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Walter Scott and Washington Irving : ‘ Editors of the land of Utopia ’1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Kathryn Sutherland
Kathryn Sutherland
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

Much has been made of Washington Irving's literary debts to Walter Scott. Influence there was, stretching back long before that day late in August 1817 when the laird of Abbotsford came limping up the gravel walk to greet his American visitor. But the relationship cannot be adequately expressed as Irving's discipleship to Scott. There were obligations on both sides.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , April 1976 , pp. 85 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

2 Lockhart, 's account of the meeting in his Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, vol. v, pp. 244 ff. (2nd ed., 1839)Google Scholar is taken from Irving's recollections published in The Crayon Miscellany, no. 2 (1835) under the title ‘Abbotsford’. There are allusions to the visit in Irving's notebooks: Tour in Scotland, ed. Williams, S. T. (1927), p. 40Google Scholar; and Notes while preparing Sketch Book, ed. Williams, S. T. (1927), pp. 83–85Google Scholar; and in Irving's letters to his brother Peter, in Irving, P. E., The Life and Letters of Washington Irving (London, 1877), vol. 1, pp. 220–4Google Scholar. Williams, S. T., The Life of Washington Irving (OUP, 1935)Google Scholar records many of Irving's literary debts to Scott in this somewhat inaccurate biography; see vol. 1, pp. 159 ff.

3 Op. cit., pp. 25–6, 28, 24, 38–9, 31.

4 Irving, P. E., Life and Letters of Washington Irving, vol. i, p. 221Google Scholar.

5 Irving records how Scott took him to True Thomas's haunts and described the interview with the Queen of Faerie: ‘It is a fine old story, said [Scott], and might be wrought up into a capital tale.’ (‘Abbotsford’, The Crayon Miscellany.) A similar legend of the disappearing poet is told in Orkney. For a modern version see Brown, George Mackay, An Orkney Tapestry (1969), pp. 127–8Google Scholar. It is interesting to note that Irving's father belonged to the island of Shapinsay in Orkney. S. T. Williams, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 168–9, 183–5. gives details of the story's German background.

6 In the Prefatory Letter to Peveril of the Peak (1822) the Rev. Dr Dryasdust describes his vision of the ‘Author of Waverley’. The meeting occurs as the clergyman dozes over his author's latest manuscript: ‘Such a doze as I then enjoyed, I find compatible with indulging the best and deepest cogitations which at any time arise in my mind.’ Geoffrey Crayon tells us of a similar experience which he had in the British Museum Reading Room, in ‘The Art of Book-Making’, The Sketch Book (1820)Google Scholar.

7 Memoir and Correspondence of Mrs Grant of Laggan (London, 1844), vol. iii, p. 289Google Scholar. Mrs Grant was admirably suited to assess without sentimentality the relation of Scott to Irving. Her Letters from the Mountains (1806) had established her as an authority on Gaelic matters, and in 1808 she had published Memoirs of an American Lady, namely the widow of Colonel Schuyler, describing life in New England and its early Dutch settlers.

8 Charles Lanman, ‘A Day with Washington Irving’. The passage is quoted by S. T. Williams, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 113.

9 These words are given to Mrs Bethune Baliol in Chronicles of the Canongate, ch. vii.

10 Lockhart, op. cit., vol. v, p. 243; S. T. Williams, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 133.

11 Scott had received the History with a letter from Brevoort dated 15 April, and he replies 23 April (Scott, 's Letters, ed. Grierson, , vol. iii p. 259)Google Scholar. The reply is to Brevoort, not to Irving himself as Williams states, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 410, n. 52.

12 From the ‘editor's’ introduction to Rip Van Winkle, ‘a posthumous writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker’.

13 The Antiquary, ch. xl.

14 Compare this with Irving's description of Scott the author, in his Tour in Scotland, p. 31; and Lockhart, op. cit., vol. v, pp. 143–4; and; Irving's description of himself at work, Notes while preparing Sketch Book, p. 87.

15 Scott uses the phrase in a letter to Irving, 1 March 1820.

16 This is the character of Edie Ochiltree the licensed beggar in The Antiquary and of Sergeant McAlpin who introduces A Legend of Montrose (1819). In verse Scott had portrayed a similar figure as early as 1805 in the Last Minstrel, but the attendant circumstances are new.

17 This is not new. The complete outline for the spurious preface as well as hints for the use of marginal notes and learned quotations can be found in the introduction to Don Quixote, a work which both Scott and Irving consciously imitated. Kirkby, John's Automathes (1745)Google Scholar, Goldsmith, 's The Citizen of the World (1762)Google Scholar, Walpole, 's Castle of Otranto (1765)Google Scholar, Mackenzie, 's Man of Feeling (1771)Google Scholar, all present further examples of the author-editor.

18 Scott had lent his influence to further the publication of The Sketch Book after Murray's early refusal of it. But, in fact, Scott was of little immediate help. He wrote to Irving, ‘I am certain the Sketch Book could be published here with great advantage; it is a delightful work’. (Scott, 's Letters, ed. cit., vol. vi, p. 46)Google Scholar. P. E. Irving, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 255–9, 263–4, records the correspondence of the two authors over this problem. Though popular opinion did assign The Sketch Book to Scott, there were those who thought the work ‘so new and peculiar’ that it could not come from that quarter. See P. E. Irving, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 275–6, Lady Lyttleton's letter.

19 Scott, 's Journal entry for 28 05 1826Google Scholar.

20 Compare their treatment of that favourite theme, the Ravages of Time: Notes while preparing Sketch Book, pp. 79–80; ‘Westminster Abbey’ from The Sketch Book; Scott, 's Journal entry for 31 12 1826Google Scholar; the opening lines of ch. vi of Croftangry's account of himself in Chronicles of the Canongate. Equally interesting are the similar reactions to the twin poles, society and solitude, as described in Notes while preparing Sketch Book, pp. 86–89; and Scott, 's Journal entry for 28 03 1826Google Scholar.