Sir Walter Scott :: Essays Papers

Sir Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott was born in a tenement at College Wynd, in Edinburgh, on August 15, 1771. There is evidence that he may have been born in 1770 and when his mother was asked about it she said she had forgotten the detail of when he was born. There was no deep warmth between parents and children in the Scott family. The Scott family had no fewer than twelve children and young Walter was the ninth. Him and his two other brothers were the only children to survive. All other nine children had died because they were premature or they died shortly after they had been born. At the time of Walters birth his mother was thirty-nine and his father was forty-two and having a child was not exciting to them anymore. His parents had named one of their first siblings Walter who was born and died in 1766 and after they named young Walter that he always felt that he had a second hand name. Walter was a healthy child until he was about eighteen months and he got a very bad fever, which kept him in bed for awhile. One day when he was recovering he was in the bath and they realized he had lost the movement in his right leg. He had infantile paralysis. Doctors tried to help him and fix it but it was a lost cause. He was not fully crippled but his right leg would never be the same. His mother became pregnant again and she could not deal with Walter while he was sick. Therefore she sent him to him to his grandfather's farm at Sandy Knowe in the spring of 1773. He stayed at this farm until he was three and a half. It was hear that his grandfather taught him to walk and eventually run. Everyone on the farm also encouraged Walter to talk Walter's aunt; Janet Scott brought it upon herself to raise Walter. Over the next six years she was Walter's foster mother and first teacher. Walter's relationship with his father lasted twenty-eight years and went though many different stages. Dominating over everything else Walter knew that he was not an important child. Robert his oldest brother did not go to the High Sch ool like his brothers did but was sent to a superior boarding school. He also had the freedom to pick his profession unlike Walter.