I return to Scott’s Waverley when the hero Edward sends his captive Talbot off to England when he hears that his wife is ill, and then accompanies the Pretender’s army southward, but soon enough that disintegrates. He however does manage to make his way to London, where he meets his uncle, and then with Talbot’s help makes his way back to Scotland to await the outcome of Talbot’s plea for his exculpation. They have by now found that the letters his commanding officer had sent him had been wilfully suppressed by a Highlander who – while being the instrument Rose Bradwardine had used to save him earlier – had thought this the best way of tying him to the Stuart cause.
Talbot, who had a lot of influence with the British Commander of the army that had decisively defeated the Young Pretender, managed to get not just Edward but also the Baron Bradwardine pardoned. And the novel ends with Edward’s marriage to Rosa, whom he had realized he loved, after earlier being infatuated by Fergus’s sister Flora.
Though Edward is a classic Scott hero, eager and youthful, and Rosa is wonderfully devoted, the more dominant characters in the novel are Fergus and Flora, who are obsessional in their devotion to the Stuarts. Flora is fond enough of Edward, but feels her first priority must be the Stuart restoration, and since initially he is not inclined to join the rebellion she cannot bring herself to commit to him. And even when he does become an adherent, she stands aloof.
Meanwhile Fergus, who is as committed to the pride of his clan as the Stuart cause, is upset when he finds that Edward has decided to give up his pursuit of Flora, not least because the Young Pretender had told him that Edward was devoted to Rosa, which was not in fact the case at the time. Fergus, who had decided that marrying Rosa was a way of shoring up his fortune and his claims to preferment, was furious, but fortunately the Pretender turns up in time to stop a duel.
Thereafter Fergus is captured in the march southward and Edward only finds him at the end, when he is condemned to death, with Talbot telling him firmly that he cannot plead for so determined a rebel. And Edward finds Fergus quite prepared to die, with his execution being the most dramatic point of the novel. It is followed by Flora retreating to a convent, though the novel has to end happily, with the wedding, and the recovery by Colonel Talbot of the sequestered lands of Baron Bradwardine, which of course then descend to Edward’s progeny – though with the proviso that they should go, if there were one, to a second son who should assume the Bradwardine arms.
Waverley is more full of adventure than Woodstock and, though the earlier novel, is more accomplished I felt in its delineation of character. Scott’s gentle mockery of his hero’s early romanticism creates sympathy for the character and interest in its development, while though the comic pedantry of Baron Bradwardine can be tedious, the character itself if fascinating, not least in the account of the days he spends in a cave while awaiting his fate. And Scott is totally involved in depicting his quarrelsome idealistic Highlanders, while making clear the quixotic nature of their quest.