Guy Mannering | Page 8

which her mother Jean is mentioned, but not by the present writer:--
'The late Madge Gordon was at this time accounted the Queen of the
Yetholm clans. She was, we believe, a granddaughter of the celebrated
Jean Gordon, and was said to have much resembled her in appearance.
The following account of her is extracted from the letter of a friend,
who for many years enjoyed frequent and favourable opportunities of
observing the characteristic peculiarities of the Yetholm
tribes:--"Madge Gordon was descended from the Faas by the mother's
side, and was married to a Young. She was a remarkable personage--of
a very commanding presence and high stature, being nearly six feet
high. She had a large aquiline nose, penetrating eyes, even in her old
age, bushy hair, that hung around her shoulders from beneath a gipsy
bonnet of straw, a short cloak of a peculiar fashion, and a long staff
nearly as tall as herself. I remember her well; every week she paid my
father a visit for her awmous when I was a little boy, and I looked upon
Madge with no common degree of awe and terror. When she spoke
vehemently (for she made loud complaints) she used to strike her staff
upon the floor and throw herself into an attitude which it was
impossible to regard with indifference. She used to say that she could
bring from the remotest parts of the island friends to revenge her
quarrel while she sat motionless in her cottage; and she frequently
boasted that there was a time when she was of still more considerable
importance, for there were at her wedding fifty saddled asses, and

unsaddled asses without number. If Jean Gordon was the prototype of
the CHARACTER of Meg Merrilies, I imagine Madge must have sat to
the unknown author as the representative of her PERSON."'[Footnote:
Blackwood's Magazine, vol. I, p. 56.]
How far Blackwood's ingenious correspondent was right, how far
mistaken, in his conjecture the reader has been informed.
To pass to a character of a very different description, Dominie
Sampson,--the reader may easily suppose that a poor modest humble
scholar who has won his way through the classics, yet has fallen to
leeward in the voyage of life, is no uncommon personage in a country
where a certain portion of learning is easily attained by those who are
willing to suffer hunger and thirst in exchange for acquiring Greek and
Latin. But there is a far more exact prototype of the worthy Dominie,
upon which is founded the part which he performs in the romance, and
which, for certain particular reasons, must be expressed very generally.
Such a preceptor as Mr. Sampson is supposed to have been was
actually tutor in the family of a gentleman of considerable property.
The young lads, his pupils, grew up and went out in the world, but the
tutor continued to reside in the family, no uncommon circumstance in
Scotland in former days, where food and shelter were readily afforded
to humble friends and dependents. The laird's predecessors had been
imprudent, he himself was passive and unfortunate. Death swept away
his sons, whose success in life might have balanced his own bad luck
and incapacity. Debts increased and funds diminished, until ruin came.
The estate was sold; and the old man was about to remove from the
house of his fathers to go he knew not whither, when, like an old piece
of furniture, which, left alone in its wonted corner, may hold together
for a long while, but breaks to pieces on an attempt to move it, he fell
down on his own threshold under a paralytic affection.
The tutor awakened as from a dream. He saw his patron dead, and that
his patron's only remaining child, an elderly woman, now neither
graceful nor beautiful, if she ever had been either the one or the other,
had by this calamity become a homeless and penniless orphan. He
addressed her nearly in the words which Dominie Sampson uses to

Miss Bertram, and professed his determination not to leave her.
Accordingly, roused to the exercise of talents which had long
slumbered, he opened a little school and supported his patron's child for
the rest of her life, treating her with the same humble observance and
devoted attention which he had used towards her in the days of her
prosperity.
Such is the outline of Dominie Sampson's real story, in which there is
neither romantic incident nor sentimental passion; but which, perhaps,
from the rectitude and simplicity of character which it displays, may
interest the heart and fill the eye of the reader as irresistibly as if it
respected distresses of a more dignified or refined character.
These preliminary notices concerning the tale of Guy Mannering and
some of the characters introduced may save the