This book was published in 1824 and harks back to the novels of the 18th Century (no prudery, but primitive sociopolitical views), without any major trappings of incipient Victorianism. It reads surprisingly well in modern English, but that is partly because this is quintessentially a 'Scotch' book -- a commentator says no Englishman could possibly have written this novel. [Andre Gide wrote the preface to my Evergreen Edition and he stressed in his adulatory introduction that he could be over-rating the book just because this milieu was all foreign to him as a Frenchman -- after all, they think Jerry Lewis is great (well, he didn't say the latter of course). Still, he rated it as an undiscovered masterpiece.]
The novel is not a mystery, so I apologize for putting it on a mystery web page, but it IS a murder story, and is just as upsetting as PSYCHO or SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. It goes right into the depths of psychological realism, even though that wasn't systematized back then -- a story of religious fanatacism that you can fit to modern avatars like Jones or Manson. And the underpinning is the horrible travesty of Christianity the Scots grafted onto Calvinist Protestantism that caused so much woe back in the days of Cavaliers vs. Covenanters -- i.e., that certain people are predestined by God to be saved (because He set up everything in advance, before time even began), so it doesn't really matter WHAT they do in life, which led to a kind of Caledonian Khomeini-ism.
There are the usual bits of Scottish dialog rendered in pseudo-phonetics, but not as egregious as in other novels of the sort. In spite of being set in the early 1700s, it generally comes across as a description of a Scotland that hasn't changed much in modern times, with parallels to football hooligans and drunks and debauchees, plus an innate puritanism and political extremism -- the more things change, the more they say the same. [I have a love/hate thing with Scots, being half one myself, considering them for the most part dour, drunken, brawling, manic-depressive Celtic sheepshaggers, but at the same time very learned and literate and civilized -- go figure.]
Structure of the plot is clever: a 90-page summary by the "Editor" based supposedly on publicly available details, that lays out the bare bones of the story in a very journalistic (I mean news-in-depth) manner, followed by the revealed Memoirs, where of course the narrator is naive enough to display all of his faults as supposed virtues -- although he finally catches on at the end. Hoary plot device, but it works very well. This presages JEKYLL AND HYDE, which, knowing now of this book, I can see was influenced by it (well, Stevenson was a Scot too, and would have known Hogg, whereas the rest of the Eng-Lit world only paid attention to Sir Walter and Burns in his whimsical vein in those days). Basically, it is a story of a man who murders his older brother to inherit his lairdship and lands, although he is of a type who would never admit to such a base motive. He goes on to do even more horrible deeds (maybe!).
The protagonist is a snotty, ugly little shit, even as he portrays himself and as he is portrayed by others. This paradoxically adds a bit of fun to this dour book -- the author was one of the radical-poet circle of his times, so he could indulge in an unusual level of cynicism for the period. There is a lot of irony and satire in this, conveyed in a wry way that is almost uniquely Scottish (closest to it is Yiddish). A description of the Sinner:
"Could you know the man in black, if you saw him again?" "I think I could, if I saw him walk or run: his gait was very particular. He walked as if he had been flat-soled, and his legs made of steel, without any joints in his feet and ankles." "The very same! The very same! ..."
The familial situation is rather odd, consisting of an old-fashioned huntin' drinkin' laird, his mistress/housekeeper, his older Tom Jones-ish son, the Blifil-ish Sinner, the laird's pious and prudish wife (whom he rapes on their wedding night rather than kneeling down for some wholesome prayer), and her spiritual adviser Wringhim, who 'adopts' the younger son in time (or is perhaps his father, but not likely, this being a novel of people looking like their role models, like dogs are supposed to resemble their masters). Wringhim, while not a 'sinner', is a perfect ass, and is responsible for educating his snot-nosed ward into his perception of personal infalibility.
[Another sample passage (the Sinner's preacher stepfather, talking to a servant)]:
"I have known a lady, John, who was delivered of a blackamoor child, merely from the circumstance of having got a start by the sudden entrance of her negro servant, and not being able to forget him for several hours."
"It may be, sir; but I ken this -- an' I had been the laird, I wadna hae ta'en that story in."
"So then, John, you positively think, from a casual likeness, that this boy is my son?"
"Man's thoughts are vanity, sir; they come unasked, an' gang away without a dismissal, an' he canna' help them. I'm neither gaun to say that I think he's your son, nor that I think he's no your son: sae ye needna pose me nae mair about it."
After all this, it turns out to be a Faustian story, because the Devil went on vacation from his other duties just to have fun playing with this particular victim. After all, how could he resist leading to depraved evils a person who believed through his Justified Religion that he was predestined by God to be one of the elect in Heaven no matter what he did on Earth? Satan, in this story, is a marvelous invention in that he takes on the features and character of whatever/whomever he is being seen by at the time -- for the most part, your own image as you perceive yourself to be, or if you're thinking of Jesus, he'll look like Jesus, or of Ringo Starr like Ringo Starr, etc. (At one point, the protagonist thinks, "I had no doubt now that he was Peter of Russia.") Naturally, Satan leads on the Justified Sinner to commit murders and despicable acts that the 'hero' thinks he can't be damned for since he's been predestined for heaven. This quotation sums up both Satan and Sinner in a nutshell when Robert Wringhim Colwan asks what he should call his new friend:
"...you may call me Gil for the present.""Gil!" said I. "Have you no name but Gil? Or which of your names is it? Your Christian or surname?"
"Oh, you must have a surname too, must you!" replied he. "Very well, you may call me Gil-Martin. It is not my Christian name; but it is a name which may serve your turn."
"This is very strange!" said I. "Are you ashamed of your parents that you refuse to give your real name?"
"I have no parents save one, whom I do not acknowledge," said he proudly. "Therefore, pray drop that subject, for it is a disagreeable one. I am a being of a very peculiar temper, for, though I have servants and subjects more than I can number, yet, to gratify a certain whim, I have left them, and retired to this city*, and, for all the society it contains, you see I have attached myself only to you. This is a secret, and I tell you only in friendship, therefore pray let it remain one, and say not another word about the matter."
I assented, and said no more concerning it; for it instantly struck me that this was no other than the Czar Peter of Russia, having heard that he had been travelling through Europe in disguise, and I cannot say that I had not thenceforward great and mighty hopes of high preferment, as a defender and avenger of the oppressed Christian Church, under the influence of this great potentate. He had hinted as much already, as that it was more honourable, and of more avail to put down the wicked with the sword than try to reform them, and I thought myself quite justified in supposing that he intended me for some great employment, that he had thus selected me for his companion out of all the rest in Scotland, and even pretended to learn the great truths of religion from my mouth. From that time I felt disposed to yield to such a great prince's suggestions without hesitation.
[Do I detect an odor of brimstone? Robert doesn't! Later, he's told...]
"Thou are called to a high vocation; to cleanse the sanctuary of thy God in this thy native land by the shedding of blood; go thou then like a ruling energy, a master spirit of desolation in the dwellings of the wicked, and high shall be your reward both here and hereafter."
[When he is jailed briefly for disrupting a tennis match, having already gotten away with one assassination -- of a preacher who preaches sense in a time of senseless preaching -- this is part of his conversation with the turnkey...]
"...if you are one of my brethren, I will take you into sweet communion and fellowship.... But, if you belong to the unregenerate, I have a commission to slay you.""The deil you hae, callant!" said he, gaping and laughing. "An', pray now, fa was it that gae you siccan a braw commission?"
"My commission is sealed by the signet above," said I, "and that I will let you and all sinners know. I am dedicated to it by the most solemn vows and engagements. I am the sword of the Lord, and Famine and Pestilence are my sisters. Woe then to the wicked of this land, for they must fall down dead together, that the Church may be purified!"
"Oo, foo, foo! I see how it is," said he. "Yours is a very braw commission, but you will have the small opportunity of carrying it through here...."
Little does our hero know about the real world...
It's interesting that it takes the evidence of the laird's mistress, a whore, and a thief (and also his devious friend the Czar) to bring this prig to justice.
The end of the story is a phantasmagoria, which Gide didn't like, but which I enjoyed, magical events and all. Here, the devil in the new Laird Colwan's guise commits seductions, frauds, and murders of a despicable nature (including matricide: "she had by this time rendered herself exceedingly obnoxious to me"), driving our 'poor hero' into a state of total schizophrenia (he believes or doesn't that he really did these things, and maybe he did). Dirty trick follows dirty trick, to excess -- and maybe that isn't fair, considering how the book went before. For the devil to implement rather than instigate is of dubious orthodoxy, yet there is some doubt as to what really happened.
[In one case he forges a deed of James II to defraud a local widow whose daughter he has debauched. Among the appurtenances supposedly granted to his father's holdings are:]
"...biggings, mills, multures, hawking, hunting, fishing; with court, plaint, herezeld, fock, fork, sack, sock, thole, thame, vert, wraik, waith, wair, venison, outfang thief, infang thief, pit and gallows, and all and sundry other commodities." [God, I love Scottish legalese!]
When Colwan finally tells his friend to 'begone', he replies: "Our beings are amalgamated, as it were, and consociated in one, and never shall I depart from this country until I can carry you in triumph with me." (Guess that finally makes the situation clear.)
[A revealing passage, when he has been told that he did all these horrible things he wasn't aware of -- this is why I mentioned Jekyll and Hyde earlier:]
"If this that you tell me be true," said I, "then it is as true that I have two souls, which take possession of my bodily frame by turns, the one being all unconscious of what the other performs; for as sure as I have at this moment a spirit within me, fashioned and destined to eternal felicity, as sure am I utterly ignorant of the crimes you now lay to my charge.""Your supposition may be true in effect," said he. "We are all subjected to two distinct natures in the same person. I myself have suffered grievously in that way. The spirit that now directs my energies is not that with which I was endowed at my creation. It is changed within me, and so is my whole nature. My former days were those of grandeur and felicity. But, would you believe it? I was not then a Christian. Now I am."
Robert's adventures, when he goes on the lam, pursued by the obligatory mob (as in the movie versions of the contemporary novel FRANKENSTEIN), will be omitted here -- discover for yourself! (Well, he does get all tangled up in a miller's loom, and ends up in Edinburgh as a typesetter's apprentice -- hence 'justification' for the existence of the Memoirs.)
This is a very fine book, and I'll leave off now (as it is, this summary ended up being a lot longer than I intended).