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ABBOTSFORD AND SIR
WALTER SCOTT:
THE IMAGE AND THE INFLUENCE Edinburgh. Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. 2003. Paper. xvii. 173 pp. ISBN 0 903903 26 1 Iain G. Brown, editor
Reviewed by Patrick Killough
Reviewer's Rating of this Book: Five Stars * * * * * Review Title: The Mind, The Pretense and the Artistic Trends Behind Sir Walter Scott's Dream House on the River Tweed ABBOTSFORD AND SIR WALTER SCOTT is a seriously good book for serious readers. For people who cannot get enough of Scotland's great poet, novelist, antiquary and historian. Even people who find it at first glimpse very hard to like Scott's dream house, his "conundrum castle," Abbotsford will soon enough emerge with deeper understanding of if not greater respect for what Sccott meant Abbotsford to do. And for non-specialists like me the book also explodes with surprises about how Scott's influence was spread across Europe and to North America via the many portraits of him and his pets. In addition, ABBOTSFORD AND SIR WALTER SCOTT sketches prima facie unlikely but undeniable links between the architectural movement behind Abbotsford -- Scottish Gothic Revival -- and projects undertaken in Russia by nobles and tsars alike. In form, ABBOTSFORD AND SIR WALTER SCOTT is ten scholarly essays derived from talks given in the autumn 2000 during a conference organized by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Editor Iain G. Brown is also a major contributor in his own right. The book is about Abbotsford, a 1,000 acre estate acquired piece by piece and transformed by Walter Scott (1771 - 1832) lying along the rapid river Tweed 40 miles South-Southeast of Edinburgh. The manor was ultra-modern in its gas lighting and pneumatic bells. But mainly it was a tribute to past architecture and a museum-like repository of ancient stones, artifacts and memorabilia. Abbotsford reminded visitors that the past had once been filled with living men and women. Up until 1826 Scott built merrily away at his farms, orchards and buildings, employing many people grateful for the work. Then came his six final years of working his way out of debt after collapse of two firms in which he was heavily invested. Thomas Carlyle caught the tragedy always implicit in Abbotsford: "... a Walter Scott writing daily with the ardour of a steam-engine, that he might make £15,000 a year, and buy upholstery with it" (p. 165). And James Hogg, "the Ettrick Shepherd," Scott's admiring but critical friend saw Abbotsford as an emperor without his clothes: "The only foible I ever could discover in the character of Sir Walter was a too strong leaning to the old aristocracy of the country. His devotion for titled rank was prodigious ..." (p. 125). Walter Scott's attention to old Scottish architecture shows up in more than one of his novels, notably his very first, WAVERLEY, and its fictional castle of Tully-Veolan. Loving details of instruments of execution and other items of material culture (some of which he owned) also appear in "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," ROB ROY and THE ANTIQUARY. Iain Brown's little book abounds in memorable photos, including of some of the furniture created expressly for Abbotsford by Scottish workmen. Scott had an immense number and variety of pets who adored him, including a cat named Hinse and many dogs of several breeds. There seem to be more portraits of him with his dogs than with his wife! The Dandie Dinmont terrier, of which Scott owned many, may be the world's only breed named from a character in a novel, the fictitious Scottish rural dog breeder in GUY MANNERING. Totally new to me in every respect was Jeremy Howard's essay on Scott and the Russian Gothic revival. The nobles and princes who came to Scotland! Some to study in Edinburgh. Others, including the future Tsar Nicholas I, who summoned Scottish architects and painters to Russia. This architectural influence associated with Abbotsford paralleled the impact of Scott the novelist on Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol and others who set to work to create "a distinctive Russian romantic literature in which the fate of the individual, and individual choice, was paramount" (p. 147). The book ends with Julie Lawson's "Ruskin on Scott's Abbotsford." John Ruskin (1819 - 1900) may prefigure modern readers of Scott who think they know Abbotsford. They idolize the writer yet choke when they visit the "Wizard of the North's" distinctly non-21st Century conundrum castle. Scott is presented by portrait gallery curator Lawson as a quintessential show-biz impresario, the same man who orchestrated King George IV's visit in kilts to Edinburgh. With an eye, inter alia, to Scott's compulsive home on the Tweed, Ruskin said, "Scott's romance and antiquarianism, his knighthood and monkery, are all false -- and he knows them to be false" (p. 167). The spirit of true Gothic is to be free, spontaneous, therefore irregular. Abbotsford's style is controlled, according to theories then in the air, therefore theatrical and not genuinely Gothic. An astonishingly good read, this small book. The illustrations alone in ABBOTSFORD AND SIR WALTER SCOTT make the book a must. But Iain Brown and his collaborators also make us see that Walter Scott was not just winging it or going it alone with his dream house. He was deeply read in prevailing architectural theories and debates about the history of medieval and modern Gothic. -OOO- ===-=-=---=--=- For further reading: start with http://www.melrose.bordernet.co.uk/abbotsford/ then go to the organization that put together the year 2000 conference http://www.socantscot.org. That URL also includes a description of ABBOTSFORD AND SIR WALTER SCOTT at http://www.socantscot.org/AbbotsfordPub.html Patrick Killough Black Mountain, North Carolina December 08, 2006 |