POETS Day! The Other Side of James Hogg

Allan, William; James Hogg (1770-1835), Poet (The Ettrick Shepherd) (The Ettrick Shepherd’s House Heating or The Celebration of his Birthday); National Galleries of Scotland

It’s almost another work week gone and there’s no sense in waiting for the official end. Call it a POET’S day and Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. There are books to read, people to meet, shows to catch. Shave a few hours off a Friday and enjoy.

First, a little verse for you.

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I didn’t know he was a poet.

Until yesterday I knew James Hogg only as the author The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and I don’t know… a lack of curiosity or preoccupation with whatever shiny thing served as a diversion after reading that novel led me elsewhere. I’ll say that his book came to my attention in the first place when I was reading and reading about Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, a book that if you’re unfamiliar, either so fascinates you that a third or fourth reading still reveals something new, or you don’t like it much at all.

The mystery writer Ian Rankin wrote his thesis on Miss Jean Brodie and in an interview he said that the main character claimed to be a descendant of Willam Brodie, a respected 18^th century cabinet-maker who socialized with all the right sorts of people and spent his evenings burgling Edinburgh. Apparently, locksmithing was folded into the expected duties of a cabinet man in Scotland during the Age of Enlightenment and he kept key copies. It was a scandal when he was caught and chattering about living a double life commenced. The affair was among the inspirations for Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. According to Stevenson, another was Confessions, a book he said “has always haunted and puzzled me.”

It was Brodie and his hidden criminal ways that inspired Hogg’s book too. Confessions is told in three parts. The first is “The Editor’s Narrative” which is a straightforward accounting of the tale as it would appear to an interested outsider. The next part is as the title of the novel, “The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.” This second part is presented as a manuscript found in the grave of a suicide and is a first person accounting. The third is the editor’s explanation of how he came upon the suicide’s confession from James Hogg, the author playing a role in his own novel.

The second part is the most interesting, though the framing is also well done. It’s an early psychological thriller. The protagonist Robert is told he’s among the elect, saved by Christ and guaranteed a place in heaven, by a religious mentor to his mother. It’s strongly hinted, though never confirmed directly, that this mentor is also his father by adultery. He preaches a Calvinist predestination that holds God’s will, not the actions of the candidate, determine salvation. There is nothing Robert can do to alter his blessed fate.

At eighteen, Robert meets Gil-Martin, who may be the devil. He’s certainly supernatural. Wikipedia provides that “Gil-Martin may be a reference to the Gaelic word gille-Màrtainn (“fox”).” As the story progresses he demonstrates an ability to change his appearance precisely enough to impersonate known characters and arrives silently in mist. That sort of thing. Gil-Martin convinces Robert that it is his duty to kill sinners, the logic being that sinners must die and there is no danger to his soul if Robert were the one to do the necessary deeds.

Robert becomes so confused and enthralled that he’s convinced, at one point, that Gil-Martin is Peter the Great on an incognito exploration of Europe. It sounds over the top, but the plot is deftly drawn and so engrossing that it works. Eventually Robert starts to lose time and finds that during those gaps in memory, Gil-Martin commits criminal and immoral acts in his name with his face. A modern reader might be reminded of Fight Club’s Tyler Durden, but for witness accounts of Gil-Martin and Robert together in all three sections.

It’s a wonderful novel and while similarities between it and Dr. Jekyll are apparent in a plot overview, Confession’s exploration of acts versus intentions give it more in common with Miss Jean Brodie.

We live in iconoclastic times where heresy is a dull background beat, but Confessions caused quite a theological stir in its day. Hogg was an immensely popular magazine writer with ties, working if not friendly, to Walter Scott and Wordsworth. He wasn’t an author who could be ignored, but bowdlerized editions of the book popped up and dulled controversy.

Andre Gide revived interest, penning an introduction to a 1947 edition. He wrote “It is long since I can remember being so taken hold of, so voluptuously tormented by any book.” It will be interesting to see if an even newer edition, this time with an introduction by trilliondy-million copy selling Ian Rankin, grows its popularity. I haven’t read Rankin’s intro, but he’s a fascinating guy. His linking Spark’s and Hogg’s books in that interview was a happy discovery and I’m glad I read them together, or at least in quick sequence.

Again, I had no idea he was a poet.

Wordsworth wrote that Hogg “was undoubtedly a man of original genius, but of coarse manners and low and offensive opinions.” Before moving to Edinburgh, Hogg worked as a shepherd, even publishing A Shepherd’s Guide filled with, I assume, his views on the dos and don’ts of the occupation. During that period he published three of his nine collections of poetry, and they were popular.

In magazines, he was later the source of some fun and some acerbic taunts for his unrefined ways. He published sometimes as the “Ettrick Shepherd”, a name which was picked up by others and used not so endearingly. But whatever the jabs, he endured. I’ve not read enough of his poetry to say of more than a handful that “It, surprisingly to me, exists.” Obviously, this week was in praise of his best-known novel and a not unenthusiastic recommendation of it, but I think you’ll enjoy this poem as well.

The Father’s Lament
James Hogg (~1770-1835)

How can you bid this heart be blithe,
When blithe this heart can never be?
I’ve lost the jewel from my crown –
Look round our circle, and you’ll see
That there is ane out o’ the ring
Who never can forgotten be –
Ay, there’s a blank at my right hand,
That ne’er can be made up to me!

‘Tis said, as water wears the rock,
That time wears out the deepest line;
It may be true wi’ hearts enow,
But never can apply to mine.
For I have learn’d to know and feel –
Though losses should forgotten be –
That still the blank at my right hand
Can never be made up to me!

I blame not Providence’s sway,
For I have many joys beside;
And fain would I in grateful way
Enjoy the same, whate’er betide.
A mortal thing should ne’er repine,
But stoop to supreme decree;
Yet oh! the blank at my right hand
Can never be made up to me.