The Heart of Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott (1818)

The reading of this was marked by a strange chance. I had started on one of the Notable Scottish Trials series, the one on Captain Porteous, and was a fair way through. I started then on this, quickly to discover that the historical incident involving Porteous was its starting point. Strange how these things coincide. This fact also allows a special insight, which is to watch how Scott interprets and magnifies real history in his fictionalising. Only the bare bones of history make it here, almost exclusively in the first part, where the Edinburgh 'mob' become incensed by Porteous' actions at the execution of a well-liked and understood smuggler in 1736, in the fact that he 'authorises' firing by the city guard when it looks like the crowd might try to cut the smuggler down from the gibbet. They are already pelting the guard with sizeable stones. The 'real' history explains that this was all a murky area, where it's not at all certain that he authorized anything, or indeed fired himself. But Scott has felt the need to come down on a side for the advancement of the story, which I understand. Then Porteous himself is imprisoned for his 'lead' in the affray, where several members of the public have been killed. That public wanted his blood for that, which is also understandable. Members of the officialdom of the city feel that he's been hard done by (and probably rightly, according to the trial) and send off to Queen Caroline in the hope of a pardon, which is eventually granted. The Edinburgh public are outraged by this, and rumours abound as to their wish to carry out Porteous' hanging themselves, royal pardon or not. Then the famous city-capture and prison break-in is successfully undertaken by a mob of persons unknown, and the grisly deed done. Scott keeps pretty well to the history here, but surrounds this story with one of a pair of sisters, one of whom has been undone by one of the original smuggler's mates in crime. She is also in prison at the time, for the probable murder of the resulting child. Her calmer, more upright elder sister is then involved in a long journey to London, also to try to obtain a pardon, as real evidence for her sister's crime is virtually non-existent - they have no idea what happened to the child; it was very possibly spirited away as soon as it was born. This journey is complicated by a strange meeting with the nefarious father of her sister's child, this time in his true identity as the young lord of a Lincolnshire estate. Astonishingly, attained of London, she enlists the help of the Duke of Argyle - and manages to meet Queen Caroline and gain her sister's pardon. The last third of the novel takes place in the west of Scotland as she comes under the protection of the Duke, her sister is released and disappears into the disgrace encumbent on a wronged woman, and life begins again in new surrounds, with her beloved (and obsessedly comic) father joining her, and her sweetheart also, a young clergyman for whom the Duke finds a local living. Years later it emerges that her sister has found her undoer and married him, becoming the celebrated and witty Lady Staunton that all British society is talking about, without of course knowing her chequered history, or that her husband was once the ne'erdowell associate of an infamous smuggler! The last act in this mosaic of intersections is the discovery by that husband of the fate of their son, who has indeed survived and become a marauder in a band of Highland banditti. Destiny closes in on him, as he is ambushed by them before being able to identify his son; he is shot in the skirmish, very possibly by the boy himself. The boy escapes on a people-smuggler's vessel to America, where he gets into more and more trouble, finally disappearing into the wilds to live out his life among the native Americans and an unknown end. Scott leavens all of this with bursts of humour associated with larger than life subsidiary characters. A plenitude of colour and crazy coincidence keep this one cracking along, though I will say that it sometimes seemed a little less disciplined than previous novels.