I took great delight in a new and welcome epistolary style afforded by John Galt’s The Ayrshire Legatees, and shall this week add my own small part to the John Galt Clishmaclaver.
In this novel, we have letters much in the style of The Expedition of Humphry Clinker—four family members head off on a journey together and each writes mostly to a single correspondent. Again, we don’t have the benefit of any of the answering letters, but we have something much more interesting: a narrator who keeps the real action of the novel back in the Scottish village of Garnock, where the recipients of the letters read them aloud to each other and go to all the trouble normally reserved for myself.
That is, they judge whose letters are best—Mrs. Pringle is most informative about London by writing about the price of food and millinery, while Andrew Pringle bores them with describing the general atmosphere and attitudes of the place. They judge the wisdom of the Pringles’ actions in trying to secure their legacy, and often judge the righteousness of their minister, Mr. Pringle, who goes so far as to see a play in the metropolis!
Over and over the company are assembled, either in church, or for tea, or sneakily by inviting themselves over to each other’s houses at what they suspect is an opportune moment, so that the narrator can give us the real dirt:
We should ill perform the part of faithful historians, did we omit to record the sentiments expressed by the company on this occasion. Mrs. Glibbans, whose knowledge of the points of orthodoxy had not their equal in the three adjacent parishes, roundly declared, that Mr. Andrew Pringle’s letter was nothing but a peesemeal of clishmaclavers; that there was no sense in it; and that it was just like the writer, a canary idiot, a touch here and a touch there, without anything in the shape of cordiality or satisfaction.
Miss Isabella Tod answered this objection with that sweetness of manner and virgin diffidence, which so well becomes a youthful member of the establishment, controverting the dogmas of a stoop of the Relief persuasion, by saying, that she thought Mr. Andrew had shown a fine sensibility. ‘What is sensibility without judgment,’ cried her adversary, ‘but a thrashing in the water, and a raising of bells? Couldna the fallow, without a’ his parleyvoos, have said, that such and such was the case, and that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away?—but his clouds, and his spectres, and his visions of Job!”
The listeners get a bit nasty when they feel Miss Rachel’s head has been turned by city finery, and even make fun of the way Mr. Pringle (their minister!) always refers to “Andrew, my son.” It’s wonderful. Instead of me just saying, so-and-so is generally reliable, so-and-so is emotional, putting the documents together and figuring out what is going on, I’ve got a bunch of Scottish villagers to do it for me (that is to say, another document to add to the list, of course).
Here’s a good example of the way the whole thing goes, with quite a fun illustration to boot if I do say so myself, as told by the Rev. Dr. Pringle to Mr. Micklewham, schoolmaster and session-clerk, Garnock. The Pringles, just arrived in London, hire a coach to take them to their lodgings, but being unspecific about which Norfolk Street they want, “now it was that we began to experience the sharpers of London.” Being taken to a disreputable address, they put the driver right.
But when we got to the door, the coachman was so extortionate, that another hobbleshaw arose. Mrs. Pringle had been told that, in such disputes, the best way of getting redress was to take the number of the coach; but, in trying to do so, we found it fastened on, and I thought the hackneyman would have gone by himself with laughter. Andrew, who had not observed what we were doing, when he saw us trying to take off the number, went like one demented, and paid the man….
Trying to take the number of the coach
At the public reading of this letter, “Mr. Snodgrass was seen to smile at the incident of taking the number off the coach, the meaning of which none but himself seemed to understand.” Wise Mr. Snodgrass!
One further note on reading the letters aloud: while some of the letters hold secrets so evident that they are suppressed from the general public (though not from a few choice friends), even more hold bits and pieces that the writer might probably have wished to keep private—at least, not have wished to tell the whole gossip circle. But I suppose Garnock has precious little entertainment of an evening to resist.
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