179 - ] English Literature
Walter Scott
As
an advocate, judge, and legal administrator by profession, he combined writing
and editing with his daily work as Clerk of Session and Sheriff-Depute of
Selkirkshire. He was prominent in Edinburgh's Tory establishment, active in the
Highland Society, long time a president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
(1820–1832), and a vice president of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
(1827–1829). His knowledge of history and literary facility equipped him to
establish the historical novel genre as an exemplar of European Romanticism. He
became a baronet of Abbotsford in the County of Roxburgh, Scotland, on 22 April
1820; the title became extinct upon his son's death in 1847.
At
age 25, he published his first work, The Chase, and William and Helen (1796), a
translation of two Romantic ballads by the German balladeer G.A. Bürger. In
1799, he was appointed sheriff depute of the county of Selkirk, and he held
this position for the rest of his life. In 1806, he was appointed clerk to the
Court of Session in Edinburgh.
Scott
became an instant best seller with historical narrative poems like The Lay of
the Last Minstrel (1805), followed by The Lady of the Lake (1810), Rokeby
(1813), and The Lord of the Isles (1815). He also wrote immensely successful
historical novels. Waverley, which he published anonymously in 1814, is now
considered the first historical novel in Western literature. This story
revolves around the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Scott’s many other novels
include Ivanhoe (1819), The Heart of Midlothian (1818), Rob Roy (1817), The
Antiquary (1816), and Guy Mannering (1815).
After
living in Naples, Italy in 1831, Scott returned home as his health declined,
and he died in Abbotsford, Roxburgh, Scotland, on September 21, 1832.
Early life
Sir Walter Scott (born August 15, 1771, Edinburgh,
Scotland—died September 21, 1832, Abbotsford, Roxburgh, Scotland) Scottish
novelist, poet, historian, and biographer Scott’s father was a lawyer, and his
mother was the daughter of a physician. He was the ninth child (six having died
in infancy) of Walter Scott (1729–1799), a member of a cadet branch of the Clan
Scott and a Writer to the Signet, and his wife Anne Rutherford, a sister of
Daniel Rutherford and a descendant both of the Clan Swinton and of the
Haliburton family (descent from which granted Walter's family the hereditary
right of burial in Dryburgh Abbey).From his earliest years, Scott was fond of
listening to his elderly relatives’ accounts and stories of the Scottish
Border, and he soon became a voracious reader of poetry, history, drama, and
fairy tales and romances. He had a remarkably retentive memory and astonished
visitors by his eager reciting of poetry. His explorations of the neighbouring
countryside developed in him both a love of natural beauty and a deep
appreciation of the historic struggles of his Scottish forebears.
Walter
Scott was a third-floor apartment on College Wynd in the Old Town, Edinburgh, a
narrow alleyway leading from the Cowgate to the gates of the old University of
Edinburgh.
Walter
was, through the Haliburtons, a cousin of the London property developer James
Burton (d. 1837), who was born with the surname 'Haliburton', and of the same's
son the architect Decimus Burton. Walter became a member of the Clarence Club,
of which the Burtons were members.
Scott's
childhood at Sandyknowes, in the shadow of Smailholm Tower, introduced him to
the tales and folklore of the Scottish Borders
A
childhood bout of polio in 1773 left Scott lame, a condition that would greatly
affect his life and writing .
To
improve his lameness he was sent in 1773 to live in the rural Scottish Borders,
at his paternal grandparents' farm at Sandyknowe, by the ruin of Smailholm
Tower, the earlier family home. Here, he was taught to read by his aunt Jenny
Scott and learned from her the speech patterns and many of the tales and
legends that later marked much of his work. In January 1775, he returned to
Edinburgh, and that summer with his aunt Jenny took spa treatment at Bath in
Somerset, Southern England, where they lived at 6 South Parade. In the winter
of 1776, he went back to Sandyknowe, with another attempt at a water cure at
Prestonpans the following summer.
In
1778, Scott returned to Edinburgh for private education to prepare him for
school and joined his family in their new house, one of the first to be built
in George Square. In October 1779, he began at the Royal High School in
Edinburgh (in High School Yards). He was by then well able to walk and explore
the city and the surrounding countryside. His reading included chivalric
romances, poems, history and travel books. He was given private tuition by
James Mitchell in arithmetic and writing, and learned from him the history of
the Church of Scotland with emphasis on the Covenanters.
In
1783, his parents, believing he had outgrown his strength, sent him to stay for
six months with his aunt Jenny at Kelso in the Scottish Borders: there he
attended Kelso Grammar School, where he met James Ballantyne and his brother
John, who later became his business partners and printers.
Scott
was educated at the high school at Edinburgh and also for a time at the grammar
school at Kelso. In 1786 he was apprenticed to his father as writer to the
signet, a Scots equivalent of the English solicitor (attorney). His study and
practice of law were somewhat desultory, for his immense youthful energy was
diverted into social activities and into miscellaneous readings in Italian,
Spanish, French, German, and Latin. After a very deeply felt early
disappointment in love, he married, in December 1797, Charlotte Carpenter, of a
French royalist family, with whom he lived happily until her death in 1826.
Appearance
As
a result of his early polio infection, Scott had a pronounced limp. He was
described in 1820 as "tall, well formed (except for one ankle and foot
which made him walk lamely), neither fat nor thin, with forehead very high,
nose short, upper lip long and face rather fleshy, complexion fresh and clear,
eyes very blue, shrewd and penetrating, with hair now silvery white".
Although a determined walker, he experienced greater freedom of movement on
horseback.
Student
Scott
began studying classics at the University of Edinburgh in November 1783, at the
age of 12, a year or so younger than most fellow students. In March 1786, aged
14, he began an apprenticeship in his father's office to become a Writer to the
Signet. At school and university Scott had become a friend of Adam Ferguson,
whose father Professor Adam Ferguson hosted literary salons. Scott met the
blind poet Thomas Blacklock, who lent him books and introduced him to the
Ossian cycle of poems by James Macpherson. During the winter of 1786–1787, a
15-year-old Scott met the Scots poet Robert Burns at one of these salons, their
only meeting. When Burns noticed a print illustrating the poem "The
Justice of the Peace" and asked who had written it, Scott alone named the
author as John Langhorne and was thanked by Burns. Scott describes the event in
his memoirs, where he whispers the answer to his friend Adam, who tells Burns;
another version of the event appears in Literary Beginnings.
When
it was decided that he would become a lawyer, he returned to the university to
study law, first taking classes in moral philosophy (under Dugald Stewart) and
universal history (under Alexander Fraser Tytler) in 1789–1790. During this
second university spell Scott became prominent in student intellectual
activities: he co-founded the Literary Society in 1789 and was elected to the Speculative
Society the following year, becoming librarian and secretary-treasurer a year
after.
After
completing his law studies, Scott took up law in Edinburgh. He made his first
visit as a lawyer's clerk to the Scottish Highlands, directing an eviction. He
was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1792. He had an unsuccessful love
suit with Williamina Belsches of Fettercairn, who married Scott's friend Sir
William Forbes, 7th Baronet. In February 1797, the threat of a French invasion
persuaded Scott and many of his friends to join the Royal Edinburgh Volunteer
Light Dragoons, where he served into the early 1800s, and was appointed
quartermaster and secretary. The daily drill practices that year, starting at 5
a.m., indicate the determination with which the role was undertaken.
Literary career, marriage and family
Scott
was prompted to take up a literary career by enthusiasm in Edinburgh in the
1790s for modern German literature. Recalling the period in 1827, Scott said
that he "was German-mad." In 1796, he produced English versions of
two poems by Gottfried August Bürger, Der wilde Jäger and Lenore, published as
The Chase, and William and Helen. Scott responded to the German interest at the
time in national identity, folk culture and medieval literature, which linked
with his own developing passion for traditional balladry. A favourite book
since childhood had been Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.
During the 1790s he would search in manuscript collections and on Border
"raids" for ballads from oral performance. With help from John
Leyden, he produced a two-volume Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border in 1802,
containing 48 traditional ballads and two imitations apiece by Leyden and
himself. Of the 48 traditionals, 26 were published for the first time. An
enlarged edition appeared in three volumes the following year. With many of the
ballads, Scott fused different versions into more coherent texts, a practice he
later repudiated. The Minstrelsy was the first and most important of a series
of editorial projects over the next two decades, including the medieval romance
Sir Tristrem (which Scott attributed to Thomas the Rhymer) in 1804, the works
of John Dryden (18 vols, 1808), and the works of Jonathan Swift (19 vols,
1814).
On
a trip to the English Lake District with old college friends, he met Charlotte
Charpentier (Anglicised to "Carpenter"), a daughter of Jean
Charpentier of Lyon in France and a ward of Lord Downshire in Cumberland, an
Anglican. After three weeks' courtship, Scott proposed and they were married on
Christmas Eve 1797 in St Mary's Church, Carlisle (now the nave of Carlisle
Cathedral). After renting a house in Edinburgh's George Street, they moved to
nearby South Castle Street. Their eldest child, Sophia, was born in 1799, and
later married John Gibson Lockhart. Four of their five children survived Scott
himself. His eldest son Sir Walter Scott, 2nd Baronet (1801–1847), inherited
his father's estates and possessions: on 3 February 1825 he married Jane
Jobson, only daughter of William Jobson of Lochore (died 1822) by his wife
Rachel Stuart (died 1863), heiress of Lochore and a niece of Lady Margaret
Ferguson. In 1799 Scott was appointed Sheriff-Depute of the County of Selkirk,
based at the courthouse in the Royal Burgh of Selkirk. In his early married
days Scott earned a decent living from his work as a lawyer, his salary as
Sheriff-Depute, his wife's income, some revenue from his writing, and his share
of his father's modest estate.
After
the younger Walter was born in 1801, the Scotts moved to a spacious
three-storey house at 39 North Castle Street, which remained his Edinburgh base
until 1826, when it was sold by the trustees appointed after his financial
ruin. From 1798, Scott had spent summers in a cottage at Lasswade, where he
entertained guests, including literary figures. It was there his career as an
author began. There were nominal residency requirements for his position of
Sheriff-Depute, and at first he stayed at a local inn during the circuit. In
1804, he ended his use of the Lasswade cottage and leased the substantial house
of Ashestiel, 6 miles (9.7 km) from Selkirk, sited on the south bank of the
River Tweed and incorporating an ancient tower house.
At
Scott's insistence the first edition of Minstrelsy was printed by his friend
James Ballantyne at Kelso. In 1798 James had published Scott's version of
Goethe's Erlkönig in his newspaper The Kelso Mail, and in 1799 included it and
the two Bürger translations in a privately printed anthology, Apology for Tales
of Terror. In 1800 Scott suggested that Ballantyne set up business in Edinburgh
and provided a loan for him to make the transition in 1802. In 1805, they
became partners in the printing business, and from then until the financial
crash of 1826 Scott's works were routinely printed by the firm.
Scott
was known for his fondness of dogs, and owned several throughout his life. Upon
his death, one newspaper noted "of all the great men who have loved dogs
no one ever loved them better or understood them more thoroughly". The
best known of Scott's dogs were Maida, a large stag hound, and Spice, a Dandie
Dinmont terrier described as having asthma, to which Scott gave particular
care. In a diary entry written at the height of his financial woes, Scott
described dismay at the prospect of having to sell them: "The thoughts of
parting from these dumb creatures have moved me more than any of the
reflections I have put down".
The
poet
Between
1805 and 1817 Scott produced five long, six-canto narrative poems, four shorter
independently published poems, and many small metrical pieces. Scott was by far
the most popular poet of the time until Lord Byron published the first two
cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812 and followed them up with his
exotic oriental verse narratives.
The
Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), in medieval romance form, grew out of Scott's
plan to include a long original poem of his own in the second edition of the
Minstrelsy: it was to be "a sort of Romance of Border Chivalry &
inchantment". He owed the distinctive irregular accent in four-beat metre
to Coleridge's Christabel, which he had heard recited by John Stoddart. (It was
not to be published until 1816) Scott was able to draw on his unrivalled
familiarity with Border history and legend acquired from oral and written sources
beginning in his childhood to present an energetic and highly coloured picture
of 16th-century Scotland, which both captivated the general public and with its
voluminous notes also addressed itself to the antiquarian student. The poem has
a strong moral theme, as human pride is placed in the context of the last
judgment with the introduction of a version of the "Dies irae" at the
end. The work was an immediate success with almost all the reviewers and with
readers in general, going through five editions in one year. The most
celebrated lines are the ones that open the final stanza:
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said ,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned ,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,
From wandering on a foreign strand!—
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell.
Three
years after The Lay Scott published Marmion (1808) telling a story of corrupt
passions leading up as a disastrous climax to the Battle of Flodden in 1513.
The main innovation involves prefacing each of the six cantos with an epistle
from the author to a friend: William Stewart Rose, The Rev. John Marriot,
William Erskine, James Skene, George Ellis, and Richard Heber: the epistles
develop themes of moral positives and special delights imparted by art. In an
unprecedented move, the publisher Archibald Constable purchased the copyright
of the poem for a thousand guineas at the beginning of 1807, when only the
first had been completed. Constable's faith was justified by the sales: the
three editions published in 1808 sold 8,000 copies. The verse of Marmion is
less striking than that of The Lay, with the epistles in iambic tetrameters and
the narrative in tetrameters with frequent trimeters. The reception by the
reviewers was less favourable than that accorded The Lay: style and plot were
both found faulty, the epistles did not link up with the narrative, there was
too much antiquarian pedantry, and Marmion's character was immoral. The most
familiar lines in the poem sum up one of its main themes: "O what a
tangled web we weave,/ When first we practice to deceive"
Scott's
meteoric poetic career peaked with his third long narrative, The Lady of the
Lake (1810), which sold 20,000 copies in the first year. The reviewers were
fairly favourable, finding the defects noted in Marmion largely absent. In some
ways it is more conventional than its predecessors: the narrative is entirely
in iambic tetrameters and the story of the transparently disguised James V
(King of Scots 1513‒42) predictable: Coleridge wrote to Wordsworth: 'The
movement of the Poem... is between a sleeping Canter and a Marketwoman's trot –
but it is endless – I seem never to have made any way – I never remember a
narrative poem in which I felt the sense of Progress so languid." But the
metrical uniformity is relieved by frequent songs and the Perthshire Highland
setting is presented as an enchanted landscape, which caused a phenomenal
increase in the local tourist trade. Moreover, the poem touches on a theme that
was to be central to the Waverley Novels: the clash between neighbouring
societies in different stages of development.
The
remaining two long narrative poems, Rokeby (1813), set in the Yorkshire estate
of that name belonging to Scott's friend J. B. S. Morritt during the Civil War
period, and The Lord of the Isles (1815), set in early 14th-century Scotland
and culminating in the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Both works had generally
favourable receptions and sold well, but without rivalling the huge success of
The Lady of the Lake. Scott also produced four minor narrative or
semi-narrative poems between 1811 and 1817: The Vision of Don Roderick (1811,
celebrating Wellington's successes in the Peninsular Campaign, with profits
donated to Portuguese war sufferers); The Bridal of Triermain (published
anonymously in 1813); The Field of Waterloo (1815); and Harold the Dauntless
(published anonymously in 1817).
Throughout
his creative life Scott was an active reviewer. Although himself a Tory he
reviewed for The Edinburgh Review between 1803 and 1806, but that journal's
advocacy of peace with Napoleon led him to cancel his subscription in 1808. The
following year, at the height of his poetic career, he was instrumental in
establishing a Tory rival, The Quarterly Review to which he contributed reviews
for the rest of his life.
In 1813 Scott was offered the position of Poet Laureate. He declined, feeling that "such an appointment would be a poisoned chalice," as the Laureateship had fallen into disrepute due to the decline in quality of work suffered by previous title holders, "as a succession of poetasters had churned out conventional and obsequious odes on royal occasions." He sought advice from the 4th Duke of Buccleuch, who counselled him to retain his literary independence. The position went to Scott's friend, Robert Southey.
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