Unlike Sir Walter Scott’s heroic adventure novels, The Antiquary, third in his series of Waverley novels and his declared favorite, follows the foibles of a character named Jonathan Oldbuck who studies historic times.
As his name symbolizes, and his title of antiquary implies, Oldbuck is enthralled with artifacts. He collects and dates them and evaluates their worth, emphasizing a theme of evaluation; while the value of objects may change, the worth of a man’s integrity does not, a truth that Scott adopts as his theme. A second theme deals with man’s attempts to understand the past in order to plan an enjoyable future.
In addition to Oldbuck, the novel’s characters include a young man the reader first knows as William Lovel, who, as his name suggests, will provide half of the plot’s romantic pair. Lovel and Oldbuck meet while traveling and form a bond. What Oldbuck later discovers is Lovel’s purpose in visiting his Scottish village, Fairport. In his true identity as Major Neville, Lovel fell in love with Isabella Wardour, a recent transplant to Scotland who, along with her father, Sir Arthur Wardour, lives just outside the village.
As suggested by his last name, Sir Arthur represents an aristocratic class that gained its fame and fortune by defending royalty. Sir Arthur had discouraged Isabella’s relationship with Neville, believing him socially unsuitable. Neville will later be proven, thanks to the help of the antiquary’s skills, heir of Glenallan and thus worthy of Isabella’s hand. However, before that truth can be revealed, the reader enjoys the irony of Neville/Lovel existing under the nose of the irascible, egoistic Oldbuck, who fancies himself an expert in “sniffing out” objects of value.
Established as a complementary character to Oldbuck and somewhat of a foil, Edie Ochiltree, the local king’s bedesman and type of privileged beggar, haunts the area and undercuts some of Oldbuck’s claims regarding the historical value of certain sites. Scott adds an advertisement (foreword) to the novel explaining the unusual position of Scotland’s bedesmen who, while to all outward appearances lacking any type of status, wear a badge that marks them as members of a select group originally put on stipend to pray for the king.
Ochiltree increases the irony of the antiquary’s claim to status when Oldbuck abuses the bedesman, one of the clearest symbols of tradition that exists in the Scotland of his day. This allows Scott to emphasize political themes, as the characters discuss their ancestors’ loyalties to various rulers. W. M. Parker points out that in The Antiquary, Scott included the only example of a democratic viewpoint to be found in all his novels when giving an account of Mucklebackit, a fisherman who returns to work shortly after the death of his son. He defends his act by pointing out that he cannot afford to remain at home indulging his grief as a wealthy man might; he must feed his four remaining children.
Scott based his two main characters on real people. Oldbuck is somewhat autobiographical, as Scott was an antiquarian. However, Scott models him more definitely on George Constable, a lawyer Scott knew as a boy. Constable presented Scott with his first German dictionary, told him the tale behind Scott’s later popular story “The Two Drovers,” and introduced Scott to Shakespeare. Scott based Ochiltree on a resident of Ayreshire named Andrew Gemmels, a military man who had the greatest fame as a beggar in the area. Supposedly 106 years old at his death, Gemmels was immortalized in an 1849 memorial erected in Roxburgh-Newtown.
In the novel’s early rising action, Lovel attends a dinner that includes Isabella and Sir Arthur Wardour and, with Ochiltree’s help, rescues them from drowning at high tide as they return home. Isabella displays her tenacity when she asks, “Must we yield life . . . without a struggle?” The Wardours chose the potentially dangerous beach route home mainly to avoid further contact with Lovel. As Sir Arthur later explains to Oldbuck, Isabella had known Lovel as Major Neville while visiting her aunt in Yorkshire, but she had rejected his attentions because Neville was an apparent “illegitimate son of a man of fortune.” Sir Arthur adds, “You know the opinions—prejudices, perhaps, you will call them—of our house concerning purity of birth.” Oldbuck soon shows a sympathetic side that reveals he has also suffered wounds of his own due to failed relationships. He repeats a classical phrase to Lovel: “Sed semel insanivimus omnes—everybody has played the fool in their turn.”
Sir Arthur will prove himself that fool as his family teeters on ruin due to his association with a dastardly German, Dousterswivel, whose name suggests changeability and a lack of trustworthiness. As one character remarks, Sir Arthur seems so “bewitched” by Dousterswivel, “he gars him e’en trow that chalk is cheese.” Ochiltree makes clear his attitude toward the self-proclaimed philosopher by addressing him as “Maister Dustandsnivel.” Ochiltree and Oldbuck both believe that Dousterswivel takes advantage of Sir Arthur’s belief in spells and magic to extort money from him.
The novel’s only clearly evil character, Dousterswivel uses a “spell” to detect buried treasure, luring Sir Arthur into risky investments. His incantations fit well with Scott’s additional Gothic imagery of ancient structures, ghosts, dreams and visions, and family secrets.
Further increasing conflict, Lovel argues with Oldbuck’s nephew, Hector M’Intyre, who fawns over Isabella. An egoistic hothead, M’Intyre is not favored by Oldbuck, who regards Lovel with more affection than his own family. When M’Intyre questions Lovel’s military service, Lovel refuses to reveal his identity as Major Neville, eliciting a challenge to a duel from M’Intyre. Lovel wounds M’Intyre and decides to hide in the woods, where Ochiltree takes him to a cave for shelter.
A convenient secret passageway allows Lovel and Ochiltree to observe Dousterswivel convincing the naive Sir Arthur that buried treasure will solve all his problems. Additional rising action includes drownings, an accusation of murder against Ochiltree, and the realization by the Earl of Glenallan, following the confession of an elderly former family servant, that Lovel is his legitimate son, the product of an early marriage for love with a woman of whom his family did not approve.
As the plot reaches its climax, Neville/Lovel’s identity, or true value, becomes clear, and he and Isabella are free to marry.
Scott displays his abundant knowledge of antiquities and classical literature, and a penchant for intellectual discussion that Oldbuck embodies. Scott’s addition to Oldbuck’s intelligence of a blustering, self-centered edge adds humor and enhances the novel with many comedic scenes. Scott’s affection for his country is clear, as is his continuing fascination with its nonaristocratic population.
The advertisement explains his focus on “the class of society who are the last to feel the influence of that general polish . . . because the lower orders are less restrained by the habit of suppressing their feelings.” Well received by Scott’s reading public, which immediate sales of 1,120 copies prove, the novel incorporated challenging colloquial Scottish expressions.
The novel influenced many, evident in various reactions by noted readers. Jane Austen suggested to her rector brother James that they adopt Scott’s approach of using text from actual documents in his novel by including sermons from their Uncle Henry in her novels. Maria Edgeworth, who became Scott’s confidante, praised the book in a letter to Joanna Baille.
Those who did not like the novel included poet John Keats (1795–1821), who compared it unfavorably to Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749), and one Edinburgh Review critic found the character of Oldbuck disagreeable. However, a critique in the Monthly Review found Edie Ochiltree “sublime.” Scott’s friend, Daniel Terry, adapted the novel to the stage for a Covent Garden production on January 25, 1820, and the novel would be translated into seven languages. Twentieth-century author Virginia Woolf placed The Antiquary in the hands of her character, Mr. Ramsay, in her novel To the Lighthouse (1927).
Oldbuck’s unconcealed misogyny interests modern feminist critics. He insults women regularly, labeling them “abominable” members of a “trolloping sex” and “sluts,” and he calls one cleaning woman a “monkey.” He also constantly berates his sister and niece with whom he lives, introducing them to Lovel as “my unlucky and good-for-nothing womankind.” Scott reveals Oldbuck’s hypocrisy, however, when the character explains that he keeps only women servants, as “the masculine sex was too noble to be employed in those acts of personal servitude, which in all early periods of society, were uniformly imposed on the female.” He does, however, begrudgingly and fondly refer to Isabella Wardour as his worthy opponent and clearly depends upon her to help him retain the friendship of her father, just as he depends upon his waiting women to keep his life in order.
Scott told friends that the novel lacked “the romance of Waverley & the adventure of G. M. & yet there is some salvation about it too for if a man will paint from nature he will be likely to amuse those who are daily looking at it.” Readers in later centuries, who enjoy irony and strong character development, continue to find the book pleasurable.
Bibliography
Parker, W. M. Introduction to The Antiquary, by Sir Walter Scott. Dutton: New York, 1966.
Grierson, Sir Herbert G. C., ed. Letters of Sir Walter Scott. Vol. 4. London: Constable & Co., 1932, 238.
Wilt, Judith. The Novels of Sir Walter Scott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.
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