Walter Scott - Waverly (Unabridged)

22I have now given in the text the full name of this gallant and excellent man, and proceed to copy the account of his remarkable conversion, as related by Doctor Doddridge.

‘This memorable event,’ says the pious writer, ‘happened towards the middle of July 1719. The major had spent the evening (and, if I mistake not, it was the Sabbath) in some gay company, and had an unhappy assignation with a married woman, whom he was to attend exactly at twelve. The company broke up about eleven, and, not judging it convenient to anticipate the time appointed, he went into his chamber to kill the tedious hour, perhaps with some amusing book, or some other way. But it very accidentally happened that he took up a religious book, which his good mother or aunt had, without his knowledge, slipped into his portmanteau. It was called, if I remember the title exactly, The Christian Soldier, or Heaven taken by Storm, and it was written by Mr. Thomas Watson. Guessing by the title of it that he would find some phrases of his own profession spiritualised in a manner which he thought might afford him some diversion, he resolved to dip into it, but he took no serious notice of anything it had in it; and yet, while this book was in his hand, an impression was made upon his mind (perhaps God only knows how) which drew after it a train of the most important and happy consequences. He thought he saw an unusual blaze of light fall upon the book which he was reading, which he at first imagined might happen by some accident in the candle, but, lifting up his eyes, he apprehended to his extreme amazement that there was before him, as it were suspended in the air, a visible representation of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross, surrounded on all sides with a glory; and was impressed as if a voice, or something equivalent to a voice, had come to him, to this effect (for he was not confident as to the words), “Oh, sinner! did I suffer this for thee, and are these thy returns?” Struck with so amazing a phenomenon as this, there remained hardly any life in him, so that he sunk down in the arm-chair in which he sat, and continued, he knew not how long, insensible.’

‘With regard to this vision,’ says the ingenious Dr. Hibbert, ‘the appearance of our Saviour on the cross, and the awful words repeated, can be considered in no other light than as so many recollected images of the mind, which probably had their origin in the language of some urgent appeal to repentance that the colonel might have casually read or heard delivered. From what cause, however, such ideas were rendered as vivid as actual impressions, we have no information to be depended upon. This vision was certainly attended with one of the most important of consequences connected with the Christian dispensation — the conversion of a sinner. And hence no single narrative has, perhaps, done more to confirm the superstitious opinion that apparitions of this awful kind cannot arise without a divine fiat.’ Doctor Hibbert adds in a note — ‘A short time before the vision, Colonel Gardiner had received a severe fall from his horse. Did the brain receive some slight degree of injury from the accident, so as to predispose him to this spiritual illusion?’ — Hibbert’s Philosophy of Apparitions, Edinburgh, 1824, p. 190.

23The courtesy of an invitation to partake a traveller’s meal, or at least that of being invited to share whatever liquor the guest called for, was expected by certain old landlords in Scotland even in the youth of the author. In requital mine host was always furnished with the news of the country, and was probably a little of a humorist to boot. The devolution of the whole actual business and drudgery of the inn upon the poor gudewife was very common among the Scottish Bonifaces. There was in ancient times, in the city of Edinburgh, a gentleman of good family who condescended, in order to gain a livelihood, to become the nominal keeper of a coffee-house, one of the first places of the kind which had been opened in the Scottish metropolis. As usual, it was entirely managed by the careful and industrious Mrs. B—; while her husband amused himself with field sports, without troubling his head about the matter. Once upon a time, the premises having taken fire, the husband was met walking up the High Street loaded with his guns and fishing-rods, and replied calmly to someone who inquired after his wife, ‘that the poor woman was trying to save a parcel of crockery and some trumpery books’; the last being those which served her to conduct the business of the house.

There were many elderly gentlemen in the author’s younger days who still held it part of the amusement of a journey ‘to parley with mine host,’ who often resembled, in his quaint humour, mine Host of the Garter in the Merry Wives of Windsor; or Blague of the George in the Merry Devil of Edmonton. Sometimes the landlady took her share of entertaining the company. In either case the omitting to pay them due attention gave displeasure, and perhaps brought down a smart jest, as on the following occasion:

A jolly dame who, not ‘Sixty Years Since,’ kept the principal caravansary at Greenlaw, in Berwickshire, had the honour to receive under her roof a very worthy clergyman, with three sons of the same profession, each having a cure of souls; be it said in passing, none of the reverend party were reckoned powerful in the pulpit. After dinner was over, the worthy senior, in the pride of his heart, asked Mrs. Buchan whether she ever had had such a party in her house before. ‘Here sit I,’ he said, ‘a placed minister of the Kirk of Scotland, and here sit my three sons, each a placed minister of the same kirk. Confess, Luckie Buchan, you never had such a party in your house before.’ The question was not premised by any invitation to sit down and take a glass of wine or the like, so Mrs. B. answered drily, ‘Indeed, sir, I cannot just say that ever I had such a party in my house before, except once in the forty-five, when I had a Highland piper here, with his three sons, all Highland pipers; and deil a spring they could play amang them.’

Table of Contents

It was about noon when Captain Waverley entered the straggling village, or rather hamlet, of Tully-Veolan, close to which was situated the mansion of the proprietor. The houses seemed miserable in the extreme, especially to an eye accustomed to the smiling neatness of English cottages. They stood, without any respect for regularity, on each side of a straggling kind of unpaved street, where children, almost in a primitive state of nakedness, lay sprawling, as if to be crushed by the hoofs of the first passing horse. Occasionally, indeed, when such a consummation seemed inevitable, a watchful old grandam, with her close cap, distaff, and spindle, rushed like a sibyl in frenzy out of one of these miserable cells, dashed into the middle of the path, and snatching up her own charge from among the sunburnt loiterers, saluted him with a sound cuff, and transported him back to his dungeon, the little white-headed varlet screaming all the while, from the very top of his lungs, a shrilly treble to the growling remonstrances of the enraged matron. Another part in this concert was sustained by the incessant yelping of a score of idle useless curs, which followed, snarling, barking, howling, and snapping at the horses’ heels; a nuisance at that time so common in Scotland, that a French tourist, who, like other travellers, longed to find a good and rational reason for everything he saw, has recorded, as one of the memorabilia of Caledonia, that the state maintained, in each village a relay of curs, called collies, whose duty it was to chase the chevaux de poste (too starved and exhausted to move without such a stimulus) from one hamlet to another, till their annoying convoy drove them to the end of their stage. The evil and remedy (such as it is) still exist. — But this is remote from our present purpose, and is only thrown out for consideration of the collectors under Mr. Dent’s Dog Bill.