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

Figure 40 Charles Edward Stuart, calotype, c1843
Meanwhile the brothers were pursuing their work on the history of tartan. By the time
Pugin met them in 1842 they were on the brink of publication. They were by now felt to have
been ‘long and honourably distinguished for their devotion to the Antiquities of the Gael’, so
much so that they were invited to contribute ‘a series of outlines of Highland Costume’ to the
Abbotsford Edition of the Waverley Novels, which appeared that same year, the year of Victoria
and Albert’s first visit north of the border. 52 The Abbotsford Edition marked another stage in the
integration of illusion and reality in and around Scott’s fiction. The editors had studied his home
and its contents ‘with care’ in order to illustrate the novels with ‘a Series of Engravings,
representing the Pictorial and Antiquarian Museum at Abbotsford’ thereby providing ‘the most
instructive graphic commentary that the body of his Writings could receive from any one
source’. 53 The romantic interior was to take on a new life in art. In addition to which further
illustrations were taken from ‘the real localities of his scenes’ and ‘the real portraits of his
personages have been copied’. 54
Here at the crux of fact and fiction the Sobieski Stuarts inserted themselves with their
‘invaluable’ researches which it was felt, fully justified ‘the expectations formed of their
projected great Work’. 55 The Vestiarium Scoticum which appeared in the same year and will be
discussed in the next chapter was indeed well received in most quarters. Five years later,
however, with Tales of the Century, the brothers over-reached themselves. In making public and
52
Scott, Abbotsford Waverley Novels, 1, p.4. For the implications of the royal visit see Tyrell, ‘The Queen’s Little
Trip’.
53
Scott, Abbotsford Waverley Novels, 1, p.3.
54
Scott, Abbotsford Waverley Novels, 1, p. 4.
55
Scott, Abbotsford Waverley Novels, 1, p. 4.
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