{"id":3454,"date":"2020-12-17T13:41:14","date_gmt":"2020-12-17T13:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=3454"},"modified":"2020-12-17T13:41:50","modified_gmt":"2020-12-17T13:41:50","slug":"on-this-day-christmas-1820-2020-special-walter-scott-and-the-pirate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=3454","title":{"rendered":"On This Day: Christmas 1820\/2020 special – Walter Scott and The Pirate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s a few days ahead of 25th December, we know… but we wanted to share<\/em> with you this special<\/em> ‘On This Day’ Christmas post by Dr Anna Fancett<\/a> so you have time to enjoy it in the lead up to the holiday break. In the post, Fancett explores how an idea delivered to Walter Scott on Christmas day 200 years ago inspired his 1821 novel <\/em>The Pirate – and also discusses the contemporary reception of the novel. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

See all posts in the ‘On This Day’ series here<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Want to contribute? Contact Anna Mercer<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Christmas Letter: Walter Scott and The Pirate<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Sir Walter Scott by Raeburn<\/a> (with added festive hat!)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

by Dr Anna Fancett (Sultan Qaboos University)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of all the things that can be given on Christmas Day, perhaps an idea is the most intriguing. On the 25th<\/sup>December 1820, Walter Scott received, not a gift-wrapped parcel but a letter from his publisher, Constable. The letter contained an idea: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018If you have not already resolved, might I presume to hint at a subject for the next, or for the Succeeding Work? \u2018The Bucanier\u2019 is I think un-occupied ground\u2013three of [the] Regicides if I mistake not went to New England after the Restoration and endured great hardships there taken by Pirates, Shipwrecked, etc.\u2019[i]<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Scott\u2019s immediate reaction to the letter is unrecorded, but as he was receptive to suggestions and corrections from letters, as Robert Mayer has recently shown,[ii]<\/sup><\/a> it is reasonable to assume that he read the suggestion with interest. Indeed, the Edinburgh Edition of The Pirate <\/em>notes that he \u2018must have responded positively\u2019 because Constable wrote about Scott\u2019s future buccaneer book.[iii]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scott\u2019s 1821 novel, The Pirate, <\/em>however, is very different from the novel that Constable suggested. The story of the three regicides was saved for inclusion in a later novel, Peveril of the Peak, <\/em>and the proposed title, The Bucanier, <\/em>was not used by Scott at all. Instead, Scott took the idea of a story based on pirates and mined his memory for suitable inspiration, landing upon a tale that he had heard on the last day of his tour of Shetland and Orkney with the Northern Lighthouse Commissioners in 1814. The story was about: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Gow the pirate,<\/em> who was born near the House of Clestrom, and afterwards commenced buccanier. He came to his native country about 1725, with a snow<\/em> which he commanded, carried off two women from one of the islands, and committed other enormities,\u2019[iv]<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He was later captured and hanged but <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018While at Stromness, he made love to a Miss Gordon, who pledged her faith to him by shaking hands, an engagement which, in her idea, could not be dissolved without her going to London to seek back again her \u2018faith and troth,\u2019 by shaking hands with him again after the execution.\u2019[v]<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This tale became the primary inspiration for The Pirate, <\/em>a novel whose titular pirate, Cleveland, is shipwrecked in Shetland and becomes romantically involved with Minna Troil. Cleveland and Minna\u2019s relationship serves as the catalyst for the rest of the novel\u2019s action, including the love story between the protagonist, the comparatively boring Mordaunt Mertoun, and Minna\u2019s sister, Brenda. Although Scott leaves out both the execution of the pirate and the gruesome ritual of shaking a dead man\u2019s hand, the doomed relationship between a Shetland woman and a desperate pirate remains at the heart of this novel. The Monthly Review <\/em>remarks on the fact that \u2018None of the former novels of this author have been so much imbued with love as the present,\u2019[vi]<\/sup><\/a> \u2013 a far cry from the political plot recommended by Constable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, all was not plain sailing in the composition of this novel. In late 1821, Scott wrote to Erskine saying, \u2018I want to talk to you about the locale of Zetland, for I am making my bricks with a very limited allowance of straw.\u2019[vii]<\/sup><\/a> Despite his 1814 trip, Scott was uncomfortable with his lack of knowledge about Shetland, as this request demonstrates. The notes in the Edinburgh Edition of The Pirate <\/em>likewise explains that Scott:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018proceeded slowly because of the unfamiliar nature of the material in The Pirate. <\/em>He had previously been writing about historical events that had taken place in locations well known to him or, at least, about well-known historical characters and contexts. Now he was creating an original romance in a strange land.\u2019[viii]<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It took almost a whole year between Constable\u2019s letter and the publication of The Pirate \u2013 <\/em>a long time in comparison to Scott\u2019s other works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the relatively slow composition of this novel was due, in part, to Scott\u2019s unfamiliarity with Shetland, his contemporary readers did not agree that this was the novel\u2019s weakness; characterisation was the problem that they bemoaned. In an 1821 letter, for example, Sydney Smith writes: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018pray (wherever the scene is laid) no more Meg Merrilies and Dominie Sampson<\/em> \u2013<\/em> very good the first and second times, but now quite worn out, and always recurring. All human themes have an end (except Taxation); but I shall heartily regret my annual amusement if I am to lose it’.[ix]<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Smith\u2019s criticism rests not on Scott\u2019s lack of knowledge of Shetland, but rather on the unoriginality of the novel\u2019s characters. La Belle Assembl\u00e9e <\/em>shares this perspective:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018<\/strong>it is, however, valuably stored with those legendary and superstitious fictions, which are so closely interwoven with the history of the country in which the scene is laid; and if the originality of its leading characters ha[d] been such as we might expect from the vigorous pen of its reputed author, this novel would still be entitled to rank with our established favourites in the same line.\u2019[x]<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Despite the complaints about characterisation, this review praises that which Scott was worried about \u2013 knowledge of Shetland. Similarly, the Monthly Review, <\/em>which criticises Scott for the metempsychosis of his characters from one novel to another, praises Scott\u2019s acquaintance with his setting and subject matter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018much prudence is manifested in returning to these bleak and gloomy regions from the tranquil plains of England, since the author\u2019s powers of description, which are of the most energetic and vivid kind, are never displayed to so much advantage as in painting all the sublimer features of natural scenery, the mountains and the cataracts of his native land, [\u2026]. His local knowledge, also, and his intimate acquaintance with the manners of the people, all point to the north as the true theatre of his genius.\u2019[xi]<\/sup><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

No sign of Scott\u2019s lack of \u2018straw\u2019 is present here; the reviewer assumes an \u2018intimate\u2019 knowledge of Shetland. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Constable\u2019s Christmas letter furnished Scott with an idea \u2013 piracy \u2013 which would turn into the 1821 novel, The Pirate. <\/em>Some of Scott\u2019s readers, having consumed around a dozen fictional narratives from him in seven years, were fatigued with the appearance of familiar character types, but they praised his descriptions of Shetland, the very thing that Scott himself had been worried about. In 2020, a year in which few people have been able to travel, perhaps his powerful descriptions will once again charm readers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Minna Troil and Cleveland. Illustration from 1879 edition, Houghton, Osgood and Company, Boston.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Anna Fancett received her PhD from the University of Aberdeen in 2015. Her thesis explored the representation of the family in the novels of Walter Scott and Jane Austen. Since then, she has published on motherhood and narrative in Scott\u2019s novels, and the reception of Walter Scott in China. She is currently working on a comparative piece on education in Jane Austen\u2019s Pride and Prejudice <\/em>and Susan Ferrier\u2019s Marriage.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[i]<\/sup><\/a> The Letters of Sir Walter Scott, <\/em>ed. H. J. C. Grierson and others, 12 vols (London, 1932-37), 7.12n.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ii]<\/sup><\/a> Mayer, Robert, Walter Scott and Fame: Authors and Readers in the Romantic Age <\/em>(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Mayer discusses how Scott took on suggestions and corrections made by his correspondents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[iii]<\/sup><\/a> Walter Scott, The Pirate <\/em>(1822) ed. by Mark Weinstein and Alison Lumsden, Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels 12 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001), 394.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[iv]<\/sup><\/a> The Pirate, <\/em>393.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[v]<\/sup><\/a> The Pirate, <\/em>393.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[vi]<\/sup><\/a> Monthly Review, <\/em>(1822), 69-83, available at: http:\/\/www.british-fiction.cardiff.ac.uk\/reviews\/pira22-68.html.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[vii]<\/sup><\/a> The Letters of Sir Walter Scott, <\/em>7.12.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[viii]<\/sup><\/a> The Pirate, <\/em>395.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ix]<\/sup><\/a> The Letters of Sydney Smith<\/em>, ed. Nowell C. Smith, (Oxford, 1953), I, 385, available at: http:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/Arts\/reading\/UK\/record_details.php?id=13414.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[x]<\/sup><\/a> La Belle Assembl\u00e9e, <\/em>(1822), 40-47, available at http:\/\/www.british-fiction.cardiff.ac.uk\/reviews\/pira22-68.html.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[xi]<\/sup><\/a> Monthly Review.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a few days ahead of 25th December, we know… but we wanted to share with you this special ‘On This Day’ Christmas post by Dr Anna Fancett so you… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3454"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3454"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3458,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3454\/revisions\/3458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}