Nineteenth Century Novelists - Sir Walter Scott - Part 1

On my bookshelves and in my collecting of antique books, I have a passion for writers who made novel readers out of millions of people. As a writer, I can think of nothing more exciting than the possibility that some you write could have influence on others and even future generations.

Sir Walter Scott, more than any other writer of his time, made novel readers out of millions of people. He set the style for romantic stories told with vigor and swiftness, and with a sense of reality. The very list of his works is imposing.

Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on August 15, 1771. When he was only eighteen months old, he suffered an attack of meningitis, and for a while it seemed that the handsome little boy would never walk.

He did recover, though his right leg was withered, and remained so through his life.

Walter was the ninth of twelve children. His father was an attorney in Edinburgh, a man of stern religious piety who made Sunday a day of penance. Walter's mother was a gentler soul.

She found time to make Walter read aloud to her, sometimes from old ballads, sometimes from translations of Homer. The poetry and the tales delighted the heart of the imaginative little boy.

When he was about seven Walter Scott went to school. He was also coached by a tutor at home. This man "thought it almost a sin to open a profane play or poem."

Accordingly, the little boy had to wait until the household was at dinner before he dared creep into his mother's dressing room, take down a volume of Shakespeare that he had found there, and read it by the firelight.

As the boy grew older his studies were extended, so were his private explorations in the realms of romance. One day these excursions stood him in good stead. Robert Burns had come to Edinburgh, and everyone was on fire to meet Scotland's greatest poet. Not least in enthusiasm was fifteen year old Walter Scott.

At last he had his wish. Many distinguished people were present, and the boy sat silent, feeding his eyes on the handsome plowman-poet. It happened that Burns' attention was caught by a picture of a dead soldier.

He was deeply moved by it, and asked who had written the lines inscribed beneath the print. None of the learned people could remember, and Walter Scott, who did, was too modest to address the great man himself. He whispered the author's name to a friend. We can readily believe Scott when, thirty years later, we find him saying that he still remembers Burns' look as he turned to thank the shy boy.

In legal studies, in reading and in horseback excursions about the country, Walter Scott spent his youth. On these "raids" he and a friend would seek out some place of historic interest, perhaps an old battleground or castle, and try to discover new legends about it from those who lived nearby.

By the time he was called to the bar, Scott was already a fair antiquary. He had read avidly Percy's Reliques, a collection of old border ballads. Scott later imitate the ballad style in some of his own poems.

At that time there was a danger of a French invasion, and Scot gathered together a volunteer cavalry corps. The drills were at five o'clock in the morning. When they were over he had to hurry home, get into wig and gown, and go to work at Parliament House. Yet, his notebooks show that he was reading hungrily all the time, with an appetite which covered a wide range.

In 1795 Scott turned a poem by Burger from German into English verse, and later translated some of Goethe. He said that he found himself "almost by accident" engaged on literary work. To the end of his days he held a legal appointment, and was careful not to neglect its drudgery, but in the early hours of the morning and on holidays the young lawyer was writing poetry.

In 1797 Scott married Charlotte Charpentier, a beautiful and spirited French girl, whose mother had fled from the Revolution and brought up her daughter in England. The Scott's had four children.

Scott was made deputy sheriff of Selkirkshire, and most of his life afterward was spent on horseback, surrounded by ponies and children and his favorite dogs.

For fifteen years and more after his marriage, Scott wrote verse in his spare time and the world listened enchanted to:

• The Lay Of The Last Minstrel
• The Lady Of The Lake
• Marmion
• Scottish Border Ballads.

Yet, their author was not satisfied. Lord Byron in England, was showing poetic genius far surpassing his own, and Scott determined to leave the field to the better man. One day chance brought this decision to a head.

Scott was searching his desk for fishing flies when he came across some chapters of a story he had begun many years ago and never finished.

Now he decided to take the prose and turn it into a novel. The novel was finished and published under the title Waverly, with no author's name. It's success was immediate and overwhelming. This was in 1814.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the effect made by the wonderful stories of which Waverley was the first. People were seen reading the new parts in the streets, and fighting for them in the bookshops. During the Peninsular War, an officer read Scott to his men while they lay flat on the ground under fire. The traffic into Scotland to see the scenery of the Waverly novels, for Scott had described it vividly.

The novels by which Scott will live while the English language is spoken were written between the years of 1814 and 1829. However, if we are to appreciate Scott's range of talent and productive power, we must remember that during the whole of the fifteen years in which he was pouring forth the stories that charmed his own generation, he was also still writing poems, literary criticism and history, and editing publications with a historical interest.

It is a long held rumor that Shakespeare dashed off his plays without blotting a line. They came spontaneously from a full charged mind and supposedly it was that way with Scott.

The very abundance of Scott's ideas demanded quick expression and drove the willing pen. So it was with all his novels written during the years of vigor.

From his boyhood Scott had had a strong sense of the romantic past, linked with a keen sense of place or locality. He found, too, a deep pleasure in the study of human character. His rapid sweep of mind surveyed history in broad and true outlines, but was not fettered by small exactness.

He claimed a large liberty which almost approached looseness. Some critics of literary style may even accuse him of careless cont ructions of speech, or even of stumbles in grammar.

These charges are all made, though with some daring, also against Shakespeare in his grandeur, and they are cast with less reserve against the homelier writings of Walter Scott. They in no way take away from his real greatness.

The main truth about his narrative is that he was a natural story teller. As soon as the movement of a tale by Scott begins we cease to feel that we are reading a book. We are looking on a scene in which ral people move and talk and have their being.

Perhaps some part of this intense sense of reality may come from the fact that Scott's imagination seemed to work most freely when he had in truth some actual scene, or occurrence, or character, on which to build. He was at once most free and real when he was placing his characters in scenes he had visited, where a fragment of history or of legend gave him a starting ground.

If, in thinking of Scott's fine array of stories, we notice the order in which they were written, we cannot fail to observe some falling off in interest and in quality of writing after the first five years.

There is is a more decided general falling off after the first ten years of tale telling. These change correspond to some extent with the troubles of the novelist's busy every day life.

When I read the classics and author's like Sir Walter Scott, I like to think about the lessons we can still learn from authors of long ago and inspiration they have for all of us. From Sir Walter Scott, I have understood:

• That to a writer, does not mean you don't live your life in a bubble, it's in real everyday details of our ordinary lives that give breath to the extraordinary --- it keeps things real, both for us and our readers.
• Inspiration is all around us.