The Female Portrait Gallery/Lucy Ashton
THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMUIR.
No. 14.— LUCY ASHTON,
I shall never forget the first reading of the "Bride of Lammermuir." I was staying in the country in one of those large rambling houses, which ought to please a taste for architecture, as they combine every variety. There was enough remaining of hoar antiquity, to contrast strongly with the comforts of modern life. There was a large old hall and spiral staircase of black oak, hung round with family portraits, grim and faded. There were long corridors, suites of rooms which were shut up, and the reputation of the library was far from good. The house had been uninhabited for years, and its present possessor was just come into possession and from the continent, while a few of the rooms had been hastily fitted up for the reception of himself and his wife. It was an odd contrast to go from the drawing-room, crowded with sofas, ottomans, looking-glass, hot-house plants, and tables covered with books and toys, into any of the other apartments. Mine was peculiarly dreary—the bed was of green velvet, black with time, and with those old-fashioned plumes at the corner, which resemble the decorations of a hearse. The chimney-piece was of dark wood, carved with grotesque faces, and an enormous press of the same material might have contained two or three skeletons, or manuscripts enough to have recorded every murder in the country. A large cedar grew so near to the window, that some of the small boughs touched the glass—and when the wind was high, a cry almost like that of human suffering came from the branches. The candles on my table did little more than cast a charmed circle of light around myself; but an enormous wood-fire sent occasional gleams around the gloomy room, giving to every object it touched that fantastic seeming peculiar to fire light. I had left the drawing-room early—
"E'en in the sunniest climes,
Light breezes will ruffle the flowers sometimes,"
and my host and his lady had disagreed about a dinner in the neighbourhood—the lady wished to go, the gentlemen did not. Retreat in such cases is the only plan for a prudent third party, before either thinks of appealing to you. If you give an opinion in favour of one, you still offend both; for it is a physological quality in quarrels conjugal, that though each considers the other to blame, they will not allow you to think so too; moreover, the chances are, that, in your own private opinion, they are both wrong—a most unpopular verdict to pronounce. I, therefore, complained of fatigue, caught up a book, and went to my own room. That book was the "Bride of Lammermuir."
I had only, a few evenings before, read the "Mysteries of Udolpho," but cannot say that their much-talked-of terrors had the least effect upon my nerves. I was tired, but if their pages gave me sleep, they did not add dreams. But I read the volume of tonight, till the most absolute terror took possession of me. I felt myself cold and pale. I involuntarily drew nearer to the candles with a sense of security. I avoided looking towards the darker parts of the room; and I remember putting out one light, lest they should not last till morning. If I had sat up all night, I could not have gone to bed in the dark. Yet, in spite of the protection of the candle, I started from my sleep twenty times, so vividly were the scenes impressed upon my mind. It haunted me for days and days. It is even now on my memory like a terrific dream.
The "Bride of Lammermuir" is one of the finest of Scott's conceptions—it belongs to the highest order of poetry—it combines the terrible and the beautiful. That Fate, so powerful and so grand an element in the Greek drama, pervades the Scottish tragedy. Few are the beliefs, still fewer the superstitions of to-day. We pretend to account for everything, till we do not believe enough for that humility so essential to moral discipline. But the dark creed of the fatalist still holds its ground—there is that within us, which dares not deny what, in the still depths of the soul, we feel to have a mysterious predominance. To a certain degree we controul our own actions—we have the choice of right or wrong; but the consequences, the fearful consequences, lie not with us. Let any one look upon the most important epochs of his life; how little have they been of his own making—how one slight thing has led on to another, till the result has been the very reverse of our calculations. Our emotions, how little are they under our own controul! how often has the blanched lip, or the flushed cheek, betrayed what the will was strong to conceal! Of all our sensations, love is the one which has most the stamp of Fate. What a mere chance usually leads to our meeting the person destined to alter the whole current of our life. What a mystery even to ourselves the influence which they exercise over us. Why should we feel so differently towards them, to what we ever felt before? An attachment is an epoch in existence—it leads to casting off old ties, that, till then, had seemed our dearest; it begins new duties; often, in a woman especially, changes the whole character; and yet, whether in its beginning, its continuance or its end, love is as little within our power as the wind that passes, of which no man knows whither it goeth or whence it comes. All that mortal resolve can effect, is to do the best under the circumstances in which we are placed, to keep alive the sweet voice of approval in our hearts, and trust that the grave will be but the bright gate opening on all that we now see through a glass darkly.
The ancients believed that the dark ministry of fate was on many a kingly line even to its close—a belief confirmed by the judaical ritual. "I will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, even unto the third and fourth generation." The house of Ravenswood is doomed to destruction. Its chiefs have been men strong and evil in the land—the blood of the victim has not sunk into the earth—and the cry of the oppressed has not risen on the morning in vain. The dark sand has run to the appointed hour, and the proud and stately race will soon be a desolation whose place no man knoweth. But it is one of the mysteries of mortality that the wicked fall, and with them perish the innocent. Is it that remorse may be added to the bitterness of punishment! The fated house falls, and with it the lovely and fragile flower that had rashly clung to the decaying wall. There is something so gentle, so touching in Lucy Ashton, that we marvel how human being could be found to visit one so soft, too roughly. But that wonder ceases in the presence of those human demons, hatred, pride, and revenge. Lucy is but one of these tender blossoms crushed without care on our daily path. Though, from her vivid imagination, likely to love a man like Ravensworth, she was unfit to be his wife; still more unfit to struggle with the difficulties attendant on an engagement which the heart kept but too truly. The moral change is exquisitely developed. First, there is the pensive girl, pensive because—
"In youth sad fancies we affect;"
then comes a brief season of love whose very happiness
"Might make the heart afraid;"
then regret, restraint, and unkindliness. Visionary terrors heighten the doubts, that he, for whose sake she endures all this, holds the sacrifice light. The domestic persecution—persecution the hardest to bear—goes on, eyes that once looked love, now turn on her in anger or disdain. The temper gives way, then the mind. Echo answers "where?" when too late, the repentant father asks for his gentle, his affectionate child! Well might Henry Ashton remember to the day of his death, that the last time his sister's arm pressed him, it was damp and cold as sepulchral marble.