Category: Literature

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Scott-Land: The Man Who Invented a Nation. Stuart Kelly, Polygon (Edinburgh), 2010. 328 pages.

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First, a disclaimer. I did not read the entire book. By the time I was halfway through, so much of the book seemed only obliquely relevant to the subject of Sir Walter Scott’s novels that I scanned the remainder of the book for the bits that seemed relevant and ignored the rest. Others, I grant, may see this book differently, if they’re interested in such matters as how Diana Gabaldon, Tony Blair, or Dr Who may relate to Walter Scott. I wasn’t particularly interested.

However, I greatly commend the author for writing a book about Walter Scott, given that Scott is hardly ever mentioned anymore, except maybe by travelers who emerge from Waverley Station in Edinburgh and see the enormous Scott memorial for the first time. The author, in fact, seems to assume that the readers of Scott-Land have not read any Scott, since few people read Scott anymore.

It’s an odd thing, isn’t it? Walter Scott as a cultural phenomenon is deemed to be worth writing books about. But few people are willing to go out on a limb and make the case that Scott is still worth reading and taking seriously, or that Scott’s books are still worth talking about the way we still talk about Jane Austen or George Eliot, or even Charles Dickens.

This is not an academic book. It’s meant to be entertaining. It’s often flippant and even snarky. Kelly seems to think that if he — or even we — took Walter Scott too seriously, that would be embarrassing, like liking the Pet Shop Boys. Kelly’s connection with Scott isn’t even particularly literary. Kelly grew up in the Borders area of Scotland near Scott’s baronial home at Abbotsford, so Kelly’s connection to Scott has a cultural rather than a literary origin, though Kelly studied English at Oxford. This is purely a guess on my part, but I’d guess that Kelly writes about Scott the same way that one would have to talk about Scott today at Oxford — with a knowing smile or even a touch of smirk.

But I’m probably an odd duck of a reader, because I have read Scott. I also take Scott seriously. A part of my personal view, though, is that we probably wouldn’t want to read Scott today because of an interest in the history of Scotland but rather because of an interest in the history of the English novel, with the bonus that in reading Scott we also get a great deal of the Scots language as well as English. A friend asked whether I’d agree that Scott’s themes are less relevant today than, say, Jane Austen’s or Charles Dickens’. I would agree. I’m certainly not arguing that Scott should be at the top of our reading list in 19th Century novels; only that he should be on it, for dedicated readers, anyway.

The first question one might ask if one is considering reading Scott is, “What should I read?” My suggestion would be — anything but Ivanhoe. Scott is at his best, I think, when he is writing not about his beloved kings and heroes but when he
is writing about ordinary people in ordinary places. I’d suggest The Heart of Mid-Lothian or The Antiquary as a good place to start.

I’m still looking for a recent academic book about Sir Walter Scott. Meanwhile, I very much agree with what the academic says in the short video below, in which she answers a question after a lecture.

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Source: Wikimedia Commons

What’s remarkable about Oliver Cromwell, 350 years after he died, is that he is still a touchy subject. Why should that be? I would propose that it’s because the conflicts of the 17th Century have not really been settled: What kind of government is best, and what should religion have to do with it? In many ways, we’re still fighting the English Civil War, just as we are still fighting the American Civil War.

Cromwell is on my mind because I just finished reading Sir Walter Scott’s Woodstock, in which Cromwell is a character, as well as the future King Charles II. And Hilary Mantel, who wrote Wolf Hall, died last month.

I am by no means qualified to make any sort of historical argument about Cromwell. I can only throw up my hands and say that it’s clearly complicated. Historians are still arguing about Cromwell and writing about Cromwell. In November, Blackwell’s will release a pricey new tome, volume 2 of The Letters, Writings, and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. Volume II, February 1649 to December 1653. A recent article in the Guardian about this book asks the question, “Has history got it wrong about Oliver Cromwell’s persecution of Catholics?”

Sir Walter Scott, though he was a royalist, does not demonize his Cromwell character. Scott’s Cromwell is pompous and menacing, but he’s also rational, and he’s not gratuitously cruel.

As for Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell in Wolf Hall, I don’t know, except that according to the reviews I’ve read she is highly sympathetic to Cromwell. I tried to read Wolf Hall but could not get beyond the second page. It was some of the most atrocious writing I’ve ever tried to read, and I made the remark at the time that it’s a wonder that some writers aren’t killed by their editors. I was not the only one. According to Wikipedia, Susan Bassnet wrote in Times Higher Education, “[D]readfully badly written… Mantel just wrote and wrote and wrote. I have yet to meet anyone outside the Booker panel who managed to get to the end of this tedious tome. God forbid there might be a sequel, which I fear is on the horizon.” For no reason other than her horrible writing, I am highly skeptical of Hilary Mantel’s take on history.

As for what makes the question complicated, we might start by saying that it depended on where one lived. The English, the Scottish, and the Irish all had good reasons for seeing Cromwell differently. As for the doctrinal and political questions, they’re still argued today. Cromwell was a Puritan, and for that reason alone I can’t imagine that I could like him. In Waller R. Newell’s book Tyrants, Newell writes that “it would be hard to know whether to describe him as a Puritan Machiavellian or a Machavellian Puritan.” Here Newell does not intend the term “Machiavellian” as an insult; rather, he has in mind “the heart of Machiavelli’s dual endorsement of ‘princes’ and ‘peoples.'”

Whatever material historians may recently have uncovered that suggests that Cromwell was more tolerant of Catholics than was previously known, there is no disputing what Cromwell did in Ireland, where, according to Wikipedia, 15 to 50 percent of the population died from Cromwell’s war and the famine and plague that followed.

Here I confess a personal grudge against Cromwell, though it is purely speculative. My paternal ancestors arrived in Virginia at the very tail of the 17th Century. No one has been able to precisely determine where they came from, but the Y-DNA genetic evidence available today strongly suggests that they came from Ireland, not from England. The speculative theory of mine is that those two young brothers left Ireland because of the devastation and redistribution of property caused by Cromwell. They saw no future for themselves in Ireland.

There are grudges aplenty today as the old civil wars continue. We know what happened to King Charles I, and it seems that King Charles II was a pretty good guy. Just yesterday, King Charles III appeared in Scotland’s Dunfermline for some royal duties. According to the media, Charles III and his consort were cheered by the large crowd waiting to see them. When Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, appeared, there were boos along with the cheers. This surprises me, but it also shows how the complexities of the 17th Century live on. According to the Daily Mail, quoting a woman in the crowd:

“Remarking on the booing of Nicola Sturgeon she said: ‘That doesn’t surprise me. She thinks she is Queen of Scotland and doesn’t realise how many people dislike her. We are very happy with the Royal Family we have and with the union, thank you.’”

Another royalist, in Scotland. Yep. It’s complicated. And very little has been settled.

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Concise Scots Dictionary. Edinburgh University Press, 2017. Second edition; first published 1985. 852 pages.

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In the academic debate about whether Scots is a language or just a dialect, it had seemed more likely to me as a mere reader and non-academic that Scots is a dialect. This was only because I can understand it, or at least very largely understand it, both when I hear it spoken or when I read it as Sir Walter Scott represents it in his novels. But I believe I have changed my mind. It’s a very cool thought: What if we native speakers of English understand a second language that is a close relative of English? After all, we consider Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish to be different languages, though they understand each other. I have even seen this written as their being able to “make themselves understood,” as though the differences in the Scandinavian languages (about which I know nothing) are greater than I imagined them to be.

A friend of mine who speaks good French claims that, if French people speak French to Italians with an Italian accent, they’ll be understood. I thought that was funny. Now I’m convinced that it’s probably true, or at least partly or largely true. I don’t have any Italian, but after taking up French in middle age after years of Spanish in junior high, high school, and college, I came to realize just how similar the languages are. I’ve lost most of the Spanish, and I found that if I tried to speak Spanish, say, to the crew that framed my house, French came out. It’s an experiment I’ve never tried but would like to try. If I spoke the best French I can muster to a Spanish speaker, using Spanish pronunciation, would I be understood? I actually think that I could make myself understood, especially if I emphasized words that I know to be cognates.

This Scots dictionary includes an introduction with the title “The History of Scots.” This introduction takes the strong position that Scots is a language, not a dialect:

It may therefore reasonably be asked if there is any sense in which Scots is entitled to the designation of a language any more than any of the regional dialects of English in England. ¶ In reply one may point out that Scots possesses several attributes not shared by any regional English dialect. In its linguistic characteristics it is more strongly differentiated from Standard English than any English dialect. The dictionary which follows displays a far larger number of words, meanings of words and expressions not current in Standard English than any of the English dialects could muster, and many of its pronunciations are strikingly different from their Standard English equivalents. Moreover, the evidence of modern linguistic surveys is that the Scots vernacular is less open to attrition in favour of standard usages than are the English dialects. One illustration of this is the fact that a fair number of dialect words, such as aye always, pooch a pocket, shune shoes, een eyes, and nicht night — have very recently died out in northern England but remain in vigorous use in many parts of Scottish society. … But what most of all distinguishes Scots is its literature.”

Reading through this long dictionary also helped convince me that Scots is a language. A vast number of words are completely foreign to me, though probably most of those words would rarely come up in most conversations, words such as gleebrie for a small piece of sorry land.

Part of the pleasure of reading Sir Walter Scott is the language, both his archaic but colorful English as well as the Scots. I’ve made a project of reading Scott, so it seemed sensible to wrap that into acquiring a better feel for Scots, especially since I love Scotland so much.

There’s another reason I’m curious about Scots. Many of the settlers of the Appalachian Mountains were from Scotland, and thus one would expect Scots to have had a large input into the Southern Appalachian dialect, which I understand perfectly well having grown up with it. Though there are a good many commonalities — a mess of beans, or reench or ranch for rinse — most of the Scots words are completely strange to me. No doubt there has been much academic work on Scots and Southern Appalachian, and I need to look for that. But my guess would be that, even if Scots had less an effect on Southern Appalachian than I would have guessed, it’s probably true that someone who understands Southern Appalachian would have an easier time understanding Scots than, say, someone from California with their perfect standard American English.

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I’ve written here in the past about how, when I can’t find newer fiction that appeals to me (often the case), I read a classic. It was back in 2013 when I read The Antiquary. Last year I read The Heart of Mid-Lothian, and earlier this year I started (but didn’t finish) Ivanhoe. I found Ivanhoe a touch boring because so much of the story is familiar, and Ivanhoe is not set in Scotland. But now, after reading Guy Mannering: Or, the Astrologer, I believe I have become addicted to Walter Scott.

When people do read Walter Scott these days, I suspect they make the wrong choices. Ivanhoe and Rob Roy are about well-mined bits of history. To my taste, Scott’s best stories are about obscure and imaginary characters, stories drawn from Scott’s delightful imagination rather than from history.

I am not the first person to be surprised by the lamentable fact that filmmakers and the BBC have ignored Sir Walter Scott. There is rich material there to be mined, the very kind of material that makes for such good period pieces — the mixing of characters of both high and low social status; a constant change of location and scenery, including seascapes, moors, castles, humble cottages, firesides, pubs and inns, courtrooms, stagecoaches, firths, ships, and old Edinburgh; and some of the snappiest dialogue in English literature — if you can understand it. The Scots dialect, which Scott represents phonetically, can be a challenge, but there are many references on the dialect when readers are stumped. And of course some of the characters — the gentry and travelers from England — speak standard, if somewhat archaic, English. Scott does not commit the sin so common in so much literature that is considered archaic — page after page of narrative. Scott is a much more cinematic writer in that he relies on action and dialogue to tell his stories — easy work for screenplay writers. Truly, Scott is worth studying as a writer.

Walter Scott’s novels are available at Gutenberg.org in Kindle format. But if you read Walter Scott, I highly recommend exploring eBay, or a seller of old books on Amazon, for an old hardcover edition. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, publishers issued many sets of books by popular authors. Some were of higher quality than others. No one seems to do that anymore, and though you may find some poorly produced paperback editions of old novels, most of these classics have long been out of print. Many of the old books are beautifully printed. Look for editions with nice cloth (or leather!) covers, strong bindings, and paper that resists yellowing. All paper that is 140 years old will be somewhat yellow, but the better quality paper is far less likely to be brittle. In particular, look for books printed in London or Edinburgh. They probably won’t be expensive, because they’re still common. My copy of Guy Mannering cost $3 plus shipping. On eBay you’ll find sets of Scott’s works (not necessarily complete as books got lost over the years). I was tempted to buy a set of the complete works but decided against it. I like the idea of an assortment of different interesting editions, bought one at a time when I decide to read another Walter Scott.

I suspect that it would take only one popular film based on a Walter Scott novel to bring about a revival and new editions — and to overwhelm Scotland with yet more tourists. Until that happens, there are many homeless and beautiful old books that would love to find a forever home on your shelves. And you could become one of the few visitors to Edinburgh to be awed by the Walter Scott memorial who has actually read Walter Scott.

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Click on the arrows for high-resolution version.

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⬇︎ Dirk Hatteraick Pursued by the Sloop of War

⬇︎ The Waste of Cumberland

⬇︎ “Gape, sinner, and swallow!”

⬇︎ Col. Mannering, Hazlewood, & the Smugglers

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From “The Pale Horse” (BBC / Amazon Prime Video). Boring.

Regular readers here know that there are certain kinds of stories that just don’t interest me. The largest category would be stories set in the here and now. But there’s another category as well: stories about bad people.

“The Pale Horse,” from BBC One (2020), now streamable from Amazon Prime Video, is that kind of story. The production is good, and the cast is excellent. It’s a nice period piece. But there is not a single character who is fit to like, with the exception of Clemency Ardingly, who has only a bit part. Even the detective is a bad guy — a bully. The men are jerks. The women are snarky and shallow. The witches glare and always look threatening.

People who are dysfunctional make similarly poor stories. The first example that comes to mind is “Trainspotting.” It was a popular film, but I stopped watching after about five minutes because the characters were so dysfunctional. Dysfunction is not interesting.

A story needs at least one character who is someone we can like. And then as long as there is at least one such character, bring on the villains.

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This series is British, but it comes along just when it’s needed in the United States: that is, as Republican states such as Florida and Texas try to invent ugly new laws designed to make the lives of young people miserable and to intimidate and punish anyone who dares to try to make the world safer for them.

So here you have it: Heartstopper dramatizes exactly what Republicans are afraid of — young people who will never, ever vote for a Republican. It also shows that, no matter what kind of meanness Republican cruelty can cook up to try to bring back the 16th Century, young people are not going back. I don’t think Heartstopper is intended as a pun, but in the U.S. it may stop the hard and feeble hearts of some old Republicans.

I’m a bit too old for this series. It’s made for young people. But from it I’m learning a lot about what young people are thinking these days and in what direction they will take the world. I even like some of their music. The charm is irresistible. I downloaded the first episode just to have a look because the reviews have been so good. Then I downloaded all of the first season.

Heartstopper can be streamed from Netflix.