On a winter's evening in 1803, James Hogg turned up for dinner at the home of Walter Scott. The man his host liked to call 'the honest grunter' was shown into the drawing-room, where a pregnant Mrs Scott was resting on a sofa. Unsure of the protocol in these toney surroundings, and deciding to take his cue from the hostess, Hogg flopped onto an adjoining sofa, smirching the chintz with his dung-spattered boots. In this position, according to J.G. Lockhart in his Life of Scott, Hogg 'afforded plentiful merriment to the more civilised part of the company'.

LRB 18 November 2004 | PDF Download