Sir Walter Scott: Life-Writing as Anti-romance

Abstract

From Thomas Carlyle's perspective, Sir Walter Scott lived no Romantic life. Carlyle rated early 19th century the sickliest of recorded ages, when British literature lay all puking and sprawling in Werterism [and] Byronism ... fruit of internal wind (Carlyle 306-07, his emphasis). His assessment of Scott, then, might seem a good thing. As he reviewed J. G. Lockhart's Life of Scott in January, 1838, however, Carlyle wrote that Scott most part transcended but a little way region of (304). (1) In 1840, Carlyle codified a theory of heroes in a series of lectures; in 1838, he recognized in Scott only those attributes shared with a wide humanity--industry, habit and health. (2) Scott's dubious achievement was his ordinariness. To Carlyle, Scott did not embrace what he could be, and thereby amounted nothing much. Yet, by focusing his review on Lockhart's romance of Sir Walter rather than on Scott's letters and journaling that often were quoted within it, Carlyle missed something. Scott excelled in ordinariness; his best, last, and quite deliberate subject was that commonplace self so disliked by Thomas Carlyle. When Scott died in 1832, others also were keen force him into or out of a mold by then determined Romantic. They wrote with benefit of a hindsight Scott could never have, and without risk of his disagreement. For Captain Basil Hall of Royal Navy, Scott was at his heroic best when he embarked on an 1831 sea voyage salvage his failing health; melding and nature, in 1832, Joanna Baillie described recently deceased Sir Walter now The cover'd treasure of a sacred spot; in an 1835 memoir, Washington Irving directly aligned his 1817 visit Scott at Abbotsford with his tour of a Newstead Abbey made Romantic by life and death of Byron. (3) Lockhart's memoir, on publication of its seventh and last volume, became renowned for a deathbed scene that heroized a poet who had predated and now aged out of Romance potentiality (Life 7: 393-94). Whatever Romanticism was by 1832, it required a life less ordinary. Lockhart, Walter Scott junior, and Robert Cadell, publisher, consequently tried restrain biographical impulses of James Hogg and William Laidlaw--each of whom had a story tell. (4) In 1827, Lockhart had railed: England expects every driveller do his Memorabilia (Lockhart, Quarterly 149). He concluded by attacking acquaintances turned biographers. With reading public as filthily prurient ... an eaves-dropping lackey, reputations need be protected (164). Those previously admitted to circles much above their station will find themselves excluded by fear that they will now [turn] a penny by systematic record of privacies too generously exposed (165). Lockhart's official biography of Scott, not surprisingly, is seen benefiting from privileged access yet entirely propagandizing for idea of great writer a great man (Carruthers 102). To Lockhart, Hogg and Laidlaw could only degrade Scott's reputation--a reputation Scott's literary heirs and business partners were keen maintain for its posthumous value. Shepherds turned poets, favorites of Sir Walter and intimates of his daily life, Hogg and Laidlaw promised meet Lockhart's low expectations: Hogg declared he wrote to show what [Scott] was in parlour, in his family, and among his acquaintances; and ... nothing extenuate, or set down aught through partiality (Robertson 48). Knowing ordinariness of everyday, and with their own lowly associations, Laidlaw and Hogg risked reducing Scott commonplace. What Carlyle, Scott's descendants and publishers, and even James Hogg missed in their competition tell story of Sir Walter Scott was how Scott's biography posed a problem residing in themselves. Scott, indeed, anticipated problem. Lockhart's first volume claimed its ground by quoting Scott's opinion of biography the most interesting perhaps of every species of composition (Life 1: 374) Scott continued, however: can no more sympathize with a mere eulogist than I can with a ranting hero upon stage (375). …