WALTER SCOTT.  (1771-1832).


 Scott, the "great romancer," was trained as a lawyer. Steeped in the traditions and customs of the Scottish highlands, Scott's novels are backdropped with the events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and set with scenes laid out in remote and uncultivated districts. His novels are filled with superstitious and mannerly characters, entangled with the intrigues of war, religion, and politics. Though Scott wrote verse he is at his best when writing prose. Scott "told his story in incident, and not in reflection or in adjective."

 Scott discovered that, indeed, facts are better than fiction; he wrote of events from real life and not "the fine-spun cobwebs of the brain." Scott's writings were politically based, he equated the mobs of the previous centuries to the "modern rabble" of his day, those who were rising up against tradition and custom such as the mobs of the French Revolution. He backed his friends who had a "horror of all reform, civil, political or religious." During his time he was a most popular figure with numerous readers and admirers, "quarrelling which of his novels is the best, opposing character to character, quoting passage against passage." William Hazlitt thought Scott to be a genius, but one "who took the wrong side and defended it by unfair means."

 (These notes mostly made from Hazlitt's The Spirit of the Age; also see Hazlitt's The Plain Speaker for additional comments on Scott. For another essay on Scott, see Bagehot's Literary Studies.) Sir Walter Scott was a prolific novelist, whose writing combined ordinary people and historical events, thus mixing cultures and classes. He is credited with the creation of the historical novel genre. Scott began his career as a lawyer. From 1799 to 1832, he was Sheriff of Kelkirkshire, a position that gave him the time and financial freedom to write. Scott was made a baronet in 1820, and two years later directed George IV's state visit to Scotland.

In 1797, at the age of 26, Scott married Charlotte Margaret Carpenter. He was struck by her beauty and grace when they first met in Gilsland, during a tour of the English lakes, and quickly decided to ask for her hand. In a letter requesting his parents blessing of the marriage, Scott wrote, "Without flying into raptures, for I must assure you that my judgment as well as my affections are consulted upon this occasion C without flying into raptures, then, I may safely assure you, that her temper is sweet and cheerful, her understanding good, and, what I know will give you pleasure, her principles of religion very serious."

In Edinburgh, the couple indulged their love of theater, and when they later moved to a cottage outside the city, they cultivated a garden and Scott's own poetry:

Those who knew him were impressed with Scott's character. Sir John Stoddart met the novelist during a tour of Scotland and remarked of him: "a man of native kindness and cultivated talent, passing the intervals of a learned profession amidst scenes highly favourable to his poetic inspirations, not in churlish and rustic solitude, but in the daily exercise of the most precious sympathies as a husband, a father, and a friend." Although troubled by debt for much of his life, Scott was known as an hospitable entertainer. Lady Scott, his wife for twenty-nine years, of whom Scott wrote, "faithful and true companion of my fortunes, good and bad, for so many years," died in May of 1826. Businessman, historian, novelist, lawyer, poet and familyman, Sir Walter Scott continued writing all his life, despite failing health in the years before his death in 1832.

Works
As the creator of the historical novel, Sir Walter Scott's influence on literature is considerable. Scott began his writing career as poet, editing a book of Scottish ballads and later publishing his own. He moved to epic poems, which are gaining respect today although in his time were considered inferior to those of his contemporaries. He was also a respected biographer, and wrote editions on Dryden and Swift which remained definitive for decades. His travel memoir, Travels in Greece was published in 1920.

Although his range was considerable, as a writer, Sir Walter Scott is best known for his novels. The stories are set in his homeland, sometimes depicting Scott's contemporary Scotland, and sometimes medieval Scotland. They are romantic and mythic, depicting culture clashes alongside affairs of the heart.

Two have recently been adapted for the screen. Rob Roy, in 1995, starred Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange. The epic Ivanhoe, popular in literaturestudies, was made into an A&E miniseries.
Novels by Sir Walter Scott :
Ivanhoe (1791)
The Fortunes of Nigel (1822)
Peveril of the Peak (1822)
Quentin Durward (1823)
Redgauntlet (1824)
St Ronan's Well (1824)
The Betrothed (1825)
The Talisman (1825)
Woodstock (1826)
Anne of Geierstein (1828)
The Fair Maid of Perth (1828)
Guy Mannering (1815)
The Antiquary (1816)
Old Mortality (1816)
Rob Roy (1817)
A Legend of Montrose (1819)
The Heart of Midlothian (1819)
The Bride of Lammermoor (1819)
The Monastery (1820)
The Abbot (1820)
Kenilworth (1821)

The pirate (1822)

WALTER SCOTT´S ACHIEVEMENT

Sir Walter Scott as a writer is famous for both his poetry and his prose. Very few writers in world literature enjoy such a distinction. He possessed a poetic faculty always real, often great and sometimes quite consummate.

In his prose works Sir Walter has the high honour of creating the historical novel. He added to the list of imaginary personages more and greater figures than had been added by anyone else except possibly Shakespeare. He infused into the novel a tradition of moral and intellectual well-being, of manliness and truth, of honour, freedom and courtesy.

And such is the man, a man of moral and intellectual integrity, of truth, honour and courtesy. Very rarely in his life did he fail by being unkind. He never failed in this way towards anyone humbler than himself. In spite of his outstanding achievements and honours accorded him by high and low, Scot and others, he remained humble. He did not rank his own achievements as a writer very high. And this was a writer whose appeal to his age was immediate and universal, and to all succeeding ages a writer who has been translated into many tongues and been so continuously reprinted in so many lands.

He had his weak points too. He did not understand the Catholic religion; when he was so well received in Italy he was all the more grateful for it, as he confessed he had not always treated the Catholic religion with respect. Then in the affair of the bankruptcy of Ballantyne in which he was so involved, his aversion to setting his affairs in order seems to have contributed to the catastrophe. As Lockhart writes: 'He must pay the penalty as well as reap the glory of this lifelong abstraction of reverie' which was the inevitable corollary of his genius. But what outstanding honour and rectitude he showed in resolutely determining with his own hand to pay off every penny of debt; as he said in his famous words for all time: 'My own right hand shall pay my debt.'
 

Perhaps the best tribute was that paid to him by an uncle, when Scott was at the height of his popularity and fame: 'God bless you, Walter, my man! You have risen to be great. But you were always good.'Legal and Literary Activities, 1795-1797

Now in his twenty-third year (1793) Scott was studying and translating from German, notably the historical works of Burger and Goethe and he was a great admirer of the latter. Later this admiration was mutual and, in a letter to Scott in 1827, Goethe spoke favourably of the life of Napoleon just then published by Scott.
LEGAL AND LITERARY ACTIVITIES ( 1795-1797 )
At this time the French revolution stimulated Scott's patriotism which features so often in his works. Yet it is a patriotism which is not narrow-minded but elevating. His military enthusiasm in defending his native country from a threatened danger of invasion found scope when he joined a body of volunteer cavalry. In 1805 when there was a false alarm of an invasion he rode one hundred miles in a day, a feat not unworthy of his moss-trooping hard-riding ancestors. They would have approved of him.

He was also working at the Bar and making good progress. The regular business habits he now acquired stood him later in good stead when he found that so much was expected and demanded of him in his literary writings.

His legal duties did not take up all his time. During the vacations he visited the Border country and also the Perthshire Highlands. He met many interesting people who told him much about bygone days and ways. All this was later put to good use in his narrative poems and novels, as well as in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. With his great interest in the past, Scott kept a watchful eye open for anything he came across of historical interest. Thus he acquired the large old Border war horn hanging still in the armoury at Abbotsford. With his wealth of historical knowledge and through meeting original characters on his excursions Scott became famous for his powers of story-telling and was soon known among his friends as Duns Scotus, after the famous Franciscan scholar of the thirteenth century.

Now in his early twenties, Scott had grown to be tall and strong; his figure was both powerful and graceful with broad chest and strong arms. He had a noble peaked head with light brown hair, grey-blue eyes, a deep voice and a pleasant Border burr. When he smiled his whole face lit up with a kindly expression. He was much attracted to. Williamina, the charming daughter of Sir J. Stuart-Belsches of Fettercairn in Kincardineshire, and they became very friendly with each other. Scott proposed marriage to her, but eventually in 1797 she married Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, Aberdeenshire. It was a hard blow for Scott. His natural fortitude came to the rescue and he recovered. It seems too he made his love the subject of some verses, such as the lyric 'The violet in her greenwood bower'.


        
 
        MARRIAGE-LITERARY FAME ( 1797-1806 )   
        In this same year, 1797, on Christmas Eve Scott married the lady of his heart, Margaret Charlotte Charpentier, the daughter of a French refugee whom he first saw in Cumberland that autumn. She was an attractive girl with dark brown eyes, masses of black hair and a fine figure. As Churchill says about his marriage and future: 'I married and lived happily ever after'; one can say the same of Scott, apart from his later financial worries six years before he died. His wife shared his life most loyally, was the mother of two sons and two daughters, was the repository of her husband's plans, watched carefully over his health and was a brave, mirthful and kindly companion. Like his great compatriot, Robert Burns, Scott was blessed in his wife. When she died in 1826, Scott tells in his Journal that his heart must break.

The young couple took up house in Edinburgh and finally came to live at No. 39 North Castle Street, till 1826. Scott was busy with his legal work but also found time to translate Goethe's Gotz von Berlichingen. He started writing some ballads, among them being Glenfinlas and The Eve of St John. In 1799 his dear father died and also the Sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire. Scott was appointed to succeed the latter. During this same year his first child, his daughter Charlotte Sophia, was born.

His official work in Selkirkshire helped him also to set about his collection of the old Border ballads energetically. This enabled him to publish in 1802 two volumes of his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border and a third volume in 1803.

As he was legally bound to reside for at least four months annually in his sheriffdom, Scott, who had taken a country cottage at Lasswade near Edinburgh upon his marriage, now took the lease of the property of Ashiestiel, on the River Tweed near Selkirk, in 1804. His family now consisted of Walter, born in 1801 and Anne, born in 1803 as well as Charlotte Sophia already mentioned. In his new home Scott found a refuge where he could bring out from the treasures of his well-stocked mind new things and old. The beloved Border country, his helpful friends such as Wordsworth and James Hogg, the 'Ettrick Shepherd' whom Scott met about this time and highly regarded, the dear society of his affectionate wife and family, his growing reputation in legal circles, all these combined in the bringing forth in 1805 of his first great narrative poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel. With the Lay Scott became famous and the most popular poet of the day. Fox and Pitt alike praised it as did many lesser folk.

The success of the Lay made Scott decide that literature should be the main business in his life. A fortunate decision, for himself, Scotland and the world. When a second edition of the Lay was called for, Messrs Longman the publishers offered £500 for the copyright and 'added £100 in their own unsolicited kindness to supply the loss of a fine horse which broke down suddenly while the author was riding with one of the worthy publishers'. Scott deeply appreciated this; he had a great love of animals as did his fellow Scot, Robert Burns. Scott had an extraordinary attraction for dogs. There was once a hen which followed him about as did the donkeys belonging to his daughter Sophia, and once a little pig wanted to attach itself to him.
 


                                                      
 
 

     THE FAMOUS POET ( 1808-1812 )

    In 1808 Scott published his edition of Dryden in eighteen volumes and Marmion, that great tale in verse of chivalry, culminating in the great national tragedy of Flodden in 1513. In addition to an affection for Britain especially during the tremendous war then being waged with Napoleon, Scott had a still deeper and more abiding affection for Scotland. As he wrote:

Breathes there a man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself has said,
This is my own, my native land.
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,

Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of my sires! What mortal hand
Can e'er untie the filial band
That knits me to thy rugged strand!

Such sentiments Burns, that other immortal poet of Scotland, would have been proud to have written. And we are reminded of that great song of our own age, Scotland the Brave, which echoes these sentiments:

Land of my high endeavour,
Land of the shining river,
Land of my heart for ever,
Scotland, the brave.

Marmion was the tonic which the nation needed to strengthen its heart in the dark times of the gruelling Napoleonic War, just like the famous speeches of Churchill during the darker times of the first two years of the Second World War. Scott and Churchill were two men who would have greatly appreciated each other, as Churchill appreciated that great Scots patriot who was his contemporary, Sir Harry Lauder.

Scott had long been thinking of a Highland pendant to the Lay and Marmion. In 1810 he visited the Highlands, rode the course his hero took from the mouth of Loch Venachar to Stirling Castle, to make sure he could do it in the three hours mentioned, and in May of that year gave it to the world under the title of The Lady of the Lake. It was a wonderful success. The Trossachs in Perthshire became a classic country, from then to this day drawing ever more people to love and appreciate the Scottish Highlands and their people and culture. Today the poem is still fresh and entrancing. It foreshadowed what his later novels revealed - his Shakespearian gift of producing little snatches of music which fit into place with exquisite and effortless aptness:

'The will to do, the strength to dare'; Soldier rest! Thy warfare o'er,/Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking...'; 'Hail to the Chief, who in triumph advances. . .'; 'Come one, come all! This rock shall fly/From its firm base as soon as I.'


 
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SCOTT  AND SCOTLAND.

Scots hold four men high in the glory of their country's story - Wallace and Bruce, Burns and Scott. Wallace and Bruce forged the independent nation, Scotland. Burns and Scott gave that nation an assured place in world literature.

Carlyle, another great Scottish writer, said of Sir Walter: 'No Scotchman of his time was more entirely Scottish than Walter Scott.' Indeed if ever a nation found expression in one man, it was in the case of Scotland and Scott. Till his time the Highlanders and the Lowlanders of Scotland looked on each other with distrust and dislike. It was Scott who changed all this. It was Scott who made them both sons of Scotland. It was Scott who made all Soots proud of their language, whether Gaelic or Broad Scots, of their country and of themselves. Then came the Peninsular War against Napoleon in the first decade of the nineteenth century. The Highland Clansmen charged on the battlefields along with the warriors from the Lothians and the west, Tweeddale and the east. Now instead of Lowlanders, Borderers or Highlanders, all whether MacDonalds, Camerons, Frasers, Stewarts, Carruths, Burns or Scotts called themselves simply Scots. All this is due in the main to Sir Walter Scott. High honour indeed.

So we now take our leave of the great Scott, who makes one humbly grateful to be a Scot.
 
 

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