The Ninety Sixth Annual Dinner
The
Chairman, Sheriff Isobel Poole, welcomed the 89 members and guests to the
dinner in the Balmoral Hotel, Edinburgh. After introducing the Top Table the chairman
asked The Very Rev. Allan MacLean of Dochgarroch to say
grace. Thereafter dinner was served. After a short interval the main toast of
the evening to the Memory of Sir Walter was proposed by the President Tam Dalyell.
As Tam himself wrote to Fraser Elgin (Hon. Secretary
and Bulletin co-editor), “The written word and the spoken word are two
different forms of communication”. Almost half his address was delivered
without reference to notes and as a result it is not possible to print a
verbatim record. The following is therefore only the gist of the excellent address
with which the diners were entertained.
Ten generations
separate the speaker of 2005 and his ancestor, General Tam Dalyell,
Sir Walter Scott’s “Bloody Muscovite”. Like John Graham Dalyell,
who lived at The Binns, 1842-1852, Tam Dalyell, MP
for West Lothian/Linlithgow 1962-2005, resents Sir Walter’s vilification of his
kinsman, 1615-1685. Dalyells think that Scott was trying to get Abbotsford out of debt and that
any villain would do, without probing facts too rigorously. Our speaker
was, he told the honorary secretary of the Sir Walter Scott Club, when he was
invited to accept its supreme honour,
conscious of the disapproval of the Shade of Sir Walter, at the choice of
himself as President. When seven times a year I chair the Court of the
First of all allow me to pay a tribute to the lady who should have been here last year, but whose place was taken at short notice by the distinguished scholar, Professor Ian Campbell. Dame Jean, Sir Walter’s younger great- great-great grand-daughter, now lies in peace at beautiful Dryburgh Abbey. She was born on June 8th 1923 and died on May 5th. 2004. and with her elder sister, Patricia, were the last-surviving direct descendants. For 50 years they strove to ensure that Abbotsford, the mansion built by Sir Walter on the banks of the Tweed, remained much as it had been during his life-time, welcoming visitors from all over the world with great warmth and openness, sharing with them the history of the house and its first owner, who liked to be known as the Laird of Abbotsford.
When Patricia died six years ago, Jean, who was lady-in-waiting to Princess Alice, took over and carried on the tradition. She was the perfect hostess, welcoming, witty and charming; thanks to their joint efforts the number of visitors to Abbotsford at one point reached 86,000., although recently, thanks to foot and mouth and 9/11 this number has dropped to 30,000. Jean was an enthusiastic supporter of festivals celebrating Sir Walter and promoted every aspect of Border life. She had a great love of horses and her horse Sir Wattie twice won at Badminton. Sadly, with her death the future of the house is now uncertain.
I am hugely indebted to the Director of the Walter Scott Digital Archive Special Collections Division of Edinburgh University Library, Dr.Paul Barnaby, and his colleagues, for information on the Scott/Dalyell relationship. There is only one letter from Dalyell to Scott, out of the 20,000 letters to and from Scott in the Millgate Union Catalogue, so most of my information is derived from the Constable manuscripts in the National Library.
The letter, dated 3 October 1801, appears to be in response to an untraced letter from Sir Walter suggesting possible meanings and etymologies for unexplained terms in Dalyell’s recently published anthology Scotish (sic) Poems of the 16th Century. Dalyell did not appear to be entirely satisfied with Scott’s explanations and derivations. He goes on to discuss Scott’s research into Sir Tristrem, which was published subsequently in 1804.
Dalyell was publishing his 16C poems
at more or less the same time as Scott was producing Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border but Dalyell
assured his publisher that there would be no overlap. Scott appears to have
stayed at The Binns in August 1801 and was sent a presentation copy in September
1801 of Dalyell’s Poems.
Dalyell and Scott must have made acquaintance with each other as fellow advocates, Scott being called to the Bar on 11 July 1792 and Dalyell on 31 January 1797. Dalyell does not seem to have had a courtroom practice but worked as a consulting lawyer. He appears to have spent much time in research in the Advocates’ library and functioned as an informal Keeper of the Library.
There are 8 volumes by Dalyell in the Abbotsford Library: Fragments of Scottish History (1798), Scotish Poems of the Sixteenth century (1801), Dalyell's editions of Richard Bannatyne's Journal of the Transactions in Scotland, & c. from 1570-1573 (1806), of Sir Robert Lindsay's Cronycles of Scotland (1814), and of George Marioreybanks's Annals of Scotland from 1514 to 1591 (1814), Dalyell's Remarks on the Antiquities Illustrated by the Chartularies of the Episcopal See of Aberdeen (1820), Analysis of Ancient Records of the Bishopric of Moray (1826), and Analysis of the Chartularies of the Abbey of Cambuskenneth, Chapel Royal of Stirling, and St. Anthony's Preceptory at Leith (1828). There is nothing in the volumes to indicate whether they were presentation copies or purchases. In all events, Archibald Constable is as likely to have presented copies to his best-selling author as Dalyell himself.
The first four of these
works are cited in the notes to the Magnum Opus edition of Scott's works and appear to have been used as
historical sources by Scott throughout his writing career. The Fragments of Scottish History (albeit misrepresented as `John Grahame Dalzell's Sketches of Scottish History')
are cited in The Abbot, The Fortunes of Nigel, Chronicles of the Canongate, and
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.
In the introduction to the 1830 edition of Minstrelsy
of the Scottish Border, Scott briefly reviews earlier collections of Scots verse
and commends Scottish Poems of the Sixteenth Century by `Mr John Grahame Dalzell, to whom his country is
obliged for his antiquarian labours'.
The edition of Bannatyne is cited in the Magnum Opus editions of Ivanhoe and Provincial Antiquities
of Scotland, while the edition of Lindsay is cited with great frequency through Scott's poetical and prose
works.
Whatever their personal relations (and, untypically, there is no obvious personal warmth in the reference to Dalyell in the 1830 Minstrelsy), Scott, then, clearly had great respect for Dalyell as an antiquarian and editor.
As regards Dalyell's reading of Scott, an auction catalogue was
published in 1852, advertising items from the library of `the late Sir John
Graham Dalyell'. It includes Scott's Rokeby, but there
is nothing to indicate that Dalyell's complete
library was for sale.
One final episode might be
worth mentioning as bearing, tangentially, on Scott's relations with Dalyell.
The first two issues of Blackwood's Magazine (1817) contained the notorious Chaldee Manuscript, a satire on the
“Now the other beast (Dalyell) was a
beast which he (Constable) loved not. A beast of burden which
he had in his courts to hew wood and carry water, and to do all manner of
unclean things. His face was like unto the face of an ape, and he chattered continually, and his nether parts were
uncomely. Nevertheless his thighs were hairy, and the hair
was as the shining of a sattin
[sic] raiment, and he skipped with
the branch of a tree in his hand, and he chewed a snail between his
teeth”.
There follow a further eight verses,
continuing to mock Dalyell's infirmity (he was crippled from birth) and alluding to Constable's
dissatisfaction with Dalyell's contributions to the General Gazetteer.
Dalyell issued a writ for defamation
and the affair was settled out of court with Blackwood’s
paying out the considerable sum of £230. The offending verses have never
been reprinted. Scott is on record as deploring the Chaldee Manuscript, warning Blackwood
that if the magazine `could continue to be a receptacle for articles, however able, composed in the same tone, I could
not [...] continue my permanent assistance'. He consistently attempted to reign in
Lockhart's critical and satiric excesses,
but it is possible that Scott's closeness to the Blackwood's circle might have affected his relations with Dalyell.
(The attack, incidentally, appears to have been politically rather than
personally motivated, Dalyell being a staunch Whig
and Lockhart an equally staunch Tory,)
So far I have dealt only with my ancestor in the
1800s. but there was a rather more notorious member of
the family mentioned by Scott in Old
Mortality. In chapter 29 the Covenanters are dismayed to hear that the
Lieutenant-General of the Royalist army will be “the celebrated General Thomas
Dalzell of Binns, who, having practised the art of war in the then barbarous
country of Russia, was much feared for his cruelty and indifference to human
life and human suffering as respected for his steady loyalty and undaunted
valour”. In chapter 30 he is described in the following terms on the eve of the
Battle of Bothwell Bridge:
“Beside him stood Claverhouse, whom we have already fully described, and another general officer whose appearance was singularly striking. His dress was of the antique fashion of Charles the First’s time, and composed of shamoy leather, curiously slashed, and covered with antique lace and garniture. His boots and spurs might be referred to the same distant period. .He wore a breastplate, over which descended a grey beard of venerable length, which he cherished as a mark of mourning for Charles the First, having never shaved since that monarch was brought to the scaffold. His head was uncovered, and almost perfectly bald. His high and wrinkled forehead, piercing grey eyes, and marked features, evinced age unbroken by infirmity, and stern resolution unsoftened by humanity. Such is the outline, however feebly expressed, of the celebrated general Thomas Dalzell, a man more feared and hated by the Whigs than even Claverhouse himself, and who executed the same violence against them out of a detestation of their persons, or perhaps an innate severity of temper, which Grahame only resorted to on political accounts, as the best means of intimidating the followers of presbytery, and of destroying that sect entirely”.
Scott has General Dalyell
oppose all attempts to parley with the insurgents and only reluctantly obey an
order to give quarter to fleeing rebels after the Royalist victory. At the trial of the insurgents in chapter
36, Dalyell threatens Morton's manservant Cuddie Headrigg with
physical violence ('Speak out, you scoundrel [, . ,] or I'll dash your teeth out with my dudgeonhaft!') and urges
torture to be employed on Ephraim Macbriar and then that he be led away to execution, callously dismissing such
work as 'drudgery'. A note refers to the `unmanly violence' with which the General is recorded as
having treated prisoners.
The editors of the most recent critical edition of Old Mortality (Edinburgh University Press) note that Dalyell was not actually present at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge, but `presumably Scott wished a fanatical royalist to balance the picture of the opposing sides'. As such, he largely accepts the picture presented in pro-Covenanting historical accounts, as he pointedly does not for Claverhouse.
General
Dalyell also appears in `Wandering Willie's Tale' in Redgauntlet. The
Blind Fiddler tells of his father being asked to perform at a ghostly
banquet hosted by his recently deceased master Sir Robert Redgauntlet,
a feared oppressor of Covenanters who `was
aye for the strong hand; and his name is kend as wide
in the country as Claverhouse's or Tam Dalyell's'. The
guests at the banquet are described as follows:
“But Lord take
us in keeping! What a set of ghastly revellers there were that sat around that table! My gudesire kend mony
that had long before gane to their place, for often had he piped to the
most part in the hall of Redgauntlet. There was the
fierce Middleton, and the dissolute Rothes, and the
crafty Lauderdale; and Dalyell, with his bald head and a beard to his girdle; and Earlshall, with Cameron's blude on his hand; and wild Bonshaw, that tied blessed Mr. Cargill's limbs till the blude
sprung; and Dumbarton Douglas, the twice turned traitor baith to country
and king. There was the Bludy Advocate MacKenyie, who, for his worldly wit and wisdom, had been to the rest as a god. And
there was Claverhouse, as beautiful as when he lived, with his long,
dark, curled locks
streaming down over his laced buff coat, and with his left hand always on his right spule-blade,
to hide the wound that the silver bullet had made. He sat apart from them all, and looked at them with a
melancholy, haughty countenance;
while the rest hallooed and sang and laughed, that the room rang. But their smiles were fearfully
contorted from time to time; and their laughter passed into such wild sounds as
made my gudesire's very nails grow blue, and chilled the marrow in his banes”.
The letters between John
Graham Dalyell and Constable indicate that Dalyell was particularly sensitive to attacks on his
ancestry and keen to defend the reputation
of General Dalyell. It is unlikely, then, that he
would have taken Scott's presentation
of his forbear lightly.
John Graham of Claverhouse was a decent chap. Scott liked people who knew how to use a knife and fork. Perhaps Tam Dalyell was not a decent chap!
…………………………………………………….
Where better than the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club for me to bury the hatchet and I am happy to have been given the opportunity to do so.
Ladies and
gentlemen, please rise and join me in drinking to the Memory of Sir Walter
Scott.
Sir Thomas Dalyell of the Binns, 11th Baronet
The