"To Be at Once Another and the Same": Walter Scott and the End(s) of Sympathetic Britishness

Abstract

ON A MISERABLE DECEMBER DAY IN 1825, WALTER SCOTT RECORDED HIS resolve fight his latest bout of depression letting mind and body know that supposing one the House of Commons and the other the House of Peers, my will is sovereign over Three weeks later, only days before the collapse of the printing and publishing businesses on which he had staked his fortune, Scott mused in his journal on the significance of the new year: A thought strikes me allied this period of the year. People say that the whole human frame in all its parts and divisions is gradually in the act of decaying and renewing. What a curious time-piece it would be that could indicate us the moment this gradual and insensible change had so completely taken place that no atom was left of the original person who had existed at a certain period but there existed in his stead person having the limbs thewes and sinews, the face and lineaments, the consciousness.... Singular--to be at once and the same. (1) Ruminating on the concurrent deterioration and renewal that paradoxically characterizes the body, Scott ponders the prospect, eerie and exhilarating, that an individual might be another and the same simultaneously. His interest in the duality of bodies, moreover, seems intimately linked his life-long investment in the fate of Britain, a compound state created by the 1707 Act of Union joining England and Scotland. Given Scott's evident familiarity with metaphors of the body politic, and bearing in mind his public role as the leading literary representative of Scotland the world, we can fruitfully read the above passage as reflecting national as well as personal concerns. Do nations, like bodies, change so gradually that it is impossible demarcate precisely when the transformation has created a new entity? If it seems paradoxical, even uncanny, to be at once and the same, what do Scott's writings reveal about the possibilities and pitfalls of attempting retain one's original national identity while simultaneously learning accept a new one? Only a month after the financial crash that ruined him, Scott was hard at work on one of his most explicit interventions in national affairs: the Letters of Malachi Malagrowther (1826). Written in response the British government's proposal limit Scottish banks' powers of issuing small bills, the Letters defends such credit arrangements as the backbone of northern economic development. Scott was well aware of the irony of his situation, remarking in his journal that is ridiculous enough for me in a state of insolvency for the present be battling about gold and paper currency (120). Nevertheless, by vindicating Scotland's right self-government on domestic issues, the Letters effectively proclaims the importance of retaining Scotland's institutions and, by extension, Scotland's national identity within the United Kingdom. On this point, Scott knew he had tread carefully: Spent the morning and till dinner on Malachi's Second Epistle the Athenians. It is difficult steer betwixt the of one's setting in one direction and the prudent regard the interests of the empire and its internal peace and quiet recommending less vehement expression. I will endeavour sight of both. But were my own interest alone concerned, d--n me but I wa'd give it them hot. (115) As in his novels, Scott aligns prudence with respect for the conjoined interests of civil society and the British state. (2) Following one's natural impulse would mean allowing one's National feelings overrule such prudential, imperial concerns. Scott's compromise is attempt keep sight of both the national and the international by attempting reconcile Scotland's interests with those of Britain as a whole. …