Walter Scott
August 15, 1771 – September 21, 1832
Also known as: Lawrence Templeton | Jedediah Cleishbotham | Somnambulus | Clutterbuck | Laurence Templeton | Malachi Malagrowther
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet FRSE, was a Scottish poet, writer, publisher and literary critic. He was one of the most widely read authors of his time – not only in Europe – and is traditionally considered the founder of the historical novel. Many of his historical novels have become classics and have served as models for numerous plays, operas and films.
Scott was born as the ninth of twelve siblings, six of whom died in infancy. He contracted polio in his second year of life and had a paralyzed leg for the rest of his life. His father, also Walter Scott, was a lawyer and, as Writer to the Signet, a solicitor with extended competences. His mother, Anne Rutherford, was the daughter of a professor of medicine. After an apprenticeship as a lawyer with his father, he changed his professional orientation, studied law at the University of Edinburgh and became a lawyer at the age of 21. Despite his later extensive literary work, he remained active as a lawyer throughout his life: 14 years as an advocate, 33 years as sheriff and 24 years as clerk of session (overlapping in time). In 1797 he married Charlotte Carpenter (born Charlotte Charpentier, daughter of French refugees), with whom he had five children: Charlotte Sophia (1799–1837), Walter (1801–1847), Anne (1803–1837), Charles (1805–1841); a child born in 1798 had lived only one day. Charlotte died on May 16, 1826, and Scott suffered a stroke in 1831 and suffered from apoplectic paralysis ever since. He died in 1832 at his home in Abbotsford, near Melrose, and was buried in Dryburgh Abbey.
His literary success and reputation earned him many honours: honorary citizen (of Edinburgh), honorary doctorate (of the University of Dublin; he was offered honorary doctorates from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, but he could not travel to the award) and on 22 April 1820 even the elevation to the (lower) hereditary nobility as Baronet, of Abbotsford in the County of Roxburgh. The highlight of his recognition as an important poet had already been the offer to take over the position of royal court poet (Poet Laureate), which had become vacant in 1813, but he declined.
His title of nobility passed to his eldest son Walter as 2nd Baronet on his death in 1847 and finally became extinct on his death in 1847.
He began his literary career at the age of 25 with rewritten translations of German ballads: The Chase and William and Helen (Gottfried August Bürger's Der wilde Jäger and Lenore). An Erl-King (to Goethe's Erlkönig) and translations of his Götz von Berlichingen as well as other contemporary German dramas by various authors are also created. His great interest in the traditions of his homeland had led him to collect folk ballads since his youth; from 1802 he published the three-volume work The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, with ballads arranged by him and also with his own.
Scott achieved wide fame through his epic verse narratives, "the first bestsellers in verse form" with astonishing print runs, beginning with The Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805, followed by Marmion in 1808 and others. Songs from his The Lady of the Lake 1810 in the German translation by Adam Storck were set to music by Franz Schubert (song cycle Fräulein vom See), from which Ellen's third song (often but misleadingly referred to as "Schubert's Ave Maria" after his opening words) became world famous. Scott's first work as a novelist was the novel Waverley, published anonymously in 1814, which is set in the last revolt of the Jacobites, a revolt that started in Scotland in 1745 and was directed against the ruling House of Hanover in London with the aim of restoring the House of Stuart. The novel immediately caused a sensation; with it, Scott practically founded the modern historical novel, at least for the English-speaking world. In rapid succession in the following 10 years, he wrote an abundance of other historical novels and stories with Scottish themes, hardly surpassed in the annals of literary history: Guy Mannering, Old Mortality, Rob Roy and more, all of which (and later) were also published without his name, only with the indication "author of Waverley" or under a pseudonym. The reason for this may have been Scott's fear that otherwise he would damage his reputation as a solid lawyer: in contrast to the poetry with which he had previously made a name for himself, prose was considered second-rate, if not dubious, at the time. Although it gradually became an open secret who the 'Wizard of the North' was, as the unknown bestselling author was called, Scott maintained anonymity until 1827. Especially after his elevation to the nobility in 1818, he regarded writing novels as an inappropriate way for a gentleman to earn a living; it was not until a public dinner in the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh in 1827 that the secret of its authorship was officially revealed.
While the plots of his first novels were all set in Scotland in the 17th or 18th century, Scott expanded the circle of his settings in terms of space and time, starting with Ivanhoe (1820): Ivanhoe is set in 12th-century England, Quentin Durward (1823) in France and Anne of Geierstein (1829) in 15th-century Switzerland. Especially with these works, Scott also reached contemporary English and continental European audiences. In between, however, he returned to Scottish themes again and again, including in his shorter prose works, such as the short stories in the Chronicles of the Canongate.
Scott's great achievement, however, lay less in the reconstruction of the historical color, but rather in the portrayal of characters in the historical milieu, with which the readers received a new, lively access to history. Above all, the characters from the lower social classes are drawn in Scott's novels with a humanity and immediacy of life that has hardly ever been seen before in literature. In his novels, for example, there are numerous character characters who are quite important for the narrative, who come from the people and often also show comic traits.
As a narrative perspective, Scott chooses the presentation of the events from the point of view of a middle protagonist in the sense of a neutral hero. In order to make the reproduction of the past both authentic and imaginatively haunting, Scott primarily resorts to a scenic method of representation with a high proportion of dialogues, which help to dramatize the developmental stage of the country that is the subject of each of the novels. In the interaction of these various structural elements of his historical novels, Scott's fundamental literary intention is recognizable to appropriate the past by remembering it in order to integrate it into the present consciousness of his readers.
Scott himself kept his distance from his novels and regarded them largely as commercial matters, although he was the first author of English literature to become a figure of national rank and prestige during his lifetime. Thus, Scott always showed himself to his large and illustrious circle of guests or admirers in Abbotsford not as the prolific, hard-working author that he was, but as a charming and distinguished idler.
Although fiction was at the forefront of Scott's work, he also published literary essays, historical stories for children, a book on magic and witchcraft beliefs, and more, especially a nine-volume biography of Napoleon. These writings were also mostly very successful; German, French, Italian and Danish editions of the Napoleon biography appeared in the year of its first publication. The comparatively most insignificant role in Scott's work was played by some dramas that he published in the decade before his death.
Scott participated intensively in public life and was significantly involved in certain political and social issues and projects. In 1818, for example, he led the successful search for the Scottish crown jewels, which had been almost forgotten for decades. In 1820 he was elected president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 1822 he arranged and organised the successful visit of the unpopular King George IV to Edinburgh. It was the first visit by a British monarch to Scottish soil in more than 170 years – perhaps the highlight of this king's years of rule. In 1826, Scott intervened directly in the political events of the day with his Letters of Malachi Malagrowther, when the Scottish central bank system was to be brought into line with the English one, thus preventing the abolition of Scottish banknotes. (Today's banknotes of the Bank of Scotland are a reminder of this: all values bear a portrait of Scott on the obverse.)
The economic success of his works enabled Scott to join the printing business of his school friend James Ballantyne in 1805, and later to found a publishing house with the Ballantyne brothers, each as a silent partner. There his works were printed and occasionally published. This brought Scott additional income, but also exposed him to considerable risks as a co-partner with unlimited liability (limitations of liability for partnerships were not yet known in Scottish law at the time). A first financial crisis, exacerbated by Scott's high expenditure on the purchase of the estate, which was later called Abbotsford, could only be overcome in 1813 by closing the publishing house, selling rights, loans from relatives and the outstanding success of his prose work, which was the focus of his work from 1814 onwards.
An elaborate, hospitable and generous lifestyle, but above all the expansion and furnishing of Abbotsford, devoured vast sums of money and led Scott, despite the considerable sales of his books, to an ever-increasing need for money. He demanded and received considerable advances from his now publisher Archibald Constable and also used the printing works, of which he was a co-owner, to borrow and withdraw large profits. This caused the publishing house as well as the printing house persistent liquidity problems, which were bridged by further loans, only apparently secured by mutually drawn and accepted favor bills. In the great British financial crisis of 1825/26, however, an important London business partner of the publishing house stopped paying, and as a result, the whole system collapsed. The publisher's creditors as well as those of the printing company stuck to Scott, who was ultimately personally liable for the entire debt of over 120,000 pounds sterling – a gigantic amount by the value of the time.
A publication of the works of Charles R. Maturin and his biography planned by Scott in 1825 failed due to the bankruptcy of Scott's publishers.Scott could have largely freed himself from this situation through bankruptcy proceedings with subsequent discharge of residual debt (Abbotsford already belonged to his son Walter at that time). Scott's sense of status as a gentleman (bankruptcy would have been a 'commercial' solution) and his sense of honour (debts have to be paid) stood in the way of this. Thus, with the consent of the creditors, he decided on a Trust Deed, a deed based on an out-of-court settlement, according to which his remaining and future assets were placed under the creditors' hands and he undertook to pay off the debts. Scott faithfully adhered to it. While he had been a very prolific author before, he now wrote non-stop and ruined his health in the process. At his death, the debt had been paid to a large extent; a few years later, it was completely redeemed by the sale of his remaining work rights.
In 1811 Scott bought a small farm on the south bank of the Tweed near Melrose; through acquisitions, he enlarged the property over the years to an area of about 4 km². There he expanded the farm's buildings into Abbotsford House by altering and extending it considerably. With its bay windows, battlements, corner towers and stepped gables, it became the forerunner of the Victorian Scottish Barony.
Like his father, Scott was a Freemason. On 2 March 1801, St. David Lodge No. 36 in Edinburgh took him on as an apprentice. That same evening he was promoted to journeyman and elevated to master. In Selkirk, as a Freemason, he laid the foundation stone for the lodge house in 1816 on behalf of the Provincial Grand Master.