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.