Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

In 1822, before the brothers made any claims to royal descent, they were present at
George IV’s ‘jaunt’ to Scotland, the progress, or ‘charade’ as Trevor-Roper has it,
choreographed by Scott that may be said to have begun the modern ‘Highland Tradition’ and
which will be discussed further in the next chapter. 38 Scott saw them there and they, perhaps,
saw him. 39 That same year John Allen published a book of verse. The Bridal of Caolchairn and
other Poems appeared in several editions in London and Edinburgh some of which gave the
author as John Hay Allan, the Scottish version of ‘Allen’, while others appeared under the name
of ‘Walter Scott’. 40 These latter were actually produced by Scott’s own publishers, Hurst,
Robinson in London and Archibald Constable in Edinburgh. Quite how this first act of
impersonation was achieved cannot be known but it was the beginning of a pattern in the
brothers’ lives. From now on, regardless of their other claims, the pedigree they might most
truthfully claim for themselves was that of Waverley. They inhabited the space between fact and
fiction, history and modernity that had been created by Scott in his novels. Scott himself, though
he warned against taking these ‘ingenious’ young men and their ‘exaggerating imagination,
which possibly deceives even themselves’ at face value, was powerless to stop their progress. 41
It was as if two characters had escaped from his novels and could not be recaptured.
The questions of identity and anonymity, the interweaving levels of narrative with which
Scott entertained his readers and himself were deployed by the brothers throughout their lives, to
diametrically opposite purpose. Scott played with his identity, disguising it or inserting himself
in his own works as a character (as in the Preface to Quentin Durward). Yet behind the games,
giving them indeed their piquancy, the reality of Walter Scott was never in doubt. His identity as
the author of Waverley was an open secret for many years before he declared it in 1827. The fact
that he had not declared it in 1822, however, was what made The Bridal of Caolchairn possible.
Out of the gaps between fact and fiction in the ironic narrative layers of Waverley, the Sobieski
Stuarts emerged. In their Tales of the Century or Sketches of the Romance of History, they
inverted the process Scott deployed in the Prefaces to Ivanhoe and Quentin Durward. In those
38
Trevor-Roper, ‘The Tartan’, p.216.
39
Scott to Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, 4 June 1829, Scott, Letters, 11, pp. 198-202. Scott discusses his doubts about
the brothers at some length.
40
See Todd and Bowden, pp. 999-1000.
41
Scott to Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Lauder, Letters 11, p. 198.
178