Frolics in the Face of Europe: Sir Walter Scott, Continental Travel and the Tradition of the Grand Tour
Thursday 3rd June 2021
Summary of the Talk:
The text examines Sir Walter Scott's relationship with the tradition of the Grand Tour, focusing on his travels in Europe, his reluctance to fully embrace the Grand Tour experience, and the cultural and literary implications of his approach to travel.
Dr. Brown reflects on the paradox of Scott's European travels, noting that while Scott took only three trips to the Continent, they did not fit the typical pattern of a "Grand Tour," an institution traditionally focused on classical education and aesthetic appreciation of Europe, particularly Italy. Scott was not an enthusiast for classical antiquity or the traditional sites of the Grand Tour. Instead, he had a deep affinity for Scottish history and landscape, often comparing European sites unfavourably with those of Scotland. His trips were thus marked more by personal and domestic preferences than by the intellectual or aesthetic motivations of many of his contemporaries.
Scott's hesitation to travel abroad stemmed not only from personal disinterest in foreign landscapes but also from a more practical focus on his career in law and literature in Scotland. His attitude towards travel was often dismissive, referring to it as a "frolic." Interestingly, despite his reluctance, he did make a few trips, with his final Mediterranean voyage in 1831 marking a late, but notable, engagement with the traditional Grand Tour locations. This trip, however, came too late in his life, and he was in poor health, which limited his enjoyment of the experience.
Dr. Brown also highlights Scott's use of secondary sources—books and maps—to explore Europe, suggesting that his deep knowledge of European history and topography, though acquired second-hand, was sufficient for his creative needs. Despite his lack of enthusiasm for the classical world, Scott’s literary works, especially his novels, engage deeply with history, and his imagination was greatly shaped by the European past, particularly the medieval period and the Jacobite history of Scotland.
Interesting Points:
- Scott's reluctance towards the Grand Tour: Scott was not the typical Grand Tourist. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he didn’t have the same fascination with classical ruins or the visual arts. His attachment to Scotland, especially to the Tweed River and Abbotsford, shaped his worldview and kept him from engaging with the classical European heritage that was central to the Grand Tour.
- Scott's late engagement with the Mediterranean: Despite being deeply engaged with European history and topography through books, Scott only visited key Mediterranean sites like Naples and Rome late in his life. His final trip was marked by illness and a sense of missed opportunities. This contrasts sharply with the youthful, adventurous nature of traditional Grand Tourists.
- Scott's connection with literature and imagination: Even though Scott never fully experienced the Grand Tour, his literary works were steeped in European history and the landscapes of the continent. His knowledge of foreign places was largely mediated through books, which shaped his writing and imagination.
- The paradox of Scott's literary career and his travels: Scott's refusal to fully immerse himself in the Grand Tour tradition, despite having the means and opportunity, underscores a tension between his intellectual pursuits and his personal preferences. His reluctance to travel and his preference for home and Scottish landscapes are themes that appear throughout his life and work.
- Scott’s relationship with Italy: Though he did not visit Italy until the end of his life, Scott had a complicated view of the country. He was more interested in its medieval past than its classical heritage and was often unimpressed with the major Italian sites. His lack of interest in Italian music and art is particularly notable, as the Grand Tour was often associated with a deeper cultural appreciation for these elements.
This text offers a nuanced perspective on Scott's relationship with European travel and highlights the importance of context in understanding his reluctance to embrace the traditional Grand Tour experience.
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Frolics in the Face of Europe: Sir Walter Scott, Continental Travel and the Tradition of the Grand Tour
On 3rd June 2021 the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club virtually hosted at talk by Dr. Iain Gordon Brown.
He was introduced by our Chairman Prof. Sir. Iain Torrance.
Dr. Iain Gordon Brown is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, was formerly Principal Curator of Manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland, where he is now an Honorary Fellow.
He has also held the office of Curator of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s national academy (of which Scott was the third President).
A widely-published scholarly author, he has edited Scott’s Interleaved Waverley Novels: An Introduction and Commentary and Abbotsford and Sir Walter Scott: The Image and the Influence, and has written numerous articles and essays on aspects of the man and his world. A past President of the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club, he is a member of the Curatorial Expert Advisory Panel of the Abbotsford Trust, and of the Faculty of Advocates Joint Abbotsford Advisory Committee. Formerly President of the Old Edinburgh Club, and a Trustee of Edinburgh World Heritage, he is currently an Associate of the Centre for the History of the Book in the University of Edinburgh and is Consultant to the Adam Drawings Project at Sir John Soane’s Museum, London. He is also a Trustee of the Penicuik House Preservation Trust and a Vice-President of the Edinburgh Decorative and Fine Arts Society.
The intellectual history and culture (in its broadest sense) of Scotland in its Golden Age of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has long been a major area of interest, and the focus of many of his books and articles which have covered a wide range of inter-related topics. For over four decades he has also worked on the history of the Grand Tour, publishing extensively on British travellers, scholars, artists and architects in Europe between the 1690s and the 1850s.
Sir Walter Scott wrote frequently of his desire to travel widely in Europe. However, he actually made only three Continental ventures. Two were to Belgium (including the battlefield of Waterloo), Northern France and Paris, where he immersed himself in local culture and society and on which he published an excellent travel book. Then, shortly before his death, he at last journeyed to the Mediterranean, the British Admiralty giving him free passage in a warship – a notable gesture of concern for the welfare of what today would be called a ‘national treasure’. Scott visited Malta, and many cities of Italy. His months in Naples and his weeks in Rome provoked both interest and sadness: most of all they caused him to reflect from afar on Scotland, the land of his birth, his mind and his heart. He returned through the Tyrol and German lands, regions of the Continent he had long wished to see, but which he could by then barely appreciate.
These European trips are full of interest for the modern reader. But equally, and almost more so, are the many other schemes Scott entertained for wider travelling, notably in the Iberian Peninsula, in Switzerland and Germany, and even (latterly) in Greece and the Aegean. In this book, all these actual and projected journeys are examined in the context of the Grand Tour tradition, and also in that of the new kind of ‘romantic’ travel that, after 1815, came to succeed older, prescribed forms.
Frolics in the Face of Europe (the phrase is derived from a letter of Scott’s of 1824) draws on his vast correspondence and his moving journal; on his verse, and his prose fiction; and on the literature of travel which gave him such a wide knowledge of the world without even leaving his study in Edinburgh or his library at Abbotsford. A series of vignettes or pen-portraits emerges of journeys completed, and voyages merely dreamed of. Many social, literary and artistic connections are made; events, places and personalities are linked, often in surprising ways. Walter Scott emerges as a man with ambiguous ideas about travel: one who knew that he ought to travel, and to have travelled more than he did. But he was a writer of profound imaginative power, whose vicarious travelling allowed him to spend most of his time where he really wanted to be: in his native Scotland. This book offers a fresh view of Scott as the 250th anniversary of his birth approaches. [Amazon]
