Selected Prose of Sir Walter Scott

 

Selected Prose of Sir Walter Scott, Edited with an Introduction by J.C. Trewin (Falcon Prose Classics, 1952). (John Courtenay Trewin, 1908 - 1990, jounalist and drama critic.)

"I read Walter Scott first with the eagerness of a boy of ten, niched among the worn, sea-pink-tufted crags on Old Lizard Head upon several of the long primrose-and-blue July evenings of a lost summer."

That's the first sentence of the Introduction, and the best. Trewin remained a fan of the Waverley novels, and here he selects ten extracts. 

They are: 1. the battle of Prestonpans, from Waverley. 2. The funeral of Mrs Margaret Bertram, from Guy Mannering. 3. The post office scene, from The Antiquary. 4. First encounter with Andrew Fairservice, from Rob Roy. 5. The riot and death of Porteous, from The Heart of Midlothian. 6. Arriving at Wolf's Crag, from The Bride of Lammermoor. 7. Dalgetty meeting Ranald in the dungeon, from A Legend of Montrose. 8. Ivanhoe's joust with Brian de Bois-Guilbert at Ashby, from Ivanhoe. 9. Meg Dods talking about the new resort, from St Ronan's Well. 10. The end of the Chevalier's venture, from Redgauntlet.

If J.C. Trewin's book had any influence, it can only have been to hasten the precipitous decline of Scott's reputation. 

These are mostly great pages from mostly great books, and yet they are somehow a terrible advert for an audience unconvinced of Scott's merits. (As Swinburne wrote of Byron: "No poet is so badly represented by a book of selections. It must show something of his weakness; it cannot show all of his strength.") Taken out of context, the extracts lose most of their meaning: for instance, in the first extract, almost everything depends on having followed Edward Waverley's story to this point, his relations with Colonel Gardiner, with Fergus MacIvor, etc. And on the other hand, reading an extract focusses pitiless attention on the feeble and clumsy writing that is always to be found in Scott, even in selection, and it makes an uncommitted reader think (mistakenly but reasonably), well if this is the best I needn't bother with the rest.... (The extract that works best in isolation is the post office scene from The Antiquary, perhaps because it's peopled by characters outside the main narrative.) The truth is, that to have a chance of experiencing Scott's greatness you have to read one of his novels in full, and then you might feel it or you might not, but if you do feel it the feeblenesses and clumsinesses don't matter, any more than dead branches in a forest. 

Still and all, this is often great writing, though sadly chopped up; and Scott was a great prose writer, as well as (what is very different) a great novelist and (what is very relevant) a great poet. Here's the climax of that hard-bitten scene from Guy Mannering:

At length they arrived at the churchyard gates, and from thence, amid the gaping of two or three dozen of idle women with infants in their arms, and accompanied by some twenty children, who ran gambolling and screaming alongside of the sable procession, they finally arrived at the burial-place of the Singleside family. This was a square enclosure in the Greyfriars churchyard, guarded on one side by a veteran angel without a nose, and having only one wing, who had the merit of having maintained his post for a century, while his comrade cherub, who had stood sentinel on the corresponding pedestal, lay a broken trunk among the hemlock, burdock, and nettles which grew in gigantic luxuriance around the walls of the mausoleum. A moss-grown and broken inscription informed the reader that in the year 1650 Captain Andrew Bertram, first of Singleside, descended of the very ancient and honourable house of Ellangowan, had caused this monument to be erected for himself and his descendants. A reasonable number of scythes and hour-glasses, and death’s heads and cross-bones, garnished the following sprig of sepulchral poetry to the memory of the founder of the mausoleum:--

                               Nathaniel’s heart, Bezaleel’s hand, 

                                     If ever any had, 

                               These boldly do I say had he, 

                                     Who lieth in this bed.

Here, then, amid the deep black fat loam into which her ancestors were now resolved, they deposited the body of Mrs. Margaret Bertram; and, like soldiers returning from a military funeral, the nearest relations who might be interested in the settlements of the lady urged the dog-cattle of the hackney coaches to all the speed of which they were capable, in order to put an end to farther suspense on that interesting topic.

Greyfriars churchyard: The Greyfriars Kirkyard, on the southern edge of Edinburgh's Old Town. 

Nathaniel's heart, etc.: Scott stole this from an inscription in the Howff, Dundee, commemorating Andrew Schippert, haxter burgess of Dundee, who died in 1641. (See Traits and Stories of the Scottish People, by the Rev. Charles Rogers (1867).) Bezaleel was the chief artisan of the tabernacle (see Exodus 31:1-6). Nathaniel presumably refers to the prince who provided offerings to the tabernacle at the time of its consecration (see Numbers 7:18-23), though he is just one of several tribal leaders listed as doing so. 

dog-cattle: the skinny horses mentioned earlier in the chapter. See Dictionaries of the Scots Language, "dog" : "dog-cattle, a contemptuous term applied to ill-nourished animals".

Scott's novels, a brief guide.