On the evening of the 7th September 2016, I
was smuggled up in bed getting to the “good bit” of The Heart of the Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott. A horde of angry
Scots were rushing Tolbooth Prison in Edinburgh, seeking out the incarcerated Captain
John Porteous, while the frantic man was trying to escape up the chimney of his
prison cell. I turned to the page where a suspended figure can be seen “wavering
and struggling” by “the red and dusky light of torches” in Cowgate and thought
that would be enough for the evening.
The following day I looked up the Porteous Riots and
discovered that, unbeknown to me, I was reading about the execution of the
Captain of the Guard on the exact night it happened, 280 years ago.
A charming coincidence, or perhaps a spooky souvenir from
one of the UK’s most haunted cities, I will never be sure, yet The Heart of the Midlothian continues to
top any list for books about Edinburgh. Although I struggled again with the
thick dialects for the characters – trying to do a Scottish accent in my head
for 507 pages was a challenge –I still enjoyed walking the streets of the city
in the eighteenth century and the book helped to stifle any holiday blues.
The Oxford University Press edition also comes with
notes, from Sir Walter Scott and the editor, which expand the folklore and
myths hinted at throughout the story. I now know that I did a “Silent Disco
Walking Tour” during the Fringe around Grassmarket, once a place of public
execution equipped with its own hanging tree, and fun fact, The Maggie Dickson
pub in the square is devoted to a woman tried for infanticide who was also the
inspiration behind one of the main characters in the novel.
Unfortunately, the long journey by the heroine Jeanie
Deans is speckled with the coincidences often found in classic literature I
find tedious (Jane Eyre conveniently turning up at her long lost cousin’s house
is a prime example), yet the freaky concurrence of the opening pages, the notes
on Edinburgh’s past was good payment for my long reading hours and made the book
a better keepsake than any pricey Scottish yarn.
