Walter Scott, James Hogg and Uncanny Testimony: Questions of Evidence and Authority Deirdre A. M. Shepherd PhD – The University of Edinburgh – 2009 Contents Preface i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Chapter One: Opening the Debate, 1790-1810 1 1.1 Walter Scott, James Hogg and Literary Friendship 8 1.2 The Uncanny 10 1.3 The Supernatural in Scotland 14 1.4 The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1802-3, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, 1805, and The Mountain Bard, 1807 20 1.5 Testimony, Evidence and Authority 32 Chapter Two: Experimental Hogg: Exploring the Field, 1810-1820 42 2.1 The Highlands and Hogg: literary apprentice 42 2.2 Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh: ‘Improvement’, Periodicals and ‘Polite’ Culture 52 2.3 The Spy, 1810 –1811 57 2.4 The Brownie of Bodsbeck, 1818 62 2.5 Winter Evening Tales, 1820 72 Chapter Three: Scott and the Novel, 1810-1820 82 3.1 Before Novels: Poetry and the Supernatural 82 3.2 Second Sight and Waverley, 1814 88 3.3 Astrology and Witchcraft in Guy Mannering, 1815 97 3.4 Prophecy and The Bride of Lammermoor, 1819 108 Chapter Four: Medieval Material, 1819-1822 119 4.1 The Medieval Supernatural: Politics, Religion and Magic 119 4.2 Ivanhoe, 1820 126 4.3 The Monastery, 1820 135 4.4 The Three Perils of Man, 1822 140 Chapter Five: Writing and Authority, 1822-1830 149 5.1 Divinity Matters: Election and the Supernatural 149 5.2 Redgauntlet, 1824 154 5.3 The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, 1824 163 Chapter Six: Scott: Reviewing the Fragments of Belief, 1824-1830 174 6.1 In Pursuit of the Supernatural 174 6.2 ‘My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror’ and ‘The Tapestried Chamber’ in The Keepsake, 1828 178 6.3 Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, addressed to J. G. Lockhart, Esq., 1830 187 Chapter Seven: Hogg and the Final Word, 1826-1834 208 7.1 The Visible Supernatural 208 7.2 Contributions to Annuals and Gift-books 211 7.3 Hogg’s tales in the Literary Souvenir for 1826, the Anniversary for 1829, Friendship’s Offering for 1830 and Forget Me Not for 1830, 1831 and 1834 213 Bibliography 238 Preface Note: The dates cited in Grierson’s edition of Scott’s Letters have been checked against Corson’s Notes and Index to Sir Herbert Grierson’s Edition of the Letters of Sir Walter Scott, 1979, and the Millgate Union Catalogue of Walter Scott Correspondence. See bibliography for further details. Referencing: Quotations in the thesis from the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels and the Stirling/South Carolina Edition of James Hogg will be introduced with a shortened title of the work and page number e.g. (Waverley 23) or (Spy 44). A full list of these abbreviations is included below. Shortened titles for ‘My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror’, ‘The Tapestried Chamber’, and Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, addressed to J. G. Lockhart, Esq., are also given. James Hogg: (Brownie) The Brownie of Bodsbeck, 1818 (Confessions) The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, 1824 (Contributions) Contributions to Annuals and Gift-Books, 2006 (Perils) The Three Perils of Man, 1822 (Spy) The Spy, 1810-11 (Tales) Winter Evening Tales, 1820 Walter Scott: (Bride) The Bride of Lammermoor, 1819 (‘Chamber’) ‘The Tapestried Chamber’, 1828 (Demonology) Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, addressed to J. G. Lockhart, Esq., 1830 (Guy) Guy Mannering, 1815 (Ivanhoe) Ivanhoe, 1819 (Minstrelsy) The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1802-3 (‘Mirror’) ‘My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror’, 1828 (Monastery) The Monastery, 1820 (Redgauntlet) Redgauntlet, 1824 (Reliquiæ) Reliquiæ Trotcosienses, 2004 (Waverley) Waverley, 1814 Endnotes are located at the end of each chapter. i Acknowledgements I should like to acknowledge my sincere appreciation of the kindly assistance given to me throughout my research by Professor Peter Garside and Professor Susan Manning of the University of Edinburgh. It was a privilege to work with two such outstanding scholars and I would like to thank them once again for sharing their knowledge and expertise so generously in all matters connected with Scott and Hogg. Declaration I declare that this thesis has been written by myself and is my own work. It has not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. Signature: ii Abstract This thesis investigates the representation of the supernatural in the literature of Walter Scott and James Hogg. In comparing both authors it takes advantage of two recent scholarly editions: the Stirling/South Carolina edition of Hogg and the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels. I trace the development of Scott’s persistent interest in various categories of the supernatural: the uncanny; witchcraft; second sight; and astrology. His literary career began in 1796 with translations of German Romantic poetry. These were followed by publication of his collection of ballads and folklore, known as the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1802-3, and by the longer poems such as The Lay of the Last Minstrel, 1805. Subsequently, Scott’s investigation of the supernatural would continue within a number of key novels and his shorter fiction. The Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, addressed to J. G. Lockhart, Esq., 1830, was one of his final attempts to establish how far the evidence of a credible witness might supply ineluctable testimony in accounts of the supernatural. Scott’s legal training, and antiquarian skills, lent particular authority into his investigations of the possibilities of the existence, or otherwise, of the supernatural. By way of contrast, James Hogg’s lack of formal education, and scanty knowledge of the progressive advances of the Scottish Enlightenment, was associated with a ready credulity in matters of the supernatural. His literary work, such as The Mountain Bard, 1807, or his later collection of Winter Evening Tales, 1820, demonstrated a familiarity with ballads, and an unlettered folklore tradition, that appeared to confirm his position as a believer in superstitious and irrational practices. However, this thesis will argue that Hogg actually possesses a shrewd and sophisticated understanding of the authority of the supernatural. This is manifest in his literary efforts to record and investigate various types of uncanny testimony, when compared with those of Scott. Hogg’s view of the supernatural is complex and essentially subversive. His final novel, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, 1824, and his later contributions to the fashionable annuals and gift- books published between 1826 and 1834, reveal an author deeply engaged with demonstrating the unique role of the supernatural within Scottish society, particularly as a channel of dissent and discord. The Ettrick Shepherd and the Author of Waverley founded their literary relationship upon a shared enthusiasm for the supernatural tales and traditions of the Scottish Borders. Their friendship was both competitive and complementary. Critics have generally tended to assume that Scott, rather than Hogg, was the sceptical party where belief in the existence of the supernatural is concerned. However, closer examination of their work reveals that such assumptions do not necessarily stand up. Ultimately, Hogg emerges as the author with greater resistance to an irrational belief in the supernatural. His position as an observer, and critic, of the antiquarian and enlightened literary establishment, with its dependence on the authority of printed texts, is developed through his literary investigation of the supernatural. My choice of works to consider has been necessarily limited by questions of space. Where possible, I have selected those texts that seem to me to offer ready comparison between the two authors. Some novels such as Scott’s The Antiquary, 1816, or The Pirate, 1822, might be regarded as worthy of inclusion in this study of the supernatural. However, there are no real equivalents of these in Hogg’s work. iii Walter Scott, James Hogg and Uncanny Testimony: Questions of Evidence and Authority Chapter One: Opening the Debate, 1790-1810 This thesis sets out to investigate the complex depiction of the supernatural, or uncanny, phenomena in the literature of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) and James Hogg (1770- 1835). ‘Supernatural’ and ‘uncanny’ are difficult terms in any project of literary analysis in that belief in the ‘supernatural’ is associated now with discredited, pre-Enlightenment ways of thinking, as well as ridiculous superstition. In the twenty- first century, the term ‘uncanny’ has also become routinely associated with Freud’s pioneering work on the principles of psychoanalysis rather than inexplicable mysteries. His essay ‘The Uncanny’, 1919, has attracted an extensive critical literature surveying aspects of the uncanny in considerable depth. Successive literary theorists have discussed narcissism and the motif of doubling; theories of creativity and repression; the existence of the occult as well as fantasy and the literature of subversion.1 Harold Bloom has even suggested Freud’s essay could be considered as ‘the only major contribution that the twentieth century has made to the aesthetics of the sublime’2 However, neither Scott nor Hogg understood ‘supernatural’ or ‘uncanny’ in these ways. This thesis will examine their literary representation of these categories of belief commonly found in Scotland. Within a period of history that included the French Revolution, 1789, and the Napoleonic Wars, 1799-1815, Scott’s and Hogg’s poetry and fiction returned again and again to aspects of the supernatural associated with danger, prophecy, upheaval and injustice. It is perhaps insignificant but certainly striking that the American scholar Coleman O. Parsons began publishing a number of articles on Scott’s use of the supernatural in 1943, shortly before the end of the Second World War. His critical studies of various aspects of the supernatural – witchcraft, demonology and magic – began to appear at a time of immense cultural and national dislocation. Parsons would later publish his monograph Witchcraft and Demonology in Scott’s Fiction in 1964.