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James Hogg
DOMESTIC MANNERS AND PRIVATE LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT (1834) Reviewed by Patrick Killough Reviewed by Patrick Killough I. For barnesandnoble.com James Hogg, "the Ettrick Shepherd" was a simple lowland Scot, descended from generations in service to the mighty Scott clan of the borderlands. In time he became a very popular writer of ballads and prose tales. Much of his inspiration began on a day in the summer of 1801 when 30 year old Walter Scott and a friend dropped by to consult about ancient Scottish ballads. They stayed together for two days, beginning an instant friendship that overcame huge differences in social rank and formal education and endured three decades more until Scott's death in 1832. *** Hogg was criticized by Sir Walter Scott for lack of order in his prose works. Hogg conceded as much: "... in all my prose works of imagination, knowing little of the world, I sail on without star or compass." "For when I write the first line of a tale or novel, I know not what the second is to be, and it is the same way with every sentence throughout." *** Hogg's affectionate little book on Scott is much the same. He begins describing a famous drinking party with the head of the Scott clan, wanders away, returns, chases hares. But throughout Walter Scott is there, cheery and a grand host when in good health, impossibly gruff when distressed by serious stomach ailments. *** We see a polio victim riding horses like a god through field and stream, roaring to see himself and friends ducked in the river by a sinking boat in the course of a night's fishing. The Ettrick Shepherd chides the Laird of Abbotsford for deferring to the aristocracy and his own titled relatives both paternal and maternal. To Hogg no man is better than his achievements and his talents and Walter Scott rather adorned his family than vice versa. *** We have glimpses of Scott's dark, beautiful French wife who always treated humble "Mr Ogg" very kindly, though she sparkled among the titled. We see his children. We catch glimpses of Scott at work in the law courts of Edinburgh and receiving endless streams of visitors in his office and at home. We catch him filching ideas for plots from Hogg, after first deprecating them. And on and on. *** Unless you want to know as much as possible about Sir Walter Scott, there is no really good reason for reading Hogg's Memoirs. But here was a close friendship, a sometimes testy and competitive rivalry between two literary geniuses who could not be more different. The Scott who emerges in the Memoirs is no saint but is a fascinating and supremely creative human being. -OOO- Dallas, Texas February 02, 2007 II. For amazon.com We he was 30 years old, Sir Walter Scott went in search of a simple Lowland Scotch shepherd named James Hogg. Scott was pursuing old ballads of the Borderlands and had heard that Hogg knew many himself and that his friends and relatives knew many more. This rumor proved true and within minutes a friendship began spanning three more decades until Scott's death in 1832. Scott saw more literary talent in "the Ettrick Shepherd" than the shepherd initially did in himself. Under Scott's guidance, Hogg created ballads of great power and popularity. Scott was almost rudely critical of Hogg's prose tales, but Hogg won popularity for those as well. And Sir Walter was not shy about proudly introducing his rural friend into aristocratic and literary circles of Scotland and England. Glimpses of Scott at work and play, in good and bad health, drinking with friends and romping with children and grandchildren are scattered through Hogg's little Memoirs of his world-famous friend. They seem to have quarreled often about their relative literary merits. Once Hogg was so irritated by Scott's criticism of a recent work that he started to leave Scott's home in a huff. Scott begged him to stay, asking him not to take his frankness amiss. Hogg replied: " ... it is the greatest folly in the world for me to be sae. But one's beuks are like his bairns, he disna like to hear them spoken ill o', especially when he is conscious that they dinna deserve it." Once Scott implied that Hogg aimed too high literarily. Hogg interjected: "Dear Sir Walter, ye can never suppose that I belang to your school of chivalry! Ye are the king o' that school, but I'm the king of the mountain and fairy school, which is a far higher ane nor yours." It is hard when reading Hogg on Scott not to think of Mark Twain's famously savage attacks on the Baronet in LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI. Both Hogg and Twain (Samuel Clemens) were of simple backgrounds and little formal education. Both saw Walter Scott's faults, especially his deference to the aristocracy and a social world based on class distinctions. Mark Twain even blamed the U.S. Civil War on Scott's IVANHOE and on Scott's filling American Southerners with nonsensical ideas about religion, history, lost causes, dashing hotheaded aristocratic men and willowy young ladies. But Hogg, who knew the Laird of Abbotsford close up, also saw the kindest man he ever knew, the truest friend, the great writer never too busy to drop everything to receive a visitor high or low. There is no special reason to read James Hogg's Memoirs if you are not very curious about Sir Walter Scott. But if you love Scott and demand to know all there is to know of him, then the Ettrick Shepherd is indispensable. -OOO- III. For epinions.com If you have no interest in the Scottish poet, antiquarian, historian and novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832), then skip James Hogg's tribute to his recently dead friend of 30 years. But if you like Scott and admire the man who overcame childhood polio, terrible illnesses, a beloved woman's early rejection of him and who went on to become the friend of King George IV and many people high and low, then Hogg is indispensable. James Hogg saw Sir Walter Scott as "practical, and with a strong grasp of real life in his poetry." But when it came to coming to grips with reality outside books, Sir Walter "was always endeavouring to live in a world of fiction." Scott's castle whimsical architecture at his residence, Abbotsford, his ceremonious, deferential dinners with his clan's chief as if 200 years earlier, his elaborate reception of chubby King George IV in kilts at Edinburgh "were continuous efforts to transplant himself into another age -- not unlike children playing Crusaders, Reavers, Robinson Crusoes, etc." Hogg, who became famous for poems and prose tales as the self-taught "Ettrick Shepherd," caught in those few words above Scott's veneration of times gone by which half a century later so irked Mark Twain in LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI. Hogg and Twain were both simple men of the people, with much respect for talent, grit and hard work but none for nobles, aristocrats, feudal privileges, chivalry and honors, class distinctions in society and such like. Scott loved common folks but almost adored inherited upper class claims to distinction by blood. Hogg wrote: "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 title and rank was prodigious, and, in such an illustrious character, altogether out of place." He was proud of his ancestors and relatives when it was they who should have been honored to claim reflected glory by kinship with him. Hogg confirms the witness of many as to the photographic, retentive memory of Walter Scott. He could hear a ballad of three hundred lines once and remember it forever, much as Mozart could musical airs. Mark Twain disliked Scott's faults. So did Hogg. But to the Ettrick Shepherd the best things about Scott was not his vast literary output. It was his good cheer, his constant boosting of his simple friend, it was Scott's canny insights into the human heart and his ability to make vast numbers of friends who adored him. Hogg's Memoirs of Scott is a slim volume. If you do not care for Walter Scott, don't read Hogg. But if Scott means anything to you, you will return to Hogg over and over. -OOO- http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/hogg_sirws.html |