Given its setting in a climate of war and rebellion, it's no
surprise that Waverley contains many scenes
of high stakes and dramatic tension.
It was Scott's attempt to recreate in an authentic way the circumstances of the
Jacobite uprising that lent the novel a lot of its adventurous appeal to readers.
Here, for example, is a scene from the beginning of chapter 31 when Edward
is being interrogated by a certain major
Melville about his involvement with the highlanders.
I am not your judge Mr. Waverley, your examination will be transmitted elsewhere.
And now to proceed, do you know a person that
passes by the name of Wily Will or Will Ruthven?
I never heard of such a name til this moment, he responds.
Did you never through such a person, or any other person, communicate
with Sergeant Humphry Houghton, instigating him to desert, with as many of
his comrades as he could seduce to join him, and unite with the
Highlanders and other rebels now in arms under the command of the Young Pretender?
I assure you I am not only entirely guiltless of the plot
you have laid to my charge, but I detest it from the
very bottom of my soul, nor would I be guilty of such
treachery to gain a throne, either for myself or any other man alive.
Yet, when I consider this envelope in the handwriting of one
of those misguided gentlemen who are now in arms against their
country, and the verses which it enclosed I
cannot, but find some analogy between the enterprise
I have mentioned ad the exploit of Vogon,
which the writer seems to expect,you should imitate.
Waverley was struck with the coincidence, but denied that the wishes or expectations
of the letter writer, were to be regarded as proofs of a charge, otherwise
[UNKNOWN].
So here we have an intense scene
of interrogation, and the stakes couldn't be higher.
Our protagonist is caught with a seized
envelope bearing the handwriting of a known traitor,
accused of conspiring with the Highlanders against the
king of England, and imprisoned for his treachery.
When you read these kinds of scenes in Waverley,
you can't help but be struck by their immediacy.
And while Scott's language and sense of humor can feel a
bit antiquated, even for fans of 19th century fiction, there's a still
palpable sense of authenticity that pervades the novel and lends it a
historical weight that was hard to find in other novels of Scott's time.
Sir Walter Scott was very well aware of the idiom of authenticity
he was inventing for Waverly and what it demanded from the author.
Here I want to bring out the novel's subtitle, shown in this slide
on the title page from the first edition, Waverley or Tis Sixty Years Since.
That period of 60 years is a very important
one, for Scott is not writing about ancient history or about a history 3 or 4
centuries past as Sophia Lee was, but about
a relatively recent period in the British past.
Scott frames this decision to go back just 60 years and
write his particular version of historical fiction as a deliberate literary choice.