Sam McKinstry and Marie Fletcher
UNIVERSITY OF PAISLEY

THE PERSONAL ACCOUNT BOOKS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT

Abstract: This study examines the personal account books of Sir Walter Scott, the world-renowned Scottish author, a topic not explored before by Scott scholars or accounting historians. It sets the account books in the context of Scott’s accounting education and experience, which took place at the time of the Scottish Enlightenment, an 18th century movement which saw a great flowering of writings on accountancy in Scotland as well as considerable progress in the arts and sciences. The style, layout and content of the account books is also studied from the point of view of elucidating Scott’s domestic financial arrangements and expenditure patterns. These are seen as confirming the insights of Vickery [1998], who posits a liberated role for women such as Mrs Scott in ‘genteel’ households, which Scott’s undoubtedly was. The study also establishes that Scott’s personal expenditures, and indeed his accounting practices, otherwise conformed to the general patriarchal pattern identified by Davidoff and Hall [1987]. The final part of the article uses what has been discovered about Scott’s personal accounting to revisit the question of his financial imprudence (or otherwise) in business. It concludes that Scott’s risk-taking in business was not unreasonable, and was informed by his bookkeeping knowledge and practices.

INTRODUCTION

In explaining the development of accountancy in Scotland before the emergence of the chartered professional bodies in the 1850s, Richard Brown [1905, p. 197] quoted a letter written in 1820 by Sir Walter Scott to his brother Thomas. Sir Walter

Acknowledgments: The authors are grateful to Dr Iain Gordon Brown of the National Library of Scotland for several conversations on Sir Walter Scott and for helping us to come to terms with the vast secondary literature which his life and work have engendered. Thanks are also tendered to the editorial referees, whose comments greatly enriched the paper, and to the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, which assisted with a small grant.

suggested a career in accountancy for his nephew and name-sake, provided he was “steady, cautious, fond of a sedentary life and quiet pursuits, and at the same time a proficient in arithmetic”. Accountancy was a “highly respectable” branch “of our legal practice” and offered an opportunity where he could “ultimately succeed”. This authoritative evidence on the social status and legal bias of Scottish accountancy, as it then was, is very well known. In contrast, it is not at all appreciated that for a number of years, Sir Walter kept his own account books to record and quantify his domestic finances, and that some of these still survive and themselves have something to say about the role of accounting in Scottish life.

The purpose of this article is to examine Scott’s account books in detail and to look at how he maintained and used them. It will set this against the backdrop of Scott’s accountancy training and experience, locating this dimension of his education in a general Scottish context and thus adding to what is already known about the spread and sophistication of accountancy in Scotland at the time of the Scottish Enlightenment. The opportunity will also be taken to look at the degree to which Scott, on the evidence of his personal account books, may himself be considered to portray Enlightenment characteristics. The study will also provide some insights from the Scott household into the place of accounting in Scottish domestic economy, an area concerning which very little has been written to date. In particular, it will shed light on the operation of a ‘genteel’ household in terms of the relations between a husband and wife and their expenditure patterns. Last but not least, the article will utilize the evidence provided by Scott’s personal account books to explore his attitude to money, a topic which has engendered controversy from Scott’s lifetime onwards.

The study will thus contribute to a growing literature on the use of accounting by literary figures or in their works. Recent studies on Freytag [Maltby, 1997], Byron [Moore, 1974] and Pepys [Boys, 1995] have proved most revealing in an unusual range of ways, as does that which follows.

SCOTT AND HIS ACHIEVEMENT

While the novels of Sir Walter Scott remain in print and many are readily available in paperback form, they do not enjoy the massive readership they once did. It is no exaggeration to say that, in his day, he was “the world’s most popular novelist” [Partington, 1930, p. 351]. Hayden [1970, p. 1] states that “no writer before him had ever been so well received by his contemporaries – ever”. His life and writings have themselves engendered a huge secondary literature, drawing on the considerable volume of personal papers that still survive.

Scott, born in 1771, was educated at the Royal High School of Edinburgh and Edinburgh University, where he studied law. He became a member of the Scottish Bar in 1792. At the end of December 1799 he became Sheriff of Selkirkshire, a position he held all his life. In 1806 he was appointed a Clerk in the senior Scottish civil court, the Court of Session, a position he only gave up in 1830, two years before his death.

Scott’s first literary successes were in the field of poetry, and works such as The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion or Lady of the Lake soon established his reputation, selling in substantial numbers for many years. With the publication of Waverley, the first of his 27 novels, in 1814, his literary career took a quantum leap forward. The novels were henceforth published at the rate of about two per annum, selling out all over Britain as soon as they became available and running to edition after edition throughout the 19th century and beyond [Scott, 1981b].

The novels were translated into French within the year of publication and were very soon available in Italian, Greek, Por-tuguese, German and even Polish. They were immensely popular not only in Europe, but also sold plentifully in the New World. Scott was regarded as a “genius” by Goethe, and held in the highest esteem by fellow writers such as Byron, Wordsworth, Heine, Pushkin, Balzac, Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper, each of whose writings were to some degree indebted to him. Scott’s genre was the historical novel, a form he influenced universally and irrevocably. Prior to 1820, his novels were set in Scotland, Rob Roy or The Heart of Midlothian being well known examples. Afterwards, the majority were set in England (for instance Kenilworth or Ivanhoe). A few late novels were set abroad.

Although most of the novels were published anonymously in Britain, as was the contemporary fashion, the author was

1 Scott was one of six Principal Clerks to the Court. Anderson [1972, pp.xxi-xxii] has noted that this was a “position roughly analagous to that of a Town Clerk or a Clerk of Parliament”. The Clerks “had charge of the papers connected with a case, and were responsible for ensuring that correct legal procedures were followed”. At the end of a case they had to reduce the judge’s decision as delivered from the Bench to a concise written decree or “interlocutor”, a task which required considerable skill.

named on foreign translations and his identity was widely sus-pected almost from the first. By 1818, the year he accepted a baronetcy, Scott was a national hero in Scotland, being seen as a successor to Robert Burns in stirring up a sense of patriotism through his writing and publicizing Scots and Scotland abroad. His novels inspired many operas, one such being Verdi’s Lucia de Lammermoor. Mark Twain, who did not like his work, paid an indirect tribute to his influence. He blamed the American Civil War on the Romantic atmosphere of Scott’s novels, which Twain held had affected the aspirations of the landowners of the Deep South [Jeffares, 1969, p. 18].

In financial terms, the success of the novels made Scott an extremely rich man. Already by the time of their publication more than comfortably off from his twin legal appointments and income from his poetry, the novels brought him an extra £10,000 or more per year, at a time when his £300 sheriff’s salary would alone have been sufficient for “a life of gentlemanly ease” [Scott, 1981b, p. ix].

By the beginning of 1826, in spite of his unprecedented success, Scott’s investments in Ballantynes, an Edinburgh pub-lishing and printing firm, had caused him deep financial embar-rassment. The firm collapsed with debts of £130,000. By this time Scott was the only partner with a financial interest, and was forced to enter a composition with his creditors which al-lowed him to continue to occupy his country seat, Abbotsford, the intention being that he should repay his debts through his writing, which he was determined to do as a matter of honor. The effort worsened his already failing health, but the debts were paid off not long after his death in 1832 [Anderson, 1971].

SCOTT’S ACCOUNTANCY EDUCATION AND THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT

Double entry accounting was widespread in Scotland in the 18th century. The Darien Company and the Bank of Scotland had double entry books of account by the last decade of the 17th century. George Watson, trained in accountancy in Holland, set up the latter’s book keeping system. He then went on to found George Watson’s Hospital, a famous Edinburgh school, where he ensured that double-entry accounting was thenceforth taught [Brown, 1905, pp. 181-202].2
2 George Watson’s College still exists today as part of a group of private schools run by the Merchants Company of Edinburgh.

For its size, Scotland produced a relatively large number of texts on bookkeeping and accountancy in the 18th century. Preceding these is Collinson’s Idea Rationara, or the Perfect Accountant, published in Edinburgh in 1683. Richard Brown’s [1905] chronological bibliography of pre-1800 books on bookkeeping lists Scots works by Macgie [1715], Malcolm [1718], Mair [two works in 1736 and 1768, with subsequent editions], Stevenson [1756], Gordon [works in 1765 and 1766, with later editions], Fisher [1772, with 30 further editions], Perry [1774 and later editions], Hamilton [1777 and later editions], Scruton [1777] and Buchanan [1798]. The last of these, The Writing-master and Accountant’s Assistant, linked writing and accounting as cognate skills, while the works by Malcolm and Perry linked arithmetic and accountancy [Brown, 1905, pp. 343-360]. Mepham [1994] has highlighted the fact that many of these authors were involved in teaching. Malcolm took up a teaching post in Aberdeen in 1730, before moving to New York. John Mair taught bookkeeping and other subjects at Ayr Grammar School, eventually becoming rector and introducing a business-related curriculum. He became rector at a newly founded Academy in Perth in 1761. William Gordon taught at Fochabers and later co-founded and ran a Mercantile Academy in Glasgow (with Scruton) moving in 1783 to become Master of the Mercantile Academy in Edinburgh. In 1793, the year of his death, Gordon was in partnership with George Paton at the Commercial Academy, South Bridge, Edinburgh. Robert Hamilton succeeded John Mair at the Perth Academy in 1769, later moving to university posts in natural philosophy and mathematics.

Mepham has, with justification, claimed that the profusion of Scottish publications on accounting at this time may be val-idly claimed as part of the achievement of the Scottish Enlightenment [Mepham, 1988, 1994]. This great 18th century movement in the intellectual life of Scotland, linked to the contemporaneous European Enlightenment, was manifested in internationally celebrated achievements in philosophy by David Hume, the political economy of Adam Smith, various writings on the law and many other developments in the arts and sciences.

Towards the end of the 18th century, the city directories of Edinburgh and Glasgow were listing the addresses of accountants. In 1773, seven were recorded in Edinburgh, followed by 14 in 1774. Six Glasgow accountants were listed in 1783. By 1807, the number had risen to ten. Accountancy practitioners were sometimes also lawyers, such as David Russell [d. 1782], or Alexander Keith, Writer to the Signet. Walker [1991] has drawn attention to the high status enjoyed by the legal profession at this time and its implications for the status of accountants. The connections between the law and accountancy also extended to the work carried out by accountants. The legal processes of sequestration, ranking of creditors in bankruptcy, multiple-poindings, trusts and judicial factories, arbitrations and legal disputes involving the accountability of one party to another, all called for the preparation of accounts as evidence to courts or were the sources of investigations by accountants [Brown, 1905, pp. 181-202; Walker, 1993; Kedslie, 1990].

It was into this national tradition of accounting and ac-counting education that Walter Scott entered while at the Royal High School of Edinburgh. This famous school was biased towards the teaching of the classics, but writing and bookkeeping were also taught there during Scott’s pupilage. John Maclure taught both these subjects until 1777 and was succeeded by Edmund Butterworth from 1780 onwards. Scott was taught by Butterworth and must have been aware of Maclure while at the Royal High School, which he attended from 1779 to 1783. While there, he was also being taught at the small, private writing and arithmetic school of John Morton, of Cant’s Close, Edinburgh, where some bookkeeping may also have been covered [Lockhart, 1902, Vol.1, p. 10]. Unfortunately, no trace of the Royal High School’s curriculum for writing and bookkeeping at the precise time of Scott’s pupilage survives. Happily, many clues are given in Steven’s History of the Royal High School of Edinburgh [1849]. As early as 1593, a William Murdo or Murdoch had been appointed as the school’s first teacher of writing and bookkeeping. Scott’s training in these subjects was therefore part of a long tradition. Steven’s book describes the bookkeeping curriculum from 1820 onwards. If this reflects that of the 1780s, as seems likely, Scott would have been shown how to draw bills of exchange, state accounts and keep a “balanced and well written set of accounts” [Steven, 1849, pp. 119, 176, 184]. Indeed the new school building by the architect Alexander Laing, in which Scott was a pupil, located the study of writing and bookkeeping prominently in a room to the left of the hall [Steven, 1849, p. 124].

On 18 January 1791, while at Edinburgh University, Scott became a member of the Speculative Society, a debating club, going on to become its treasurer. Its accounts do not survive, but Lockhart observes that “the minutes kept in his handwriting attest the strict regularity of his attention to the small affairs, literary and financial, of the club” [Clark, 1969, p. 206]. Scott had to deal with protested bills and promissory notes as well as preparing accounts, matters which would also concern him dur-ing the period he spent training in his father’s law office.

Here he would no doubt gain experience of completing and sending out the “modest” accounts his father charged for his services, as well as learning how the practice’s own accounts were kept [Clark, 1969, p. 154]. At this point, too, his knowledge of the use and role of accounting in legal processes and in the courts would have grown. This is borne out by a note at the end of Redgauntlet, a semi-autobiographical novel of 1824, in which Scott admits to having modeled his eccentric character, Peter Peebles, on a real person of the same name who “frequented the courts of justice” about 1792. Scott had at one point represented him in a type of case given to young barristers as an “assay piece”, because it was so voluminous and had dragged on so long.

In Redgauntlet, Peebles has been defrauded by a business partner over a 12-year period. The account of the court case involves Peebles’ counsel, Alan Fairford (clearly modeled on Scott himself) plunging:

. .. boldly into the mare magnum of accounts between the parties . . . [and pursuing] . . . each false statement from the waste-book to the day-book, from the daybook to the bill-book, from the bill-book to the ledger . . . and availing himself … of his father’s previous labours, and his own knowledge of accounts, in which he had been sedulously trained, he laid before the court a clear and intelligible statement of the affairs of the copartnery [Scott, 1912, p. 186].
The precision of the passage bespeaks a close, first hand knowledge of accounting born of practical experience.

When Scott took up the Sheriffdom of Selkirkshire in late 1799, he was immediately involved in small lawsuits where matters of accounting and finance called for his attention. His judgments have been collected, analyzed and admired by Chisholm, who was himself a distinguished judge [1918]. Scott’s very first case, in 1800, involved a question of unpaid business accounts, connected to the exercise of agency. Cases in 1801 and 1803 involved claims for unpaid wages. In 1804, a more substantial case involved a claim for unpaid agricultural rent, a counterclaim that the terms of the lease had not been met and an instruction by the Sheriff that the defaulting tenant should supply a “rectified state of his claims of compensation, instructing the same by vouchers”. The tenant did not provide this, and a warrant was granted for a roup (sale) of his assets. An appeal was made to the Court of Session, which referred the matter back to the Sheriff Court, where Scott reviewed the evidence and made deductions for work done and expenses incurred from the rents due, based on vouchers and other financial details. In 1805, an action of “count and reckoning” required the production of financial evidence in relation to a co-partnery in a Selkirk hosiery business in order to determine monies due to an absentee investor. Throughout the rest of his career as Sheriff, which admittedly only involved an average of four fairly minor cases per year, Sir Walter Scott was frequently exposed to questions of accounting and finance [Chisholm, 1918, passim]. On taking up the position of Clerk to the Court of Session in 1806, Scott would have officiated at much longer cases involving accounting, but these came later than the majority of his surviving personal account books and cannot have informed his thinking as he drew them up and used them.

Scott’s personal training in accountancy and his exposure to it in different areas of his life, outlined above, provides rich empirical evidence regarding the widespread use of sophisti-cated accounting amongst the business and professional classes of Scottish society towards the end of the Enlightenment period. Taken together with the profusion of books in print and educational opportunities relating to accounting that occurred at the time, it adds weight to Mepham’s contention that accountancy had indeed made considerable progress in Scotland by the time of the Enlightenment.

THE BOOKS OF ACCOUNT

Five books of account belonging to Scott have survived (See Table 1). Four of these might be described as Cash Books and another as an Analysis Book.
TABLE 1 Scott’s Account Books

Dates of Entries Size Type Pages Completed NLS
Reference Number
Jan 1796 – Jan 1799 8×5’/4 inches Cash Book 10 MS 1740
Jan 1799-Dec 1802 IVi x 5 inches Cash Book 114 MS 1742
Jan 1799-Dec 1801 8!/4X 11% inches Analysis Book 24 MS 1741
Jan 1803 -Aug 1807 6lA x 8 inches Cash Book 87 MS 1743
May 1823 -Jun 1826 6Vt x 8 inches Cash Book 120 MS 1744

The earliest of the books is a small volume entitled “Memorandum Book 1796”. Inside this, cash receipts have been recorded on the left hand page and payments on the right hand page, on “Cash Book” linings added to the blank pages by Scott. The earlier entries in the book date from the 1796/1797 period. The left-hand (income) page is headed “1797”, but the expenditure page is dated “1796”. The next pair of pages is dated “1796”, which suggests that the earlier mention of 1797 was a mistake, indeed pages for this year appear in sequence. The 1798 pages are headed up “Cr.” and “Dr.” respectively, contrary to the conventional business practice of showing receipts as ‘Dr’ followed by ‘Cr’. While this is of no moment in the recording of personal finances, it is unlikely to have been an error. Scott appears to be taking the view that money received is credited to himself, and that money spent is a debit. In this he follows standard banking practice.

In the “Memorandum Book 1796”, Scott institutes a procedure he continues in the later books: the receipts and payments columns are totaled when one of these (invariably payments) has been filled up, and a balance of funds in hand is struck at the foot of the page. A diagonal ruling is drawn through the unused part of the receipts page. The next page is opened up with the entry “By Cash in Purse”. For some reason, Scott has put a large diagonal cross through the receipts and payments pages for 1796, a practice he does not continue, perhaps to indicate that he regards the finances for this period as concluded. Only five double pages of this first book are taken up, and it finishes with some details from January 1799. Here then is a man who understands bookkeeping: the manual cash rulings, the diagonal linings, the balancing of pages, the sophisticated use of debit and credit. What is his purpose? It seems clear that he simply wants to keep track of his expenditure and to keep a handy record of payments. This book and its successors are functional books, not maintained for the pleasure of writing. While they are neat and reasonably legible, no attempt has been made to make them masterpieces of calligraphy (see Figure 1).

This first book covers a transitional phase in Scott’s life. Having been in practice as an advocate (a Scottish barrister) since 1792, Scott remained a bachelor until late 1797 when he married Charlotte Carpenter, after a brief courtship. Earlier that year, his hopes of marrying his long-term love Williamina Belsches, were dashed when she wed William Forbes, the wealthy private banker and a social acquaintance of Scott’s [Oman, 1973]. Expenses from 1796 included postage, the repayment of a loan of five shillings to his mother and a loss of two shillings and sixpence at cards, a favorite pastime in Edinburgh society, as well as sums paid to “stablers”.3 A receipt of five pounds from his father may have been a gift. Sums paid for gloves, shoes or coach hire confirm details of a bachelor existence in Edinburgh and occasionally at the family premises in the Scottish Borders. The pages for 1798 reveal far greater levels of expenditure commensurate with Scott’s marital status: payments to Mrs Scott begin to feature, one of ten pounds and another of one guinea. Having moved in the spring of 1798 from temporary accommodation in a New Town flat at 50 George Street, Edinburgh to another nearby at 10 South Castle Street, Scott and his new wife took occupancy of a Romantic, thatched cottage orné at Lasswade near Edinburgh later that year. It was rented from the Clerks of Eldin and cost £30 per annum, as the cash books reveal. Lasswade was the family home whenever Scott’s duties allowed him to leave the city. Payment in 1798 to a mason for “chimneys” and the substantial sum of £6-15-6 for furniture clearly relate to Lasswade. Payments for the purchase of “German books” adumbrate Scott’s published translations of German writers from about this period. An account paid to Hutchison and Oliphant for liquors reflects Scott’s love of entertaining in both his homes and his early penchant for social drinking.

The second surviving account book is a crown octavo (7 inches by 5 inches) cash book, single-cash lined in red ink by Scott, as previously, and carrying on the same recording and balancing practices as before. From this the progress of Scott’s married life is evident. A wine bill of £31 -11/-, due to Johnstone, is recorded as paid in January 1799. Payments to Mrs Scott of four, five and six guineas at more or less weekly intervals make it clear that she arranged the household expenditure. A “house to Camp”, Scott’s much-loved and intelligent dog, was pur-

3 Amounts of money is Sterling were in Scott’s day (and until fairly recently) expressed in pounds, shillings and pence. There were twelve pence to a shilling and twenty shillings to a pound. Large sums of pounds, shillings and pence are shown in this article thus: £23 – 4 – 5.
Sometimes amounts were expressed in guineas, a guinea being one pound and one shilling.

Based on manual wage rates in Scott’s day, as compared with the present, monetary values in Scott’s books would have to be uplifted by about 150-200 times to give current income comparisons.

chased for six shillings, as Figure 2 shows.4 Thirteen shillings and sixpence was paid for building a pigeon loft at the “cottage”, where slabbing was also carried out. Small payments for losses at cards, the upkeep of horses and harness and the purchase of stockings reveal that Scott continued to make personal expenditure as well as remaining in overall charge of finances. A number of payments were made by Scott on behalf of the Edinburgh Light Dragoons, the volunteer cavalry corps he had joined in 1797 and for which he acted as paymaster. One of these is for £23 – 4 – 5, for the “Keep of Horses”. A number of payments for the “ELD” are recorded as received by Scott, making it clear that he paid bills for the corps personally and received reimbursement.

The cash book records that Scott was now carrying forward aggregate cash receipts and payments, not just for the purpose of balancing each double page, but in order to record totals for the full calendar year. It reveals that for 1799, £1,441 had been spent, and that “cash in purse” was four pounds nine shillings at the year end. The figures for 1802 were £1,339-17-6 and ten shillings and sixpence respectively. Among the expenses at the end of 1802 were small sums paid for “prints of horsemen” and five guineas spent on “Baby’s clothes”. These were purchased in anticipation of the birth of his second daughter and fourth and last child, Anne, born early in 1803. At the end of 1801, the family had shifted their Edinburgh quarters from 10 South Castle Street to a fine town house of three stories and an attic at 39 South Castle Street.

Expenditure figures of the above magnitude reveal that the Scotts were enjoying a very opulent lifestyle and, indeed, suggest they were doing so by drawing down their savings to support their spending. Some pages at the rear of the cash book record payments into Scott’s bank account with Sir William Forbes (his former rival in love), as well as payments out of the account. For the year 1799, £931 in total was paid into the account, and £693 was withdrawn. In 1800 £593 was paid into Forbes bank and £803 withdrawn. For 1799 and 1800, the balance seldom exceeded £200 and was often much lower.
All the amounts withdrawn from the bank account are shown as receipts in the cash book, revealing Scott’s familiarity

4 Scott’s Analysis Book for the same year reveals that the “house to Camp” was in fact a dog basket. It seems likely that Scott would enjoy the play on words here, which was perhaps intended to signify the improvement in his pet’s living conditions as much as to describe his expenditure.

with double entry. A note at the very back of the cash book records that three certificates for £611, £190 and £403 were drawn from “Messrs Drummonds”, presumably the London-based bank of that name, in 1799. It seems likely that some of these funds were entered into the Forbes account, but the absence of narrative means that this cannot be proved.

As well as withdrawals from the Forbes bank account being entered into the first two cash books, many “fees”, typically of one, two or three guineas, are recorded as received every few days. These were payments to Scott for his services as an advocate, and together with the withdrawals from Forbes, are the main source of income until 1800, the year that Scott was appointed as Sheriff of Selkirkshire, at a salary of £300 per annum. The second cash book records the receipt of just over £56, being his first quarterly salary payment for his new post, after deductions, and that the new Sheriff paid 14 shillings and sixpence for a map of Selkirkshire on 4 February 1800. Scott purchased a new pair of “gallowses” (braces) for six shillings on 3 June 1800.5 Rather touchingly, the payment of two shillings for a “toy” for his daughter Sophia is recorded on 1 January 1802.

As was indicated earlier, the cash books do not provide enough details to allow the reader to see the precise sources of all of Scott’s income and funds flows in detail. They are, how-ever, consistent with what is known about his finances during the early years of his marriage: advocacy fees of a few hundred pounds a year, a Sheriff’s salary of £300 per annum and a wife with an annual allowance of £400 from a brother in India. These and the drawing down of savings can easily account for the heavy expenditure the family made.

This was certainly something that Scott sought to keep under review, if not actually control, as is apparent from the third of his surviving books, which covers the period January 1799 -December 1801. It represents a major extension to his system, and consistent with its function, is larger than the Cash Books, being 8Vi by 112A inches. It is illustrated in Figure 2.

5 The Scots word for braces, straps supporting trousers from the shoulders, is sometimes spelt ‘galluses’ and is a corruption of the term ‘gallows’, the apparatus for capital punishment by hanging. The amusing parallel between the hanging of trousers and the hanging of criminals inherent in the Scots term would not be lost on Scott, who loved and sought to perpetuate his native tongue.

Here Scott has ruled the plain pages out to produce an Analyzed Cash Book. On the left-hand page, the Disbursements already recorded in the Cash Books are described in chronological order and the amount of each item is given in total, after which it is allocated to one or more of nine columns, which are spread over the right-hand page as follows:

Household Expenses
House Rent and Servants’ Wages
Public Burdens & c
Liquors
Furniture, Books, Stationary [sic] & c
Mrs Scott’s Personal Expenses
Personal Expenses, Keep of Horse & c
Public Places, Travelling Coach Hire & c
Incidents.

Scott is not consistent about the order of these headings, which were used for January 1799. In December 1799, a slightly different order was followed. The descriptions also changed. “Furniture, Books, Stationary &c” was changed to “Country Expenses, Furniture, Books, etc”, and “Mrs Scott’s Personal Expenses” becomes “Personal Expenses Mrs Scott & Child.”6 Total expenses for 1799, as analyzed by Scott, (with percentages calculated by the authors) are given below:
TABLE 2 Scott’s Expenses for 1799

£ % of Total
Household Expenses 191 – 13 – 6 19.8
House Rent & Servants’ Wages 93 – 13 – 9.7
Public Burdens 29 – / – 3.0
Country Expenses, Furniture
Books, &c 197 – 16 – 6 20.5
Personal Expenses, Mrs Scott & child. 91 – 2 – 6 9.4
Personal Expenses 104 – 10 – 10.8
Travelling Expenses 66 – 7 – 6 6.9
Wine & Liquors 181 – 13 – 6 18.8
Incidents 10 – 2 – 6 1.1
965 – 19 – 0 100.0

There are two surprising elements to these figures. The first is the large “Wine and Liquors” total. Clearly, Scott is building up a cellar, probably in each of his two residences. Towards the rear of his earliest Cash Book, Scott listed “Port, Sherry, Frontenac, Claret, Rum, Gin, Brandy, Whisky” sideways along a page, as if he intended to record his stock of each, but did not do so. The second surprising element is the total of £965 – 19/-, which does not square with the cash book total of £1441 – 2/-. A simple reconciliation reveals the explanation – that Scott has omitted his payments on behalf of the Edinburgh Light Dragoons from his analysis book. At least some of this expense was recovered, as was indicated above.

As can be seen, the maintenance of this account book was quite onerous, and Scott let it drop after 1801. The presence of unused, lined pages beyond this point reveals his intention to continue its use, but it can be assumed with reasonable certainty that his growing workload as an advocate, Sheriff and author soon brought about its discontinuation.

A fourth surviving book, a cash book once more, survives for the 1803-1807 period. This book is no different in concept or execution to its predecessor cash books, but contains some interesting details reflecting Scott’s altering circumstances. In 1803, for instance, £35 is recorded as paid to Scott as profits from the first edition of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, as is £114 from Longman for the “price” of Border Ballads. A £30 fee for an article in the Edinburgh Review is also recorded that year. These newer sources of income begin to supplement the existing ones, although other more mysterious receipts, parts of bills of exchange and the like with cryptic and semi-legible notes alongside, which featured in the books for some time and still put in an occasional appearance. In 1805, £200 (out of £500) received from the sale of “Rosebank”, a property belonging to his late uncle, was used for household expenses. Scott’s total inheritance from this source was £5,600, £5,000 for the property and £600 from the residue of the estate, but little of this made its way into the household books. The Cash Book records that £1,500 of it was “advanced” to James Ballantyne, printers in 1805, providing capital for the co-partnery that would eventually bring Scott down in 1826. An entry of 1806 reveals that a “patrimony”, or legacy from his father, was also credited, and that £1,000 was received from this source, £900 of it passing immediately to “Wm. Riddell”, apparently in repayment of a loan.

The Cash Book reveals, therefore, an already well-off family receiving substantial bequests. It is clear that parts of these have been anticipated and spent in advance, while investments are being made with other parts. The acquisition of a “post chaise” for £80 in 1805 confirms a picture of growing affluence, as does a reference in 1806 “Sold £1700 stock 3% Consols” for £1007 -5/-. £950 of this is again invested in Ballantynes.

Other interesting developments around this time include the giving up of the Lasswade cottage for “Ashestiel” in 1804. Ashestiel was a substantial farm property in the borders rented for seven years from an absentee relative, and was taken up so that the Sheriff might live in his constituency. In 1804, Scott began a separate section of his Cash Book for his “Farm Account” but this was soon abandoned, such that only 15 pages were ever written up. These record small sums of income from the sale of coal and the occasional animal. Expenses include payments for hay and oats for the cattle and small amounts such as the one shilling and sixpence expended as candidly outlined in Scott’s description: “Blackberry Cow Bull’d”. The income and expenditure totals for the Farm Account pages seldom exceed £20, and it may be assumed that sums of this size turned out not to be material enough to justify separate accounting.

Apart from the abortive Farm Account section of this Cash Book, the only other feature of note is the use of the category “lost in accounting” to enable Scott to balance cash in hand. For the year 1806, an entry of two pounds and two shillings was required for this purpose.

The final extant account book belonging to Scott is for a much later period, May 1823 to June 1826. It seems likely that there was a whole series of books for the intervening years which have been lost. Lockhart, Scott’s son-in-law and the chief authority on him, observed that Scott kept account books all his life [Lockhart, 1902] and in July 1819, Scott wrote to his own son as follows: “I beg you will keep an acct. of money received and paid. Buy a little book ruled for the purpose for pounds, shillings and pence and keep an account of cash received and expended. The balance ought to be cash in purse if the book is regularly kept” [quoted in Quayle, 1968, p. 138]. It is unlikely that Scott would have made such a recommendation if he himself had discontinued the practice he advocated.
The last surviving account book reflects the vast change that had taken place in Scott’s life since 1806/7. He was now an author of world renown, a baronet, the friend of kings and princes and since 1821, Laird of Abbotsford, his new country seat in the Borders. What survives for 1823-1826 is a book in which the bare essentials of business life are recorded in a very incomplete and cryptic way, but one which would be understood by Scott. For 1823, two entries on the receipts side appear to record income of £8,910 and £9,000. To the side of these figures are some illegible abbreviations written against amounts of £1,000-£3,000 which are added to produce these two totals. Taken together they indicate a huge literary income for the year of £17,910.

On the expenditure side, large payments, typically from £150 to £790, are made to “Curries”, a London bank, “Con-stable” (one of Scott’s publishers) or “J.B.” (James Ballantyne, the printing firm in which he was a partner). The pages are not totaled. It is clear by this time that the cash book has taken on more of the character of an “aide memoire” for major business transactions than that of a personal account book.

The catastrophic, UK wide financial crisis of 1825 brought down some 60 banks and a vast number of business houses. On 14 January 1826, Constable’s London agents, Hurst Robinson & Coy, were forced to stop payment. Archibald Constable and Company and James Ballantyne and Company, linked to them and to each other by debts secured through bills of exchange, were also brought down through their inability to pay. As the sole financing partner in Ballantynes by this time, Scott was liable for huge debts and in due course entered into a trust deed for his creditors. It is no surprise then, that the final fragmentary entries in Scott’s last account book are for June 1826, after which point his affairs are administered by trustees. The final entries consist of a payment of £750 on 3 June with an illegible narrative alongside, followed by one of £667 to Hunt and Company, dated 7 June. No personal books survive beyond this point, and it is unlikely, given the circumstances, that any were ever kept again.

Scott did, however, keep a personal journal from late 1825 onwards, intended for publication, and in this he from time to time reconciled his income, expenditure and cash in hand balance as he had always done [Anderson, 1972]. Over 100 instances of account-keeping of this kind may be found between 1825 and 1830, ranging from very brief notes to fuller accounts. On Thursday 5 July 1827, for example, a note appears as follows:

In purse £50
Anne (Daughter)
In purse 30
Post horses 2
28
On Monday 29 October, Scott begins “I may as well square my accounts”, producing the undernoted:

McKinstry and Fletcher: Personal Account Books of Sir Walter Scott 77

By cash in purse £ 43 – 0 – 0
20 – 0 – 0
5 – 0 – 0
12 – 0 – 0
To subscription to Canning Monument 5 – 0 – 0 To Bogie [Scott’s gardener] Subscription to Forest Club Travelling expences [sic]

£ 42 – 0 – 0 £1 – 0 – 0
Cash for reviewing from Lockhart 100 – 0 – 0
Cash from Exchequer 149 – 0 – 0
250 – 0 – 0
Cash to Charles [Scott’s son] 100 – 0 – 0
Balance 150 – 0 – 0
[Anderson, 1972].

These accounts were kept at irregular intervals and seldom had recognizable carry-forward cash balances. They do, how-ever, attest to the large amounts of money Scott gave to his family, his ready ability to generate income from sources not subject to his bankruptcy arrangements, and a still extravagant lifestyle.7 Above all, it appears that Scott knew exactly how his finances stood.

SCOTT’S DOMESTIC ACCOUNTING – SOME IMPLICATIONS

As well as disclosing a hitherto unexamined aspect of Sir Walter Scott’s private habits, namely, his personal accounting practices, this study also seeks to explore what the accounts reveal about their author.

First, Scott’s accounting activities can clearly be understood as part of a fertile accounting scene in Scotland. His education in this subject is quite obviously connected with the wider 18th century Scottish expansion of accountancy which attracted the notice of Mepham and which was characterized by a profusion of practical accountancy texts underpinned by a growth in accounting education in both public and private schools. As Mepham has argued, this was “a part of the general intellectual ferment of the ‘Enlightenment'” [1994, p. 284]. The Enlightenment has always been understood as having two distinct
7 One such source was reviewing works of literature for his son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart, who was editor of the “Edinburgh Review”, a literary journal. Cash from this source is displayed in the accounting statement shown. Lockhart went on to become Scott’s biographer.

strands, one being the more philosophical writings of leading figures such as David Hume or Adam Smith, the other being empirical science of the kind which underpinned the early in-dustrial revolution. The accountancy texts, Mepham notes, can be seen as “complementary to more renowned works in eco-nomics and law” produced at around the same time and thus more aligned with the practical, empirical side of the Enlightenment [1994, p. 284].

If the regulation of aspects of Scott’s everyday life through the maintenance of personal accounts can be seen as related to the Enlightenment, then this raises questions as to how his thought processes are to be understood and characterized. While he was and is associated in the minds of his readers with the Romantic images of the Scotland he portrayed in his poems and novels, more serious students of his work, such as Daiches, have noticed that:

. .. though his greatest novels deal with the recent his-tory of his native Scotland, [Scott] . . . was never simply a patriotic Scottish novelist. One side of him was totally captivated by the glamour of a violent and heroic past; the other side, belonging less to the wild Borders that to enlightened Edinburgh in the Golden Age, believed in reason, moderation [and] . . . commercial progress [Daiches, 1971, p. 125].

Another commentator has observed in Scott’s work “con-flicts… between the emotional and rational, the romantic and the Augustan”, while reminding readers that “the Last Minstrel was also chairman of the Edinburgh Oil and Gas Board” [Scott, 1981b, p. xxv], a business involvement of the “Author of Waverley” which arose in connection with the installation of gas lighting at Abbotsford. It is clear then, that Scott had a foot in both the Enlightenment and Romantic camps, and in particular, that his personal account keeping sheds fresh light on his commitment to rationality and Enlightenment empiricism in much of his life and outlook. As Daiches puts it [1971, p. 125], Scott belonged both to the Romantic Revival and to the Scottish Enlightenment, and “the blend of the two is like nothing else in our literature”.

A second point for consideration relates to what Scott’s accountancy practices reveal about the field of domestic economy and accounting. Walker has recently written [1998] on the use of accounting in the British bourgeois home in the 19th century, calling for more research into domestic accounting as applied “in different social strata”. Financial good fortune, together with literary success and social fame soon took Scott well beyond the realms of the average bourgeois, and his domestic account books have the potential to shed some light on the use of accounting at this more elevated social level. In addition Kirkham and Loft [2001] have noted that Vickery [1998] paints a less negative view of the role of women and their domestic accounting in ‘genteel’ households, as compared with those that were merely “bourgeois”, and a study of Scott’s household arrangements will reveal whether or not this was the case in this instance.
Scott’s household could certainly be classed as ‘genteel’ in the sense intended by Vickery [1998, p. 13]. As an advocate, he fits into one of Vickery’s ‘genteel’ categories by virtue of his occupation alone while still an unattached man. Added to this, his receipt of financial windfalls from legacies, already referred to, together with his marriage to a lady with noble connections, Charlotte Charpentier, in possession of an annuity from her brother, soon consolidated Scott’s not inconsiderable social position. From this point onwards, his wealth, baronetcy, high connections and fame lifted Scott even further up the social scale.

Some general impressions of Scott’s domestic economy and Mrs Scott’s place in it emerge from the extant account books. For the earlier years of marriage (1799-1801), domestic expenditure amounted to about £1,000 per annum, rising to just under £1,300 for 1804, the first of the years of residence in the further distant and larger establishment of Ashestiel. Mrs Scott’s expenditure (sums paid by Scott to his wife) has been abstracted by the authors from Scott’s books and is as follows:

As was indicated earlier, Mrs Scott received more-or-less weekly payments, in guineas, from which she would have dis-bursed some servants’ wages and other necessaries. To these have been added other payments from Scott’s cash books, over which Mrs Scott most likely exercised control, such as disbursement to resident nurses, clothes for children, beds for children or toys.

In terms of Mrs Scott’s own bookkeeping activities, little evidence survives. Scott’s own cash book for 1799 reveals the purchase of a book “for servants”, most likely for the recording of wages. It seems probable that Mrs Scott would keep this, together with the records of food and other lesser purchases so obviously missing from Scott’s own personal account books. As Walker points out [1998, p. 493], in the larger household this might well have been the province of a senior housekeeper. It is not inconceivable that Mrs Scott may at first have kept the records, and as a larger household became necessary at Ashestiel or Abbotsford, perhaps responsibility was delegated, but this remains a matter for speculation.

The lack of references to Mrs Scott’s income in the surviving account books presents something of a mystery. It is possible that Scott’s wife’s income is the source of the funds drawn from Drummonds Bank and entered into Scott’s cash books, referred to earlier, but this must remain a speculation. That the couple’s assets were pooled in this way is, however, consistent with the other facts. If this were not the case, and Mrs Scott had separate assets, these would possibly have been used to ease the intermittent working capital problems with Ballantyne’s which Scott came to encounter almost from the beginning. If separate funds had existed, these would conceivably have been made available to Scott and would have been mentioned in Lockhart’s massive and detailed biography of his father-in-law. Matters have been complicated by the fact that while the account books which have survived are revealing, they do not give the total picture concerning Scott’s financial assets and liabilities.

Several clues as to Mrs Scott’s status and role in the home have, however, survived. Prior to their marriage in 1797, Char-lotte sent Scott a note advising him that “you write too much. When I am mistress I shall not allow it” [Lockhart, 1902, Vol. II, p. 326]. While there is an element of affectionate playfulness at work here, the note also suggests that Mrs Scott will have a degree of status and power in the home which might even extend to the regulation of aspects of her husband’s behavior.

In a letter of 1803, Scott also alluded to “Charlotte with the infantry (of the household troops I mean)” who was to “beat a retreat to the Ettrick Forrest”, Scott’s way of alluding to the family’s removal to Ashestiel in 1804 [Lockhart, 1902, Vol. III, p. 135]. It is clear from this that the female “officer” in charge of the Scott household enjoyed a high status at home and among friends. This also extended to the local community. While living at Ashestiel, Mrs Scott, for example, regularly visited the sick and the poor of the neighborhood to dispense food and medical assistance, earning herself and Scott a reputation for “unwearied kindness” [Lockhart, 1898, p. 276]. A further piece of evidence relates to the fact that Mrs Scott as early as 1800 demanded the acquisition of a “phaeton” at once “strong and low and handsome” for her personal use, a convenience and status symbol which was procured [Lockhart, 1898, pp. 122-123].

It appears then that Vickery’s assertion that ‘genteel’ women had significant and powerful roles in “the authoritative management” of households applies in the case of Mrs Scott [Kirkham and Loft, 2001, p. 84].

In some ways, Scott’s account books, as kept prior to 1807, are not unusual and represent a normal and conventional standard of orderliness expected of men [Walker, 1998, p. 489], although the sophisticated analysis to which they aspired appears uncommon. They reveal a typically patriarchal pattern of purchases. As Davidoff and Hall [1987, p. 387] point out, “men were responsible for buying …wine, books, pictures, musical instruments and wheeled vehicles”. Examples of all these, apart from musical instruments, feature in Scott’s cash books, and were alluded to above. The plainest evidence of Scott’s espousal of the patriarchal ideal is, however, his obvious control of the family finances as a whole, especially his assigning of monies to his wife for personal or household purposes.

In view of the above, therefore, the relations between Scott and his wife appear nearer to the “primus inter pares” model of the ‘genteel’ marital partnership than the “lofty pine and slender vine” model of the bourgeois pairing [Davidoff and Hall, 1987, p. 397]. In keeping with this conclusion, Scott’s expenditure patterns certainly do not conform to the “domestic moderation” of the middle classes if, in the earlier period covered by the books of account they stop short of the “lavish” display and consumption, typical of the aristocracy [Davidoff and Hall, 1987, p. 21]. It certainly might be argued that Scott had gone further down this road in the post-Ashestiel period. “At last I am a laird”, he wrote after first acquiring Abbotsford [Daiches, 1971, p. 86]. Scott’s casual attitude to debt was certainly closer to that of the aristocracy than the middle class. Indeed he at one point bor-rowed money from the Duke of Buccleuch [Daiches, 1971, p. 104]. But borrowing was not the only department in which Scott shared the habits of the aristocracy. In maintaining his personal account books with such diligence, Scott was compared by Lockhart with his near neighbor, Sir John Riddell, a social equal, who was said to have “kept day book and ledger as regularly as any cheesemonger in the Grassmarket” [Lockhart, 1902, Vol.6, p. 70].

SCOTT’S ACCOUNT BOOKS AND HIS ATTITUDE TO MONEY

The speed at which Scott came to produce novels, together with their uneven literary quality, meant that he had contemporary detractors. Some believed that Scott wrote for financial gain only. He answered his critics in the Introduction to The Fortunes of Nigel [1821] by stressing the benefits which the printing and publication of his novels brought to the economy and stating that the many thousands who purchased them clearly received “gratification” in return for their expenditure, which they were not obliged to make. While stressing the need to produce quickly to keep an author’s name before the public, Scott also pointed out the self-evident truth that “no work of the imagination, proceeding from the mere consideration of a certain sum of copy-money, ever did, or ever will succeed” [Scott, 1821, p. 23]. Scott went on to indicate that he did not consider himself of a “greedy or mercenary disposition”, and that it was sensible to accept “a just recompense” for his time and “a reasonable share of the capital which owes its very existence to his exertions”. He considered himself “answerable to Heaven only” for his expenditure, part of which would “wander, heaven directed, to the poor” [Scott, 1821, pp. 23-24].
The writer’s protestations of good intention did not satisfy everyone, especially Thomas Carlyle, the eminent historian and essayist, who wrote in 1838, after Scott’s death that:

Our highest literary man who immeasurably beyond all others commanded the world’s ear, had, as it were, no message whatever to deliver to the world; wished not the world to elevate itself, to do this or to do that, except simply pay him for the books he kept writing [Hayden, 1995, pp. 345-377].

As was indicated above, Scott was earning from three sources quite early in his married life, his Sheriffship, his ap-pointment at the Court of Session, and his writing. It was not until 1824, however, that his country house in the Scottish Borders, Abbotsford, was complete. Its building and furnishing coupled with the acquisition of hundreds of acres of adjacent and not very productive land soon absorbed the bulk of his literary profits. It had been Scott’s intention to spend only £1,500 in restoring the farm which originally stood on the site. From 1812 to 1824, increasingly ambitious architectural plans, finally those of William Atkinson, took shape causing Scott to observe in 1823 that “Builders and planners have drained my purse” [Daiches, 1971, p. 92]. Interiors were designed with the help of Daniel Terry, the actor, and packed with historic armor, old weaponry and stained glass windows. There was a magnificent library-study, full of expensive books, with secret recessed departments. Scott intended Abbotsford to be a kind of time capsule, “a thing to dream of, not to tell” [Daiches, 1971, p. 92]. Externally the house was decorated with stones from historic Scots buildings, and its silhouette was marked out by plentiful battlements and turrets in a new and trend-setting style that was part-Gothic and part-Scots Baronial. The house became a center of lavish and frequent entertainment for a never ending stream of literary and aristocratic guests, attracted to Scott like a moth to a flame.

As Daiches writes [1971, p. 95], Scott was impulsive in everything he did, and Abbotsford was part of a spontaneous cycle of activity which involved the rapid writing of instantly successful novels, the printing of which kept Ballantyne and Company busy and the sales of the copyrights of which funded the construction and furnishing of Abbotsford and Scott’s hospitable lifestyle. Out of this, too, a large household staff, many regarded by Scott as close personal friends, was maintained and the future of Scott’s family was generously provided for. There can be no doubt, either, that Scott was attempting to create a dynastic home at Abbotsford, intended not only to house his descendants and much-loved staff in conditions of paternalistic friendship, but also, to establish a branch of the Scott clan in perpetuity [Daiches, 1971, pp. 91-94].

The stream of funds which kept everything afloat dried up dramatically in 1825 with the onset of a UK-wide financial crash. Accounting information relating to Scott and his business involvements is fragmentary, but the interlinked businesses of publishing, printing and bookselling had always been vulnerable to contractions of credit. Payments for goods and services, including the copyrights of novels, were made from business to business by means of post-dated bills of exchange, augmented from time to time by “accommodation bills”, that is, bills given by one person to another to provide credit in time of need. The bills were to be discounted by the banks and ‘retired’, that is, paid off, at their due dates, all of which was standard commercial practice [Checkland, 1975, pp. 189-192]. On 17 January 1826 Scott learned that he was ruined. Hurst Robinson, the London agents of Constable, one of Scott’s publishers, defaulted on a bill payable to Constables, whose own credit dried up and who were linked through indebtedness with James Ballantyne and Company. The latter firm, whose capital had for some time belonged to Scott alone, was obliged to stop payment and thus became bankrupt. Scott’s personal and business responsibility for debts amounted to £120,899, over and above which a recently completed mortgage of £10,000 also existed [Anderson, 1998, pp. xxx-xxxi].

Abbotsford had been transferred over to Scott’s eldest son, Walter as a precondition of his marriage to the wealthy heiress, Jane Jobson early in 1825, on the basis that the author should have the liferent (life occupancy) of it, meaning that this asset was not Scott’s to repay creditors with. On the understanding that Scott would write for the benefit of his creditors, his trustees in bankruptcy allowed him to remain at Abbotsford. As Anderson [1995, p. xxxi] notes, “their best hope was to trust in Scott’s own resolve to write his way out of difficulties”. This the ailing Scott did stoically until his death in 1832, producing five novels, a nine-volume life of Napoleon, a two -volume history of Scotland and a multiplicity of other items. In less that six years Scott earned some £50,000 for his creditors, most of the balance due coming shortly after his death through the sale of his copy-rights.

After Scott’s death the controversies concerning his attitude to money continued to raise their heads. When John Gibson Lockhart published his monolithic and somewhat hagiographic Life of Scott in 1837, it became clear that he blamed the Ballantyne brothers, James and John, for mismanaging the printing and publishing businesses in which Scott had been involved, and thus for Scott’s failure. A refutation of Lockhart’s claims was published by Ballantyne’s Trustees and son in 1838, a reply to this by Lockhart in 1839, and a final rejoinder to Lockhart in 1840, [Ballantyne Controversy, passim]. These voluminous tracts quite naturally produced evidence of Scott’s drawings from the Ballantyne businesses which they successfully related to Scott’s personal expenditures. Ballantyne’s Trustees did not do this with the intention of denigrating Scott, whom they revered, but rather to disprove Lockhart’s defamatory remarks regarding James and John Ballantyne.

The matter was not allowed to die. In 1968, Eric Quayle, historian of the Ballantyne bookselling businesses, having seen the relevant archives, published The Ruin of Sir Walter Scott. This book probed the detail of the relations between Scott and the Ballantynes, reaching the conclusion that Scott was greedy “a weakling beset with traits of character that allowed a consuming self-interest to dictate modes of conduct that finally brought ruin on himself and lesser men” [Quayle, 1968, p. 11].

According to this very negative view of Scott, financial ambi-tions and his desire to be seen above all else as a Tweedside Laird came to dominate his thinking and to drive his literary output, thus affecting its quality. It therefore followed that greed was the reason for Scott’s investment in Ballantynes. The creation of Abbotsford in particular, Quayle argues, had led to reckless personal and business borrowing by Scott, “light heartedly entered into”, in anticipation of future monies from novels. Quayle’s case is one of interpretation, based largely on Scott’s indisputably heavy business and personal borrowings and his high personal expenditure. Quayle also produces evidence that Scott was usually robust in his business dealings, an example being his negotiation of a high fee from Constable for the poem Rokeby. In this instance Constable noted that “he [Scott] wishes to squeeze us as he has the B’s [Ballantynes]” [Quayle, 1968, p. 66]. At various points Quayle also notes that Scott insisted on 15% interest on his capital in the Ballantyne business, making it clear and indubitable that Scott was the dominant influence in the enterprise.

Scott’s surviving account books provide prima facie evi-dence suggesting it is improbable that he was “light-hearted” in his financial affairs, at least in the sense of ignoring obligations. Indeed, Quayle is well aware [1968, p. 77] that both Scott and James Ballantyne regularly discussed the printing firm’s cash flow requirements, including the bills of exchange that were receivable and payable month by month. Details of the sums and firms involved survives plentifully [Ballantyne Controversy, passim]. Quayle also knew from Lockhart’s Life of Scott’s meticulous personal account books [1968, p. 134], although there is no evidence he ever saw them. It is clear, then, that record keeping, either business or personal on Scott’s part, is not what is in question. What concerns Quayle more is the constantly growing extent of Scott’s indebtedness and expenditure at both a personal and business level.

Scott’s personal books, as was discussed earlier, certainly display an early tendency to spend to the limit, to borrow money in anticipation of receipts and to live lavishly. They also suggest that Scott handled his finances knowledgeably, a speculation borne out by his ‘balance sheet’ approach to assessing his own wealth as the London banking scene continued to deteriorate late in 1825, prior to his bankruptcy. He noted in his Journal [Anderson, 1998, p. 45] that “upon a fair balance” he was worth “not less that £40,000 or nearly £50,000 above the world”. When this assessment was made, Scott did not realize that he would have to stand liable for the business debts of James Ballantyne and Company, whose assets had melted away in the crash, as well as his own vast debts. At this point, as usual, Scott had little cash and Ballantyne and Company’s debts alone stood at £42,239, having risen from some £27,000 three-and-a-half years earlier. It is certainly true that Scott and the Ballantyne business, which he undoubtedly controlled, was under-capitalized and survived on maximum borrowing, and that this was increasing as Abbotsford grew.

Was this responsible for the crash? It was a necessary con-dition for it, but not a sufficient one. Self evidently, the suffi-cient condition was the government assisted collapse of the UK financial system which caused the supply of credit relied upon by Ballantyne and Company and Scott and his publishers to dry up. While Scott recognized that Abbotsford was his “Dalilah” [Anderson, 1998, p. 47], a point made much of by Quayle, he did so with hindsight, and it is plain that Scott blamed his bankruptcy directly on the fact that “London chuses to be in an uproar” [Anderson, 1998, p. 51].

Was Scott “greedy” in all this? His account books, letters and journals reveal a myriad of small acts of generosity to all levels and grades of society. They also reveal that he spent vastly greater sums on entertaining and on property. This certainly was “a thriftless sort of charity”, to use his own phrase, which did not cause him much sacrifice, although he was generous in absolute terms [Scott, 1821, p. 38]. As Hesketh Pearson has put it in what appears a more balanced assessment that better fits the facts than Quayle’s, “He did not care for the possession of money, but he enjoyed the use of it in realizing his dreams and making life easier for others” [Pearson, 1954, p. 150].

If Quayle is in any way successful, it is in showing that Scott was indeed a complex figure, one whose motives are a matter of interpretation rather than absolute proof. However, most students of Scott tend to side with A.N. Wilson, who stated that “the experience of reading Scott brings one into touch not merely with great art, but with the greatness of the man” [Wilson, 1979, p. 5].

CONCLUSIONS

As can be seen from the above, the personal account books of Sir Walter Scott have proved a most valuable resource. They reveal, in summary, that he was well acquainted with the techniques of bookkeeping, and as such, a personal exemplar of the

McKinstry and Fletcher: Personal Account Books of Sir Walter Scott 87
degree to which accounting had permeated Scottish life by the time of the Enlightenment. The books also confirm the view that Scott did indeed have a foot in both the Enlightenment and Romantic camps, in terms of his cast of mind, and also that financial arrangements in the Scott household conformed with what is known of other ‘genteel’ households: that the husband was in overall control, with the wife in a prestigious if still inferior position.
The existence of the books also leads to the conclusion that an understanding of Scott’s business risk-taking cannot be reached without taking into consideration his detailed knowl-edge and consistent practice of accountancy, over against which allegations of carelessness or recklessness, in the sense of ill-considered commercial decision-making, appear inappropriate.

In terms of Scott’s personal expenditure patterns, the ac-count books have their limitations. While they reveal both the lavishness and generosity so typical of Scott, they are necessarily silent on the motivation behind his expenditures. As was indicated, the moral principles underpinning these expenditure patterns remain, therefore, open to interpretation, although few would side with the very unsympathetic and negative views that have occasionally been expressed concerning one of the most famous Scottish figures of all time.

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