by Allan Massie
The manly honesty of this answer impressed me deeply, for even then I caught a glimpse of the complexity of the heroic nature, and I recall to this day the ironic laugh and the quick embrace with which he concluded this confession.
Then I had been much in the Highlands, when they were wilder and less visited than they are today, and the grandeur of the scenery and character of the inhabitants had made a profound – I may say indelible – impression on me. It seemed to me that the clash of an ancient civilization, still abiding by old traditions and ways of life, with the more civil and developed state of society south of the Highland line, offered a subject of significance which I was competent to treat. Though the philosophy of history had been a sealed book to me in my hot youth, yet I had gradually assembled much of what was striking and picturesque in historical narrative, and then in riper years attended more to the deduction of general principles. I was therefore in maturity furnished with a powerful host of examples, which I might use in illustration of them. I was, in short, like a gamester who keeps a good hand till he knows how to play it. Believing also that the Jacobite Risings, and especially the high, inspiring, and yet melancholy story of the ’45, offered a fit subject for a Romance that might please and touch the public, it was a natural theme for me to settle on. I had been a fierce Jacobite, of course, from my youth: my great-grandfather having, as I have said, fought both in Dundee’s campaign which ended with the hero’s death in victory at Killiecrankie, and in the ’15, naturally inclined me to that side; and I have never quite got rid of the impression which the gallantry of Prince Charlie made on my imagination, even though I am sensible – reason and reading having come to my assistance – that the Jacobite cause is more to be applauded in defeat than it could have been in victory. Even if the Prince, who had declared the Union with England dissolved, had been content to establish himself in Scotland and hold it as an independent kingdom against our southern neighbour – which indeed he never showed the slightest inclination of wishing to do – the results must have been unhappy. Indeed, dwelling on the wars with France, occasioned by the destructive principles of the Revolution and the inordinate greed, ambition, and callousness of Napoleon, I shrink – horresco referens – at what the consequences might have been of a revival of the Auld Alliance between my native land and France.
When all is said and done, I must be glad I did not live in the ’45, for though as a lawyer I could not have pleaded Charles’s right, and as a clergyman – had I been one – I could not have prayed for him, yet as a soldier I am sure, against the conviction of my better reason, I would have fought for him even to the bottom of the gallows.
The very confusion of my own sentiments, which, I was confident, mirrored that of so many of my fellow-countrymen, confirmed me in the idea that the romance of the ’45 presented itself as the very subject for a novel, one which, I was convinced, no one could bring off more happily than I.
Accordingly, about the year 1805, I wrote, rapidly, as has ever been my wont, some six or seven chapters of a novel, which I then entitled ‘Waverley – or ’tis Sixty Years Since’. I took as my hero a young English gentleman travelling in the Highlands and caught up in the drama of the Rising, choosing such a figure because I thought it useful to have affairs observed, and filtered to the public, through the medium of one who was not intimately engaged in the cause, and no firm partisan of either side. It seemed to me also that the choice of such a hero would enable me to view the, to him as to readers, unaccustomed nature of Highland society with a candid eye.
I showed these chapters to my friend William Erskine (subsequently Lord Kineddar) on whose taste and literary judgement I relied. His opinion was unfavourable, and so I laid the thing aside, being unwilling to hazard the reputation which I had won by The Lay of the Last Minstrel on so uncertain a cast, upon which so good and perspicacious a judge had frowned. In justice to my friend I should say that, though his decision was to be reversed by the favour the public eventually showed the novel, he is scarcely to be blamed, for the chapters he saw had not extended beyond the departure of the hero for Scotland, and consequently had not entered upon that part of the work which was finally found most interesting.
The work, though abandoned, did not leave me, and occasionally in the years that followed I thought of resuming it. But as it happened I could not lay my hands on the manuscript, and being unwilling, or too indolent, to try to renew it from memory, nothing was done. Meanwhile I did around 1808 undertake a task for Mr John Murray of Albemarle Street, which led me to consider again certain principles of prose fiction. He asked me to revise and arrange for posthumous publication certain writings of the distinguished artist and antiquary, Mr Joseph Strutt. These included an unfinished Romance, entitled Queen-Hoo-Hall. It was set in the time of Henry VI, and was remarkable for the scrupulous care which the author had taken to re-create the manners and language of that remote time. Since it was unfinished, I bestirred myself to supply a conclusion – admittedly hasty and artificial – but drawn from the notes Mr Strutt had left. The narrative displayed considerable power of imagination, but it did not please the public. Considering the reason for its failure, I judged that Mr Strutt had raised an obstacle to his success by his very erudition, by rendering his language too ancient, and by displaying his antiquarian knowledge in such a liberal manner as impeded the progress of the narrative, and laid him open to accusations of pedantry. I resolved therefore to try to avoid these faults if I should ever return to this sort of enterprise. In passing I may observe that an author cannot, with any degree of success, use language which dates much further back than the time of our grandparents.
Then one day while searching for some fishing tackle for the use of a guest at Abbotsford, I remembered that some had been put away in an old writing-desk consigned to a store-room or garret. I found the required tackle, and the manuscript of the first chapters of Waverley also. I read them, thought them tolerable, and my interest was rekindled. I set to, and wrote the tale rapidly, in a careless haphazard fashion, for I never took the time to form a scheme for the work, but rattled on as my imagination and zest led me. If some have discovered – or shall ever discover – a pattern in the book, I can claim no credit for it, but must assume that I was guided by some faculty of which I knew nothing, or that my hand, or rather my imagination, was in thrall to some force beyond my understanding.
I gave the manuscript to Mr James Ballantyne, who was enthusiastic. He passed it to Archibald Constable, already well launched on his remarkable career, which led me to dub him ‘the Napoleon of the publishing and bookselling trade’. ‘The very thing,’ cried he, and promptly offered me an agreement whereby we should divide the profits of the enterprise equally between us, I stipulating only that James Ballantyne should be the printer.
The novel was, as the world knows, published anonymously. Now that I have confessed my authorship to the world, some may find this decision curious; others have declared it reprehensible. Yet it seemed sensible to me. Though I believed that I had lost my place at the top of the poetic tree, and would not regain it, I was yet certain that a speculative venture of this nature might do my reputation as a poet some damage, if, as I said to James, ‘it doesna tak’. Then I was not certain that it was altogether decorous for the Clerk to the Court of Session to appear before the public in the guise of a mere romancer. I believe I wrote to my friend John Morritt of Rokeby in County Durham, ‘Judges being monks, Clerks are a sort of lay brethren, from whom some solemnity of walk and conduct may be expected’. Moreover, I was conscious of the warning given me some time earlier by Constable’s erstwhile partner, Mr Hunter, that I was in danger of flooding the market, and so falling out of favour with a weary, indeed saturated, public.
I must confess also that there was a considerable pleasure in anonymity. It spared me the attentions of many who might have wished either to flatter or upbraid me. It appealed also to a sense of mischief which some may find childish, as indeed my dear Charlotte, with affectionate raill
ery, professed to do.
‘Scott,’ she would say, ‘you must toujours be ze lost heir of your own romances, or a little boy who dresses up to deceive his fellows.’
It may be also, I suppose, that there is something in the nature of a story-teller that inclines him to secrecy and deception. Novelists are after all liars. We seek to persuade our readers that an imaginary event has the force and significance of the real world; we aim to draw tears from them over the misfortunes of beings who have no corporal existence, and who are indeed no more than figments of the imagination. It is a strange trade, spending hours in the companionship of such beings, and I am fortunate that I have found it an agreeable one.
We went to considerable trouble to preserve my anonymity. I wrote the books in my own hand (except for a couple which I was compelled to dictate being at the time too weakened by illness to be able to hold a pen). James Ballantyne then had these manuscripts, or the copy as we say in the trade, transcribed by a reliable amanuensis, who was, like all those in the know, sworn to secrecy. Two sets of proofs were invariably cast off. I corrected one, and then James himself transcribed my emendments to the other set which was then returned to the printers. I believe we met with fair success, and it is a tribute to the integrity of mankind that none of the twenty or so people to whom the secret of my authorship was entrusted ever betrayed me.
I think it fair to say that few who knew me well had any doubt that I was the author of Waverley. They found there, and in subsequent novels, too many familiar scenes and characters, too many turns of phrase which they recognized as mine, in short a tone which to them was quite unmistakable. In Captain Medwin’s not, I think, entirely reliable record of his conversations with Byron, he states that he asked whether Byron was certain that these novels were Sir Walter Scott’s, and asserts that Byron replied, ‘Scott as much as owned himself the Author of Waverley to me in Murray’s shop. I was talking to him about that novel, and lamented that the author had not carried the story nearer to the time of the Revolution – Scott, entirely off his guard, replied, “Aye, I might have done so, but” – there he stopped. It was in vain to attempt to correct himself; he looked confused, and relieved his embarrassment by a precipitate retreat . . .’ All I can say is that I have no recollection of such a conversation, and had it taken place, I am more like to have laughed than to have been embarrassed, for I certainly never hoped to deceive Lord Byron in this matter. Indeed, from the manner in which he spoke of the novels, I knew very well that he knew me to be the author, though, respecting my desire for anonymity, he was too well-bred to put the direct question.
Others were less so; and then I was compelled to follow one of three courses. Either I must have surrendered my secret – or equivocated – or issued a stout denial. The first two courses were unpalatable, for an admission to a person capable of such an impertinent question would have amounted to the announcement of my secret to the world, while equivocation would most like have had the same result. So I stood squarely by the principle of Scots Law: that no man is bound to incriminate himself; and since I was not on oath, I had no scruple in rebutting the charge, though it may amuse some to know that, acting on the same principle as allows a child to tell a lie to his fellows if he keeps his fingers crossed, I would generally add that, had I been the author, I would have felt quite entitled to defend my secret by refusing my own evidence.
I confess that, so many years after I entered on this course, it seems stranger to me than it did at the time; and if some choose to regard it as an example of moral infirmity, why then, I must bear the reproach.
Nor indeed did I stop at this point, for some three or four years after the publication of Waverley I brought yet another author on to the scene when I commenced to write what I chose to call the Tales of My Landlord putatively assembled by one Jedediah Cleishbotham, schoolmaster of the parish of Gandercleuch.
My motive this time was different, though there was a residual concern that ‘the Author of Waverley’ might appear more prolific than would be approved by either critics – who often hold that a modest rate of production is a truer mark of genius than fecundity – or the public itself. But, the real motive was otherwise. Though I esteemed Constable highly, and admired the energy of his business methods, I have never held that it is in an author’s interest to be bound to a single publisher, who, in such a case, may all too easily come to think of the wretched author as his employee – something which, as one of the Black Hussars of Literature – I could never bring myself to tolerate.
I may say, here in passing, lest I find no other suitable occasion to do so, that I had an ulterior, and indeed altruistic, motive for resuming my work on Waverley. I had been greatly impressed, as well as delighted, by the Irish novels of Maria Edgeworth, whose presentation of the characters and nature of her native land was such as to persuade the English to look more kindly on them; indeed she may be said to have done more to completing the Union of the nations of the British Isles than any number of Acts of Parliament could contrive to do; and I nursed the not ignoble hope that I might likewise present Scotland to those ignorant of the country, or prejudiced against its inhabitants, in such a manner as to promote a better and truer understanding between the nations. If I have indeed contrived to do so, then I trust I am not immodest in claiming that I have made some contribution to the happiness and future peace and prosperity of the United Kingdom.
Between the delivery and publication of this novel, I took a holiday, sailing round the Northern Isles of Scotland in the Lighthouse yacht, under the happy guidance of Mr Stevenson, the Surveyor of the Lights, a scholarly engineer whose contribution to the well-being of mankind, by his construction of lighthouses that save so many sailors from disaster, must be accounted far greater and more worthwhile than the achievements of a scribbler. The literary world may not agree, but the truth is that its inhabitants are too apt to measure value by some reference to literature, to suppose that nobody who lacks knowledge of it can be worth much. God help us! It would be a poor world if there was any truth in such opinion. I have read books enough, and been rarely happy in doing so, and I have met and conversed with the most cultivated minds of my time, but yet I have heard higher sentiments from the lips of poor uneducated men and women, heroically confronting difficulty and affliction, or speaking simply as to the circumstances of their family, friends or neighbours, than I have met with in secular literature. And, with what success, I cannot judge, I have in my own writings attempted to bring this out by allowing my humbler characters to speak with at least equal dignity, and often with a greater force of true and honest emotion, as my fine ladies and gentlemen.
This voyage introduced me to parts of Scotland which I had not previously visited, but my first port of call aroused mixed emotions. The abbey of Arbroath is celebrated in the History of Scotland as having been the place where, during our Wars of Independence, the nobility, clergy, lairds, and burgesses of the realm came together to compose a noble Declaration addressed to the Pope, wherein they stated that it was ‘for liberty alone that we fight and contend, which no honest man will surrender but with his life’. Yet, though I tried to keep my mind on this matter of high estate, I could not forget that it was with Williamina that I had first visited the noble ruined abbey; and the thought brought ready tears to my eyes.
I was delighted by the wild scenery of the Northern Isles which I was later to employ, to some effect, I trust, in The Pirate, and I was pleased to meet a well-attested witch, who made it her practice to sell favourable winds to sailors, but there, and in Sutherland, I was saddened also to see how the progress of civilization, and the demands it made, and the opportunities it offered, threatened to destroy old-established modes of life. I reflected that had I been an Orcadian laird, I would strive to maintain the crofting system, though I could not deny that it would be against my pecuniary interest, for it was clear that larger farms could be managed more efficiently and profitably.
In the outer Hebrides I followed with rapt interes
t the course of the Prince’s wanderings after Culloden, and at Holy Iona, Columba’s Isle, viewed the graves of the ancient Scottish kings, and thought how odd it was that the last to be buried there, Macbeth, should be more widely celebrated than all the others, thanks to a few weeks of labour on the part of an obscure English actor.
Then we crossed over into Ulster, where I was heartened by the evidence of the progress made by the descendants of my fellow-Scots established there by King James VI and I, when my holiday mood was broken by the sad news of the death of Harriet, Duchess of Buccleuch, at whose request I had written the Lay. I should have liked her to have the opportunity to read Waverley, which I flatter myself she would have enjoyed, but her inability to do so was naturally the least part of the grief her death caused me. Returned to Greenock, I sent a letter of condolence to the Duke, which I had composed on the crossing, but was surprised and deeply touched to find a letter from him, announcing her death, awaiting me. He desired, he said, to draw his friends closer around him: ‘I shall love them more and more because I know that they loved her.’
I returned to Edinburgh to find that Constable had sold three thousand copies of Waverley, and was eager to come to terms of agreement concerning a third edition. If I could not say, like Byron, on the publication of Childe Harold, ‘I awoke in the morning and found myself famous’, it was only because I had already enjoyed as much fame as I wished, and because my name was not on the title-page.
It is not my intention to give a full account of my career as novelist, which would be tedious in the extreme, and would also smack of vanity and presumption. In any case, I shall have enough of that, if I do as Cadell asks and write an introductory preface to each of the novels in his magnum opus edition; but I feel a desire to say a few words about my practice as an author, and perhaps about the craft of fiction, for, though I write as it were by instinct, and have been condemned for carelessness, it is not to be supposed that from time to time I have not dwelled on this matter; and since the world in general has been pleased to grant approbation to my efforts, my thoughts on the subject may be of some interest to future generations.