No ladies’ man

‘Walter Scott is unjust towards love; there is no force or colour in his account of it, no energy. One can see that he has studied it in books and not in his own heart.’ That was Stendhal’s opinion, and many even of Scott’s most devoted readers would not dissent from it. Dialogues between his young lovers are, to put it mildly, rarely satisfactory. The idea of his young heroines may be pleasing. One can understand why Victorian schoolboys are said to have fallen in love with Diana Vernon in Rob Roy; she is beautiful, lively and resourceful, a fine horsewoman and gallant Jacobite. John Buchan also succumbed to her spell: ‘Not only is the reader vividly conscious of her charm of person and manner and her fineness of spirit, but he is aware of a notable intelligence.’ Alas, the spell doesn’t work for me. Indeed this is to see her as Frank Osbaldistone, the young narrator, sees her, not as she reveals herself. The charm dissolves when she speaks; her language is dull and formal, even pompous. There is no vitality in it. She is, as A. O. J. Cockshut wrote in one of the best books about Scott, ‘a day dream’; or, if you like, a Bond girl. Scott himself knew that he was no great hand at depicting young ladies, partly, I think, because he did not hear their voices in his head, partly, perhaps because he had too much respect for them — and for the proprieties — but principally because, as Stendhal suggested, the idea of love did not fire his imagination.

Nevertheless his heroines made an impression on his early readers. A few months ago I discovered a book in a second-hand shop (appropriately in Melrose) which substantiates this claim. Galerie des Femmes de Walter Scott, Quarante-Deux Portraits, accompagnés chacun d’un portrait littéraire was published in Paris in 1839, seven years after his death.