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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The attack on the accepted chronology of the Waverley Novels began in 1932, the year of the Scott centennial. In a letter to the Edinburgh Scotsman, Dame Una Pope-Hennessy, who had just published a successful biography, launched an assault on what she considered the most vulnerable work in the canon from the point of view of chronology, St. Ronan's Weil. Universally accepted as the eighteenth member of the series, this novel seemed to Dame Una, “after careful consideration and re-reading”, far more likely to be the first in time of composition, and because of its suggestive allusions to the period of Scott's courtship, she expressed the belief that “the major portion” must have been written, not in 1823, but in 1797–98—twenty-five years before it was actually sent to press, and sixteen years before the completion of Waverley (1814), Scott's celebrated first novel.
1 “St. Ronan's Well”, The Scotsman, March 16, 1932, p. 10, c. 6—republished in the Saturday Review of Literature, viii (1932), 686.
2 Rob Roy was moved up from sixth place to fourth place in the series, probably because of its popularity. The other adjustments in the order were very slight.
3 John Gibson Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1901), iii, 108. 4 “The Dates of the Waverley Novels”, TLS, April 28, 1932, p. 311.
5 “St. Ronan's Well”, The Scotsman, March 22, 1932, p. 7; April 2, 1932, p. 11; TLS, May S, 1932, p. 331; “The Legend of Abbotsford”, Nineteenth Century, cxii (1932), 374–384; “Sir Walter's Secret, a Literary Inquest”, Scots Magazine, xx n.s. (1933), 192–198.
6 “Rob Roy: a New Interpretation”, The Glasgow Herald, July 3,1937, p. 4.
7 Mody C. Boatright, “Scott's Theory and Practice Concerning the Use of the Supernatural in Prose Fiction in Relation to the Chronology of the Waverley Novels”, PMLA, L(1935), 235–261.
8 “Dame Una Pope-Hennessy has presented a case that cannot easily be answered. If at all she errs on the side of moderation” (TLS, op. cit., May 5, 1932, p. 331). “Further evidence [for the early composition of The Monastery] is really superfluous … ” (“Sir Walter's Secret”, op. cit., p. 197).
9 Lockhart, rv, 122–123. In July Scott is considering how the story will evolve; in September “the work is about half finished or more”—Letters of Sir Walter Scott, ed. H. J. C. Grierson (Edinburgh, 1932-37), viii, 29, 88.
10 Lockhart, in, 11.
11 Ibid., iii, 132-133. Scott frequently settled on the next “subject” while still working on the old.
12 “Rob Roy : a New Interpretation”, p. 4.
13 There are other difficulties, some of which Sir Herbert Grierson raises (Sir Walter Scott, Bart. [London: Constable, 1938], pp. 116–117). When was there timefor so extensive a series of works? Why did they not appear in the financial crises of 1809-10 and 1813-14? Are Scott's early attempts in prose of any value, or of the same genre actually as the novels?
14 Thomas the Rhymer (c. 1799); The Lord of Ennerdale (c. 1799); the conclusion of Queen-hoo Hall (1808). By 1799, according to Mr. Carswell, Scott had already written several 'prentice novels. Yet these fragments are far inferior in quality to all of the supposed early novels, and none of them—significantly—is about contemporary manners or in the epistolary mode.
15 “Sir Walter's Secret”, p. 193.
16 I am deeply indebted to Miss Belle da Costa Greene, Director, and to the staff of the Morgan Library, for the readiness with which these priceless MSS were made available to me, and for the very great courtesy shown me on every occasion.
17 The fifteen leaves of the Morgan Waverley, and the first thirty leaves of The Monastery, are written on foolscap of folio size.
18 The Journal of Walter Scott (Edinburgh: Constable, 1890), i, 122.
19 The early (disputed) chapters of Rob Roy are watermarked “1813.” I am indebted to Miss Emma Dixon, present owner of the MS, for this information. The MS of Rob Roy is in the Honresfeld Library.
20 Redgaunilet is written “all on paper manufactured by Cowan in 1822”, according to Grierson (Sir Walter Scott, Bart., p. 232). The MS is in the National Library of Scotland.
211 have included Rob Roy and Redgauntlet in this list because they are disputed novels, and because the known information about them serves to complete the total picture.
22 It is interesting to observe how the watermarks of The Monastery support Lockhart's statement that part of the first volume of the novel was written before Ivanhoe was concluded.
23 Leaves 17–19, 55–58, and 67–70 of Volume ii. The grouping of the pages suggests a mechanical irregularity.
24 In 1938 Dame Una Pope-Hennessy disclaimed ever having had herself any belief in The Monastery as an early work (“The New Life of Walter Scott”, The Observer, September 11, 1938, p. 8). In the remaining five, however, she and Mr. Carswell concur.
26 They were close enough to reveal unmistakably their 'prentice origins—which, according to Dame Una and Mr. Carswell, are betrayed by “patchwork” form and “awkwardness of construction”, “crudity of conception and execution”, a “fumbling” manner of narration, a “dreary” style, autobiographical detail, and (in St. Ronan's Well) the “many French expressions” which figure in the text.
26 The Laird of Abbotsfori (London: Putnam, 1932), p. 156.
27 “It is, I suppose, superfluous to add, that in no instance did Scott ever rewrite his prose before sending it to press. Whatever may have been the case with his poetry, the world uniformly received the prima cura of the novelist” (Lockhait, iii, 421). A special exception, of course, was the revised ending of St. Ronan's Well.
28 Letters of Scott, vi, 160,
29 “I am pressed to get on with Woodstock, and must try. I wish I could open a good vein of interest which would breathe freely. I must take my old way, and write myself into good-humour with my task” (The Journal of Walter Scott, i, 74).