The heroines of the Waverley Novels, with a single prominent exception, are all of them motherless. They had mothers presumably, but their mothers filled untimely graves. The one prominent exception, of course, is Lucy Ashton, whose mother, Lady Ashton, is an important personage in the story. In _Waverley_ there are two heroines, Flora M’Ivor and Rose Bradwardine, who are both motherless. In _Guy Mannering_ there are also two heroines, Julia Mannering and Lucy Bertram, who are both motherless. In _Rob Roy_ the heroine is Die Vernon, who is motherless. In _Old Mortality_ the heroine is Edith Bellenden, who is motherless. In _The Heart of Midlothian_ the heroine is Jeanie Deans, who is motherless. In _Ivanhoe_ there are again two heroines, Rebecca and Rowena, who are both motherless. In _Kenilworth_ the heroine is Amy Robsart, who is motherless. In _The Pirate_ the heroines are Minna and Brenda Troil, who are motherless. In _The Fortunes of Nigel_ the heroine is Margaret Ramsay, who is motherless. In _Quentin Durward_ the heroine is Isabelle, Countess of Croye, who is motherless. In _Woodstock_ the heroine is Alice Lee, who is motherless. In _The Fair Maid of Perth_ the heroine is Catherine Glover, who is motherless. I need not go through the entire list. I believe that Lucy Ashton is the only exception of note.
It would be interesting to know Scott’s reason for what can hardly be the result of accident. He may possibly have thought that a girl deprived of a mother’s care and control was likely to grow up a more unconventional, and therefore a more picturesque, personage than one more happily circumstanced. But this is a mere guess.
I can think of another guess. It is known how Scott was disappointed in early love, and how he married a lady of French extraction, who makes a very shadowy appearance in biographies of him. Now that his children’s children are dead, there can be no harm in hinting that his wife was accused of a weakness which went to diminish the respect if not the affection of her family. An old friend of my father, still alive, heard the matter put very plainly by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, who told him how he himself had given up dining with the Scotts, because of the state in which he frequently found the lady of the house. That bit of hushed-up scandal would explain why the husband shrank from describing a mother’s influence, as touching a sore point in his own family life. His letters and diaries also dwell far more upon his children than upon their mother.