The Entail: or, The Lairds of Grippy

Tales of the West

by John Galt

First published in 1822, The Entail is Galt's most ambitious novel. It is a horrifying study of obsession in which a Glasgow merchant victimizes his family members one by one.

"No doubt, Laird", replied Claud, "but it's a comfort to hae a frugal woman for a helpmate; but ye ken now-a-days it's no the fashion for bare legs to come thegither. The wife maun hae something to put in the pot as well as the man. And, although Miss Girzy may na be a'thegither objectionable, yet it would still be a pleasant thing baith to hersel and the man that gets her, an ye would just gie a bit inkling o what she'll hae."

Genres: Scotland, Fiction, Literature, Classics

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1822

About the author

John Galt was a Scottish novelist, entrepreneur, and political and social commentator. He was the first novelist to deal with issues of the Industrial Revolution and he has been called the first political novelist in the English language.

In 1820 Galt began to write for Blackwoods Magazine which published Annals of the Parish and The Ayrshire Legatees in 1821, The Provost and Sir Andrew Wylie in 1822, and The Entail in 1823. His novel Ringan Gilhaize (1823) offers a very different perspective on Scotland's Covenanting period to Walter Scott's The Tale of Old Mortality (1816).

Galt was instrumental in establishing the Canada Company, which was granted a charter in 1826 and bought almost 2.5 million acres of land from the British Government with a view to selling it on in individual plots to settlers. He founded the cities of Guelph and Goderich in Ontario. His novels Lawrie Tod (1830) and Bogle Corbet (1831) are concerned with the settlement of North America.

Reviews

[Virginia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Galt’s 1822 novel, the fictional history of the Walkinshaw family, is a marvelous read. To some extent, his account of the transmission of vice from one generation to another is a morality tale. Three generations of Walkinshaw lords suffer dire consequences from valuing family property over family relationships. However, this work is never preachy and almost always hilarious with the brand of humor we see in Trollope, and in Dickens. The resemblance is especially strong when Galt is taking aim at the legal profession. The plot line is strong with some interesting twists along the way and principal characters—both male and female--are multi-faceted (pretty impressive for 1822). But, Reader, beware: The dialect is very difficult; yet, it is worth the effort. I’m abashed to say that had I known a glossary was present in the back of the book, I would have had an easier time.

[Ralph Britton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had not heard of John Galt or The Entail (1822) before I picked up a copy of the Oxford English Novels edition edited by Ian Gordon in a charity book shop. I was amazed at the quality of Galt’s writing. The theme is tragic, the corrupting effect of the greed and the obsession with regaining an ancestral estate. The main character of the first volume, Claud, is determined to recover the estate his grandfather and father lost, and to this he sacrifices his children, his peace of mind and his sincere religious belief. The entail, designed to reunite the different parts of the estate exerts a baleful influence even to the next generation. Claud realises what he has done too late to make reparation and he dies in despair, struggling unsuccessfully to sign a legal document that will so something to help the son he has disinherited. His youngest son George, colder, more calculating and hypocritical, destroys his brother Walter by having him declared insane and deposing him from the farm where he was happy. Walter is relegated to a flat in Glasgow, where he is miserable. Walter, the ‘haverel’ is a naïve, childlike man, not capable of understanding the law or managing business, but he is handsome, good natured, happy in his marriage and loves his wife and daughter. Claud has managed to establish legally his ability to inherit as part of his plan to reunite the estate. When Walter’s wife and daughter die he is distraught and George takes the opportunity to have him certified and get control of the estate, only to be frustrated by events he cannot control.
Galt’s treatment of his main characters is superb. Claud is shown with real depth, the character of Walter, sometimes comic, sometimes affecting is an unusually sympathetic treatment in fiction of someone who lacks full mental ability. George is a well developed and convincing character, but the third triumph of the novel is The Liddy – Grizel, the wife of Claud. In her Galt shows his mastery of dialect used for sharp observation and often for comic effect. To appreciate this English readers need an edition with notes that explain the dialect. Besides the common dialect terms that come naturally to a woman of a respectable country family The Liddy has an extensive and inaccurate grasp of Scots law and religion, and her constant hilarious malapropisms can’t be appreciated without knowledge of the words she is mangling. The Liddy has a strong sense of her own importance and is always ready to assert it, but she grows in stature through the book and her strong sense of justice and her humanity make a telling counterweight to Claud and George. One strength of the novel is the Scot’s dialect in the characters’ speech; Galt uses varied degrees of it to differentiate their education and status in the community, often to comic effect.
Unfortunately The Entail has its flaws. Though there is a fine gallery of minor characters some major ones get very conventional treatment. Charles, Claud’s disinherited first son, seems in the novel to be a means to an end rather than interesting in his own right. The lovers who finally inherit the estate get a cursory romantic treatment, almost as if Galt finds them slightly ridiculous. Galt is much happier with the schemers and grotesques. Another, more damaging flaw is not entirely Galt’s fault. He was under pressure from Blackwood, his publisher, to develop more plot, add dramatic incident and romantic colour to the story. Towards the end, when Galt moved nearer to Blackwood his influence predominated, and we get Highland second sight and a melodramatic shipwreck to round off the plot with poetic justice. This part reads like a poor version of Walter Scott.
I should not want to leave any prospective reader with the idea that these defects outweigh the surprising depth and power of the main theme. I was reminded of Gogol and my edition’s blurb mentions Dostoevsky. The comparison is not absurd; I think any reader who, like me, has never heard of Galt will be amazed by the best parts of the novel. Scott read the novel three times and Byron was deeply moved by it. They were not wrong.

[John Woolley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The language is very interesting, with the unfamiliar west-Scots dialect in full view. (Thank goodness for the notes in the World's Classics edition.) As a novel, it's rather defective, with the only really sympathetic characters on-stage only late or not much, and the unsympathetic main character off-stage for much of the book. Ane the third "book", of three, gets kind of melodramatic, and is padded out a bit with extraneous narrative. Still, I enjoyed it, and I'm glad I read it.