t.Col. Scott died at sea off Madras,
a sad illustration of his famous uncle's description of
India as a 'Corn Chest for Scotland, where we poor gentry
must send our younger Sons as we send our black cattle to
the south.' Although Sir Walter Scott is reknowned as one
of Scotland's greatest literary and antiquarian figures,
his associations with India are less well-known. Scott's
brother-in-law, Charles Carpenter, was a Collector at Salem,
and Scott's own son had served as a young Cornet under Sir
David Baird, then Commander in Chief in Ireland. When
young Walter himself seemed likely to be posted to India,
his father protested that 'a good appointment in civil service'
or 'the Company's military' would be infinitely preferable
to the post of 'an officer in the King's service by which
you can get neither experience in your profession: nor credit
nor wealth nor anything but an obscure death in storming
the hill for of some Rajah with an unpronounceable name.'
The Indian initiative for young Walter was abandoned. For
his friend the linguist, doctor and antiquarian, John Leyden,
however, Sir Walter used his 'connections' to secure the
patronage of Dundas himself.
By 1805, two years after he had sailed for India, 'Leyden
Bahauder' had been appointed physician and naturalist to
the Mysore survey.
It was the late Miss Margaret Tait, born a Scot in Bangalore
in 1907, whose literary and Indian interests first encouraged
a renewed appreciation of Scott's Indian novels: 'Guy Mannering'
; 'St Ronan's Well' ; and 'The Surgeon's Daughter.' 'We
had a passion for collecting news items on that region which
are pasted rather higgelty piggelty into scrapbooks,' she
wrote, describing an article from 'The Madras Mail'(5 March
1919). It reviewed a lecture, 'The Surgeon's Daughter ,
Scott's Indian Novel', presented that week to the Madras
Literary Society by Mr P R Krishnaswami, Professor, Government
College, Kumbakonam. The audience, which included Miss Tait's
father, heard that 'Scott's intimacy with India may be traced
partly to his desire to send his sons to serve the EIC and
partly to his friends like Leyden and Heber who sailed to
India in quest of careers.' The speaker concluded: 'May
it not be hoped that the readers of this romance will turn
with new zest to acquaint themselves with the story of South
India in the past centuries.' In the debate which followed,
mention was made of 'the Mackenzie
collection of Indian manuscripts' as a valuable source of
reference.
Sir Walter Scott, working in distant Edinburgh
and Abbotsford, on the Scottish Borders, acknowledged one
of his sources of reference in his Journal (16 September
1827): 'finished the Chronicles (i.e. 'The Chronicles of
Canongate,', which include 'The Surgeon's Daughter') with
a good deal of assistance from Col. Ferguson's notes about
Indian affairs,' and again (23 September 1827) 'drove over
to Huntly Burn, chiefly to get from the good humoured Colonel
the accurate spelling of certain Hindu words which I have
been using under his instructions.' Today, the National
Library of Scotland preserves many of the original sources
for our knowledge of the Scots men and women in India, while
the forthcoming Edinburgh University Edition of Sir Walter
Scott's Indian novels, and Iain Gordon Brown's research
for 'The Tiger and the Thistle' bi-centennial exhibition
catalogue essay, will add greatly to our appreciation of
Scott and India.
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