ENPages
page_0001
[Original in: Sir Walter Scott miscellanies (PR5330.55)]
COPY
Christ Church, Oxford. 4 Oct. 1932.
My Dear Sir,
I have been reading with much profit and interest your life of Sir W. Scott . May I suggest one point to your attention? You speak of Dousterswivvel in the Antiquary as a conventional figure. Have you considered Thomas Seccombe's article in the D.N.B. on Rudolf Raspe (Munchausen) the German adventurer who cheated Sir John Sinclair by promise of mining wealth some twenty years before the Antiquary was written? Seccombe says definitely that Scott used the story of Raspe; he would not have been unwilling to make Sinclair ridiculous. Strange to say the omniscient Andrew Lang misses this explanation of the ridiculous baronet in his edition of the Novels.
But possibly you have considered, and rejected, this hypothesis.
Yours very faithfully, (Signed) E. W. Watson.
John Buchan Esq.
