The second series in Sir Walter Scott’s Tales of My Landlord was to consist of one short tale and one novel, The Heart of Midlothian. The final product consisted only of the novel and was issued in four volumes, for which Scott’s publisher, Constable, agreed to pay him £5,000 and publish 10,000 copies. It has been judged the best of all Scott’s books, due to his fine characterization of its protagonist, Jeanie Deans.

Scott based Deans on the real-life Helen Walker, a Dumfriesshire woman who in 1738 walked to London to petition for her sister’s release from prison. Scott had received correspondence from a Mrs. Goldie, wife of the Commissary of Dumfries; she described having met Walker. Then in her 70s or 80s, she still supported herself by knitting feet into stockings. Mrs. Goldie died before Scott could talk with her about the experience, but her daughter supplied additional information. Scott printed their letters in later editions of the book.

The Heart of Midlothian was the nickname for the Tolbooth, an infamous Edinburgh prison; during its demolition, Scott had brought some of its stones and fittings to be used in the construction of his country house, Abbotsford. Scott follows his usual pattern in basing the novel on a historic event, opening it in 1736 with the Porteous Riots.

Prison guard captain John Porteous had fired into a Scottish crowd gathered to watch the hanging of a robber named Wilson. Porteous was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang, but on the day scheduled for his execution received a pardon, so angering the populace that they revolted. Led by an associate of Wilson named George Robertson, who dressed in women’s clothing as a disguise, a crowd stormed the Tolbooth, kidnapping Porteous and demanding revenge.

Unbeknownst to the crowd, Robertson had little interest in Porteous. He had only wanted their help to break through the prison gates to rescue his love, Effie Deans, accused of killing her illegitimate baby. His personal rescue attempt fails and, despite his disguise, Robertson is recognized by a prison informer, the aptly named Ratcliffe. He is forced to hide from authorities.

In the meantime, the crowd hangs Porteous in the Grassmarket, the center of many public executions. A young minister named Reuben Butler, forced by the crowd to attend Porteous just prior to his death, witnesses the violence. The frail Butler had grown up a part of the Deans family and loved them dearly. Both the Butlers and the Deans had been tenants on land belonging to the Laird of Dumbiedikes. Because of the support of David Deans and his daughter, Jeanie, Reuben had decided to attend the university and study for the ministry.

Reuben hoped to marry the sturdy, dependable, and religious Presbyterian Jeanie. Jeanie’s half-sister Effie had always been a shy and sweet girl, and David was horrified by her imprisonment. While her hardworking widowed father had at last made a comfortable life for his family, Effie’s situation saddened him to the point of immobility. The local magistrate, sketched as a fair and reasonable man by Scott, detains Butler for a time for questioning but eventually frees him.

Butler receives a message from a stranger who asks him to give it to Jeanie. The message requests her to meet with Robertson, now in hiding for his crime. He asks Jeanie to swear that Effie had confided in her regarding the pregnancy before the baby’s birth, explaining that would mitigate the charges of infanticide. In reality, Effie had never shared information about the pregnancy, and Jeanie’s code of ethics will not allow her to commit perjury in court, even to save her beloved sister’s life. She remarks to her father, “We are cruelly sted between God’s laws and man’s laws—What will we do?—What can we do?”

The child’s body had never been discovered, and Effie seems doomed to die. The night before the trial, Jeanie visits the Heart of Midlothian to comfort Effie, who adamantly refuses to testify as to Robertson’s paternity of the infant. She preferred to sacrifice herself, especially when she heard of Robertson’s gallant attempt to rescue her. She faints when she learns her child’s body has never been discovered and begs Jeanie to testify in her favor, but Jeanie again refuses.

During the trial, Effie calls out to Jeanie to testify, but Jeanie will not bear false witness, causing their father to faint in the courtroom. Even though Effie is condemned to death, Jeanie remains determined to find an honest way to free her. Learning that a criminal could be granted a pardon by the king, Jeanie decides to travel to London to make her request. She leaves her ill father with a relative and explains her plan to Effie, who forgives Jeanie for not testifying.

Jeanie takes her leave of Butler, who, already ill and anxious, pleads with her to marry him, vowing to protect her on her mission. She asks him instead to remain behind to care for her father. He reluctantly agrees and gives her a letter to the Duke of Argyle, a powerful figure who owed an obligation to his grandfather. Jeanie walked barefoot for miles through Scotland but bought some shoes in England to avoid curious stares. As she came closer to London, she was offered rides in various wagons and carts.

When Jeanie reached London, the letter gained her admission to see the duke. Supporting Scott’s emphasis on the conflict between justice and morality of his era, the duke tells Jeanie, “It seems contrary to the genius of British law [. . .] to take that for granted which is not proved, or to punish with death for a crime, which, for aught the prosecutor has been able to show, may not have been committed at all.” Following their audience, the duke took measures to help Jeanie, including gaining her a meeting with Queen Caroline.

The queen hesitates to help a Scot due to the country’s history of rebellion against England but at last agrees as she recognizes Jeanie’s high moral character. Effie receives her royal pardon but is banished for 14 years from Scotland. Jeanie accepts transport in the Duke of Argyle’s carriage to the Isle of Roseneath, where her ill father waits to see her. Her father explains he had added his personal banishment of Effie to the royal order and sent her away with her outlaw lover, vowing never to think of her again.

The devoted Butler marries Jeanie as he receives a parish appointment at Roseneath by the duke. They learn that Gypsies had stolen Effie’s baby, who everyone believed was dead. When Jeanie meets later with Effie and Robertson, now recognized correctly as the wealthy George Staunton, she cannot conceal her feelings for him, shrinking away “with a feeling of internal abhorrence.” Scott demonstrates that while Jeanie remains devoted to her sister, her actions had not been intended to help Staunton in any way. She is dismayed that Effie has married Staunton following his reform.

George Staunton proves an upright member of society, and the sisters reunite. The novel concludes on a melodramatic tone, with the death of Staunton and with Effie, now Lady Staunton, being driven almost mad. Jeanie again cares for her sister, and some of her acquaintances at last learn of her relationship to the Stauntons, and the truth behind their past.

The novel retains a serious tone, with little comic relief. Critics believe it could have been further strengthened had it concluded with the pardoning of Effie. One of its most distinctive features for its era was the focus on a lower-class woman as protagonist. However, unsatisfied with his noble portrait of Jeanie, Scott felt he had to add the more melodramatic ending.

In his third series he would include The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), taking readers deeper into a more pure and unrelieved tragedy. His darker tone during those two works may have been due to chronic pain he experienced or to his having exhausted the Scottish historical topics he wanted to research and convert to fiction. Scott’s production of his series earned him universal popularity as well as respectability for the novel, a genre despised as low literature only a few years previously. The Heart of Midlothian thus played a crucial role in the development of the novel as literature.

Bibliography
Inglis, Tony. Introduction to The Heart of Midlothian, by Sir Walter Scott. New York: Penguin, 1994.
Scott, Paul Henderson. Walter Scott and Scotland. Edinburgh: Saltire Society, 1994.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

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