History is full of accidents. For example, this novel. If not for a missing tackle box, no one would ever have gotten to read it.
In the preface to his 1829 edition of Waverley, Walter Scott explains how he wrote the first few chapters of this, gave it up, and put the manuscript in a garret room where he kept lumber. Poking around said room trying to find a tackle box to lend to a friend, he came across the manuscript, read it, was surprised to enjoy it, and decided to finish it.
And thus history, or rather historical fiction, came to be.
It is a lovely tale; for the first third of this novel, one I would rather been reading than Waverley itself. Man, this book is slow.
After much delay, including an opening chapter where Scott expounds way too long on the kinds of book he won’t be writing, Edward Waverley, our title character, is introduced. Edward is a dreamer, living in luxury with his noble uncle, crushing on a girl he sees at church, and content with books he reads for entertainment rather than edification:
…young Waverley drove through the sea of books, like a vessel without a pilot or a rudder.
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| Eventually the novel picks up and presents scenes like this one, but it takes awhile. The first third of this long novel consists of less flashy and grand material, which is a problem. Painting by Mark Churms from https://fictionfanblog.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/waverley-or-tis-sixty-years-since-by-sir-walter-scott/ |
Seeing Edward’s need to grow up, his absent father persuades him to enlist in the army, securing him a commission and a post. Edward soon gets bored with army life and takes extended leave to visit a friend of the family, a Lowland Scottish baron whose daughter forms an attachment to Edward.
Trouble is its 1745, and the Scots are about to revolt, rallying to the banner of Bonnie Prince Charlie, a pretender to the throne. Rudderless as always, Waverley more or less unconsciously gets pulled into the fray:
It seemed like a dream to Waverley that these deeds of violence should be familiar to men’s minds, and currently talked of, as falling within the common order of things, and happening daily in the immediate vicinity, without his having crossed the seas, and while he was yet in the otherwise well-ordered island of Great Britain.
Waverley is credited in Wikipedia as the first historical-fiction novel. Historical fiction has long been a popular genre for its ability to deliver on two elemental human experiences: sex and war.
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| Waverley's Scottish comrade Fergus MacIvor confronts a ghost foretelling doom. A character with hidden dimensions, you really care about Fergus by book's end. Drawing by C. R. Leslie from https://fineartamerica.com/featured/waverley-by-sir-walter-scott-mary-evans-picture-library.html |
Waverley does neither. Oh, there is a war, the Rising of 1745, but that forms mostly a backdrop, with only one battle described at any length. Edward is a brave soldier, but neither an accomplished nor eager one. “The plumed troops and the big war used to enchant me in poetry; but the night marches, vigils, couched under the wintry sky, and such accompaniments of the glorious trade, are not at all to my taste in practice…” he will come to say.
As for sex, or its early 19th century equivalent, romance, Edward finds himself pulled in two directions: Rose Bradwardine, the aforementioned baron’s daughter; and Flora MacIvor, a proud Highland rebel. Flora carries the charm of Scotland, while Rose is kinder and more protective of him. But little wooing and no kissing occurs in these pages.
Most critically for the needs of historical fiction is the lack of a substantial protagonist. Edward is about as gormless a figure as you can find, eager to make a mark but indecisive, without a will of his own.
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| Young Waverley pledges himself to Prince Charles, while Fergus looks on. Waverley's conversion to the rebel cause is genuine, even if the circumstances occasioning it are not, we come to learn. Image from https://www.speakeasy-news.com/sir-walter-scott-at-250/ |
“Nay, I cannot tell what to make of you, you are blown about with every wind of doctrine,” Edward is told by Fergus MacIvor, Flora’s brother, whose artful gaslighting blows Edward into the rebel camp.
History ultimately doesn’t depend on individuals as much as it does on irresistible, impersonal forces. That’s a truth most historical fictions dance glibly around. But Waverley embraces it, presenting Edward as a hapless straw in the wind. This makes for a frustrating first third. Waverley shares drinks and flattery with the Scottish nobles while extending his leave from the British army without permission from his commander. Nothing much of consequence happens, at least on the page.
Scott plays this up as romantic idyll, complete with much verse and extensive quotation from Shakespeare and other literary icons. It is all too precious and twee, even when his description of the Bradwardines’ Lowland manor, Tully-Veolan, provide vivid descriptive enchantment:
One of the folding leaves of the lower gate was open, and as the sun shone full into the court behind, a long line of brilliancy was flung upon the aperture up the dark and gloomy avenue. It was one of those effects which a painter loves to represent, and mingled well with the struggling light which found its way between the boughs of the shady arch that vaulted the broad green alley.
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| The Bradwardine estate of Tully-Veolan, as depicted in an early edition of Waverley. The estate is decorated by statues of bears, "with the ancient family motto, Bewar the Bar, cut under each hyperborean form." Image from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5998/5998-h/5998-h.htm |
It is not hard to imagine people responding to passages like the above, and Waverley’s endless cast of colorful if one-note characters, not caring that the plot moves like molasses when it moves at all.
The middle-aged Scott produced the novel anonymously, unwilling to risk his reputation as an established poet on a new venture. He needn’t have worried. Waverley was a publishing sensation. For years after, every new Scott novel was credited to “the author of Waverley.” Though people soon figured out it was Scott, that “author of Waverley” tag was marketing genius. With later Scott novels, the historical-fiction theme was usually maintained, and so were British settings.
There is a tendency, more now than in his own time, to regard this as provincialism and thus take Scott lightly. There is a similar tendency to take historical fiction lightly, as a genre of simplified characters and Cliff Note versions of great events. But Waverley, after chapters of tedious exposition, becomes something else entirely, a subtle satire at the very genre it was simultaneously helping to invent.
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| As the successful author of poems like "The Lady Of The Lake," Walter Scott wasn't eager to associate his pen with the crasser sport of novel-writing. In addition to anonymity, he spends much of the earlier part of his narrative spoofing novels in general. Image from https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/walter-scott-is-primed-for-a-comeback-put-your-money-on-it-vzfdt0gjx |
About two-thirds of the way in, it becomes clear that Scott has been having young Waverley, not to mention us readers, on for a long time. By now we have seen him being played by everyone, even by himself, jumping to conclusions and being caught short. Led to believe he is destined for great things, we buy into this idea of a great adventure just over the horizon, until, on a battlefield, he is confronted by a faithful family servant: “Ah, squire, why did you leave us?”
That’s when Scott pulls the string, and his castle in the air comes down.
Scott previously intimated this in his treatment of Waverley’s love life. Here, the problem is a kind of impotency of spirit he experiences when coming into contact with the beguilingly distant Flora:
The sensation of hope with which he had nursed his affection in absence of the beloved object seemed to vanish in her presence, and, like one striving to recover particulars of a forgotten dream, he would have given the world at that moment to have recollected the grounds on which he had founded expectations which now seemed so delusive.
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| Edward has more success with Rose than with Flora, aided by books he has shipped from his home. The above illustration from an early edition is about as close as we get to seeing a romantic clinch in Waverley. Image from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5998/5998-h/5998-h.htm |
Anyone who has had a crush on the wrong person can relate to those words. But the passage also illustrates a deeper self-knowledge that rubs against Waverley’s self-image; he knows he is not destined for great things. Only when he gives up his dreams will he find true success.
Scott would go on to portray larger-than-life heroes in better-known novels that followed; here we get a person who is surprisingly common and relatable despite his noble blood: Walter Mitty in a kilt (or in Edward’s case, plaid breeks.)
At the one battle Scott portrays at any length, known as Prestonpans today, the British are soundly thrashed and Waverley’s Scottish allies triumphant. But Waverley’s joy is muted, not only by the carnage, but also the confusion of finding himself a small cog in a terrible machine:
Waverley felt his heart at that moment throb as it would have burst from his bosom. It was not fear, it was not ardour – it was a compound of both, a new and deeply energetic impulse, that with its first emotion chilled and astounded, then fevered and maddened his mind.
Neither a realistic nor naturalistic novel, Waverley is not exactly fanciful, either. At times, it broadly lampoons the customs and traditions of Scotland, with real and deep affection but bite as well. Scott is liberal with his footnotes, sending up the historical authenticity of his story even as he insists on its validity. He is always playing games.
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| In one extended episode regarding the theft of cattle, Edward finds himself in the cavern lair of Highland outlaw Donald Bean Lean. Though a villain, Donald is presented sympathetically by Scott. Image from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5998/5998-h/5998-h.htm |
People who enjoy Dickens may well appreciate Scott’s likeminded humor and social commentary. What Scott lacks in liveliness, he makes up for with his subtlety and craft:
A dispute occurred whether the Gaelic or Italian language was most liquid, and best adapted for poetry; the opinion for the Gaelic…was here fiercely defended by several Highland ladies, who talked at the top of their lungs, and screamed the company deaf, with examples of Celtic euphonia.
So even when Scott pushes this reader’s patience, with extensive, overly-learned quotations from the tiresome Baron of Bradwardine or sentimental passages featuring the gentle but soft-headed Davie Gellatley, his Romantic commitment to his story pulled me in, until what seemed weaknesses become, with repetition, a kind of strength by dint of familiarity, rather like musical motives or grace notes.
It takes some fortitude to get there, however; Scott the writer of high adventure had not yet arrived. Here, he is by turns playful, arch, comic, harrowing, and lyrical company, a great novelist lacking only a novel-length story.
“Well, after all, every thing has its fair as well as its seamy side…” Edward concludes near the end of the novel. That is a sentiment which proves just as true for the novel itself.
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| Waverley concludes with a fond valediction for Scotland and its people: "This race has now almost entirely vanished from the land, and with it,
doubtless, much absurd political prejudice – but also many living examples of
singular and disinterested attachment to the principles of loyalty which they
received from their fathers, and of old Scottish faith, hospitality, worth, and
honour." Image from https://www.inspiringtravelscotland.com/news/why-visit-the-scottish-highlands/attachment/quiraing-skye-scottish-highlands/ |
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