THE HEIRESS OF BRUGES.*
Tins is a romance of the true circulating library temperature—SO degrees of Fahrenheit in the shade. All is hot—love and war— scene of bustle succeeds scene ; and when affairs are sufficiently embroiled, an impregnable fortress is blown into the air by the lord of the castle himself; and the author takes advantage of the pause of stillness which follows, to arrange his parties in couples, and accommodate them for marriage—the never-failing end of all romance.
By this novel Mr. GRATTAN has fairly established his claim to be considered one of the headachy school. This school is of Irish origin, and its most famous professors have been Irish. MATURIN and Lady MORGAN are the most illustrious examples; GRATTAN brings up the rear. The school acquired its name from the in- variable effect produced upon the reader by the perusal of its chefs d'ceuvres. Such is the bustle, confusion, and extravagance of these works, that no head, however methodically organized, can resist the heating effects of an attentive reading of them. Struggle succeeds struggle, achievement achievement, disguise disguise: man is more than man ; he is every where and does every thing; noble, beautiful, and accomplished ; irresistible in battle and in bustle, in love and in learning : life is a perpetual strife, scuffle, contest, and victory. Such is the hero of the Heiress; such are all the heroes of the headachy school, without an exception. Works of this class cannot be called dull : they are in general thought to be animated. But the animation is of the body, not of the soul : it is not vivacity of imagination ; it is not elasticity of mind, or richness of fancy ; it is sheer temperament, and what is more, Irish temperament. If an Englishman could keep himself at a certain pitch of intoxication, without sinking into the maudlin or rising into the extravagant and absurd, he would be qualified to try for the prize in the "headachy" novel academy. The Irish are naturally elevated ; they need no excitement. That which an Irish row is to the peasant, the novel is to the Irish poet and author. He hits right and left with his never-failing cudgel ; he whoops the war-shout ; he shakes hands, cracks skulls, jumps in ecstacy, all in a breath ; where the fight is thickest, there is he, careless of himself, ever active with his weapon, and doing prodigies of valour: the end is a broken head, the society of his girl, and the consolation of whisky. All this being interpreted, and duly exaggerated, is an Irish novel. Mr. GRATTAN has elevated the scene by placing his hero among nobles ; and by putting his events far back in history he has thrown over the whole the softening light of antiquity. But De Bassenvelt is an Irishman in a row on a large scale ; in other words, the valorous partisan, lover, and patriot of Flanders in her contest against the Spanish authority, in the year sixteen hundred, as described by Mr. COLLEY GRATTAN, is neither more nor less than the scrabbling, ragged hero of Connemara, placed in wholly different circumstances from either a rising or a row of the mo- dern kind, and certainly far better dressed and armed. De Bassenvelt, the lord of Welbasch Castle, is as beautiful as Apollo, and sings as well; he assumes as many disguises and is as crafty as Mercury ; he has the strength of Hercules ; and is as valorous and as successful in war as the God of Battles. When a new personage is introduced, we are never sure that it is not De Bassenvelt; and it is only in the last page that we learn who is and who is not he.
The Heiress is the daughter of Van Rozenhoed, the Burgo- master of Bruges ; who in early life, while in the lowest state of * A Tale of the Year Sixteen Hundred. By Thomas Colley Grattan, author of !‘ Highways and Byways," "Traits of Travel," iire. 4 vols. 1830. poverty and misery, discovered a treasure in money and jewels to an enormous amount. His daughter, born since his elevation, and bred in a convent, is, like her father's diamonds, a beauty of the first water : her suitors are innumerable. Van Rozenhoed, the pride of his heart, gives a public entertainment, at which all pretenders to his daughter's hand are to make known their claims, and present their homage to the heroine of the night. At this epoch, the towns of Flanders, Bruges among the rest, are on the eve of a general rising. The lovers of Theresa are mostly, either on one side or the other, involved in the political events on the tapis : the author at any rate contrives to join them together, and thus goes on weaving love and politics to the end of the chapter. At this period, Belgium, under the government of Spain, was administered by Duke Albert and Isabella : it had some time be- fore yielded to the cruel warfare of Alva. Holland had success- fully resisted ; and at the opening of the novel, is, under its great Prince, Maurice of Nassau, assembling her forces to back the at- tempt on the part of Flanders to throw off the Spanish yoke, which had been so unscrupulously imposed and tyrannically maintained.
A Flemish city in the times in question was partly ruled by its native municipal authorities, and partly by the Spanish governor at the head of his troops : consequently they were divided into a Spanish and a country party. The conflict of these interests forms a portion of the subject of the novel. We have spoken of De Bassenvelt : he is a partisan general, who has employed himself in putting down the picaroons or mili- tary robbers, who infested the country, in considerable bodies. When the patriot cause is joined by the Dutch and Prince Maurice, De l3assenvelt and his officers and garrison declare for the country. He sustains a siege in his ancient castle of Welbasch ; where he and his men enact prodigies of valour: in short, there never was any thing illustrious performed at a siege that is not assembled here, for the purpose of dazzling the eyes of the reader in favour of the glo- rious De Bassenvelt. But De Bassenvelt is not only a conqueror both in court and camp ; he is a conqueror of his passions—a very Scipio. He runs away with a lovely and desperately-enamoured girl from a nunnery, with the most disinterested motives : he takes her to his castle, and teaches her morality, and strengthens her in the vir- tues she was about to abandon. She is a Moorish Spaniard, and it is to be supposed her blood (lid not circulate in her veins for nothing; nevertheless, he not only induces her to be satisfied with his conti- nence, but persuades her to join heart and soul in assisting him to gain the object of his affections, another woman—the Heiress of Bruges, the Burgomaster's daughter. But, like a true hero of ro- mance, he will only be loved in a certain fashion, and that for himself alone. Lest the lady should be seduced by the name and fame of De Bassenvelt, he personates a humble secretary, and enters her father's service ; finding time also, by slipping off his disguise and mounting casque and plume, to command his troops and harass the enemy. The heroine does not suspect the identity of Bassenvelt and the Secretary till the very close of the tale; though no reader at all acquainted with romantic machinery can fail to have ascertained the fact from the very commencement of the plot: We think that the Heiress of Bruges will be pronounced by novel-readers interesting—the one essential quality. To our taste, it wants verity and naturalness : nothing like it ever happened since the world was created—improbability stares us in the face from every page. If NAT. LEE'S notion of Alexander be just, then is GRATTAN true to nature. As an hiaorical novel, it gives a tolerably correct representation of the general movements of the time ; but the truth is, there is very little history in it. The per- sonages, though many may be true as to name, are generally occu- pied about such private matters as history never can know or take notice of. Prince Maurice and the battle of Nieuport are, however, great exceptions. In a topographical and antiquarian view, the i work is curious. Mr. GRATTAN has, we believe, resided n Bruges, and he describes several parts of that extraordinary old town with effect ; though we understand on good authority, that he has committed a grievous mistake in the position of the Dominican Convent in Bruges—the ruins of that building, on which so much turns, remain on another spot, at some distance from the convent of Mr. GRATTAN. Those readers who are not in Belgium will, we are sure, care very little about such errors ; but they render it a difficult task for a person familiar with the place to find his way on the map of the romance. Of the various characters of the piece, none strike as original or veracious copies of nature : they are not the creatures of life, but of the theatre and the repertory of romance. The Morisco man. Gaspar, and his sister Beatrice, are perhaps the personages best sustained. The wildness of their ways are put down to their origin: if nicely looked into, they might probably be found as Irish as the rest ; but perhaps the difference between Irish and Moorish savagery is only in the complexion. One of the truest characters in the book is Martin Schenk, the commander of a troop of picaroons—that is to say, disbanded soldiery, who make up for their loss of pay by plunder, and be- longing to neither side of the contending parties, lay the country under contribution with a marvellous impartiality. In a secret expedition between Bruges and the castle of De BassenveA, Gas- par the Morisco flounders into the very midst of a party of Schenk's picaroons ; who seeing a mounted soldier in the Spa- nish uniform bounce among them, take him for a vidette of the Spanish force, and flee in all directions. Gaspar gallops on, as • "Gaspar now found he had nothing for it but to dash on. In a mo- ment two or three carbines were discharged unerringly at their mark, and the brave courser fell dead under him ; and he rolled with the qui- vering carcass to and fro in the dust, till extricated by the robbers, who now rushed round him from all sides. "While some of them seized him and dragged him up on his feet, his eye was fixed on one, who by the air of reselute command, rather than any richness of apparel, seemed evidently the chief. "This man having dismounted from his horse, stood calmly by, with- out speaking a word, while the Moriscoe was placed before him. One of the robbers, fancying that he read in this stern silence a not unwonted signal for the prisoner's death, drew his dagger, and was in the act of striking Gaspar to the heart, when the chieftain suddenly raised the long sword on which he leant, and with a powerful blow almost severed the man's arm from his body. As the intended murderer reeled from the shock, and let his weapon fall from his hand, the chief motioned to have him removed. A slight murmur ran through the band ; but a stern look from him, while he placed his hand on one of the several pistols that filled his leathern girdle, instantly hushed the sound; and at this mo- ment three or four of the robbers came up bearing the fellow whom Gas- par had wounded. "AS soon as the captain saw this bleeding victim, he showed some slight and passing emotion; and he briefly demanded an explanation of the circumstances that had excited so much alarm, and brought Gaspar into his presence. The wounded man, it appeared, had had the command of the advanced party which Gaspar surprised. He faintly answered the stern questions of the captain, who seemed intuitively to read the whole affair. As the explanation ■vcnt on, a lowering frown settled on his brow, and, little by little, he drew the pistol from his belt and cocked it. " Then, Jacob Wooperman, the case is this.: first, you were sur- prised?' slowly asked the captain.
I confess it,' said the wounded man, as slowly.
" And then you fled ?' " I retreated on the main body.'
" You FLED—fled before a single man
" 'Be it as you like,' was the sullen answer to this fiercely-uttered sen- tence, which sounded more like judgment than accusation. " You all hear this ?' said the captain, turning round to the assembled banditti.
" Yes, we do ; we hear it ; it is true;' and the like admissions were gloomily pronounced.
" Good!' exclaimed the captain; and then darkly turning on the wounded man, whose pale and quivering lips showed a stronger emotion than that of mere bodily pain, he added—
"'To you I intrusted the command of our advance—our whole safety was in your care : you neglected it—our ruin might have followed: you Lied in panic and infamy : you are not worthy of life—it is doubly for- feited by the rules of our band.'
" He waved his hand to those who supported the culprit. They in- stantly obeyed the motion, and each quitted his hold. The trembling wretch staggered, and was falling to the ground ; but ere his body sank, he was a corpse. A brace of bullets from the captain's pistol had been lodged in his breast ; and this joint judge and executioner exclaimed- ' Away with him ! Throw the black mantle on his carcass, and never let the name of the coward be whispered among the brave.' "A black cloak, profusely marked with blood in broad and blotted patches, (the evidence of former murders) was instantly thrown over the body, in obedience to this morose and merciless order. The dark counte- nances around were fixed in stern observance."
This chieftain was the famous Martin Schenk, who had been a colonel in the Spanish service in Flanders, and who had left it in disgust, because, having succeeded in surprising a strong fortress, he was not rewarded with the governorship of a province, accord- incr to his demand. He afterwards joined the patriots under Prince Maurice, and was killed in an attack on Nimeguen. his only hope of safety ; but after having levelled with his petro- nel the only picaroon who had endeavoured to stop him, he is at length brought up by several shots from the main body of the ma- rauders, headed by Schenk himself, which he encounters on the road. We shall give a portion of the scene, as being drawn with some force and truth.
Previous page
