IN a real sense, we live in the country of Scott-land, and many people are not happy about that.
Perhaps nothing encapsulates better the career of Sir Walter Scott than the Royal Visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822.
The almost ridiculous pageantry which greeted the first monarch to visit Scotland in more than 170 years was put together in just three weeks by Scott with the assistance of the actor/manager William Henry Murray.
It was some show, specifically designed by Scott to fix Scotland’s place in the Union.
Thousands of soldiers in Highland uniform and clansmen in Highland outfits and tartan were paraded before the King.
The visit massively boosted a process which was already underway, thanks largely to Scott’s own novels: namely the creation, or perhaps re-creation, of pride in a Scottish identity and history, no matter how inaccurate that history or identity was.
Discovering Scotland was to become a recurring cultural theme in the 19th century, with Scott-style romanticism and tartan at its core.
Yet Scott himself was a diehard unionist, and that is the reason why so many Scots are nowadays ambivalent about him.
They did not feel that way in the 1830s when the money to build the Scott Monument – still the largest monument to a writer in the world – was raised by public subscription soon after his death in 1832.
Modern sensibilities, however, see Scott’s legacy as a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, his global following in Victorian times almost single-handedly made Scotland a place worth visiting, and gave us a rich tapestry of characters, ranging from Rob Roy MacGregor to Harry Bertram in Guy Mannering, from Hugh Redgauntlet to Henry Gow in The Fair Maid of Perth.
On the other hand, he was a Tory and a unionist all his days, an Edinburgh lawyer with a brilliant imagination but a closed mind politically.
By all means let’s celebrate the 250th anniversary of his birth in 2021, but let us do so by acknowledging all sides of the Wizard of the North. At the very least it will make for a great year of flyting.
Theatre chief calls for ‘Scott Year’ in 2021 to mark novelist’s birth
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