THE MENTOR
WALTER SCOTT

The Wizard of the North

THE causes of Sir Walter Scott’s ascendancy are to
be found in the goodness of his heart, the integrity
of his conduct, the romantic and picturesque accessories
and atmosphere of his life, the fertile brilliancy of his
literary execution, the charm that he exercises, both as
man and artist, over the imagination, the serene, tranquilizing
spirit of his works, and, above all, the buoyancy,
the happy freedom of his genius.

HE was not simply an intellectual power, he was also
a human and gentle comforter. He wielded an immense
mental force, but he always wielded it for good,
and always with tenderness. It is impossible to conceive
of his ever having done a wrong act, or of any contact
with his influence that would not inspire the wish to be
virtuous and noble. The scope of his sympathy was as
broad as are the weakness and need of the human race.
He understood the hardship in the moral condition of
mankind and he wished and tried to relieve it.

HIS writings are full of sweetness and cheer, and they
contain nothing that is morbid—nothing that tends
toward surrender or misery. He did not sequester himself
in mental pride, but simply and sturdily, through
years of conscientious toil, he employed the faculties of a
strong, tender, gracious genius for the good of his fellow-creatures.
The world loves him because he is worthy to
be loved, and because he has lightened the burden of its
care and augmented the sum of its happiness.

From “Over the Border” by William Winter

 ONE 

WAVERLEY”
is a story of the rebellion of the chevalier
Prince Charles Edward, in Scotland, in 1745.

Edward Waverley, the central figure of the tale,
was a captain of dragoons in the English army. He
obtained a leave of absence from his regiment and went to
Scotland for a rest, staying at the home of Baron Bradwardine.
During his stay a band of Highlanders
drove off the Baron’s cattle, and Waverley
offered his assistance in recovering them.

Fergus MacIvor was the chief of the
band which stole the cattle. Waverley
met his sister, Flora, and fell in love with
her, but she discouraged him.

Later Waverley was wounded by a stag;
and the rebellion having started in the
meanwhile, one of the Highlanders, assuming
Waverley to be a sympathizer,
used his name and seal to start a mutiny
in Waverley’s troop. For this reason
Waverley was dismissed from his regiment
for desertion and treason. Indignant
at this unjust treatment, Waverley
joined the rebellion, first, however,
returning home in an attempt to
justify himself. On this trip he was
arrested for treason, but was rescued by
the Highlanders when on his way to the
dungeon of Stirling Castle.

Waverley served in the war, and when
the rebellion was crushed he escaped, and
later made his way to London. There his
name was cleared from the false charges,
and a pardon obtained for both himself
and Baron Bradwardine. Flora’s brother
was executed, and she herself retired to a
convent at Paris. Waverley married Rose,
the beautiful daughter of Baron Bradwardine.

One of the most charming scenes in the
story took place shortly after Waverley
met Flora at the home of her brother.
Flora had promised to sing a Gaelic song
for him in one of her favorite haunts.
One of the attendants guided him to a
beautiful waterfall in the neighborhood,
and there he saw Flora.

“Here, like one of those lovely forms
which decorate the landscapes of Poussin,
Waverley found Flora gazing on the waterfall.
Two paces farther back stood Cathleen,
holding a small Scottish harp, the use
of which had been taught to Flora by
Rory Dall, one of the last harpers of the
western Highlands. The sun, now stooping
in the west, gave a rich and varied
tinge to all the objects which surrounded
Waverley, and seemed to add more than
human brilliancy to the full, expressive
darkness of Flora’s eye, exalted the richness
and purity of her complexion, and enhanced
the dignity and grace of her beautiful
form. Edward thought he had never,
even in his wildest dreams, imagined a
figure of such exquisite and interesting
loveliness. The wild beauty of the retreat,
bursting upon him as if by magic, augmented
the mingled feelings of delight and
awe with which he approached her, like a
fair enchantress of Boiardo or Ariosto, by
whose nod the scenery around seemed
to have been created—an Eden in the
wilderness.

“Flora, like every beautiful woman, was
conscious of her own power, and pleased
with its effects, which she could easily discern
from the respectful yet confused address
of the young soldier. But as she
possessed excellent sense, she gave the
romance of the scene and other accidental
circumstance full weight in appreciating
the feelings with which Waverley seemed
obviously to be impressed; and unacquainted
with the fanciful and susceptible
peculiarities of his character, considered his
homage as the passing tribute which a
woman of even inferior charms might have
expected in such a situation. She therefore
quietly led the way to a spot at such
a distance from the cascade that its sound
should rather accompany than interrupt
that of her voice and instrument, and sitting
down upon a mossy fragment of rock,
she took the harp from Cathleen.”

“Waverley” was the first of the world-famous
series of romances to which it gives
the title. It was published anonymously
in 1814. Although the authorship of the
series was generally accredited to Scott,
it was never formally acknowledged until
business conditions necessitated it in 1826.

 TWO 

GUY MANNERING, a young Englishman traveling
through Scotland, stopped one night at the
home of the Laird of Ellangowan. When the Laird
learned that the young man had studied astrology,
he begged him to cast the horoscope of his son, who had been
born that night. What was Mannering’s dismay to find that
two catastrophes overhung the lad, one at
his fifth, and the other at his twenty-first
year! He told the father, however, that
he might be warned; and later went his
way.

The fortunes of the Laird of Ellangowan,
Godfrey Bertram, waned rapidly. In addition
to this, his son, Harry, at the age of
five, was kidnapped. It was impossible to
learn whether the child was alive or dead.
The boy’s mother died from the shock;
and some years later the Laird himself
followed her, leaving his daughter Lucy
penniless.

In the meanwhile, Guy Mannering had
become Colonel Mannering. He had married
and had a daughter, Julia. She had
fallen in love with a young officer, named
Vanbeest Brown, who had served in India
under Colonel Mannering. The colonel
objected to him as a suitor, because of the
obscurity of his birth.

When things were at their worst for
Lucy Bertram, Colonel Mannering returned
to England. Accidentally hearing
of the straits to which she had been reduced,
he at once invited her and her
guardian to make their home with him and
his daughter Julia.

Captain Brown followed the Mannerings
to England; and finally he proved
to be the long lost Harry Bertram, brother
of Lucy. He had been abducted with the
help of Meg Merrilies, a gypsy, and
some smugglers, at the instigation of a
man named Glossin, once agent for the
Laird of Ellangowan, who had hoped to
get possession of the Laird’s property. He
finally succeeded in this; but, after his
crime was discovered, he died a violent
death in prison. Bertram had been kidnapped
and taken to Holland, where the
name of Vanbeest Brown had been given
him.

Meg Merrilies is regarded as one of the
great characters of fiction.

“The fairy bride of Sir Gawaine, while
under the influence of the spell of her
wicked stepmother, was more decrepit,
probably, and what is commonly called
more ugly, than Meg Merrilies; but I
doubt if she possessed that wild sublimity
which an excited imagination communicated
to features marked and expressive
in their own peculiar character, and to the
gestures of a form which, her sex considered,
might be termed gigantic. Accordingly,
the Knights of the Round Table did
not recoil with more terror from the apparition
of the loathly lady placed between
‘an oak and a green holly,’ than Lucy
Bertram and Julia Mannering did from
the appearance of this Galwegian sibyl
upon the common of Ellangowan.

“‘For God’s sake,’ said Julia, pulling her
purse, ‘give that dreadful woman something,
and bid her go away,’

“‘I cannot,’ said Bertram: ‘I must not
offend her.’

“‘What keeps you here?’ said Meg, exalting
the harsh and rough tones of her
hollow voice. ‘Why do you not follow?
Must your hour call you twice? Do you remember
your oath?—were it at kirk or
market, wedding or burial,’—and she held
high her skinny forefinger in a menacing
attitude….

“Almost stupefied with surprise and fear,
the young ladies watched with anxious
looks the course of Bertram, his companion,
and their extraordinary guide. Her
tall figure moved across the wintry heath
with steps so swift, so long, and so steady,
that she appeared rather to glide than to
walk. Bertram and Dinmont, both tall
men, apparently scarce equaled her in
height, owing to her longer dress and high
headgear. She proceeded straight across
the common, without turning aside to the
winding path by which passengers avoided
the inequalities and little rills that traversed
it in different directions. Thus the
diminishing figures often disappeared from
the eye as they dived into such broken
ground, and again ascended to sight when
they were past the hollow. There was
something frightful and unearthly, as it
were, in the rapid and undeviating course
which she pursued, undeterred by any of
the impediments which usually incline a
traveler from the direct path. Her way
was as straight, and nearly as swift, as
that of a bird through the air. At length
they reached those thickets of natural
wood which extended from the skirts of
the common towards the glades and brook
of Derneleugh, and were there lost to the
view.”

“Guy Mannering” was published in
1815, the second of the Waverley novels
to appear. It is said to have been the result
of six weeks’ work. There are less
than forty characters in the book, and the
plot is not very complicated.

 THREE 

IN “Heart of Midlothian” Scott set himself to
draw his own people at their best. The real
heroine of the book is Jeanie Deans, whose
character was drawn from that of Helen Walker,
the daughter of a farmer in Scotland. With a few variations
Jeanie’s story was hers.

Effie Deans, the sister of Jeanie, was
doomed to death for child murder. Jeanie
might have saved her on the witness stand
by lying; but this she could not do even
to save her sister. However, she showed
the depth of her love by going on foot all
the way to London and getting a pardon
from the king.

Effie was released; but even before Jeanie
reached home, she eloped with her betrayer,
George Staunton, who married her
and took her to London with him. There
they lived as Lord and Lady Staunton, for
George succeeded to the title of his father.

Jeanie married a Presbyterian minister,
and by a combination of circumstances,
learned that Effie’s son had never really
been killed, but had been given to the care
of Meg Murdockson, whose daughter
Madge had also been betrayed by Staunton,
or Geordie Robertson, as he was
known in Scotland.

When Sir George Staunton learned this,
he was anxious to discover the whereabouts
of his son. He traced him to a certain
band of vagabonds, of which Black Donald
was the chief. Staunton attempted to
arrest the leader, but in the affray was
shot by a young lad called the Whistler.
This lad later proved to be his long lost son.

Effie, who was now Lady Staunton,
overcome with grief, attempted to drown
her sorrows in the gayeties of the fashionable
world. But this was in vain. She
could not forget her grief, and finally she
retired to a convent in France, where she
remained until her death.

Jeanie and her husband were given a
good parish by the Duke of Argyle, and
through Effie’s influence the children of
her sister were helped greatly.

“Heart of Midlothian” was first published
anonymously in 1818. It takes its
name from the Tolbooth, or old jail of
Edinburgh, where Scott imagined Effie to
have been in prison. This book has fewer
characters than any other of Scott’s novels.
It has also a smaller variety of incidents,
and less description of scenery. One of
the most touching scenes in all fiction is
that in which Jeanie visits her sister in the
prison under the eyes of the jailor, Ratcliffe.

“Ratcliffe marshalled her the way to the
apartment where Effie was confined.

“Shame, fear, and grief, had contended
for mastery in the poor prisoner’s bosom
during the whole morning, while she had
looked forward to this meeting; but when
the door opened, all gave way to a confused
and strange feeling that had a tinge
of joy in it, as, throwing herself on her
sister’s neck, she ejaculated: ‘My dear
Jeanie!—my dear Jeanie! It’s lang since
I hae seen ye.’ Jeanie returned the embrace
with an earnestness that partook almost
of rapture, but it was only a flitting
emotion, like a sunbeam unexpectedly penetrating
betwixt the clouds of a tempest,
and obscured almost as soon as visible.
The sisters walked together to the side of
the pallet bed, and sat down side by side,
took hold of each other’s hands, and looked
each other in the face, but without speaking
a word. In this posture they remained
for a minute, while the gleam of joy gradually
faded from their features, and gave
way to the most intense expression, first of
melancholy, and then of agony, till, throwing
themselves again into each other’s
arms, they, to use the language of Scripture,
lifted up their voices and wept bitterly.

“Even the hard-hearted turnkey, who
had spent his life in scenes calculated to
stifle both conscience and feeling, could not
witness this scene without a touch of human
sympathy. It was shown in a trifling
action, but which had more delicacy in it
than seemed to belong to Ratcliffe’s character
and station. The unglazed window of
the miserable chamber was open and the
beams of a bright sun fell right upon the
bed where the sufferers were seated. With
a gentleness that had something of reverence
in it, Ratcliffe partly closed the shutter,
and seemed thus to throw a veil over
a scene so sorrowful.”

 FOUR 

SIR WILFRED, Knight of Ivanhoe, a young Saxon
knight, brave and handsome, was disinherited by
his father because he loved Rowena, a Saxon heiress
and a ward of his father. He therefore went on a
crusade to Palestine with Richard the Lion Hearted. Returning,
under the name of Desdichado (The Disinherited) he
entered the lists of the Ashby Tournament:
and, having won the victory, he
was crowned by the Lady Rowena.

At this tournament there was one knight
in particular who aided Ivanhoe. This was
the Black Knight, and his feats of valor
set all the spectators to wondering who he
might be. He was in reality Richard the
Lion Hearted, the Crusader, King of
England.

Just at this time King Richard’s younger
brother, John, was conspiring to take the
throne of England from him. One of his
fellow conspirators was Maurice de Bracy,
who was in love with Rowena. He captured
her as she was returning from the
tournament, and imprisoned her in the
Tower of Torquilstone.

Ivanhoe, who was wounded in the tournament,
was cared for by Isaac of York
and his daughter, Rebecca. She fell in
love with him, but realized that she could
never marry him; and knowing that Ivanhoe
loved Rowena, she offered to give any
sum of money for her release.

This was not effected, however, until
Torquilstone had been besieged by Locksley,
who was really Robin Hood, and his
men, led by the Black Knight. The Black
Knight had come upon this band in his
wanderings through Sherwood Forest.
He ran across the little chapel of the
Hermit, one of Locksley’s men, in the
the following manner:

“The entrance to this ancient place of
devotion was under a very low round arch,
ornamented by several courses that zigzag
moulding, resembling shark’s teeth,
which appears so often in the more ancient
Saxon architecture. A belfry rose above
the porch on four small pillars, within
which hung the green and weatherbeaten
bell, the feeble sounds of which had been
some time before heard by the Black
Knight.

“The whole peaceful and quiet scene lay
glimmering in twilight before the eyes of
the traveler, giving him good assurance of
lodging for the night; since it was a
special duty of those hermits who dwelt
in the woods to exercise hospitality
towards benighted or bewildered passengers.

“Accordingly, the knight took no time
to consider minutely the particulars which
we have detailed, but thanking Saint
Julian (the patron of travelers), who had
sent him good harborage, he leaped from
his horse and assailed the door of the
hermitage with the butt of his lance,
in order to arouse attention and gain
admittance.”

The Hermit who lived there and who
gave the Black Knight food and lodging,
was Friar Tuck.

Finally Rowena was rescued and married
Ivanhoe. Rebecca was carried away
by the Templar Bois-Guilbert, who was
madly and vainly in love with her, to the
Preceptory of Templestowe, and convicted
of sorcery. She was condemned to be
burned alive, but was allowed a trial by
combat. Ivanhoe was her champion, and
in the contest with the Templar he was
the victor. Rebecca was then pronounced
guiltless and freed.

“Ivanhoe” is one of Scott’s most famous
novels. It was written and published in
1819. The manuscript is now at Abbotsford.

 FIVE 

THE central figure in “Kenilworth” is that of
Queen Elizabeth of England, but the real heroine
is Amy Robsart. She was the daughter of Sir
Hugh Robsart. The Earl of Leicester, infatuated
by her charms, married her secretly. He then established
her at Cumnor Place, a lonely manor house. There she lived
alone with one or two attendants. But
she bore her solitude with pleasure as long
as she was sure that Leicester loved her.

However, Leicester and the Earl of
Surrey were rivals for the favor of Queen
Elizabeth. In fact, each hoped that he
might wed her; and, therefore, Leicester did
not want his marriage to Amy made public.

Edmund Tressilian, who had been engaged
to Amy, discovered her hiding place,
and, not knowing that she was married,
tried in vain to induce her to return home.
Then he appealed to the queen; and when
a disclosure of the truth seemed inevitable,
Richard Varney, Leicester’s closest friend,
affirmed that Amy was his wife. Varney
was then ordered to appear with her at the
approaching revels at Kenilworth Castle,
which belonged to the Earl of Leicester.

Leicester and Varney went to Amy and
endeavored to persuade her to pose for a
short time as Varney’s wife.

“‘How, my Lord of Leicester,’ said the
lady, disengaging herself from his embraces,
‘is it to your wife you give the
dishonourable counsel to acknowledge herself
the bride of another—and of all men,
the bride of that Varney?’

“‘Madam, I speak it in earnest—Varney
is my true and faithful servant, trusted in
my deepest secrets. I had better lose my
right hand than his service at this moment.
You have no cause to scorn him as you do.’

“‘I could assign one, my Lord,’ replied
the Countess; ‘and I see he shakes even
under that assured look of his. But he
that is necessary as your right hand to
your safety, is free from any accusation of
mine. May he be true to you; and that he
may be true, trust him not too much or
too far. But it is enough to say, that I will
not go with him unless by violence, nor
would I acknowledge him as my husband,
were all—’

“‘It is a temporary deception, madam,’
said Leicester, irritated by her opposition,
‘necessary for both our safeties, endangered
by you through female caprice, or
the premature desire to seize on a rank to
which I gave you title only under condition
that our marriage, for a time, should
continue secret. If my proposal disgust
you, it is yourself has brought it on both of
us. There is no other remedy—you must
do what your own impatient folly hath
rendered necessary—I command you.’

“‘I cannot put your commands, my
Lord,’ said Amy, ‘in balance with those
of honor and conscience. I will not, in
this instance, obey you. You may achieve
your own dishonor, to which these
crooked policies naturally tend, but I will
do naught that can blemish mine. How
could you again, my Lord, acknowledge
me as a pure and chaste matron, worthy
to share your fortunes, when, holding that
high character, I had strolled the country
the acknowledged wife of such a profligate
fellow as your servant Varney?'”

Later Varney attempted to drug her;
and in fear of her life she escaped and made
her way to Kenilworth. She could not
get to her husband, however; and she was
discovered and misjudged by Tressilian.
Queen Elizabeth found her half fainting in
a grotto, but Varney kept her from learning
the truth by persuading the queen that
Amy was insane. He also made Leicester
believe that she was false and really loved
Tressilian, a thing which was not true.

For this reason Leicester gave him his
signet ring and authority to act for him.
Amy was hurriedly taken back to Cumnor
Place.

In the meanwhile Leicester, who really
loved Amy, and soon discovered the injustice
of his suspicions, confessed everything
to Queen Elizabeth. The queen,
feeling herself insulted, treated him with
scorn and contempt; but she immediately
dispatched Tressilian and Sir Walter
Raleigh to bring Amy back to Kenilworth.
They arrived just too late. Amy, decoyed
from her room, stepped on a trap-door
prepared by Varney, and plunged to her
death. After her tragic taking off, Tressilian
fell into profound melancholy and
died soon after, “young in years, but old
in grief.”

“Kenilworth” appeared in 1819. It was
the second of Scott’s great romances
drawn from English history, and is regarded
as one of the most delightful of
English historical romances.

 SIX 

EDGAR, Master of Ravenswood, was the son of Allan,
Lord Ravenswood. His father had fought in the
Revolution of 1688, and his side had been vanquished.
For this his title had been abolished and
his estate taken from him. He had fought hard for his rights
in the courts, but in vain, and at length he died breathing
curses on Sir William Ashton, who became
owner of the estates.

Edgar, the son, penniless and proud, had
vowed vengeance on the family of Sir
William Ashton. However, in spite of this,
he fell in love with Lucy, Sir William’s
daughter. They became engaged secretly.

“Ravenswood found Lucy seated alone
by the ruin….

“‘I like this spot,’ said Lucy at length,
as if she had found the silence embarrassing:
‘the bubbling murmur of the clear
fountain, the waving of the trees, the profusion
of grass and wild-flowers, that rise
among the ruins, make it like a scene in
romance. I think, too, I have heard it is
a spot connected with the legendary lore
which I love so well.’

“‘It has been thought,’ answered Ravenswood,
‘a fatal spot to my family; and I
have some reason to term it so, for it
was here I first saw Miss Ashton—and
it is here I must take my leave of her
for ever.’

“‘To take leave of us, Master!’ she exclaimed;
‘what can have happened to hurry you away?—I know
Alice hates—I mean dislikes, my father—and I hardly
understood her humor to-day, it was so
mysterious. But I am certain my father
is sincerely grateful for the high service
you rendered us. Let us hope that having
won your friendship hardly, we shall not
lose it lightly.’

“‘Lose it, Miss Ashton?’ said the Master
of Ravenswood. ‘No—wherever my fortune
calls me—whatever she
inflicts upon me—it is your friend—your sincere
friend, who acts or suffers. But there is a fate on
me, and I must go, or I shall add the ruin
of others to my own.’

“‘Yet do not go from us. Master,’ said
Lucy; and she laid her hand, in all simplicity
and kindness, upon the skirt of his
cloak, as if to detain him. ‘You shall not
part from us. My father is powerful, he
has friends that are more so than himself—do
not go till you see what his gratitude
will do for you. Believe me, he is already
laboring in your behalf with the Council.’

“‘It may be so,’ said the Master proudly;
‘yet it is not to your father, Miss
Ashton, but to my own exertions, that I
ought to owe success in the career on which
I am about to enter. My preparations are
already made—a sword and a cloak, and
a bold heart and a determined hand.’

“Lucy covered her face with her hands,
and the tears, in spite of her, forced their
way between her fingers. ‘Forgive me,’
said Ravenswood, taking her right hand,
which, after slight resistance, she yielded
to him, still continuing to shade her face
with the left. ‘I am too rude—too rough—too
intractable to deal with any being
so soft and gentle as you are. Forget that
so stern a vision has crossed your path of
life—and let me pursue mine, sure that
I can meet no worse misfortune
after the moment it divides me from
your side.’

“Lucy wept on, but her tears were less
bitter. Each attempt which the Master
made to explain his purpose of departure
only proved a new evidence of his desire to
stay; until, at length, instead of bidding
her farewell, he gave his faith to her for
ever, and received her troth in return.
The whole passed so suddenly, and arose
so much out of the immediate impulse of
the moment, that ere the Master of Ravenswood
could reflect upon the consequences
of the step which he had taken,
their lips, as well as their hands, had
pledged the sincerity of their affection.”

But Lucy’s mother, the ambitious Lady
Ashton, endeavored to force her daughter
to marry another. Lady Ashton was proud
and vindictive, and she hated the Ravenswood
family with such intensity that she
did not scruple at any means to deceive
Lucy into believing her love unfaithful.
Lucy, on the other hand, was gentle and
timid. Her mother called her, in derision,
the “Lammermoor Shepherdess,” to show
that she considered Lucy plebeian in her
tastes.

In the struggle, Lucy went mad. Ravenswood,
thinking himself rejected, came
to an untimely end.

“The Bride of Lammermoor” is in that
group of the Waverley novels called “Tales
of My Landlord.” The plot was suggested
by an incident in the family of the Earls
of Stair. The scene is laid on the east coast
of Scotland, in the year 1700. Though somber
and depressing, “The Bride of Lammermoor”
was very popular. The plot was used by Donizetti,
the Italian composer, for his opera Lucia di Lammermoor.

WALTER SCOTT

By HAMILTON W. MABIE

Author and Editor

MENTOR GRAVURES		MENTOR GRAVURES
LUCY AND THE MASTER		FLORA MacIVOR
“The Bride of Lammermoor“		“Waverley“
THE BLACK KNIGHT AT THE HERMITAGE		MEG MERRILIES DIRECTS BERTRAM TO THE CAVE
“Ivanhoe“		“Guy Mannering“
VARNEY, LEICESTER AND AMY ROBSART		EFFIE DEANS AND GEORDIE
“Kenilworth“		“Heart of Midlothian“
Bust of Sir Walter Scott		By Sir Francis Chantrey

THE MENTOR · DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE
SEPTEMBER 15, 1916

Entered as second-class matter March 10, 1913, at the postoffice at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1916,
by The Mentor Association, Inc.

A
NOTED English critic said that he never sat down to write
about Sir Walter Scott without a sense of elation and happiness;
and he might have added without a sense of satisfaction.
For the author of the Waverley Novels was a clean, wholesome,
loyal human soul. The out-of-door vigor of the Highlands
found in him not only a chronicler but an incarnation. At the
end, when his strength was failing, his brain becoming darkened, the
battle apparently going against him, his struggle against disaster became
a moral victory and his character took on heroic proportions. At a time
when so much writing is impaired by egotism, and mental and moral
disease give prose and verse the odor of the hospitals, Scott brings a
tonic atmosphere with him.

He was a fortunate man; he was born in a country which he understood,
at a time when the men, women, and events he wrote about were
in the past but not too far in the past; and he was well born in the best
sense. He came at the right time, in the right place, and of the right ancestry.
In a word, he was in harmony with the conditions of his life, and he
was spared the antagonism which often bends and sometimes breaks a
promising talent and distorts a wholesome nature. Like Goethe he had a
methodical father, of orderly habit, and a mother of generous heart, a
vivid memory and the gift of pictorial talk. He said of her that if he had
2
been able to paint past times it was
largely because of “the studies with
which she presented me.” She had
talked with a man who remembered
the battle of Dunbar; and the day
before her last illness she told, with
great accuracy of detail, the real
story of the Bride of Lammermoor,
and indicated the points in which it
differed from her son’s famous novel.
To his father Scott owed his steadiness
of aim and his indomitable
industry; to his mother he owed his
vivid energy of mind, his tireless
curiosity.

PORTRAIT OF SCOTT

By Sir Henry Raeburn

To Scotland his debt was even
greater. Born in Edinburgh in 1771,
four years before the beginning of
the American Revolution, an illness
in his second year sent him to reside
with his grandfather in a country of
crags and in the neighborhood of a ruined tower. In fine weather the
shepherd took him to the places where the sheep were grazing and laid
him on the ground among them. He was forgotten one day, and a thunderstorm
broke on him. When he was found he was calling out, “bonny!
bonny!” at each flash of lightning. His illness made him lame for life,
but he was a boy of sweet temper and a winning disposition. Lameness
did not daunt him; he learned to climb with great agility and to keep his
saddle with the best of them. At the age of six he was reciting ballads
with zest and fire, and he showed very early the spirit which made him a
story-teller and a man of dauntless courage.

The Boyhood of Scott

At school he was noted as a daring climber, a pertinacious fighter, an
irregular student, and a teller of fascinating tales. In the High School he
was “more distinguished in the yards than in the class.” In 1783 he entered
the Humanity and Greek classes in the University of Edinburgh,
but his education was directed by his genius rather than by the school
and college curriculum. He began on his grandfather’s farm, Sandy-Knowe,
in a landscape that runs to the Cheviot Hills and the slopes of
Lammermoor, where he lay, a “puir lame laddie,” on the turf among the
sheep. Out of a volume of Ramsay’s “Tea Table Miscellany” he was
taught “Hardy Knute,” long before he could read the ballad. “It was
the first poem I ever learned,” he wrote years afterwards, “the last I shall
ever forget.” His grandmother knew all the wild and romantic stories of
3
the Border and the eager boy listened with his heart and imagination.
He had only to look across the countryside to see many of the places
where these moving events had happened: the peaks of Peebleshire, the
crags of Hume, the landmarks of Ettrick and Yarrow; the Brethren
Stanes were among the objects that “painted the earliest images on the
eye of the last and greatest of the Border Minstrels.”

When he was thirteen years old he came upon one of those books that
open the world of imagination to boys and girls of genius. He was visiting
his aunt in Kelso, which he describes as the most beautiful if not the
most romantic village in Scotland. The house stood in a garden in which
there was a great platanus tree (plane tree), and under its branches, one
summer afternoon, he opened “Percy’s Reliques,” which had appeared
nineteen years before, and the magic of the old, stirring ballads which
Bishop Percy had piously brought together, laid a spell upon him which
was never broken. “The summer day sped onward so fast,” he wrote long
afterwards, “that notwithstanding the sharp appetite of thirteen, I forgot
the hour of dinner, was sought for with anxiety, and was still found
entranced in my intellectual banquet.” As soon as he could “scrape
five shillings together” he bought the volumes and read no other books
so often or with such enthusiasm.

ABBOTSFORD, SCOTLAND

The home of Walter Scott

This vital education for the work he was to do was not interrupted by his
studies at the University. Hosts of Americans have climbed Arthur’s Seat
and picked bluebells and looked down on one of the most picturesque cities
in Europe. Scott climbed this famous hill and Salisbury Crags or Blackford
Hill on Saturdays and in vacation, carrying a bundle of books from a circulating
library; and, overlooking one of the most enchanting landscapes in
Scotland, read Spenser, Ariosto and other masters of romance. He learned
to read Italian and Spanish so as to get direct access to “Don Quixote”
and the “Decameron”; and Froissart he came to know almost by heart.
4

Edinburgh and the Highlands

Edinburgh was an illustrated edition of a great
deal of Scotch history, and Scott left no part of
the old town unvisited. He spent so much time
exploring the country within reach that his father
protested that he was becoming a strolling peddler.
“Show me an old castle or a battlefield,” he wrote,
“and I was at home at once, filled it with its
combatants in their proper costume, and overwhelmed
my hearers by the enthusiasm of my
description.” So he came to know not only the
spirit but the “form and presence” of feudalism
and the ideals and code of
manners of chivalry.

SIR WALTER SCOTT

From the painting by J. P. Knight

ABBOTSFORD

A near view

His education went a step
farther when he saw the Highlands
for the first time in 1787.
The traditions of 1715 and
1745, when the Highland
chiefs had engaged in brave
but futile attempts to restore
the exiled Stuarts to the
throne which those ill-starred
Kings had forfeited by their
inability to understand the
English people, were still fresh
on the Border. Men who had
taken part in the rising of
1745 were still living, and
Scott was fortunate enough to be the guest of one of them. He was to
write the stories of wild Scotland as no historian had or could write them,
and on this memorable visit he was to hear the tales of stirring and romantic
deeds from one who had played a part in them, and he was to see
with the eyes of youth the landscape on which they had been enacted.
It was a happy hour in which the boy who was to write “Waverley” and
“Rob Roy” heard from a veteran the stories of battle, of dashing foray,
of daring deeds and hairbreadth escapes. “To know men who had known
Rob Roy, to hear the story of the two risings which had shaken Scotland
like an earthquake, to be a guest in remote and lonely castles, to be guided
through wild defiles and over vast mountain ranges by kilted clansmen
whose speech was only Gaelic and whose claymores were still at the service
of their chiefs—this was the real education of the writer who was to
be the scribe of his country, the truest of her historians.”
5

This first-hand education in romantic history was supplemented by
the eager reading of military exploits, of medieval romance and legend,
of the songs of the Border, of Ariosto and Cervantes. The author of
“Don Quixote,” he said later, “first inspired him with the ambition to
excel in fiction.” He was also fortunate in the possession of a memory
which held tenaciously everything that contributed to his future work
and let unrelated things slip through its meshes.

THE LIBRARY, ABBOTSFORD

He studied law and practised at the
bar in a desultory way for fourteen
years. He was appointed “Sheriff
of the Court” of Ettrick, a position
to which a comfortable salary was
attached, and for five years he acted,
without salary, as a Clerk of Sessions
in the court in Edinburgh. He was
recognized as an able man, and he
was interested in the historical
aspects of Scotch law, in its “quips
and quiddities,” and his knowledge
of its processes was shown in his
novels; but he was an impatient and
uninterested practitioner, and long
before he formally gave up the
profession he was writing poetry.
While poetry and law have often
been on good terms they have never
been happy partners.

THE STUDY, ABBOTSFORD

This room is lined with Scott’s favorite books and works
of reference. The bedroom that he used opens directly
into the study.

SIR WALTER SCOTT

From the painting by C. R.
Leslie, R. A.

Marriage

During this period Scott’s affections
were deeply engaged, and but
for the interference of parents he would probably
have married a young woman of singularly
beautiful nature. His love had a very deep influence
on his character, and it remained to the
end the great passion of his life. In 1797 he
married the daughter of a French royalist who,
after her brother’s death, came to England. She
was described as a “lively beauty,” of no great
depth of nature, but she had humor and high
spirits and she was true-hearted. He protected
her from care, and their life together was a happy
one. She was not a mate for her husband, but
she basked in the sunshine of his prosperity, and
she was brave in adversity.
6

SIR WALTER SCOTT AND HIS FRIENDS AT ABBOTSFORD

From the painting by Thomas Faed. Those in the picture, reading from left to right, are, sitting: Sir Walter Scott;
Henry Mackenzie, the Scottish novelist; George Crabbe, the English poet; John Gibson Lockhart, the son-in-law of
Scott, and his biographer; William Wordsworth, the English Poet Laureate from 1843 to 1850; Francis, Lord Jeffrey,
the Scottish critic, essayist, and jurist; Adam Ferguson, the Scottish philosopher and historian; John Moore, the Scottish
physician and writer; Thomas Campbell, the writer, and Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow from 1826 to
1829; Archibald Constable, Scott’s publisher from 1805 to 1826; standing: John Wilson, who wrote under the pseudonym
of Christopher North; John Allen, the British political and historical writer; Sir David Wilkie, the Scottish painter.]

Entrance Into Literature

Scott made the transition from law to literature gradually. He published
a translation of Burger’s “Lenore” in 1795. While he was at the
University he began to collect the materials which made up the three
volumes of “The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,” a collection of ballads
old and new in which the “old, simple, violent world” lived again in
song and story. The making of these books was congenial work, and carried
still further Scott’s education in the spirit and temper of the Scotland
of clans and feuds, of reckless border warfare, dashing foray, fierce
revenge and superstition. The various introductions and notes which
accompanied the ballads show Scott’s painstaking care for fact and detail;
he combined in rare degree the romantic spirit, the antiquarian’s zeal for the
small details of history, and the methodical habits of the literary drudge.

In 1805, in his thirty-fourth year, “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” appeared
and secured a popular success of unprecedented proportions. The
picturesque or pictorial quality of the poem and its unqualified romanticisms
gave it a very broad appeal. It was popular in the good sense of the
word. Mountains and wild landscapes generally, which had been shunned
for generations, were coming into fashion, so to speak. They have been
“in fashion” ever since, and today their appeal to city folk, to tired people,
to men and women of imagination and active temperament, is irresistible.
To Dr. Johnson Scotland was a wild and dreary waste, to Scott
7
it was a wonderland; and a wonderland it has
remained ever since. In the confusion of an
age when every sort of opinion gets into print
the “call of the wild” has a trumpet tone. “I
am sensible,” wrote Scott, “that if there be
anything good about my poetry or prose either,
it is a hurried frankness of composition which
pleases soldiers, sailors, and young people of
bold and active dispositions.”

THE LADY OF THE LAKE

From the group by J. Adams Acton

EFFIE DEANS AND HER SISTER, JEANIE, IN PRISON

This picture, illustrating Jeanie Deans’ visit to her accused sister, as related in
“Heart of Midlothian,” is from the painting by R. Herdman

Three years later the strongest and most
stirring of the poems, “Marmion,” appeared.
It is a poem of scenery as well as of action, its
descriptions are both exact and living; it tells
a story with clear and compelling vigor, and it
shows at their best two of Scott’s really great
qualities: simplicity and energy. It lacked the
delicate shading of the verbal music which
gave some later English poetry a magical
charm; but it had a fine strength of outline, a
noble ruggedness. He said later that he loved
the sternness and bold nakedness of the Border
landscape, and that if he did not see the
heather at least once a year he believed he
would die. “The Lady of the Lake,” “The Lay
of the Last Minstrel,”
“The Lord
of the Isles,” were
less effective, but
the fresh vitality of
the Highlands was
in them all.

The Crash of His
Fortunes

The Waverley
Novels have so long
stood in the forefront
of Scott’s literary
achievements
that it is difficult
to put them out of
view and remember
that in 1814, when
Scott was forty-four
8
years old, he was known to the world as a poet who had laid a spell on
the imagination of his generation. He had “broken the record” so far
as monetary returns for poetry were concerned. Milton received about
one hundred dollars for “Paradise Lost” and Dr. Johnson was paid about
seventy-five dollars for “The Vanity of Human Wishes,” while “The Lay
of the Last Minstrel” brought Scott nearly four thousand dollars; for
“Marmion” he received five thousand dollars in advance of publication,
and for one-half the copyright of “The Lord of the Isles” he was paid
over seven thousand five hundred
dollars. He was unaware of the
enormous earning powers which
he was later to develop; he had
given up his profession, and he
longed for an income which would
support his family on the scale
which his tastes and natural
generosity dictated. To secure
financial independence he brought
James Ballantyne, a former school-mate
and editor of a local newspaper,
to Edinburgh and lent him
money enough to start a printing
business. This was in 1802; three
years later he became a silent
partner with Ballantyne and his
brother. In 1809 he took a still
more venturesome step and
started the publishing house of
John Ballantyne & Company.
The two brothers were men of
small ability, and entirely without knowledge of the business on which
they embarked; they knew something about printing but nothing about
publishing. Scott was equally ignorant of business methods; he was a
man of generous nature and lavish tastes, and between the recklessness
of his partners, for which he was largely responsible, and his lavish use of
money, he was soon in financial difficulties and a crash would have come
early if the phenomenal popularity of the novels had not postponed
the evil day.

PORTRAIT OF SCOTT

By Sir Thomas Lawrence

In 1812 he bought the farm at Abbotsford, to the ownership of which
he had long looked forward. The country was lovely, the four acres grew
into a great estate, the farm cottage became a stately mansion, as all
traveled Americans know, and the owner lived like a Scotch laird but
without a laird’s steady income. He entertained lavishly and lived
9
in feudal state, happy in his friends, his tenants, his horses and dogs. But
the land alone cost more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars!

A GLIMPSE OF ABBOTSFORD

In 1805 Scott was the most popular poet in Great Britain. He had
opened a fresh field, he had command of the magic of romance which
always has and always will, in spite of temporary changes of taste,
cast a spell over the imagination of men; his style was simple and his
method plain; all classes of readers could understand him. During the
next ten years he published six or seven long poems of varying merit.
When the last of these, “The Lord of the Isles,” appeared in 1815, the
popular interest had diminished in volume and intensity, and the poet
was in serious financial difficulties as the result of his lavish scale of living
and the mismanagement of his business enterprises.

The Waverley Novels

At the moment when ruin faced him he found himself suddenly in
the possession of a great income from an unexpected source. In 1805 he
had written, almost at a sitting, an instalment of a story of the uprising
of 1745 in a futile attempt to restore the exiled Stuart, Charles Edward,
to the throne. In 1814 he completed the story and published it anonymously
under the title of “Waverley.” The novel was written in what
the oarsmen call a “spurt”; not because the novelist was writing carelessly
at breakneck speed for immediate income, but because he was a
tremendous worker and more concerned with the general movement and
human interest of the story in hand than with the details of its workmanship.
To immense energy of mind and body Scott united patience and
methodical habits of work, as he added to a romantic imagination keen
interest in the business of life and in the smallest detail of practical affairs.
His appetite for facts was as marked as his capacity for sentiment.
Scott had breadth and vigor rather than delicacy of imagination; that is
one reason why he is out of fashion at a
time when men want to know not only
what people do but why and how they do
it. He saw men and events in the rough;
he was interested in striking historical
incidents and events, in strongly-marked
characters, in actions rather than in moods.
In a word, Scott was a writer who took
the world as he found it, and described it
as he saw it, without any strong desire to
reform it. He was a Tory in politics, a
strong adherent of an ordered society; a
good, sound man not haunted by misgiving
and questioning about the general
order of things.

Scott’s novels were literally poured out
during fifteen wonderful years; and even
10
then the broken man could still
apply the whip to his exhausted
and crippled brain. The popular
success of the novels was
unprecedented in the history of
literature. It is estimated that
Scott earned with his pen not
less than three-quarters of a million
dollars. The earlier stories
were the best: “The Antiquary,”
“Old Mortality,” “Rob Roy,”
“Heart of Midlothian,” “Guy
Mannering.” These were followed
by the series of semi-historical
novels with their brilliant historical
portraits: “Ivanhoe,” the
most popular though by no means
the best of Scott’s stories, “The
Monastery,” “The Abbot,”
“Kenilworth,” “Quentin Durward,”
“The Bride of Lammermoor,”
“The Talisman.”

THE EMPTY CHAIR, ABBOTSFORD

From the painting by Sir W. Allan, R. A., in the Royal
Collection

The defects of these novels and those which came later have been
clearly pointed out since the analytical novel and the novel of purpose
have come into vogue. Scott did not command the constructive skill of
even the second-rate novelist of today; he was often an awkward builder
and clumsy in putting his materials together in a coherent whole; his
style is often loose and diffuse; he dealt largely with the outside of the
spectacle of living; his women have no magic of loveliness, no mystery
of temperament, though they sometimes stand out with great distinctness;
his heroes are rarely heroic, they are often commonplace.

Scott was the chronicler of feudalism, the primitive social order of the
clan, of an aristocratic society. He was as little interested in Democracy as
was Shakespeare; and largely for the same reason: his age was not anti-democratic,
it had not reached the democratic stage. Bagehot, the famous
English critic, put his limitations under two heads: he gives us the stir of
the world but not its soul, and he leaves the abstract intellect unreported.

His vital interest in the moving spectacle of life has given us an almost
unrivalled report of that world, and of a great group of men and women
whose careers, as Scott reports them, have the reality of fact and the
dramatic interest of fiction. Jeanie Deans, Madge Wildfire, Diana Vernon,
Meg Merrilies, Wandering Willie, Andrew Fairservice, and a crowd of their
companions, are more alive today, after a century has passed, than most
of the people whose names are in the telephone directories.

THE GRAVE OF SCOTT

At Dryburgh Abbey, Scotland

Scott was a man of the kind men love to remember. His faults
of nature are as obvious as his faults of art; but his splendid vitality
11
makes them trivial. He was large hearted, frank, generous, honorable;
he made life seem more noble by the richness of his nature and his splendid
courage. His career was as romantic in achievement and vicissitude
as his most striking novel. In 1826, when he was fifty-five years old, the
two business houses in which he was a partner failed, with obligations
amounting to nearly six hundred thousand dollars. Scott had recently
spent large sums on the enlargement of Abbotsford, in settling his sons
in life, and for other people; and he held the bills of Constable for four
novels to be written in the future; the novels were written, but the bills
were not honored. Four months after the failure Lady Scott died, and
Scott’s health was breaking. Two days after the failure he resumed
work on “Woodstock,” and set himself to pay the debt of half a million
dollars. In two years he earned for his creditors nearly two hundred
thousand dollars, the major part of which came from the sales of “Woodstock”
and “The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte.” If his brain had not given
out he would have discharged the entire indebtedness in a few years.
Working with a disabled brain but with heroic resolution, he wrote “Count
Robert of Paris” and “Castle Dangerous.” In five years more than three
hundred thousand dollars had been paid; meantime he had had a stroke
of paralysis. After a second stroke, when
“Count Robert” was practically finished,
the publishers objected to the work in the
last volume. “The blow is a stunning
one,” wrote the broken man. “God knows
I am at sea in the dark, and the vessel
leaky…. I often wish I could lie down and
sleep without waking. But I will fight it
out if I can.” And he fought it out; he
died on July 12, 1832, and on February
21, 1833, the creditors were paid in full.
Never was a heroic fight more nobly won.

On his death-bed Scott called his son-in-law
Lockhart, who was to tell the story
of his life in one of the great biographies,
to his bedside. “I have but a minute to
speak to you,” he said. “My dear, be a
good man…. Nothing else will give you
any comfort when you come to lie here.”

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

*** Information concerning the above books may be had on application to the Editor of The Mentor.

THE OPEN LETTER

SIR WALTER SCOTT

From the painting by Sir Henry Raeburn

What sort of a person
was he; what did he
look like—this Scottish
bard, novelist, historian,
essayist, and landed baronet?

“There he goes,” said
Dr. Maginn, a contemporary
of Scott’s, “sauntering
about his grounds,
with his Lowland bonnet
in his hand, dressed
in his old green shooting-jacket,
telling stories of
every stone and bush,
and tree and stream in
sight—tales of battles
and raids—or ghosts and
fairies, as the case may
be, of the days of yore.”

“Sauntering” is hardly
the word with which
to describe Scott’s gait. “Limping”
would be better, for he was lame from
boyhood, and he supported himself in
walking with a staff so heavy that it
looked like a cudgel. Washington Irving
visited Abbotsford in 1816, and described
Scott as “limping up the gravel walk,
aiding himself by a stout walking-stick,
but moving rapidly and with vigor.”

* * *

His lameness, was no serious handicap
to Sir Walter. He was a man of extraordinary
strength, six feet tall, and of a
large and powerful frame, with great
breadth across the chest. The muscles of
his arms were like iron. He was an exceptional
and powerful wielder of an ax,
and could bring down a tree with the best
of the younger men. He was a master of
the horse, and a bold rider. He climbed
the hills till he wearied all but his faithful
dogs, and he was proficient in sport and
hunting. The latter, however, he did not
like. “I was never at ease,” he said,
“when I had knocked down my bird and,
going to pick him up, he cast back his
dying eye with a look of reproach. I am
not ashamed to say that no practice ever
reconciled me fully to the cruelty of the
affair.”

* * *

The conversation of Scott was frank,
hearty, picturesque, and dramatic. He
had a great sense of
humor, and a rare gift
for story telling. He was
an accomplished mimic,
and he lighted up his
narratives and anecdotes
with appropriate dialect
and graphic description.
And, as a near friend
once observed, “The
chief charm of his conversation,
he being a man
of such eminence, was
its perfect simplicity and
the entire absence of
vanity and love of display.”

* * *

He was a good listener,
too—but he did not enjoy
listening to classic
music. He allowed that
he “had a reasonable good ear for a jig,”
but confessed that “sonatas gave him the
spleen.” But he would rouse up at the
sound of “The Blue Bells of Scotland”
or “Bonnie Dundee,” and his eye would
flash an enthusiastic response to any song
or verse that celebrated the romance,
chivalry, and heroism of his native land.

* * *

Sir Walter was a strange combination
of simplicity and strength. His personal
appearance was strikingly odd. Once
seen, he could never be forgotten. “Although
forty-eight years have passed since
I met him,” wrote an acquaintance, “his
personality is as present to me now as it
was then in the flesh. His light blue waggish
eye, sheltered, almost screened, by
overhanging straw-colored bushy brows,
his scanty, sandy-colored hair, the length
of his upper lip, his towering forehead, his
abrupt movements, and the mingled humor,
urbanity and benevolence of his
smile.” His usual costume consisted of a
green cutaway coat, with short skirts and
brass buttons; drab trousers, vest and
gaiters; a single seal and watch-key attached
to a watered black ribbon dangling
from his fob; a loose, soft linen collar; a
black silk neckerchief;
and a low-crowned,
deep-brimmed hat.

W. D. Moffat

Editor