Tue, Nov 18 · 7:00 PM EST
We read Waverly, two years ago, and agreed we would return to Sir Walter Scott.
In reading, To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf, we discovered that Mr. Ramsey of that stupendous novel, believed "The Antiquary" to be Scott's very best work. Virginia Woolf was enchanted by the characters in this novel, and with that recommendation, we'll dive in.
The Antiquary (1816) tells the tale of a mysterious young man named Lovel, who travels idly to a Scottish seaside town of Fairport. Lovel befriends the antiquary, Jonathan Oldbuck, who has taken refuge in the obsessive study of history.
Virginia Woolf's homage (tell me this doesn't grab you!):
In To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Ramsey glances at her husband:
He was reading something that moved him very much … He was tossing the pages over. He was acting it – perhaps he was thinking himself the person in the book. She wondered what book it was. Oh, it was one of old Sir Walter’s she saw, adjusting the shade of her lamp so that the light fell on her knitting. For Charles Tansley had been saying (she looked up as if she expected to hear the crash of books on the floor above) – had been saying that people don’t read Scott any more. Then her husband thought, “That’s what they’ll say of me;” so he went and got one of those books … It fortified him. He clean forgot all the little rubs and digs of the evening… and his being so irritable with his wife and so touchy and minding when they passed his books over as if they didn’t exist at all …[Scott’s] feeling for straight forward simple things, these fishermen, the poor old crazed creature in Mucklebackit’s cottage [in The Antiquary ] made him feel so vigorous, so relieved of something that he felt roused and triumphant and could not choke back his tears. Raising the book a little to hide his face he let them fall and shook his head from side to side and forgot himself completely (but not one or two reflections about morality and French novels and English novels and Scott’s hands being tied but his view perhaps being as true as the other view), forgot his own bothers and failures completely in poor Steenie’s drowning and Mucklebackit’s sorrow (that was Scott at his best) and the astonishing delight and feeling of vigor that it gave him. Well, let them improve upon that, he thought as he finished the chapter … The whole of life did not consist in going to bed with a woman, he thought, returning to Scott and Balzac, to the English novel and the French novel.
The Antiquary is a solid 400+ pages. Plan accordingly as you pace your read. We also need to read The Antiquary before our re-read of To the Lighthouse, so another reason to join :-)
A link to new and used copies:
Also available digitally on Gutenberg:
