Scott: plot construction and the historical novel

1822

Extracts from (a) Scott’s Introductory Epistle to The Fortunes of Nigel (1822) and (b) Scott’s Prefatory Letter to Peveril of the Peak (1822).

Both selections are in the form of a dialogue between a vision of the unknown author of Waverley and one of two imaginary correspondents, Captain Clutterbuck and the Reverend Doctor Dryasdust.

(a) Captain

This may justify a certain degree of rapidity in publication, but not that which is proverbially said to be no speed. You should take time at least to arrange your story.

Author

That is a sore point with me, my son. Believe me, I have not been fool enough to neglect ordinary precautions. I have repeatedly laid down my future work to scale, divided it into volumes and chapters, and endeavoured to construct a story which I meant should evolve itself gradually and strikingly, maintain suspense, and stimulate curiosity; and which, finally, should terminate in a striking catastrophe. But I think there is a demon who seats himself on the feather of my pen when I begin to write, and leads it astray from the purpose. Characters expand under my hand; incidents are multiplied; the story lingers, while the materials increase; my regular mansion turns out a Gothic anomaly, and the work is closed long before I have attained the point I proposed.

Captain

Resolution and determined forbearance might remedy that evil.

Author

Alas! my dear sir, you do not know the force of paternal affection. When I light on such a character as Bailie Jarvie, or Dalgetty, my imagination brightens, and my conception becomes clearer at every step which I take in his company, although it leads me many a 264weary mile away from the regular road, and forces me to leap hedge and ditch to get back into the route again. If I resist the temptation, as you advise me, my thoughts become prosy, flat, and dull; I write painfully to myself, and under a consciousness of flagging which makes me flag still more; the sunshine with which fancy had invested the incidents, departs from them, and leaves every thing dull and gloomy. I am no more the same author I was in my better mood, than the dog in a wheel, condemned to go round and round for hours, is like the same dog merrily chasing his own tail, and gambolling in all the frolic of unrestrained freedom. In short, sir, on such occasions, I think I am bewitched.

(b) Dryasdust

Craving, then, your paternal forgiveness for my presumption, I only sighed at the possibility of your venturing yourself amongst a body of critics, to whom, in the capacity of skilful anti-quaries, the investigation of truth is an especial duty, and who may therefore visit with the more severe censure those aberrations, which it is so often your pleasure to make from the path of true history.

Author

I understand you. You mean to say these learned persons will have but little toleration for a romance, or a fictitious narrative, founded upon history?

Dryasdust

Why, sir, I do rather apprehend, that their respect for the foundation will be such, that they may be apt to quarrel with the inconsistent nature of the superstructure; just as every classical traveller pours forth expressions of sorrow and indignation, when, in travelling through Greece, he chances to see a Turkish kiosk rising on the ruins of an ancient temple.

Author

But since we cannot rebuild the temple, a kiosk may be a pretty thing, may it not? Not quite correct in architecture, strictly and classically criticised; but presenting something uncommon to the eye, and something fantastic to the imagination, on which the spectator gazes with pleasure of the same description which arises from the perusal of an Eastern tale.

Dryasdust

I am unable to dispute with you in metaphor, sir; but I must say, in discharge of my conscience, that you stand much censured for adulterating the pure sources of historical knowledge. You approach them, men say, like the drunken yeoman, who, once upon a time, polluted the crystal spring which supplied the thirst of his family, with a score of sugar loaves and a hogshead of rum; and thereby converted a simple and wholesome beverage into a stupifying, brutifying, and intoxicating fluid; 265sweeter, indeed, to the taste, than the natural lymph, but, for that very reason, more seductively dangerous.

Author

I allow your metaphor, Doctor; but yet, though good punch cannot supply the want of spring-water, it is, when modestly used, no malum in se ¹ ; and I should have thought it a shabby thing of the parson of the parish, had he helped to drink out the well on Saturday night, and preached against the honest hospitable yeoman on Sunday morning. I should have answered him, that the very flavour of the liquor should have put him at once upon his guard; and that, if he had taken a drop over much, he ought to blame his own imprudence more than the hospitality of his entertainer.

Dryasdust

I profess I do not exactly see how this applies.

Author

No; you are one of those numerous disputants, who will never follow their metaphor a step farther than it goes their own way. I will explain. A poor fellow, like myself, weary with ransacking his own barren and bounded imagination, looks out for some general subject in the huge and boundless field of history, which holds forth examples of every kind—lights on some personage, or some combination of circumstances, or some striking trait of manners, which he thinks may be advantageously used as the basis of a fictitious narrative—bedizens it with such colouring as his skill suggests—ornaments it with such romantic circumstances as may heighten the general effect—invests it with such shades of character, as will best contrast with each other—and thinks, perhaps, he has done some service to the public, if he can present to them a lively fictitious picture, for which the original anecdote or circumstance which he made free to press into his service, only furnished a slight sketch. Now I cannot perceive any harm in this. The stores of history are accessible to every one; and are no more exhausted or impoverished by the hints thus borrowed from them, than the fountain is drained by the water which we subtract for domestic purposes. And in reply to the sober charge of falsehood, against a narrative announced positively to be fictitious, one can only answer, by Prior’s exclamation, ‘Odzooks, must one swear to the truth of a song?’

Dryasdust

Nay; but I fear me that you are here eluding the charge. Men do not seriously accuse you of misrepresenting history; although 266I assure you I have seen some grave treatises, in which it was thought necessary to contradict your assertions.

Author

That certainly was to point a discharge of artillery against a wreath of morning mist.

Dryasdust

But besides, and especially, it is said that you are in danger of causing history to be neglected—readers being contented with such frothy and superficial knowledge as they acquire from your works, to the effect of inducing them to neglect the severer and more accurate sources of information.

Author

I deny the consequence. On the contrary, I rather hope that I have turned the attention of the public on various points, which have received elucidation from writers of more learning and research, in consequence of my novels having attached some interest to them. I might give instances, but I hate vanity—I hate vanity. The history of the divining rod is well known—it is a slight valueless twig in itself, but indicates, by its motion, where veins of precious metal are concealed below the earth, which afterwards enrich the adventurers by whom they are laboriously and carefully wrought. I claim no more merit for my historical hints; but this is something.

Dryasdust

We severer antiquaries, sir, may grant that this is true; to wit, that your works may occasionally have put men of solid judgment upon researches which they would not perhaps have otherwise thought of undertaking. But this will leave you still accountable for misleading the young, the indolent, and the giddy, by thrusting into their hands, works, which, while they have so much the appearance of conveying information, as may prove perhaps a salve to their consciences for employing their leisure in the perusal, yet leave their giddy brains contended with the crude, uncertain, and often false statements, which your novels abound with.

Author

It would be very unbecoming in me, reverend sir, to accuse a gentleman of your cloth of cant; but, pray, is there not something like it in the pathos with which you enforce these dangers? I aver, on the contrary, that by introducing the busy and the youthful to ‘truths severe in fairy fiction dressed’, ¹ I am doing a real service to the more 267ingenious and the more apt among them; for the love of knowledge wants but a beginning—the least spark will give fire when the train is properly prepared; and having been interested in fictitious adventures, ascribed to an historical period and characters, the reader begins next to be anxious to learn what the facts really were, and how far the novelist has justly represented them.

But even where the mind of the more careless reader remains satisfied with the light perusal he has afforded to a tale of fiction, he will still lay down the book with a degree of knowledge, not perhaps of the most accurate kind, but such as he might not otherwise have acquired. Nor is this limited to minds of a low and incurious description; but, on the contrary, comprehends many persons otherwise of high talents, who, nevertheless, either from lack of time, or of perseverance, are willing to sit down contented with the slight information which is acquired in such a manner. The great Duke of Marlborough, for example, having quoted, in conversation, some fact of English history rather inaccurately, was requested to name his authority. ‘Shakspeare’s Historical Plays’, answered the conqueror of Blenheim; ‘the only English history I ever read in my life.’ And a hasty recollection will convince any of us how much better we are acquainted with those parts of English history which that immortal bard has dramatized, than with any other portion of British story.

Dryasdust

And you, worthy sir, are ambitious to render a similar service to posterity?

Author

May the saints forefend I should be guilty of such unfounded vanity! I only show what has been done when there were giants in the land. We pigmies of the present day, may at least, however, do something; and it is well to keep a pattern before our eyes, though that pattern be inimitable.

Dryasdust

Well, sir, with me you must have your own course; and for reasons well known to you, it is impossible for me to reply to you in argument. But I doubt if all you have said will reconcile the public to the anachronisms of your present volumes. Here you have a Countess of Derby fetched out of her cold grave, and saddled with a set of adventures dated twenty years after her death, besides being given up as a Catholic, when she was in fact a zealous Huguenot.

Author

She may sue me for damages, as in the case Dido versus Virgil.

Dryasdust

A worse fault is, that your manners are even more incorrect than usual. Your Puritan is faintly traced, in comparison to your Cameronian.

268Author

I agree to the charge; but although I still consider hypocrisy and enthusiasm as fit food for ridicule and satire, yet I am sensible of the difficulty of holding fanaticism up to laughter or abhorrence, without using colouring which may give offence to the sincerely worthy and religious. Many things are lawful which we are taught are not convenient; and there are many tones of feeling which are too respectable to be insulted, though we do not altogether sympathize with them.

Dryasdust

Not to mention, my worthy sir, that perhaps you may think the subject exhausted.

Author

The devil take the men of this generation for putting the worst construction on their neighbour’s conduct!