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Grace Webster and Ingliston

John R. Yamamoto-Wilson

I

Miss Websters works are all standard worksthe purity of her diction and

the vigour of her style rank her among the best writers of the English

language.1

It is curious how times change. There is no entry for Grace Webster

(1802-1874) in theDictionary of National Biography, and no record of her

or her standard works in The Oxford Companion to English Literature.

Later on in life she herself knew that she had not been a success, saying of

the act of writing that it is not unlike the vain mother who dresses out her

daughters in every modish trapping to attract admirers; but it will not do.

They are, ultimately, like our unread volumes, laid on the shelf (A

Skeleton Novel; or, The Undercurrent of Society, London, 1866, p. 7). Even

so, she was recognized at the time of her death as a well known writer

the authoress of [among other works] Ingliston (obituary notice, The

Scotsman, March 4th, 1874). Now, however, she is not merely obscure but

almost completely unknown.

Grace Webster was born into an illustrious family, that of John

Webster, who stepped into the shoes of his uncle, Charles Webster, as

minister of St. Pauls in Edinburgh and, according to Grace Websters own

account, possessed one of the finest private libraries at that time in the

Scottish capital.2 However, she was the victim of a ruinous lawsuit3

which, coupled with recurrent bouts of mental illness and a failure to gaincritical acceptance south of the Scottish border,4 consigned her to obscurity.

Her early years were promising enough, though. Her first publication,

The Edinburgh Literary Album (1835), a collection of poems and short

stories, was highly regarded, and her first novel, Ingliston (Edinburgh,

London and Dublin, 1840), though it not only broke with the taboo on

illegitimacy but did so in terms that challenged the contemporary

understanding perhaps beyond what it could readily withstand, was

favourably reviewed everywhere from the Church of England Journalto the


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Aethenaeum and was republished a few years later as Margaret Inglis, her

Life and Trials. A Tale of Social Life (1848). In addition to Ingliston, she

published four other novels, The Disputed Inheritance, (three volumes,1845), Raymond Revilloyd: A Romance (two volumes, 1849), A Skeleton

Novel, or The Under-Current of Society (in three parts, 1866), and

Strathbrachan Hospitality, or The Laird (three volumes, 1868). She also

edited editions of religious works by Lewis Bayly5 and George Abbot6 and

published a number of her own religious tracts. To appraise her fully, the

body of her work needs to be judged as a whole, but that lies beyond the

scope of a single article, and I will therefore limit myself to a discussion of

Ingliston.

Despite the neglect into which both it and its author have fallen,

Ingliston is not only well worth reading for its own sake, but deserving of a

proper place in the canon of 19th century literature, both as a record of the

times and for the light it sheds on other literature of the period. Since the

work has fallen into such extreme obscurity, I shall begin by giving some

account of its narrative and style, before discussing its relevance to

literature and to the period in which it was written.

II

At a structural level, Ingliston contains many surprises. The reader is

never quite sure to what genre the novel belongs. The bachelor Sir Norman

Inglis, of Ingliston Hall, and his guests, and even perhaps the visit of an

undesirable (but wealthy) young woman engineered by his mother, Lady

Grace, in her misguided attempts to find a match for him, would not be out

of place in a Jane Austen novel. In the first chapter, though, Sir Norman

rebels against the imposition of the unwanted guest and simply disappears,leaving his mother to deal with the social embarrassment, and in the

following pages the narrow world and petty concerns of privileged society

are counterpointed by the world of servants and peasants speaking a broad

Scots vernacular, and underpinned (in a manner worthy of Laurence Sterne)

by the piecemeal reconstruction of the progress of a letter which the

missing John Inglis writes to his mother:

he dispatched to his mother a letter, which he commissioned a person to be


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the bearer of, who proved unfaithful to his trust, for he, instead of going to

Ingliston, wentto join in some revels which were holding at the village

and the letter with which he was entrusted passed from hand to hand, till atlast it was taken in charge by a drunk carter, who was going home the way

of Ingliston, and he being invited in to take a supernumerary mouthful at a

toll-house on the road, had the honour of an introduction to Mrs MacMartin

[cook at Ingliston Hall], into whose bosom it ultimately found a resting-

place. (pp. 62-63)

Sir Normans personal servant, Keith, comes across Mrs. MacMartin as she

drunkenly finds her way home in the dark:

Och! I am sick, I am sick, replied a voice in an agonizing tone of despair,

while a most villainous decantation from a stomach overcharged with liquor

beshowered, from his breast ruffles downwards, the unfortunate Keiths

heretofore unsullied vestments. (p. 9)

Realising who she is (and with the certainty that the condition of his own

outward man could not well be rendered more filthy than it already was, p.

9), Keith helps her to the house, where Lady Grace is waiting, with Diane

Hamilton (the undesirable young woman on whose account whom Sir

Norman has made his escape), for supper to be brought. Unfortunately, the

key to the parlour is somewhere about the person of the now comatose Mrs.

MacMartin:

the keywas found in her left pocketa fathom down Lady Graces

maidcould not restrain her curiosity when she saw a letter drop from Mrs

MacMartins bosomand she stepped briskly forward to pick it up.

After supper, the maid finds occasion to pass the letter to Lady Grace:

Lady Gracedid not tear it open with the impatience which maternal

anxiety might have directed, but she held it, as a thing polluted, between the

tips of her forefinger and thumb

Here, my dear Diana, cried she, I am so nervous at the sight of this,

that I have not strength to open it. Read it for me if you please Miss


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Diana took the letter, which she could most fervently have pressed to her

lips, notwithstanding its ill savour. She opened it with a deep sigh, and

began to read it in a solemn sentimental tone.My Dear MotherI hereby declare, that I am not to be trepanned by

that crooked machine, Miss Diana Hamilton, whom you persist in keeping

in my house, and thereby forcing me to absent myself Unable to proceed

further, Miss Diana uttered a hysterical sob of passion [and] tore the letter in

a thousand pieces Lady Grace called in her maid, who hastened to unlace

herwhile Lady Gracegathered up all the fragments of his letter, but was

obliged to give up in despair the impracticable taskof putting them

together, so as to be able to decipher it. (pp. 14-15)

The author could be paving the way for a comedy of manners, or a

satire on social class, but then the novel changes focus. Speculative gossip

starts to spread concerning the reasons for Sir Normans disappearance, and

the lower-class world actually invades the aristocratic one, in the form of

one Jean Dempster, a rather simple-minded peasant woman who is under

the impression that Sir Norman has fled because he is bankrupt. She

entreats his mother to make some provision for a boy and girl twins

whom Sir Norman has fathered some ten years previously. This is the first

Grace Inglis has heard of the matter.

Sir Norman returns and his mother, being now determined to avoid

future disappearances, sets out to please him by, among other things, taking

the twins into Ingliston Hall. However, although their status is widely

known (Jean Dempster talked extensively to the servants before meeting

the lady of the house), they are not taken into the heart of the family, but

shown to the servants quarters. It begins to look as if the juxtaposition of

social classes serves a judgmental, rather than a satirical purpose, and thatthe author condemns Lady Graces aloofness and Sir Normans indecisive

awkwardness, championing instead (despite their occasional drunkenness

and a tendency to gossip) the values of the lower classes, as exemplified by

the earthy sympathy of the servants for the two children now thrust in their

midst.

Sandy, the little boy, runs away and rejoins his mother at the first

opportunity, but the little girl, Margaret, stays and grows up at Ingliston

Hall. As the years go by she grows into a beautiful young lady, with every


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sign of good breeding. The servants, with all affection and deference to her

natural grace, treat her as the future mistress of the house, though in the

eyes of her father and grandmother she continues to be a kind of privilegedservant rather than a proper member of the family.

Then she starts to attract the attention of men. First, there is the

unwelcome attention of Colonel Gilbert, a portly gentleman of about

forty-five (p. 99), followed by the devout admiration of the sincere and

respectable Mr. Gowans, clerk to Sir Normans financial agent, and finally

Charles Weirham, a young naval officer of good family whom she meets

while he is on leave, a noble generous youth, of exquisite manly beauty

(p. 126). He it is who wins her heart, avowing his undying love for her

before setting off once more to sea.

It appears that all the satire and social realism were just a backcloth for

a rather conventional romance, an impression that is reinforced by the

gentle humour with which the author depicts the young man in question

lying sleepless in his bed, pondering how to obtain his beloved, given his

impecunious state and the probable objections of his family:

The first planwas to rise, betimes, watch forthe mistress of his heart,

give his mother, brother, sisters, and all the good people of Ingliston the

slip, and set offand call on a ministerand cause the reverend

gentlemanto tie the indissoluble knot, and then he would retire to some

sequestered spot among running brooks, green trees, and blackbirds, and

pass a longlife of unmingled felicity. But how were they to subsist? She

had no money, neither had heso he dismissed this first scheme as

impracticable, but not till he had, in imagination, wandered through many a

delicious scene in the beauteous retreat which his fancy conjured up. (pp.

157)

He then determines to go to sea as he intended, but, not waiting to rise

in the usual progressive way, he would take a short cut to preferment:

He would acquit himself like a hero; perhaps capture the enemys fleet, and

be promoted to the command of his own. He would achieve mighty things

for his country But, unfortunately, at that moment, Britain had made

peace with her neighbours, and, unless he could break the truce, there was


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no field for his exertions. (pp. 157-58)

And so on. Needless to say, when he does resolve on a feasible plan ofaction (to announce his intentions to Margarets father), circumstances

conspire to prevent him carrying it out before his leave expires and he is

obliged to go once more to sea. Margarets lack of parental guidance, the

social gulf between her and the young man, even the rather inappropriate

advice she gets from her friends among the servants, all seem now

subservient to the flutterings of her anxious young heart, pining in the

absence of the loved one.

But then other, more practical concerns, take over. Lady Grace dies,

and Sir Norman is not long following her. When his will is examined it is

found that, although he had apparently intended to leave the house and

lands of Eastmosshall an independent part of his estate and an annuity

to Margaret, and an equally handsome bequest to his son, he died without

ever signing the will or putting his seal to it. The property therefore goes in

its entirety to his cousin, Sir Archibald Hay Inglis. Margarets mother is

dead, and her twin brother cannot be traced and no one in the Inglis

family appears inclined to acknowledge Sir Normans illegitimate daughter.

Margaret has little choice but to stay on and be treated once more as a

servant, or to leave altogether. She chooses the latter course and goes to

Glasgow, at first being in the company of one of the other servants, but

increasingly finding herself cast adrift, and with few means, apart from

some sewing, to earn a meagre living. There is little enough of romance,

and little to laugh about either, though of course we suspect that the

narrative will follow the conventions of the bildungsroman, and she will

emerge from this crisis, and will possibly be reunited with her loved one,

but in any case will undoubtedly be a wiser and better person for what shehas gone through.

Margaret is cut off, ever more decisively, from all links with Ingliston.

The grim realities of her sojourn in Glasgow dominate the entire middle

section of the book, relieved only by an equally unsatisfactory trip to

Edinburgh, undertaken as a result of a chance meeting with Mr. Bland, Sir

Archibalds representative at the reading of the will. She had hopes of

receiving a small annuity from Sir Archibald, and Mr. Bland promises to

make representations on her behalf. He convinces her to go to Edinburgh


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with him, holding out the prospect of employment and a meeting with Sir

Archibald.

When Margaret arrives in Edinburgh she is given quarters in what Mr.Bland (a minister of the church) describes as his writing-chambers, but

turns out in fact to be a front for something little better than a bawdy-house.

There is a riotous scene when the housekeeper, Mrs. Wildgoose, throws a

licentious party, and Margaret divines (quite rightly) that Mr. Blands

intentions in bringing her to Edinburgh had been very much less than

honourable. She flees back to Glasgow and a life of grinding poverty,

relieved only by little acts of mercy and kindness between people who are,

many of them, almost equally destitute. She lodges with Widow Kirke, a

gentlewoman of reduced circumstances as Grace Webster would herself

one day be called (medical record, Morningside Lunatic Asylum,

Edinburgh, January 12th, 1856) and somehow together they contrive to

make ends meet. But she is beset by ill-health, mainly attributed to the

meanness of her environment and the sense of abandonment and

hopelessness which envelopes her. Her suffering reaches its peak when she

hears that Charles Weirham (whom she knows has now inherited his

fathers estate) has married her cousin, Miss Hay Inglis.

By now, Margaret has utterly lost heart. She succumbs slowly but

surely to a wasting disease. The only thing that grows stronger, as her

appetite for life decreases, is her faith in God. In the depths of her poverty,

she gives to Mrs. Kirke a locket to sell in order to buy food. In it is a lock

of hair, which Mrs. Kirke keeps.

Margaret does not know it, but it transpires that Mr. Bland, having

been frustrated in his own licentious designs on Margaret, has told Charles

that Margaret has sunk to the level of a common prostitute on the streets of

Glasgow. Being a family friend he long ago perceived the nature ofCharless feelings for Margaret, and Charles has no reason to disbelieve

him, respected pillar of Edinburgh society as he is. At the same time his

mother and sisters are beseeching him to marry a wealthy woman, since his

fathers fortunes had declined rapidly before he died. His marriage to Miss

Hay is an unhappy one, and it ends when she dies giving birth to their only

child. One surmises that this information will be the prelude to some

miraculous reuniting of the star-crossed lovers and that, after all, the story

of Margarets woes is about to be transformed into a romantic fairy tale.


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Then, when Margaret is almost at deaths door, Widow Kirke makes

petition to the parish on her behalf, and when the dispensers of parish

bounty arrive one of them turns out to be that straightforward, goodheartedman Mr. Gowans. He immediately takes every step in his power to nurse

Margaret back to health, taking her under his roof and sparing no expense.

It seems, then, that it will not be a romantic match, but a sound, practical

one. Grace Webster will advance sound common sense against passionate

heart-stirrings.

Far from it. First she hints, and then she announces, that Margaret is

not going to recover from her illness. Mr. Gowanss help has come too late

and Margaret dies, commending herself to God. As she dies her pious death

the reader concludes that the genres the author has so far toyed with the

comedy, the social realism, the romance and the pragmatism were all a

front for a devotional tale. Margaret has found the one safe path through

life the path founded on a love of God and all the rest, the hopes of love

and wealth, the humour and the heartache, is as nothing.

But Grace Webster is not through yet. Life goes on. Mr. Gowans

marries. Eventually Ingliston Hall is put on the market, and is bought by a

Colonel Dempster, who arrives in Glasgow with his charming wife, Lady

Anne, and together they prevail upon Mr. Gowan to take up his old post as

financial agent for the estate.

When the Gowans arrive, the Dempsters are in the process of

organizing a great feast. First the gentlefolk among whom is Charles

(now Lord) Weirham, whose estate is nearby dine at Ingliston Hall itself,

then the company proceeds to where the tenants of the estate are holding a

secondary feast under canvas, and it is in this setting that Colonel Dempster

announces that he is Sir Norman Ingliss son the twin who ran away.

III

Writing a quarter of a century later, Webster is very clear about her

aims as a novelist; Fiction of a proper type has a moral purpose (A

Skeleton Novel, p. 61). But this moral purpose must not descend into mere

didacticism; proper aim of the novelist is not the holding up to prominent

and obvious censure any particular vice, nor yet the setting forth as a copy

some pattern model-virtue (ibid.). Margarets death is not an exhortation


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to a life of piety; it is a demonstration that an illegitimate child can lead an

exemplary life, and the revelation that Colonel Dempster is the long-lost

Sandy is the corollary a bastard can be every inch a gentleman.On hearing Colonel Dempsters story, one of the tenants, an aged,

white-haired man, stands up and reminds the company of a little girl that

dwelt in this place, who was light to our eyesand joy to our hearts (p.

385), and proposes a toast to the memory of Margaret Inglis, the true

purpose of whose story is now finally clear.

The last few pages of the novel tie up little details of minor characters,

right up to an explanation of how the fate of the daughter of the jeweler to

whom Mrs. Kirke sold Margarets locket is related to that of the son of the

keeper of the inn where Sir Norman stayed when he went missing at the

beginning of the story. The main action is already over, and the tale ends as

it began, almost like something out of Jane Austen except for Mrs.

Kirkes encounter with a mysterious visitor to Margarets grave, who weeps

like an infant (p. 398) when she tells him she had saved a lock of hair

that Margaret treasured and put it in her grave with her. Webster ends, then,

by overlaying her didactic purpose with the pathos of the roman noir, and

subsuming the whole in an ongoing pattern of human concerns.

This mingling of different genres in Ingliston is arguably a fatal

weakness, leading to a novel that is neither flesh nor fish nor fowl. An

unsympathetic reading of the novel might certainly lead to such a

conclusion. The ludicrous fate of Sir Normans letter, for example, might

be said to sit incongruously with the tragic fate of the heroine. And indeed

in one sense it is incongruent, but at another level it is perfectly in keeping.

For one thing, both events are completely consonant with their originator

(Sir Norman), a man of good-natured imbecility (p. 1), whose

indecision brought to the grave the one woman he might have loved andmarried (p. 2). And furthermore, the letter falling into bad hands,

maltreated and finally, at the moment of its apparent deliverance, lost

irrevocably can be seen as a metaphor for Margaret herself.

A good reader, Webster knows, is forever forming hypotheses, but is at

the same time forever hoping that those hypotheses are going to be false

and that the author has something more to offer than what the reader has

predicted. Thus, while we are wondering which of two possible suitors will

become her husband, she calmly announces that her heroine is going to die.


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And it is done in such a way that, after all, the reader concludes, yes, that

was always on the cards. And once she is dead we wonder how she can

possibly fill the remaining pages, and once again that is achieved quitenaturally. Ingliston is a richly-textured novel, and a great part of its

attraction lies in the fact that, all the way through, the reader is never quite

sure which of its many strands will prove strongest.

The apparent incongruity of the elements of the novel is only

superficial. If one looks deeper there is an underlying congruity. Congruity,

indeed, was central to Websters artistic vision; a quarter of a century later,

in her last novel, she does away with continuity, but instead establishes a

kind of coherence through the congruity of the events described (A

Skeleton Novel, p. 4). Her mingling of genres inIngliston does not create a

hodge-podge but a blend, and a skilful one at that. She combines comedy

and tragedy, romance and realism, blind chance and guiding fate, because

her conception of the moral purpose behind her work is not that of a narrow

didacticism, but of a healthy and truthful delineation of life and

mannersgivingthe readerthat insight into the arcana of society

which his own experience or opportunities of observation may not have

enabled him to acquire.7 She makes her points, but she does not labour

them, preferring instead to subsume them within a larger vision.

On the whole Grace Websters characters are very plausible and true to

life much more than, say, those of Charles Dickens, who always behave

according to type. They are not simply cardboard cut-outs, but polyfacetic

individuals. Even the unattractive Diana Hamilton, who, having a mind as

distorted as her body, could have no real admirers and for the credit

of mankind be it told, that, notwithstanding her wealth, she never had an

offer [of marriage] in her life is not incapable of a certain gentleness

and complacency of manner, which she displays on those occasions when,repeatedly and desperately, she has fallen in love (p. 3).

Nevertheless, there are some aspects of the characterization that are

perhaps somewhat flawed. One would like to have some examples of the

workings of Diana Hamiltons distorted mind; as it is, we simply have the

bare assertion, backed up by no manifestations of it. In Websters defence,

it could be pointed out that Diana Hamilton is only a minor character, who

makes no reappearance after being taken home by her parents on page 41.

But then, her parents are even more minor, with no other role than to


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collect Diana from Ingliston, and yet they, by contrast, are described in

what seems excessive detail they are good-natured, easy-minded [and]

homely, and while immensely rich they did not live in any stylesuitable to their wealth (p. 40), and so on.

The lengthy description of Dianas parents can perhaps be justified as

a foil for Diana herself; The only drawback in life to this worthy pair was

their daughter, their sole representative. But they good-naturedly let her

have her own way; yet she seldom allowed them to have theirs (p. 40).

But it does seem to be symptomatic of the authors tendency to thrust

minor characters at the author with no apparent narrative purpose, an

extreme example of which can be seen when, with the focus clearly on Sir

Norman and his confused state of mind after running away from Ingliston

and Diana Hamilton, Webster digresses for twenty lines on the character

and background of the hostess of the lodgings he has taken, whose only

immediate function is to bring Sir Norman his food (pp. 58-59). A tenuous

justification can be found in the fact that her son (mentioned in this long

description of her and her concerns as training to be a minister of the

church) makes a reappearance as Mr. Gowanss companion in dispensing

parish charity in Glasgow, but in its narrower context the description is

unjustifiably long. Worse, since the author is in the midst of depicting Sir

Normans cogitations, it appears at first as if he is privy to this information

about his hostess, when of course he is not.

I suspect that these flaws are a consequence of the authors enthusiasm

for drawing from life, an enthusiasm which leads her to indulge, sometimes

for half a dozen pages at a stretch, in long dialogues or, even more

impenetrably, monologues in broad Scots dialect. True to life it may be,

but it is likely to try the readers patience at times.

These are minor quibbles, though. Broadly speaking, her characters,like her plot, are well-rounded and her descriptions are vivid and

appropriate. Above all, because they reconstruct themselves in the readers

mind as real people, rather than character types, they are unpredictable.

People who are essentially good may not always live up to their own

standards; Flawed characters may do good things; bad people may be

wronged as well as good ones; and those whom the world judges good may

be nothing more than hypocrites, but nevertheless, even if only through

expediency, they will sometimes act honourably.


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To exemplify each of the above in turn: Margaret herself arguably

brings her suffering upon her own head by refusing to accept her one real

chance of earning a decent living:The agreement was nearly made, when, upon Margaret making some

inquiries into the nature of the duties required of her, the lady informed her

that she kept one of the most approved private asylums in England for the

insane. Margaret was much hurt, and the conference was soon ended. (p.

190)

Her squeamishness (whether or not shared by the author and there is an

irony here, to which I will return later) is no more or less than one of many

little flaws that make Margaret Inglis aperson, rather than merely a vehicle

for some attribute or set of attributes. She is foolish enough to be tempted

to get into a coach alone with Colonel Gilbert (p. 100), and makes a very

similar mistake when she allows Mr. Bland to convince her to go to

Edinburgh (pp. 196-202). She does not always choose her friends wisely;

in particular, Mrs. Logan, both as servant at Ingliston and later on in

Glasgow, does Margaret more harm than good and it takes her a long time

to realise it. And when she learns that she is not to inherit anything from

her father she does not show saintly detachment and delicate forebearance.

On the contrary, her tears flowed fast and then faster (p. 176),

becoming a flood of bitter tears, to which hysterical tremors succeeded

(p. 177), culminating in mental anguish and despondency and despair

(p. 178). It is these little blemishes in her character that bring Margaret to

life, making her authentic and believable a real human being, rather

than some emblematic representation of virtue.

Mrs. Stalker, one of Margarets neighbours in Glasgow, exemplifies

the rough and ready kindness of a less than perfect individual; She was

not otherwise than a tolerably civil, decent sort of person, without anyglaring moral defect in her character, and equally without any virtue (p.

284). On visiting Margaret and Mrs. Kirke she derives a philosophical

principle of contentment, as she ruminated on the fact that Mrs Kirkes fire

was not much better than her own (p. 285). She is kind enough to sit at

Margarets sickbed, but then discourses most inappropriately and

gruesomely on the subject of body-snatching and autopsies (pp. 292-293),

and when begged by Margaret to desist can find no better topic than

salacious gossip (pp. 293-294). Yet, when she receives a gift of charity


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from the parish, she takes them a piece of fish and a bowl of oatmeal (p.

301), and goes to the trouble of pleading their cause to one of the parish

worthies (pp. 307-308). She goes off in the rain on an errand of mercy forMaragaret, returning with a bottle of wine and a paper with some broken

pieces of loaf sugar wrapped up in it, which she handed to Mrs Kirke; and

besides these, she had a heel of a quartern loaf, which she kept to herself

(p. 332).

Mrs. Wildgoose, although she is a liar and thief, also has her moments

of kindness, and she herself becomes the victim of injustice. Mr. Bland,

disappointed that Margaret has slipped out of his grasp, severs his ties with

Mrs. Wildgoose, giving out, as the ostensible reason forwithdrawing his

countenance from Mrs Wildgoose, that she kept late hours and unruly

company. His hypocritical malice had the desired effect. Her apparent

respectability was gone by his desertion of her, and she speedily sunk

intoobscure poverty. And whatever she, in her revenge and resentment,

might say to injure Mr. Blands character and extenuate herself, went for

nothingThus is the world deceived, and thus men are allowed to lull

themselves in the security of their own good name (pp. 249-150).

Mr. Bland is perhaps the only character in the story of whom there is

absolutely nothing good to be said, and even he takes the trouble to send

Margarets effects on to her after she flees Edinburgh and returns to

Glasgow, even if his motive was only fear of being brought into trouble, if

enquiry were made about them by the owner (p. 254).

As in life, the characters in Ingliston are filled with contradictory

impulses, inconsistencies, misgivings and ambiguities. Yet, though their

actions may not be predictable, they are nevertheless, to use the word

again, congruent.

IV

Miss Webster writes for mankind and for future years.8

Ingliston is, in many ways, a remarkable novel. Even more

remarkable, though, is the fact that it has lain forgotten for over a hundred

years. The question is, though, does it matter? A few people, on reading

this article, may be tempted to do as I have done and take a dusty copy of


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her works down from the shelf. But, beyond the fact that they will thereby

garnish some hours of safe and wholesome entertainment (A Skeleton

Novel, p. 61), is there any real significance in their doing so?To answer that we need to seeIngliston in the context of the literature

of the period. Margaret Inglis is at once in the role of a Heathcliff (Emily

Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 1847) an outsider brought into polite

society, but kept at arms length and never fully integrated and of an

Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, 1937-8) the innocent

outcast, born for better things, but destined to be cast out, at least for a

time, on the storms of life), with more than a touch of Little Nell (Charles

Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop, 1841), the sweet child who is too good

for this world. And yet she is unlike any of them. In Emily Brontes vision

the outsider remains forever outside, doomed by his very essence to live up

to the negative expectations of those who harbour prejudices against him,

and in Dickens work the innocent Oliver Twist follows the directly

opposite path of Margaret, coming in, as it were, from the cold and into the

bosom of an aristocratic family, and his illegitimacy is tastefully glossed

over. The identity of his motheris established; the fact that the father is still

unaccounted for is rather pointedly ignored. And, while Little Nell may

meet a similar sad end to Margarets, there is no slur over her parentage.

In Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847-8), to take

another example, not only is the outsider (Betty Sharp) an unscrupulous

upstart, but it is a precondition of Henry Esmonds integration into polite

society that he be cleared of the charge of illegitimacy which hangs over

him for most of the story. Thackeray also, in Catherine (1839-40),

reinforces the stereotype of the illegitimate child as a devious and

dangerous underminer of society (he plots with his mother to kill his

stepfather). Again, Adam Bede (George Eliot, 1859) perpetuates thestereotype of the unmarried mother in the following decade (thought the

setting is 18th century); the foolish Hetty Sorrel not only allows herself to

be taken advantage of, but then murders her child that is, she is not just a

fool but a wicked fool.

One of the very few novels of the period (though postdating Ingliston

by 13 years) which really challenge the stereotype of the unmarried mother

isRuth (1853). Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell depicts the father as a heartless

rogue, and portrays Ruth herself and her child as more sinned against


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than sinning, persecuted by a vindictive male-dominated society, but not

themselves the perpetrators of any real evil.

Ruth is probably the closest novel of its period to Ingliston, but thereare significant differences. Webster does not demonise Margarets

unmarried mother, but she does not idealise her either; Jean Dempster is

simple to the point of imbecility (p. 49), but she has sense enough (p.

53) to know how to protect her own interests, and nowhere is it imputed

that she is anything other than a good mother to her children, within the

limits of her straitened means. Neither does Webster make Margarets

father out to be either a very good or a very bad man, his main

characteristics being good-natured imbecility (p. 1) and indecision (p.

2). She depicts both parents as adequate and well-intentioned, but rather

deficient in mental agility. And of course she focuses on the child, rather

than her parents.

There is something of a parallel to Margaret Inglis herself in Adle

(Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, 1847). Although illegitimate, she is a sweet

and endearing child. Nevertheless, the harshness with which society will

deal with her is an issue that Charlotte Bronte does not really develop, and

(apart from being a device to bring Jane and Rochester together) her main

function is to show what a good sort Rochester is, to bother himself with

her, rather than to make a point of her own virtues. LikeRuth, this positive

portrayal of Adle in Jane Eyre postdates Ingliston, which may have

provided a source for both of them, and whose tragic end may even have

suggested to Dickens the fate of Little Nell.

I do not think there is an example of an illegitimate child playing a

central and exemplary part in any other novel of the period. Margaret

Inglis, quite openly presented as the natural child of an unsanctified union

between a middle-aged little woman, of a swarthy brown complexion, onwhose good-natured countenance there was constantly a broad gaping

smile indicative of a weak intellect (pp. 42-43) and the lord of an

immense extent of property (p. 1) is, I think, unique. If ever a child ought,

by the moral laws governing not only the fiction but also the life of the

period, either never to have found her way into the pages of the book or,

having done so, to have turned out bad, surely it was Margaret Ingliston.

She does not even have the advantage (as Ruth would have) of at least one

admirable parent. And yet not only is she presented to the reader as an


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example of outstanding and saintly virtue, but her brother also succeeds in

establishing himself as a true gentleman, honoured by all. A modern

scholar writing on the topic Jenny Bourne-Taylor,9

for example, thoughshe generally specifies England as her frame of reference might appraise

the topic of Victorian illegitimacy differently if this account of nineteenth

century Scotland were taken into account.

Even a contemporary reviewer ofIngliston, writing, what we admire

is [Websters] moral honesty. She has the courage to call things by their

proper names, and is ignorant of that false and sinful charity which

intercepts the outgoings of honourable sentiment,10 restricts himself to

admiring in Grace Webster a directness which he, nevertheless, prudently

refrains from practising. Like others of his era, he draws a discreet veil

over the issue of illegitimacy: We do not subscribe to all of the views of

this gifted authoress

Of course, it does not follow that, because Grace Webster attacks one

form of prejudice, she is therefore free of others. The authors apparent

approval of her heroines refusal to work in an asylum for the insane (as

she terms it) is a particular irony, since only five years after the publication

ofIngliston Webster herself was admitted to Morningside Lunatic Asylum,

Edinburgh a place she would return to intermittently for the remainder of

her life.11

Her portrayal of the only really black character in the novel

(Margarets swarthy mother and the dark-skinned Margaret herself are

essentially shades of white) is equally narrow-minded. Mrs Wildgoose is

stereotyped as a tremendously uglymulatto (p. 204), who cheats (pp.

218-219) and lies (p. 249) and, when Margaret leaves Glasgow, steals some

of her most precious possessions (p. 254). Even her name (though in part

perhaps an allusion to the fact that Margaret is on a wild goose chase)seems a rather cruel joke.

Whether these details represent what Grace Webster herself thought, or

whether she intended, by reflecting some of the prejudices of her day, the

more successfully to challenge the one she has taken as her main theme I

cannot say. What is clear, though, is that she was of that rare breed of

writers who write, not for fame, but from an inner compulsion. A

manuscript notebook, with an 1810 watermark, containing 42 pages of a

story she wrote as a child,12

and a comment in her medical record she


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has continued to write for a livelihood and latterly has been in rather

reduced circumstances13 show that she wrote all through her life

regardless of encouragement or discouragement). She did not aim to pleasecritics or readers, but simply to say the truth as she saw it. In addition, she

was recognized in the earliest reviews of her work as one who drew her

material from life (writing of the short stories in The Edinburgh Literary

Album one reviewer comments Though it is not saidthat they are

founded on fact, they are so graphic, and there is so much of nature in

them, that we are almost sure the groundwork is truth).14 Grace Webster

truly does, as I have noted above, give the reader that insight into the

arcana of society which his own experience or opportunities of observation

may not have enabled him to acquire.15 It is perhaps an insight that has

been ignored for too long.


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1NOTESN

Anonymous review,Edinburgh Evening Courant(July 15th, 1848).2 Grace Webster,Memoir of dr. Charles Webster(1853). In fact, this book covers a broad swathe of the history of the

Edinburgh Websters. It is symptomatic of the obscurity into which Grace Webster has fallen that the DNB entries forCharles and Alexander Webster make no reference to this work.

3 Manuscript application by David Irving of Edinburgh for Royal Literary Fund assistance (May 15, 1846). Thisapplication resulted in a payment of 35. When she learned of this payment, Webster insisted that it should bereturned, and was only induced to keep it with great difficulty. She had hitherto supported her imbecile sister and anaged aunt by her literary exertions (ibid.). I am grateful to Eileen M. Curran, professor emerita of Colby College,Massachusetts, for bringing this manuscript to my attention.

4 WhileIngliston was well received, response to her later work was often indifferent or frankly hostile. In particular,Henry Fothergill Chorley, noted inDNB for his hostile attitude towards struggling genius, wrote scathingly and inmy view quite unfairly ofRaymond Revilloydin theAethenaeum (1850, p. 309).

5 The Practice of Piety (1842), to which she added a long biographical preface.6 An Exposition upon the Prophet Jonah (1845).7 Grace Webster,A Skeleton Novel, pp. 61-62.8 Church of England Journal, August 31, 1848.9 Jenny Bourne-Taylor, Representing Illegitimacy in Victorian Culture, in Victorian Identities (1996), pp. 119-42.10 Ibid.11

Medical record, Morningside Lunatic Asylum, Edinburgh (Edinburgh Royal Infirmary). She writes movingly of theexperience of being detained and confined to an institution in a later novel,Raymond Revilloyd.

12 Private collection; one of a number of letters and other documents relating to Grace Webster found in the chimney ofan old house in Edinburgh in 1999.

13 Medical record, Morningside, January 12th, 1856.14Caledonian Mercury, cited inIn Post Octavo, Blackwood and Sons, no date.15 See note 7, above.