Guy Mannering or The Astrologer

In these circumstances, far from inspiring, was "Guy Mannering" written and hurried through the press. The story has its own history: one can watch the various reminiscences and experiences of life that crystallized together in Scott's mind, and grouped themselves fantastically into his unpremeditated plot. Sir Walter gives, in the preface of 1829, the legend which he heard from John MacKinlay, his father's Highland servant, and on which he meant to found a tale more in Hawthorn's manner than in his own. That plan he changed in the course of printing, "leaving only just enough of astrology to annoy pedantic reviewers and foolish Puritans." Whence came the rest of the plot,―the tale of the long-lost heir, and so on? The true heir, "kept out of his own," and returning in disguise, has been a favourite character ever since Homer sang of Odysseus, and probably long before that. But it is just possible that Scott had a certain modern instance in his mind. In turning over the old manuscript diary at Branxholme Park (mentioned in a note to "Waverley"), the Editor lighted on a singular tale, which, in the diarist's opinion, might have suggested "Guy Mannering" to Sir Walter. The resemblance between the story of Vanbeest Brown and the hero of the diarist was scanty; but in a long letter of Scott's to Lady Abercorn (May 21, 1813), a the Editor finds Sir Walter telling his correspondent the very narrative recorded in the Branxholme Park diary. Singular things happen, Sir Walter says; and he goes on to describe a case just heard in the court where he is sitting as Clerk of Sessions. Briefly, the anecdote is this: A certain Mr. Carruthers of Dormont had reason to suspect his wife's fidelity. While proceedings for a divorce were pending, Mrs. Carruthers bore a daughter, of whom her husband, of course, was legally the father. But he did not believe in the relationship, and sent the infant girl to be brought up, in ignorance of her origin and in seclusion, among the Cheviot Hills. Here she somehow learned the facts of her own story. She married a Mr. Routledge, the son of a yeoman, and "compounded" her rights (but not those of her issue) for a small sung of ready money, paid by old Dormont. She bears a boy; then she and her husband died in poverty. Their son was sent by a friend to the East Indies, and was presented with a packet of papers, which he left unopened at a lawyer's. The young man made a fortune in India, returned to Scotland, and took a shooting in Dumfriesshire, near bormont, his ancestral home. He lodged at a small inn hard by, and the landlady, struck by his name, began to gossip with him about his family history. He knew nothing of the facts which the landlady disclosed, but, impressed by her story, sent for and examined his neglected packet of papers. Then he sought legal opinion, and was advised, by President Blair, that he had a claim worth presenting on the estate of Dormont. "The first decision of the cause," writes Scott, "was favourable." The true heir celebrated his legal victory by a dinner-party, and his friends saluted him as "Dormont." Next morning he was found dead. Such is the true tale. As it occupied Scott's mind in 1813, and as he wrote "Guy Mannering" in 1814-15, it is not impossible that he may have borrowed his wandering heir, who returns by pure accident to his paternal domains, and there learns his origin at a woman's lips, from the Dormont case. The resemblance of the stories, at least, was close enough to strike a shrewd observer some seventy years ago.