8 September: Boreham on Amy Robsart

The Acid Test
He is a particularly clever man who has learned so to manage the delicate business of living as to prevent the choicest and best things in life from doing him more harm than good. More men come to grief through the good things that swarm around us than through the bad ones. We are led to these abstract reflections by the fact that today marks the anniversary of the death of Amy Robsart, who, as the Countess of Leicester, stands as one of Sir Walter Scott's most tragic heroines. On almost the last page of "Kenilworth," Sir Walter Scott, lays down a stupendous principle in relation to her end.

The Countess of Leicester is a prisoner in her own castle. Just outside the room is a trapdoor. The trapdoor is supported by springs so nicely adjusted that, if a mouse were to scamper across it, the door would precipitate it into the vault below. The countess is being guarded by two men, Foster inside the castle, and Varney without. All at once, the sound of hoofs is heard in the castle yard, followed by the Earl's familiar whistle. In a flash, the countess rushes from her room; steps upon the fatal trap; and, in a second, all is over. Varney, through the window, asks if the ruse, of which Foster knows nothing, has proved successful. Foster is horrified. He turns angrily upon his associate. "If there be judgment in heaven," he cries, "thou hast deserved it and wilt meet it! Thou hast destroyed her by means of her best affections. It is a seething of the kid in its mother's milk." Foster's closing sentence is, of course, merely the citation of an ancient and oft repeated levitical mandate which, employed in this connection by Sir Walter Scott, becomes startlingly significant.

Are Things Good Or Bad In Themselves?
For, at that touchstone, the inner significance of the striking interdict stands crystal clear. The mother's milk is Nature's beautiful provision for the nourishment and sustenance of the kid. It is therefore ordained, probably with pointed reference to some old eastern custom, that no man must pervert into an instrument of destruction that which was designed as a ministration of life. The wifely instinct that led the countess to rush forth to welcome her lord was the loveliest thing in her womanhood, but, by means of his deceitful stratagem, Varney had used it as the agency by which he had destroyed her. She had been basely betrayed by means of her tenderest and supremest loyalties. It is this that the ancient commandment forbids.

The implications of the principle are simply infinite. There is nothing pure and sweet and noble that cannot be employed as an engine of debasement. Indeed, few things are either good or bad in themselves; their ethical quality depends upon the ends to which we ourselves harness them. We recall George Macdonald's fisherboy who was asked by his prospective customer if his fish were good. "It all depends!" replied Malcolm. "Depends," echoed the woman, "depends on what?" "Well," the boy explained, "if a bad man buys them, and they nourish him for his badness, they're bad fish; but, if a good man buys them and they strengthen him for his goodness, they're good fish!" A wealth of sound philosophy lies there.

It by no means follows that, because a thing is good in itself, nothing but good can come of it. It all depends. Money is a good thing. It is the love of money that inspires all our great agricultural and commercial and industrial activities. If no man wanted money, the land would lie stagnant and useless and civilisation would relapse into savagery. Yet money, and the love of money, may ruin a man's character and do incalculable harm. George Eliot's "Silas Marner" twice possessed the same gold. Its earlier possession made a miser of him and all men despised him. Its recovery, after its dramatic loss, made him a benefactor, the object of universal admiration.

Take our love of social intercourse. There are few things more wholesome and enjoyable than to meet and laugh and eat and drink together. And yet any drunkard will confess that it was his fondness for conviviality that led to his downfall.

Nothing So Good That It Is Incapable Of Harm
Life is full of delicate, exalted, and noble impulses—the passion for art, devotion to Nature, the love of music, the craving for company, the lure of sport, and the attraction of the sexes for each other—any one of which may, notwithstanding its own essential purity and sublimity, be degraded into a means of moral and spiritual degradation. Love is a lovely thing, or why should we all be so fond of love stories? The love of a man for a maid, and the love of a maid for a man are among the sweetest and most beautiful things in human existence.

Every man who has won the affection of a true woman feels that a new sanctity has entered into his experience. He is conscious of a fresh stimulus towards purity and nobleness. And every girl who has captured the heart of a good man feels that life has become a holier thing for her. And yet a survey of the complicated tangle of affairs that surges around us proves that, through the sinister degradation of this same pure and idyllic impulse, men and women frequently make shipwreck.

Nor are the loftiest things of all immune from the perils implied in this subtle principle. The most outstanding exponent of that gospel which is proclaimed in all the churches, constantly stresses the fact that, while the potentialities of redemption implied in his evangel are simply infinite, its dangers are proportionately appalling. He preached it to some, he says, and it became to them the power by which their lives were transfigured; but, he adds, to the Jews it became a mere stumbling block and to the Greeks sheer foolishness. The sacred writings reach their climax of urgency and insistence in their declaration that a man may convert into the instrument of their condemnation the sublime forces that were designed for their redemption. It is the supreme example of the offence forbidden by that ancient inhibition which Sir Walter Scott has so dramatically enforced and illuminated.

F W Boreham

Image: Amy Robsart