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Scott's Theory and Practice Concerning the Use of the Supernatural in Prose Fiction in Relation to the Chronology of the Waverley Novels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Mody C. Boatright
Mody C. Boatright*
Affiliation:
University of Texas
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Extract

The question has recently been raised as to whether or not the order of the publication of the Waverley Novels is also, as Lockhart implies, the order of writing. Dame Una Pope-Hennessy, writing in the New York Saturday Review of Literature for April 23, 1932, (p. 686), appeals to lovers of Scott for help in the solution of the problem of the chronology of his novels. She states her reasons for believing that St. Ronan's Well, though later revised, was written seventeen years before Waverley. In a similar communication published in the London Times Literary Supplement for April 28, 1932, Dame Una Pope-Hennessy outlines the genesis of her skepticism as to the usually accepted chronology of Scott's novels:

Hitherto it has been assumed that novels issued from Scott's head much as Athena issued from the head of Zeus, full-panoplied for action. … Now, after re-reading and consideration, I incline to think that in Scott we have a novelist from boyhood, temporarily diverted by the study of ballads and the fashions of the hour to writing poetry, and then, when the poetic vein had been sufficiently worked, going back to his first love, prose.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , March 1935 , pp. 235 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1935

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References

1 Views and Renews, p. 95.

2 “The Legend of Abbotsford,” The Nineteenth Century and After (1932) cxii, 374–384.

3 The probability of such an assumption is increased by the facts that Waverley, though begun in 1805, did not reach its final form until 1813 or 1814; and that The Bridal of Triermain, though begun in 1797, as has been shown by Dame Pope-Hennessy in her book, The Laird of Abbotsford, pp. 52 ff., was not completed until shortly before publication in 1813.

4 I use here the phraseology of Charles Edward Whitmore in The Supernatural in Tragedy (Cambridge, Mass., 1915), p. 9.

5 I have not had access to the 1820 edition. My references are to the edition entitled Lives of Eminent Novelists and Dramatists (London, n. d.).

6 Ibid., pp. 539, 540.

7 Ibid., p. 540.

8 Ibid., p. 540. In the same work (p. 556) Scott praises Ann Radcliffe for her effective use of setting in The Italian.

9 Miscellaneous Works, xviii, 166–168.

10 Lives of Eminent Novelists and Dramatists, p. 541.

11 Ibid., pp. 568, 569.

12 Miscellaneous Works, xviii, 170.

13 Ibid., 273.

14 Ibid., xviii, 273.

15 Lives of Eminent Novelists and Dramatists, p. 542.

16 Miscellaneous Works, xviii, 274.

17 Ibid., p. 203.

18 Lives of Eminent Novelists and Dramatists, p. 542.

19 Ibid., p. 567.

20 Review of Frankenstein, Miscellaneous Works, xviii, 253, 254.

21 Miscellaneous Works, xviii, 276.

22 Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, p. 372.

23 Lives of Eminent Novelists and Dramatists, p. 547.

24 Ibid., p. 548.

25 Ibid., pp. 547, 548.—In his essay on Hoffmann (Miscellaneous Works, xviii, 276) Scott again praises Shakespeare's skill in finding appropriate speeches for ghosts, but notes that the attempts “would probably have been ridiculous in any meaner hand.”

26 In the 1830 introduction Scott says: “The story was intended to be longer, and the catastrophe more artificially brought out; but a friendly critic, to whose opinion I subjected the work in its progress, was of the opinion that the idea of the Solitary was of a kind too revolting, and more likely to disgust than interest the reader.”

27 All references to the Waverley Novels are to the edition published by P. F. Collier and Sons, New York, n.d. The text of the Collier edition is that of the Dryburgh Edition, published by A. and C. Black, London, 1892.

28 Writing of David Ritchie, the original of Elshie, Scott says: “He did not altogether discourage the idea [that he commanded supernatural powers;] it enlarged his very limited circle of power, and in so far gratified his means of giving terror or pain.”

29 Professor Wilmon Brewer, in Shakespeare's Influence on Sir Walter Scott (Boston, 1925), pp. 258–261, argues that the character of the dwarf is modeled upon that of Timon of Athens. There is, however, this essential difference: Timon dies in his misanthropy, and gives his gold only with the object of increasing human misery, whereas Mauley aids both Hobbie and Isabella Vere from motives of humanity. Scott's original plan must have called for Mauley's playing the rôle of Timon to the end.

30 All references of Lockhart are to the five-volume edition published by Houghton, Mifflin Company, Boston, 1901.

31 As a contributor to the London Times Literary Supplement (April 14, 1928), pp. 529–530, has pointed out, the story is made up of thirteen private letters, plus two chapters of author's narrative, plus seven chapters from a journal, plus eleven chapters of author's narrative, plus a two-chapter epilogue.

32 David MacRitchie, “The Proofsheets of Redgauntlet,” London Times Literary Supplement (September 14, 1924). I have not had access to Mr. MacRitchie's longer article on the same subject in Longman's Magazine for March, 1900. The manuscript of Redgauntlet has been described in the London Times Literary Supplement for April 14, 1924.

33 Twenty-five Finest Short Stories, New York, 1931.

34 Lockhart, iv, 84.

35 N. W. Senior, Essays on Fiction, p. 55, had ample warrant for asserting that the White Lady acted “with no assignable objects.”

35 I am aware of the fact that in her last speech the White Lady professes to have protected Halbert and sent him out of the valley to prevent his marriage to Mary. But her uniform kindness to him during the first part of the action contradicts her words. I doubt if Scott had any idea of giving her this speech when he wrote the first part of the book.

37 Scott's words are: “In imitation of an example so successful, the White Lady of Avenel was introduced into the following sheets.” If the first conception of the White Lady came from Fouque, The Monastery could not have been written before 1813, the date of the publication of Undine. Scott's words, however, could well apply to a change in the character, for example that from fairy to elementary spirit, rather than to her origin.

38 Frank Thilly's History of Philosophy (New York, 1914), p. 285; Wilhelm Windleband's A History of Philosophy, translated by James H. Tufts (second edition, New York, 1901), p. 378.

39 Miscellaneous Works, xviii, 119.

40 Miss Ball's statement (Sir Waller Scott as a Critic of Literature, p. 117) is as follows: “That he was deeply impressed with his blunder in managing the White Lady of Avenel may be surmised from the fact that in several later discussions of the effect of supernatural apparitions in novels, he emphasized the necessity of keeping them sufficiently infrequent to preserve an atmosphere of mystery.”

41 See Scott's introductions and appendices to Woodstock.