John Galt - The Entail

For many years I have been wondering why John Galt’s works are fallen into such neglect: that they should be almost wholly forgotten, even by readers to whom Scott and Jane Austen, Fanny Burney and Miss Edgeworth are indispensable, is what I cannot understand. If his Autobiography were not a rare book, an explanation might suggest itself. For supposing that the public, before reading The Entail , Annals of the Parish , or The Ayrshire Legatees , had been so unfortunate as to attempt the reading of the Autobiography, no one could be surprised that it made up its mind to read no more of him. A more tedious, flat, and dull book was never written by a man of genius: it is never interesting, never amusing, and always exasperating to any one who knows what he could do, and has done. To wade through it is very nearly impossible, and there is nothing to be gained by the achievement. Galt’s life was not particularly interesting in itself, but many lives less eventful have been so written as to be worth reading, and easy to read.

There is, however, little danger of Galt’s now losing possible admirers by the unlucky accident of their stumbling on his Autobiography before making his acquaintance in the right way – by reading his really excellent works of fiction: for copies of the Autobiography are not at all easy to come at. I suppose they have mostly been burned by his admirers.

There is not much to be told about him; his life does not matter to my purpose. John Galt was one of the sons of a sea-captain, in the West India trade, and was born on May 2, 1779, at Irvine in Ayrshire. When he was ten years old the family moved to Greenock, where the boy had his schooling and became a clerk in the Custom House. At five and twenty he carried himself and an epic poem to London, in quest of literary fame. The epic, on the Battle of Largs, he had printed, but it did not establish his repute as a poet, and, to judge by the specimens I have read, the indifference of the public was not a malicious affectation. Later on he produced half a dozen dramas, which deserved, and met with, as much success as the epic. Falling into bad health he made a tour through the Mediterranean and Levant, and had Byron and Hobhouse for fellow-travellers during a part of it. In the Autobiography he does not heap flattery on either ‘Orestes or Pylades’: perhaps, though he does not confess it, he extracted from his brother poet an opinion on his own muse. His experiences of travel were given to the world in Letters from the Levant , and the book was by no means a failure, and is much easier reading than the Autobiography. In 1820 appeared, in Blackwood , The Ayrshire Legatees : and in it he first showed the real power that was in him. It has been reprinted in recent years and can easily be read, and should be read by every one. The book has the rather tiresome form of letters: and the letters of the young lady and young gentleman are not always particularly entertaining: those of Dr. Pringle and his wife are invariably excellent. None better of the sort exist anywhere in fiction. It is astounding that a man of genius, whose fiction is so extraordinarily real, could, when writing of his own real life, make it inhumanly dull and artificial. In the Autobiography there is nothing quaint, and nothing witty: Dr. and Mrs. Pringle are inimitably quaint and funny. It would seem that when Galt looked at life, at men and manners, and things, through imaginary eyes he could see everything there was to be seen, and see it in a light intensely simple and vivid and real: that when he looked at anything through his own eyes he saw nothing at all. The doctor and Mrs. Pringle are indispensable to all readers who love dear oddities, and they are Galt’s very own: you shall not find them anywhere else. He borrowed them nowhere, but made them himself in a jocund humour of affectionate creation.

In 1821 The Ayrshire Legatees was followed up by the Annals of the Parish , which displayed Galt’s singular and original genius in fuller perfection. That his epic failed, and the Annals marked a literary success, is much to the credit of his contemporaries. Perhaps if Crabbe had not perversely insisted on being a poet we might have had country tales of his as worthy of immortality as the Annals of the Parish . The book is commonly said to be Galt’s masterpiece: which it is not. But it is unique and perfect. That The Entail is really Galt’s masterpiece seems to me clear: nevertheless there are weak parts in it, and the less good chapters are lamentably unequal to the best: whereas the Annals of the Parish has no weak chapters, and the balance of excellence is maintained throughout. But there is no story in the Annals ; and, though it is a long gallery of perfect portraits, it has no characters that can even be compared with Watty and the Leddy o’ Grippy.

Where the Annals peculiarly excel is in the rare quality of charm : it has no hero, and the central figure is enriched with foibles that do not lean to heroism’s side: but they are quaintly attractive, and no one but Galt has given to literature any one like him. Of pathos Galt is shy in the Annals ; nowhere is he at all disposed to ‘wallow’ in it: but he draws reverently near, and moves away as reverently. Nor is he boisterously funny: his wit is all his own, and it crops up at every corner, but not noisily: it cuts few capers, and has a pawky discretion. It is singularly void of malice and haughtiness, and has a Shakespearian humanity and blandness that fails to remind one of Thackeray. The Annals of the Parish prove that a great writer can make a whole book intensely amusing and extraordinarily amiable: that perfectly clear sight need not be merciless, nor wit remorselessly cruel.

The great and just success of the Annals of the Parish made Galt prolific: and in rapid sequence came Sir Andrew Wylie , The Entail , The Steamboat , The Provost , Ringan Gilhaize , The Spaewife , Rothelan , and The Omen .

Almost all of these are worth reading, and to read them is no trouble: but they are of very unequal merit: and only one of them is worthy of being grouped with The Ayrshire Legatees and the Annals . Sir Andrew Wylie is extremely good, and much of it shows Galt in his best vein. The more romantic tales, Ringan Gilhaize , The Spaewife , Rothelan , and The Omen , have the defects of their qualities, and the more Galt submits to those qualities the less we are pleased. To be romantic was, perhaps, a pardonable compliance with fashion: but Galt had little to make with romance, and idealism was his easiest road to failure. To be Ossianic may have seemed to him a literary duty, but the performance of some duties is hard on the public: as the district-visited might plead, to whom the perfecting of district-visitors appeals less than it ought. Galt had not a rich imagination; what he possessed in a rare degree was the faculty of representation. In his works of fiction we find a gallery of portraits of singular variety and perfection: of all of them he had seen the originals. When he chose to add characters invented by himself his success was not great. It must not, however, be supposed that he could only reproduce with pedestrian fidelity: there can be no doubt that from a mere hint in actual experience he could draw a vivid portrait of absolute and convincing reality.

He himself placed The Provost higher than the Annals of the Parish and The Ayrshire Legatees , but no one will agree with him. Almost the only interesting thing he tells us in the Autobiography is that the Annals , though published in 1821, the year following the appearance of The Ayrshire Legatees , were written in 1813, and laid aside and forgotten. Of The Entail he tells us little, except that the scene of the storm was introduced to admit of the description of a part of Scotland he had never seen. He speaks complacently of the praise accorded to that description, but betrays no pride in Watty or the Leddy, whom, indeed, he does not mention. He has plenty to say about Ringan Gilhaize , and evidently believes that the book was not accorded its due proportion of praise; chiefly, it would seem, because the thing he tried to do in it was difficult, and success the more meritorious. Probably Watty and the Leddy were thoroughly spontaneous, as they are inimitably real, and Galt thought the less of them on that account.