The title of this work has not been chosen without the grave and
solid deliberation which matters of importance demand from the
prudent. Even its first, or general denomination, was the result
of no common research or selection, although, according to the
example of my predecessors, I had only to seize upon the most
sounding and euphonic surname that English history or topography
affords, and elect it at once as the title of my work and the name
of my hero. But, alas! what could my readers have expected from
the chivalrous epithets of Howard, Mordaunt, Mortimer, or Stanley,
or from the softer and more sentimental sounds of Belmour,
Belville, Belfield, and Belgrave, but pages of inanity, similar to
those which have been so christened for half a century past? I
must modestly admit I am too diffident of my own merit to place it
in unnecessary opposition to preconceived associations; I have,
therefore, like a maiden knight with his white shield, assumed for
my hero, WAVERLEY, an uncontaminated name, bearing with its sound
little of good or evil, excepting what the reader shall hereafter
be pleased to affix to it. But my second or supplemental title was
a matter of much more difficult election, since that, short as it
is, may be held as pledging the author to some special mode of
laying his scene, drawing his characters, and managing his
adventures. Had I, for example, announced in my frontispiece,
'Waverley, a Tale of other Days,' must not every novel-reader have
anticipated a castle scarce less than that of Udolpho, of which
the eastern wing had long been uninhabited, and the keys either
lost, or consigned to the care of some aged butler or housekeeper,
whose trembling steps, about the middle of the second volume, were
doomed to guide the hero, or heroine, to the ruinous precincts?
Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very
title-page? and could it have been possible for me, with a
moderate attention to decorum, to introduce any scene more lively
than might be produced by the jocularity of a clownish but
faithful valet, or the garrulous narrative of the heroine's
fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and horror which
she had heard in the servants' hall? Again, had my title borne,
'Waverley, a Romance from the German,' what head so obtuse as not
to image forth a profligate abbot, an oppressive duke, a secret
and mysterious association of Rosycrucians and Illuminati, with
all their properties of black cowls, caverns, daggers, electrical
machines, trap-doors, and dark-lanterns? Or if I had rather chosen
to call my work a 'Sentimental Tale,' would it not have been a
sufficient presage of a heroine with a profusion of auburn hair,
and a harp, the soft solace of her solitary hours, which she
fortunately finds always the means of transporting from castle to
cottage, although she herself be sometimes obliged to jump out of
a two-pair-of-stairs window, and is more than once bewildered on
her journey, alone and on foot, without any guide but a blowzy
peasant girl, whose jargon she hardly can understand? Or, again,
if my Waverley had been entitled 'A Tale of the Times,' wouldst
thou not, gentle reader, have demanded from me a dashing sketch of
the fashionable world, a few anecdotes of private scandal thinly
veiled, and if lusciously painted, so much the better? a heroine
from Grosvenor Square, and a hero from the Barouche Club or the
Four-in-Hand, with a set of subordinate characters from the
elegantes of Queen Anne Street East, or the dashing heroes of the
Bow-Street Office? I could proceed in proving the importance of a
title-page, and displaying at the same time my own intimate
knowledge of the particular ingredients necessary to the
composition of romances and novels of various descriptions;—but
it is enough, and I scorn to tyrannise longer over the impatience
of my reader, who is doubtless already anxious to know the choice
made by an author so profoundly versed in the different branches
of his art.
By fixing, then, the date of my story Sixty Years before this
present 1st November, 1805, I would have my readers understand,
that they will meet in the following pages neither a romance of
chivalry nor a tale of modern manners; that my hero will neither
have iron on his shoulders, as of yore, nor on the heels of his
boots, as is the present fashion of Bond Street; and that my
damsels will neither be clothed 'in purple and in pall,' like the
Lady Alice of an old ballad, nor reduced to the primitive
nakedness of a modern fashionable at a rout. From this my choice
of an era the understanding critic may farther presage that the
object of my tale is more a description of men than manners. A
tale of manners, to be interesting, must either refer to antiquity
so great as to have become venerable, or it must bear a vivid
reflection of those scenes which are passing daily before our
eyes, and are interesting from their novelty. Thus the
coat-of-mail of our ancestors, and the triple-furred pelisse of our modern
beaux, may, though for very different reasons, be equally fit for
the array of a fictitious character; but who, meaning the costume
of his hero to be impressive, would willingly attire him in the
court dress of George the Second's reign, with its no collar,
large sleeves, and low pocket-holes? The same may be urged, with
equal truth, of the Gothic hall, which, with its darkened and
tinted windows, its elevated and gloomy roof, and massive oaken
table garnished with boar's-head and rosemary, pheasants and
peacocks, cranes and cygnets, has an excellent effect in
fictitious description. Much may also be gained by a lively
display of a modern fete, such as we have daily recorded in that
part of a newspaper entitled the Mirror of Fashion, if we contrast
these, or either of them, with the splendid formality of an
entertainment given Sixty Years Since; and thus it will be readily
seen how much the painter of antique or of fashionable manners
gains over him who delineates those of the last generation.
Considering the disadvantages inseparable from this part of my
subject, I must be understood to have resolved to avoid them as
much as possible, by throwing the force of my narrative upon the
characters and passions of the actors;—those passions common to
men in all stages of society, and which have alike agitated the
human heart, whether it throbbed under the steel corslet of the
fifteenth century, the brocaded coat of the eighteenth, or the
blue frock and white dimity waistcoat of the present day.
[Footnote: Alas' that attire, respectable and gentlemanlike in
1805, or thereabouts, is now as antiquated as the Author of
Waverley has himself become since that period! The reader of
fashion will please to fill up the costume with an embroidered
waistcoat of purple velvet or silk, and a coat of whatever colour
he pleases.] Upon these passions it is no doubt true that the
state of manners and laws casts a necessary colouring; but the
bearings, to use the language of heraldry, remain the same, though
the tincture may be not only different, but opposed in strong
contradistinction. The wrath of our ancestors, for example, was
coloured gules; it broke forth in acts of open and sanguinary
violence against the objects of its fury. Our malignant feelings,
which must seek gratification through more indirect channels, and
undermine the obstacles which they cannot openly bear down, may be
rather said to be tinctured sable. But the deep-ruling impulse is
the same in both cases; and the proud peer, who can now only ruin
his neighbour according to law, by protracted suits, is the
genuine descendant of the baron who wrapped the castle of his
competitor in flames, and knocked him on the head as he
endeavoured to escape from the conflagration. It is from the great
book of Nature, the same through a thousand editions, whether of
black-letter, or wire-wove and hot-pressed, that I have
venturously essayed to read a chapter to the public. Some
favourable opportunities of contrast have been afforded me by the
state of society in the northern part of the island at the period
of my history, and may serve at once to vary and to illustrate the
moral lessons, which I would willingly consider as the most
important part of my plan; although I am sensible how short these
will fall of their aim if I shall be found unable to mix them with
amusement—a task not quite so easy in this critical generation as
it was 'Sixty Years Since.'