BOOKS
The Great Unread
CAROLA OMAN
The death of Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford on an idyllic early autumn day of 1832 caused a world-wide sensation. 'Almost every newspaper that announced this event in Scotland, and many in England,' wrote his son-in-law, 'had signs of moufning usual on the demise of a king.' It was not surprising that in France, where his novels haa enjoyed enormous popularity, the same example should have been followed. (There was also the consideration, widely credited, that he had given to a country who appreciated it, the tartan.) But the outstanding effort was produced by an American newspaper in the South. The Richmond Examiner edged all columns in black, an honour hitherto reserved for the passing of a President of the United States while in office.
A learned friend said in my hearing the other day, that where you find in a house a large collection of stuffed birds in glass cases and a complete edition of the Waverley novels it is a very promising sign for the an- tique-collector. It means that there has not been a sale in the house for over eighty years. I suppose that is about the time it took for the Great Unknown to become the Great Unread. The change did not come at all suddenly. At Hatfield House in January 1835 there were staged 'the Waverley Novels Tableaux Vivants.' The Iron Duke sat in the front row; there were patriotic prologues spoken by young hopefuls. It was melan- choly that there would be no more Waverley novels, to help invalids through a complete winter. Busy merchants would not be seen any more scanning the sheets of The Fortunes of Nigel hot from the press as they hurried to their places of gainful oc- cupation.
Sir Walter's range had been tremendous. _ He seemed to have produced a book for everybody. His stories were set in the Highlands and Lovaands, Shetlands, Orkneys, London, Warwick, Oxford, the Isle of Wight and the Isle of Man, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Windsor, Northumberland and Cumberland, Syria, Constantinople, France, Flanders, Holland, India, Switzerland, Germany. ... His powers of observation had been fascinating. 'It's commonly him' had announced an admiring young small son, 'that sees the hare sitting.' To be sure, his young heroes had not been very inspiring; he had himself dismissed Edward Waverley as 'a sneaking piece of imbecility'. But then look at Shakespeare's young gallants. They were much worse. (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch did not take long to discover that there were no Gentlemen in Verona.) Even the diction of his historical characters troubled critics. G. M. Young said that 'King Richard and Wilfred talk like our great-grandfathers, and Gurth and Wamba like nothing on earth.'
Scott had been responsible for the Golden Age of the historical novel. The floodgates had opened and a good deal of rubbish had come down on the flood. This may have helped to dim his popularity. But nobody could deny that he had excelled in bringing Great Ones upon the scene: Mary, Queen of Scots, Caroline of Ansbach, James I, the Prince . . . No Southron author had been able to do that. It was strange, but un-
deniable, that he seemed to have become definitely a baneful influence on the historical novel. His imitators had managed to copy and magnify all his errors but utterly missed his magic in a form of narrative with much the oldest origins. Mediaeval romances had been full of missing heirs, painfully faithful lovers, Great Ones in disguise—just like Scott. The novel of contemporary life, still held by his admirers to be his best medium, really could hardly be said to have begun in Britain before Richardson: And then, for up-to-date intelligent ap- praisal as the twentieth century unfolded, he had become very long-winded. `If only,' sighed an erudite dowager in a Danish castle with a library in eight languages: 'If only dear Sir Walter and Goethe could have said it a little shorter.'
During nine months' recent stay in America, Mr Moray McLaren, a veteran Scottish author and a devoted Scott- ' ite—whose Sir Walter Scott: The Man-and Patriot (Heinemann 45s) is published this week—examined the problem why the Waverley novels, which had such a hypnotic effect at the date of their publication, and for some decades following, are now in almost total eclipse. 'It's a pity,' he was courteously told, 'Scott has reached an all-time record low with us. No one reads him, no one even prints him. Oh, yes, there are the standard collected editions of his novels on the shelves . . . but who takes them out? The last novel of his to be printed here ... was Ivanhoe and that only for the reason that it was sometimes set as a subject for school ex- aminations. But they've stopped printing Ivanhoe now. It's a great pity. But perhaps this bicentenary and the whole story of Scott, the extraordinary story of the man, as presented by your writers and ours here in America, may arouse public interest among us again. I hope so.'
It must be remembered that the novels of Dickens in their day had been greeted with almost as much acclaim. It was said that when a vessel from England arrived off the shores of the New World it was hailed with shouts of 'Is Little Dorrit .dead?' And it was not only in America that Scott's novels had been poisoned for ever for a rising genera- tion by the choice of Ivanhoe as a holiday task. For those who,were hardy enough to put to sea again, in maturity, quite uninstructed, there came lukewarm ac- ceptance of 'the costume -novels'. - Some grudging admiration came for his master- pieces about his own land (lamentably des- cribed as 'his lively pictures of Scotch low life'). A few people became addicts for ever. Mr. McLaren decided not to attempt another Life for the bicentenary. He had been told of a meisterwerk which had already occupied a distinguished biographer for over twelve years and was likely to be issued as a three. decker. For his bicentenary book, to appear simultaneously in Great Britain andAmerica, his choice was a study of Scott's influence on his contemporaries, of translations of his works, and of Scotland's debt to Scott at a crucial period in her history. He would assume that the main events of his story were well known. He. would not attempt detailed criticism of his work, verse or prose.
Sir Walter Scott: The Man and Patriot is one of the first commemorative books to appear. It is attractively produced and should receive a warm welcome from the au- diences for whom it was designed. It opens with the reception of the news of Scott's death in Edinburgh. There are chapters about the city as it was in his infancy, his years while he was `makin' himself, and his courtships of Williamina Belsches and Charlotte Carpenter (rather unromantically handled). And then in relentless swift succession come his first best-seller, his retirement from epic verse, partly in deference to Byron, his skill as a host to George 1V and many more, his career as a novelisl, enveloped in the gauze of anonymity which was in itself a cause of even better best-selling. There is a mercifully short attempt to dispose of the Ballantyne, Blackwood, Cadell and Hurst and Robinson financial imbroglios which if set out in con- scientious detail are enough to make even a confirmed Scottite wish to go under the table and howl like a dog. Abbotsford, Ruin, the Great Struggle, the Last Journey finish the story. 'Scott Today and a Hundred Years Ago' includes a description of the centenary celebrations of 1871. 'London has never had a Shakespearian festival of the size and ,glamour of-Edinburgh's on Scott.'
Twelve little Scotts had been born in rapid succession, but of the first clutch of seven five had died before the parents sadry sup- posed that Anchor Close, College Wynd was not a healthy neighbourhood. They moved, and Scott never again lived in the most evocative quarter of 'mine own romantic town', though it was always in his view, as graphically described by Mr McLaren. 'The shell of it was there for him to look at like a drop-curtain against the southern sky whenever he cared to raise his eyes from Princes Street.' In probably the largest monument ever erected to an author he sits with his back to the Castle, with the Old Town streaming down the Rock : beyond lie the hills and mountains he immortalised.
Mr McLaren pays the usual due tribute to Lockhart's Life, which however man- ipulated, for the best of reasons, 'some still place as a biography in our language second only to Boswell's Johnson.' How strange it is, that only these two examples-are generally brought forward as patterns of English high biography. Two gems of the first water long preceded them, one by another son-in-law, William Roper's Life. Arraignement and Death of that Mirrour of all true Honour and Venue, Syr Thomas More and the Life of Wolsey, by George Cavendish, his gentleman-usher.
Mr McLaren's short bibliography is disap- pointing. He realises that the 1932 centenary of Scott's death did produce fresh biographies, of which John Buchan's has held place for nearly forty years, but the an- niversary material, some of it valuable, has never yet been fully used. Sir Herbert Grierson's twelve massive volumes of Scott's letters still await appreciation. Mr McLaren went to press too soon for Mr Cockshut's Achievement of Walter Scott and Mr Arthur Melvill Clark's Sir Walter Scott: The Formative Years; but Janet Adam Smith's Scott and the Idea of Scotland came in 1963. And in 1943 came Dr James Corson's Bibliography of Sir Walter Scott: A classified and annotated list of books and articles relating to his life and works. This invaluable volume should be the bible of the Scott biographer.
During the late spring came perhaps the return of a dove to the ark. A film of a novel by Sir Walter Scott was announced for British television. Believe it or not, it was Ivanhoe again, the bogey of the Edwardian schoolboy, the book which some believe to have done more than any other to put the modern reader off the Wizard of the North. On they all trooped, Isaac of York, Fair Rowena and dark Rebecca, wicked Sir Brian and Ivanhoe himself, as brave as ever if no brighter. They all really seemed to have worn rather well. Is it possible that by means of a new medium thousands may come again to feel an old magic? But 0 ye Men of Power, do not let us have Quentin Durward or The Talisman. Send us Old Mortality, and Guy Manneritig, and The Heart of Midlothian.
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