Heart of Midlothian, The

Heart of Midlothian, The, a novel by Sir W. Scott, published 1818, as the 2nd series of Tales of My Landlord.

Scott has built one of his greatest novels on two historical incidents: the Porteous Riots, in which John Porteous, Commander of the Edinburgh City Guard, is dragged from the Edinburgh Tolbooth (‘the Heart of Midlothian’) and hanged by a mob after he has been pardoned for firing on the citizens at the hanging of Wilson, a convicted robber; and the story of Isobel Walker whose pardon for child murder, for which she had been sentenced to death, is obtained by her sister Helen, who walks to London to intercede for her with the Duke of Argyle. In the novel, the riot is engineered by George Staunton, an accomplice, under the name of Robertson, of the hanged Wilson, to release his lover, Effie Deans, who is imprisoned in the Tolbooth for child murder. Effie refuses to escape, stands trial and, since her sister, Jeanie, refuses to perjure herself to save her, is, like Isobel Walker, condemned to death. Jeanie sets out on foot for London to plead for her life and, after various vicissitudes and through the mediation of the Duke of Argyle, secures her sister's pardon from Queen Caroline. Effie, like her real-life model, eventually marries her seducer but, unlike her, did not actually kill her child, which was sold by the midwife to a vagrant woman whose daughter, Madge Wildfire, Staunton had also seduced. The child later unwittingly becomes his father's assassin. Jeanie eventually marries her faithful suitor, the Presbyterian minister, Reuben Butler.