Ivanhoe
By Walter Scott
Notwithstanding the occasional exhortation and chiding of his companion, the noise of the horsemen’s feet continuing to approach, Wamba could not be prevented from occasionally lingering on the road upon every pretence which occurred, now catching from the hazel a cluster of half-ripe nuts, and now turning his head to leer after a cottage maiden who crossed their path. The horsemen, therefore, soon overtook them on the road.
Their numbers amounted to ten men, of whom the two who rode foremost seemed to be persons of considerable importance and the others their attendants. It was not difficult to ascertain the condition and character of one of these personages. He was a preacher of high rank; his dress was that of a Cistercian Monk but composed of materials much finer than those which the rule of that order admitted. His mantle and hood were of the best Flanders cloth and fell in ample, not ungraceful folds, around a handsome, somewhat corpulent person. His countenance bore as tiny the marks of self-denial as his habit indicated contempt of worldly splendour. His features might have been called good had there not lurked under the penthouse of his eye, that sly epicurean twinkle which indicates the cautious voluptuary. In other respects, his profession and situation had taught him a ready command over his countenance, which he could contract at pleasure into solemnity. However, its natural expression was that of good-humoured social indulgence. In defiance of conventual rules and the edicts of popes and councils, the sleeves of this dignitary were lined and turned up with rich furs, his mantle secured at the throat with a golden clasp. The whole dress proper to his order as much refined upon and ornamented as that of a Quaker beauty of the present day, who, while she retains the garb and costume of her sect, continues to give to its simplicity by choice of materials and the mode of disposing of them, a certain air of coquettish attraction, savouring but too much of the vanities of the world. This worthy churchman rode upon a well-fed ambling mule whose furniture was highly decorated and whose bridle was ornamented with silver bells according to the day’s fashion. In his seat, he had nothing of the awkwardness of the convent but displayed the easy and habitual grace of a well-trained horseman.
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Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet FRSE FSAScot (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish historian, novelist, poet, and playwright.
Biography.
Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels Ivanhoe (1819), Rob Roy (1817), Waverley (1814), Old Mortality (1816), The Heart of Mid-Lothian (1818), and The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), along with the narrative poems Marmion (1808) and The Lady of the Lake (1810). He had a significant impact on European and American literature.
As an advocate, judge, and legal administrator by profession, he combined writing and editing with his daily work as Clerk of Session and Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire. He was prominent in Edinburgh’s Tory establishment, active in the Highland Society, long-time a president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1820–1832), and a vice president of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1827–1829). His knowledge of history and literary facility equipped him to establish the historical novel genre as an exemplar of European Romanticism. He became a baronet of Abbotsford in the County of Roxburgh, Scotland, on 22 April 1820; the title became extinct upon his son’s death in 1847.
Early life
Walter Scott was born on 15 August 1771 in a third-floor apartment on College Wynd in the Old Town, Edinburgh, a narrow alleyway leading from the Cowgate to the gates of the old University of Edinburgh. He was the ninth child (six having died in infancy) of Walter Scott (1729–1799), a member of a cadet branch of the Clan Scott and a Writer to the Signet, and his wife Anne Rutherford, a sister of Daniel Rutherford and a descendant both of the Clan Swinton and of the Haliburton family (descent from which granted Walter’s family the hereditary right of burial in Dryburgh Abbey).
Through Haliburton, Walter was a cousin of the London property developer James Burton (d. 1837), who was born with the surname ‘Haliburton’ and of the same’s son, the architect Decimus Burton. Walter became a member of the Clarence Club, of which the Burtons were members.
Scott’s childhood at Sandyknowes, in the shadow of Smailholm Tower, introduced him to the tales and folklore of the Scottish Borders. The Scott family’s home in George Square, Edinburgh, from about 1778. A childhood of polio in 1773 left Scott lame, a condition that would significantly affect his life and writing.
To improve his lameness, he was sent in 1773 to live in the rural Scottish Borders, at his paternal grandparents’ farm at Sandyknowe, by the ruin of Smailholm Tower, the earlier family home. Here, he was taught to read by his aunt Jenny Scott and learned from her the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends that later marked much of his work. In January 1775, he returned to Edinburgh, and that summer, with his aunt Jenny, took spa treatment at Bath in Somerset, Southern England, where they lived at 6 South Parade. In the winter of 1776, he returned to Sandyknowe with another attempt at a water cure at Prestonpans the following summer.
In 1778, Scott returned to Edinburgh for private education to prepare him for school and joined his family in their new house, one of the first to be built in George Square. In October 1779, he began at the Royal High School in Edinburgh (in High School Yards). By then, he was able to walk and explore the city and the surrounding countryside. His reading included chivalric romances, poems, history, and travel books. James Mitchell gave him private tuition in arithmetic and writing and learned from him the history of the Church of Scotland with emphasis on the Covenanters.
Walter Scott
