Sir Walter Scott

17th Great-Grandparent of Donald D. Erwin	14th Great-Grandparent of Sir Walter Scott
William Keith (1315-1407)
Robert Keith (1355-1430)	Janet Keith (1351-1406)
William Keith (1389-1464)	Janet Stewart (1373-1410)
William Keith (1425-1485)	Janet Somerville (1428-1492)
William Keith (1451-1530)	David Scott (1456-1492)
Janet Keith (1494-1547)	Walter Scott (1475-1504)
Agnes Graham (1528-1560)	Walter Scott (1495-1552)
Elizabeth Graham (1516-1576)	William Scott (1523-1552)
Margaret Sinclair (1553-1590)	Walter Scott (1549-1574)
James Sutherland (1584-1680)	Walter Scott (1569-1611)
Margaret Sutherland (1627-1697)	William Scott (1592-1655)
Alexander Irvine (1675-1744)	Walter Scott (1620-1688)
James N. Irvine (1709-1770)	Walter Scott (1653-1729)
Joseph Erwin (1729-1793)	Sir Walter Beardie Scott (1679-1729
Joseph Erwin (1769-1846)	Robert Scott (1699-1771)
Joseph Erwin (1794-1879)	Walter Scott (1729-1799)
Thomas J. Erwin (1822-1892)	Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Michael R. Erwin (1867-1953)
Odes H. Erwin (1888-1966)
Donald D. Erwin (1933-)

Sir Walter Scott was a prolific Scottish historical novelist and poet popular throughout Europe during his time.
In some ways Scott was the first English-language author to have a truly international career in his lifetime, with many contemporary readers all over Europe, Australia, and North America. His novels and poetry are still read, and many of his works remain classics of both English-language literature and of Scottish literature. Famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, The Lady of The Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian and The Bride of Lammermoor.

Born in College Wynd in the Old Town of Edinburgh in 1771, the son of a solicitor, the young Walter Scott survived a childhood bout of polio in 1773 that would leave him lame. To cure his lameness, he was sent in that year to live in the rural Borders region at his grandparents’ farm at Sandyknowe, adjacent to the ruin of Smailholm Tower, an earlier family home. Here he was taught to read by his aunt Jenny and learned from her the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends which characterized much of his later work. In January 1775 he returned to Edinburgh, and that summer went with his aunt Jenny to take spa treatment at Bath in England. In the winter of 1776 he went back to Sandyknowe, with another attempt at a water cure being made at Prestonpans during the following summer.

In 1778, Scott returned to Edinburgh for private education to prepare him for school, and in October 1779 he began at the Royal High School of Edinburgh. He was now well able to walk and explore the city as well as the surrounding countryside. His reading included chivalric romances, poems, and history and travel books. He was tutored privately by James Mitchell in arithmetic and writing and learned from him the history of the Kirk (Church) with emphasis on the Covenanters. After finishing school, he was sent to stay for six months with his aunt Jenny in Kelso, attending the local Grammar School. There he met James Ballantyne, who later became his business partner and printed his books.

Scott began studying classics at the University of Edinburgh in November 1783, at the age of only twelve. While at the university Scott had become a friend of Adam Ferguson, the son of Professor Adam Ferguson who hosted literary salons (a social gathering of intellectuals). Scott met the blind poet Thomas Blacklock who lent him books as well as introducing him to James Macpherson’s Ossian cycle of poems.

During the winter of 1786-87, at the age of fifteen, Scott saw Robert Burns at one of these salons, for what was to be their only meeting. When Burns noticed a print illustrating the poem “The Justice of the Peace” and asked who had written the poem, only Scott could tell him it was by John Langhorne, and was thanked by Burns.

When it was decided that he would become a lawyer he returned to the university to study law, first taking classes in Moral Philosophy and Universal History in 1789?90. After completing his studies in law, he became a lawyer in Edinburgh. As a lawyer’s clerk he made his first visit to the Scottish Highlands directing an eviction. He was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1792.

At the age of twenty-five he began dabbling in writing, translating works from German, his first publication being rhymed versions of ballads by Bürger in 1796. He then published a three-volume set of collected Scottish ballads, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. This was the first sign of his interest in Scottish history from a literary standpoint.

Scott married Margaret Charlotte Charpentier in 1797, daughter of Jean Charpentier of Lyon in France. They had five children. In 1799 he was appointed Sheriff-Deputy of the County of Selkirk, based in the Royal Burgh of Selkirk.

Scott had started a printing business in 1805. One of his first printing projects was his own The Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805. It was a huge success, and he published a number of other poems over the next ten years, including the popular The Lady of the Lake, printed in 1810.

In 1809, his sympathies led him to become a co-founder of the Quarterly Review, a review journal to which he made several anonymous contributions. When the press became embroiled in pecuniary difficulties, Scott set out, in 1814, to write a cash-cow. The result was Waverley, a novel which did not name its author. It was a tale of the “Forty-Five” Jacobite rising in the Kingdom of Great Britain with its English protagonist Edward Waverley, by his Tory upbringing sympathetic to Jacobitism, becoming enmeshed in events but eventually choosing Hanoverian respectability. The novel met with considerable success. There followed a succession of novels over the next five years, each with a Scottish historical setting. Mindful of his reputation as a poet, he maintained the anonymous habit he had begun with Waverley, always publishing the novels under the name Author of Waverley or attributed as “Tales of…” with no author. Even when it was clear that there would be no harm in coming out into the open he maintained the façade, apparently out of a sense of fun. During this time the nickname The Wizard of the North was popularly applied to the mysterious best-selling writer. His identity as the author of the novels was widely rumored, and in 1815 Scott was given the honor of dining with George, Prince Regent, who wanted to meet “the author of Waverley.”

In 1819, he broke away from writing about Scotland with Ivanhoe, a historical romance set in 12th-century England. It too was a runaway success and, as he did with his first novel, he wrote several books along the same lines. Among other things, the book is noteworthy for having a very sympathetic Jewish major character, Rebecca, considered by many critics to be the book’s real heroine – relevant to the fact that the book was published at a time when the struggle for the Emancipation of the Jews in England was gathering momentum.

As his fame grew during this phase of his career, he was granted the title of baronet, becoming Sir Walter Scott. At this time, he organized the visit of King George IV to Scotland, and when the King visited Edinburgh in 1822 the spectacular pageantry Scott had concocted to portray George as a rather tubby reincarnation of Bonnie Prince Charlie made tartans and kilts fashionable and turned them into symbols of Scottish national identity.

Beginning in 1825, he went into dire financial straits again, as his company nearly collapsed. That he was the author of his novels became general knowledge at this time as well. Rather than declare bankruptcy he placed his home, Abbotsford House, and income into a trust belonging to his creditors, and proceeded to write his way out of debt. He kept up his prodigious output of fiction (as well as producing a biography of Napoléon Bonaparte) until 1831. By then his health was failing, and he died at Abbotsford in 1832. Though not in the clear by then, his novels continued to sell, and he made good his debts from beyond the grave. He was buried in Dryburgh Abbey where nearby, fittingly, a large statue can be found of William Wallace, one of Scotland’s most romantic historical figures.

When Sir Walter Scott was a boy he sometimes travelled with his father from Selkirk to Melrose, in the Border Country where some of his novels are set. At a certain spot the old gentleman would stop the carriage and take his son to a stone on the site of the battle of Melrose (1526). Not far away was a little farm called Cartleyhole, and this he eventually purchased. In due course the farmhouse developed into a great home that has been compared to a fairy palace. Through windows enriched with the insignia of heraldry the sun shone on suits of armor, trophies of the chase, fine furniture, and still finer pictures. More land was purchased, until Scott owned nearly 1,000 acres. A neighboring Roman road with a ford used in olden days by the abbots of Melrose suggested the name of Abbotsford.

The last of his direct descendants to inhabit Abbotsford House was his great-great-great granddaughter Dame Jean Maxwell-Scott (June 8, 1923 – July 7, 2004). She inherited it from her elder sister Patricia in 1998. Patricia and Jean turned the house into one of Scotland’s premier tourist attractions, after they had to rely on paying visitors to afford the upkeep of the house. It had electricity installed only in 1962. Dame Jean was at one time a lady-in-waiting to Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester.

Among the early critics of Scott was Mark Twain, who blamed Scott’s “romanticization of battle” for what he saw as the South’s decision to fight the American Civil War. Twain’s ridiculing of chivalry in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, in which Twain has the main character, repeatedly utter “great Scott” as an oath, is considered as specifically targeting Scott’s books. Twain also targeted Scott in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn where he names a sinking boat the Walter Scott. Three crooks drown on this wreck.