It was at Abbotsford that Scott made his home for the rest of his life.  Here he put off the gown and wig of a barrister, and played the part of a country gentleman.  He rode about accompanied by his children and his friends, and followed by his dogs.  He fished, and walked, and learned to know every one around, high and low.  He was beloved by all the countryside, for he was kindly and courteous to all, and was “aye the gentleman.”  He would sit and talk with a poor man in his cottage, listening to his tales of long ago, with the same ease and friendliness as he would entertain the great in his own beautiful house.  And that house was always thronged with visitors, invited and uninvited, with friends who came out of love of the genial host, with strangers who came out of curiosity to see the great novelist.  For great as Scott’s fame as a poet, it was nothing to the fame he earned as a story-teller.

The first story he published was called Waverley, or ’Tis Sixty Years Since.  He had begun to write this tale years before, but had put it aside as some of his friends did not think well of it.  One day he came upon the manuscript by accident, thought himself that the story was worth something, and resolved to publish it.  Finishing the writing in three weeks he published the novel without putting his name upon the title-page.  He did this, he said, because he thought it was not quite dignified for a grave advocate and Sheriff of the county to write novels.  The book was a wild success, everybody read it, everybody was eager to know who the author was.  Many people guessed that it was Scott, but, for more than ten years, he would not own it.  At public dinners when the health of the author of Waverley was drunk, people would look meaningly at Scott, but he would appear quite unconcerned, and drink the health and cheer with the rest.  To keep the mystery up he even reviewed his own books.  And so curiosity grew.  Who was this Great Unknown, this Wizard of the North?

Waverley is a story of the Jacobite times, of the rebellion of ’45.  The hero, Edward Waverley, who is no such great hero either, his author calling him indeed “a sneaking piece of imbecility,” gives his name to the book.  He meets Bonnie Prince Charlie, is present at the famous ball at Holyrood, fights at the battle of Prestonpans, and marches with the rebel army into England.

Thus we have the beginning of the historical novel.  Scott takes real people, and real incidents, and with them he interweaves the story of the fortunes of make-believe people and make-believe incidents.  Scott does not always keep quite strictly to fact.  He is of the same mind as the old poet Davenant who thought it folly to take away the liberty of a poet and fetter his feet in the shackles of an historian.  Why, he asked, should a poet not make and mend a story and frame it more delightfully, merely because austere historians have entered into a bond to truth.  So Scott takes liberties with history, but he always gives us the spirit of the times of which he writes.  Thus in one sense he is true to history.  And perhaps from Waverley we get the better idea of the state of Scotland, at the time of the last Jacobite rebellion, than from any number of histories.  In the next chapter Scott himself shall give you an account of the battle of Prestonpans.