Dr Lucy Wood (Chair OF THE EDINBURGH WALTER SCOTT CLUB) – Toast to the Society of Writers to His Majesty’s Signet
Henry Raeburn’s portrait of Walter Scott and dogs (1823).
When we think of Scott, we often think of the word writer, but tonight we are reminded that his professional identity was not initially literary but legal. Scott was born into a legal family—not just any lawyer, but a Writer to the Signet. He began studying at the University of Edinburgh at age 12 and was apprenticed to his father's legal office at 15. His apprenticeship was occasionally disrupted by growth spurts, one of which prompted a doctor to prescribe vegetarianism, much to Scott’s dismay.
While the legal world may seem stern, Enlightenment Edinburgh was alive with social and intellectual energy. The legal quarter, particularly Parliament House, was surrounded by inns and taverns frequented by philosophers, lawyers, and writers. Scott would have been immersed in this lively culture.
One notable anecdote, drawn from Redgauntlet, recounts how Writers to the Signet and clerks would make a daily visit to John’s Coffee House for the meridian—a midday dram of brandy. Though they often didn’t speak, the shared ritual was a form of sociability. Amusingly, the coffee house has recently reopened.
Though Scott's path led him to literature, his legal grounding remained with him. He was called to the bar in 1792 and practised for thirty years. The law profoundly influenced his fiction, imbuing it with themes of justice, social order, and historical realism. From The Heart of Midlothian to Redgauntlet and Guy Mannering, Scott’s legal world enriched his writing.
It is no coincidence that the son of a Writer to the Signet became a writer of such stature. So, if not with a bumper dram of brandy, at least with whatever is in your glass—let us raise it to the Society of Writers to His Majesty’s Signet.
DR ROBERT PIRRIE WS — RESPONSE TO THE TOAST
Thank you for your generous toast to the Society.
Like all of you here I love the work of Walter Scott. For me, however, this has not been a life long appreciation. My appreciation of Scott really took off ten years ago when I embarked on my second career as a historian. The journey began when I left legal practice as a corporate lawyer and became Chief Executive of the WS Society. It was at the Society — one the oldest professional bodies in the world — that I truly grasped the traditions of which I was a part of, as a Writer to the Signet, like Scott’s father. A tradition of which Scott was the greatest exponent. The tradition of combining law, history and literature.
“Lawyers reduce and regulate circumstances to words on a page. That is what Scott did in his historical fiction, and he used literary devices to achieve it, just as lawyers do. ”
When my interest in Scott took off there was a frenzy of book buying, first was J. G. Lockhart’s ten volume biography of Scott, then the choice of edition for the Waverley novels. I settled on the Borders edition by Andrew Lang of 1892, red binding, Japanese paper, lovely illustrations.
I wrote my history PhD on the period 1746 to 1830 in Scotland, so obviously Scott featured heavily in my research. I questioned some of the more pejorative things that historians and academics will say about Scott, that he “invented” or “romanticised” Scottish history, “created a mythical nation”. That was not my interpretation of Waverley, The Antiquary, Old Mortality, The Heart of Midlothian, The Bride of Lammermoor. I saw a past painstakingly researched and recreated in glorious detail. When reading Scott, I find myself fleeting backwards and forwards between time. The time of the novel setting, the time of Scott writing and my time in the present. So many constants but so many changes across time.
Lawyers reduce and regulate circumstances to words on a page: a contract, a court summons, a letter, an email. That is what Scott did in his historical fiction, and he used literary devices to achieve it just as lawyer do albeit more mundanely. Like any good lawyer, he did it with the respect and the use of fact and precedent. What he wrote he extrapolated from historical research, from site visit, from recollections and memories he had heard or read, from chapbooks he collected. From the characters, high and low that he encountered in his daily life.
I work in Parliament Square on the Royal Mile and every day I see characters who could have travelled from the pages of a Scott novel; judges, advocates, police officers, court official, tourists, pipers, and buskers. The Old Town is still a melting pot and among all of this you find Scottish humour everywhere and it is everywhere in Scott’s novels.
I am sure that everybody here agrees it is a great shame that more people today do not know Scott and read Scott. That his characters are not as well loved as those of Charles Dickens. I think so much of this is due to a mistaken impression of how he somehow imposed a fake, sanitised Highlandism on Scotland and created his own version of what the nation should be in the 19th century. I think this interpretation is quite wrong. I think Scott brilliantly brought to life the real people of Scotland, past and present. He had an acute and sensitive understanding of Scotland and its history and was able to write about it in way that captivated people all over the world. His work still has that potential today if only more people knew.
To close, thank you again for your generous toast to the WS Society, I shall convey your good wishes to the members.
Read more about the Society's Sir Walter Scott collection here.