Chronicles of the Canongate | Page 5

same kind, and endanger his popularity by having laid aside his
incognito. It is certainly not a voluntary experiment, like that of
Harlequin; for it was my original intention never to have avowed these
works during my lifetime, and the original manuscripts were carefully
preserved (though by the care of others rather than mine), with the
purpose of supplying the necessary evidence of the truth when the
period of announcing it should arrive. [These manuscripts are at present
(August 1831) advertised for public sale, which is an addition, though a
small one, to other annoyances.] But the affairs of my publishers
having, unfortunately, passed into a management different from their
own, I had no right any longer to rely upon secrecy in that quarter; and
thus my mask, like my Aunt Dinah's in "Tristram Shandy," having
begun to wax a little threadbare about the chin, it became time to lay it
aside with a good grace, unless I desired it should fall in pieces from
my face, which was now become likely.
Yet I had not the slightest intention of selecting the time and place in
which the disclosure was finally made; nor was there any concert
betwixt my learned and respected friend LORD MEADOWBANK and
myself upon that occasion. It was, as the reader is probably aware, upon
the 23rd February last, at a public meeting, called for establishing a
professional Theatrical Fund in Edinburgh, that the communication
took place. Just before we sat down to table, Lord Meadowbank [One
of the Supreme Judges of Scotland, termed Lords of Council and
Session.] asked me privately whether I was still anxious to preserve my
incognito on the subject of what were called the Waverley Novels? I
did not immediately see the purpose of his lordship's question, although

I certainly might have been led to infer it, and replied that the secret
had now of necessity become known to so many people that I was
indifferent on the subject. Lord Meadowbank was thus induced, while
doing me the great honour of proposing my health to the meeting, to
say something on the subject of these Novels so strongly connecting
them with me as the author, that by remaining silent I must have stood
convicted, either of the actual paternity, or of the still greater crime of
being supposed willing to receive indirectly praise to which I had no
just title. I thus found myself suddenly and unexpectedly placed in the
confessional, and had only time to recollect that I had been guided
thither by a most friendly hand, and could not, perhaps, find a better
public opportunity to lay down a disguise which began to resemble that
of a detected masquerader.
I had therefore the task of avowing myself, to the numerous and
respectable company assembled, as the sole and unaided author of these
Novels of Waverley, the paternity of which was likely at one time to
have formed a controversy of some celebrity, for the ingenuity with
which some instructors of the public gave their assurance on the subject
was extremely persevering. I now think it further necessary to say that,
while I take on myself all the merits and demerits attending these
compositions, I am bound to acknowledge with gratitude hints of
subjects and legends which I have received from various quarters, and
have occasionally used as a foundation of my fictitious compositions,
or woven up with them in the shape of episodes. I am bound, in
particular, to acknowledge the unremitting kindness of Mr. Joseph
Train, supervisor of excise at Dumfries, to whose unwearied industry I
have been indebted for many curious traditions and points of
antiquarian interest. It was Mr. Train who brought to my recollection
the history of Old Mortality, although I myself had had a personal
interview with that celebrated wanderer so far back as about 1792,
when I found him on his usual task. He was then engaged in repairing
the Gravestones of the Covenanters who had died while imprisoned in
the Castle of Dunnottar, to which many of them were committed
prisoners at the period of Argyle's rising. Their place of confinement is
still called the Whigs' Vault. Mr. Train, however, procured for me far
more extensive information concerning this singular person, whose
name was Patterson, than I had been able to acquire during my own

short conversation with him. [See, for some further particulars, the
notes to Old Mortality, in the present collective edition.] He was (as I
think I have somewhere already stated) a native of the parish of
Closeburn, in Dumfriesshire; and it is believed that domestic affliction,
as well as devotional feeling, induced him to commence the wandering
mode of life which he pursued for a very long period. It is more than
twenty years since Robert Patterson's death, which took