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The Chapter-Tags in the Waverley Novels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Tom B. Haber
Tom B. Haber*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
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Extract

When Sir Walter Scott, with his friend and publisher John Ballantyne at his shoulder, was adding his chapter-tags to the proofsheets of his third novel, The Antiquary (1816), he came to a halt at one chapter for which he wanted some lines from Beaumont and Fletcher. Ballantyne undertook the task of finding the passage. Awaiting for some time the discovery of the verses he wished, Scott at length exclaimed, “Hang it, Johnnie, I believe I can make a motto sooner than you will find one.” He did so, and thus began his habit of calling upon his invention when memory failed, producing throughout the remainder of the Waverley Novels numerous chapter-headings ascribed “Anonymous,” “Old Play,” etc., which Lockhart calls “some of the most exquisite verses that ever flowed from his pen.” Of “Old Play” captions there are 94; “Old Ballad” 26—mostly Scott's free-hand alterations; “Old Song” 12; “Anonymous” 29; and unsigned mottoes 10. One of the best of the “Old Play” fabrications occurs at the head of chapter xxix of Anne of Geierstein, describing the good king René of Provence;—in reality, it may be called Scott's own epitaph:

      A mirthful man he was—the snows of age
      Fell, but they did not chill him. Gaiety
      Even in life's closing touched his teeming brain
      With such wild visions as the setting sun
      Raises in front of some hoar glacier,
      Painting the bleak ice with a thousand hues.
      —Old Play

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , December 1930 , pp. 1140 - 1149
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1930

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References

1 Lockhart's Life of Scott, ed. 1914, III, 64.

2 Ibid., III, 64.

3 Lockhart's Life, I, 310.

4 See The Literary Digest, Sept. 11, 1920.

5 Book IV, Satire III, lines 34–39.

6 May it be possible that Scott took the couplet from Lintot's Miscellany, which contained, in addition to Pope's Paraphrase of the wife of Bath, Betterton's “Chaucer's Characters; or, the Introduction to the Canterbury Tales”—in which Pope is said to have had a hand?

7 See “Graeme and Bewick” st. 27 in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, ed. 1902, III, 75.

8 Other novels show a similar relation between the nature of the chapter-heads and the circumstances under which the novels were written. A good example is The Bride of Lammermoor, which Scott's illness compelled him to dictate. Nearly all of the tags are taken from wellknown identifiable sources, showing an unusual indisposition to original composition; there are but two “Anonymous” headings, one “Old Play” and one “Old Song.” Ivanhoe properly shows a greater number of chapter-heads taken from English poets (11 from Shakespere, with Pope, Chaucer, Thomson, Dryden, Goldsmith, and Crabbe represented at least once); Scottish ballad-mottoes are relegated to the back-ground. More striking is the correspondence in Kenilworth, of which 12 chapters are headed with Shakesperian mottoes. There are but 5 beginning with “Old Play” tags. By way of contrast, The Fortunes of Nigel shows but 4 headings from Shakespere, all within the last seven chapters. Jonson is called upon for two captions; there are 8 “Old Play” mottoes and several fictitious titles, mostly savoring of Gaelic.

9 Key to abbreviations: GM—Guy Mannering; Ant—The Antiquary; BD—The Black Dwarf; OM—Old Mortality; RR—Rob Roy; H of M—Heart of Midlothian; B of L—Bride of Lammermoor; Mont—Legend of Montrose; Iv—Ivanhoe; Monas—The Monastery; Abb—The Abbott; K—Kenilworth; Pir—The Pirate; F of N—Fortunes of Nigel; P of P—Peveril of the Peak; QD—Quentin Durward; StR—St. Ronan's Well; Bet—The Betrothed, Tal—The Talisman; Wood—Woodstock; HW—The Highland Widow; SD—The Surgeon's Daughter; FM—Fair Maid of Perth; A of G—Anne of Geierstein; CR—Count Robert of Paris; CD—Castle Dangerous.

10 Lockhart's Life, I, 32.

11 Lockhart's Life, I, 32.

12 Ibid., IV, 260.

13 Ibid., V, 251.