Bab Bab 1 · INTRODUCTORY

. INTRODUCTORY

The title of this work has not been chosen without the grave and solid

deliberation which matters of importance demand from the prudent. Even

its first, or general denomination, was the result of no common

research or selection, although, according to the example of my

predecessors, I had only to seize upon the most sounding and euphonic

surname that English history or topography affords, and elect it at

once as the title of my work and the name of my hero. But, alas! what

could my readers have expected from the chivalrous epithets of Howard,

Mordaunt, Mortimer, or Stanley, or from the softer and more sentimental

sounds of Belmour, Belville, Belfield, and Belgrave, but pages of

inanity, similar to those which have been so christened for half a

century past? I must modestly admit I am too diffident of my own merit

to place it in unnecessary opposition to preconceived associations; I

have, therefore, like a maiden knight with his white shield, assumed

for my hero, WAVERLEY, an uncontaminated name, bearing with its sound

little of good or evil, excepting what the reader shall hereafter be

pleased to affix to it. But my second or supplemental title was a

matter of much more difficult election, since that, short as it is, may

be held as pledging the author to some special mode of laying his

scene, drawing his characters, and managing his adventures. Had I, for

example, announced in my frontispiece, “Waverley, a Tale of other

Days,” must not every novel-reader have anticipated a castle scarce

less than that of Udolpho, of which the eastern wing had long been

uninhabited, and the keys either lost, or consigned to the care of some

aged butler or housekeeper, whose trembling steps, about the middle of

the second volume, were doomed to guide the hero, or heroine, to the

ruinous precincts? Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket

cried in my very title-page? and could it have been possible for me,

with a moderate attention to decorum, to introduce any scene more

lively than might be produced by the jocularity of a clownish but

faithful valet, or the garrulous narrative of the heroine’s

_fille-de-chambre_, when rehearsing the stories of blood and horror

which she had heard in the servants’ hall? Again, had my title borne,

“Waverley, a Romance from the German,” what head so obtuse as not to

image forth a profligate abbot, an oppressive duke, a secret and

mysterious association of Rosycrucians and Illuminati, with all their

properties of black cowls, caverns, daggers, electrical machines,

trap-doors, and dark-lanterns? Or if I had rather chosen to call my

work a “Sentimental Tale,” would it not have been a sufficient presage

of a heroine with a profusion of auburn hair, and a harp, the soft

solace of her solitary hours, which she fortunately finds always the

means of transporting from castle to cottage, although she herself be

sometimes obliged to jump out of a two-pair-of-stairs window, and is

more than once bewildered on her journey, alone and on foot, without

any guide but a blowzy peasant girl, whose jargon she hardly can

understand? Or, again, if my Waverley had been entitled “A Tale of the

Times,” wouldst thou not, gentle reader, have demanded from me a

dashing sketch of the fashionable world, a few anecdotes of private

scandal thinly veiled, and if lusciously painted, so much the better? a

heroine from Grosvenor Square, and a hero from the Barouche Club or the

Four-in-Hand, with a set of subordinate characters from the elegantes

of Queen Anne Street East, or the dashing heroes of the Bow-Street

Office? I could proceed in proving the importance of a title-page, and

displaying at the same time my own intimate knowledge of the particular

ingredients necessary to the composition of romances and novels of

various descriptions;—but it is enough, and I scorn to tyrannise longer

over the impatience of my reader, who is doubtless already anxious to

know the choice made by an author so profoundly versed in the different

branches of his art.

By fixing, then, the date of my story Sixty Years before this present

1st November, 1805, I would have my readers understand, that they will

meet in the following pages neither a romance of chivalry nor a tale of

modern manners; that my hero will neither have iron on his shoulders,

as of yore, nor on the heels of his boots, as is the present fashion of

Bond Street; and that my damsels will neither be clothed “in purple and

in pall,” like the Lady Alice of an old ballad, nor reduced to the

primitive nakedness of a modern fashionable at a rout. From this my

choice of an era the understanding critic may farther presage that the

object of my tale is more a description of men than manners. A tale of

manners, to be interesting, must either refer to antiquity so great as

to have become venerable, or it must bear a vivid reflection of those

scenes which are passing daily before our eyes, and are interesting

from their novelty. Thus the coat-of-mail of our ancestors, and the

triple-furred pelisse of our modern beaux, may, though for very

different reasons, be equally fit for the array of a fictitious

character; but who, meaning the costume of his hero to be impressive,

would willingly attire him in the court dress of George the Second’s

reign, with its no collar, large sleeves, and low pocket-holes? The

same may be urged, with equal truth, of the Gothic hall, which, with

its darkened and tinted windows, its elevated and gloomy roof, and

massive oaken table garnished with boar’s-head and rosemary, pheasants

and peacocks, cranes and cygnets, has an excellent effect in fictitious

description. Much may also be gained by a lively display of a modern

_fête_, such as we have daily recorded in that part of a newspaper

entitled the Mirror of Fashion, if we contrast these, or either of

them, with the splendid formality of an entertainment given Sixty Years

Since; and thus it will be readily seen how much the painter of antique

or of fashionable manners gains over him who delineates those of the

last generation.

Considering the disadvantages inseparable from this part of my subject,

I must be understood to have resolved to avoid them as much as

possible, by throwing the force of my narrative upon the characters and

passions of the actors;—those passions common to men in all stages of

society, and which have alike agitated the human heart, whether it

throbbed under the steel corslet of the fifteenth century, the brocaded

coat of the eighteenth, or the blue frock and white dimity waistcoat of

the present day.[*] Upon these passions it is no doubt true that the

state of manners and laws casts a necessary colouring; but the

bearings, to use the language of heraldry, remain the same, though the

tincture may be not only different, but opposed in strong

contradistinction. The wrath of our ancestors, for example, was

coloured _gules;_ it broke forth in acts of open and sanguinary

violence against the objects of its fury. Our malignant feelings, which

must seek gratification through more indirect channels, and undermine

the obstacles which they cannot openly bear down, may be rather said to

be tinctured sable. But the deep-ruling impulse is the same in both

cases; and the proud peer, who can now only ruin his neighbour

according to law, by protracted suits, is the genuine descendant of the

baron who wrapped the castle of his competitor in flames, and knocked

him on the head as he endeavoured to escape from the conflagration. It

is from the great book of Nature, the same through a thousand editions,

whether of black-letter, or wire-wove and hot-pressed, that I have

venturously essayed to read a chapter to the public. Some favourable

opportunities of contrast have been afforded me by the state of society

in the northern part of the island at the period of my history, and may

serve at once to vary and to illustrate the moral lessons, which I

would willingly consider as the most important part of my plan;

although I am sensible how short these will fall of their aim if I

shall be found unable to mix them with amusement—a task not quite so

easy in this critical generation as it was “Sixty Years Since.”

[* Alas! that attire, respectable and gentlemanlike in 1805, or

thereabouts, is now as antiquated as the Author of “Waverley” has

himself become since that period! The reader of fashion will please to

fill up the costume with an embroidered waistcoat of purple velvet or

silk, and a coat of whatever colour he pleases.]