"How closely the Evil One can imitate the workings of the Spirit"

Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke: Reading Notes, Part Four

Micah, Reuben, and Decimus encounter the bibilous roue Sir Gervas Jerome who, speaking of his thirst, claims to be "as dry as a concordance" and states he would welcome arrest as a dissenter and even imprisonment as a welcome change of pace.

Micah thinks Sir Gervas is jesting when he offers his services as a valet; he is so slow to realize that the aristocrat is ruined that Sir Gervas addresses him as "oh most astute and yet most slow-witted master."

Speaking of the Jewish moneylenders who have a hold on his Estate, Sir Gervas moans "the ten tribes have been upon me and I have been harried and wasted, bound, ravished, and despoiled . . . They have hewed into pieces mine estate rather than myself."

Sir Gervas on the dispersal of his retinue in the wake of his bankruptcy: "when the honey-pot is broken it is farewell to the flies."

With Sir Gervas now in their company, Micah's party falls in with a group of puritans heading for rendevous with Monmouth. Decimus adjusts his behavior to match them, singing hymns and expounding faith in the almighty.

Soon, the puritan band is confronted by horse troopers. Decimus, in command, slays an officer (a cornet) under a white flag when he haughtily tries to incite desertion among the dissenters (interestingly similar to action of Balfour of Burley in "Old Mortality"; the same section makes reference to Wappinenschaws and popinjays as in opening chapters of that Scott novel).

After the puritan victory, the minister, Pettigrue, bridles at Decimus' comparison of the bravery of the dissenters to that of Turks he has seen in battle.

"'I trust sir,' said the minister gravely, 'that you do not intend . . . to infer that there is any similarity between the devil-inspired fury of the infidel Saracens and the Christian fortitude of the struggling faithful!'"

"'By no means,' Saxon answered, grinning at me over the minister's head. 'I was but showing how closely the Evil One can imitate the workings of the Spirit.'"

Micah reacts as Decimus, now a hero to the puritans, continues to play the role of the extreme sectary: "I could not but marvel at the depths and completeness of the hypocrisy which had cast so complete a cloak over his rapacious self."

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Plunder and Alchemy

Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke: Reading Notes, Part Three

Traveling cross-country to Monmouth's camp, Decimus immediately commences looking for opportunities for plunder: "What would war be without plunder! A bottle without wine -- a shell without the oyster."

Of Micah's increasingly strong and angry moral remonstrances, he jests: "Od's mercy! I see you will start carving me anon and take me to Monmouth's camp in sections."

In one village, Micah and Decimus encounter two Royal officers strangely conversant in the latest theories of chemistry.

Later (they have now been joined by Micah's loyal friend Reuben) the adventurers arrive at the secluded cabin of a dispossessed noble, Sir Jacob Clancing of Snellaby, who has turned to alchemy.

In service to Charles I, Sir Jacob had experienced a different kind of transmutation as he converted his wealth and property into military resources for the doomed King: "My silver chargers and candlesticks were thrown into the melting-pot . . . they went in metal and came out as troopers and pikemen."

With Cromwell's success, Sir Jacob's estate goes to a baser kind of alchemist: a soapmaker.

Upon the Stuart Restoration, Sir Jacob seeks restitution from Charles II, but is offered instead a commission as a "lottery cavalier," a licensed keeper of a gambling house "allowed to have a den in the piazza of Covent Garden, and there to decoy the young sparks of the town and fleece them at ombre."

Incensed to see the dissolute Stuarts waste on their revels money they deny to those nobles seeking restitution, Sir Jacob retires from court in order to painstakingly rebuild his fortune through his alchemical knowledge.

The doubtful and greedy Decimus: "Perhaps you have found out how to convert pots and pans into gold in the way you have spoken of. But that cannot be, for I see iron and brass in this room which would hardly remain there could you convert it to gold."

Sir Jacob: "Gold has its uses and iron has its uses . . . It can indeed be done, but only slowly and in order, small pieces at a time, and with much expenditure of work and patience."

Observing a locked chest, Decimus determines to rob Sir Jacob of his gold. Answering Micah's objections: "he can make more as easily as your good mother maketh cranberry dumplings."

Micah stays awake to protect his host's possessions from his plundering companion.

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Decimus Saxon, the "strange fish"

Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke: Reading Notes, Part Two

Sailing in the harbor, Micah and his friend Reuben rescue a man who jumped in the sea to escape an altercation on board a Dutch ship.

The braggart and soldier of fortune Decimus Saxon, "tenth child of a worthy father," had been in a violent dispute with two of his brothers: Nonus and Quartus. Becomes apparent that all three brothers had been engaged in the slave trade.

Saxon has with him letters for several of the Independent sect, including Micah's father.

A change into dry clothing at Micah's home also seems to change Decimus' identity: "it seemed as if he had cast off his manner with his rainments," no more the flippant "bedraggled castaway who had crawled like a conger eel into our fishing-boat" but rather a demure and pious warrior for the faith.

Micah's father, utterly taken in by Decimus' manner -- "a man of parts and piety" -- outfits him as his son's companion in sending the youth off to war as part of Monmouth's forces.

As they prepare to travel across country to join Monmouth, Micah objects to the cover story Decimus proposes as dishonorable and a lie: "I should rather be hanged as a rebel than speak a falsehood."

Decimus counters that all warfare is a manner of lying: "For what are all strategems, ambuscades, and outfalls but lying on a large scale? What is an adroit commander but one who has a facility for disguising the truth?"

The freebooter casts off his piety once out of range of Micah's father: "Master Decimus Saxon had flung to the winds the precise demeanor which he had assumed in the presence of my father, and rattled away with many a jest and scrap of rhyme of song ad we galloped through the darkness."

"'Gadzooks!,' said he frankly, 'it is good to be able to speak freely without being expected to tag every sentence with a hallelujah or amen.'"

Further making his opportunism apparent, Decimus relates to the increasingly scandalized Micah the story of how, captured by the Turk, he escaped death and slavery by taking on the identity of a devout Muslim.

Micah: "'What,' I cried in horror, 'you did pretend to be a Musselman?'"

Decimus: "Nay, there was no pretence. I became a Musselman."



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"Micah Clarke": The Rising of the "Old Leaven"

Arthur Conan Doyle, Micah Clarke: Reading Notes, Part One

Set at time of Monmouth's Rebellion, the events in Arthur Conan Doyle's "Micah Clarke" occur just a few years before those in Scott's "Old Mortality."

Framed as story told by an old man -- Micah Clarke -- to his grandchildren, relating experience of his own youth.

He speaks as among the last survivors: "it is not likely that in the whole county of Hampshire, or even perhaps in all England, there is another left alive who is so well able to speak from his own knowledge of these events."

Micah's father a Dissenter and veteran of Cromwell's army; generally mild, but can be subject to fits of "the old leaven" what "his enemies would call fanaticism and his friends piety." Micah's mother is a churched Protestant -- a believer in the Church hierarchy -- and so his religious heritage is divided between extremes.

The adult friends of Micah's youth include a bookish carpenter, Zachary Palmer, who shares with the boy works of serious drama and poetry as well as Classics and treatises of contemporary political philosophy. His other "father" is Solomon Sprent, a retired seaman, tattooed with the Old and New Testaments (Creation upon his neck and the Ascension upon his left ankle) and full of romantic stories of faraway lands and adventure, his talk "a library in itself." Micah's intellectual heritage is thus also divided between extremes.

Rumors abound that there will be a rising of the "Independents" under the illegitimate Duke of Monmouth against the Catholic James II.

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"Old Mortality" Concludes: "The scene was another and yet the same"

Walter Scott, Old Mortality: Reading Notes, Part Seven

Henry returns incognito from refuge in Europe; with ascension of William and Mary, political and religious situation has now reversed, with the Whigs in power and the Jacobites insurgent. Claverhouse has become a rebel, fighting with the Highlanders.

Dietary advice from Henry's aged maid: "I would approve o' your eating butcher-meat maybe as often as three times-a-week -- it keeps the wind out o' the stamack."

Surveying the Inn at Howff after the absence of many years -- and with many lives lost in the interim -- Henry observes melancholically how "the scene was another and yet the same . . . let the tide of the world wax or wane as it will, enough will be found to fill the places which chance renders vacant; and in the usual occupations and amusements of life, human beings will succeed each other as leaves upon the same tree, with the same individual difference and the same general resemblance."

The rural dram house keeper (significantly, she has gone blind) Mistress Maclure has extended her charity to those on both sides of the conflict -- "blaming nane and condemning nane" -- and only suffered for doing so.

Balfour, become a delusional hermit, holds some secret that allows him to control the fate of the Bellenden property, now in the hands of a usurper, Basil Olifant.

Of Olifant, Balfour confides: "These lands are a bit between his jaws and a hook in his nostrils, and the rein and the line are in my hands to guide them as I think meet."

In final confrontation, it is the amoral, apolitical, irreligious Cuddie who fires the shot that brings everything to right.

Poking fun at his own pat narrative resoultions and happy endings, Scott's stand-in in the book's conclusion opines: "every volume of a narrative turns less and less interesting as the author draws to a conclusion; just like your tea which, though excellent hyson, is necessarily weaker and more insipid in the last cup."


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Dining with General Claverhouse

Walter Scott, Old Mortality: Reading Notes, Part Six

Upon breaking-up nest of Cameronians and thus rescuing Henry, Claverhouse orders summary execution of armed rebels and, in tone that suggests it is a legal nuisance, interrogation of unarmed preacher (Macbriar).

Then, in a sentence that suggests Morton's status is now that of an indulged and favored beast, Claverhouse instructs his orderly "let Mr Morton be civilly used and see that the men look well after their horses; and let my groom wash Wildblood's shoulder with some vinegar, the saddle touched him a little."

Claverhouse dines as the insurgents are executed. Noting Henry's distress, he philosophises: "in the beginning of my military career I had as much aversion to blood spilt as ever man felt; it seemed to me to be wrung from my own heart; and yet, if you trust one of those whig fellows, he will tell you I drink a warm cup of it every morning before I breakfast."

Claverhouse continues: "Men die daily -- not a bell tolls the hour but it is the death-note of some one or another; and why hesitate to shorten the span of others, or take over anxious care to prolong our own? It is all a lottery."

In transit the next day, Claverhouse expounds on what he sees as the difference between those killed by Balfour of Burley and the blood he and his troops shed: "There is a difference, I trust, between the blood of learned and reverend prelates, of gallant soldiers and noble gentlemen, and the red puddle that stagnates in the veins of psalm-singing mechanics, crack-brained demagogues, and silly boors; some distinction, in short, between spilling a flask or generous wine, and dashing down a can full of base muddy ale."

Claverhouse mock-distraught at Henry's lack of knowledge of chilvaric literature: "Did you ever read Froissart?" No. "I have half a mind to contrive you should have six months' imprisonment in order to procure you that pleasure."

Claverhouse maintains a "Black Book" with information on individual citizens, whether insurgent or not, much of it gathered by "loyal" ministers. Henry remonstrates: "Does it not revolt a mind like yours to follow a system that is supported by such minute inquiries after obscure individuals?"

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"Thou art unwise Henry Morton"

Walter Scott, Old Mortality: Reading Notes, Part Five

Henry reflects on how "our best and most praiseworthy feelings" become degraded: "the liberal principles of one man sink into cold and unfeeling indifference; the religious zeal of another hurries him into frantic and savage enthusiasm."

Balfour correctly guesses and highly disapproves Henry's motives for wanting to remain near the besieged castle -- to protect his beloved, Edith, and his mentor, Major Bellenden.

Balfour: "thou art unwise, Henry Morton, to sacrifice this holy cause to thy friendship for an uncircumcised Philistine, or thy lust for a Moabitist woman." Henry: "I neither understand your meaning, Mr. Balfour, nor relish your allusions."

Later, Henry remonstrates with Balfour on the zealot's plan to summarily execute Evandale: "we are in arms to put down such cruelties, not to imitate them."

Prevailing unworldliness at the front lines of the insurgent army does not inspire confidence : "their piquets and patrols were more interested and occupied in disputing the true occasion and causes of wrath, and defining the limits of Erastian herecy, than in looking out for and observing the motions of their enemies."

Sectarianism undermines insurgent army. When Henry seeks to save the bridge crossing from falling into the hands of Claverhouse, the Cameronian (zealot) dominated cavalry will not follow him as he has been condemned by the maniac Mucklewrath as an Erastian.

Fleeing from the royal troops, Henry and loyal Cuddie find themselves amid some of the most ardent Cameronians, including Macbriar and Mucklewrath.

Looking for a celestial cause for the defeat, they look threatenly at Henry, believing that God has delivered him into their hands. Cuddie: "they'll kill him, the murdering loons, and think they're doing a gude turn."

Having decided to murder Henry at the expiry of the Sabbath, the zealots begin a vigil to look for a sign of heavenly approbation for the slaughter.

Henry freed when Cuddie enlists Claverhouse to break-up the Cameronian nest.


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The council of the zealots

Walter Scott, Old Mortality: Reading Notes, Part Four

Henry's moderation and neutrality: he finds nothing to admire either in the oppressed religious zealots with their "gloomy fanaticism" and the "envenomed rancor of their political hatred" or in their military oppressors "the misrule, license, and brutality of the soldiery, the executions on the scaffold, the slaughters in the open field."

If the Bible in Lewis' "The Monk" is a compendium of all that is sinful, in "Old Mortality" it is a justification for extreme, ruthless, and ecstatic violence. For Balfour and Mause, the Bible demands the exercise of violence.

Henry cites to Balfour (Burley) his own respect for scripture as a guide to behavior but protests the Dissenters "wrest[ing] of certain passages out of their context" in order to justify killing.

Motive for Balfour's attempt to lure Henry into the insurgent camp is revealed in aside to the fanatical preacher Macbriar: that they must temporarily abide "Laodiceans and Erastians" in order to mass sufficient numbers against the Government.

Scott makes clear the personal ambition that underlies Balfour's militant religiosity.

Erastianism = "subjection of the church of God to the regulations on an earthly government."

In reading papers of the deceased Bothwell, Henry sees a once honorable man driven by failed love and adversity into depravity and coarseness. In the same documents, Balfour sees the myriad forms of Satan's influence.

Council of the insurgents a raucous event, theological rather than political or military. "The smoke . . . formed over the heads of the assembled council a clouded canopy as opaque as their physical theology."

(Turgenev will also use "smoke," in novel of that name, as a metaphor for the unsubstantiality of Revolutionary ideology).

Heated dispute between moderate (Poundtext) and radical (Kettledrumle) clerics broken-up by Balfour; the silenced divines "continued to eye each other like two dogs who, having been separated by their masters while fighting, have retreated, each beneath the chair of its owner . . . each indicating by occasional growls, by the erected bristles of the back and ears, that their discord is unappeased."

Theological debate reignited by ravings of bloodthirsty, apocalyptic madman Habakkuk Mucklewrath: "slay, slay -- smite -- slay utterly -- let not your eye have pity! slay utterly, old and young"

Henry agrees to serve with insurgents, with goal of "softening the horrors of Civil War" and opposing atrocities.

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"Thou shall be zealous even to slaying"

Walter Scott, Old Mortality: Reading Notes, Part Three

Claverhouse, the military commander and scourge of the Dissenters, rides a horse without a single white hair -- said by those he pursues to be "a gift from the Prince of Darkness" himself.

Lady Bellenden's breakfast for the visiting military host of the archaic variety: "the priestly ham, the knightly sirloin, the noble baron of beef" and flagons of beer, wine, and mead.

Lady Bellenden so seduced by rank that she cannot see Bothwell's degradation. In her own way, she is as single-mindedly deluded as her bible-quoting former servant Mause.

Claverhouse has a soft and courtly exterior that hides "a spirit unbounded in daring and ambition." He is "careless in facing death and ruthless in inflicting it on others."

Claverhouse's regiment has, as ornaments, black trumpeters: "six negroes in white dresses, richly laced, and having massive silver collars and armlets."

Claverhouse leads his troops against body of insurgents led by Balfour.

Balfour kills officer sent to treat for peace, horrifying his companions. To which Balfour replies: "is it not written, Thou shall be zealous even to slaying?"

Balfour fights with and kills Bothwell. Bothwell says: "Base peasant churl, thou hast spilt the blood of a line of kings"

Balfour replies: "Die bloodthirsty dog! Die as thou hast lived! Die like the beasts that perish -- hoping nothing -- believing nothing!"

And Claverhouse's whispered aside to the news of Bothwell's death: "the King has lost a servant and the Devil has gained one."

Claverhouse moves through melee untouched: "the awe on the insurgents' minds was such that they gave way to Claverhouse as before a Supernatural being."

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"A piece of lighted match betwixt the fingers"

Walter Scott, Old Mortality: Reading Notes, Part Two

At the miser Milnwood's table, all members of the household are watched "by sharp, envious eyes which seemed to measure the quantity that each dependent swallowed . . . In its progress from the lips to the stomach."

The robust appetite of the recently-arrived Cuddie causes Milnwood to regard him as a "cormorant."

Dinner interrupted by entry of the opportunist Bothwell and his troops in search of the religious fanatic Balfour: "in they tramped, a tremendous clatter upon the stone floor with the iron-shod heels of their large jack boots and the clash and clang of their long, heavy basket-hilted broadswords."

All members of the household -- for guilt or conscience or fear of being plundered -- find reason to fear Bothwell's domiciliary intrusion.

As part of interrogation, Bothwell threatens to torture Henry "by tying a piece of lighted match betwixt your fingers."

Cuddie's mother Mause an endless font of Biblical imprecation.

Riding with Henry as his prisoner, Bothwell affably explains how a soldier gets his fill of brandy at every household -- served by the Royalists out of affection, by the moderates out of fear, and by the radicals through force.

The royal-blooded but disenfranchised Bothwell on why he has not been recognized by James II: "his most sacred majesty is more engaged in grafting scions of his own than with nourishing those planted by his grandfather's grandfather.

Henry to be tried by: "the military commission, to whom it has pleased our king, our privy council, and our parliament that used to be tenacious of our liberties, to commit the sole charge of our goods and our lives."



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Old Mortality: Portrait of a Fanatic

Walter Scott, Old Mortality: Reading Notes, Part One

Scott's "Old Mortality" set in period of Stuart Restoration, when Scottish Presbyterians ("Covenanters") suppressed as subversives harboring Republican (Roundhead) sympathies.

Story presented as told by an itinerant craftsman who travels from gravesite to gravesite -- thus his nickname "Old Mortality" -- restoring inscriptions on headstones of forgotten Presbyterian martyrs.

Jacobite royalists enforce recreation -- sports, dancing -- as well as military drills for young men in order to seduce them from severity of Covenanter society.

"To compel men to dance and make merry by authority, has rarely succeeded even on board slave ships where it was formerly sometimes attempted by way of inducing the wretched captives to agitate their limbs and restore their circulation during the few minutes they were permitted to enjoy the fresh air upon deck."

May Day celebration includes traditional game of shooting the "Popinjay": brightly feathered target suspended from a pole at great distance from the contestants.

Scott's account of rivalry of green-caped gentry and fashionable noble to hit Popinjay will be told by him again, much more elaborately, in archery contest won by Robin Hood in "Ivanhoe."

Scott introduces two zealots: the crude Royalist bully Bothwell (of royal blood, but disposessed) and the uncompromising dissenter Balfour, on the run having assassinated the Archbishop. (Later he will introduce the almost Satanic Claverhouse as the polar opposite to Balfour; the consummate cynic to Balfour's true believer).

Scott's hero Henry Morton, winner of the Popinjay contest, tries to navigate between the two extremes, but in a brave manner, like his dead father, rather than a cautious one, like his penurious uncle.

Uncompromising covenanters such as Balfour (also known as Burley) see the "indulged" Presbyterian ministers as tools of the Royalists: "a fighting of the wars of darkness with the swords of the children of light."

The brave fanatic (one could say terrorist) Balfour on his eventual fate: "my hour is not yet come. That I shall one day fall into their hands and be honorably associated with the saints whom they have slaughtered, I am full well aware. And I would that hour were come; it will be as welcome to me as ever wedding to bridegroom."

For all his ardor and certitude, Balfour still expresses doubt to Henry as to the source of an inspiration that causes him to violate "feelings of natural humanity" in order to serve divine will.

Balfour to Henry: "think ye our conquests must be only over our corrupt and evil affections and passions? No; we are called upon, when we have girded our loins, to run the race boldly, and when we have drawn the sword, we are enjoined to smite the ungodly, though he be our neighbor, and the man of power and cruelty, though he were of our own kindred, and the friend of our own bosom."

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