Neglected Nineteenth Century Novels - The Heart of Midlothian

I love nineteenth century fiction and much of it is sadly neglected nowadays. How many of you have read Walter Scott I wonder? Yet at one time he was the most famous author in the world, so renowned that a massive 200 foot high monument to him can be found in Princes Street in Edinburgh. Perhaps the most famous novel by him is The Heart of Midlothian. Sounds like an idyllic spot, but in fact it is a prison.
The title refers to the Old Tolbooth, the notorious Edinburgh prison that stood in the centre of Edinburgh. The story is set mainly in 1736–1737 and opens against the real historical background of the Porteous Riots.

In 1736, Captain John Porteous of the Edinburgh City Guard orders his men to fire on a crowd during the execution of a smuggler called Wilson killing several people. Porteous was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang, but received a last-minute royal reprieve.
In the novel an enraged mob, partly led by a figure known as “Robertson” (the alias of the young nobleman George Staunton), storms the Tolbooth, seizes Porteous, and lynches him in the Grassmarket.

Interwoven with this is the story of two sisters, daughters of the strict Calvinist Presbyterian farmer Davie Deans. They are the steadfast, highly moral Jeanie Deans and her more impulsive, beautiful younger sister Effie. Effie has been seduced by Staunton/Robertson and becomes pregnant. After the baby disappears Effie is arrested because if the mother can’t produce the baby the law treated concealment of the pregnancy as evidence of infanticide. She is tried, convicted, and sentenced to hanging. Jeanie can save her by testimony but this would mean swearing an oath, and strict Calvinists think that God would rather you let your sister be hanged in the Greenmarket than swear an oath. So can Jeanie save her some other way? Read the book to find out.

Walter Scott (1771–1832) was born in Edinburgh, trained as a lawyer, and first achieved fame as a poet with works such as The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Marmion (1808), and The Lady of the Lake (1810). The Heart of Midlothian marks a high point in Scott’s career as the pioneering historical novelist, written in his mid-to-late forties during a period of extraordinary productivity and national prominence.

I always feel a bit of affinity with the miserable Davie Deans. Most of my ancestors are Yorkshire born and bred, but one branch is Scottish. One of my Scottish ancestors took a tenancy on a farm just east of Edinburgh in 1752. His brother in law was the father of Thomas McCrie the famous Calvinist divine and a founder of the First Secession Church of the Scottish Presbyterian Church. Could have been a model for Davie!