Jane Austen and Walter Scott: Not Quite Love and Friendship by Catherine Hokin

“Walter Scott has no business writing novels, especially good ones – it is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people’s mouths.”

 Jane Austen from original family picture. Getty

Author feuds: we at the History Girls are above such things but they are horribly common. Gore Vidal comparing Norman Mailer to Charles Manson; Vidal retaliating by punching and then headbutting him.  HG Wells calling Henry James a 'painful hippopotamus' before engaging in a rather nasty letter-writing battle. Ernest Hemingway dismissing F.Scott FitzGerald as a sissy, a moaner and a drunk. No one comes out well and it's not just the men who know how to sharpen a quill: the above 'attack' on Walter Scott was penned by our own mistress of manners, Jane Austen.

Now I'll be honest here, I'm not the world's greatest Austen fan, my tastes run a bit more melodramatic (and sometimes my prose, my agent's term 'you've gone purple again' is never meant as a compliment) which is why I love Walter far more. No one can deny, however, how well Austen can mix admiration into rivalry or the elegant dryness of her tone. This archness runs through her letters as much as her novels although the above comment (written to her niece Anna in 1814) does continue in a rather blunter vein: "I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it - but fear I must." It's hard not to hear the gritted teeth grinding just a little.

Walter Scott was, of course, a very different writer to Austen. His books are written on a far larger scale than hers and in a far more exuberant (also known as completely over-the-top) way but he was generous in his appreciation of Austen's style. His review of Emma, published in The Quarterly Review in 1816 is widely credited with bringing her work to a wider audience and may have been the impetus behind an early American printing. The review is not a raving endorsement but does include positive comments about Austen's other works (with one omission) and makes a distinction between Emma and what many felt was multiplicity of novels suddenly flooding the market, stating that it showed “a knowledge of the human heart, with the power and resolution to bring that knowledge to the service of honour and virtue,” unlike the “ephemeral productions which supply the regular demand of watering-places and circulating libraries.” Whether or not Austen appreciated the review (or even knew that Scott was its author) is unclear. As with much of her writing, her response that the authoress “has no reason, I think, to complain of her treatment in it, except in the total omission of ‘Mansfield Park.’ I cannot but be sorry that so clever a man as the Reviewer of ‘Emma’ should consider it as unworthy of being noticed” can be read in a positive or a peevish tone.

 No explanation or excuse needed

Scott continued to reflect positively on Austen's work throughout his own career. In 1826, he wrote in his private journal:“READ again, and for the third time at least, Miss Austen’s very finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice. That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.” (From an article by Stuart Kelly, whose book Scott-Land: The Man Who Invented a Nation is a wonderful read for anyone interested in Scott's life). In 1832, Scott wrote in the preface to the one novel he wrote with a more domestic setting, St Ronan's Well, that he had no “hope of rivaling … the brilliant and talented names of Edgeworth, Austen..whose success seems to have appropriated this province of the novel as exclusively their own." Was Austen as generous in return? I'm not enough of an Austen scholar to know but I think it would be fair to assume she was not. Although Scott could appreciate the genre she had made her own, she was definitely no fan of his. When James Stanier-Clarke, librarian to the Prince Regent, 'helpfully' suggested she might like to write a work of historical romance to celebrate the Prince, she was less than complimentary at the idea. "I am fully sensible that an Historical Romance, founded on the House of Saxe Cobourg might be much more to the purpose of Profit or Popularity, than such pictures of domestic Life in Country Villages as I deal in – but I could no more write a Romance than an Epic Poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my Life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first Chapter." Damned by faint praise indeed.

It is unfair of me to call the relationship between Scott and Austen a feud, it's really more of a niggle although I'm sure her clever tongue could hold its own in any author-celebrity death match. The one I would have liked to see? Austen versus Mark Twain. Twain loathed Austen's work, interestingly he also loathed Walter Scott, so much in fact that he once cited Walter Scott disease as a prime cause of the American Civil War: "Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war." Reading Twain on Austen reminds me of the horrors of having to teach her to teenage boys: he expressed amazement that she had a natural death instead of being executed for literary crimes and followed that up by declaring he wanted to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone every time he attempted to read Pride and Prejudice. Exactly like teenage boys. I couldn't break them, I'm not convinced I didn't side with them at times, but I doubt the woman who could write "I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other" would have been troubled by any of us. 

Art Lovers

It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry.... If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art, or his art, or the artist part of him, than in him. After which let them take tea together three times a week.

EZRA POUND, letter to his mother, 1909

Thinking of this post, I did a search for 'art lovers' (with varied success), then 'writers and marriage'. Alarmingly, the first few posts suggested were not how gloriously creative life can be, but - to paraphrase - '41 Reasons You Should Not Marry Writers'. (Or Artists). 'Why Writers Should Not Marry'. 'A Spouse's Survival Guide ...' You get the picture. Which begs the question: what's so hard about being the partner of a creative person?

I'm just back from a recharging visit home, and a couple of literary festivals in Cornwall and Hampshire, talking about the inspiration for the first two novels. The idea of writing about a creative partnership in my next book is bubbling away at the back of my mind, and I was interested to notice again that none of the writers I met had partners who were writers or artists. Not one. Is it a case of when writers or artists pair up with their peers it can be very, very good - or totally disastrous?

I'm hoping people will offer up suggestions of successful pairings - creative and romantic partnerships fascinate me. Lee Miller and Man Ray, for example, whose brief relationship burnt out but left a great legacy of photographs. Shrugging off the mantle of surrealist muse, Miller went on to have an incredible career as a war photographer.

Hemingway's romantic life has inspired some wonderful novels lately - Paula McLain's 'The Paris Wife' and Naomi Wood's 'Mrs Hemingway.' 

Hemingway and Gellhorn

In 'Die letzten Tage des Sommers', just published in Germany, I wrote about the summer Andre Breton and his wife Jacqueline Lamba spent as refugees in the south of France during WW2, sheltering in a fishing shack in Martigues. Breton was the magnetic heart of the surrealist movement, Lamba a mercurial painter who was earning a living as a nude underwater dancer in Paris when they met. It was a passionate and equal pairing tested to its limits by the danger they faced during the war.

 Andre Breton

 Jacqueline Lamba (left) with Frida Kahlo

Kahlo and Rivera are another interesting pair - perhaps the secret to creative and romantic success is space (in their case, separate houses if not tea three times a week as Pound suggested). I'd like to think creative partnerships are about inspiration, challenge and support but perhaps finding balance in a relationship is difficult enough without throwing professional competition into the mix. 

How many truly successful pairings between writers, artists and musicians do you think there have been through history - who are your favourite art lovers?

Die letzen Tage des Sommers published August 2014 by Piper

Getting lost in historical fiction by Marcus Sedgwick

Photo by Kate Christer

Another real treat as our August guest: Marcus Sedgwick.


Marcus Sedgwick was born and raised in East Kent in the South-east of England. He now divides his time between a small village near Cambridge and the mountains of Switzerland.

Alongside a 16 year career in publishing he established himself as a widely-admired writer of YA fiction; he is the winner of many prizes, most notably the Branford-Boase Award for a debut novel (Floodland), and the Booktrust Teenage Prize (My Swordhand is Singing). His books have been shortlisted for over thirty other awards, including the Carnegie Medal (four times), the Edgar Allan Poe Award (twice) and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize (four times).
www.marcussedgwick.com


Welcome, Marcus, and over to you:

Of all the books I've had published, I would say maybe two or three of them are what I would classify as historical fiction: Revolver, set in the Arctic in 1910; The Foreshadowing, set in the run up to the Battle of the Somme, and Blood Red, Snow White, the true story of Arthur Ransome's experiences as a spy during the Russian Revolution.

Arthur Ransome during his time in revolutionary Russia - photo Public Domain

Then I have a few books that are probably better placed towards the Fantasy shelves, but which contain aspects derived from various historical delvings, I'm thinking here of books like The Book of Dead Days or the Dark Horse, the latter inspired by The Sagas of the Icelanders.

As for my most recent book, Midwinterblood, I have no idea how it should be classified, being seven stories in one book, which link to form a larger eighth story, about love and sacrifice. The seven stories are set in seven different times, from the future to the place in the past where myth and history are inseparable. Unlike some of my earlier books, it did not require large amounts of research.

With the three first named books above, I spent months on reading and travelling and delving into libraries: the stack of books I read to write The Foreshadowing was taller than I am; for Revolver I travelled in the Arctic and learned how to fire a live revolver, for Blood Red I spent longer than I can remember in various archives putting together Ransome's life story. I didn't do this because I felt I had to, or because I think I was doing my homework properly that way or because I wanted to be able to show off about it afterwards, but because it was fun. I love research, and the great thing about being a writer (as opposed to my friends who are academics) is this: you only have to do as much research as you need and/or want. You can stop when you have enough, you don't have to read everything on the subject ever written, you don't have to back anything up with references and footnotes, and best of all, if you don't like the facts you've uncovered, you can change them to something you like better. So you get all the fun of being a historian without the dreary bits.


You might ask if that holds true for a book like Blood Red, Snow White, which, being based on a true story, someone's life story, needs to stick to the facts. Well, my answer to that is "sort of" but I'll come back to that in a bit.

So why didn't I do so much research for Midwinterblood, if I love it so much? Well, partly because the times I chose to write about in the book were areas I feel fairly comfortable with already. Partially it was because being short stories, each of them required fewer bits of historical fact, for example, I did a spot of research into Spitfires and their bases of operation in the war because it came up as I was writing that section of the book. But finally, and I think more importantly, I think it's because my attitude to historical fiction has changed over the years.

Spitfire photo Public Domain

I'll be completely honest and say I'm still not sure what I intend to do when I write, and I'm still not sure about my relationship to historical fiction, but I feel that at the moment, I see historical fiction slightly differently from how I once did. I used to think that you needed to immerse yourself in the subject in order to be as true to that period as you could be, and that if you were true to that period, you would write a good historical book. But I'm not so sure anymore. Now I think all that's important is that you are true to what it is to be human.

It's a truism (I think) to say that that's what storytelling is about: saying something real about living. I'm not for one second saying that I think historical writers who go for total accuracy are wasting their time, far from it. I'm saying that I think I have drifted away from this belief to a position where I see the study of history as something to get me excited about or interested in an event, or moment, or action that I can use in a book, because it says something true about living.

I think that all writing is a fiction, even the most accurate historical fiction (there's a clue in its name). Even a true life story is fiction: how could I ever pretend to know what was in Arthur Ransome's head minute by minute, day by day? I can't, of course. But I was touched by his life and felt it made a good fictional story, so I decided to tell it. Ransome, like many, many authors, fictionalised certain parts of his own autobiography, something which I found liberated me from the fear of not "being true" to his life 100% accurately. People often have criticised authors when they do this, and now I'm thinking of Ernest Hemingway, because whatever else you think about him, he was at least very honest and explicit about this process: the merging of fact and fiction.

Hemingway in Africa - Photofest

Truth, for Hemingway, was something a little different from how the word usually gets used. Truth for him was to say something accurate and real about what it is to be human, and if that meant using a "lie", then so be it. And that's the way I see historical fiction now, because it's the way I see all fiction: we use lies to tell the truth.