Walter Scott
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PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN ALMOST MENTIONED IN WALDEN: SIR WALTER SCOTT “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY Four Approaches to the Writer’s Estate Approach “Old Money” “New Money” “Sweat Equity” “Just Enough Money” Writer Lord Byron Sir Walter Scott Henry Thoreau Virginia Wolff Estate Newstead Abbey Abbotsford Walden Pond A Room of One’s Own Results Bailout Insolvency Immortality Feminism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Walden: Sir Walter Scott HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: SIR WALTER SCOTT PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN WALDEN: I should not forget that during my last winter at the pond there PEOPLE OF was another welcome visitor, who at one time came through the village, WALDEN through snow and rain and darkness, till he saw my lamp through the trees, and shared with me some long winter evenings. One of the last of the philosophers, –Connecticut gave him to the world,– he peddled first her wares, afterwards, as he declares, his brains. These he peddles still, prompting God and disgracing man, bearing for fruit his brain only, like the nut its kernel. I think that he must be the man of the most faith of any alive. His words and attitude always suppose a better state of things than other men are acquainted with, and he will be the last man to be disappointed as the ages revolve. He has no venture in the present. But though comparatively disregarded now, when his day comes, laws unsuspected by most will take effect, and masters of families and rulers will come to him for advice.– “How blind that cannot see serenity!” A true friend of man; almost the only friend of human progress. An Old Mortality, say rather an Immortality, with unwearied patience and faith making plain the image engraven in men’s bodies, the God of whom they are but defaced and leaning monuments. With his hospitable intellect he embraces children, beggars, insane, and scholars, and entertains the thought of all, adding to it commonly some breadth and elegance. I think that he should keep a caravansary on the world’s highway, where philosophers of all nations might put up, and on his sign should be printed. “Entertainment for man, but not for his beast. Enter ye that have leisure and a quiet mind, who earnestly seek the right road.” He is perhaps the sanest man and has the fewest crotchets of any I chance to know; the same yesterday and tomorrow. Of yore we had sauntered and talked, and effectually put the world behind us; for he was pledged to no institution in it, freeborn, ingenuus. Whichever way we turned, it seemed that the heavens and the earth had met together, since he enhanced the beauty of the landscape. A blue-robed man, whose fittest roof is the overarching sky which reflects his serenity. I do not see how he can ever die; Nature cannot spare him. BRONSON ALCOTT SIR WALTER SCOTT ROBERT PATERSON HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: SIR WALTER SCOTT PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1220 Birth of Thomas Learmonth, the Rhymer, a soothsayer incorrectly given credit, by Walter Scott, for the romance “Sir Tristrem.” SCOTLAND DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Walden: Sir Walter Scott HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: SIR WALTER SCOTT PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1500 The William Dunbar who eventually would be termed, by Walter Scott, the “darling of the Scottish Muses,” was at this point granted, as a token of royal esteem, due to his abject penury, a pension of £10 per year. Here, I’d like to make sure you’re not short of pocket money. He would travel both to England and to France in King James IV’s service, and may well have done some of this traveling as a Franciscan novice. He would never, however, attain to a rank higher than that of Friar, while meanwhile a better-connected relative Alexander Dunbar, Prior of Pluscarden, was relentlessly laundering the incomes and properties of this church asset into the coffers of his relatives: Belief does leap, trust does not tarry, Office does flit, and courts do vary, Purpose does change as wind and rain; Which to consider is a pain. The people so wicked are of feiris [manners] The fruitless earth all witness bears, The air infected and profane; Which to consider is a pain. Fifes were popular. The flute we know, which we hold sidewise to our right, is referred to technically as the flauto traverso or cross flute or German flute (to distinguish it from the common flute or recorder, from duct flutes such as the Arabic nay, from panpipes, from the nose flute, etc.). In the 16th Century in Europe, a tenor flute pitched in the key of G would be played in concert with a descant flute pitched in the key of D and a bass flute pitched in the key of C. Typically, these early flutes would be fashioned of boxwood, would be fashioned in one piece as a straight tube, and typically they would have six finger holes with no keys. WALDEN: In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat playing the flute, and saw the perch, which I seemed to have charmed, hovering around me, and the moon travelling over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed with the wrecks of the forest. Formerly I had come to this pond adventurously, from time to time, in dark summer nights, with a companion, and making a fire close to the water’s edge, which we thought attracted the fishes, we caught pouts with a bunch of worms strung on a thread; and when we had done, far in the night, threw the burning brands high into the air like skyrockets, which, coming down into the pond, were quenched with a loud hissing, and we were suddenly groping in total darkness. Through this, whistling a tune, we took our way to the haunts of men again. But now I had made my home by the shore. CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Walden: Sir Walter Scott HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: SIR WALTER SCOTT PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1526 The last clan battle between the Kers and the Scotts took place in the Border country, on a piece of ground which Walter Scott would acquire in 1811 in the creation of the historical fantasy he would refer to as his “Abbotsford.” The Author’s Fantasy An Anglo/Scottish peace treaty was signed. WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Walden: Sir Walter Scott HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: SIR WALTER SCOTT PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1715 Robert Paterson was born near Hawick, Scotland. This Scottish stonemason would make it his practice to commemorate and keep in repair the tombs of the Covenanters. He would meet Sir Walter Scott in Dunnotar churchyard. The 1st Jacobite rising in Britain and Scotland attempted to restore the exiled James Francis Edward Stuart of the Stuart dynasty to the throne (James would become King James VII of Scotland and James III of England). England implemented on August 1st of this year a Riot Act, according to which if one dozen or more citizens were assembled and were disturbing the peace, and refused to disperse upon proper warning, they would face felony charges. This new procedure seemed less provocative and less dangerous than previous practices such as the military or police proceeding directly to fire over the heads of a group that might transform itself into an angry mob. The formal warning by the police would come to be termed “reading them the Riot Act”: WALDEN: Far through unfrequented woods on the confines of towns, PEOPLE OF where once only the hunter penetrated by day, in the darkest night WALDEN dart these bright saloons without the knowledge of their inhabitants; this moment stopping at some brilliant station-house in town or city, where a social crowd is gathered, the next in the Dismal Swamp, scaring the owl and fox. The startings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day. They go and come with such regularity and precision, and their whistle can be heard so far, that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one well conducted institution regulates a whole country. Have not men improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was invented? Do they not talk and think faster in the depot than they did in the stage-office? There is something electrifying in the atmosphere of the former place. I have been astonished at the miracles it has wrought; that some of my neighbors, who, I should have prophesied, once for all, would never get to Boston by so prompt a conveyance, were on hand when the bell rang. To do things “railroad fashion” is now the by-word; and it is worth the while to be warned so often and so sincerely by any power to get off its track. There is no stopping to read the riot act, no firing over the heads of the mob, in this case. We have constructed a fate, an Atropos, that never turns aside. (Let that be the name of your engine.) Men are advertised that at a certain hour and minute these bolts will be shot toward particular points of the compass; yet it interferes with no man’s business, and the children go to school on the other track.