SCOTTISH WRITERS

Although her links with England are extremely close and mutually beneficial, Scotland’s culture has its own distinct flavour and excellencies, as much in literature as in any other sphere. Always less hierarchical and feudal than England, while materially poorer, the Scottish royal court historically patronised the arts generously and fine poets of the 15^th century like Henryson and Dunbar were able to flourish. The Union of the Crowns in 1603 removed this prop, with the court moving from Edinburgh to London and 17^th century Scotland produced no rival to Milton or Dryden.

Despite this, Scotland’s culture prospered mightily in the 18^th century during the remarkable Scottish Enlightenment. The novelist Tobias Smollett produced picaresque romps like Roderick Random, Humphry Clinker and Peregrine Pickle between 1748 and 1771 on similar lines to the works of Sterne and Richardson. More seriously the great philosophical and ethical works of David Hume starting with his Treatise on Human Understanding (1740) contributed to Edinburgh’s reputation as “The Athens of the North”, arguing that man is a bundle of emotions rather than a rational being, earning him a European reputation. To this acute intelligence we can add the name of Adam Smith, professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow, who published his The Wealth of Nations in 1776. His analysis of economic behavior and his arguments in favour of international trade resonate still. He revolutionised the science of economics and laid the intellectual foundations of modern capitalism.

David Hume

James Boswell

More riches were to follow. James Boswell (1740-96) epitomised many of the failings of Scots, a snob, a drunk and a debauchee, but he had warm virtues too, the gift of friendship and an acute eye for the society in which he lived. He visited the courts of Europe and befriended Voltaire, Rousseau and the glittering circle round his mentor Dr Samuel Johnson in London and the finest minds in Scotland. His daily Journals from 1763 reveal his merits and failings with vivid candour. Even his sharpest critic, Lord Macaulay, declared that Boswell’s Life of Johnson (1791) was the greatest biography in the English language and that eminence has never been challenged.

As his 25 January birthday is upon us, let us celebrate the fine poetry of Robert Burns (1759-96), whose Romantic and lyrical works endear him to Scots everywhere:

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

…or in a more radical vein:

Then let us pray that come it may,

(As come it will for a' that,)

That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,

Shall bear the gree, an' a' that. For a' that, an' a' that,

It's coming yet for a' that,

That Man to Man, the world o'er,

Shall brothers be for a' that.

Robert Burns

Sir Walter Scott

                                                                           

Walter Scott (1771-1832) was a busy Scots lawyer of Tory sympathies who first became known as a poet. His Marmion and Lay of the Last Minstrel were much admired. The famous lines below give a flavour:

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land?
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand?

Scott’s enduring fame rests on his historical novels, a genre he effectively invented, publishing Waverley in 1813 followed by many others including Heart of Midlothian, The Antiquary and Ivanhoe. He attracted a European audience, but his works fell out of fashion, (guru-critic F L Leavis an enemy), in the 20^th century and only now are being re-appraised. The ambition and sweep of his plots are striking and the many monuments to him in Scottish towns are a testimony to the high esteem in which he is held.

It is perhaps useful if I set out what I think are the trademarks of much Scots writing:

-         - A fascination with ideas, either religious or philosophical

-          - A strong compulsion to praise (even overpraise) the merits of Scotland

-          - An excessive interest, often tortured, in sexual feelings

-          - A contrarian spirit, both to shock or entertain, fed by the author’s vanity

-          - Radical political views, opposing the existing order, whatever it might be.

Returning to the 19^th century, the industrial revolution had made Scotland prosperous though not enough prosperity trickled down to the labouring classes. Scotland had in David Hume a much-read historian though he wrote a History of England rather than Scotland. Similarly Anglophile was Lord Macaulay, with a Scottish father but who spent his life in England (and India). He was thus half-Scot, but I would settle for that fraction of a glorious stylist and an incisive critic even if his Whig interpretation of history raises hackles.

More definitively Scottish was Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), the Sage of Ecclefechan, who admired German writers like Goethe and Fichte. He was a believer in heroic Great Men, for example Cromwell or Napoleon, and disparaged democracy. His The French Revolution and his biography of Frederick the Great gave ample scope for his eccentric, declamatory prose style. He was a kenspeckle figure round his home in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, and was a doughty controversialist all his life.

A maverick and bohemian figure was Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94) driven from his native damp and chilly Edinburgh by chronic bronchial problems. His Child’s Garden of Verses graced children’s bookshelves but his Kidnapped and Treasure Island were in fact adult adventures while Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde famously explored the splits in the human personality.

Thomas Carlyle

Robert Louis Stevenson

Two other Scots writers distinguished themselves with now classic stories for children J M Barrie and Kenneth Grahame. Barrie was a busy playwright but his Peter Pan (1904) earned him an enchanted immortality. Kenneth Grahame celebrated the other world of animals in the touching anthropomorphic tale The Wind in the Willows (1908) with the delightful adventures of Moley, Ratty, Badger and Toad.

A less sunny view of Scottish mores was taken by George Douglas Brown, a critic of the sentimental kailyard school of writing, whose The House with the Green Shutters (1901) described the jealousies and pettiness of small-town Scots life. More sophisticated were the short stories of H H Munro (aka Saki) exuding the languid values of pre-1914 London club-land.

The Great War and the later economic slump changed everything. Red Clydeside revelled in the expected collapse of capitalism, others like the brilliant achiever John Buchan, continued to write for an appreciative conservative readership, The Scottish Renaissance, ushered in by Hugh Macdiarmid’s 1926 epic poem A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle, attracted famous names like novelists A J Cronin, Eric Linklater, playwright James Bridie and poet Norman MacCaig. There was a strong element of Scottish nationalism in this movement, although some intellectuals like poet Edwin Muir opposed the use of Scots vocabulary and championed English and indeed England. A cherished writer from the Left was Lewis Grassic Gibbon whose moving Sunset Song described the struggles of a farming family in the North east.

Macdiarmid lost his acolytes as he changed his political opinions constantly moving from nationalism to rigid Stalinism before recanting. He was the archetypical moaning Scotsman justifying P G Wodehouse’s jibe “It has never been difficult to tell the difference between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine!” A more cheerful nationalist was Sir Compton Mackenzie, who had a colourful life as Great War intelligence agent, a playboy in Capri, a prolific novelist and writer of history and a co-founder of the SNP. Best known for novels Sinister Street (1913) and Whisky Galore (1947), I had the honour of receiving some school prizes from him in 1960!

Hugh Macdiarmid

Sir Compton Mackenzie

 

My knowledge of contemporary Scottish writers is tenuous – both Iain Banks of The Wasp Factory fame or Irvine Welsh of Trainspotting tackle subjects I frankly prefer not to know about.

Taken in the round, Scottish writers have punched far above their weight and added substantially to British and World culture.

SMD

24.01.20 

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2020