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Waverley: or 'Tis Sixty Years Since (Oxford World's Classics)

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Just about every work of historical fiction ever written owes its existence to Walter Scott and to Waverley, his first novel. At the time, it was a new way to write novels - indeed, combining historical fact with entertainment was a brilliant idea. By creating a fictional character and inserting him into the middle of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, Walter Scott was able to bring the culture and traditions of Scotland to life in the most staid bourgeois imagination. As a result, he achieved unprecedented popularity for his time, singlehandedly started a tourist industry in Scotland, and kicked off a new genre of fiction, which was then studiously adopted by countless authors, of whom Dumas and Fenimore Cooper are canonical examples.

Sometime in the middle of the nineteenth century, however, Scott's popularity took a nosedive, and has never recovered since. Unfortunately, after all the years and all the imitators, and after this kind of novel turned into an established genre, much of Waverley's charm has been lost, and the book no longer seems particularly impressive. Its length is sure to turn off many, especially given that for all the historical romance, there's relatively little action here. However, what still makes it worth your time is Scott's delightful and quintessentially British humour, which he applies through odd digressions and liberal use of comic anticlimax to alleviate tension. One also can't help but be impressed by his vocabulary; there are many passages in Waverley that are more or less devoid of content, but which are so elaborately constructed as to be a pleasure to read.

The story itself is no less worth one's attention than before, as far as its "educational value" goes, but the modern reader will not enjoy wading through the obfuscatory prose. I confess that I had a hard time getting through the first few chapters; after that, though, I got used to it and actually enjoyed the rest of the book. I can't however, claim that it was a particularly mindblowing read. I'm not alone; Scott has often been criticized for being a daft romantic entertainer and not a serious artist. This isn't quite true since he was rather conservative (not romantic); he writes about romantic things, but with a rather tongue-in-cheek approach that isn't visible in the works of, say, Dumas. What is true, however, is that this is primarily a tale of manners, and thus by necessity somewhat stuck in its time. Dumas's colourful, loyal, wine-loving Musketeers can thrill the mind even to this day; Scott's characters seem rather bland in comparison, and it looks like he is doomed to fall even further into disfavour as time passes and readers' frames of reference change even further.

I do recommend Waverley, but more for the author than the book - unable to extract any great effect from the latter, I found myself more and more captivated by the former, who lets the reader in on his jokes and invites him to regard the events of the book with the same attitude of respect and fascination lightened by bemused wit. That doesn't make for any life-altering enlightenment, but it is enjoyable.

Sir Walter Scott, I think, needs to be redeemed only in the eyes of people who don't know him. He has a bad rep in most English Departments--because most people (including English professors) haven't read him. Typically, the process goes like this: a professor will tell you that Cooper got the "historical novel format" from Scott, and then you read "The Last of the Mohicans," and you're cured forever. But really, Scott himself is the antidote to this hasty conclusion.

"Waverley" is a great novel. It takes some work though: you'll have to get over the sometimes convoluted language, the artificial dialogue, the idealized descriptions of character and setting. But once you do that, this novel is a blast. The hero may look like a sissy for most of the book, but after the Jacobites' retreat back to Scotland, Scott will show you that Waverley is a "real" character after all. The happy ending, after adventuring incognito through England back to London, may seem too romantic for a student in an English Department, but Scott never loses sight of the pain and bloodshed that are the inevitable result of civil war.

Romantically speaking, it's up to you. Rose or Flora? I always think it's sad that Scott has Waverley marry Rose instead of providing us with a super-happy ending, but perhaps this goes to show you--Scott is not that romantic after all. Romantically speaking, you got to love the couleur locale of the Highlands, the dirks and claymores, the unwavering loyalty of Evan Dhu, Flora's waterfall... Don't forget, all you professors and Ph.D.'s and M.A.'s, we also read to enjoy, and I enjoy the heck out of this novel!

This particular edition, like all the others by OUP, is very competent. The introduction by Clare Lemont could have done with a healthy dose of Marxist criticism (see the OUP edition of "Rob Roy"--in my opinion, by the way, a much less exciting novel), but the apparatus, which includes extensive notes by the editor and Scott's introductions and notes to the Magnum Opus-edition, is great.

So there you have it: this is a very good edition of a wonderful novel by a wonderful storyteller. Go get you a copy and read it with glasses colored by whatever critical theory you subscribe to--but read it first, and read it for enjoyment also.

Oh, is this a difficult read!

If you're fluent in Old Scotts, French and Latin, and familiar with hundreds of historical/literary allusions (some of which Scott purposefully distorts in the mouths of his characters), then you should be OK. Otherwise, I see only two ways for the reader to make it through "Waverly" -- Sir Walter Scott's first historical novel and progenitor of an entire literary genre. Either keep a thumb on the page you're reading and leave the other digits free to mark the glossary, appendices and notes. Or, may I suggest you plow through the text fortified with your favorite beverage and merely pretend to understand what is being said?

Here's an example from the pedantic and quarrelsome, Baron Bradwardine, who has just dismounted his war-horse:

"I seldom ban, sir, but if you play any of your hound's-foot tricks, and leave puir Berwick before he's sorted, to rin after spuilzie, deil be wi' me if I do not give your craig a thraw."

You'll forgive my very loose, vulgar translation, but here goes:

"I seldom swear, sir, but if I catch you running around, leaving my poor horse, Berwick, unattended (all hot and lathered) so you can whore after the spoils of war, it will be the devil with me if I don't wring your bloody neck with my own hands."

Mercifully, the narration is written in modern English. The trick is to get through the first 125 pages, which is all narrative, no dialogue, and not a modicum of action. Something is not quite right here. Either Scott's erudition is too much for a Post- World War II baby boomer weaned on television; or, he was still cutting his literary teeth on "Waverly" and had not yet mastered a narrative technique that served him so well later on. My problem is I'm not quite sure which it is?

Ultimately, the text and narration may be easier to deal with than the young hero protagonist, Edward Waverly -- the last remaining branch of a venerable, ancient English family, whose only familial blemish is empathy for Scottish independence. By no means is Edward Waverly a bad fellow -- I don't think he has a mean bone in his body. He is, indeed, a gentleman at a time when that term actually stood for something. He also possesses a certain adventuresome spirit, and to use a modern day expression he has wonderful survival skills.

The problem with Edward Waverly is that Scott has rendered a central character that inspires something like indifference in the reader, and at the risk of sounding too harsh I'm not sure I really care what happens to him. It's hard to. This is how he describes himself: "I am the very child of caprice." And here is the brave, ambitious Highland Chieftain, Fergus Mac-Ivor, telling Edward, "...you are not celebrated for knowing your own mind very pointedly." That's putting it mildly! At times his behavior is overly mannered, wooden and seemingly imbecilic. At other times, he appears to aimlessly drift from one allegiance to another.

Perhaps this is the way Scott wanted to portray an overly romantic young man, struggling to find his place in the world and trying rather desperately to answer the age-old question: "Who am I?" Or, maybe, it was Sir Walter Scott struggling with himself? After all, he was blazing a new literary genre with "Waverly," and his primary goal was to recapture a bygone era (which he does so magnificently.) My sense is Scott created Edward Waverly to transport his reader back in time, and along the way Scott may have lost touch with his own young protagonist.

Half a century later, Robert Louis Stevenson recreated Edward Waverly as David Balfour in "Kidnapped", who is also a young man coming of age in war-torn Scotland. The difference is that David Balfour does not have the advantages of wealth and education, nor is he overly romantic and foolish enough -- as is Edward Waverly -- to willingly stick his head into the jaws of a real historic event, the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. Perhaps the best that can be said for Edward Waverly is that many of the novel's heroic figures love him and want to protect him....mostly from himself. And to his credit, by the end of this long tale, Edward Waverly manfully handles the loss of so many dear friends.

So, why have I given "Waverly" four stars? Well, on the authority of others, it did create an entirely new literary genre -- the historical novel. But I loved this book because Sir Walter Scott created a precious time-bank of 18th Century Scottish culture. This is a treasure trove of language and customs, and the reader is treated to a national ethos of Scotland, including marshal ardor, hospitality, thrift and a certain fondness for overly intricate legal matters. And, if you can make it through, say, four-fifths of the book, Scott delivers a heartfelt, masterful ending that blends pathos with celebration and renewal.

For those who know the novel already, this particular edition (World's Classics) is a nice one to have; it includes both Scott's own footnotes (which are indicated in-text) and the editor's (which are not indicated in the text). For those not familiar with the work, this is an excellent historical novel dealing with the Scottish rebellion of 1745. The events depicted are real, though most of the characters are not. It has the "classic" elements of a novel: love, war, suspense, etc. It's also an interesting depicition of the many layers of society on one small island. Good for history buffs, literature fans, or people just looking for a good novel!

Waverley, Walter Scott's first successful novel, concerns Edward Waverley, the scion of a noble, landed family in England. He's a Romantic young man, in the formal sense of belonging to the Romantic movement and in temperament--the relative ease of his life and his passionate dilettantishness land him, eventually, in the service of the Jacobites during the rebellion of 1745. He discovers the wild landscapes of the Scottish Highlands, the curious manners of the Highland folk, and learns that life and war are not exactly like all those romantic books about adventure and glory he loves to read.

Scott's book can be interpreted as a critique of the Romantic temperament, and I think the book succeeds best when it contrasts reality with the puffed-up imaginings of Edward Waverley's literature-addled perception. He is not quite Don Quixote, according to Scott, but he suffers from a milder version of the same disease; the most amusing parts of the book center around Waverley's naivete toward battle, ceremony, and love. He is feckless, to be sure, and abysmally undisciplined--but he is a decent fellow in the end, and learns from his mistakes. The people that populate Scott's novel are generally civilized, noble, and upright people, even the fierce rebels; while Scott doesn't approve of rebellion, the rebels are portrayed as misguided at worst, and of equal nobility to the English at best. Scott's purpose was to peer into the world "sixty years since" his own time, and helped give birth to the historical novel. It has confusing and near-unreadable parts (especially when the pedantic Baron shows up), but as a historical novel, it certainly sets the template for all other books of its type to come.

Scott can be a ragged storyteller, by our contemporary standards (which are unfair to apply, since he showed the way to all future English novelists). Patches of WAVERLEY are ragged and rambling. Such humor as there is is not very funny, and sometimes when the action is meant to be sweeping, it is more nearly absurd.

None of this is without compensations. The English novel was still young and unformed, and Scott is alive to all its possibilities, with a freshness and boldness not available to later writers. He thinks nothing, for instance, of having his hero (here as in IVANHOE) sick or asleep while the action is conducted elsewhere by more vidid, nominally secondary characters.

But WAVERLEY is not just of historical interest. It accomplishes something unique in the Bildungsroman genre. In its time, and even now, it is thought of as a nonpareil romantic adventure, but the reputation is misleading, since it is mostly about the unraveling of Waverley's romantic notions. For a time we share them: how merry and noble the highlanders seem, how manly and swashbuckling their leader, Fergus; how accomplished and womanly his sister, the beautiful Flora. By the the end of the book, however, Waverley's cause has turned to ashes, the man he idolized is revealed as an unfeeling monomaniac, and the woman he thought he loved seems just a sour harpy.

The cold slap of reality is an experience common enough in life, the painful accompaniment of growing up, but you'll have to look far and wide to find it so cannily presented in fiction as here.

Mark Twain stated that Scott's writings had a "debilitating influence;" in fact drove the antebellum South "mad" with medieval notions of chivalry into the War Between the States. It's true, the popularity of Sir Walter at the time was unparalleled. Waverley, published in 1814, has the distinction of being the first historical novel; that is, where a heroic fictional character is set within an actual event in history. Waverley also stands out as a splendid example of the romantic trend in literature, where imagination is considered primary to understanding. Waverley is the first in a series of popular "historical romances" by Scott. The key event to Waverley is the colorful Jacobite rebellion of 1745, where Bonnie Prince Charlie, the last of the Stuarts, landed on Scottish shores to reclaim the English throne from King George II. 75,000 ex-Jacobites later immigrated to South Carolina following Prince Charlie's failure, no doubt giving King George III much to contend with, during the American Revolution. Over a hundred years later, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union, by the Scott "crazed" generation. So, Twain's witty observation could have a basis in fact.
Scott published Waverley anonymously, giving the novel a thrilling mystique of historical authenticity; a romantic strategy ? for imaginative distancing or "negative capability" discussed by contemporary poet, John Keats. The hero, Edward Waverley, is born into a house of divided loyalties, between the treasonable Stuart cause and loyal ties to the Hanoverian crown. Although himself a Captain in the King's forces, Edward begins an adventure of self-discovery at the Scottish manor of Bradwardine; learns the ways of the Highlanders from Fergus McIvor and his sister, Flora; joins forces with "the Chief," and fights the battle of Preston. We are treated to riveting characterizations of famous historical persons and events, told in evocative poetic prose, with haunting images, dramatic set pieces, and convincingly real dialogue. I agree with A.N. Wilson, who more recently described Sir Walter Scott as "a genius of extraordinary range, depth and intelligence."
So, in reply to the ever gallant and wry wit of Mr. Twain, it's my belief that the creative genius, as evidenced by Waverley, promotes rather than detracts from cultural growth. The self-defeating principles which destroyed the Old South are endemic to all societies (including our own), as Toynbee could have said, and these causes lay deep within the collective unconscious (Jung).

The first 200 pages of "Waverley" represent an early zenith for novelists testing the patience of their readership.

After a lengthy introduction where author Sir Walter Scott mocks the romantic pretentiousness then abounding among novelists, he proceeds to introduce us to assorted personages we will never meet again before finally focusing on the opaque central character, whose name not only gives us the book's title but a sense of grating irresolution which comes to define him. The reader's feet start tapping.

Scott then throws up a detailed sequence of non-events. Young Waverley joins the British army, marches off to Scotland, and becomes the guest of every Highland warlord with a grudge against His Majesty. I may have left off a couple of incidents, but that's the sum total of the action for the first third or so of the book. "Shall this be a long or short chapter?" he teasingly asks at the beginning of his 24th chapter, nearly 200 pages in.

"Waverley" does eventually kick itself into a higher gear, not that it ever becomes a thrill-ride. But he imbues his mysterious Scottish landscape with an aura that swirls around the reader and, though hard to explain coherently, becomes not only quite charming but compelling, too.

Waverley, like David Copperfield and many other such heroes of 19th century fiction, finds himself torn between two women, and as his attempts at wooing one fell painfully short, I found myself cutting across the chasm of time and really identifying with the guy.

"The sensation of hope with which he had nursed his affection in absence of the beloved object seemed to vanish in her presence..."

Scott's remedy for such pining is also too good not to quote: "I knew a very accomplished and sensible young man cured of a violent passion for a pretty woman, whose talents were not equal to her face and figure, by being permitted to bear her company for a whole afternoon."

I wish I had the stomach to finish this book the first time I tried to read it, when I was a sophomore in high school. It might have saved me much misery.

The noteworthy thing about "Waverley," as others here comment, is that it plays off the romantic ideal of the day in a character whose inconstancy is a deliberate statement about how such all-or-nothing sentiments can be misleading, even injurious. Edward Waverley, introduced to us memorably (if at great length) in terms of the books he starts but doesn't finish, becomes a waterbug skittering across the waves of history, once a loyal supporter of the Hanoveran throne, then a rebel Jacobite, as his loyalties are played by people of varying moral hues.

"Well, after all, every thing has its fair as well as its seamy side," Waverley declares by the second half of the book, beginning to understand.

What makes "Waverley" a great book are the characters around Waverley more than the man himself, especially one rebel named Fergus who takes his measure of Waverley's indecisive character, and his station as the heir to a British title, in order to manipulate him. Scott does this so subtly we may feel ourselves as caught out as young Edward when he learns the score, but it works not only because it carries logical force within the ever-shifting narrative but doesn't turn Fergus into a villain so much as a man who does what he can with what he has.

For all the romantic stuff, well presented indeed, it's the relationship between Waverley and Fergus that carries the strongest resonant strain, since it isn't exactly a friendship or adversarial, but a bit of both with an undercurrent of tragedy that becomes more focused toward the end.

"Waverley" isn't a well-structured novel per se, given the sluggish opening and Waverley's pinball-like relationship to the politics around him. Readers of "Ivanhoe" will miss the firmer storyline of that work, not to mention comic relief in the form of pithy Wamba of that book rather than the windy, Latin-loving Baron, though the latter has his moments.

Everyone in "Waverley" has their moments, and they add up to a great book once the momentum gets going. It's a tough climb, but you'll be glad you made the effort when it's over.

Sir Walter Scott began WAVERLEY, his first novel, in 1805. Years later, after his move to his dream home Abbotsford near the border with England, he found his manuscript while rummaging in a fishing tackle box. He then brought the world's first historical novel to a conclusion in 1814.

Abe Lincoln read Walter Scott. His children entertained their mother re-enacting scenes from the WAVERLEY series of novels. I wonder therefore if Lincoln's "Four score and seven years ago..." does not echo WAVERLEY's frequently repeated sub-title, " 'Tis Sixty Years Since." WAVERLEY is narrated as from 1805, the year it was begun, and for both it and the Gettysburg Address, a reader inevitably starts calculating backwards. What date are we talking about? Ah,1745 for young Edward Waverley. We know (as he does not) what turmoil he is letting himself in for when he rides into the Highlands -- the last hurrah of the legitimate Stuart dynasty. And 1776 for Abe Lincoln meant the Declaration of Independence. In 1745 "auld" Scotland almost disappeared in defeat. In 1776 Hanoverian Britain began its retreat from North America.

Scott tells us in i.1 (p. 5) that in 1745 our ancestors expressed their anger directly, by taking up arms. But in 1805/1814 his generation was more indirect, taking enemies to court.

This very great novel should be read for sheer entertainment, for its characters, for the omnipresent black bears of the Baron of Bradwardine and for its love story. But I suggest that we read it as well as history and geography. Are we up for the sounds of broad Scots language? For a smidgen of Highland Gaelic (which Scott barely knew)? To learn about doch and dorroch and the stirrup-cup? Through hundreds of details of what Scotsmen ate, how they dressed, how beautiful were their mountains and waters near Perth, Walter Scott brought Scotland to life in England and throughout Europe and in the USA.

WAVERLEY makes us take Scotland, the real Scotland of history, seriously. We see its educated Catholic Highlanders sending their children to study in France and Italy. Bonnie Prince Charlie lost only one battle of several, but it was enough to secure Hanoverians their throne. We sense that the transition, however awful, was inevitable from fiercely independent Scotland to an uncomfortable, demoted "North Britain" within a prospering, peaceful United Kingdom of middle-class shopkeepers. Walter Scott makes us ask what if any history has to teach us.

Not only is WAVERLEY the first historical novel. It is also the first political novel. We see dimly how a generally dismal set of rulers, the Stuart dynasty, could continue to win men's loyalty to a lost cause. In a later novel, also about Prince Charlie 20 years later, we read of a Scottish family named REDGAUNTLET whose fate was always to be on the losing side. What makes subjects or citizens alike glory in losing for political principle?

Mark Twain wrote as if all Walter Scott cared about were kings and dynasties, knights, beautiful high-born ladies and lost inheritances. But day after day in court in Edinburgh he heard argued cases of little people with religious and inherited passions and prejudices, not to mention superstitions. He remembered them all, along with the tales he heard as a boy and the ballads he researched for seven consecutive summers as a young adult. These little people live again in WAVERLEY and in Scott's 26 other novels as well.

-OOO-

At first perusal "Waverley" appears to be quite peculiar. The initial opinion, however primitive, is probably caused by one's continuous comparison of it, in the course of the reading, with the well-known Sir Scott's masterpiece, "Ivenhoe". Indeed, the opening chapters of the novel are too descriptive, and those in the middle, though packed with events, are generally lacklustre. The end stands out as written in a rather precipitate manner, which Sir Scott understands himself - "but when the story draws near its close, we hurry over the circumstances, however important ... and leave you to suppose those things..." and ultimately gives an original and amusing justification for that. The narrative is often intermittent with long digressions, not bearing a direct relationship to the main line of the story. The principal hero, young Edward Waverley, is depicted as a timid boy, with education "of a nature somewhat desultory" making it highly surprising to find other heroes rapturous over his personality. Sir Scott portrays the former as bright individuals, perhaps, sometimes too bright, which imparts to them some artificiality: the uncharacteristic puerility of the Baron, the inconceivable honour and pride of Colonel Talbot, the shyness and simplicity of Rose, who scarcely opens her mouth in the novel. English, with which it is written, is tainted with Scotch and Latin, over-abusively, in several scenes.
All this forms a direct contrast to "Ivanhoe", which is yet more noticeable by the complete absence in "Waverley" of that good and witty humour of Wamba and Friar Tuck which "Ivenhoe" is strewn with.
Why, then, did I endow "Waverley" with four stars? Trudging through the novel, the careful reader will get the feeling that the author has really some other purpose than simply to entertain the audience with a well fabricated story. Instead, he tries to do his best to combine the story with traditions and history of Scotland, often painting the picture with local dialects, so that the reader could get the "double share". We clearly see the author's intention in the Postscript: "... and now, for the purpose of preserving some idea of the ancient manners, of which I have witnessed the almost total extinction, I have embodied in imaginary scenes, and ascribed to fictitious characters, a part of the incidents which I received from those who were actors in them". On the whole, "Waverley" is a great and profound historical novel, written by a real master.
So, if you value art and history, if you are not one who can be easily intimidated by obstacles in a journey, this is the book for you.