PICTURESQUE TOURS IN SCOTLAND: FORMING AN IDEA OF THE BRITISH NATION KAZUMI KANATSU DPHIL THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND RELATED LITERATURE SEPTEMBER 2000 PAGE NUMBERING AS ORIGINAL TABLE OF CONTENTS Page List of Illustrations iii Acknowledgements iv Abstract v Abbreviations vi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 The Picturesque, Scotland's Jacobite past and an Idea of the British nation 15 Introduction 16 Section 1. Early Tours in Scotland: Thomas Pennant and Samuel Johnson 27 Section 2. William Gilpin's picturesque tours in Scotland 43 CHAPTER 2 The Picturesque Image of Nature and Economic Improvement of Scotland 59 Introduction 60 Section 1. The Picturesque and Improvement in the 1770s and the 1780s 71 Section 2. The Picturesque and Commerce in the 1790s 90 CHAPTER 3 Women's Picturesque Tours in Scotland and Their Sense of Citizenship 106 Introduction 107 Section 1. Sentimentalism and Picturesque Tours 124 Section 2. The Picturesque and the sense of citizenship: Dorothy Wordsworth's Recollections. 140 CHAPTER 4 Walter Scott's Historical Picturesque 161 -i- CONCLUSION 198 BIBUOGRAPHY 203 -ii- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page Plate 1 Paul Sandby, 'View in Strathtay'(1747). Reproduced from Peter Womack, Improvement and Romance: Constructing the Myth of the Highlands (London: Macmillan, 1989). 6 Plate 2 'View in Strathtay' (engraving after Sandby, 1781). Reproduced from Peter Womack, Improvement and Romance: Constructing the Myth of the Highlands (London: Macmillan, 1989). 6 Plate 3 Cairngorm scene: crag, loch, pinewood, capercailzie and roe deer (1969). Reproduced from John R. Gold and Margaret M. Gold, Imagining Scotland: Tradition, Representation and Promotion in Scottish Tourism since 1750 (Hants and Vermont: Scolar Press, 1995). 7 Plate 4 'The Caledonian Voyage to Money-Land' (1762). Reproduced from English Cartoons and Satirical Prints 1320-1832 in the British Museum (Cambridge: Chadwich-Healey, 1978), BMC.3856. 20 Plate 5 'The Three Roads to John Bull's Farm'(1762). Reproduced from English Cartoons and Satirical Prints 1320-1832 in the British Museum (Cambridge: Chadwich-Healey, 1978), BMC.3926. 20 Plate 6 'Sawney in the Bog-House' (1762). Reproduced from English Cartoons and Satirical Prints 1320-1832 in the British Museum (Cambridge: Chadwich-Healey, 1978), BMC. 3988. 21 Plate 7 'A Satire on "Scotch" and "English'" (1763 ?). Reproduced from English Cartoons and Satirical Prints 1320-1832 in the British Museum (Cambridge: Chadwich-Healey, 1978), BMC. 4095. 21 Plate 8 'Edinburgh from Calton Hill' (George Cooke's engraving after J. M. W. Turner, c1820). Reproduced from Walter Scott, Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of Scotland, with descriptive illustrations (London and Edinburgh: John and Arthur Arch, Comhill, and William Blackwood). 194 -iii- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to thank my main supervisor, John Barrell, who read drafts of my work and offered comments and unfailing guidance throughout my writing up process. I am also very grateful to my sub-supervisor, Jane Moody, who gave me great help and suggestions in making my argument clear and coherent. The original idea of this thesis developed from discussions with my former supervisor, Stephen Copley. His sudden death about two years ago is still a cause of deep sorrow in my mind because he was the one who inspired my enthusiasm for the study of eighteenth-century culture. I would like to express my condolences concerning his death and my sincerest appreciation for all he taught me. Thanks also go to my friends who offered proof reading of my English: Shash and Richard Trevett, Richard Hudson, Marlene Hanna, Andrew Finch and John Nixon. I am more grateful than I can say to Barbara Parry, whom I personally respect as my British mother. Her encouragement and kind concern made my years in York comfortable and precious. Without her emotional and spiritual support, this thesis could not have been completed. Heartfelt thanks and love are also due to my best friend and partner, Hideki Hiraga, who has supported me during these years with great understanding and patience in listening to my unexamined and often inconsistent ideas about this thesis. Last but not the least, I would like to take this opportunity to show my deepest affection and gratitude to my parents in Japan, whose profound love and concern has been my greatest incentive to complete this thesis. Kazumi Kanatsu -lV- ABSTRACT The aim of this thesis is to elucidate the relationship between the picturesque and the emergence of British national identity. It explores Scottish travel writings from the 1770s to the early nineteenth century, in order to examine the ways in which tourists employ the discourse of the picturesque to imagine the British nation. The introduction sets out the questions this thesis attempts to address and defines the scope of discussion. It also outlines the general arguments surrounding the picturesque and specifies the way in which picturesque descriptions of Scotland during the period will be approached. Chapter One examines the writings of early tourists to Scotland such as Thomas Pennant, Samuel Johnson and William Gilpin. Scotland's association with Jacobitism prevents Pennant and Johnson from perceiving the region as an integral part of the British nation and also prevents them from appreciating the natural beauty of Scotland. This chapter shows how Gilpin assimilates Scotland's historical distinctiveness to his idea of picturesque beauty. Chapter Two surveys the description of landscape by tourists who are particularly interested in the economic improvement of Scotland. The 1770s and 1780s in Scotland are marked by various endeavours to assimilate the region to the system of capitalist economy. The main interest of this chapter lies in the correspondence between picturesque discourse and contemporary economic discourse, and its attempt to elucidate the ways in which the picturesque helps the development of commercial society to appear as a natural process. Chapter Three investigates the relationship between women's taste for the picturesque and their sense of citizenship. In particular, it focusses on Dorothy Wordsworth's Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland. The Recollections demonstrates how Dorothy appropriates the picturesque to define her identity, and suggests that the equivocal quality of women's picturesque language in some ways corresponds to their ambivalent status in modem commercial society. Chapter Four concludes this inquiry into the picturesque's nation-projecting function by an examination of Walter Scott's idea of the picturesque. His first novel, Waverley, shows how he employs the picturesque to articulate his historical sense of Britishness. This chapter illustrates how Scott uses his literary fictions to propagate a picturesque image of the British nation among the general public. -v- ABBREVIATIONS BM Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine ER Edinburgh Review GM Gentleman's Magazine QR Quarterly Review -vi- INTRODUCTION -1- The eighteenth century in Britain saw various and complex processes which culminated in the emergence of the nation as a physical and geographical entity. At the same time, the period was marked by the formation of the nation as an idea. When the Act of Union joined Scotland to England and Wales in 1707, a new nation was in effect created, an united kingdom named Great Britain. However, the establishment of a correspondingly new national identity required an intricate and lengthy process. Early eighteenth-century Britain remained characterized by a wide diversity of national ideas. The British isles were separated into three entities distinguished by history, tradition, ethnicity and language: England, Wales and Scotland. The inhabitants of these three countries had not been accustomed to identify themselves as the British, and there had been little collective sense of nationality among the three peoples. In Scotland, the English-speaking Lowlanders and the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders regarded each other as alien. The central range of mountains divided Wales into the north and south and made trade and communication between them difficult. England was as heterogeneous as Scotland and Wales. Northumberland had closer attachments to the Scottish Lowlands than to Southern England. Shropshire and Herefordshire also maintained strong social ties with Wales. In her comprehensive study of national identity, Linda Colley suggests that the true picture of Britain in the early eighteenth century was 'a patch-work in which uncertain areas of Welshness, Scottishness and Englishness were cut across by strong regional attachments and scored over again by loyalties to village, town, family and landscape". She argues that after 1707 the British became a single people 'not because of any political or cultural consensus at home, but rather in reaction to the other beyond their shore' (Colley, 6). In order to be perceived as one united 1 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707 -1837 (London: Pimlico, 1994), p. 17. -2- country despite its inherent heterogeneity, the nation had to imagine the existence of its antithesis. In particular, Colley identifies 'the other' as a Catholic European power, namely France. She emphasises the importance of the successive wars with France from 1707 to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 for the emergence of British national identity. Despite the difference in their sense of national identity, she argues, people living in the British Isles could unite to protect their interests from invasion by French