The Usurper

‘…I brought him [Peter Llewellyn] home and dined with us, and after dinner I took my wife out, for I do find that I am not able to conquer myself as to going to plays till I come to some new vowe concerning it, and that I am now come, that is to say, that I will not see above one in a month at any of the publique theatres till the sum of 50s. be spent, and then none before New Year’s Day next, unless that I do become worth 1000l. sooner than then, and then am free to come to some other terms, and so leaving him in Lombard Street I took her to the King’s house, and there met Mr. Nicholson, my old colleague, and saw “The Usurper,” which is no good play, though better than what I saw yesterday. However, we rose unsatisfied, and took coach and home, and I to the office late writing letters, and so to supper and to bed.’

“The Usurper” was one of five plays Edward Howard produced.  Samuel Pepys, who recorded in his diary seeing the play on January 2^nd, 1664, liked another Howard play better.  Of Howard’s “The Change of Crowns”, Pepys said it was "the best that I ever saw at that house [Theater royal], being a great play and serious."

Walter Scott includes Mr. Howard, and “The Usurper”, in a note comparing verse and play text, in “The Life of John Dryden”.  ‘…The honourable Edward Howard, Sir Robert’s brother, expresses himself in the preface to the “Usurper”, a play published in 1668, “not insensible to the disadvantage it may receive passing into the world upon naked feet of verse, with other works that have their measures adorned with the trappings of rhime, which, however they have succeeded in wit or design, is still thought music, as the heroic tone now goes; but whether so natural to a play, that should most nearly intimate, in some cases, our familiar converse, the judicious may easily determine.”

The Conqueror of Quebec

English General James Wolfe had a very successful career, which included a role in suppressing Scottish Jacobite forces in 1745.  He gained renown not for this aspect of his career, but for his role in defeating French forces holding Quebec in 1759.  William Pitt (elder) assigned Wolfe the command of an expedition to take Quebec in that year, and Wolfe successfully fulfilled his task, though died during the battle.

Author Robert Wright, in his "The Life of Major-General James Wolfe..." offers the following quote from Sir Walter Scott on the character of Wolfe (and Pitt): 'Pitt and Wolfe, therefore, were considered as characters above ordinary humanity, not so much on account of the power and eloquence of the Minister or the prowess of the General, as because they made the honour and welfare of their country their sole aim. "They dared," as Sir Walter Scott says, "to contemn wealth; the statesman and soldier of the present day would, on the contrary, not dare to propose it to himself."..'

James Wolfe was born this day, January 2nd, in the year 1727.

Woodstock

Yesterday's post referenced the novel "Woodstock".  Walter Scott often moved from one project ot another.  Sometimes these breaks provided an opportunity to move forward while waiting for source material for the first project.  Other times they seem to have been an outlet when Scott ran into a creative roadblock.  In late 1825, Scott took a break from working on his Life of Napoleon Buonaparte to start the novel Woodstock.  From Scott's Journal of January 2, 1826:

Weather clearing up in Edinburgh once more, and all will, I believe, do well. I am pressed to get on with Woodstock, and must try. I wish I could open a good vein of interest which would breathe freely. I must take my old way, and write myself into good-humour with my task. It is only when I dally with what I am about, look back, and aside, instead of keeping my eyes straight forward, that I feel these cold sinkings of the heart. All men I suppose do, less or more. They are like the sensation of a sailor when the ship is cleared for action, and all are at their places—gloomy enough; but the first broadside puts all to rights. Dined at Huntly Burn with the Fergusons en masse.