Walter Scott, born in College Wynd in…

1801 CE

Walter Scott, born in College Wynd in the Old Town of Edinburgh in 1771, the son of a solicitor, had survived a childhood bout of polio in 1773 that left him lame.

To cure his lameness he had been sent in 1773 to live in the rural Borders region at his paternal grandparents' farm at Sandyknowe, adjacent to the ruin of Smailholm Tower, the earlier family home.

Here he had been taught to read by his aunt Jenny, and learned from her the speech patterns and many of the tales and legends that characterize much of his literary work.

In January 1775, he had returned to Edinburgh, and that summer went with his aunt Jenny to take spa treatment at Bath in England.

In the winter of 1776, he returned to Sandyknowe, with another attempt at a water cure at Prestonpans during the following summer.

In 1778, Scott returned to Edinburgh for private education to prepare him for school, and in October 1779 he began at the Royal High School of Edinburgh.

Now well able to walk and explore the city and the surrounding countryside, his reading included chivalric romances, poems, history and travel books.

He had been given private tuition by James Mitchell in arithmetic and writing, and learned from him the history of the Kirk with emphasis on the Covenanters.

After finishing school he had been sent to stay for six months with his aunt Jenny in Kelso, attending the local grammar school where he met James and John Ballantyne who later became his business partners and printed his books.

Scott had begun studying classics at the University of Edinburgh in November 1783, at the age of only twelve, a year or so younger than most of his fellow students.

In March 1786, he began an apprenticeship in his father's office to become a Writer to the Signet.

While at the university, Scott had become a friend of Adam Ferguson, the son of Professor Adam Ferguson who hosted literary salons.

Scott met the blind poet Thomas Blacklock who lent him books as well as introducing him to James Macpherson's Ossian cycle of poems.

During the winter of 1786–87, the fifteen-year-old Scott saw Robert Burns at one of these salons, for what was to be their only meeting.

When Burns noticed a print illustrating the poem "The Justice of the Peace" and asked who had written the poem, only Scott knew that it was by John Langhorne, and was thanked by Burns.

When it was decided that he would become a lawyer, he returned to the university to study law, first taking classes in Moral Philosophy and Universal History in 1789–90.

After completing his studies in law, he became a lawyer in Edinburgh.

As a lawyer's clerk he made his first visit to the Scottish Highlands directing an eviction.

He was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1792.

He had an unsuccessful love suit with Williamina Belsches of Fettercairn, who married Scott´s friend Sir William Forbes, 6th Baronet.

As a boy, youth, and young man, Scott had been fascinated by the oral traditions of the Scottish Borders.

An obsessive collector of stories, he had developed an innovative method of recording what he heard at the feet of local storytellers using carvings on twigs, to avoid the disapproval of those who believed that such stories were neither for writing down nor for printing.

At the age of twenty-five, he had begun to write professionally, translating works from German, his first publication being rhymed versions of ballads by Gottfried August Bürger in 1796.

He had then published an idiosyncratic three-volume set of collected ballads of his adopted home region, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.

This was the first sign from a literary standpoint of his interest in Scottish history.

As a result of his early polio infection, Scott had a pronounced limp.

Although a determined walker, on horseback he experienced greater freedom of movement.

Unable to consider a military career, Scott had enlisted as a volunteer in the 1st Lothian and Border yeomanry.

On a trip to the Lake District with old college friends he met Charlotte Genevieve Charpentier (or Carpenter), daughter of Jean Charpentier of Lyon in France, and ward of Lord Downshire in Cumberland.

After three weeks of courtship, Scott proposed and they were married on Christmas Eve 1797.

They had five children, of whom only four will survive by the time of Scott's death.

In 1799, he had been appointed Sheriff-Depute of the County of Selkirk, based in the Royal Burgh of Selkirk.

In his early married days, Scott has a decent living from his earnings at the law, his salary as Sheriff-Depute of the County of Selkirk, his wife's income, some revenue from his writing, and his share of his father's rather meager estate.