Companions

The other Scotland Book I read on my brief trip was Walter Scott's Waverley, which I have been sort of thinking I ought to read every time I pull in and out of Waverley Station.

Waverley has the distinction (or so the front and back-matter leads me to believe) of being maybe the first English-language Historical Fiction Novel, which is kind of fascinating to contemplate and honestly very readable as such given the givens! The plot involves a naive English romantic, signed up with the British army, who happens to be on an ill-timed vacation visiting a new friend in the Scottish Highlands when the Jacobite Rising breaks out and stumbles through a series of circumstances that ends up with him sort of confusedly signing up to fight on behalf of Bonnie Prince Charlie.

There's a bit in Scott's intro where he's explaining why he chose to publish this book anonymously -- sidenote, I had no idea he had written this book anonymously, and it's very funny to read his pages and pages and pages essentially going 'why? well, because it was fun, and funny, and also I was already so rich and famous that I really had nothing to gain from publishing a book under my own name that might have been bad' -- anyway, one of the things he brings up is "people have suggested that I Might have been worried that the King would be mad about this book about the gallant heroes of the Jacobite rebellion, but why would I worry about that? The sufferers of that melancholy period have, during the last and present reign, been honoured both with the sympathy and protection of the reigning family, whose magnanimity can well pardon a sigh from others, and bestow one themselves, to the memory of brave opponents, who did nothing in hate, but all in honour." Well, okay, sure, but one has to genuinely admire the delicate dance that Scott is doing in his portrayal of the Rising; the Jacobites romantically valiant but tragically misguided, our good English hero signing up because he's pushed by every circumstance into doing so and feeling conflicted about it the whole way because he respects everybody on both sides so much, Bonnie Prince Charlie himself the flower of chivalry of course, and George II? well, no need to talk much about him. He's offscreen occasionally offering a gracious pardon.

My only Scott experience previous to this was Ivanhoe; with Waverley Scott is now two for two on "here is the Wrong Woman who is fascinating and compelling and heroic but alas! so independently devoted to a incompatible cultural/religious ideal that she cannot properly devote herself to a man, and here is the Right Woman, who is -- well. What can we say about her. She's wife-shaped!"

The women in this one are Flora the ardent Highland Jacobite who was raised at the French court and speaks multiple languages and translates poetry and Rose the lowland aristocrat's daughter who has never gone anywhere or done anything or had any opinions whatsoever, and they are Best Friends; Waverley is in love with Flora and Rose is in love with Waverley and Flora spends the whole book like oh my god please please transfer your affections to Rose. please I am so uninterested in marrying anything except the platonic ideal of the Rising. Honestly, I was fascinated and quite pleased to see a near-duel situation arise from the hero's insistence that it is the object of his affection's right to refuse his proposal if she wants and her brother should please stop intimating that she doesn't really mean it! she has made it very clear that she's not into him and he doesn't want to push it any more!!

Anyway. Broadly speaking, the takes are more nuanced than expected, and the people act like people, often confused, often self-interested, often funny; more knowledgeable people than I can talk about the resounding effect of this book on Romantic Ideas About Scotland, but as founding patterns for the shape of historical literature in general, one could do a lot worse.