 1775, and renowned for the fine quality of their work. See Michael Moss, ‘Glasgow’, in The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, Volume 2: Enlightenment and Expansion 1707–1800, ed. Stephen W. Brown and Warren McDougall (Edinburgh, 2012), 156–65 (163–4). 66.6–7  in her shift prone upon the bed  In a previous draft Stevenson had also included the subsequent detail that her feet were kicking and her legs were ‘showing through her shift’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 34), perhaps eliminated subsequently out of self-censorship. 66.13  the joints of her body thought, and remembered  perhaps alluding to John Donne’s ‘Of the Progress of the Soul: The Second Anniversary’: ‘her pure and eloquent blood | Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, | That one might almost say, her body thought’—see The Oxford Authors: John Donne, ed. John Carey (Oxford, 1990), 218–31 (224). 242

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66.17  the Fair Lass of Cauldstaneslap  Kirstie is envisaging herself as the heroine of a ballad. See for instance titles such as ‘The Fair Lass of Islington’, in The Oxford Book of Ballads, ed. James Kinsley (Oxford, 1969; rptd 1971), 649–52, or ‘The Bonny Lass of Lochroyan’, in David Herd, Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, Heroic Ballads etc., 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1776), i, 149–53. 66.38–9  in excelsis  (Latin) ‘in the highest’, most familiar from the phrase ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo’ (‘Glory to God in the highest’). 67.9  the mesmerist’s eye  Mesmerism is hypnotism, the name being taken from that of the Austrian physician F. A. Mesmer (1734– 1815). 68.28–9  Jenny … Jill  generic names for women in Scots ( Jenny) and in English ( Jill). For Jenny see, for example, ‘Norland Jocky’ which begins ‘A Southland Jenny, that was right bonny, | Had for a suiter a Norland Johny’—David Herd, Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, Heroic Ballads, &c., 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1776), ii, 83. For Jill see, for example, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, iii. 3. 45–6: ‘Jack shall have Jill, | Naught shall go ill’. 69.1–2  rig and fur woollen hose  stockings knitted with a ribbed pattern, reminiscent of the ridges and furrows (Scots, ‘rig and fur’) of a ploughed field. 69.7  My denty May  According to James Hogg, ‘A May, in old Scottish ballads and romances, denotes a young lady, or a maiden somewhat above the lower class’—See Mador of the Moor, ed. James E. Barcus (Edinburgh, 2005), 33. 69.31  as the crow flies  that is, straight across country rather than following either the contours of the land or footpaths. 70.11  the cup of life  life like wine. In the Bible a cup (meaning its contents) is used for the sufferings or the joys God provides for a person. See, for instance, Jesus’s plea to God to ‘take away this cup from me’ (Mark 14. 36). 70.31  drawn him as with cords  In Hosea 11. 4, recalling his dealings with Israel, God is supposed to say, ‘I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love’. 71.8  shimmered in the fading light  One of the details that Belle Strong referred to in seeing herself as the model for young Kirstie El243

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liott. She remarked that Stevenson had ‘made her dark and vain and her bare arms “shimmer” (as he once said mine did in a black silk dress)’—see ‘Grouse in the Gun-Room: Volume ii’, 31 (entry for 24 Nov [1894]) (Beinecke 49, 1073). 71.16  hitherto unspotted  that is, Archie is a virgin. 72.27  On the Lord’s day  The fourth commandment is ‘Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy’ (Exodus 20. 8). The customary repressiveness of the Scottish Sunday was notorious and included a ban on whistling and singing, except of course for the singing of psalms in church. 72.32  sooth it  Kirstie is perhaps singing in a soft and soothing manner: she is not humming since she obviously articulates the words of her brother’s song. 73.33–4  Of old unhappy far off things | And battles long ago  In Wordsworth’s ‘The Solitary Reaper’ the poet hears a Gaelic-speaking girl singing in the Highlands, whose song he cannot understand and yet is moved by—See William Wordsworth, The Major Works, ed. Stephen Gill (Oxford, 2000; rptd 2008), 319–20. 73.35  their rude wars composed  Compare James Hogg, ‘St Mary of the Lows’, ‘Even Scotts, and Kerrs, and Pringles, blended | In peaceful slumbers, rest together, | Whose fathers there to death contended!’—see A Queer Book, ed. P. D. Garside (Edinburgh, 1995), 154. 74.17  waling the portions  selecting the portion of Scripture to be read aloud. A reference to Burns’s ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’, in which the father of the peasant family ‘wales a portion with judicious care; | “And let us worship God!” he says with solemn air’ (Burns, i, 149). 74.18  family priest and judge  Family worship was normally led by the male head of the household or, if he were absent, then the oldest man present. Lockhart comments that ‘every father is, in a certain sense, the Priest of his House’ (Peter’s Letters, iii, 337). 74.29  the American War  a reference to the Anglo-American War of 1812–15 that may suggest that the narrative has reached a later date than the spring of 1812 since the American declaration of war was made in June 1812. However, the conflict was clearly imminent and would have been under discussion beforehand, particularly among merchants like Clem: one of the causes was a series of British Orders in Council to restrict American trade with Napoleonic France. 244

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75.12  a night that was to be Heaven opened  John in his vision in Revelation 19. 11 ‘saw heaven opened’. 75.14  bowers of Beulah  Isaiah 62. 4 promises Israel that ‘thy land’ shall be called Beulah. In the first part of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) the Celestial City that is the goal of Christian’s pilgrimage can be seen from the country of Beulah, a place of earthly beauty where birds sing continually and fresh flowers appear daily. 76.2 MEPHISTOPHELES In the first part of Goethe’s Faust (1808) Gretchen is seduced by Faust with the assistance of the devil Mephistopheles. Stevenson had previously considered the matter-offact title ‘Pete enters’ (Beinecke 45, 1022), and also the Biblical or Miltonic ‘An Idyl and a Serpent’ (ms, 161) as titles for this chapter. 76.3  a gig from Crossmichael  Frank would travel from Edinburgh in one or more public stage-coaches to the nearest post-town to Hermiston and then hire a private carriage from an inn for the remainder of the journey. 76.16  a small Morayshire laird  a small landowner in Morayshire, a county in the Highlands near Inverness. 76.19  losses on the turf  losses incurred by betting on horse-races. 76.20–1  a warrant for his arrest  The bookseller who had given Frank Innes credit would have been alarmed at losing the possibility of resuming possession of the books if his customer’s account was not settled in a reasonable time. 76.24 Inverauld apparently a fictitious but plausible place name. 76.25  Any port in a storm  a proverbial expression (see odep, 15). 76.27  porter and oysters  Stevenson may refer here to the mixed parties of 18th-century Edinburgh, held by appointment in ‘one of those abysses of darkness and comfort, called, in Edinburgh, laigh shops’ where the consumption of oysters, porter, and brandy or rum punch would be followed by dancing. After the ladies of the party retired, ‘the gentlemen again sat down, or adjourned to another tavern, to crown the pleasures of the evening with an unlimited debauch’ (Chambers, ii, 268–9). 76.27  the ring  a boxing ring, prizefighting being a fashionable spectator sport in Regency Britain. 245

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76.33–4  Pylades has come to Orestes  Pylades and Orestes were the constant friends of Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy. 77.2–3  the courts still sitting  The Court of Session was sitting during the spring at this period for a Candlemas term and a Whitsunday term. The Edinburgh Almanack and Imperial Register for 1812 gives the dates of the Candlemas term as from 15 January to 3 February and of the Whitsunday term as from 12 May to 2 June. 77.8  come down with the dust  pay out the money (slang). 78.1–2  taking the Lord’s name in vain  Kirstie alludes to the third commandment, ‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain’ (Exodus 20. 7). 78.11  crying on me  (Scots) calling for me. 78.21  Settin’ up his snash  (Scots) giving out his impudent talk. 78.22  the black toon  Edinburgh, more generally known as Auld Reekie because of the pall of smoke that hung over it. Lockhart refers to the buildings of the Old Town as seen ‘through the lowering mist which almost perpetually envelopes them’ (Peter’s Letters, i, 8). 78.23  making a mess o’ himsel’ wi’ nesty hizzies  frequenting prostitutes. 78.32  Tantæne iræ  Kirstie’s ill-temper is compared to Juno’s resentment against Aeneas and the Trojans in Virgil’s Æneid, i. 11, which reads ‘Tantæne animis cælestibus iræ’, meaning ‘Can the gods feel such rage?’ 79.8–9  The little maid, indeed, was an exception  In an earlier draft Stevenson had explained her lack of overt communication with Innes as the result not of her discretion but of her stupidity, which he despised: ‘she was a lass so unutterably stupid, that even George’s mortified self-love declined the conquest’ (Beinecke 45, 1022). 79.20  young Apollo  the Greek god Apollo was represented as the perfection of youthful manhood. 79.38  a sensitive affection and respect  Stevenson had previously drafted a scene taking place not long after Archie’s arrival at Hermiston where he goes out with the shepherd and his assistant in a snowstorm to search for the Hermiston flocks (Morgan, MA 993, ff. 43, 46). 246

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This may have been intended to account for the respect in which Archie is held by the Hermiston people. 80.4  a drone  the male bee, whose sole function is to fertilize the queen of the colony and who performs no work. 80.4  As for Dand  In an earlier version Stevenson had expressed Dandie’s repulsion for Frank Innes as that of the poet ‘for the shallowness of the orator’ (Beinecke 45, 1022). 81.22–3  plenty of bile  In classical medicine, bile or choler was one of the four humours of the body, which should ideally be in balance. As any one of them predominates, an individual’s temper will be affected: a person with too much choler will have a tendency to anger or peevishness. 81.24  a worthy family of weavers somewhere  Hermiston’s low social origin would be a matter of professional concern. Lockhart notes that men had formerly been refused admittance to the Faculty of Advocates ‘on the score of want of birth, or status in society’ (Peter’s Letters, ii, 92). 82.4  steers very near the wind  goes to the verge of what law, decency or propriety will allow. The expression derives from the practice of taking the head of a sailing ship as near the quarter from which the wind is blowing as possible while still keeping the sails filled. 82.21–2  probably on the wheels of machinery  During the late 18th and early 19th centuries commercial men and manufacturers increasingly invested their money in the land that would give them political power. Stevenson has already noted that Clem Elliott, with his Glasgow-made fortune, ‘could have bought out his brother, the cock laird, six times over’ (52). 83.1  Sherlock Holmes  The famous consulting detective who solves mysteries by close observation and deduction, featuring in a number of works by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), the first of which, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in 1887. Stevenson wrote to Conan Doyle on 5 April 1893 to offer ‘my compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ and had recognized that the Edinburgh surgeon Joseph Bell (1837–1911) was one of the models for the character (Letters 8: 49–50). 83.2 Talleyrand Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754– 1838), the artful diplomat who maintained office through political 247

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change from the French Revolution to the France of Louis-Phillipe (that is, 1789 to 1834). 83.8 Swingleburn apparently a fictitious stream. To swingle in Scots means to oscillate from side to side. 83.37  obsto principiis  (Latin) ‘I oppose it at the very start’. 84.5  He hated to seem harsh  In earlier drafts Stevenson had made it clear that Archie was aware of the real reason for Innes’s visit to Hermiston and that the sense of Innes’s dependence on him adds to his regret. In one formulation Innes ‘had thrown himself upon his mercy; and he hated to appear to presume upon that knowledge of his friend’s helplessness’ (Morgan, MA 1582). According to a deleted passage in a surviving manuscript leaf in the Stevenson House Museum Archive Collection, Monterey State Historic Park, Archie was sorry because ‘Frank on the first evening after his arrival’ had glibly blurted out the reason for his visit. 84.8  that inexpressible she  a phrase perhaps suggested by the ‘Wishes. To his (supposed) Mistresse’ of Richard Crashaw (1612?– 49), which opens ‘Who ere she bee, | That not impossible shee | That shall command my heart and mee’. See The Poems English Latin and Greek of Richard Crashaw, ed. L. C. Martin, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1957; rptd 1968), 195–8. 84.10  at the cost of burning cities  a phrase recalling the effect of Helen, whose beauty led to the destruction of Troy in Greek legend. 84.13 Lilliput one of the countries visited by the hero of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), where the inhabitants were only six inches high and everything else was in the same proportion of an inch to a foot. 84.18–19  herself the rarest and fairest flower  an allusion to Persephone, who in Milton’s formulation, ‘gathering flowers | Herself a fairer flower by gloomy Dis | was gathered’ (Paradise Lost, iv. 269–71). 85.1  keeping tryst  keeping a pre-arranged meeting. 85.10  towards the sources of the Clyde  The source of the river Clyde is debateable, but is often thought to be Little Clydes Burn, about three miles north of the meeting point of the counties of Lanarkshire, Peeblesshire and Dumfriesshire in the Scottish Borders. 248

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85.12  Kingsmuirs and Polintarf  Stevenson uses Peeblesshire place-names but does not refer to their actual locations. Kingsmuir is a tract of land close to Peebles, once owned by the burgh. Polintarf Water is a tributary of the river Lyne. 85.18  a telescope  An earlier draft explains, somewhat implausibly, that Frank had seen with his telescope ‘the fluttering of female raiment’ without being able to identify the woman (Morgan, MA 1582, verso). 85.20  the twenty-ninth day of his visit  Innes sees Kirstie on a Sunday, and since he arrived at Hermiston on a Tuesday, this day cannot be the twenty-ninth day of his visit. Colvin changed the passage to read ‘on the twenty-seventh day of his visit’ (see Chatto, 229). 85.24–5  not until the second  If Kirstie missed going to church on the first Sunday of Frank’s stay at Hermiston and he first saw her there almost four weeks after his own arrival, then two Sundays are unaccounted for. Colvin added the explanation that Frank was himself absent from Hermiston kirk on these Sundays ‘on some of his excursions among the neighbouring families’ and stated that it was on ‘the fourth’ Sunday that he first saw Kirstie in church (see Chatto, 230). In an earlier draft Frank asks Archie to introduce him to the ‘lovely rustic’ and during the walk home from the kirk makes himself known to her, thus causing Archie to display the violence of his temper and consequently to offend Kirstie herself (Beinecke 45, 1023). 86.12 the retort delicate  a term inspired by Touchstone’s list of courtly insults preceding a duel in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, v. 4. 64–75: ‘the Retort Courteous […] the Quip Modest […] the Reply Churlish […] the Reproof Valiant […] the Countercheck Quarrelsome […] the Lie Circumstantial […] the Lie Direct’. 87.1  to speak more by the card  to express oneself with more care and nicety (odep, 760). 87.6–7  nameless, nameless, nameless, Grigalach!  The clan of Macgregor (Gaelic Griogarach) had been prescribed in 1603, and its members subsequently adopted various surnames belonging to other families. The nameless clan features largely in Scott’s novel, Rob Roy (1818), but the allusion here is rather to his song ‘Macgregor’s Gathering’, which includes the line ‘We’re landless, landless, landless, Grigalach!’. See Sir Walter Scott, Poetical Works, ed. J. Logie Robertson (London, 1904; rptd 1971), 732. This was first published in 1816, so that Stevenson’s reference is mildly anachronistic. 249

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87.19 Tweeddale the valley of the river Tweed in the eastern Scottish Borders, often used as an alternative name for the county of Peeblesshire. 87.21  poor Poll’s  Poll, or Polly, is a conventional name for a parrot, and by transference for a gossip or chatterbox. 87.22  two horns to your dilemma  In rhetoric, a dilemma is problem that presents two alternatives, both undesired. The alternatives themselves are the horns. 88.3  ride to glory or the grave  perhaps a pointed allusion to Thomas Gray’s dictum that ‘The paths of glory lead but to the grave’. See ‘Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard’ (l. 36) in Thomas Gray and William Collins: Poetical Works, ed. Roger Lonsdale (Oxford, 1977), 35. 88.4–5  details of schemes  A deletion in an earlier draft notes ‘some of them were benevolent’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 35v). 89.13–14  cannie hour at een  See Burns’s ‘Green Grow the Rashes’, which contains the lines ‘But gie me a canny hour at e’en, | My arms about my Dearie, O’ (Burns, i, 59–60). 89.15  a happy ghost, in fields Elysian  In Greek mythology Elysium, or the Isles of the Blessed, was where those favoured by the gods enjoyed a full and pleasant life after death. 89.31–2  admitted the attractions of the younger Kirstie  An earlier draft adds that this was with a ‘sense of despair, such as Lord Hermiston had never known and never could know’ (Morgan, MA 993: sequence in Belle Strong’s hand, f. 4). 90.1–2  strewed the bride-bed  Perhaps recalling the lament of Gertrude for Ophelia in Hamlet, v. 1. 228–9: ‘I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid, | And not t’have strewed thy grave’. 90.17–18  she trembled for Kirstie and the credit of the Elliotts  An idea expressed in a previous draft as ‘All she cared for— since the die was cast, since the day was over for Kirstie’s old world stories and local gossip—was that the lassie should be good to him— and not too good’ (Morgan, MA 993: sequence in Belle Strong’s hand, ff. 4–5). 90.22  come to the lees  to have drunk up wine or beer, so that only the sediment remains, an image employed by Shakespeare’s Macbeth on the death of Duncan: ‘The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees | Is left this vault to brag of ’ (ii. 3. 91–2). 250

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90.38  She tore off her night cap  In an earlier draft Kirstie had retained her nightcap and Stevenson made use of it in his subsequent likening of her to an immortal goddess: ‘The night cap took something the air of a helmet, and she herself, in her great and fresh maturity of womanhood, with her seeming calm and her fine features, might have passed for the figure of Athene’ (Morgan, MA 993: sequence in Belle Strong’s hand, f. 6). 91.7–8  Frank jingling with the decanters in the dining room  In a previous draft Kirstie’s observation was the cause of her opening remark to Archie: she disparages Frank and earns a rebuke from him: ‘ “ We must remember that he is our guest,” said Archie in a tone of reproof ’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 38v). 91.14  after the manner of the unhappy  An earlier version includes more details of Archie’s reflections, especially of his reluctant acquiescence in Frank’s questioning the prudence of his relationship with young Kirstie: ‘Frank was right; from his point of view, from his information, the meddler was right. He had uttered the voice of that paltry, two-foot-rule-prudence, which sees all things small and all things like a coward, which gently expostulates with the criminal as he comes dripping gore out of the shambles, and pipingly congratulates the dying hero while his heart breaks; and which is yet so sanctified by the consent of man, that to utter its judgements partakes of the nature of virtue, and must be repaid with gratitude, no matter what sacred things he may have trodden on by the way’ (Morgan, MA 993: sequence in Belle Strong’s hand, f. 2). 91.24  the youth of goddesses  A previous draft suggests that Stevenson primarily had Pallas Athene in mind here, the protector of Athens and identified by the Romans with Minerva, their goddess of wisdom—see note to 90.38. Athene was usually depicted as a woman of severe beauty, wearing armour and carrying a shield. 91.39–40  reaping where he hasnae sawed and gaithering where he hasnae strawed  In the Parable of the Talents the man who has buried his one talent reproaches his master, ‘Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed’ (Matthew 25. 24). 92.4–5  cryin on the hills to cover ye  In Hosea 10. 8 the guilty Israelites ‘shall say to the mountains, Cover us; and to the hills, Fall on us’. 251

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92.24–5  wars and rumours of wars  One of the signs by which Jesus’s disciples were to know of the coming of the end of the world. He told them, ‘ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars’ (Matthew 24. 6). The French Revolution had stimulated expectations that the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world were imminent. 92.33–4  like Paul o’ Tarsus, when they think o’t least  Saul of Tarsus, who had formerly persecuted the early Christians, saw a vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus and afterwards became Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles (Acts 9. 1–15). 93.10  have nae command over our ain members  James 4. 1 refers to ‘lusts that war in your members’. 93.22  none be done her  In a previous draft these words are followed by ‘O, you can understand, for I know your story now—you can understand how dear and precious she is to me! there shall be no scandal’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 37v). 93.30  what she had done  In an earlier draft these words are followed by ‘Would it not have been better to sacrifice the silly lassie? a question frequently occurring to the aunts of young lasses and demigods in other stations of society’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 37v). 93.31–2  I have buildit on this foundation  perhaps recalling the parable of the wise man who built his house upon the rock and the foolish man who built his house upon the sand (Matthew 7. 24–7). 93.33  the hale hypothec  (Scots) the whole business, everything. A hypothec is a deposit or pledge. 93.35–6  keep yersel’ frae inordinate desires  Colossians 3. 5 instructs Christians to avoid ‘fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection’. 93.39  a mouthfu’ o’ mools is the appointed end  referring to God’s curse on Adam in Genesis 3. 19: ‘dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return’. 94.4  long past thinking of  In an earlier version Archie continues more explicitly ‘my heart is gone from me like a bird, Kirsty, I maun have her—or, I think, my woman, that I’ll dee’ (Beinecke 45, 1024). 94.12  May the blessing of God lift and rest upon ye  A benediction such as Kirstie would have heard at the conclusion of Sunday service in church, deriving ultimately from the priestly blessing in Numbers 6. 24–6: ‘The Lord bless thee, and keep thee; The Lord make his 252

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face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace’. 95.3  It was late in the afternoon  A substantial paragraph preceding this in an earlier draft gave an account of Archie’s spending the morning walking in the garden at Hermiston reflecting painfully on the situation and resolving how to act, while Kirstie watches him from a distance, and of his continued civility to Frank Innes at breakfast (Morgan, MA 993, f. 39). 95.10  the only inhabitant  Recalling the lone figure under an oppressive sunset of John Martin’s apocalyptic painting The Last Man (1849) and Mary Shelley’s novel The Last Man (1826), both inspired by Thomas Campell’s 1823 poem of the same name. 95.19  But he deceived her  perhaps recalling the cry of the city of Jerusalem in Lamentations 1. 19: ‘I called for my lovers, but they deceived me’. 95.24  The revulsion of feeling in Christina’s heart was violent  An earlier draft formulates this in more explicit terms: ‘The revulsion of feeling in Christina’s heart was as violent as hatred for a moment’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 39). 96.32  worth waiting for a generation  an allusion perhaps to Lord Hermiston as the key obstacle to a marriage, and to the possibility of Archie being free to marry Kirstie after his death. However, the mention of Kirstie as a ‘reward’ rather suggests Jacob’s offer to serve Laban for seven years to win Rachel for his wife: ‘And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her’ (Genesis 29. 20). 97.12–13  by a memory of Lord Hermiston  An earlier draft added ‘and his promise to obey him’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 39v). 97.16  my lady Hermiston  Kirstie adheres to old-fashioned Borders usage, according to which, in James Hogg’s words, ‘every landward laird’s wife was then styled Lady’—see ‘The Brownie of the Black Haggs’, in The Shepherd’s Calendar, ed. Douglas S. Mack (Edinburgh, 1995), 249. 98.11  a savage cross-examination  Archie’s reply to Kirstie’s question is explicitly answered in a previous draft with ‘My friend Innes’. Archie is described as experiencing in Kirstie ‘an obstinate and (he felt) sullen resistance’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 40). 253

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98.19  Was this at prayers like?  the time of the day when the whole household, including the servants, would assemble together. 99.1  He took the poor child in his arms  In a draft continuation of this scene the narrator comments on Archie’s embracing Kirstie at this point that he proceeded to ‘follow the advice of that great artist, who was a representative of the universal schoolmaster himself ’ (Morgan, MA 993, f. 41), that is to say Milton, who depicts Eve as preferring to enquire of Adam rather than the angel, on the grounds that ‘he, she knew would intermix | Grateful digressions, and solve high dispute | With conjugal caresses’ (Paradise Lost, viii. 54–6). 99.10  wilful convulsion of brute nature  Stevenson’s draft material continues the scene and includes a discussion between Archie and Kirstie about informing Hermiston of their relationship. Archie asks her if she prefers him to write to his father or to tell him when he arrives at Hermiston and Kirstie displays her reluctance to have Hermiston told at all (Morgan, MA 993, f. 42v). For details of the possible future course of the novel see the Appendices to the present edition.

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Glossary This Glossary sets out to provide a convenient guide to Scots, English, and other words in Weir of Hermiston that may be unfamiliar to some readers. It lists single words and provides a brief definition: for phrases and words for which a longer explanation is desirable the reader is referred to the relevant explanatory note. The Glossary excludes several categories of Scots words as being readily understandable: for instance, those where ‘a’ or ‘ae’ is equivalent to English ‘o’ (‘sae/so’), and those where ‘ui’ is equivalent to English ‘oo’ (‘puir/poor’). It has also been thought unnecessary to note when the spelling of a common English word suggests a Scottish pronunciation (‘ceety/city’). It is greatly indebted to the Oxford English Dictionary and to the Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk), to which readers requiring more information may wish to refer. a’  all a’body  everybody accoutrement  apparel, outfit, equipment adamantine  impenetrable, unbreakable, hard as a loadstone advocate  a member of the Scottish bar, the Faculty of Advocates ae one afore  before, previously ails  is amiss with ain  own ance  once angle  a fishing line and hook; a fishing rod anon  at once; in a little while Antinomian  see note to 51.21 apologue  an allegorical story intended to convey a useful lesson athegither  altogether

auld  old ay, aye  yes; always, continually baby  an infant; a doll or puppet backslider  an apostate, one who falls away from religious faith or practice baillie  a town magistrate, next in rank to a provost bairn  a child, someone’s offspring ballant  ballad bauchles  old, worn shoes, or loose slippers bauld  bold bawbee  a coin worth sixpence Scots or a halfpence sterling besom; broom, especially one made of a bundle of twigs bile  see note to 81.22-3 billet  a note, a short written document

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glossary birling  whirling, revolving rapidly bit  a mouthful, a small amount of anything black-a-vised  dark-complexioned blagyard  blackguard, an unprincipled scoundrel blend, blendit  blind, blinded blithely  cheerfully, gladly bloods  young men who set the prevailing tone in dress or manners blunderbuss  a short gun with a large bore, that does not demand an accurate aim body  a person, a human being bonnet-laird  small proprietor who farms his own land bonny  handsome, beautiful, attractive bool  ball; a round sweet, often striped bower  a shady arbour brae  the bank of a river, rising ground brave  splendid, fine braw, braws  handsome, fine, excellent; fine things brewst  a brew brief  a summary of facts and points of law drawn up for the use of counsel in a law case brig  bridge broad  speaking with a stronglymarked dialectal or vulgar pronunciation broadside  see note to 24.11 buff  see note to 31.26 buirdly  stalwart, well-built, powerful burn  a brook or stream buryin’  a funeral butt end  fag-end; a small piece of

ground separated from adjacent land bye-product  a substance obtained in the course of a chemical process but which is not its primary object byre  cowshed ca’  call; drive cairn  a pyramid of loose stones marking a boundary or serving as a memorial caitiff  a despicable wretch; a villain caller  fresh, cool, healthy cannae  cannot cannie, canny  shrewd, astute, careful; lucky, well-omened cannily  shrewdly, astutely cantie  cheerful, lively, pleasant caravan  a company in motion carline  an old woman catchword  a word caught up and repeated cauld  cold caulf  calf chalmer  chamber, a private room change house  an inn, an ale-house changeling  a person surreptitiously exchanged (especially by fairies) for another chapel  a lesser temple or sanctuary than a church claes  clothes clamjamfry  a crowd, a rabble clarionet  clarinet, a wooden single-reed wind instrument played by means of holes and keys clavers  idle talk, gossip cloister  a place of religious seclusion such as a nunnery coats  skirts

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glossary cobweb  composed of a fine network, similar to a spider’s web cock-laird  small proprietor who farms his own land collie-shangie  a dog-fight; an uproar or noisy dispute colloguing  talking together, being in league with comfit  a sweetmeat made of some fruit or root preserved with sugar commoved  moved violently, set in commotion coriaceous  leathery, made of leather corp  corpse corporation  see note to 52.25 couldnae  could not crack  conversation, gossip, chat crying (on)  summoning, calling for cuddy  donkey cuist  cast curricle  a light, two-wheeled carriage, usually drawn by two horses abreast cutty  brat, mischievous young girl

thing of derived character didnae  did not dinna, dinnae  do not dirdum  vigour; an altercation or uproar dish (face)  round or vacant, like a dish disjaskit  delapidated, worn out, untidy doer  law agent dour  hard, stern, severe dozened  stupefied, dazed dram  a small drink of liquor drone  see note to 80.4 drumlie  troubled, clouded, full of sediment dule tree  a gallows dunting  knocking, beating dwaibly  infirm, rickety, weak

daft  mad, frolicsome, foolish dander  saunter, stroll danders  cinders, the refuse of a fire daur  dare, venture daurna  dare not, venture not deave, deeve  deafen, annoy with talk deed  indeed deid  dead deil  devil demi-broquin  see note to 60.33 denty  dainty, pleasant, agreeable derivative  an agent that transmits from one part to another, a

fa’  fall; waterfall fair  completely, absolutely, simply feared  scared, afraid fechting  fighting feck  the majority, the greater part; an amount fell  fierce, ruthless fell  a moorland ridge, a hill or mountain fey  behaving strangely, as in the hour of approaching disaster or death fit  foot

een, e’en  eyes e’en  even, evening elder  a man elected and ordained to take part in the government of a church but not to teach ettercap  a spider; a venomous person evangelist  one who preaches the gospel

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glossary fleering  sneering, grinning, grimacing flit  depart, remove flyped  flipped, folded back, turned inside out forbye  besides, in addition to foregather  assemble, congregate, fall in with formalist  a solemn pretender to wisdom fower  four foxy  stained with brownishyellow spots on its leaves frae  from frich’ened  frightened, afraid of fry  (collectively) offspring füshionless  pithless, withered fyle  soil, defile fylement  defilement, obloquy

not melodically or harmonically essential grat  wept, lamented grieve  farm-bailiff, overseer on a farm gross  twelve dozen (144) grunding  grinding guddle  to catch fish with the hands gumption  common sense, mother-wit gurly  stormy, surly, threatening gyte  mad, crazy, beside one’s self

haddit  held hae  have, have it hag  hollow of marshy ground in a moor, as where peats have been cut hale  whole gaed  went hare-brained  giddy or reckless, gang  to go with a brain like that of a hare gate  way of behaving, manner haud  hold geyan  rather, very havenae  have not gibbet  gallows; an upright post hawse  the bows of a ship, with a projecting arm from which particularly the part in which criminals were killed, or exposed hawse-holes are cut for cables to after death, suspended by a rope pass through around the neck heels-ower-gurdie  head-overgig  a light, two-wheeled, oneheels horse carriage heritor  landowner liable to the gigot  leg of mutton payment of public burdens in the girzie  girl; maidservant parish glamoured  bewitched, enchant- hinney  honey ed hirstle  see note to 32.24 glaur  mud, slime hissing  see note to 38.26-7 gloaming  dusk, twilight hizzie  frivolous woman; servantglower  scowl, stare intently maid; housewife gobbets  small lumps of somehob-nailed  rustic; wearing boots thing soft with heavy nails protecting the going  current soles gowden  golden homespun  rustic, unsophistigowsty  blustery, wet and windy cated; cloth of home manufacture grace  a musical embellishment hose, hosen  socks or stockings consisting of extra notes that are

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glossary howe  hollow, depression or basin formation of land howf  favourite haunt, meetingplace hunkered  crouched on one’s haunches hunks  a surly, crusty old person; a miser hypothec  the whole concern, everything idleset  idleness, unemployment infeftment  investiture in the legal possession of land ipsissimus  (Latin) his own self isnae  is not ithers  others jaconet  see note to 61.6 jad  jade, woman jape  a jest or gibe jeely-piece  a slice of bread and jam jennipers  junipers jo  sweetheart, lover (usually male) justifeed  put to death, executed jyle  jail kebbuck  cheese keened  wailed for the dead ken  to know kennae  not to know kenspeckle  conspicuous kilted  tucked up (of clothing) kirk  church kite  stomach, belly kye, kine  cow, cows lackey  a liveried male servant laigh  low lair  lore, doctrine; an act of teaching laird  landed proprietor lane  alone lane (one’s)  by one’s self

langsyne  long ago, long since lasses, lassies  unmarried women; maidservants lave  the rest, remainder lees  dregs; sediment from wine and other liquids licit  lawful, permitted, allowable lift  the sky, the heavens lightly  make light of, disparage, insult linking  moving fast and vigorously; forming into loops lown  hushed, peaceful, still lustre  chandelier lynn  a ravine or narrow gorge; a waterfall or cataract macer  an official who keeps order in a law-court, effectively an usher maculation  the action of being spotted or stained manse  dwelling-house provided for the parish minister mantle  a sleeveless cloak mantua-makers  dress-makers mart  market maun  must mauna, maunae  must not may  see note to 69.7 mem  abbreviation of ‘madam’, as a title of respect menseful  well-mannered, sensible mesmerist  see note to 67.9 micht  might mind  remember, recollect, call to mind mire  wet or soft mud mirk  dark, gloomy, obscure misbegowk  see note to 49.3 mools  soil, mould, earth morn, (the)  tomorrow moss  moorland, boggy ground muckle  much, big, great

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glossary muir  moor

porter  a dark beer made from browned or partly charred malt na, nae  no, not portions  passages chosen from naebody  nobody the Bible for reading at family naething  nothing worship nay-say  contradict, deny, refuse posse  a force or body of people nice  requiring great precision or pouder  gunpowder accuracy probation  investigation or nicht  night testing of a person’s character in a no  not trial noo  now process  see note to 26.32-3 nowt  cattle provost  the head of a Scottish outworks  an advanced portion of municipal corporation, equivadefences lent to mayor overtaken  made helpless, puddock  frog or toad overcome (especially by liquor) puggy  monkey-like, imp-like ower  over, too much, excessively person owercome  a refrain or burden to quean  young woman, girl; a a song; a surplus maidservant paddled  spanked quietism  religious mysticism palmering  walking aimlessly or consisting of passive devotional clumsily contemplation pannel  the accused person in a quo’  quoth, said court of law rallied  bantered, treated with peas-bannock  a griddle-baked good-humoured ridicule flat cake made of ground peas randy  boisterous, dissipated, peel  fortified tower house lustful perfit  perfect rare  rear pillory  a wooden framework for reck  take care or heed of holding an offender to be exposed rife  plentiful, abundant to public ridicule and molestation riff-raff  rabble pimatum  pomatum, a scented rin  run ointment for the skin or hair risping  grinding place  a country-house with its rostrum  a platform for an orator surroundings or public speaker plaids  rectangular lengths of rout, rowt  to roar, to bellow twilled woollen cloth, worn as routh, rowth  abundance, plenty outer garments in rural districts rowel  rotatory wheel with sharp plebeian  one of the common radial points forming the people extremity of a spur plew-stilts  the shafts or handles rudas  cantankerous, witch-like of a plough runt  a gnarled, ill-natured and/or policy  the enclosed grounds of a undersized person, especially an large house or mansion

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glossary old woman rush  a feeble candle, made by dipping the pith of a rush in fat saison  season, time of ripeness and maturity sanguishes  sandwiches sarsenet  see note to 61.15-16 sasine  legal document registering land ownership saxt  sixth scaling  dispersing, scattering; climbing sclamber  to scramble or clamber score  twenty sculduddery  obscenity or indecency of language senator  Senator of the College of Justice, a judge of the Court of Session separative  alternative, tending to cause separation session  the Court of Session, the most senior Scottish law-court shauchling  shuffling, shambling shift  a body garment of linen or cotton shoo  to scare or drive away by making this noise siller  money, cash; silver coins simmer  summer sinsyne  since then, after that time skailing  dispersing, scattering skelp  smack, slap skirling  shrieking, screaming skriegh (of day)  peep of day, crack of dawn slap  passage or shallow valley between hills snash  abuse, sneer at, speak impertinently to sneisty  supercilious, cheeky, sneering sooth  see note to 72.32

sorrow (a)  not a (an emphatic negative) sough  sound, murmur; sigh of the wind speir  ask, make enquiry speldering  sprawling, thrashing about awkwardly splairge  splash, bespatter; run wild, squander one’s resources heedlessly sponsible  respectable, reliable, responsible spunk  spark, spirit starling  see note to 49.18 steik  shut, close; keep silent stentorian  loud-voiced, like Stentor in the Iliad stithy  an anvil; a forge or smithy stockfish  see note to 51.41 strawed  strewed, scattered over a surface suld  should suldnae  should not symposia  convivial meetings for drinking, conversation, and intellectual entertainment syne  since, thereafter table tombstone  horizontal grave-stone, resting on legs ta’en  taken taper  a wax candle; something that gives light or is burning target  a round shield, or a mark for shooting at in the shape of one tawpie  giddy, scatterbrained, or untidy young woman thegither  together thir  this, these thocht  thought thrawn  cross-grained, perverse, sullen toddy  a drink composed of whisky with hot water and sugar to-names  bynames, sobriquets

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glossary toon  town toper  a hard drinker, one who drinks a great deal Tories  those inclined to conservative principles toward  imminent, impending trills  musical ornaments; the rapid alternation of two notes a degree apart troth  in truth (exclamation) trysting-place  a recognised place for an assignation turns  musical ornaments; groups of three musical notes, the central one of which is the note ornamented, the others being one degree above and below it tyke  dog, cur

wa’  away wae  woeful, unhappy, grieved waling  choosing, picking out walk  manner of behaviour, conduct of life warrandise  warrant, authorisation wasnae  was not waur  worse wear  expend, consume, use upon weary  sad, sorrowful, hard to endure weird  fate, destiny, a prophecy whammle  to upset, to overturn whaup  curlew whaur  where whiles  sometimes, occasionally whipping  casting a fishing-line upon the water with a movement unchancy  dangerous, threatenlike the stroke of a whip ing; unlucky, inauspicious whirligig  a rotating contrivance unco  strange, extraordinary, whunstane  very hard, like unfamiliar; uncommonly certain dark-coloured rocks uncoly  to a remarkable extent, wi’ with very much wife  a disparaging term for a unregenerately  not like one who middle-aged or elderly woman has been spiritually reborn; windlestrae  withered, thin wickedly grass-stalk upsitten  impertinent, giving wouldnae  would not oneself airs wraith  a ghost; the apparition of villa  a residence standing in its a living person own ground, in town or the wund  wind country yin  one vivers  food, victuals

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