Embedded Files
On the top floor, lies the library. Tall windows overlook the gravel driveway, and on the windowsill before them, proud stone busts of the founders of Hospitalfield.
I am one the lucky ten people to have been awarded a two-week Interdisciplinary Residency this May at Hospitalfield -- a historic art college in Arbroath, now a centre of learning and creativity. Two weeks here will be spent entirely on progressing A Justified Sinner. With art, writing, planning, storyboarding, it's going to be a party of creativity, and I intend on going into more detail about my time on Residency in a later blog post.
A bank of haar came in from the North Sea and settled over the east coast of Scotland. It hasn't moved for days. Every time you go outside, your face becomes webbed with cold vapours. It makes me muse upon and respect the wisdom of the saying 'Ne'er cast a cloot til May is oot'. I'm glad I packed lots of jumpers. This atmosphere is perfect for the gothic horror story that is A Justified Sinner. Perfect weather also, for a day in the old library.
My partner was visiting me for the weekend, and I took them on a tour of the building. The last room we got to was the library, which happened to be through the wall from my bedroom. We perused and admired the shelves of encyclopaedias,19th century art books, novels by Sir Walter Scott --- and then suddenly my partner leapt towards a double shelf of neatly uniform periodicals.
"Blackwoods Magazine!" they shrieked.
"Blackwoods [creative expletive] Magazine!" I shrieked in return.
Blackwood's Magazine, a literary periodical that published stories, letters and poetry of James Hogg for many years. It was also the journal with the regular feature, Noctes Ambrosianae, with which all Hogg fans will be familiar, as he wrote many episodes and starred in many more as the loveable drunken buffoon character parodying himself, 'The Ettrick Shepherd' or just 'The Shepherd'.
But most importantly for my purposes, this is the magazine that features in the original novel of Confessions of a Justified Sinner. It is through James Hogg's published letter that the Editor first learns about the phenomena of the mysterious suicide's grave.
Both extracts from Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
And what's more -- Hogg actually did publish this article in August 1823 in Blackwood's as a standalone piece called 'A Scots Mummy', a year before the publication of Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
This is a fact I have known since I first attended lectures in university, yet I have never been able to find the full original 'Scots Mummy' story as it was published in Blackwood's. The extract of it published in the novel did not include how the story started or finished. I have been dying to know for years, as I wondered what valuable details there might be that are crucial for my adaptation.
I was planning on visiting the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh to try and get a copy. Call it a coincidence, call it intervention from the literary gods on high, either way the article was sitting on a shelf right next door to my room.
To condense the amount of clichés I am tempted to deploy to describe my sheer excitement, I will use just this one: a picture is worth a thousand words.
The letter published in the August edition of Blackwood's is addressed to Sir Christopher North, 'Sir Christy', which is the nom-de-plume of author and moral philosopher, John Wilson, who was one of the principal writers in Blackwood's. It describes an interaction between Wilson and Hogg, who had been out drinking in Ambrose's tavern in Edinburgh. Wilson asks Hogg to write for the Magazine, 'something of the phenomena of nature'. The tale of the mysterious suicide, the manner of his death and exhumation is the story that Hogg submits in response to this request.
But at length the curiosity of two young shepherds, neighbours of my own, furnished me with a subject that hit my fancy to a hair; and the moment that I first heard the relation, I said to myself, "This is the very thing for old Christy." But thereby hangs a tale, which is simply and literally as follows...
Whether or not this is a true account of how the story came to be, I do not know, considering how Wilson and Hogg wrote their fictional doppelgangers interacting regularly in Ambrose's tavern in the Noctes Ambrosianae, and this could be part of that mythos. We do not know how true the two young shepherds' story of the suicide is either...but that is one of the mysteries of Confessions of a Justified Sinner, and what drives the character of the Editor in my graphic novel to distraction.
It is so intriguing to me to wonder what came first -- the idea for Confessions of a Justified Sinner, or this letter. Did Hogg write this after hearing it as a genuine local story, or did he write it as a way of creating intrigue in preparation for publishing his novel the following year? I have read that he wrote the Confessions over the course of a few months in the Spring of 1824, so perhaps not. Which makes me wonder, was there in the story of the Suicide's Grave, the Scots Mummy, an element of truth?
This exact debate is what begins my graphic novel, as Dr Grieve furiously tries to disprove or rationally explain it.
To Grieve and his attitude, Hogg would have the perfect thing to say. A quote from within this letter that made me laugh out loud:
Stop a wee bit, my dear Sir Christy. Dinna just cut afore the point. Ye ken auld fools an' young bairns shouldna see things that are half done. Stop just a wee bit, ye auld crusty, crippled, crabbit, editor body, an' I'll let ye see that the grand phenomena of Nature's a' to come to yet.
'Crusty, crabbit editor body' is an excellent descriptor of Dr Grieve, and this sounds more or less like a line of dialogue I have in my script for an argument between Grieve and Hogg about the authenticity of the story of the Scots Mummy.
Needless to say, I was absolutely thrilled and found myself laughing out loud at the strength of Hogg's character in his writing and his classic acerbic wit. No example better than the way he rounds off his letter to Sir Christy:
I am sure you will confess that a very valuable receipt may be drawn from it for the preservation of dead bodies. If you should think of trying the experiment on yourself, you have nothing more to do than hang yourself in a hay rope, which, by the by, is to be made of risp, and leave orders that you are to be buried in a wild height, and I will venture to predict, that though you repose there for ages an inmate of your mossy cell, of the cloud, and the storm, you shall set up your head at the last day as fresh as a moor-cock. I remain, my worthy friend, yours very truly,JAMES HOGG.Altrieve Lake, Aug. 1, 1823.
For being only day four of my Residency at Hospitalfield, I have had such a great time already and this discovery was so unexpected and wonderful and fills me with the sense that I am truly in the right place at the right time.
Below is the full Scots Mummy letter if you're interested in reading the whole thing.
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