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
15th 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 17th century Scotland produced
no rival to Milton or Dryden.
Despite this, Scotland’s culture prospered
mightily in the 18th 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.
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| David Hume |
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| 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!
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.
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| Robert Burns |
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| 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?
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 20th 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 19th
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.
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| Thomas Carlyle |
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| 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!
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| Hugh Macdiarmid |
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| 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
