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Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart.Lockhart, J. G. (John Gibson), 1794-18547 volsEdinburghRobert Cadell1837
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2009-02-26BibliographyBook HistoryCollectionCriticismDramaEphemeraFictionHumorLawLettersLife WritingHistoryManuscriptNonfictionPeriodicalPoliticsReference WorksPoetryReligionReviewTranslationTravel MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. VOLUME THE FIRST. MDCCCXXXVII. ROBERT CADELL, EDINBURGH. JOHN MURRAY AND WHITTAKER AND CO., LONDON.
TOJOHN BACON SAUREY MORRITT,OF ROKEBY PARK, ESQ.THESE MEMOIRS OF HIS FRIENDARE RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELYINSCRIBED.PREFACE.
In obedience to the instructions of Sir
Walter Scott’s last will, I had made some progress in a narrative of his
personal history, before there was discovered, in an old cabinet at Abbotsford, an
autobiographical fragment, composed by him in 1808 shortly after the publication of his Marmion.
This fortunate accident rendered it necessary that I should altogether
remodel the work which I had commenced. The first Chapter of the following Memoirs consists of
the Ashestiel fragment; which gives a clear
outline of his early life down to the period of his call to the bar—July, 1792. All the notes
appended to this Chapter are also by himself. They are in a handwriting very different from the
text, and seem, from various circumstances, to have been added in 1826.
It appeared to me, however, that the author’s modesty had prevented him
from telling the story of his youth with that fulness of
detail which would now satisfy the public. I have therefore recast my own collections as to the
period in question, and presented the substance of them, in five succeeding chapters, as illustrations of his too brief autobiography. This procedure has been
attended with many obvious disadvantages; but I greatly preferred it to printing the precious
fragment in an Appendix.
I foresee that some readers may be apt to accuse me of trenching upon
delicacy in certain details of the sixth and seventh chapters in this volume. Though the
circumstances there treated of had no trivial influence on Sir Walter
Scott’s history and character, I should have been inclined, for many
reasons, to omit them; but the choice was, in fact, not left to me,—for they had been
mentioned, and misrepresented, in various preceding sketches of the Life which I had undertaken
to illustrate. Such being the case, I considered it as my duty to tell the story truly and
intelligibly: but I trust I have avoided any unnecessary disclosures: and, after all, there was
nothing to disclose that could have attached any sort of blame to any of the parties concerned.
For the copious materials which the friends of Sir Walter have placed at my
disposal, I feel just gratitude. Several of them are named in
the course of the present volume; but I must take this opportunity of expressing my sense of
the deep obligations under which I have been laid by the frank communications, in particular,
of William Clerk, Esq., of Eldin,—John Irving, Esq., W.S.,—Sir Adam
Ferguson,—James Skene, Esq., of
Rubislaw,—Patrick Murray, Esq., of
Simprim,—J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., of
Rokeby,—William Wordsworth, Esq.,—Robert Southey, Esq., Poet Laureate,—Samuel Rogers, Esq.,—William
Stewart Rose, Esq.,—Sir Alexander
Wood,—the Right Hon. the Lord Chief Commissioner
Adam,—the Right Hon. Sir William Rae,
Bart.,—the late Right Hon. Sir William Knighton,
Bart.,—the Right Hon. J. W.
Croker,—Lord Jeffrey,—Sir Henry Halford, Bart., G. C. H.,—the late Major-General Sir John Malcolm, G.C.B.,—Sir Francis Chantrey, R.A.,—Sir
David Wilkie, R.A.,—Thomas Thomson,
Esq., P.C.S.,—Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe,
Esq.,—William Scott, of Raeburn,
Esq.,—John Scott, of Gala,
Esq.,—Alexander Pringle, of Whytbank,
Esq., M.P.,—John Swinton, of Inverleith-place,
Esq.,—John Richardson, Esq., of Fludyer
Street,—John Murray, Esq., of Albemarle
Street,—Robert Bruce, Esq., Sheriff of
Argyle,—Robert Ferguson, Esq., M.D.,—G. P. R. James, Esq.,—William
Laidlaw, Esq., Robert Cadell, Esq.,
John Elliot Shortreed, Esq., Allan Cunningham, Esq., Claud
Russell, Esq.,—James Clark-son, Esq., of Melrose,—the late James Ballantyne, Esq.,—Joseph Train,
Esq.,—Adolphus Ross, Esq., M.D.,—William Allan, Esq., R.A.,—Charles
Dumergue, Esq.,—Stephen Nicholson Barber,
Esq.,—James Slade, Esq.,—Mrs
Joanna Baillie,—Mrs George
Ellis,—Mrs Thomas Scott,—Mrs Charles Carpenter,—Miss Russell of
Ashestiel,—Mrs Sarah
Nicholson,—Mrs Duncan, Mertoun-Manse,—the Right Hon. the
Lady Polwarth,—and her sons, Henry, Master of Polwarth, the Hon. and Rev.
William, and the Hon. Francis Scott.
I beg leave to acknowledge with equal thankfulness the courtesy of the
Rev. Dr Harwood, Thomas
White, Esq., Mrs Thomson, and the Rev. Richard Garnett, all of Lichfield, and the Rev. Thomas Henry White, of Glasgow, in forwarding to me
Sir Walter Scott’s early letters to Miss Seward: that of the Lord
Seaford, in intrusting me with those addressed to his late cousin, George Ellis, Esq.: and the kind readiness with which whatever
papers in their possession could be serviceable to my undertaking were supplied by the
Duke and Duchess of
Buccleuch, and the Lord Montagu;—the
Countess-Duchess of Sutherland, and the Lord Francis Egerton;—the Lord Viscount
Sidmouth,—the Lord Bishop of
Llandaff,—the Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel,
Bart.,—the Lady Louisa Stuart,—the Hon. Mrs Warrender, and the Hon. Catharine Arden,—Lady Davy, —Miss
Edgeworth,—Mrs Maclean Clephane, of
Torloisk,—Mrs Hughes, of Uffington,—Mrs Charles Richardson,—Mrs
Bartley;—Sir George Mackenzie of Coul,
Bart.,—the late Sir Francis Freeling,
Bart.,—Captain Sir Hugh Pigott, R.N.,—the
late Sir William Gell,—Sir
Cuthbert Sharp,—the Very Rev. Principal
Baird,—the Rev. William Steven, of
Rotterdam,—the late Rev. James Mitchell, of
Wooler,—Robert William Hay, Esq., lately Under
Secretary of State for the Colonial Department,—John Borthwick, of
Crookstone, Esq.,—John Cay, Esq., Sheriff
of Linlithgow,—Captain Basil Hall, R.N.,—Thomas Crofton Croker, Esq.,—Henry
Cheney, Esq.,—Alexander Young, Esq., of
Harburn—A. J. Valpy, Esq.,—James Maidment, Esq., Advocate,—the late Donald Gregory, Esq.,—Robert
Johnston, Esq., of Edinburgh,—J. J. Masquerier,
Esq., of Brighton,—Owen Rees, Esq., of
Paternoster Row,—William Miller, Esq., formerly of
Albemarle Street,—David Laing, Esq., of Edinburgh,—and
John Smith the Youngest, Esq., of Glasgow.
J. G. Lockhart. London, December 20, 1836.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME FIRST. PAGE CHAPTER I. Memoir of the early Life of Sir Walter Scott,
written by himself, 1 CHAPTER II. Illustrations of the Autobiographical
Fragment—Edinburgh—Sandy-Knowe—Bath—Prestonpans— 1771-1778, 61 CHAPTER III. Illustrations of the Autobiography continued—High School of
Edinburgh—Residence at Kelso— 1778-1783, 91 CHAPTER IV. Illustrations of the Biography continued—Anecdotes of
Scott’s College Life— 1783-1786, 120 CHAPTER V. Illustrations continued—Scott’s Apprenticeship to
his Father—Excursions to the Highlands, &c.—Debating Societies—Early Correspondence,
&c. &c.— 1786-1790, 132 CHAPTER VI. Illustrations continued—Studies for the Bar—Excursions to
Northumberland—Letter on Flodden Field—Call to the Bar— 1790-1792,
166 PAGE CHAPTER VII. First Expedition into Liddesdale—Study of German—Political Trials,
&c.—Specimen of Law Papers—Bürger’s Lenore translated—Disappointment in
Love— 1792-1790, 187 CHAPTER VIII. Publication of Ballads after
Bürger—Scott Quarter-Master of the
Edinburgh Light-Horse—Excursion to Cumberland—Gilsland Wells—Miss
Carpenter—Marriage— 1796-1797, 245 CHAPTER IX. Early Married Life—Lasswade Cottage—Monk
Lewis—Translation of Goetz Von Berlichingen,
published—Visit to London—House of Aspen—Death of Scott’s Father—First Original
Ballads—Glenfinlas, &c.—Unpublished Fragments—Appointment to the Sheriffship of
Selkirkshire— 1798-1799, 285 CHAPTER X. The Border Minstrelsy in
Preparation—Richard Heber—John
Leyden—William Laidlaw—James
Hogg—Correspondence with George Ellis—Publication of the
Two First Volumes of the Border Minstrelsy— 1800-1802, 319 CHAPTER XI. Preparation of Volume III. of the Minstrelsy—and of
Sir Tristrem—Correspondence with Miss
Seward and Mr Ellis—Ballad of the
Reiver’s Wedding—Commencement of the Lay of the Last
Minstrel—Visit to London and Oxford—Completion of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border— 1802-1803, 348 CHAPTER XII. Contributions to the Edinburgh Review—Progress of
the Tristrem and of the Lay of the Last
Minstrel—Visit of Wordsworth—Publication of “Sir Tristrem”— 1803-1804, 383
MEMOIRSOF THELIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.CHAPTER I.MEMOIR OF THE EARLY LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, WRITTEN BY
HIMSELF.
Ashestiel, April 26th, 1808.
The present age has discovered a desire, or rather a
rage, for literary anecdote and private history, that may be well permitted to
alarm one who has engaged in a certain degree the attention of the public. That
I have had more than my own share of popularity, my contemporaries will be as
ready to admit, as I am to confess that its measure has exceeded not only my
hopes, but my merits, and even wishes. I may be therefore permitted, without an
extraordinary degree of vanity, to take the precaution of recording a few
leading circumstances (they do not merit the name of events) of a very quiet
and uniform life—that, should my literary reputation survive my temporal
existence, the public may know from good authority all that they are entitled
to know of an individual who has contributed to their amusement.
From the lives of some poets a most important moral lesson may
doubtless be derived, and few sermons can be read with so much profit as the
Memoirs of Burns, of Chatterton, or of Savage. Were I conscious of any thing peculiar in my own moral
character which could render such developement necessary or useful, I would as
readily consent to it as I would bequeath my body to dissection, if the
operation could tend to point out the nature and the means of curing any
peculiar malady. But as my habits of thinking and acting, as well as my rank in
society, were fixed long before I had attained, or even pretended to, any
poetical reputation,* and as it produced, when acquired, no remarkable change
upon either, it is hardly to be expected that much information can be derived
from minutely investigating frailties, follies, or vices, not very different in
number or degree from those of other men in my situation. As I have not been
blessed with the talents of Burns or
Chatterton, I have been happily exempted from the
influence of their violent passions, exasperated by the
* I do not mean to say that my success in literature
has not led me to mix familiarly in society much above my birth and
original pretensions, since I have been readily received in the first
circles in Britain. But there is a certain intuitive knowledge of the
world to which most well-educated Scotchmen are early trained, that
prevents them from being much dazzled by this species of elevation. A
man who to good-nature adds the general rudiments of good breeding,
provided he rest contented with a simple and unaffected manner of
behaving and expressing himself, will never be ridiculous in the best
society, and so far as his talents and information permit, may be an
agreeable part of the company. I have therefore never felt much
elevated, nor did I experience any violent change in situation, by the
passport which my poetical character afforded me into higher company
than my birth warranted.—[1826].
struggle of feelings which rose up
against the unjust decrees of fortune. Yet, although I cannot tell of
difficulties vanquished, and distance of rank annihilated by the strength of
genius, those who shall hereafter read this little Memoir may find in it some
hints to be improved, for the regulation of their own minds, or the training
those of others.
Every Scottishman has a pedigree. It is a national prerogative
as unalienable as his pride and his poverty. My birth was neither distinguished
nor sordid. According to the prejudices of my country, it was esteemed gentle,
as I was connected, though remotely, with ancient families both by my
father’s and mother’s side. My father’s grandfather was
Walter Scott, well known in
Teviotdale by the surname of Beardie. He was the second
son of Walter Scott, first Laird of Raeburn, who was third
son of Sir William Scott, and the
grandson of Walter Scott, commonly
called in tradition Auld Watt, of Harden. I am therefore
lineally descended from that ancient chieftain, whose name I have made to ring
in many a ditty, and from his fair dame, the Flower
of Yarrow—no bad genealogy for a Border minstrel. Beardie, my great-grandfather aforesaid,
derived his cognomen from a venerable beard, which he wore unblemished by razor
or scissors, in token of his regret for the banished dynasty of
Stewart. It would have been well that his zeal had
stopped there. But he took arms, and intrigued in their cause, until he lost
all he had in the world, and, as I have heard, run a narrow risk of being
hanged, had it not been for the interference of Anne,
Duchess of Buccleuch and Mon-mouth.
Beardie’s elder brother, William Scott of
Raeburn, my great-granduncle, was killed about the age of
twenty-one, in a duel with Pringle of
Crichton, grandfather of the present Mark Pringle of Clifton. They fought with swords, as was the
fashion of the time, in a field near Selkirk, called from the catastrophe the
Raeburn Meadow-spot. Pringle
fled from Scotland to Spain, and was long a captive and slave in Barbary. Beardie became, of course, Tutor of
Raeburn, as the old Scottish phrase called him, that is, guardian to
his infant nephew, father of the present Walter
Scott of Raeburn. He also managed the estates of Makerstoun,
being nearly related to that family by his mother, Barbara
MacDougal. I suppose he had some allowance for his care in
either case, and subsisted upon that and the fortune which he had by his wife,
a Miss Campbell of Silvercraigs, in the west, through
which connexion my father used to call cousin, as they
say, with the Campbells of Blythswood. Beardie was a man
of some learning, and a friend of Dr
Pitcairn, to whom his politics probably made him acceptable.
They had a Tory or Jacobite club in Edinburgh, in which the conversation is
said to have been maintained in Latin. Old Beardie died in
a house, still standing, at the north-east entrance to the Churchyard of Kelso,
about . . . .
He left three sons. The eldest, Walter,
had a family, of which any that now remain have been long settled in America:
the male-heirs are long since extinct. The third was
William, father of James Scott,
well known in India as one of the original settlers of Prince of Wales’s island: he had, besides, a numerous
family both of sons and daughters, and died at Lasswade, in Mid-Lothian, about
....
The second, Robert
Scott, was my grandfather. He was originally bred to the sea;
but, being shipwrecked near Dundee in his trial voyage, he took such a sincere
dislike to that element, that he could not be persuaded to a second attempt.
This occasioned a quarrel between him and his father, who left him to shift for
himself. Robert was one of those active spirits to whom
this was no misfortune. He turned Whig upon the spot, and fairly abjured his
father’s politics, and his learned poverty. His chief and relative,
Mr Scott of Harden, gave him a lease of the farm of
Sandy-Knowe, comprehending the rocks in the centre of which Smailholm or
Sandy-Knowe Tower is situated. He took for his shepherd an old man, called
Hogg, who willingly lent him, out of respect to his
family, his whole savings, about L.30, to stock the new farm. With this sum,
which it seems was at the time sufficient for the purpose, the master and
servant set off to purchase a stock of sheep at Whitsun-Tryste, a fair held on
a hill near Wooler in Northumberland. The old shepherd went carefully from
drove to drove, till he found a hirsel likely to answer
their purpose, and then returned to tell his master to come up and conclude the
bargain. But what was his surprise to see him galloping a mettled hunter about
the race-course, and to find he had expended the whole stock in this
extraordinary purchase! Moses’s
bargain of green spectacles did not strike more dismay into the Vicar of Wakefield’s family than my
grandfather’s rashness into the poor old shep-herd. The
thing, however, was irretrievable, and they returned without the sheep. In the
course of a few days, however, my grandfather, who was one of the best horsemen
of his time, attended John Scott of Harden’s hounds
on this game horse, and displayed him to such advantage that he sold him for
double the original price. The farm was now stocked in earnest; and the rest of
my grandfather’s career was that of successful industry. He was one of
the first who were active in the cattle trade, afterwards carried to such
extent between the Highlands of Scotland and the leading counties in England,
and by his droving transactions acquired a considerable sum of money. He was a
man of middle stature, extremely active, quick, keen, and fiery in his temper,
stubbornly honest, and so distinguished for his skill in country matters, that
he was the general referee in all points of dispute which occurred in the
neighbourhood. His birth being admitted as gentle, gave
him access to the best society in the county, and his dexterity in country
sports, particularly hunting, made him an acceptable companion in the field as
well as at the table.*
Robert Scott of Sandy-Knowe, married, in
1728, Barbara Haliburton, daughter of Thomas Haliburton of Newmains, an ancient and
respectable family in Berwickshire. Among other patrimonial possessions, they
enjoyed the part of Dryburgh, now the property of the Earl of Buchan, comprehending the ruins of the Abbey. My
granduncle, Robert Haliburton, having no
male heirs,
* The present Lord
Haddington, and other gentlemen conversant with the
south country, remember my grandfather well. He was a line alert
figure, and wore a jockey cap over his grey hair. [1826].
this estate, as well as the
representation of the family, would have devolved upon my father, and indeed
Old Newmains had settled it upon him; but this was prevented by the misfortunes
of my granduncle, a weak silly man, who engaged in trade, for which he had
neither stock nor talents, and became bankrupt. The ancient patrimony was sold
for a trifle (about L.3000), and my father, who might have purchased it with
ease, was dissuaded by my grandfather, who at that time believed a more
advantageous purchase might have been made of some lands which
Raeburn thought of selling. And thus we have nothing
left of Dryburgh, although my father’s maternal inheritance, but the
right of stretching our bones where mine may perhaps be laid ere any eye but my
own glances over these pages.
Walter Scott, my father, was born in
1729, and educated to the profession of a Writer to the Signet. He was the
eldest of a large family, several of whom I shall have occasion to mention with
a tribute of sincere gratitude. My father was a singular instance of a man
rising to eminence in a profession for which nature had in some degree unfitted
him. He had indeed a turn for labour, and a pleasure in analyzing the abstruse
feudal doctrines connected with conveyancing, which would probably have
rendered him unrivalled in the line of a special pleader, had there been such a
profession in Scotland; but in the actual business of the profession which he
embraced, in that sharp and intuitive perception which is necessary in driving
bargains for himself and others, in availing himself of the wants, necessities,
caprices, and follies of some, and guarding against the knavery and malice of
others, uncle Toby himself could not have
conducted himself with more simplicity than my father.
Most attorneys have been suspected, more or less justly, of making their own
fortune at the expense of their clients—my father’s fate was to vindicate
his calling from the stain in one instance, for in many cases his clients
contrived to ease him of considerable sums. Many worshipful and be-knighted
names occur to my memory, who did him the honour to run in his debt to the
amount of thousands, and to pay him with a lawsuit, or a commission of
bankruptcy, as the case happened. But they are gone to a different accounting,
and it would be ungenerous to visit their disgrace upon their descendants. My
father was wont also to give openings, to those who were pleased to take them,
to pick a quarrel with him. He had a zeal for his clients which was almost
ludicrous: far from coldly discharging the duties of his employment towards
them, he thought for them, felt for their honour as for his own, and rather
risked disobliging them than neglecting any thing to which he conceived their
duty bound them. If there was an old mother or aunt to be maintained, he was, I
am afraid, too apt to administer to their necessities from what the young heir
had destined exclusively to his pleasures. This ready discharge of obligations
which the Civilians tell us are only natural and not legal, did not, I fear,
recommend him to his employers. Yet his practice was, at one period of his
life, very extensive. He understood his business theoretically, and was early
introduced to it by a partnership with George Chalmers,
Writer to the Signet, under whom he had served his apprenticeship.
His person and face were uncommonly handsome, with an
expression of sweetness of temper, which was not fal-lacious; his manners were rather formal, but full of
genuine kindness, especially when exercising the duties of hospitality. His
general habits were not only temperate, but severely abstemious; but upon a
festival occasion, there were few whom a moderate glass of wine exhilarated to
such a lively degree. His religion, in which he was devoutly sincere, was
Calvinism of the strictest kind, and his favourite study related to church
history. I suspect the good old man was often engaged with Knox and Spottiswoode’s folios, when, immured in his solitary
room, he was supposed to be immersed in professional researches. In his
political principles he was a steady friend to freedom, with a bias, however,
to the monarchical part of our constitution, which he considered as peculiarly
exposed to danger during the later years of his life. He had much of ancient
Scottish prejudice respecting the forms of marriages, funerals, christenings,
and so forth, and was always vexed at any neglect of etiquette upon such
occasions. As his education had not been upon an enlarged plan, it could not be
expected that he should be an enlightened scholar, but he had not passed
through a busy life without observation; and his remarks upon times and manners
often exhibited strong traits of practical though untaught philosophy. Let me
conclude this sketch, which I am unconscious of having overcharged, with a few
lines written by the late Mrs Cockburn*
upon the subject. They
* Mrs Cockburn
(born Miss Rutherford of Fairnalie) was the
authoress of the beautiful song
“I have seen the smiling Of fortune beguiling.” [1826]. made one among a set of poetical characters which were
given as toasts among a few friends, and we must hold them to contain a
striking likeness, since the original was recognised so soon as they were read
aloud.
“To a thing that’s uncommon A youth of discretion, Who, though vastly handsome, Despises flirtation: To the friend in affliction, The heart of affection, Who may hear the last trump Without dread of detection.”
In [April, 1758] my father married Anne Rutherford, eldest daughter of Dr John Rutherford, professor of medicine in the University of
Edinburgh. He was one of those pupils of Boerhaave to whom the school of medicine in our northern
metropolis owes its rise, and a man distinguished for professional talent, for
lively wit, and for literary acquirements. Dr Rutherford
was twice married. His first wife, of whom my mother is the sole surviving
child, was a daughter of Sir John
Swinton of Swinton, a family which produced many distinguished
warriors during the middle ages, and which, for antiquity and honourable
alliances, may rank with any in Britain. My grandfather’s second wife was
Miss Mackay, by whom he had a second family, of whom
are now (1808) alive, Dr Daniel
Rutherford, professor of botany in the University of Edinburgh,
and Misses Janet and Christian Rutherford, amiable and accomplished
women.
My father and mother had a very numerous family, no fewer, I
believe, than twelve children, of whom many were highly promising, though only five survived very
early youth. My eldest brother (that is, the eldest whom I remember to have
seen) was Robert Scott, so called after
my uncle, of whom I shall have much to say hereafter. He was bred in the
King’s service, under Admiral, then Captain
William Dickson, and was in most of Rodney’s battles. His temper was bold and haughty, and to
me was often checkered with what I felt to be capricious tyranny. In other
respects I loved him much, for he had a strong turn for literature, read poetry
with taste and judgment, and composed verses himself which had gained him great
applause among his messmates. Witness the following elegy upon the supposed
loss of the vessel, composed the night before
Rodney’s celebrated battle of April the 12th,
1782. It alludes to the various amusements of his mess.— “No more the geese shall cackle on the poop, No more the bagpipe through the orlop sound, No more the midshipmen, a jovial group, Shall toast the girls, and push the bottle round. In death’s dark road at anchor fast they stay, Till Heaven’s loud signal shall in thunder
roar, Then starting up, all hands shall quick obey, Sheet home the topsail, and with speed
unmoor.” Robert sung agreeably (a virtue which was never seen in
me) understood the mechanical arts, and when in good humour, could regale us
with many a tale of bold adventure and narrow escapes. When in bad humour,
however, he gave us a practical taste of what was then man-of-war’s
discipline, and kicked and cuffed without mercy. I have often thought how he
might have distinguished himself had he continued in the
navy until the present times, so glorious for nautical exploit. But the peace
of Paris cut off all hopes of promotion for those who had not great interest;
and some disgust which his proud spirit had taken at harsh usage from a
superior officer combined to throw poor Robert into the
East India Company’s service, for which his habits were ill adapted. He
made two voyages to the East, and died a victim to the climate in . . .
John Scott, my second brother, is about
three years older than me. He addicted himself to the military service, and is
now brevet-major in the 73d regiment.*
I had an only sister, Anne
Scott, who seemed to be from her cradle the butt for mischance
to shoot arrows at. Her childhood was marked by perilous escapes from the most
extraordinary accidents. Among others, I remember an iron-railed door leading
into the area in the centre of George’s Square being closed by the wind,
while her fingers were betwixt the hasp and staple. Her hand was thus locked
in, and must have been smashed to pieces, had not the bones of her fingers been
remarkably slight and thin. As it was, the hand was cruelly mangled. On another
occasion she was nearly drowned in a pond, or old quarry-hole, in what was then
called Brown’s Park, on the south side of the square. But the most
unfortunate accident, and which, though it happened while she was only six
* He was this year made major of the second battalion,
by the kind intercession of Mr
Canning at the War-Office 1809 He retired from the army,
and kept house with my mother. His health was totally broken, and he
died, yet a young man, on 8th May, 1816.—[1826].
years old, proved the remote cause of
her death, was her cap accidentally taking fire. The child was alone in the
room, and before assistance could be obtained, her head was dreadfully
scorched. After a lingering and dangerous illness, she recovered—but never to
enjoy perfect health. The slightest cold occasioned swellings in her face, and
other indications of a delicate constitution. At length, in [1801], poor Anne
was taken ill, and died after a very short interval. Her temper, like that of
her brothers, was peculiar, and in her, perhaps, it showed more odd, from the
habits of indulgence which her nervous illnesses had formed. But she was at
heart an affectionate and kind girl, neither void of talent nor of feeling,
though living in an ideal world which she had framed to herself by the force of
imagination. Anne was my junior by about a year.
A year lower in the list was my brother Thomas Scott, who is still alive.*
Last, and most unfortunate of our family, was my youngest
brother Daniel. With the same aversion
to labour, or rather, I should say, the same determined indolence that marked
us all, he had neither the vivacity of intellect which supplies the want of
diligence,
* Poor Tom, a
man of infinite humour and excellent parts, pursued for some time my
father’s profession; but he was unfortunate, from engaging in
speculations respecting farms and matters out of the line of his proper
business. He afterwards became paymaster of the 70th regiment, and died
in Canada. Tom married Elizabeth, a daughter of the family of
M’Culloch of Ardwell, an ancient
Galwegian stock, by whom he left a son, Walter
Scott, now second lieutenant of engineers in the East
India Company’s service, Bombay, and three daughters—Jessie, married to Lieutenant-Colonel Huxley; 2,
Anne; 3, Eliza—the two last still
unmarried.—[1826].
nor the pride which renders the most detested labour better
than dependence or contempt. His career was as unfortunate as might be augured
from such an unhappy combination, and after various unsuccessful attempts to
establish himself in life, he died on his return from the West Indies, in [July
1806],
Having premised so much of my family, I return to my own
story. I was born, as I believe, on the 15th August, 1771, in a house belonging
to my father, at the head of the College Wynd. It was pulled down, with others,
to make room for the northern front of the new College. I was an uncommonly
healthy child, but had nearly died in consequence of my first nurse being ill
of a consumption, a circumstance which she chose to conceal, though to do so
was murder to both herself and me. She went privately to consult Dr Black, the celebrated professor of
chemistry, who put my father on his guard. The woman was dismissed, and I was
consigned to a healthy peasant, who is still alive to boast of her laddie being what she calls a grand
gentleman.* I showed every sign of health and strength until I was
about eighteen months old. One night, I have been often told, I showed great
reluctance to be caught and put to bed, and after being chased about the room,
was apprehended and consigned to my dormitory with some difficulty. It was the
last time I was to show such personal agility. In the morning I was discovered
to be affected with the fever which often accompanies the cutting of large
teeth. It held me three days. On the
* She died in 1810.—[1826].
fourth, when they went to bathe me as
usual, they discovered that I had lost the power of my right leg. My
grandfather, an excellent anatomist as well as physician, the late worthy
Alexander Wood, and many others of
the most respectable of the faculty, were consulted. There appeared to be no
dislocation or sprain; blisters and other topical remedies were applied in
vain. When the efforts of regular physicians had been exhausted, without the
slightest success, my anxious parents, during the course of many years, eagerly
grasped at every prospect of cure which was held out by the promise of
empirics, or of ancient ladies or gentlemen who conceived themselves entitled
to recommend various remedies, some of which were of a nature sufficiently
singular. But the advice of my grandfather, Dr
Rutherford, that I should be sent to reside in the country, to
give the chance of natural exertion, excited by free air and liberty, was first
resorted to, and before I have the recollection of the slightest event, I was,
agreeably to this friendly counsel, an inmate in the farm-house of Sandy-Knowe.
An odd incident is worth recording. It seems my mother had
sent a maid to take charge of me, that I might be no inconvenience in the
family. But the damsel sent on that important mission had left her heart behind
her, in the keeping of some wild fellow, it is likely, who had done and said
more to her than he was like to make good. She became extremely desirous to
return to Edinburgh, and as my mother made a point of her remaining where she
was, she contracted a sort of hatred at poor me, as the cause of her being detained at Sandy-Knowe. This rose, I suppose, to a sort of
delirious affection, for she confessed to old Alison
Wilson, the housekeeper, that she had carried me up to the
Craigs, meaning, under a strong temptation of the Devil, to cut my throat with
her scissors, and bury me in the moss. Alison instantly
took possession of my person, and took care that her confidant should not be
subject to any farther temptation, so far as I was concerned. She was
dismissed, of course, and I have heard became afterwards a lunatic.
It is here at Sandy-Knowe, in the residence of my paternal
grandfather, already mentioned, that
I have the first consciousness of existence; and I recollect distinctly that my
situation and appearance were a little whimsical. Among the odd remedies
recurred to to aid my lameness, some one had recommended that so often as a
sheep was killed for the use of the family, I should be stripped, and swathed
up in the skin warm as it was flayed from the carcass of the animal. In this
Tartar-like habiliment I well remember lying upon the floor of the little
parlour in the farm-house, while my grandfather, a venerable old man with white
hair, used every excitement to make me try to crawl. I also distinctly remember
the late Sir George MacDougal of
Makerstoun, father of the present Sir Henry Hay
MacDougal, joining in this kindly attempt. He was, God knows
how,* a relation of ours, and I still recollect him in his
* He was a second cousin of my grandfather’s.
Isobel MacDougal, wife of Walter, the first Laird of Raeburn,
and mother of Walter Scott,
called Beardie, was grand aunt, I take it, to the
late Sir George MacDougal. There
was always great friendship between
old fashioned military habit (he had
been colonel of the Greys), with a small cocked hat, deeply laced, an
embroidered scarlet waistcoat, and a light-coloured coat, with milk-white locks
tied in a military fashion, kneeling on the ground before me, and dragging his
watch along the carpet to induce me to follow it. The benevolent old soldier
and the infant wrapped in his sheepskin would have afforded an odd group to
uninterested spectators. This must have happened about my third year, for
Sir George MacDougal and my grandfather both died
shortly after that period.
My grandmother continued for some years to take charge of the
farm, assisted by my father’s second brother, Mr Thomas Scott, who resided at Crailing, as
factor or land-steward for Mr Scott of
Danesfield, then proprietor of that estate.* This was during the
heat of the American war, and I remember being as anxious on my uncle’s
weekly visits (for we heard news at no other time) to hear of the defeat of
Washington, as if I had had some
deep and personal cause of antipathy to him. I know not how this was combined
with a very strong prejudice in favour of the Stuart
family, which
us and the Makerston family. It
singularly happened that at the burial of the late Sir Henry MacDougal, my cousin
William Scott younger of Raeburn, and I myself were the nearest
blood-relations present, although our connexion was of so old a date,
and ranked as pall-bearers accordingly. [1826].
* My uncle afterwards resided at Elliston, and then
took from Mr Cornelius Elliot
the estate of Woollee. Finally, he retired to Monklaw, in the
neighbourhood of Jedburgh, where he died, 1823, at the advanced age of
ninety years, and in full possession of his faculties. It was a fine
thing to hear him talk over the change of the country which he had
witnessed.—[1826].
I had originally imbibed from the songs and tales of the
Jacobites. This latter political propensity was deeply confirmed by the stories
told in my hearing of the cruelties exercised in the executions at Carlisle,
and in the Highlands, after the battle of Culloden. One or two of our own
distant relations had fallen on that occasion, and I remember detesting the
name of Cumberland with more than infant
hatred. Mr Curle, farmer at Yetbyre, husband of one of my
aunts, had been present at their execution; and it was probably from him that I
first heard these tragic tales which made so great an impression on me. The
local information, which I conceive had some share in forming my future taste
and pursuits, I derived from the old songs and tales which then formed the
amusement of a retired country family. My grandmother, in whose youth the old
Border depredations were matter of recent tradition, used to tell me many a
tale of Watt of Harden, Wight Willie of Aikwood, Jamie Tellfer of the fair Dodhead, and other heroes—merrymen
all of the persuasion and calling of Robin
Hood and Little John. A more
recent hero, but not of less note, was the celebrated Diel of Littledean, whom she well
remembered, as he had married her mother’s sister. Of this extraordinary
person I learned many a story, grave and gay, comic and warlike. Two or three
old books which lay in the window-seat were explored for my amusement in the
tedious winter days. Automathes and Ramsay’sTea-table Miscellany were my favourites,
although at a later period an odd volume of Josephus’sWars of the Jews divided my partiality.
My kind and affectionate aunt, Miss Janet Scott, whose
memory will ever be dear to me, used to read these works to me with admirable
patience, until I could repeat long passages by heart. The ballad of Hardyknute I was early
master of, to the great annoyance of almost our only visitor, the worthy
clergyman of the parish, Dr Duncan, who
had not patience to have a sober chat interrupted by my shouting forth this
ditty. Methinks I now see his tall thin emaciated figure, his legs cased in
clasped gambadoes, and his face of a length that would have rivalled the
Knight of La Mancha’s, and hear
him exclaiming, “One may as well speak in the mouth of a cannon as
where that child is.” With this little acidity, which was natural
to him, he was a most excellent and benevolent man, a gentleman in every
feeling, and altogether different from those of his order who cringe at the
tables of the gentry, or domineer and riot at those of the yeomanry. In his
youth he had been chaplain in the family of Lord
Marchmont—had seen Pope—and could talk familiarly of many characters who had survived
the Augustan age of Queen Anne. Though
valetudinary, he lived to be nearly ninety, and to welcome to Scotland his son,
Colonel William Duncan, who, with the highest
character for military and civil merit, had made a considerable fortune in
India. In [1795], a few days before his death, I paid him a visit, to enquire
after his health. I found him emaciated to the last degree, wrapped in a tartan
night-gown, and employed with all the activity of health and youth in
correcting a history of the Revolution, which he intended should be given to
the public when he was no more. He read me several passages with a voice
naturally strong, and which the feelings of an author then
raised above the depression of age and declining health. I begged him to spare
this fatigue, which could not but injure his health. His answer was remarkable,
“I know,” he said, “that I cannot survive a
fortnight—and what signifies an exertion that can at worst only accelerate
my death a few days?” I marvelled at the composure of this reply,
for his appearance sufficiently vouched the truth of his prophecy, and rode
home to my uncle’s (then my abode), musing what there could be in the
spirit of authorship that could inspire its votaries with the courage of
martyrs. He died within less than the period he assigned—with which event I
close my digression.
I was in my fourth year when my father was advised that the
Bath waters might be of some advantage to my lameness. My affectionate
aunt, although such a journey
promised to a person of her retired habits any thing but pleasure or amusement,
undertook as readily to accompany me to the wells of Bladud, as if she had expected all the delight that ever the
prospect of a watering-place held out to its most impatient visitants. My
health was by this time a good deal confirmed by the country air, and the
influence of that imperceptible and unfatiguing exercise to which the good
sense of my grandfather had subjected me; for when the day was fine, I was
usually carried out and laid down beside the old shepherd, among the crags or
rocks round which he fed his sheep. The impatience of a child soon inclined me
to struggle with my infirmity, and I began by degrees to stand, to walk, and to
run. Although the limb affected was much
shrunk and contracted, my general health, which was of more importance, was
much strengthened by being frequently in the open air, and, in a word, I who in
a city had probably been condemned to hopeless and helpless decrepitude, was
now a healthy, high-spirited, and, my lameness apart, a sturdy
child—non sine diis animosus
infans.
We went to London by sea, and it may gratify the curiosity of
minute biographers to learn, that our voyage was performed in the Duchess of Buccleuch, Captain
Beatson, master. At London we made a short stay, and saw some of
the common shows exhibited to strangers. When, twenty-five years afterwards, I
visited the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, I was astonished to find how
accurate my recollections of these celebrated places of visitation proved to
be, and I have ever since trusted more implicitly to my juvenile reminiscences.
At Bath, where I lived about a year, I went through all the usual discipline of
the pump-room and baths, but I believe without the least advantage to my
lameness. During my residence at Bath, I acquired the rudiments of reading at a
day-school, kept by an old dame near our lodgings, and I had never a more
regular teacher, although I think I did not attend her a quarter of a year. An
occasional lesson from my aunt supplied the rest. Afterwards, when grown a big
boy, I had a few lessons from Mr Stalker of Edinburgh, and
finally from the Rev. Mr Clure. But I never acquired a
just pronunciation, nor could I read with much propriety.
In other respects my residence at Bath is marked by very pleasing recollections. The venerable John Home, author of Douglas, was then at the watering-place,
and paid much attention to my aunt and to me. His wife, who has survived him,
was then an invalid, and used to take the air in her carriage on the Downs,
when I was often invited to accompany her. But the most delightful
recollections of Bath are dated after the arrival of my uncle, Captain Robert Scott, who introduced me to all
the little amusements which suited my age, and, above all, to the theatre. The
play was As You Like
It; and the witchery of the whole scene is alive in my mind at this
moment. I made, I believe, noise more than enough, and remember being so much
scandalized at the quarrel between Orlando
and his brother in the first scene, that I screamed out, “A’
n’t they brothers?” A few weeks’ residence at home
convinced me, who had till then been an only child in the house of my
grandfather, that a quarrel between brothers was a very natural event.
The other circumstances I recollect of my residence in Bath
are but trifling, yet I never recall them without a feeling of pleasure. The
beauties of the parade (which of them I know not), with the river Avon winding
around it, and the lowing of the cattle from the opposite hills, are warm in my
recollection, and are only rivalled by the splendours of a toy-shop somewhere
near the Orange Grove. I had acquired, I know not by what means, a kind of
superstitious terror for statuary of all kinds. No ancient Iconoclast or modern
Calvinist could have looked on the outside of the abbey church (if I mistake
not, the principal church at Bath is so
called) with more horror than the image of Jacob’s Ladder, with all its
angels, presented to my infant eye. My uncle effectually combated my terrors, and formally introduced
me to a statue of Neptune, which perhaps
still keeps guard at the side of the Avon, where a pleasure boat crosses to
Spring Gardens.
After being a year at Bath, I returned first to Edinburgh,
and afterwards for a season to Sandy-Knowe; and thus the time whiled away till
about my eighth year, when it was thought sea-bathing might be of service to my
lameness.
For this purpose, still under my aunt’s protection, I
remained some weeks at Prestonpans, a circumstance not worth mentioning,
excepting to record my juvenile intimacy with an old military veteran,
Dalgetty by name, who had pitched his tent in that
little village, after all his campaigns subsisting upon an ensign’s
half-pay, though called by courtesy a Captain. As this old gentleman, who had
been in all the German wars, found very few to listen to his tales of military
feats, he formed a sort of alliance with me, and I used invariably to attend
him for the pleasure of hearing those communications. Sometimes our
conversation turned on the American war, which was then raging. It was about
the time of Burgoyne’s unfortunate
expedition, to which my Captain and I augured different conclusions. Somebody
had showed me a map of North America, and, struck with the rugged appearance of
the country, and the quantity of lakes, I expressed some doubts on the subject
of the General’s arriving safely at the end of his journey, which were
very indignantly refuted by the Captain. The news of the
Saratoga disaster, while it gave me a little triumph, rather shook my intimacy
with the veteran.*
* Besides this veteran, I found another ally at
Prestonpans, in the person of George
Constable, an old friend of my father’s, educated to
the law, but retired upon his independent property, and generally residing
near Dundee. He had many of those peculiarities of temper which long
afterwards I tried to develope in the character of Jonathan Oldbuck. It is very odd, that though I am
unconscious of any thing in which I strictly copied the manners of my old friend, the resemblance was nevertheless
detected by George Chalmers, Esq.,
solicitor, London, an old friend, both of my father and Mr
Constable, and who affirmed to my late friend, Lord Kinedder, that I must needs be the
author of the Antiquary, since he recognised the portrait of
George Constable. But my friend
George was not so decided an enemy to womankind as
his representative Monkbarns. On the
contrary, I rather suspect that he had a tendresse for my Aunt
Jenny, who even then was a most beautiful woman, though
somewhat advanced in life. To the close of her life, she had the finest
eyes and teeth I ever saw, and though she could be sufficiently sharp when
she had a mind, her general behaviour was genteel and ladylike. However
this might be, I derived a great deal of curious information from
George Constable, both at this early period, and
afterwards. He was constantly philandering about my aunt, and of course
very kind to me. He was the first person who told me about Falstaff and Hotspur, and other characters in Shakspeare. What idea I annexed to them I
know not, but I must have annexed some, for I remember quite well being
interested on the subject. Indeed, I rather suspect that children derive
impulses of a powerful and important kind in hearing things which they
cannot entirely comprehend; and therefore, that to write down to children’s understanding is a mistake; set them on
the scent, and let them puzzle it out. To return to George
Constable, I knew him well at a much later period. He used
always to dine at my father’s house of a Sunday, and was authorized
to turn the conversation out of the austere and Calvinistic tone, which it
usually maintained on that day, upon subjects of history or auld langsyne.
He remembered the forty-five, and told many excellent stories, all with a
strong dash of a peculiar caustic humour.
George’s sworn ally as a
brother antiquary was John Davidson,
then Keeper of the Signet; and I remember his flattering and com-
From Prestonpans I was transported back to my father’s
house in George’s Square, which continued to be my most established place
of residence, until my marriage in 1797. I felt the change from being a single
indulged brat, to becoming a member of a large family, very severely; for under
the gentle government of my kind grandmother, who was meekness itself, and of
my aunt, who, though of an higher temper, was exceedingly attached to me, I had
acquired a degree of license which could not be permitted in a large family. I
had sense enough, however, to bend my temper to my new circumstances; but such
was the agony which I internally experienced, that I have guarded against
nothing more in the education of my own family, than against their acquiring
habits of self-willed caprice and domination. I found much consolation during
this period of mortification in the partiality of my mother. She join-
pelling me to go to dine there. A
writer’s apprentice with the Keeper cf the Signet, whose least
officer kept us in order! It was an awful event. Thither, however, I
went with some secret expectation of a scantling of good claret.
Mr D. had a son whose taste
inclined him to the army, to which his father, who had designed him for
the bar, gave a most unwilling consent. He was at this time a young
officer, and he and I, leaving the two seniors to proceed in their chat
as they pleased, never once opened our mouths either to them or each
other. The Pragmatic Sanction happened unfortunately to become the
theme of their conversation, when Constable said in jest, “Now, John, I’ll
wad you a plack that neither of these two lads ever heard of the
Pragmatic Sanction.”—“Not heard of the Pragmatic
Sanction! “said John Davidson; “I
would like to see that;” and with a voice of thunder, he
asked his son the fatal question. As young D.
modestly allowed he knew nothing about it, his father drove him from
the table in a rage, and I absconded during the confusion; nor could
Constable ever bring me back again to his
friend Davidson’s. [1826].
ed to a light and happy temper of mind a strong turn to
study poetry and works of imagination. She was sincerely devout, but her
religion was, as became her sex, of a cast less austere than my father’s.
Still, the discipline of the Presbyterian Sabbath was severely strict, and I
think injudiciously so. Although Bunyan’sPilgrim, Gesner’sDeath of Abel, Rowe’sLetters, and one or two other books, which, for that reason, I
still have a favour for, were admitted to relieve the gloom of one dull sermon
succeeding to another—there was far too much tedium annexed to the duties of
the day; and in the end it did none of us any good.
My week-day tasks were more agreeable. My lameness and my
solitary habits had made me a tolerable reader, and my hours of leisure were
usually spent in reading aloud to my mother Pope’stranslation of Homer, which, excepting a few traditionary ballads,
and the songs in Allan
Ramsay’sEvergreen, was the first poetry which I
perused. My mother had good natural
taste and great feeling: she used to make me pause upon those passages which
expressed generous and worthy sentiments, and if she could not divert me from
those which were descriptive of battle and tumult, she contrived at least to
divide my attention between them. My own enthusiasm, however, was chiefly
awakened by the wonderful and the terrible—the common taste of children, but in
which I have remained a child even unto this day. I got by heart, not as a
task, but almost without intending it, the passages with which I was most
pleased, and used to recite them aloud, both when alone and to others—more
willingly, however, in my hours of
solitude, for I had observed some auditors smile, and I dreaded ridicule at
that time of life more than I have ever done since.
In [1779] I was sent to the second class of the Grammar
School, or High School of Edinburgh, then taught by Mr Luke Fraser, a good Latin scholar and a very worthy man.
Though I had received, with my brothers, in private, lessons of Latin from
Mr James French, now a minister of
the Kirk of Scotland, I was nevertheless rather behind the class in which I was
placed both in years and in progress. This was a real disadvantage, and one to
which a boy of lively temper and talents ought to be as little exposed as one
who might be less expected to make up his lee-way, as it is called. The
situation has the unfortunate effect of reconciling a boy of the former
character (which in a posthumous work I may claim for my own) to holding a
subordinate station among his class-fellows—to which he would otherwise affix
disgrace. There is also, from the constitution of the High School, a certain
danger not sufficiently attended to. The boys take precedence in their places,
as they are called, according to their merit, and it requires a long while, in
general, before even a clever boy, if he falls behind the class, or is put into
one for which he is not quite ready, can force his way to the situation which
his abilities really entitle him to hold. But, in the mean while, he is
necessarily led to be the associate and companion of those inferior spirits
with whom he is placed; for the system of precedence, though it does not limit
the general intercourse among the boys, has nevertheless the effect of throwing them into clubs and coteries, according to the
vicinity of the seats they hold. A boy of good talents, therefore, placed, even
for a time, among his inferiors, especially if they be also his elders, learns
to participate in their pursuits and objects of ambition, which are usually
very distinct from the acquisition of learning; and it will be well if he does
not also imitate them in that indifference which is contented with bustling
over a lesson, so as to avoid punishment, without affecting superiority, or
aiming at reward. It was probably owing to this circumstance that, although at
a more advanced period of life I have enjoyed considerable facility in
acquiring languages, I did not make any great figure at the High School or, at
least, any exertions which I made were desultory and little to be depended on.
Our class contained some very excellent scholars. The first
Dux was James Buchan, who retained his honoured place,
almost without a day’s interval, all the while we were at the High
School. He was afterwards at the head of the medical staff in Egypt, and in
exposing himself to the plague infection, by attending the hospitals there,
displayed the same well-regulated and gentle, yet determined perseverance,
which placed him most worthily at the head of his school-fellows, while many
lads of livelier parts and dispositions held an inferior station. The next best
scholars (sed longo intervallo) were
my friend David Douglas, the heir and
élève of the celebrated Adam
Smith, and James Hope, now
a Writer to the Signet, both since well known and distinguished in their departments of the law. As for myself, I
glanced like a meteor from one end of the class to the other, and commonly
disgusted my kind master as much by negligence and frivolity, as I occasionally
pleased him by flashes of intellect and talent. Among my companions, my
good-nature and a flow of ready imagination rendered me very popular. Boys are
uncommonly just in their feelings, and at least equally generous. My lameness,
and the efforts which I made to supply that disadvantage, by making up in
address what I wanted in activity, engaged the latter principle in my favour;
and in the winter play hours, when hard exercise was impossible, my tales used
to assemble an admiring audience round Luckie
Brown’s fireside, and happy was he that could sit next to
the inexhaustible narrator. I was also, though often negligent of my own task,
always ready to assist my friends, and hence I had a little party of staunch
partisans and adherents, stout of Land and heart, though somewhat dull of head,
the very tools for raising a hero to eminence. So, on the whole, I made a
brighter figure in the yards than in the class.*
My father did not trust our education solely to our High
School lessons. We had a tutor at home, a young
* I read not long since, in that authentic record
called the Percy
Anecdotes, that I had been educated at Musselburgh school,
where I had been distinguished as an absolute dunce, only Dr Blair, seeing farther into the
millstone, had pronounced there was fire in it. I never was at
Musselburgh school in my life, and though I have met Dr
Blair at my father’s and elsewhere, I never had
the good fortune to attract his notice, to my knowledge. Lastly, I was
never a dunce, nor thought to be so, but an incorrigibly idle imp, who
was always longing to do something else than what was enjoined
him.—[1826].
man of an excellent disposition, and a laborious student.
He was bred to the Kirk, but unfortunately took such a very strong turn to
fanaticism, that he afterwards resigned an excellent living in a seaport town,
merely because he could not persuade the mariners of the guilt of setting sail
of a Sabbath,—in which, by the by, he was less likely to be successful, as,
cæteris paribus,
sailors, from an opinion that it is a fortunate omen, always choose to weigh
anchor on that day. The calibre of this young man’s understanding may be
judged of by this anecdote; but in other respects, he was a faithful and active
instructor; and from him chiefly I learned writing and arithmetic. I repeated
to him my French lessons, and studied with him my themes in the classics, but
not classically. I also acquired, by disputing with him, for this he readily
permitted, some knowledge of school-divinity and church-history, and a great
acquaintance in particular with the old books describing the early history of
the Church of Scotland, the wars and sufferings of the Covenanters, and so
forth. I, with a head on fire for chivalry, was a Cavalier; my friend was a
Roundhead; I was a Tory, and he was a Whig. I hated Presbyterians, and admired
Montrose with his victorious
Highlanders; he liked the Presbyterian Ulysses, the dark and politic Argyle; so that we never wanted subjects of dispute, but our
disputes were always amicable. In all these tenets there was no real conviction
on my part, arising out of acquaintance with the views or principles of either
party; nor had my antagonist address enough to turn the debate on such topics.
I took up my politics at that period as King Charles II. did his religion, from an idea
that the Cavalier creed was the more gentlemanlike persuasion of the two.
After having been three years under Mr Fraser, our class was, in the usual routine
of the school, turned over to Dr Adam,
the Rector. It was from this respectable man that I first learned the value of
the knowledge I had hitherto considered only as a burdensome task. It was the
fashion to remain two years at his class, where we read Cæsar, and Livy, and
Sallust, in prose; Virgil, Horace,
and Terence, in verse. I had by this time
mastered, in some degree, the difficulties of the language, and began to be
sensible of its beauties. This was really gathering grapes from thistles; nor
shall I soon forget the swelling of my little pride when the Rector pronounced,
that though many of my school-fellows understood the Latin better,
Gualterus Scott was behind
few in following and enjoying the author’s meaning. Thus encouraged, I
distinguished myself by some attempts at poetical versions from
Horace and Virgil. Dr
Adam used to invite his scholars to such essays, but never made
them tasks. I gained some distinction upon these occasions, and the Rector in
future took much notice of me, and his judicious mixture of censure and praise
went far to counterbalance my habits of indolence and inattention. I saw I was
expected to do well, and I was piqued in honour to vindicate my master’s
favourable opinion. I climbed, therefore, to the first form; and, though I
never made a first-rate Latinist, my schoolfellows, and what was of more
consequence, I myself, considered that I had a character for learning to maintain. Dr Adam, to whom I owed so much,
never failed to remind me of my obligations when I had made some figure in the
literary world. He was, indeed, deeply imbued with that fortunate vanity which
alone could induce a man who has arms to pare and burn a muir to submit to the
yet more toilsome task of cultivating youth. As Catholics confide in the
imputed righteousness of their saints, so did the good old doctor plume himself
upon the success of his scholars in life, all of which he never failed (and
often justly) to claim as the creation, or at least the fruits, of his early
instructions. He remembered the fate of every boy at his school during the
fifty years he had superintended it, and always traced their success or
misfortunes entirely to their attention or negligence when under his care. His
“noisy mansion” which to others would have been a
melancholy bedlam, was the pride of his heart; and the only fatigues he felt,
amidst din and tumult, and the necessity of reading themes, hearing lessons,
and maintaining some degree of order at the same time, were relieved by
comparing himself to Cæsar, who could dictate to
three secretaries at once;—so ready is vanity to lighten the labours of duty.
It is a pity that a man so learned, so admirably adapted for
his station, so useful, so simple, so easily contented, should have had other
subjects of mortification. But the magistrates of Edinburgh, not knowing the
treasure they possessed in Dr Adam,
encouraged a savage fellow, called Nicol, one of the undermasters, in insulting his person and
authority. This man was an excellent
classical scholar, and an admirable convivial humourist (which latter quality
recommended him to the friendship of Burns); but worthless, drunken, and inhumanly cruel to the boys
under his charge. He carried his feud against the Rector within an inch of
assassination, for he waylaid and knocked him down in the dark. The favour
which this worthless rival obtained in the town-council led to other
consequences, which for some time clouded poor
Adam’s happiness and fair fame. When the French
Revolution broke out, and parties ran high in approving or condemning it, the
doctor incautiously joined the former. This was very natural, for as all his
ideas of existing governments were derived from his experience of the
town-council of Edinburgh, it must be admitted they scarce brooked comparison
with the free states of Rome and Greece, from which he borrowed his opinions
concerning republics. His want of caution in speaking on the political topics
of the day lost him the respect of the boys, most of whom were accustomed to
hear very different opinions on those matters in the bosom of their families.
This, however (which was long after my time), passed away with other heats of
the period, and the doctor continued his labours till about a year since, when
he was struck with palsy while teaching his class. He survived a few days, but
becoming delirious before his dissolution, conceived he was still in school,
and after some expressions of applause or censure, he said, “But it
grows dark—the boys may dismiss”—and instantly expired.
From Dr Adam’s
class I should, according to the usual routine, have
proceeded immediately to college. But, fortunately, I was not yet to lose, by a
total dismission from constraint, the acquaintance with the Latin which I had
acquired. My health had become rather delicate from rapid growth, and my father
was easily persuaded to allow me to spend half-a-year at Kelso with my kind
aunt, Miss Janet Scott, whose inmate I
again became. It was hardly worth mentioning that I had frequently visited her
during our short vacations.
At this time she resided in a small house, situated very
pleasantly in a large garden, to the eastward of the churchyard of Kelso, which
extended down to the Tweed. It was then my father’s property, from whom
it was afterwards purchased by my uncle. My grandmother was now dead, and my
aunt’s only companion, besides an old maid-servant, was my cousin,
Miss Barbara Scott, now Mrs
Meik. My time was here left entirely to my own disposal,
excepting for about four hours in the day, when I was expected to attend the
grammar-school of the village. The teacher at that time was Mr Lancelot Whale, an excellent classical
scholar, a humourist, and a worthy man. He had a supreme antipathy to the puns
which his very uncommon name frequently gave rise to; insomuch, that he made
his son spell the word Wale, which only occasioned the
young man being nicknamed the Prince of Wales by the
military mess to which he belonged. As for Whale, senior,
the least allusion to Jonah, or the terming him an odd
fish, or any similar quibble, was sure to put him beside himself. In point of
knowledge and taste, he was far too good
for the situation he held, which only required that he should give his scholars
a rough foundation in the Latin language. My time with him, though short, was
spent greatly to my advantage and his gratification. He was glad to escape to
Persius and Tacitus from the eternal Rudiments and Cornelius Nepos; and as perusing these authors with one who
began to understand them was to him a labour of love, I made considerable
progress under his instructions. I suspect, indeed, that some of the time
dedicated to me was withdrawn from the instruction of his more regular
scholars; but I was as grateful as I could. I acted as usher, and heard the
inferior classes, and I spouted the speech of Galgacus at
the public examination, which did not make the less impression on the audience
that few of them probably understood one word of it.
In the mean while my acquaintance with English literature was
gradually extending itself. In the intervals of my school hours I had always
perused with avidity such books of history or poetry or voyages and travels as
chance presented to me—not forgetting the usual, or rather ten times the usual,
quantity of fairy tales, eastern stories, romances, &c. These studies were
totally unregulated and undirected. My tutor thought it almost a sin to open a
profane play or poem; and my mother,
besides that she might be in some degree trammelled by the religious scruples
which he suggested, had no longer the opportunity to hear me read poetry as
formerly. I found, however, in her dressing-room (where I slept at one time)
some odd volumes of Shak-speare, nor can I easily forget the rapture with which I
sate up in my shirt reading them by the light of a fire in her apartment, until
the bustle of the family rising from supper warned me it was time to creep back
to my bed, where I was supposed to have been safely deposited since nine
o’clock. Chance, however, threw in my way a poetical preceptor. This was
no other than the excellent and benevolent Dr
Blacklock, well-known at that time as a literary character. I
know not how I attracted his attention, and that of some of the young men who
boarded in his family; but so it was that I became a frequent and favoured
guest. The kind old man opened to me the stores of his library, and through his
recommendation I became intimate with Ossian and Spenser. I
was delighted with both, yet I think chiefly with the latter poet. The tawdry
repetitions of the Ossianic phraseology disgusted me rather sooner than might
have been expected from my age. But Spenser I could have
read for ever. Too young to trouble myself about the allegory, I considered all
the knights and ladies and dragons and giants in their outward and exoteric
sense, and God only knows how delighted I was to find myself in such society.
As I had always a wonderful facility in retaining in my memory whatever verses
pleased me, the quantity of Spenser’s stanzas which
I could repeat was really marvellous. But this memory of mine was a very fickle
ally, and has through my whole life acted merely upon its own capricious
motion, and might have enabled me to adopt old Beattie of Meikledale’s answer, when complimented by a
certain reverend divine on the strength of the same faculty:— “No, sir,” answered the old
Borderer, “I have no command of my memory. It only retains what hits
my fancy, and probably, sir, if you were to preach to me for two hours, I
would not be able when you finished to remember a word you had been
saying.” My memory was precisely of the same kind; it seldom
failed to preserve most tenaciously a favourite passage of poetry, a playhouse
ditty, or, above all, a Border-raid ballad; but names, dates, and the other
technicalities of history, escaped me in a most melancholy degree. The
philosophy of history, a much more important subject, was also a sealed book at
this period of my life; but I gradually assembled much of what was striking and
picturesque in historical narrative; and when, in riper years, I attended more
to the deduction of general principles, I was furnished with a powerful host of
examples in illustration of them. I was, in short, like an ignorant gamester,
who kept up a good hand until he knew how to play it.
I left the High School, therefore, with a great quantity of
general information, ill arranged, indeed, and collected without system, yet
deeply impressed upon my mind; readily assorted by my power of connexion and
memory, and gilded, if I may be permitted to say so, by a vivid and active
imagination. If my studies were not under any direction at Edinburgh, in the
country, it may be well imagined, they were less so. A respectable subscription
library, a circulating library of ancient standing, and some private
book-shelves, were open to my random perusal, and I waded into the stream like
a blind man into a ford, without the power of searching my
way, unless by groping for it. My appetite for books was as ample and
indiscriminating as it was indefatigable, and I since have had too frequently
reason to repent that few ever read so much, and to so little purpose.
Among the valuable acquisitions I made about this time was an
acquaintance with Tasso’sJerusalem Delivered, through the flat
medium of Mr Hoole’stranslation. But above all, I
then first became acquainted with Bishop
Percy’sReliques of Ancient Poetry. As I had been from infancy devoted to
legendary lore of this nature, and only reluctantly withdrew my attention, from
the scarcity of materials and the rudeness of those which I possessed, it may
be imagined, but cannot be described, with what delight I saw pieces of the
same kind which had amused my childhood, and still continued in secret the
Delilahs of my imagination, considered
as the subject of sober research, grave commentary, and apt illustration, by an
editor who showed his poetical genius was capable of emulating the best
qualities of what his pious labour preserved. I remember well the spot where I
read these volumes for the first time. It was beneath a huge platanus-tree, in
the ruins of what had been intended for an old-fashioned arbour in the garden I have mentioned. The summer day sped onward so
fast, that notwithstanding the sharp appetite of thirteen, I forgot the hour of
dinner, was sought for with anxiety, and was still found entranced in my
intellectual banquet. To read and to remember was in this instance the same
thing, and henceforth I overwhelmed my schoolfellows, and all who would hearken
to me, with tragical recitations from
the ballads of Bishop Percy. The first time, too, I could
scrape a few shillings together, which were not common occurrences with me, I
bought unto myself a copy of these beloved volumes, nor do I believe I ever
read a book half so frequently, or with half the enthusiasm. About this period
also I became acquainted with the works of Richardson, and those of Mackenzie (whom in later years I became entitled to call my
friend) with Fielding, Smollet, and some others of our best
novelists.
To this period also I can trace distinctly the awaking of
that delightful feeling for the beauties of natural objects which has never
since deserted me. The neighbourhood of Kelso, the most beautiful, if not the
most romantic village in Scotland, is eminently calculated to awaken these
ideas. It presents objects, not only grand in themselves, but venerable from
their association. The meeting of two superb rivers, the Tweed and the Teviot,
both renowned in song—the ruins of an ancient Abbey—the more distant vestiges
of Roxburgh Castle—the modern mansion of Fleurs, which is so situated as to
combine the ideas of ancient baronial grandeur with those of modern taste—are
in themselves objects of the first class; yet are so mixed, united, and melted
among a thousand other beauties of a less prominent description, that they
harmonize into one general picture, and please rather by unison than by
concord. I believe I have written unintelligibly upon this subject, but it is
fitter for the pencil than the pen. The romantic feelings which I have
described as predominating in my mind, naturally rested upon and associated
themselves with these grand features of the landscape
around me; and the historical incidents, or traditional legends connected with
many of them, gave to my admiration a sort of intense impression of reverence,
which at times made my heart feel too big for its bosom. From this time the
love of natural beauty, more especially when combined with ancient ruins, or
remains of our fathers’ piety or splendour, became with me an insatiable
passion, which, if circumstances had permitted, I would willingly have
gratified by travelling over half the globe.
I was recalled to Edinburgh about the time when the College
meets, and put at once to the Humanity class, under Mr Hill, and the first Greek class, taught by Mr Dalzell. The former held the reins of
discipline very loosely, and though beloved by his students, for he was a
good-natured man as well as a good scholar, he had not the art of exciting our
attention as well as liking. This was a dangerous character with whom to trust
one who relished labour as little as I did, and amid the riot of his class I
speedily lost much of what I had learned under Adam and Whale. At the
Greek class, I might have made a better figure, for Professor
Dalzell maintained a great deal of authority, and was not only
himself an admirable scholar, but was always deeply interested in the progress
of his students. But here lay the villany. Almost all my companions who had
left the High School at the same time with myself, had acquired a smattering of
Greek before they came to College. I, alas! had none; and finding myself far
inferior to all my fellow-students, I could hit upon no better mode of vindicating my equality than by
professing my contempt for the language, and my resolution not to learn it. A
youth who died early, himself an excellent Greek scholar, saw my negligence and
folly with pain, instead of contempt. He came to call on me in George’s
Square, and pointed out in the strongest terms the silliness of the conduct I
had adopted, told me I was distinguished by the name of the Greek Blockhead, and exhorted me to redeem my reputation while it was
called to-day. My stubborn pride received this advice with sulky civility; the
birth of my Mentor (whose name was Archibald, the son of
an inn-keeper) did not, as I thought in my folly, authorize him to intrude upon
me his advice. The other was not sharp-sighted, or his consciousness of a
generous intention overcame his resentment. He offered me his daily and nightly
assistance, and pledged himself to bring me forward with the foremost of my
class. I felt some twinges of conscience, but they were unable to prevail over
my pride and self-conceit. The poor lad left me more in sorrow than in anger,
nor did we ever meet again. All hopes of my progress in the Greek were now
over; insomuch that when we were required to write essays on the authors we had
studied, I had the audacity to produce a composition in which I weighed
Homer against Ariosto, and pronounced him wanting in the
balance. I supported this heresy by a profusion of bad reading and flimsy
argument. The wrath of the Professor was extreme, while at the same time he
could not suppress his surprise at the quantity of out-of-the-way knowledge
which I displayed. He pronounced upon me the severe sen-tence—that dunce I was, and dunce was to remain—which, however, my excellent
and learned friend lived to revoke over a bottle of Burgundy, at our literary
club at Fortune’s, of which he was a distinguished member.
Mean while, as if to eradicate my slightest tincture of
Greek, I fell ill during the middle of Mr
Dalzell’s second class, and migrated a second time to
Kelso where I again continued a long time reading what and how I pleased, and
of course reading nothing but what afforded me immediate entertainment. The
only thing which saved my mind from utter dissipation was that turn for
historical pursuit, which never abandoned me even at the idlest period. I had
forsworn the Latin classics for no reason I know of, unless because they were
akin to the Greek, but the occasional perusal of Buchanan’s history, that of Mathew Paris, and other monkish chronicles, kept up a kind of
familiarity with the language even in its rudest state. But I forgot the very
letters of the Greek alphabet; a loss never to be repaired, considering what
that language is, and who they were who employed it in their compositions.
About this period—or soon afterwards—my father judged it
proper I should study mathematics, a study upon which I entered with all the
ardour of novelty. My tutor was an aged person, Dr
MacFait, who had in his time been distinguished as a teacher of
this science. Age, however, and some domestic inconveniences, had diminished
his pupils, and lessened his authority amongst the few who remained. I think
that had I been more fortunately placed for instruction, or had I had the spur
of emulation, I might have made some progress in this science, of which under the circumstances I have
mentioned I only acquired a very superficial smattering.
In other studies I was rather more fortunate; I made some
progress in Ethics under Professor John
Bruce, and was selected as one of his students whose progress he
approved, to read an essay before Principal
Robertson. I was farther instructed in Moral Philosophy at the
class of Mr Dugald Stewart, whose
striking and impressive eloquence riveted the attention even of the most
volatile student. To sum up my academical studies, I attended the class of
History, then taught by the present Lord
Woodhouselee, and, as far as I remember, no others, excepting
those of the civil and municipal law. So that if my learning be flimsy and
inaccurate, the reader must have some compassion even for an idle workman, who
had so narrow a foundation to build upon. If, however, it should ever fall to
the lot of youth to peruse these pages—let such a reader remember that it is
with the deepest regret that I recollect in my manhood the opportunities of
learning which I neglected in my youth; that through every part of my literary
career I have felt pinched and hampered by my own ignorance; and that I would
at this moment give half the reputation I have had the good fortune to acquire,
if by doing so I could rest the remaining part upon a sound foundation of
learning and science.
I imagine my father’s reason for sending me to so few classes in the
College, was a desire that I should apply myself particularly to my legal
studies. He had not determined whether I should fill the situation of an
Advocate or a Writer; but judiciously considering the
technical knowledge of the latter to be useful at least, if not essential, to a
barrister, he resolved I should serve the ordinary apprenticeship of five years
to his own profession. I accordingly entered into indentures with my father
about 1785-6, and entered upon the dry and barren wilderness of forms and
conveyances.
I cannot reproach myself with being entirely an idle
apprentice—far less, as the reader might reasonably have expected, “A clerk foredoom’d my father’s soul to
cross.” The drudgery, indeed, of the office I disliked, and the confinement I
altogether detested; but I loved my father, and I felt the rational pride and
pleasure of rendering myself useful to him. I was ambitious also; and among my
companions in labour the only way to gratify ambition was to labour hard and
well. Other circumstances reconciled me in some measure to the confinement. The
allowance for copy-money furnished a little fund for the menus plaisirs of the circulating library
and the Theatre; and this was no trifling incentive to labour. When actually at
the oar, no man could pull it harder than I, and I remember writing upwards of
120 folio pages with no interval either for food or rest. Again, the hours of
attendance on the office were lightened by the power of choosing my own books
and reading them in my own way, which often consisted in beginning at the
middle or the end of a volume. A deceased friend, who was a fellow apprentice
with me, used often to express his surprise that, after such a
hop-step-and-jump perusal, I knew as much of the book as he had been able to acquire from reading it in the
usual manner. My desk usually contained a store of most miscellaneous volumes,
especially works of fiction of every kind, which were my supreme delight. I
might except novels, unless those of the better and higher class, for though I
read many of them, yet it was with more selection than might have been
expected. The whole Jemmy and Jenny
Jessamy tribe I abhorred, and it required the art of Burney, or the feeling of Mackenzie, to fix my attention upon a domestic
tale. But ail that was adventurous and romantic I devoured without much
discrimination, and I really believe I have read as much nonsense of this class
as any man now living. Every thing which touched on knight-errantry was
particularly acceptable to me, and I soon attempted to imitate what I so
greatly admired. My efforts, however, were in the manner of the tale-teller,
not of the bard.
My greatest intimate, from the days of my school-tide, was
Mr John Irving, now a Writer to the
Signet. We lived near each other, and by joint agreement were wont, each of us,
to compose a romance for the other’s amusement. These legends, in which
the martial and the miraculous always predominated, we rehearsed to each other
during our walks, which were usually directed to the most solitary spots about
Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags. We naturally sought seclusion, for we
were conscious no small degree of ridicule would have attended our amusement,
if the nature of it had become known. Whole holidays were spent in this
singular pastime, which continued for two or three years, and had, I believe,
no small effect in directing the turn of my imagination to
the chivalrous and romantic in poetry and prose.
Mean while, the translations of Mr Hoole having made me acquainted with Tasso and Ariosto, I learned from his notes on the latter, that the
Italian language contained a fund of romantic lore. A part of my earnings was
dedicated to an Italian class which I attended twice a-week, and rapidly
acquired some proficiency. I had previously renewed and extended my knowledge
of the French language, from the same principle of romantic research. Tressan’s romances, the
Bibliothèque Bleue, and Bibliothèque de Romans, were already familiar
to me, and I now acquired similar intimacy with the works of Dante, Boiardo, Pulci, and
other eminent Italian authors. I fastened also, like a tiger, upon every
collection of old songs or romances which chance threw in my way, or which my
scrutiny was able to discover on the dusty shelves of John Sibbald’s circulating library in
the Parliament Square. This collection, now dismantled and dispersed, contained
at that time many rare and curious works, seldom found in such a collection.
Mr Sibbald himself, a man of rough manners but of some
taste and judgment, cultivated music and poetry, and in his shop I had a
distant view of some literary characters, besides the privilege of ransacking
the stores of old French and Italian books, which were in little demand among
the bulk of his subscribers. Here I saw the unfortunate Andrew Macdonald, author of Vimonda; and here, too, I saw at a
distance the boast of Scotland, Robert
Burns. Of the latter I shall presently have occasion to speak
more folly.
I am inadvertently led to confound dates while I talk of this
remote period, for, as I have no notes, it is impossible for me to remember
with accuracy the progress of studies, if they deserve the name, so irregular
and miscellaneous. But about the second year of my apprenticeship, my health,
which, from rapid growth and other causes, had been hitherto rather uncertain
and delicate, was affected by the breaking of a blood-vessel. The regimen I had
to undergo on this occasion was far from agreeable. It was Spring, and the
weather raw and cold, yet I was confined to bed with a single blanket, and bled
and blistered till I scarcely had a pulse left. I had all the appetite of a
growing boy, but was prohibited any sustenance beyond what was absolutely
necesary for the support of nature, and that in vegetables alone. Above all,
with a considerable disposition to talk, I was not permitted to open my lips
without one or two old ladies who watched my couch being ready at once to souse
upon me, “imposing silence with a stilly sound.” My only
refuge was reading and playing at chess. To the romances and poetry, which I
chiefly delighted in, I had always added the study of history, especially as
connected with military events. I was encouraged in this latter study by a
tolerable acquaintance with geography, and by the opportunities I had enjoyed
while with Mr MacFait to learn the
meaning of the more ordinary terms of fortification. While, therefore, I lay in
this dreary and silent solitude, I fell upon the resource of illustrating the
battles I read of by the childish expedient of arranging shells, and seeds, and
pebbles, so as to represent encountering armies. Diminutive
cross-bows were contrived to mimic artillery, and with the assistance of a
friendly carpenter, I contrived to model a fortress, which, like that of Uncle
Toby, represented whatever place happened to be uppermost in my imagination. I
fought my way thus through Vertot’sKnights of Malta—a book which, as it hovered between history and
romance, was exceedingly dear to me; and Orme’s interesting and beautiful History of Indostan, whose copious plans,
aided by the clear and luminous explanations of the author, rendered my
imitative amusement peculiarly easy. Other moments of these weary weeks were
spent in looking at the Meadow Walks, by assistance of a combination of mirrors
so arranged that, while lying in bed, I could see the troops march out to
exercise, or any other incident which occurred on that promenade.
After one or two relapses, my constitution recovered the
injury it had sustained, though for several months afterwards I was restricted
to a severe vegetable diet. And I must say, in passing, that though I gained
health under this necessary restriction, yet it was far from being agreeable to
me, and I was affected whilst under its influence with a nervousness which I
never felt before or since. A disposition to start upon slight alarms—a want of
decision in feeling and acting, which has not usually been my failing—an acute
sensibility to trifling inconveniences—and an unnecessary apprehension of
contingent misfortunes, rise to my memory as connected with my vegetable diet,
although they may very possibly have been entirely the result of the disorder
and not of the cure. Be this as it may, with this illness I bade farewell both to disease and medicine,
for since that time, till the hour I am now writing, I have enjoyed a state of
the most robust health, having only had to complain of occasional headaches or
stomachic affections, when I have been long without taking exercise or have
lived too convivially—the latter having been occasionally though not habitually
the error of my youth, as the former has been of my advanced life.
My frame gradually became hardened with my constitution, and
being both tall and muscular, I was rather disfigured than disabled by my
lameness. This personal disadvantage did not prevent me from taking much
exercise on horseback, and making long journies on foot, in the course of which
I often walked from twenty to thirty miles a-day. A distinct instance occurs to
me. I remember walking with poor James
Ramsay, my fellow apprentice, now no more, and two other friends
to breakfast at Prestonpans. We spent the forenoon in visiting the ruins at
Seton, and the field of battle at Preston—dined at Prestonpans on tiled haddocks, very sumptuously—drank half a bottle of
port each, and returned in the evening. This could not be less than thirty
miles, nor do I remember being at all fatigued upon the occasion.
These excursions on foot or horseback formed by far my most
favourite amusement. I have all my life delighted in travelling, though I have
never enjoyed that pleasure upon a large scale. It was a propensity which I
sometimes indulged so unduly as to alarm and vex my parents. Wood, water,
wilderness itself had an inexpressible charm for me, and I had a dreamy way of
going much farther than I intended, so that uncon-sciously
my return was protracted, and my parents had sometimes serious cause of
uneasiness. For example, I once set out with Mr George
Abercromby* (the son of the immortal General), Mr William Clerk, and some others, to fish in
the lake above Howgate, and the stream which descends from it into the Esk. We
breakfasted at Howgate, and fished the whole day; and while we were on our
return next morning I was easily seduced by William Clerk,
then a great intimate, to visit Pennycuik House, the seat of his family. Here
he and John Irving, and I for their
sake, were overwhelmed with kindness by the late Sir John Clerk and his lady, the present Dowager Lady Clerk. The pleasure of looking at
fine pictures, the beauty of the place, and the nattering hospitality of the
owners, drowned all recollection of home for a day or two. Mean while our
companions, who had walked on without being aware of our digression, returned
to Edinburgh without us, and excited no small alarm in my father’s
household. At length, however, they became accustomed to my escapades. My
father used to protest to me on such occasions that he thought I was born to be
a strolling pedlar, and though the prediction was intended to mortify my
conceit, I am not sure that I altogether disliked it. I was now familiar with
Shakspeare, and thought of Autolycus’s song—
“Jog on, jog on, the foot path way, And merrily hent the stile-a: A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in a mile-a.”
* Now Lord
Abercromby. [1826].
My principal object in these excursions was the pleasure of
seeing romantic scenery, or what afforded me at least equal pleasure, the
places which had been distinguished by remarkable historical events. The
delight with which I regarded the former of course had general approbation, but
I often found it difficult to procure sympathy with the interest I felt in the
latter. Yet to me the wandering over the field of Bannockburn was the source of
more exquisite pleasure than gazing upon the celebrated landscape from the
battlements of Stirling castle. I do not by any means infer that I was dead to
the feeling of picturesque scenery; on the contrary, few delighted more in its
general effect. But I was unable with the eye of a painter to dissect the
various parts of the scene, to comprehend how the one bore upon the other, to
estimate the effect which various features of the view had in producing its
leading and general effect. I have never, indeed, been capable of doing this
with precision or nicety, though my latter studies have led me to amend and
arrange my original ideas upon the subject. Even the humble ambition, which I
long cherished, of making sketches of those places which interested me, from a
defect of eye or of hand was totally ineffectual. After long study and many
efforts, I was unable to apply the elements of perspective or of shade to the
scene before me, and was obliged to relinquish in despair an art which I was
most anxious to practise. But show me an old castle or a field of battle, and I
was at home at once, filled it with its combatants in their proper costume, and
overwhelmed my bearers by the enthusiasm of my description. In crossing Magus Moor, near St Andrews, the spirit moved me
to give a picture of the assassination of the Archbishop of St Andrews to some fellow-travellers with whom I
was accidentally associated, and one of them, though well acquainted with the
story, protested my narrative had frightened away his night’s sleep. I
mention this to show the distinction between a sense of the picturesque in
action and in scenery. If I have since been able in poetry to trace with some
success the principles of the latter, it has always been with reference to its
general and leading features, or under some alliance with moral feeling; and
even this proficiency has cost me study.—Mean while I endeavoured to make
amends for my ignorance of drawing by adopting a sort of technical memory
respecting the scenes I visited. Wherever I went, I cut a piece of a branch
from a tree—these constituted what I called my log-book; and I intended to have
a set of chess-men out of them, each having reference to the place where it was
cut—as the kings from Falkland and Holy-Rood; the queens from Queen
Mary’s yew-tree at Crookston; the bishops from abbeys or episcopal
palaces; the knights from baronial residences; the rooks from royal fortresses;
and the pawns generally from places worthy of historical note. But this
whimsical design I never carried into execution.
With music it was even worse than with painting. My mother
was anxious we should at least learn Psalmody; but the incurable defects of my
voice and ear soon drove my teacher to despair.* It is only by long
* The late Alexander
Campbell, a warm-hearted man, and an
practice that I have acquired the power
of selecting or distinguishing melodies; and although now few things delight or
affect me more than a simple tune sung with feeling, yet I am sensible that
even this pitch of musical taste has only been gained by attention and habit,
and, as it were, by my feeling of the words being associated with the tune. I
have, therefore, been usually unsuccessful in composing words to a tune,
although my friend, Dr Clarke, and other musical
composers, have sometimes been able to make a happy union between their music
and my poetry.
In other points, however, I began to make some amends for the
irregularity of my education. It is well known that in Edinburgh one great spur
to emulation among youthful students is in those associations called literary societies, formed not only for the purpose of
debate, but of composition. These undoubtedly have some disadvantages, where a
bold, petulant, and dispu-
enthusiast in Scottish music, which
he sang most beautifully, had this ungrateful task imposed on him. He
was a man of many accomplishments, but dashed with a bizarrerie of
temper which made them useless to their proprietor. He wrote several
books—as a Tour in
Scotland, &c.—and he made an advantageous marriage, but
fell nevertheless into distressed circumstances, which I had the
pleasure of relieving, if I could not remove. His sense of gratitude
was very strong, and showed itself oddly in one respect. He would never
allow that I had a bad ear; but contended, that if I did not understand
music, it was because I did not choose to learn it. But when he
attended us in George’s Square, our neighbour, Lady Cumming, sent to beg the boys
might not be all flogged precisely at the same hour, as, though she had
no doubt the punishment was deserved, the noise of the concord was
really dreadful. Robert was the
only one of our family who could sing, though my father was musical and a performer on
the violoncello at the gentlemen’s
concerts. [1826].
tatious temper happens to be combined with considerable
information and talent. Still, however, in order to such a person being
actually spoiled by his mixing in such debates, his talents must be of a very
rare nature, or his effrontery must be proof to every species of assault; for
there is generally, in a well-selected society of this nature, talent
sufficient to meet the forwardest, and satire enough to penetrate the most
undaunted. I am particularly obliged to this sort of club for introducing me
about my seventeenth year into the society which at one time I had entirely
dropped; for, from the time of my illness at college, I had had little or no
intercourse with any of my class-companions, one or two only excepted. Now,
however, about 1788, I began to feel and take my ground in society. A ready
wit, a good deal of enthusiasm, and a perception that soon ripened into tact
and observation of character, rendered me an acceptable companion to many young
men whose acquisitions in philosophy and science were infinitely superior to
any thing I could boast.
In the business of these societies—for I was a member of more
than one successively—I cannot boast of having made any great figure. I never
was a good speaker unless upon some subject which strongly animated my
feelings; and, as I was totally unaccustomed to composition, as well as to the
art of generalizing my ideas upon any subject, my literary essays were but very
poor work. I never attempted them unless when compelled to do so by the
regulations of the society, and then I was like the Lord of Castle Rackrent, who was obliged to cut
down a tree to get a few faggots to boil the kettle; for the quantity of ponderous and miscellaneous knowledge,
which I really possessed on many subjects, was not easily condensed, or brought
to bear upon the object I wished particularly to become master of. Yet there
occurred opportunities when this odd lumber of my brain, especially that which
was connected with the recondite parts of history, did me, as Hamlet says, “yeoman’s
service.” My memory of events was like one of the large,
old-fashioned stone-cannons of the Turks—very difficult to load well and
discharge, but making a powerful effect when by good chance any object did come
within range of its shot. Such fortunate opportunities of exploding with effect
maintained my literary character among my companions, with whom I soon met with
great indulgence and regard. The persons with whom I chiefly lived at this
period of my youth were William Clerk,
already mentioned; James Edmonstoune, of
Newton; George Abercromby; Adam Ferguson, son of the celebrated Professor
Ferguson, and who combined the lightest and most airy temper with the best and
kindest disposition; John Irving,
already mentioned; the Honourable Thomas
Douglas, now Earl of Selkirk; David
Boyle,*—and two or three others, who sometimes plunged deeply
into politics and metaphysics, and not unfrequently “doffed the world
aside, and bid it pass.“*
Looking back on these times, I cannot applaud in all respects
the way in which our days were spent. There was too much idleness, and
sometimes too much
* Now Lord Justice-Clerk. [1826].
conviviality: but our hearts were warm, our minds
honourably bent on knowledge and literary distinction; and if I, certainly the
least informed of the party, may be permitted to bear witness, we were not
without the fair and creditable means of attaining the distinction to which we
aspired. In this society I was naturally led to correct my former useless
course of reading; for—feeling myself greatly inferior to my companions in
metaphysical philosophy and other branches of regular study—I laboured, not
without some success, to acquire at least such a portion of knowledge as might
enable me to maintain my rank in conversation. In this I succeeded pretty well;
but unfortunately then, as often since through my life, I incurred the deserved
ridicule of my friends from the superficial nature of my acquisitions, which
being, in the mercantile phrase, got up for society, very often proved flimsy
in the texture; and thus the gifts of an uncommonly retentive memory and acute
powers of perception were sometimes detrimental to their possessor, by
encouraging him to a presumptuous reliance upon them.
Amidst these studies, and in this society, the time of my
apprenticeship elapsed; and in 1790, or thereabouts, it became necessary that I
should seriously consider to which department of the law I was to attach
myself. My father behaved with the most
parental kindness. He offered, if I preferred his own profession, immediately
to take me into partnership with him, which, though his business was much
diminished, still afforded me an immediate prospect of a handsome independence.
But he did not disguise his wish that I
should relinquish this situation to my younger brother, and embrace the more
ambitious profession of the bar. I had little hesitation in making my
choice—for I was never very fond of money; and in no other particular do the
professions admit of a comparison. Besides, I knew and felt the inconveniences
attached to that of a writer; and I thought (like a young man) many of them
were “ingenio haud subeunda meo.” The appearance
of personal dependence which that profession requires was disagreeable to me;
the sort of connexion between the client and the attorney seemed to render the
latter more subservient than was quite agreeable to my nature; and, besides, I
had seen many sad examples while overlooking my father’s business, that
the utmost exertions, and the best meant services, do not secure the man of business, as he is called, from great loss, and
most ungracious treatment on the part of his employers. The bar, though I was
conscious of my deficiencies as a public speaker, was the line of ambition and
liberty; it was that also for which most of my contemporary friends were
destined. And, lastly, although I would willingly have relieved my father of
the labours of his business, yet I saw plainly we could not have agreed on some
particulars if we had attempted to conduct it together, and that I should
disappoint his expectations if I did not turn to the bar. So to that object my
studies were directed with great ardour and perseverance during the years 1789,
1790, 1791, 1792.
In the usual course of study, the Roman or civil law was the
first object of my attention—the second, the Municipal Law of Scotland. In the
course of reading on both subjects, I had the advantage of
studying in conjunction with my friend William
Clerk, a man of the most acute intellects and powerful
apprehension, and who, should he ever shake loose the fetters of indolence by
which he has been hitherto trammelled, cannot fail to be distinguished in the
highest degree. We attended the regular classes of both laws in the University
of Edinburgh. The civil law chair, now worthily filled by Mr Alexander Irving, might at that time be
considered as in abeyance, since the person by whom it was occupied had never been fit for the
situation, and was then almost in a state of dotage. But the Scotch law
lectures were those of Mr David Hume, who
still continues to occupy that situation with as much honour to himself as
advantage to his country. I copied over his lectures twice with my own hand,
from notes taken in the class, and when I have had occasion to consult them, I
can never sufficiently admire the penetration and clearness of conception which
were necessary to the arrangement of the fabric of law, formed originally under
the strictest influence of feudal principles, and innovated, altered, and
broken in upon by the change of times, of habits, and of manners, until it
resembles some ancient castle, partly entire, partly ruinous, partly
dilapidated, patched and altered during the succession of ages by a thousand
additions and combinations, yet still exhibiting, with the marks of its
antiquity, symptoms of the skill and wisdom of its founders, and capable of
being analyzed and made the subject of a methodical plan by an architect who
can understand the various styles of the different ages in which it was
subjected to alteration. Such an
architect has Mr Hume been to the law of Scotland, neither
wandering into fanciful and abstruse disquisitions, which are the more proper
subject of the antiquary, nor satisfied with presenting to his pupils a dry and
undigested detail of the laws in their present state, but combining the past
state of our legal enactments with the present, and tracing clearly and
judiciously the changes which took place, and the causes which led to them.
Under these auspices, I commenced my legal studies. A little
parlour was assigned me in my father’s house, which was spacious and
convenient, and I took the exclusive possession of my new realms with all the
feelings of novelty and liberty. Let me do justice to the only years of my life
in which I applied to learning with stern, steady, and undeviating industry.
The rule of my friend Clerk and myself
was, that we should mutually qualify ourselves for undergoing an examination
upon certain points of law every morning in the week, Sundays excepted. This
was at first to have taken place alternately at each other’s houses, but
we soon discovered that my friend’s resolution was inadequate to severing
him from his couch at the early hour fixed for this exercitation. Accordingly,
I agreed to go every morning to his house, which, being at the extremity of
Prince’s Street, New Town, was a walk of two miles. With great
punctuality, however, I beat him up to his task every morning before seven
o’clock, and in the course of two summers, we went, by way of question
and answer, through the whole of Heineccius’sAnalysis of the
Institutes and Pandects, as well as through the smaller copy of Erskine’sInstitutes of the Law of Scotland. This
course of study enabled us to pass with credit the usual trials, which, by the
regulations of the Faculty of Advocates, must be undergone by every candidate
for admission into their body. My friend William Clerk and
I passed these ordeals on the same days—namely, the civil law trial on the
[30th June, 1791], and the Scots law trial on the [6th July, 1792]. On the
[11th July, 1792], we both assumed the gown with all its duties and honours.
My progress in life during these two or three years had been
gradually enlarging my acquaintance, and facilitating my entrance into good
company. My father and mother, already advanced in life, saw little society at
home, excepting that of near relations, or upon particular occasions, so that I
was left to form connexions in a great measure for myself. It is not difficult
for a youth with a real desire to please and be pleased, to make his way into
good society in Edinburgh—or indeed any where—and my family connexions, if they
did not greatly further, had nothing to embarrass my progress. I was a
gentleman, and so welcome any where, if so be I could behave myself, as
Tony Lumpkin says, “in a
concatenation accordingly.”
* * * * *
CHAPTER II. ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
FRAGMENT—EDINBURGH—SANDY-KNOWE—BATH—PRESTONPANS— 1771-1778.
Sir Walter Scott opens his
brief account of his ancestry with a playful allusion to a trait of national character,
which has, time out of mind, furnished merriment to the neighbours of the Scotch; but the
zeal of pedigree was deeply rooted in himself, and he would have been the last to treat it
with serious disparagement. It has often been exhibited under circumstances sufficiently
grotesque; but it has lent strength to many a good impulse, sustained hope and self-respect
under many a difficulty and distress, armed heart and nerve to many a bold and resolute
struggle for independence; and prompted also many a generous act of assistance, which under
its influence alone could have been accepted without any feeling of degradation.
He speaks modestly of his own descent; for, while none of his predecessors
had ever sunk below the situation and character of a gentleman, he had but to go three or
four generations back, and thence, as far as they could be followed, either on the paternal
or maternal side, they were to be found moving in the highest ranks of our baronage. When
he fitted up in his later years the beautiful hall of Abbotsford, he was careful to have
the armorial bearings of his forefathers blazoned in due order on the
compartments of its roof; and there are few in Scotland, under the titled nobility, who
could trace their blood to so many stocks of historical distinction.
In the Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border, and Notes to the Lay of
the Last Minstrel, the reader will find sundry notices of the “Bauld
Rutherfords that were sae stout,” and the
Swintons of Swinton in Berwickshire, the two nearest houses on the
maternal side. An illustrious old warrior of the latter family, Sir John Swinton, extolled by Froissart, is the hero of the dramatic sketch, “Halidon Hill”; and it is not to be omitted, that
through the SwintonsSir Walter
Scott could trace himself to William Alexander,
Earl of Stirling, the poet and dramatist.* His respect for the worthy barons
of Newmains and Dryburgh, of whom, in right of his father’s mother, he was the
representative, and in whose venerable sepulchre his remains now rest, was testified by his
“Memorials of the
Haliburtons,” a small volume printed (for private circulation only) in the
year 1820. His own male ancestors of the family of Harden, whose
lineage is traced by Douglas in his Baronage of Scotland back to the middle
of the fourteenth century, when they branched off from the great blood of
Buccleuch, have been so largely celebrated in his various
writings,
* On Sir Walter’s copy of
“Recreations with the
Muses, by William Earl of Stirling, 1637,” there is the following
MS. note: “Sir William Alexander,
sixth Baron of Menstrie, and first Earl of Stirling, the friend of Drummond of Hawthornden and Ben Jonson, died in 1640. His eldest son,
William Viscount Canada, died before
his father, leaving one son and three daughters by his wife, Lady Margaret Douglas, eldest daughter of
William, first Marquis of Douglas.
Margaret, the second of these daughters, married
Sir Robert Sinclair of Longformacus in the
Merse, to whom she bore two daughters, Anne
and Jean. Jean Sinclair, the younger
daughter, married Sir John Swinton of
Swinton; and Jean
Swinton, her eldest daughter, was the grandmother of the proprietor
of this volume.”
that I might perhaps content myself with a
general reference to those pages, their only imperishable monument. The antique splendour
of the ducal house itself has been dignified to all Europe by the pen of its remote
descendant; but it may be doubted whether his genius could have been adequately developed,
had he not attracted, at an early and critical period, the kindly recognition and support
of the Buccleuchs.
The race had been celebrated, however, long before his day, by a minstrel
of its own; nor did he conceal his belief that he owed much to the influence exerted over
his juvenile mind by the rude but enthusiastic clan-poetry of old Satchells, who describes himself on his
title-page as “Captain Walter Scot, an old Souldier and no Scholler, And one that can write nane, But just the Letters of his Name.” His “True History of several
honourable Families of the Right Honourable Name of Scot, in the Shires of Roxburgh and
Selkirk, and others adjacent, gathered out of Ancient Chronicles, Histories, and
Traditions of our Fathers,” includes, among other things, a string of
complimentary rhymes addressed to the first Laird of
Raeburn; and the copy which had belonged to that gentleman, was in all
likelihood about the first book of verses that fell into the poet’s hand.* How
continually
* His family well remember the delight which he expressed on
receiving, in 1818, a copy of this first edition, a small dark quarto of 1688, from
his friend Constable. He was breakfasting
when the present was delivered, and said, “This is indeed the resurrection of
an old ally—I mind spelling these lines.” He read
aloud the jingling epistle to his own great-great-grandfather, which, like the
rest, concludes with abroad hint that, as the author had neither lands nor flocks
“no estate left except his designation” the more fortunate
kinsman who enjoyed, like Jason of old, a fair
share
its wild and uncouth doggrel was on his lips to his latest day, all his
familiars can testify; and the passages which he quoted with the greatest zest were those
commemorative of two ancient worthies, both of whom had had to contend against physical
misfortune similar to his own. The former of these, according to
Satchells, was the immediate founder of the branch originally
designed of Sinton, afterwards of Harden. “It is four hundred winters past in order Since that Buccleuch was Warden in the Border; A son he had at that same tide, Which was so lame could neither run nor ride. John, this lame son, if my author speaks true, He sent him to St Mungo’s in Glasgu, Where he remained a scholar’s time, Then married a wife according to his mind. . . . And betwixt them twa was procreat Headshaw, Askirk, Sinton, and
Glack.”
of fleeces, might do
worse than bestow on him some of King
James’sbroad pieces. On rising
from table, Sir Walter immediately wrote as
follows on the blank leaf opposite to poor Satchells’ honest title-page—
“I, Walter Scott of Abbotsford, a
poor scholar, no soldier, but a soldier’s lover, In the style of my namesake and kinsman do hereby discover, That I have written the twenty-four letters twenty-four million times over; And to every true-born Scott I do wish as many golden
pieces, As ever were hairs in Jason’s and
Medea’s golden
fleeces.”
The rarity of the original edition of Satchells is such, that the copy now at Abbotsford was the only one
Mr Constable had ever seen and no
wonder, for the author’s envoy is in these words:
“Begone, my book, stretch forth thy wings and fly Amongst the nobles and gentility; Thou’rt not to sell to scavengers and clowns, But given to worthy persons of renown. The number’s few I’ve printed, in regard My charges have been great, and I hope reward; I caus’d not print many above twelve score, And the printers are engaged that they shall print no more.” But, if the scholarship of John the Lamiter furnished his descendant with many a
mirthful allusion, a far greater favourite was the memory of William the Boltfoot, who followed him in the
sixth generation. “The Laird and Lady of Harden Betwixt them procreat was a son Called William Boltfoot of
Harden” The emphasis with which this next line was quoted I can never forget “He did survive to bea man.” He was, in fact, one of the “prowest knights” of the whole genealogy—a
fearless horseman and expert spearman, renowned and dreaded; and I suppose I have heard
Sir Walter repeat a dozen times, as he was dashing into the Tweed
or Ettrick, “rolling red from brae to brae,” a stanza from what he
called an old ballad, though it was most likely one of his own early imitations. “To tak the foord he aye was first, Unless the English loons were near; Plunge vassal than, plunge horse and man, Auld Boltfoot rides into the
rear.”
“From childhood’s earliest hour,” says the poet
in one of his last Journals, “I have rebelled against external
circumstances.” How largely the traditional famousness of the stalwart Boltfoot may have helped to
develope this element of his character, I do not pretend to say; but I cannot avoid
regretting that Lord Byron had not discovered such
another “Deformed Transformed”
among his own chivalrous progenitors.
So long as Sir Walter retained his
vigorous habits, he used to make an autumnal excursion, with whatever friend happened to be
his guest at the time, to the tower of Harden, the incunabula of his
race. A more picturesque scene for the fastness of a lineage of Border
marauders could not be conceived; and so much did he delight in it, remote and inaccessible
as its situation is, that, in the earlier part of his life, he had nearly availed himself
of his kinsman’s permission to fit up the dilapidated peel for
his summer residence. Harden (the ravine of hares) is a deep, dark, and narrow glen, along
which a little mountain brook flows to join the river Borthwick, itself a tributary of the
Teviot. The castle is perched on the brink of the precipitous bank, and from the ruinous
windows you look down into the crows’ nests on the summits of the old mouldering
elms, that have their roots on the margin of the stream far below.— “Where Bortha hoarse, that loads the meads with sand, Rolls her red tide to Teviot’s western strand, Through slaty hills, whose sides are shagged with thorn, Where springs in scattered tufts the dark-green corn, Towers wood-girt Harden far above the vale, And clouds of ravens o’er the turrets sail. A hardy race who never shrunk from war, The Scott, to rival realms a mighty bar, Here fixed his mountain home;—a wide domain, And rich the soil, had purple heath been grain; But what the niggard ground of wealth denied, From fields more bless’d his fearless arm supplied.”*
It was to this wild retreat that the Harden of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, the Auld
Wat of a hundred Border ditties, brought home, in 1567, his beautiful bride,
Mary Scott, “the Flower of Yarrow,”
whose grace and gentleness have lived in song along with the stern vir-
* Leyden, the author of
these beautiful lines, has borrowed, as the Lay of the Last Minstrel did also, from one of Satchells’ primitive couplets—
“If heather-tops had been corn of the best, Then Buccleugh mill had gotten, a noble grist.’
tues of her lord. She is said to have chiefly owed her
celebrity to the gratitude of an English captive, a beautiful child, whom she rescued from
the tender mercies of Wat’s moss-troopers, on their return from a foray into
Cumberland. The youth grew up under her protection, and is believed to have been the
composer both of the words and the music of many of the best old songs of the Border. As
Leyden says, “His are the strains whose wandering echoes thrill The shepherd lingering on the twilight hill, When evening brings the merry folding hours, And sun-eyed daisies close their winking flowers. He lived o’er Yarrow’s
Flower to shed the tear, To strew the holly leaves o’er Harden’s bier; But none was found above the minstrel’s tomb, Emblem of peace, to bid the daisy bloom. He, nameless as the race from which he sprung, Saved other names, and left his own unsung.”
We are told, that when the last bullock which Auld Wat had provided from the English pastures was consumed, the Flower of Yarrow placed on her table a dish containing a
pair of clean spurs; a hint to the company that they must bestir themselves for their next
dinner. Sir Walter adds, in a note to the Minstrelsy, “Upon one occasion when the village
herd was driving out the cattle to pasture, the old laird heard him call loudly to drive
out Harden’s cow.
‘Harden’scow!’
echoed the affronted chief; ‘Is it come to that pass? by my faith they shall soon say
Harden’skye (cows).’
Accordingly, he sounded his bugle, set out with his followers, and next day returned with a
bow of kye, and a bassen’d (brindled) bull. On his return with this gallant prey, he passed a very large haystack. It
occurred to the provident laird that this would be extremely convenient to fodder his new
stock of cattle; but as no means of transporting it were obvious, he was fain to take leave of it with the apostrophe, now become proverbial, By my saul, had ye but four feet ye should not stand lang there. In
short, as Froissart says of a similar class of
feudal robbers, nothing came amiss to them that was not too heavy or too
hot.”
Another striking chapter in the genealogical history belongs to the
marriage of Auld Wat’s son and heir,
afterwards Sir William Scott of Harden,
distinguished by the early favour of James VI., and
severely fined for his loyalty under the usurpation of Cromwell. The period of this gentleman’s youth was a very wild one in
that district. The Border clans still made war on each other occasionally, much in the
fashion of their forefathers; and the young and handsome heir of Harden, engaging in a
foray upon the lands of Sir Gideon Murray of
Elibank, treasurer-depute of Scotland, was overpowered by that baron’s
retainers, and carried in shackles to his castle, now a heap of ruins, on the banks of the
Tweed. Elibank’s “doomtree” extended its broad arms
close to the gates of his fortress, and the indignant laird was on the point of desiring
his prisoner to say a last prayer, when his more considerate dame interposed milder
counsels, suggesting that the culprit was born to a good estate, and that they had three
unmarried daughters. Young Harden, not, it is said, without
hesitation, agreed to save his life by taking the plainest of
the three off their hands, and the contract of marriage, executed instantly
on the parchment of a drum, is still in the charter-chest of his noble representative.
Walter Scott, the third son of this couple, was the
first Laird of Raeburn, already alluded to as one of the patrons of Satchells. He married Isabel
Macdougal, daughter of Macdougal of Makerstoun—a family
of great antiquity and distinction in Roxburgh-shire, of
whose blood, through various alliances, the poet had a large share in his veins.
Raeburn, though the son and brother of two steady cavaliers, and
married into a family of the same political creed, became a Whig, and at last a Quaker; and
the reader will find, in one of the notes to The
Heart of Mid-Lothian, a singular account of the persecution to which this
back-gliding exposed him at the hands of both his own and his wife’s relations. He
was incarcerated (A.D. 1665), first at Edinburgh and then at Jedburgh, by order of the
Privy Council—his children were forcibly taken from him, and a heavy sum was levied on his
estate yearly, for the purposes of their education beyond the reach of his perilous
influence. “It appears,” says Sir Walter, in
a MS. memorandum now before me, “that the Laird of Makerstoun, his brother-in-law,
joined with Raeburn’s own elder brother,
Harden, in this singular persecution, as it will now be termed by
Christians of all persuasions. It was observed by the people that the male line of the
second Sir William of Harden became extinct in 1710, and that the
representation of Makerstoun soon passed into the female line. They assigned as a cause,
that when the wife of Raeburn found herself deprived of her husband, and refused permission
even to see her children, she pronounced a malediction on her husband’s brother as
well as on her own, and prayed that a male of their body might not inherit their
property.”
The MS. adds, “of the first
Raeburn’s two sons it may be observed, that, thanks to the
discipline of the Privy Council, they were both good scholars.” Of these
sons, Walter, the second, was the poet’s
greatgrandfather, the enthusiastic Jacobite of the autobiographical fragment,—who is
introduced, “With amber beard and flaxen hair, And reverend apostolic air,” in the epistle prefixed to the sixth canto of Marmion. A good portrait of Bearded Wat, painted for his
friend Pitcairn, was presented by the doctor’s
grandson, the Earl of Kellie, to the father of Sir Walter. It is now at Abbotsford; and shows a
considerable resemblance to the poet. Some verses addressed to the original by his kinsman
Walter Scott of Harden, are given in one of the Notes to Marmion. The old gentleman himself is said to have written verses
occasionally, both English and Latin; but I never heard more than the burden of a
drinking-song— “Barba crescat, barba crescat, Donec carduus revirescat.”
Scantily as the worthy Jacobite seems to have been provided with this
world’s goods, he married the daughter of a gentleman of good condition,
“through whom,” says the MS. Memorandum already quoted,
“his descendants have inherited a connexion with some honourable branches of
the Slioch nan Diarmid, or Clan of Campbell.” To this
connexion Sir Walter owed, as we shall see hereafter,
many of those early opportunities for studying the manners of the Highlanders, to which the
world are indebted for Waverley, Rob Roy, and the Lady of the Lake.
Robert Scott, the son of Beardie, formed also an honourable alliance. His father-in-law, Thomas Haliburton,* the last but one of the “good
lairds of New-
* “From the genealogical deduction in the Memorials, it appears that the
Haliburtons of Newmains were descended from and
represented the ancient and once powerful family of Haliburton of
Mertoun, which became extinct in the beginning of the eighteenth
cen-
mains,” entered his marriage as follows in the
domestic record, which Sir Walter’s pious respect
induced him to have printed nearly a century afterwards: “My second daughter
Barbara is married to Robert
Scott, son to Walter Scott, uncle to
Raeburn, upon this sixteen day of July, 1728, at my house of
Dryburgh, by Mr James Innes, minister of Mertoun, their mothers
being cousings; may the blessing of the Lord rest upon them, and make them comforts to
each other and to all their relations;” to which the editor of the Memorials adds this note, “May God
grant that the prayers of the excellent persons who have passed away may avail for the
benefit of those who succeed them!—Abbotsford, Nov.
1824.”
I need scarcely remind the reader of the exquisite description of the
poet’s grandfather, in the Introduction to the third Canto of Marmion— ——“the thatched mansion’s grey-hair’d sire, Wise without learning, plain and good, And sprung of Scotland’s gentler blood;
tury. The first of this latter family possessed the lands and barony of Mertoun
by a charter granted by Archibald Earl of
Douglas and Lord of Galloway (one of those tremendous lords
whose coronets counterpoised the Scottish crown) to Henry de
Haliburton, whom he designates as his standard-bearer, on
account of his service to the earl in England. On this account the
Haliburtons of Mertoun and those of Newmains, in
addition to the arms borne by the Haliburtons of Dirleton
(the ancient chiefs of that once great and powerful but now almost extinguished
name)—viz. or, on a bend azure, three mascles of the first—gave the distinctive
bearing of a buckle of the second in the sinister canton. These arms still
appear on various old tombs in the abbeys of Melrose and Dryburgh, as well as
on their house at Dryburgh, which was built in 1572.”—MS. Memorandum, 1820. Sir
Walter was served heir to these Haliburtons
soon after the date of this Memorandum, and thenceforth quartered the arms above
described with those of his paternal family.
Whose eye, in age quick, clear, and keen, Showed what in youth its glance had been; Whose doom discording neighbours sought, Content with equity unbought.” In the Preface to Guy Mannering, we
have an anecdote of Robert Scott in his earlier days: “My
grandfather, while riding over Charterhouse Moor, then a very extensive common, fell
suddenly among a large band of gipsies, who were carousing in a hollow surrounded by
bushes. They instantly seized on his bridle with shouts of welcome, exclaiming that
they had often dined at his expense, and he must now stay and share their cheer. My
ancestor was a little alarmed, for he had more money about his person than he cared to
risk in such society. However, being naturally a bold lively spirited man, he entered
into the humour of the thing, and sat down to the feast, which consisted of all the
varieties of game, poultry, pigs, and so forth, that could be collected by a wide and
indiscriminate system of plunder. The dinner was a very merry one, but my relative got
a hint from some of the older gipsies, just when ‘the mirth and fun grew fast and
furious,’ and mounting his horse accordingly, he took a French leave of his
entertainers.” His grandson might have reported more than one scene of the
like sort in which he was himself engaged, while hunting the same district, not in quest of
foxes or of cattle sales, like the goodman of Sandy-knowe, but of ballads for the Minstrelsy. Gipsy stories, as we are told
in the same Preface, were frequently in the mouth of the old man when his face
‘brightened at the evening fire,’ in the days of the poet’s
childhood. And he adds, that ‘as Dr Johnson
had a shadowy recollection of Queen Anne as a stately
lady in black, adorned with diamonds,’ so his own memory was haunted with
‘a solemn remembrance of a woman of more
than female height, dressed in a long red cloak, who once made her appearance beneath
the thatched roof of Sandy-Knowe, commenced acquaintance by giving him an apple, and
whom he looked on, nevertheless, with as much awe as the future doctor, High Church and
Tory as he was doomed to be, could look upon the Queen.’ This was
Madge Gordon, granddaughter of Jean
Gordon, the prototype of Meg Merrilees.
Of Robert of Sandy-Knowe also
there is a very tolerable portrait at Abbotsford, and the likeness of the poet to his
grandfather must have forcibly struck every one who has seen it. Indeed, but for its
wanting some inches in elevation of forehead (a considerable want it must be allowed), the
picture might be mistaken for one of Sir Walter Scott.
The keen shrewd expression of the eye, and the remarkable length and compression of the
upper lip, bring him exactly before me as he appeared when entering with all the zeal of a
professional agriculturist into the merits of a pit of marle discovered at Abbotsford. Had
the old man been represented with his cap on his head, the resemblance to one particular
phasis of the most changeful of countenances, would have been perfect.
Robert Scott had a numerous progeny, and Sir Walter has intimated his intention of recording several of
them “with a sincere tribute of gratitude” in the contemplated
prosecution of his autobiography. Two of the younger sons were bred to the naval service of
the East India Company; one of whom died early and unmarried; the other was the excellent
Captain Robert Scott, of whose kindness to his
nephew some particulars are given in the Ashestiel Fragment, and more will occur hereafter. Another son, Thomas, followed the profession of his father with
ability, and retired in old age upon a handsome independence, acquired
by his industrious exertions. He was twice married, first to his near relation, a daughter
of Raeburn; and secondly to Miss Rutherford of
Know-South, the estate of which respectable family is now possessed by his
son Charles Scott, an amiable and high-spirited
gentleman, who was always a special favourite with his eminent kinsman. The death of
Thomas Scott is thus recorded in one of the MS. notes on his
nephew’s own copy of the Haliburton
Memorials:—“The said Thomas Scott died at Monklaw,
near Jedburgh, at two of the clock, 27th January, 1823, in the 90th year of his life,
and fully possessed of all his faculties. He read till nearly the year before his
death; and being a great musician on the Scotch pipes, had, when on his deathbed, a
favourite tune played over to him by his son James, that he might
be sure he left him in full possession of it. After hearing it, he hummed it over
himself, and corrected it in several of the notes. The air was that called Sour Plumbs in Galashiels. When barks
and other tonics were given him during his last illness he privately spat them into his
handkerchief, saying, as he had lived all his life without taking doctor’s drugs,
he wished to die without doing so.”
I visited this old man, two years before his death, in company with
Sir Walter, and thought him about the most venerable
figure I had ever set my eyes on—tall and erect, with long flowing tresses of the most
silvery whiteness, and stockings rolled up over his knees, after the fashion of three
generations back. He sat reading his Bible without spectacles, and did not, for a moment,
perceive that any one had entered his room, but on recognising his nephew he rose, with
cordial alacrity, kissing him on both cheeks, and exclaiming, “God bless thee,
Walter, my man, thou hast risen to be great, but thou wast always good.” His remarks were
lively and sagacious, and delivered with a touch of that humour which seems to have been
shared by most of the family. He had the air and manner of an ancient gentleman, and must
in his day have been eminently handsome. I saw more than once, about the same period, this
respectable man’s sister, who had married her
cousin Walter, Laird of Raeburn thus adding a new
link to the closeness of the family connexion. She also must have been, in her youth,
remarkable for personal attractions; as it was, she dwells on my memory as the perfect
picture of an old Scotch lady, with a great deal of simple dignity in her bearing, but with
the softest eye, and the sweetest voice, and a charm of meekness and gentleness about every
look and expression; all which contrasted strikingly enough with the stern dry aspect and
manners of her husband, a right descendant of the moss-troopers of Harden, who never seemed
at his ease but on horseback, and continued to be the boldest fox-hunter of the district,
even to the verge of eighty. The poet’s aunt spoke her native language pure and
undiluted, but without the slightest tincture of that vulgarity which now seems almost
unavoidable in the oral use of a dialect so long banished from courts, and which has not
been avoided by any modern writer who has ventured to introduce it, with the exception of
Scott, and I may add, speaking generally, of Burns. Lady Raeburn, as she was
universally styled, may be numbered with those friends of early days whom her nephew has
alluded to in one of his prefaces as preserving what we may fancy to have been the old
Scotch of Holyrood.
The particulars which I have been setting down may help English readers
to form some notion of the structure of society in those southern
districts of Scotland. When Satchells wrote, he
boasted that Buccleuch could summon to his banner one hundred lairds,
all of his own name, with ten thousand more landless men, but still of the same blood. The
younger sons of these various lairds were, through many successive generations, portioned
off with fragments of the inheritance, until such subdivision could be carried no farther,
and then the cadet, of necessity, either adopted the profession of arms, in some foreign
service very frequently, or became a cultivator on the estate of his own elder brother, of
the chieftain of his branch, or of the great chief and patriarchal protector of the whole
clan. Until the commerce of England, and above all, the military and civil services of the
English colonies were thrown open to the enterprise of the Scotch, this system of things
continued entire. It still remained in force to a considerable extent at the time when the
Goodman of Sandy-Knowe was establishing his children in the world—and I am happy to say,
that it is far from being abolished even at the present day. It was a system which bound
together the various classes of the rural population in bonds of mutual love and
confidence: the original community of lineage was equally remembered on all sides; the
landlord could count for more than his rent on the tenant, who regarded him rather as a
father or an elder brother, than as one who owed his superiority to mere wealth; and the
farmer who, on fit occasions, partook on equal terms of the chase and the hospitality of
his landlord, went back with content and satisfaction to the daily labours of a vocation
which he found no one disposed to consider as derogating from his gentle blood. Such
delusions, if delusions they were, held the natural arrogance of riches in check, taught
the poor man to believe that in virtuous poverty he had
nothing to blush for, and spread over the whole being of the community the gracious spirit
of a primitive humanity.
Walter Scott, the eldest son of Robert of Sandy-Knowe, appears to have been the first of
the family that ever adopted a town life, or any thing claiming to be classed among the
learned professions. His branch of the law, however, could not in those days be
advantageously prosecuted without extensive connexions in the country; his own were too
respectable not to be of much service to him in his calling, and they were cultivated
accordingly. His professional visits to Roxburghshire and Ettrick Forest were, in his
vigorous life, very frequent; and though he was never supposed to have any tincture either
of romance or poetry in his composition, he retained to the last a warm affection for his
native district, with a certain reluctant flavour of the old feelings and prejudices of the
Borderer. I have little to add to Sir Walter’s short and
respectful notice of his father, except that I have heard it confirmed by the testimony of
many less partial observers. According to every account, he was a most just, honourable,
conscientious man; only too high of spirit for some parts of his business. “He
passed from the cradle to the grave,” says a surviving relation,
“without making an enemy or losing a friend. He was a most affectionate
parent, and if he discouraged, rather than otherwise, his son’s early devotion to
the pursuits which led him to the height of literary eminence, it was only because he
did not understand what such things meant, and considered it his duty to keep his young
man to that path in which good sense and industry might, humanly speaking, be thought
sure of success.”
Sir Walter’s mother was short of stature, and
by no means comely, at least after the days of her early youth. She had
received, as became the daughter of an eminently learned physician, the best sort of
education then bestowed on young gentlewomen in Scotland. The poet, speaking of Mrs Euphemia Sinclair, the mistress of the school at which
his mother was reared, to the ingenious local antiquary, Mr
Robert Chambers, said that “she must have been possessed of
uncommon talents for education, as all her young ladies were, in after life, fond of
reading, wrote and spelled admirably, were well acquainted with history and the belles
lettres, without neglecting the more homely duties of the needle and accompt book; and
perfectly well-bred in society.” Mr Chambers adds,
“Sir W. further communicated that his mother, and
many others of Mrs Sinclair’s pupils, were sent afterwards
to be finished off by the Honourable Mrs
Ogilvie, a lady who trained her young friends to a style of manners
which would now be considered intolerably stiff. Such was the effect of this early
training upon the mind of Mrs Scott, that even when she approached
her eightieth year, she took as much care to avoid touching her chair with her back, as
if she had still been under the stern eye of Mrs
Ogilvie.” The physiognomy of the poet bore, if their portraits may be
trusted, no resemblance to either of his parents.
Mr Scott was nearly thirty years of age when he
married, and six children, born to him between 1759
* See Chambers’sTraditions of Edinburgh, vol. ii. pp.
127-131. The functions here ascribed to Mrs Ogilvie may appear
to modern readers little consistent with her rank. Such things, however, were not
uncommon in those days in poor old Scotland. Ladies with whom I have conversed in
my youth well remembered an Honourable Mrs Maitland who
practised the obstetric art in the Cowgate.
and 1766, all perished in infancy.* A suspicion that
the close situation of the College Wynd had been unfavourable to the health of his family,
was the motive that induced him to remove to the house which he ever afterwards occupied in
George’s Square. This removal took place shortly after the poet’s birth; and
the children born subsequently were in general healthy. Of a family of twelve, of whom six
lived to maturity, not one now survives; nor have any of them left descendants, except
Sir Walter himself, and his next and dearest
brother, Thomas Scott.
He says that his consciousness of existence dated from Sandy-Knowe; and
how deep and indelible was the impression which its romantic localities had left on his
imagination, I need not remind the readers of Marmion and the Eve of St John. On
the summit of the Crags which overhang the farm-house stands the ruined tower of
Smailholme, the scene of that fine ballad; and the view from thence takes in a wide expanse
of the district in which, as has been truly said, every field has its battle, and every
rivulet its song:— “The lady looked in mournful mood, Looked over hill and vale, O’er Mertoun’s wood, and Tweed’s fair flood, And all down Teviotdale”—
* In Sir Walter Scott’s
desk, after his death, there was found a little packet containing six locks of
hair, with this inscription in the handwriting of his mother:
“1. Anne Scott, born March 10, 1759. 2. Robert Scott, born August 22, 1760. 3. John Scott, born November 28, 1761. 4. Robert Scott, born June 7, 1763. 5. Jean Scott, born March 27, 1765. 6. Walter Scott, born August 30, 1766.
All these are dead, and none of my present family was born
till some time afterwards.”
Mertoun, the principal seat of the Harden family,
with its noble groves; nearly in front of it, across the Tweed, Lessudden, the
comparatively small but still venerable and stately abode of the Lairds of Raeburn; and the
hoary Abbey of Dryburgh, surrounded with yew-trees as ancient as itself, seem to lie almost
below the feet of the spectator. Opposite him rise the purple peaks of Eildon, the
traditional scene of Thomas the Rymer’s
interview with the Queen of Faerie; behind are the
blasted peel which the seer of Erceldoun himself inhabited, ‘the Broom of the
Cowdenknowes,’ the pastoral valley of the Leader, and the bleak wilderness of
Lammermoor. To the eastward the desolate grandeur of Hume Castle breaks the horizon, as the
eye travels towards the range of the Cheviot. A few miles westward, Melrose, ‘like
some tall rock with lichens grey,’ appears clasped amidst the windings of the
Tweed: and the distance presents the serrated mountains of the Gala, the Ettrick, and the
Yarrow, all famous in song. Such were the objects that had painted the earliest images on
the eye of the last and greatest of the Border Minstrels. As his memory reached to an
earlier period of childhood than that of almost any other person, so assuredly no poet has
given to the world a picture of the dawning feelings of life and genius, at once so simple,
so beautiful, and so complete, as that of his epistle to William Erskine, the chief literary confidant and counsellor of his prime
of manhood.
“Whether an impulse that has birth Soon as the infant wakes on earth, One with our feelings and our powers, And rather part of us than ours; Or whether fitlier term’d the sway Of habit, formed in early day, Howe’er derived, its force confest Rules with despotic sway the breast, And drags us on by viewless chain, While taste and reason plead in vain. . . . Thus, while I ape the measure wild Of tales that charm’d me yet a child, Rude though they be, still with the chime Return the thoughts of early time, And feelings rous’d in life’s first day, Glow in the line and prompt the lay. Then rise those crags, that mountain tower, Which charm’d my fancy’s wakening hour. It was a barren scene and wild Where naked cliffs were rudely piled; But ever and anon between Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green; And well the lonely infant knew Recesses where the wall flower grew And honeysuckle loved to crawl Up the low crag and ruin’d wall. I deem’d such nooks the sweetest shade The sun in all its round surveyed; And still I thought that shattered tower The mightiest work of human power, And marvelled as the aged hind, With some strange tale bewitch’d my mind, Of forayers who, with headlong force, Down from that strength had spurr’d their horse, Their southern rapine to renew, Far in the distant Cheviots blue, And home returning, fill’d the hall With revel, wassel-rout, and brawl. Methought that still with trump and clang The gateway’s broken arches rang; Methought grim features, seam’d with scars, Glared thro’ the windows’ rusty bars And ever, by the winter hearth, Old tales I heard of wo or mirth, Of lovers’ slights, of ladies’ charms, Of witches’ spells, of warriors’ arms— Of patriot battles won of old By Wallace Wight and Bruce the Bold— Of later fields of feud and fight, When, pouring from their Highland height, The Scottish clans, in headlong sway, Had swept the scarlet ranks away. While stretched at length upon the floor, Again I fought each combat o’er, Pebbles and shells, in order laid, The mimic ranks of war displayed, And onward still the Scottish Lion bore, And still the scattered Southron fled before.”
There are still living in that neighbourhood two old women, who were in
the domestic service of Sandy-Knowe, when the lame child was brought thither in the third
year of his age. One of them, Tibby Hunter, remembers his coming well;
and that ‘he was a sweet-tempered bairn, a darling with all about the house. The
young ewe-milkers delighted, she says, to carry him about on their backs among the
crags; and he was very gleg (quick) at the uptake, and soon kenned every sheep and lamb
by headmark as well as any of them.’ His great pleasure, however, was in the
society of the ‘aged hind,’ recorded in the epistle to Erskine. ‘Auld Sandy
Ormistoun,’ called, from the most dignified part of his function,
‘the Cow-bailie,’ had the chief superintendence of the flocks that browsed upon
‘the velvet tufts of loveliest green.’ If the child saw him in the
morning, he could not be satisfied unless the old man would set him astride on his
shoulder, and take him to keep him company as he lay watching his charge. “Here was poetic impulse given By the green hill and clear blue heaven.” The Cow-bailie blew a particular note on his whistle, which signified to the
maid-servants in the house below when the little boy wished to be carried home again. He
told his friend, Mr Skene of Rubislaw, when spending
a summer day in his old age among these well-remembered crags, that he delighted to roll
about on the grass all day long in the midst of the
flock, and that ‘the sort of fellowship he thus formed with the sheep and lambs
had impressed his mind with a degree of affectionate feeling towards them which had
lasted throughout life.’ There is a story of his having been forgotten one
day among the knolls when a thunder-storm came on; and his aunt, suddenly recollecting his
situation, and running out to bring him home, is said to have found him lying on his back,
clapping his hands at the lightning, and crying out, ‘Bonny, bonny!’ at
every flash.
I find the following marginal note on his copy of Allan Ramsay’sTea-Table Miscellany (edition 1724): “This
book belonged to my grandfather, Robert Scott,
and out of it I was taught Hardiknute by heart before I could read the ballad myself. It was the first
poem I ever learnt the last I shall ever forget.” According to
Tibby Hunter, he was not particularly fond of his book, embracing
every pretext for joining his friend the Cow-bailie out of doors; but ‘Miss Jenny was a grand hand at keeping him to the bit,
and by degrees he came to read brawly.’* An early acquaintance of a higher
class, Mrs Duncan, the wife of the present excellent minister of
Mertoun, informs me, that though she was younger than Sir
Walter, she has a dim remembrance of the interior of
Sandy-Knowe:—‘Old Mrs Scott sitting,
with her spinning-wheel, at one side of the fire, in a clean
clean parlour; the grandfather, a good deal failed, in his elbow-chair
opposite; and the little boy lying on the carpet, at the old man’s feet,
listening
* This old woman still possesses ‘the banes’ (bones)—that is to say, the boards—of a Psalm-book,
which Master Walter gave her at Sandy-knowe.
‘He chose it,’ she says, ‘of a very large
print, that I might be able to read it when I was very auld—forty year auld; but the bairns pulled the leaves out
langsyne.’
to the Bible, or whatever good book Miss Jenny
was reading to them.’
Robert Scott died before his grandson was four years
of age; and I heard him mention when he was an old man that he distinctly remembered the
writing and sealing of the funeral letters, and all the ceremonial of the melancholy
procession as it left Sandy-Knowe. I shall conclude my notices of the residence at
Sandy-Knowe with observing, that in Sir Walter’s
account of the friendly clergyman who so often sat at his grandfather’s fireside, we
cannot fail to trace many features of the secluded divine in the novel of Saint Ronan’s Well.
I have nothing to add to what he has told us of that excursion to England
which interrupted his residence at Sandy-Knowe for about a twelvemonth, except that I had
often been astonished, long before I read his autobiographic fragment, with the minute
recollection he seemed to possess of all the striking features of the city of Bath, which
he had never seen again since he quitted it before he was six years of age. He has himself
alluded, in his Memoir, to the lively recollection he retained of his first visit to the
theatre, to which his uncle Robert carried him to
witness a representation of As You Like
It. In his Reviewal of the
Life of John Kemble, written in
1826, he has recorded that impression more fully, and in terms so striking, that I must
copy them in this place:—
“There are few things which those gifted with any degree of
imagination recollect with a sense of more anxious and mysterious delight than the
first dramatic representation which they have witnessed. The unusual form of the house,
filled with such groups of crowded spectators, themselves forming an extraordinary
spectacle to the eye which has never witnessed it be-fore;
yet all intent upon that wide and mystic curtain, whose dusky undulations permit us now
and then to discern the momentary glitter of some gaudy form, or the spangles of some
sandaled foot, which trips lightly within: Then the light, brilliant as that of day;
then the music, which, in itself a treat sufficient in every other situation, our
inexperience mistakes for the very play we came to witness; then the slow rise of the
shadowy curtain, disclosing, as if by actual magic, a new land, with woods, and
mountains, and lakes, lighted, it seems to us, by another sun, and inhabited by a race
of beings different from ourselves, whose language is poetry,—whose dress, demeanour,
and sentiments seem something supernatural,—and whose whole actions and discourse are
calculated not for the ordinary tone of everyday life, but to excite the stronger and
more powerful faculties—to melt with sorrow, overpower with terror, astonish with the
marvellous, or convulse with irresistible laughter:—all these wonders stamp indelible
impressions on the memory. Those mixed feelings also, which perplex us between a sense
that the scene is but a plaything, and an interest which ever and anon surprises us
into a transient belief that that which so strongly affects us cannot be fictitious;
those mixed and puzzling feelings, also, are exciting in the highest degree. Then there
are the bursts of applause, like distant thunder, and the permission afforded to clap
our little hands, and add our own scream of delight to a sound so commanding. All this,
and much, much more, is fresh in our memory, although, when we felt these sensations,
we looked on the stage which Garrick had not yet
left. It is now a long while since; yet we have not passed many hours of such unmixed
delight, and we still remember the sinking lights, the dispersing crowd, with the vain
longings which we felt that the music would again sound, the magic
curtain once more arise, and the enchanting dream recommence; and the astonishment with
which we looked upon the apathy of the elder part of our company, who, having the
means, did not spend every evening in the theatre.”*
Probably it was this performance that first tempted him to open the page
of Shakspeare. Before he returned to Sandy-Knowe,
assuredly, notwithstanding the modest language of his autobiography, the progress which had
been made in his intellectual education was extraordinary; and it is impossible to doubt
that his hitherto almost sole tutoress, Miss Jenny
Scott, must have been a woman of tastes and acquirements very far above what
could have been often found among Scotch ladies, of any but the highest class at least, in
that day. In the winter of 1777, she and her charge spent some few weeks—not happy weeks,
the “Memoir” hints them to
have been—in George’s Square, Edinburgh; and it so happened, that during this little
interval, Mr and Mrs
Scott received in their domestic circle a guest capable of appreciating,
and, fortunately for us, of recording in a very striking manner the remarkable developement
of young Walter’s faculties. Mrs Cockburn, mentioned by him in his Memoir as the
authoress of the modern “Flowers of the Forest,” born a Rutherford, of
Fairnalie, in Selkirkshire, was as distantly related to the poet’s mother, with whom
she had through life been in habits of intimate friendship. This accomplished woman was
staying at Ravelstone, in the vicinity of Edinburgh, a seat of the Keiths of
Dunnotar, nearly related to Mrs Scott, and to herself.
With some of that family she spent an evening in George’s Square. She chanced to be
writing next day
* Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. xx. p. 154.
to Dr
Douglas, the well-known and much respected minister of her native parish,
Galashiels; and her letter, of which the doctor’s son has kindly given me a copy,
contains the following passage:
“Edinburgh, Saturday night, 15th of the gloomy month when the
people of England hang and drown themselves.
* * * * “I last night supped in
Mr Walter Scott’s. He has the most
extraordinary genius of a boy I ever saw. He was reading a poem to his mother when I
went in. I made him read on; it was the description of a shipwreck. His passion rose
with the storm. He lifted his eyes and hands. ‘There’s the mast
gone,’ says he; ‘crash it goes!—they will all perish!’ After his
agitation, he turns to me. ‘That is too melancholy,’ says he; ‘I had
better read you something more amusing.’ I preferred a little chat, and asked his
opinion of Milton and other books he was
reading, which he gave me wonderfully. One of his observations was, ‘How strange
it is that Adam, just new come into the world,
should know every thing—that must be the poet’s fancy,’ says he. But when
he was told he was created perfect by God, he instantly yielded. When taken to bed last
night, he told his aunt he liked that lady. What lady?’ says she. ‘Why,
Mrs Cockburn; for I think she is a virtuoso,
like myself.’ ‘Dear Walter,’ says aunt
Jenny, ‘what is a virtuoso?’ ‘Don’t ye know?
Why, it’s one who wishes and will know every thing.’*—
* It may amuse my reader to recall, by the side of Scott’s early definition of “a
Virtuoso,” the lines
in which Akenside has painted that
character—lines which might have been written for a description of the Author
of Waverley:—
“He knew the various modes of ancient times, Their arts and fashions of each various guise; Now, sir, you will think this a very silly story. Pray, what age do
you suppose this boy to be? Name it now, before I tell you. Why, twelve or fourteen. No
such thing; he is not quite six years old.* He has a lame leg, for which he was a year
at Bath, and has acquired the perfect English accent, which he has not lost since he
came, and he reads like a Garrick. You will
allow this an uncommon exotic.”
Some particulars in Mrs
Cockburn’s account appear considerably at variance with what Sir
Walter has told us respecting his own boyish proficiency—especially in the article of
pronunciation. On that last head, however, Mrs Cockburn was not,
probably, a very accurate judge: all that can be said is, that if at this early period he
had acquired any thing which could be justly described as an English accent, he soon lost,
and never again recovered, what he had thus gained from his short residence at Bath. In
after life his pronunciation of words, considered separately, was seldom much different
from that of a well-educated Englishman of his time; but he used many words in a sense
which belonged to Scotland not to England, and the tone and accent remained broadly Scotch,
though, unless in the burr, which no doubt smacked of the country
bordering on Northumberland, there was no provincial peculiarity
about his utterance. He had strong powers of mimicry—could talk with a peasant quite in his
own style, and frequently in general society introduced rustic Their weddings, funerals, punishments of crimes; Their strength, their learning eke, and rarities. Of old habiliment, each sort and size, Male, female, high and low, to him were known; Each gladiator’s dress, and stage-disguise, With learned clerkly phrase he could have shown.”
* He was, in fact, six years and three months old before this
letter was written.
patois, northern, southern, or midland, with great truth and effect;
but these things were inlaid dramatically, or playfully, upon his narrative. His exquisite
taste in this matter was not less remarkable in his conversation than in the prose of his
Scotch novels.
Another lady, nearly connected
with the Keiths of Ravelstone, has a lively recollection of young Walter, when paying a visit much about the same period to his kind
relation,* the mistress of that picturesque old mansion, which furnished him in after days
with many of the features of his Tully-Veolan, and whose venerable gardens, with their
massive hedges of yew and holly, he always considered as the ideal of the art. The lady,
whose letter I have now before me, says she distinctly remembers the sickly boy sitting at
the gate of the house with his attendant, when a poor mendicant approached, old and
woebegone, to claim the charity which none asked for in vain at Ravelstone. When the man
was retiring, the servant remarked to Walter that he ought to be
thankful to Providence for having placed him above the want and misery he had been
contemplating. ‘The child looked up with a half wistful, half incredulous
expression,’—and said Homer was
a beggar! How do ‘you know that? said the other Why, don’t you
remember, answered the little Virtuoso,—that ‘Seven Roman cities strove for Homer
dead, Through which the living Homer begged his bread?’
The lady smiled at the ‘Roman cities,’ but already ‘Each blank in faithless memory void The poet’s glowing thought supplied.’
It was in this same year, 1777, that he spent some time at Prestonpans;
made his first acquaintance with
* Mrs Keith of Ravelstone
was born a Swinton of Swinton, and sister to Sir Walter’s maternal grandmother.
George Constable, the original of his Monkbarns;
explored the field where Colonel Gardiner received
his death-wound, under the learned guidance of Dalgetty; and marked
the spot ‘where the grass grew long and green, distinguishing it from the rest of
the field,’* above the grave of poor Balmawhapple.
His uncle Thomas, whom I have
described as I saw him in extreme old age at Monklaw, had the management of the farm
affairs at Sandy-Knowe, when Walter returned thither
from Prestonpans; he was a kindhearted man, and very fond of the child. Appearing on his
return somewhat strengthened, his uncle promoted him from the Cow-bailie’s shoulder
to a dwarf of the Shetland race, not so large as many a Newfoundland dog. This creature
walked freely into the house, and was regularly fed from the boy’s hand. He soon
learned to sit her well, and often alarmed aunt
Jenny, by cantering over the rough places about the tower. In the evening of
his life, when he had a grandchild afflicted with an infirmity akin to his own, he provided
him with a little mare of the same breed, and gave her the name of Marion, in memory of this early favourite.
* Waverley, vol. ii. p. 175.
CHAPTER III. ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY CONTINUED—HIGH SCHOOL OF
EDINBURGH—RESIDENCE AT KELSO—1778-1783.
The report of Walter’s
progress in horsemanship probably reminded his father that it was time he should be
learning other things beyond the department either of aunt
Jenny or uncle Thomas, and after a
few months he was recalled to Edinburgh. But extraordinary as was the progress he had by
this time made in that self-education, which alone is of primary consequence to spirits of
his order, he was found too deficient in lesser matters to be at once entered in the High
School. Probably his mother dreaded, and deferred as long as she could, the day when he
should be exposed to the rude collision of a crowd of boys. At all events he was placed
first in a little private school kept by one Leechman in Bristo-port; and then, that experiment not answering
expectation, under the domestic tutorage of Mr James
French, afterwards minister of East Kilbride in Lanarkshire. This
respectable man grounded him in the Latin grammar, and considered him fit to join Luke Fraser’s second class in October 1779.
His own account of his progress at this excellent seminary is, on the
whole, very similar to what I have received from some of his surviving school-fellows. His
quick apprehension and powerful memory enabled him, at little cost of labour, to perform
the usual routine of tasks, in such a manner as to keep him generally “in a decent place” (so he once expressed it to Mr Skene), “about the middle of the class; with
which,” he continued, “I was the better contented, that it chanced
to be near the fire.”* Mr Fraser was,
I believe, more zealous in enforcing attention to the technicalities of grammar, than to
excite curiosity about historical facts, or imagination to strain after the flights of a
poet. There is no evidence that Scott, though he speaks of him as his “kind
master,” in remembrance probably of sympathy for his physical infirmities, ever
attracted his special notice with reference to scholarship; but Adam, the rector, into whose class he passed in October, 1782, was, as his
situation demanded, a teacher of a more liberal caste, and though never, even under his
guidance, did Walter fix and concentrate his ambition so
as to maintain an eminent place, still the vivacity of his talents was observed, and the
readiness of his memory in particular was so often displayed, that (as Mr Irving, his chosen friend of that day, informs me), the
doctor “would constantly refer to him for dates, the particulars of battles, and
other remarkable events alluded to in Horace, or
whatever author the boys were reading, and used to call him the historian of the
class.” No one who has read, as few have not, Dr
Adam’s interesting work on Roman Antiquities, will doubt the author’s
capacity for stimulating such a mind as young Scott’s.
He speaks of himself as occasionally “glancing like a meteor from
the bottom to the top of the form.” His school-fellow, Mr
Claud Russell, remembers that he once made a great leap in consequence of
the stupidity of some laggard on what is called the dult’s
(dolt’s) bench,
* According to Mr
Irving’s recollection, Scott’s place, after the first winter, was usually between
the 7th and the 15th from the top of the class. He adds, “Dr James Buchan was always the dux; David Douglas
(Lord Reston) second; and the present Lord
Melvillethird.”
who being asked, on boggling at cum, “what part of speech is with?” answered, “a substantive” The rector, after a
moment’s pause, thought it worth while to ask his dux—“Is with ever a substantive?”
but all were silent until the query reached Scott, then
near the bottom of the class, who instantly responded by quoting a verse of the book of
Judges: “And Sampson said unto Delilah,
If they bind me with seven green withs that were never dried, then shall I be weak, and
as another man.”* Another upward movement, accomplished in a less laudable
manner, but still one strikingly illustrative of his ingenious resources, I am enabled to
preserve through the kindness of a brother poet and esteemed friend, to whom Sir
Walter himself communicated it in the melancholy twilight of his bright day.
Mr Rogers says—“Sitting one day alone with
him in your house, in the Regent’s Park—(it was the day but one before he left it
to embark at Portsmouth for Malta)—I led him, among other things, to tell me once again
a story of himself, which he had formerly told me, and which I had often wished to
recover. When I returned home, I wrote it down, as nearly as I could, in his own words;
and here they are. The subject is an achievement worthy of Ulysses himself, and such as many of his school-fellows could, no
doubt, have related of him; but I fear I have done it no justice, though the story is
so very characteristic that it should not be lost. The inimitable manner in which he
told it—the glance of the eye, the turn of the head, and the light that played over his
faded features as, one by one, the circumstances came back to him, accompanied by a
thousand boyish feelings, that had slept perhaps for years—there is no language, not
even his own, could convey to you; but you can supply them. Would that
* Chap. xvi. v. 7.
others could do so, who had not the good fortune to know him! The
memorandum (Friday, October 21, 1831) is as follows:—
“There was a boy in my class at school, who stood always at the
top,* nor could I with all my efforts supplant him. Day came after day, and still he
kept his place, do what I would; till at length I observed that, when a question was
asked him, he always fumbled with his fingers at a particular button in the lower part
of his waistcoat. To remove it, therefore, became expedient in my eyes; and in an evil
moment it was removed with a knife. Great was my anxiety to know the success of my
measure; and it succeeded too well. When the boy was again questioned, his fingers
sought again for the button, but it was not to be found. In his distress he looked down
for it; it was to be seen no more than to be felt. He stood confounded, and I took
possession of his place; nor did he ever recover it, or ever, I believe, suspect who
was the author of his wrong. Often in after-life has the sight of him smote me as I
passed by him; and often have I resolved to make him some reparation; but it ended in
good resolutions. Though I never renewed my acquaintance with him, I often saw him, for
he filled some inferior office in one of the courts of law at Edinburgh. Poor fellow! I
believe he is dead; he took early to drinking.”
The autobiography tells us that his translations in verse from Horace and Virgil were
often approved by Dr Adam. One of these little
pieces, written in a weak boyish scrawl, within pencilled marks still visible, had
* Mr Irving inclines to
think that this incident must have occurred during Scott’s attendance on Luke
Fraser, not after he went to Dr
Adam; and he also suspects that the boy referred to sat at the top
not to the class, but of Scott’s own bench or division
of the class.
been carefully preserved by his mother; it was found folded up in a cover inscribed by the
old lady—“My Walter’s first lines, 1782.” “In awful ruins Ætna thunders nigh, And sends in pitchy whirlwinds to the sky Black clouds of smoke, which, still as they aspire, From their dark sides there bursts the glowing fire; At other times huge balls of fire are toss’d, That lick the stars, and in the smoke are lost: Sometimes the mount, with vast convulsions torn, Emits huge rocks, which instantly are borne With loud explosions to the starry skies, The stones made liquid as the huge mass flies, Then back again with greater weight recoils, While Ætna thundering from the bottom boils.” I gather from Mr Irving that these lines were
considered as the second best set of those produced on the occasion—Colin Mackenzie of Portmore, through life Scott’s dear friend, carrying off the premium.
In his Introduction to the “Lay,” he alludes to an original effusion of these “schoolboy
days,” prompted by a thunder-storm, which he says “was much approved of,
until a malevolent critic sprung up in the shape of an apothecary’s blue-buskined
wife, who affirmed that my most sweet poetry was copied from an old magazine. I
never” (he continues) “forgave the imputation, and even now I
acknowledge some resentment against the poor woman’s memory. She indeed accused
me unjustly, when she said I had stolen my poem ready made; but as I had, like most
premature poets, copied all the words and ideas of which my verses consisted, she was
so far right. I made one or two faint attempts at verse after I had undergone this sort
of daw-plucking at the hands of the apothecary’s wife, but some friend or other
always advised me to put my verses into the fire; and, like Dorax in the play, I submitted, though with a
swelling heart.” These lines, and another short piece “on the Setting Sun,” were lately found wrapped up in a cover,
inscribed by Dr Adam, “Walter Scott, July, 1783,” and have been kindly
transmitted to me by the gentleman who discovered them.
“On a Thunder-storm. “Loud o’er my head though awful thunders roll, And vivid lightnings flash from pole to pole, Yet ’tis thy voice, my God, that bids them fly, Thy arm directs those lightnings through the sky. Then let the good thy mighty name revere, And hardened sinners thy just vengeance fear.” On the Setting Sun. “Those evening clouds, that setting ray And beauteous tints, serve to display Their great Creator’s praise; Then let the short-lived thing call’d man, Whose life’s comprised within a span, To Him his homage raise. “We often praise the evening clouds, And tints so gay and bold, But seldom think upon our God, Who tinged these clouds with gold!”*
It must, I think, be allowed that these lines, though of the class to
which the poet himself modestly ascribes them, and not to be compared with the efforts of
Pope,
* I am obliged for these little memorials to the Rev. W. Steven of Rotterdam, author of an
interesting book on the history
of the branch of the Scotch Church long established in Holland, and still
flourishing under the protection of the enlightened government of that country.
Mr Steven found them in the course of his recent
researches, undertaken with a view to some memoirs of the High School of Edinburgh,
at which he had received his own early education.
still less of Cowley at the same period, show, nevertheless, praiseworthy dexterity for a
boy of twelve.
The fragment tells us, that on the whole he was “more
distinguished in the Yards (as the High School playground was
called), than in the class;” and this, not less than
the intellectual advancement which years before had excited the admiration of Mrs Cockburn, was the natural result of his lifelong
“rebellion against external circumstances.” He might now with very
slender exertion have been the dux of his form,
but if there was more difficulty, there was also more to whet his ambition, in the attempt
to overcome the disadvantages of his physical misfortune, and in spite of them assert
equality with the best of his compeers on the ground which they considered as the true
arena of honour. He told me, in walking through these same yards
forty years afterwards, that he had scarcely made his first appearance there, before some
dispute arising, his opponent remarked that “there was no use to hargle-bargle
with a cripple;” upon which he replied, that if he might fight mounted, he would try his hand with any one of his inches.
“An elder boy” (said he), “who had perhaps been chuckling
over our friend Roderick Random when his mother
supposed him to be in fall cry after Pyrrhus or
Porus, suggested that the two little tinklers
might be lashed front to front upon a deal board—and—‘O gran bonta
de’ cavalier antichi’—the proposal being forthwith
agreed to, I received my first bloody nose in an attitude which would have entitled me,
in the blessed days of personal cognizances, to assume that of a lioncel seiant gules. My pugilistic trophies
here” (he continued) “were all the results of such sittings in banco” Considering his utter
ignorance of fear, the strength of his chest and upper limbs, and that the scientific part
of pugilism never flourished in Scotland, I daresay these trophies were
not few.
The mettle of the High-School boys, however, was principally displayed
elsewhere than in their own yards; and Sir
Walter has furnished us with ample indications of the delight with which he
found himself at length capable of rivalling others in such achievements as required the
exertion of active locomotive powers. Speaking of some scene of his infancy in one of his
latest tales, he says: “Every step of the way after I have passed through the
green already mentioned” (probably the Meadows behind George’s Square),
“has for me something of an early remembrance. There is the stile at which I
can recollect a cross child’s-maid upbraiding me with my infirmity as she lifted
me coarsely and carelessly over the flinty steps which my brothers traversed with shout
and bound. I remember the suppressed bitterness of the moment, and conscious of my own
infirmity, the envy with which I regarded the easy movements and elastic steps of my
more happily formed brethren. Alas!” (he adds), “these goodly barks
have all perished in life’s wide ocean, and only that which seemed, as the naval
phrase goes, so little sea-worthy, has reached the port when the tempest is
over.” How touching to compare with this passage, that in which he records his
pride in being found before he left the High School one of the boldest and nimblest
climbers of “the kittle nine stanes,” a passage of difficulty which
might puzzle a chamois-hunter of the Alps, its steps “few and far
between,” projected high in air from the precipitous black granite of the Castle
rock. But climbing and fighting could sometimes be combined, and he has in almost the same
page dwelt upon perhaps the most favourite of all these juvenile exploits—namely,
“the manning of the Cowgate Port,”—in the season when snowballs
could be employed by the young scorners of discipline
for the annoyance of the Townguard. To understand fully the feelings of a High-School boy
of that day with regard to those ancient Highlanders, who then formed the only police of
the city of Edinburgh, the reader must consult the poetry of the scapegrace Ferguson. It was in defiance of their Lochaber axes that
the Cowgate Port was manned—and many were the occasions on which its defence presented at
least a formidable mimicry of warfare. “The gateway,” Sir
Walter adds, “is now demolished, and probably most of its garrison
lie as low as the fortress! To recollect that I, however naturally disqualified, was
one of these juvenile dreadnoughts, is a sad reflection for one who cannot now step
over a brook without assistance.”
I am unwilling to swell this narrative by extracts from
Scott’s published works, but there is one juvenile exploit
told in the General Preface to the Waverley
Novels which I must crave leave to introduce here in his own language, because
it is essentially necessary to complete our notion of his schoolboy life and character.
“It is well known” (he says) “that there is little boxing
at the Scottish schools. About forty or fifty years ago, however, a far more dangerous
mode of fighting, in parties or factions, was permitted in the streets of Edinburgh, to
the great disgrace of the police, and danger of the parties concerned. These parties
were generally formed from the quarters of the town in which the combatants resided,
those of a particular square or district fighting against those of an adjoining one.
Hence it happened that the children of the higher classes were often pitted against
those of the lower, each taking their side according to the residence of their friends.
So far as I recollect, however, it was unmingled either with feelings of democracy or
aristo-oracy, or indeed with malice or ill-will of any kind
towards the opposite party. In fact, it was only a rough mode of play. Such contests
were, however, maintained with great vigour with stones, and sticks, and fisticuffs,
when one party dared to charge and the other stood their ground. Of course mischief
sometimes happened; boys are said to have been killed at these Bickers, as they were called, and serious accidents certainly took place, as
many contemporaries can bear witness.
“The author’s father, residing in George’s Square,
in the southern side of Edinburgh, the boys belonging to that family, with others in
the square, were arranged into a sort of company, to which a lady of distinction
presented a handsome set of colours.* Now, this company or regiment, as a matter of
course, was engaged in weekly warfare with the boys inhabiting the Crosscauseway,
Bristo-Street, the Potterrow,—in short, the neighbouring suburbs. These last were
chiefly of the lower rank, but hardy loons, who threw stones to a hair’s-breadth,
and were very rugged antagonists at close quarters. The skirmish sometimes lasted for a
whole evening, until one party or the other was victorious, when, if ours were
successful, we drove the enemy to their quarters, and were usually chased back by the
reinforcement of bigger lads who came to their assistance. If, on the contrary, we were
pursued, as was often the case, into the precincts of our square, we were in our turn
supported by our elder brothers, domestic servants, and similar auxiliaries. It
followed, from our frequent opposition to each other, that, though not knowing the
names of our enemies, we were yet well acquainted with their appearance, and had
nicknames for the most remarkable of them. One very
* This young patroness was the present Countess-Duchess of Sutherland.
active and spirited boy might be considered as
the principal leader in the cohort of the suburbs. He was, I suppose, thirteen or
fourteen years old, finely made, tall, blue-eyed, with long fair hair, the very picture
of a youthful Goth. This lad was always first in the charge, and last in the
retreat—the Achilles at once and Ajax of the Crosscauseway. He was too formidable to us
not to have a cognomen, and, like that of a knight of old, it was taken from the most
remarkable part of his dress, being a pair of old green livery breeches, which was the
principal part of his clothing; for, like Pentapolin, according to Don
Quixote’s account, Green-breeks, as we called him, always entered
the battle with bare arms, legs, and feet.
“It fell, that once upon a time when the combat was at the
thickest, this plebeian champion headed a charge so rapid and furious, that all fled
before him. He was several paces before his comrades, and had actually laid his hands
upon the patrician standard, when one of our party, whom some misjudging friend had
intrusted with, a couteau de chasse, or
hanger, inspired with a zeal for the honour of the corps, worthy of Major Sturgeon himself, struck poor Green-breeks over the
head, with strength sufficient to cut him down. When this was seen, the casualty was so
far beyond what had ever taken place before, that both parties fled different ways,
leaving poor Green-breeks, with his bright hair plentifully dabbled in blood, to the
care of the watchman, who (honest man) took care not to know who had done the mischief.
The bloody hanger was thrown into one of the Meadow ditches, and solemn secrecy was
sworn on all hands; but the remorse and terror of the actor were beyond all bounds, and
his apprehensions of the most dreadful character. The wounded hero was for a few days
in the Infirmary, the case being only a trifling one. But though
enquiry was strongly pressed on him, no argument could make him indicate the person
from whom he had received the wound, though he must have been perfectly well known to
him. When he recovered, and was dismissed, the author and his brothers opened a
communication with him, through the medium of a popular gingerbread baker, of whom both
parties were customers, in order to tender a subsidy in the name of smart-money. The
sum would excite ridicule were I to name it; but sure I am, that the pockets of the
noted Green-breeks never held as much money of his own. He declined the remittance,
saying that he would not sell his blood; but at the same time reprobated the idea of
being an informer, which he said was clam, i. e. base or mean.
With much urgency, he accepted a pound of snuff for the use of some old woman aunt,
grandmother, or the like with whom he lived. We did not become friends, for the bickers were more agreeable to both parties than any more
pacific amusement; but we conducted them ever after, under mutual assurances of the
highest consideration for each other.” Sir
Walter adds:—“Of five brothers, all healthy and promising in a
degree far beyond one whose infancy was visited by personal infirmity, and whose health
after this period seemed long very precarious, I am, nevertheless, the only survivor.
The best loved, and the best deserving to be loved, who had destined this incident to
be the foundation of a literary composition, died “before his day,” in a
distant and foreign land; and trifles assume an importance not their own, when
connected with those who have been loved and lost.”
During some part of his attendance on the High School, young Walter spent one hour daily at a small separate seminary of
writing and arithmetic, kept by one Morton, where, as was, and I
suppose continues to be, the custom of Edinburgh,
young girls came for instruction as well as boys; and one of Mr
Morton’s female pupils has been kind enough to set down some little
reminiscences of Scott, who happened to sit at the same desk with
herself. They appear to me the more interesting, because the lady had no acquaintance with
him in the course of his subsequent life. Her nephew Mr
James (the accomplished author of Richelieu), to whose friendship I owe her
communication, assures me too, that he had constantly heard her tell the same things in the
very same way, as far back as his own memory reaches, many years before he had ever seen
Sir Walter, or his aunt could have dreamt of surviving to assist
in the biography of his early days.
“He attracted,” Mrs
Churnside says, “the regard and fondness of all his companions, for
he was ever rational, fanciful, lively, and possessed of that urbane gentleness of
manner, which makes its way to the heart. His imagination was constantly at work, and
he often so engrossed the attention of those who learnt with him, that little could be
done—Mr Morton himself being forced to laugh as much as the
little scholars at the odd turns and devices he fell upon; for he did nothing in the
ordinary way, but, for example, even when he wanted ink to his pen, would get up some
ludicrous story about sending his doggie to the mill again. He used also to interest us
in a more serious way, by telling us the visions, as he called them, which he had lying
alone on the floor or sofa, when kept from going to church on a Sunday by ill health.
Child as I was, I could not help being highly delighted with his description of the
glories he had seen—his misty and sublime sketches of the regions above, which he had
visited in his trance. Recollecting these descriptions, radiant and not gloomy as they
were, I have often thought since, that there must have been a bias
in his mind to superstition—the marvellous seemed to have such power over him, though
the mere offspring of his own imagination, that the expression of his face, habitually
that of genuine benevolence, mingled with a shrewd innocent humour, changed greatly
while he was speaking of these things, and showed a deep intenseness of feeling, as if
he were awed even by his own recital. . . . I may add, that in walking he used always
to keep his eyes turned downwards as if thinking, but with a pleasing expression of
countenance, as if enjoying his thoughts. Having once known him it was impossible ever
to forget him. In this manner, after all the changes of a long life, he constantly
appears as fresh as yesterday to my mind’s eye.”
This beautiful extract needs no commentary. I may as well, however, bear
witness, that exactly as the schoolboy still walks before “her mind’s
eye,” his image rises familiarly to mine, who never saw him until he was past
the middle of life: that I trace in every feature of her delineation, the same gentleness
of aspect and demeanour which the presence of the female sex, whether in silk or in russet,
ever commanded in the man; and that her description of the change on his countenance when
passing from the “doggie of the mill,” to the dream of Paradise, is a
perfect picture of what no one that has heard him recite a fragment of high poetry, in the
course of table-talk, can ever forget. Strangers may catch some notion of what fondly
dwells on the memory of every friend, by glancing from the conversational bust of Chantrey, to the first portrait by Raeburn, which represents the Last Minstrel as musing in
his prime within sight of Hermitage.*
* The Duke of Buccleuch, who
now possesses this admirable portrait, has kindly permitted it to be re-engraved
for the illustration of the present volume.
I believe it was about this time that, as
he expresses it in one of his latest works, “the first images of horror from the
scenes of real life were stamped upon his mind,” by the tragical death of his
great-aunt Mrs Margaret Swinton. This old lady,
whose extraordinary nerve of character he illustrates largely in the introduction to the
story of Aunt Margaret’s Mirror, was
now living with one female attendant, in a small house not far from Mr Scott’s residence in George’s Square. The maidservant, in a
sudden access of insanity, struck her mistress to death with a coal-axe, and then rushed
furiously into the street with the bloody weapon in her hand, proclaiming aloud the horror
she had perpetrated. I need not dwell on the effects which must have been produced in a
virtuous and affectionate circle by this shocking incident. The old lady had been tenderly
attached to her nephew. “She was” (he says) “our constant
resource in sickness, or when we tired of noisy play, and closed round her to listen to
her tales.”
It was at this same period that Mr
and Mrs Scott received into their house, as tutor
for their children, Mr James Mitchell, of whom the
Ashestiel Memoir gives us a
description, such as I could not have presented had he been still alive. Mr
Mitchell was still living, however, at the time of his pupil’s death,
and I am now not only at liberty to present Scott’s unmutilated account of their
intercourse, but enabled to give also the most simple and characteristic narrative of the
other party. I am sure no one, however nearly related to Mr Mitchell,
will now complain of seeing his keen-sighted pupil’s sketch placed by the side, as it
were, of the fuller portraiture drawn by the unconscious hand of the amiable and worthy man
himself. The following is an extract from Mr Mitchell’s MS., entitled “Memorials of the most remarkable occurrences and trans-actions of my life, drawn up in the hope that, when I shall be no more, they may be
read with profit and pleasure by my children.” The good man was so kind as
to copy out one chapter for my use, as soon as he heard of Sir
Walter Scott’s death. He was then, and had for many years been,
minister of a Presbyterian chapel at Wooler, in Northumberland, to which situation he had
retired on losing his benefice at Montrose, in consequence of the Sabbatarian scruples
alluded to in Scott’s Autobiography.
“In 1782,” says Mr
Mitchell, “I became a tutor in Mr Walter Scott’s family. He was a Writer to the Signet,
in George’s Square, Edinburgh. Mr Scott was a fine
looking man, then a little past the meridian of life, of dignified, yet
agreeable manners. His business was extensive. He was a man of tried integrity,
of strict morals, and had a respect for religion and its ordinances. The church
the family attended was the Old Grey Friars, of which the celebrated Doctors
Robertson and Erskine were the ministers. Thither went Mr
and Mrs Scott every Sabbath, when well
and at home, attended by their fine young family of children, and their
domestic servants—a sight so amiable and exemplary as often to excite in my
breast a glow of heartfelt satisfaction. According to an established and
laudable practice in the family, the heads of it, the children, and servants
were assembled on Sunday evenings in the drawing-room, and examined on the
Church catechism and sermons they had heard delivered during the course of the
day; on which occasions I had to perform the part of chaplain, and conclude
with prayer. From Mrs Scott I learned that Mr
Scott was one that had not been seduced from the paths of
virtue; but had been enabled to venerate good morals from his youth. When he
first came to Edinburgh to follow out his profession, some of his school fellows, who,
like him, had come to reside in Edinburgh, attempted to unhinge his principles,
and corrupt his morals; but when they found him resolute, and unshaken in his
virtuous dispositions, they gave up the attempt; but, instead of abandoning him
altogether, they thought the more of him, and honoured him with their
confidence and patronage; which is certainly a great inducement to young men in
the outset of life to act a similar part.
“After having heard of his inflexible adherence to the
cause of virtue in his youth, and his regular attendance on the ordinances of
religion in after-life, we will not be surprised to be told that he bore a
sacred regard for the Sabbath, nor at the following anecdote illustrative of
it. An opulent farmer of East Lothian had employed Mr Scott as his agent, in a cause depending before the Court of
Session. Having a curiosity to see something in the papers relative to the
process, which were deposited in Mr Scott’s hands,
this worldly man came into Edinburgh on a Sunday to have an inspection of them.
As there was no immediate necessity for this measure, Mr
Scott asked the farmer if an ordinary week-day would not answer
equally well. The farmer was not willing to take this advice, but insisted on
the production of his papers. Mr Scott then delivered them
up to him, saying, it was not his practice to engage in secular business on
Sabbath, and that he would have no difficulty in Edinburgh to find some of his
profession who would have none of his scruples. No wonder such a man was
confided in, and greatly honoured in his professional line.—All the poor
services I did to his family were more than repaid by the comfort and honour I
had by being in the family, the pecuniary remuneration I received, and
particularly by his recommendation of me, sometimes afterwards, to the
Magistrates and Town-Council of Mon-trose, when there was a
vacancy, and this brought me on the carpet, which, as he said, was all he could
do, as the settlement would ultimately hinge on a popular election.
“Mrs Scott was
a wife in every respect worthy of such a husband. Like her partner, she was
then a little past the meridian of life, of a prepossessing appearance, amiable
manners, of a cultivated understanding, affectionate disposition, and fine
taste. She was both able and disposed to soothe her husband’s mind under
the asperities of business, and to be a rich blessing to her numerous progeny.
But what constituted her distinguishing ornament was, that she was sincerely
religious. Some years previous to my entrance into the family, I understood
from one of the servants she had been under deep religious concern about her
soul’s salvation, which had ultimately issued in a conviction of the
truth of Christianity, and in the enjoyment of its divine consolations. She
liked Dr Erskine’s sermons; but
was not fond of the Principal’s,
however rational, eloquent, and well composed, and would, if other things had
answered, have gone, when he preached, to have heard Dr Davidson. Mrs Scott
was a descendant of Dr Daniel
Rutherford, a professor in the Medical School of Edinburgh, and one
of those eminent men, who, by learning and professional skill, brought it to
the high pitch of celebrity to which it has attained. He was an excellent
linguist, and, according to the custom of the times, delivered his prelections
to the students in Latin. Mrs Scott told me, that, when
prescribing to his patients, it was his custom to offer up at the same time a
prayer for the accompanying blessing of heaven; a laudable practice, in which,
I fear, he has not been generally imitated by those of his profession.
“Mr
Scott’s family consisted of six children, all of which
were at home except the eldest, who was
an offi-cer in the
army; and as they were of an age fit for instruction, they were all committed
to my superintendence, which, in dependence on God, I exercised with an earnest
and faithful regard to their temporal and spiritual good. As the most of them
were under public teachers, the duty assigned me was mainly to assist them in
the prosecution of their studies. In all the excellencies, whether as to
temper, conduct, talents natural or acquired, which any of the children
individually possessed, to Master Walter,
since the celebrated Sir Walter, must a decided preference
be ascribed. Though, like the rest of the children, placed under my tuition,
the conducting of his education comparatively cost me but little trouble,
being, by the quickness of his intellect, tenacity of memory, and diligent
application to his studies, generally equal of himself to the acquisition of
those tasks I or others prescribed to him. So that Master
Walter might be regarded not so much as a pupil of mine, but as
a friend and companion, and I may add, as an assistant also; for, by his
example and admonitions, he greatly strengthened my hands, and stimulated my
other pupils to industry and good behaviour. I seldom had occasion all the time
I was in the family to find fault with him even for trifles, and only once to
threaten serious castigation, of which he was no sooner aware than he suddenly
sprung up, threw his arms about my neck, and kissed me. It is hardly needful to
state, that now the intended castigation was no longer thought of. By such
generous and noble conduct my displeasure was in a moment converted into esteem
and admiration; my soul melted into tenderness, and I was ready to mingle my
tears with his. Some incidents in reference to him in that early period, and
some interesting and useful conversations I had with him, then deeply impressed
on my mind, and which the lapse of near half a century has
not yet obliterated, afforded no doubtful presage of his future greatness and
celebrity. On my going into the family, as far as I can judge, he might be in
his twelfth or thirteenth year, a boy in the Rector’s class. However
elevated above the other boys in genius, though generally in the list of the
duxes, he was seldom, as far as I recollect, the leader of the school: nor need
this be deemed surprising, as it has often been observed, that boys of original
genius have been outstripped by those that were far inferior to themselves, in
the acquisition of the dead languages. Dr
Adam, the rector, celebrated for his knowledge of the Latin
language, was deservedly held by Mr Walter in high
admiration and regard; of which the following anecdote may be adduced as a
proof. In the High School, as is well known, there are four masters and a
rector. The classes of those masters the rector in rotation inspects, and in
the mean time the master, whose school is examined, goes in to take care of the
rector’s. One of the masters, on
account of some grudge, had rudely assaulted and injured the venerable rector
one night in the High School Wynd. The rector’s scholars, exasperated at
the outrage, at the instigation of Master Walter,
determined on revenge, and which was to be executed when this obnoxious master
should again come to teach the class. When this occurred, the task the class
had prescribed to them was that passage in the Æneid of Virgil, where the Queen of Carthage interrogates the court as
to the stranger that had come to her habitation— ‘Quis novus hic hospes successit sedibus
nostris?’*
* This transposition of hospes and nostris sufficiently confirms his pupil’s
statement that Mr Mitchell
“superintended his classical themes, but not
classically.” The “obnoxious master “alluded
to was Burns’s friend
Nicoll, the hero of the
song—
“Willie brewed a
peck o’ maut, And Rob and
Allan came to see,” &c. Master Walter having taken a piece of paper, inscribed
upon it these words, substituting vanus for novus,
and pinned it to the tail of the master’s coat, and turned him into
ridicule by raising the laugh of the whole school against him. Though this
juvenile action could not be justified on the footing of Christian principles,
yet certainly it was so far honourable that it was not a dictate of personal
revenge; but that it originated in respect for a worthy and injured man, and
detestation of one whom he looked upon as a bad character.
“One forenoon, on coming from the High School, he said
he wished to know my opinion as to his conduct in a matter he should state to
me. When passing through the High School Yards, he found a half-guinea piece on
the ground. Instead of appropriating this to his own use, a sense of honesty
led him to look around, and on doing so he espied a countryman, whom he
suspected to be the proprietor. Having asked the man if he had lost anything,
he searched his pockets, and then replied that he had lost half-a-guinea.
Master Walter with pleasure presented
him with his lost treasure. In this transaction, his ingenuity in finding out
the proper owner, and his integrity in restoring the property, met my most
cordial approbation.
“When in church, Master
Walter had more of a soporific tendency than the rest of my
young charge. This seemed to be constitutional. He needed one or other of the
family to arouse him, and from this it might be inferred that he would cut a
poor figure on the Sabbath evening when examined about the sermons. But what
excited the admiration of the family was, that none of the children, however
wakeful, could answer as he did. The only way that I could account for this
was, that when he heard the text, and divisions of the subject, his good sense,
memory, and genius supplied the thoughts which would occur to the preacher.
“On one occasion, in the dining-room, when, according
to custom, he was reading some author in the time of relaxation from study, I
asked him how he accounted for the superiority of knowledge he possessed above
the rest of the family. His reply was—Some years ago he had been attacked by a
swelling in one of his ankles, which confined him to the house, and prevented
him taking amusement and exercise, and which was the cause of his lameness as
under this ailment he could not romp with his brothers and the other young
people in the green in George’s Square, he found himself compelled to
have recourse to some substitute for the juvenile amusements of his comrades,
and this was reading. So that, to what he no doubt accounted a painful
dispensation of Providence, he probably stood indebted for his future
celebrity. When it was understood I was to leave the family, Master Walter told me that he had a small present
to give me to be kept as a memorandum of his friendship, and that it was of
little value: ‘But you know, Mr
Mitchell,’ said he, ‘that presents are
not to be estimated according to their intrinsic value, but according to
the intention of the donor.’ This was his Adam’s grammar, which had seen hard
service in its day, and had many animals and inscriptions on its margins. This,
to my regret, is no longer to be found in my collection of books, nor do I know
what has become of it.
“Since leaving the family, although no stranger to the
widely spreading fame of Sir Walter, I have
had few opportunities of personal intercourse with him. When minister in the
second charge of the Established Church at Montrose, he paid me a visit, and
spent a night with me—few visits have been more gratifying. He was then on his
return from Aberdeen, where he, as an advocate, had attended the Court of
Justiciary in its
northern circuit. Nor was his attendance in this court his sole object;
another, and perhaps the principal, was, as he stated to me, to collect in his
excursion ancient ballads and traditional stories about fairies, witches, and
ghosts. Such intelligence proved to me as an electrical shock; and as I then
sincerely regretted, so do I still, that Sir
Walter’s precious time was so much devoted to the
dulce, rather than the
utile of composition, and
that his great talent should have been wasted on such subjects. At the same
time I feel happy to qualify this censure, as I am generally given to
understand that his Novels are of a more pure and unexceptionable nature than
characterises writings of a similar description; while at the same time his pen
has been occupied in the production of works of a better and nobler order.
Impressed with the conviction that he would one day arrive at honour and
influence in his native country, I endeavoured to improve the occasion of his
visit to secure his patronage in behalf of the strict and evangelical party in
the Church of Scotland, in exerting himself to induce patrons to grant to the
Christian people liberty to elect their own pastors in cases of vacancy. His
answer struck me much—it was: ‘Nay, nay, Mr Mitchell, I’ll not do that; for if that were to be
done, I and the like of me would have no life with such as you;’
from which I inferred he thought that, were the evangelical clergy to obtain
the superiority, they would introduce such strictness of discipline as would
not quadrate with the ideas of that party called the
moderate in the Church of Scotland, whose views, I presume,
Sir Walter had now adopted. Some, however, to whom I
have mentioned Sir Walter’s reply, have suggested
that I had misunderstood his meaning, and that what he said was not in earnest,
but in jocularity and good-humour. This may be true, and certainly is a candid
interpretation. As to the ideal beings already mentioned
as the subject of his enquiries, my materials were too scanty to afford him
much information.”
Notwithstanding the rigidly Presbyterian habits which this chronicle
describes with so much more satisfaction than the corresponding page in the Ashestiel Memoir, I am reminded, by a
communication already quoted from a lady of the Ravelstone
family, that Mrs Scott, who had, she
says, “a turn for literature quite uncommon among the ladies of the
time,” encouraged her son in his passion for Shakspeare that his plays, and the Arabian Nights, were often read aloud in the family circle by Walter, “and served to spend many a happy evening
hour”—nay, that, however good Mitchell
may have frowned at such a suggestion, even Mr Scott
made little objection to his children, and some of their young friends, getting up private
theatricals occasionally in the dining-room, after the lessons of the day were over. The
lady adds, that Walter was always the manager, and had the whole
charge of the affair, and that the favourite piece used to be Jane Shore, in which he was the Hastings, his sister the Alicia. I have
heard from another friend of the family, that Richard III. also was attempted, and that Walter took the
part of the Duke of Gloucester, observing that
“the limp would do well enough to represent the hump.”
A story which I have seen in print, about his partaking in the dancing
lessons of his brothers, I do not believe. But it was during Mr
Mitchell’s residence in the family that they all made their
unsuccessful attempts in the art of music, under the auspices of poor Elshender Campbell the Editor of “Albyn’s Anthology.”
Mr Mitchell appears to have terminated his super-intendence before Walter left Dr Adam, and in the
interval between this and his entrance at College, he spent some time with his aunt, who
now inhabited a cottage at Kelso; but the Memoir, I suspect, gives too much extension to
that residence—which may be accounted for by his blending with it a similar visit which he
paid to the same place during his College vacation of the next year.
Some of the features of Miss
Jenny’s abode at Kelso are alluded to in the Memoir, but the fullest
description of it occurs in his “Essay
on Landscape Gardening” (1828), where, talking of grounds laid out in the
Dutch taste, he says: “Their rarity now entitles them
to some care as a species of antiques, and unquestionably they give character to some
snug, quiet, and sequestered situations, which would otherwise have no marked feature
of any kind. I retain an early and pleasing recollection of the seclusion of such a
scene. A small cottage, adjacent to a beautiful village, the habitation of an ancient
maiden lady, was for some time my abode. It was situated in a garden of seven or eight
acres, planted about the beginning of the eighteenth century, by one of the Millars
related to the author of the “Gardeners’ Dictionary,”
or, for aught I know, by himself. It was full of long straight walks, between hedges of
yew and hornbeam, which rose tall and close on every side. There were thickets of
flowery shrubs, a bower, and an arbour, to which access was obtained through a little
maze of contorted walks calling itself a labyrinth. In the centre of the bower was a
splendid Platanus, or Oriental plane—a huge hill of leaves—one of the noblest specimens
of that regularly beautiful tree which I remember to have seen. In different parts of
the garden were fine ornamental trees, which had attained great size, and the orchard
was filled with fruit trees of the best description. There were
seats and hilly walks, and a banquetting house. I visited this scene lately, after an
absence of many years. Its air of retreat, the seclusion which its alleys afforded, was
entirely gone; the huge Platanus had died, like most of its kind, in the beginning of
this century; the hedges were cut down, the trees stubbed up, and the whole character
of the place so destroyed, that I was glad when I could leave it.” It was
under this Platanus that Scott first devoured Percy’sReliques. I remember well being with him, in 1820 or
1821, when he revisited the favourite scene, and the sadness of his looks when he
discovered that “the huge hill of leaves” was no more.
To keep up his scholarship while inhabiting the
garden, he attended daily, as he informs us, the public school of Kelso, and here
he made his first acquaintance with a family, two members of which were intimately
connected with the most important literary transactions of his after life—James Ballantyne, the printer of almost all his works, and
his brother John, who had a share in the publication
of many of them. Their father was a respectable tradesman in this pretty town. The elder of
the brothers, who did not long survive his illustrious friend, was kind enough to make an
exertion on behalf of this work, while stretched on the bed from which he never rose, and
dictated a valuable paper of memoranda, from which I shall here introduce my first
extract:—
“I think” (says James
Ballantyne) “it was in the year 1783, that I first became
acquainted with Sir Walter Scott, then a boy about
my own age, at the Grammar School of Kelso, of which Mr
Lancelot Whale was the Rector. The impression left by his manners was,
even at that early period, calculated to be deep, and I cannot recall any other
instance in which the man and the boy
continued to resemble each other so much and so long. Walter Scott
was not a constant school-fellow at this seminary; he only attended it for a few weeks
during the vacation of the Edinburgh High School. He was then, as he continued during
all his after life to be, devoted to antiquarian lore, and was certainly the best
story-teller I had ever heard, either then or since. He soon discovered that I was as
fond of listening as he himself was of relating; and I remember it was a thing of daily
occurrence, that after he had made himself master of his own lesson, I, alas! being
still sadly to seek in mine, he used to whisper to me, ‘Come, slink over
beside me, Jamie, and I’ll tell you a story.’
I well recollect that he had a form, or seat, appropriated to himself, the particular
reason of which I cannot tell, but he was always treated with a peculiar degree of
respect, not by the boys of the different classes merely, but by the venerable
Master Lancelot himself, who, an absent, grotesque being,
betwixt six and seven feet high, was nevertheless an admirable scholar, and sure to be
delighted to find any one so well qualified to sympathize with him as young
Walter Scott; and the affectionate gratitude of the young
pupil was never intermitted, so long as his venerable master continued to live. I may
mention, in passing, that old Whale bore, in many particulars, a
strong resemblance to Dominie Sampson, though, it
must be admitted, combining more gentlemanly manners with equal classical lore, and, on
the whole, being a much superior sort of person. In the intervals of school hours, it
was our constant practice ta walk together by the banks of the Tweed, our employment
continuing exactly the same, for his stories seemed to be quite inexhaustible. This
intercourse continued during the summers of the years 1783-4, but was broken off in
1785-6, when I went into Edinburgh to College.”
Perhaps the separate seat assigned to Walter
Scott, by the Kelso schoolmaster, was considered due to him as a temporary
visitor from the great Edinburgh seminary. Very possibly, however, the worthy Mr Whale thought of nothing but protecting his solitary
student of Persius and Tacitus from the chances of being jostled among the adherents of Ruddiman and Cornelius
Nepos.
Another of his Kelso schoolfellows was Robert Waldie
(son of Mr Waldie of Henderside), and to this connexion he owed, both
while quartered in the Garden, and afterwards at Rosebank, many kind attentions, of which
he ever preserved a grateful recollection, and which have left strong traces on every page
of his works in which he has occasion to introduce the Society of Friends. This young
companion’s mother, though always called in the neighbourhood “Lady Waldie,” belonged to that community; and the
style of life and manners depicted in the household of Joshua
Geddes of Mount Sharon and his amiable sister, in some of the sweetest
chapters of Redgauntlet, is a slightly
decorated edition of what he witnessed under her hospitable roof. He records, in a note to
the Novel, the “liberality and benevolence” of this “kind old
lady” in allowing him to “rummage at pleasure, and carry home any
volumes he chose of her small but valuable library,” annexing only the
condition that he should “take at the same time some of the tracts printed for
encouraging and extending the doctrines of her own sect. She did not,” he
adds, “even exact any assurance that I would read these performances, being too
justly afraid of involving me in a breach of promise, but was merely desirous that I
should have the chance of instruction within my reach, in case whim, curiosity, or
accident might induce me to have recourse to it.” I remember the pleasure
with which he read, late in life, “Rome in the Nineteenth Century,” an
ingenious work produced by one of Mrs Waldie’sgrand-daughters, and how comically he pictured the alarm
with which his ancient friend would have perused some of its delineations of the high
places of Popery.
I shall be pardoned for adding in this place a marginal note, written
apparently late in Scott’s life, on his copy of a
little forgotten volume, entitled “Trifles in Verse, by a Young Soldier.” “In 1783” (he says)
“or about that time, I remember John
Marjoribanks, a smart recruiting officer in the village of Kelso, the Weekly
Chronicle of which he filled with his love verses. His Delia was a Miss Dickson, daughter of a shopkeeper in
the same village—his Gloriana a certain prudish old maiden lady,
benempt Miss Goldie; I think I see her still, with her thin arms
sheathed in scarlet gloves, and crossed like two lobsters in a fishmonger’s stand.
Poor Delia was a very beautiful girl, and not more conceited than a
be-rhymed miss ought to be. Many years afterwards I found the Kelso belle, thin and pale,
her good looks gone, and her smart dress neglected, governess to the brats of a Paisley
manufacturer. I ought to say there was not an atom of scandal in her flirtation with the
young military poet. The bard’s fate was not much better; after some service in
India, and elsewhere, he led a half-pay life about Edinburgh, and died there. There is a
tenuity of thought in what he has written, but his verses are usually easy, and I like them
because they recall my schoolboy days, when I thought him a Horace, and his Delia a goddess.”
CHAPTER IV. ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE BIOGRAPHY CONTINUED—ANECDOTES OF SCOTT’S COLLEGE LIFE,—1783-1786.
On returning to Edinburgh, and entering the College, in
November, 1783, Scott found himself once more in the fellowship of all his intimates of the
High School; of whom, besides those mentioned in his autobiographical fragment, he speaks
in his diaries with particular affection of Sir William Rae,
Bart., David Monypenny, afterwards
Lord Pitmilly, Thomas Tod, W.S., Sir
Archibald Campbell of Succoth, Bart., all familiar friends of his through
manhood, and the present Earl of Dalhousie, whom, on
meeting with him after a long separation in the evening of life, he records as still being,
and having always been, “the same manly and generous character that all about him
loved as the Lordie Ramsay of the
Yards.” His chosen intimate, however, continued to be for some time Mr John Irving—his suburban walks with whom have been
recollected so tenderly, both in the Memoir of 1808, and in the Preface to Waverley of 1829. It will interest the
reader to compare, with those beautiful descriptions, the following extract from a letter
with which Mr Irving has favoured me:—
“Every Saturday, and more frequently during the vacations, we
used to retire, with three or four books from the circulating library, to Salisbury
Crags, Arthur’s Seat, or Blackford Hill, and read them together. He read faster
than I, and had, on this account, to wait a little at finishing every two pages,
before turning the leaf. The books we most delighted in were romances of
knight-errantry the Castle of
Otranto, Spenser, Ariosto, and Boiardo were great favourites. We used to climb up the rocks in search
of places where we might sit sheltered from the wind; and the more inaccessible they
were, the better we liked them. He was very expert at climbing. Sometimes we got into
places where we found it difficult to move either up or down, and I recollect it being
proposed, on several occasions, that I should go for a ladder to see and extricate him,
but I never had any need really to do so, for he always managed somehow either to get
down or ascend to the top. The number of books we thus devoured was very great. I
forgot great part of what I read, but my friend, notwithstanding he read with such
rapidity, remained, to my surprise, master of it all, and could even, weeks or months
afterwards, repeat a whole page in which any thing had particularly struck him at the
moment. After we had continued this practice of reading for two years or more together,
he proposed that we should recite to each other alternately such adventures of
knight-errants as we could ourselves contrive; and we continued to do so a long while.
He found no difficulty in it, and used to recite for half an hour or more at a time,
while I seldom continued half that space. The stories we told were, as Sir Walter has said, interminable—for we were unwilling to
have any of our favourite knights killed. Our passion for romance led us to learn
Italian together; after a time we could both read it with fluency, and we then copied
such tales as we had met with in that language, being a continued succession of battles
and enchantments. He began early to collect old ballads, and as my mother could repeat
a great many, he used to come and learn those she could recite to
him. He used to get all the copies of these ballads he could, and select the
best.”
These, no doubt, were among the germs of the collection of ballads in six
little volumes, which, from the handwriting, had been begun at this early period, and which
is still preserved at Abbotsford. And it appears, that at least as early a date must be
ascribed to another collection of little humorous stories in prose, the Penny Chap-books, as they are called, still in high favour among the lower
classes in Scotland, which stands on the same shelf. In a letter of 1830* he states that he
had bound up things of this kind to the extent of several volumes, before he was ten years
old.
Although the Ashestiel
Memoir mentions so very lightly his boyish addiction to verse, and the rebuke
which his vein received from the Apothecary’s blue-buskined wife as having been
followed by similar treatment on the part of others, I am inclined to believe that while
thus devouring, along with his young friend, the stores of Italian romance, he essayed,
from time to time, to weave some of their materials into rhyme;—nay, that he must have made
at least one rather serious effort of this kind, as early as the date of these rambles to
the Salisbury Crags. I have found among his mother’s papers a copy of verses headed,
“Lines to Mr Walter Scott on reading his
poem of Guiscard and Matilda, inscribed to Miss Keith of
Ravelston” There is no date; but I conceive the lines bear internal
evidence of having been written when he was very young—not, I should suppose, above
fourteen or fifteen at most. I think it also certain that the writer was a woman; and have
almost as little doubt that they came from the pen of his old admirer, Mrs Cockburn. They are as follows:—
* See Strang’sGermany
in 1831, vol. i., p. 265.
“If such the accents of thy early youth When playful fancy holds the place of truth; If so divinely sweet thy numbers flow, And thy young heart melts with such tender wo What praise, what admiration shall be thine, When sense mature with science shall combine To raise thy genius and thy taste refine! “Go on, dear youth, the glorious path pursue Which bounteous Nature kindly smooths for you; Go, bid the seeds her hand hath sown arise, By timely culture, to their native skies; Go, and employ the poet’s heavenly art, Not merely to delight, but mend the heart. Than other poets happier mayst thou prove, More blest in friendship, fortunate in love, Whilst Fame, who longs to make true merit known, Impatient waits, to claim thee as her own. “Scorning the yoke of prejudice and pride, Thy tender mind let truth and reason guide Let meek humility thy steps attend, And firm integrity, youth’s surest friend. So peace and honour all thy hours shall bless, And conscious rectitude each joy increase; A nobler meed be thine than empty praise— Heaven shall approve thy life, and Keith thy
lays.”
At the period to which I refer these verses, Scott’s parents still continued to have some expectations of curing
his lameness, and Mr Irving remembers to have often
assisted in applying the electrical apparatus, on which for a considerable time they
principally rested their hopes. There is an allusion to these experiments in
Scott’s autobiographical fragment, but I have found a fuller
notice on the margin of his copy of the “Guide to Health, Beauty, Riches, and Longevity,” as Captain Grose chose to entitle an amusing collection of
quack advertisements.
“The celebrated Dr
Graham” (says the annotator) “was an
empiric of some genius and great assurance. In fact, he had a dash of madness in his
composition. He had a fine electrical apparatus, and used it with skill. I myself,
amongst others, was subjected to a course of electricity under his charge. I remember
seeing the old Earl of Hopetoun seated in a large
arm-chair, and hung round with a collar, and a belt of magnets, like an Indian chief.
After this, growing quite wild, Graham set up his Temple of Health, and lectured on the celestial bed. He attempted a course of these lectures at Edinburgh, and as
the Magistrates refused to let him do so, he libelled them in a series of
advertisements, the flights of which were infinitely more absurd and exalted than those
which Grose has collected. In one tirade (long
in my possession), he declared that ‘he looked down upon them’ (the
Magistrates) ‘as the sun in his meridian glory looks down on the poor, feeble,
stinking glimmer of an expiring farthing candle, or as G—— himself, in the plenitude of
his omnipotence, may regard the insolent bouncings of a few refractory maggots in a
rotten cheese.’ Graham was a good-looking man; he used to
come to the Grey-friars’ Church in a suit of white and silver, with a
chapeau-bras, and his hair marvellously dressed into a sort of double toupee, which
divided upon his head like the two tops of Parnassus. Mrs
Macauley, the historianess, married his brother. Lady Hamilton is said to have first enacted his
Goddess of Health, being at this time a fille de
joie of great celebrity.* The Temple of Health dwindled into a sort
of obscene hell, or gambling house. In a quarrel which took
place there, a poor young man was run into the bowels with a red-hot poker, of which
injury he died. The mob vented their
* Lord Nelson’s
connexion with this lady will preserve her celebrity.
fury on the house, and the Magistrates,
somewhat of the latest, shut up the exhibition. A quantity of glass and crystal
trumpery, the remains of the splendid apparatus, was sold on the South Bridge for next
to nothing. Graham’s next receipt was the earth-bath, with
which he wrought some cures, but that also failing, he was, I believe, literally
starved to death.”
Graham’s earth-bath too was, I understand,
tried upon Scott, but his was not one of the cases, if
any such there were, in which it worked a cure. He, however, improved about this time
greatly in his general health and strength, and Mr
Irving, in accordance with the statement in the Memoir, assures me, that
while attending the early classes at the College, the young friends extended their walks,
so as to visit in succession all the old castles within eight or ten miles of Edinburgh.
“Sir Walter” (he says) “was
specially fond of Rosslyn. We frequently walked thither before breakfast—after
breakfasting there walked all down the river side to Lasswade—and thence home to town
before dinner. He used generally to rest one hand on my shoulder when we walked
together, and leaned with the other on a stout stick.”
The love of picturesque scenery, and especially of feudal castles, with
which the vicinity of Edinburgh is plentifully garnished, awoke, as the Memoir tells us,
the desire of being able to use the pencil. Mr
Irving says,—“I attended one summer a class of drawing along with
him, but although both fond of it, we found it took up so much time that we gave this
up before we had made much progress.” In one of his later diaries, Scott himself gives the following more particular account of
this matter:—
“I took lessons of oil-painting in youth from a little Jew
animalcule—a smouch called Burrell—a clever sen-sible creature though. But I could make no progress either in painting or drawing.
Nature denied me the correctness of eye and neatness of hand. Yet I was very desirous
to be a draughtsman at least—and laboured harder to attain that point than at any other
in my recollection to which I did not make some approaches.
Burrell was not useless to me altogether neither. He was a
Prussian, and I got from him many a long story of the battles of Frederick, in whose armies his father had been a
commissary, or perhaps a spy. I remember his picturesque account of seeing a party of
the black hussars bringing in some forage carts which they had taken from a body of the
Cossacks, whom he described as lying on the top of the carts of hay mortally wounded,
and like the dying gladiator, eyeing their own blood as it ran down through the
straw.”
A year or two later Scott renewed his attempt. “I
afterwards” (he says) “took lessons from Walker,
whom we used to call Blue Beard. He was one of the most
conceited persons in the world, but a good teacher—one of the ugliest countenances he
had that need be exhibited—enough, as we say, to spean weans.
The man was always extremely precise in the quality of every thing about him; his
dress, accommodations, and every thing else. He became insolvent, poor man, and, for
some reason or other, I attended the meeting of those concerned in his affairs. Instead
of ordinary accommodations for writing, each of the persons present was equipped with a
large sheet of drawing-paper, and a swan’s quill. It was mournfully ridiculous
enough. Skirving made an admirable likeness of
Walker; not a single scar or mark of the smallpox, which
seamed his countenance, but the too accurate brother of the brush had faithfully laid
it down in longitude and latitude. Poor Walker destroyed it (being
in crayons) rather then let the caricature
of his ugliness appear at the sale of his effects. I did learn myself to take some vile
views from nature. When Will Clerk and I lived
very much together, I used sometimes to make them under his instruction. He to whom, as
to all his family, art is a familiar attribute, wondered at me as a Newfoundland dog
would at a greyhound which showed fear of the water.”
Notwithstanding all that Scott says
about the total failure of his attempts in the art of the pencil, I presume few will doubt
that they proved very useful to him afterwards; from them it is natural to suppose he
caught the habit of analyzing, with some approach at least to accuracy, the scenes over
which his eye might have continued to wander with the vague sense of delight. I may add
that a longer and more successful practice of the crayon might, I cannot but think, have
proved the reverse of serviceable to him as a future painter with the pen. He might have
contracted the habit of copying from pictures rather than from nature itself; and we should
thus have lost that which constitutes the very highest charm in his delineations of
scenery, namely, that the effect is produced by the selection of a few striking features,
arranged with a light unconscious grace, neither too much nor too little—equally remote
from the barren generalizations of a former age and the dull servile fidelity with which so
many inferior writers of our time fill in both background and foreground, having no more
notion of the perspective of genius than Chinese paper-stainers have of that of the
atmosphere, and producing in fact not descriptions but inventories.
The illness, which he alludes to in his Memoir as interrupting for a
considerable period his attendance on the Latin and Greek classes in Edinburgh College, is
spoken of more largely in one of his pre-faces.* It arose from the
bursting of a blood-vessel in the lower bowels; and I have heard him say that his uncle,
Dr Rutherford, considered his recovery from it
as little less than miraculous. His sweet temper and calm courage were no doubt important
elements of safety. He submitted without a murmur to the severe discipline prescribed by
his affectionate physician, and found consolation in poetry, romance, and the enthusiasm of
young friendship. Day after day John Irving relieved
his mother and sister in their attendance upon him. The bed on which he lay was piled with
a constant succession of works of imagination, and sad realities were forgotten amidst the
brilliant day-dreams of genius drinking unwearied from the eternal fountains of Spenser and Shakspeare. Chess was recommended as a relief to these unintermitted though
desultory studies; and he engaged eagerly in the game which had found favour with so many
of his Paladins. Mr Irving remembers playing it with him hour after
hour, in very cold weather when, the windows being kept open as a part of the medical
treatment, nothing but youthful nerves and spirit could have persevered. But Scott did not pursue the science of chess after his boyhood.
He used to say that it was a shame to throw away upon mastering a mere game, however
ingenious, the time which would suffice for the acquisition of a new language.
“Surely,” he said, “chess-playing is a sad waste of
brains.”
His recovery was completed by another visit to Roxburghshire. Captain Robert Scott, who had been so kind to the sickly
infant at Bath, finally retired about this time from his profession, and purchased the
elegant villa of Rosebank, on the Tweed, a little below
* See Preface to Waverley, 1829.
Kelso. Here Walter now took up his quarters, and here, during all the rest of his
youth, he found, whenever he chose, a second home, in many respects more agreeable than his
own. His uncle, as letters to be subsequently quoted will show, had nothing of his
father’s coldness for polite letters, but entered into all his favourite pursuits
with keen sympathy, and was consulted, from this time forth, upon all his juvenile essays,
both in prose and verse.
He does not seem to have resumed attendance at College during the session
of 1785-6; so that the Latin and Greek classes, with that of Logic, were the only ones he
had passed through previous to the signing of his indentures as an apprentice to his
father. The Memoir mentions the ethical course of Dugald
Stewart, as if he had gone immediately from the logical professor (Mr Bruce) to that eminent lecturer; but he, in fact,
attended Mr Stewart four years afterwards, when beginning to consider
himself as finally destined for the bar.
I shall only add to what he sets down on the subject of his early
academical studies, that in this, as in almost every case, he appears to have underrated
his own attainments. He had, indeed, no pretensions to the name of an extensive, far less
of an accurate, Latin scholar; but he could read, I believe, any Latin author, of any age,
so as to catch without difficulty his meaning; and although his favourite Latin poet, as
well as historian, in later days, was Buchanan, he
had preserved, or subsequently acquired, a strong relish for some others of more ancient
date. I may mention, in particular, Lucan and Claudian. Of Greek, he does not exaggerate in saying that he
had forgotten even the alphabet; for he was puzzled with the words
άοιδος and
ποιητης, which he had occasion to
introduce, from some authority on his table, into his “Introduction to Popular Poetry,” written in April 1830; and happening to be
in the house with him at the time, he sent for me to insert them for him in his MS.
Mr Irving has informed us of the early period at
which he enjoyed the real Tasso and Ariosto. I presume he had at least as soon as this enabled
himself to read Gil Blas in the original;
and, in all probability, we may refer to the same time of his life, or one not much later,
his acquisition of as much Spanish as served for the Guerras Civiles de Granada, Lazarillo de Tormes, and, above all, Don Quixote. He read all these languages in after life
with about the same facility. I never but once heard him attempt to speak any of them, and
that was when some of the courtiers of Charles X. came
to Abbotsford, soon after that unfortunate prince took up his residence for the second time
at Holyrood-house. Finding that one or two of these gentlemen could speak no English at
all, he made some efforts to amuse them in their own language after the champagne had been
passing briskly round the table; and I was amused next morning with the expression of one
of the party, who, alluding to the sort of reading in which Sir
Walter seemed to have chiefly occupied himself, said, “Mon Dieu!
comme il estropiait, entre deux vins, le Français du bon sire de Joinville!” Of all these tongues, as
of German somewhat later, he acquired as much as was needful for his own purposes, of which
a critical study of any foreign language made at no time any part. In them he sought for
incidents, and he found images; but for the treasures of diction he was content to dig on
British soil. He had all he wanted in the old wells of “English
undefiled,” and the still living, though fast shrinking, waters of that sister
idiom which had not always, as he flattered himself, deserved the name of a dialect.
As may be said, I believe, with perfect truth of every really great man, Scott was
self-educated in every branch of knowledge which he ever turned to account in the works of
his genius—and he has himself told us that his real studies were those lonely and desultory
ones of which he has given a copy in the first chapter of Waverley, where the hero is represented as
“driving through the sea of books, like a vessel without pilot or
rudder;” that is to say, obeying nothing but the strong breath of native
inclination;—“He had read, and stored in a memory of uncommon tenacity, much
curious, though ill arranged and miscellaneous information. In English literature, he
was master of Shakspeare and Milton, of our earlier dramatic authors, of many
picturesque and interesting passages from our old historical chronicles, and was
particularly well acquainted with Spenser,
Drayton, and other poets, who have exercised
themselves on romantic fiction,—of all themes the most fascinating to
a youthful imagination, before the passions have roused themselves, and demand
poetry of a more sentimental description.”* I need not repeat his
enumeration of other favourites, Pulci, the Decameron, Froissart, Brantome, Delanoue, and the chivalrous and romantic lore of Spain. I
have quoted a passage so well known, only for the sake of the striking circumstance by
which it marks the very early date of these multifarious studies.
* Waverley, vol. i. p 32.
CHAPTER V. ILLUSTRATIONS CONTINUED—SCOTT’S APPRENTICESHIP TO
HIS FATHER—EXCURSIONS TO THE HIGHLANDS, &c.—DEBATING SOCIETIES—EARLY CORRESPONDENCE,
&c. &c.—1786-1790.
In the Minute-books of the Society of Writers to the Signet
appears the following entry: “Edinburgh, 15th May, 1786. Compeared Walter Scott, and presented an indenture, dated 31st
March last, entered into between him and Walter
Scott, his son, for five years from the date thereof, under a mutual
penalty of 40 sterling.”
An inauspicious step this might at first sight appear in the early history
of one so strongly predisposed for pursuits wide as the antipodes asunder from the dry
technicalities of conveyancing; but he himself, I believe, was never heard, in his mature
age, to express any regret that it should have been taken; and I am convinced for my part
that it was a fortunate one. It prevented him, indeed, from passing with the usual
regularity through a long course of Scotch metaphysics; but I extremely doubt whether any
discipline could ever have led him to derive either pleasure or profit from studies of that
order. His apprenticeship left him time enough, as we shall find, for continuing his
application to the stores of poetry and romance, and those old chroniclers, who to the end
were his darling historians. Indeed, if he had wanted any new stimulus, the necessity of
devoting certain hours of every day to a routine of drudgery, however it might have operated on a spirit more prone to earth,
must have tended to quicken his appetite for “the sweet bread eaten in
secret.” But the duties which he had now to fulfil were, in various ways,
directly and positively beneficial to the developement both of his genius and his
character. It was in the discharge of his functions as a Writer’s Apprentice that he
first penetrated into the Highlands, and formed those friendships among the surviving
heroes of 1745, which laid the foundation for one great class of his works. Even the less
attractive parts of his new vocation were calculated to give him a more complete insight
into the smaller workings of poor human nature, than can ever perhaps be gathered from the
experience of the legal profession in its higher walk;—the etiquette of the bar in
Scotland, as in England, being averse to personal intercourse between the advocate and his
client. But, finally, and I will say chiefly, it was to this prosaic discipline that he
owed those habits of steady, sober diligence, which few imaginative authors had ever before
exemplified—and which, unless thus beaten into his composition at a ductile stage, even he,
in all probability, could never have carried into the almost professional exercise of some
of the highest and most delicate faculties of the human mind. He speaks, in not the least
remarkable passage of the preceding Memoir, as if constitutional indolence had been his
portion in common with all the members of his father’s family. When Gifford, in a dispute with Soame Jenyns, quoted Doctor
Johnson’s own confession that he “knew little Greek,”
Jenyns answered, “Yes, young man; but how shall we know what
Johnson would have called much Greek?” and
Gifford has recorded the deep impression which this hint left on
his own mind. What Scott would have called
constitutional diligence, I know not; but surely if indolence of any kind had been inherent
in his nature, even the triumph of Socrates was not
more signal than his.
It will be, by some of my friends, considered as trivial to remark on such
a circumstance—but the reader who is unacquainted with the professional habits of the
Scotch lawyers, may as well be told that the Writer’s Apprentice receives a certain
allowance in money for every page he transcribes; and that, as in those days the greater
part of the business, even of the supreme courts, was carried on by means of written
papers, a ready penman, in a well-employed chamber, could earn in this way enough, at all
events, to make a handsome addition to the pocket-money which was likely to be thought
suitable for a youth of fifteen by such a man as the elder Scott. The allowance being, I believe, threepence for every page containing
a certain fixed number of words, when Walter had
finished, as he tells us he occasionally did, 120 pages within twenty-four hours, his fee
would amount to thirty shillings; and in his early letters I find him more than once
congratulating himself on having been, by some such exertion, enabled to purchase a book,
or a coin, otherwise beyond his reach. A school-fellow, who was now, like himself, a
writer’s apprentice, recollects the eagerness with which he thus made himself master
of “Evans’s Ballads,”
shortly after their publication; and another of them, already often referred to, remembers,
in particular, his rapture with Meikle’s
“Cumnor Hall,” which
first appeared in that collection. “After the labours of the day were
over,” says Mr Irving, “we often
walked in the Meadows” (a large field intersected by
formal alleys of old trees, adjoining George’s Square), “especially in the
moonlight nights; and he seemed never weary of repeating the first stanza—
‘The dews of summer light did fall The Moon, sweet regent of the sky, Silvered the walls of Cumnor Hall, And many an oak that grew thereby.’”
I have thought it worth while to preserve these reminiscences of his
companions at the time, though he has himself stated the circumstance in his Preface to
Kenilworth. “There is a
period in youth,” he there says, “when the mere power of numbers has
a more strong effect on ear and imagination than in after life. At this season of
immature taste, the author was greatly delighted with the poems of Meikle and Langhorne. The first stanza of Cumnor Hall especially had a peculiar enchantment
for his youthful ear the force of which is not yet (1829) entirely spent.”—
Thus that favourite elegy, after having dwelt on his memory and
imagination for forty years, suggested the subject of one of his noblest romances.
It is affirmed by a preceding biographer, on the authority of one of these
brother-apprentices, that about this period Scott showed
him a MS. poem on “the Conquest of Granada,” in four
books, each amounting to about 400 lines, which, soon after it was finished, he committed
to the flames.* As he states in his Essay
on the Imitation of Popular Poetry, that, for ten years previous to 1796, when
his first translation from the German was executed, he had written no verses
“except an occasional sonnet to his mistress’s eyebrow,” I
presume this Conquest of Granada, the fruit of his study of the
Guerras
Civiles, must be assigned to the summer of 1786—or, making allowance for
trivial inaccuracy, to the next year at latest. It was probably composed in imitation of
Meikle’sLusiad:—at all events,
* Life
of Scott, by Mr Allan, p. 53.
we have a very distinct statement, that he made no attempts in the
manner of the old minstrels, early as his admiration for them had been, until the period of
his acquaintance with Bürger. Thus with him, as
with most others, genius had hazarded many a random effort ere it discovered the true
key-note. Long had ‘Amid the strings his fingers stray’d, And an uncertain warbling made,’ before ‘the measure wild’ was caught, and ‘In varying cadence, soft or strong, He swept the sounding chords along.’
His youthful admiration of Langhorne has been rendered memorable by his own record of his first and
only interview with his great predecessor, Robert
Burns. Although the letter, in which he narrates this incident, addressed to
myself in 1827, when I was writing a short biography of that poet, has been often
reprinted, it is too important for my present purpose to be omitted here.
“As for Burns”
(he writes), “I may truly say, Virgilium vidi tantum. I was a lad of
fifteen in 1786-7, when he came first to Edinburgh, but had sense and feeling enough to
be much interested in his poetry, and would have given the world to know him; but I had
very little acquaintance with any literary people, and still less with the gentry of
the west country, the two sets that he most frequented. Mr Thomas
Grierson was at that time a clerk of my father’s. He knew
Burns, and promised to ask him to his lodgings to dinner, but
had no opportunity to keep his word, otherwise I might have seen more of this
distinguished man. As it was, I saw him one day at the late venerable Professor Fergusson’s, where there were several
gentlemen of literary reputation, among whom I remember the celebrated Mr Dugald Stewart. Of course we youngsters sate silent,
looked and listened. The only thing I remember which was remarkable in
Burns’ manner, was the effect produced upon him by a
print of Bunbury’s, representing a soldier
lying dead on the snow, his dog sitting in misery on the one side, on the other his
widow, with a child in her arms. These lines were written beneath— ‘Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden’s plain, Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain; Bent o’er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, The big drops, mingling with the milk he drew, Gave the sad presage of his future years, The child of misery baptized in tears.’ Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather the ideas which
it suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. He asked whose the lines were, and it
chanced that nobody but myself remembered that they occur in a half-forgotten poem of
Langhorne’s, called by the unpromising title of
‘The Justice of the
Peace.’ I whispered my information to a friend present, who mentioned
it to Burns, who rewarded me with a look and a word, which, though
of mere civility, I then received and still recollect with very great pleasure.
“His person was strong and robust: his manners rustic, not
clownish; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its
effect perhaps from one’s knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His features
are represented in Mr Nasmyth’s picture,
but to me it conveys the idea that they are diminished as if seen in perspective. I
think his countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. I would
have taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very sagacious country farmer
of the old Scotch school—i. e. none of your modern
agriculturists, who keep labourers for their drudgery, but the douce gudeman who held his own plough. There was a strong expression of sense and
shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical
character and temperament. It was large and of a dark cast, and glowed (I say literally
glowed) when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw
such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men in my
time. His conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, without the slightest
presumption. Among the men who were the most learned of their time and country, he
expressed himself with perfect firmness, but without the least intrusive forwardness;
and when he differed in opinion, he did not hesitate to express it firmly, yet at the
same time with modesty. I do not remember any part of his conversation distinctly
enough to be quoted, nor did I ever see him again, except in the street, where he did
not recognise me, as I could not expect he should. He was much caressed in Edinburgh,
but (considering what literary emoluments have been since his day) the efforts made for
his relief were extremely trifling.
“I remember on this occasion I mention, I thought Burns’ acquaintance with English poetry was
rather limited, and also, that having twenty times the abilities of Allan Ramsay and of Ferguson, he talked of them with too much humility as his models; there
was doubtless national predilection in his estimate.”
I need not remark on the extent of knowledge, and justice of taste,
exemplified in this early measurement of Burns, both
as a student of English literature and as a Scottish poet. The print, over which Scott saw Burns shed tears, is still in
the possession of Dr Fergusson’s family, and I
had often heard him tell the story, in the room where the precious relic hangs, before I
requested him to set it down in writing—how little anticipating the use to which I should
ultimately apply it!
His intimacy with Adam (now Sir Adam Fergusson) was thus his first means of
introduction to the higher literary society of Edinburgh, and it was very probably to that
connexion that he owed, among the rest, his acquaintance with the blind poet Blacklock, whom Johnson, twelve years earlier, “beheld with reverence.”
We have seen, however, that the venerable author of Douglas was a friend of his own parents, and had
noticed him even in his infancy at Bath. John Home
now inhabited a villa at no great distance from Edinburgh, and there, all through his young
days, Scott was a frequent guest. Nor must it be
forgotten that his uncle, Dr Rutherford, inherited
much of the general accomplishments, as well as the professional reputation of his
father—and that it was beneath that roof he saw, several years before this, Dr Cartwright, then in the enjoyment of some fame as a
poet. In this family, indeed, he had more than one kind and strenuous encourager of his
early literary tastes, as will be shown abundantly when we reach certain relics of his
correspondence with his mother’s sister, Miss Christian
Rutherford. Dr Rutherford’s good-natured
remonstrances with him, as a boy, for reading at breakfast, are well remembered, and will
remind my reader of a similar trait in the juvenile manners both of Burns and Byron; nor
was this habit entirely laid aside even in Scott’s advanced age.
If he is quite accurate in referring his first acquaintance with the
Highlands to his fifteenth year, this incident also belongs to the first season of his
apprenticeship. His father had, among a rather numerous list of Highland clients, Alexander Stewart of Invernahyle, an enthusiastic
Jacobite, who had survived to recount, in secure and vigorous old age, his active
experiences in the insurrections both of 1715 and 1745. He had, it
appears, attracted Walter’s attention and
admiration at a very early date; for he speaks of having “seen him in
arms” and heard him “exult in the prospect of drawing his claymore once
more before he died,” when Paul Jones
threatened a descent on Edinburgh; which transaction occurred in September 1779.
Invernahyle, as Scott adds, was the only
person who seemed to have retained possession of his cool senses at the period of that
disgraceful alarm, and offered the magistrates to collect as many Highlanders as would
suffice for cutting off any part of the pirate’s crew that might venture in quest of
plunder into a city full of high houses and narrow lanes, and every way well calculated for
defence. The eager delight with which the young apprentice now listened to the tales of
this fine old man’s early days produced an invitation to his residence among the
mountains, and to this excursion he probably devoted the few weeks of an autumnal
vacation—whether in 1786 or 1787, it is of no great consequence to ascertain.
In the Introduction to one of his Novels he has preserved a vivid picture
of his sensations when the vale of Perth first burst on his view, in the course of his
progress to Invernahyle, and the description has made classical ground of the Wicks of Baiglie, the spot from which that beautiful landscape was
surveyed. “Childish wonder, indeed,” he says, “was an
ingredient in my delight, for I was not above fifteen years old, and as this had been
the first excursion which I was permitted to make on a pony of my own, I also
experienced the glow of independence, mingled with that degree of anxiety which the
most conceited boy feels when he is first abandoned to his own undirected counsels. I
recollect pulling up the reins, without meaning to do so, and gazing on the scene
before me as if I had been afraid it would shift, like those in a theatre, before I
could dis-tinctly observe its different parts, or
convince myself that what I saw was real. Since that hour, the recollection of that
inimitable landscape has possessed the strongest influence over my mind, and retained
its place as a memorable thing, while much that was influential on my own fortunes has
fled from my recollection.” So speaks the poet; and who will not recognise
his habitual modesty, in thus undervaluing, as uninfluential in comparison with some affair
of worldly business, the ineffaceable impression thus stamped on the glowing imagination of
his boyhood?
I need not quote the numerous passages scattered over his writings, both
early and late, in which he dwells with fond affection on the chivalrous character of
Invernahyle—the delight with which he heard the
veteran describe his broadsword duel with Rob
Roy—his campaigns with Mar and Charles Edward and his long seclusion (as pictured in
the story of Bradwardine) within a rocky cave situated
not far from his own house, while it was garrisoned by a party of English soldiers, after
the battle of Culloden. Here, too, still survived the trusty henchman who had attended the
chieftain in many a bloody field and perilous escape, the same “grim-looking old
Highlander” who was in the act of cutting down Colonel
Whitefoord with his Lochaber axe at Prestonpans when his master arrested the
blow—an incident to which Invernahyle owed his life, and we are indebted for another of the
most striking pages in Waverley.
I have often heard Scott mention some
curious particulars of his first visit to the remote fastness of one of these Highland
friends; but whether he told the story of Invernahyle, or of one of his own relations of the Clan Campbell, I do not
recollect; I rather think the latter was the case. On reaching the
brow of a bleak eminence overhanging the primitive tower and its tiny patch of cultivated
ground, he found his host and three sons, and perhaps half-a-dozen attendant gillies, all stretched half asleep in their tartans upon the heath,
with guns and dogs, and a profusion of game about them; while in the courtyard, far below,
appeared a company of women, actively engaged in loading a cart with manure. The stranger
was not a little astonished when he discovered, on descending from the height, that among
these industrious females were the laird’s own lady, and two or three of her
daughters; but they seemed quite unconscious of having been detected in an occupation
unsuitable to their rank—retired presently to their “bowers,” and when they
re-appeared in other dresses, retained no traces of their morning’s work, except
complexions glowing with a radiant freshness, for one evening of which many a high-bred
beauty would have bartered half her diamonds. He found the young ladies not ill informed,
and exceedingly agreeable; and the song and the dance seemed to form the invariable
termination of their busy days. I must not forget his admiration at the principal article
of this laird’s first course; namely, a gigantic haggis, borne
into the hall in a wicker basket by two half-naked Celts, while the piper strutted fiercely
behind them, blowing a tempest of dissonnance.
These Highland visits were repeated almost every summer for several
successive years, and perhaps even the first of them was in some degree connected with his
professional business. At all events, it was to his allotted task of enforcing the
execution of a legal instrument against some Maclarens, refractory
tenants of Stewart of Appin, brother-in-law to Invernahyle, that
Scott owed his introduction to the scenery of the
Lady of the Lake. “An escort of a
sergeant and six men,” he says, “was obtained from a Highland regiment lying in Stirling, and
the author, then a writer’s apprentice, equivalent to the honourable situation of
an attorney’s clerk, was invested with the superintendence of the expedition,
with directions to see that the messenger discharged his duty fully, and that the
gallant sergeant did not exceed his part by committing violence or plunder. And thus it
happened, oddly enough, that the author first entered the romantic scenery of Loch
Katrine, of which he may perhaps say he has somewhat extended the reputation, riding in
all the dignity of danger, with a front and rear guard, and loaded arms. The sergeant
was absolutely a Highland Sergeant Kite, full of
stories of Rob Roy and of himself, and a very
good companion. We experienced no interruption whatever, and when we came to
Invernenty, found the house deserted. We took up our quarters for the night, and used
some of the victuals which we found there. The Maclarens, who
probably had never thought of any serious opposition, went to America, where, having
had some slight share in removing them from their paupera
regna, I sincerely hope they prospered.”*
That he entered with ready zeal into such professional business as
inferred Highland expeditions with comrades who had known Rob
Roy, no one will think strange; but more than one of his biographers allege,
that in the ordinary indoor fagging of the chamber in George’s Square, he was always
an unwilling, and rarely an efficient assistant. Their addition that he often played chess
with one of his companions in the office, and had to conceal the board with precipitation
when the old gentleman’s footsteps were heard on the staircase, is, I do not doubt,
true; and we may remember along with it his own insinuation that his father was sometimes
poring in his secret
* Introduction to Rob Roy, p. lxxxix, note.
nook over Spottiswoode or Wodrow when his apprentices supposed him to
be deep in Dirleton’s Doubts, or Stair’s Decisions. But the Memoir of 1808, so candid—indeed, more than
candid—as to many juvenile irregularities, contains no confession that supports the broad
assertion to which I have alluded; nor can I easily believe, that with his affection for
his father, and that sense of duty which seems to have been inherent in his character, and,
lastly, with the evidence of a most severe training in industry which the habits of his
after-life presented, it is at all deserving of serious acceptation. His mere handwriting,
indeed, continued, during the whole of his prime, to afford most striking and irresistible
proof how completely he must have submitted himself for some very considerable period to
the mechanical discipline of his father’s office. It spoke to months after months of
this humble toil, as distinctly as the illegible scrawl of Lord
Byron did to his self-mastership from the hour that he left Harrow. There
are some little technical tricks, such as no gentleman who has not been subjected to a
similar regimen ever can fall into, which he practised invariably while composing his
poetry, which appear not unfrequently on the MSS. of his best novels, and which now and
then dropt instinctively from his pen, even in the private letters and diaries of his
closing years. I allude particularly to a sort of flourish at the bottom of the page,
originally, I presume, adopted in engrossing as a safeguard against the intrusion of a
forged line between the legitimate text and the attesting signature. He was quite sensible
that this ornament might as well be dispensed with; and his family often heard him mutter,
after involuntarily performing it, “There goes the old shop again!”
I dwell on this matter, because it was always his favourite tenet, in
contradiction to what he called the cant of
sonnetteers, that there is no necessary connexion between genius and an aversion or
contempt for any of the common duties of life; he thought, on the contrary, that to spend
some fair portion of every day in any matter of fact occupation, is good for the higher
faculties themselves in the upshot. In a word, from beginning to end, he piqued himself on
being a man of business; and did—with one sad and memorable
exception—whatever the ordinary course of things threw in his way, in exactly the
business-like fashion which might have been expected from the son of a thoroughbred old
Clerk to the Signet, who had never deserted his father’s profession.
In the winter of 1788, however, his apprentice habits were exposed to a
new danger; and from that date I believe them to have undergone a considerable change. He
was then sent to attend the lectures of the Professor of Civil Law in the University, this
course forming part of the usual professional education of Writers to the Signet, as well
as of Advocates. For some time his companions, when in Edinburgh, had been chiefly, almost
solely, his brother apprentices and the clerks in his father’s office. He had
latterly seen comparatively little even of the better of his old High School friends, such
as Fergusson and Irving—for though both of these also were writer’s apprentices, they
had been indentured to other masters, and each had naturally formed new intimacies within
his own chamber. The civil law class brought him again into daily contact with both
Irving and Fergusson, as well as others of
his earlier acquaintance of the higher ranks; but it also led him into the society of some
young gentlemen previously unknown to him, who had from the outset been destined for the
bar, and whose conversation, tinctured with certain prejudices natural to scions of what he
calls in Redgaunt-let the Scottish noblesse de la robe, soon
banished from his mind every thought of ultimately adhering to the secondary branch of the
law. He found these future barristers cultivating general literature without any
apprehension that such elegant pursuits could be regarded by any one as interfering with
the proper studies of their professional career; justly believing, on the contrary, that
for the higher class of forensic exertion some acquaintance with almost every branch of
science and letters is a necessary preparative. He contrasted their liberal aspirations,
and the encouragement which these received in their domestic circles, with the narrower
views which predominated in his own home, and resolved to gratify his ambition by adopting
a most precarious walk in life, instead of adhering to that in which he might have counted
with perfect security on the early attainment of pecuniary independence. This resolution
appears to have been foreseen by his father, long before it was announced in terms; and the
handsome manner in which the old gentleman conducted himself upon the occasion, is
remembered with dutiful gratitude in the preceding autobiography.
The most important of these new alliances was the intimate friendship
which he now formed with William Clerk of Eldin, of
whose powerful talents and extensive accomplishments we shall hereafter meet with many
enthusiastic notices. It was in company with this gentleman that he entered the debating
societies described in his Memoir; through him he soon became linked in the closest
intimacy with George Cranstoun (now Lord
Corehouse), George Abercromby (now
Lord Abercromby), Sir Patrick Murray
of Ochtertyre, John James Edmonstone of
Newton, Patrick Murray of Simprim, and a group of other
young men, all high in birth and connexion, and all remarkable in early life for the
qua-lities which afterwards led them to
eminent station, or adorned it. The introduction to their several families is alluded to by
Scott as having opened to him abundantly certain
advantages, which no one could have been more qualified to improve, but from which he had
hitherto been in great measure debarred in consequence of the retired habits of his
parents.
Mr Clerk says, that he had been struck from the
first day he entered the civil law class-room with something odd and remarkable in
Scott’s appearance; what this something was he
cannot now recall, but he remembers telling his companion some time afterwards that he
thought he looked like a hautboy-player. Scott
was amused with this notion, as he had never touched any musical instrument of any kind;
but I fancy his friend had been watching a certain noticeable but altogether indescribable
play of the upper lip when in an abstracted mood. He rallied Walter,
he says, during one of their first evening walks together, on the slovenliness of his
dress; he wore a pair of corduroy breeches, much glazed by the rubbing of his staff, which
he immediately flourished and said, “they be good enough for drinking in—let us go
and have some oysters in the Covenant Close.”
Convivial habits were then indulged among the young men of Edinburgh,
whether students of law, writers, or barristers, to an extent now happily unknown; and this
anecdote recalls some striking hints on that subject which occur in
Scott’s brief autobiography. That he partook profusely in
the juvenile bacchanalia of that day, and continued to take a plentiful share in such
jollities down to the time of his marriage, are facts worthy of being distinctly stated—for
no man in mature life was more habitually averse to every sort of intemperance. He could,
when I first knew him, swallow a great quantity of wine without being at all visibly
disordered by it; but nothing short of some very particular occasion
could ever induce him to put this strength of head to a trial; and I have heard him many
times utter words which no one in the days of his youthful temptation can be the worse for
remembering:—“Depend upon it, of all vices drinking is the most incompatible
with greatness.”
The liveliness of his conversation—the strange variety of his
knowledge—and above all, perhaps, the portentous tenacity of his memory—riveted more and
more Clerk’s attention, and commanded the
wonder of all his new allies; but of these extraordinary gifts Scott himself appeared to be little conscious; or at least he impressed
them all as attaching infinitely greater consequence (exactly as had been the case with him
in the days of the Cowgate Port and the kittle nine steps) to feats
of personal agility and prowess. William Clerk’s brother,
James, a midshipman in the navy, happened to
come home from a cruise in the Mediterranean shortly after this acquaintance began, and
Scott and the sailor became almost at sight “sworn
brothers.” In order to complete his time under the late Sir Alexander Cochrane, who was then on the Leith station, James
Clerk obtained the command of a lugger, and the young friends often made
little excursions to sea with him. “The first time Scott
dined on board,” says William Clerk, “we met
before embarking at a tavern in Leith—it was a large party, mostly midshipmen, and
strangers to him, and our host introducing his landsmen guests said, ‘my brother
you know, gentlemen; as for Mr Scott, mayhaps you may take him for
a poor lamiter, but he is the first to begin a row, and the last to end it;’
which eulogium he confirmed with some of the expletives of Tom
Pipes.”*
When, many years afterwards,
Clerk read The
Pirate, he was startled by the resurrection of a hundred traits of the tabletalk
of this lugger; but the author has since traced some of the most striking passages in that
novel to his recollection of the almost childish period when he hung on his own brother
Robert’s stories about Rodney’s battles and the haunted keys of the West Indies.
One morning Scott called on Clerk, and, exhibiting his stick all cut and marked, told
him he had been attacked in the streets the night before by three fellows, against whom he
had defended himself for an hour. “By Shrewsbury clock?” said his
friend. “No,” says Scott smiling, “by the
Tron.” But thenceforth, adds Mr Clerk, and for twenty
years after, he called his walking stick by the name of “Shrewsbury.”
With these comrades Scott now resumed,
and pushed to a much greater extent, his early habits of wandering over the country in
quest of castles and other remains of antiquity, his passion for which derived a new
impulse from the conversation of the celebrated John Clerk of
Eldin,* the father of his friend. William Clerk well
remembers his father telling a story which was introduced in due time in The Antiquary. While he was visiting his grandfather,
Sir John Clerk, at Dumcrieff, in Dumfriesshire,
many years before this time, the old Baronet carried some English Virtuosos to see a
supposed Roman camp; and on his exclaiming at a particular spot, “this I take to
have been the Prætorium,” a herdsman, who stood by, answered,
“Prætorium. here, Prætorium there, I made it wi’ a flaughter
spade.Ӡ
but a lamiter, but I warrant ye, grippie for grippie, he’ll gar the blue
blood spin frae your nails his hand’s like a smith’s
vice.” ‘Black Dwarf’ Waverley Novels,
vol. ix. p. 202.
* Author of the famous Essay on dividing the Line in Sea-fights.
† Compare “The Antiquary,” vol. i. p. 49.
Many traits of the elder Clerk were, his son has
no doubt, embroidered on the character of George
Constable in the composition of Jonathan
Oldbuck. The old gentleman’s enthusiasm for antiquities was often
played on by these young friends, but more effectually by his eldest son, John Clerk (Lord Eldin), who, having
a great genius for art, used to amuse himself with manufacturing mutilated heads, which,
after being buried for a convenient time in the ground, were accidentally discovered in
some fortunate hour, and received by the laird with great honour as valuable accessions to
his museum.*
On a fishing excursion to a loch near Howgate, among the Moorfoot Hills,
Scott, Clerk,
Irving, and Abercromby spent the night at a little public-house kept by one
Mrs Margaret Dods. When St Ronan’s Well was published, Clerk, meeting
Scott in the street, observed, “That’s an odd name;
surely I have met with it somewhere before.” Scott
smiled, said, “Don’t you remember Howgate?” and passed on. The
name alone, however, was taken from the Howgate hostess.
At one of their drinking bouts of those days, William Clerk, Sir P. Murray,
Edmonstone, and Abercromby being of the party, the sitting was prolonged to a very late
hour, and Scott fell asleep. When he awoke, his friends
succeeded in convincing him that he had sung a song in the course of the evening, and sung
it extremely well. How must these gentlemen have chuckled when they read Frank Osbaldistone’s account of his revels in the old
hall! “It has even been reported by maligners that I sung a song while
* The most remarkable of these antique heads was so highly
appreciated by another distinguished connoisseur, the late Earl of
Buchan, that he carried it off from Mr Clerk’s museum, and presented it to the Scottish
Society of Antiquaries—in whose collection, no doubt, it may still be admired.
under this vinous influence; but as I
remember nothing of it, and never attempted to turn a tune in all my life, either
before or since, I would willingly hope there is no actual foundation for the
calumny.”*
On one of his first long walks with Clerk and others of the same set, their pace, being about four miles an
hour, was found rather too much for Scott, and he
offered to contract for three, which measure was thenceforth considered as the legal one.
At this rate they often continued to wander from five in the morning till eight in the
evening, halting for such refreshment at mid-day as any village alehouse might afford. On
many occasions, however, they had stretched so far into the country, that they were obliged
to be absent from home all night; and though great was the alarm which the first occurrence
of this sort created in George’s Square, the family soon got accustomed to such
things, and little notice was taken, even though Walter remained away
for the better part of a week. I have heard him laugh heartily over the recollections of
one protracted excursion, towards the close of which the party found themselves a long
day’s walk—thirty miles, I think—from Edinburgh, without a single sixpence left among
them. “We were put to our shifts,” said he; “but we asked every
now and then at a cottage-door for a drink of water; and one or two of the goodwives,
observing our worn-out looks, brought forth milk in place of water—so with that, and
hips and haws, we came in little the worse.” His father met him with some
impatient questions as to what he had been living on so long, for the old man well knew how
scantily his pocket was supplied. “Pretty much like the young ravens,”
answered he; “I only wished I had been as good a player on
* “Rob
Roy,” Waverley
Novels, vol. vii. p. 182.
the flute as poor George
Primrose in The Vicar of
Wakefield. If I had his art, I should like nothing better than to tramp like
him from cottage to cottage over the world.” “I doubt,’
said the grave Clerk to the Signet, “I greatly doubt, sir, you were born for nae
better than a gangrel scrape-gut.” Some allusions to
reproaches of this kind occur in the “Memoir;” and we shall find others in letters subsequent to his admission
at the bar.
The debating club formed among these young friends at this era of their
studies, was called The Literary Society; and is not to be
confounded with the more celebrated Speculative Society, which Scott did not join for two years later. At the
Literary he spoke frequently, and very amusingly and sensibly, but was not at all
numbered among the most brilliant members. He had a world of knowledge to produce; but he
had not acquired the art of arranging it to the best advantage in a continued address; nor,
indeed, did he ever, I think, except under the influence of strong personal feeling, even
when years and fame had given him full confidence in himself, exhibit upon any occasion the
powers of oral eloquence. His antiquarian information, however, supplied many an
interesting feature in these evenings of discussion. He had already dabbled in Anglo-Saxon
and the Norse Sagas: in his Essay on
Imitations of Popular Poetry, he alludes to these studies as having facilitated
his acquisition of German: But he was deep especially in Fordun and Wyntoun, and all the
Scotch chronicles; and his friends rewarded him by the honourable title of Duns Scotus.
A smaller society, formed with less ambitious views, originated in a ride
to Pennycuik, the seat of the head of Mr
Clerk’s family, whose elegant hospitalities are recorded in the Memoir. This was called, by way of excellence,
The Club, and I believe it is continued under the same name to
this day. Here, too, Walter had his sobriquet; and—his
corduroy breeches, I presume, not being as yet worn out—it was Colonel Grogg.*
Meantime he had not broken up his connexion with Rosebank; he appears to
have spent several weeks in the autumn, both of 1788 and 1789, under his uncle’s roof; and it was, I think, of his journey
thither, in the last named year, that he used to tell an anecdote, which I shall here set
down—how shorn, alas! of all the accessaries that gave it life when he recited it. Calling,
before he set out, on one of the ancient spinsters of his family, to enquire if she had any
message for
* “The members of The Club used to
meet on Friday evenings in a room in Carrubber’s Close, from which some of
them usually adjourned to sup at an oyster tavern in the same neighbourhood. In
after life those of them who chanced to be in Edinburgh dined together twice every
year, at the close of the winter and summer sessions of the Law Courts; and during
thirty years, Sir Walter was very rarely absent
on these occasions. It was also a rule, that when any member received an
appointment or promotion, he should give a dinner to his old associates; and they
had accordingly two such dinners from him one when he became Sheriff of
Selkirkshire, and another when he was named Clerk of Session. The original members
were, in number, nineteen viz., Sir Walter
Scott, Mr William Clerk,
Sir A. Fergusson, Mr James Edmonstone, Mr
George Abercromby (Lord Abercromby), Mr D. Boyle (now Lord Justice-Clerk), Mr James Glassford (Advocate), Mr James Ferguson (Clerk of Session), Mr David Monypenny (Lord
Pitmilly), Mr Robert Davidson
(Professor of Law at Glasgow), Sir William Rae,
Bart., Sir Patrick Murray,
Bart., David
Douglas (Lord Reston), Mr Murray of Simprim, Mr Monteath of Closeburn, Mr Archibald Miller (son of Professor Miller), Baron Reden, a Hanoverian; the Honourable Thomas Douglas, afterwards
Earl of Selkirk, and John
Irving. Except the five whose names are underlined, these original members are all still alive.”—Letter from Mr Irving, dated 29th September, 1836.
Kelso, she retired, and presently placed in his hands a packet of some
bulk and weight, which required, she said, very particular attention. He took it without
examining the address, and carried it in his pocket next day, not at all to the lightening
of a forty miles’ ride in August. On his arrival, it turned out to contain one of the
old lady’s pattens, sealed up for a particular cobbler in Kelso, and accompanied with
fourpence to pay for mending it, and special directions that it might be brought back to
her by the same economical conveyance.
It will be seen from the following letter, the earliest of Scott’s writing that has fallen into my hands, that
professional business had some share in this excursion to Kelso; but I consider with more
interest the brief allusion to a day at Sandy-Knowe.
To Mrs Scott, George Square, Edinburgh. “(With a parcel).
“Rosebank, 5th Sept. 1788. “Dear Mother,
“I was favoured with your letter, and send you
Anne’s stockings along with this: I would have
sent them last week, but had some expectations of a private opportunity. I have
been very happy for this fortnight; we have some plan or other for every day.
Last week my uncle, my cousin William*
and I, rode to Smailholm, and from thence walked to Sandy-knowe Craigs, where
we spent the whole day, and made a very hearty dinner by the side of the
Orderlaw Well, on some cold beef and bread and cheese: we had also a small
case-bottle of rum to make grog with, which we drank to the Sandy-
* The present Laird of Raeburn.
knowe bairns, and all their
connexions. This jaunt gave me much pleasure, and had I time, I would give you
a more full account of it.
“The fishing has been hitherto but indifferent, and 1
fear I shall not be able to accomplish my promise with regard to the
wild-ducks. I was out on Friday, and only saw three. I may probably, however,
send you a hare, as my uncle has got a present of two greyhounds from Sir H. MacDougall, and as he has a license,
only waits till the corn is off the ground to commence coursing. Be it known to
you, however, I am not altogether employed in amusements, for I have got two or
three clients besides my uncle, and am busy drawing tacks and contracts, not,
however, of marriage. I am in a fair way of making money, if I stay here long.
“Here I have written a pretty long letter, and nothing
in it; but you know writing to one’s friends is the next thing to seeing
them. My love to my father and the boys from, dear mother, your dutiful and
affectionate son,
Walter Scott.”
It appears from James
Ballantyne’s memoranda, that having been very early bound apprentice
to a solicitor in Kelso, he had no intercourse with Scott during the three or four years that followed their companionship at
the school of Lancelot Whale; but
Ballantyne was now sent to spend a winter in Edinburgh for the
completion of his professional education, and in the course of his attendance on the
Scots-law class, became a member of a young Teviotdale club, where Walter
Scott seldom failed to make his appearance. They supped together, it seems,
once a-month; and here, as in the associations above mentioned, good fellowship was often
pushed beyond the limits of modern indulgence. The strict intimacy
between Scott and Ballantyne was not at this time
renewed—their avocations prevented it—but the latter was no uninterested observer of his
old comrade’s bearing on this new scene. “Upon all these
occasions,” he says, “one of the principal features of his character was
displayed as conspicuously as I believe it ever was at any later period. This was the
remarkable ascendency he never failed to exhibit among his young companions, and which
appeared to arise from their involuntary and unconscious submission to the same
firmness of understanding, and gentle exercise of it, which produced the same effects
throughout his after life. Where there was always a good deal of drinking, there was of
course now and then a good deal of quarrelling. But three words from Walter
Scott never failed to put all such propensities to quietness.”
Mr Ballantyne’s account of his friend’s
peace-making exertions at this club may seem a little at variance with some preceding
details. There is a difference, however, between encouraging quarrels in the bosom of a
convivial party, and taking a fair part in a row between one’s
own party and another. But Ballantyne adds, that at The Teviotdale, Scott was always remarkable
for being the most temperate of the set; and if the club consisted chiefly of persons, like
Ballantyne himself, somewhat inferior to
Scott in birth arid station, his carefulness both of sobriety and
decorum at their meetings was but another feature of his unchanged and unchangeable
character—qualis ab imo.
At one of the many merry suppers of this time, Walter Scott had said something, of which, on recollecting himself next
morning, he was sensible that his friend Clerk might
have reason to complain. He sent him accordingly a note apologetical, which has by some
accident been preserved, and which I am sure every reader will agree with me in considering well worthy of
preservation. In it Scott contrives to make use of both his own club
designations, and addresses his friend by another of the same order, which
Clerk had received in consequence of comparing himself on some
forgotten occasion to Sir John Brute in the play. This
characteristic document is as follows:—
To William Clerk, Esq.
“Dear Baronet,
“I am sorry to find that our friend Colonel
Grogg has behaved with a very undue degree of vehemence in a
dispute with you last night, occasioned by what I am convinced was a gross
misconception of your expressions. As the Colonel, though a military man, is
not too haughty to acknowledge an error, he has commissioned me to make his
apology as a mutual friend, which I am convinced you will accept from yours
ever,
Duns Scotus.” “Given at Castle-Duns, Monday.”
I should perhaps have mentioned sooner, that when first Duns Scotus became the Baronet’s daily
companion—this new alliance was observed with considerable jealousy by some of his former
inseparables of the writing office. At the next annual supper of the clerks and
apprentices, the gaudy of the chamber, this feeling showed itself in various ways, and when
the cloth was drawn, Walter rose and asked what was meant.
“Well,” said one of the lads, “since you will have it out,
you are cutting your old friends for the sake of Clerk and some
more of these dons that look down on the like of us.”
“Gentlemen,” answered Scott, “I will
never cut any man unless I detect him in scoundrelism, but I know not what right any of you have to interfere with my choice of my company.
If any one thought I had injured him, he would have done well to ask an explanation in
a more private manner. As it is, I fairly own that though I like many of you very much,
and have long done so, I think William Clerk well worth you all
put together.” The senior in the chair was wise enough to laugh, and the
evening passed off without further disturbance.
As one effect of his office education, Scott soon began to preserve in regular files the letters addressed to him;
and from the style and tone of such letters, as Mr
Southey observes in his Life
of Cowper, a man’s character may often be gathered even more surely than
from those written by himself. The first series of any considerable extent in his
collection, includes letters dated as far back as 1786, and proceeds, with not many
interruptions, down beyond the period when his fame had been established. I regret, that
from the delicate nature of the transactions chiefly dwelt upon in the earlier of these
communications, I dare not make a free use of them; but I feel it my duty to record the
strong impression they have left on my own mind of high generosity of affection, coupled
with calm judgment, and perseverance in well-doing on the part of the stripling
Scott. To these indeed every line in the collection bears pregnant
testimony. A young gentleman, born of good family,
and heir to a tolerable fortune, is sent to Edinburgh College, and is seen partaking, along
with Scott, through several apparently happy and careless years, of
the studies and amusements of which the reader may by this time have formed an adequate
notion. By degrees, from the usual license of his equal comrades, he sinks into habits of a
looser description—becomes reckless, contracts debts, irritates his own family almost
beyond hope of reconciliation, is virtually
cast off by them, runs away from Scotland, forms a marriage far below his condition in a
remote part of the sister kingdom—and, when the poor girl has made him a father, then first
begins to open his eyes to the full consequences of his mad career. He appeals to
Scott, by this time in his eighteenth year, ‘as the
truest and noblest of friends,’ who had given him ‘the earliest and
the strongest warnings,’ had assisted him ‘the most generously
throughout all his wanderings and distresses,’ and will not now abandon him
in his ‘penitent lowliness of misery,’ the result of his seeing
‘virtue and innocence involved in the punishment of his errors.’ I
find Scott obtaining the slow and reluctant assistance of his own
careful father,—who had long before observed this
youth’s wayward disposition, and often cautioned his son against the connexion,—to
intercede with the unfortunate wanderer’s family, and procure, if possible, some
mitigation of their sentence. The result is, that he is furnished with the scanty means of
removing himself to a distant colony, where he spends several years in the drudgery of a
very humble occupation, but by degrees establishes for himself a new character, which
commands the anxious interest of strangers;—and I find these strangers, particularly a
benevolent and venerable clergyman, addressing, on his behalf, without his privacy, the
young person, as yet unknown to the world, whom the object of their concern had painted to
them as ‘uniting the warm feelings of youth with the sense of years’
whose hair he had, ‘from the day he left England, worn next his heart.’
Just at the time when this appeal reached Scott, he hears that his
exiled friend’s father has died suddenly, and after all intestate; he has actually
been taking steps to ascertain the truth of the case at the moment when the American
despatch is laid on his table. I leave the reader to guess with what
pleasure Scott has to communicate the intelligence that his repentant
and reformed friend may return to take possession of his inheritance. The letters before me
contain touching pictures of their meeting—of Walter’s first
visit to the ancient hall, where a happy family are now assembled—and of the affectionately
respectful sense which his friend retained ever afterwards of all that he had done for him
in the season of his struggles. But what a grievous loss is
Scott’s part of this correspondence! I find this
correspondent over and over again expressing his admiration of the letters in which
Scott described to him his early tours both in the Highlands and
the Border dales: I find him prophesying from them, as early as 1789, ‘one day
your pen will make you famous,’ and already, in 1790, urging him to
concentrate his ambition on a ‘history of the clans.’*
This young gentleman appears to
have had a decided turn for literature; and, though in his earlier epistles he makes no
allusion to Scott as ever dabbling in rhyme, he often
inserts verses of his own, some of which are not without merit. There is a long letter in
doggrel, dated 1788, descriptive of a ramble from Edinburgh to Carlisle of which I may
quote the opening lines, as a sample of the simple habits of these young people.
“At four in the morning, I won’t be too sure, Yet, if right I remember me, that was the hour, When with Fergusson, Ramsay, and
Jones, sir, and you, From Auld Reekie I southward my route did pursue. But two of the dogs (yet God bless them, I said) Grew tired, and but set me half way to Lasswade, While Jones, you and I, Wat, went on without flutter, And at Symonds’s feasted on good bread and butter;
* All Scott’s letters to
the friend here alluded to are said to have perished in an accidental fire.
Where I, wanting a sixpence, you lugged out a shilling, And paid for me too, though I was most unwilling. We parted—be sure I was ready to snivel— Jones and you to go home—I to go to the devil.”
In a letter of later date, describing the adventurer’s captivation
with the cottage maiden whom he afterwards married, there are some lines of a very
different stamp. This couplet at least seems to me exquisite:— “Lowly beauty, dear friend, beams with primitive grace, And ’tis innocence self plays the rogue in her face.”
I find in another letter of this collection—and it is among the first of
the series—the following passage:—“Your Quixotism, dear Walter, was highly characteristic. From the description of the blooming
fair, as she appeared when she lowered her manteau
vert, I am hopeful you have not dropt the acquaintance. At least I
am certain some of our more rakish friends would have been glad enough of such an
introduction.” This hint I cannot help connecting with the first scene of
The Lady Green Mantle in Redgauntlet; but indeed I could easily trace many more
coincidences between these letters and that novel, though at the same time I have no sort
of doubt that William Clerk was, in the main,
Darsie Latimer, while
Scott himself unquestionably sat for his own picture in young
Alan Fairford.
The allusion to ‘our more rakish friends’ is in keeping with
the whole strain of this juvenile correspondence. Throughout there occurs no coarse or even
jocular suggestion as to the conduct of Scott in that particular, as to which most youths of his then age
are so apt to lay up stores of self-reproach. In this season of hot and impetuous blood he
may not have escaped quite blameless, but I have the concurrent testimony of all the most
intimate among his surviving associates, that he was remarkably free
from such indiscretions; that while his high sense of honour shielded him from the remotest
dream of tampering with female innocence, he had an instinctive delicacy about him which
made him recoil with utter disgust from low and vulgar debaucheries. His friends, I have
heard more than one of them confess, used often to rally him on the coldness of his nature.
By degrees they discovered that he had from almost the dawn of the passions, cherished a
secret attachment, which continued, through all the most perilous stage of life, to act as
a romantic charm in safeguard of virtue. This—(however he may have disguised the story by
mixing it up with the Quixotic adventure of the damsel in the Green Mantle)—this was the
early and innocent affection to which we owe the tenderest pages, not only of Redgauntlet, but of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and of Rokeby. In all of these works the heroine has
certain distinctive features, drawn from one and the same haunting dream of his manly
adolescence.
It was about 1790, according to Mr William
Clerk, that Scott was observed to lay
aside that carelessness, not to say slovenliness, as to dress, which used to furnish matter
for joking at the beginning of their acquaintance. He now did himself more justice in these
little matters, became fond of mixing in general female society, and, as his friend
expresses it, ‘began to set up for a squire of dames.’
His personal appearance at this time was not unengaging. A lady of high rank, who well remembers him in the Old Assembly
Rooms, gays, ‘Young Walter Scott was a comely
creature.’ He had outgrown the sallowness of early ill health, and had a
fresh brilliant complexion. His eyes were clear, open, and well set, with a changeful
radiance, to which teeth of the most perfect
regularity and whiteness lent their assistance, while the noble expanse and elevation of
the brow gave to the whole aspect a dignity far above the charm of mere features. His smile
was always delightful; and I can easily fancy the peculiar intermixture of tenderness and
gravity, with playful innocent hilarity and humour in the expression, as being well
calculated to fix a fair lady’s eye. His figure, excepting the blemish in one limb,
must in those days have been eminently handsome; tall, much above the usual standard, it
was cast in the very mould of a young Hercules, the
head set on with singular grace, the throat and chest after the truest model of the
antique, the hands delicately finished, the whole outline that of extraordinary vigour,
without as yet a touch of clumsiness. When he had acquired a little facility of manner, his
conversation must have been such as could have dispensed with any exterior advantages, and
certainly brought swift forgiveness for the one unkindness of nature. I have heard him, in
talking of this part of his life, say, with an arch simplicity of look and tone which those
who were familiar with him can fill in for themselves,—‘It was a proud night with
me when I first found that a pretty young woman could think it worth her while to sit
and talk with me, hour after hour, in a corner of the ball-room, while all the world
were capering in our view.’
I believe, however, that the ‘pretty
young woman’ here specially alluded to had occupied his attention long
before he ever appeared in the Edinburgh Assembly Rooms, or any of his friends took note of
him as ‘setting up for a squire of dames.’ I have been told that their
acquaintance began in the Greyfriars’ Churchyard, where rain beginning to fall one
Sunday as the congregation were dispersing, Scott
happened to offer his umbrella, and the tender being accepted, so escorted her to her residence, which proved to be at no great distance from his
own. To return from church together had, it seems, grown into something like a custom,
before they met in society, Mrs Scott being of the
party. It then appeared that she and the lady’s mother had been companions in their
youth, though, both living secludedly, they had scarcely seen each other for many years;
and the two matrons now renewed their former intercourse. But no acquaintance appears to
have existed between the fathers of the young people, until things had advanced in
appearance further than met the approbation of the good Clerk to the Signet.
Being aware that the young lady,
who was very highly connected, had prospects of fortune far above his son’s, the
upright and honourable man conceived it his duty to give her parents warning that he
observed a degree of intimacy which, if allowed to go on, might involve the parties in
future pain and disappointment. He had heard his son talk of a contemplated excursion to
the part of the country in which his neighbour’s estates lay, and not doubting that
Walter’s real object was different from that
which he announced, introduced himself with a frank statement that he wished no such affair
to proceed without the express sanction of those most interested in the happiness of
persons as yet too young to calculate consequences for themselves. The northern Baronet had
heard nothing of the young apprentice’s intended excursion, and appeared to treat the
whole business very lightly. He thanked Mr Scott for
his scrupulous attention—but added, that he believed he was mistaken; and this paternal
interference, which Walter did not hear of till long afterwards,
produced no change in his relations with the object of his growing attachment.
I have neither the power nor the wish to give in detail the sequel of
this story. It is sufficient to say, that after he had
through several long years nourished the dream of an ultimate union with this lady, his
hopes terminated in her being married to a gentleman
of the highest character, to whom some affectionate allusions occur in one of the greatest
of his works, and who lived to act the part of a most generous friend to his early rival
throughout the anxieties and distresses of 1826 and 1827. I have said enough for my purpose
which was only to render intelligible a few allusions in the letters which I shall by and
by have to introduce; but I may add, that I have no doubt this unfortunate passion, besides
one good effect already adverted to, had a powerful influence in nerving Scott’s mind for the sedulous diligence with which he
pursued his proper legal studies, as described in his Memoir, during the two or three years
that preceded his call to the bar.
CHAPTER VI. ILLUSTRATIONS CONTINUED—STUDIES FOR THE BAR—EXCUR-SIONS TO
NORTHUMBERLAND—LETTER ON FLODDEN FIELD—CALL TO THE BAR—1790-1792.
The two following letters may sufficiently illustrate the
writer’s everyday existence in the autumn of 1790. The first, addressed to his
fidus Achates, has not a few indications
of the vein of humour from which he afterwards drew so largely in his novels; and indeed,
even in his last days, he delighted to tell the story of the Jedburgh bailies’ boots.
To William Clerk, Esq., at John Clerk’s, Esq. of Eidin,
Prince’s Street, Edinburgh.
“Rosebank, 6th August, 1790. “Dear William,
“Here am I, the weather, according to your phrase,
most bitchiferous; the Tweed within twenty yards of the window at which I am
writing, swelled from bank to brae, and roaring like thunder. It is paying you
but a poor compliment to tell you I waited for such a day to perform my promise
of writing, but you must consider that it is the point here to reserve such
within-doors’ employment as we think most agreeable for bad weather,
which in the country always wants something to help it away. In fair weather we
are far from want-ing amusement, which at
present is my business; on the contrary, every fair day has some plan of
pleasure annexed to it, in so much that I can hardly believe I have been here
above two days, so swiftly does the time pass away. You will ask how it is
employed. Why, negatively, I read no civil law.
Heineccius and his fellow worthies
have ample time to gather a venerable coat of dust, which they merit by their
dulness. As to my positive amusements, besides riding, fishing, and the other
usual sports of the country, I often spend an hour or two in the evening in
shooting herons, which are numerous on this part of the river. To do this I
have no farther to go than the bottom of our garden, which literally hangs over
the river. When you fire at a bird she always crosses the river, and when again
shot at with ball, usually returns to your side, and will cross in this way
several times before she takes wing. This furnishes fine sport, nor are they
easily shot, as you never can get very near them. The intervals between their
appearing is spent very agreeably in eating gooseberries.
“Yesterday was St James’s Fair, a day of great
business. There was a great show of black cattle—I mean of ministers; the
narrowness of their stipends here obliges many of them to enlarge their incomes
by taking farms and grazing cattle. This, in my opinion, diminishes their
respectability, nor can the farmer be supposed to entertain any great reverence
for the ghostly advice of a pastor (they literally
deserve the epithet), who perhaps the day before overreached him in a bargain.
I would not have you to suppose there are no exceptions to this character, but
it would serve most of them. I had been fishing with my uncle, Captain Scott, on the Teviot, and returned
through the ground where the Fair is kept. The servant was wait-ing there with our horses, as we were to ride the water.
Lucky it was that it was so; for just about that time the magistrates of
Jedburgh, who preside there, began their solemn procession through the Fair.
For the greater dignity upon this occasion, they had a pair of boots among
three men—i. e., as they ride three in a rank, the outer legs of those personages who formed the outside,
as it may be called, of the procession, were each clothed in a boot. This and
several other incongruous appearances, were thrown in the teeth of those
cavaliers by the Kelso populace, and, by the assistance of whisky, parties were
soon inflamed to a very tight battle, one of that kind which, for distinction
sake, is called royal. It was not without great difficulty that we extricated
ourselves from the confusion; and had we been on foot, we might have been
trampled down by these fierce Jedburghians, who charged like so many troopers.
We were spectators of the combat from an eminence, but peace was soon after
restored, which made the older warriors regret the effeminacy of the age, as,
regularly, it ought to have lasted till night. Two lives were lost, I mean of
horses; indeed, had you seen them, you would rather have wondered that they
were able to bear their masters to the scene of action, than that they could
not carry them off.
“I am ashamed to read over this sheet of nonsense, so
excuse inaccuracies. Remember me to the lads of the Literary, those of the club in particular. I wrote Irving. Remember my most respectful
compliments to Mr and Mrs Clerk and family, particularly James; when you write, let me know how he did
when you heard of him. Imitate me in writing a long letter, but not in being
long in writing it. Direct to me at Miss Scott’s,
Garden, Kelso. My letters lie there for me, as it saves their being sent down
to Rosebank. The carrier puts up at the
Grassmarket, and goes away on Wednesday forenoon. Yours,
Walter Scott.”
The next letter is dated from a house at which I have often seen the
writer in his latter days. Kippilaw, situated about five or six miles behind Abbotsford, on
the high ground between the Tweed and the Water of Ayle, is the seat of an ancient laird of
the clan Kerr, but was at this time tenanted by the family of
Walter’s brother-apprentice, James Ramsay, who
afterwards realized a fortune in the civil service of the East India Company at Ceylon.
To William Clerk, Esq.
“Kippilaw, Sept. 3, 1790. “Dear Clerk,
“I am now writing from the country habitation of our
friend Ramsay, where I have been
spending a week as pleasantly as ever I spent one in my life. Imagine a
commodious old house, pleasantly situated amongst a knot of venerable elms, in
a fine sporting, open country, and only two miles from an excellent water for
trouts, inhabited by two of the best old ladies
(Ramsay’s aunts), and three as pleasant young
ones (his sisters) as any person would wish to converse with—and you will have
some idea of Kippilaw. James and I wander about, fish, or
look for hares, the whole day, and at night laugh, chat, and play round games
at cards. Such is the fatherland in which I have been living for some days
past, and which I leave to-night or to-morrow. This day is very bad;
notwithstanding which, James has sallied out to make some
calls, as he soon leaves the country. I have a great mind to trouble him with
the care of this.
“And now for your letter, the receipt of which I have
not, I think, yet acknowledged, though I am much obliged to you for it. I dare
say you would relish your jaunt to Pennycuick very much, especially considering
the solitary desert of Edinburgh, from which it relieved you. By the by, know,
O thou devourer of grapes, who contemnest the vulgar gooseberry, that thou art
not singular in thy devouring—nec tam aversus
equos sol jungit ab urbe (Kelsonianâ scilicet) my uncle being the lawful possessor of a vinery,
measuring no less than twenty-four feet by twelve, the contents of which come
often in my way; and, according to the proverb, that enough is as good as a
feast, are equally acceptable as if they came out of the most extensive
vineyard in France. I cannot, however, equal your boast of breakfasting,
dining, and supping on them. As for the civilians*—peace be with them, and may
the dust lie light upon their heads—they deserve this prayer in return for
those sweet slumbers which their benign influence infuses into their readers. I
fear I shall too soon be forced to disturb them, for some of our family being
now at Kelso, I am under the agonies lest I be obliged to escort them into
town. The only pleasure I shall reap by this is that of asking you how you do,
and, perhaps, the solid advantage of completing our studies before the College
sits down. Employ, therefore, your mornings in slumber while you can, for soon
it will be chased from your eyes. I plume myself on my sagacity with regard to
C. J. Fox.† I always foretold you would
tire of him—a vile brute. I have not yet forgot the narrow escape of my
fingers. I rejoice at James’s‡ intimacy with Miss
Menzies. She promised to turn out a
* Books on Civil Law.
† A tame fox of Mr
Clerk’s, which he soon dismissed.
‡ Mr James
Clerk, R.N.
fine girl, has a fine
fortune, and could James get her, he might sing,
‘I’ll go no more to sea, to
sea.’ Give my love to him when you write.—‘God preserve us,
what a scrawl!’ says one of the ladies just now, in admiration at the
expedition with which I scribble. Well I was never able in my life to do any
thing with what is called gravity and deliberation.
“I dined two days ago tête à tête with Lord Buchan. Heard a history of all his
ancestors whom he has hung round his chimney-piece. From counting of pedigrees,
good Lord deliver us! He is thinking of erecting a monument to Thomson. He frequented Dryburgh much in my
grandfather’s time. It will be a handsome thing. As to your scamp of a
boy, I saw nothing of him; but the face is enough to condemn there. I have seen
a man flogg’d for stealing spirits on the sole information of his nose.
Remember me respectfully to all your family.
“Believe me yours affectionately,
Walter Scott.”
After his return from the scene of these merry doings, he writes as
follows to his kind uncle. The reader will see that,
in the course of the preceding year, he had announced his early views of the origin of what
is called the feudal system in a paper read before the Literary
Society. He, in the succeeding winter, chose the same subject for an essay,
submitted to Mr Dugald Stewart, whose prelections on
ethics he was then attending. Some time later he again illustrated the same opinions more
at length in a disquisition before the Speculative Society; and, indeed, he always adhered
to them. One of the last historical books he read, before leaving Abbotsford for Malta in
1831, was Colonel Tod’s interesting account of Rajasthan; and I well remember
the delight he expressed on finding his views confirmed, as they
certainly are in a very striking manner, by the philosophical soldier’s details of
the structure of society in that remote region of the East.
“To Captain Robert Scott, Rosebank, Kelso.
“Edinburgh, September, 1790. “Dear Uncle,
“We arrived here without any accident about five
o’clock on Monday evening. The good weather made our journey pleasant. I
have been attending to your commissions here, and find that the last volume of
Dodsley’s Annual Register
published is that for 1787, which I was about to send you; but the bookseller I
frequent had not one in boards, though he expects to procure one for me. There
is a new work of the same title and size, on the same plan, which, being
published every year regularly, has almost cut out Dodsley’s, so that
this last is expected to stop altogether. You will let me know if you would
wish to have the new work, which is a good one, will join very well with those
volumes of Dodsley’s, which you already have, and is
published up to the present year. Byron’sNarrative is not yet published, but you
shall have it whenever it comes out.
“Agreeable to your permission, I send you the scroll
copy of an essay on the origin of the feudal system, written for the Literary
Society last year. As you are kind enough to interest yourself in my style and
manner of writing, I thought you might like better to see it in its original
state, than one on the polishing of which more time had been bestowed. You will
see that the intention and attempt of the essay is principally to controvert
two propositions laid down by the writers on the subject;—1st, That the system
was invented by the Lombards; and, 2dly, that its foundation depended on the
king’s being acknowledged the sole lord of all the lands in the country,
which he afterwards distributed to be held by military tenures. I have
endeavoured to assign it a more general origin, and to prove that it proceeds
upon principles common to all nations when placed in a certain situation. I am
afraid the matter will but poorly reward the trouble you will find in reading
some parts. I hope, however, you will make out enough to enable you to favour
me with your sentiments upon its faults. There is none whose advice I prize so
high, for there is none in whose judgment I can so much confide, or who has
shown me so much kindness.
“I also send, as amusement for an idle half hour, a
copy of the regulations of our Society, some of which will, I think, be
favoured with your approbation.
“My mother and sister join in compliments to aunt and
you, and also in thanks for the attentions and hospitality which they
experienced at Rosebank. And I am ever your affectionate nephew,
Walter Scott.
“P.S—If you continue to want a mastiff, I think I
can procure you one of a good breed, and send him by the carrier.”
While attending Mr Dugald
Stewart’s class, in the winter of 1790-1, Scott produced, in compliance with the usual custom of ethical students,
several essays besides that to which I have already made an allusion, and which was, I
believe, entitled, “On the Manners and Customs of the Northern
Nations.” But this essay it was that first attracted, in any particular
manner, his professor’s attention. Mr Robert
Ainslie, well known as the friend and fellow-traveller
of Burns, happened to attend
Stewart the same session, and remembers his saying, ex cathedrâ, “The author of this paper
shows much knowledge of his subject, and a great taste for such researches.”
Scott became, before the close of the Session, a frequent visitor
in Mr Stewart’s family, and an affectionate intercourse was
maintained between them through their after-lives.
Let me here set down a little story which most of his friends must have
heard him tell of the same period. While attending Dugald
Stewart’s lectures on moral philosophy, Scott happened to sit frequently beside a modest and diligent youth,
considerably his senior, and obviously of very humble condition. Their acquaintance soon
became rather intimate, and he occasionally made this new friend the companion of his
country walks, but as to his parentage and place of residence he always preserved total
silence. One day towards the end of the session, as Scott was
returning to Edinburgh from a solitary ramble, his eye was arrested by a singularly
venerable Bluegown, a beggar of the Edie
Ochiltree order, who stood propped on his stick, with his hat in his hand,
but silent and motionless, at one of the outskirts of the city. Scott
gave the old man what trifle he had in his pocket, and passed on his way. Two or three
times afterwards the same thing happened, and he had begun to consider the Bluegown as one
who had established a claim on his bounty: when one day he fell in with him as he was
walking with his humble student. Observing some confusion in his companion’s manner
as he saluted his pensioner, and bestowed the usual benefaction, he could not help saying,
after they had proceeded a few yards further, ‘Do you know any thing to the old
man’s discredit?’ Upon which the youth burst into tears, and cried,
‘O no, sir, God forbid but I am a poor wretch to be ashamed to speak to him—he is my own
father. He has enough laid by to serve for his own old days, but he stands bleaching
his head in the wind, that he may get the means of paying for my education.’
Compassionating the young man’s situation, Scott soothed his
weakness, and kept his secret, but by no means broke off the acquaintance. Some months had
elapsed before he again met the Bluegown—it was in a retired place, and the old man begged
to speak a word with him. ‘I find, sir,’ he said, ‘that you
have been very kind to my Willie. He had often spoke of it before
I saw you together. Will you pardon such a liberty, and give me the honour and pleasure
of seeing you under my poor roof? To-morrow is Saturday, will you come at two
o’clock? Willie has not been very well, and it would do him
meikle good to see your face.’ His curiosity, besides better feelings, was
touched, and he accepted this strange invitation. The appointed hour found him within sight
of a sequestered little cottage, near St Leonard’s—the hamlet where he has placed the
residence of his David Dean’s. His
fellow-student, pale and emaciated from recent sickness, was seated on a stone bench by the
door, looking out for his coming, and introduced him into a not untidy cabin, where the old
man, divested of his professional garb, was directing the last vibrations of a leg of
mutton that hung by a hempen cord before the fire. The mutton was excellent—so were the
potatoes and whiskey; and Scott returned home from an entertaining
conversation, in which, besides telling many queer stories of his own life and he had seen
service in his youth—the old man more than once used an expression, which was long
afterwards put into the mouth of Dominie
Sampson’s mother:—‘Please God, I may live to see my bairn wag
his head an a pulpit yet.’
Walter could not help telling all this the same night
to his mother, and added, that he would fain see his poor friend
obtain a tutor’s place in some gentleman’s family. ‘Dinna speak to
your father about it,’ said the good lady; ‘if it had been a shoulder he might have thought less, but he will say the jigot was a sin. I’ll see what I can do.’
Mrs Scott made her inquiries in her own way
among the professors, and, having satisfied herself as to the young man’s character,
applied to her favourite minister, Dr Erskine, whose
influence soon procured such a situation as had been suggested for him, in the north of
Scotland. ‘And thenceforth,’ said Sir Walter,
‘I lost sight of my friend—but let us hope he made out his curriculum at Aberdeen, and is now wagging his head where the fine old carle
wished to see him.’*
On the 4th January, 1791, Scott was
admitted a member of The Speculative Society, where it had, long
before, been the custom of those about to be called to the bar, and those who, after
assuming the gown, were left in possession of leisure by the solicitors, to train or
exercise themselves in the arts of elocution and debate. From time to time each member
produces an essay, and his treatment of his subject is then discussed by the conclave.
Scott’s essays were, for November 1791, ‘On the Origin of the Feudal System;’ for the 14th February,
1792, On the Authenticity of Ossian’s Poems; ‘and, on the 11th December of the
same year, he read one ‘On the Origin of the Scandinavian
Mythology.’
* The reader will find a story not unlike this in the
Introduction to the “Antiquary,” 1830. When I first read that note, I asked him why he
had altered so many circumstances from the usual oral edition of his anecdote.
“Nay,” said he, “both stories may be true, and why
should I be always lugging in myself, when what happened to another of our
class would serve equally wellfor the purpose I had in view?” I
regretted the leg of mutton.
The selection of these subjects shows the
course of his private studies and predilections; but he appears, from the minutes, to have
taken his fair share in the ordinary debates of the Society, and spoke, in the spring of
1791, on these questions, which all belong to the established text-book for juvenile
speculation in Edinburgh: ‘Ought any permanent support to be provided for the
poor?’ ‘Ought there to be an established religion?’ ‘Is attainder
and corruption of blood ever a proper punishment?’ ‘Ought the public expenses
to be defrayed by levying the amount directly upon the people, or is it expedient to
contract national debt for that purpose?’ ‘Was the execution of Charles I. justifiable?’ ‘Should the slave-trade
be abolished?’ In the next session, previous to his call to the bar, he spoke in the
debates, of which these were the theses:—‘Has the belief in a future state been of
advantage to mankind, or is it ever likely to be so?’ ‘Is it for the interest
of Britain to maintain what is called the balance of Europe?’ and again on the
eternal question as to the fate of King Charles I., which, by the way,
was thus set up for re-discussion on a motion by Walter Scott.
He took, for several winters, an ardent interest in this society. Very
soon after his admission (18th January, 1791), he was elected their librarian; and in the
November following he became also their secretary and treasurer; all which appointments
indicate the reliance placed on his careful habits of business, the fruit of his chamber
education. The minutes kept in his hand-writing attest the strict regularity of his
attention to the small affairs, literary and financial, of the club; but they show also, as
do all his early letters, a strange carelessness in spelling. His constant good temper
softened the asperities of debate; while his multifarious lore, and
the quaint humour with which he enlivened its display, made him more a favourite as a
speaker than some whose powers of rhetoric were far above his.
Lord Jeffrey remembers being struck, the first night
he spent at the Speculative, with the singular appearance of the secretary, who sat gravely
at the bottom of the table in a huge woollen night-cap; and when the president took the
chair, pleaded a bad toothach as his apology for coming into that worshipful assembly in
such a “portentous machine.” He read that night an essay on ballads, which so
much interested the new member, that he requested to be introduced to him. Mr
Jeffrey called on him next evening, and found him ‘in a small den,
on the sunk floor of his father’s house, in George’s Square, surrounded
with dingy books,’ from which they adjourned to a tavern, and supped
together. Such was the commencement of an acquaintance, which by degrees ripened into
friendship, between the two most distinguished men of letters whom Edinburgh produced in
their time. I may add here the description of that early den, with
which I am favoured by a lady of Scott’s family.
‘Walter had soon begun to collect out-of-the-way
things of all sorts. He had more books than shelves; a small painted cabinet, with
Scotch and Roman coins in it, and so forth. A claymore and Lochaber axe, given him by
old Invernahyle, mounted guard on a little print of Prince Charlie; and Broughton’sSaucer was hooked
up against the wall below it.’ Such was the germ of the magnificent library
and museum of Abbotsford; and such were the ‘new realms’ in which he, on taking
possession, had arranged his little parapharnalia about him ‘with all the feelings of
novelty and liberty.’ Since those days the habits of life in Edinburgh, as elsewhere,
have undergone many changes and the ‘convenient parlour,’ in which Scott first showed Jeffrey his collections of
minstrelsy, is now, in all probability, thought hardly good enough for a menial’s
sleeping-room.
But I have forgotten to explain Broughton’s
Saucer. We read of Mr Saunders Fairford, that
though ‘an elder of the kirk, and of course zealous for King George and the
Government,’ yet, having ‘many clients and connexions of business
among families of opposite political tenets, he was particularly cautious to use all
the conventional phrases which the civility of the time had devised as an admissible
mode of language betwixt the two parties: Thus he spoke sometimes of the Chevalier, but never either of the Prince, which would have been sacrificing his own principles, or of the Pretender, which would have been offensive to those of others:
Again, he usually designated the Rebellion as the affair of
1745, and spoke of any one engaged in it as a person who had been out at a certain
period—so that, on the whole, he was much liked and respected on all sides.’*
All this was true of Mr Walter Scott, W.S.; but I
have often heard his son tell an anecdote of him which he dwelt on with particular
satisfaction, as illustrative of the man, and of the difficult time through which he had
lived.
Mrs Scott’s curiosity was strongly excited one
autumn by the regular appearance, at a certain hour every evening, of a sedan chair, to
deposit a person carefully muffled up in a mantle, who was immediately ushered into her
husband’s private room, and commonly remained with him there until long after the
usual bed-time of this orderly family. Mr Scott
answered her repeated enquiries with a vagueness which irritated the lady’s feelings
more and more; until, at last, she could bear the thing no longer; but one evening, just as
she heard
* Redgauntlet, vol. i. p. 244.
the bell ring as for the stranger’s chair to carry him off, she
made her appearance within the forbidden parlour with a salver in her hand, observing, that
she thought the gentlemen had sat so long they would be the better of a dish of tea, and
had ventured accordingly to bring some for their acceptance. The stranger, a person of
distinguished appearance, and richly dressed, bowed to the lady, and accepted a cup; but
her husband knit his brows and refused very coldly to partake the refreshment. A moment
afterwards the visitor withdrew and Mr Scott, lifting up the
window-sash, took the cup, which he had left empty on the table, and tossed it out upon the
pavement. The lady exclaimed for her china, but was put to silence by her husband’s
saying, “I can forgive your little curiosity, madam, but you must pay the penalty.
I may admit into my house, on a piece of business, persons wholly unworthy to be
treated as guests by my wife. Neither lip of me nor of mine comes after Mr Murray of Broughton’s.”
This was the unhappy man who, after attending Prince Charles Stuart as his secretary throughout the
greater part of his expedition, condescended to redeem his own life and fortune by bearing
evidence against the noblest of his late master’s adherents, when “Pitied by gentle hearts Kilmarnock
died— The brave, Balmerino, were on thy
side.” When first confronted with the last named peer before the Privy Council in St
James’s, the prisoner was asked “do you know this witness, my
lord?” “Not I,” answered Balmerino; “I once knew a
person who bore the designation of Murray of
Broughton—but that was a gentleman and a man of honour, and one that
could hold up his head!”
The saucer belonging to Broughton’s teacup had been preserved; and Walter, at a very early period, made prize of it. One can fancy young Alan Fairford pointing significantly to the relic when
Mr Saunders was vouchsafing him one of his
customary lectures about listening with unseemly sympathy to “the blawing,
bleezing stories which the Hieland gentlemen told of those troublous times.”*
The following letter is the only one of the autumn of 1791 that has
reached my hands. It must be read with particular interest, for its account of Scott’s first visit to Flodden field, destined to be
celebrated seventeen years afterwards in the very noblest specimen of his numbers.
To William Clerk, Esq. Prince’s Street, Edinburgh.
“Northumberland, 26th August, 1791. “Dear Clerk,
“Behold a letter from the mountains, for I am very
snugly settled here, in a farmer’s house, about six miles from Wooler, in
the very centre of the Cheviot hills, in one of the wildest and most romantic
situations which your imagination, fertile upon the subject of cottages, ever
suggested. And what the deuce are you about there? methinks I hear you say.
Why, sir, of all things in the world—drinking goat’s whey—not that I
stand in the least need of it, but my uncle having a slight cold, and being a
little tired of home, asked me last Sunday evening if I would like to go with
him to Wooler, and I answering in the affirmative, next morning’s sun
beheld us on our journey, through a pass in the Cheviots, upon the back of two
special nags, and man Thomas behind with a portmanteau, and two fishing rods
fastened across his back, much in the style of St Andrew’s Cross. Upon
* Redgauntlet, vol. i. p. 142.
reaching Wooler we found the accommodations so bad that we
were forced to use some interest to get lodgings here, where we are most
delightfully appointed indeed. To add to my satisfaction, we are amidst places
renowned by the feats of former days; each hill is crowned with a tower, or
camp, or cairn, and in no situation can you be near more fields of battle:
Flodden, Otterburn, Chevy Chase, Ford Castle, Chillingham Castle, Copland
Castle, and many another scene of blood are within the compass of a
forenoon’s ride. Out of the brooks with which these hills are intersected
we pull trouts of half a yard in length, as fast as we did the perches from the
pond at Pennycuick, and we are in the very country of muirfowl.
“Often as I have wished for your company I never did
it more earnestly than when I rode over Flodden Edge. I know your taste for
these things, and could have undertaken to demonstrate, that never was an
affair more completely bungled than that day’s work was. Suppose one army
posted upon the face of a hill, and secured by high grounds projecting on each
flank, with the river Till in front, a deep and still river, winding through a
very extensive valley called Milfield Plain, and the only passage over it by a
narrow bridge, which the Scots artillery, from the hill, could in a moment have
demolished. Add that the English must have hazarded a battle while their
troops, which were tumultuously levied, remained together; and that the Scots,
behind whom the country was open to Scotland, had nothing to do but to wait for
the attack as they were posted. Yet did two thirds of the army, actuated by the
perfervidum ingenium
Scotorum, rush down and give an opportunity to Stanley to occupy the ground they had quitted, by
coming over the shoulder of the hill, while the other third, under Lord Home, kept their ground, and having seen their King and about 10,000 of their countrymen cut to
pieces, retired into Scotland without loss. For the reason of the bridge not
being destroyed while the English passed, I refer you to Pitscottie, who narrates at large, and to whom
I give credit for a most accurate and clear description, agreeing perfectly
with the ground.
“My uncle drinks the whey here, as I do ever since I
understood it was brought to his bedside every morning at six, by a very pretty
dairy-maid. So much for my residence; all the day we shoot, fish, walk, and
ride; dine and sup upon fish struggling from the stream, and the most delicious
heath-fed mutton, barn-door fowls, poys,* milk-cheese, &c., all in
perfection; and so much simplicity resides among these hills, that a pen, which
could write at least, was not to be found about the house, though belonging to
a considerable farmer, till I shot the crow with whose quill I write this
epistle. I wrote to Irving before
leaving Kelso. Poor fellow, I am sure his sister’s death must have hurt
him much; though he makes no noise about feelings, yet still streams always run
deepest. I sent a message by him to Edie,† poor devil, adding my mite of consolation to him in
his affliction. I pity poor ******, who is more deserving
of compassion, being his first offence. Write soon, and as long as the last;
you will have Perthshire news I suppose soon. Jamie’s adventure diverted me much. I read it to my
uncle, who being long in the India service, was affronted. Remember to
James when you write, and to all your family and
friends in general. I send this to Kelso—you may address as usual; my letters
will be forwarded—adieu—au revoir,
Walter Scott.”
With the exception of this little excursion, Scott ap-
* Pies. †
Sir A. Fergusson.
pears to have been nailed to Edinburgh during this autumn, by that
course of legal study, in company with Clerk, on
which he dwells in his Memoir with more satisfaction than on any other passage in his early
life. He copied out twice, as the Fragment tells us, his notes of
those lectures of the eminent Scots law professor (afterwards Mr
Baron Hume), which he speaks of in such a high strain of eulogy; and
Mr Irving adds, that the second copy, being
fairly finished and bound into volumes, was presented to his father. The old gentleman was
highly gratified with this performance, not only as a satisfactory proof of his son’s
assiduous attention to the Law Professor, but inasmuch as the lectures afforded himself
‘very pleasant reading for leisure hours.’
Mr Clerk assures me, that nothing could be more
exact (excepting as to a few petty circumstances introduced for obvious reasons) than the
resemblance of the Mr Saunders Fairford of Redgauntlet to his friend’s
father:—“He was a man of business of
the old school, moderate in his charges, economical, and even niggardly in his
expenditure; strictly honest in conducting his own affairs and those of his clients;
but taught by long experience to be wary and suspicious in observing the motions of
others. Punctual as the clock of St Giles tolled nine” (the hour at which the
Court of Session meets), “the dapper form of the hale old gentleman was seen at
the threshold of the court hall, or at farthest, at the head of the Back
Stairs” (the most convenient access to the Parliament House from George’s
Square), “trimly dressed in a complete suit of snuff-coloured brown, with
stockings of silk or woollen, as suited the weather; a bob wig and a small cocked hat;
shoes blacked as Warren would have blacked them;
silver shoebuckles, and a gold stock-buckle. His manners corresponded with his attire,
for they were scrupulously civil, and not a
little formal . . . . On the whole, he was a man much liked and respected, though his
friends would not have been sorry if he had given a dinner more frequently, as his
little cellar contained some choice old wine, of which, on such rare occasions, he was
no niggard. The whole pleasure of this good old-fashioned man of method, besides that
which he really felt in the discharge of his own daily business, was the hope to see
his son attain what in the father’s eyes was the proudest of all distinctions—the
rank and fame of a well-employed lawyer. Every profession has its peculiar honours, and
his mind was constructed upon so limited and exclusive a plan, that he valued nothing
save the objects of ambition which his own presented. He would have shuddered at his
son’s acquiring the renown of a hero, and laughed with scorn at the equally
barren laurels of literature; it was by the path of the law alone that he was desirous
to see him rise to eminence; and the probabilities of success or disappointment, were
the thoughts of his father by day, and his dream by night.”*
It is easy to imagine the original of this portrait, writing to one of
his friends, about the end of June 1792,—“I have the pleasure to tell you that my son
has passed his private Scots law examinations with good approbation—a great relief to my
mind, especially as worthy Mr Pest told me in my ear, there was no
fear of the ‘callant,’ as he familiarly called him, which gives me great heart.
His public trials, which are nothing in comparison save a mere form, are to take place, by
order of the Honourable Dean of Faculty,† on Wednesday first, and on Friday he puts
on the gown, and gives a bit chack of dinner to his friends and acquaintances, as is the
custom, Your company will
* Redgauntlet, vol. i. p. 243-5.
† The situation of Dean of Faculty was filled in 1792 by
the Honourable Henry Erskine, of witty and
benevolent memory.
be wished for there by more than him.—P.S.—His thesis is, on the
title, ‘De periculo et commodo rei
venditæ,’ and is a very pretty piece of Latinity.”*
And all things passed in due order, even as they are figured. The real
Darsie was present at the
real Alan Fairford’s ‘bit chack of
dinner,’ and the old clerk of the Signet was very joyous on the occasion. Scott’sthesis was, in fact,
on the Title of the Pandects, Concerning the disposal of the dead bodies of criminals. It
was dedicated, I doubt not by the careful father’s advice, to his friend and
neighbour in George’s Square, the coarsely humorous, but acute and able, and still
well-remembered, Macqueen of Braxfield, then Lord
Justice-Clerk (or President of the Supreme Criminal Court) of Scotland.
I have often heard both Alan and Darsie laugh over their reminiscences of the important day when they
‘put on the gown.’ After the ceremony was completed, and they had mingled for
some time with the crowd of barristers in the outer Court, Scott said to his comrade, mimicking the air and tone of a Highland lass
waiting at the cross of Edinburgh to be hired for the harvest work,—‘We’ve
stood here an hour by the Tron, hinny, and diel a ane has speered our price.’ Some
friendly solicitor, however, gave him a guinea fee before the Court rose; and as they
walked down the High Street together, he said to Mr
Clerk, in passing a hosier’s shop ‘This is a sort of a
wedding-day, Willie; I think I must go in and buy me a new
night-cap.’ He did so accordingly; perhaps this was Lord Jeffrey’s ‘portentous machine.’ His
first fee of any consequence, however, was expended on a silver taper-stand for his mother,
which the old lady used to point to with great satisfaction, as it stood on her
chimney-piece five-and-twenty years afterwards.
* Redgauntlet vol. i. p. 144.
CHAPTER VII FIRST EXPEDITION INTO LIDDESDALE STUDY OF GERMAN—POLITICAL TRIALS,
&c.—SPECIMEN OF LAW PAPERS—BÜR-GER’SLENORE TRANSLATED—DISAPPOINTMENT IN LOVE— 1792-1796.
Scott was called to the bar
only the day before the closing of the session, and he appears to have almost immediately
escaped to the country. On the 2d of August I find his father writing, “I have
sent the copies of your thesis as desired;” and on the 15th he addressed to
him at Rosebank a letter, in which there is this paragraph, an undoubted autograph of
Mr Saunders Fairford, anno ætatis sixty-three
‘Dear Walter,
‘ . . . I am glad that your expedition to the west proved agreeable.
You do well to warn your mother against Ashestiel. Although I said little, yet I never
thought that road could be agreeable; besides, it is taking too wide a circle. Lord Justice-Clerk is in town attending the Bills.* He
called here yesterday, and enquired very particularly for you. I told him where you was,
and he expects to see you at Jedburgh upon the 21st. He is to be at Mellerstain† on
the 20th, and
* The Judges then attended in Edinburgh in rotation during the
intervals of term, to take care of various sorts of business which could not brook
delay, bills of injunction, &c.
† The beautiful seat of the Baillies of
Jerviswood, in Berwickshire, a few miles below Dryburgh.
will be there all night. His Lordship said, in a very pleasant manner,
that something might cast up at Jedburgh to give you an opportunity of appearing, and that
he would insist upon it, and that in future he meant to give you a share of the criminal
business in this Court, all which is very kind. I told His Lordship that I had dissuaded
you from appearing at Jedburgh, but he said I was wrong in doing so, and I therefore leave
the matter to you and him. I think it is probable he will breakfast
withSir H. H.
MacDougallon the 21st, on
his way to Jedburgh.’ * * *
This last quiet hint, that the young lawyer might as well be at Makerstoun
(the seat of a relation) when His Lordship breakfasted there, and of course swell the train
of His Lordship’s little procession into the county town, seems delightfully
characteristic. I think I hear Sir Walter himself
lecturing me, when in the same sort of situation, thirty years afterwards. He declined, as
one of the following letters will show, the opportunity of making his first appearance on
this occasion at Jedburgh. He was present, indeed, at the Court during the assizes, but
“durst not venture.” His accounts to William
Clerk of his vacation amusements, and more particularly of his second
excursion to Northumberland, will, I am sure, interest every reader.
To William Clerk, Esq. Advocate, Prince’s Street, Edinburgh.
‘Rosebank, 10th Sept. 1792. ‘Dear William,
‘Taking the advantage of a very indifferent day, which
is likely to float away a good deal of corn, and of my father’s leaving
this place, who will take charge of this scrawl, I sit down to answer your
favour. I find you have been, like myself, taking advantage of the good weather to look around you
a little, and congratulate you upon the pleasure you must have received from
your jaunt with Mr Russell.* I
apprehend, though you are silent on the subject, that your conversation was
enlivened by many curious disquisitions of the nature of undulating exhalations. I should have bowed before the venerable
grove of oaks at Hamilton with as much respect as if I had been a Druid about
to gather the sacred mistletoe. I should hardly have suspected your host
Sir William† of having been
the occasion of the scandal brought upon the library and Mr Gibb‡ by the introduction of the Cabinet des Fées, of which I
have a volume or two here. I am happy to think there is an admirer of snug
things in the administration of the library. Poor Linton’s misfortune, though I cannot say it surprises,
yet heartily grieves me. I have no doubt he will have many advisers and
animadverters upon the naughtiness of his ways, whose admonitions will be
forgot upon the next opportunity.
‘I am lounging about the country here, to speak
sincerely, as idle as the day is long. Two old companions of mine, brothers of
Mr Walker of Wooden, having come to
this country, we have renewed a great intimacy. As they live directly upon the
opposite bank of the river, we have signals agreed upon by which we concert
* Mr Russell,
surgeon, afterwards Professor of Clinical Surgery at Edinburgh.
† Sir William
Miller (Lord Glenlee).
‡ Mr Gibb
was the Librarian of the Faculty of Advocates.
§ Clerk,
Abercromby, Scott, Fergusson, and others, had occasional boating
excursions from Leith to Inchcolm, Inchkeith, &c.; on one of these
their boat was neared by a Newhaven one—Fergusson,
at the moment, was standing up talking; one of the Newhaven fishermen,
taking him for a brother of his own craft, bawled out,
“Linton, you lang bitch, is that
you?” From that day Adam Fergusson’s
cognomen among his friends of The Club was Linton.
a plan of operations for the day. They are both officers,
and very intelligent young fellows, and what is of some consequence, have a
brace of fine greyhounds. Yesterday forenoon we killed seven hares, so you may
see how plenty the game is with us. I have turned a keen duck shooter, though
my success is not very great; and when wading through the mosses upon this
errand, accoutred with the long gun, a jacket, musquito trowsers, and a rough
cap, I might well pass for one of my redoubted moss-trooper progenitors,
Walter Fire-the-Braes, ‘or
rather Willie wi’ the Bolt-Foot.
‘For about-doors’ amusement, I have constructed
a seat in a large tree which spreads its branches horizontally over the Tweed.
This is a favourite situation of mine for reading, especially in a day like
this, when the west wind rocks the branches on which I am perched, and the
river rolls its waves below me of a turbid blood colour. I have, moreover, cut
an embrasure, through which I can fire upon the gulls, herons, and cormorants,
as they fly screaming past my nest. To crown the whole, I have carved an
inscription upon it in the ancient Romant taste. I believe I shall hardly
return into town, barring accidents, sooner than the middle of next month,
perhaps not till November. Next week, weather permitting, is destined for a
Northumberland expedition, in which I shall visit some parts of that country
which I have not yet seen, particularly about Hexham. Some days ago I had
nearly met with a worse accident than the tramp I took at Moorfoot;† for
having bewildered myself among the Cheviot hills, it was nearly nightfall
before I got to the village of Hownam, and
* Walter Scott of
Synton (elder brother of Bolt-Foot, the first Baron of Harden) was thus
designated. He greatly distinguished himself in the battle of Melrose,
A.D. 1526.
† This alludes to being lost in a fishing
excursion.
the passes with which I was
acquainted. You do not speak of being in Perthshire this season, though I
suppose you intend it. I suppose we, that is, nous
autres,* are at present completely dispersed.
Compliments to all who are in town, and best respects to
your own family, both in Prince’s Street and at Eldin. Believe me ever
most sincerely yours,
Walter Scott.’
‘To William Clerk, Esq.
‘Rosebank, 30th Sept., 1792. Dear William,
‘I suppose this will find you flourishing like a green
bay-tree on the mountains of Perthshire, and in full enjoyment of all the
pleasures of the country. All that I envy you is the noctes
cenæque deum, which, I take it for granted, you three merry men
will be spending together, while I am poring over Bartholine in the long evenings, solitary enough; for, as for
the lobsters, as you call them, I am separated from them by the Tweed, which
precludes evening meetings, unless in fine weather and full moons. I have had
an expedition through Hexham and the higher parts of Northumberland, which
would have delighted the very cockles of your heart, not so much on account of
the beautiful romantic appearance of the country, though that would have
charmed you also, as because you would have seen more Roman inscriptions built
into gate-posts, barns, &c., than perhaps are to be found in any other part
of Britain. These have been all dug up from the neighbouring Roman wall, which
is still in many places very entire, and gives a stupendous idea of the
perseverance of its founders, who carried such an erection from sea to sea,
over rocks, mountains, rivers, and morasses. There are
* The companions of The Club.
several lakes among the mountains above Hexham, well worth
going many miles to see, though their fame is eclipsed by their neighbourhood
to those of Cumberland. They are surrounded by old towers and castles, in
situations the most savagely romantic; what would I have given to have been
able to take effect-pieces from some of them! Upon the Tyne, about Hexham, the
country has a different aspect, presenting much of the beautiful though less of
the sublime. I was particularly charmed with the situation of Beaufront, a
house belonging to a mad sort of genius whom, I am sure, I have told you some
stories about. He used to call himself the Noble
Errington, but of late has assumed the title of Duke
of Hexham. Hard by the town is the field of battle where the
forces of Queen Margaret were defeated by
those of the House of York, a blow which the Red Rose never recovered during
the civil wars. The spot where the Duke of
Somerset and the northern nobility of the Lancastrian faction
were executed after the battle is still called Dukesfield. The inhabitants of
this country speak an odd dialect of the Saxon, approaching nearly that of
Chaucer, and have retained some
customs peculiar to themselves. They are the descendants of the ancient Danes,
chased into the fastnesses of Northumberland by the severity of William the Conqueror. Their ignorance is
surprising to a Scotchman. It is common for the traders in cattle, which
business is carried on to a great extent, to carry all letters received in
course of trade to the parish church, where the clerk reads them aloud after
service, and answers them according to circumstances.
‘We intended to visit the lakes in Cumberland, but our
jaunt was cut short by the bad weather. I went to the circuit at Jedburgh, to
make my bow to Lord J. Clerk, and might have had
employment, but durst not
venture. Nine of the Dunse rioters were condemned to banishment, but the
ferment continues violent in the Merse. Kelso races afforded little
sport—Wishaw* lost a horse which cost
him L.500, and foundered irrecoverably on the course. At another time I should
quote George Buchanan’s adage of
‘a fool and his money,’ but at present labour under a similar
misfortune; my Galloway having yesterday thought proper (N. B., without a
rider) to leap over a gate, and being lamed for the present. This is not his
first faux-pas, for he jumped into a water with me on
his back when in Northumberland, to the imminent danger of my life. He is,
therefore, to be sold (when recovered), and another purchased. This accident
has occasioned you the trouble of reading so long an epistle, the day being
Sunday, and my uncle, the captain, busily engaged with your father’s
naval tactics, is too seriously employed to be an agreeable companion. Apropos
(des bottes)—I am sincerely sorry to hear that James is still unemployed, but have no doubt a
time will come round when his talents will have an opportunity of being
displayed to his advantage. I have no prospect of seeing my chère adorable
till winter, if then. As for you, I pity you not, seeing as how you have so
good a succedaneum in M. G.; and on the contrary, hope,
not only that Edmonstone may roast you,
but that Cupid may again (as erst) fry you on the gridiron of jealousy for your infidelity.
Compliments to our right trusty and well-beloved Linton and Jean Jacques.† If you
write, which, by the way, I hardly have the conscience to expect, direct to my
father’s care, who will forward your letter. I have quite given up
duck-shooting for
* William Hamilton of
Wishaw,—who afterwards established his claim to the
peerage of Belhaven.
† John James
Edmonstone.
the season, the birds being too old and the mosses too
deep and cold. I have no reason to boast of my experience or success in the
sport, and for my own part, should fire at any distance under eighty or even
ninety paces, though above forty-five I would reckon it a coup déséspére, and as the
bird is beyond measure shy, you may be sure I was not very bloody. Believe me,
deferring, as usual, our dispute till another opportunity, always sincerely
yours,
Walter Scott.’
‘P. S. I believe if my pony does not soon recover,
that misfortune, with the bad weather, may send me soon to town.’
It was within a few days after Scott’s return from his excursion to Hexham, that, while attending
the Michaelmas head-court, as an annual county-meeting is called, at Jedburgh, he was
introduced, by an old companion, Charles Kerr of
Abbotrule, to Mr Robert Shortreed,
that gentleman’s near relation, who spent the greater part of his life in the
enjoyment of much respect as Sheriff-substitute of Roxburghshire.
Scott had been expressing his wish to visit the then wild and
inaccessible district of Liddesdale, particularly with a view to examine the ruins of the
famous castle of Hermitage, and to pick up some of the ancient riding
ballads, said to be still preserved among the descendants of the moss-troopers,
who had followed the banner of the Douglasses, when lords of that grim and remote fastness.
Mr Shortreed had many connexions in Liddesdale, and knew its
passes well, and he was pointed out as the very guide the young advocate wanted. They
started accordingly, in a day or two afterwards, from Abbotrule; and the laird meant to
have been of the party; but ‘it was well for
him,’ said Shortreed, ‘that he changed his
mind—for he could never have done as we did.’*
During seven successive years Scott
made a raid, as he called it, into Liddesdale, with Mr Shortreed for his guide; exploring every rivulet to its
source, and every ruined peel from foundation to battlement. At this time no wheeled
carriage had ever been seen in the district the first, indeed, that ever appeared there was
a gig, driven by Scott himself for a part of his way, when on the last
of these seven excursions. There was no inn nor public-house of any kind in the whole
valley; the travellers passed from the shepherd’s hut to the minister’s manse,
and again from the cheerful hospitality of the manse to the rough and jolly welcome of the
homestead; gathering, wherever they went, songs and tunes, and occasionally more tangible
relics of antiquity—even such ‘a rowth of auld nicknackets’ as Burns ascribes to Captain
Grose. To these rambles Scott owed much of the
materials of his ‘Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border;’ and not less of that intimate acquaintance with the
living manners of these unsophisticated regions, which constitutes the chief charm of one
of the most charming of his prose works. But how soon he had any definite object before him
in his researches, seems very doubtful. ‘He was makin’
himsell a’ the time,’ said Mr Shortreed;
‘but he didna
* I am obliged to Mr John Elliot
Shortreed, a son of Scott’s
early friend, for some memoranda of his father’s
conversations on this subject, which are the more interesting that they
represent the worthy Sheriff-substitute’s dialect exactly as it was.
These notes were written in 1824; and I shall make several quotations from
them. I had, however, many opportunities of hearing Mr
Shortreed’s stories from his own lips, having often been
under his hospitable roof in company with Sir
Walter, who to the last always lodged there when any business
took him to Jedburgh.
ken maybe what he was about till years had passed: At first he
thought o’ little, I dare say, but the queerness and the fun.’
‘In those days,’ says the Memorandum before me,
‘advocates were not so plenty—at least about Liddesdale;’ and the
worthy Sheriff-substitute goes on to describe the sort of bustle, not unmixed with alarm,
produced at the first farm-house they visited (Willie
Elliot’s, at Millburnholm), when the honest man was informed of the
quality of one of his guests. When they dismounted, accordingly, he received Mr Scott with great ceremony, and insisted upon himself
leading his horse to the stable. Shortreed
accompanied Willie, however, and the latter, after taking a deliberate
peep at Scott, ‘out-by the edge of the door-cheek,’
whispered, ‘Weel, Robin, I say, de’il hae me if I’s be a bit feared
for him now; he’s just a chield like ourselves, I think.’ Half-a-dozen
dogs of all degrees had already gathered round ‘the advocate,’ and his way of
returning their compliments had set Willie Elliot at once at his ease.
According to Mr Shortreed, this
good-man of Millburnholm was the great original of Dandie
Dinmont. As he seems to have been the first of these upland sheep-farmers
that Scott ever visited, there can be little doubt that
he sat for some parts of that inimitable portraiture; and it is certain that the James Davidson, who carried the name of Dandie to his grave with him, and whose thoroughbred deathbed
scene is told in the Notes to Guy
Mannering, was first pointed out to Scott by Mr
Shortreed himself, several years after the novel had established the
man’s celebrity all over the Border; some accidental report about his terriers, and
their odd names, having alone been turned to account in the original composition of the
tale. But I have the best reason to believe that the
kind and manly character of Dandie, the gentle and
delicious one of his wife, and some at least of the most picturesque peculiarities of the
menage at Charlieshope, were filled up from Scott’s observation,
years after this period, of a family, with one of whose members he had, through the best
part of his life, a close and affectionate connexion. To those who were familiar with him,
I have perhaps already sufficiently indicated the early home of his dear friend, William Laidlaw, among ‘the braes of Yarrow.’
They dined at Millburnholm, and after having lingered over Willie Elliot’s punch-bowl, until, in Mr Shortreed’s phrase, they were
‘half-glowrin,’ mounted their steeds again, and proceeded to Dr
Elliot’s at Cleughhead, where (‘for,’ says my Memorandum,
‘folk were na very nice in those days’) the two travellers slept in one and the
same bed as, indeed, seems to have been the case with them throughout most of their
excursions in this primitive district. Dr Elliot (a clergyman) had
already a large MS. collection of the ballads Scott was
in quest of; and finding how much his guest admired his acquisitions, thenceforth exerted
himself, for several years, with redoubled diligence, in seeking out the living
depositaries of such lore among the darker recesses of the mountains. ‘The
doctor,’ says Mr Shortreed, ‘would have
gane through fire and water for Sir Walter, when he ance kenned
him.’
Next morning they seem to have ridden a long way, for the express purpose
of visiting one ‘auld Thomas o’ Tuzzilehope,’
another Elliot, I suppose, who was celebrated for his skill on the
Border pipe, and in particular for being in possession of the real lilt of Dick o’ the
Cow. Before starting,” that is, at six o’clock, the
ballad-hunters had, ‘just to lay the stomach, a devilled duck or twae, and some
London porter.’ Auld Thomas found them, nevertheless, well disposed for
‘breakfast’ on their arrival at Tuzzilehope; and this being over, he delighted
them with one of the most hideous and unearthly of all the specimens of ‘riding
music,’ and, moreover, with considerable libations of whisky-punch, manufactured in a
certain wooden vessel, resembling a very small milk-pail, which he called
‘Wisdom,’ because it ‘made’ only a few spoonfuls of spirits—though
he had the art of replenishing it so adroitly, that it had been celebrated for fifty years
as more fatal to sobriety than any bowl in the parish. Having done due honour to
‘Wisdom,’ they again mounted, and proceeded over moss and moor to some other
equally hospitable master of the pipe. ‘Ah me,’ says Shortreed, ‘sic an endless fund o’ humour
and drollery as he then had wi’ him! Never ten yards but we were either laughing
or roaring and singing. Whereever we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsell to every
body! He aye did as the lave did; never made himsell the great man, or took ony airs in
the company. I’ve seen him in a’ moods in these jaunts, grave and gay, daft
and serious, sober and drunk (this, however, even in our wildest rambles, was but rare)
but drunk or sober, he was aye the gentleman. He lookit excessively heavy and stupid
when he was fou, but he was never out o’
gude-humour.’
On reaching, one evening, some Charlieshope or
other (I forget the name) among those wildernesses, they found a kindly reception as usual;
but, to their agreeable surprise after some days of hard living, a measured and orderly
hospitality as respected liquor. Soon after supper, at which a bottle of elderberry wine
alone had been produced, a young student of divinity, who happened to be in the house, was
called upon to take the ‘big ha’ Bible,’ in the good old fashion
of Burns’sSaturday Night; and some progress had
been already made in the service, when the goodman of the farm, whose
‘tendency,’ as Mr Mitchell says,
‘was soporific,’ scandalized his wife and the dominie by starting suddenly from
his knees, and rubbing his eyes, with a stentorian exclamation of ‘By ——,
here’s the keg at last!’ and in tumbled, as he spake the word, a couple
of sturdy herdsmen, whom, on hearing a day before of the advocate’s approaching
visit, he had despatched to a certain smuggler’s haunt, at some considerable
distance, in quest of a supply of run brandy from the Solway Frith.
The pious ‘exercise’ of the household was hopelessly interrupted. With a
thousand apologies for his hitherto shabby entertainment, this jolly
Elliot, or Armstrong, had the welcome keg
mounted on the table without a moment’s delay, and gentle and simple, not forgetting
the dominie, continued carousing about it until daylight streamed in upon the party.
Sir Walter Scott seldom failed, when I saw him in
company with his Liddesdale companion, to mimic with infinite humour the sudden outburst of
his old host, on hearing the clatter of horses’ feet, which he knew to indicate the
arrival of the keg the consternation of the dame and the rueful despair with which the
young clergyman closed the book.
‘It was that same season, I think,’ says Mr Shortreed, ‘that Sir
Walter got from Dr Elliot, the large old border war horn, which ye may
still see hanging in the armoury at Abbotsford. How great he was
when he was made master o’ that! I believe it had been
found in Hermitage Castle—and one of the doctor’s servants had used it many a day
as a grease-horn for his scythe, before they discovered its history. When cleaned out,
it was never a hair the worse—the original chain, hoop, and mouthpiece of steel were
all entire, just as you now see them. Sir
Walter carried it home all the way from Liddesdale to Jedburgh, slung
about his neck like Johnny Gilpin’s bottle,
while I was intrusted with an ancient bridlebit, which we had likewise picked up. “The feint o’ pride—na pride had he . . . A lang kail-gully hung down by his side, And a great meikle nowt-horn to rout on had he,” And meikle and sair we routed on’t, and “hotched and blew, wi’
micht and main.” O what pleasant days! and then a’ the nonsense we had cost
us naething. We never put hand in pocket for a week on end. Tollbars there were
none—and indeed I think our haill charges were a feed o’ corn to our horses in
the gangin’ and comin’ at Riccartoun mill.’
It is a pity that we have no letters of Scott’s describing this first raid into Liddesdale; but as he must
have left Kelso for Edinburgh very soon after its conclusion, he probably chose to be the
bearer of his own tidings. At any rate the wonder perhaps is not that we should have so few
letters of this period, as that any have been recovered. ‘I ascribe the
preservation of my little handful,’ says Mr
Clerk, ‘to a sort of instinctive prophetic sense of his future
greatness.’
I have found, however, two note-books, inscribed ‘Walter Scott, 1792,’ containing a variety of scraps and
hints which may help us to fill up our notion of his private studies during that year. He
appears to have used them indiscriminately. We have now an extract from the author he
happened to be reading; now a memorandum of something that had struck him in conversation;
a fragment of an essay; transcripts of favourite poems; remarks on curious cases in the old
records of the Justiciary Court; in short, a most miscellaneous collection, in which there
is whatever might have been looked for, with perhaps the single exception of original
verse. One of the books opens, with
‘Vegtam’s Kvitha, or The Descent of Odin,
with the Latin of Thomas Bartholine, and the
English poetical version of
Mr Gray; with some account of the death of
Balder, both as narrated in the Edda, and as handed down to us by the Northern
historians—Auctore Gualtero
Scott.’ The Norse original, and the two
versions, are then transcribed; and the historical account appended, extending to seven
closely written quarto pages, was, I doubt not, read before one or other of his debating
societies. Next comes a page, headed ‘Pecuniary distress of Charles the First,’ and containing a transcript
of a receipt for some plate lent to the King in 1643. He then copies the ‘Owen of Carron,’ of Langhorne; the verses of Canute, on passing Ely; the lines to a cuckoo given by Warton as the oldest specimen of English verse; a
translation ‘by a gentleman in
Devonshire,’ of the death-song of ‘Regner Lodbrog;’ and the beautiful quatrain
omitted in Gray’s elegy, “There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,” &c. After this we have an Italian canzonet, on the praises of blue eyes (which were much
in favour at this time); several pages of etymologies from Ducange; some more of notes on the Morte Arthur; extracts from the books of Adjournal,
about Dame Janet Beaton, the Lady of
Branxome of the Lay of the Last
Minstrel, and her husband, ‘Sir Walter Scott
of Buccleuch, called Wicked Watt;’ other
extracts about witches and fairies; various couplets from Hall’sSatires; a passage from Albania;
notes on the Second Sight, with extracts from Aubry
and Glanville; a ‘List of ballads to be
discovered or recovered;’ extracts from Guerin de Montglave; and after many more similar entries,
a table of the MæsoGothic, Anglo-Saxon and Runic alpha-bets—with a
fourth section, headed German, but left blank. But enough perhaps of
this record.
In November 1792, Scott and Clerk began their regular attendance at the Parliament
House, and Scott, to use Mr Clerk’s words,
“by and by crept into a tolerable share of such business as may be expected
from a writer’s connexion.” By this we are to understand that he was
employed from time to time by his father, and probably a few other solicitors, in that
dreary everyday taskwork, chiefly of long written informations, and
other papers for the court, on which young counsellors of the Scotch bar were then expected
to bestow a great deal of trouble for very scanty pecuniary remuneration, and with scarcely
a chance of finding reserved for their hands any matter that could elicit the display of
superior knowledge or understanding. He had also his part in the cases of persons suing
in forma pauperis; but how little
important those that came to his share were, and how slender was the impression they had
left on his mind, we may gather from a note on Redgauntlet, wherein he signifies his doubts whether he really had ever been
engaged in what he has certainly made the cause
célèbre of Poor
Peter Peebles.
But he soon became as famous for his powers of story-telling among the
lawyers of the Outer-House, as he had been among the companions of his High School days.
The place where these idlers mostly congregated was called, it seems, by a name which
sufficiently marks the date—it was the Mountain. Here, as Roger North says of the Court of King’s Bench in his
early day, “there was more News than Law;” here hour after hour passed
away, week after week, month after month, and year after year, in the interchange of
light-hearted merriment, among a circle of young men, more than one of whom, in after
times, attained the highest honours of the profes-sion. Among the most intimate of Scott’s daily
associates from this time, and during all his subsequent attendance at the bar, were,
besides various since eminent persons that have been already named, the first legal
antiquary of our time in Scotland, Mr Thomas
Thomson, and William Erskine,
afterwards Lord Kinedder. Mr
Clerk remembers complaining one morning on finding the group convulsed with
laughter, that Duns Scotus had been
forestalling him in a good story, which he had communicated privately the day
before—adding, moreover, that his friend had not only stolen, but disguised it.
‘Why,’ answered he, skilfully waving the main charge, ‘this
is always the way with the Baronet. He is continually saying
that I change his stories, whereas in fact I only put a cocked hat on their heads, and
stick a cane into their hands to make them fit for going into company.’
The German class, of which we have an account in one of the Prefaces of
1830, was formed before the Christmas of 1792, and it included almost all these loungers of
the Mountain. In the essay now referred to, Scott traces the interest excited in Scotland on the subject
of German literature to a paper read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, on the 21st of
April, 1788, by the author of the Man of
Feeling. ‘The literary persons of Edinburgh,’ he says,
‘were then first made aware of the existence of works of genius in a language
cognate with the English, and possessed of the same manly force of expression; they
learned at the same time that the taste which dictated the German compositions was of a
kind as nearly allied to the English as their language: those who were from their youth
accustomed to admire Shakspeare and Milton, became acquainted for the first time with a
race of poets, who had the same lofty ambition to spurn the flaming boundaries of the
universe, and investigate the realms of Chaos and Old Night; and
of dramatists, who, disclaiming the pedantry of the unities, sought, at the expense of
occasional improbabilities and extravagance, to present life on the stage in its scenes
of wildest contrast, and in all its boundless variety of character. . . . Their
fictitious narratives, their ballad poetry, and other branches of their literature,
which are particularly apt to bear the stamp of the extravagant and the supernatural,
began also to occupy the attention of the British literati. In Edinburgh, where the
remarkable coincidence between the German language and the Lowland Scottish, encouraged
young men to approach this newly discovered spring of literature, a class was formed of
six or seven intimate friends, who proposed to make themselves acquainted with the
German language. They were in the habit of being much together, and the time they spent
in this new study was felt as a period of great amusement. One source of this diversion
was the laziness of one of their number, the present author, who, averse to the
necessary toil of grammar, and the rules, was in the practice of righting his way to
the knowledge of the German by his acquaintance with the Scottish and Anglo-Saxon
dialects, and of course frequently committed blunders which were not lost on his more
accurate and more studious companions.’ The teacher, Dr Willich, a medical man, is then described as striving
with little success to make his pupils sympathize in his own passion for the ‘sickly
monotony,’ and ‘affected ecstasies’ of Gessner’sDeath of
Abel; and the young students, having at length acquired enough of the language
for their respective purposes, as selecting for their private pursuits, some the
philosophical treatises of Kant, others the dramas of
Schiller and Goethe. The chief, if not the only Kantist of the party, was, I believe,
John Macfarlan of Kirkton: among those who
turned zealously to the popular BellesLettres of Germany were, with Scott, his most
intimate friends of the period, William Clerk,
William Erskine, and Thomas Thomson.
These studies were much encouraged by the example, and assisted by the
advice, of an accomplished person, considerably Scott’s superior in standing,
Alexander Fraser Tytler, afterwards a Judge of
the Court of Session by the title of Lord Woodhouselee. His version of
Schiller’sRobbers, was one of the earliest from the German
theatre, and no doubt stimulated his young friend to his first experiments in the same
walk.
The contemporary familiars of those days almost all survive; but one, and
afterwards the most intimate of them all, went before him; and I may therefore hazard in
this place a few words on the influence which he exercised at this critical period on
Scott’s literary tastes and studies. William Erskine was the son of an Episcopalian clergyman
in Perthshire, of a good family, but far from wealthy. He had received his early education
at Glasgow, where, while attending the college lectures, he was boarded under the roof of
Andrew Macdonald, the author of Vimonda, who then officiated as minister
to a small congregation of Episcopalian nonconformists. From this unfortunate but very
ingenious man, Erskine had derived, in boyhood, a strong passion for old English
literature, more especially the Elizabethan dramatists; which, however, he combined with a
far livelier relish for the classics of antiquity than either Scott or
his master ever possessed. From the beginning, accordingly, Scott had
in Erskine a monitor who—entering most warmly into his taste for
national lore the life of the past—and the bold and picturesque style of the original
English school was constantly urging the advantages to be derived from combining with its
varied and masculine breadth of delineation such attention to the minor graces of arrangement and diction as might conciliate the fastidiousness of
modern taste. Deferring what I may have to say as to Erskine’s
general character and manners, until I shall have approached the period when I myself had
the pleasure of sharing his acquaintance, I introduce the general bearing of his literary
opinions thus early, because I conceive there is no doubt that his companionship was, even
in those days, highly serviceable to Scott as a student of the German
drama and romance. Directed, as he mainly was in the ultimate determination of his literary
ambition, by the example of their great founders, he appears to have run at first no
trivial hazard of adopting the extravagances, both of thought and language, which he found
blended in their works with such a captivating display of genius, and genius employed on
subjects so much in unison with the deepest of his own juvenile predilections. His friendly
critic was just as well as delicate; and unmerciful severity as to the mingled absurdities
and vulgarities of German detail commanded deliberate attention from one, who admired not
less enthusiastically than himself the genuine sublimity and pathos of his new favourites.
I could, I believe, name one other at least among Scott’s
fellow-students of the same time, whose influence was combined in this matter with
Erskine’s; but his was that which continued to be exerted
the longest, and always in the same direction. That it was not accompanied with entire
success, the readers of the Doom of Devorgoil,
to say nothing of minor blemishes in far better works, must acknowledge.
These German studies divided Scott’s attention with the business of the courts of law, on which he
was at least a regular attendant, during the winter of 1792-3.
If the preceding autumn forms a remarkable point in Scott’s history, as first introducing him to the man-ners of the wilder Border country, the
summer which followed left traces of equal importance. He gave the greater part of it to an
excursion which much extended his knowledge of Highland scenery and character; and in
particular furnished him with the richest stores which he afterwards turned to account in
one of the most beautiful of his great poems, and in several, including the first, of his
prose romances.
Accompanied by Adam Fergusson, he
visited on this occasion some of the finest districts of Stirlingshire and Perthshire; and
not in the percursory manner of his more boyish expeditions, but taking up his residence
for a week or ten days in succession at the family residences of several of his young
allies of the Mountain, and from thence familiarizing himself at
leisure with the country and the people round about. In this way he lingered some time at
Tullibody, the seat of the father of Sir Ralph
Abercromby, and grandfather of his friend Mr George
Abercromby (now Lord Abercromby); and heard from the
old gentleman’s own lips his narrative of a journey which he had been obliged to
make, shortly after he first settled in Stirlingshire, to the wild retreat of Rob Roy. The venerable laird told how he was received by
the cateran ‘with much courtesy,’ in a cavern exactly such as that of Bean Lean; dined on collops cut from
some of his own cattle, which he recognised hanging by their heels from the rocky roof
beyond; and returned in all safety, after concluding a bargain of black-mail—in virtue of which annual payment Rob Roy
guaranteed the future security of his herds against, not his own followers merely, but all
freebooters whatever. Scott next visited his friend Edmonstone, at Newton, a beautiful seat close to the ruins
of the once magnificent Castle or Doune, and heard another aged gentleman’s vivid
recollections of all that happened there when John
Home, the author of Douglas, and other Hanoverian prisoners, escaped from
the Highland garrison in 1745.* Proceeding towards the sources of the Teith, he was
received for the first time under a roof which, in subsequent years, he regularly
revisited, that of another of his associates, Buchanan,
the young laird of Cambusmore. It was thus that the scenery of Loch Katrine came to be so
associated with ‘the recollection of many a dear friend and merry expedition of
former days,’ that to compose the Lady
of the Lake was ‘a labour of love, and no less so to recall the manners
and incidents introduced.’† It was starting from the same house, when
the poem itself had made some progress, that he put to the test the practicability of
riding from the banks of Lochvennachar to the Castle of Stirling within the brief space
which he had assigned to Fitz-James’sGrey Bayard,
after the duel with Roderick Dhu; and the principal
landmarks in the description of that fiery progress are so many hospitable mansions all
familiar to him at the same period—Blairdrummond, the residence of Lord Kaimes; Ochtertyre, that of John Ramsay, the scholar and antiquarian (now best
remembered for his kind and sagacious advice to Burns); and ‘the lofty brow of ancient Kier,’ the
splendid seat of the chief family of the name of Stirling; from which, to say nothing of remoter objects, the prospect has,
on one hand, the rock of ‘Snowdon,’ and in front the field of Bannockburn.
Another resting place was Craighall, in Perthshire, the seat of the
Rattrays, a family related to Mr
Clerk, who accompanied him. From the position of this striking place, as
Mr Clerk at once perceived, and as the author
* Waverley, vol.
ii. p. 82.
† Introduction to The
Lady of the Lake. 1830.
afterwards confessed to him, that of the Tully-Veolan was very faithfully copied; though in the description
of the house itself, and its gardens, many features were adopted from Bruntsfield and
Ravelstone.* Mr Clerk has told me that he went through the first
chapters of Waverley without more than a
vague suspicion of the new novelist; but that when he read the arrival at Tully-Veolan, his
suspicion was at once converted into certainty, and he handed the book to a mutual friend
of his and the author’s, saying ‘This is Scott’s—and I’ll lay a bet you’ll find such and such
things in the next chapter.’ I hope Mr Clerk will
forgive me for mentioning the particular circumstance that first flashed the conviction on
his mind. In the course of a ride from Craighall they had both become considerably fagged
and heated, and Clerk, seeing the smoke of a clachan a little way before them, ejaculated, ‘How agreeable if we
should here fall in with one of those signposts where a red lion predominates over a
punchbowl.’ The phrase happened to tickle Scott’s
fancy—he often introduced it on similar occasions afterwards—and at the distance of twenty
years Mr Clerk was at no loss to recognise an old acquaintance in the
‘huge bear’ which ‘predominates’ over the stone
basin in the courtyard of the Baron of Bradwardine.
I believe the longest stay he made this autumn was at Meigle in
Forfarshire, the seat of Patrick Murray of Simprim,
a gentleman whose enthusiastic passion for antiquities, and especially military
antiquities, had peculiarly endeared him both to Scott
and Clerk. Here Adam
Fergusson too was of the party; and 1 have often heard them each and all
dwell on the thousand scenes of adventure and merriment which diversified that visit. In
* Waverley, vol. i. p. 82.
the village churchyard, close beneath Mr
Murray’s gardens, tradition still points out the tomb of Queen Guenever; and the whole district abounds in objects of
historical interest. Amidst them they spent their wandering days, while their evenings
passed in the joyous festivity of a wealthy young bachelor’s establishment, or
sometimes under the roofs of neighbours less refined than their host, the
Balmawhapples of the Braes of Angus. From Meigle they made a trip
to Dunottar Castle, the ruins of the huge old fortress of the Earls
Marischall, and it was in the churchyard of that place that Scott then saw
for the first and last time Peter Paterson, the
living Old Mortality. He and Mr Walker, the
minister of the parish, found the poor man refreshing the epitaphs on the tombs of certain
Cameronians who had fallen under the oppressions of James the
Second’s brief insanity. Being invited into the manse after dinner to
take a glass of whisky punch, ‘to which he was supposed to have no
objections,’ he joined the minister’s party accordingly, but ‘he
was in bad humour,’ says Scott, ‘and, to use his
own phrase, had no freedom for conversation. His spirit had been sorely vexed by hearing,
in a certain Aberdonian kirk, the psalmody directed by a pitch-pipe or some similar
instrument, which was to Old Mortality the abomination of
abominations.’
It was also while he had his headquarters at Meigle at this time that
Scott visited for the first time Glammis, the
residence of the Earls of Strathmore, by far the noblest specimen of
the real feudal castle entire and perfect that had as yet come under his inspection. What
its aspect was when he first saw it, and how grievously he lamented the change it had
undergone when he revisited it some years afterwards, he has recorded in one of the most
striking passages that I think ever came from his pen. Commenting, in his Essay on Landscape Gardening (1828), on the proper domestic ornaments of the
Castle Pleasaunce, he has this beautiful burst of lamentation over the barbarous
innovations of the Capability men:—‘Down went many a trophy of old magnificence,
courtyard, ornamented enclosure, fosse, avenue, barbican, and every external muniment
of battled wall and flanking tower, out of the midst of which the ancient dome rising
high above all its characteristic accompaniments, and seemingly girt round by its
appropriate defences, which again circled each other in their different gradations,
looked, as it should, the queen and mistress of the surrounding country. It was thus
that the huge old tower of Glammis, “whose birth tradition notes not,” once
showed its lordly head above seven circles (if I remember aright) of defensive
boundaries, through which the friendly guest was admitted, and at each of which a
suspicious person was unquestionably put to his answer. A disciple of Kent had the
cruelty to render this splendid old mansion (the more modern part of which was the work
of Inigo Jones) more parkish, as he was pleased
to call it; to raze all those exterior defences, and bring his mean and paltry
gravel-walk up to the very door from which, deluded by the name, one might have
imagined Lady Macbeth (with the form and features
of Siddons) issuing forth to receive King Duncan. It is thirty years and upwards since I have
seen Glammis, but I have not yet forgotten or forgiven the atrocity which, under
pretence of improvement, deprived that lordly place of its appropriate
accompaniments, “Leaving an ancient dome and towers like these Beggar’d and outraged.”’*
The night he spent at the yet unprofaned Glammis in
* Wordsworth’s Sonnet on Neidpath Castle.
1793 was, as he elsewhere says, one of the ‘two periods
distant from each other’ at which he could recollect experiencing
‘that degree of superstitious awe which his countrymen call eerie.’ ‘The heavy pile,’ he writes,
‘contains much in its appearance, and in the traditions connected with it,
impressive to the imagination. It was the scene of the murder of a Scottish King of
great antiquity, not indeed the gracious Duncan,
with whom the name naturally associates itself, but Malcolm
II. It contains also a curious monument of the peril of feudal times,
being a secret chamber, the entrance of which, by the law or custom of the family, must
only be known to three persons at once, namely, the Earl of
Strathmore, his heir-apparent, and any third person whom they may take
into their confidence. The extreme antiquity of the building is vouched by the
thickness of the walls, and the wild straggling arrangement of the accommodation within
doors. As the late earl seldom resided at Glammis, it was when I was there but half
furnished, and that with movables of great antiquity, which, with the pieces of
chivalric armour hanging on the walls, greatly contributed to the general effect of the
whole. After a very hospitable reception from the late Peter
Proctor, seneschal of the castle, I was conducted to my apartment in a
distant part of the building. I must own that when I heard door after door shut, after
my conductor had retired, I began to consider myself as too far from the living, and
somewhat too near the dead. We had passed through what is called the King’s Room, a vaulted apartment, garnished with stag’s antlers
and other trophies of the chase, and said by tradition to be the spot of
Malcolm’s murder, and I had an idea of the vicinity of
the castle chapel. In spite of the truth of history, the whole night scene in Macbeth’s Castle rushed at once upon me, and struck my mind more forcibly than even when I
have seen its terrors represented by John Kemble
and his inimitable sister. In a word, I
experienced sensations which, though not remarkable for timidity or superstition, did
not fail to affect me to the point of being disagreeable, while they were mingled at
the same time with a strange and indescribable sort of pleasure, the recollection of
which affords me gratification at this moment.’*
He alludes here to the hospitable reception which had preceded the
mingled sensations of this eerie night; but one of his notes on
Waverley touches this not unimportant
part of the story more distinctly; for we are there informed, that the silver bear of Tully-Veolan, ‘the poculum
potatorium of the valiant baron,’ had its prototype at
Glammis—a massive beaker of silver, double gilt, moulded into the form of a lion, the name
and bearing of the Earls of Strathmore, and containing about an
English pint of wine. ‘The author,’ he says, ‘ought perhaps to
be ashamed of recording that he had the honour of swallowing the contents of the lion,
and the recollection of the feat suggested the story of the Bear of
Bradwardine.’
From this pleasant tour, so rich in its results, Scott returned in time to attend the October assizes at Jedburgh, on which
occasion he made his first appearance as counsel in a criminal court; and had the
satisfaction of helping a veteran poacher and sheepstealer to escape through some of the
meshes of the law. ‘You’re a lucky scoundrel,’
Scott whispered to his client, when the verdict was pronounced.
‘I’m just o’ your mind,’ quoth the desperado,
‘and I’ll send ye a maukin† the
* Letters
on Demonology and Witchcraft, p. 398.
† i. e. a hare.
morn, man.’ I am not sure whether it was at these
assizes or the next in the same town that he had less success in the case of a certain
notorious housebreaker. The man, however, was well aware that no skill could have baffled
the clear evidence against him, and was, after his fashion, grateful for such exertions as
had been made in his behalf. He requested the young advocate to visit him once more before
he left the place. Scott’s curiosity induced him to accept this
invitation, and his friend, as soon as they were alone together in the condemned cell, said, ‘I am very sorry, sir, that I have no fee to offer
you—so let me beg your acceptance of two bits of advice which may be useful perhaps
when you come to have a house of your own. I am done with practice, you see, and here
is my legacy. Never keep a large watchdog out of doors we can always silence them
cheaply—indeed if it be a dog, ’tis easier than
whistling—but tie a little tight yelping terrier within; and secondly, put no trust in
nice, clever, gimcrack locks—the only thing that bothers us is a huge old heavy one, no
matter how simple the construction, and the ruder and rustier the key, so much the
better for the housekeeper.’ I remember hearing him tell this story some
thirty years after at a Judges’ dinner at Jedburgh, and he summed it up with a rhyme
‘Ay, ay, my lord,’ (I think he addressed his friend Lord Meadowbank)— “Yelping terrier, rusty key, Was Walter Scott’s best Jeddart
fee.”
At these, or perhaps the next assizes, he was also counsel in an appeal
case touching a cow which his client had sold as sound, but which the court below (the
Sheriff) had pronounced to have what is called the cliers—a disease
analogous to glanders in a horse. In opening his case before Sir
David Rae, Lord Eskgrove, Scott stoutly maintained the healthiness of the cow,
who, as he said, had merely a cough. ‘Stop there,’ quoth the judge,
‘I have had plenty of healthy kye in my time, but I never heard of ane of them
coughing. A coughin’ cow!—that will never do—sustain the Sheriff’s
judgment, and decern.’
A day or two after this Scott and his old companion were again on their
way into Liddesdale, and ‘just,’ says the Shortreed Memorandum, ‘as we
were passing by Singdon, we saw a grand herd o’ cattle a’ feeding by the
roadside, and a fine young bullock, the best in the whole lot, was in the midst of them,
coughing lustily. “Ah,” said Scott, “what a pity for my client that old
Eskgrove had not taken Singdon on his way to the
town. That bonny creature would have saved us— ‘A Daniel come to judgment, yea a
Daniel; O wise young judge, how I do honour thee!;”
The winter of 1793-4 appears to have been passed like the preceding one;
the German class resumed their sittings; Scott spoke in
his debating club on the questions of Parliamentary Reform and the Inviolability of the
Person of the First Magistrate, which the circumstances of the time had invested with
extraordinary interest, and in both of which he no doubt took the side adverse to the
principles of the English, and the practice of the French Liberals. His love affair
continued on exactly the same footing as before—and for the rest, like the young heroes in
Redgauntlet, he ‘swept the
boards of the Parliament House with the skirts of his gown; laughed, and made others
laugh; drank claret at Bayle’s,
Fortune’s, and Walker’s, and
eat oysters in the Covenant Close.’ On his desk ‘the new novel most
in repute lay snugly intrenched beneath Stair’sInstitute, or an open volume of Decisions;’ and his dressing-table was littered ‘with old play-bills, letters respecting a
meeting of the Faculty, Rules of the Speculative, Syllabus of Lectures—all the
miscellaneous contents of a young advocate’s pocket, which contains every thing
but briefs and bank-notes.’ His own professional occupation, though gradually
increasing, was still of the most humble sort; but he took a lively interest in the
proceedings of the criminal court, and more especially in those arising out of the troubled
state of the public feeling as to politics.
In the spring of 1794 I find him writing to his friends in Roxburghshire
with great exultation about the ‘good spirit’ manifesting itself among
the upper classes of the citizens of Edinburgh, and above all, the organization of a
regiment of volunteers, in which his brother Thomas,
now a fine active young man, equally handsome and high-spirited, was enrolled as a
grenadier; while, as he remarks, his own ‘unfortunate infirmity’
condemned him to be ‘a mere spectator of the drills.’ In the course of
the same year the plan of a corps of volunteer light horse was started; and, if the
recollection of Mr Skene be accurate, the suggestion
originally proceeded from Scott himself, who certainly
had a principal share in its subsequent success. He writes to his uncle at Rosebank, requesting him to be on the look out
for a ‘strong gelding, such as would suit a stalwart dragoon;’ and
intimating his intention to part with his collection of Scottish coins, rather than not be
mounted to his mind. The corps, however, was not organized for some time; and in the mean
while he had an opportunity of displaying his zeal in a manner which Captain
Scott by no means considered as so respectable.
A party of Irish medical students began, towards the end of April, to
make themselves remarkable in the Edinburgh
Theatre, where they mustered in a particular corner of the pit, and lost no opportunity of
insulting the loyalists of the boxes, by calling for revolutionary tunes, applauding every
speech that could bear a seditious meaning, and drowning the national anthem in howls and
hootings. The young Tories of the Parliament House resented this license warmly, and after
a succession of minor disturbances, the quarrel was put to the issue of a regular trial by
combat. Scott was conspicuous among the juvenile
advocates and solicitors who on this grand night assembled in the front of the pit armed
with stout cudgels, and determined to have God save
the King not only played without interruption, but sung in full chorus
by both company and audience. The Irishmen were ready at the first note of the anthem. They
rose, clapped on their hats, and brandished their shilelahs; a stern battle ensued, and
after many a head had been cracked, the loyalists at length found themselves in possession
of the field. Next morning the more prominent rioters on both sides were bound over to keep
the peace, and Scott was, of course, among the number. One of the party, Sir Alexander Wood, whose notes lie before me,
says,—‘Walter was certainly our Coriphæus, and signalized himself splendidly in this
desperate fray; and nothing used afterwards to afford him more delight than dramatizing
its incidents. Some of the most efficient of our allies were persons previously unknown
to him, and of several of these whom he had particularly observed, he never lost sight
afterwards. There were, I believe, cases in which they owed most valuable assistance in
life to his recollection of the playhouse row.’ To
this last part of Sir Alexander’s testimony I can also add mine;
and I am sure my worthy friend, Mr Donald
M’Lean, W.S., will gratefully confirm it. When that gentleman became candidate for some office in the Exchequer, about 1822 or 1823, and
Sir Walter’s interest was requested on his behalf,
“To be sure!” said he, “did not he sound the charge upon
Paddy? Can I ever forget Donald’s ‘Sticks, by G—t?’” On the
9th May, 1794, Charles Kerr of Abbotrule writes to
him, “I was last night at Rosebank, and your uncle told me he had been giving you a very long and very sage lecture
upon the occasion of these Edinburgh squabbles. I am happy to hear they are now at an
end. They were rather of the serious cast, and though you encountered them with spirit
and commendable resolution, I, with your uncle, should wish to see your abilities
conspicuous on another theatre.” The same gentleman, in his next letter (June
3d), congratulates Scott on having “seen
his name in the newspaper,” viz. as counsel for another
Roxburghshire laird, by designation Bedrule, Such, no doubt, was
Abbotrule’s “other theatre.”
Scott spent the long vacation of this year chiefly in
Roxburghshire, but again visited Keir, Cambusmore, and others of his friends in Perthshire, and came
to Edinburgh, early in September, to be present at the trials of Watt and Downie, on a charge of high
treason. Watt seems to have tendered his services to Government as a
spy upon the Society of the Friends of the People in Edinburgh, but ultimately, considering
himself as underpaid, to have embraced, to their wildest extent, the schemes he had become
acquainted with in the course of this worthy occupation; and he and one
Downie, a mechanic, were now arraigned as having taken a prominent
part in the organizing of a plot for a general rising in Edinburgh, to seize the castle,
the bank, the persons of the Judges, and proclaim a provisional Republican Government; all
which was supposed to have beer arranged in concert with the Hardies, Thelwalls, Holcrofts, and so forth, who were a few weeks later brought to trial in
London, for an alleged conspiracy to ‘summon delegates to a National Convention,
with a view to subvert the Government, and levy war upon the King.’ The
English prisoners were acquitted, but Watt and
Downie were not so fortunate. Scott writes as follows to his aunt,
Miss Christian Rutherford, then at Ashestiel, in
Selkirkshire:—
“Advocates’ Library, 5th Sept. 1794.
“My dear Miss
Christy will perceive, from the date of this epistle, that I
have accomplished my purpose of coming to town to be present at the trial of
the Edinburgh traitors. I arrived here on Monday evening from Kelso, and was
present at Watt’s trial on
Wednesday, which displayed to the public the most atrocious and deliberate plan
of villany which has occurred, perhaps, in the annals of Great Britain. I refer
you for particulars to the papers, and shall only add, that the equivocations
and perjury of the witnesses (most of them being accomplices in what they
called the great plan) set the abilities of Mr
Anstruther, the King’s counsel, in the most striking point
of view. The patience and temper with which he tried them on every side, and
screwed out of them the evidence they were so anxious to conceal, showed much
knowledge of human nature; and the art with which he arranged the information
he received, made the trial, upon the whole, the most interesting I ever was
present at. Downie’s trial is just
now going forwards over my head; but as the evidence is just the same as
formerly brought against Watt, is not so interesting. You
will easily believe that on Wednesday my curiosity was too much excited to
retire at an early hour, and, indeed, I sat in the Court from seven in the
morning till two the next morning; but as I had provided my-self with some cold meat and a bottle of wine, I contrived to support the
fatigue pretty well. It strikes me, upon the whole, that the plan of these
miscreants might, from its very desperate and improbable nature, have had no
small chance of succeeding, at least as far as concerned cutting off the
soldiers, and obtaining possession of the banks, besides shedding the blood of
the most distinguished inhabitants. There, I think, the evil must have stopped,
unless they had further support than has yet appeared. Stooks was the prime mover of the whole, and
the person who supplied the money, and our theatrical disturbances are found to
have formed one link of the chain. So, I have no doubt, Messrs
Stooks, Burk, &c., would have
found out a new way of paying old debts. The people are perfectly quiescent
upon this grand occasion, and seem to interest themselves very little in the
fate of their soi-disant friends. The Edinburgh
volunteers make a respectable and formidable appearance already. They are
exercised four hours almost every day, with all the rigour of military
discipline. The grenadier company consists entirely of men above six feet. So
much for public news.
“As to home intelligence—know that my mother and Anne had projected a jaunt to
Inverleithing; fate, however, had destined otherwise. The intended day of
departure was ushered in by a most complete deluge, to which, and the
consequent disappointment, our proposed travellers did not submit with that
Christian meekness which might have beseemed. In short, both within and without
doors, it was a devil of a day. The second was like unto
it. The third day came a post, a killing post, and in the shape of a letter
from this fountain of health, informed us no lodgings were to be had there, so,
whatever be its virtues, or the grandeur attending a journey to its streams, we
might as well have proposed to visit the river Jordan, or the walls of Jericho.
Not so our heroic John; he has been
arrived here for some time (much the same as when he went way), and has formed
the desperate resolution of riding out with me to Kelso to-morrow morning. I
have stayed a day longer, waiting for the arrival of a pair of new boots and
buckskin &cs., in which the soldier is to be equipt. I ventured to hint the
convenience of a roll of diaculum plaister, and a box of the most approved
horseman-salve, in which recommendation our doctor* warmly joined. His impatience for the journey has been
somewhat cooled by some inclination yesterday displayed by his charger (a pony
belonging to Anne) to lay his warlike rider in the dust—a
purpose he had nearly effected. He next mounted Queen
Mab, who treated him with little more complaisance, and, in
carters’ phrase, would neither hap nor wynd, till she got rid of him. Seriously, however, if
Jack has not returned covered with laurels, a crop
which the Rock† no longer produces, he has brought back all his own
good-nature, and a manner considerably improved, so that he is at times very
agreeable company. Best love to Miss R.,
Jean, and Anne (I hope they are
improved at the battledore), and the boys, not forgetting my friend
Archy, though least not last in my remembrance. Best
compliments to the Colonel.‡ I
shall remember with pleasure Ashestiel hospitality, and not without a desire to
put it to the proof next year. Adieu, ma chère amie.
When you write, direct to Rosebank, and I shall be a good boy, and write you
another sheet
* Dr
Rutherford.
† Captain John
Scott had been for some time with his regiment at
Gibraltar.
‡ Colonel
Russell of Ashestiel, married to a sister of
Scott’s mother.
of nonsense soon. All friends here well. Ever yours
affectionately,
Walter Scott.”
The letter, of which the following is an extract, must have been written
in October or November—Scott having been in Liddesdale,
and again in Perthshire, during the interval. It is worth quoting for the little domestic
allusions with which it concludes, and which every one who has witnessed the discipline of
a Presbyterian family of the old school at the time of preparation for the Communion, will perfectly understand. Scott’s
father, though on particular occasions he could permit himself, like Saunders Fairford, to play the part of a good Amphytrion, was habitually ascetic in his habits. I have
heard his son tell, that it was common with him, if any one observed that the soup was
good, to taste it again, and say, “Yes, it is too good, bairns,” and
dash a tumbler of cold water into his plate. It is easy, therefore, to imagine with what
rigidity he must have enforced the ultra-Catholic severities which marked, in those days,
the yearly or half-yearly retreat of the descendants of John
Knox.
To Miss Christian Rutherford Ashestiel.
“Previous to my ramble, I stayed a single day in town
to witness the exit of the ci-devant
Jacobin, Mr Watt. It was a very solemn
scene, but the pusillanimity of the unfortunate victim was astonishing,
considering the boldness of his nefarious plans. It is matter of general regret
that his associate Downie should have
received a reprieve, which, I understand, is now prolonged for a second month,
I suppose to wait the issue of the London trials. Our volunteers are now
com-pletely embodied, and
notwithstanding the heaviness of their dress, have a martial and striking
appearance. Their accuracy in firing and manoeuvring excites the surprise of
military gentlemen, who are the best judges of their merit in that way. Tom is
very proud of the grenadier company, to which he belongs, which has
indisputably carried off the palm upon all public occasions. And now, give me
leave to ask you whether the approaching winter does not remind you of your
snug parlour in George’s Street? Do you not feel a little uncomfortable
when you see ‘how bleak and bare He wanders o’er the heights of Yair?’ Amidst all this regard for your accommodation, don’t suppose I am
devoid of a little self-interest when I press your speedy return to Auld
Reekie, for I am really tiring excessively to see the said parlour again
inhabited. Besides that, I want the assistance of your eloquence to convince my
honoured father that nature did not mean
me either for a vagabond or travelling merchant, when
she honoured me with the wandering propensity lately so conspicuously
displayed. I saw Dr. yesterday, who is well. I did not
choose to intrude upon the little lady, this being sermon week; for the same
reason we are looking very religious and very sour at home. However, it is with
some folks, selon les
règles, that in proportion as they are pure themselves, they are
entitled to render uncomfortable those whom they consider as less perfect. Best
love to Miss R., cousins and friends in general, and
believe me ever most sincerely yours,
Walter Scott.”
In March, 1795, when the court rose, he proceeded into Galloway, where he
had not before been, in order to make himself acquainted with the
persons and localities mixed up with the case of a certain Rev. Mr M’Naught, minister of Girthon, whose trial, on charges of
habitual drunkenness, singing of lewd. and profane songs, dancing and toying at a
penny-wedding with a “sweetie wife” (that is, an itinerant vender of
gingerbread, &c.), and moreover of promoting irregular marriages as a justice of the
peace, was about to take place before the General Assembly of the Kirk.
As his “Case for M’Naught,” dated May 22, 1795, is the
first of his legal papers that I have discovered, and contains several characteristic
enough turns, I make no apology for introducing a few extracts:
“At the head of the first class of offences stands
the extraordinary assertion, that, being a minister of the gospel, the respondent had
illegally undertaken the office of a justice of peace. It is, the respondent believes,
the first time that ever the undertaking an office of such extensive utility was stated
as a crime; for he humbly apprehends, that by conferring the office of a justice of the
peace upon clergymen, their influence may, in the general case be rendered more
extensive among their parishioners, and many trifling causes be settled by them, which
might lead the litigants to enormous expenses, and become the subject of much
contention before other courts. The duty being only occasional, and not daily, cannot
be said to interfere with those of their function; and their education, and presumed
character, render them most proper for the office. It is indeed alleged, that the act
1584, chap. 133, excludes clergymen from acting under a commission of the peace. This
act, however, was passed at a time when it was of the highest importance to the Crown
to wrench from the hands of the clergy the power of administering justice in civil
cases, which had, from the ignorance of the laity, been enjoyed by them almost
exclusively. During the whole reign of James VI., as
is well known to the Reverend Court, such a jealousy subsisted betwixt the Church and
the State, that those who were at the head of the latter endeavoured, by every means in
their power, to diminish the influence of the former. At present, when these
dissensions happily no longer subsist, the law, as far as respects the office of
justice of the peace, appears to have fallen into disuse; and the respondent conceives,
that any minister is capable of acting in that, or any other judicial capacity, provided it is of such a nature as
not to withdraw much of his time from what the statute calls the comfort and
edification of the flock committed to him. Further, the act 1584 is virtually repealed
by the statute 6th Anne, c. 6. sect. 2, which makes the Scots law on the subject of
justices of the peace the same with that of England, where the office is publicly
exercised by the clergy of all descriptions.
* * * * “Another branch of the accusation against the defender as a justice of
peace, is the ratification of irregular marriages. The defender must here also call the
attention of his reverend brethren and judges to the expediency of his conduct. The
girls were usually with child at the time the application was made to the defender. In
this situation the children born out of matrimony, though begot under promise of
marriage, must have been thrown upon the parish, or perhaps murdered in infancy, had
not the men been persuaded to consent to a solemn declaration of betrothment, or
private marriage, emitted before the defender as a justice of peace. The defender
himself, commiserating the situation of such women, often endeavoured to persuade their
seducers to do them justice; and men frequently acquiesced in this sort of marriage,
when they could by no means have been prevailed upon to go through the ceremonies of
proclamation of banns, or the expense and trouble of a public wedding. The declaration
of a previous marriage was sometimes literally true; sometimes a fiction voluntarily
emitted by the parties themselves, under the belief that it was the most safe way of
constituting a private marriage de presenti.
The defender had been induced, from the practice of other justices, to consider the
receiving these declarations, whether true or false, as a part of his duty which he
could not decline, even had he been willing to do so. Finally, the defender must remind
the Venerable Assembly that he acted upon these occasions as a justice of peace, which
brings him back to the point from which he set out, viz., that the Reverend Court are
utterly incompetent to take cognizance of his conduct in that character, which no
sentence that they can pronounce could give or take away.
“The second grand division of the libel against the
defender refers to his conduct as a clergyman and a Christian. He was charged in the
libel with the most gross and vulgar behaviour, with drunkenness, blasphemy, and
impiety; yet all the evidence which the appellants have been able to bring forward
tends only to convict him of three acts of drunkenness during the course of fourteen
years; for even the Presbytery, severe as they have been, acquit him quoadultra. But the attention of the Reverend Court is
earnestly entreated to the situation of the defender at the time, the circumstances
which conduced to his imprudence, and the share which some of those had in occasioning
his guilt, who have since been most active in persecuting and distressing him on
account of it.
“The defender must premise, by observing, that the
crime of drunkenness consists not in a man’s having been in that situation twice
or thrice in his life, but in the constant and habitual practice of the vice; the
distinction between ebrius and ebriosus being founded in common sense, and
recognised by law. A thousand cases may be supposed, in which a man, without being
aware of what he is about, may be insensibly led on to intoxication, especially in a
country where the vice is unfortunately so common, that upon some occasions a man may
go to excess from a false sense of modesty, or a fear of disobliging his entertainer.
The defender will not deny, that after losing his senses upon the occasions, and in the
manner to be afterwards stated, he may have committed improprieties which fill him with
sorrow and regret; but he hopes, that in case he shall be able to show circumstances
which abridge and palliate the guilt of his imprudent excess, the Venerable Court will
consider these improprieties as the effects of that excess only, and not as arising
from any radical vice in his temper or disposition. When a man is bereft of his
judgment by the influence of wine, and commits any crime, he can only be said to be
morally culpable, in proportion to the impropriety of the excess he has committed, and
not in proportion to the magnitude of its evil consequences. In a legal view, indeed, a
man must be held as answerable and punishable for such a crime, precisely as if he had
been in a state of sobriety; but his crime is, in a moral light, comprised in the
origo mali, the drunkenness only. His
senses being once gone, he is no more than a human machine, as insensible of
misconduct, in speech and action, as a parrot or an automaton. This is more
particularly the case with respect to indecorums, such as the defender is accused of;
for a man can no more be held a common swearer, or a habitual talker of obscenity,
because he has been guilty of using such expressions when intoxicated, than he can be
termed an idiot, because, when intoxicated, he has spoken nonsense. If, therefore, the
defender can extenuate the guilt of his intoxication, he hopes that its consequences
will be numbered rather among his misfortunes than faults; and his Reverend Brethren
will consider him, while in that state, as acting from a mechanical impulse, and as
incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong, For the scandal which his
behaviour may have occasioned, he
feels the most heartfelt sorrow, and will submit with penitence and contrition, to the
severe rebuke which the Presbytery have decreed against him. But he cannot think that
his unfortunate misdemeanour, circumstanced as he was, merits a severer punishment. He
can show, that pains were at these times taken to lead him on, when bereft of his
senses, to subjects which were likely to call forth improper or indecent expressions.
The defender must further urge, that not being originally educated for the church, he
may, before he assumed the sacred character, have occasionally permitted himself
freedoms of expression which are reckoned less culpable among the laity. Thus, he may,
during that time, have learned the songs which he is accused of singing, though rather
inconsistent with his clerical character. What then was more natural than that, when
thrown off his guard by the assumed conviviality and artful solicitations of those
about him, former improper habits, though renounced during his thinking moments, might
assume the reins of his imagination, when his situation rendered him utterly insensible
of their impropriety?”
* * * * “The Venerable Court will now consider how far three instances of ebriety,
and their consequences, should ruin at once the character and the peace of mind of the
unfortunate defender, and reduce him, at his advanced time of life, about sixty years,
together with his aged parent, to a state of beggary. He hopes his severe sufferings
may be considered as some atonement for the improprieties of which he may have been
guilty; and that the Venerable Court will, in their judgment, remember mercy.
“In respect whereof, &c.Walter Scott.”
This argument (for which he received five guineas) was sustained by Scott
in a speech of considerable length at the bar of the Assembly. It was far the most
important business in which any solicitor had as yet employed him, and The Club mustered strong in the gallery. He began in a low voice, but by degrees
gathered more confidence; and when it became necessary for him to analyse the evidence
touching a certain penny-wedding, repeated some very coarse specimens of his client’s
alleged conversation in a tone so bold and free, that he was called to order with great
austerity by one of the leading members of the Venerable Court. This
seemed to confuse him not a little; so when, by and by, he had to recite a stanza of one of
M’Naught’s convivial ditties, he
breathed it out in a faint and hesitating style; whereupon, thinking he needed
encouragement, the allies in the gallery astounded the Assembly by cordial shouts of hear! hear!—encore! encore! They were immediately turned out, and
Scott got through the rest of his harangue very
little to his own satisfaction.
He believed, in a word, that he had made a complete failure, and issued
from the Court in a melancholy mood. At the door he found Adam
Fergusson waiting to inform him that the brethren so unceremoniously
extruded from the gallery had sought shelter in a neighbouring tavern, where they hoped he
would join them. He complied with the invitation, but seemed for a long while incapable of
enjoying the merriment of his friends. “Come, Duns,” cried the Baronet—“cheer up,
man, and fill another tumbler; here’s ******** going to give us The Tailor.”—“Ah!” he answered, with a groan,
“the tailor was a better man than me, sirs; for he didna venture ben until he
kenned the way.” A certain comical old song, which
had, perhaps, been a favourite with the Minister of
Girthon— “The tailor he cam here to sew, And weel he kenn’d the way o’t,” &c.— was, however, sung and chorussed; and the evening ended in the full jollity of High Jinks.
Mr M’Naught was deposed from the ministry,
and his young advocate has written out at the end of the printed papers on the case two of
the songs which had been alleged in the evidence. They are both grossly indecent. It is to
be observed, that the research he had made with a view to pleading this man’s cause,
carried him for the first, and I believe for the
last time, into the scenery of his Guy
Mannering; and I may add, that several of the names of the minor characters of
the novel (that of M’Guffog, for example) appear in the list of witnesses for and
against his client.
In the following July, a young lad, who had served for some time with
excellent character on board a ship of war, and been discharged in consequence of a wound
which disabled one of his hands, had the misfortune, in firing off a toy cannon in one of
the narrow wynds of Edinburgh, to kill on the spot one of the doorkeepers of the
Advocates’ Library; a button, or some other hard substance, having been accidentally
inserted with his cartridge. Scott was one of his
counsel when he was arraigned for murder, and had occasion to draw up a written argument or
information for the prisoner, from which also I shall make a
short quotation. Considered as a whole, the production seems both crude and clumsy, but the
following passages have, I think, several traces of the style of thought and language which
he afterwards made familiar to the world.
“Murder,” he writes, “or the
premeditated slaughter of a citizen, is a crime of so deep and scarlet a dye, that
there is scarce a nation to be found in which it has not, from the earliest period,
been deemed worthy of a capital punishment. ‘He who sheddeth man’s blood,
by man shall his blood be shed,’ is a general maxim which has received the assent
of all times and countries. But it is equally certain, that even the rude legislators
of former days soon perceived, that the death of one man may be occasioned by another,
without the slayer himself being the proper object of the lex talionis. Such an accident may happen either by the
carelessness of the killer, or through that excess and vehemence of passion to which
humanity is incident. In either case, though blameable, he ought not to be confounded
with the cool and deliberate assassin, and the species of criminality attaching itself
to those acts has been distinguished by the term dolus, in opposition to the milder term culpa. Again, there may be a third species of homicide, in
which the per-petrator being the innocent and unfortunate cause of
casual misfortune, becomes rather an object of compassion than punishment.
“Admitting there may have been a certain degree of
culpability in the panel’s conduct, still there is one circumstance which pleads
strongly in his favour, so as to preclude all presumption of dole. This is the frequent practice, whether proper or
improper, of using this amusement in the streets. It is a matter of public notoriety,
that boys of all ages and descriptions are, or at least till the late very proper
proclamation of the magistrates, were to be seen every evening in almost every corner
of this city amusing themselves with firearms and small cannons, and that without being
checked or interfered with. When the panel, a poor ignorant raw lad, lately discharged
from a ship of war, certainly not the most proper school to learn a prudent aversion to
unlucky or mischievous practices, observed the sons of gentlemen of the first
respectability engaged in such amusements, unchecked by their parents or by the
magistrates, surely it can hardly be expected that he should discover that in imitating
them in so common a practice, he was constituting himself hostis humani generis, a wretch the pest and scourge of
mankind.
“There is, no doubt, attached to every even the
most innocent of casual slaughter, a certain degree of blame, inasmuch as almost every
thing of the kind might have been avoided had the slayer exhibited the strictest degree
of diligence. A well-known and authentic story will illustrate the proposition. A young
gentleman just married to a young lady of which he was passionately fond, in
affectionate trifling presented at her a pistol, of which he had drawn the charge some
days before. The lady, entering into the joke, desired him to fire: he did so, and shot
her dead; the pistol having been again charged by his servant without his knowledge.
Can any one read this story, and feel any emotion but that of sympathy towards the
unhappy husband? Can they ever connect the case with an idea of punishment? Yet,
divesting it of these interesting circumstances which act upon the imagination, it is
precisely that of the panel at your Lordships’ bar; and though no one will
pretend to say that such a homicide is other than casual, yet there is not the
slightest question but it might have been avoided had the killer taken the precaution
of examining his piece. But this is not the degree of culpa which can raise a misfortune to the pitch of a crime. It
is only an instance that no accident can take place without its afterwards being
discovered that the chief actor might have avoided committing it, had he been gifted
with the spirit of prophecy, or with such an extreme degree of prudence as is almost
equally rare.
“In the instance of shooting at butts, or at a
bird, the person killed must have been somewhat in the line previous to the discharge
of the shot, otherways it could never have come near him. The shooter must therefore
have been guilty cuius levis seu
levissimæ in firing while the deceased was in such a situation.
In like manner, it is difficult to conceive how death should happen in consequence of a
boxing or wrestling match, without some excess upon the part of the killer. Nay, in the
exercise of the martial amusements of our forefathers, even by royal commission, should
a champion be slain in running his barriers, or performing his tournament, it could
scarcely happen without some culpa sen levis seu
levissima on the part of his antagonist. Yet all these are
enumerated in the English law-books as instances of casual homicide only; and we may
therefore safely conclude, that by the law of the sister country a slight degree of
blame will not subject the slayer per
infortuniam to the penalties of culpable homicide.
“Guilt, as an object of punishment, has its origin
in the mind and intention of the actor; and therefore, where that is wanting, there is
no proper object of chastisement. A madman, for example, can no more properly be said
to be guilty of murder than the sword with which he commits it, both being equally
incapable of intending injury. In the present case, in like manner, although it ought
no doubt to be matter of deep sorrow and contrition to the panel that his folly should
have occasioned the loss of life to a fellow-creature; yet as that folly can neither be
termed malice, nor yet doth amount to a gross negligence, he ought rather to be pitied
than condemned. The fact done can never be recalled, and it rests with your Lordships
to consider the case of this unfortunate young man, who has served his country in an
humble though useful station,—deserved such a character as is given him in the letter
of his officers,—and been disabled in that service. You will best judge how
(considering he has suffered a confinement of six months) he can in humanity be the
object of further or severer punishment, for a deed of which his mind at least, if not
his hand, is guiltless. When a case is attended with some nicety, your Lordships will
allow mercy to incline the balance of justice, well considering, with the legislator of
the east, ‘It is better ten guilty should escape than that one innocent man
should perish in his innocence.’”
The young sailor was acquitted,
To return for a moment to Scott’s love-affair. I find him writing
as follows, in March 1795, to his cousin, William Scott, now Laird of Raeburn, who was then in
the East Indies: “The lady you allude to
has been in town all this winter, and going a good deal into public, which has not in
the least altered the meekness of her manners. Matters, you see, stand just as they
did.”
To another friend he writes thus, from Rosebank, on the 23d of August,
1795:
“It gave me the highest satisfaction to find, by the
receipt of your letter of the 14th current, that you have formed precisely the
same opinion with me, both with regard to the interpretation of —— ——’s letter as highly flattering and
favourable, and to the mode of conduct I ought to pursue for, after all, what
she has pointed out is the most prudent line of conduct for us both, at least
till better days, which, I think myself now entitled to suppose, she, as well
as I myself, will look forward to with pleasure. If you were surprised at
reading the important billet, you may guess how agreeably I was so at receiving
it; for I had, to anticipate disappointment,—struggled to suppress every rising
gleam of hope, and it would be very difficult to describe the mixed feelings
her letter occasioned, which, entre
nous, terminated in a very hearty fit of crying. I read over
her epistle about ten times a-day, and always with new admiration of her
generosity and candour—and as often take shame to myself for the mean
suspicions, which, after knowing her so long, I could listen to, while
endeavouring to guess how she would conduct herself. To tell you the truth, I
cannot but confess, that my amour
propre, which one would expect should have been exalted, has
suffered not a little upon this occasion, through a sense of my own
unworthiness, pretty similar to that which afflicted Linton upon sitting down at Keir’s table. I ought perhaps to tell
you, what, indeed, you will perceive from her letter, that I was always
attentive, while con-sulting with
you upon the subject of my declaration, rather to under than over-rate the
extent of our intimacy. By the way, I must not omit mentioning the respect in
which I hold your knowledge of the fair sex, and your capacity of advising in
these matters, since it certainly is to your encouragement that I owe the
present situation of my affairs. I wish to God, that, since you have acted as
so useful an auxiliary during my attack, which has succeeded in bringing the
enemy to terms, you would next sit down before some fortress yourself, and were
it as impregnable as the rock of Gibraltar, I should, notwithstanding, have the
highest expectations of your final success. Not a line from poor Jack—What can
he be doing? Moping, I suppose, about some watering-place, and deluging his
guts with specifics of every kind—or lowering and snorting in one corner of a
post-chaise, with Kennedy, as upright and cold as a poker,
stuck into the other. As for Linton, and Crab,* I anticipate with pleasure their
marvellous adventures, in the course of which Dr
Black’sself-denying ordinance
will run a shrewd chance of being neglected. They will be a source of fun for
the winter evening conversations. Methinks I see the pair upon the mountains of
Tipperary—John with a beard of three inches, united
and blended with his shaggy black locks, an ellwand-looking cane, with a gilt
head, in his hand, and a bundle in a handkerchief over his shoulder, exciting
the cupidity of every Irish rapparee who passes him, by his resemblance to a
Jew pedlar who has sent forward his pack—Linton, tired of
trailing his long legs, exalted in
* Crab was the
nickname of a friend who had accompanied Fergusson this summer on an Irish tour. Dr Black, celebrated for his
discoveries in chemistry, was Adam
Fergusson’s uncle; and had, it seems, given the
young travellers a strong admonition touching the dangers of Irish
hospitality.
state upon an Irish garron, without stirrups, and a halter
on its head, tempting every one to ask, ‘Who is that upon the pony, So long, so lean, so raw, so bony?’* —calculating, as he moves along, the expenses of the salt horse—and
grinning a ghastly smile, when the hollow voice of his fellow-traveller
observes, ‘God! Adam, if ye gang on at this rate,
the eight shillings and sevenpence halfpenny will never carry us forward to my
uncle’s at Lisburn.’ Enough of a thorough Irish expedition.
“We have a great marriage towards here Scott of Harden, and a daughter of Count Bruhl,
the famous chess-player, a lady of sixteen quarters, half-sister to the
Wyndhams. I wish they may come down soon, as we shall
have fine racketting, of which I will, probably, get my share. I think of being
in town sometime next month, but whether for good and all, or only for a visit,
I am not certain. O, for November! Our meeting will be a little embarrassing
one. How will she look, &c. &c. &c., are the important subjects of
my present conjectures—how different from what they were three weeks ago! I
give you leave to laugh, when I tell you seriously, I had begun to
‘dwindle, peak, and pine,’ upon the subject—but now, after the
charge I have received, it were a shame to resemble Pharoah’s lean kine.
If good living and plenty of exercise can avert that calamity, I am in little
danger of disobedience, and so, to conclude classically,
Dicite Io pœan, et Io bis dicite pœan!— Jubeo te bene valere,Gualterus Scott.”
* These lines are part of a song on the Parliamentary orator
Littleton. They are quoted in Boswell’sLife of Johnson, originally published in 1791.
I have had much hesitation about inserting the preceding letter, but
could not make up my mind to omit what seems to me a most exquisite revelation of the whole
character of Scott at this critical period of his
history, both literary and personal; more especially of his habitual effort to suppress, as
far as words were concerned, the more tender feelings, which were in no heart deeper than
in his.
It must, I think, have been, while he was indulging his vagabond vein,
during the autumn of 1794, that Miss Aikin (afterwards Mrs Barbauld) paid her visit to Edinburgh, and entertained
a party at Mr Dugald Stewart’s, by reading
Mr William Taylor’s then unpublished version of Bürger’sLenore. In the Essay on
Imitation of Popular Poetry the reader has a full account of the interest with
which Scott heard, some weeks afterwards, a
friend’s imperfect recollections of this performance; the anxiety with which he
sought after a copy of the original German; the delight with which he at length perused it;
and how, having just been reading the specimens of ballad poetry introduced into Lewis’s romance of The Monk, he called to mind the early facility of
versification which had lain so long in abeyance, and ventured to promise his friend a
rhymed translation of “Lenore”
from his own pen. The friend in question was Miss
Cranstoun, afterwards Countess of Purgstall, the sister
of his friend George Cranstoun, now Lord
Corehouse. He began the task, he tells us, after supper, and did not retire
to bed until he had finished it, having by that time worked himself into a state of
excitement which set sleep at defiance.
Next morning, before breakfast, he carried his MS. to Miss Cranstoun, who was not only delighted but astonished
at it; for I have seen a letter of hers to a mutual friend in the
country, in which she says “Upon my word, Walter
Scott is going to turn out a poet something of a cross I think between
Burns and Gray.” The same day he read it also to his friend Sir Alexander Wood, who retains a vivid recollection of the
high strain of enthusiasm into which he had been exalted by dwelling on the wild unearthly
imagery of the German bard. “He read it over to me,” says Sir
Alexander, “in a very slow and solemn tone, and after we had said a
few words about its merits, continued to look at the fire silent and musing for some
minutes, until he at length burst out with ‘I wish to Heaven I could get a skull
and two cross-bones.’” Wood said that if he would
accompany him to the house of John Bell, the
celebrated surgeon, he had no doubt this wish might be easily gratified. They went thither
accordingly on the instant;—Mr Bell (who was a great humourist) smiled
on hearing the object of their visit, and pointing to a closet, at the corner of his
library, bade Walter enter and choose. From a well-furnished museum of
mortality, he selected forthwith what seemed to him the handsomest skull and pair of
cross-bones it contained, and wrapping them in his handkerchief, carried the formidable
bundle home to George’s Square. The trophies were immediately mounted on the top of
his little bookcase; and when Wood visited him, after many years of
absence from this country, he found them in possession of a similar position in his
dressing-room at Abbotsford.
All this occurred in the beginning of April, 1796. A few days afterwards,
Scott went to pay a visit at a country house, where
he expected to meet the “lady of his love.” Jane
Anne Cranstoun was in the secret of his attachment, and knew, that however
doubtful might be Miss ——’s feeling on that subject, she had a high
admiration of Scott’s abilities, and often corresponded with him
on literary matters; so, after he had left Edinburgh, it occurred to her that she might
perhaps forward his views in this quarter, by presenting him in the character of a printed
author. William Erskine being called into her
counsels, a few copies of the ballad were
forthwith thrown off in the most elegant style, and one richly bound and blazoned followed
Scott in the course of a few days to the country. The verses were
read and approved of, and Miss Cranstoun at least flattered herself
that he had not made his first appearance in types to no purpose.*
I ought to have mentioned before, that in June, 1795, he was appointed
one of the curators of the Advocates’ Library, an office always reserved for those
members of the faculty who have the reputation of superior zeal in literary affairs. He had
for colleagues David Hume, the Professor of Scots
Law, and Malcolm Laing, the historian; and his
discharge of his functions must have given satisfaction, for I find him further nominated,
in March, 1796, together with Mr Robert Hodgson Cay,
an accomplished gentleman, afterwards Judge of the Admiralty Court in Scotland, to
‘put the Faculty’s cabinet of medals in proper arrangement.’
On the 4th of June, 1796 (the birth-day of George
III.), there seems to have been a formidable riot in Edinburgh, and
Scott is found again in the front. On the 5th, he
writes as follows to his aunt, Christian Rutherford,
who was then in the north of Scotland, and had meant to visit, among other places, the
residence of the chère
adorable.’
* This story was told by the Countess of
Purgstall on her deathbed to Captain Basil
Hall. See his Schloss
Hainfeld, p. 333.
“Edinburgh, 5th June, 1796. “Ma Chère Amie,
“Nothing doubting that your curiosity will be upon the
tenters to hear the wonderful events of the long-expected 4th of June, I take
the pen to inform you that not one worth mentioning has taken place. Were I
inclined to prolixity, I might, indeed, narrate at length how near a thousand
gentlemen (myself among the number) offered their services to the magistrates
to act as constables for the preservation of the
peace—how their services were accepted—what fine
speeches were made upon the occasion—how they were
furnished with pretty painted brown batons—how they were
assembled in the aisle of the New Church, and treated with claret and
sweetmeats—howSir
John Whiteford was chased by the mob, and how
Tom, Sandy Wood,
and I rescued him, and dispersed his tormentors à beaux coups de batons—how
the Justice-Clerk’s windows were broke by a few boys, and how a large
body of constables and a press-gang of near two hundred men arrived, and were
much disappointed at finding the coast entirely clear; with many other matters
of equal importance, but of which you must be contented to remain in ignorance
till you return to your castle. Seriously, every thing, with the exception of
the very trifling circumstances above mentioned, was perfectly quiet—much more
so than during any King’s birth-day I can recollect. That very stillness,
however, shows that something is brewing among our friends the Democrats, which
they will take their own time of bringing forward. By the wise precautions of
the magistrates, or rather of the provost, and the spirited conduct of the
gentlemen, I hope their designs will be frustrated. Our association meets
to-night, when we are to be divided into districts according to the place of
our abode, places of rendezvous and captains named; so that, upon the hoisting of a flag on the Tron-steeple,
and ringing out all the large bells, we can be on duty in less than five
minutes. I am sorry to say that the complexion of the town seems to justify all
precautions of this kind. I hope we shall demean ourselves as quiet and peaceable magistrates; and intend,
for the purpose of learning the duties of my new office, to con diligently the
instructions delivered to the watch by our brother Dogberry, of facetious memory. So much for information. By way
of enquiry, pray let me know—that is, when you find any idle hour—how you
accomplished the perilous passage of her Majestie’s Ferry without the
assistance and escort of your preux-chevalier, and whether you will receive
them on your return—how Miss R. and you are spending your
time, whether stationary or otherwise—above all, whether you have been at
*******? and all the &cs. &cs. which the question involves. Having made
out a pretty long scratch, which, as Win
Jenkins says, will take you some time to decipher, I shall only
inform you farther that I shall tire excessively till you return to your shop.
I beg to be remembered to Miss Kerr, and in particular to
La Belle Jeanne. Best love to Miss
Rutherford; and believe me ever, my dear Miss Christy, sincerely and affectionately
your
Walter Scott.”
During the autumn of 1796 he visited again his favourite haunts in
Perthshire and Forfarshire. It was in the course of this tour that he spent a day or two at
Montrose with his old tutor Mitchell, and astonished
and grieved that worthy Presbyterian by his zeal about witches and fairies. The only letter
of his written during this expedition, that I have recovered, was addressed to another of
his clerical friends—one by no means of Mit-chell’s
stamp—Mr Walker, the minister of Dunnotar, and
it is chiefly occupied with an account of his researches at a vitrified fort, in
Kincardineshire, commonly called Lady Fenella’s Castle, and,
according to tradition, the scene of the murder of Kenneth
II. by his mistress. While in the north, he visited also the residence of
the lady who had now for so many years been the
object of his attachment; and that his reception was not adequate to his expectations may
be gathered pretty clearly from some expressions in a letter addressed to him when at
Montrose by his friend and confidante, Miss
Cranstoun.
To Walter Scott, Esq., Post-Office, Montrose.
“DearScott,—Far be it from
me to affirm that there are no diviners in the land. The voice of the people
and the voice of God are loud in their testimony. Two years ago, when I was in
the neighbourhood of Montrose, we had recourse for amusement one evening to
chiromancy, or, as the vulgar say, having our fortunes read; and read mine were
in such a sort, that either my letters must have been inspected, or the devil
was by in his own proper person. I never mentioned the circumstance since, for
obvious reasons; but now that you are on the spot, I feel it my bounden duty to
conjure you not to put your shoes rashly from off your feet, for you are not
standing on holy ground.
“I bless the gods for conducting your poor dear soul
safely to Perth. When I consider the wilds, the forests, the lakes, the rocks
and the spirits in which you must have whispered to their startled echoes, it
amazeth me how you escaped. Had you but dismissed your little squire and Earwig,* and spent a few days as Or-
* A servant boy and pony.
lando would have done, all posterity might
have profited by it; but to trot quietly away without so much as one stanza to
despair—never talk to me of love again—never, never, never! I am dying for your
collection of exploits. When will you return? In the mean time, Heaven speed
you! Be sober, and hope to the end.
“William
Taylor’stranslation of your ballad is published, and so
inferior, that I wonder we could tolerate it. Dugald Stewart read yours to ********** the other day. When he
came to the fetter dance,* he looked up, and poor ********** was sitting with
his hands nailed to his knees, and the big tears rolling down his innocent nose
in so piteous a manner, that Mr Stewart could not help
bursting out a laughing. An angry man was * “‘Dost fear? dost fear?—The moon shines clear;— Dost fear to ride with me? Hurrah! hurrah! the dead can ride!’— Oh, William, let them
be!’ “‘See there, see there! What yonder swings And creaks ’mid whistling rain?’— Gibbet and steel, the accursed wheel; A murd’rer in his chain. “‘Hollow! thou felon, follow here, To bridal bed we ride; And thou shalt prance a fetter dance Before me and my bride.’ “And hurry, hurry! clash, clash, clash! The wasted form descends; And fleet as wind, through hazel bush, The wild career attends. “Tramp, tramp! along the land they rode; Splash, splash! along the sea; The scourge is red, the spur drops blood. The flashing pebbles flee.” **********. I have seen another edition too, but it is below
contempt. So many copies make the ballad famous, so that every day adds to your
renown.
“This here place is very, very dull. Erskine is in London; my dear
Thomson at Daily; Macfarlan hatching Kant
and George* Fountainhall.† I have nothing more to tell you, but that
I am most affectionately yours. Many an anxious thought I have about you.
Farewell.—J. A. C.”
The affair in which this romantic creature took so lively an interest,
was now approaching its end. It was known, before this autumn closed, that the lady of his vows had finally promised her hand to his
amiable rival; and, when the fact was announced,
some of those who knew Scott the best appear to have
entertained very serious apprehensions as to the effect which the disappointment might have
upon his feelings. For example, one of those brothers of the
Mountain wrote as follows to another of them, on the 12th October 1796:
“Mr —— marries Miss ——. This is not good news. I always dreaded there was some
self-deception on the part of our romantic friend, and I now shudder at the violence of
his most irritable and ungovernable mind. Who is it that says, ‘Men have died,
and worms have eaten them, but not for love?’ I hope
sincerely it may be verified on this occasion.”
Scott had, however, in all likelihood, digested his
agony during the solitary ride in the Highlands to which Miss
Cranstoun’s last letter alludes.
Talking of this story with Lord
Kinedder, I once asked him whether Scott
never made it the subject
* George Cranstoun, Lord
Corehouse.
† Decisions by Lord
Fountainhall.
of verses at the period. His own confession, that,
even during the time when he had laid aside the habit of versification, he did sometimes
commit “a sonnet on a mistress’s eyebrow,” had not then appeared.
Lord Kinedder answered, “O yes, he made many little
stanzas about the lady, and he sometimes showed them to Cranstoun, Clerk, and myself—but
we really thought them in general very poor. Two things of the kind, however, have been
preserved—and one of them was done just after the conclusion of the
business.” He then took down a volume of the English Minstrelsy, and pointed out to me some
lines on a violet, which had not at that time been included in
Scott’s collected works. Lord Kinedder
read them over in his usual impressive, though not quite unaffected, manner, and said,
“I remember well that, when I first saw these, I told him they were his best;
but he had touched them up afterwards.”
“The violet in her greenwood bower, Where birchen boughs with hazels mingle, May boast itself the fairest flower In glen or copse or forest dingle. “Though fair her gems of azure hue Beneath the dewdrop’s weight reclining, I’ve seen an eye of lovelier blue More sweet through watery lustre shining. “The summer sun that dew shall dry, Ere yet the sun be past its morrow, Nor longer in my false love’s eye Remained the tear of parting sorrow!”
In turning over a volume of MS. papers, I have found a copy of verses,
which, from the hand, Scott had evidently written down
within the last ten years of his life. They are headed, “To Time—by a Lady”—but
certain initials on the back satisfy me, that the authoress was no other than the object of his first passion. I think I must be
pardoned for transcribing the lines which had dwelt so long on his memory—leaving it to the
reader’s fancy to picture the mood of mind in which the fingers of a grey-haired man
may have traced such a relic of his youthful dreams.
“Friend of the wretch oppress’d with grief, Whose lenient hand, though slow, supplies The balm that lends to care relief, That wipes her tears—that checks her sighs! “’Tis thine the wounded soul to heal That hopeless bleeds for sorrow’s smart, From stern misfortune’s shaft to steal The barb that rankles in the heart. “What though with thee the roses fly, And jocund youth’s gay reign is o’er; Though dimm’d the lustre of the eye, And hope’s vain dreams enchant no more; “Yet in thy train come soft-eyed peace, Indifference with her heart of snow; At her cold touch, lo! sorrows cease, No thorns beneath her roses grow. “O haste to grant the suppliant’s prayer, To me thy torpid calm impart; Rend from my brow youth’s garland fair, But take the thorn that’s in my heart. ‘Ah, why do fabling poets tell, That thy fleet wings outstrip the wind? Why feign thy course of joy the knell, And call thy slowest pace unkind? “To me thy tedious feeble pace Comes laden with the weight of years; With sighs I view morn’s blushing face, And hail mild evening with my tears.”
CHAPTER VIII. PUBLICATION OF BALLADS AFTER
BÜRGER—SCOTT QUARTERMASTER OF THE
EDINBURGH LIGHT-HORSE—EXCURSION TO CUMBERLAND—GILSLAND WELLS—MISS
CARPENTER—MARRIAGE. 1796-1797.
Rebelling, as usual, against circumstances, Scott seems to have turned with renewed ardour to his literary
pursuits; and in that same October, 1796, he was “prevailed on,” as he
playfully expresses it, “by the request of friends, to
indulge his own vanity, by publishing the translation of Lenore,
with that of the Wild Huntsman, also from
Bürger, in a thin quarto.”
The little volume, which has no author’s name on the titlepage, was printed for
Manners and Miller of Edinburgh. The first named of these respectable publishers had
been a fellow-student in the German class of Dr
Willich; and this circumstance probably suggested the negotiation. It was
conducted by William Erskine, as appears from his
postscript to a letter addressed to Scott by his sister, who, before it reached its destination, had become
the wife of Mr Campbell (Colquhoun) of Clathick (and
Kellermont)—in after-days Lord Advocate of Scotland. This was another of
Scott’s dearest female friends—the humble home which she
shared with her brother during his early struggles at the bar, had been the scene of many
of his happiest hours; and her letter affords such a pleasing idea of the warm
affectionateness of the little circle, that I cannot forbear inserting it.
To Walter Scott, Esq. Rosebank, Kelso.
“Monday Evening.
“If it were not that etiquette and I were constantly
at war, I should think myself very blamable in thus trespassing against one of
its laws; but as it is long since I foreswore its dominion, I have acquired a
prescriptive right to act as I will—and I shall accordingly anticipate the
station of a matron in addressing a young man.
“I can express but a very, very little of what I feel,
and shall ever feel, for your unintermitting friendship and attention. I have
ever considered you as a brother, and shall now think myself entitled to make
even larger claims on your confidence. Well do I remember the dark conference we lately held together! The intention of unfolding
my own future fate was often at my lips.
“I cannot tell you my distress at leaving this house,
wherein I have enjoyed so much real happiness, and giving up the service of so
gentle a master, whose yoke was indeed easy. I will therefore only commend him
to your care as the last bequest of Mary Anne
Erskine, and conjure you to continue to each other through all
your pilgrimage as you have commenced it. May every happiness attend you.
Adieu!
Your most sincere friend and sister, M. A. E.”
Mr Erskine writes on the other page—“The
poems are gorgeous, but I have made
no bargain with any bookseller. I have told M.
and M. that I won’t be satisfied with
indemnity, but an offer must be made. They will be out before the end of the
week.” On what terms the publication really took place, I know not.
It has already been mentioned, that Scott owed his copy of Bürger’s works to the young lady of
Harden, whose marriage
occurred in the autumn of 1795. She was daughter of Count Bruhl
of Martkirchen, long Saxon ambassador at the court of St James’s, by
his second wife the Countess-Dowager of Egremont; and
though I believe she had never at this time been out of England, spoke her father’s
language perfectly, corresponded regularly with many of her relations on the Continent, and
was very fond of the rising literature of the Germans. The young kinsman was introduced to
her soon after her arrival at Mertoun, and his attachment to German studies excited her
attention and interest. Mrs Scott supplied him with many standard
German books, besides Bürger; and the gift of an Adelung’s dictionary from his old ally, George Constable (Jonathan
Oldbuck), enabled him to master their contents sufficiently for the purposes
of translation. The ballad of the Wild
Huntsman appears to have been executed, under Mrs
Scott’s eye, during the month that preceded his first publication; and
he was thenceforth engaged in a succession of versions from the dramas of Meier and Iffland,
several of which are still extant in his MS., marked 1796 and 1797. These are all in prose
like their originals; but he also versified at the same time some lyrical fragments of
Goëthe, as, for example, the Morlachian Ballad, “What yonder glimmers so white on the mountain,” and the song from Claudina von Villa Bella. He consulted his
friend at Mertoun on all these essays; and I have often heard him say, that, among those
many “obligations of a distant date which remained impressed on his memory, after
a life spent in a constant interchange of friendship and kindness,” he
counted not as the least the lady’s frankness in correcting his Scotticisms, and more
especially his Scottish rhymes.
His obligations to this lady were
indeed various—but I doubt, after all, whether these were the most important. He used to
say, that she was the first woman of real fashion that took him up; that she used the privileges of her sex and station in
the truest spirit of kindness; set him right as to a thousand little trifles, which no one
else would have ventured to notice; and, in short, did for him what no one but an elegant
woman can do for a young man, whose early days have been spent in narrow and provincial
circles. “When I first saw Sir
Walter,” she writes to me, “he was about four or
five-and-twenty, but looked much younger. He seemed bashful and awkward; but there were
from the first such gleams of superior sense and spirit in his conversation, that I was
hardly surprised when, after our acquaintance had ripened a little, I felt myself to be
talking with a man of genius. He was most modest about himself, and showed his little
pieces apparently without any consciousness that they could possess any claim on
particular attention. Nothing so easy and good-humoured as the way in which he received
any hints I might offer, when he seemed to be tampering with the King’s English.
I remember particularly how he laughed at himself, when I made him take notice that
‘the little two dogs,’ in some of his lines, did not please an English ear
accustomed to ‘the two little dogs.’”
Nor was this the only person at Mertoun who took a lively interest in his
pursuits. Harden entered into all the feelings of his
beautiful bride on this subject; and his mother, the Lady Diana
Scott, daughter of the last Earl of
Marchmont, did so no less. She had conversed, in her early days, with the
brightest ornaments of the cycle of Queen Anne, and
preserved rich stores of anecdote, well calculated to gratify the curiosity and excite the
ambition of a young enthusiast in literature. Lady Diana soon appreciated the minstrel of the clan;
and, surviving to a remarkable age, she had the satisfaction of seeing him at the height of
his eminence—the solitary person who could give the author of Marmion personal reminiscences of Pope.*
On turning to James
Ballantyne’sMemorandum (already quoted), I
find an account of Scott’s journey from Rosebank
to Edinburgh, in the November after the Ballads from
Bürger were published, which gives an interesting notion of his literary
zeal and opening ambition at this remarkable epoch of his life. Mr
Ballantyne had settled in Kelso as a solicitor in 1795; but not immediately
obtaining much professional practice, time hung heavy on his hands, and he willingly
listened, in the summer of 1796, to a proposal of some of the neighbouring nobility and
gentry respecting the establishment of a weekly newspaper,† in opposition to one of a
democratic tendency, then widely circulated in Roxburghshire and the other Border counties.
He undertook the printing and editing of this new journal, and proceeded to London, in
order to engage correspondents and make other necessary preparations. While thus for the
first time in the metropolis, he happened to meet with two authors, whose reputations were
then in full bloom—namely, Thomas Holcroft and
William Godwin—the former a popular dramatist
and, novelist; the latter, a novelist of far greater merit, but “still more
importantly distinguished,” says the Memorandum before me, “by those
moral, legal, political, and religious heterodoxies, which his talents enabled him to
present to the world in a very captivating man-
* Mr Scott of Harden’s
right to the peerage of Polwarth, as representing, through his mother, the line of
Marchmont, was allowed by the House of Lords in 1835.
† The Kelso Mail.
ner. His Caleb
Williams had then just come out, and occupied as much public attention as any
work has done before or since.” “Both these eminent persons,”
Ballantyne continues, “I saw pretty frequently; and being
anxious to hear whatever I could tell about the literary men in Scotland, they both
treated me with remarkable freedom of communication. They were both distinguished by
the clearness of their elocution, and very full of triumphant confidence in the truth
of their systems. They were as willing to speak, therefore, as I could be to hear; and
as I put my questions with all the fearlessness of a very young man, the result was,
that I carried away copious and interesting stores of thought and information; that the
greater part of what I heard was full of error, never entered into my contemplation.
Holcroft at this time was a fine-looking, lively man, of green
old age, somewhere about sixty. Godwin, some twenty years younger,
was more shy and reserved. As to me, my delight and enthusiasm were
boundless.”
After returning home, Ballantyne
made another journey to Glasgow for the purchase of types; and on entering the Kelso coach
for this purpose—“It would not be easy,” says he, “to express
my joy on finding that Mr Scott was to be one of my
partners in the carriage, the only other passenger being a fine, stout, muscular, old
Quaker. A very few miles re-established us on our ancient footing. Travelling not being
half so speedy then as it is now, there was plenty of leisure for talk, and
Mr Scott was exactly what is called the old man. He abounded,
as in the days of boyhood, in legendary lore, and had now added to the stock, as his
recitations showed, many of those fine ballads which afterwards composed the Minstrelsy. Indeed, I was more
delighted with him than ever; and, by way of reprisal, I opened on him my London budget
collected from Holcroft and Godwin. I doubt if Boswell ever
showed himself a more skilful Reporter than I did on this occasion. Hour after hour
passed away, and found my borrowed eloquence still flowing, and my companion still
hanging on my lips with unwearied interest. It was customary in those days to break the
journey (only forty miles) by dining on the road, the consequence of which was that we
both became rather oblivious; and after we had re-entered the coach, the worthy Quaker
felt quite vexed and disconcerted with the silence which had succeeded so much
conversation. ‘I wish,’ said he, ‘my young friends, that you would
cheer up, and go on with your pleasant songs and tales as before: they entertained me
much.’ And so,” says Ballantyne, “it went
on again until the evening found us in Edinburgh; and from that day, until within a
very short time of his death a period of not less than five-and-thirty years I may
venture to say that our intercourse never flagged.”
The reception of the two
ballads had, in the mean time, been favourable, in his own circle at least. The
many inaccuracies and awkwardnesses of rhyme and diction to which he alludes in
republishing them towards the close of his life, did not prevent real lovers of poetry from
seeing that no one but a poet could have transfused the daring imagery of the German in a
style so free, bold, masculine, and full of life; but, wearied as all such readers had been
with that succession of feeble, flimsy, lackadaisical trash which followed the appearance
of the Reliques by Bishop Percy, the opening of such a new vein of popular
poetry as these verses revealed would have been enough to produce lenient critics for far
inferior translations. Many, as we have seen, sent forth copies of the Lenore about the same time; and some of these might be
thought better than Scott’s in particular passages; but, on the whole,
it seems to have been felt and acknowledged by those best entitled to judge, that he
deserved the palm. Meantime, we must not forget that Scotland had lost that very year the
great poet Burns, her glory and her shame. It is at
least to be hoped that a general sentiment of self-reproach, as well as of sorrow, had been
excited by the premature extinction of such a light; and, at all events, it is agreeable to
know that they who had watched his career with the most affectionate concern were among the
first to hail the promise of a more fortunate successor. Scott found
on his table, when he reached Edinburgh, the following letters from two of
Burns’s kindest and wisest friends:
To Walter Scott Esq., Advocate, George’s
Square.
“My Dear Sir,
“I beg you will accept of my best thanks for the
favour you have done me by sending me four copies of your beautiful translations. I shall retain two of
them, as Mrs Stewart and I both set a
high value on them as gifts from the author. The other two I shall take the
earliest opportunity of transmitting to a friend in England, who, I hope, may
be instrumental in making their merits more generally known at the time of
their first appearance. In a few weeks, I am fully persuaded, they will engage
public attention to the utmost extent of your wishes, without the aid of any
recommendation whatever. I ever am,
Dear Sir, yours most truly, “Dugald Stewart. “Canongate, Wednesday evening.”
To the Same.
“Dear Sir,
“On my return from Cardross, where I had been for a week, I found yours of
the 14th, which had surely loitered by the way. I thank you most cordially for
your present. I meet with little poetry nowadays that touches my heart; but
your translations excite mingled emotions of pity and terror, insomuch, that I
would not wish any person of weaker nerves to read William and Helen
before going to bed. Great must be the original if it equals the translation in
energy and pathos. One would almost suspect you have used as much liberty with
Bürger as Macpherson was suspected of doing with
Ossian. It is, however, easier to backspeir you. Sober reason rejects the machinery as
unnatural; it reminds me, however, of the magic of Shakspeare. Nothing has a finer effect than the repetition of
certain words, that are echoes to the sense, as much as the celebrated lines in
Homer about the rolling up and falling
down of the stone:—Tramp, tramp, splash, splash, is to
me perfectly new;—and much of the imagery is nature. I should consider this
same muse of yours (if you carry the intrigue far) more likely to steal your
heart from the law than even a wife. I am, Dear Sir, your most obedient, humble
servant,
“Jo. Ramsay. “Ochtertyre, 30th Nov. 1796.”
Among other literary persons at a distance, I may mention George Chalmers, the celebrated antiquary, with whom he
had been in correspondence from the beginning of this year, supplying him with Border
ballads for the illustration of his researches into Scotch history. This gentleman had been
made acquainted with Scott’s large collections in
that way, by a mutual friend, Dr Somerville,
minister of Jedburgh, author of the History of
Queen Anne;* and the numerous MS.
* Some extracts from this venerable person’s unpublished
Me-
copies communicated to him in consequence, were recalled in the course
of 1799, when the plan of the “Minstrelsy” began to take shape. Chalmers writes in
great transports about Scott’s versions; but weightier
encouragement came from Mr Taylor of Norwich,
himself the first translator of the Lenore.
“I need not tell you, sir” (he writes),
“with how much eagerness I opened your volume—with how much glow I
followed the
Chase—or with how much alarm I came to William and Helen. Of
the latter I will say nothing; praise might seem hypocrisy—criticism envy. The
ghost nowhere makes his appearance so well as with you, or his exit so well as
with Mr Spenser. I like
very much the recurrence of ‘The scourge is red, the spur drops blood, The flashing pebbles flee,’ but of William and Helen
I had resolved to say nothing. Let me return to the Chase, of which the metric stanza style
pleases me entirely—yet I think a few passages written in too elevated a strain
for the general spirit of the poem. This age leans too much to the Darwin style. Mr
Percy’sLenore owes its coldness to the adoption of this; and it seems
peculiarly incongruous in the ballad where habit has taught us to expect
simplicity. Among the passages too stately and pompous, I should reckon—
moirs of his own Life, have been
kindly sent to me by his son,
the well-known physician of Chelsea College; from which it appears that
the reverend doctor, and more particularly still his wife, a lady of
remarkable talent and humour, had formed a high notion of Scott’s future eminence at a very
early period of his life. Dr. S.
survived to a great old age, preserving his faculties quite entire, and
I have spent many pleasant hours under his hospitable roof in company
with Sir Walter Scott. We heard him preach an
excellent circuit sermon when he was upwards of ninety-two, and at the
Judges’ dinner afterwards he was among the gayest of the company.
‘The mountain echoes startling wake— And for devotion’s choral swell Exchange the rude discordant noise— Fell famine marks the maddening throng With cold Despair’s averted eye’— and perhaps one or two more. In the twenty-first stanza I prefer
Bürger’s trampling the corn into chaff and
dust, to your more metaphorical, and therefore less picturesque,
“destructive sweep the field along.” In the thirtieth,
“On whirlwind’s pinions swiftly borne,” to me
seems less striking than the still disapparition of the tumult and bustle the
earth has opened, and he is sinking with his evil genius to the nether world as
he approaches, dumpf rauscht es wie ein ferner
meer—it should be rendered, therefore, not by
“Save what a distant torrent gave,” but by some sounds
which shall necessarily excite the idea of being hellsprung—the sound of simmering seas of fire—pinings of goblins
damned—or some analogous noise. The forty-seventh stanza is a very great
improvement of the original. The profanest blasphemous speeches need not have
been softened down, as in proportion to the impiety of the provocation,
increases the poetical probability of the final punishment. I should not have
ventured upon these criticisms, if I did not think it required a microscopic
eye to make any, and if I did not on the whole consider the Chase as a most spirited and beautiful
translation. I remain (to borrow in another sense a concluding phrase from the
Spectator), your constant
admirer,
“W. Taylor, Jun. “Norwich, 14th Dec. 1796.”
The anticipations of these gentlemen, that Scott’s versions would attract general attention in the south, were
not fulfilled. He himself attributes this to the contemporaneous
appearance of so many other translations from Lenore. “In a word,” he says, “my adventure, where
so many pushed off to sea, proved a dead loss, and a great part of the edition was
condemned to the service of the trunkmaker. This failure did not operate in any
unpleasant degree either on my feelings or spirits. I was coldly received by strangers,
but my reputation began rather to increase among my own friends, and on the whole I was
more bent to show the world that it had neglected something worth notice, than to be
affronted by its indifference; or rather, to speak candidly, I found pleasure in the
literary labours in which I had almost by accident become engaged, and laboured less in
the hope of pleasing others, though certainly without despair of doing so, than in a
pursuit of a new and agreeable amusement to myself.”*
On the 12th of December Scott had the
curiosity to witness the trial of one James Mackean,
a shoemaker, for the murder of Buchanan, a carrier, employed to convey
money weekly from the Glasgow bank to a manufacturing establishment at Lanark.
Mackean invited the carrier to spend the evening in his house;
conducted family worship in a style of much seeming fervour; and then, while his friend was
occupied, came behind him, and almost severed his head from his body by one stroke of a
razor. I have heard Scott describe the sanctimonious air which the
murderer maintained during his trial preserving throughout the aspect of a devout person,
who believed himself to have been hurried into his accumulation of crime by an
uncontrollable exertion of diabolical influence; and on his copy of the “Life of James Mackean, executed 25th January,
1797,” I find the following marginal note:—
* Remarks on Popular Poetry. 1830.
“I went to see this wretched man when under sentence of death,
along with my friend, Mr William Clerk,
advocate. His great anxiety was to convince us that his diabolical murder was committed
from a sudden impulse of revengeful and violent passion, not from deliberate design of
plunder. But the contrary was manifest from the accurate preparation of the deadly
instrument, a razor strongly lashed to an iron bolt, and also from the evidence on the
trial, from which it seems he had invited his victim to drink tea with him on the day
he perpetrated the murder, and that this was a reiterated invitation. Mackean was a good-looking, elderly man, having a thin
face and clear grey eye; such a man as may be ordinarily seen beside a collection-plate
at a seceding meeting-house, a post which the said Mackean had
occupied in his day. All Mackean’s account of the murder is
apocryphal. Buchanan was a powerful man, and
Mackean slender. It appeared that the latter had engaged
Buchanan in writing, then suddenly clapped one hand on his
eyes, and struck the fatal blow with the other. The throat of the deceased was cut
through his handkerchief to the back bone of the neck, against which the razor was
hacked in several places.”
In his pursuit of his German studies Scott acquired, about this time, a very important assistant in Mr Skene of Rubislaw, in Aberdeenshire; a gentleman
considerably his junior, who had just returned to Scotland from a residence of several
years in Saxony, where he had obtained a thorough knowledge of the language, and
accumulated a better collection of German books than any to which
Scott had, as yet, found access. Shortly after Mr
Skene’s arrival in Edinburgh, Scott requested to
be introduced to him by a mutual friend, Mr Edmonstone of
Newton, and their fondness for the same literature, with
Scott’s eagerness to profit by his new acquaint-ance’s superior attainment in it, thus opened an intercourse
which general similarity of tastes, and I venture to add, in many of the most important
features of character, soon ripened into the familiarity of a tender
friendship”“An intimacy,” Mr Skene says,
in a paper before me, “of which I shall ever think with so much pride”a
friendship so pure and cordial as to have been able to withstand all the vicissitudes
of nearly forty years, without ever having sustained even a casual chill from unkind
thought or word.” Mr Skene adds: “During the
whole progress of his varied life, to that eminent station which he could not but feel
he at length held in the estimation, not of his countrymen alone, but of the whole
world, I never could perceive the slightest shade of variance from that simplicity of
character with which he impressed me on the first hour of our meeting.”
Among the common tastes which served to knit these friends together, was
their love of horsemanship, in which, as in all other manly exercises, Skene highly excelled; and the fears of a French invasion
becoming every day more serious, their thoughts were turned with corresponding zeal to the
project of organizing a force of mounted volunteers in Scotland. “The London
Light-horse had set the example”—(says Mr
Skene)—“but in truth it was to Scott’s ardour that this force in the North owed its origin.
Unable, by reason of his lameness, to serve amongst his friends on foot, he had nothing
for it but to rouse the spirit of the moss-trooper, with which he readily inspired all
who possessed the means of substituting the sabre for the musket.”
On the 14th February, 1797, these friends and many more met and drew up
an offer to serve as a body of volunteer cavalry in Scotland; which offer, being
transmitted through the Duke of Buccleuch,
Lord-Lieute-nant of Mid-Lothian, was
accepted by Government. The organization of the corps proceeded rapidly; they extended
their offer to serve in any part of the island in case of actual invasion; and this also
being accepted, the whole arrangement was shortly completed; when Charles Maitland, Esq. of Rankeillor, was elected
Major-Commandant; (Sir) William Rae of St
Catharine’s, Captain; James Gordon of Craig,
and George Robinson of Clermiston, Lieutenants;
(Sir) William Forbes of Pitsligo, and James Skene of Rubislaw, Cornets; Walter Scott, Paymaster, Quartermaster, and Secretary; John Adams, Adjutant. But the treble duties thus devolved
on Scott were found to interfere too severely with his other
avocations, and Colin Mackenzie of Portmore relieved
him soon afterwards from those of paymaster.
“The part of quartermaster,” says Mr Skene, “was properly selected for him, that he
might be spared the rough usage of the ranks; but, notwithstanding his infirmity, he
had a remarkably firm seat on horseback, and in all situations a fearless one: no
fatigue ever seemed too much for him, and his zeal and animation served to sustain the
enthusiasm of the whole corps, while his ready ‘mot à
rire,’ kept up, in all, a degree of good humour and relish for the
service, without which, the toil and privations of long daily
drills would not easily have been submitted to by such a body of gentlemen. At every
interval of exercise, the order, sit at ease, was the signal for
the quartermaster to lead the squadron to merriment; every eye was intuitively turned
on ‘Earl Walter,’ as he was familiarly
called by his associates of that date, and his ready joke seldom failed to raise the
ready laugh. He took his full share in all the labours and duties of the corps, had the
highest pride in its progress and proficiency, and was such a trooper himself, as only
a very powerful frame of body and the warmest zeal in the cause
could have enabled any one to be. But his habitual good humour was the great charm, and
at the daily mess (for we all dined together when in quarters) that reigned
supreme.”
Earl Walter’s first charger, by the way, was a
tall and powerful animal named Lenore.
These daily drills appear to have been persisted in during the spring and summer of 1797;
the corps spending moreover some weeks in quarters at Musselburgh. The majority of the
troop having professional duties to attend to, the ordinary hour for drill was five in the
morning; and when we reflect, that after some hours of hard work in this way,
Scott had to produce himself regularly in the Parliament House
with gown and wig, for the space of four or five hours at least, while his chamber
practice, though still humble, was on the increase—and that he had found a plentiful source
of new social engagements in his troop connexions—it certainly could have excited no
surprise had his literary studies been found suffering total intermission during this busy
period. That such was not the case, however, his correspondence and note-books afford ample
evidence.
He had no turn, at this time of his life, for early rising; so that the
regular attendance at the morning drills was of itself a strong evidence of his military
zeal; but he must have, in spite of them, and of all other circumstances, persisted in what
was the usual custom of all his earlier life, namely, the devotion of the best hours of the
night to solitary study. In general, both as a young man, and in more advanced age, his
constitution required a good allowance of sleep, and he, on principle, indulged in it,
saying, “he was but half a man if he had not full seven hours of utter
unconsciousness;” but his whole mind and temperament were, at this period, in
a state of most fervent exaltation, and spirit
triumphed over matter. His translation of Steinberg’sOtho of
Wittelsbach, is marked “1796-7;” from which, I conclude, it was
finished in the latter year. The volume containing that of Meier’s “Wolfred of
Dromberg, a drama of chivalry,” is dated 1797; and, I think, the reader
will presently see cause to suspect, that though not alluded to in his imperfect note-book,
these tasks must have been accomplished in the very season of the daily drills.
The letters addressed to him in March, April, and June, by Kerr of Abbotrule, George
Chalmers, and his uncle at Rosebank,
indicate his unabated interest in the collection of coins and ballads; and I shall now make
a few extracts from his private note-book, some of which will at all events amuse the
survivors of the Edinburgh Light-Horse:
“March 15, 1797 Read Stanfield’s trial, and the conviction
appears very doubtful indeed. Surely no one could seriously believe, in 1688,
that the body of the murdered bleeds at the touch of the murderer, and I see
little else that directly touches Philip Stanfield. He was
a very bad character, however; and tradition says, that having insulted
Welsh, the wild preacher, one day in his early life,
the saint called from the pulpit that God had revealed to him that this
blasphemous youth would die in the sight of as many as were then assembled. It
was believed at the time that Lady Stanfield had a hand in
the assassination, or was at least privy to her son’s plans; but I see
nothing inconsistent with the old gentleman’s having committed suicide.*
The ordeal
* See particulars of Stanfield’s case in
Lord
Fountainhall’sChronological Notes of Scottish Affairs,
1680-1701, edited by Sir Walter Scott. 4to, Edinburgh, 1822.
Pp, 233-236.
of touching the corpse was observed in Germany. They call
it barrecht.
“March 27.—
‘The friers of Fail Gat never owre hard eggs, or owre thin kale; For they made their eggs thin wi’ butter, And their kale thick wi’ bread. And the friers of Fail they made gude kale On Fridays when they fasted; They never wanted gear enough As lang as their neighbours’ lasted.’
“Fairy-rings.—N. B. Delrius says the same appearance occurs wherever the witches
have held their Sabbath.
“For the ballad of Willie’s
Lady,’ compare Apuleius,
lib. i. p. 33. . . .
“April 20—The portmanteau to
contain the following articles:—2 shirts; 1 black handkerchief; 1 nightcap,
woollen; 1 pair pantaloons, blue; 1 flannel shirt with sleeves; 1 pair flannel
drawers; 1 waistcoat; 1 pair worsted stockings or socks.
“In the slip, in cover of portmanteau, a case with
shaving-things, combs, and a knife, fork, and spoon; a German pipe and
tobacco-bag, flint, and steel; pipe-clay and oil, with brush for laying it on;
a shoe-brush; a pair of shoes or hussar-boots; a horse-picker, and other loose
articles.
“Belt with the flap and portmanteau, currycomb, brush,
and mane-comb, with sponge.
“Over the portmanteau the blue overalls, and a spare
jacket for stable; a small horse-sheet, to cover the horse’s back with,
and a spare girth or two.
“In the cartouche-box, screw-driver and picker for
pistol, with three or four spare flints.
“The horse-sheet may be conveniently folded below the
saddle, and will save the back in a long march or bad weather. Beside the holster, two fore-feet
shoes.*
“May 22.—Apuleius, lib. ii. . . . . . . . . Anthony-a-Wood. . . . . Mr Jenkinson’s name (now Lord
Liverpool) being proposed as a difficult one to rhyme to, a lady
present hit off this verse extempore. N. B. Both father and son (Lord Hawkesbury) have a peculiarity of vision.
‘Happy Mr
Jenkinson, Happy Mr Jenkinson, I’m sure to you Your lady’s true, For you have got a winking son.’
“23.—Delrius.
. . .
“24.—
I, John Bell of Brackenbrig, lies under this
stane; Four of my sons laid it on my wame. I was man of my meat, and master of my wife, And lived in mine ain house without meikle strife. Gif thou be’st a better man in thy time than I was in mine, Tak this stane off my wame, and lay it upon thine.’
“25.—Meric
Casaubon on Spirits. . . . .
“26.—
‘There saw we learned Maroe’s golden tombe; The way he cut an English mile in length Thorow a rock of stone in one night’s space.’
* Some of Scott’s most intimate friends at the Bar, partly, no
doubt, from entertaining political opinions of another cast, were by no
means disposed to sympathize with the demonstrations of his military
enthusiasm at this period. For example, one of these gentlemen thus writes
to another in April, 1797:—“By the way, Scott
is become the merest trooper that ever was begotten by a drunken
dragoon on his trull in a hay loft. Not an idea crosses his mind, or a
word his lips, that has not an allusion to some d——d instrument or
evolution of the Cavalry—‘draw your swords—by single files to the
right of front—to the left wheel—charge.’ After all, he knows
little more about wheels and charges than I do about the wheels of
Ezekiel, or the King of
Pelew about charges of horning on six days’ date.
I saw them charge on Leith Walk a few days ago, and I can assure you it
was by no means orderly proceeded. Clerk and I are continually obliged to open a
six-pounder upon him in self-defence, but in spite of a temporary
confusion, he soon rallies and returns to the attack.”
“Christopher
Marlowe’sTragicall History of Dr Faustus a very remarkable thing. Grand
subject—end grand. . . . . . Copied ‘Prophecy of
Merlin’ from Mr
Clerk’s MS.
“27—Read Everybody’s Business is Nobody’s
Business, by Andrew Moreton. This was one of
Defoe’s many aliases like his
pen, in parts . . . . .
‘To Cuthbert, Car, and
Collingwood, to Shafto
and to Hall; To every gallant generous heart that for King
James did fall.’
“28—. . . . . . Anthony-a-Wood. . . . . Plain Proof of the True Father and Mother of the
Pretended Prince of Wales, by W.
Fuller. This fellow Was pilloried for a forgery some years. . .
. . . . . later Began Nathan der
Weise.
“June 29.—Read Introduction to a Compendium on Brief Examination, by W. S.—viz.
William Stafford—though it was for a time given to no
less a W. S. than William Shakspeare. A
curious treatise—the Political Economy of the Elizabethan Day—worth reprinting.
. . . .
“July 1.—Read Discourse of Military Discipline, by
Captain Barry—a very curious account
of the famous Low Countries’ armies—full of military hints worth note. .
. . . . Anthony
Wood again.
“3.—Nathan der Weise. . . . . Delrius. . . . .
“5.—Geutenberg’sBraut begun.
“6.—The Bride again.
Delrius.”
The note-book from which I have been copying is chiefly filled with
extracts from Apuleius and Anthony-a-Wood—most of them bearing, in some way, on the subject of popular
superstitions. It is a pity that many leaves have been torn out; for if unmutiluted, the
record would probably have enabled one to guess whether he had already planned his
“Essay on Fairies.”
I have mentioned his business at the bar as increasing at the same time.
His fee-book is now before me, and it shows that he made by his first year’s practice
L.24, 3s.; by the second, L.57, 15s.; by the third L.84, 4s.; by the fourth L.90; and in
his fifth year at the bar that is, from November, 1796, to July, 1797—L. 144, 10s.; of
which L.50 were fees from his father’s chamber.
His friend, Charles Kerr of
Abbotrule, had been residing a good deal about this time in Cumberland:
indeed, he was so enraptured with the scenery of the lakes as to take a house in Keswick
with the intention of spending half of all future years there. His letters to Scott (March, April, 1797) abound in expressions of wonder
that he should continue to devote so much of his vacations to the Highlands of Scotland,
“with every crag and precipice of which,” says he, “I
should imagine you would be familiar by this time; nay, that the goats themselves might
almost claim you for an acquaintance;” while another district lay so near him
at least as well qualified “to give a swell to the fancy.”
After the rising of the Court of Session in July,
Scott accordingly set out on a tour to the English lakes,
accompanied by his brother John, and Adam Fergusson. Their first stage was Halyards, in
Tweeddale, then inhabited by his friend’s father, the philosopher and historian; and they staid there for a day or
two, in the course of which Scott had his first and only
interview with David Ritchie, the original of his
Black Dwarf.* Proceeding southwards, the
tourists visited Carlisle, Penrith,—the vale of the Eamont, including Mayburgh and Brougham
Castle,—Ulswater and Windermere; and at length fixed their headquarters at the then
peaceful and sequestered little watering place of Gilsland, making excursions from
* See the Introduction to this Novel in the edition of 1830.
thence to the various scenes of romantic interest which are
commemorated in The Bridal of Triermain, and
otherwise leading very much the sort of life depicted among the loungers of St Ronan’s Well.
Scott was, on his first arrival in Gilsland, not a little engaged
with the beauty of one of the young ladies lodged under the same roof with him; and it was
on occasion of a visit in her company to some part of the Roman Wall that he indited his
lines— “Take these flowers, which, purple waving, On the ruined rampart grew,” &c.* But this was only a passing glimpse of flirtation. A week or so afterwards commenced a
more serious affair.
Riding one day with Ferguson, they
met, some miles from Gilsland, a young lady taking the air on horseback, whom neither of
them had previously remarked, and whose appearance instantly struck both so much, that they
kept her in view until they had satisfied themselves that she also was one of the party at
Gilsland. The same evening there was a ball, at which Captain
Scott produced himself in his regimentals, and Ferguson
also thought proper to be equipped in the uniform of the Edinburgh Volunteers. There was no
little rivalry among the young travellers as to who should first get presented to. the
unknown beauty of the morning’s ride; but though both the gentlemen in scarlet had
the advantage of being dancing partners, their friend succeeded in handing the fair
stranger to supper—and such was his first introduction to Charlotte
Margaret Carpenter.
Without the features of a regular beauty, she was
* I owe this circumstance to the recollection of Mr Claud Russel, accountant in Edinburgh, who was
one of the party. Previously I had always supposed these verses to have been
inspired by Miss Carpenter.
rich in personal attractions; “a
form that was fashioned as light as a fay’s;” a complexion of the
clearest and lightest olive; eyes large, deep-set and dazzling, of the finest Italian
brown; and a profusion of silken tresses, black as the raven’s wing—her address
hovering between the reserve of a pretty young Englishwoman who has not mingled largely in
general society, and a certain natural archness and gaiety that suited well with the
accompaniment of a French accent. A lovelier vision, as all who remember her in the bloom
of her days have assured me, could hardly have been imagined; and from that hour the fate
of the young poet was fixed.
She was the daughter of Jean
Charpentier, of Lyons, a devoted royalist, who held an office under
Government,* and Charlotte Volere, his wife. She and
her only brother, Charles Charpentier, had been
educated in the Protestant religion of their mother; and when their father died, which
occurred in the beginning of the Revolution, Madame Charpentier made
her escape with her children, first to Paris, and then to England, where they found a warm
friend and protector in the late Marquis of Downshire,
who had, in the course of his travels in France, formed an intimate acquaintance with the
family, and, indeed, spent some time under their roof. M. Charpentier
had, in his first alarm as to the coming Revolution, invested £4000 in English
securities—part in a mortgage upon Lord Downshire’s estates. On
the mother’s death, which occurred soon after her arrival in London, this nobleman
took on himself the character of sole guardian to her children; and Charles
Charpentier received in due time, through his interest, an appointment in
the service of the East India Company, in which he had by this time risen to
* In several deeds which I have seen, M. Charpentier is designed “Ecuyer du
roi.” What the post he held was I never heard.
the lucrative situation of commercial resident at Salem. His sister
was now making a little excursion, under the care of the lady who had superintended her
education, Miss Jane Nicolson, a daughter of
Dr Nicolson, Dean of Exeter, and granddaughter of William Nicolson, Bishop of Carlisle, well known as the
editor of “The English
Historical Library.” To some connexions which the learned prelate’s
family had ever since his time kept up in the diocese of Carlisle, Miss
Carpenter owed the direction of her summer tour.
Scott’s father was now in a very feeble state
of health, which accounts for his first announcement of this affair being made in a letter
to his mother; it is undated;—but by this time the
young lady had left Gilsland for Carlisle, where she remained until her destiny was
settled.
To Mrs Scott, Georges Square, Edinburgh.
“My Dear Mother,
“I should very ill deserve the care and affection with
which you have ever regarded me, were I to neglect my duty so far as to omit
consulting my father and you in the most
important step which I can possibly take in life, and upon the success of which
my future happiness must depend. It is with pleasure, I think, that I can avail
myself of your advice and instructions in an affair of so great importance as
that which I have at present on my hands. You will probably guess from this
preamble, that I am engaged in a matrimonial plan, which is really the case.
Though my acquaintance with the young lady has not been of long standing, this
circumstance is in some degree counterbalanced by the intimacy in which we have
lived, and by the opportunities which that intimacy has afforded me of
remarking her conduct and sentiments on many different occasions, some of which
were rather of a delicate nature, so that in fact I have seen more of her during the few weeks we have
been together, than I could have done after a much longer acquaintance,
shackled by the common forms of ordinary life. You will not expect from me a
description of her person,—for which I refer you to my brother, as also for a fuller account of all
the circumstances attending the business than can be comprised in the compass
of a letter. Without flying into raptures, for I must assure you that my
judgment as well as my affections are consulted upon this occasion; without
flying into raptures then, I may safely assure you, that her temper is sweet
and cheerful, her understanding good, and what I know will give you pleasure,
her principles of religion very serious. I have been very explicit with her
upon the nature of my expectations, and she thinks she can accommodate herself
to the situation which I should wish her to hold in society as my wife, which,
you will easily comprehend, I mean should neither be extravagant nor degrading.
Her fortune, though partly dependent upon her brother, who is high in office at
Madras, is very considerable—at present L.500 a-year. This, however, we must,
in some degree, regard as precarious,—I mean to the full extent; and indeed
when you know her you will not be surprised that I regard this circumstance
chiefly because it removes those prudential considerations which would
otherwise render our union impossible for the present. Betwixt her income and
my own professional exertions, I have little doubt we will be enabled to hold
the rank in society which my family and situation entitle me to fill.
“My dear mother, I cannot express to you the anxiety I
have that you will not think me flighty nor inconsiderate in this business.
Believe me, that experience, in one instance—you cannot fail to know to what I
allude—is too recent to permit my being so hasty in my
conclusions as the warmth of my temper might have otherwise prompted. I am also
most anxious that you should be prepared to show her kindness, which I know the
goodness of your own heart will prompt, more especially when I tell you that
she is an orphan, without relations, and almost without friends. Her guardian
is, I should say was, for she is of age, Lord
Downshire, to whom I must write for his consent, a piece of
respect to which he is entitled for his care of her, and there the matter rests
at present. I think I need not tell you that if I assume the new character
which I threaten, I shall be happy to find that in that capacity, I may make
myself more useful to my brothers, and especially to Anne, than I could in any other. On the other
hand, I shall certainly expect that my friends will endeavour to show every
attention in their power to a woman who forsakes for me, prospects much more
splendid than what I can offer, and who comes into Scotland without a single
friend but myself. I find I could write a great deal more upon this subject,
but as it is late, and as I must write to my father, I shall restrain myself. I
think (but you are best judge) that in the circumstances which I stand, you
should write to her, Miss Carpenter, under
cover to me at Carlisle.
“Write to me very fully upon this important
subject—send me your opinion, your advice, and above all, your blessing; you
will see the necessity of not delaying a minute in doing so, and in keeping
this business strictly private, till you hear farther
from me, since you are not ignorant that even at this advanced period, an
objection on the part of Lord Downshire, or
many other accidents, may intervene; in which case, I should little wish my
disappointment to be public.
“Believe me, my dear mother, ever your dutiful and affectionate son, Walter Scott.”
Scott remained in Cumberland until the Jedburgh assizes
recalled him to his legal duties. On arriving in that town, he immediately sent for his
friend Shortreed, whose memorandum records that the
evening of the 30th September, 1797, was one of the most joyous he ever spent.
“Scott” (he says) “was sair beside
himself about Miss Carpenter we toasted her twenty
times over and sat together, he raving about her, until it was one in the
morning.” He soon returned to Cumberland; and the following letters will throw
light on the character and conduct of the parties, and on the nature of the difficulties
which were presented by the prudence and prejudices of the young advocate’s
family-connexions. It appears that, at one stage of the business,
Scott had seriously contemplated leaving the bar at Edinburgh, and
establishing himself with his bride (I know not in what capacity) in one of the colonies.
To Walter Scott, Esq., Advocate, Edinburgh.
“Carlisle, October 4, 1797.
“It is only an hour since I received Lord Downshire’s letter. You will say, I
hope, that I am indeed very good to write so soon, but I almost fear that all
my goodness can never carry me through all this plaguy writing. Lord
Downshire will be happy to hear from you. He is the very best
man on earth—his letter is kind and affectionate, and full of advice, much in
the style of your last. I am to consult most carefully my heart. Do you believe I did not do it
when I gave you my consent? It is true I don’t like to reflect on that
subject. I am afraid. It is very awful to think it is for life. How can I ever
laugh after such tremendous thoughts? I believe never more. I am hurt to find
that your friends don’t think the match a prudent one. If it is not agreeable to them all, you must then forget me, for
I have too much pride to think of connecting myself in a family were I not
equal to them. Pray, my dear sir, write to Lord D.
immediately—explain yourself to him as you would to me, and he will, I am sure,
do all he can to serve us. If you really love me, you must love him, and write
to him as you would to a friend.
Adieu,—au plaisir devous revoir bientôt.
C. C.’
To Robert Shortreed, Esq., Sheriff-Substitute,
Jedburgh.
“Selkirk, 8th October 1797. “Dear Bob,
“This day a long train of anxieties was put an end to
by a letter from Lord Downshire, couched in
the most flattering terms, giving his consent to my marriage with his ward. I
am thus far on my way to Carlisle—only for a visit—because, betwixt her
reluctance to an immediate marriage, and the imminent approach of the session,
I am afraid I shall be thrown back to the Christmas holidays. I shall be home
in about eight days.
“Ever yours, sincerely, W. Scott.”
To Miss Christian Rutherford, Ashestiel, by
Selkirk.
“Has it never happened to you, my dear Miss Christy, in the course of your domestic
economy, to meet with a drawer stuffed so very, so extremely full, that it was very difficult to pull it open, however
desirous you might be to exhibit its contents? In case this miraculous event
has ever taken place, you may somewhat conceive from thence the cause of my
silence, which has really proceeded from my having a very great deal to
communi-cate; so much so, that I
really hardly know how to begin. As for my affection and friendship for you,
believe me, sincerely, they neither slumber nor sleep, and it is only your
suspicions of their drowsiness which incline me to write at this period of a
business highly interesting to me, rather than when I could have done so with
something like certainty—Hem! Hem! It must come out at once—I am in a very fair
way of being married to a very amiable young woman, with whom I formed an
attachment in the course of my tour. She was born in France—her parents were of
English extraction—the name Carpenter. She
was left an orphan early in life, and educated in England, and is at present
under the care of a Miss Nicolson, a
daughter of the late Dean of Exeter, who was on a visit to
her relations in Cumberland. Miss Carpenter is of age, but
as she lies under great obligations to the Marquis of
Downshire, who was her guardian, she cannot take a step of such
importance without his consent—and I daily expect his final answer upon the
subject. Her fortune is dependent, in a great measure, upon an only and very
affectionate brother. He is Commercial
Resident at Salem in India, and has settled upon her an annuity of L.500. Of
her personal accomplishments I shall only say, that she possesses very good
sense, with uncommon good temper, which I have seen put to most severe trials.
I must bespeak your kindness and friendship for her. You may easily believe I
shall rest very much both upon Miss R.
and you for giving her the carte de
pays, when she comes to Edinburgh. I may give you a hint
that there is no romance in her composition—and that though born in France, she
has the sentiments and manners of an Englishwoman, and does not like to be
thought otherwise. A very slight tinge in her pronunciation is all which marks
the foreigner. She is at pre-sent at Carlisle, where I
shall join her as soon as our arrangements are finally made. Some difficulties
have occurred in settling matters with my father, owing to certain
prepossessions which you can easily conceive his adopting. One main article was
the uncertainty of her provision, which has been in part removed by the safe
arrival of her remittances for this year, with assurances of their being
regular and even larger in future, her brother’s situation being
extremely lucrative. Another objection was her birth; ‘Can any good
thing come out of Nazareth?’ but as it was birth merely and
solely, this has been abandoned. You will be more interested about other points
regarding her, and I can only say that—though our acquaintance was shorter than
ever I could have thought of forming such a connexion upon—it was exceedingly
close, and gave me full opportunities for observation—and if I had parted with
her, it must have been for ever, which both parties began to think would be a
disagreeable thing. She has conducted herself through the whole business with
so much propriety as to make a strong impression in her favour upon the minds
of my father and mother, prejudiced as they were against her, from the
circumstances I have mentioned. We shall be your neighbours in the New Town,
and intend to live very quietly; Charlotte will need many
lessons from Miss R. in housewifery. Pray show this letter
to Miss R. with my very best compliments. Nothing can now
stand in the way except Lord Downshire, who may not think
the match a prudent one for Miss C.—but he will surely
think her entitled to judge for herself at her age, in what she would wish to
place her happiness. She is not a beauty, by any means, but her person and face
are very engaging. She is a brunette—her manners are lively, but when
necessary, she can be very serious. She was baptized and educated a Protestant
of the Church of England. I think I
have now said enough upon this subject. Do not write till you hear from me
again, which will be when all is settled. I wish this important event may
hasten your return to town. I send a goblin story, with best compliments to the
misses, and ever am, yours affectionately,
Walter Scott.
“The Erl-King. (The Erl-King is a goblin that
haunts the Blade Forest in Thuringia, —To be read by
a candle particularly long in the snuff.) O, who rides by night thro’ the woodland so wild? It is the fond father embracing his child; And close the boy nestles within his loved arm, To hold himself fast, and to keep himself warm. ‘O father, see yonder! see yonder!’ he says; ‘My boy, upon what doest thou fearfully gaze?’ ‘O, ’tis the Erl-King with his crown and his
shroud.’— ‘No, my son, it is but a dark wreath of the
cloud.’ (The Erl-King
speaks.) ‘O, come and go with me thou loveliest child, By many a gay sport shall thy time be beguiled; My mother keeps for thee full many a fair toy, And many a fine flower shall she pluck for my boy.’
‘O father, my father, and did you not hear The Erl-King whisper so low in my ear?’— ‘Be still my heart’s darling, my child, be at
ease, It was but the wild blast as it sung thro’ the
trees.’ Erl-King. ‘O wilt thou go with me, thou loveliest boy? My daughter shall tend thee with care and with joy; She shall bear thee so lightly thro’ wet and
thro’ wild, And press thee, and kiss thee, and sing to my child.’
‘O father, my father, and saw you not plain, The Erl-King’s pale daughter glide past thro’
the rain?’— ‘O yes, my loved treasure, I knew it full soon, It was the grey willow that danced to the moon.’ Erl-King. ‘Oh come and go with me, no longer delay, Or else, silly child, I will drag thee away.’— ‘Oh father! Oh father! now, now keep your hold, The Erl-King has seized me—his grasp is so cold!’
Sore trembled the father, he spurr’d thro’ the
wild, Clasping close to his bosom his shuddering child; He reaches his dwelling in doubt and in dread, But, clasp’d to his bosom, the infant was dead!”—
“You see I have not altogether lost the faculty of
rhyming. I assure you there is no small impudence in attempting a version
of that ballad, as it has been translated by Lewis. All good things be with you.
W. S.”
To Walter Scott, Esq., Advocate, Edinburgh.
“London, October 15, 1797. “Sir,
“I received your letter with pleasure, instead of
considering it as an intrusion. One thing more being fully stated would have
made it perfectly satisfactory, namely, the sort of income you immediately
possess, and the sort of maintenance Miss
Carpenter, in case of your demise, might reasonably expect.
Though she is of an age to judge for herself in the choice of an object that
she would like to run the race of life with, she has referred the subject to
me. As her friend and guardian, I in duty must try to secure her happiness, by
endeavouring to keep her comfortable immediately, and to prevent her being left
destitute, in case of any unhappy contingency. Her good sense and good
education are her chief fortune; therefore, in the worldly way of talking, she
is not entitled to much. Her brother,
who was also left under my care at an early period, is excessively fond of her;
he has no person to think of but her
as yet; and will certainly be enabled to make her very handsome presents, as he
is doing very well in India, where I sent him some years ago, and where he
bears a very high character, I am happy to say. I do not throw out this to
induce you to make any proposal beyond what prudence and discretion recommend;
but I hope I shall hear from you by return of post, as I may be shortly called
out of town to some distance. As children are in general the consequence of an
happy union, I should wish to know what may be your thoughts or wishes upon
that subject. I trust you will not think me too particular; indeed I am sure
you will not, when you consider that I am endeavouring to secure the happiness
and welfare of an estimable young woman whom you admire and profess to be
partial and attached to, and for whom I have the highest regard, esteem, and
respect. I am, Sir, your obedient humble servant,
Downshire.”
To the Same.
“Carlisle, Oct. 22.
“Your last letter, my dear sir, contains a very fine
train of perhaps, and of so many pretty conjectures,
that it is not flattering you to say you excel in the art of tormenting
yourself. As it happens, you are quite wrong in all your suppositions. I have
been waiting for Lord D.’s answer to
your letter, to give a full answer to your very proper enquiries about my
family. Miss Nicolson says, that when
she did offer to give you some information, you refused it—and advises me now to wait for Lord
D.’s letter. Don’t believe I have been idle; I have
been writing very long letters to him, and all about you. How can you think
that I will give an answer about the house until I hear
from London?—that is quite impossible; and I believe you are a little out of
your senses to imagine I can be in Edinburgh before the twelfth of next month.
O, my dear sir, no—you must not think of it this great
while. I am much flattered by your mother’s remembrance; present
my respectful compliments to her. You don’t mention your father in your
last anxious letter—I hope he is better. I am expecting
every day to hear from my brother. You may tell your uncle he is commercial
resident at Salem. He will find the name of Charles
C. in his India list. My compliments to Captain Scott. Sans
adieu,
C. C.”
To the Same.
“Carlisle, Oct. 25.
“Indeed, Mr Scott,
I am by no means pleased with all this writing. I have told you how much I
dislike it, and yet you still persist in asking me to write, and that by return
of post. O, you really are quite out of your senses. I should not have indulged
you in that whim of yours, had you not given me that hint that my silence gives
an air of mystery. I have no reason that can detain me in acquainting you that
my father and mother were French, of the name of
Charpentier; he had a place under government; their
residence was at Lyons, where you would find on enquiries that they lived in
good repute and in very good style. I had the misfortune
of losing my father before I could know the value of such a parent. At his
death we were left to the care of Lord D.,
who was his very great friend, and very soon after I had the affliction of
losing my mother. Our taking the name of Carpenter was on
my brother’s going to India, to prevent any little difficulties that
might have occurred. I hope now you are pleased. Lord D.
could have given you every information, as he has been ac-quainted with all my family. You say you almost love
him, but until your almost comes to a quite, I cannot love you. Before I conclude
this famous epistle, I will give you a little hint—that is, not to put so many
must in your letters—it is beginning rather too soon; and another thing is, that I take the
liberty not to mind them much, but I expect you mind me. You must take care of yourself; you must think of
me, and believe me yours sincerely,
C. C.”
To the Same.
“Carlisle, Oct. 26.
“I have only a minute before the post goes, to assure
you, my dear sir, of the welcome reception of the stranger.* The very great
likeness to a friend of mine will endear him to me; he shall be my constant
companion, but I wish he could give me an answer to a thousand questions I have
to make—one in particular, what reason have you for so many fears you express?
Have your friends changed? Pray let me know the truth—they perhaps don’t
like me being French. Do write immediately—let it be in
better spirits. Et croyez-moi toujours votre sincere
C. C.”
To the Same.
“October 31st.
“. . . . All your apprehensions about your friends
make me very uneasy. At your father’s age prejudices are not easily overcome—old
people have, you know, so much more wisdom and experience, that we must be
guided by them. If he has an objection on my being French, I excuse him with all my heart, as I don’t love them
myself. O how all these things plague me—when will it end? And to complete the
matter, you talk of
* A miniature of Scott.
going to the West Indies. I am certain your father and
uncle say you are a hot heady young man, quite mad, and I assure you I join with
them; and I must believe, that, when you have such an idea, you have then
determined to think no more of me. I begin to repent of having accepted your
picture. I will send it back again, if you ever think
again about the West Indies. Your family then would love
me very much—to forsake them for a stranger, a
person who does not possess half the charms and good qualities that you
imagine. I think I hear your uncle calling you a hot heady young man. I am
certain of it, and I am generally right in my
conjectures. What does your sister say
about it? I suspect that she thinks on the matter as I should do, with fears
and anxieties for the happiness of her brother. If it be proper, and you think
it would be acceptable, present my best compliments to
your mother; and to my old acquaintance
Captain Scott I beg to be
remembered. This evening is the first ball—don’t you wish to be of our
party? I guess your answer—it would give me infinite pleasure. En
attendant le plaisir de vous revoir, je suis toujours votre
constante
Charlotte.”
To the Same.
“The Castle, Hartford, October 29, 1797. “Sir,
“I received the favour of your letter. It was so
manly, honourable, candid, and so full of good sense, that I think Miss Carpenter’s friends cannot in any way
object to the union you propose. Its taking place, when or where, will depend
upon herself, as I shall write to her by this night’s post. Any provision
that may be given to her by her brother, you will have settled upon her and her children; and I hope, with
all my heart, that every earthly happiness may attend you both. I shall be
always happy to hear it, and to subscribe myself your faithful friend and
obedient humble servant,
Downshire.”
(On the same sheet.)
“Carlisle, Nov. 4.
“Last night I received the enclosed for you from
Lord Downshire. If it has your
approbation, I shall be very glad to see you as soon as will be convenient. I
have a thousand things to tell you; but let me beg of you not to think for some
time of a house. I am sure I can convince you of the propriety and prudence of
waiting until your father will settle
things more to your satisfaction, and until I have heard from my brother. You must be of
my way of thinking.—Adieu.
C. C.”
Scott obeyed this summons, and I suppose remained in
Carlisle until the Court of Session met, which is always on the 12th of November.
To W. Scott, Esq., Advocate, Edinburgh.
“Carlisle, Nov. 14th,
“Your letter never could have come in a more
favourable moment. Any thing you could have said would have been well received.
You surprise me much at the regret you express you had of leaving Carlisle.
Indeed, I can’t believe it was on my account, I was so uncommonly stupid.
I don’t know what could be the matter with me, I was so very low, and
felt really ill: it was even a trouble to speak. The settling of our little
plans—all looked so much in earnest—that I began reflecting more seriously than
I generally do, or approve of. I don’t think that very thoughtful
people ever can be happy. As this is my maxim, adieu to all thoughts. I have
made a determination of being pleased with every thing, and with every body in
Edinburgh; a wise system for happiness, is it not? I enclose the lock. I have
had almost all my hair cut off. Miss
Nicolson has taken some, which she sends to London to be made to
something, but this you are not to know of, as she intends to present it to
you. * * * * I am happy to hear of your father’s being better pleased as
to money matters; it will come at last; don’t let that trifle disturb
you. Adieu, Monsieur, j’ai l’honneur d’etre votre
tres humble et tres
ObeissanteC. C.”
“Carlisle, Nov. 27th.
“You have made me very triste all day. Pray never more complain of being poor.
Are you not ten times richer than I am? Depend on yourself and your profession.
I have no doubt you will rise very high, and be a great rich
man, but we should look down to be contented with our lot, and banish
all disagreeable thoughts. We shall do very well. I am very sorry to hear you
have such a bad head. I hope I shall nurse away all your
aches. I think you write too much. When I am mistress I
shall not allow it. How very angry I should be with you if you were to part
with Lenore. Do you really
believe I should think it an unnecessary expense where your health and pleasure
can be concerned? I have a better opinion of you, and I am very glad you
don’t give up the cavalry, as I love any thing that is stylish. Don’t forget to find a stand for the old carriage, as
I shall like to keep it, in case we should have to go any journey; it is so
much more convenient than the post
chaises, and will do very well till we can keep our
carriage. What an idea of yours was that to mention where you wish to
have your bones laid! If you were married, I should
think you were tired of me. A very pretty compliment before
marriage. I hope sincerely that I shall not live to see that day. If
you always have those cheerful thoughts, how very pleasant and gay you must be.
“Adieu, my dearest friend, take care of yourself if
you love me, as I have no wish that you should visit that beautiful and romantic scene, the burying-place. Adieu, once more, and
believe that you are loved very sincerely by
C. C.”
“Dec. 10th.
“If I could but really believe that my letter gave
you only half the pleasure you express, I should almost think, my dearest
Scott, that I should get very fond of
writing merely for the pleasure to indulge you—that is
saying a great deal. I hope you are sensible of the compliment I pay you, and
don’t expect I shall always be so pretty behaved.
You may depend on me, my dearest friend, for fixing as early a day as I possibly can; and if it happens to be not quite so
soon as you wish, you must not be angry with me. It is very unlucky you are
such a bad housekeeper—as I am no better. I shall try. I hope to have very soon
the pleasure of seeing you, and to tell you how much I love you; but I wish the
first fortnight was over. With all my love, and those sort of pretty
things—adieu.
Charlotte.
P.S. Etudiez votre
Francais. Remember you are to teach me Italian in
return, but I shall be but a stupid scholar. Aimez Charlotte.”
“Carlisle, Dec. 14th.
***** “I heard last night from my friends in London,
and I shall certainly have the deed this week. I will send it to you directly;
but not to lose so much time, as you have been reckoning, I will prevent any
little delay that might happen by the post, by fixing already next Wednesday
for your coming here, and on Thursday the 21st, Oh, my dear Scott—on that day I shall be yours for ever. C. C.
“P.S. Arrange it so that we shall see none of your
family the night of our arrival. I shall be so tired, and such a fright, I
should not be seen to advantage.”
To these extracts I may add the following from the first leaf of an old
black-letter Bible at Abbotsford:—
“Secundum morem majorum hæc de
familiâ Gualteri Scott, Jurisconsulti Edinensis, in
librum hunc sacrum manu suâ conscripta sunt.
“Gualterus
Scott, filius Gualteri Scott et
Annæ Rutherford, natus erat apud Edinam 15mo die
Augusti, A. D. 1771.
“Socius Facultatis Juridicæ
Edinensis receptus erat 11mo die Julii, A. D. 1792.
“In ecclesiam Sanctæ Mariæ
apud Carlisle, uxorem duxit Margaretam Charlottam Carpenter,
filiam quondam Joannis Charpentier et Charlottæ
Volere, Lugdunensem, 24to die Decembris, 1797.”
CHAPTER IX EARLY MARRIED LIFE—LASSWADE COTTAGE—MONK
LEWIS—TRANSLATION OF GOETZ VON BERLICHINGEN,
PUBLISHED—VISIT TO LONDON—HOUSE OF ASPEN—DEATH OF SCOTT’S
FATHER—FIRST ORIGINAL BALLADS—GLENFINLAS, &c.—UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENTS—APPOINTMENT TO THE
SHERIFFSHIP OF SELKIRKSHIRE—1798-1799.
Scott carried his bride to a lodging in George Street, Edinburgh; a house which
he had taken in South Castle Street not being quite prepared for her reception. The first
fortnight, to which she had looked with such anxiety, was, I believe, more than sufficient
to convince her husband’s family that, however rashly he had formed the connexion,
she had the sterling qualities of a good wife. Notwithstanding the little leaning to the
pomps and vanities of the world, which her letters have not concealed, she had made up her
mind to find her happiness in better things; and so long as their circumstances continued
narrow, no woman could have conformed herself to them with more of good feeling and good
sense. Some habits, new in the quiet domestic circles of Edinburgh citizens, did not escape
criticism; and in particular, I have heard herself, in her most prosperous days, laugh
heartily at the remonstrances of her George Street landlady, when it was discovered that
the southron lodger chose to sit usually, and not on high occasions merely, in her
drawing-room,—on which subject the mother-in-law was disposed to take the thrifty
old-fashioned dame’s side.
I cannot fancy that Lady Scott’s
manners or ideas could ever have amalgamated very well with those of her husband’s
parents; but the feeble state of the old gentleman’s health prevented her from seeing
them constantly; and without any affectation of strict intimacy, they soon were, and always
continued to be, very good friends. Anne Scott, the
delicate sister to whom the Ashestiel
Memoir alludes so tenderly, speedily formed a warm and sincere attachment for
the stranger; but death, in a short time, carried off that interesting creature, who seems
to have had much of her brother’s imaginative and romantic temperament, without his
power of controlling it.
Mrs Scott’s arrival was welcomed with unmingled
delight by the brothers of the Mountain. The two ladies who had
formerly given life and grace to their society were both recently married. We have seen
Miss Erskine’s letter of farewell; and I
have before me another not less affectionate, written when Miss
Cranstoun gave her hand (a few months later) to Godfrey
Wenceslaus, Count of Purgstall, a nobleman of large possessions in Styria,
who had been spending some time in Edinburgh. Scott’s house in
South Castle Street,—(soon after exchanged for one of the same sort in North Castle Street,
which he purchased, and inhabited down to 1826)—became now to the
Mountain what Cranstoun’s and
Erskine’s had been while their
accomplished sisters remained with them. The officers of the Light Horse, too, established
a club among themselves, supping once a-week at each other’s houses in rotation. The
young lady thus found two somewhat different, but both highly agreeable, circles ready to
receive her with cordial kindness; and the evening hours passed in a round of innocent
gaiety, all the arrangements being conducted in a simple and in ex-pensive fashion suitable to young people whose days were mostly
laborious, and very few of their purses heavy. Scott and
Erskine had always been fond of the theatre; the pretty bride was
passionately so—and I doubt if they ever spent a week in Edinburgh without indulging
themselves in this amusement. But regular dinners and crowded assemblies were in those
years quite unthought of. Perhaps nowhere could have been found a society on so small a
scale including more of vigorous intellect, varied information, elegant tastes, and real
virtue, affection, and mutual confidence. How often have I heard its members, in the midst
of the wealth and honours which most of them in due season attained, sigh over the
recollection of those humbler days, when love and ambition were young and buoyant—and no
difference of opinion was able to bring even a momentary chill over the warmth of
friendship.
“You will imagine,” writes the Countess Purgstall to Scott, from one of her Styrian castles, “how my heart burnt within
me, my dear, dear friend, while I read your thrice welcome letter. Had all the gods and
goddesses, from Saturn to La Liberté, laid their
heads together, they could not have presented me with any thing that so accorded with my
fondest wishes. To have a conviction that those I love are happy, and don’t forget
me—I have no way to express my feelings—they come in a flood and destroy me. Could my
George but light on another Charlotte, there would be but one crook left in my lot—to wit,
that Reggersburg does not serve as a vista for the Parliament Square.* Would some
earthquake engulf the vile
* The ancient castle of Reggersburg (if engravings may be
trusted, one of the most magnificent in Germany) was the chief seat of the
Purgstalls. In situation and extent it seems to resemble
the castle of Stirling. The Countess writes thus, about the same time, to another
of the Mountain:—“As for Scott and his sweet little
tract between, or the spirit of our rock introduce me to Jack the Giant Queller’s shoemaker; Lord, Lord, how
delightful! Could I choose, I should just for the present patronise the shoemaker, and then
the moment I got you ail snug in this old hall, steal the shoes and lock them away till the
indignation of the Lord passes by poor Old England! Earl Walter would
play the devil with me, but his Charlotte’s smiles would speak
thanks ineffable, and the angry clouds pass as before the sun in his strength. How divinely
your spectre scenes would come in here. Surely there is no vanity in saying that earth has
no mountains like ours. O, how delightful to see the lady that is blessed with
Earl Walter’s love, and that had mind enough to discover the
blessing. Some kind post, I hope, will soon tell me that your happiness is enlarged, in the
only way it can be enlarged, for you have no chance now I think of taking Buonaparte prisoner. What sort of a genius will he be is a
very anxious speculation indeed; whether the philosopher, the lawyer, the antiquary, the
poet, or the hero will prevail—the spirit whispers unto me a happy melange of the two last—he will lisp in numbers and kick at la Nourrice. On his arrival present my fondest wishes
to his honour, and don’t, pray, give him a name out of your list of round-table
knights, but some simple Christian appellation from the House of Harden. And is it then
true, my God, that Earl Walter is a Benedick, and that I am in Styria? Well, bless us all, prays the separated
from her brethren.
J. A. P.” “Hainfeld, July 20, 1798.”
wife, I consider them as a sort of papa and mamma
to you all, and am happy the gods have ordered it so.”
Another extract from the Family Bible may close
this letter—“M. C. Scott puerum edidit 18to die Octobris 1778, qui postero
die obiit apud Edinam.”
In the summer of this year Scott had
hired a pretty cottage at Lasswade, on the Esk, about six miles from Edinburgh, and there,
as the back of Madame de P.’s letter shows, he
received it from the hands of Professor Stewart. It
is a small house, but with one room of good dimensions, which Mrs
Scott’s taste set off to advantage at very humble cost a paddock or
two and a garden (commanding a most beautiful view) in which Scott
delighted to train his flowers and creepers. Never, I have heard him say, was he prouder of
his handywork than when he had completed the fashioning of a rustic archway, now overgrown
with hoary ivy, by way of ornament to the entrance from the Edinburgh road. In this retreat
they spent some happy summers, receiving the visits of their few chosen friends from the
neighbouring city, and wandering at will amidst some of the most romantic scenery that
Scotland can boast—Scott’s dearest haunt in the days of his
boyish ramblings. They had neighbours, too, who were not slow to cultivate their
acquaintance. With the Clerks of Pennycuick, with Mackenzie, the Man of Feeling, who then occupied the
charming villa of Auchendinny, and with Lord
Woodhouselee, Scott had from an earlier date been
familiar; and it was while at Lasswade that he formed intimacies, even more important in
their results, with the noble families of Melville and
Buccleuch, both of whom have castles in the same valley.
“Sweet are the paths, O passing sweet, By Esk’s fair streams that run, O’er airy steep, thro’ copsewood deep Impervious to the sun; “From that fair dome where suit is paid By blast of bugle free,* To Auchendinny’s hazel shade, And haunted Woodhouslee. “Who knows not Melville’s beechy grove, And Roslin’s rocky glen; Dalkeith, which all the virtues love, And classic Hawthornden?”
Another verse reminds us that “There the rapt poet’s step may rove;”— and it was amidst these delicious solitudes that he did produce the pieces which laid
the imperishable foundations of all his fame. It was here that when his warm heart was
beating with young and happy love, and his whole mind and spirit were nerved by new motives
for exertion; it was here, that in the ripened glow of manhood he seems to have first felt
something of his real strength, and poured himself out in those splendid original ballads
which were at once to fix his name.
I must, however, approach these more leisurely. When William Erskine was in London in the spring of this year,
he happened to meet in society with Matthew Gregory
Lewis, M.P. for Hindon, whose romance of “The Monk,” with the ballads which it included, had
made for him, in those barren days, a brilliant reputation. This good-natured fopling, the
pet and plaything of certain fashionable circles, was then busy with that miscellany which
at length came out in 1801, under the name of “Tales of Wonder,” and was beating up in all
quarters for contributions. Erskine showed LewisScott’s versions of
“Lenore” and the
“Wild Huntsman;” and when he
mentioned that his friend had other specimens of the German diablerie in his portfolio, the collector anxiously requested that
Scott might be en-
* Pennycuick.
listed in his cause. The brushwood splendour of
“The Monk’s” fame, “The false and foolish fire that’s whiskt about By popular air, and glares, and then goes out,”* had a dazzling influence among the unknown aspirants of Edinburgh; and
Scott, who was perhaps at all times rather disposed to hold
popular favour as the surest test of literary merit, and who certainly continued through
life to over-estimate all talents except his own, considered this invitation as a very
flattering compliment. He immediately wrote to Lewis, placing whatever
pieces he had translated and imitated from the German “Volkslieder” at his disposal. The following is the first of
Lewis’s letters to him that has been preserved—it is without
date, but marked by Scott “1798.”
To Walter Scott, Esq., Advocate, Edinburgh.
Sir,
“I cannot delay expressing to you how much I feel
obliged to you, both for the permission to publish the ballads I requested, and
for the handsome manner in which that permission was granted. The plan I have
proposed to myself, is to collect all the marvellous ballads which I can lay
hands upon. Ancient as well as modern will be comprised in my design; and I
shall even allow a place to Sir Gawaine’s Foul
Ladye, and the Ghost that came to Margaret’s door and tirled at the pin. But as a ghost or
a witch is a sine qua non ingredient
in all the dishes of which I mean to compose my hobgoblin repast, I am afraid
the ‘Lied von Treue’ does not come within
the plan. With regard to the romance in ‘Claudina von
Villa Bella,’ if I am not mistaken, it is only a fragment in
the original; but,
* Oldham.
should you have finished it, you will oblige me much by
letting me have a copy of it, as well as of the other marvellous traditionary
ballads you were so good as to offer me.
“Should you be in Edinburgh when I arrive there, I
shall request Erskine to contrive an
opportunity for my returning my personal thanks. Mean while I beg you to
believe me your most obedient and obliged
M. G. Lewis.”
When Lewis reached Edinburgh he met
Scott accordingly, and the latter told Allan Cunningham, thirty years afterwards, that he thought
he had never felt such elation as when the “Monk” invited
him to dine with him for the first time at his hotel. Since he gazed on Burns in his seventeenth year, he had seen no one
enjoying, by general consent, the fame of a poet; and Lewis, whatever
Scott might, on maturer consideration, think of his title to such
fame, had certainly done him no small service; for the ballads of “Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogine,” and
“Durandarte,” had
rekindled effectually in his breast the spark of poetical ambition. Lady Charlotte Campbell (now Bury),
always distinguished by her passion for elegant letters, was ready, “in pride of
rank, in beauty’s bloom,” to do the honours of Scotland to the
“Lion of Mayfair;” and I believe Scott’s first
introduction to Lewis took place at one of her Ladyship’s
parties. But they met frequently, and, among other places, at Dalkeith—as witness one of
Scott’s marginal notes, written in 1825, on Lord Byron’s Diary.—“Poor fellow,”
says Byron, “he died a martyr to his new riches—of a second
visit to Jamaica. “I’d give the lands of Deloraine Dark Musgrave were alive again;” that is, “I would give many a sugar-cane, Monk Lewis were alive again.” To which Scott adds: “I would pay my share! how few
friends one has whose faults are only ridiculous. His visit was one of humanity to
ameliorate the condition of his slaves. He did much good by stealth, and was a most
generous creature . . . . Lewis was fonder of great people than he
ought to have been, either as a man of talent or as a man of fashion. He had always
dukes and duchesses in his mouth, and was pathetically fond of any one that had a
title. You would have sworn he had been a parvenu of yesterday,
yet he had lived all his life in good society . . . . Mat had
queerish eyes—they projected like those of some insects, and were flattish on the
orbit. His person was extremely small and boyish—he was indeed the least man I ever
saw, to be strictly well and neatly made. I remember a picture of him by Saunders being handed round at Dalkeith House. The
artist had ingeniously flung a dark folding-mantle around the form, under which was
half-hid a dagger, a dark lantern, or some such cut-throat appurtenance; with all this
the features were preserved and ennobled. It passed from hand to hand into that of
Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, who, hearing the
general voice affirm that it was very like, said aloud, ‘Like Mat
Lewis! Why that picture’s like A Man!’ He looked, and lo, Mat Lewis’s head was at
his elbow. This boyishness went through life with him. He was a child, and a spoiled
child, but a child of high imagination; and so he wasted himself on ghost-stories and
German romances. He had the finest ear for rhythm I ever met with—finer than
Byron’s.”
During Lewis’s stay in
Scotland this year, he spent a day or two with Scott at
Musselburgh, where the yeomanry corps were in quarters.
Scott received him in his lodgings, under the roof of an ancient
dame, who afforded him much amusement by her daily colloquies with the fishwomen—the Mucklebackets of the place. His delight in studying the dialect of
these people is well remembered by the survivors of the cavalry, and must have astonished
the stranger dandy. While walking about before dinner on one of these days, Mr Skene’s recitation of the German Kriegslied, “Der
Abschied’s Tag ist da” (the day of departure is come), delighted
both Lewis and Scott; and the latter produced
next morning that spirited little piece in the same measure, which, embodying the volunteer
ardour of the time, was forthwith adopted as the troop-song of the Edinburgh Light Horse.
In January, 1799, Mr Lewis appears
negotiating with a bookseller, named Bell, for the
publication of Scott’s version of Goethe’s Tragedy, “Goetz von Berlichingen of the Iron Hand.” Bell
seems finally to have purchased the copyright for twenty-five guineas, and twenty-five more
to be paid in case of a second edition—which was never called for until long after the
copyright had expired. Lewis writes, “I have made him
distinctly understand, that, if you accept so small a sum, it will be only because this
is your first publication.” The edition of “Lenore” and the “Yager,” in 1796, had been completely forgotten; and
Lewis thought of those ballads exactly as if they had been MS.
contributions to his own “Tales of
Wonder,” still lingering on the threshold of the press. The Goetz appeared accordingly, with
Scott’s name on the titlepage, in the following February.
In March, 1799, he carried his wife to London, this being the first time
that he had seen the metropolis since the days of his infancy. The acquaintance of
Lewis served to introduce him to some literary and fashionable
society, with which he was much amused; but his great anxiety was to examine the
antiquities of the Tower and Westminster Abbey, and to make some researches among the MSS.
of the British Museum. He found his Goetz
spoken of favourably, on the whole, by the critics of the time; but it does not appear to
have attracted general attention. The truth is, that, to have given Goethe any thing like a fair chance with the English
public, his first drama ought to have been translated at least ten years before. The
imitators had been more fortunate than the master, and this work, which constitutes one of
the most important landmarks in the history of German literature, had not come even into
Scott’s hands, until he had familiarized himself with the ideas which it first
opened, in the feeble and puny mimicries of writers already forgotten. He readily
discovered the vast gulf which separated Goethe from the German
dramatists on whom he had heretofore been employing himself; but the public in general drew
no such distinctions, and the English Goetz was soon afterwards condemned to oblivion through the unsparing ridicule
showered on whatever bore the name of German play, by the inimitable
caricature of The Rovers.
The tragedy of Goethe, however,
has in truth nothing in common with the wild absurdities against which Canning and Ellis
had levelled the arrows of their wit. It is a broad, bold, free, and most picturesque
delineation of real characters, manners, and events; the first fruits, in a word, of that
passionate admiration for Shakspeare, to which all
that is excellent in the recent imaginative literature of Germany must be traced. With what
delight must Scott have found the scope and manner of
our Elizabethan drama revived on a foreign stage at the call of a real master: with what
double delight must he have seen Goethe seizing
for the noblest purposes of art, men and modes of life, scenes, incidents, and
transactions, all claiming near kindred with those that had from boyhood formed the chosen
theme of his own sympathy and reflection. In the baronial robbers of the Rhine, stern,
bloody, and rapacious, but frank, generous, and, after their fashion, courteous; in their
forays upon each other’s domains, the besieged castles, the plundered herds, the
captive knights, the browbeaten bishop, and the baffled liege-lord, who vainly strove to
quell all these turbulences, Scott had before him a vivid image of the
life of his own and the rival Border clans, familiarized to him by a hundred nameless
minstrels. If it be doubtful whether, but for “Percy’s Reliques,” he would ever have
thought of editing their ballads, I think it not less so whether, but for the Ironhanded
Goetz, it would ever have flashed upon his mind,
that in the wild traditions which these recorded, he had been unconsciously assembling
materials for more works of high art than the longest life could serve him to elaborate.
As the version of the Goetz
has at length been included in Scott’spoetical works, I need not make it the
subject of more detailed observation here. The reader who turns to it for the first time
will be no less struck than I was under similar circumstances a dozen years ago, with the
many points of resemblance between the tone and spirit of Goethe’s delineation, and that afterwards adopted by the translator
in some of the most remarkable of his original works. One example, however, may be
forgiven.
‘A loud alarm, with shouts and firing—Selbiss is borne in wounded by two Troopers.Selbiss. Leave me here, and hasten to Goetz. 1st Trooper. Let us stay—you need our aid. Sel. Get one of you on the watch-tower, and tell mo how it goes. 1st Troop. How shall I get up? 2d Troop. Get upon my shoulder; you can then reach the ruined
part. 1st Troop. (On the lower). Alas! Alas! Sel. What seest thou? Troop. Your cavaliers fly to the hill. Sel. Hellish cowards! I would that they stood, and that I had a
ball through my head! Ride one of you at full speed Curse and thunder them back to the
field! See’st thou Goetz? Troop. I see the three black feathers in the midst of the
tumult. Sel. Swim, brave swimmer—I lie here. Troop. A white plume! Whose is that? Sel. The Captain. Troop. Goetz gallops upon
him—Crash—down he goes. Sel. The Captain? Troop. Yes. Sel. Bravo!—bravo! Troop. Alas! alas! I see Goetz no more. Sel. Then die, Selbiss! Troop. A dreadful tumult where he stood. George’s blue plume vanishes too. Sel. Climb higher See’st thou Lerse? Troop. No—every thing is in confusion. Sel. No further—come down—tell me no more. Troop. I cannot—bravo! I see Goetz. Sel. On horseback? Troop. Ay, ay—high on horseback—victory!—they fly! Sel. The Imperialists? Troop. Standard and all—Goetz behind them—he has it—he has it!”
The first hint of this (as of what not in poetry?) may be found in the
Iliad—where Helen points out the persons of the Greek heroes in the fight raging below,
to old Priam seated on the walls of Troy; and Shakspeare makes some use of the same idea in his Julius Cæsar. But who does not
recognise in Goethe’s drama the true original
of the death-scene of Marmion, and the
storm in Ivanhoe?
Scott executed about the same time his “House of Aspen,” rather a
rifacimento than a translation from one
of the minor dramatists that had crowded to partake the popularity of Goetz of the Ironhand. It also was sent to Lewis in London, where having first been read and much
recommended by the celebrated actress, Mrs Easton, it was taken up by
Kemble, and I believe actually put in rehearsal
for the stage. If so, the trial did not encourage further preparation, and the notion was
abandoned. Discovering the play thirty years after among his papers, Scott sent it to one of the literary almanacks (the Keepsake of 1829). In the advertisement, he says
“he had lately chanced to look over these scenes with feelings very different
from those of the adventurous period of his literary life during which they were
written, and yet with such, perhaps, as a reformed libertine might regard the
illegitimate production of an early amour.” He adds, “there is
something to be ashamed of certainly; but after all, paternal vanity whispers that the
child has some resemblance to the father.” This piece being also now included
in the general edition of his works, I shall not dwell upon it here. It owes its most
effective scenes to the Secret Tribunal, which fountain of terror
had first been disclosed by Goethe, and had by this
time lost much of its effect through the “clumsy alacrity” of a hundred
followers. Scott’s scenes are interspersed with some lyrics, the
numbers of which, at least, are worthy of attention. One has the metre—and not a little of
the spirit, of the boat-song of Roderick Dhu and Clan
Alpin. “Joy to the victors, the sons of old Aspen, Joy to the race of the battle and scar; Glory’s proud garland triumphantly grasping, Generous in peace, and victorious in war. Honour acquiring, Valour inspiring, Bursting resistless through foemen they go, War axes wielding, Broken ranks yielding, Till from the battle proud Roderick
retiring, Yields in wild rout the fair palm to his foe.” Another is the first draft of “the Maid of
Toro;” and perhaps he had forgotten the more perfect copy of that song
when he sent the original to the Keepsake.
I incline to believe that the “House of Aspen” was written after Scott’s return from London; but it has been mentioned in
the same page with the “Goetz,”
to avoid any recurrence to either the German or the Germanized dramas. His return was
accelerated by the domestic calamity which forms the subject of the following letter:
To Mrs Scott, George’s Square, Edinburgh.
“London, 19th April, 1799. “My dear Mother,
“I cannot express the feelings with which I sit down
to the discharge of my present melancholy duty, nor how much I regret the
accident which has removed me from Edinburgh, at a time, of all others, when I
should have wished to administer to your distress all the consolation which
sympathy and affection could have afforded. Your own principles of virtue and
religion will, however, I well know, be your best support in this heaviest of
human afflictions. The removal of my regretted parent from this earthly scene, is to him, doubtless, the
happiest change, if the firmest integrity and the best spent life can entitle
us to judge of the state of our departed friends. When we reflect upon this we
ought almost to suppress the selfish feelings of regret that he was not spared
to us a little longer, especially when we consider that it was not the will of
Heaven that he should share the most inestimable of its
earthly blessings, such a portion of health as might have enabled him to enjoy
his family. To my dear father, then, the putting off this mortal mask was
happiness, and to us who remain, a lesson so to live that we also may have hope
in our latter end; and with you, my dearest Mother, remain many blessings and some duties, a grateful
recollection of which will, I am sure, contribute to calm the current of your
affliction. The affection and attention which you have a right to expect from
your children, and which I consider as the best tribute we can pay to the
memory of the parent we have lost, will also, I am sure, contribute its full
share to the alleviation of your distress. The situation of Charlotte’s health, in its present delicate
state, prevented me from setting off directly for Scotland, when I heard that
immediate danger was apprehended. I am now glad I did not do so, as I could not
with the utmost expedition have reached Edinburgh before the lamented event had
taken place. The situation of my affairs must detain me here for a few days
more; the instant I can I will set off for Scotland. I need not tell you not
even to attempt to answer this letter such an exertion would be both
unnecessary and improper. John or
Tom will let me know how my
sister and you do. I am, ever, dear
Mother, your dutiful and affectionate son,
W. S.”
“P.S.—Permit me, my dear Madam, to add a line to
Scott’s letter, to express to
you how sincerely I feel for your loss, and how much I regret that I am not
near you to try by the most tender care to soften the pain that so great a
misfortune must inflict on you, and on all those who had the happiness of
being connected with him. I hope soon to have the pleasure of returning to
you, and to convince
you of the sincere affection of your daughter,
M. C. S.”
The death of this worthy man, in his 70th year, after a long series of
feeble health and suffering, was an event which could only be regarded as a great
deliverance to himself. He had had a succession of paralytic attacks, under which, mind as
well as body had by degrees been laid quite prostrate. When the first Chronicles of the Canongate appeared, a near relation
of the family said to me “I had been out of Scotland for some time, and did not
know of my good friend’s illness, until I reached Edinburgh, a few months before
his death. Walter carried me to visit him, and
warned me that I should see a great change. I saw the very scene that is here painted
of the elder Croftangry’s sickroom—not a
feature different—poor Anne Scott, the gentlest
of creatures, was treated by the fretful patient precisely like this niece.”*
I have lived to see the curtain rise and fall once more on a like scene.
Mr Thomas Scott continued to manage his
father’s business. He married early; he was in his circle of society extremely
popular; and his prospects seemed fair in all things. The property left by the old
gentleman was less than had been expected, but sufficient to make ample provision for his
widow, and a not inconsiderable addition to the resources of those among whom the remainder
was divided.
Scott’s mother and sister, both much exhausted with their attendance on a protracted sickbed,
and the latter already in the first stage of the malady which in two years more carried her
also to her grave, spent the
* See Chronicles, Waverley
Novels, vol. xli., p. 19.
greater part of the following summer and autumn in his cottage at
Lasswade.
There he was now again labouring assiduously in the service of Lewis’s “hobgoblin repast,” and
the specimens of his friend’s letters on his contributions, as they were successively
forwarded to London, which were printed by way of appendix to his Essay on Popular Poetry, in 1830, may perhaps be
sufficient for the reader’s curiosity. The versions from Bürger were, in consequence of Lewis’s
remarks, somewhat corrected; and, indeed, although Scott
speaks of himself as having paid no attention, “at the
time” to the lectures of his martinet in rhymes and
numbers”—(“lectures which were,” he adds, “severe
enough, but useful eventually,” as “forcing on a young and careless
versifier criticisms absolutely necessary to his future success”) it is
certain that his memory had in some degree deceived him when he used this language, for, of
all the false rhymes and Scotticisms which Lewis had pointed out in
these “lectures,” hardly one appears in the printed copies of the ballads
contributed by Scott to the Tales of Wonder.
As to his imperfect rhymes of this period, I have
no doubt he owed them to his recent zeal about collecting the ballads of the Border. He
had, in his familiarity with compositions so remarkable for merits of a higher order,
ceased to be offended, as in the days of his devotion to Langhorne and Meikle he would
probably have been, with their loose and vague assonances, which are often, in fact, not
rhymes at all; a license pardonable enough in real minstrelsy, meant to be chanted to
moss-troopers with the accompanying tones of the war pipe, but certainly not worthy of
imitation in verses written for the eye of a polished age. Of this carelessness as to
rhyme, we see little or nothing in our few specimens of his boyish verse, and it does not
occur, to any extent that has ever been thought worth notice, in his great works.
But Lewis’s collection did
not engross the leisure of this summer. It produced also what Scott justly calls his “first serious attempts in
verse;” and of these the earliest appears to have been the Glenfinlas. Here the scene is laid in the most
favourite district of his favourite Perthshire Highlands; and the Gaelic tradition on which
it is founded was far more likely to draw out the secret strength of his genius, as well as
to arrest the feelings of his countrymen, than any subject with which the stores of German
diablerie could have supplied him. It has been alleged, however,
that the poet makes a German use of his Scottish materials; that the legend, as briefly
told in the simple prose of his preface, is more affecting than the
lofty and sonorous stanzas themselves, that the vague terror of the original dream loses,
instead of gaining, by the expanded elaboration of the detail. There may be something in
these objections: but no man can pretend to be an impartial critic of the piece which first
awoke his own childish ear to the power of poetry and the melody of verse.
The next of these compositions was, I believe, the Eve of St John, in which Scott repeoples the tower of Smailholm, the awe-inspiring haunt of his
infancy; and here he touches, for the first time, the one superstition which can still be
appealed to with full and perfect effect; the only one which lingers in minds long since
weaned from all sympathy with the machinery of witches and goblins. And surely this mystery
was never touched with more thrilling skill than in that noble ballad. It is the first of
his original pieces, too, in which he uses the measure of his own favourite Minstrels; a
measure which the monotony of mediocrity had long and successfully
been labouring to degrade, but in itself adequate to the expression of the highest thoughts
as well as the gentlest emotions, and capable, in fit hands, of as rich a variety of music
as any other of modern times. This was written at Mertoun-house in the autumn of 1799. Some
dilapidations had taken place in the tower of Smailholm, and Harden, being informed of the fact, and entreated with needless earnestness
by his kinsman to arrest the hand of the spoiler, requested playfully a ballad, of which
Smailholm should be the scene, as the price of his assent. The stanza in which the groves
of Mertoun are alluded to, has been quoted in a preceding page.
Then came The Grey
Brother, founded on another superstition, which seems to have been almost as
ancient as the belief in ghosts; namely, that the holiest service of the altar cannot go on
in the presence of an unclean person—a heinous sinner unconfessed and unabsolved. The
fragmentary form of this poem greatly heightens the awfulness of its impression; and in
construction and metre, the verses which really belong to the story appear to me the
happiest that have ever been produced expressly in imitation of the ballad of the middle
age. In the stanzas, previously quoted, on the scenery of the Esk, however beautiful in
themselves, and however interesting now as marking the locality of the composition, he must
be allowed to have lapsed into another strain, and produced a pannus purpureus which interferes with and mars the general
texture.
He wrote at the same period the fine chivalrous ballad, entitled The Fire-King, in which there is more than
enough to make us forgive the machinery. It was also in the course of this autumn that he
first visited Bothwell Castle, the seat of Archibald Lord
Douglas, who had married the
Lady Frances Scott, sister to Henry, Duke of Buccleuch; a woman whose many amiable virtues
were combined with extraordinary strength of mind, and who had, from the first introduction
of the young poet at Dalkeith, formed high anticipations of his future career.
Lady Douglas was one of his dearest friends through life; and now,
under her roof, he met with one whose abilities and accomplishments not less qualified her
to estimate him, and who still survives to lament the only event that could have
interrupted their cordial confidence—the Lady Louisa
Stuart, daughter of the celebrated John, Earl of
Bute. These ladies, who were sisters in mind, feeling, and affection, he
visited among scenes the noblest and most interesting that all Scotland can show—alike
famous in history and romance; and he was not unwilling to make Bothwell and Blantyre the
subject of another ballad. His purpose was never completed. I think, however, the reader
will not complain of my introducing the fragment which I have found among his papers.
“When fruitful Clydesdale’s apple-bowers Are mellowing in the noon; When sighs round Pembroke’s ruin’d towers The sultry breath of June; “When Clyde, despite his sheltering wood, Must leave his channel dry; And vainly o’er the limpid flood The angler guides his fly; “If, chance, by Bothwell’s lovely braes A wanderer thou hast been, Or hid thee from the summer’s blaze In Blantyre’s bowers of green “Full where the copse wood opens wild Thy pilgrim step hath staid Where Bothwell’s towers in ruin piled O’erlook the verdant glade; “And many a tale of love and fear Hath mingled with the scene— Of Bothwell’s banks that bloom’d so dear And Bothwell’s bonny Jean. “O, if with rugged minstrel lays Unsated be thy ear, And thou of deeds of other days Another tale wilt hear, “Then all beneath the spreading beech Flung careless on life lea, The Gothic muse the tale shall teach Of Bothwell’s sisters three. “Wight Wallace stood on
Deckmont head, He blew his bugle round, Till the wild bull in Cadyow wood Has started at the sound. “St George’s cross, o’er Bothwell hung, Was waving far and wide, And from the lofty turret flung Its crimson blaze on Clyde; “And rising at the bugle blast That mark’d the Scottish foe, Old England’s yeomen muster’d fast, And bent the Norman bow. “Tall in the midst Sir Aylmer
rose, Proud Pembroke’s Earl was he While”— . . . . . .
One morning, during his visit to Bothwell, was spent on an excursion to
the ruins of Craignethan Castle, the seat, in former days, of the great Evandale branch of
the house of Hamilton, but now the property of Lord Douglas; and the poet expressed such rap-ture with the scenery, that his hosts urged him to accept, for
his lifetime, the use of a small habitable house, enclosed within the circuit of the
ancient walls. This offer was not at once declined; but circumstances occurred before the
end of the year, which rendered it impossible for him to establish his summer residence in
Lanarkshire. The castle of Craignethan is the original of his “Tillietudlem.”
Another imperfect
ballad, in which he had meant to blend together two legends familiar to every
reader of Scottish history and romance, has been found in the same portfolio, and the
handwriting proves it to be of the same early date. Though long and very unfinished, it
contains so many touches of his best manner that I cannot withhold
THE SHEPHERD’S TALE. * * *
* * * * * And ne’er but once, my son, he says, Was yon sad cavern trod, In persecution’s iron days, When the land was left by God From Bewlie bog, with slaughter red, A wanderer hither drew, And oft he stopt and turned his head, As by fits the night wind blew; For trampling round by Cheviot edge Were heard the troopers keen, And frequent from the Whitelaw ridge The death-shot flashed between. The moonbeams through the misty shower On yon dark cavern fell; Through the cloudy night, the snow gleamed white, Which sunbeam ne’er could quell. “Yon cavern dark is rough and rude, And cold its jaws of snow; But more rough and rude are the men of blood, That hunt my life below; “Yon spell-bound den, as the aged tell, Was hewn by demon’s hands; But I had lourd * melle with the fiends of hell, Than with Clavers and
his band.” He heard the deep-mouthed bloodhound bark, He heard the horses neigh, He plunged him in the cavern dark, And downward sped his way. Now faintly down the winding path Came the cry of the faulting hound, And the muttered oath of baulked wrath Was lost in hollow sound. He threw him on the flinted floor, And held his breath for fear; He rose and bitter cursed his foes, As the sounds died on his ear. “O bare thine arm, thou battling Lord, For Scotland’s wandering band, Dash from the oppressor’s grasp the sword, And sweep him from the land! “Forget not thou thy people’s groans From dark Dunnotter’s tower, Mix’d with the seafowl’s shrilly moans, And ocean’s bursting roar! “O in fell Clavers’ hour of pride, Even in his mightiest day, As bold he strides through conquest’s tide, O stretch him on the clay! “His widow and his little ones, O may their tower of trust
* Lourd; i. e.,
liefer—rather.
Remove its strong foundation stones, And crush them in the dust!”— “Sweet prayers to me,” a voice replied, “Thrice welcome, guest of mine!”— And glimmering on the cavern side A light was seen to shine. An aged man, in amice brown, Stood by the wanderer’s side, By powerful charm, a dead man’s arm The torch’s light supplied. From each stiff finger stretched upright, Arose a ghastly flame, That waved not in the blast of night Which through the cavern came. O deadly blue was that taper’s hue, That flamed the cavern o’er, But more deadly blue was the ghastly hue Of his eyes who the taper bore. He laid on his head a hand like lead, As heavy, pale, and cold:— “Vengeance be thine, thou guest of mine, If thy heart be firm and bold. “But if faint thy heart, and caitiff fear Thy recreant sinews know, The mountain erne thy heart shall tear, Thy nerves the hooded crow.” The wanderer raised him undismay’d: “My soul, by dangers steeled, Is stubborn as my border blade, Which never knew to yield. “And if thy power can speed the hour Of vengeance on my foes, Theirs be the fate, from bridge and gate To feed the hooded crows.” The Brownie looked him in the face, And his colour fled with speed— “I fear me,” quoth he, “uneath it will be To match thy word and deed. “In ancient days when English bands Sore ravaged Scotland fair, The sword and shield of Scottish land Was valiant Halbert Kerr. “A warlock loved the warrior well, Sir Michael Scott by name, And he sought for his sake a spell to make, Should the Southern foemen tame; “Look thou,” he said, “from Cessford head, As the July sun sinks low, And when glimmering white on Cheviot’s height Thou shalt spy a wreath of snow, The spell is complete which shall bring to thy feet The haughty Saxon foe.” For many a year wrought the wizard here, In Cheviot’s bosom low, Till the spell was complete, and in July’s heat Appeared December’s snow; But Cessford’s Halbert never came The wondrous cause to know. “For years before in Bowden aisle The warrior’s bones had lain, And after short while, by female guile, Sir Michael Scott was slain. “But me and my brethren in this cell His mighty charms retain, And he that can quell the powerful spell Shall o’er broad Scotland reign.” He led him through an iron door And up a winding stair, And in wild amaze did the wanderer gaze On the sight which opened there. Through the gloomy night flashed ruddy light,— A thousand torches’ glow; The cave rose high, like the vaulted sky, O’er stalls in double row. In every stall of that endless hall Stood a steed in barbing bright; At the foot of each steed, all armed save the head, Lay stretched a stalwart knight. In each mailed hand was a naked brand, As they lay on the black bull’s hide; Each visage stern did upwards turn, With eyeballs fixed and wide. A launcegay strong, full twelve ells long, By every warrior hung; At each pommel there, for battle yare, A Jedwood axe was slung. The casque hung near each cavalier; The plumes waved mournfully At every tread which the wanderer made Through the hall of Gramarye; The ruddy beam of the torches’ gleam, That glared the warriors on, Reflected light from armour bright, In noontide splendour shone. And onward seen in lustre sheen, Still lengthening on the sight, Through the boundless hall, stood steeds in stall, And by each lay a sable knight. Still as the dead lay each horseman dread, And moved nor limb nor tongue; Each steed stood stiff as an earthfast cliff, Nor hoof nor bridle rung. No sounds through all the spacious hall The deadly still divide, Save where echoes aloof from the vaulted roof To the wanderer’s step replied. At length before his wondering eyes, On an iron column borne, Of antique shape, and giant size, Appear’d a sword and horn. “Now choose thee here,” quoth his leader, “Thy venturous fortune try; Thy wo and weal, thy boot and bale, In yon brand and bugle lie.” To the fatal brand he mounted his hand, But his soul did quiver and quail; The life-blood did start to his shuddering heart And left him wan and pale. The brand he forsook, and the horn he took To ’say a gentle sound; But so wild a blast from the bugle brast, That the Cheviot rock’d around. From Forth to Tees, from seas to seas, The awful bugle rung; On Carlisle wall, and Berwick withal, To arms the warders sprung. With clank and clang the cavern rang, The steeds did stamp and neigh; And loud was the yell as each warrior fell Sterte up with hoop and cry. “Wo, wo,” they cried, “thou caitiff coward That ever thou wert born! Why drew ye not the knightly sword Before ye blew the horn?” The morning on the mountain shone, And on the bloody ground Hurled from the cave with shiver’d bone, The mangled wretch was found. And still beneath the cavern dread, Among the glidders gray, A shapeless stone with lichens spread Marks where the wanderer lay.’ * * *
* * * * * *
The reader may be interested by comparing with this ballad the
author’s prose version of part of its legend, as given in one of the last works of
his pen. He says, in the Letters on
Demonology and Witchcraft, 1830:—“Thomas of
Ercildowne, during his retirement, has been supposed, from time to time,
to be levying forces to take the field in some crisis of his country’s fate. The
story has often been told, of a daring horse-jockey having sold a black horse to a man
of venerable and antique appearance, who appointed the remarkable hillock upon Eildon
hills, called the Lucken-hare, as the place where, at twelve o’clock at night, he
should receive the price. He came, his money was paid in ancient coin, and he was
invited by his customer to view his residence. The trader in horses followed his guide
in the deepest astonishment through several long ranges of stalls, in each of which a
horse stood motionless, while an armed warrior lay equally still at the charger’s
feet. ‘All these men,’ said the wizard in a whisper, ‘will awaken at
the battle of Sheriffmuir.’ At the extremity of this extraordinary depot hung a
sword and a horn, which the prophet pointed out to the horse-dealer as containing the
means of dissolving the spell. The man in confusion took the horn and attempted to wind
it. The horses instantly started in their stalls, stamped, and shook their bridles, the
men arose and clashed their armour, and the mortal, terrified at the tumult he had
excited, dropped the horn from his hand. A voice like that of a
giant, louder even than the tumult around, pronounced these words:— ‘Wo to the coward that ever he was born, That did not draw the sword before he blew the horn.’ A whirlwind expelled the horse-dealer from the cavern, the entrance to which he could
never again find. A moral might be perhaps extracted from the legend, namely, that it
is best to be armed against danger before bidding it defiance.”
One more fragment, in another style, and I shall have exhausted this
budget. I am well aware that the introduction of such things will be considered by many as
of questionable propriety; but on the whole, it appears to me the better course to omit
nothing by which it is in my power to throw light on this experimental period.
* * * * * “Go sit old Cheviot’s crest below, And pensive mark the lingering snow In all his scaurs abide, And slow dissolving from the hill In many a sightless soundless rill, Feed sparkling Bowmont’s tide. “Fair shines the stream by bank and lea, As wimpling to the eastern sea She seeks Till’s sullen bed, Indenting deep the fatal plain, Where Scotland’s noblest, brave in vain, Around their monarch bled. “And westward hills on hills you see, Even as old Ocean’s mightiest sea Heaves high her waves of foam, Dark and snow-ridged from Cutsfeld’s wold To the proud foot of Cheviot roll’d, Earth’s mountain billows come.” * * * * *
Notwithstanding all these varied essays, and the charms of the
distinguished society into which his reputation had already introduced him, Scott’s friends do not appear to have as yet entertained
the slightest notion that literature was to be the main business of his life. A letter of
Kerr of Abbotrule congratulates him on his having
had more to do at the autumnal assizes of Jedburgh this year than on any former occasion,
which intelligence he seems himself to have communicated with no feeble expressions of
satisfaction. “I greatly enjoy this,” says Kerr;
“go on; and with your strong sense and hourly ripening knowledge, that you
must rise to the top of the tree in the Parliament House in due season, I hold as
certain as that Murray died Lord
Mansfield. But don’t let many an Ovid,* or rather many a Burns
(which is better), be lost in you. I rather think men of business have produced as good
poetry in their by-hours as the professed regulars; and I don’t see any
sufficient reason why a Lord President Scott should not be a
famous poet (in the vacation time), when we have seen a President Montesquieu step so nobly beyond the trammels in the Esprit des
Loix. I suspect Dryden would have
been a happier man had he had your profession. The reasoning talents visible in his
verses, assure me that he would have ruled in Westminster Hall as easily as he did at
Button’s, and he might have found time enough besides for every thing that one
really honours his memory for.” This friend appears to have entertained, in
October, 1799, the very opinion as to the profession of literature
on which Scott acted through life.
Having again given a week to Liddisdale, in company with Mr Shortreed, he spent a few days at Rose-
* “How many an Ovid
was in Murray lost.”—Pope.
bank, and was preparing to return to Edinburgh for the winter, when
James Ballantyne called on him one morning, and
begged him to supply a few paragraphs on some legal question of the day for his newspaper.
Scott complied; and carrying his article himself to
the printing-office, took with him also some of his recent pieces, designed to appear in.
Lewis’s collection. With these,
especially, as his Memorandum says, the “Morlachian fragment after Goethe,” Ballantyne was
charmed, and he expressed his regret that Lewis’s book was so long in appearing. Scott talked of
Lewis with rapture; and, after reciting some of his stanzas, said,
“I ought to apologize to you for having troubled you with any thing of my own
when I had things like this for your ear.”—“I felt at
once,” says Ballantyne, “that his own verses were
far above what Lewis could ever do, and though, when I said this,
he dissented, yet he seemed pleased with the warmth of my approbation.” At
parting, Scott threw out a casual observation, that he wondered his
old friend did not try to get some little booksellers’ work, “to keep his
types in play during the rest of the week.” Ballantyne
answered, that such an idea had not before occurred to him—that he had no acquaintance with
the Edinburgh “trade;” but, if he had, his types were good, and he thought he
could afford to work more cheaply than town-printers. Scott,
“with his good-humoured smile,” said, “You had better try
what you can do. You have been praising my little ballads; suppose you print off a
dozen copies or so of as many as will make a pamphlet, sufficient to let my Edinburgh
acquaintances judge of your skill for themselves.”
Ballantyne assented; and I believe exactly twelve copies of William and Ellen, The Fire-King, The
Chase, and a few more of those pieces, were thrown off accordingly, with the
title (alluding to the long delay of Lewis’s collection) of “Apology for Tales of Terror—1799.” This first
specimen of a press, afterwards so celebrated, pleased Scott; and he
said to Ballantyne, “I have been for years collecting old
Border ballads, and I think I could, with little trouble, put together such a selection
from them as might make a neat little volume, to sell for four or five shillings. I
will talk to some of the booksellers about it when I get to Edinburgh, and if the thing
goes on, you shall be the printer.” Ballantyne highly
relished the proposal; and the result of this little experiment changed wholly the course
of his worldly fortunes, as well as of his friend’s.
Shortly after the commencement of the Winter Session, the office of
Sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire became vacant by the death of an early ally of
Scott’s, Andrew Plummer of Middlestead, a
scholar and antiquary, who had entered with zeal into his ballad-researches, and whose name
occurs accordingly more than once in the notes to the Border Minstrelsy. Perhaps the community of their
tastes may have had some part in suggesting to the Duke of
Buccleuch, that Scott might fitly succeed
Mr Plummer in the magistrature. Be that as it might, his
Grace’s influence was used with the late Lord
Melville, who, in those days, had the general control of the crown patronage
in Scotland, and his Lordship was prepared to look favourably on
Scott’s pretensions to some office of this description.
Though neither the Duke nor this able Minister were at all addicted to literature, they had
both seen Scott frequently under their own roofs, and been pleased
with his manners and conversation; and he had by this time come to be on terms of
affectionate intimacy with some of the younger members of either family. The Earl of Dalkeith (afterwards Duke Charles of
Buccleuch), and his brother Lord James
Scott (now Lord Montagu), had been par-ticipating, with kindred ardour, in the military patriotism of the
period, and had been thrown into Scott’s society under
circumstances well qualified to ripen acquaintance into confidence. The Honourable Robert Dundas, eldest son of the statesman whose
title he has inherited, had been one of Scott’s companions in the High School; and
he, too, had been of late a lively partaker in the business of the yeomanry cavalry; and,
last not least, Scott always remembered with gratitude the strong
intercession on this occasion of Lord Melville’s nephew, the
Right Honourable William Dundas, then Secretary
to the Board of Control, and now Lord Clerk Register for Scotland.
His appointment to the Sheriffship bears date 16th December, 1799. It
secured him an annual salary of £300; an addition to his resources which at once
relieved his mind from whatever degree of anxiety he might have felt in considering the
prospect of an increasing family, along with the ever precarious chances of a profession,
in the daily drudgery of which it is impossible to suppose that he ever could have found
much pleasure.* The duties of the office were far from heavy; the district, small,
peaceful, and pastoral, was in great part the property of the Duke
of Buccleuch; and he turned with redoubled zeal to his project of editing
the ballads, many of the best of which belonged to this very district of his favourite
Border—those “tales,” which, as the Dedication of the Minstrelsy expresses it, had “in elder times
celebrated the prowess and cheered the halls” of his noble patron’s
ancestors.
* “My profession and I came to stand nearly upon the footing
which honest Slender consoled himself on having
established with Mistress Anne Page:
‘There was no great love between us at the beginning, and it pleased heaven
to decrease it on farther acquaintance.’”—Introduction to the Lay of the Last
Minstrel. 1830.
CHAPTER X. THE BORDER MINSTRELSY IN
PREPARATION—RICHARD HEBER—JOHN
LEYDEN—WILLIAM LAIDLAW—JAMES
HOGG—CORRESPONDENCE WITH GEORGE ELLIS—PUBLICATION OF THE
TWO FIRST VOLUMES OF THE BORDER MINSTRELSY. 1800-1802.
James Ballantyne, in his
Memorandum, after mentioning his ready acceptance of Scott’s proposal to print the Minstrelsy, adds—“I do not believe, that even
at this time, he seriously contemplated giving himself much to literature.” I
confess, however, that a letter of his, addressed to Ballantyne in the
spring of 1800, inclines me to question the accuracy of this impression. After alluding to
an intention which he had entertained, in consequence of the delay of Lewis’s collection, to publish an edition of the ballads contained in his own little volume, entitled
“Apology for Tales of
Terror,” he goes on to detail plans for the future direction of his
printer’s career, which were, no doubt, primarily suggested by the friendly interest
he took in Ballantyne’s fortunes; but there are some hints
which, considering what afterwards did take place, lead me to suspect that even thus early
the writer contemplated the possibility at least of being himself very intimately connected
with the result of these airdrawn schemes. The letter is as follows:
To Mr J. Ballantyne, Kelso Mail Office, Kelso.
“Castle Street, 22d April, 1800. “Dear Sir,
“I have your favour, since the receipt of which some things have occurred which induce me to postpone my
intention of publishing my ballads, particularly a letter from a friend,
assuring me that ‘The Tales of
Wonder’ are actually in the printer’s hand. In this
situation I endeavour to strengthen my small stock of patience, which has been
nearly exhausted by the delay of this work, to which (though for that reason
alone) I almost regret having promised assistance. I am still resolved to have
recourse to your press for the Ballads of the Border, which are in some forwardness.
“I have now to request your forgiveness for
mentioning a plan which your friend Gillon and I have talked over together with a view as well to
the public advantage as to your individual interest. It is nothing short of a
migration from Kelso to this place, which I think might be effected upon a
prospect of a very flattering nature.
“Three branches of printing are quite open in
Edinburgh, all of which I am well convinced you have both the ability and
inclination to unite in your person. The first is that of an editor of a
newspaper, which shall contain some thing of an uniform historical deduction of
events distinct from the farrago of detached and unconnected plagiarisms from
the London paragraphs of ‘The
Sun.’ Perhaps it might be possible (and Gillon has promised to make enquiry about it)
to treat with the proprietors of some established paper—suppose the Caledonian Mercury—and we would
all struggle to obtain for it some celebrity. To this might be added a
‘Monthly Magazine,’ and ‘Caledonian Annual Register,’ if you will; for
both of which, with the excellent literary assistance which Edinburgh at
present affords, there is a fair opening. The next object would naturally be
the execution of Session papers, the best paid work which a printer undertakes,
and of which, I dare
say, you would soon have a considerable share; for as you make it your business
to superintend the proofs yourself, your education and abilities would insure
your employers against the gross and provoking blunders which the poor
composers are often obliged to submit to. The publication of works, either
ancient or modern, opens a third fair field for ambition. The only gentleman
who attempts any thing in that way is in very bad health; nor can I, at any
rate, compliment either the accuracy or the execution of his press. I believe
it is well understood, that with equal attention an Edinburgh press would have
superior advantages even to those of the metropolis; and though I would not
advise launching into that line at once, yet it would be easy to feel your way
by occupying your press in this manner on vacant days only.
“It appears to me that such a plan, judiciously
adopted and diligently pursued, opens a fair road to an ample fortune. In the
mean while, the ‘Kelso
Mail’ might be so arranged as to be still a source of some
advantage to you; and I dare say, if wanted, pecuniary assistance might be
procured to assist you at the outset, either upon terms of a share or
otherwise; but I refer you for particulars to Joseph, in whose room I am now assuming the pen, for reasons
too distressing to be declared, but at which you will readily guess. I hope, at
all events, you will impute my interference to any thing rather than an
impertinent intermeddling with your concerns on the part of, clear sir, your
obedient servant,
Walter Scott.”
The Joseph Gillon here named was a
Writer to the Signet of some eminence; a man of strong abilities and genuine wit and
humour, for whom Scott, as well as Ballantyne, had a warm regard.* The intemperate
habits alluded to at the close of Scott’s letter gradually
undermined his business, his health, and his character; and he was glad, on leaving
Edinburgh, which became quite necessary some years afterwards, to obtain the situation of a
doorkeeper in the House of Lords—in which he died. The answer of
Ballantyne has not been preserved.
To return to the “Minstrelsy.”—Scott found able
assistants in the completion of his design. Richard
Heber (long Member of Parliament for the University of Oxford) happened to
spend this winter in Edinburgh, and was welcomed, as his talents and accomplishments
entitled him to be, by the cultivated society of the place. With Scott
his multifarious learning, particularly his profound knowledge of the literary monuments of
the middle ages, soon drew him into habits of close alliance; the stores of his library,
even then extensive, were freely laid open, and his own oral commentaries were not less
valuable. But through him Scott made acquaintance with a person still
more qualified to give him effectual aid in this undertaking; a native of the Border from
infancy, like himself, an enthusiastic lover of its legends, and who had already saturated
his mind with every species of lore that could throw light upon these relics.
Few who read these pages can be unacquainted with the leading facts in
the history of John Leyden.—Few can need to be
reminded that this extraordinary man, born in a shepherd’s cottage in one of the
wildest valleys of Roxburghshire, and of course almost entirely self-educated, had, before
he attained his nineteenth
* Calling on him one day in his writing office, Scott said, “Why, Joseph, this place is as hot as an oven.”
“Well,” quoth Gillon, “and
isn’t it here that I make my bread?”
year, confounded the doctors of Edinburgh by
the portentous mass of his acquisitions in almost every department of learning. He had set
the extremest penury at utter defiance, or rather he had never been conscious that it could
operate as a bar; for bread and water, and access to books and lectures, comprised all
within the bound of his wishes; and thus he toiled and battled at the gates of science
after science, until his unconquerable perseverance carried every thing before it; and yet,
with this monastic abstemiousness and iron hardness of will, perplexing those about him by
manners and habits in which it was hard to say whether the moss-trooper or the schoolman of
former days most prevailed, he was at heart a poet.
Archibald Constable, in after life one of the most
eminent of British publishers, was at this period the keeper of a small book-shop, into
which few, but the poor students of Leyden’s
order, had hitherto found their way. Heber, in the
course of his bibliomaniacal prowlings, discovered that it contained some of “The small old volumes, dark with tarnish’d gold,” which were already the Delilahs of his
imagination; and, moreover, that the young bookseller had himself a strong taste for such
charmers. Frequenting the place accordingly, he observed with some curiosity the barbarous
aspect and gestures of another daily visitant, who came not to purchase evidently, but to
pore over the more recondite articles of the collection—often balanced for hours on a
ladder with a folio in his hand, like Dominie Sampson.
The English virtuoso was on the look-out for any books or MSS. that might be of use to the
editor of the projected “Minstrelsy,” and some casual colloquy led to the discovery that this
unshorn stranger was, amidst the endless labyrinth of his lore, a
master of legend and tradition—an enthusiastic collector and most skilful expounder of
these very Border ballads in particular. Scott heard
with much interest Heber’s account of his odd acquaintance, and
found, when introduced, the person whose initials, affixed to a series of pieces in verse,
chiefly translations from Greek, Latin, and the northern languages, scattered, during the
last three or four years, over the pages of the “Edinburgh Magazine,” had often much excited his curiosity, as various
indications pointed out the Scotch Border for the native district of this unknown “J.
L.”
These new friendships led to a great change in Leyden’s position, purposes, and prospects. He was
presently received into the best society of Edinburgh, where his strange, wild uncouthness
of demeanour does not seem to have at all interfered with the general appreciation of his
genius, his gigantic endowments, and really amiable virtues. Fixing his ambition on the
East, where he hoped to rival the achievements of Sir William
Jones, he at length, about the beginning of 1802, obtained the promise of
some literary appointment in the East India Company’s service; but when the time drew
near, it was discovered that the patronage of the season had been exhausted, with the
exception of one surgeon-assistant’s commission which had been with difficulty
secured for him by Mr William Dundas; who, moreover,
was obliged to inform him that, if he accepted it, he must be qualified to pass his medical
trials within six months. This news, which would have crushed any other man’s hopes
to the dust, was only a welcome fillip to the ardour of Leyden. He
that same hour grappled with a new science, in full confidence that whatever ordinary men
could do in three or four years, his energy could accomplish in as many months; took his
degree accordingly in the beginning of 1803, having just before published his beautiful poem, the “Scenes of Infancy;” sailed to India; raised for
himself, within seven short years, the reputation of the most marvellous of Orientalists;
and died, in the midst of the proudest hopes, at the same age with Burns and Byron, in
1811.
But to return: Leyden was enlisted
by Scott in the service of Lewis, and immediately contributed a ballad, called The Elf-King, to the Tales of Terror. Those highly spirited pieces, The Cout of Keildar, Lord Soulis, and The Mermaid, were furnished for the original
department of Scott’s own collection; and the Dissertation on Fairies, prefixed to its second
volume, “although arranged and digested by the editor, abounds with instances of
such curious reading as Leyden only had read, and was originally
compiled by him;” but not the least of his labours was in the collection of
the old ballads themselves. When he first conversed with Ballantyne on the subject of the proposed work, and the printer signified
his belief that a single volume of moderate size would be sufficient for the materials,
Leyden exclaimed, “Dash it, does Mr
Scott mean another thin thing like Goetz of Berlichingen? I have more than that in my head
myself: we shall turn out three or four such volumes at least.” He went to
work stoutly in the realization of these wider views. “In this labour,”
says Scott, “he was equally interested by friendship for the
editor, and by his own patriotic zeal for the honour of the Scottish borders; and both
may be judged of from the following circumstance. An interesting fragment had been
obtained of an ancient historical ballad; but the remainder, to the great disturbance
of the editor and his coadjutor, was not to be recovered. Two days afterwards, while,
the editor was sitting with some company after dinner, a sound was heard at a distance
like that of the whistling of a tempest through the torn rigging
of the vessel which scuds before it. The sounds increased as they approached more near;
and Leyden (to the great astonishment of such of the guests as did
not know him) burst into the room, chanting the desiderated ballad with the most
enthusiastic gesture, and all the energy of what he used to call the saw-tones of his voice. It turned out that he had walked between forty and
fifty miles and back again, for the sole purpose of visiting an old person who
possessed this precious remnant of antiquity.”*
Various allusions to the progress of Leyden’s fortunes will occur in letters to be quoted hereafter. I may
refer the reader, for further particulars, to the biographical sketch by Scott from which the preceding anecdote is taken. Many
tributes to his memory are scattered over his friend’s other works, both prose and
verse; and, above all, Scott did not forget him when exploring, three
years after his death, the scenery of his “Mermaid;”
“Scarba’s isle, whose tortured shore Still rings to Corrievrekan’s roar, And lonely Colonsay;— Scenes sung by him who sings no more: His bright and brief career is o’er, And mute his tuneful strains; Quench’d is his lamp of varied lore, That loved the light of song to pour; A distant and a deadly shore Has Leyden’s cold
remains!Ӡ
During the years 1800 and 1801, the Minstrelsy formed its editor’s chief occupation—a
labour of love truly, if ever such there was; but neither this nor his sheriffship
interfered with his regular attendance at the
* Essay on the Life of
Leyden—Scott’s
Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. iv., p. 165.
† Lord of the
Isles, Canto iv. st. 11.
bar, the abandonment of which was all this
while as far as it ever had been from his imagination, or that of any of his friends. He
continued to have his summer headquarters at Lasswade; and Mr
(now Sir John) Stoddart, who visited him there in the course of his Scottish
tour,* dwells on “the simple unostentatious elegance of the cottage, and the
domestic picture which he there contemplated—a man of native kindness and cultivated
talent, passing the intervals of a learned profession amidst scenes highly favourable
to his poetic inspirations, not in churlish and rustic solitude, but in the daily
exercise of the most precious sympathies as a husband, a father, and a
friend.” His means of hospitality were now much enlarged, and the cottage, on a
Saturday and Sunday at least, was seldom without visitors.
Among other indications of greater ease in his circumstances, which I
find in his letter-book, he writes to Heber, after
his return to London in May, 1800, to request his good offices on behalf of Mrs Scott, who had “set her heart on a phæton,
at once strong, and low, and handsome, and not to cost more than thirty
guineas;” which combination of advantages Heber seems to
have found by no means easy of attainment. The phæton was, however, discovered; and
its springs must soon have been put to a sufficient trial, for this was “the first
wheeled carriage that ever penetrated into Liddesdale”—namely, in August,
1800. The friendship of the Buccleuch family now placed better means of research at his
disposal, and Lord Dalkeith had taken special care that
there should be a band of pioneers in waiting for his orders when he reached Hermitage.
Though he had not given up Lasswade, his sheriffship now made it
necessary for him that he should be
* The account of
this Tour was published in 1801.
frequently in Ettrick Forest. On such occasions he took up his
lodgings in the little inn at Clovenford, a favourite fishing station on the road from
Edinburgh to Selkirk. From this place he could ride to the county town whenever business
required his presence, and he was also within a few miles of the vales of Yarrow and
Ettrick, where he obtained large accessions to his store of ballads. It was in one of these
excursions that, penetrating beyond St Mary’s lake, he found a hospitable reception
at the farm of Blackhouse, situated on the Douglas-burn, then
tenanted by a remarkable family, to which I have already made allusion—that of William Laidlaw. He was then a very young man, but the
extent of his acquirements was already as noticeable as the vigour and originality of his
mind; and their correspondence, where “Sir” passes, at a few bounds, through
“Dear Sir,” and “Dear Mr Laidlaw,” to
“Dear Willie,” shows how speedily this new acquaintance
had warmed into a very tender affection. Laidlaw’s zeal about
the ballads was repaid by Scott’s anxious
endeavours to get him removed from a sphere for which, he writes, “it is no
flattery to say that you are much too good.” It was then, and always
continued to be, his opinion, that his friend was particularly qualified for entering with
advantage on the study of the medical profession; but such designs, if
Laidlaw himself ever took them up seriously, were not ultimately
persevered in; and I question whether any worldly success could, after all, have
overbalanced the retrospect of an honourable life spent happily in the open air of nature,
amidst scenes the most captivating to the eye of genius, and in the intimate confidence of,
perhaps, the greatest of contemporary minds.
James Hogg had spent ten years of his life in the
service of Mr Laidlaw’s father, but although
his own various accounts of his early days are not
to be reconciled with each other as to minute particulars of date and locality, he seems to
have passed into that of another sheep-farmer in a neighbouring valley, before Scott first visited Blackhouse. Be that as it may,
William Laidlaw and Hogg had been for years
the most intimate of friends, and the former took care that Scott should see, without delay, one whose enthusiasm about the minstrelsy
of the Forest was equal to his own, and whose mother, then an aged woman, though she lived
many years afterwards, was celebrated for having by heart several ballads in a more perfect
form than any other inhabitant of the vale of Ettrick. The personal history of
James Hogg must have interested Scott even
more than any acquisition of that sort which he owed to this acquaintance with, perhaps,
the most remarkable man that ever wore the maud of a shepherd. But I
need not here repeat a tale which his own language will convey to the latest posterity.
Under the garb, aspect, and bearing of a rude peasant—and rude enough he was in most of
these things, even after no inconsiderable experience of society—Scott
found a brother poet, a true son of nature and genius, hardly conscious of his powers. He
had taught himself to write by copying the letters of a printed book as he lay watching his
flock on the hill-side, and had probably reached the utmost pitch of his ambition when he
first found that his artless rhymes could touch the heart of the ewe-milker who partook the
shelter of his mantle during the passing storm. As yet his naturally kind and simple
character had not been exposed to any of the dangerous flatteries of the world; his heart
was pure—his enthusiasm buoyant as that of a happy child; and well as
Scott knew that reflection, sagacity, wit, and wisdom were
scattered abundantly among the humblest rangers of these pastoral solitudes, there was here a depth and a brightness that filled him with wonder, combined
with a quaintness of humour, and a thousand little touches of absurdity, which afforded him
more entertainment, as I have often heard him say, than the best comedy that ever set the
pit in a roar.
Scott opened in the same year a correspondence with the
venerable Bishop of Dromore, who seems, however, to
have done little more than express a warm interest in an undertaking so nearly resembling
that which will ever keep his own name in remembrance. He had more success in his
applications to a more unpromising quarter namely, with Joseph
Ritson, the ancient and virulent assailant of Bishop
Percy’s editorial character. This narrow-minded, sour, and dogmatical
little word-catcher had hated the very name of a Scotsman, and was utterly incapable of
sympathizing with any of the higher views of his new correspondent. Yet the bland courtesy
of Scott disarmed even this half-crazy pedant; and he communicated the
stores of his really valuable learning in a manner that seems to have greatly surprised all
who had hitherto held any intercourse with him on antiquarian topics. It astonished, above
all, the late amiable and elegant George Ellis,
whose acquaintance was about the same time opened to Scott through
their common friend Heber. Mr
Ellis was now busily engaged in collecting the materials for his charming
works, entitled Specimens of Ancient English
Poetry, and Specimens of Ancient
English Romance. The correspondence between him and Scott
soon came to be constant. They met personally, not long after the correspondence had
commenced, conceived for each other a cordial respect and affection, and continued on a
footing of almost brotherly intimacy ever after. To this valuable alliance
Scott owed, among other advantages, his early and ready admission
to the acquaintance and familiarity of Ellis’s bosom friend, his
coadjutor in the Antijacobin, and the confidant of all his literary schemes,
the late illustrious statesman, Mr Canning.
The first letter of Scott to
Ellis is dated March 27, 1801, and begins
thus:—“Sir, as I feel myself highly flattered by your enquiries, I lose no
time in answering them to the best of my ability. Your eminence in the literary world,
and the warm praises of our mutual friend Heber,
had made me long wish for an opportunity of being known to you. I enclose the first
sheet of Sir Tristrem, that you may
not so much rely upon my opinion as upon that which a specimen of the style and
versification may enable your better judgment to form for itself. . . . These pages are
transcribed by Leyden, an excellent young man,
of uncommon talents, patronised by Heber, and who is of the utmost
assistance to my literary undertakings.”
As Scott’s edition of Sir Tristrem did not appear until May 1804,
and he and Leyden were busy with the Border
Minstrelsy when his correspondence with Ellis
commenced, this early indication of his labours on the former work may require explanation.
The truth is, that both Scott and Leyden, having
eagerly arrived at the belief, from which neither of them ever permitted himself to falter,
that the “Sir Tristrem” of the Auchinleck MS., was
virtually, if not literally, the production of Thomas the
Rhymer, laird of Ercildoune, in Berwickshire, who flourished at the close of
the thirteenth century—the original intention had been to give it, not only a place, but a
very prominent one, in the “Minstrelsy of
the Scottish Border.” The doubts and difficulties which
Ellis suggested, however, though they did not shake
Scott in his opinion as to the parentage of the romance, induced
researches which occupied so much time, and gave birth to notes so bulky, that he
eventually found it expedient first to pass it over in the two volumes
of the Minstrelsy, which appeared in 1802, and then even in the
third, which followed a year later; thus reserving Tristrem for a
separate publication, which did not take place until after Leyden had
sailed for India.
I must not swell these pages By transcribing the entire correspondence
of Scott and Ellis, the greater part of which consists of minute antiquarian discussion
which could hardly interest the general reader; but I shall, give such extracts as seem to
throw light on Scott’s personal history during
this period.
To George Ellis, Esq.
“Lasswade Cottage, 20th April, 1801. “My dear Sir,
“I should long ago have acknowledged your instructive
letter, but I have been wandering about in the wilds of Liddesdale and Ettrick
Forest, in search of additional materials for the Border Minstrelsy. I cannot, however, boast
much of my success. One of our best reciters has turned religious in his later
days, and finds out that old songs are unlawful. If so, then, as Falstaff says, is many an acquaintance of mine
damned. I now send you an accurate analysis of Sir Tristrem.
Philo-Tomas, whoever he was, must surely have been an
Englishman; when his hero joins battle with Moraunt, he exclaims, God help Tristrem the Knight, He fought for Ingland.’ This strain of national attachment would hardly have proceeded from a
Scottish author, even though he had laid his scene in the sister country. In
other respects the language appears to be Scottish, and certainly contains the
essence of Tomas’s work. . . . . You shall have Sir Otuel in a week or two, and I shall be happy to
compare your Romance of Merlin with our Arthur and Merlin, which is a very good poem, and may
supply you with some valuable additions. I would very fain lend your elephant*
a lift, but I fear I can be of little use to you. I
have been rather an observer of detached facts respecting antiquities, than a
regular student. At the same time, I may mention one or two circumstances, were
it but to place your elephant upon a tortoise. From Selkirkshire to Cumberland,
we have a ditch and bulwark of great strength, called the Catrail, running
north and south, and obviously calculated to defend the western side of the
island against the inhabitants of the eastern half. Within this bulwark, at
Drummelzier, near Peebles, we find the grave of Merlin, the account of whose madness and death you will find in
Fordun. The same author says he was
seized with his madness during a dreadful battle on the Liddle, which divides
Cumberland from Scotland. All this seems to favour your ingenious hypothesis,
that the sway of the British Champion [Arthur] extended over Cumberland and Strathcluyd, as well as
Wales. Ercildoune is hardly five miles from the Catrail. . . . .
“Leyden has
taken up a most absurd resolution to go to Africa on a journey of discovery.
Will you have the goodness to beg Heber
to write to him seriously on so ridiculous a plan, which can promise nothing
either pleasant or profitable. I am certain he would get a church in Scotland
with a little patience and prudence, and it gives me great pain to see a
valuable young man of uncommon genius and acquirements fairly throw himself
away. Yours truly,
W. Scott.”
* I believe it was Mr Canning
that had, on some occasion when Ellis talked of
his antiquarian hobby-horse, exclaimed, “Hobby, truly! yours is an
elephant.”
To the Same.
“Musselburgh, 11th May, 1801.
. . . “I congratulate you upon the health of your
elephants—as an additional mouthful of provender for them, pray observe that
the tale of Sir Gawain’s Foul Ladie, in Percy’s Reliques, is
originally Scaldic, as you will see in the history of Hrolfe Kraka, edited by
Torfæus from the ancient Sagas
regarding that prince. I think I could give you some more crumbs of information
were I at home; but I am at present discharging the duties of quartermaster to
a regiment of volunteer cavalry—an office altogether inconsistent with romance;
for where do you read that Sir Tristrem
weighed out hay and corn; that Sir Launcelot du
Lac distributed billets; or that any Knight of the Round Table
condescended to higgle about a truss of straw? Such things were left for our
degenerate days, when no warder sounds his horn from the barbican as the
preux chevalier approaches to
claim hospitality. Bugles indeed we have; but it is only to scream us out of
bed at five in the morning—hospitality such as the seneschals of Don Quixote’s castles were wont to offer
him—and all to troopers, to whom, for valour eke and courtesy, Major Sturgeon himself might yield the palm. In
the midst of this scene of motley confusion, I long, like the hart for
water-brooks, for the arrival of your grande opus. The
nature of your researches animates me to proceed in mine (though of a much more
limited and local nature), even as iron sharpeneth iron. I am in utter despair
about some of the hunting terms in ‘Sir Tristrem.’ There is no copy of
Lady Juliana Berners’ work in
Scotland, and I would move heaven and earth to get a sight of it. But as I fear
this is utterly impossible, I must have recourse to your friendly assistance,
and communicate a set of doubts and queries, which, if any man in England can satisfy, I am
well assured it must be you. You may therefore expect, in a few days, another
epistle. Mean time I must invoke the spirit of
Nimrod.”
“Edinburgh, 10th June, 1801. “My dear Sir,
“A heavy family misfortune, the loss of an only
sister in the prime of life, has
prevented, for some time, my proposed communication regarding the hunting terms
of ‘Sir Tristrem.’
I now enclose the passage, accurately copied, with such explanations as occur
to myself, subject always to your correction and better judgment. . . . . . I
have as yet had only a glance of The Specimens. Thomson, to whom Heber
intrusted them, had left them to follow him from London in a certain trunk,
which has never yet arrived. I should have quarrelled with him excessively for
making so little allowance for my impatience, had it not been that a violent
epidemic fever, to which I owe the loss already mentioned, has threatened also
to deprive me, in his person, of one of my dearest friends, and the Scottish
literary world of one of its most promising members.
“Some prospect seems to open for getting Leyden out to India, under the patronage of
Mackintosh, who goes as chief of the intended
academical establishment at Calcutta. That he is highly qualified for acting a
distinguished part in any literary undertaking will be readily granted; nor do
I think Mr Mackintosh will meet with
many half so likely to be useful in the proposed institution. The extent and
versatility of his talents would soon raise him to his level, even although he
were at first to go out in a subordinate department. If it be in your power to
second his application, I rely upon Heber’s interest with you to induce you to do so.”
“Edinburgh, 13th July, 1801.
. . . “I am infinitely obliged to you, indeed, for
your interference in behalf of our Leyden, who, I am sure, will do credit to your patronage, and
may be of essential service to the proposed mission. What a difference from
broiling himself, or getting himself literally broiled, in Africa.
‘Que diable vouloit-il faire dans cette
galère?’ . . . His brother is a fine lad, and
is likely to enjoy some advantages which he wanted—I mean by being more early
introduced into society. I have intermitted his transcript of ‘Merlin,’ and set him to work on ‘Otuel,’ of which I send a specimen.” . . .
“Edinburgh, 7th December, 1801.
“My literary amusements have of late been much
retarded and interrupted, partly by professional avocations, and partly by
removing to a house newly furnished, where it will be some time before I can
get my few books put into order, or clear the premises of painters and workmen;
not to mention that these worthies do not nowadays proceed upon the plan of
Solomon’s architects, whose saws and hammers
were not heard, but rather upon the more ancient system of the builders of
Babel. To augment this confusion, my wife has fixed upon this time as proper to
present me with a fine chopping boy, whose pipe, being of the shrillest, is
heard amid the storm, like a boatswain’s whistle in a gale of wind. These
various causes of confusion have also interrupted the labours of young
Leyden on your behalf; but he has
again resumed the task of transcribing ‘Arthour,’ of which I once again transmit a part. I have to
acknowledge, with the deepest sense of gratitude, the beautiful analysis of
Mr Douce’s Fragments, which
throws great light upon the romance of Sir Tristan.
In arranging that, I have anticipated your judicious hint, by dividing it into three
parts, where the story seems naturally to pause, and prefixing an accurate
argument, referring to the stanzas as numbered.
“I am glad that Mrs
Ellis and you have derived any amusement from the House of Aspen. It is a very
hurried dramatic sketch; and the fifth act, as you remark, would require a
total revisal previous to representation or publication. At one time I
certainly thought, with my friends, that it might have ranked well enough by
the side of the Castle
Spectre, Bluebeard, and the other drum and trumpet exhibitions of the day;
but the ‘Plays of the
Passions’* have put me entirely out of conceit with my
Germanized brat; and should I ever again attempt dramatic composition, I would
endeavour after the genuine old English model . . . . . . The publication of
‘The
Complaynt’† is delayed. It is a work of multifarious lore. I
am truly anxious about Leyden’s
Indian journey, which seems to hang fire. Mr
William Dundas was so good as to promise me his interest to get
him appointed secretary to the Institution;‡ but whether he has succeeded
or not, I have not yet learned. The various kinds of distress under which
literary men, I mean such as have no other profession than letters, must
labour, in a commercial country, is a great disgrace to society. I own to you I
always tremble for the fate of genius when left to its own exertions, which,
however powerful, are usually, by some bizarre dispensation of nature, useful
to every one but themselves. If Heber
could learn by Mackintosh, whether
* The first volume of Joanna Baillie’s “Plays of the Passions”
appeared in 1798. Vol. II. followed in 1802.
† “The Complaynt of Scotland, written in
1548; with a Preliminary Dissertation and Glossary, by John
Leyden,” was published by Constable in January, 1802.
‡ A proposed Institution for purposes of
Education at Calcutta.
any thing could be done to fix
Leyden’s situation, and what sort of interest
would be most likely to succeed, his friends here might unite every exertion in
his favour. . . . . . . . . . . Direct Castle Street, as usual; my new house
being in the same street with my old dwelling.”
“Edinburgh, 8th January, 1802.
. . . “Your favour arrived just as I was sitting down
to write to you, with a sheet or two of ‘King
Arthur.’ I fear, from a letter which I have received from
Mr William Dundas, that the Indian
establishment is tottering, and will probably fall. Leyden has therefore been induced to turn his mind to some
other mode of making his way to the East; and proposes taking his degree as a
physician and surgeon, with the hope of getting an appointment in the
Company’s Service as surgeon. If the Institution goes forward, his having
secured this step will not prevent his being attached to it; at the same time
that it will afford him a provision independent of what seems to be a very
precarious establishment. Mr Dundas has promised to exert
himself. . . . I have just returned from the hospitable halls of Hamilton,
where I have spent the Christmas.” . . . . .
“14th February, 1802.
“I have been silent but not idle. The Transcript of
King Arthur is at length finished, being a
fragment of about 7000 lines. Let me know how I shall transmit a parcel
containing it, with the Complaynt and the Border Ballads, of which I expect every day
to receive some copies. I think you will be disappointed in the Ballads. I have
as yet touched very little on the more remote antiquities of the Border, which,
indeed, my songs, all comparatively modern, did not lead me to discuss. Some
scattered herbage, however, the elephants may perhaps find. By the way, you will not forget to notice
the mountain called Arthur’s Seat, which overhangs
this city. When I was at school the tradition ran that King Arthur occupied as his throne a huge rock upon its summit,
and that he beheld from thence some naval engagement upon the Frith of Forth. I
am pleasantly interrupted by the post; he brings me a letter from William Dundas, fixing Leyden’s appointment as an assistant
surgeon to one of the India settlements—which is not yet determined; and
another from my printer, a very
ingenious young man, telling me, that he means to escort the ‘Minstrelsy’ up to London in person. I shall,
therefore, direct him to transmit my parcel to Mr
Nicol.” . . . .
“2d March, 1802.
“I hope that long ere this you
have received the Ballads,
and that they have afforded you some amusement. I hope, also, that the threatened third volume will be more interesting to
Mrs Ellis than the dry antiquarian
detail of the two first could prove. I hope, moreover, that I shall have the
pleasure of seeing you soon, as some circumstances seem not so much to call me
to London, as to furnish me with a decent apology for coming up sometime this
spring; and I long particularly to say, that I know my friend Mr Ellisby sight as well as intimately. I
am glad you have seen the Marquess of Lorn,
whom I have met frequently at the house of his charming sister, Lady Charlotte Campbell, whom, I am sure, if
you are acquainted with her, you must admire as much as I do. Her Grace of Gordon, a great admirer of yours,
spent some days here lately, and, like Lord Lorn, was
highly entertained with an account of our friendship à la distance. I do not, nor did I ever, intend to
fob you off with twenty or thirty lines of the second part
of Sir Guy. Young Leyden has been much engaged with his studies, otherwise you
would have long since received what I now send, namely, the combat between
Guy and Colbronde, which I take to be the cream of the romance. . . . .
If I do not come to London this spring, I will find a safe opportunity of
returning Lady Juliana Berners, with my
very best thanks for the use of her reverence’s work.”
The preceding extracts are picked out of letters, mostly very long ones,
in which Scott discusses questions of antiquarian
interest, suggested sometimes by Ellis, and
sometimes by the course of his own researches among the MSS. of the Advocates’
Library. The passages which I have transcribed appear sufficient to give the reader a
distinct notion of the tenour of Scott’s life while his first
considerable work was in progress through the press. In fact, they place before us in a
vivid light the chief features of a character which, by this time, was completely formed
and settled—which had passed unmoved through the first blandishments of worldly applause,
and which no subsequent trials of that sort could ever shake from its early balance:—His
calm delight in his own pursuits—the patriotic enthusiasm which mingled with all the best
of his literary efforts; his modesty as to his own general merits, combined with a certain
dogged resolution to maintain his own first view of a subject, however assailed; his
readiness to interrupt his own tasks by any drudgery by which he could assist those of a
friend; his steady and determined watchfulness over the struggling fortunes of young genius
and worth.
The reader has seen that he spent the Christmas of 1801 at Hamilton
Palace, in Lanarkshire. To Lady Anne Hamilton he had
been introduced by her half-sister, Lady Charlotte Campbell, and both the
late and the present Dukes of Hamilton appear to have partaken of Lady
Anne’s admiration for Glenfinlas, and the Eve of St John.
A morning’s ramble to the majestic ruins of the old baronial castle on the
precipitous banks of the Evan, and among the adjoining remains of the primeval Caledonian
forest, suggested to him a ballad, not inferior in execution to any that he had hitherto
produced, and especially interesting as the first in which he grapples with the world of
picturesque incident unfolded in the authentic annals of Scotland. With the magnificent
localities before him, he skilfully interwove the daring assassination of the Regent Murray by one of the clansmen of “the princely
Hamilton.” Had the subject been taken up in after years, we might have had another
Marmion or Heart of MidLothian; for in Cadyow Castle we have the materials and outline of more
than one of the noblest of ballads.
Not long before this piece began to be handed about in Edinburgh,
Thomas Campbell had made his appearance there,
and at once seized a high place in the literary world by his ‘Pleasures of Hope.’ Among the most eager to
welcome him had been Scott; and I find the brother-bard
thus expressing himself concerning the MS. of Cadyow:—
“The verses of Cadyow
Castle are perpetually ringing in my imagination ‘Where mightiest of the beasts of chase That roam in woody Caledon, Crashing the forest in his race, The mountain bull comes thundering on—’ and the arrival of Hamilton, when Reeking from the recent deed, He dashed his carbine on the ground.’ I have repeated these lines so often on the North Bridge that the
whole fraternity of coachmen know me by tongue as I pass. To be sure, to a mind in
sober, serious street-walking humour, it must bear an appearance of lunacy when one
stamps with the hurried pace and fervent shake of the head, which strong, pithy poetry
excites.”
Scott finished his Cadyow Castle before the last sheets of the second volume
of his “Minstrelsy” had
passed through the press; but “the two volumes,” as Ballantyne says, “were already full to overflowing;” so
it was reserved for the “threatened third.” The two volumes appeared in
the course of January, 1802, from the respectable house of Cadell and Davies, in the Strand;
and, owing to the cold reception of Lewis’s
“Tales of Wonder,” which
had come forth a year earlier, these may be said to have first introduced Scott as an
original writer to the English public.
In his Remarks on the
Imitation of Popular Poetry, he says: “Owing to the failure of the
vehicle I had chosen, my first efforts to present myself before the public as an
original writer proved as vain as those by which I had previously endeavoured to
distinguish myself as a translator. Like Lord Home,
however, at the Battle of Flodden, I did so far well, that I was able to stand and save
myself; and amidst the general depreciation of the ‘Tales of Wonder,’ my small share of the
obnoxious publication was dismissed without censure, and in some cases obtained praise
from the critics. The consequences of my escape made me naturally more daring, and I
attempted, in my own name, a collection of ballads of various kinds, both ancient and
modern, to be connected by the common tie of relation to the Border districts in which
I had collected them. The edition was curious, as being the first example of a work
printed by my friend and
schoolfellow, Mr James Ballantyne, who at that
period was editor of a provincial paper. When the book came out, the imprint, Kelso,
was read with wonder by amateurs of typography, who had never heard of such a place,
and were astonished at the example of handsome printing which so obscure a town had
produced. As for the editorial part of the task, my attempt to imitate the plan and
style of Bishop Percy, observing only more
strict fidelity concerning my originals, was favourably received by the
public.”
The first edition of volumes I. and II. of the Minstrelsy consisted of eight hundred copies, fifty of
which were on large paper. One of the embellishments was a view of Hermitage castle, the
history of which is rather curious. Scott executed a
rough sketch of it during the last of his “Liddesdale raids” with Shortreed, standing for that purpose for an hour or more
up to his middle in the snow. Nothing can be ruder than the performance, which I have now
before me; but his friend William Clerk made a
better drawing from it, and from his a third and further improved copy was done by
Hugh Williams, the elegant artist, afterwards
known as “Greek Williams.” Scott used
to say the oddest thing of all was, that the engraving, founded on the labours of three
draughtsmen, one of whom could not draw a straight line, and the two others had never seen
the place meant to be represented, was nevertheless pronounced by the natives of Liddesdale
to give a very fair notion of the ruins of Hermitage.
The edition was exhausted in the course of the year, and the terms of
publication having been that Scott should have half the
clear profits, his share was exactly £78, 10s.—a sum which certainly could not have
repaid him for the actual expenditure incurred in the collection of
his materials. Messrs Cadell and Davies, however, complained, and probably with good
reason, that a premature advertisement of a “second and improved edition” had
rendered some copies of the first unsaleable.
I shall transcribe the letter in which Mr
George Ellis acknowledges the receipt of his copy of the book.
To Walter Scott, Esq. Advocate, Castle Street,
Edinburgh.
“Sunning Hill, March 5, 1802. “My dear Sir,
“The volumes are arrived, and I have been devouring
them, not as a pig does a parcel of grains (by which simile you will judge that
I must be brewing, as indeed I am), putting in its snout, shutting its eyes,
and swallowing as fast as it can without consideration—but as a schoolboy does
a piece of gingerbread; nibbling a little bit here, and a little bit there,
smacking his lips, surveying the number of square inches which still remain for
his gratification, endeavouring to look it into larger dimensions, and making
at every mouthful a tacit vow to protract his enjoyment by restraining his
appetite. Now, therefore—but no! I must first assure you on the part of
Mrs E. that if you cannot, or will
not come to England soon, she must gratify her curiosity and gratitude, by
setting off for Scotland, though at the risk of being tempted to pull caps with
Mrs Scott when she arrives at the end of
her journey. Next, I must request you to convey to Mr Leyden my very sincere acknowledgment for his part of the
precious parcel. How truly vexatious that such a man should embark, not for the
‘fines
Atticæ,’ but for those of Asia; that the Genius of
Scotland, instead of a poor Complaint, and an address in the style of
‘Navis, quæ tibi creditum debes Virgilium—reddas incolumem, precor,’ should
not interfere to
prevent his loss. I wish to hope that we should, as Sterne says, ‘manage these matters better’
in England; but now, as regret is unavailing, to the main point of my letter.
“You will not, of course, expect that I should as
yet give you any thing like an opinion, as a critic, of
your volumes; first, because you have thrown into my throat a cate of such
magnitude that Cerberus, who had three throats, could not have swallowed a
third part of it without shutting his eyes; and secondly, because, although I
have gone a little farther than George
Nicol the bookseller, who cannot cease exclaiming,
“What a beautiful book!” and is distracted with jealousy
of your Kelso Bulmer, yet, as I said
before, I have not been able yet to digest a great deal
of your ‘Border
Minstrelsy.’ I have, however, taken such a survey as satisfies
me that your plan is neither too comprehensive nor too contracted; that the
parts are properly distinct; and that they are (to preserve the painter’s
metaphor) made out just as they ought to be. Your introductory chapter is, I
think, particularly good; and I was much pleased, although a little surprised,
at finding that it was made to serve as a recueil
des pièces justificatives to your view of the state
of manners among your Borderers, which I venture to say will be more thumbed
than any part of the volume.
“You will easily believe that I cast many an anxious
look for the annunciation of ‘Sir Tristrem,’ and will not be surprised that I was at first
rather disappointed at not finding any thing like a solemn engagement to
produce him to the world within some fixed and limited period. Upon reflection,
however, I really think you have judged wisely, and that you have best promoted
the interests of literature, by sending, as the harbinger of the
‘Knight of Leonais,’ a
collection which must form a parlour window book in every
house in Britain which contains a parlour and a window. I am happy to find my
old favourites in their natural
situation‘indeed in the only situation which can enable a Southern reader
to estimate their merits. You remember what somebody said of the Prince de Condé’s army during the
wars of the Fronde, viz.—“that it would be a very fine army whenever
it came of age.” Of the Murrays and
Armstrongs of your Border Ballads, it might be said
that they might grow, when the age of good taste should arrive, to a Glenfinlas or an Eve of St John. Leyden’s additional poems are also very
beautiful. I meant, at setting out, a few simple words of thanks, and behold I
have written a letter, but no matter; I shall return to the charge after a more
attentive perusal. Ever yours very faithfully,
G. Ellis.”
I might fill many pages by transcribing similar letters from persons of
acknowledged discernment in this branch of literature; John Duke
of Roxburgh is among the number, and he conveys also a complimentary message
from the late Earl Spencer; Pinkerton issues his decree of approbation as ex
cathedrâ; Chalmers
overflows with heartier praise; and even Joseph
Ritson extols his presentation copy as “the most valuable literary
treasure in his possession.” There follows enough of female admiration to
have been dangerous for another man; a score of fine ladies contend who shall be the most
extravagant in encomium—and as many professed blue stockings come after; among, or rather
above the rest, Anna Seward, “the
Swan of Lichfield,” who laments that her “bright
luminary,” Darwin, does not survive to
partake her raptures;—observes, that “in the Border Ballads the first strong rays
of the Delphic orb illuminate Jellon Græme;” and concludes with a fact
indisputable, but strangely expressed, viz. that “the Lady Anne
Bothwell’s Lament, Cowdenknowes, &c.
&c., climatically preceded the treasures of Burns, and the consummate Glenfinlas and Eve
of St John.” Scott felt as acutely as
any malevolent critic the pedantic affectations of Miss
Seward’s epistolary style, but in her case sound sense as well as
vigorous ability had unfortunately condescended to an absurd disguise; he looked below it,
and was far from confounding her honest praise with the flat superlatives either of worldly
parrots or weak enthusiasts.
CHAPTER XI. PREPARATION OF VOLUME III. OF THE MINSTRELSY—AND OF
SIR TRISTREM—CORRESPONDENCE WITH MISS
SEWARD AND MR ELLIS—BALLAD OF THE
REIVER’S WEDDING—COMMENCEMENT OF THE LAY OF THE LAST
MINSTREL—VISIT TO LONDON AND OXFORD—COMPLETION OF THE
MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER—1802-1803.
The approbation with which the first two volumes of the Minstrelsy were received, stimulated
Scott to fresh diligence in the preparation of a
third; while “Sir Tristrem”—it
being now settled that this romance should form a separate volume—was transmitted, without
delay, to the printer at Kelso. As early as March 30th, 1802, Ballantyne, who had just returned from London, writes thus:—
To Walter Scott, Esq., Castle Street,
Edinburgh.
“Dear Sir,
“By to-morrow’s Fly I shall send the remaining
materials for Minstrelsy,
together with three sheets of Sir
Tristrem. . . . I shall ever think the printing the Scottish
Minstrelsy one of the most fortunate circumstances of my life. I have gained,
not lost by it, in a pecuniary light; and the prospects it has been the means
of opening to me, may advantageously influence my future destiny. I can never
be sufficiently grateful for the interest you unceasingly take in my welfare.
Your query respecting Edinburgh, I am yet at a loss to
answer. To say truth, the expenses I have incurred in my resolution to acquire
a character for elegant printing, whatever might be the result, cramp
considerably my present exertions. A short time, I trust, will make me easier,
and I shall then contemplate the road before me with a steady eye. One thing
alone is clear—that Kelso cannot be my abiding place for aye; sooner or later
emigrate I must and will; but, at all events, I must wait till my plumes are
grown. I am, dear sir, your faithful and obliged
J. B.”
On learning that a third volume of the Minstrelsy was in progress, Miss Seward forwarded to the Editor “Rich Auld Willie’s Farewell,” a
Scotch ballad of her own manufacture, meaning, no doubt, to place it at his disposal, for
the section of “Imitations.” His answer (dated Edinburgh, June 29, 1802), after
many compliments to the Auld Willie, of
which he made the use that had been intended, proceeds as follows:
“I have some thoughts of attempting a Border ballad in the comic manner;
but I almost despair of bringing it well out. A certain Sir William Scott, from whom I am descended,
was ill-advised enough to plunder the estate of Sir
Gideon Murray of Elibank, ancestor to the present Lord Elibank. The marauder was defeated, seized,
and brought in fetters to the castle of Elibank, upon the Tweed. The
Lady Murray (agreeably to the custom of all ladies in
ancient tales) was seated on the battlements, and descried the return of her
husband with his prisoners. She immediately enquired what he meant to do with
the young Knight of Harden, which was the petit
titre of Sir William Scott.
‘Hang the robber, assuredly,’ was the answer of
Sir Gideon. ‘What!’ answered the
lady, ‘hang the handsome young knight of Harden
when I have three ill-favoured daughters unmarried! No, no, Sir
Gideon, we’ll force him to marry our
Meg.’ Now tradition says, that Meg Murray was the ugliest woman in the four
counties, and that she was called, in the homely dialect of the time,
meikle-mouthed Meg (I will not affront you by an
explanation).* Sir Gideon, like a good husband and tender
father, entered into his wife’s sentiments, and preferred to
Sir William the alternative of becoming his
son-in-law, or decorating with his carcase the kindly gallows of Elibank. The
lady was so very ugly, that Sir William, the handsomest
man of his time, positively refused the honour of her hand. Three days were
allowed him to make up his mind; and it was not until he found one end of a
rope made fast to his neck, and the other knitted to a sturdy oak bough, that
his resolution gave way, and he preferred an ugly wife to the literal noose. It
is said, they were afterwards a very happy couple. She had a curious hand at
pickling the beef which he stole; and, marauder as he was, he had little reason
to dread being twitted by the pawky gowk. This, either by its being perpetually
told to me when young, or by a perverted taste for such anecdotes, has always
struck me as a good subject for a comic ballad, and how happy should I be were
Miss Seward to agree in opinion with
me.
“This little tale may serve for an introduction to
some observations I have to offer upon our popular poetry. It will at least so
far disclose your correspondent’s weak side, as to induce you to make
allowance for my mode of arguing. Much of its peculiar charm is indeed, I
believe, to be attributed solely to its locality. A very
* It is commonly said that all Meg’s descendants have inherited
something of her characteristic feature. The Poet certainly was no
exception to the rule.
commonplace and obvious
epithet, when applied to a scene which we have been accustomed to view with
pleasure, recalls to us not merely the local scenery, but a thousand little
nameless associations, which we are unable to separate or to define. In some
verses of that eccentric but admirable poet, Coleridge, he talks of ‘An old rude tale that suited well The ruins wild and hoary.’ I think there are few who have not been in some degree touched with this
local sympathy. Tell a peasant an ordinary tale of robbery and murder, and
perhaps you may fail to interest him; but to excite his terrors, you assure him
it happened on the very heath he usually crosses, or to a man whose family he
has known, and you rarely meet such a mere image of Humanity as remains
entirely unmoved. I suspect it is pretty much the same with myself, and many of
my countrymen, who are charmed by the effect of local description, and
sometimes impute that effect to the poet which is produced by the recollections
and associations which his verses excite. Why else did Sir Philip Sydney feel that the tale of Percy and Douglas moved him like the sound of a
trumpet? or why is it that a Swiss sickens at hearing the famous Ranz des Vaches, to which the native of any other
country would have listened for a hundred days, without any other sensation
than ennui? I fear our poetical taste is in general much more linked with our
prejudices of birth, of education, and of habitual thinking, than our vanity
will allow us to suppose; and that, let the point of the poet’s dart be
as sharp as that of Cupid, it is the wings
lent it by the fancy and prepossessions of the gentle reader which carry it to
the mark. It may appear like great egotism to pretend to illustrate my position
from the reception which the pro-ductions of so mere a
ballad-monger as myself have met with from the public; but I cannot help
observing that all Scotchmen prefer the Eve of St John to Glenfinlas, and most of my English friends entertain precisely an
opposite opinion. . . . I have been writing this letter by a paragraph at a
time for about a month, this being the season when we are most devoted to the ‘Drowsy bench and babbling hall.’ I have the honour,” &c. &c. . . . . .
Miss Seward, in her next letter, offers an apology
for not having sooner begged Scott to place her name
among the subscribers to his third volume. His answer is in these words:
“Lasswade, July, 1802.
“I am very sorry to have left you under a mistake
about my third volume. The truth is, that highly as I should feel myself
flattered by the encouragement of Miss
Seward’s name, I cannot, in the present instance, avail
myself of it, as the Ballads are not published by subscription. Providence
having, I suppose, foreseen that my literary qualifications, like those of many
more distinguished persons, might not, par
hazard, support me exactly as I would like, allotted me
a small patrimony which, joined to my professional income, and my appointments
in the characteristic office of Sheriff of Ettrick Forest, serves to render my
literary pursuits more a matter of amusement than an object of emolument. With
this explanation, I hope you will honour me by accepting the third volume as
soon as published, which will be in the beginning of next year, and I also
hope, that under the circumstances, you will hold me acquitted of the silly
vanity of wishing to be thought a gentleman-author.
“The ballad of The Reiver’s Wedding is not yet written,
but I have finished one of a tragic cast, founded upon the death of Regent Murray, who was shot in Linlithgow, by
James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh. The
following verses contain the catastrophe, as told by
Hamilton himself to his chief and his kinsmen:—
“This Bothwellhaugh has occupied such an unwarrantable proportion of
my letter, that I have hardly time to tell you how much I join in your
admiration of Tam o’
Shanter, which I verily believe to be inimitable, both in the
serious and ludicrous parts, as well as the singularly happy combination, of
both. I request Miss Seward to
believe,” &c.
The “Reiver’s
Wedding” never was completed, but I have found two copies of its
commencement, and I shall make no apologies for inserting here what seems to have been the
second one. It will be seen that he had meant to mingle with Sir William’s capture, Auld Wat’s Foray of
the Bassened Bull, and the Feast of Spurs; and that, I know not for what reason, Lochwood,
the ancient fortress of the Johnstones in Annandale, has been
substituted for the real locality of his ancestor’s Drumhead Wedding Contract:—
“THE REIVER’S WEDDING. ‘O will ye hear a mirthful bourd? Or will ye hear of courtesie? Or will ye hear how a gallant lord Was wedded to a gay ladye? ‘Ca’ out the kye,’ quo’ the village herd. As he stood on the knowe, ‘Ca’ this ane’s nine and that ane’s ten, And bauld Lord William’s
cow.’ ‘Ah! by my sooth,’ quoth William then, And stands it that way now, When knave and churl have nine and ten, That the Lord has but his cow? ‘I swear by the light of the Michaelmas moon And the might of Mary high, And by the edge of my braidsword brown, They shall soon say Harden’s
kye.’ He took a bugle frae his side, With names carved o’er and o’er— Full many a chief of meikle pride, That Border bugle bore—* He blew a note baith sharp and hie, Till rock and water rang around— Three score of mosstroopers and three Have mounted at that bugle sound. The Michaelmas moon had entered then, And ere she wan the full, Ye might see by her light in Harden glen A bow o’ kye and a bassened bull. And loud, and loud in Harden tower The quaigh gaed round wi’ meikle glee; For the English beef was brought in bower, And the English ale flowed merrilie. And mony a guest from Teviotside And Yarrow’s Braes were there; Was never a lord in Scotland wide That made more dainty fare. They ate, they laugh’d, they sang and quaff’d, Till nought on board was seen,
* This celebrated horn is still in the possession of
Lord Polwarth.
When knight and squire were boune to dine, But a spur of silver sheen. Lord William has ta’en his berry brown steed— A sore shent man was he: Wait ye, my guests, a little speed— Weel feasted ye shall be.’ He rode him down by Falsehope burn, His cousin dear to see, With him to take a riding turn Wat-draw-the-sword was he. And when he came to Falsehope glen, Beneath the trysting tree, On the smooth green was carved plain,* ‘To Lochwood bound are we.’ ‘O if they be gane to dark Lochwood To drive the Warden’s gear, Betwixt our names, I ween, there’s feud; I’ll go and have my share: ‘For little reck I for Johnstone’s feud, The Warden though he be.’ So Lord William is away to dark Lochwood, With riders barely three. The Warden’s daughters in Lochwood sate, Were all both fair and gay, All save the Lady Margaret, And she was wan and wae. The sister, Jean, had a full fair skin, And Grace was bauld and braw;
* “At Linton, in Roxburghshire, there is a circle
of stones surrounding a smooth plot of turf, called the Tryst, or place of
appointment, which tradition avers to have been the rendezvous of the
neighbouring warriors. The name of the leader was cut in the turf, and the
arrangement of the letters announced to his followers the course which he
had taken.”—Introduction to the Minstrelsy, p. 185.
But the leal-fast heart her breast within It weel was worth them a’. Her father’s pranked her sisters twa With meikle joy and pride; But Margaret maun seek Dundrennan’s wa’— She ne’er can be a bride. On spear and casque by gallants gent Her sisters’ scarfs were borne, But never at tilt or tournament Were Margaret’s colours worn.
Her sisters rode to Thirlstane bower, But she was left at hame To wander round the gloomy tower, And sigh young Harden’s name.
‘Of all the knights, the knight most fair, From Yarrow to the Tyne,’ Soft sigh’d the maid, ‘is Harden’s
heir, But ne’er can he be mine; Of all the maids, the foulest maid From Teviot to the Dee, Ah! sighing sad, that lady said, ‘Can ne’er young Harden’s be’— She looked up the briery glen, And up the mossy brae, And she saw a score of her father’s men Yclad in the Johnstone grey. fast and fast they downwards sped The moss and briers among, And in the midst the troopers led A shackled knight along.” * * * * * * *
As soon as the autumn vacation set Scott at liberty, he proceeded to the Borders with Leyden. “We have just concluded,” he
tells Ellis on his return to Edin-burgh, “an excursion of two or three
weeks through my jurisdiction of Selkirkshire, where, in defiance of mountains, rivers,
and bogs damp and dry, we have penetrated the very recesses of Ettrick Forest, to which
district if I ever have the happiness of welcoming you, you will be convinced that I am
truly the sheriff of the ‘cairn and the scaur.’ In the course of our grand
tour, besides the risks of swamping and breaking our necks, we encountered the
formidable hardships of sleeping upon peat-stacks, and eating mutton slain by no common
butcher, but deprived of life by the judgment of God, as a coroner’s inquest
would express themselves. I have, however, not only escaped safe ‘per
varios casus per tot discrimina rerum,’ but returned loaded with the treasures of oral tradition. The principal
result of our enquiries has been a complete and perfect copy of ‘Maitland with his Auld Berd Graie,’ referred to by
Douglas in his ‘Palice of Honour,’ along with John the Reef and other popular characters, and celebrated also
in the poems from the Maitland MS. You may guess the surprise of
Leyden and myself when this was presented to us, copied down
from the recitation of an old shepherd, by a country farmer, and with no greater
corruptions than might be supposed to be introduced by the lapse of time, and the
ignorance of reciters. I don’t suppose it was originally composed later than the
days of Blind Harry. Many of the old words are
retained, which neither the reciter nor the copyer understood. Such are the military
engines sowies, springwalls (springalds),
and many others. Though the poetical merit of this curiosity is not striking, yet it
has an odd energy and dramatic effect.”
A few weeks later, he thus answers Ellis’s enquiries as to the progress of the Sir Tristrem:—“The worthy knight is still in
embryo, though the whole poetry is printed. The fact is, that a
second edition of the Minstrelsy has
been demanded more suddenly than I expected, and has occupied my immediate attention. I
have also my third volume to compile and arrange; for the Minstrelsy is now to be completed altogether independent of the
preux chevalier, who might hang heavy
upon its skirts. I assure you my Continuation is mere doggrel,
not poetry—it is argued in the same division with Thomas’s own production, and therefore not worth
sending. However, you may depend on having the whole long before publication. I have
derived much information from Turner: he
combines the knowledge of the Welsh and northern authorities, and, in despite of a most
detestable Gibbonism, his book is interesting.* I intend to
study the Welsh triads before I finally commit myself on the subject of Border poetry.
. . . . . . As for Mister Ritson, he and I still
continue on decent terms; and, in truth, he makes pate de
velours; but I dread I shall see ‘a whisker first and
then a claw’ stretched out against my unfortunate lucubrations. Ballantyne, the Kelso printer, who has a book of his
in hand, groans in spirit over the peculiarities of his orthography, which, sooth to
say, hath seldom been equalled since the days of Elphinstone, the ingenious author of the mode of spelling according to
the pronunciation, which he aptly termed ‘Propriety ascertained in her
Picture.’ I fear the remark of Festus to St Paul might be more justly applied to this curious
investigator of antiquity, and it is a pity such research should be rendered useless by
the infirmities of his temper. I have lately had from him a copie of ‘Ye litel wee Mon,’ of which I think I can make some use.
In return, I have sent him a sight of Auld Maitland, the
original MS. If you are curious, I
* The first part of Mr Sharon
Turner’sHistory of the Anglo-Saxons was published in 1799; the second in
1801.
dare say you may easily see it. Indeed, I
might easily send you a transcribed copy,—but I wish him to see it in puris naturalibus.”
Ritson had visited Lasswade in the course of this
autumn, and his conduct had been such as to render the precaution here alluded to very
proper in the case of one who, like Scott, was resolved
to steer clear of the feuds and heartburnings that gave rise to such scandalous scenes
among the other antiquaries of the day. Leyden met
Ritson at the cottage, and, far from imitating his host’s
forbearance, took a pleasure of tormenting the half-mad pedant by every means in his power.
Among other circumstances, Scott delighted to detail the scene that
occurred when his two uncouth allies first met at dinner. Well knowing
Ritson’s holy horror of all animal food,
Leyden complained that the joint on the table was overdone.
“Indeed, for that matter,” cried he, “meat can never be too
little done, and raw is best of all.” He sent to the kitchen accordingly for
a plate of literally raw beef, and manfully eat it up, with no sauce but the exquisite
ruefulness of the Pythagorean’s glances.
Mr Robert Pierce Gillies, a gentleman of the Scotch
bar, well known, among other things, for some excellent translations from the German, was
present at the cottage another day, when Ritson was
in Scotland. He has described the whole scene in the second section of his “Recollections of Sir Walter
Scott,”—a set of papers in which many inaccurate statements occur, but which
convey, on the whole, a lively impression of the persons introduced.* “In
approaching the cottage,” he says, “I was struck with the exceeding
air of neatness that prevailed around. The hand of tasteful cultivation had been there,
and all methods employed to
* These papers appeared in Frazer’s Magazine for September, November,
and December, 1835, and January, 1836.
convert an ordinary thatched cottage into a handsome and
comfortable abode. The doorway was in an angle formed by the original old cabin and the
additional rooms which had been built to it. In a moment I had passed through the
lobby, and found myself in the presence of Mr and Mrs
Scott, and Mr William Erskine. At
this early period, Scott was more like the portrait,
by Saxon, engraved for the first edition of
‘The Lady of the Lake,’
than to any subsequent picture. He retained in features and form an impress of that
elasticity and youthful vivacity, which he used to complain wore off after he was
forty, and by his own account was exchanged for the plodding
heaviness of an operose student. He had now, indeed, somewhat of a boyish gaiety of
look, and in person was tall, slim, and extremely active. On my entrance, he was seated
at a table near the window, and occupied in transcribing from an old MS. volume into
his commonplace book. As to costume, he was carelessly attired in a widely-made
shooting-dress, with a coloured handkerchief round his neck; the very antithesis of
style usually adopted either by student or barrister. ‘Hah!’ he
exclaimed, ‘welcome, thrice welcome! for we are just proposing to have lunch,
and then a long, long walk through wood and wold, in which I am sure you will join
us. But no man can thoroughly appreciate the pleasure of such a life who has not
known what it is to rise spiritless in a morning, and daidle
out half the day in the Parliament House, where we must all compear within another fortnight; then to spend the rest of one’s
time in applying proofs to condescendences, and hauling out
papers to bamboozle judges, most of whom are daized enough
already. What say you, Counsellor Erskine? Come—alla guerra—rouse, and say whether you are for
a walk to-day.’ ‘Certainly, in such fine weather I don’t
see what we can propose better. It is the
last I shall see of the country this vacation.’—‘Nay, say not
so, man; we shall all be merry twice and once yet before the evil days
arrive.’—‘I’ll tell you what I have thought of this
half-hour: it is a plan of mine to rent a cottage and a cabbage-garden not here,
but somewhere farther out of town, and never again, after this one session, to
enter the Parliament House.’—‘And you’ll ask
Ritson, perhaps,’ said Scott,
‘to stay with you, and help to consume the cabbages. Rest assured we shall
both sit on the bench one day; but, heigho! we shall both have become very old and
philosophical by that time.’—‘Did you not expect Lewis here this
morning?’—‘Lewis, I venture to say, is
not up yet, for he dined at Dalkeith yesterday, and of course found the wine very
good. Besides, you know, I have intrusted him with Finella till his own steed gets well of a sprain,
and he could not join our walking excursion.—I see you are admiring that broken
sword,’ he added, addressing me, ‘and your interest would
increase if you knew how much labour was required to bring it into my possession.
In order to grasp that mouldering weapon, I was obliged to drain the well at the
Castle of Dunnottar. But it is time to set out; and here is one friend’ (addressing himself to a large dog) ‘who is
very impatient to be in the field. He tells me he knows where to find a hare in the
woods of Mavisbank. And here is another’ (caressing a terrier),
‘who longs to have a battle with the weazels and water-rats, and the
foumart that wons near the caves of Gorthy: so let us be off.’”
Mr Gillies tells us, that in the course of their
walk to Rosslyn, Scott’s foot slipped, as he was
scrambling towards a cave on the edge of a precipitous bank, and that, “had there
been no trees in the way, he must have been killed, but midway he was stopped by a
large root of hazel, when, instead of struggling, which would have
made matters greatly worse, he seemed perfectly resigned to his fate, and slipped
through the tangled thicket till he lay flat on the river’s brink. He rose in an
instant from his recumbent attitude, and with a hearty laugh called out, ‘Now,
let me see who else will do the like.’ He scrambled up the cliff with
alacrity, and entered the cave, where we had a long dialogue.”
Even after he was an old and hoary man, he continually encountered such
risks with the same recklessness. The extraordinary strength of his hands and arms was his
great reliance in all such difficulties, and if he could see any thing to lay hold of, he
was afraid of no leap, or rather hop, that came in his way. Mr
Gillies says, that when they drew near the famous chapel of Rosslyn,
Erskine expressed a hope that they might, as
habitual visitors, escape hearing the usual endless story of the silly old woman that
showed the ruins; but Scott answered, “There is
a pleasure in the song which none but the songstress knows, and by telling her we know
it all already, we should make the poor devil unhappy.”
On their return to the cottage, Scott
enquired for the learned cabbage-eater, meaning Ritson, who had been expected to dinner.
“Indeed,” answered his wife, “you may be happy he is not
here, he is so very disagreeable. Mr Leyden, I
believe, frightened him away.” It turned out that it was even so. When
Ritson appeared, a round of cold beef was on the luncheon-table,
and Mrs Scott, forgetting his peculiar creed, offered him a slice.
“The antiquary, in his indignation, expressed himself in such outrageous terms
to the lady, that Leyden first tried to correct him by ridicule,
and then, on the madman growing more violent, became angry in his turn, till at last he
threatened, that if he were not silent, he would thraw his neck.
Scott shook his
head at this recital, which Leyden observing, grew vehement in his
own justification. Scott said not a word in reply, but took up a
large bunch of feathers fastened to a stick, denominated a duster, and shook it about the student’s ears till he laughed—then
changed the subject.”
All this is very characteristic of the parties. Scott’s playful aversion to dispute was a trait in his mind and
manners that could alone have enabled him to make use at one and the same time, and for the
same purpose, of two such persons as Ritson and
Leyden.
To return to Ellis. In answer to
Scott’s letter last quoted, he urged him to
make Sir Tristremvolume fourth of the Minstrelsy. “As to his hanging heavy on hand” (says he),
“I admit, that as a separate publication he may do so, but the Minstrelsy is now established as a library book, and in this
bibliomaniac age, no one would think it perfect without the preux chevalier, if you avow the said chevalier as your adopted
son. Let him, at least, be printed in the same size and paper, and then I am persuaded
our booksellers will do the rest fast enough, upon the credit of your
reputation.” Scott replies (November), that it is now too
late to alter the fate of Sir Tristrem. “Longman, of Paternoster Row, has been down here in summer,
and purchased the copyright of the Minstrelsy. Sir Tristrem is a separate property, but will be on the same scale in point of
size.”
The next letter introduces to Ellis’s personal acquaintance Leyden, who had by this time completed his medical studies, and taken his
degree as a physician. In it Scott says: “At
length I write to you per favour of John Leyden. I presume
Heber has made you sufficiently acquainted
with this original (for he is a true one), and therefore I will trust to your own kindness, should an opportunity occur of doing him any service in
furthering his Indian plans. You will readily judge, from conversing with him, that
with a very uncommon stock of acquired knowledge, he wants a good deal of another sort
of knowledge which is only to be gleaned from an early intercourse with polished
society. But he dances his bear with a good confidence, and the bear itself is a very
good-natured and well-conditioned animal. All his friends are much interested about
him, as the qualities both of his heart and head are very uncommon.” He adds:
“My third volume will appear as soon after the others as the despatch of the
printers will admit. Some parts will, I think, interest you; particularly the
preservation of the entire ‘Auld Maitland’ by
oral tradition, probably from the reign of Edward
II. or III. As I have never met with
such an instance, I must request you to enquire all about it of
Leyden, who was with me when I received my first copy. In the
third volume I intend to publish Cadyow Castle, a historical sort of a ballad upon the
death of the Regent Murray, and besides this, a
long poem of my own. It will be a kind
of romance of Border chivalry, in a light-horseman sort of stanza.”
He appears to have sent a copy of Cadyow Castle by Leyden, whose reception at Mr
Ellis’s villa, near Windsor, is thus described in the next letter of
the correspondence. “Let me thank you,” says Ellis,
“for your poem, which Mrs E. has not received, and which, indeed, I could not help feeling glad,
in the first instance (though we now begin to grow very impatient for it), that she did
not receive. Leyden would not have been your
Leyden if he had arrived like a careful citizen, with all his
packages carefully docketed in his portmanteau. If on the point of leaving for many
years, perhaps for ever, his country and the friends of his youth, he had not deferred
to the last, and till it was too
late, all that could be easily done, and that stupid people find time to do—if he had
not arrived with all his ideas perfectly bewildered—and tired to death, and sick—and
without any settled plans for futurity, or any accurate recollection of the past—we
should have felt much more disappointed than we were by the non-arrival of your poem,
which he assured us he remembered to have left somewhere or other, and therefore felt
very confident of recovering. In short, his whole air and countenance told us, ‘I
am come to be one of your friends,’ and we immediately took him at his
word.”
By the “romance of Border chivalry,” which was
designed to form part of the third volume of the Minstrelsy, the reader is to understand the first
draught of The Lay of the Last Minstrel; and
the author’s description of it as being “in a light-horseman sort of
stanza,” was probably suggested by the circumstances under which the greater
part of that original draught was composed. He has told us, in his Introduction of 1830,
that the poem originated in a request of the young and lovely Countess of Dalkeith, that he would write a ballad on the legend of
Gilpin Horner: that he began it at Lasswade, and
read the opening stanzas, as soon as they were written, to his friends, Erskine and Cranstoun: that their reception of these was apparently so cold as to
discourage him, and disgust him with what he had done; but that finding, a few days
afterwards, that the stanzas had nevertheless excited their curiosity, and haunted their
memory, he was encouraged to resume the undertaking. The scene and date of this resumption
I owe to the recollection of the then Cornet of the Edinburgh light-horse. While the troop
were on permanent duty at Musselburgh, in the autumnal recess of 1802, the quartermaster,
during a charge on Porto-bello sands, received a kick of a horse, which
confined him for three days to his lodgings. Mr
Skene found him busy with his pen; and he produced before these three days
expired the first canto of the Lay, very nearly, if his
friend’s memory may be trusted, in the state in which it was ultimately published.
That the whole poem was sketched and filled in with extraordinary rapidity, there can be no
difficulty in believing. He himself says (in the Introduction of 1830), that after he had
once got fairly into the vein, it proceeded at the rate of about a canto in a week. The
Lay, however, like the Tristrem, soon outgrew the dimensions which he had
originally contemplated; the design of including it in the third volume of the Minstrelsy was of course abandoned; and it did not appear until
nearly three years, after that fortunate mishap on the beach of Portobello.
To return to Scott’s correspondence:—it shows that Ellis had, although involved at the time in serious family
afflictions, exerted himself strenuously and effectively in behalf of Leyden; a service which Scott acknowledges most warmly. His friend writes, too, at great length
about the completion of the Minstrelsy,
urging, in particular, the propriety of prefixing to it a good map of the Scottish
Border—“for, in truth,” he says, “I have never been able to
find even Ercildoune on any map in my possession.” The
poet answers (January 30, 1803): “The idea of a map pleases me much, but there are
two strong objections to its being prefixed to this edition. First, we shall be out in a month, within which time it would be difficult, I
apprehend, for Mr Arrowsmith, labouring under
the disadvantages which I am about to mention, to complete the map. Secondly, you are to know that I am an utter stranger to geometry, surveying,
and all such inflammatory branches of study, as Mrs Malaprop calls them. My education was unfortunately
in-terrupted by a long
indisposition, which occasioned my residing for about two years in the country with a
good maiden aunt, who permitted and encouraged me to run about the fields, as wild as
any buck that ever fled from the face of man. Hence my geographical knowledge is merely
practical, and though I think that in the South country
‘I could be a guide worth ony twa, that may in Liddesdale be
found,’ yet I believe Hobby Noble, or Kinmont
Willie, would beat me at laying down a map. I have, however, sense
enough to see that our mode of executing maps in general is any thing but perfect. The
country is most inaccurately defined, and had your General (Wade) marched through Scotland by the assistance of Ainslie’s map, his flying artillery would soon
have stuck fast among our morasses, and his horse broke their knees among our cairns.
Your system of a bird’s eye view is certainly the true principle.” He
goes on to mention some better maps than Ellis seemed to have
consulted, and to inform him where he may discover Ercildoune, under its modern form of
Earlston, upon the river Leader; and concludes, “the map then must be deferred
until the third edition, about which, I suppose, Longman thinks courageously.” He then adds:
“I am almost glad Cadyow Castle is
miscarried, as I have rather lost conceit of it at present, being engaged on what I think
will be a more generally interesting legend. I have called it the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ and put it in the mouth of an
old bard, who is supposed to have, survived all his brethren, and to have lived down to
1690. The thing itself will be very long, but I would willingly have sent you the Introduction had you been still in possession of your senatorial
privilege; but double postage would be a strange innovation on the established price of
ballads, which have always sold at the easy rate of one halfpenny.”
I must now give part of a letter in which Leyden recurs to the kindness, and sketches the person and manners of
George Ellis, in a highly characteristic
fashion. He says to Scott (January 25, 1803),
“You were, no doubt, surprised, my dear sir, that I gave you so little
information about my movements; but it is only this day I have been able to speak of
them with any precision. Such if the tardiness in every thing connected with the India
House, that a person who is present in the character of spectator is quite amazed; but
if we consider it as the centre of a vast commercial concern, in comparison of which
Tyre and Sidon, and the Great Carthage itself, must inevitably dwindle into huckster
shops, we are induced to think of them with more patience. Even yet I cannot answer you
exactly—being very uncertain whether I am to sail on the 18th of next month, or the
28th.
1. “Now shal i telen to ye, i wis, Of that kind Squeyere Ellis, That wonnen in this cite; Courtess he is, by God almtzt! That he nis nought ymaked knizt It is the more pitie. 2. “He konnen better eche glewe Than I konnen to ye shewe, Baith maist and least. So wel he wirketh in eche thewe, That where he commen, I tel ye trewe, He is ane welcome guest. 3. “His eyen graye as glas ben, And his looks ben alto kene, Loveliche to paramour. Brown as acorn ben his faxe, His face is thin as bettel axe That dealeth dintis doure, 4. “His wit ben both keene and sharpe, To knizt or dame that carll can carpe Either in hall or bower; And had I not this squeyere yfonde, I had been at the se gronde, Which had been great doloure. 5. “In him Ich finden non other euil, Save that his nostril so doth snivel, It is not myche my choice. But than his wit ben so perquire, That thai who can his carpynge here Thai thynke not of his voice. 6. “To speake not of his gentel dame Ich wis it war bothe sin and shame Lede is not to layne; She is a ladye of sich pryce, To leven in that dame’s service Meni wer fill fain. 7. “Hir wit is ful kene and queynt And hir stature smale and gent, Semeleche to be seene; Armes, hondes, and fingres smale, Of pearl beth eche fingre nale; She mizt be ferys Quene. 8. “That lady she wil giv a scarf To him that wold ykillen a dwarf Churl of paynim kinde; That dwarf he is so fell of mode Tho ye shold drynk his hert blode, Gode wold ze never finde. 9. “That dwarf he ben beardless and bare And weazelblowen ben al his hair, Like an ympe or elfe; And in this world beth al and hale Ben nothynge that he loveth an dele Safe his owen selfe” . . . . .
The fourth of these verses refers to the loss of the Hindostan, in which
ship Leyden, but for Mr
Ellis’s interference, must have sailed, and which foundered in the
Channel. The dwarf is, of course, Ritson.
After various letters of the same kind, I find one, dated Isle of Wight,
April the 1st (1803), the morning before Leyden
finally sailed. “I have been two days on board,” he writes,
“and you may conceive what an excellent change I made from the politest
society of London to the brutish skippers of Portsmouth. Our crew consists of a very
motley party; but there are some of them very ingenious, and Robert Smith, Sidney’s brother, is himself a host. He is almost the most
powerful man I have met with. My money concerns I shall consider you as trustee of; and
all remittances, as well as dividends from Longman, will be to your direction. These, I hope, we shall soon be
able to adjust very accurately. Money may be paid, but kindness never. Assure your
excellent Charlotte, whom I shall ever recollect
with affection and esteem, how much I regret that I did not see her before my
departure, and say a thousand pretty things, for which my mind is too much agitated,
being in the situation of Coleridge’s
devil and his grannam, ‘expecting and hoping the trumpet to blow.’
And now, my dear Scott, adieu. Think of me with
indulgence, and be certain, that wherever, and in whatever situation, John
Leyden is, his heart is unchanged by place, and his soul by
time.”
This letter was received by Scott,
not in Edinburgh, but in London. He had hurried up to town as soon as the Court of Session
rose for the spring vacation, in hopes of
seeing his friend once more before he left England; but he came too late. He had, however,
done his part: he had sent Leyden L.50, through Messrs Longman, a week before; and on the back of that bill there is the following
memorandum: “Dr Leyden’s total debt to
me L.150; he also owes L.50 to my uncle.”
He thus writes to Ballantyne, on
the 21st April, 1803: “I have to thank you for the accuracy with which the Minstrelsy is thrown off. Longman and Rees
are delighted with the printing. Be so good as to disperse the following presentation
copies, with ‘From the Editor’ on each:— James Hogg, Ettrick House, care of
Mr Oliver, Hawick by the carrier—a complete set. Thomas Scott (my brother), ditto. Colin Mackenzie, Esq.,
Prince’s Street, third volume only. Mrs Scott, George Street, ditto. Dr Rutherford, York Place, ditto. Captain Scott, Rosebank, ditto.
I mean all these to be ordinary paper. Send one set fine paper to Dalkeith House,
addressed to the Duchess; another, by the Inverary
carrier, to Lady Charlotte Campbell; the
remaining ten, fine paper, with any of Vol. III., which may be
on fine paper, to be sent to me by sea. I think they will give you some eclat here, where printing is so much valued. I
have settled about printing an edition of the Lay, 8vo, with
vignettes, provided I can get a draughtsman whom I think well of. We may throw off a
few superb in quarto. To the Minstrelsy I mean this note to
be added, by way of advertisement: In the press, and will speedily be published, The Lay of the
Last Minstrel, by Walter Scott, Esq., Editor of The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Also, Sir Tristrem, a Metrical Romance, by Thomas of Ercildoune, called the Rhymer, edited from
an ancient MS., with an Introduction and Notes, by Walter Scott,
Esq.” Will you cause such a thing to be appended in your own way and
fashion?”
This letter is dated “No. 15, Piccadilly West,”—he and
Mrs Scott being there domesticated under the roof of
the late M. Charles Dumergue, a man of very superior
abilities and of excellent education, well known as surgeon-dentist to the royal family,
who had been intimately acquainted with the Charpentiers in his own
early life in France, and had warmly befriended Mrs Scott’s
mother on her first arrival in England. M. Dumergue’s house was,
throughout the whole period of the emigration, liberally opened to the exiles of his native
country; nor did some of the noblest of those unfortunate refugees scruple to make the
freest use of his purse, as well as of his hospitality. Here Scott met much highly interesting French society, and until a child of his
own was established in London, he never thought of taking up his abode any where else, as
often as he had occasion to be in town.
The letter is addressed to “Mr James
Ballantyne, printer, Abbey-hill, Edinburgh;” which shows, that before
the third volume of the Minstrelsy
passed through the press, the migration recommended two years earlier had at length taken
place. “It was about the end of 1802,” says
Ballantyne in his Memorandum, “that I closed with a plan
so congenial to my wishes. I removed, bag and baggage, to Edinburgh, finding
accommodation for two presses, and a proof one, in the precincts of Holyrood-house,
then deriving new lustre and interest from the recent arrival of the royal exiles of
France. In these obscure premises some of
the most beautiful productions of what we called The Border
Press were printed.” The Memorandum states, that Scott having renewed his hint as to pecuniary assistance, so
soon as the printer found his finances straitened, “a liberal loan was advanced
accordingly.” Of course Scott’s interest was
constantly exerted in procuring employment, both legal and literary, for his friend’s
types:—and the concern grew and prospered.
Heber, and Mackintosh then at the height of his reputation as a conversationist, and
daily advancing also at the Bar, had been ready to welcome Scott in town as old friends; and Rogers, William Stewart Rose, and
several other men of literary eminence were at the same time added to the list of his
acquaintance. His principal object, however—having missed Leyden—was to peruse and make extracts from some MSS. in the library of
John Duke of Roxburghe, for the illustration of the
Tristrem; and he derived no small
assistance in other researches of the like kind from the collections which the
indefatigable and obliging Douce placed at his
disposal. Having completed these labours, he and Mrs
Scott went, with Heber and Deuce,
to Sunninghill, where they spent a happy week, and Mr and Mrs Ellis heard the first two
or three cantos of the Lay of the Last Minstrel
read under an old oak in Windsor Forest.
I should not omit to say, that Scott
was attended on this trip by a very large and fine bull-terrier, by name Camp, and that Camp’s master, and mistress too, were
delighted by finding that the Ellises cordially
sympathized in their fondness for this animal, and indeed for all his race. At parting,
Scott promised to send one of Camp’s progeny, in the course of the season, to Sunninghill.
From thence they proceeded to Oxford, accompanied by Heber; and it was on this occasion, as I believe, that
Scott first saw his friend’s brother,
Reginald, in afterdays the apostolic Bishop of
Calcutta. He had just been declared the successful competitor for that year’s
poetical prize, and read to Scott at breakfast, in Brazen Nose
College, the MS. of his “Palestine.” Scott observed that, in the verses on
Solomon’s Temple, one striking circumstance had escaped him, namely, that no tools
were used in its erection. Reginald retired for a few minutes to the
corner of the room, and returned with the beautiful lines,— “No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung, Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung. Majestic silence,” &c.*
After inspecting the University and Blenheim, under the guidance of the
Hebers, Scott returned to
London, as appears from the following letter to Miss
Seward, who had been writing to him on the subject of her projected biography of Dr Darwin. The conclusion
and date are lost.
“I have been for about a fortnight in this huge and
bustling metropolis, when I am agreeably surprised by a packet from Edinburgh,
containing Miss Seward’s letter. I
am truly happy at the information it communicates respecting the life of Dr Darwin, who could
not have wished his fame and character intrusted to a pen more capable of doing
them ample, and, above all, discriminating justice. Biography, the most
interesting perhaps of every species of composition, loses all its interest
with me, when the shades and lights of the principal character are not
accurately and faithfully detailed;
* See “Life of Bishop Heber, by his
Widow,” edition 1830,
vol. i. p. 30.
nor have I much patience
with such exaggerated daubing as Mr
Hayley has bestowed upon poor Cowper. I can no more sympathize with
a mere eulogist than I can with a ranting hero upon the stage; and it
unfortunately happens that some of our disrespect is apt, rather unjustly, to
he transferred to the subject of the panegyric in the one case and to poor
Cato in the other. Unapprehensive that
even friendship can bias Miss Seward’s duty to the
public, I shall wait most anxiously for the volume her kindness has promised
me.
“As for my third volume, it was very nearly printed
when I left Edinburgh, and must, I think, be ready for publication in about a
fortnight, when it will have the honour of travelling to Lichfield. I doubt you
will find but little amusement in it, as there are a good many old ballads,
particularly those of ‘the Covenanters,’ which, in point of
composition, are mere drivelling trash. They are, however, curious in an
historical point of view, and have enabled me to slide in a number of notes
about that dark and bloody period of Scottish history. There is a vast
convenience to an editor in a tale upon which, without the formality of
adapting the notes very precisely to the shape and form of the ballad, he may
hang on a set like a herald’s coat without sleeves, saving himself the
trouble of taking measure, and sending forth the tale of ancient time, ready
equipped from the Monmouth Street warehouse of a commonplace book. Cadyow Castle is to appear in
volume third.
“I proceeded thus far about three weeks ago, and
shame to tell, have left my epistle unfinished ever since; yet I have not been
wholly idle, about a fortnight of that period having been employed as much to
my satisfaction as any similar space of time during my life. I was, the first
week of that fortnight, with my invaluable friend George Ellis, and spent the second week at Oxford, which I visited for the first time. I was peculiarly fortunate in
having, for my patron at Oxford, Mr
Heber, a particular friend of mine, who is intimately acquainted
with all, both animate and inanimate, that is worth knowing at Oxford. The
time, though as much as I could possibly spare, has, I find, been too short to
convey to me separate and distinct ideas of all the variety of wonders which I
saw. My memory only at present furnishes a grand but indistinct picture of
towers, and chapels, and oriels, and vaulted halls, and libraries, and
paintings. I hope, in a little time, my ideas will develope themselves a little
more distinctly, otherwise I shall have profited little by my tour. I was much
flattered by the kind reception and notice I met with from some of the most
distinguished inhabitants of the halls of Isis, which was more than such a
truant to the classic page as myself was entitled to expect at the source of
classic learning.
“On my return, I find an apologetic letter from my
printer, saying the third volume
will be despatched in a day or two. There has been, it seems, a meeting among
the printers’ devils; also among the papermakers. I never heard of
authors striking work, as the mechanics call it, until their masters the
booksellers should increase their pay; but if such a combination could take
place, the revolt would now be general in all branches of literary labour. How
much sincere satisfaction would it give me could I conclude this letter (as I
once hoped), by saying I should visit Lichfield and pay my personal respects to
my invaluable correspondent in my way northwards; but as circumstances render
this impossible, I shall depute the poetry of the olden time in the
editor’s stead. My ‘Romance’ is not yet finished. I prefer it much to any thing I
have done of the kind.” . . . .
He was in Edinburgh by the middle of May; and thus returns to his view
of Oxford in a letter to his friend at Sunninghill:—
To George Ellis, Esq., &c. &c.
“Edinburgh, 25th May, 1803. “My dear Ellis,
“ . . . . I was equally delighted with that venerable
seat of learning, and flattered by the polite attention of Heber’s friends. I should have been
enchanted to have spent a couple of months among the curious libraries. What
stores must be reserved for some painful student to bring forward to the
public! Under the guidance and patronage of our good
Heber, I saw many of the literary men of his Alma Mater,
and found matters infinitely more active in every department than I had the
least previous idea of. Since I returned home, my time has been chiefly
occupied in professional labours; my truant days spent in London having thrown
me a little behind; but now, I hope, I shall find spare moments to resume Sir Tristrem and the Lay, which has acquired additional
value in my estimation from its pleasing you. How often do Charlotte and I think of the little paradise at
Sunninghill and its kind inhabitants; and how do we regret, like
Dives, the gulf which is placed betwixt us and
friends, with whom it would give us such pleasure to spend much of our time. It
is one of the vilest attributes of the best of all possible worlds, that it
contrives to split and separate and subdivide every thing like congenial
pursuits and habits, for the paltry purpose, one would think, of diversifying
every little spot with a share of its various productions. I don’t know
why the human and vegetable departments should differ so excessively. Oaks and
beeches, and ashes and elms, not to mention cabbages and
turnips, are usually arrayed en
masse; but where do we meet a town of antiquaries, a village
of poets, or a hamlet of philosophers? But, instead of fruitless lamentations,
we sincerely hope Mrs Ellis and you will
unrivet yourselves from your forest, and see how the hardy blasts of our
mountains will suit you for a change of climate. . . . . . . The new edition of
‘Minstrelsy’
is published here, but not in London as yet, owing to the embargo on our
shipping. An invasion is expected from Flushing, and no measures of any kind
taken to prevent or repel it. Yours ever faithfully,
W. Scott.”
This letter enclosed a sheet of extracts from Fordun, in Scott’s handwriting; the subject being the traditional marriage of
one of the old Counts of Anjou with a female demon, by which the Scotch chronicler accounts
for all the crimes and misfortunes of the English Plantagenets.
Messrs Longman’s new
edition of the first two volumes of the Minstrelsy consisted of 1000 copies—of volume third there were 1500. A complete
edition of 1250 copies followed in 1806; a fourth, also of 1250, in 1810; a fifth of 1500
in 1812; a sixth of 500 in 1820; and since then it has been incorporated in various
successive editions of Scott’s Collected Poetry—to the extent of at least 15,000
copies more. Of the Continental and American editions, I can say nothing, except that they
have been very numerous. The book was soon translated into German, Danish, and Swedish;
and, the structure of those languages being very favourable to the undertaking, the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border has thus become widely
naturalized among nations themselves rich in similar treasures of legendary lore. Of the extraordinary accuracy and
felicity of the German version of Schubart,
Scott has given some specimens in the last edition
which he himself superintended—that of 1830.
He speaks in the Essay, to which I have referred, as if the first reception of the Minstrelsy on the south of the Tweed had
been cold. “The curiosity of the English,” he says, “was not
much awakened by poems in the rude garb of antiquity, accompanied with notes referring
to the obscure feuds of barbarous clans, of whose very names civilized history was
ignorant.” In writing those beautiful Introductions of 1830, however,
Scott, as I have already had occasion to hint,
trusted entirely to his recollection of days long since gone by, and he has accordingly let
fall many statements, which we must take with some allowance. His impressions as to the
reception of the Minstrelsy were different, when, writing to his
brother-in-law, Charles Carpenter, on the 3d March,
1803, for the purpose of introducing Leyden, he
said, “I have contrived to turn a very slender portion of literary talents to some
account, by a publication of the poetical antiquities of the Border, where the old
people had preserved many ballads descriptive of the manners of the country during the
wars with England. This trifling collection was so well received by a discerning public, that, after receiving about £100 profit for the first
edition, which my vanity cannot omit informing you went off in six months, I have sold
the copyright for £500 more.” This is not the language of
disappointment; and though the edition of 1803 did not move off quite so rapidly as the
first, and the work did not perhaps attract much notice beyond the more cultivated students
of literature, until the Editor’s own genius blazed out in full splendour in the
Lay, and thus lent general interest to whatever was connected with his name, I suspect there never was much
ground for accusing the English public of regarding the Minstrelsy with more coldness than the Scotch—the population of the Border
districts themselves being, of course, excepted. Had the sale of the original edition been
chiefly Scotch, I doubt whether Messrs Longman would
have so readily offered £500, in those days of the trade a large sum, for the second.
Scott had become habituated, long before 1830, to a scale of
bookselling transactions, measured by which the largest editions and copy-monies of his own
early days appeared insignificant; but the evidence seems complete that he was well
contented at the time.
He certainly had every reason to be so as to the impression which the
Minstrelsy made on the minds of
those entitled to think for themselves upon such a subject. The ancient ballads in his
collection, which had never been printed at all before, were in number forty-three; and of
the others—most of which were in fact all but new to the modern reader—it is little to say
that his editions were superior in all respects to those that had preceded them. He had, I
firmly believe, interpolated hardly a line or even an epithet of his own; but his diligent
zeal had put him in possession of a variety of copies in different stages of preservation;
and to the task of selecting a standard text among such a diversity of materials, he
brought a knowledge of old manners and phraseology, and a manly simplicity of taste, such
as had never before been united in the person of a poetical antiquary. From among a hundred
corruptions he seized, with instinctive tact, the primitive diction and imagery; and
produced strains in which the unbroken energy of half-civilized ages, their stern and deep
passions, their daring adventures and cruel tragedies, and even their rude wild humour, are
reflected with almost the
brightness of a Homeric mirror, interrupted by hardly a blot of what deserves to be called
vulgarity, and totally free from any admixture of artificial sentimentalism. As a picture
of manners, the Scottish Minstrelsy is not surpassed, if equalled, by any similar body of
poetry preserved in any other country; and it unquestionably owes its superiority in this
respect over Percy’s Reliques to
the Editor’s conscientious fidelity, on the one hand, which prevented the
introduction of any thing new—to his pure taste, on the other, in the balancing of
discordant recitations. His introductory essays and notes teemed with curious knowledge,
not hastily grasped for the occasion, but gradually gleaned and sifted by the patient
labour of years, and presented with an easy, unaffected propriety and elegance of
arrangement and expression, which it may be doubted if he ever materially surpassed in the
happiest of his imaginative narrations. I well remember, when Waverley was a new book, and all the world were puzzling
themselves about its authorship, to have heard the Poet of “the Isle of
Palms” exclaim impatiently: “I wonder what all these people are
perplexing themselves with: have they forgotten the prose of the Minstrelsy?” Even had the Editor inserted none of his own verse,
the work would have contained enough, and more than enough, to found a lasting and graceful
reputation.
It is not to be denied, however, that The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border has derived a
very large accession of interest from the subsequent career of its Editor. One of the
critics of that day said that the book contained “the elements of a hundred
historical romances;” and this critic was a prophetic one. No person who has
not gone through its volumes for the express purpose of comparing their contents with his
great original works, can have formed a conception of the end-less
variety of incidents and images now expanded and emblazoned by his mature art, of which the
first hints may be found either in the text of those primitive ballads, or in the notes,
which the happy rambles of his youth had gathered together for their illustration. In the
edition of the Minstrelsy published since his death, not a few
such instances are pointed out; but the list might have been extended far beyond the limits
which such an edition allowed. The taste and fancy of Scott appear to have been formed as early as his moral character; and he
had, before he passed the threshold of authorship, assembled about him, in the
uncalculating delight of native enthusiasm, almost all the materials on which his genius
was destined to be employed for the gratification and instruction of the world.
CHAPTER XII. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW—PROGRESS OF
THE TRISTREM—AND OF THE LAY OF THE LAST
MINSTREL—VISIT OF WORDSWORTH—PUBLICATION OF “SIR TRISTREM.” 1803-1804.
Shortly after the complete “Minstrelsy” issued from the press, Scott made his first appearance as a reviewer. The Edinburgh Review had been commenced in October,
1802, under the superintendence of the Rev. Sidney
Smith, with whom, during his short residence in Scotland, he had lived on
terms of great kindness and familiarity. Mr Smith soon resigned the
editorship to Mr Jeffrey, who had by this time been
for several years among the most valued of Scott’s friends and
companions at the bar; and, the new journal being far from committing itself to violent
politics at the outset, he appreciated the brilliant talents regularly engaged in it far
too highly, not to be well pleased with the opportunity of occasionally exercising his pen
in its service. His first contribution was,
I believe, an article on Southey’sAmadis of Gaul, included in the number for
October, 1803. Another, on Sibbald’sChronicle of Scottish Poetry, appeared in the same
number:—a third, on Godwin’sLife of Chaucer; a fourth, on Ellis’sSpecimens of
Ancient English Poetry; and a fifth, on the Life and Works of
Chatterton, followed in the course of 1804.*
* Scott’s contributions to
our periodical literature have been
During the summer of 1803, however, his chief literary labour was still
on the “Tristrem;” and I shall
presently give some further extracts from his letters to Ellis, which will amply illustrate the spirit in which he continued his
researches about the Seer of Ercildoune, and the
interruptions which these owed to the prevalent alarm of French invasion. Both as
Quartermaster of the Edinburgh Light-horse, and as Sheriff of The Forest, he had a full
share of responsibility in the warlike arrangements to which the authorities of Scotland
had at length been roused; nor were the duties of his two offices considered as strictly
compatible by Francis Lord Napier, then Lord-Lieutenant
of Selkirkshire; for I find several letters in which his Lordship. complains that the
incessant drills and musters of Musselburgh and Portobello prevented the Sheriff from
attending county meetings held at Selkirk in the course of this summer and autumn, for the
purpose of organizing the trained bands of the Forest, on a scale hitherto unattempted.
Lord Napier strongly urges the propriety of his resigning his
connexion with the Edinburgh troop, and fixing his summer residence somewhere within the
limits of his proper jurisdiction; nay, he goes so far as to hint, that if these
suggestions should be neglected, it must be his duty to state the case to the Government.
Scott could not be induced (least of all by a
threat), while the fears of invasion still prevailed, to resign his place among his old
companions of “the voluntary band;” but he seems to have presently acquiesced
in the propriety of the Lord-Lieutenant’s advice respecting a removal from Lasswade
to Ettrick Forest.
The following extract is from a letter written at Musselburgh, during
this summer or autumn:—
with some trivial exceptions, included in the
recent collection of his Miscellaneous
Prose Writings.
“Miss Seward’s
acceptable favour reaches me in a place, and at a time, of great bustle, as the corps
of voluntary cavalry to which I belong is quartered for a short time in this village,
for the sake of drilling and discipline. Nevertheless, had your letter announced the
name of the gentleman who took the trouble of forwarding it, I would have made it my
business to find him out, and to prevail on him, if possible, to spend a day or two
with us in quarters. We are here assuming a very military appearance. Three regiments
of militia, with a formidable park of artillery, are encamped just by us. The Edinburgh
troop, to which I have the honour to be quartermaster, consists entirely of young
gentlemen of family, and is, of course, admirably well mounted and armed. There are
other four troops in the regiment, consisting of yeomanry, whose iron faces and
muscular forms announce the hardness of the climate against which they wrestle, and the
powers which nature has given them to contend with and subdue it. These corps have been
easily raised in Scotland, the farmers being in general a high-spirited race of men,
fond of active exercises, and patient of hardship and fatigue. For myself, I must own
that to one who has, like myself, la tête un peu
exaltée, the pomp and circumstance of war gives, for a
time, a very poignant and pleasing sensation. The imposing appearance of cavalry, in
particular, and the rush which marks their onset, appear to me to partake highly of the
sublime. Perhaps I am the more attached to this sort of sport of swords, because my
health requires much active exercise, and a lameness contracted in childhood renders it
inconvenient for me to take it otherwise than on horseback. I have, too, a hereditary
attachment to the animal—not, I flatter myself, of the common jockey cast, but because
I regard him as the kindest and most generous of the subordinate
tribes. I hardly even except the dogs; at least they are usually so much better
treated, that compassion for the steed should be thrown into the scale when we weigh
their comparative merits. My wife (a foreigner)
never sees a horse ill-used without asking what that poor horse has done in his state
of pre-existence? I would fain hope they have been carters or hackney-coachmen, and are
only experiencing a retort of the ill-usage they have formerly inflicted. What think
you?”
It appears that Miss Seward had
sent Scott some obscure magazine criticism on his
“Minstrelsy,” in which
the censor had condemned some phrase as naturally suggesting a low idea. The lady’s
letter not having been preserved, I cannot explain farther the sequel of that from which I
have been quoting. Scott says, however:
“I am infinitely amused with your sagacious critic. God wot I
have often admired the vulgar subtlety of such minds as can with a depraved ingenuity
attach a mean or disgusting sense to an epithet capable of being otherwise understood,
and more frequently, perhaps, used to express an elevated idea. In many parts of
Scotland the word virtue is limited entirely to industry; and a young divine who preached upon the moral
beauties of virtue was considerably surprised at learning that the whole discourse was
supposed to be a panegyric upon a particular damsel who could spin fourteen spindles of
yarn in the course of a week. This was natural; but your literary critic has the merit
of going very far a-field to fetch home his degrading association.”
To return to the correspondence with Ellis—Scott writes thus to him in
July:—“I cannot pretend immediately to enter upon the serious discussion which
you propose respecting the age of ‘Sir
Tristrem;’ but yet, as it seems likely to strip Thomas the Prophet of the honours due to the author of the English ‘Tristrem,’ I cannot help hesitating before I can agree to
your theory; and here my doubt lies. Thomas of Ercildoune, called
the Rhymer, is a character mentioned by almost every Scottish historian, and the date
of whose existence is almost as well known as if we had the parish register. Now, his
great reputation, and his designation of Rymour, could only be derived from his poetical performances; and
in what did these consist excepting in the romance of ‘Sir
Tristrem,’ mentioned by Robert de
Brunne? I hardly think, therefore, we shall be justified in assuming the
existence of an earlier Thomas, who would be, in fact, merely the
creature of our system. I own I am not prepared to take this step, if I can escape
otherwise from you and M. de la Ravaillere and
thus I will try it. M. de la R. barely informs us that the history
of Sir Tristrem was known to Chretien de
Troyes in the end of the twelfth century, and to the King of
Navarre in the beginning of the thirteenth. Thus far his evidence goes,
and I think not one inch farther for it does not establish the existence either of the
metrical romance, as you suppose, or of the prose romance, as M. de la
R. much more erroneously supposes, at that very early period. If the story of ‘Sir Tristrem’
was founded in fact, and if, which I have all along thought, a person of this name
really swallowed a dose of cantharides intended to stimulate the exertions of his
uncle, a petty monarch of Cornwall, and involved himself of course in an intrigue with
his aunt, these facts must have taken place during a very early period of English
history, perhaps about the time of the Heptarchy. Now, if this be once admitted, it is
clear that the raw material from which Thomas wove his web, must
have been current long before his day, and I am inclined to think that
Chretien and the King of Navarre refer
not to the spe-cial metrical romance contained in Mr Douce’s fragments, but to the general story
of ‘Sir Tristrem,’ whose love and misfortunes were handed down by tradition
as a historical fact. There is no difficulty in supposing a tale of this kind to have
passed from the Armoricans, or otherwise, into the mouths of the French, as, on the
other hand, it seems to have been preserved among the Celtic tribes of the Border, from
whom, in all probability, it was taken by their neighbour, Thomas of
Ercildoune. If we suppose, therefore, that Chretien
and the King allude only to the general and well-known story of
Tristrem, and not to the particular edition of which Mr
Douce has some fragments—(and I see no evidence that any such special
allusion to these fragments is made)—it will follow that they
may be as late as the end of the thirteenth century, and that the
Thomas mentioned in them may be theThomas of whose existence we have historical
evidence. In short, the question is, shall Thomas be considered as
a landmark by which to ascertain the antiquity of the fragments, or shall the supposed antiquity of the fragments be held a sufficient reason
for supposing an earlier Thomas? For aught yet seen, I incline to
my former opinion, that those fragments are coeval with the ipsissimus Thomas. I acknowledge the internal evidence, of
which you are so accurate a judge, weighs more with me than the reference to the
King of Navarre; but after all, the extreme difficulty of
judging of style, so as to bring us within sixty or seventy years, must be fully
considered. Take notice, I have never pleaded the matter so high as to say, that the
Auchinleck MS. contains the very words devised by Thomas the
Rhymer. On the contrary, I have always thought it one of the spurious
copies in queint Inglis, of which
Robert de Brunne so heavily complains. But this will take
little from the curiosity, perhaps little from the antiquity, of the romance. Enough of
Sir T. for the present.—How happy it
will make us if you can fulfil the expectation you hold out of a northern expedition.
Whether in the cottage or at Edinburgh, we will be equally happy to receive you and
show you all the lions of our vicinity. Charlotte is
hunting out music for Mrs E., but I intend to
add Johnson’s
collection, which, though the tunes are simple, and often bad sets, contains much more
original Scotch music than any other.”
About this time, Mr and Mrs Ellis, and their friend Douce, were preparing for a tour into the North of England; and Scott was invited and strongly tempted to join them at various
points of their progress, particularly at the Grange, near Rotherham, in Yorkshire, a seat
of the Earl of Effingham. But he found it impossible to escape again
from Scotland, owing to the agitated state of the country. On returning to the Cottage from
an excursion to his Sheriffship, he thus resumes:—
To George Ellis, Esq.
“Lasswade, August 27, 1803. “Dear Ellis,
“My conscience has been thumping me as hard as if it
had studied under Mendoza, for letting
your kind favour remain so long unanswered. Nevertheless, in this it is like
Launcelot Gobbo’s, but a hard
kind of conscience, as it must know how much I have been occupied with Armies
of Reserve, and Militia, and Pikemen, and Sharpshooters, who are to descend
from Ettrick Forest to the confusion of all invaders. The truth is, that this
country has for once experienced that the pressure of external danger may
possibly produce internal unanimity; and so great is the present military zeal,
that I really wish our rulers would devise some way of calling it into action, were it only on the economical principle of saving
so much good courage from idle evaporation.—I am interrupted by an
extraordinary accident, nothing less than a volley of small shot fired through
the window, at which my wife was five minutes before arranging her flowers. By
Camp’s assistance, who run the
culprit’s foot like a Liddesdale bloodhound, we detected an unlucky
sportsman, whose awkwardness and rashness might have occasioned very serious
mischief—so much for interruption.—To return to Sir Tristrem. As for Thomas’s name, respecting which you
state some doubts,* I request you to attend to the following particulars: In
the first place, surnames were of very late introduction into Scotland, and it
would be difficult to show that they became in general a hereditary
distinction, until after the time of Thomas the Rhymer;
previously they were mere personal distinctions peculiar to the person by whom
they were borne, and dying along with him. Thus the children of Alan Durward were not called
Durward, because they were
not Ostiarii, the circumstance from
which he derived the name. When the surname was derived from property, it
became naturally hereditary at a more early period, because the distinction
applied equally to the father and the son. The same happened with patronymics, both because the name of the father is
usually given to the son; so that Walter Fitzwalter would
have been my son’s name in those times as well as my own; and also
because a clan often takes a sort of general patronymic from one common
ancestor, as Macdonald, &c. &c. But though these
classes of surnames become hereditary at an early period, yet, in the natural
course of things, epithets merely per-
* Mr Ellis had
hinted that “Rymer
might not more necessarily indicate an actual poet, than the name
of Taylor does in modern times an actual
knight of the thimble.”
sonal are much longer of becoming a
family distinction.* But I do not trust, by any means, to this general
argument; because the charter quoted in the Minstrelsy contains written evidence, that
the epithet of Rymour was peculiar
to our Thomas, and was dropped by his son, who designs
himself simply, Thomas of
Erceldoune, son ofThomas the Rymour of Erceldoune; which I
think is conclusive upon the subject. In all this discussion, I have scorned to
avail myself of the tradition of the country, as well as the suspicious
testimony of Boece, Dempster, &c., grounded probably upon that
tradition, which uniformly affirms the name of Thomas to
have been Learmont or Leirmont, and
that of the Rhymer a personal epithet. This circumstance may induce us,
however, to conclude that some of his descendants had taken that name certain
it is that his castle is called Leirmont’s Tower,
and that he is as well known to the
* The whole of this subject has derived much
illustration from the recent edition of the “Ragman’s Roll,” a contribution to the Bannatyne
Club of Edinburgh by two of Sir Walter
Scott’s most esteemed friends, the Lord Chief
Commissioner Adam and
Sir Samuel Shepherd. That
record of the oaths of fealty tendered to Edward I., during his Scotch usurpation, furnishes,
indeed, very strong confirmation of the views which the Editor of
“Sir
Tristrem” had thus early adopted concerning the origin
of surnames in Scotland. The landed gentry, over most of the country,
seem to have been then generally distinguished by the surnames still
borne by their descendants—it is wonderful how little the land seems to
have changed hands in the course of so many centuries. But the
towns’ people have, with few exceptions, designations apparently
indicating the actual trade of the individual; and, in many instances,
there is distinct evidence that the plan of transmitting such names had
not been adopted; for example, Thomas the Tailor
is described as son of Thomas the Smith, or vice versâ. The chief magistrates of the
burghs appear, however, to have been, in most cases, younger sons of
the neighbouring gentry, and have of course their hereditary
designations. This singular document, so often quoted and referred to,
was never before printed in
extenso.
country people by that name, as by the appellation of the
Rhymer.
“Having cleared up this matter, as I think, to every
one’s satisfaction, unless to those resembling not Thomas himself, but his namesake the Apostle,
I have, secondly, to show that my Thomas is the
Tomas of Douce’s MS. Here I must again refer to
the high and general reverence in which Thomas appears to
have been held, as is proved by Robert de
Brunne; but above all, as you observe, to the extreme similarity
betwixt the French and English poems, with this strong circumstance, that the
mode of telling the story approved by the French
minstrel, under the authority of his Tomas, is the very
mode in which my Thomas has told it. Would you desire
better sympathy?
“I lately met by accident a Cornish gentleman, who
had taken up his abode in Selkirkshire for the sake of fishing—and what should
his name be but Caerlion? You will
not doubt that this interested me very much. He tells me that there is but one
family of the name in Cornwall, or as far as ever he heard any where else, and
that they are of great antiquity. Does not this circumstance seem to prove that
there existed in Cornwall a place called Caerlion, giving name to that family?
Caerlion would probably be Castrum Leonense, the chief
town of Liones, which in every romance is stated to have been Tristrem’s country, and from which he
derived his surname of Tristrem de
Liones. This district, as you notice in the notes on
the Fabliaux, was swallowed up by the
sea. I need not remind you that all this tends to illustrate the Caerlioun mentioned by Tomas, which
I always suspected to be a very different place from Caerlion on Uske—which is
no seaport. How I regret the number of leagues which prevented my joining you
and the sapient Douce, and how much
ancient lore I have
lost. Where I have been, the people talked more of the praises of Ryno and Fillan (not
Ossian’s heroes, but two Forest
greyhounds which I got in a present) than, I verily believe, they would have
done of the prowesses of Sir Tristrem, or
of Esplandian, had either of them appeared
to lead on the levy en masse. Yours
ever,
W. Scott.”
Ellis says in reply:—“My dear
Scott, I must begin by congratulating
you on Mrs Scott’s escape; Camp, if he had had no previous title to immortality,
would deserve it, for his zeal and address in detecting the stupid marksman,
who, while he took aim at a bird on a tree, was so near shooting your fair
‘bird in bower.’ If there were many such shooters, it would become
then a sufficient excuse for the reluctance of Government to furnish arms
indifferently to all volunteers. In the next place, I am glad to hear that you
are disposed to adopt my channel for transmitting the tale of Tristrem to Chretien de
Troye. The more I have thought on the subject the more I am
convinced that the Normans, long before the Conquest, had acquired from the
Britons of Armorica a considerable knowledge of our old British fables, and
that this led them, after the Conquest, to enquire after such accounts as were
to be found in the country where the events are supposed to have taken place. I
am satisfied, from the internal evidence of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History, that it must have been
fabricated in Bretagne, and that he did, as he asserts, only translate it. Now, as Marie, who lived about a century later, certainly translated also from the Breton a series of
lays relating to Arthur and his knights, it
will follow that the first poets who wrote in France,
such as Chretien, &c., must have acquired their
knowledge of our traditions from Bretagne. Observe, that the pseudo-Turpin, who is supposed to have been
anterior to Geoffry, and who, on that supposition, cannot
have borrowed from him, mentions, among Charlemagne’s heroes, Hoel (the hero of Geoffrey also),
‘de quo canitur cantilena usque ad hodiernum
diem.’ Now, if Thomas
was able to establish his story as the most authentic,
even by the avowal of the French themselves, and if the sketch of that story
was previously known, it must have been because he wrote in the country which
his hero was supposed to have inhabited; and on the same grounds the Norman
minstrels here, and even their English successors, were allowed to fill up with
as many circumstances as they thought proper the tales of which the Armorican
Bretons probably furnished the first imperfect outline.
“What you tell me about your Cornish fisherman is
very curious; and I think with you that little reliance is to be placed on our
Welsh geography—and that Caerlion on Uske is by no means the Caerlion of Tristrem. Few writers or
readers have hitherto considered sufficiently that from the moment when
Hengist first obtained a settlement in
the Isle of Thanet, that settlement became England, and all the rest of the
country became Wales; that these divisions continued to represent different
proportions of the island at different periods; but that Wales, during the
whole Heptarchy, and for a long time after, comprehended the whole western
coast very nearly from Cornwall to Dunbretton; and that this whole tract, of
which the eastern frontier may be easily traced for each particular period,
preserved most probably to the age of Thomas a community of language, of
manners, and traditions.
“As your last volume announces your Lay, as well as Sir Tristrem, as in the press, I begin, in
common with all your friends, to be uneasy about the future disposal of your time. Having
nothing but a very active profession, and your military pursuits, and your
domestic occupations to think of, and Leyden having monopolized Asiatic lore, you will presently be
quite an idle man! You are, however, still in time to learn Erse, and it is, I
am afraid, very necessary that you should do so, in order to stimulate my
laziness, which has hitherto made no progress whatever in Welsh. Your ever
faithful, G. E.—P.S. Is Camp married yet?”
Ellis had projected some time before this an edition
of the Welsh Mabinogion, in which he was to be assisted by
Mr Owen, the author of the “Welsh and English Dictionary,”
“Cambrian
Biography,” &c. “I am very sorry,” Scott says (September 14), “that you flag over those
wild and interesting tales. I hope, if you will not work yourself (for which you have
so little excuse, having both the golden talents and the golden leisure necessary for
study), you will at least keep Owen to something that is
rational—I mean to iron horses, and magic
cauldrons, and Bran the Blessed, with the music of his
whole army upon his shoulders, and, in short, to something more pleasing and profitable
than old apophthegms, triads, and ‘blessed burdens of the womb of the isle of
Britain.’ Talking of such burdens, Camp has
been regularly wedded to a fair dame in the neighbourhood, but notwithstanding the
Italian policy of locking the lady in a stable, she is suspected of some inaccuracy;
but we suspend judgment, as Othello ought in all
reason to have done, till we see the produce of the union. As for my own employment, I
have yet much before me, and as the beginning of letting out ink is like the letting
out of water, I daresay I shall go on scribbling one nonsense or another to the end of
the chapter. People may say this and that of the pleasure of fame or of profit as a
motive of writing. I think the only pleasure is in the actual
exertion and research, and I would no more write upon any other terms than I would hunt
merely to dine upon hare-soup. At the same time, if credit and profit came unlooked
for, I would no more quarrel with them than with the soup. I hope this will find you
and Mrs Ellis safely and pleasantly settled ‘In Yorkshire, near fair Rotherham.’
“—By the way, while you are in his neighbourhood, I hope you will
not fail to enquire into the history of the valiant ‘Moor of
Moorhall and the Dragon of Wantley.’ As a noted burlesque upon the popular
romance, the ballad has some curiosity and merit. Ever yours, W.
S.”
Mr Ellis received this letter where
Scott hoped it would reach him, at the
seat of Lord Effingham; and he answers, on the 3d of
October, “The beauty of this part of the country is such as to indemnify
the traveller for a few miles of very indifferent road, and the tedious process
of creeping up and almost sliding down a succession of high hills; and in the
number of picturesque landscapes by which we are encompassed, the den of the
dragon which you recommended to our attention is the most superlatively
beautiful and romantic. You are, I suppose, aware that this same den is the
very spot from whence Lady Mary Wortley
Montague wrote many of her early letters; and it seems that an
old housekeeper, who lived there till last year, remembered to have seen her,
and dwelt with great pleasure on the various charms of her celebrated mistress;
so that its wild scenes have an equal claim to veneration from the admirers of
wit and gallantry, and the far-famed investigators of remote antiquity. With
regard to the original Dragon, I have met with two different traditions. One of
these (which I think is preserved by Percy) states him to have been a wicked attorney, a relentless
persecutor of the poor, who
was at length, fortunately for his neighbours, ruined by a law-suit which he
had undertaken against his worthy and powerful antagonist Moor of
Moorhall. The other legend, which is current in the
Wortley family, states him to have been a most
formidable drinker, whose powers of inglutition, strength of stomach, and
stability of head, had procured him a long series of triumphs over common
visitants, but who was at length fairly drunk dead by the chieftain of the
opposite moors. It must be confessed that the form of the den, a cavern cut in
the rock, and very nearly resembling a wine or ale cellar, tends to corroborate
this tradition; but I am rather tempted to believe that both the stories were
invented apres coup, and that the
supposed dragon was some wolf or other destructive animal, who was finally
hunted down by Moor of Moorhall, after doing considerable
mischief to the flocks and herds of his superstitious neighbours.
“The present house appears to have grown to its even
now moderate size by successive additions to a very small logge (lodge), built by ‘a gentle knight, Sir Thomas
Wortley,’ in the time of Henry
VIII., for the pleasure, as an old inscription in the present
scullery testifies, of ‘listening to the Hartes bell.’ Its site is
on the side of a very high rocky hill, covered with oaks (the weed of the
country), and overhanging the river Don, which in this place is little more
than a mountain torrent, though it becomes navigable a few miles lower at
Sheffield. A great part of the road from hence (which is seven miles distant)
runs through forest ground, and I have no doubt that the whole was at no
distant period covered with wood, because the modern improvements of the
country, the result of flourishing manufactories, have been carried on almost
within our own time in consequence of the abundance of coal which here breaks
out in many places even on the surface. On the opposite side of the river begin
almost imme-diately the extensive moors which strike along
the highest land of Yorkshire and Derbyshire, and following the chain of hills,
probably communicated not many centuries ago with those of Northumberland,
Cumberland, and Scotland. I therefore doubt whether the general face of the
country is not better evidence as to the nature of the monster than the
particular appearance of the cavern; and am inclined to believe that
Moor of Moorhall was a hunter of wild-beasts, rather
than of attorneys or hard drinkers.
“You are unjust in saying that I flag over the
Mabinogion—I have been very constantly employed upon my preface, and was
proceeding to the last section when I set off for this place—so you see I am
perfectly exculpated, and all over as white as snow. Anne being a true aristocrat, and considering
purity of blood as essential to lay the foundation of all the virtues she
expects to call out by a laborious education of a true son of Camp—she highly approves the strict and even prudish
severity with which you watch over the morals of his bride, and expects you,
inasmuch as all the good knights she has read of have been remarkable for their
incomparable beauty, not to neglect that important requisite in selecting her
future guardian. We possess a vulgar dog (a pointer), to whom it is intended to
commit the charge of our house during our absence, and to whom I mean to give
orders to repel by force any attempts of our neighbours during the times that I
shall be occupied in preparing hare-soup; but Fitz-Camp will be her companion, and she trusts that
you will strictly examine him while yet a varlet, and only send him up when you
think him likely to become a true knight. Adieu—mille choses,
G. E.”
Scott tells Ellis in reply (October 14), that he was “infinitely gratified with his account
of Wortley Lodge and the Dragon,” and refers him to the article
“Kempion,” in the Minstrelsy, for a similar tradition respecting an ancestor of the
noble house of Somerville. The reader can hardly need to
be reminded that the gentle knight, Sir Thomas
Wortley’s, love of hearing the deer bell was often alluded
to in Scott’s subsequent writings. He goes on to
express his hope, that next summer will be “a more propitious season for
a visit to Scotland. The necessity of the present occasion,” he says,
“has kept almost every individual, however insignificant, to his post.
God has left us entirely to our own means of defence, for we have not above one
regiment of the line in all our ancient kingdom. In the mean while, we are
doing the best we can to prepare ourselves for a contest, which, perhaps, is
not far distant. A beacon light, communicating with that of Edinburgh Castle,
is just erecting in front of our quiet cottage. My field equipage is ready, and
I want nothing but a pipe and a schnurbartchen to convert me into a complete hussar.*
Charlotte, with the infantry (of the
household troops, I mean), is to beat her retreat into Ettrick Forest, where,
if the Tweed is in his usual wintry state of flood, she may weather out a
descent from Ostend. Next year I hope all this will be over, and that not only
I shall have the pleasure of receiving you in peace and quiet, but also of
going with you through every part of Caledonia, in which you can possibly be
interested. Friday se’ennight our corps takes the field
* Schnurbartchen is German for mustachio. It appears
from a page of an early note-book previously transcribed, that
Scott had been sometimes a
smoker of tobacco in the first days of his lighthorsemanship. He had
laid aside the habit at the time when this letter was written; but he
twice again resumed it, though he never carried the indulgence to any
excess.
for ten days—for the second time within three months—which
may explain the military turn of my epistle.
“Poor Ritson
is no more. All his vegetable soups and puddings have not been able to avert
the evil day, which, I understand, was preceded by madness. It must be worth
while to enquire who has got his MSS. I mean his own notes and writings. The
‘Life of
Arthur,’ for example, must contain many curious facts and
quotations, which the poor defunct had the power of assembling to an
astonishing degree, without being able to combine any thing like a narrative,
or even to deduce one useful inference—witness his ‘Essay on Romance and
Minstrelsy,’ which reminds one of a heap of rubbish, which had
either turned out unfit for the architect’s purpose, or beyond his skill
to make use of. The ballads he had collected in Cumberland and Northumberland,
too, would greatly interest me. If they have fallen into the hands of any
liberal collector, I dare say I might be indulged with a sight of them. Pray
enquire about this matter.
“Yesterday Charlotte and I had a visit which we owe to Mrs E. A rosy lass, the sister of a bold
yeoman in our neighbourhood, entered our cottage, towing in a monstrous sort of
bulldog, called emphatically Cerberus, whom she came
on the part of her brother to beg our acceptance of, understanding we were
anxious to have a son of Camp. Cerberus was no sooner loose (a pleasure which, I suspect, he had
rarely enjoyed) than his father (supposé) and he engaged in a battle which might have
been celebrated by the author of the
‘Unnatural
Combat,’ and which, for aught I know, might have turned out a
combat à
l’outrance, if I had not interfered with a horsewhip,
instead of a baton, as juge de Camp. The odds were
indeed greatly against the stranger knight—two fierce Forest greyhounds having
arrived, and, contrary
to the law of arms, stoutly assailed him. I hope to send you a puppy instead of
this redoubtable Cerberus. Love to Mrs
E.—W. S.”
After giving Scott some information
about Ritson’s literary treasures, most of
which, as it turned out, had been disposed of by auction shortly before his death,
Mr Ellis (10th November) returns to the charge
about Tristrem and True Thomas.
“You appear,” he says, “to have been for some time so
military that I am afraid the most difficult and important part of your original plan,
viz., your History of Scottish poetry, will again be postponed, and must be kept for
some future publication. I am, at this moment, much in want of two such assistants as
you and Leyden. It seems to me that if I had
some local knowledge of that wicked Ettrick Forest, I could extricate myself
tolerably—but as it is, although I am convinced that my general idea is tolerably just,
I am unable to guide my elephants in that quiet and decorous step-by-step march which
the nature of such animals requires through a country of which I don’t know any
of the roads. My comfort is, that you cannot publish Tristrem without a preface, that you can’t
write one without giving me some assistance, and that you must finish the said preface
long before I go to press with my Introduction.”
This was the Introduction to Ellis’s “Specimens of Ancient English Romances,” in which he intended to prove,
that as Valentia was, during several ages, the exposed frontier of Roman Britain towards
the unsubdued tribes of the North, and as two whole legions were accordingly usually
quartered there, while one besides sufficed for the whole southern part of the island, the
manners of Valentia, which included the district of Ettrick Forest, must have been greatly
favoured by the continued residence of so many Roman troops. “It is probable, therefore,” he says, in another letter,
“that the civilisation of the northern part became gradually the most perfect. That
country gave birth, as you have observed, to Merlin,
and to Aneurin, who was probably the same as the
historian Gildas. It seems to have given education to
Taliessin it was the country of Bede and Adonnan.”
I shall not quote more on this subject, as the reader may turn to the
published essay for Mr Ellis’s matured
opinions respecting it. To return to his letter of November 10th, 1803, he proceeds
“And now let me ask you about the Lay of
the Last Minstrel. That, I think, may go on as well in your tent, amidst the
clang of trumpets and the dust of the field, as in your quiet cottage perhaps indeed
still better nay, I am not sure whether a real invasion would not be, as far as your
poetry is concerned, a thing to be wished.”
It was in the September of this year that Scott first saw Wordsworth. Their
mutual acquaintance, Stoddart, had so often talked
of them to each other, that they met as if they had not been strangers; and they parted
friends.
Mr and Miss
Wordsworth had just completed that tour in the Highlands, of which so many
incidents have since been immortalized, both in the poet’s verse and in the hardly
less poetical prose of his sister’s Diary. On the morning of the 17th of September,
having left their carriage at Rosslyn, they walked down the valley to Lasswade, and arrived
there before Mr and Mrs
Scott had risen. “We were received,” Mr
Wordsworth has told me, “with that frank cordiality which, under
whatever circumstances I afterwards met him, always marked his manners; and, indeed, I
found him then in every respect except, perhaps, that his animal spirits were somewhat
higher precisely the same man that you knew him in later life; the same lively, entertaining
conversation, full of anecdote, and averse from disquisition; the same unaffected
modesty about himself; the same cheerful and benevolent and hopeful views of man and
the world. He partly read and partly recited, sometimes in an enthusiastic style of
chant, the first four cantos of the Lay of the
Last Minstrel; and the novelty of the manners, the clear picturesque
descriptions, and the easy glowing energy of much of the verse, greatly delighted
me.”
After this he walked with the tourists to Rosslyn, and promised to meet
them in two days at Melrose. The night before they reached Melrose they slept at the little
quiet inn of Clovenford, where, on mentioning his name, they were received with all sorts
of attention and kindness, the landlady observing that Mr
Scott, “who was a very clever gentleman,” was an old
friend of the house, and usually spent a good deal of time there during the fishing season;
but, indeed, says Mr Wordsworth, “wherever
we named him, we found the word acted as an open sesamum; and I
believe, that in the character of the Sheriff’s friends,
we might have counted on a hearty welcome under any roof in the Border
country.”
He met them at Melrose on the 19th, and escorted them through the Abbey,
pointing out all its beauties, and pouring out his rich stores of history and tradition.
They then dined and spent the evening together at the inn; but Miss Wordsworth observed that there was some difficulty about arranging
matters for the night, “the landlady refusing to settle any thing until she had
ascertained from the Sheriff himself that he had no objection to
sleep in the same room with William.” Scott was
thus far on his way to the Circuit Court at Jedburgh, in his capacity of Sheriff, and there
his new friends again joined him; but he begged that they would not
enter the court, “for,” said he “I really would not like you to
see the sort of figure I cut there.” They did see him casually, however, in
his cocked hat and sword, marching in the Judge’s procession to the sound of one
cracked trumpet, and were then not surprised that he should have been a little ashamed of
the whole ceremonial. He introduced to them his friend William
Laidlaw, who was attending the court as a juryman, and who, having read some
of Wordsworth’s verses in a newspaper was exceedingly anxious to
be of the party, when they explored at leisure, all the law-business being over, the
beautiful valley of the Jed, and the ruins of the Castle of Fernieherst, the original
fastness of the noble family of Lothian. The grove of stately ancient elms about and below
the ruin was seen to great advantage in a fine, grey, breezy autumnal afternoon; and
Mr Wordsworth happened to say, “What life there is in
trees!”—“How different,” said Scott,
“was the feeling of a very intelligent young lady, born and bred in the Orkney
Islands, who lately came to spend a season in this neighbourhood! She told me nothing
in the mainland scenery had so much disappointed her as woods and trees. She found them
so dead and lifeless, that she could never help pining after the eternal motion and
variety of the ocean. And so back she has gone, and I believe nothing will ever tempt
her from the windswept Orcades again.”
Next day they all proceeded together up the Teviot to Hawick, Scott entertaining his friends with some legend or ballad
connected with every tower or rock they passed. He made them stop for a little to admire
particularly a scene of deep and solemn retirement, called Horne’s
Pool, from its having been the daily haunt of a contemplative schoolmaster, known
to him in his youth; and at Kirkton he
pointed out the little village schoolhouse, to which his friend Leyden had walked six or eight miles every day across the moors
“when a poor barefooted boy.” From Hawick, where they spent the
night, he led them next morning to the brow of a hill, from which they could see a wide
range of the Border mountains, Ruberslaw, the Carter, and the Cheviots; and lamented that
neither their engagements nor his own would permit them to make at this time an excursion
into the wilder glens of Liddisdale, “where,” said he, “I have
strolled so often and so long, that I may say I have a home in every
farm-house.” “And, indeed,” adds Mr Wordsworth, “wherever we went with him, he seemed to know every
body, and every body to know and like him.” Here they parted—the
Wordsworths to pursue their journey homeward by Eskdale—he to
return to Lasswade.
The impression on Mr
Wordsworth’s mind was, that on the whole he attached much less
importance to his literary labours or reputation than to his bodily sports, exercises, and
social amusements; and yet he spoke of his profession as if he had already given up almost
all hope of rising by it; and some allusion being made to its profits, observed that
“he was sure he could, if he chose, get more money than he should ever wish to
have from the booksellers.”*
This confidence in his own literary resources appeared to Mr Wordsworth remarkable—the more so, from the careless
way in which its expression dropt from him. As to his despondence concerning the bar, I
confess his fee-book indicates much less ground for such a feeling
than
* I have drawn up the account of this meeting from my
recollection partly of Mr Wordsworth’s
conversation—partly from that of his sister’s charming “Diary,” which he was
so kind as to read over to me on the 16th May, 1836.
I should have expected to discover there. His practice brought him, as
we have seen, in the session of 1796-7, £144, 10s.: its proceeds fell down, in the
first year of his married life, to £79, 17s.; but they rose again, in 1798-9, to
£135, 9s.; amounted, in 1799-1800, to £129, 13s in 1800-1, to £170—in
1801-2, to £202, 12s.—and in the session that had just elapsed (which is the last
included in the record before me), to £228, 18s.
On reaching his cottage in Westmoreland, Wordsworth addressed a letter to Scott, from which I must quote a few sentences. It
is dated Grasmere, October 16, 1803. “We had a delightful journey home,
delightful weather, and a sweet country to travel through. We reached our
little cottage in high spirits, and thankful to God for all his bounties. My
wife and child were both well, and as I need not say, we had all of us a happy
meeting. . . . . We passed Branxholme—your Branxholme, we supposed—about four
miles on this side of Hawick. It looks better in your poem than in its present
realities. The situation, however, is delightful, and makes amends for an
ordinary mansion. The whole of the Teviot and the pastoral steeps about
Mosspaul pleased us exceedingly. The Esk below Langholm is a delicious river,
and we saw it to great advantage. We did not omit noticing Johnnie Armstrong’s keep; but his
hanging place, to our great regret, we missed. We were, indeed, most truly
sorry that we could not have you along with us into Westmoreland. The country
was in its full glory the verdure of the valleys, in which we are so much
superior to you in Scotland, but little tarnished by the weather, and the trees
putting on their most beautiful looks. My sister was quite enchanted, and we
often said to each other, What a pity Mr Scott is not with
us! . . . . I had the pleasure of seeing Coleridge and Southey at Keswick last Sunday.
Southey, whom I never saw much of before, I liked
much: he is very pleasant in his manner, and a man of great reading in old
books, poetry, chronicles, memoirs, &c. &c., particularly Spanish and
Portuguese. . . . . My sister and I
often talk of the happy days that we spent in your company. Such things do not
occur often in life. If we live we shall meet again; that is my consolation
when I think of these things. Scotland and England sound like division, do what
ye can; but we really are but neighbours, and if you were no farther off, and
in Yorkshire, we should think so. Farewell. God prosper you, and all that
belongs to you. Your sincere friend, for such I will call myself, though slow
to use a word of such solemn meaning to any one,—W. Wordsworth.”
The poet then transcribes his noble sonnet on Neidpath Castle, of which Scott had, it seems, requested a copy. In the MS. it stands
somewhat differently from the printed edition; but in that original shape
Scott always recited it, and few lines in the language were more
frequently in his mouth.
I have already said something of the beginning of Scott’s acquaintance with “the Ettrick Shepherd.” Shortly after their first
meeting, Hogg, coming into Edinburgh with a flock of sheep, was seized
with a sudden ambition of seeing himself in print, and he wrote out that same night
“Willie and Katie,” and a
few other ballads, already famous in the Forest, which some obscure bookseller gratified
him by putting forth accordingly; but they appear to have attracted no notice beyond their
original sphere. Hogg then made an excursion into the Highlands, in
quest of employment as overseer of some extensive sheep-farm; but, though
Scott had furnished him with strong recommendations to various
friends, he returned without success. He printed an account of his travels, however,
in a set of letters in the Scots Magazine, which,
though exceedingly rugged and uncouth, had abundant traces of the native shrewdness and
genuine poetical feeling of this remarkable man. These also failed to excite attention;
but, undeterred by such disappointments, the Shepherd no sooner read the third volume of
the “Minstrelsy,” than he
made up his mind that the Editor’s “Imitations of the Ancients” were by
no means what they should have been. “Immediately,” he says, in one of
his many Memoirs of himself, “I chose a number of traditional facts, and set about
imitating the manner of the Ancients myself.” These imitations he transmitted
to Scott, who warmly praised the many striking beauties scattered over
their rough surface. The next time that Hogg’s business carried
him to Edinburgh, he waited upon Scott, who invited him to dinner in
Castle Street, in company with William Laidlaw, who
happened also to be in town, and some other admirers of the rustic genius. When
Hogg entered the drawingroom, Mrs
Scott, being at the time in a delicate state of health, was reclining on a
sofa. The Shepherd, after being presented, and making his best bow, forthwith took
possession of another sofa placed opposite to hers, and stretched himself thereupon at all
his length; for, as he said afterwards, “I thought I could never do wrong to copy
the lady of the house.” As his dress at this period was precisely that in
which any ordinary herdsman attends cattle to the market, and as his hands, moreover, bore
most legible marks of a recent sheep-smearing, the lady of the house did not observe with
perfect equanimity the novel usage to which her chintz was exposed. The Shepherd, however,
remarked nothing of all this dined heartily and drank freely, and, by jest, anecdote, and
song, afforded plentiful merriment to the more civilized part of the company. As the liquor operated, his familiarity
increased and strengthened; from “Mr Scott,” he advanced
to “Sherra,” and thence to “Scott,”
“Walter,” and
“Wattie,” until, at supper, he fairly convulsed the whole
party by addressing Mrs Scott as
“Charlotte.”
The collection entitled “The Mountain Bard” was eventually published by
Constable, in consequence of
Scott’s recommendation, and this work did at last afford
Hogg no slender share of the popular reputation
for which he had so long thirsted. It is not my business, however, to pursue the details of
his story. What I have written was only to render intelligible the following letter:
To Walter Scott, Esq., Advocate, Castle Street,
Edinburgh.
“Ettrick-house, December 24, 1803. “Dear Mr Scott,
“I have been very impatient to hear from you. There
is a certain affair of which you and I talked a little in private, and which
must now be concluded, that naturally increaseth this.
“I am afraid that I was at least half-seas over the
night I was with you, for I cannot, for my life, recollect what passed when it
was late; and, there being certainly a small vacuum in my brain, which, when
empty, is quite empty, but is sometimes supplied with a small distillation of
intellectual matter—this must have been empty that night, or it never could
have been taken possession of by the fumes of the liquor so easily. If I was in
the state in which I suspect that I was, I must have spoke a very great deal of
nonsense, for which I beg ten thousand pardons. I have the consolation,
however, of remembering that Mrs Scott kept
in company all or most of the time, which she certainly could not have done,
had I been very rude. I remember, too, of the filial
injunction you gave at parting, cautioning me against being ensnared by the
loose women in town. I am sure I had not reason enough left at that time to
express either the half of my gratitude for the kind hint, or the utter
abhorrence I inherit at those seminaries of lewdness.
“You once promised me your best advice in the first
lawsuit in which I had the particular happiness of being engaged. I am now
going to ask it seriously in an affair, in which, I am sure, we will both take
as much pleasure. It is this: I have as many songs beside me, which are
certainly the worst of my productions, as will make
about one hundred pages close printed, and about two hundred, printed as the
Minstrelsy is. Now,
although I will not proceed without your consent and advice, yet I would have
you to understand that I expect it, and have the scheme much at heart at
present. The first thing that suggested it, was their extraordinary repute in
Ettrick and its neighbourhood, and being everlastingly plagued with writing
copies, and promising scores which I never meant to perform. As my last
pamphlet was never known, save to a few friends, I wish your advice what pieces
of it are worth preserving. The ‘Pastoral’ I am resolved to insert, as
I am ‘Sandy
Tod.’ As to my manuscripts, they are endless; and as I doubt you
will disapprove of publishing them wholesale, and letting the good help off the
bad, I think you must trust to my discretion in the selection of a few. I wish
likewise to know if you think a graven image on the first leaf is any
recommendation; and if we might front the songs with a letter to you, giving an
impartial account of my manner of life and education, and, which if you pleased
to transcribe, putting He for I. Again, there is no publishing a book without a
patron, and I have one or two in my eye, and of which I will, with my wonted assurance to
you, give you the most free choice. The first is Walter
Scott, Esq., Advocate, Sheriff-depute of Ettrick Forest, which,
if permitted, I will address you in a dedication singular enough. The next is
Lady Dalkeith, which, if you approved
of, you must become the Editor yourself; and I shall give you my word for it,
that neither word nor sentiment in it shall offend the most delicate ear. You
will not be in the least jealous, if, alongst with my services to you, I
present my kindest compliments to the sweet little lady whom you call Charlotte. As for Camp
and Walter (I beg pardon for this
pre-eminence), they will not mind them if I should exhaust my eloquence in
compliments. Believe me, dear Walter, your
most devoted servant,
James Hogg.”
The reader will, I doubt not, be particularly amused with one of the
suggestions in this letter; namely, that Scott should
transcribe the Shepherd’s narrative in fore of his life and
education, and merely putting “He” for “I,” adopt it as his own
composition. James, however, would have had no
hesitation about offering a similar suggestion either to Scott, or
Wordsworth, or Byron, at any period of their renown. To say nothing about modesty, his
notions of literary honesty were always exceedingly loose; but, at the same time, we must
take into account his peculiar notions, or rather no notions, as to the proper limits of a
joke.
Literature, like misery, makes men acquainted with strange bed-fellows.
Let us return from the worthy Shepherd of Ettrick to
the courtly wit and scholar of Sunninghill. In the last quoted of his letters, he expresses
his fear that Scott’s military avocations might
cause him to publish the Tristrem
unaccompanied by his “Essay on the History of
Scottish Poetry.” It is needless to add that no such Essay ever was
completed; but I have heard Scott say that his plan had been to begin
with the age of Thomas of Ercildoune, and bring the
subject down to his own, illustrating each stage of his progress by a specimen of verse
imitating every great master’s style, as he had done that of the original Sir Tristrem in his “Conclusion”
Such a series of pieces from his hand would have been invaluable, merely as bringing out in
a clear manner the gradual divarication of the two great dialects of
the English tongue; but seeing by his “Verses on a Poacher,” written many years after this, in professed
imitation of Crabbe, with what happy art he could
pour the poetry of his own mind into the mould of another artist, it is impossible to doubt
that we have lost better things than antiquarian illumination by the non-completion of a
design in which he should have embraced successively the tone and measure of Douglas, Dunbar,
Lindesay, Montgomerie, Hamilton, Ramsay, Fergusson,
and Burns.
The “Tristrem” was now far advanced at press. He says to Ellis, on the 19th March, 1804, “As I had a world
of things to say to you, I have been culpably, but most naturally silent. When you turn
a bottle with its head downmost, you must have remarked that the extreme impatience of
the contents to get out all at once greatly impedes their getting out at all. I have,
however, been forming the resolution of sending a grand packet with Sir Tristrem, who will kiss your hands in about a fortnight. I intend
uncastrated copies for you, Heber, and Mr Douce, who, I am willing to hope, will accept this
mark of my great respect and warm remembrance of his kindness while in London. Pray
send me without delay the passage referring to Thomas in the French
‘Hornchild.’ Far from being daunted with the
position of the enemy, I am resolved to carry it at the point of the bayonet, and, like
an able general, to attack where it would be difficult to defend. Without metaphor or
parable, I am determined not only that my Tomas shall be the
author of “Tristrem,” but that he shall be the
author of “Hornchild” also. I must, however, read
over the romance before I can make my arrangements. Holding, with Ritson, that the copy in his collection is translated
from the French, I do not see why we should not suppose that the French had been
originally a version from our Thomas. The date does not greatly
frighten me, as I have extended Thomas of Ercildoune’s life
to the three-score and ten years of the Psalmist, and consequently removed back the
date of, “Sir Tristrem” to 1250. The French
translation might be written for that matter within a few days after
Thomas’s work was completed and I can allow a few years.
He lived on the Border, already possessed by Norman families, and in the vicinity of
Northumberland, where there were many more. Do you think the minstrels of the
Percies, the Vescies, the
Morells, the Grais, and the De
Vaux, were not acquainted with honest Thomas, their next door neighbour,
who was a poet, and wrote excellent tales—and, moreover, a laird, and gave, I dare be sworn, good dinners? And would they not anxiously
translate, for the amusement of their masters, a story like ‘Hornchild,’ so intimately connected with the lands in which they had
settled? And do you not think, from the whole structure of ‘Hornchild,’ however often translated and retranslated, that it must
have been originally of northern extraction? I have not time to tell you certain
suspicions I entertain that Mr Douce’s fragments are the
work of one Raoull de Beauvais, who flourished about the middle of
the thirteenth century, and for whose accommodation principally I
have made Thomas, to use a military phrase, dress backwards for ten years.”
All this playful language is exquisitely characteristic of Scott’s indomitable adherence to his own views. But his
making Thomasdress backwards—and resolving that, if necessary, he shall be the
author of Hornchild, as well as Sir Tristrem may perhaps remind the reader of Don Quixote’s method of repairing the headpiece which,
as originally constructed, one blow had sufficed to demolish: “Not altogether
approving of his having broken it to pieces with so much ease, to secure himself from the
like danger for the future, he made it over again, fencing it with small bars of iron
within, in such a manner, that he rested satisfied of its strength—and,
without caring to make a fresh experiment on it, he approved and looked upon it as a
most excellent helmet.”
Ellis having made some observations on Scott’sarticle upon Godwin’sLife of Chaucer, which implied a
notion that he had formed a regular connexion with the Edinburgh Review, he in the same letter says: “I
quite agree with you as to the general conduct of the Review, which savours more of a
wish to display than to instruct; but as essays, many of the articles are invaluable,
and the principal conductor is a man of very acute and universal talent. I am not
regularly connected with the work, nor have I either inclination or talents to use the
critical scalping knife, unless as in the case of Godwin, where
flesh and blood succumbed under the temptation. I don’t know if you have looked
into his tomes, of which a whole edition has vanished, I was at a loss to know how,
till I conjectured that, as the heaviest materials to be come at, they have been sent
on the secret expedition planned by Mr Phillips,
and adopted by our sapient Government, for blocking up the mouth of our enemy’s
harbours. They should have had my free
consent to take Phillips and Godwin, and all
our other lumber, literary and political, for the same beneficial purpose. But, in
general, I think it ungentlemanly to wound any person’s feelings through an
anonymous publication, unless where conceit or false doctrine strongly calls for
reprobation. Where praise can be conscientiously mingled in a larger proportion than
blame, there is always some amusement in throwing together our ideas upon the works of
our fellow labourers, and no injustice in publishing them. On such occasions, and in
our way, I may possibly, once or twice a-year, furnish my critical friends with an
article.”
“Sir
Tristrem” was at length published on the 2d of May, 1804, by Constable, who, however, expected so little popularity for
the work that the edition consisted only of 150 copies. These were sold at a high price
(two guineas), otherwise they would not have been enough to cover the expenses of paper and
printing. Mr Ellis, and Scott’s other antiquarian friends, were much dissatisfied with these
arrangements; but I doubt not that Constable was a better judge than
any of them. The work, however, partook in due time of the favour attending its
editor’s name. In 1806, 750 copies were called for; and 1000 in 1811. After that time
Sir Tristrem was included in the collective editions of
Scott’s poetry; but he had never parted with the copyright,
merely allowing his general publishers to insert it among his other works, whenever they
chose to do so, as a matter of courtesy. It was not a performance from which he had ever
anticipated any pecuniary profit, but it maintained at least, if it did not raise, his
reputation in the circle of his fellow antiquaries; and his own Conclusion, in the manner of the original romance, must always be admired as a
remarkable specimen of skill and dexterity.
As to the arguments of the Introduction, I shall not in this place
attempt any discussion.* Whether the story of Tristrem was first
told in Welsh, Armorican, French, or English verse, there can, I think, be no doubt that it
had been told in verse, with such success as to obtain very general renown, by Thomas of Ercildoune, and that the copy edited by
Scott was either the composition of one who had
heard the old Rhymer recite his lay, or the identical lay itself. The introduction of
Thomas’s name in the third person, as not the author, but
the author’s authority, appears to have had a great share in convincing
Scott that the Auchinleck MS. contained not the original, but the
copy of an English admirer and contemporary. This point seems to have been rendered more
doubtful by some quotations in the recent edition of Warton’sHistory of
English Poetry; but the argument derived from the enthusiastic exclamation
“God help Sir Tristrem the knight—he
fought for England,” still remains; and stronger perhaps even than that, in
the opinion of modern philologists, is the total absence of any Scottish or even
Northumbrian peculiarities in the diction.
All this controversy may be waved here. Scott’s object and delight was to revive the fame of the Rhymer, whose traditional history he had listened to while
yet an infant among the crags of Smailholme. He had already celebrated him in a noble
ballad;† he now devoted a volume to elucidate a fragment supposed to be substantially
his work; and we shall find that
* The critical reader will find all the learning on the subject
brought together with much ability in the Preface to “The Poetical Romances of Tristan, in French, in
Anglo-Norman, and in Greek, composed in the Twelfth and Thirteenth
Centuries—Edited by Francisque
Michel,” 2 vols. London, 1835.
† See the Minstrelsy (Edition 1833), vol. iv. p. 110.
thirty years after, when the lamp of his own
genius was all but spent, it could still revive and throw out at least some glimmerings of
its original brightness at the name of Thomas of Ercildoune.
END OF VOLUME FIRST.EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND CO., PAUL’S WORK.
MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. VOLUME THE SECOND. MDCCCXXXVII. ROBERT CADELL, EDINBURGH. JOHN MURRAY AND WHITTAKER AND CO., LONDON. CONTENTS OF VOLUME SECOND. PAGE CHAPTER I. Removal to Ashestiel—Death of Captain Robert
Scott—Mungo Park—Completion and Publication of
the Lay of the Last Minstrel— 1804-1805,
1 CHAPTER II. Partnership with James Ballantyne—Literary Projects;
Edition of the British Poets; Edition of the Ancient English Chronicles, &c.
&c.—Edition of Dryden undertaken—Earl Moira
Commander of the Forces in Scotland—Sham Battles—Articles in the Edinburgh Review—Commencement of Waverley—Letter on
Ossian—Mr Skene’s Reminiscences of
Ashestiel—Excursion to Cumberland—Alarm of Invasion—Visit of Mr
Southey—Correspondence on Dryden with
Ellis and Wordsworth— 1805,
37 CHAPTER III. Affair of the Clerkship of Session—Letters to Ellis and
Lord Dalkeith—Visit to London—Earl Spenser
and Mr Fox—Caroline, Princess of
Wales—Joanna Baillie—Appointment as Clerk of
Session—Lord Melville’s Trial—Song on his Acquittal— 1806, 83 PAGE CHAPTER IV. Dryden—Critical Pieces—Edition of Slingsby’s
Memoirs, &c.—Marmion Begun—Visit to
London—Ellis—Rose—Canning—Miss
Seward—Scott Secretary to the Commission on Scotch
Jurisprudence—Letters to Southey, &c.—Publication of
Marmion—Anecdotes—The Edinburgh Review on Marmion—1806-1808, 112 CHAPTER V. Edition of Dryden published—And criticised by
Mr Hallam—Weber’s Romances—Editions of
Queenhoo-hall; Captain Carleton’s
Memoirs; The Memoirs of Robert Cary, Earl of
Monmouth; The Sadler Papers; And the Somers’
Tracts—Edition of Swift begun—Letters to Joanna
Baillie and George Ellis on the Affairs of the
Peninsula—John Struthers—James Hogg—Visit of
Mr Morritt—Mr Morritt’s Reminiscences
of Ashestiel—Scott’s Domestic Life— 1808,
160 CHAPTER VI. Quarrel with Messrs Constable and
Hunter—John Ballantyne established as a
Bookseller in Edinburgh—Scott’s Literary Projects—The Edinburgh Annual Register, &c.—Meeting of James
Ballantyne and John
Murray—Murray’s Visit to Ashestiel—Politics—The
Peninsular War—Project of the Quarterly Review—Correspondence
with Ellis, Gifford,
Morritt, Southey, Sharpe,
&c.— 1808-1809, 195 CHAPTER VII. Case of a Poetical Tailor Condemned to Death at Edinburgh—His letters to
Scott—Death of Camp—Scott in London—Mr
Morritt’s Description of him as “a lion” in town—Dinner at
Mr
Sotheby’s—Coleridge’sFire, Famine, and Slaughter—The Quarterly
Review started—First visit to Rokeby—The Lady of the
Lake begun—Excursion to the Trossachs and Loch Lomond—Letter on
Byron’sEnglish Bards and Scotch
Reviewers—Death of Daniel Scott—Correspondence about
Mr Canning’s Duel with Lord
Castlereagh—Miss Baillie’sFamily Legend acted at Edinburgh—Theatrical
Anecdotes—Kemble—Siddons—Terry—Letter
on the Death of Miss Seward— 1809-1810, 239 PAGE CHAPTER VIII. Affair of Thomas Scott’s Extractorship Discussed in
the House of Lords—Speeches of Lord Lauderdale, Lord
Melville, &c.—Lord Holland at the Friday
Club—Publication of the Lady of the Lake—Correspondence concerning Versification with
Ellis and Canning—The Poem criticised by
Jeffrey and Mackintosh—Letters to
Southey and Morritt—Anecdotes from
James Ballantyne’s Memoranda— 1810,
279 CHAPTER IX. First Visit to the Hebrides—Staffa—Skye—Mull—Iona, &c.—The Lord of the Isles projected—Letters to Joanna
Baillie—Southey—and Morritt— 1810, 309 CHAPTER X. Life of Miss Seward—Waverley
resumed—Ballantyne’s Critique on the First Chapters of the
Novel—Waverley again laid aside—Unfortunate Speculations of
John Ballantyne and Co.; History of the
Culdees; Tixall Poetry; Beaumont
and Fletcher; Edinburgh Annual Register,
&c.—Scott’s Essay on Judicial Reform—His scheme of going
to India—Letters on the War in the Peninsula—Death of Lord President
Blair—And of Lord Melville—Publication of the Vision of Don Roderick—The Inferno of Altesidora, &c.— 1810-1811, 328 CHAPTER XI. New Arrangement concerning the Clerks of
Session—Scott’s First Purchase of Land—Abbotsford;
Turn-Again, &c.—Joanna Baillie’sOrra, &c.—Death of James Grahame—And of John
Leyden— 1811, 354 CHAPTER XII. The Poem of Rokeby begun—Correspondence with
Mr Morritt—Death of Henry Duke of
Buccleuch—George Ellis—John
Wilson—Apprentices of Edinburgh—Scott’s
“Nicknackatories”—Letter to Miss Baillie on the
Publication of Childe Harold—Correspondence with Lord
Byron— 1811-1812, 378
MEMOIRSOF THELIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.CHAPTER I. REMOVAL TO ASHESTIEL—DEATH OF CAPTAIN ROBERT
SCOTT—MUNGO PARK—COMPLETION AND PUBLICATION OF THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL—1804-1805.
It has been mentioned that in the course of the preceding
summer, the Lord-Lieutenant of Selkirkshire complained
of Scott’s military zeal as interfering sometimes
with the discharge of his shrieval functions, and took occasion to remind him, that the
law, requiring every Sheriff to reside at least four months in the year within his own
jurisdiction, had not hitherto been complied with. It appears that
Scott received this communication with some displeasure, being
conscious that no duty of any importance had ever been neglected by him; well knowing that
the law of residence was not enforced in the cases of many of his brother sheriffs; and, in
fact, ascribing his Lord-Lieutenant’s complaint to nothing but a certain nervous
fidget as to all points of form, for which that respectable nobleman was notorious, as well
became, perhaps, an old Lord of the Bedchamber, and High Commissioner
to the General Assembly of the Kirk.* Scott, however, must have been
found so clearly in the wrong, had the case been submitted to the Secretary of State, and
Lord Napier conducted the correspondence with such courtesy, never
failing to allege as a chief argument the pleasure which it would afford himself and the
other gentlemen of Selkirkshire to have more of their Sheriff’s society, that, while
it would have been highly imprudent to persist, there could be no mortification in
yielding. He flattered himself that his active habits would enable him to maintain his
connexion with the Edinburgh Cavalry as usual; and, perhaps, he also flattered himself,
that residing for the summer in Selkirkshire would not interfere more seriously with his
business as a barrister, than the occupation of the cottage at Lasswade had hitherto done.
While he was seeking about, accordingly, for some “lodge in the
Forest,” his kinsman of Harden suggested that the tower of Auld Wat might be
refitted, so as to serve his purpose; and he received the proposal with enthusiastic
delight. On a more careful inspection of the localities, however, he became sensible that
he would be practically at a greater distance from county business of all kinds at Harden,
than if he were to continue at Lasswade. Just at this time, the house of
* I remember being much amused with an instance of Lord Napier’s precision in small matters,
mentioned by the late Lady Stewart of
Castlemilk, in Lanarkshire. Lord and Lady Napier had arrived at Castlemilk, with the
intention of staying a week; but next morning it was announced that a circumstance
had occurred which rendered it indispensable for them to return without delay to
their own seat in Selkirkshire. It was impossible for Lady
Stewart to extract any further explanation at the moment, but it
turned out afterwards that Lord Napier’s valet had
committed the grievous mistake of packing up a set of neckcloths which did not
correspond in point of date with the shirts they accompanied!
Ashestiel, situated on the southern bank of the
Tweed, a few miles from Selkirk, became vacant by the death of its proprietor, Colonel Russell, who had married a sister of Scott’s
mother, and the consequent dispersion of the family. The young laird of Ashestiel, his cousin, was then in India; and the Sheriff took a
lease of the house and grounds, with a small farm adjoining. On the 4th May, two days after
the Tristrem had been published, he says
to Ellis: “I have been engaged in
travelling backwards and forwards to Selkirkshire upon little pieces of business, just
important enough to prevent my doing any thing to purpose. One great matter, however, I
have achieved, which is, procuring myself a place of residence, which will save me
these teasing migrations in future, so that though I part with my sweet little cottage
on the banks of the Esk, you will find me this summer in the very centre of the ancient
Reged, in a decent farmhouse overhanging the Tweed, and situated in a wild pastoral
country.” And again, on the 19th, he thus apologizes for not having answered
a letter of the 10th:—“For more than a month my head was fairly tenanted by ideas,
which, though strictly pastoral and rural, were neither literary nor poetical. Long
sheep, and short sheep, and tups, and gimmers, and hogs, and dinmonts, had made a
perfect sheepfold of my understanding, which is hardly yet cleared of them.*—I hope
Mrs Ellis will clap a bridle on her
imagination. Ettrick Forest boasts finely shaped
* Describing his meeting with Scott in the summer of 1801, James
Hogg says—“During the sociality of the evening, the
discourse ran very much on the different breeds of sheep, that curse of the
community of Ettrick Forest. The original black-faced Forest breed being
always called the short sheep, and the Cheviot breed the long sheep, the
disputes at that period ran very high about the practicable profits of
each. Mr Scott, who had come into that remote district
to preserve what fragments remained of its legendary
hills and clear romantic streams; but, alas! they are bare, to
wildness, and denuded of the beautiful natural wood with which they were formerly
shaded. It is mortifying to see that, though wherever the sheep are excluded, the copse
has immediately sprung up in abundance, so that enclosures only are wanting to restore
the wood wherever it might be useful or ornamental, yet hardly a proprietor has
attempted to give it fair play for a resurrection. . . . You see we reckon positively
on you—the more because our arch-critic Jeffrey
tells me that he met you in London, and found you still inclined for a northern trip.
All our wise men in the north are rejoiced at the prospect of seeing George
Ellis. If you delay your journey till July, I shall then be free of the
Courts of Law, and will meet you upon the Border, at whatever side you
enter.”
The business part of these letters refers to Scott’s brother Daniel, who,
as he expresses it, “having been bred to the mercantile line, had been obliged, by
some untoward circumstances, particularly an imprudent connexion with an artful woman,
to leave Edinburgh for
lore, was rather bored with everlasting
questions of the long and the short sheep. So at length, putting on his most
serious, calculating face, he turned to Mr Walter Bryden,
and said, ‘I am rather at a loss regarding the merits of this very
important question. How long must a sheep actually measure to come under the
denomination of a long sheep?’ Mr Bryden, who, in
the simplicity of his heart, neither perceived the quiz nor the reproof, fell
to answer with great sincerity. ‘It’s the woo [wool], sir
it’s the woo’ that makes the difference. The lang sheep ha’e
the short woo’, and the short sheep ha’e the lang thing, and these
are just kind o’ names we gi’e them, like.’ Mr
Scott could not preserve his grave face of strict calculation;
it went gradually awry, and a hearty guffaw “[i.
e. horselaugh]” followed. When I saw the very same words
repeated near the beginning p. (4) of the ‘Black Dwarf,’ how could I be mistaken of
the author? “Autobiography prefixed to Hogg’s “Altrive Tales.”
Liverpool, and now to be casting
his eyes towards Jamaica.” Scott requests Ellis to help him if he can, by introducing him to some of
his own friends or agents in that island: and Ellis furnishes him
accordingly with letters to Mr Blackburne, a friend
and brother proprietor, who appears to have paid Daniel Scott every
possible attention, and soon provided him with suitable employment on a healthy part of his
estates. But the same low tastes and habits which had reduced the unfortunate young man to
the necessity of expatriating himself, recurred after a brief season of penitence and
order, and continued until he had accumulated great affliction upon all his family.
On the 10th of June, 1804, died, at his seat of Rosebank, Captain Robert Scott, the affectionate uncle whose name
has often occurred in this narrative.* “He was” says his nephew to
Ellis, on the 18th, “a man of universal
benevolence, and great kindness towards his friends, and to me individually. His
manners were so much tinged with the habits of celibacy as to render them peculiar,
though by no means unpleasingly so, and his profession (that of a seaman) gave a high
colouring to the whole. The loss is one which, though the course of nature led me to
expect it, did not take place at last without considerable pain to my feelings. The
arrangement of his affairs, and the distribution of his small fortune among his
relations, will devolve in a great measure upon me. He has distinguished me by leaving
me a beautiful little villa on the banks of the Tweed, with every possible convenience
annexed to it, and about
* In the obituary of the Scots Magazine for this month I find:—“Universally
regretted, Captain Robert Scott of
Rosebank, a gentleman whose life afforded an uniform example of
unostentatious charity and extensive benevolence.”
thirty acres of the finest land in Scotland. Notwithstanding,
however, the temptation that this bequest offers, I continue to pursue my Reged plan,
and expect to be settled at Asliestiel in the course of a month. Rosebank is situated
so near the village of Kelso as hardly to be sufficiently a country residence; besides,
it is hemmed in by hedges and ditches, not to mention Dukes and Lady Dowagers, which
are bad things for little people. It is expected to sell to great advantage. I shall
buy a mountain farm with the purchase-money, and be quite the Laird of the Cairn and
the Scaur.”
Scott sold Rosebank in the course of the year for
£5000; his share (being a ninth) of his uncle’s other property amounted, I
believe, to about £500; and he had besides a legacy of £100 in his quality of
trustee. This bequest made an important change in his pecuniary position, and influenced
accordingly the arrangements of his future life. Independently of practice at the bar, and
of literary profits, he was now, with his little patrimony, his Sheriffship, and about
£200 per annum arising from the stock ultimately settled on his wife, in possession of
a fixed revenue of nearly, if not quite, £1000 a-year.
On the 1st of August he writes to Ellis from Ashestiel—“Having had only about a hundred and fifty
things to do, I have scarcely done any thing, and yet could not give myself leave to
suppose that I had leisure to write letters. 1st, I had this farm-house to furnish from
sales, from broker’s shops, and from all manner of hospitals for incurable
furniture. 2dly, I had to let my cottage on the banks of the Esk. 3dly, I had to
arrange matters for the sale of Rosebank. 4thly, I had to go into quarters with our
cavalry, which made a very idle fortnight in the midst of all this business. Last of
all, I had to superintend a removal, or what we call a flit-ting, which, of all bores
under the cope of Heaven, is bore the most tremendous. After all these storms, we are
now most comfortably settled, and have only to regret deeply our disappointment at
finding your northern march blown up. We had been projecting about twenty expeditions,
and were pleasing ourselves at Mrs Ellis’s
expected surprise on finding herself so totally built in by mountains, as I am at the
present writing hereof. We are seven miles from kirk and market. We rectify the last
inconvenience by killing our own mutton and poultry; and as to the former, finding
there was some chance of my family turning pagans, I have adopted the goodly practice
of reading prayers every Sunday, to the great edification of my household. Think of
this, you that have the happiness to be within two steps of the church, and commiserate
those who dwell in the wilderness. I showed Charlotte yesterday the Catrail, and told her
that to inspect that venerable monument was one main object of your intended journey to
Scotland. She is of opinion that ditches must be more scarce in the neighbourhood of
Windsor Forest than she had hitherto had the least idea of.”
Ashestiel will be visited by many for his sake, as long as Waverley and Marmion are remembered. A more beautiful situation for the
residence of a poet could not be conceived. The house was then a small one, but, compared
with the cottage at Lasswade, its accommodations were amply sufficient. You approached it
through an old-fashioned garden, with holly hedges, and broad, green, terrace walks. On one
side, close under the windows, is a deep ravine, clothed with venerable trees, down which a
mountain rivulet is heard, more than seen, in its progress to the Tweed. The river itself
is separated from the high bank on which the house stands only by a
narrow meadow of the richest verdure. Opposite, and all around, are the green hills. The
valley there is narrow, and the aspect in every direction is that of perfect pastoral
repose. The heights immediately behind are those which divide the Tweed from the Yarrow;
and the latter celebrated stream lies within an easy ride, in the course of which the
traveller passes through a variety of the finest mountain scenery in the south of Scotland.
No town is within seven miles, but Selkirk, which was then still smaller and quieter than
it is now; there was hardly even a gentleman’s family within visiting distance,
except at Yair, a few miles lower on the Tweed, the ancient seat of the
Pringles of Whytbank, and at Bowhill, between the Yarrow and the
Ettrick, where the Earl of Dalkeith used occasionally to inhabit a
small shooting lodge, which has since grown to be a magnificent ducal residence. The
country all around, with here and there an insignificant exception, belongs to the
Buccleuch estate; so that, whichever way he chose to turn, the
bard of the clan had ample room and verge enough, and all appliances to boot, for every
variety of field sport that might happen to please his fancy; and being then in the prime
vigour of manhood, he was not slow to profit by these advantages. Mean time, the concerns
of his own little farm, and the care of his absent relation’s woods, gave him
healthful occupation in the intervals of the chase; and he had long, solitary evenings for
the uninterrupted exercise of his pen; perhaps, on the whole, better opportunities of study
than he had ever enjoyed before, or was to meet with elsewhere in later days.
When he first examined Ashestiel, with a view to being his cousin’s
tenant, he thought of taking home James Hogg to
superintend the sheep-farm, and keep watch over the house also during the winter. I am not
able to tell exactly in what manner this
proposal fell to the ground. In January 1804, the Shepherd writes to him: “I have
no intention of waiting for so distant a prospect as that of being manager of your
farm, though I have no doubt of our joint endeavour proving successful, nor yet of your
willingness to employ me in that capacity. His Grace the Duke
of Buccleuch hath at present a farm vacant in Eskdale, and I have been
importuned by friends to get a letter from you and apply for it. You can hardly be
conscious what importance your protection hath given me already, not only in mine own
eyes, but even in those of others. You might write to him, or to any of the family you
are best acquainted with, stating that such and such a character was about leaving his
native country for want of a residence in the farming line.” I am very
doubtful if Scott—however willing to encounter the risk of employing
Hogg as his own grieve, or bailiff—would
have felt himself justified at this, or, indeed, at any time, in recommending him as the
tenant of a considerable farm on the Duke of Buccleuch’s estate.
But I am also quite at a loss to comprehend how Hogg should have
conceived it possible, at this period, when he certainly had no capital whatever, that the
Duke’s Chamberlain should agree to accept him for a tenant, on any attestation,
however strong, as to the excellence of his character and intentions. Be that as it may, if
Scott made the application which the Shepherd suggested, it
failed. So did a negotiation which he certainly did enter upon about the same time with the
late Earl of Caernarvon (then Lord
Porchester), through that nobleman’s aunt, Mrs Scott of Harden, with the view of obtaining for
Hogg the situation of bailiff on one of his Lordship’s
estates in the west of England; and such, I believe, was the result of several other
attempts of the same kind with landed proprietors nearer home. Perhaps
the Shepherd had already set his heart so much on taking rank as a farmer in his own
district, that he witnessed the failure of any such negotiations with indifference. As
regards the management of Ashestiel, I find no trace of that proposal having ever been
renewed.
In truth Scott had hardly been a week in possession of his new domains,
before he made acquaintance with a character much better suited to his purpose than
James Hogg ever could have been. I mean honest
Thomas Purdie, his faithful servant—his
affectionately devoted humble friend from this time until death parted them.
Tom was first brought before him, in his capacity of Sheriff, on a
charge of poaching, when the poor fellow gave such a touching account of his
circumstances,—a wife, and I know not how many children depending on his exertions—work
scarce and grouse abundant, and all this with a mixture of odd sly humour,—that the
Sheriff’s heart was moved. Tom escaped the penalty of the law
was taken into employment as shepherd, and showed such zeal, activity, and shrewdness in
that capacity, that Scott never had any occasion to
repent of the step he soon afterwards took, in promoting him to the position which had been
originally offered to James Hogg.
It was also about the same time that he took into his service as
coachman Peter Mathieson, brother-in-law to
Thomas Purdie, another faithful servant, who
never afterwards left him, and still survives his kind master. Scott’s awkward conduct of the little phaeton had exposed his wife to
more than one perilous overturn, before he agreed to set up a close carriage, and call in
the assistance of this steady charioteer.
During this autumn Scott formed the
personal acquaintance of Mungo Park, the celebrated
victim of African discovery. On his return from his
first expedition, Park endeavoured to establish himself as a medical
practitioner in the town of Hawick, but the drudgeries of that calling in such a district
soon exhausted his ardent temper, and he was now living in seclusion in his native cottage
at Fowlsheils on the Yarrow, nearly opposite Newark Castle. His brother, Archibald Park, a man remarkable for strength both of mind
and body, was the sheriff’s-officer of that district, and introduced the traveller to
his principal. They soon became much attached to each other; and Scott
supplied some interesting anecdotes of their brief intercourse, to the late Mr Wishaw, the editor of Park’s posthumous Journal, with which I shall blend a few
minor circumstances which I gathered from him in conversation long afterwards. “On
one occasion,” he says, “the traveller communicated to him some very
remarkable adventures which had befallen him in Africa, but which he had not recorded
in his book.” On Scott’s asking the cause of this
silence, Mungo answered, “that in all cases where he had
information to communicate, which he thought of importance to the public, he had stated
the facts boldly, leaving it to his readers to give such credit to his statements as
they might appear justly to deserve; but that he would not shock their faith, or render
his travels more marvellous, by introducing circumstances, which, however true, were of
little or no moment, as they related solely to his own personal adventures and
escapes.” This reply struck Scott as highly
characteristic of the man; and though strongly tempted to set down some of these marvels for
Mr Wishaw’s use, he on reflection abstained from doing so,
holding it unfair to record what the adventurer had deliberately chosen to suppress in his
own narrative. He confirms the account given by Park’s biographer of his cold and
reserved manners to strangers; and in particular, of his disgust with
the indirect questions which curious visitors would often put to him upon the subject of
his travels. “This practice,” said Mungo,
“exposes me to two risks; either that I may not understand the questions meant
to be put, or that my answers to them may be misconstrued;” and he contrasted
such conduct with the frankness of Scott’s revered friend,
Dr Adam Ferguson, who, the very first day the
traveller dined with him at Hallyards, spread a large map of Africa on the table, and made
him trace out his progress thereupon, inch by inch, questioning him minutely as to every
step he had taken. “Here, however,” says Scott,
“Dr F. was using a privilege to which he was well
entitled by his venerable age and high literary character, but which could not have
been exercised with propriety by any common stranger.”
Calling one day at Fowlsheils, and not finding Park at home, Scott
walked in search of him along the banks of the Yarrow, which in that neighbourhood passes
over various ledges of rock, forming deep pools and eddies between them. Presently he
discovered his friend standing alone on the bank, plunging one stone after another into the
water, and watching anxiously the bubbles as they rose to the surface.
“This,” said Scott, “appears but an idle
amusement for one who has seen so much stirring adventure.” “Not so
idle, perhaps, as you suppose,” answered Mungo.
“This was the manner in which I used to ascertain the depth of a river in
Africa before I ventured to cross it—judging whether the attempt would be safe, by the
time the bubbles of air took to ascend.” At this time
Park’s intention of a second expedition had never been
revealed to Scott; but he instantly formed the opinion that these experiments on Yarrow
were connected with some such purpose.
His thoughts had always continued to be haunted with Africa. He told
Scott that whenever he awoke suddenly in the night,
owing to a nervous disorder with which he was troubled, he fancied himself still a prisoner
in the tent of Ali; but when the poet expressed some surprise that he
should design again to revisit those scenes, he answered, that he would rather brave Africa
and all its horrors, than wear out his life in long and toilsome rides over the hills of
Scotland, for which the remuneration was hardly enough to keep soul and body together.
Towards the end of the autumn, when about to quit his country for the
last time, Park paid Scott a farewell visit, and slept at Ashestiel. Next morning his host
accompanied him homewards over the wild chain of hills between the Tweed and the Yarrow.
Park talked much of his new scheme, and mentioned his
determination to tell his family that he had some business for a day or two in Edinburgh,
and send them his blessing from thence without returning to take leave. He had married, not
long before, a pretty and amiable woman; and when they reached the Williamhope Ridge, “the autumnal mist floating heavily and slowly down
the valley of the Yarrow,” presented to Scott’s
imagination “a striking emblem of the troubled and uncertain prospect which his
undertaking afforded.” He remained, however, unshaken, and at length they
reached the spot at which they had agreed to separate. A small ditch divided the moor from
the road, and, in going over it, Park’s horse stumbled, and
nearly fell. “I am afraid, Mungo,” said the
Sheriff, “that is a bad omen.” To which he answered, smiling,
“Freits (omens) follow those who look to
them.” With this expression Mungo struck the spurs into his
horse, and Scott never saw him again. His parting proverb, by the way,
was probably suggested by one of the Border ballads, in which spe-cies
of lore he was almost as great a proficient as the Sheriff himself; for we read in
“Edom o’ Gordon,”— Them look to freits, my master dear, Then freits will follow them.”
I must not omit that George Scott, the unfortunate
companion of Park’s second journey, was the son
of a tenant on the Buccleuch estate, whose skill in drawing having casually attracted the
Sheriff’s attention, he was recommended by him to the protection of the family, and
by this means established in a respectable situation in the Ordnance department of the
Tower of London; but the stories of his old acquaintance Mungo
Park’s discoveries, had made such an impression on his fancy, that
nothing could prevent his accompanying him on the fatal expedition of 1805.
The brother of Mungo Park remained
in Scott’s employment for many years, and was
frequently his companion in his mountain rides. Though a man of the most dauntless
temperament, he was often alarmed at Scott’s reckless
horsemanship. “The de’il’s in ye, Sherra,” be would say,
“ye’ll never halt till they bring you hame with your feet
foremost.” He rose greatly in favour, in consequence of the gallantry with which
he seized a gipsy, accused of murder, from amidst a group of similar desperadoes, on whom
the Sheriff and he had come unexpectedly in a desolate part of the country.
To return to The Lay of the Last
Minstrel:—Ellis, understanding it to be
now nearly ready for the press, writes to Scott, urging him to set it
forth with some engraved illustrations—if possible, after Flaxman, whose splendid designs from Homer had shortly before made their appearance. He answers, August
21—“I should have liked very much to have had appropriate embellishments. Indeed, we
made some attempts of the kind, but
they did not succeed. I should fear Flaxman’s genius is too
classic to stoop to body forth my Gothic Borderers. Would there not be some risk of their
resembling the antique of Homer’s heroes rather than the iron
race of Salvator? After all, perhaps, nothing is more
difficult than for a painter to adopt the author’s ideas of an imaginary character,
especially when it is founded on traditions to which the artist is a stranger. I should
like at least to be at his elbow when at work. I wish very much I could have sent you the
Lay while in MS., to have had the advantage of your opinion
and corrections. But Ballantyne galled my kibes so
severely during an unusual fit of activity, that I gave him the whole story in a sort of
pet both with him and with it. . . . . I have lighted upon a very good amanuensis for copying such matters as the Lay le Frain, &c. He was sent down here
by some of the London booksellers in a half-starved state, but begins to pick up a little.
. . I am just about to set out on a grand expedition of great importance to my comfort in
this place. You must know that Mr Plummer, my
predecessor in this county, was a good antiquary, and left a valuable collection of books,
which he entailed with the estate, the first successors being three of his sisters, at
least as old and musty as any Caxton or Wynkyn de Worde in his library. Now I must contrive to
coax those watchful dragons to give me admittance into this garden of the Hesperides. I
suppose they trouble the volumes as little as the dragon did the golden pippins; but they
may not be the more easily soothed on that account. However, I set out on my quest, like a preux
chevalier, taking care to leave Camp, for
dirtying the carpet, and to carry the greyhounds with me, whose appearance will indicate
that hare soup may be forthcoming in due season. By the way, did I tell you that Fitz-Camp is dead, and another on the stocks?
As our stupid postman might mistake Reged, address, as per date,
Ashestiel, Selkirk, by Berwick.”
I believe the spinsters of Sunderland hall proved very generous dragons;
and Scott lived to see them succeeded in the
guardianship of Mr Plummer’s literary
treasures by an amiable young gentleman of his own name and family. The half-starved
amanuensis of this letter was Henry
Weber, a laborious German, of whom we shall hear more hereafter.
With regard to the pictorial embellishments contemplated for the first edition of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, I believe the artist in
whose designs the poet took the greatest interest was Mr
Masquerier, now of Brighton, with whom he corresponded at some length on the
subject; but his distance from that ingenious gentleman’s residence was inconvenient,
and the booksellers were probably impatient of delay, when the MS. was once known to be in
the hands of the printer.
There is a circumstance which must already have struck such of my
readers as knew the author in his latter days, namely, the readiness with which he seems to
have communicated this poem, in its progress, not only to his own familiar friends, but to
new and casual acquaintances. We shall find him following the same course with his Marmion—but not, I think, with any of his
subsequent works. His determination to consult the movements of his own mind alone in the
conduct of his pieces was probably taken before he began the Lay;
and he soon resolved to trust for the detection of minor inaccuracies to two persons
only—James Ballantyne and William Erskine. The printer was himself a man of
considerable literary talents; his own style had the incurable faults of pomposity and affectation, but his eye for more venial errors in
the writings of others was quick, and, though his personal address was apt to give a
stranger the impression of insincerity, he was in reality an honest man, and conveyed his
mind on such matters with equal candour and delicacy during the whole of
Scott’s brilliant career. In the vast majority of instances
he found his friend acquiesce at once in the propriety of his suggestions; nay, there
certainly were cases, though rare, in which his advice to alter things of much more
consequence than a word or a rhyme, was frankly tendered, and on deliberation adopted by
Scott. Mr Erskine was the referee whenever
the poet hesitated about taking the hints of the zealous typographer, and his refined taste
and gentle manners rendered his critical alliance highly valuable. With. two such faithful
friends within his reach, the author of the Lay might safely
dispense with sending his MS. to be revised even by George
Ellis.
Before he left Ashestiel for the winter session, the printing of the
poem had made considerable progress. Ellis writes to
him on the 10th November, complaining of bad health, and adds, “Tu quid
agis? I suppose you are still an inhabitant of Reged, and being there it
is impossible that your head should have been solely occupied by the ten thousand cares
which you are likely to have in common with other mortals, or even by the Lay, which must have
been long since completed, but must have started during the summer new projects
sufficient to employ the lives of half-a-dozen patriarchs. Pray tell me all about it,
for as the present state of my frame precludes me from much activity, I want to enjoy
that of my friends.” Scott answers from
Edinburgh: “I fear you fall too much into the sedentary habits incident to a
literary life, like my poor friend Plummer, who
used to say that a walk from the parlour to the gar-den once a day
was sufficient exercise for any rational being, and that no one but a fool or a
fox-hunter would take more. I wish you could have had a seat on Hassan’s tapestry to have brought Mrs Ellis and you soft and fair to Ashestiel, where
with farm mutton at four p.m., and goats whey at 6 a.m., I think we could have re-established as much
embonpoint as ought to satisfy a
poetical antiquary. As for my country amusements, I have finished the Lay, with which and its accompanying notes the press now
groans; but I have started nothing except some scores of hares, many of which my
gallant greyhounds brought to the ground.”
Ellis had also touched upon a literary feud then
raging between Scott’s allies of the Edinburgh
Review, and the late Dr Thomas Young,
illustrious for inventive genius, displayed equally in physical science and in philological
literature. A northern critic, whoever he was, had treated with merry contempt certain
discoveries in natural philosophy and the mechanical arts, more especially that of the
undulating theory of light, which ultimately conferred on
Young’s name one of its highest distinctions. “He
had been for some time,” says Ellis, “lecturer
at the Royal Institution; and having determined to publish his lectures, he had
received from one of the booksellers the offer of L.1000 for the copyright. He was
actually preparing for the press, when the bookseller came to him, and told him that
the ridicule thrown by the Edinburgh Review, on some papers
of his in the Philosophical Transactions, had so frightened the whole trade that he
must request to be released from his bargain. This consequence, it is true, could not
have been foreseen by the reviewer, who, however, appears to have written from feelings
of private animosity; and I still continue to think, though I greatly admire the good
taste of the literary essays, and the perspicuity of the dissertations on political
economy, that an apparent want of
candour is too generally the character of a work which, from its independence on the
interests of booksellers, might have been expected to be particularly free from this
defect.” Scott rejoins: “I am
sorry for the very pitiful catastrophe of Dr Young’s
publication, because, although I am altogether unacquainted with the merits of the
controversy, one must always regret so very serious a consequence of a diatribe. The
truth is, that these gentlemen reviewers ought often to read over the fable of the boys
and frogs, and should also remember it is much more easy to destroy than to build, to
criticise than to compose. While on this subject, I kiss the rod of my critic in the
Edinburgh, on the subject of the price of Sir Tristrem; it was not my fault,
however, that the public had it not cheap enough, as I declined taking any copy-money,
or share in the profits, and nothing surely was as reasonable a charge as I could
make.”
On the 30th December he resumes: “The Lay is now ready, and will probably be in Longman and Rees’s hands shortly after this comes to yours. I have charged
them to send you a copy by the first conveyance, and shall be impatient to know whether
you think the entire piece corresponds to that which you have already seen. I would
also fain send a copy to Gifford, by way of
introduction.—My reason is that I understand he is about to publish an edition of
Beaumont and Fletcher, and I think I could offer him the use of some miscellaneous
notes, which I made long since on the margin of their works.* Besides I have a good
esteem of Mr Gifford
* It was his Massinger
that Gifford had at this time in hand. His Ben Jonson followed, and then
his Ford. Some time later, he
projected editions, both of Beaumont and Fletcher, and
of Shakspeare: but, to the grievous
misfortune of literature, died without having completed either of them. We
shall see presently what became of Scott’s Notes on Beaumont and
Fletcher.
as a manly English poet, very different from most of our modern
versifiers.—We are so fond of Reged that we are just going to set out for our farm in
the middle of a snow-storm; all that we have to comfort ourselves with is, that our
march has been ordered with great military talent—a detachment of minced pies and
brandy having preceded us. In case we are not buried in a snow-wreath, our stay will be
but short. Should that event happen we must wait the thaw.”
Ellis, not having as yet received the new poem,
answers on the 9th January, 1805, “I look daily and with the greatest anxiety for
the Last Minstrel—of which I still hope to
see a future edition decorated with designs à
laFlaxman,
as the Lays of Homer have already been. I think you
told me that Sir Tristrem had not
excited much sensation in Edinburgh. As I have not been in London this age, I
can’t produce the contrary testimony of our metropolis. But I can produce one
person, and that one worth a considerable number, who speaks of it with rapture, and
says, ‘I am only sorry that Scott has not
(and I am sure he has not) told us the whole of his creed on the subject of
Tomas, and the other early Scotch
minstrels, I suppose he was afraid of the critics, and determined to say very
little more than he was able to establish by incontestable proofs. I feel
infinitely obliged to him for what he has told us, and I have no hesitation in
saying, that I consider Sir T. as by far the most
interesting work that has as yet been published on the subject of our earliest
poets, and, indeed, such a piece of literary antiquity as no one could have,
a priori, supposed to
exist.’ This is Frere—our
ex-ambassador for Spain, whom you would delight to know, and who would delight to know
you. It is remarkable that you were, I believe, the most ardent of all the admirers of
his old English version of the Saxon Ode;* and he is, per contra, the warmest panegyrist of your
Conclusion, which he can repeat by heart, and affirms to be the very best imitation of
old English at present existing. I think I can trust you for having concluded the Last Minstrel with as much spirit as it was begun—if you have
been capable of any thing unworthy of your fame amidst the highest mountains of Reged,
there is an end of all inspiration.”
Scott answers—“Frere is so perfect a master of the ancient style of composition, that I
would rather have his suffrage than that of a whole synod of your vulgar antiquaries. The
more I think on our system of the origin of romance, the more simplicity and uniformity it
seems to possess; and though I adopted it late and with hesitation, I believe I shall never
see cause to abandon it. Yet I am aware of the danger of attempting to prove, where proofs
are but scanty, and probable suppositions must be placed in lieu of them. I think the Welsh
antiquaries have considerably injured their claims to confidence, by attempting to detail
very remote events with all the accuracy belonging to the facts of yesterday. You will hear
one of them describe you the cut of Llywarch Hen’s beard, or the
whittle of Urien
* “I have only met, in my researches into these
matters,” says Scott in 1830,
“with one poem, which, if it had been produced as ancient, could not
have been detected on internal evidence. It is the War Song upon the Victory at
Brunnanburgh, translated from the Anglo-Saxon into Anglo-Norman, by
the Right Hon. John Hookham Frere. See
Ellis’sSpecimens of Ancient English
Poetry, vol. i. p. 32. The accomplished editor tells us,
that this very singular poem was intended as an imitation of the style and
language of the fourteenth century, and was written during the controversy
occasioned by the poems
attributed to Rowley. Mr Ellis adds, ‘the
reader will probably hear with some surprise that this singular instance of
critical ingenuity was the composition of an Eton
schoolboy.’”—Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad,
p. 19.
Reged, as if he had trimmed the one, or cut his cheese with the other.
These high pretensions weaken greatly our belief in the Welsh poems, which probably contain
real treasures. ’Tis a pity some sober-minded man will not take the trouble to sift
the wheat from the chaff, and give us a good account of their MSS. and traditions. Pray,
what is become of the Mabinogion? It is a proverb, that children
and fools talk truth, and am mistaken if even the same valuable quality may not sometimes
be extracted out of the tales made to entertain both. I presume, while we talk of childish
and foolish tales, that the Lay is already with
you, although, in these points, Long-manumest errare.
Pray enquire for your copy.”
In the first week of January, 1805, “The Lay” was published; and its success at once decided
that literature should form the main business of Scott’s life.
In his modest Introduction of 1830, he had
himself told us all that he thought the world would ever desire to know of the origin and
progress of this his first great original production. The present Memoir, however, has
already included many minor particulars, for which I believe no student of literature will
reproach the compiler. I shall not mock the reader with many words as to the merits of a
poem which has now kept its place for nearly a third of a century; but one or two
additional remarks on the history of the composition may be pardoned.
It is curious to trace the small beginnings and gradual developement of
his design. The lovely Countess of Dalkeith hears a
wild rude legend of Border diablerie, and
sportively asks him to make it the subject of a ballad. He had been already labouring in
the elucidation of the “quaint Inglis” ascribed to an ancient seer and bard of
the same district, and perhaps completed his own sequel, intending the whole to be included in the
third volume of the Minstrelsy. He
assents to Lady Dalkeith’s request, and casts about for some new
variety of diction and rhyme, which might be adopted without impropriety in a closing
strain for the same collection. Sir John
Stoddort’s casual recitation, a year or two before, of Coleridge’s unpublished Christabel, had fixed the music of that noble
fragment in his memory; and it occurs to him, that by throwing the story of Gilpin Horner into somewhat of a similar cadence, he might
produce such an echo of the later metrical romance, as would serve to connect his
Conclusion of the primitive Sir Tristrem with his imitations of
the common popular ballad in the Grey
Brother and Eve of St John. A single
scene of feudal festivity in the hall of Branksome, disturbed by some pranks of a
nondescript goblin, was probably all that he contemplated; but his accidental confinement
in the midst of a volunteer camp gave him leisure to meditate his theme to the sound of the
bugle;—and suddenly there flashes on him the idea of extending his simple outline, so as to
embrace a vivid panorama of that old Border life of war and tumult, and all earnest
passions, with which his researches on the “Minstrelsy” had by degrees fed his imagination, until every the minutest
feature had been taken home and realized with unconscious intenseness of sympathy; so that
he had won for himself in the past another world, hardly less complete or familiar than the
present. Erskine or Cranstoun suggests that he would do well to divide the poem into cantos,
and prefix to each of them a motto explanatory of the action, after the fashion of
Spenser in the Faery Queen. He pauses for a moment—and the happiest
conception of the framework of a picturesque narrative that ever occurred to any poet—one
that Homer might have envied—the creation of the ancient harper starts to life. By such steps did the “Lay of the Last Minstrel” grow out of the
“Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.”
A word more of its felicitous machinery. It was at Bowhill that the
Countess of Dalkeith requested a ballad on
Gilpin Horner. The ruined castle of Newark closely
adjoins that seat, and is now indeed included within its pleasance.
Newark had been the chosen residence of the first Duchess of
Buccleuch, and he accordingly shadows out his own beautiful friend in the
person of her lord’s ancestress, the last of the original stock of that great house;
himself the favoured inmate of Bowhill, introduced certainly to the familiarity of its
circle in consequence of his devotion to the poetry of a by-past age, in that of an aged
minstrel, “the last of all the race,” seeking shelter at the gate of
Newark, in days when many an adherent of the fallen cause of Stuart,—his own bearded
ancestor, who had fought at Killiecrankie, among the rest,—owed
their safety to her who In pride of power, in beauty s bloom, Had wept o’er Monmouth’s bloody
tomb.”
The arch allusions which run through all these Introductions, without in the least interrupting the truth and graceful pathos of
their main impression, seem to me exquisitely characteristic of Scott, whose delight and pride was to play with the genius which
nevertheless mastered him at will. For, in truth, what is it that gives to all his works
their unique and marking charm, except the matchless effect which sudden effusions of the
purest heart blood of nature derive from their being poured out, to all appearance
involuntarily, amidst diction and sentiment cast equally in the mould of the busy world,
and the seemingly habitual desire to dwell on nothing but what might be likely to excite
curiosity, without too much disturbing
deeper feelings, in the saloons of polished life? Such outbursts come forth dramatically in
all his writings; but in the interludes and passionate parentheses of the “Lay of the Last Minstrel” we have the
poet’s own inner soul and temperament laid bare and throbbing before us: even here,
indeed, he has a mask, and he trusts it—but fortunately it is a transparent one.
Many minor personal allusions have been explained in the notes to the
last edition of the “Lay.” It was
hardly necessary even then to say that the choice of the hero had been dictated by the
poet’s affection for the living descendants of the Baron of
Cranstoun; and now none who have perused the preceding pages can doubt, that
he had dressed out his Margaret of Branksome in the
form and features of his own first love. This poem
may be considered as the “bright consummate flower” in which all the dearest
dreams of his youthful fancy had at length found expansion for their strength, spirit,
tenderness, and beauty.
In the closing lines— “Hush’d is the harp the Minstrel gene; And did he wander forth alone? Alone, in indigence and age, To linger out his pilgrimage? No! close beneath proud Newark’s tower Arose the Minstrel’s humble bower,” &c.— —in these charming lines he has embodied what was, at the time when he penned them,
the chief day-dream of Ashestiel. From the moment that his uncle’s death placed a
considerable sum of ready money at his command, he pleased himself, as we have seen, with
the idea of buying a mountain farm, and becoming not only the “sheriff” (as he had in former days delighted to call himself), but
“the laird of the cairn and the scaur.” While
he was labouring doucement at the Lay” (as in one of his letters he expresses
it), during the recess of 1804, circumstances rendered it next to certain that the small
estate of Broadmeadows, situated just over against the rums of Newark on the northern bank
of the Yarrow, would soon be exposed to sale; and many a time did he ride round it in
company with Lord and Lady
Dalkeith, “When summer smiled on sweet Bowhill,” surveying the beautiful little domain with wistful eyes, and anticipating that “There would he sing achievement high And circumstance of chivalry, Till the ’rapt traveller would stay, Forgetful of the closing day; And noble youths, the strain to hear, Forget the hunting of the deer; And Yarrow, as he rolled along, Bear burden to the Minstrel’s song.”
I consider it as, in one point of view, the greatest misfortune of his
life that this vision was not realized; but the success of the poem itself changed
“the spirit of his dream.” The favour which it at once attained had
not been equalled in the case of any one poem of considerable length during at least two
generations: it certainly had not been approached in the case of any narrative poem since
the days of Dryden. Before it was sent to the press
it had received warm commendation from the ablest and most influential critic of the time;
but when Mr Jeffrey’sreviewal appeared, a month after publication,
laudatory as its language was, it scarcely came up to the opinion which had already taken
root in the public mind. It, however, quite satisfied the author, and were I at liberty to insert some letters which
passed between them in the course of the summer of 1805, it would be seen that their
feelings towards each other were those of mutual confidence and gratitude. Indeed, a severe
domestic affliction which about this time befell Mr Jeffrey, called
out the expression of such sentiments on both sides in a very touching manner.
I abstain from transcribing the letters which conveyed to Scott the private opinions of persons themselves eminently
distinguished in poetry; but I think it just to state, that I have not discovered in any of
them—no, not even in those of Wordsworth or
Campbell—a strain of approbation higher on the
whole than that of the chief professional reviewer of the period. When the happy days of
youth are over, even the most genial and generous of minds are seldom able to enter into
the strains of a new poet with that full and open delight which he awakens in the bosoms of
the rising generation about him. Their deep and eager sympathies have already been drawn
upon to an extent of which the prosaic part of the species can never have any conception;
and when the fit of creative inspiration has subsided, they are apt to be rather cold
critics even of their own noblest appeals to the simple primary feelings of their kind.
Miss Seward’s letter, on this occasion,
has been since included in the printed collection of her correspondence; but perhaps the
reader may form a sufficient notion of its tenor from the poet’s answer which, at all
events, he will be amused to compare with the Introduction of 1830:—
To Miss Seward, Lichfield.
Edinburgh, 21st March, 1805. “My dear Miss Seward,
“I am truly happy that you found any amusement in the
Lay of the Last Minstrel. It
has great faults, of which no one can be more sensible
than I am myself. Above all, it is deficient in that sort of continuity which a
story ought to have, and which, were it to write again, I would endeavour to
give it. But I began and wandered forward, like one in a pleasant country,
getting to the top of one hill to see a prospect, and to the bottom of another
to enjoy a shade, and what wonder if my course has been devious and desultory,
and many of my excursions altogether unprofitable to the advance of my journey.
The Dwarf Page is also an excrescence, and I plead guilty to all the censures
concerning him. The truth is, he has a history, and it is this: The story of
Gilpin Horner was told by an old
gentleman to Lady Dalkeith, and she, much
diverted with his actually believing so grotesque a tale, insisted that I
should make it into a Border ballad. I don’t know if ever you saw my
lovely chieftainess—if you have, you must be aware that it is impossible for any one to refuse her request, as she has more of the
angel in face and temper than any one alive; so that if she had asked me to
write a ballad on a broomstick I must have attempted it. I began a few verses,
to be called the Goblin Page; and they lay long by me, till the applause of
some friends whose judgment I valued induced me to resume the poem; so on I
wrote, knowing no more than the man in the moon how I was to end. At length the
story appeared so uncouth, that I was fain to put it into the mouth of my old
minstrel—lest the nature of it should be misunderstood, and I should be
suspected of setting up a new school of poetry, instead of a feeble attempt to
imitate the old. In the process of the romance the page, intended to be a
principal person in the work, contrived (from the baseness of his natural
propensities I suppose) to slink down stairs into the kitchen, and now he must
e’en abide there.
I mention these circumstances to you, and to any one whose applause I value,
because I am unwilling you should suspect me of trifling with the public in
malice prepense. As to the
herd of critics, it is impossible for me to pay much attention to them; for, as
they do not understand what I call poetry, we talk in a foreign language to
each other. Indeed, many of these gentlemen appear to me to be a sort of
tinkers, who, unable to make pots and pans, set up for menders of them, and,
God knows, often make two holes in patching one. The sixth canto is altogether
redundant; for the poem should certainly have closed with the union of the
lovers, when the interest, if any, was at an end. But what could I do? I had my
book and my page still on my hands, and must get rid of them at all events.
Manage them as I would, their catastrophe must have been insufficient to occupy
an entire canto; so I was fain to eke it out with the songs of the minstrels. I
will now descend from the confessional, which I think I have occupied long
enough for the patience of my fair confessor. I am happy you are disposed to
give me absolution, notwithstanding all my sins.
“We have a new poet come forth amongst us—James Graham, author of a poem called the
Sabbath, which I admire
very much. If I can find an opportunity I will send you a copy. Your
affectionate humble servant,
Walter Scott.”
Mr Ellis does not seem to have written
at any length on the subject of the Lay, until he had perused the article in the Edinburgh Review. He then says, “Though I
had previously made up my mind, or rather perhaps because I had done so, I was
very anxious to compare my sentiments with those of the Edinburgh critic, and I
found that in general we were perfectly agreed, though there are parts of the
subject which we consider from very different points of
view. Frere, with whom I had not any
previous communication about it, agrees with me; and trusting very much to the
justice of his poetical feelings, I feel some degree of confidence in my own
judgment though in opposition to Mr
Jeffrey, whose criticism I admire upon the whole extremely, as
being equally acute and impartial, and as exhibiting the fairest judgment
respecting the work that could be formed by the mere assistance of good sense
and general taste, without that particular sort of taste which arises from the
study of romantic compositions.
“What Frere
and myself think, must be stated in the shape of a hyper-criticism—that is to say, of a review of the reviewer. We say
that the Lay of the Last Minstrel
is a work sui generis, written with
the intention of exhibiting what our old romances do indeed exhibit in point of
fact, but incidentally, and often without the wish, or rather contrary to the
wish of the author;—viz. the manners of a particular age; and that therefore,
if it does this truly, and is at the same time capable of keeping the steady
attention of the reader, it is so far perfect. This is also a poem, and ought
therefore to contain a great deal of poetical merit. This indeed it does by the
admission of the reviewer, and it must be admitted that he has shown much real
taste in estimating the most beautiful passages; but he finds fault with many
of the lines as careless, with some as prosaic, and contends that the story is
not sufficiently full of incident, and that one of the incidents is borrowed
from a merely local superstition, &c. &c. To this we answer—1st, that
if the Lay were intended to give any idea of the
Minstrel compositions, it would have been a most glaring absurdity to have
rendered the poetry as perfect and uniform as the works usually submitted to
modern readers—and as in telling a story, nothing, or very little would be
lost, though the merely
connecting part of the narrative were in plain prose, the reader is certainly
no loser by the incorrectness of the smaller parts. Indeed, who is so unequal
as Dryden? It may be said that he was
not intentionally so—but to be very smooth is very often
to be tame; and though this should be admitted to be a
less important fault than inequality in a common modern poem, there can be no
doubt with respect to the necessity of subjecting yourself to the latter fault
(if it is one) in an imitation of an ancient model. 2d, Though it is naturally
to be expected that many readers will expect an almost infinite accumulation of
incidents in a romance, this is only because readers in general have acquired
all their ideas on the subject from the prose romances, which commonly
contained a farrago of metrical stories. The only thing
essential to a romance was, that it should be believed by the hearers. Not only tournaments, but
battles are indeed accumulated in some of our ancient romances, because
tradition had of course ascribed to every great conqueror a great number of
conquests, and the minstrel would have been thought deficient if, in a warlike
age, he had omitted any military event. But in other respects a paucity of
incident is the general characteristic of our minstrel poems. 3d, With respect
to the Goblin Page, it is by no means necessary that the superstition on which
this is founded should be universally or even generally current. It is quite
sufficient that it should exist somewhere in the neighbourhood of the castle
where the scene is placed; and it cannot fairly be required that because the
goblin is mischievous, all his tricks should be directed to the production of
general evil. The old idea of goblins seems to have been, that they were
essentially active, and careless about the mischief they produced, rather than
providentially malicious.
“We therefore (i.e.Frere and myself)
dissent from all the reviewer’s objections to these
circumstances in the narrative; but we entertain some doubts about the
propriety of dwelling so long on the Minstrel songs in the last Canto. I say we
doubt, because we are not aware of your having ancient authority for such a practice; but though the
attempt was a bold one, inasmuch as it is not usual to add a whole canto to a
story which is already finished, we are far from wishing that you had left it
unattempted. I must tell you the answer of a philosopher (Sir Henry Englefield) to a friend of his who
was criticising the obscurity of the language used in the Minstrel. ‘I read little poetry, and
often am in doubt whether I exactly understand the poet’s meaning;
but I found, after reading the Minstrel three
times, that I understood it all perfectly.’ ‘Three
times?’ replied his friend. ‘Yes, certainly; the first
time, I discovered that there was a great deal of meaning in it; a second
would have cleared it all up, but that I was run away with by the beautiful
passages, which distracted my attention; the third time I skipped over
these, and only attended to the scheme and structure of the poem, with
which I am delighted.’ At this conversation I was present, and
though I could not help smiling at Sir Henry’s mode
of reading poetry, was pleased to see the degree of interest which he took in
the narrative.”*
* Mr Morritt informs me, that
he well remembers the dinner where this conversation occurred, and thinks Mr Ellis has omitted in his report the best thing that
Sir Harry Englefield said, in answer to one
of the Dii Minorum Gentium, who made himself
conspicuous by the severity of his censure on the verbal inaccuracies and careless
lines of The Lay. “My dear
sir,” said the Baronet, “you remind me of a lecture on sculpture,
which M. Falconet delivered at Rome, shortly
after completing the model of his equestrian statue of Czar
Peter, now at Petersburg. He took for his subject the celebrated horse
of Marcus Aurelius in the Capitol, and pointed out
as many faults in it as ever a jockey did in an animal he
I fancy most of my readers will agree with me in thinking that Sir Henry Englefield’s method of reading and
enjoying poetry was more to be envied than smiled at; and in doubting whether posterity
will ever dispute about the “propriety” of the Canto
which includes the Ballad of Rosabelle and the Requiem of Melrose. The friendly hypercritics seem, I
confess, to have judged the poem on principles not less pedantic, though of another kind of
pedantry, than those which induced the critic to pronounce that its great prevailing blot
originated in those “local partialities of the author,” which had
induced him to expect general interest and sympathy for such personages as his
“Johnstones, Elliots, and
Armstrongs.” “Mr
Scott,” said Jeffrey,
“must either sacrifice his Border prejudices, or offend his readers in the
other parts of the empire.” It might have been answered by Ellis or Frere,
that these Border clans figured after all on a scene at least as wide as the Troad; and
that their chiefs were not perhaps inferior, either in rank or power, to the majority of
the Homeric kings; but even the most zealous of its admirers among the professed literators
of the day would hardly have ventured to suspect that the Lay of the Last Minstrel might have no prejudices to encounter
but their own. It was destined to charm not only the British empire, but the whole
civilized world; and had, in fact, exhibited a more Homeric genius than any regular epic
since the days of Homer.
“It would be great affectation,” says the
Introduction of 1830, “not to own that the author expected some success from the
Lay of the Last Minstrel. The attempt
was about to purchase. But something came
over him, vain as he was, when he was about to conclude the harangue. He took a
long pinch of snuff, and eyeing his own faultless model, exclaimed with a
sigh—”Cependant, Messieurs, il
faut avouer que cette vilaine bête là est vivante, et que
la mienne est morte.”
to return to a more, simple and natural style of poetry was likely
to be welcomed, at a time when the public had become tired of heroic hexameters, with
all the buckram and binding that belong to them in modern days. But whatever might have
been his expectations, whether moderate or unreasonable, the result left them far
behind; for among those who smiled on the adventurous minstrel were numbered the great
names of William Pitt and Charles Fox. Neither was the extent of the sale inferior
to the character of the judges who received the poem with approbation. Upwards of
30,000 copies were disposed of by the trade; and the author had to perform a task
difficult to human vanity, when called upon to make the necessary deductions from his
own merits, in a calm attempt to account for its popularity.”
Through what channel or in what terms Fox made known his opinion of the Lay, I have failed to ascertain. Pitt’s praise, as expressed to his niece, Lady Hester Stanhope, within a few weeks after the poem appeared, was
repeated by her to Mr William Stewart Rose, who, of
course, communicated it forthwith to the author; and not long after, the Minister, in
conversation with Scott’s early friend the
Right Hon. William Dundas, signified that it
would give him pleasure to find some opportunity of advancing the fortunes of such a
writer. “I remember,” writes this gentleman, “at Mr
Pitt’s table in 1805, the Chancellor asked me about you and your then situation, and after I had
answered him, Mr Pitt observed, ‘he can’t remain as he
is,’ and desired me to ‘look to it.’ He then repeated some lines from
the Lay describing the old harper’s embarrassment when
asked to play, and said,—‘This is a sort of thing which I might have expected
in painting, but could never have fancied capable of being given in
poetry.’”*
* Letter dated April 25th, 1818, and indorsed by Scott, “William
Dundasa very kind letter.”
It is agreeable to know that this great statesman and accomplished
scholar awoke at least once from his supposed apathy as to the elegant literature of his
own time.
The poet has under-estimated even the patent and tangible evidence of
his success. The first edition of the Lay was a
magnificent quarto, 750 copies; but this was soon exhausted, and there followed an octavo
impression of 1500; in 1806, two more, one of 2000 copies, another of 2250; in 1807, a
fifth edition of 2000, and a sixth of 3000; in 1808, 3550; in 1809, 3000—a small edition in
quarto (the ballads and lyrical pieces being then annexed to it), and another octavo
edition of 3250; in 1811, 3000; in 1812, 3000; in 1816, 3000; in 1823, 1000. A fourteenth
impression of 2000 foolscap appeared in 1825; and besides all this, before the end of 1836,
11,000 copies had gone forth in the collected editions of his poetical works. Thus, nearly
forty-four thousand copies had been disposed of in this country, and by the legitimate
trade alone, before he superintended the edition of 1830, to which his biographical
introductions were prefixed. In the history of British Poetry nothing had ever equalled the
demand for the Lay of the Last Minstrel.
The publishers of the first edition were Longman and Co. of London, and Archibald
Constable and Co. of Edinburgh; which last house, however, had but a small
share in the adventure. The profits were to be divided equally between the author and his
publishers; and Scott’s moiety was L.169, 6s.
Messrs Longman, when a second edition was called for, offered L.500
for the copyright; this was accepted, but they afterwards, as the Introduction says,
“added L.100 in their own unsolicited kindness. It was handsomely given to
supply the loss of a fine horse which broke down suddenly while the author was riding
with one of the worthy publishers.” This worthy
publisher was Mr Owen Rees, and the gallant steed, to
whom a desperate leap in the coursing-field proved fatal, was, I believe, Captain, the immediate successor of Lenore, as Scott’s charger in the volunteer cavalry;
Captain was replaced by Lieutenant. The author’s whole share, then, in, the profits of the Lay, came to L.769, 6s.
Mr Rees’ visit to Ashestiel occurred in the
autumn. The success of the poem had already been decisive; and fresh negotiations of more
kinds than one were at this time in progress between Scott and various booksellers’ houses both of Edinburgh and London.
CHAPTER II. PARTNERSHIP WITH JAMES BALLANTYNE—LITERARY
PROJECTS—EDITION OF THE BRITISH POETS—EDITION OF THE ANCIENT ENGLISH CHRONICLES, &C.
&C.—EDITION OF DRYDEN UNDERTAKEN—EARL MOIRA
COMMANDER OF THE FORCES IN SCOTLAND—SHAM BATTLES—ARTICLES IN THE EDINBURGH REVIEW—COMMENCEMENT OF WAVERLEY—LETTER ON
OSSIAN—MR SKENE’S REMINISCENCES OF
ASHESTIEL—EXCURSION TO CUMBERLAND—ALARM OF INVASION—VISIT OF MR
SOUTHEY—CORRESPONDENCE ON DRYDEN WITH
ELLIS AND WORDSWORTH—1805.
Mr Ballantyne, in his
Memorandum, says, that very shortly after the publication of the Lay, he found himself obliged to apply to Mr Scott for an advance of money; his own capital being
inadequate for the business which had been accumulated on his press, in consequence of the
reputation it had acquired for beauty and correctness of execution. Already, as we have
seen, Ballantyne had received “a liberal loan;”
“and now,” says he, “being compelled, maugre all delicacy,
to renew my application, he candidly answered that he was not quite sure that it would
be prudent for him to comply, but in order to evince his entire confidence in me, he
was willing to make a suitable advance to be admitted as a third-sharer of my
business.” In truth, Scott now embarked in
Ballantyne’s concern almost the whole of the capital at his
disposal, namely, the L.5000 which he had received for Rosebank, and which he had a few
months before designed to invest in the purchase of Broadmeadows.
Dis aliter visum.
I have, many pages back, hinted my suspicion that he had formed some
distant notion of such an alliance, as early as the date of Ballantyne’s projected removal from Kelso to Edinburgh; and his
Introduction to the Lay, in 1830, appears to
leave little doubt that the hope of ultimately succeeding at the Bar had waxed very faint,
before the third volume of the Minstrelsy was brought out in 1803. When that hope ultimately vanished
altogether, perhaps he himself would not have found it easy to tell. The most important of
men’s opinions, views, and projects are sometimes taken up in so very gradual a
manner, and after so many pauses of hesitation and of inward retractation, that they
themselves are at a loss to trace in retrospect all the stages through which their minds
have passed. We see plainly that Scott had never been
fond of his profession, but that, conscious of his own persevering diligence, he ascribed
his scanty success in it mainly to the prejudices of the Scotch solicitors against
employing, in weighty causes at least, any barrister supposed to be strongly imbued with
the love of literature; instancing the career of his friend Jeffrey as almost the solitary instance within his experience of such
prejudices being entirely overcome. Had Scott, to his strong sense and
dexterous ingenuity, his well-grounded knowledge of the jurisprudence of his country, and
his admirable industry, added a brisk and ready talent for debate and declamation, I can
have no doubt that his triumph over the prejudices alluded to would have been as complete
as Mr Jeffrey’s; nor in truth do I much question that, had one
really great and interesting case been submitted to his sole care and management, the
result would have been to place his professional character for skill and judgment, and
variety of resource, on so firm a
basis, that even his rising celebrity as a man of letters could not have seriously
disturbed it. Nay, I think it quite possible, that had he been intrusted with one such case
after his reputation was established, and he had been compelled to do his abilities some
measure of justice in his own secret estimate, he might have displayed very considerable
powers even as a forensic speaker. But no opportunities of this engaging kind having ever
been presented to him—after he had persisted for more than ten years in sweeping the floor
of the Parliament House, without meeting with any employment but what would have suited the
dullest drudge, and seen himself termly and yearly more and more distanced by
contemporaries for whose general capacity he could have had little respect—while, at the
same time, he already felt his own position in the eyes of society at large to have been
signally elevated in consequence of his extra-professional exertions—it is not wonderful
that disgust should have gradually gained upon him, and that the sudden blaze and tumult of
renown which surrounded the author of the Lay should have at last
determined him to concentrate all his ambition on the pursuits which had alone brought him
distinction. It ought to be mentioned that the business in George’s Square, once
extensive and lucrative, had dwindled away in the hands of his brother Thomas, whose varied and powerful talents were
unfortunately combined with some tastes by no means favourable to the successful
prosecution of his prudent father’s vocation; so that very possibly even the humble
employment of which, during his first years at the bar, Scott had at
least a sure and respectable allowance, was by this time much reduced. I have not his
fee-books of later date than 1803: it is, however, my impression from the whole tenour of
his conversation and correspondence, that after that period he had not only not advanced as
a professional man, but had been retrograding in nearly the same
proportion that his literary reputation advanced.
We have seen that, before he formed his contract with Ballantyne, he was in possession of such a fixed income as
might have satisfied all his desires, had he not found his family increasing rapidly about
him. Even as that was, with nearly if not quite L.1000 per annum, he might perhaps have
retired not only from the Bar, but from Edinburgh, and settled entirely at Ashestiel or
Broadmeadows, without encountering what any man of his station and habits ought to have
considered as an imprudent risk. He had, however, no wish to cut himself off from the busy
and intelligent society to which he had been hitherto accustomed; and resolved not to leave
the bar until he should have at least used his best efforts for obtaining, in addition to
his Shrievalty, one of those clerkships of the supreme court at Edinburgh, which are
usually considered as honourable retirements for advocates who, at a certain standing,
finally give up all hopes of reaching the dignity of the bench. “I
determined,” he says, “that literature should be my staff but not my
crutch, and that the profits of my literary labour, however convenient otherwise,
should not, if I could help it, become necessary to my ordinary expenses. Upon such a
post an author might hope to retreat, without any perceptible alteration of
circumstances, whenever the time should arrive that the public grew weary of his
endeavours to please, or he himself should tire of the pen. I possessed so many friends
capable of assisting me in this object of ambition, that I could hardly over-rate my
own prospects of obtaining the preferment to which I limited my wishes; and, in fact, I
obtained, in no long period, the reversion of a situation which completely met
them.”*
The first notice of this affair that occurs in his cor-
* Introduction to the Lay of the Last Minstrel—1830.
respondence, is in a note of Lord Dalkeith’s, Feb. the 2d, 1805, in which his noble
friend says, “My father desires me to tell you that he has had a communication
with Lord Melville within these few days, and that
he thinks your business is in a good train, though not
certain.” I consider it as clear, then, that he began his negotiations
concerning a seat at the clerk’s table immediately after the Lay was published; and that their commencement had been resolved upon in the
strictest connexion with his embarkation in the printing concern of James Ballantyne and Company. Such matters are seldom
speedily arranged; but we shall find him in possession of his object before twelve months
had elapsed.
Mean while, his design of quitting the bar was divulged to none but those
immediately necessary for the purposes of his negotiation with the Government; and the
nature of his connexion with the printing company remained, I believe, not only unknown,
but for some years wholly unsuspected, by any of his daily companions except Mr Erskine.
The forming of this commercial connexion was one of the most important
steps in Scott’s life. He continued bound by it
during twenty years, and its influence on his literary exertions and his worldly fortunes
was productive of much good and not a little evil. Its effects were in truth so mixed and
balanced during the vicissitudes of a long and vigorous career, that I at this moment doubt
whether it ought, on the whole, to be considered with more of satisfaction or of regret.
With what zeal he proceeded in advancing the views of the new
copartnership, his correspondence bears ample evidence. The brilliant and captivating
genius, now acknowledged universally, was soon discovered by the leading booksellers of the
time to be united with such abundance of matured information in many departments, and, above all, with such indefatigable habits, as to mark him out for the
most valuable workman they could engage for the furtherance of their schemes. He had, long
before this, cast a shrewd and penetrating eye over the field of literary enterprise, and
developed in his own mind the outlines of many extensive plans, which wanted nothing but
the command of a sufficient body of able subalterns to be carried into execution with
splendid success. Such of these as he grappled with in his own person were, with rare
exceptions, carried to a triumphant conclusion; but the alliance with Ballantyne soon infected him with the proverbial rashness
of mere mercantile adventure while, at the same time, his generous feelings for other men
of letters, and his characteristic propensity to over-rate their talents, combined to hurry
him and his friends into a multitude of arrangements, the results of which were often
extremely embarrassing, and ultimately, in the aggregate, all but disastrous. It is an old
saying, that wherever there is a secret there must be something wrong; and dearly did he
pay the penalty for the mystery in which he had chosen to involve this transaction. It was
his rule, from the beginning, that whatever he wrote or edited must be printed at that
press; and had he catered for it only as author and sole editor, all had been well; but had
the booksellers known his direct pecuniary interest in keeping up and extending the
occupation of those types, they would have taken into account his lively imagination and
sanguine temperament, as well as his taste and judgment, and considered, far more
deliberately than they too often did, his multifarious recommendations of new literary
schemes, coupled though these were with some dim understanding that, if the
Ballantyne press were employed, his own literary skill would be at
his friend’s disposal for the general superintendence of the undertaking. On the
other hand, Scott’s suggestions were, in many cases, perhaps in the majority of them, conveyed
through Ballantyne, whose habitual deference to his opinion induced
him to advocate them with enthusiastic zeal; and the printer, who had thus pledged his
personal authority for the merits of the proposed scheme, must have felt himself committed
to the bookseller, and could hardly refuse with decency to take a certain share of the
pecuniary risk, by allowing the time and method of his own payment to be regulated
according to the employer’s convenience. Hence, by degrees, was woven a web of
entanglement from which neither Ballantyne nor his adviser had any
means of escape, except only in that indomitable spirit, the mainspring of personal
industry altogether unparalleled, to which, thus set in motion, the world owes its most
gigantic monument of literary genius.
The following is the first letter I have found of Scott to his partner. The Mr Foster mentioned in the beginning of it was a literary
gentleman who had proposed to take on himself a considerable share in the annotation of
some of the new editions then on the carpet—among others one of Dryden.
To Mr James Ballantyne, Printer, Edinburgh.
Ashestiel, April 12th, 1805. “Dear Ballantyne,
“I have duly received your two favours—also Foster’s. He still howls about the
expense of printing, but I think we shall finally settle. His argument is that
you print too fine, alias too dear. I intend to stick to
my answer, that I know nothing of the matter; but that settle it how you and he
will, it must be printed by you, or can be no concern of mine. This gives you
an ad-vantage in driving the bargain. As to every thing
else, I think we shall do, and I will endeavour to set a few volumes agoing on
the plan you propose.
“I have imagined a very superb work. What think you
of a complete edition of British Poets, ancient and modern? Johnson’s is imperfect and out of
print; so is Bell’s,
which is a Lilliputian thing; and Anderson’s, the most complete in point of number, is most
contemptible in execution both of the editor and printer. There is a scheme for
you! At least a hundred volumes, to be published at the rate of ten a-year. I
cannot, however, be ready till midsummer. If the booksellers will give me a
decent allowance per volume, say thirty guineas, I shall hold myself well paid
on the writing hand. This is a dead secret.
“I think it quite right to let Doig* have a share of Thomson;† but he is hard and slippery,
so settle your bargain fast and firm—no loop-holes! I am glad you have got some
elbow-room at last. Cowan will come to, or we will find
some fit place in time. If not, we must build—necessity has no law. I see
nothing to hinder you from doing Tacitus
with your correctness of eye, and I congratulate you on the fair prospect
before us. When you have time you will make out a list of the debts to be
discharged at Whitsunday, that we may see what cash we shall have in bank. Our
book-keeping may be very simple—an accurate cash book and ledger is all that is
necessary; and I think I know enough of the matter to assist at making the
balance sheet.
“In short, with the assistance of a little cash I
have
* A bookseller in Edinburgh.
† A projected edition of the Works of the
author of the Seasons.
no doubt things will go on
à merveille. If you
could take a little pleasuring, I wish you could come here and see us in all
the glories of a Scottish spring. Yours truly,
W. Scott.”
Scott opened forthwith his gigantic scheme of the
British Poets to Constable, who entered into it with
eagerness. They found presently that Messrs Cadell
and Davies, and some of the other London publishers,
had a similar plan on foot, and after an unsuccessful negotiation with Mackintosh, were now actually treating with Campbell for the Biographical prefaces.
Scott proposed that the Edinburgh and London houses should join in
the adventure, and that the editorial task should be shared between himself and his brother
poet. To this both Messrs Cadell and Mr Campbell
warmly assented; but the design ultimately fell to the ground in consequence of the
booksellers refusing to admit certain works which both Scott and
Campbell insisted upon. Such, and from analogous causes, has been
the fate of various similar schemes both before and since. But the public had no trivial
compensation upon the present occasion, since the failure of the original project led
Mr Campbell to prepare for the press those “Specimens of English Poetry”
which he illustrated with sketches of biography and critical essays, alike honourable to
his learning and taste; while Scott, Mr
Foster ultimately standing off, took on himself the whole burden of a new
edition, as well as biography, of Dryden. The body
of booksellers mean while combined in what they still called a general
edition of the English Poets, under the superintendence of one of their own
Grub-street vassals, Mr Alexander Chalmers.
Precisely at the time when Scott’s poetical ambition had been stimulated by the first outburst
of universal applause, and when he was forming those engagements with
Ballantyne which involved so large an accession
of literary labours, as well as of pecuniary cares and responsibilities, a fresh impetus
was given to the volunteer mania in Scotland, by the appointment of the late Earl of Moira (afterwards Marquis of
Hastings) to the chief military command in that part of the empire. The Earl
had married, the year before, a Scottish Peeress, the Countess of
Loudon, and entered with great zeal into her sympathy with the patriotic
enthusiasm of her countrymen. Edinburgh was converted into a camp: independently of a large
garrison of regular troops, nearly 10,000 fencibles and volunteers were almost constantly
under arms. The lawyer wore his uniform under his gown; the shopkeeper measured out his
wares in scarlet; in short, the citizens of all classes made more use for several months of
the military than of any other dress; and the new commander-in-chief consulted equally his
own gratification and theirs, by devising a succession of manoeuvres which presented a
vivid image of the art of war conducted on a large and scientific scale. In the sham battles and sham sieges of 1805,
Craigmillar, Preston, Gilmerton, the Crosscauseway, and other formidable positions in the
neighbourhood of Edinburgh, were the scenes of many a dashing assault and resolute defence;
and occasionally the spirits of the mock combatants—English and Scotch, or Lowland and
Highland—became so much excited that there was some difficulty in preventing the rough
mockery of warfare from passing into its realities. The Highlanders, in particular, were
very hard to be dealt with; and once, at least, Lord Moira was forced
to alter at the eleventh hour his programme of battle, because a battalion of kilted
fencibles could not or would not understand that it was their duty to be beat. Such days as
these must have been more nobly
spirit-stirring than even the best specimens of the fox-chase. To the end of his life
Scott delighted to recall the details of their countermarches,
ambuscades, charges, and pursuits, and in all of these his associates of the Light-Horse
agree that none figured more advantageously than himself. Yet these military interludes
seem only to have whetted his appetite for closet work. Indeed, nothing but a complete
publication of his letters could give an adequate notion of the facility with which he
already combined the conscientious magistrate, the martinet quartermaster, the speculative
printer, and the ardent lover of literature for its own sake. A few specimens must suffice.
To George Ellis, Esq.
Edinburgh, May 26, 1805. “My dear Ellis,
“Your silence has been so long and opinionative, that I am quite authorized, as a Border ballad-monger,
to address you with a—‘Sleep you, or wake you?’ What has
become of the Romances,
which I have expected as anxiously as my neighbours around me have watched for
the rain, which was to bring the grass, which was to feed the new-calved cows,
and to as little purpose, for both Heaven and you have obstinately delayed your
favours. After idling away the spring months at Ashestiel, I am just returned
to idle away the summer here, and I have lately lighted upon rather an
interesting article in your way. If you will turn to Barbour’sBruce (Pinkerton’s edition, p. 66), you will
find that the Lord of Lorn, seeing Bruce covering the retreat of his followers, compares him to
Gow MacMorn (Macpherson’sGaul the son of
Morni). This similitude appears to Barbour
a disparagement, and he says, the Lord of Lorn might more mannerly have compared the King to
Gadefeir de Lawryss, who was with the mighty
Duke Betys when he assailed the forayers in Gadderis,
and who in the retreat did much execution among the pursuers, overthrowing
Alexander and Thelomier and
Danklin, although he was at length slain; and here,
says Barbour, the resemblance fails. Now, by one of those
chances which favour the antiquary once in an age, a single copy of the romance
alluded to has been discovered, containing the whole history of this
Gadefeir, who had hitherto been a stumbling-block to
the critics. The book was printed by Arbuthnot, who flourished at Edinburgh in the seventeenth
century. It is a metrical romance, called ‘The Buik of
the Most Noble and Vauliant Conquerour, Alexander the Grit.’
The first part is called the Foray of Gadderis, an
incident supposed to have taken place while Alexander was besieging Tyre; Gadefeir is
one of the principal champions, and after exerting himself in the manner
mentioned by Barbour, unhorsing the persons whom he named,
he is at length slain by Emynedus, the Earl-Marshal of the
Macedonian conqueror. The second part is called the Avowis
of Alexander, because it introduces the oaths which he and others
made to the peacock in the ‘chalmer of Venus,’ and gives an account
of the mode in which they accomplished them. The third is the Great Battell of Effesoun, in which
Porus makes a distinguished figure. This you are to
understand is not thePorus of
India, but one of his sons. The work is in decided Scotch, and adds something
to our ancient poetry, being by no means despicable in point of composition.
The author says he translated it from the Franch, or Romance, and that he accomplished his work in 1438-9.
Barbour must therefore have quoted from the French
Alexander, and perhaps his praises of the work excited the Scottish
translator. Will you tell me what you think of all this, and whether any
transcripts will be of use to you? I am pleased with the accident of its
casting up, and hope it may prove the forerunner of more discoveries in the
dusty and ill-arranged libraries of our country gentlemen.
“I hope you continue to like the Lay. I have had a flattering assurance of
Mr Fox’s approbation, mixed with
a censure of my eulogy on the Viscount of
Dundee. Although my Tory principles prevent my coinciding with
his political opinions, I am very proud of his approbation in a literary sense.
Charlotte joins me, &c. &c. W. S.”
In his answer, Ellis
says—“Longman lately informed me
that you have projected a General Edition of our Poets. I expressed to him my anxiety
that the booksellers, who certainly can ultimately sell what they please, should for
once undertake something calculated to please intelligent readers, and that they should
confine themselves to the selection of paper, types, &c. (which they possibly may
understand), and by no means, interfere with the literary part of the business, which,
if popularity be the object, they must leave exclusively to you. I am talking, as you
perceive, about your plan, without knowing its extent, or any of its details; for
these, therefore, I will wait—after confessing that, much as I wish for a corpus poetarum, edited as you would edit it, I
should like still better another Minstrel Lay by the last and best Minstrel; and the
general demand for the poem seems to prove that the public are of my opinion. If,
however, you don’t feel disposed to take a second ride on Pegasus, why not undertake something far less
infra dig. than a mere edition of our
poets? Why not undertake what Gibbon once
undertook—an edition of our historians? I have never been able to
look at a volume of the Benedictine edition of the early French historians without
envy.”
Mr Ellis appears to have communicated all his
notions on this subject to Messrs Longman, for
Scott writes to Ballantyne (Ashestiel, September 5), “I have had a visit from
Rees yesterday. He is anxious about a
corpus historiarum, or full edition
of the Chronicles of England, an immense work. I proposed to him beginning with
Hollinshed, and I think the work will be
secured for your press. I congratulate you on Clarendon, which, under Thomson’s direction, will be a glorious publication.”*
The printing-office in the Canongate was by this time in very great
request; and the letter I have been quoting contains evidence that the partners had already
found it necessary to borrow fresh capital—on the personal security, it need not be added,
of Scott himself. He says, “As I have full
confidence in your applying the accommodation received from Sir William Forbes in the most convenient and prudent manner, I have no
hesitation to return the bonds subscribed, as you desire. This will put you in cash for
great matters.”
But to return. To Ellis himself,
he says, “I have had booksellers here in the plural number. You have set little
Rees’s head agog about the Chronicles,
which would be an admirable work, but should, I think, be edited by an Englishman who
can have access to the MSS. of Oxford and Cambridge, as one cannot trust much to the
correctness of printed copies. I will, howover, consider the matter, so far as a decent
edition of Hollinshed is concerned, in case my
time is not other-
* An edition of Clarendon
had been, it seems, contemplated by Scott’s friend, Mr Thomas Thomson.
wise taken up. As for the British Poets, my
plan was greatly too liberal to stand the least chance of being adopted by the trade at
large, as I wished them to begin with Chaucer.
The fact is, I never expected they would agree to it. The Benedictines had an infinite
advantage over us in that esprit du corps
which led them to set labour and expense at defiance, when the honour of the order was
at stake. Would to God your English Universities, with their huge endowments and the
number of learned men to whom they give competence and leisure, would but imitate the
monks in their literary plans. My present employment is an edition of John Dryden’s Works, which is
already gone to press. As for riding on Pegasus,
depend upon it, I will never again cross him in a serious way, unless I should by some
strange accident reside so long in the Highlands, and make myself master of their
ancient manners, so as to paint them with some degree of accuracy in a kind of
companion to the Minstrel Lay. . . . . . I
am interrupted by the arrival of two gentil
bachelors, whom, like the Count of
Artois, I must despatch upon some adventure till dinner time. Thank
Heaven, that will not be difficult, for although there are neither dragons nor boars in
the vicinity, and men above six feet are not only scarce, but pacific in their habits,
yet we have a curious breed of wild-cats who have eaten all Charlotte’s chickens, and against whom I have declared a war at
outrance, in which the assistance of
these gentes demoiseaux will be fully as
valuable as that of Don Quixote to Pentalopin with the naked arm. So, if Mrs Ellis takes a fancy for cat-skin fur, now is the
time.”
Already, then, he was seriously at work on Dryden. During the same summer, he drew up for the Edinburgh Review an admirable article on Todd’sEdition of
Spenser; another on
Godwin’sFleetwood; a third, on the
Highland Society’s Report concerning the
Poems of Ossian; a fourth, on
Johnes’sTranslation of Froissart; a fifth, on Colonel
Thornton’sSporting
Tour—and a sixth, on some
cookery books—the two last being excellent specimens of his humour. He had, besides, a
constant succession of minor cares in the superintendence of multifarious works passing
through the Ballantyne press. But there is yet
another important item to be included in the list of his literary labours of this period.
The General Preface to his Novels informs us, that “about 1805” he wrote the
opening chapters of Waverley; and the
second title, ’Tis Sixty Years
since, selected, as he says, ”that the actual date of publication
might correspond with the period in which the scene was laid,” leaves no
doubt that he had begun the work so early in 1805 as to contemplate publishing it before
Christmas.* He adds, in the same page, that he was induced, by the favourable reception of
the Lady of the Lake, to think of giving some
of his recollections of Highland scenery and customs in prose; but this is only one
instance of the inaccuracy as to matters of date which pervades all those delightful
Prefaces. The Lady of the Lake was not published until five years
after the first chapters of Waverley were written; its success,
therefore, could have had no share in suggesting the original design of a Highland novel,
though no doubt it principally influenced him to take up that design after it had been long
suspended, and almost forgotten. Thus early, then, had Scott meditated deeply such a portraiture of Highland manners as might
“make a sort of companion” to that of the old Border life in the
“Minstrel Lay;” and he had
probably begun
* I have ascertained, since this page was written, that a small
part of the MS. of Waverley is on
paper bearing the watermark of 1805—the rest on paper of 1813.
and suspended his Waverley, before he expressed to Ellis
his feeling that he ought to reside for some considerable time in the country to be
delineated, before seriously committing himself in the execution of such a task.
“Having proceeded,” he says, “as far as I
think the seventh chapter, I showed my work to a critical friend, whose opinion was
unfavourable; and having then some poetical reputation, I was unwilling to risk the
loss of it by attempting a new style of composition. I, therefore, then threw aside the
work I had commenced, without either reluctance or remonstrance. I ought to add, that
though my ingenuous friend’s sentence was afterwards reversed, on an appeal to
the public, it cannot be considered as any imputation on his good taste; for the
specimen subjected to his criticism did not extend beyond the departure of the hero for
Scotland, and consequently had not entered upon the part of the story which was finally
found most interesting.” A letter to be quoted under the year 1810 will, I
believe, satisfy the reader that the first critic of the opening chapters of Waverley was William Erskine.
The following letter must have been written in the course of this
autumn. It is in every respect a very interesting one; but I introduce it here as
illustrating the course of his reflections on Highland subjects in general, at the time
when the first outlines both of the Lady of the
Lake and Waverley must have
been floating about in his mind:—
To Miss Seward, Lichfield.
Ashestiel [1805]. “My dear Miss Seward,
“You recall to me some very pleasant feelings of my
boyhood, when you ask my opinion of Ossian.
His works were first put into my hands by old Dr Blacklock, a blind poet, of whom you may
have heard; he was the worthiest and kindest of human beings, and particularly
delighted in encouraging the pursuits, and opening the minds, of the young
people by whom he was surrounded. I, though at the period of our intimacy a
very young boy, was fortunate enough to attract his notice and kindness; and if
I have been at all successful in the paths of literary pursuit, I am sure I owe
much of that success to the books with which he supplied me, and his own
instructions. Ossian and Spenser were two books which the good old bard put into my
hands, and which I devoured rather than perused. Their tales were for a long
time so much my delight, that I could repeat without remorse whole cantos of
the one and duans of the other; and wo to the unlucky wight who undertook to be
my auditor, for in the height of my enthusiasm I was apt to disregard all hints
that my recitations became tedious. It was a natural consequence of progress in
taste that my fondness for these authors should experience some abatement.
Ossian’s poems, in particular, have more charms
for youth than for a more advanced stage. The eternal repetition of the same
ideas and imagery, however beautiful in themselves, is apt to pall upon a
reader whose taste has become somewhat fastidious; and, although I agree
entirely with you that the question of their authenticity ought not to be
confounded with that of their literary merit, yet scepticism on that head takes
away their claim for indulgence as the productions of a barbarous and remote
age; and, what is perhaps more natural, it destroys that feeling of reality
which we should otherwise combine with our sentiments of admiration. As for the
great dispute, I should be no Scottishman if I had not very attentively
considered it at some period of my studies; and, indeed, I have gone some lengths in my researches, for I
have beside me translations of some twenty or thirty of the unquestioned
originals of Ossian’s poems. After making every
allowance for the disadvantages of a literal translation, and the possible
debasement which those now collected may have suffered
in the great and violent change which the Highlands have undergone since the
researches of Macpherson, I am compelled
to admit that incalculably the greater part of the English Ossian must be ascribed to
Macpherson himself, and that his whole introductions,
notes, &c. &c. are an absolute tissue of forgeries.
“In all the ballads I ever saw or could hear of,
Fin and Ossin are described as
natives of Ireland, although it is not unusual for the reciters sturdily to
maintain that this is a corruption of the text. In point of merit I do not
think these Gaelic poems much better than those of the Scandinavian Scalds;
they are very unequal, often very vigorous and pointed, often drivelling and
crawling in the very extremity of tenuity. The manners of the heroes are those
of Celtic savages; and I could point out twenty instances in which Macpherson has very cunningly adopted the
beginning, the names, and the leading incidents, &c. of an old tale, and
dressed it up with all those ornaments of sentiment and sentimental manners,
which first excite our surprise, and afterwards our doubt of its authenticity.
The Highlanders themselves, recognising the leading features of tales they had
heard in infancy, with here and there a tirade really taken from an old poem,
were readily seduced into becoming champions for the authenticity of the poems.
How many people, not particularly addicted to poetry, who may have heard Chevy- Chase in the nursery or at school, and never
since met with the ballad, might be imposed upon by a new Chevy-Chase, bearing no resemblance to the old one, save in here
and there a stanza or an incident? Besides, there is
something in the severe judgment passed on my countrymen—‘that if they
do not prefer Scotland to truth, they will always prefer it to
enquiry.’ When once the Highlanders had adopted the poems of Ossian as an article
of national faith, you would far sooner have got them to disavow the Scripture
than to abandon a line of the contested tales. Only they
all allow that Macpherson’s translation is very
unfaithful, and some pretend to say inferior to the original; by which they can
only mean, if they mean any thing, that they miss the charms of the rhythm and
vernacular idiom, which pleases the Gaelic natives; for in the real attributes
of poetry Macpherson’s version is far superior to
any I ever saw of the fragments which he seems to have used.
“The Highland Society have lately set about
investigating, or rather, I should say, collecting materials to defend, the
authenticity of Ossian. Those researches
have only proved that there were no real originals using that word as is
commonly understood to be found for them. The oldest tale they have found seems
to be that of Darthula; but it is perfectly
different, both in diction and story, from that of Macpherson. It is, however, a beautiful specimen of Celtic
poetry, and shows that it contains much which is worthy of preservation.
Indeed, how should it be otherwise, when we know that, till about fifty years
ago, the Highlands contained a race of hereditary poets? Is it possible to
think, that, among perhaps many hundreds, who for such a course of centuries
have founded their reputation and rank on practising the art of poetry in a
country where the scenery and manners gave such effect and interest and imagery
to their productions, there should not have been some who attained excellence?
In searching out those genuine records of the Celtic Muse, and preserving them
from oblivion, with all the
curious information which they must doubtless contain, I humbly think our
Highland antiquaries would merit better of their country, than by confining
their researches to the fantastic pursuit of a chimera.
“I am not to deny that Macpherson’s inferiority in other compositions is a
presumption that he did not actually compose these poems. But we are to
consider his advantage when on his own ground. Macpherson
was a Highlander, and had his imagination fired with the charms of Celtic
poetry from his very infancy. We know, from constant experience, that most
Highlanders, after they have become complete masters of English, continue to
think in their own language; and it is to me
demonstrable that Macphersonthought almost every word of Ossian in Gaelic, although he wrote it down
in English. The specimens of his early poetry which remain are also deeply
tinged with the peculiarities of the Celtic diction and character; so that, in
fact, he might be considered as a Highland poet, even if he had not left us
some Earse translations (or originals of Ossian) unquestionably written by himself. These circumstances
gave a great advantage to him in forming the style of
Ossian, which, though exalted and modified according
to Macpherson’s own ideas of modern taste, is in
great part cut upon the model of the tales of the Sennachies and Bards. In the
translation of Homer, he
not only lost these advantages, but the circumstances on which they were
founded were a great detriment to his undertaking; for although such a dress
was appropriate and becoming for Ossian, few people cared
to see their old Grecian friend disguised in a tartan plaid and philabeg. In a
word, the style which Macpherson had formed, however
admirable in a Highland tale, was not calculated for translating Homer; and it was a great
mistake in him, excited, however, by the general applause his first work
received, to suppose that there was any thing homogeneous betwixt his own ideas
and those of Homer. Macpherson, in
his way, was certainly a man of high talents, and his poetic powers as
honourable to his country, as the use which he made of them, and I fear his
personal character in other respects, was a discredit to it.
“Thus I have given you with the utmost sincerity my
creed on the great national question of Ossian; it has been formed after much deliberation and enquiry.
I have had for some time thoughts of writing a Highland poem, somewhat in the style of the Lay, giving as far as I can a real picture of what
that enthusiastic race actually were before the destruction of their
patriarchal government. It is true I have not quite the same facilities as in
describing Border manners, where I am, as they say, more at home. But to
balance my comparative deficiency in knowledge of Celtic manners, you are to
consider that I have from my youth delighted in all the Highland traditions
which I could pick from the old Jacobites who used to frequent my
father’s house; and this will, I hope, make some amends for my having
less immediate opportunities of research than in the Border tales.
“Agreeably to your advice, I have actually read over
Madoc a second time, and
I confess have seen much beauty which escaped me in the first perusal. Yet (which yet, by the way, is almost as vile a
monosyllable as but) I cannot feel quite the interest I
would wish to do. The difference of character which you notice, reminds me of
what by Ben Jonson and other old
commedians were called humours, which consisted rather
in the personification of some individual passion or propensity than of an
actual individual man. Also, I cannot
give up my objection that what was strictly true of Columbus, becomes an unpleasant falsehood
when told of some one else. Suppose I was to write a fictitious book of
travels, I should certainly do ill to copy exactly the incidents which befel
Mungo Park or Bruce of Kinnaird. What was true of them would
incontestably prove at once the falsehood and plagiarism of my supposed
journal. It is not but what the incidents are natural—but it is their having
already happened which strikes us when they are transferred to imaginary
persons. Could any one bear the story of a second city being taken by a wooden
horse?
“Believe me, I shall not be within many miles of
Lichfield without paying my personal respects to you; and yet I should not do
it in prudence, because I am afraid you have formed a higher opinion of me than
I deserve; you would expect to see a person who had dedicated himself much to
literary pursuits, and you would find me a rattle-sculled half-lawyer,
half-sportsman, through whose head a regiment of horse has been exercising
since he was five years old; half-educated, half-crazy, as his friends
sometimes tell him; half every thing, but entirelyMiss
Seward’s much obliged, affectionate, and faithful servant,
Walter Scott.”
His correspondence shows how largely he was exerting himself all this
while in the service of authors less fortunate than himself. James Hogg, among others, continued to occupy from time to time his
attention; and he assisted regularly and assiduously throughout this and the succeeding
year Mr Robert Jameson, an industrious and
intelligent antiquary, who had engaged in editing a collection of ancient popular ballads
before the third volume of the Minstrelsy appeared, and who at length published his very
curious work in 1807. Mean time, Ashestiel, in place of being less resorted to by literary
strangers than Lasswade cottage had been, shared abundantly in the fresh attractions of the
Lay, and “booksellers in the
plural number” were preceded and followed by an endless variety of
enthusiastic “gentil bachelors,” whose main temptation from the south
had been the hope of seeing the Borders in company with their Minstrel. He still writes of
himself as “idling away his hours;” he had already learned to appear as
if he were doing so to all who had no particular right to confidence respecting the details
of his privacy.
But the most agreeable of all his visitants were his own old familiar
friends, and one of these has furnished me with a sketch of the autumn life of Ashestiel,
of which I shall now avail myself. Scott’s invitation was in these terms:—
To James Skene, Esq. of Rubislaw.
“Ashestiel, 18th August, 1805. “Dear Skene,
“I have prepared another edition of the Lay, 1500 strong, moved thereunto by
the faith, hope, and charity of the London booksellers. . . . . If you could,
in the interim, find a moment to spend here, you know the way, and the ford is
where it was; which, by the way, is more than I expected after Saturday last,
the most dreadful storm of thunder and lightning I ever witnessed. The
lightning broke repeatedly in our immediate vicinity, i.e. betwixt us and the Peel wood. Charlotte resolved to die in bed like a good Christian. The
servants said it was the preface to the end of the world, and I was the only
person that maintained my character for stoicism, which I assure you had some
merit, as I had no doubt that we were
in real danger. It was accompanied with a flood so tremendous, that I would
have given five pounds you had been here to make a sketch of it. The little
Glenkinnon brook was impassable for all the next day, and indeed I have been
obliged to send all hands to repair the ford, which was converted into a deep
pool. Believe me ever yours affectionately,
W. S.”
Mr Skene says, “I well remember the ravages
of the storm and flood described in this letter. The ford of Ashestiel was never a good
one, and for some time after this it remained not a little perilous. He was himself the
first to attempt the passage on his favourite black horse Captain, who had scarcely entered the river when he plunged beyond his
depth, and had to swim to the other side with his burden. It requires a good horseman
to swim a deep and rapid stream, but he trusted to the vigour of his steady trooper,
and in spite of his lameness kept his seat manfully. A cart bringing a new kitchen
range (as I believe the grate for that service is technically called) was shortly after
upset in this ugly ford. The horse and cart were with difficulty got out, but the grate
remained for some time in the middle of the stream to do duty as a horse-trap, and
furnish subject for many a good joke when Mrs Scott
happened to complain of the imperfection of her kitchen appointments.”
Mr Skene soon discovered an important change which
had recently been made in his friend’s distribution of his time. Previously it had
been his custom, whenever professional business or social engagements occupied the middle
part of his day, to seize some hours for study after he was supposed to have retired to
bed. His physician suggested that this was very likely to aggravate his nervous headaches,
the only malady he was subject to in the prime of his manhood; and,
contemplating with steady eye a course not only of unremitting but of increasing industry,
he resolved to reverse his plan, and carried his purpose into execution with unflinching
energy. In short, he had now adopted the habits in which, with very slender variation, he
ever after persevered when in the country. He rose by five o’clock, lit his own fire
when the season required one, and shaved and dressed with great deliberation—for he was a
very martinet as to all but the mere coxcombries of the toilet, not abhorring effeminate
dandyism itself so cordially as the slightest approach to personal slovenliness, or even
those “bed-gown and slipper tricks,” as he called them, in which
literary men are so apt to indulge. Arrayed in his shooting-jacket, or whatever dress he
meant to use till dinner time, he was seated at his desk by six o’clock, all his
papers arranged before him in the most accurate order, and his books of reference
marshalled around him on the floor, while at least one favourite dog lay watching his eye
just beyond the line of circumvallation. Thus, by the time the family assembled for
breakfast between nine and ten, he had done enough (in his own language) “to break the neck of the day’s work.” After
breakfast a couple of hours more were given to his solitary tasks, and by noon he was, as
he used to say, “his own man.” When the weather was bad he would labour
incessantly all the morning; but the general rule was to be out and on horseback by one
o’clock at the latest; while, if any more distant excursion had been proposed over
night, he was ready to start on it by ten; his occasional rainy days of unintermitted study
forming, as he said, a fund in his favour, out of which he was entitled to draw for
accommodation whenever the sun shone with special brightness.
It was another rule that every letter he received should be answered
that same day. Nothing else could have enabled him to keep abreast with the flood of
communications that in the sequel put his good nature to the severest test—but already the
demands on him in this way also were numerous; and he included attention to them among the
necessary business which must be despatched before he had a right to close his writing-box,
or as he phrased it, “to say out damned spot, and be a gentleman.” In
turning over his enormous mass of correspondence, I have almost invariably found some
indication that, when a letter had remained more than a day or two unanswered, it had been
so because he found occasion for enquiry or deliberate consideration.
I ought not to omit that in those days Scott was far too zealous a dragoon not to take a principal share in the
stable duty. Before beginning his desk-work in the morning, he uniformly visited his
favourite steed, and neither Captain nor
Lieutenant, nor the
lieutenant’s successor, Brown Adam
(so called after one of the heroes of the Minstrelsy), liked to be fed except by him. The latter charger was indeed
altogether intractable in other hands, though in his the most submissive of faithful
allies. The moment he was bridled and saddled, it was the custom to open the stable door as
a signal that his master expected him, when he immediately trotted to the side of the leaping-on-stone, of which Scott from his
lameness found it convenient to make use, and stood there, silent and motionless as a rock,
until he was fairly in his seat, after which he displayed his joy by neighing triumphantly
through a brilliant succession of curvettings. Brown Adam never
suffered himself to be backed but by his master. He broke, I believe, one groom’s arm
and another’s leg in the rash attempt to tamper with his dignity.
Camp was at this time the constant parlour dog. He was very
handsome, very intelligent, and naturally very fierce, but gentle as a lamb among the
children. As for the more locomotive Douglas and Percy, he kept one window of his study open, whatever might be the
state of the weather, that they might leap out and in as the fancy moved them. He always
talked to Camp as if he understood what was said—and the animal
certainly did understand not a little of it; in particular, it seemed as if he perfectly
comprehended on all occasions that his master considered him as a sensible and steady
friend, the greyhounds as volatile young creatures whose freaks must be borne with.
“Every day,” says Mr
Skene, “we had some hours of coursing with the greyhounds, or
riding at random over the hills, or of spearing salmon in the Tweed by sunlight: which
last sport, moreover, we often renewed at night by the help of torches. This amusement
of burning the water, as it is called, was not without some
hazard, for the large salmon generally lie in the pools, the depths of which it is not
easy to estimate with precision by torchlight,—so that not unfrequently, when the
sportsman makes a determined thrust at a fish apparently within reach, his eye has
grossly deceived him, and instead of the point of the weapon encountering the prey, he
finds himself launched with corresponding vehemence heels over head into the pool, both
spear and salmon gone, the torch thrown out by the concussion of the boat, and quenched
in the stream, while the boat itself has of course receded to some distance. I remember
the first time I accompanied our friend he went right over the gun-wale in this manner,
and had I not accidentally been close at his side, and made a successful grasp at the
skirt of his jacket as he plunged overboard, he must at least have had an awkward dive
for it. Such are the contingencies of
burning the water. The pleasures consist in being penetrated
with cold and wet, having your shins broken against the stones in the dark, and perhaps
mastering one fish out of every twenty you take aim at.”
In all these amusements, but particularly in the burning of the water, Scott’s most
regular companion at this time was John Lord
Somerville, who united with many higher qualities a most enthusiastic love
for such sports, and consummate address in the prosecution of them. This amiable nobleman
then passed his autumns at his pretty seat of Allwyn, or the Pavilion, situated on the
Tweed, some eight or nine miles below Ashestiel. They interchanged visits almost every
week; and Scott did not fail to profit largely by his friend’s
matured and well-known skill in every department of the science of rural economy. He always
talked of him, in particular, as his master in the art of planting.
The laird of Rubislaw seldom failed to spend a part of the summer and
autumn at Ashestiel, as long as Scott remained there,
and during these visits they often gave a wider scope to their expeditions.
“Indeed,” says Mr Skene,
“there are few scenes at all celebrated either in the history, tradition, or
romance of the Border counties, which we did not explore together in the course of our
rambles. We traversed the entire vales of the Yarrow and Ettrick, with all their sweet
tributary glens, and never failed to find a hearty welcome from the farmers at whose
houses we stopped, either for dinner or for the night. He was their chief-magistrate,
extremely popular in that official capacity, and nothing could be more gratifying than
the frank and hearty reception which every where greeted our arrival, however
unexpected. The exhilarating air of the mountains, and tho healthy exercise of the day,
secured our relishing homely fare, and we found inexhaustible entertainment in the varied display of character which the affability of the Sheriff drew forth on all occasions in genuine breadth and
purity. The beauty of the scenery gave full employment to my pencil, with the free and
frequent exercise of which he never seemed to feel impatient. He was at all times ready
and willing to alight when any object attracted my notice, and used to seat himself
beside me on the brae to con over some ballad appropriate to the occasion, or narrate
the tradition of the glen—sometimes, perhaps, to note a passing idea in his pocketbook;
but this was rare, for in general he relied with confidence on the great storehouse of
his memory. And much amusement we had, as you may suppose, in talking over the
different incidents, conversations, and traits of manners that had occurred at the last
hospitable fireside where we had mingled with the natives. Thus the minutes glided away
until my sketch was complete, and then we mounted again with fresh alacrity.
“These excursions derived an additional zest from the
uncertainty that often attended the issue of our proceedings; for, following the game
started by the dogs, our unfailing comrades, we frequently got entangled and bewildered
among the hills, until we had to trust to mere chance for the lodging of the night.
Adventures of this sort were quite to his taste, and the more for the perplexities
which on such occasions befell our attendant squires, mine a lanky Savoyard, his a
portly Scotch butler, both of them uncommonly
bad horsemen, and both equally sensitive about their personal dignity, which the
ruggedness of the ground often made it a matter of some difficulty for either of them
to maintain, but more especially for my poor foreigner, whose seat resembled that of a
pair of compasses astride. Scott’s heavy
lumbering beauffetier had provided himself
against the mountain showers with a huge cloak, which, when the cavalcade were at gallop, streamed at full stretch from
his shoulders, and kept flapping in the other’s face, who, having more than
enough to do in preserving his own equilibrium, could not think of attempting at any
time to control the pace of his steed, and had no relief but fuming and pesting at the sacré manteau, in language happily unintelligible to its
wearer. Now and then some ditch or turf-fence rendered it indispensable to adventure on
a leap, and no farce could have been more amusing than the display of politeness which
then occurred between these worthy equestrians, each courteously declining in favour of
his friend the honour of the first experiment, the horses fretting impatient beneath
them, and the dogs clamouring encouragement. The horses generally terminated the
dispute by renouncing allegiance, and springing forward without waiting the pleasure of
the riders, who had to settle the matter with their saddles as they best could.
“One of our earliest expeditions was to visit the wild scenery
of the mountainous tract above Moffat, including the cascade of the ‘Grey
Mare’s Tail,’ and the dark tarn called ‘Loch Skene.’ In our
ascent to the lake we got completely bewildered in the thick fog which generally
envelopes the rugged features of that lonely region; and, as we were groping through
the maze of bogs, the ground gave way, and down went horse and horsemen pell-mell into
a slough of peaty mud and black water, out of which, entangled as we were with our
plaids and floundering nags, it was no easy matter to get extricated. Indeed, unless we
had prudently left our gallant steeds at a farm-house below, and borrowed hill ponies
for the occasion, the result might have been worse than laughable. As it was, we rose
like the spirits of the bog, covered cap-à-pie with slime, to free themselves from which, our wily
ponies took to rolling about on the heather, and we had nothing
for it but following their example. At length as we approached the gloomy loch, a huge
eagle heaved himself from the margin and rose right over us, screaming his scorn of the
intruders; and altogether it would be impossible to picture any thing more desolately
savage than the scene which opened, as if raised by enchantment on purpose to gratify
the poet’s eye; thick folds of fog rolling incessantly over the face of the inky
waters, but rent asunder now in one direction, and then in another—so as to afford us a
glimpse of some projecting rock or naked point of land, or island bearing a few scraggy
stumps of pine—and then closing again in universal darkness upon the cheerless waste.
Much of the scenery of Old Mortality
was drawn from that day’s ride.
“It was also in the course of this excursion that we
encountered that amusing personage introduced into Guy Mannering as ‘Tod
Gabbie,’ though the appellation by which he was known in the
neighbourhood was ‘Tod Willie.’ He was one of those
itinerants who gain a subsistence among the moorland farmers by relieving them of
foxes, polecats, and the like depredators—a half-witted, stuttering, and most original
creature.
“Having explored all the wonders of Moffatdale, we turned
ourselves towards Blackhouse Tower, to visit Scott’s worthy acquaintances the Laidlaws, and
reached it after a long and intricate ride, having been again led off our course by the
greyhounds, who had been seduced by a strange dog that joined company, to engage in
full pursuit upon the tract of what we presumed to be either a fox or a roe-deer. The
chase was protracted and perplexing, from the mist that skirted the hill tops; but at
length we reached the scene of slaughter, and were much distressed to find that a
stately old he-goat had been the victim. He seemed to have fought a stout battle for
his life, but now lay mangled in the
midst of his panting enemies, who betrayed, on our approach, strong consciousness of
delinquency and apprehension of the lash, which was administered accordingly to soothe
the manes of the luckless Capricorn—though, after all, the dogs were not so much to
blame in mistaking his game flavour, since the fogs must have kept him out of view till
the last moment. Our visit to Blackhouse was highly interesting;—the excellent old
tenant being still in life, and the whole family group presenting a perfect picture of
innocent and simple happiness, while the animated, intelligent, and original
conversation of our friend William was quite
charming.
“Sir Adam Fergusson and
the Ettrick Shepherd were of the party that
explored Loch Skene and hunted the unfortunate he-goat.
“I need not tell you that Saint Mary’s Loch, and the Loch
of the Lowes, were among the most favourite scenes of our excursions, as his fondness
for them continued to his last days, and we have both visited them many times together
in his company. I may say the same of the Teviot, and the Aill, Borthwick-water, and
the lonely towers of Buccleuch and Harden, Minto, Roxburgh, Gilnockie, &c. I think
it was either in 1805 or 1806 that I first explored the Borthwick with him, when on our
way to pass a week at Langholm with Lord and
Lady Dalkeith, upon which occasion the
otter-hunt, so well described in Guy
Mannering, was got up by our noble host; and I can never forget the delight
with which Scott observed the enthusiasm of the
high-spirited yeomen, who had assembled in multitudes to partake the sport of their
dear young chief, well mounted, and dashing about from rock to rock with a reckless
ardour which recalled the alacrity of their forefathers in follow-ing the Buccleuchs of former days through adventures of a more
serious order.
“Whatever the banks of the Tweed from its source to its
termination, presented of interest, we frequently visited; and I do verily believe
there is not a single ford in the whole course of that river which we have not
traversed together. He had an amazing fondness for fords, and was not a little
adventurous in plunging through, whatever might be the state of the flood, and this
even though there happened to be a bridge in view. If it seemed possible to scramble
through, he scorned to go ten yards about, and in fact preferred the ford; and it is to
be remarked, that most of the heroes of his tales seem to have been endued with similar
propensities—even the White Lady of Avenel delights
in the ford. He sometimes even attempted them on foot, though his lameness interfered
considerably with his progress among the slippery stones. Upon one occasion of this
sort I was assisting him through the Ettrick, and we had both got upon the same
tottering stone in the middle of the stream, when some story about a kelpie occurring
to him, he must needs stop and tell it with all his usual vivacity—and then, laughing
heartily at his own joke, he slipped his foot, or the stone shuffled beneath him, and
down he went headlong into the pool, pulling me after him. We escaped, however, with no
worse than a thorough drenching and the loss of his stick, which floated down the
river, and he was as ready as ever for a similar exploit before his clothes were half
dried upon his back.”
About this time Mr and Mrs Scott made
a short excursion to the Lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and visited some of their
finest scenery, in company with Mr Wordsworth. I
have found no written nar-rative of
this little tour, but I have often heard Scott speak
with enthusiastic delight of the reception he met with in the humble cottage which his
brother poet then inhabited on the banks of Grasmere; and at least one of the days they
spent together was destined to furnish a theme for the verse of each, namely, that which
they gave to the ascent of Helvellyn, where, in the course of the preceding spring, a young
gentleman having lost his way and perished by falling over a precipice, his remains were
discovered, three months afterwards, still watched by “a faithful terrier-bitch,
his constant attendant during frequent rambles among the wilds.”* This day
they were accompanied by an illustrious philosopher, who was also a true poet and might
have been one of the greatest of poets had he chosen; and I have heard Mr
Wordsworth say, that it would be difficult to express the feelings with
which he, who so often had climbed Helvellyn alone, found himself standing on its summit
with two such men as Scott and Davy.
After leaving Mr Wordsworth,
Scott carried his wife to spend a few days at
Gilsland, among the scenes where they had first met; and his reception by the company at
the wells was such as to make him look back with something of regret, as well as of
satisfaction, to the change that had occurred in his circumstances since 1797. They were,
however, enjoying themselves much
* See notice prefixed to the song—
“I climbed the dark brow of the mighty
Helvellyn,” &c., in Scott’s Poetical Works, edit. 1834, vol. i., 370; and compare the
lines,
Inmate of a mountain dwelling, Thou hast clomb aloft, and gazed From the watch-towers of Helvellyn, Awed, delighted, and amazed,” &c. Wordsworth’sPoetical Works, 8vo. Edit. Vol. iii. p.
96. there, when he received intelligence which induced him to believe that
a French force was about to land in Scotland:—the alarm indeed had spread far and wide; and
a mighty gathering of volunteers, horse and foot, from the Lothians and the Border country,
took place in consequence at Dalkeith. He was not slow to obey the summons. He had luckily
chosen to accompany on horseback the carriage in which Mrs
Scott travelled. His good steed carried him to the spot of rendezvous, full
a hundred miles from Gilsland, within twenty-four hours; and on reaching it, though no
doubt to his disappointment the alarm had already blown over, he was delighted with the
general enthusiasm that had thus been put to the test—and, above all, by the rapidity with
which the yeomen of Ettrick forest had poured down from their glens, under the guidance of
his good friend and neighbour, Mr Pringle of
Torwoodlee. These fine fellows were quartered along with the Edinburgh troop
when he reached Dalkeith and Musselburgh; and after some sham battling, and a few evenings
of high jollity had crowned the needless muster of the beacon-fires,* he immediately turned
his horse again towards the south, and rejoined Mrs Scott at Carlisle.
By the way, it was during his fiery ride from Gilsland to Dalkeith, on
the occasion above mentioned, that he composed his Bard’s Incantation, first published six years afterwards in the Edinburgh Annual Register:— “The forest of Glenmore is drear, It is all of black pine and the dark oak-tree,” &c.— and the verses bear the full stamp of the feelings of the moment.
Shortly after he was re-established at Ashestiel, he was visited there
by Mr Southey; this being, I believe,
* See Note “Alarm of Invasion,” Antiquary, vol. ii. p. 338.
their first meeting. It is alluded to in
the following letter; a letter highly characteristic in more respects than one.
To George Ellis, Esq. Sunninghill.
“Ashestiel, 17th October, 1805. “Dear Ellis,
“More than a month has glided away in this busy
solitude, and yet I have never sat down to answer your kind letter. I have only
to plead a horror of pen and ink with which this country, in fine weather (and
ours has been most beautiful) regularly affects me. In recompense, I ride,
walk, fish, course, eat and drink, with might and main from morning to night. I
could have wished sincerely you had come to Reged this year to partake her
rural amusements;—the only comfort I have is, that your visit would have been
over, and now I look forward to it as a pleasure to come. I shall be infinitely
obliged to you for your advice and assistance in the course of Dryden. I fear little can be
procured for a Life beyond what Malone
has compiled, but certainly his facts may be rather better told and arranged. I
am at present busy with the dramatic department. This undertaking will make my
being in London in spring a matter of absolute necessity.
“And now let me tell you of a discovery which I have
made, or rather which Robert Jameson has
made, in copying the MS. of ‘True Thomas and the Queen
of Elfland,’ in the Lincoln cathedral. The queen at parting,
bestows the gifts of harping and carping upon the prophet, and mark his reply— ‘To harp and carp, Tomas, where so ever ye gen— Tomas, take thou these with thee.’— ‘Harping,’ he said, ‘ken I nane, For Tong is chefe of mynstrelsie.’ If poor Ritson
could contradict his own system of materialism by rising from the grave to peep
into this MS., he would slink back again in dudgeon and dismay. There certainly
cannot be more respectable testimony than that of True
Thomas, and you see he describes the tongue or recitation as the
principal, or at least the most dignified, part of a minstrel’s
profession.
“Another curiosity was brought here a few days ago by
Mr Southey the poet, who favoured me
with a visit on his way to Edinburgh. It was a MS. containing sundry metrical
romances, and other poetical compositions, in the northern dialect, apparently
written about the middle of the 15th century. I had not time to make an
analysis of its contents, but some of them seem highly valuable. There is a
tale of Sir Gowther, said to be a Breton Lay,
which partly resembles the history of Robert the
Devil, the hero being begot in the same way; and partly that of
Robert of Sicily, the penance imposed on
Sir Gowther being the same, as he kept
table with the hounds, and was discovered by a dumb lady to be the stranger
knight who had assisted her father the emperor in his wars. There is also a MS.
of Sir Isanbras; item a poem called Sir Amadas not Amadis of
Gaul, but a courteous knight who, being reduced to poverty, travels to
conceal his distress, and gives the wreck of his fortune to purchase the rites
of burial for a deceased knight, who had been refused them by the obduracy of
his creditors. The rest of the story is the same with that of Jean de Calais, in the Bibliothèque Bleue, and with a vulgar
ballad called the Factor’s Garland. Moreover
there is a merry tale of hunting a hare, as performed by a set of country
clowns, with their mastiffs, and curs with ‘short legs and never a
tail.’ The disgraces and blunders of these ignorant sportsmen
must have afforded infinite mirth at the table of a feudal baron, prizing himself on his knowledge of
the mysteries of the chase performed by these unauthorized intruders. There is
also a burlesque sermon, which informs us of Peter and
Adam journeying together to Babylon, and how
Peter asked Adama full great doubtful question, saying,
‘Adam, Adam, why
did’st thou eat the apple unpared?’ This book belongs to a
lady. I would have given something valuable to have had a week of it.
Southey commissioned me to say that he intended to
take extracts from it, and should be happy to copy, or cause to be copied, any
part that you might wish to be possessed of; an offer which I heartily
recommend to your early consideration. Where dwelleth Heber the magnificent, whose library and
cellar* are so superior to all others in the world? I wish to write to him
about Dryden. Any word lately from
Jamaica? Yours truly, W. S.”
Mr Ellis, in his answer, says, “Heber will, I dare say, be of service to you in your
present undertaking, if indeed you want any assistance, which I very much doubt; because it
appears to me that the best edition, which could now be given of Dryden, would be one which should unite accuracy of text
and a handsome appearance, with good critical notes. QuoadMalone—I should think
Ritson himself, could he rise from the dead,
would be puzzled to sift out a single additional anecdote of the poet’s life; but to
abridge Malone,—and to render his narrative terse, elegant, and
intelligible, would be a great obligation conferred on the purchasers (I will not say the
readers, because I have
* Ellis had mentioned, in
a recent letter, Heber’s buying wines
to the value of L.1100 at some sale he happened to attend this autumn.
doubts whether they exist in the plural number) of his very laborious
compilation. The late Dr Warton, you may have heard,
had a project of editing Drydenà
laHurd; that is to say,
upon the same principle as the castrated
edition of Cowley. His reason was that Dryden, having
written for bread, became of necessity a most voluminous author, and poured forth more
nonsense of indecency, particularly in his theatrical compositions, than almost any
scribbler in that scribbling age. Hence, although his transcendent genius frequently breaks
out, and marks the hand of the master, his comedies seem, by a tacit but general consent,
to have been condemned to oblivion; and his tragedies, being printed in such bad company,
have shared the same fate. But Dr W. conceived that, by a judicious
selection of these, together with his fables and prose works, it would be possible to
exhibit him in a much more advantageous light than by a republication of the whole mass of
his writings. Whether the Doctor (who, by the way, was by no means scrupulously chaste and
delicate, as you will be aware from his edition of Pope) had taken a just view of the subject, you know better than I;
but I must own that the announcement of a general edition of Dryden
gave me some little alarm. However, if you can suggest the sort of assistance you are
desirous of receiving, I shall be happy to do what I can to promote your views. . . . . . .
And so you are not disposed to nibble at the bait I throw out!
Nothing but ‘a decent edition of Hollinshed?’ I confess that my project chiefly related to the
later historical works respecting this country—to the union of Gall,
Twisden, Camden, Leibnitz, &c. &c.,
leaving the Chronicles, properly so called, to shift for themselves. . . . . . . I am
ignorant when you are to be in Edinburgh, and in that ignorance have not desired Blackburn, who is now at Glasgow, to call on you. He has the best practical understanding I have ever
met with, and I vouch that you would be much pleased with his acquaintance. And so for the
present God bless you. G. E.”
Scott’s letter in reply opens thus:
“I will not castrate John Dryden.
I would as soon castrate my own father, as I believe Jupiter did of yore. What would you say to any man who would
castrate Shakspeare, or Massinger, or Beaumont and Fletcher? I
don’t say but that it may be very proper to select correct passages for
the use of boarding-schools and colleges, being sensible no improper ideas can
be suggested in these seminaries, unless they are intruded or smuggled under
the beards and ruffs of our old dramatists. But in making an edition of a man
of genius’s works for libraries and collections, and such I conceive a
complete edition of Dryden to be, I must give my author as
I find him, and will not tear out the page, even to get rid of the blot, little
as I like it. Are not the pages of Swift, and even of Pope,
larded with indecency, and often of the most disgusting kind, and do we not see
them upon all shelves and dressing-tables, and in all boudoirs? Is not
Prior the most indecent of
tale-tellers, not even excepting La
Fontaine, and how often do we see his works in female hands? In
fact, it is not passages of ludicrous indelicacy that corrupt the manners of a
people—it is the sonnets which a prurient genius like Master Little sings virginibus putrisque—it is the sentimental slang, half
lewd, half methodistic, that debauches the understanding, inflames the sleeping
passions, and prepares the reader to give way as soon as a tempter appears. At
the same time, I am not at all happy when I peruse some of
Dryden’s comedies: they are very stupid, as well
as indelicate; sometimes, however, there is a con-siderable
vein of liveliness and humour, and all of them present extraordinary pictures
of the age in which he lived. My critical notes will not be very numerous, but
I hope to illustrate the political poems, as Absalom and Achitophel, the Hind and Panther, &c. with some
curious annotations. I have already made a complete search among some hundred
pamphlets of that pamphlet-writing age, and with considerable success, as I
have found several which throw light on my author. I am told that I am to be
formidably opposed by Mr Crowe, the
Professor of Poetry at Oxford, who is also threatening an edition of
Dryden. I don’t know whether to be most vexed
that some one had not undertaken the task sooner, or that Mr
Crowe is disposed to attempt it at the same time with me;
however, I now stand committed, and will not be crowed
over, if I can help it. The third edition of the Lay is now in the press, of which I hope you will
accept a copy, as it contains some trifling improvements or additions. They
are, however, very trifling.
“I have written a long letter to Rees, recommending an edition of our
historians, both Latin and English; but I have great hesitation whether to
undertake much of it myself. What I can I certainly will do; but I should feel
particularly delighted if you would join forces with me, when I think we might
do the business to purpose. Do, Lord love you, think of this grande opus.
“I have not been so fortunate as to hear of Mr Blackburn. I am afraid poor Daniel has been very idly
employed—Cælum non
animum. I am glad you still retain the purpose of visiting
Reged. If you live on mutton and game, we can feast you; for, as one wittily
said, I am not the hare with many friends, but the friend with many hares.—W.
S.”
Mr Ellis, in his next letter, says:—“I will
not disturb you by contesting any part of your ingenious apology for your intended
complete edition of Dryden, whose genius
I venerate as much as you do, and whose negligences, as he was not rich enough to doom
them to oblivion in his own lifetime, it is perhaps incumbent on his editor to transmit
to the latest posterity. Most certainly I am not so squeamish as to quarrel with him
for his immodesty on any moral pretence. Licentiousness in writing, when accompanied by
wit, as in the case of Prior, La Fontaine, &c., is never likely to excite any
passion, because every passion is serious; and the grave epistle of Eloisa is more likely to do moral
mischief and convey infection to love-sick damsels, than five hundred stories of Hans Carvel and Paulo Purgante; but whatever is in point of
expression vulgar—whatever disgusts the taste—whatever might have been written by any
fool, and is therefore unworthy of Dryden—whatever might have been suppressed, without exciting a
moment’s regret in the mind of any of his admirers—ought, in my opinion, to be
suppressed by any editor who should be disposed to make an appeal to the public taste
upon the subject; because a man who was perhaps the best poet and best prose writer in
the language—but it is foolish to say so much, after promising to say nothing. Indeed I
own myself guilty of possessing all his works in a very
indifferent edition, and I shall certainly purchase a better one whenever you put it in
my power. With regard to your competitors, I feel perfectly at my ease, because I am
convinced that though you should generously furnish them with all the materials, they
would not know how to use them: non cuivis hominum
contingit to write critical notes that any one will
read.” Alluding to the regret which Scott had
expressed some time before at the shortness of his visit to the
libraries of Oxford, Ellis says, in another of these
letters—“A library is like a butcher’s shop: it contains plenty of meat,
but it is all raw; no person living—(Leyden’s breakfast was only a tour de
force to astonish Ritson,
and I except the Abyssinians, whom I never saw)—can find a meal in it, till some good
cook (suppose yourself) comes in and says, ‘Sir, I see by your looks that you are
hungry; I know your taste—be patient for a moment, and you shall be satisfied that you
have an excellent appetite.’”
I shall not transcribe the mass of letters which Scott received from various other literary friends whose assistance he
invoked in the preparation of his edition of
Dryden; but among them there occurs one so admirable, that I cannot refuse
myself the pleasure of introducing it, more especially as the views which it opens
harmonize as remarkably with some, as they differ from others, of those which
Scott himself ultimately expressed respecting the poetical
character of his illustrious author.
“Patterdale, Nov. 7, 1805. “My dear Scott,
. . . “I was much pleased to hear of your engagement
with Dryden: not that he is, as a poet,
any great favourite of mine: I admire his talents and genius highly, but his is
not a poetical genius. The only qualities I can find in
Dryden that are essentially
poetical, are a certain ardour and impetuosity of mind, with an excellent ear.
It may seem strange that I do not add to this, great command of language: That he certainly has, and of such language, too, as it
is most desirable that a poet should possess, or rather that he should not be
without. But it is not language that is, in the highest sense of the word,
poetical, being neither of the imagi-nation nor of the passions; I mean the amiable, the ennobling, or the intense
passions. I do not mean to say that there is nothing of this in
Dryden, but as little, I think, as is possible,
considering how much he has written. You will easily understand my meaning,
when I refer to his versification of Palamon and Arcite, as contrasted with the
language of Chaucer.
Dryden had neither a tender heart nor a lofty sense of
moral dignity. Whenever his language is poetically impassioned, it is mostly
upon unpleasing subjects, such as the follies, vices, and crimes of classes of
men or of individuals. That his cannot be the language of imagination, must
have necessarily followed from this, that there is not a single image from
nature in the whole body of his works; and in his translation from Virgil, wherever Virgil can
be fairly said to have had his eye upon his object, Dryden
always spoils the passage.
“But too much of this; I am glad that you are to be
his editor. His political and satirical pieces may be greatly benefited by
illustration, and even absolutely require it. A correct text is the first
object of an editor—then such notes as explain difficult or obscure passages;
and lastly, which is much less important, notes pointing out authors to whom
the poet has been indebted, not in the fiddling way of phrase here and phrase
there—(which is detestable as a general practice)—but where he has had
essential obligations either as to matter or manner.
“If I can be of any use to you, do not fail to apply
to me. One thing I may take the liberty to suggest, which is, when you come to
the fables, might it not be
advisable to print the whole of the tales of Boccace in a smaller type in the original language? If this
should look too much like swelling a book, I should certainly make such
extracts as would show where Dryden has
most strikingly improved upon, or fallen below, his ori-ginal. I think his translations from Boccace are the
best, at least the most poetical, of his poems. It is many years since I saw
Boccace, but I remember that Sigismunda is not married by him to Guiscard (the names are different in
Boccace in both tales, I believe certainly in
Theodore, &c.) I think
Dryden has much injured the story by the marriage, and
degraded Sigismunda’s character by
it. He has also, to the best of my remembrance, degraded her still more by
making her love absolute sensuality and appetite; Dryden
had no other notion of the passion. With all these defects, and they are very
gross ones, it is a noble poem. Guiscard’s answer, when first reproached by Tancred, is noble in Boccace
nothing but this: Amor può molto più
che ne voi ne io possiamo. This,
Dryden has spoiled. He says first very well,
‘the faults of love by love are justified,’ and then
come four lines of miserable rant, quite à
laMaximin. Farewell, and believe me ever your
affectionate friend,
William Wordsworth.”
CHAPTER III. AFFAIR OF THE CLERKSHIP OF SESSION—LETTERS TO ELLIS AND
LORD DALKEITH—VISIT TO LONDON—EARL SPENCER
AND MR FOX—CAROLINE, PRINCESS OF
WALES—JOANNA BAILLIE—APPOINTMENT AS CLERK OF
SESSION—LORD MELVILLE’S TRIAL—SONG ON HIS ACQUITTAL—1806.
While the first volumes of his Dryden were passing through the press, the affair
concerning the clerkship of the Court of Session, opened nine or ten months before, had not
been neglected by the friends on whose counsel and assistance Scott had relied. In one of his Prefaces of 1830, he briefly tells the
issue of this negotiation, which he justly describes as “an important circumstance
in his life, of a nature to relieve him from the anxiety which he must otherwise have
felt as one upon the precarious tenure of whose own life rested the principal prospects
of his family, and especially as one who had necessarily some dependence on the
proverbially capricious favour of the public.” Whether Mr Pitt’s hint to Mr
William Dundas, that he would willingly find an opportunity to promote the
interests of the author of the Lay, or some conversation between
the Duke of Buccleuch and Lord
Melville, first encouraged him to this direction of his views, I am not able
to state distinctly; but I believe that the desire to see his fortunes placed on some more
substantial basis, was at this time partaken pretty equally by the three persons who had
the principal influence in the distribution of the crown patronage in Scotland; and as his
object was rather to secure a future than an immediate increase of
official income, it was comparatively easy to make such an arrangement as would satisfy his
ambition. George Home of Wedderburn, in Berwickshire,
a gentleman of considerable literary acquirements, and an old friend of
Scott’s family, had now served as Clerk of Session for
upwards of thirty years. In those days there was no system of retiring pensions for the
worn-out functionary of this class, and the usual method was, either that he should resign
in favour of a successor who advanced a sum of money according to the circumstances of his
age and health, or for a coadjutor to be associated with him in his patent, who undertook
the duty on condition of a division of salary. Scott offered to
relieve Mr Home of all the labours of his office, and to allow him,
nevertheless, to retain its emoluments entire during his lifetime; and the aged clerk of
course joined his exertions to procure a conjoint-patent on these very advantageous terms.
Mr Home resigned, and a new patent was drawn out accordingly; but,
by a clerical inadvertency, it was drawn out solely in Scott’s
favour, no mention of Mr Home being inserted in the instrument.
Although, therefore, the sign-manual had been affixed, and there remained nothing but to
pay the fees and take out the commission, Scott, on discovering this
omission, could not of course proceed in the business; since, in the event of his dying
before Mr Home, that gentleman would have lost the vested interest
which he had stipulated to retain. A pending charge of pecuniary corruption had compelled
Lord Melville to retire from office some time before Mr
Pitt’s death; and the cloud of popular obloquy under which he now
laboured, rendered it impossible that Scott should expect assistance
from the quarter to which, under any other circumstances, he would naturally have turned
for extrication from this difficulty. He
therefore, as soon as the Fox and Grenville Cabinet had been nominated, proceeded to London, to
make in his own person such representations as might be necessary to secure the issuing of
the patent in the shape originally intended.
It seems wonderful that he should ever have doubted for a single moment
of the result; since, had the new Cabinet been purely Whig, and had he been the most
notorious and violent of Tory partisans, neither of which was the case, the arrangement had
been not only virtually, but, with the exception of an evident official blunder, formally
completed; and no Secretary of State, as I must think, could have refused to rectify the
paltry mistake in question without a dereliction of every principle of honour. The seals of
the Home Office had been placed in the hands of a nobleman of the highest
character—moreover, an ardent lover of literature;—while the chief of the new Ministry was
one of the most generous as well as tasteful of mankind; and accordingly, when the
circumstances were explained, there occurred no hesitation whatever on their parts.
“I had,” says Scott,
“the honour of an interview with Earl
Spencer, and he in the most handsome manner gave directions that the
commission should issue as originally intended; adding that, the matter having received
the royal assent, he regarded only as a claim of justice what he would willingly have
done as an act of favour.” He adds, “I never saw Mr Fox on this or any other occasion, and never made any
application to him, conceiving, that in doing so, I might have been supposed to express
political opinions different from those which I had always professed. In his private
capacity, there is no man to whom I would have been more proud to owe an obligation—had
I been so distinguished.”*
* Introduction to Marmion, 1830.
In January, 1806, however, Scott had
by no means measured either the character, the feelings, or the arrangements of great
public functionaries, by the standard with which observation and experience subsequently
furnished him. He had breathed hitherto, as far as political questions of all sorts were
concerned, the hot atmosphere of a very narrow scene,—and seems to have pictured to himself
Whitehall and Downing Street as only a wider stage for the exhibition of the bitter and
fanatical prejudices that tormented the petty circles of the Parliament House at Edinburgh;
the true bearing and scope of which no man in after days more thoroughly understood, or
more sincerely pitied. The variation of his feelings, while his business still remained
undetermined, will, however, be best collected from the correspondence about to be quoted.
It was, moreover, when these letters were written, that he was tasting for the first time,
the full cup of fashionable blandishment as a London Lion; nor will
the reader fail to observe how deeply, while he supposed his own most important worldly
interests to be in peril on the one hand, and was surrounded with so many captivating
flatteries on the other, he continued to sympathize with the misfortunes of his early
friend and patron, now hurled from power, and subjected to a series of degrading
persecutions from the consequences of which that lofty spirit was never entirely to
recover.
To George Ellis, Esq. Sunninghill.
“Edinburgh, January 25th, 1806. My dear Ellis,
“I have been too long in letting you hear of me, and
my present letter is going to be a very selfish one, since it will be chiefly
occupied by an affair of my own, in which, probably, you may find very little
entertain-ment. I rely,
however, upon your cordial good wishes and good advice, though, perhaps, you
may be unable to afford me any direct assistance without more trouble than I
would wish you to take on my account. You must know, then, that with a view of
withdrawing entirely from the bar, I had entered into a transaction with an
elderly and infirm gentleman, Mr George
Home, to be associated with him in the office which he holds as
one of the principal clerks to our supreme Court of Session; I being to
discharge the duty gratuitously during his life, and to succeed him at his
decease. This could only be carried into effect by a new commission from the
crown to him and me jointly, which has been issued in similar cases very
lately, and is in point of form quite correct. By the interest of my kind and
noble friend and chief, the Duke of
Buccleuch, the countenance of Government was obtained to this
arrangement, and the affair, as I have every reason to believe, is now in the
Treasury. I have written to my solicitor, Alexander
Mundell, Fludyer Street, to use every despatch in hurrying
through the commission; but the news of to-day giving us every reason to
apprehend Pitt’s death, if that
lamentable event has not already happened,* makes me get nervous on a subject
so interesting to my little fortune. My political sentiments have been always
constitutional and open, and although they were never rancorous, yet I cannot
expect that the Scottish Opposition party, should circumstances bring them into
power, would consider me as an object of favour: nor would I ask it at their
hands. Their leaders cannot regard me with malevolence, for I am intimate with
many of them; but they must provide for the Whiggish children before they throw
their bread to
* Mr Pitt died
January 23d, two days before this letter was written.
the Tory dogs; and I shall not fawn on them because they
have in their turn the superintendence of the larder. At the same time, if
Fox’s friends come into power,
it must be with Windham’s party,
to whom my politics can be no exception,—if the politics of a private
individual ought at any time to be made the excuse for intercepting the bounty
of his sovereign, when it is in the very course of being bestowed.
“The situation is most desirable, being L.800 a-year,
besides being consistent with holding my sheriffdom; and I could afford very
well to wait till it opened to me by the death of my colleague, without wishing
a most worthy and respectable man to die a moment sooner than ripe nature
demanded. The duty consists in a few hours’ labour in the forenoons when
the Court sits, leaving the evenings and whole vacation open for literary
pursuits. I will not relinquish the hope of such an establishment without an
effort, if it is possible without dereliction of my principles to attain the
accomplishment of it. As I have suffered in my professional line by addicting
myself to the profane and unprofitable art of poem-making, I am very desirous
to indemnify myself by availing myself of any prepossession which my literary
reputation may, however unmeritedly, have created in my favour. I have found it
useful when I applied for others, and I see no reason why I should not try if
it can do any thing for myself.
“Perhaps, after all, my commission may be got out
before a change of Ministry, if such an event shall take place, as it seems not
far distant. If it is otherwise, will you be so good as to think and devise
some mode in which my case may be stated to Windham or Lord Grenville,
supposing them to come in? If it is not deemed worthy of attention, I am sure I
shall be contented; but it is one thing to have a right to ask a favour, and another to hope that a
transaction, already fully completed by the private parties, and approved of by
an existing Administration, shall be permitted to take effect in favour of an
unoffending individual. I believe I shall see you very shortly, unless I hear
from Mundell that the business can be
done for certain without my coming up. I will not, if I can help it, be flayed
like a sheep for the benefit of some pettifogging lawyer or attorney. I have
stated the matter to you very bluntly; indeed, I am not asking a favour, but,
unless my self-partiality blinds me, merely fair play. Yours ever,
Walter Scott.”
To Walter Scott, Esq. Edinburgh.
“Bath, 6th February, 1806. “My dear Scott,
“You must have seen by the lists of the new Ministry
already published in all the papers, that, although the death of our excellent
Minister has been certainly a most
unfortunate event, in as far as it must tend to delay the object of your
present wishes, there is no cause for your alarm on account of the change,
excepting as far as that change is very extensive, and thus, perhaps much time
may elapse before the business of every kind which was in arrears can be
expedited by the new Administration. There is no change of principle (as far as
we can yet judge) in the new Cabinet—or rather the new Cabinet has no general
political creed. Lord Grenville, Fox, Lord
Lansdowne, and Addington
were the four nominal heads of four distinct parties, which must now by some
chemical process be amalgamated; all must forget, if they can, their peculiar
habits and opinions, and unite in the pursuit of a common object. How far this is possible, time will show; to what degree
this motley Ministry can, by their joint influence, command a majority in the
House of Commons; how far they will, as a whole, be
assisted by the secret influence and power of the Crown; whether, if not so
seconded, they will be able to appeal some time hence to the people, and
dissolve the Parliament—all these and many other questions, will receive very
different answers from different speculators. But in the mean time it is
self-evident, that every individual will be extremely jealous of the patronage
of his individual department; that individually as well as conjointly, they
will be cautious of provoking enmity; and that a measure patronized by the
Duke of Buccleuch is not very likely to
be opposed by any member of such a Cabinet.
“If, indeed, the object of your wishes were a
sinecure, and at the disposal of the Chancellor (Erskine), or of the President of the Board of Control
(Lord Minto), you might have strong
cause, perhaps, for apprehension; but what you ask would suit few candidates,
and there probably is not one whom the Cabinet, or any person in it, would feel
any strong interest in obliging to your disadvantage.
But farther, we know that Lord Sidmouth is
in the Cabinet, so is Lord Ellenborough,
and these two are notoriously the King’s
Ministers. Now we may be very sure that they, or some other of the King’s
friends, will possess one department, which has no name, but is not the less
real; namely, the supervision of the King’s influence both here and in
Scotland. I therefore much doubt whether there is any man in the Cabinet who,
as Minister, has it in his power to prevent your attainment of your object.
Lord Melville, we know, was in a great
measure the representative of the King’s personal influence in Scotland,
and I am by no means sure that he is no longer so; but be that as it may, it
will, I am well persuaded,
continue in the hands of some one who has not been forced upon his Majesty as
one of his confidential servants.
“Upon the whole, then, the only consolation that I
can confidently give you is, that what you represent as a principal difficulty
is quite imaginary, and that your own political principles are exactly those
which are most likely to be serviceable to you. I need not say how happy
Anne and myself would be to see you
(we shall spend the month of March in London), nor that, if you should be able
to point out any means by which I can be of the slightest use in advancing your
interests, you may employ me without reserve. I must go to the Pumproom for my
glass of water—so God bless you. Ever truly yours,
G. Ellis.”
To George Ellis, Esq., Bath.
London, Feb. 20, 1806. “My Dear Ellis,
“I have your kind letter, and am infinitely obliged
to you for your solicitude in my behalf. I have indeed been rather fortunate,
for the gale which has shattered so many goodly argosies, has blown my little
bark into the creek for which she was bound, and left me only to lament the
misfortunes of my friends. To vary the simile, while the huge frigates, the
Moira and Lauderdale, were fiercely combating for the dominion of the
Caledonian main, I was fortunate enough to get on board the good ship Spencer, and leave them to settle their disputes
at leisure. It is said to be a violent ground of controversy in the new
Ministry, which of those two noble lords is to be St Andrew for Scotland. I own
I tremble for the consequences of so violent a temper as
Lauderdale’s, irritated by long disappointed
ambition and ancient feud with all his brother nobles. It is a certain truth
that Lord Moira insists upon his claim, backed by all the
friends of the late Administration in Scotland, to have a certain weight in
that country; and it is equally certain that the Hamiltons
and Lauderdales have struck out. So here are people who
have stood in the rain without doors for so many years, quarrelling for the
nearest place to the fire, as soon as they have set their feet on the floor.
Lord Moira, as he always has been, was highly kind and
courteous to me on this occasion.
“Heber is just
come in, with your letter waving in his hand. I am ashamed of all the trouble I
have given you, and at the same time flattered to find your friendship even
equal to that greatest and most disagreeable of all trials, the task of
solicitation. Mrs Scott is not with me, and
I am truly concerned to think we should be so near, without the prospect of
meeting. Truth is, I had half a mind to make a run up to Bath, merely to break
the spell which has prevented our meeting for these two years. But Bindley, the collector, has lent me a parcel
of books, which he insists on my consulting within the liberties of
Westminster, and which I cannot find elsewhere, so that the fortnight I propose
to stay, will be fully occupied by examination and extracting. How long I may
be detained here is very uncertain, but I wish to leave London on Saturday
se’ennight. Should I be so delayed as to bring my time of departure any
thing near that of your arrival, I will stretch my furlough to the utmost, that
I may have a chance of seeing you. Nothing is minded here but domestic
politics, and if we are not clean swept, there is no want of new brooms to
perform that operation. I have heard very bad news of Leyden’s health since my arrival here—
such, indeed, as to give
room to apprehend the very worst. I fear he has neglected the precautions which
the climate renders necessary, and which no man departs from with impunity.
Remember me kindly and respectfully to Mrs
Ellis; and believe me ever yours faithfully,
Walter Scott.
“P.S. Poor Lord
Melville! How does he look? We have had miserable accounts
of his health in London. He was the architect of my little fortune, from
circumstances of personal regard merely; for any of my trifling literary
acquisitions were out of his way. My heart bleeds when I think on his
situation
‘Even when the rage of battle ceased, The victor’s soul was not
appeased.’”*
To the Earl of Dalkeith.
“London, 11th Feb. 1806. “My dear Lord,
“I cannot help flattering myself—for perhaps it is
flattering myself—that the noble architect of the Border Minstrel’s
little fortune has been sometimes anxious for the security of that lowly
edifice, during the tempest which has overturned so many palaces and towers. If
I am right in my supposition, it will give you pleasure to learn that,
notwithstanding some little rubs, I have been able to carry through the
transaction which your lordship sanctioned by your influence and approbation,
and that in a way very pleasing to my own feelings. Lord Spencer, upon the nature of the transaction being
* These lines are from Smollett’sTears of Caledonia.
explained in an audience with which he favoured me, was
pleased to direct the commission to be issued, as an act of justice,
regretting, he said, it had not been from the beginning his own deed. This was
doing the thing handsomely, and like an English nobleman. I have been very much
fêted and caressed here, almost indeed to suffocation, but have been made
amends by meeting some old friends. One of the kindest was Lord Somerville, who volunteered introducing me
to Lord Spencer, as much, I am convinced, from respect to
your lordship’s protection and wishes, as from a desire to serve me
personally. He seemed very anxious to do any thing in his power which might
evince a wish to be of use to your protegé. Lord
Minto was also infinitely kind and active, and his influence
with Lord Spencer would, I am convinced, have been
stretched to the utmost in my favour, had not Lord
Spencer’s own view of the subject been perfectly
sufficient.
“After all, a little literary reputation is of some
use here. I suppose Solomon, when he
compared a good name to a pot of ointment, meant that it oiled the hinges of
the hall-doors into which the possessors of that inestimable treasure wished to
penetrate. What a good name was in Jerusalem, a known name seems to be in
London. If you are celebrated for writing verses or for slicing cucumbers, for
being two feet taller or two feet less than any other biped, for acting plays
when you should be whipped at school, or for attending schools and institutions
when you should be preparing for your grave, your notoriety becomes a
talisman—an ‘Open Sesame’ before which every thing gives way till
you are voted a bore, and discarded for a new plaything. As this is a
consummation of notoriety which I am by no means ambitious of experiencing, I
hope I shall be very soon able
to shape my course northward, to enjoy my good fortune at my leisure, and snap
my fingers at the bar and all its works.
“There is, it is believed, a rude scuffle betwixt our
late commander-in-chief and Lord Lauderdale, for the patronage of Scotland.
If there is to be an exclusive administration, I hope it will not be in the
hands of the latter. Indeed, when one considers that, by means of Lords
Sidmouth and Ellenborough, the King
possesses the actual power of casting the balance betwixt the five Grenvillites
and four Foxites who compose the Cabinet, I cannot think they will find it an
easy matter to force upon his Majesty any one to whom he has a personal
dislike. I should therefore suppose that the disposal of St Andrew’s
Cross will be delayed till the new Ministry is a little consolidated, if that
time shall ever come. There is much loose gunpowder amongst them, and one spark
would make a fine explosion. Pardon these political effusions; I am infected by
the atmosphere which I breathe, and cannot restrain my pen from discussing
state affairs. I hope the young ladies and my dear little chief are now recovering from the hooping-cough, if it
has so turned out to be. If I can do any thing for any of the family here, you
know your right to command, and the pleasure it will afford me to obey. Will
your lordship be so kind as to acquaint the Duke, with every grateful and respectful acknowledgment on my
part, that I have this day got my commission from the Secretary’s office?
I dine to-day at Holland-house; I refused to go before, lest it should be
thought I was soliciting interest in that quarter, as I abhor even the shadow
of changing or turning with the tide.
“I am ever, with grateful acknowledgment, your
Lordship’s much indebted, faithful humble servant,
Walter Scott.”
To George Ellis, Esq.
“London, Saturday, March 3, 1806. “My dear Ellis,
“I have waited in vain for the happy dissolution of
the spell which has kept us asunder at a distance less by one quarter than in
general divides us; and since I am finally obliged to depart for the north
to-morrow, I have only to comfort myself with the hope that Bladud will infuse a double influence into his
tepid springs, and that you will feel emboldened, by the quantity of
reinforcement which the radical heat shall have received, to undertake your
expedition to the tramontane region of Reged this
season. My time has been spent very gaily here, and I should have liked very
well to have remained till you came up to town, had it not been for the wife
and bairns at home, whom I confess I am now anxious to see. Accordingly I set
off early to-morrow morning—indeed I expected to have done so to-day, but my
companion, Ballantyne, our Scottish
Bodoni, was afflicted with a violent
diarrhoea, which, though his physician assured him it would serve his health in
general, would certainly have contributed little to his accomplishments as an
agreeable companion in a post-chaise, which are otherwise very respectable. I
own Lord Melville’s misfortunes
affect me deeply. He, at least his nephew, was my early patron, and gave me countenance and
assistance when I had but few friends. I have seen when the streets of
Edinburgh were thought by the inhabitants almost too vulgar for Lord
Melville to walk upon; and now I fear that, with his power and
influence gone, his presence would be accounted by many, from whom he has
deserved other thoughts, an embarrassment, if not something worse. All this is
very vile—it is one of the occasions when Providence, as it were, industriously
turns the tapestry, to let us see the
ragged ends of the worsted which compose its most beautiful figures. God grant
your prophecies may be true, which I fear are rather dictated by your kind
heart than your experience of political enmities and the fate of fallen
statesmen. Kindest compliments to Mrs
Ellis. Your next will find me in Edinburgh.
Walter Scott.”
To George Ellis, Esq.
“Ashestiel, April 7, 1806. “My dear Ellis,
“Were I to begin by telling you all the regret I had
at not finding you in London, and at being obliged to leave it before your
return, this very handsome sheet of paper, which I intend to cover with more
important and interesting matters, would be entirely occupied by such a
Jeremiade as could only be equalled by Jeremiah himself. I
will therefore waive that subject, only assuring you that I hope to be in
London next spring, but have much warmer hopes of seeing you here in summer. I
hope Bath has been of service; if not so much as you expected, try easy
exercise in a northward direction, and make proof of the virtues of the Tweed
and Yarrow. We have been here these two days, and I have been quite rejoiced to
find all my dogs, and horses, and sheep, and cows, and two cottages full of
peasants and their children, and all my other stock, human and animal, in great
good health—we want nothing but Mrs
Ellis and you to be the strangers within our gates, and our
establishment would be complete on the patriarchal plan. I took possession of
my new office on my return. The duty is very simple, consisting chiefly in
signing my name; and as I have five colleagues, I am not obliged to do duty except in turn, so my task is a very easy one,
as my name is very short.
“My principal companion in this solitude is John Dryden. After all, there are some
passages in his translations from Ovid and
Juvenal that will hardly bear
reprinting, unless I would have the Bishop of
London and the whole corps of Methodists about my ears. I wish
you would look at the passages I mean. One is from the fourth book of Lucretius; the other from
Ovid’s Instructions to his Mistress. They are
not only double-entendres, but good plain single-entendres—not only broad, but
long, and as coarse as the mainsail of a first-rate. What to make of them I
know not; but I fear that, without absolutely gelding the bard, it will be
indispensable to circumcise him a little by leaving out some of the most
obnoxious lines. Do pray look at the poems and decide for me. Have you seen my
friend Tom Thomson, who is just now in
London? He has, I believe, the advantage of knowing you, and I hope you will
meet, as he understands more of old books, old laws, and old history than any
man in Scotland. He has lately received an appointment under the Lord Register
of Scotland, which puts all our records under his immediate inspection and
control, and I expect many valuable discoveries to be the consequence of his
investigation, if he escapes being smothered in the cloud of dust which his
researches will certainly raise about his ears. I sent your card instantly to
Jeffrey, from whom you had doubtless
a suitable answer.* I saw the venerable economist and antiquary, Macpherson, when in London, and was quite
delighted with the simplicity and kindness of his
* Mr Ellis had
written to Mr Jeffrey, through
Scott, proposing to write an
article for
the Edinburgh Review on
the Annals of
Commerce, then recently published by Mr David Macpherson.
manners. He is exactly like one of the
old Scotchmen whom I remember twenty years ago, before so close a union had
taken place between Edinburgh and London. The mail-coach and the Berwick smacks
have done more than the Union in altering our national character, sometimes for
the better and sometimes for the worse.
“I met with your friend, Mr Canning, in town, and claimed his acquaintance as a friend
of yours, and had my claim allowed; also Mr
Frere, both delightful companions, far too good for politics,
and for winning and losing places. When I say I was more pleased with their
society than I thought had been possible on so short an acquaintance, I pay
them a very trifling compliment and myself a very great one. I had also the
honour of dining with a fair friend of yours at Blackheath, an honour which I
shall very long remember. She is an enchanting princess, who dwells in an enchanted palace, and I cannot help
thinking that her prince must labour under
some malignant spell when he denies himself her society. The very Prince of the
Black Isles, whose bottom was marble, would have made an effort to transport
himself to Montague House. From all this you will understand I was at Montague
House.
“I am quite delighted at the interest you take in
poor Lord Melville. I suppose they are
determined to hunt him down. Indeed, the result of his trial must be ruin from
the expense, even supposing him to be honourably acquitted. Will you, when you
have time to write, let me know how that matter is likely to turn. I am deeply
interested in it; and the reports here are so various, that one knows not what
to trust to. Even the common rumour of London is generally more authentic than
the ‘from good authority’ of Edinburgh. Besides, I am now in the
wilds (alas! I cannot say woods and wilds), and hear little of what passes. Charlotte joins me in a thousand kind remembrances to Mrs Ellis; and I am ever yours most truly,
Walter Scott.”
I shall not dwell at present upon Scott’s method of conduct in the circumstances of an eminently
popular author beleaguered by the importunities of fashionable admirers: his bearing when
first exposed to such influences was exactly what it was to the end, and I shall have
occasion in the sequel to produce the evidence of more than one deliberate observer.
Caroline, Princess of Wales, was in those days
considered among the Tories, whose politics her husband had uniformly opposed, as the
victim of unmerited misfortune, cast aside, from the mere wantonness of caprice, by a gay
and dissolute voluptuary; while the Prince’s Whig
associates had espoused his quarrel, and were already, as the event showed, prepared to
act, publicly as well as privately, as if they believed her to be among the most abandoned
of her sex. I know not by whom Scott was first
introduced to her little Court at Blackheath; but I think it was probably through Mrs Hayman, a lady of her bedchamber, several of whose
notes and letters occur about this time in the collection of his correspondence. The
careless levity of the Princess’s manner was observed by him, as I have heard him
say, with much regret, as likely to bring the purity of heart and mind, for which he gave
her credit, into suspicion. For example, when, in the course of the evening, she conducted
him by himself to admire some flowers in a conservatory, and, the place being rather dark,
his lameness occasioned him to hesitate for a moment in following her down some steps which
she had taken at a skip, she turned round, and said, with mock indignation, ‘Ah! false and
faint-heart troubadour! you will not trust yourself with me for fear of your
neck!”
I find from one of Mrs
Hayman’s letters, that on being asked, at Montague House, to recite
some verses of his own, he replied that he had none unpublished which he thought worthy of
her Royal Highnesses attention, but introduced a short account of the Ettrick Shepherd, and repeated one of the ballads of the
Mountain Bard, for which he was
then endeavouring to procure subscribers. The Princess appears to have been interested by
the story, and she affected, at all events, to be pleased with the lines; she desired that
her name might be placed on the Shepherd’s list, and thus he had at least one gleam
of royal patronage.
It was during the same visit to London that Scott first saw Joanna Baillie, of
whose Plays on the Passions he had been,
from their first appearance, an enthusiastic admirer. The late Mr Sotheby, the translator of Oberon, &c. &c. was the mutual friend who introduced him to the poetess
of Hampstead. Being asked very lately what impression he made upon her at this
interview—“I was at first,” she answered, “a little
disappointed, for I was fresh from the Lay,
and had pictured to myself an ideal elegance and refinement of feature; but I said to
myself, If I had been in a crowd, and at a loss what to do, I should have fixed upon
that face among a thousand, as the sure index of the benevolence and the shrewdness
that would and could help me in my strait. We had not talked long, however, before I
saw in the expressive play of his countenance far more even of elegance and refinement
than I had missed in its mere lines.” The acquaintance thus begun, soon
ripened into a most affectionate intimacy between him and this remarkable woman; and
thenceforth she and her distinguished brother, Dr Matthew
Baillie, were among the friends to whose intercourse
he looked forward with the greatest pleasure when about to visit the metropolis.
I ought to have mentioned before, that he had known Mr Sotheby at a very early period of life, that amiable
and excellent man having been stationed for some time at Edinburgh while serving his
Majesty as a captain of dragoons. Scott ever retained
for him a sincere regard; he was always, when in London, a frequent guest at his hospitable
board, and owed to him the personal acquaintance of not a few of their most eminent
contemporaries in various departments of literature and art.
When the Court opened after the spring recess, Scott entered upon his new duties as one of the Principal Clerks of
Session; and as he continued to discharge them with exemplary regularity, and to the entire
satisfaction both of the Judges and the Bar, during the long period of twenty-five years, I
think it proper to tell precisely in what they consisted, the more so because, in his
letter to Ellis of the 25th January, he has himself
(characteristically enough) understated them.
The Court of Session sits at Edinburgh from the 12th of May to the 12th
of July, and again from the 12th of November, with a short interval at Christmas, to the
12th of March. The Judges of the Inner Court took their places on the Bench, in his time,
every morning not later than ten o’clock, and remained according to the amount of
business ready for despatch, but seldom for less than four or more than six hours daily;
during which space the Principal Clerks continued seated at a table below the Bench to
watch the progress of the suits, and record the decisions—the cases, of all classes, being
equally apportioned among their number. The Court of Session, however, does not sit on
Monday, that day being reserved for the criminal business of the High Court of Justiciary;
and there is also another blank day every
other week,—the Teind Wednesday, as it is called, when the Judges
are assembled for the hearing of tithe questions, which belong to a separate jurisdiction,
of comparatively modern creation, and having its own separate establishment of officers. On
the whole, then, Scott’s attendance in Court may
be taken to have amounted, on the average, to from four to six hours daily during rather
less than six months out of the twelve.
Not a little of the Clerk’s business in Court is merely formal,
and indeed mechanical; but there are few days in which he is not called upon for the
exertion of his higher faculties, in reducing the decisions of the Bench, orally
pronounced, to technical shape; which, in a new, complex, or difficult case, cannot be
satisfactorily done, without close attention to all the previous proceedings and written
documents, an accurate understanding of the principles or precedents on which it has been
determined, and a thorough command of the whole vocabulary of legal forms. Dull or indolent
men, promoted through the mere wantonness of political patronage, might, no doubt, contrive
to devolve the harder part of their duty upon humbler assistants: but, in general, the
office had been held by gentlemen of high character and attainments; and more than one
among Scott’s own colleagues enjoyed the
reputation of legal science that would have done honour to the Bench. Such men, of course,
prided themselves on doing well whatever it was their proper function to do; and it was by
their example, not that of the drones who condescended to lean upon unseen and
irresponsible inferiors, that Scott uniformly modelled his own conduct
as a Clerk of Session. To do this required, of necessity, constant study of law-papers and
authorities at home. There was also a great deal of really base drudgery, such as the
authentica-ting of registered deeds, by signature, which he had to
go through out of Court; he had, too, a Shrievalty, though not a heavy one, all the while
upon his hands;—and, on the whole, it forms one of the most remarkable features in his
history, that, throughout the most active period of his literary career, he must have
devoted a large proportion of his hours, during half at least of every year, to the
conscientious discharge of professional duties.
Henceforth, then, when in Edinburgh, his literary work was performed
chiefly before breakfast with the assistance of such evening hours as he could contrive to
rescue from the consideration of Court papers, and from those social engagements in which,
year after year, as his celebrity advanced, he was of necessity more and more largely
involved; and of those entire days during which the Court of Session did not sit—days
which, by most of those holding the same official station, were given to relaxation and
amusement. So long as he continued quartermaster of the Volunteer Cavalry, of course he
had, even while in Edinburgh, some occasional horse exercise; but, in general, his town
life henceforth was in that respect as inactive as his country life ever was the reverse.
He scorned for a long while to attach any consequence to this complete alternation of
habits; but we shall find him confessing in the sequel, that it proved highly injurious to
his bodily health.
I may here observe that the duties of his clerkship brought him into
close daily connexion with a set of gentlemen, most of whom were soon regarded by him with
the most cordial affection and confidence. Among his fellow-clerks were David Hume (the nephew of the historian) whose lectures on
the Law of Scotland are characterised with just eulogy in the Ashestiel Memoir, and who
subsequently became a Baron of the Exche-quer; a
man as virtuous and amiable as conspicuous for masculine vigour of intellect and variety of
knowledge. Another was Hector Macdonald Buchanan of
Drummakiln, a frank-hearted and generous gentleman, not the less acceptable to Scott for the Highland prejudices which he inherited with the
high blood of Clanranald; at whose beautiful seat of Ross Priory, on the shores of
Lochlomond, he was henceforth almost annually a visitor—a circumstance which has left many
traces in the Waverley Novels. A
third (though I believe of later appointment), with whom his intimacy was not less strict;
was the late excellent Sir Robert Dundas, of
Beechwood, Bart.; and a fourth, was the friend of his boyhood, one of the dearest he ever
had, Colin Mackenzie of Portmore. With these
gentlemen’s families, he and his lived in such constant familiarity of kindness, that
the children all called their fathers’ colleagues uncles, and the mothers of their
little friends, aunts; and in truth, the establishment was a brotherhood.
Scott’s nomination as Clerk of Session, appeared
in the same Gazette (March 8, 1806), which
announced the instalment of the Hon. Henry Erskine
and John Clerk of Eldin as Lord Advocate and
Solicitor-General for Scotland. The promotion at such a moment, of a distinguished Tory,
might well excite the wonder of the Parliament House, and even when the circumstances were
explained, the inferior local adherents of the triumphant cause were far from considering
the conduct of their superiors in this matter with feelings of satisfaction. The indication
of such humours was deeply resented by his haughty spirit; and he in his turn showed his
irritation in a manner well calculated to extend to higher quarters the spleen with which
his advancement had been regarded by persons wholly unworthy of his attention. In short, it
was almost immediately after a Whig Ministry had gazetted his
appointment to an office which had for twelve months formed a principal object of his
ambition, that, rebelling against the implied suspicion of his having accepted something
like a personal obligation at the hands of adverse politicians, he for the first time put
himself forward as a decided Tory partisan. The impeachment of Lord Melville was among the first measures of the new Government; and
personal affection and gratitude graced as well as heightened the zeal with which
Scott watched the issue of this, in his eyes, vindictive
proceeding; but, though the ex-minister’s ultimate acquittal was, as to all the
charges involving his personal honour, complete, it must now be allowed that the
investigation brought out many circumstances by no means creditable to his discretion; and
the rejoicings of his friends ought not, therefore, to have been scornfully jubilant. Such
they were, however at least in Edinburgh; and Scott took his share in
them by inditing a song, which was sung by
James Ballantyne, and received with clamorous
applauses, at a public dinner given in honour of the event on the 27th of June, 1806. I
regret that this piece was inadvertently omitted in the late collective edition of his
poetical works; but since such is
the case, I consider myself bound to insert it here. However he may have regretted it
afterwards, he authorized its publication in the newspapers of the time, and my narrative
would fail to convey a complete view of the man, if I should draw a veil over the
expression, thus deliberate, of some of the strongest personal feelings that ever animated
his verse.
“HEALTH TO LORD MELVILLE, Air—Carrickfergus. “Since here we are set in array round the table, Five hundred good fellows well met in a hall, Come listen, brave boys, and I’ll sing as I’m able How innocence triumphed and pride got a fall. But push round the claret— Come, stewards, don’t spare it— With rapture you’ll drink to the toast that I give: Here, boys, Off with it merrily— Melville for
ever, and long may he live! “What were the Whigs doing when, boldly pursuing, Pitt
banished Rebellion, gave Treason a string? Why, they swore, on their honour, for Arthur O’Connor, And fought hard for Despard against country and king. Well, then, we knew, boys, Pitt and Melville were true
boys, And the tempest was raised by the friends of Reform. Ah, wo! Weep to his memory; Low lies the pilot that weathered the storm! “And pray, don’t you mind when the Blues first were raising, And we scarcely could think the house safe o’er our
heads? When villains and coxcombs, French politics praising, Drove peace from our tables and sleep from our beds? Our hearts they grew bolder When, musket on shoulder, Stepp’d forth our old Statesman example to give. Come, boys, never fear, Drink the Blue grenadier Here’s to old Harry, and long may he live! “They would turn us adrift; though rely, sir, upon it— Our own faithful chronicles warrant us that The free mountaineer and his bonny blue bonnet Have oft gone as far as the regular’s hat. We laugh at their taunting, For all we are wanting Is license our life for our country to give. Off with it merrily, Horse, foot, and artillery,— Each loyal Volunteer, long may he live. “’Tis not us alone, boys—the Army and Navy Have each got a slap ’mid their politic pranks; Cornwallis cashier’d, that watched winters to
save ye, And the Cape called a bauble, unworthy of thanks. But vain is their taunt, No soldier shall want The thanks that his country to valour can give: Come, boys, Drink it off merrily,— Sir David
and Popham, and long may they live! “And then our revenue—Lord knows how they viewed it While each petty Statesman talked lofty and big; But the beer-tax was weak, as if Whitbread had brewed it, And the pig-iron duty a shame to a pig. In vain is their vaunting, Too surely there’s wanting What judgment, experience, and steadiness give; Come, boys, Drink about merrily,— Health to sage Melville, and long may he live! “Our King, too—our Princess—I dare not say more, sir,— May Providence watch them with mercy and might! While there’s one Scottish hand that can wag a claymore, sir, They shall ne’er want a friend to stand up for their
right. Be damn’d he that dare not,— For my part, I’ll spare not To beauty afflicted a tribute to give: Fill it up steadily, Drink it off readily,— Here’s to the Princess, and long may she live. “And since we must not set Auld Reikie in glory, And make her brown visage as light as her heart;* Till each man illumine his own upper story, Nor law-book nor lawyer shall force us to part. In Grenville and Spencer, And some few good men, sir,
* The Magistrates of Edinburgh had rejected an
application for illumination of the town, on the arrival of the news of
Lord Melville’s acquittal.
High talents we honour, slight difference forgive; But the Brewer
we’ll hoax, Tallyho to the Fox, And drink Melville for ever, as long as we live!”
This song gave great offence to the many sincere personal friends whom
Scott numbered among the upper ranks of the Whigs;
and, in particular, it created a marked coldness towards him on the part of the
accomplished and amiable Countess of Rosslyn (a very
intimate friend of his favourite patroness, Lady
Dalkeith), which, as his letters show, wounded his feelings severely,—the
more so, I have no doubt, because a little reflection must have made him repent not a few
of its allusions. He was consoled, however, by abundant testimonies of Tory approbation;
and, among others, by the following note from Mr
Canning:—
To Walter Scott, Esq. Edinburgh.
“London, July 14, 1806. “Dear Sir,
“I should not think it necessary to trouble you with
a direct acknowledgment of the very acceptable present which you were so good
as to send me through Mr William Rose, if
I had not happened to hear that some of those persons who could not indeed be
expected to be pleased with your composition, have thought proper to be very
loud and petulant in the expression of their disapprobation. Those, therefore,
who approve and are thankful for your exertions in a cause which they have much
at heart, owe it to themselves, as well as to you, that the expressions of
their gratitude and pleasure, should reach you in as direct a manner as
possible. I hope that, in the course of next year, you are likely to afford
your friends in this part of the world an opportu-nity of
repeating these expressions to you in person; and I have the honour to be, dear
sir, with great truth, your very sincere and obedient servant,
George Canning.”
Scott’s Tory feelings appear to have been kept in
a very excited state during the whole of this short reign of the Whigs. He then, for the
first time, mingled keenly in the details of county politics,—canvassed electors—harangued
meetings; and, in a word, made himself conspicuous as a leading instrument of his
party—more especially as an indefatigable local manager, wherever the parliamentary
interest of the Buccleuch family was in peril. But he was, in truth,
earnest and serious in his belief that the new rulers of the country were disposed to
abolish many of its most valuable institutions; and he regarded with special jealousy
certain schemes of innovation with respect to the courts of law and the administration of
justice, which were set on foot by the crown officers for Scotland. At a debate of the
Faculty of Advocates on some of these propositions, he made a speech much longer than any
he had ever before delivered in that assembly; and several who heard it have assured me,
that it had a flow and energy of eloquence for which those who knew him best had been quite
unprepared. When the meeting broke up, he walked across the Mound, on his way to Castle
Street, between Mr Jeffrey and another of his
reforming friends, who complimented him on the rhetorical powers he had been displaying,
and would willingly have treated the subject-matter of the discussion playfully. But his
feelings had been moved to an extent far beyond their apprehension: he exclaimed,
“No, no—’tis no laughing matter; little by little, whatever your wishes
may be, you will destroy and undermine, until nothing of what makes Scotland Scotland shall remain.” And so
saying, he turned round to conceal his agitation—but not until Mr
Jeffrey saw tears gushing down his cheek—resting his head until he recovered
himself on the wall of the Mound. Seldom, if ever, in his more advanced age, did any
feelings obtain such mastery.
CHAPTER IV. DRYDEN—CRITICAL PIECES—EDITION OF SLINGSBY’S
MEMOIRS, &C.—MARMION BEGUN—VISIT TO
LONDON—ELLIS—ROSE—CANNING—MISS
SEWARD—SCOTT SECRETARY TO THE COMMISSION ON SCOTCH
JURISPRUDENCE—LETTERS TO SOUTHEY, &C.—PUBLICATION OF MARMION—ANECDOTES—THE EDINBURGH REVIEW ON
MARMION—1806—1808.
During the whole of 1806 and 1807 Dryden continued to occupy the greater share of Scott’s literary hours; but in the course of the former year he found
time and, notwithstanding all these political bickerings, inclination, to draw up three
papers for the Edinburgh Review; viz. one on the poems and translations of the
Hon. William Herbert; a second, more valuable and elaborate, in which he compared
the “Specimens of Early English
Romances” by Ellis with the
“Selection of Ancient
English Metrical Romances” by Ritson; and, lastly, that exquisite piece of humour, his article on the Miseries of Human Life, to which Mr Jeffrey added some, if not all, of the Reviewers’
Groans with which it concludes, It was in September 1806, too, that Messrs Longman put forth, in a separate volume, those of his own
Ballads which, having been included in the Minstrelsy, were already their property, together with a collection of his
“Lyrical Pieces;” for which
he received L.100. This publication, obviously suggested by the continued popularity of the
Lay, was highly successful, seven thousand
copies having been disposed of before
the first collective edition of his poetical works appeared. He had also proposed to
include the House of Aspen in the same
volume, but on reflection once more laid his prose tragedy aside. About the same time he
issued, though without his name, a miscellaneous volume, entitled, “Original Memoirs written during the Great
Civil Wars; being the Life of Sir Henry Slingsby, and Memoirs of Captain Hodgson, with
Notes,” &c. Scott’s preface consists of a
brief but elegant and interesting biography of the gallant cavalier Slingsby; his notes are few and unimportant. This volume
(by which he gained nothing as editor) was put forth in October by Messrs Constable; and in November, 1806, he began Marmion, the
publication of which was the first important business of his in which that enterprising
firm had a primary part.
He was at this time in frequent communication with several leading
booksellers, each of whom would willingly have engrossed his labours; but from the moment
that his literary undertakings began to be serious, he seems to have resolved against
forming so strict a connexion with any one publisher, as might at all interfere with the
freedom of his transactions. I think it not improbable that his interests as the partner of
Ballantyne may have had some influence in this
part of his conduct; at all events, there can be little doubt that the hope of sharing more
and more in the profits of Scott’s original works
induced the competing booksellers to continue and extend their patronage of the Edinburgh
printer, who had been introduced to their notice as the personal friend of the most rising
author of the day. But, nevertheless, I can have no doubt that Scott
was mainly guided by his love of independence. It was always his maxim, that no author
should ever let any one house fancy that they had obtained a right of
monopoly over his works—or, as he expressed it, in the language of the Scotch feudalists,
“that they had completely thirled him to their mill;” and through
life, as we shall see, the instant he perceived the least trace of this feeling, he
asserted his freedom, not by word, but by some decided deed, on whatever considerations of
pecuniary convenience the step might make it necessary for him to trample. Of the conduct
of Messrs Longman, who had been principally
concerned in the publication of the Minstrelsy, the Lay, Sir Tristrem, and the Ballads, he certainly could have had no reason to
complain; on the contrary, he has in various places attested that it was liberal and
handsome beyond his expectation; but, nevertheless, a negotiation which they now opened
proved fruitless, and ultimately they had no share whatever in the second of his original
works.
Constable offered a thousand guineas for the poem
very shortly after it was begun, and without having seen one line of it; and Scott, without hesitation, accepted this proposal. It may be
gathered from the Introduction of 1830, that private circumstances of a delicate nature
rendered it highly desirable for him to obtain the immediate command of such a sum; the
price was actually paid long before the poem was published; and it suits very well with
Constable’s character to suppose that his readiness to
advance the money may have outstripped the calculations of more established dealers, and
thus cast the balance in his favour. He was not, however, so unwise as to keep the whole
adventure to himself. His bargain being fairly concluded, he tendered one-fourth of the
copyright to Mr Miller of Albemarle Street, and
another to Mr Murray, then of Fleet Street, London;
and both these booksellers appear to have embraced his proposition with eagerness.
“I am,” Murray wrote to
Constable, on the 6th February, 1807 “truly sensible of the kind remembrance of
me in your liberal purchase. You have rendered Mr Miller no less
happy by your admission of him; and we both view it as honourable, profitable, and
glorious to be concerned in the publication of a new poem by Walter
Scott.” The news that a thousand guineas had been paid for an
unseen and unfinished MS. appeared in those days portentous; and it must be allowed that
the writer who received such a sum for a performance in embryo, had made a great step in
the hazards, as well as in the honours, of authorship.
The private circumstances which he alludes to as having precipitated his
re-appearance as a poet were connected with his brother Thomas’s final withdrawal from the profession of a Writer to the
Signet, which arrangement seems to have become quite necessary towards the end of 1806; but
it is extremely improbable that, in the absence of any such occurrence, a young, energetic,
and ambitious man would have long resisted the cheering stimulus of such success as had
attended the Lay of the Last Minstrel.
“I had formed,” he says, “the prudent
resolution to bestow a little more labour than I had yet done on my productions, and to
be in no hurry again to announce myself as a candidate for literary fame. Accordingly,
particular passages of a poem which was finally called ‘Marmion’ were laboured with a good deal of care
by one by whom much care was seldom bestowed. Whether the work was worth the labour or
not, I am no competent judge; but I may be permitted to say, that the period of its
composition was a very happy one in my life; so much so, that I remember with pleasure
at this moment (1830) some of the spots in which particular passages were composed. It
is probably owing to this that the introductions to the several cantos assumed the form
of familiar epistles to my intimate friends, in which I alluded,
perhaps more than was necessary or graceful, to my domestic occupations and
amusements—a loquacity which may be excused by those who remember that I was still
young, light-headed, and happy, and that out of the abundance of the
heart the mouth speaketh.”*
The first four of the Introductory Epistles are dated Ashestiel, and they
point out very distinctly some of the “spots” which, after the lapse of so many
years, he remembered with pleasure, for their connexion with particular passages of Marmion. There is a knoll with some tall old
ashes on the adjoining farm of the Peel, where he was very fond of sitting by himself, and
it still bears the name of the Sheriff’s knowe. Another
favourite seat was beneath a huge oak hard by the Tweed, at the extremity of the haugh of Ashestiel. It was here a that while meditating his verses,
he used “to stray, And waste the solitary day In plucking from yon fen the reed, And watch it floating down the Tweed; Or idly list the shrilling lay With which the milkmaid cheers her way. Marking its cadence rise and fail, As from the field, beneath her pail, She trips it down the uneven dale.”
He frequently wandered far from home, however, attended only by his dog,
and would return late in the evening, having let hours after hours slip away among the soft
and melancholy wildernesses where Yarrow creeps from her fountains. The lines, “Oft in my mind such thoughts awake, By lone Saint Mary’s silent lake,” &c.,
* Introduction to Marmion, 1830.
paint a scene not less impressive than what Byron
found amidst the gigantic pines of the forest of Ravenna; and how completely does he set
himself before us in the moment of his gentler and more solemn inspiration, by the closing
couplet, “Your horse’s hoof-tread sounds too rude, So stilly is the solitude.” But when the theme was of a more stirring order, he enjoyed pursuing it over brake and
fell at the full speed of his Lieutenant.
I well remember his saying, as I rode with him across the hills from Ashestiel to Newark
one day in his declining years—“Oh, man, I had many a grand gallop among these
braes when I was thinking of Marmion,
but a trotting canny pony must serve me now.” His friend, Mr Skene, however, informs me that many of the more
energetic descriptions, and particularly that of the battle of Flodden, were struck out
while he was in quarters again with his cavalry, in the autumn of 1807. “In the
intervals of drilling,” he says, “Scott used to delight in walking his powerful black steed up and down
by himself upon the Portobello sands, within the beating of the surge; and now and then
you would see him plunge in his spurs and go off as if at the charge, with the spray
dashing about him. As we rode back to Musselburgh, he often came and placed himself
beside me to repeat the verses that he had been composing during these pauses of our
exercise.”
He seems to have communicated fragments of the poem very freely during
the whole of its progress. As early as the 22d February, 1807, I find Mrs Hayman acknowledging, in the name of the Princess of Wales, the receipt of a copy of the
Introduction to Canto III., in which occurs the tribute to Her Royal
Highness’s heroic father, mortally wounded the year before at Jena—a tribute so
grateful to her feelings that she herself shortly after sent the poet an elegant silver
vase as a memorial of her thankfulness. And about the same time the Marchioness of Abercorn expresses the delight with which both
she and her lord had read the generous verses on Pitt
and Fox, in another of those epistles. But his
connexion with this noble family was no new one; for his father, and afterwards his brother
Thomas, had been the auditors of their Scotch
rental.
In March his researches concerning Dryden carried him again to the south. During several weeks he gave his day
pretty regularly to the pamphlets and MSS. of the British Museum, and the evening to the
brilliant societies that now courted him whenever he came within their sphere. His recent
political demonstrations during the brief reign of the Whigs, seem to have procured for him
on this occasion a welcome of redoubled warmth among the leaders of his own now once more
victorious party. “As I had,” he writes to his brother-in-law, in India, “contrary to many who
avowed the same opinions in sunshine, held fast my integrity during the Foxites’
interval of power, I found myself of course very well with the new
administration.” But he uniformly reserved his Saturday and Sunday either for
Mr Ellis, at Sunninghill, or Lord and Lady Abercorn,
at their beautiful villa near Stanmore; and the press copy of Cantos I. and II. of Marmion attests that most of it reached
Ballantyne in sheets, franked by the Marquis, or his son-in-law, Lord Aberdeen, during April, 1807.
Before he turned homeward he made a short visit to his friend William Stewart Rose, at his cottage of Gundimore, in
Hampshire, and enjoyed in his company various long rides in the New Forest, a day in the dockyard of Portsmouth, and two or
three more in the Isle of Wight.* Several sheets of the MS., and corrected proofs of Canto
III. are also under covers franked from Gundimore by Mr Rose; and I
think I must quote the note which accompanied one of these detachments, as
* I am sure I shall gratify every reader by extracting some
lines, alluding to Scott’s visit at Mr
Rose’s Marine Villa, from an unpublished poem, entitled
“Gundimore,“ kindly placed at my disposal
by his host.
“Here Walter Scott has woo’d
the northern muse; Here he with me has joy’d to walk or cruise; And hence has pricked through Yten’s holt, where we Have called to mind how under greenwood tree, Pierced by the partner of his ‘woodland craft,’ King Rufus fell by
Tyrrell’s random shaft. Hence have we ranged by Celtic camps and barrows, Or climbed the expectant bark, to thread the Narrows Of Hurst, bound westward to the gloomy bower Where Charles was prisoned in yon
Island tower; Or from a longer flight alighted where Our navies to recruit their strength repair— And there have seen the ready shot and gun; Seen in red steam the molten copper run; And massive anchor forged, whose iron teeth Should hold the three-decked ship when billows seethe; And when the arsenal’s dark stithy rang With the loud hammers of the Cyclop-gang, Swallowing the darkness up, have seen with wonder, The flashing fire, and heard fast-following thunder. Here, witched from summer sea and softer reign, Foscolo courted Muse of milder
strain. On these ribbed sands was Coleridge
pleased to pace, While ebbing seas have hummed a rolling base To his rapt talk. Alas! all these are gone, ‘And I and other creeping things live on.’ The flask no more, dear Walter, shall I quaff With thee, no more enjoy thy hearty laugh. showing the good-natured buoyancy of mind and temper with which the
Poet received in every stage of his progress the hints and suggestions of his watchful
friends, Erskine and Ballantyne. The latter having animadverted on the first draught of the song
“Where shall the Lover rest,” and sketched what
he thought would be a better arrangement of the stanza Scott answers
as follows:—
“Dear James,
“I am much obliged to you for the rhymes. I presume
it can make no difference as to the air if the first three lines rhyme; and I
wish to know, with your leisure, if it is absolutely necessary that the fourth
should be out of poetic rhythm, as ‘the deserted fair one’
certainly is.—For example would this do? ‘Should my heart from thee falter, To another love alter, (For the rhyme we’ll say Walter) Deserting my lover.’ There is here the same number of syllables, but arrang- No more shalt thou to me extend thy hand, A welcome pilgrim to my father’s land! * * *
* Alone such friends and comrades I deplore, And peopled but with phantoms is the shore: Hence have I fled my haunted beach; yet so Would not alike a sylvan home forego. Though wakening fond regrets its sere and yellow Leaves, and sweet inland murmur, serve to mellow And soothe the sobered sorrow they recall, When mantled in the faded garb of fall;— But wind and wave—unlike the sighing sedge And murmuring leaf—gave grief a coarser edge: And in each howling blast my fancy hears ‘The voices of the dead, and songs of other
years.’” ed in cadence. I return the proof and send
more copy. There will be six Cantos. Yours truly,
W. S.”
In the first week of May we find him at Lichfield, having diverged from
the great road to Scotland for the purpose of visiting Miss
Seward. Her account of her old correspondent, whom till now she had never
seen, was addressed to Mr Cary, the translator of
Dante; and it may interest the reader to compare it
with other similar sketches of earlier and later date. “On Friday last,”
she says, “the poetically great Walter Scott
came ‘like a sunbeam to my dwelling.’ This proudest boast of the
Caledonian muse is tall, and rather robust than slender, but lame in the same manner as
Mr Hayley, and in a greater measure. Neither
the contour of his face nor yet his features are elegant; his complexion healthy, and
somewhat fair, without bloom. We find the singularity of brown hair and eyelashes, with
flaxen eyebrows, and a countenance open, ingenuous, and benevolent. When seriously
conversing or earnestly attentive, though his eyes are rather of a lightish grey, deep
thought is on their lids: he contracts his brow, and the rays of genius gleam aslant
from the orbs beneath them. An upper lip too long prevents his mouth from being
decidedly handsome, but the sweetest emanations of temper and heart play about it when
he talks cheerfully or smiles; and in company he is much oftener gay than
contemplative. His conversation—an overflowing fountain of brilliant wit, apposite
allusion, and playful archness—while on serious themes it is nervous and eloquent; the
accent decidedly Scotch, yet by no means broad. On the whole, no expectation is
disappointed which his poetry must excite in all who feel the power and graces of human
inspiration. . . . . Not less astonishing than was Johnson’s memory is that of Mr
Scott; like Johnson, also, his recitation is too
monotonous and violent to do justice either to his own writings or those of others. The
stranger guest delighted us all by the unaffected charms of his mind and manners. Such
visits are among the most high-prized honours which my writings have procured for
me.” Miss Seward adds, that she showed him the passage
in Cary’s Dante where Michael Scott occurs, and that though he admired the
spirit and skill of the version, he confessed his inability to find pleasure in the Divina Comedia. “The plan,”
he said, “appeared to him unhappy; the personal malignity and strange mode of
revenge presumptuous and uninteresting.”
By the 12th of May he was at Edinburgh for the commencement of the
summer session, and the printing seems thenceforth to have gone on at times with great
rapidity, at others slowly and irregularly; the latter Cantos having no doubt been merely
blocked out when the first went to press, and his professional avocations, but above all,
his Dryden, occasioning frequent
interruptions. Just a year had elapsed from his beginning the poem when he penned the
Epistle for Canto IV. at Ashestiel; and who, that considers how busily his various pursuits
and labours had been crowding the interval, can wonder to be told that “Even now, it scarcely seems a day Since first I tuned this idle lay— A task so often laid aside When leisure graver cares denied— That now November’s dreary gale, Whose voice inspired my opening tale, That same November gale once more Whirls the dry leaves on Yarrow shore.”
The fifth Introduction was written in Edinburgh in the month following; that to the last Canto, during the Christmas
festivities of Merton-house, where, from the first days of his ballad-rhyming, down to the
close of his life, he, like his bearded ancestor, usually spent that season with the
immediate head of the race. The bulky appendix of notes, including a mass of curious
antiquarian quotations, must have moved somewhat slowly through the printers’ hands;
but Marmion was at length ready for
publication by the middle of February 1808.
Among the “graver cares” which he alludes to as
having interrupted his progress in the poem, the chief were, as has been already hinted,
those arising from the pecuniary embarrassments of his brother. These are mentioned in a
letter to Miss Seward, dated in August 1807. The
lady had, among other things, announced her pleasure in the prospect of a visit from the
author of “Madoc,” expressed
her admiration of “Master Betty, the
Young Roscius,” and lamented the father’s design of
placing that “miraculous boy” for three years under a certain
“schoolmaster of eminence at Shrewsbury.”* Scott says in
answer:—
“Since I was favoured with your letter, my dear
Miss Seward, I have brought the
unpleasant transactions to which my last letter alluded pretty near to a
conclusion, much more fortunate than I had ventured to hope. Of my brother’s creditors, those connected
with him by blood or friendship, showed all the kindness which those ties are
in Scotland peculiarly calculated to produce; and what is here much more
uncommon, those who had no personal connexion with him or his family, showed a
liberality which would not have misbecome the generosity of the English. Upon
the whole, his affairs are
“See Miss Seward’s Letters, vol.
vi. p. 364.
put in a course of management which I hope will enable
him to begin life anew with renovated hopes, and not entirely destitute of the
means of recommencing business.
“I am very happy—although a little jealous
withal—that you are to have the satisfaction of Southey’s personal acquaintance. I am certain you will
like the Epic bard exceedingly. Although he does not deign to enter into the
mere trifling intercourse of society, yet when a sympathetic spirit calls him
forth, no man talks with more animation on literary topics; and perhaps no man
in England has read and studied so much with the same powers of making use of
the information which he is so indefatigable in acquiring. I despair of
reconciling you to my little friend Jeffrey, although I think I could trust to his making some
impression on your prepossession, were you to converse with him. I think
Southey does himself injustice in supposing the Edinburgh Review, or any other,
could have sunk Madoc, even
for a time. But the size and price of the work, joined to the frivolity of an
age which must be treated as nurses humour children, are sufficient reasons why
a poem, on so chaste a model, should not have taken immediately. We know the
similar fate of Milton’simmortal work, in the witty
age of Charles II., at a time when poetry
was much more fashionable than at present. As to the division of the profits, I
only think that Southey does not understand the gentlemen
of the trade, emphatically so called, as well as I do.
Without any greater degree of fourberie than they conceive the long practice of their
brethren has rendered matter of prescriptive right, they contrive to clip the
author’s proportion of profits down to a mere trifle. It is the tale of
the fox that went a hunting with the lion, upon con-dition of equal division of the spoil; and yet I do not
quite blame the booksellers, when I consider the very singular nature of their
mystery. A butcher generally understands something
of black cattle, and wo betide the jockey who should presume to exercise his
profession without a competent knowledge of horse-flesh. But who ever heard of
a bookseller pretending to understand the commodity in which he dealt? They are
the only tradesmen in the world who professedly, and by choice, deal in what is
called ‘a pig in a poke.’ When you consider the abominable trash
which, by their sheer ignorance, is published every year, you will readily
excuse them for the indemnification which they must necessarily obtain at the
expense of authors of some value. In fact, though the account between an
individual bookseller and such a man as Southey may be
iniquitous enough, yet I apprehend that upon the whole the account between the trade and the authors of Britain at large is pretty
fairly balanced; and what these gentlemen gain at the expense of one class of
writers, is lavished, in many cases, in bringing forward other works of little
value. I do not know but this, upon the whole, is favourable to the cause of
literature. A bookseller publishes twenty books, in hopes of hitting upon one
good speculation, as a person buys a parcel of shares in a lottery, in hopes of
gaining a prize. Thus the road is open to all, and if the successful candidate
is a little fleeced, in order to form petty prizes to console the losing
adventurers, still the cause of literature is benefited, since none is excluded
from the privilege of competition. This does not apologize for
Southey’s carelessness about his interest—for, —‘his name is up, and may go From Toledo to Madrid.’
“Pray, don’t trust Southey too long with Mr
White. He is even more determined in his admiration of old ruins than I am. You see I am glad to pick a hole in his
jacket, being more jealous of his personal favour in Miss Seward’s eyes than of his poetical
reputation.
“I quite agree with you about the plan of young
Betty’s education, and am no
great idolater of the learned languages, excepting for what they contain. We
spend in youth that time in admiring the wards of the key, which we should
employ in opening the cabinet and examining its treasures. A prudent and
accomplished friend, who would make instruction acceptable to him for the sake
of the amusement it conveys, would be worth an hundred schools. How can so
wonderfully premature a genius, accustomed to excite interest in thousands, be
made a member of a class with other boys!”
To return to Scott’s own
“graver cares” while Marmion
was in progress—among them were those of preparing himself for an office to which he was
formally appointed soon afterwards, namely, that of Secretary to a Parliamentary Commission
for the improvement of Scottish Jurisprudence. This Commission, at the head of which was
Sir Islay Campbell, Lord President of the Court
of Session, continued in operation for two or three years. Scott’s salary, as
secretary, was a mere trifle; but he had been led to expect that his exertions in this
capacity would lead to better things. In giving a general view of his affairs to his
brother-in-law in India, he says: “The
Clerk of Session who retired to make way for me, retains the appointments, while I do
the duty. This was rather a hard bargain, but it was made when the Administration was
going to pieces, and I was glad to swim ashore on a plank of the wreck;
or, in a word, to be provided for any how, before the new people came in. To be sure,
nobody could have foreseen that in a year’s time my friends were all to be in
again. . . . I am principally pleased with my new appointment as being conferred on me
by our chief law lords and King’s counsel, and consequently an honourable
professional distinction. The employment will be but temporary, but may have
consequences important to my future lot in life, if I give due satisfaction in the
discharge of it.” He appears accordingly to have submitted to a great deal of
miserable drudgery in mastering beforehand the details of the technical controversies which
had called for legislatorial interference; and he discharged his functions, as usual, with
the warm approbation of his superiors; but no result followed. This is alluded to, among
other things, in his correspondence with Mr Southey,
during the printing of Marmion. I shall now go back to extract
some of these letters; they will not only enable the reader to fill up the outline of the
preceding narrative, as regards Scott’s own various occupations
at this period, but illustrate very strikingly the readiness with which, however occupied,
he would turn aside, whenever he saw any opportunity of forwarding the pursuits and
interests of other literary men.
Mr Southey had written to Scott, on the 27th September, 1807, informing him that he had desired his
booksellers to forward a copy of “Palmerin of England,” then on the eve of publication—announcing also his
“Chronicle of the Cid;” and
adding, “I rejoice to hear that we are to have another Lay, and hope we may have
as many Last Lays of the Minstrel, as our ancestors had Last Words of Mr Baxter.”
Scott’s answer was this:—
To Robert Southey, Esq.
“Ashestiel, 1st October, 1807. “My dear Southey,
“It will give me the most sincere pleasure to receive
any token of your friendly remembrance, more especially in the shape of a
romance of knight-errantry. You know so well how to furbish the arms of a
preux chevalier, without converting him à laTressan into a modern light dragoon, that
my expectations from Palmerin are very high, and I have given directions to have him
sent to this retreat so soon as he reaches Edinburgh. The half-guinea for
Hogg’spoems was duly received. The uncertainty
of your residence prevented the book being sent at the time proposed—it shall
be forwarded from Edinburgh to the bookseller at Carlisle, who will probably
know how to send it safe. I hope very soon to send you my Life of Dryden, and eke my lastLay—(by the way, the former ditty was only proposed as the lay of
the last Minstrel, not his last
fitt). I grieve that you have renounced the harp; but still I confide, that,
having often touched it so much to the delight of the hearers, you will return
to it again after a short interval. As I don’t much admire compliments,
you may believe me sincere when I tell you, that I have read Madoc three times since my first cursory
perusal, and each time with increased admiration of the poetry. But a poem
whose merits are of that higher tone does not immediately take with the public
at large. It is even possible that during your own life—and may it be as long
as every real lover of literature can wish—you must be contented with the
applause of the few whom nature has gifted with the rare taste for
discriminating in poetry. But the mere Readers of verse must one day come in,
and then Ma-doc will assume
his real place at the feet of Milton.
Now this opinion of mine was not that (to speak frankly) which I formed on
reading the poem at first, though I then felt much of its merit. I hope you
have not and don’t mean to part with the copyright. I do not think
Wordsworth and you understand the
bookselling animal well enough, and wish you would one day try my friend
Constable, who would give any terms
for a connexion with you. I am most anxious to see the Cid. Do you know I committed a theft upon
you (neither of gait, kine, nor horse, nor outside nor inside plenishing, such
as my forefathers sought in Cumberland), but of many verses of the Queen
Auragua,* or howsoever you spell her name? I repeated them to a very great lady
(the Princess of Wales), who was so much
delighted with them, that I think she got them by heart also. She asked a copy,
but that I declined to give, under pretence I could not give an accurate one;
but I promised to prefer her request to you. If you wish to oblige her R. H., I
will get the verses transmitted to her; if not, the thing may be passed over.
“Many thanks for your invitation to Keswick, which I
hope to accept, time and season permitting. Is your brother with you? if so, remember me kindly. Where is Wordsworth, and what doth he do? I wrote him a
few lines some weeks ago, which I suspect never came to hand. I suppose you are
possessed of all relating to the Cid,
otherwise I would mention an old romance, chiefly relating to his banishment,
which is in John Frere’s
possession, and from which he made some lively translations in a tripping
Alexandrine stanza. I dare say he would communicate the original, if it could
* The ballad of Queen Orraca was first published in the Edinburgh Annual Register
for 1808.
be of the least use.* I am an humble petitioner that your
interesting Spanish ballads be in some shape appended to the Cid. Be assured they will give him wings.
There is a long letter written with a pen like a stick. I beg my respects to
Mrs Southey, in which Mrs Scott joins; and I am, very truly and
affectionately, yours,
Walter Scott.”
To the Same.
“Edinburgh, November 1807. “My dear Southey,
“I received your letter some time, but had then no
opportunity to see Constable, as I was
residing at some distance from Edinburgh. Since I came to town I spoke to
Constable, whom I find anxious to be connected with
you. It occurs to me that the only difference between him and our fathers in
the Row is on the principle contained in the old proverb:—He that would
thrive—must rise by five;—He that has thriven—may lye till seven.
Constablewould thrive, and
therefore bestows more pains than our fathers who have
thriven. I do not speak this without book, because I know he has pushed off
several books which had got aground in the Row. But, to say the truth, I have
always found advantage in keeping on good terms with several of the trade, but
never suffering any one of them to consider me as a monopoly. They are very
like farmers, who thrive best at a high rent; and, in general, take most pains
to sell a book that has cost them money to purchase. The bad
* Mr Southey
introduced, in the appendix to his Chronicle of the Cid, some specimens
of Mr Frere’s admirable
translation of the ancient Poema del Cid, to which Scott here alludes.
sale of Thalaba is truly astonishing; it should
have sold off in a twelvemonth at farthest.
“As you occasionally review, will you forgive my
suggesting a circumstance for your consideration, to which you will give
exactly the degree of weight you please. I am perfectly certain that Jeffrey would think himself both happy and
honoured in receiving any communications which you might send him, choosing
your books and expressing your own opinions. The terms of the Edinburgh Review are ten guineas
a-sheet, and will shortly be advanced considerably. I question if the same
unpleasant sort of work is any where else so well compensated. The only reason
which occurs to me as likely to prevent your affording the Edinburgh some critical Assistance, is the severity of the
criticisms upon Madoc and
Thalaba. I do not know
if this will be at all removed by assuring you, as I can do upon my honour,
that Jeffrey has, notwithstanding the flippancy of these
articles, the most sincere respect both for your person and talents. The other
day I designedly led the conversation on that subject, and had the same reason
I always have had to consider his attack as arising from a radical difference
in point of taste, or rather feeling of poetry, but by no means from any thing
approaching either to enmity or a false conception of your talents. I do not
think that a difference of this sort should prevent you, if you are otherwise
disposed to do so, from carrying a proportion at least of your critical labours
to a much better market than the Annual.* Pray think of this, and if you are disposed to give your
assistance, I am positively certain that I can transact the matter with the
utmost delicacy towards both my friends. I am certain
* The Annual
Review, conducted by Dr Arthur
Aikin, commenced in 1802, and was discontinued in 1808.
you may add L.100 a-year, or double the sum, to your
income in this way with almost no trouble, and, as times go, that is no trifle.
“I have to thank you for Palmerin, which has been my afternoon
reading for some days. I like it very much, although it is, I think,
considerably inferior to the Amadis. But I wait with double anxiety for the Cid, in which I expect to find very much
information as well as amusement. One discovery I have made is, that we
understand little or nothing of Don
Quixote except by the Spanish romances. The English and French
romances throw very little light on the subject of the doughty cavalier of La
Mancha. I am thinking of publishing a small edition of the Morte Arthur, merely to preserve that
ancient record of English chivalry; but my copy is so late as 1637, so I must
look out for earlier editions to collate. That of Caxton is, I believe, introuvable. Will you give me your opinion on this
project? I have written to Mr Frere
about the Spanish books, but I do not very well know if my letter has reached
him. I expect to bring Constable to a
point respecting the poem of Hindoo
Mythology.* I should esteem myself very fortunate in being assisting
in bringing forth a twin brother of Thalaba. Wordsworth is harshly treated in the Edinburgh Review, but Jeffrey gives the sonnets as much praise as he usually does to
any body. I made him admire the song of Lord Clifford’s minstrel, which I
like exceedingly myself. But many of Wordsworth’s
lesser poems are caviare, not only to the multitude, but
to all who judge of poetry by the established rules of criticism. Some of them,
I can safely say, I like the better for these aberrations; in
* The
Curse of Kehama was published by Longman and Co. in 1810.
others they get beyond me at
any rate, they ought to have been more cautiously hazarded. I hope soon to send
you a Life of Dryden and a
lay of former times. The
latter I would willingly have bestowed more time upon; but what can I do? my
supposed poetical turn ruined me in my profession, and the least it can do is
to give me some occasional assistance instead of it. Mrs Scott begs kind compliments to Mrs Southey, and I am always kindly yours,
Walter Scott.”
Mr Southey, in reply to this letter, stated at
length certain considerations, political, moral, and critical, which rendered it impossible
for him to enlist himself on any terms in the corps of the Edinburgh Reviewers. In speaking of his friend Wordsworth’s last work, which had been rather
severely handled in this Review, he expresses his regret that the poet, in his magnificent
sonnet on Killiecrankie, should
have introduced the Viscount of Dundee without apparent
censure of his character; and, passing to Scott’s
own affairs, he says, “Marmion is
expected as impatiently by me as he is by ten thousand others. Believe me,
Scott, no man of real genius was ever a puritanical stickler
for correctness, or fastidious about any faults except his own. The best artists, both
in poetry and painting, have produced the most. Give us more lays, and correct them at
leisure for after, editions,—not laboriously, but when the amendment comes naturally
and unsought for. It never does to sit down doggedly to correct.” The rest,
Scott’s answer will sufficiently explain.
To Robert Southey, Esq.
Edinburgh, 15th December, 1807. “Dear Southey,
“I yesterday received your letter, and can perfectly
enter into your ideas on the subject of the Review:—indeed, I dislike most extremely the late
stream of politics which they have adopted, as it seems, even on their own
showing, to be cruelly imprudent. Who ever thought he did a service to a person
engaged in an arduous conflict, by proving to him, or attempting to prove to
him, that he must necessarily be beaten; and what effect can such language have
but to accelerate the accomplishment of the prophecy which it contains? And as
for Catholic Emancipation—I am not, God knows, a bigot in religious matters,
nor a friend to persecution; but if a particular sect of religionists are
ipso facto connected with
foreign politics and placed under the spiritual direction of a class of
priests, whose unrivalled dexterity and activity are increased by the rules
which detach them from the rest of the world—I humbly think that we may be
excused from intrusting to them those places in the state where the influence
of such a clergy, who act under the direction of a passive tool of our worst
foe, is likely to be attended with the most fatal consequences. If a gentleman
chooses to walk about with a couple of pounds of gunpowder in his pocket, if I
give him the shelter of my roof, I may at least be permitted to exclude him
from the seat next to the fire. So thinking, I have felt your scruples in doing
any thing for the Review of late.
“As for my good friend Dundee, I cannot admit his culpability in the extent you
allege; and it is scandalous of the Sunday
bard to join in your condemnation, ‘and yet come of a
noble Græme!’ I admit he was tantsoit peu savage, but he was a noble
savage; and the beastly Covenanters against whom he acted, hardly had any claim
to be called men, unless what was founded on their walking upon their hind
feet. You can hardly conceive the perfidy, cruelty, and stupidity of these
people according to the accounts they have themselves preserved. But I admit I
had many cavalier prejudices instilled into me, as my ancestor was a
Killiecrankie man.
“I am very glad the Morte Arthur is in your hands; it has been
long a favourite of mine, and I intended to have made it a handsome book, in
the shape of a small antique-looking quarto, with wooden vignettes of costume.
I wish you would not degrade him into a squat 12mo; but admit the temptation
you will probably feel to put it into the same shape with Palmerin and Amadis. If on this, or any occasion, you
can cast a job in the way of my friend Ballantyne, I should consider it as a particular personal
favour, and the convenience would be pretty near the same to you, as all your
proofs must come by post at any rate. If I can assist you about this matter
command my services. The late Duke of
Roxburghe once showed me some curious remarks of his own upon
the genealogy of the Knights of the Round Table. He was a curious and unwearied
reader of romance, and made many observations in writing; whether they are now
accessible or no I am doubtful. Do you follow the metrical or the printed books
in your account of the Round Table, and would your task be at all facilitated
by the use of a copy of Sir Lancelot, from the press of Jehan
Dennis, which I have by me?
“As to literary envy, I agree with you, dear
Southey, in believing it was never
felt by men who had any powers of their own to employ to better purpose than in
crossing or jostling their companions; and I can say with a safe conscience,
that I am most delighted with praise from those who
convince me of their good taste by admiring the genius of my contemporaries.
Believe me ever, dear Southey, with best compliments to
Mrs S., yours affectionately,
Walter Scott.”
The following letter to another accomplished and attached friend, will bring us back to the completion of Marmion.
To the Right Hon. the Lady Louisa Stuart,
London.
“Edinburgh, 19th January, 1808.
“I am much flattered, dear Lady Louisa, by your kind and encouraging
remembrance. Marmion is, at this instant,
gasping upon Flodden field, and there I have been obliged to leave him for
these few days in the death pangs. I hope I shall find time enough this morning
to knock him on the head with two or three thumping stanzas. I thought I should
have seen Lady Douglas while she was at
Dalkeith, but all the Clerks of Session (excepting myself, who have at present
no salary) are subject to the gout, and one of them was unluckily visited with
a fit on the day I should have been at the Duke’s, so I had his duty and my own to discharge. Pray,
Lady Louisa, don’t look for Marmion in Hawthornden or any where else,
excepting in the too thick quarto which bears his name. As to the fair
* * * * * * *, I beg her pardon with
all my heart and spirit; but I rather think that the habit of writing novels or
romances, whether in prose or verse, is unfavourable to rapid credulity; at
least these sort of folks know that they can easily make fine stories
themselves, and will be therefore as curious in examining those of other folks
as a cunning vintner in detecting the sophistication of his neighbour’s
claret by the help of his own experience. Talking of fair ladies and fables
reminds me of Mr
Sharpe’sballads,* which I suppose
Lady Douglas carried with her to Bothwell. They
exhibit, I think, a very considerable portion of imagination, and occasionally,
though not uniformly, great flow of versification. There is one verse, or
rather the whole description of a musical ghost lady sitting among the ruins of
her father’s tower, that pleased me very much. But his language is too
flowery and even tawdry, and I quarrelled with a lady in the first poem who
yielded up her affection upon her lover showing his white teeth. White teeth
ought to be taken great care of and set great store by; but I cannot allow them
to be an object of passionate admiration—it is too like subduing a lady’s
heart by grinning. Grieved am I for Lady Douglas’s
indisposition, which I hope will be short, and I am sure will be tolerable with
such stores of amusement around her. Last night I saw all the Dalkeith family
presiding in that happy scene of mixed company and Babylonian confusion, the
Queen’s Assembly. I also saw Mr Alison there. I hope
your ladyship has not renounced your intention, of coming to Edinburgh for a
day or two, and that I shall have the honour to see you. We have here a very
diverting lion and sundry wild beasts; but the most meritorious is Miss Lydia White, who is what Oxonians call a
lioness of the first order, with stockings nineteen times nine dyed blue, very
lively, very good-humoured, and extremely absurd. It is very diverting to see
the sober Scotch ladies staring at this phenomenon. I am, with great respect,
your ladyship’s honoured and obliged
Walter Scott.”
* A small volume, entitled “Metrical Legends and Other Poems,”
was published in 1807 by Scott’s friend, Charles
Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq.
Marmion was published on the 23d of
February. The letter which accompanied the presentation copy to Sunninghill, had been
preceded a few weeks before by one containing, an abstract of some of Weber’s German researches, which were turned to
account in the third edition of Sir
Tristrem; but Mr Ellis was at this time
in a very feeble state of health, and that communication had elicited no reply.
To George Ellis, Esq.
“Edinburgh, February 23, 1808. ‘Sleepest thou, wakest thou, George Ellis?’
“Be it known that this letter is little better than a
fehde brief,—as to the
meaning of which, is it not written in Wachter’s
Thesaurus and the Lexicon of Adelung? To
expound more vernacularly, I wrote you, I know not how long ago, a swinging
epistle of and concerning German Romances, with some discoveries not of my own
discovering, and other matter not furiously to the present purpose. And this I
caused to be conveyed to you by ane gentil knizt,
Sir William Forbes, knizt, who assures me he left it as directed, at
Sir Peter Parker’s.
‘Since,’ to vary my style to that of the ledger, ‘none of
yours.’ To avenge myself of this unusual silence, which is a manifest
usurpation of my privileges (being the worst correspondent in the world,
Heber excepted), I have indited to
you an epistle in verse, and that I may be sure of its reaching your hands, I
have caused to be thrown off 2000 copies thereof, that you may not plead
ignorance.
“This is oracular, but will be explained by perusing
the Introduction to the 5th canto of a certain dumpy quarto, entitled Marmion, a Tale of Flodden-field,
of which I have to beg your acceptance of a copy. ‘So wonder on till
time makes all things plain.’ One thing I am sure you will admit,
and that is, that ‘the hobbyhorse is not forgot;’ nay, you
will see I have paraded in my introductions a plurality of hobby-horses a whole
stud, on each of which I have, in my day, been accustomed to take an airing.
This circumstance will also gratify our friend Douce, whose lucubrations have been my study for some days.* They will, I fear,
be caviare to the multitude, and even to the
soi-disant connoisseurs, who
have never found by experience what length of time, of reading, and of
reflection is necessary to collect the archæological knowledge of which he
has displayed such profusion. The style would also, in our Scotch phrase, thole a mends, i. e. admit of improvement. But his
extensive and curious researches place him at the head of the class of
black-letter antiquaries; and his knowledge is communicated—without the
manifest irritation which his contemporaries have too often displayed in
matters of controversy, without ostentation, and without self-sufficiency. I
hope the success of his work will encourage this modest and learned antiquary
to give us more collectanea. There are few things I read with more pleasure.
Charlotte joins in kindest respects to
Mrs Ellis. I have some hopes of
being in town this spring, but I fear you will be at Bath. When you have run
over Marmion, I hope you will remember how impatient
I shall be to hear your opinion sans
phrase. I am sensible I run some risk of being thought to
fall below my former level, but those that will play for the gammon must take
their chance of this. I am also anxious to have particular news of your health.
Ever yours faithfully,
W. S.”
* Mr Douce’sIllustrations of Shakspeare
were published late in 1807.
The letter reached Ellis before
the book; but how well he anticipated the immediate current of criticism, his answer will
show. “Before I have seen the stranger,” he says, “and while my
judgment is unwarped by her seduction, I think I can venture, from what I remember of
the Lay, to anticipate the fluctuations of public opinion concerning her. The first
decision respecting the Last Minstrel was,
that he was evidently the production of a strong and vivid mind, and not quite unworthy
the author of Glenfinlas and the Eve of St John; but that it was difficult
to eke out so long a poem with uniform spirit; that success generally emboldens writers
to become more careless in a second production; that—— in short, months elapsed, before
one-tenth ofour wise critics had discovered that a long poem which no one reader could
bring himself to lay down till he had arrived at the last line, was a composition
destined perhaps to suggest new rules of criticism, but certainly not amenable to the
tribunal of a taste formed on the previous examination of models of a perfectly
different nature. That Minstrel is now in its turn become a standard; Marmion will therefore be compared with
this metre, and will most probably be in the first instance
pronounced too long, or too short, or improperly divided, or &c. &c. &c.,
till the sage and candid critics are compelled, a second time, by the united voice of
all who can read at all, to confess that ‘aut
prodesse aut delectare’ is the only real standard
of poetical merit. One of my reasons for liking your Minstrel
was, that the subject was purely and necessarily poetical;
whereas my sincere and sober opinion of all the epic poems I
have ever read, the Odyssey perhaps
excepted, is that they ought to have been written in prose; and hence, though I think
with Mackintosh, that ‘forte epos acer ut nemo Varius
scribit,’ I rejoice in your choice of a subject which cannot
be considered as epic, or conjure
up in the memory a number of fantastic rules, which, like Harpies, would spoil the
banquet offered to the imagination. A few days, however, will, I hope, enable me to
write avec connaissance de cause.”
I have, I believe, alluded, in a former Chapter of this narrative, to a
remark which occurs in Mr Southey’sLife of Cowper, namely, that a
man’s character may be judged of even more surely by the letters which his friends
addressed to him, than by those which he himself penned; and I cannot but think that—freely
as Scott’s own feelings and opinions were poured
from his head and heart to all whom he considered as worthy of a wise and good man’s
confidence—the openness and candour with which the best and most sagacious of his friends
wrote to him about his own literary productions, will be considered hereafter (when all the
glories of this age shall, like him, have passed away), as affording a striking
confirmation of the truth of the biographer’s observation. It was thus, for example,
that Mr Southey himself, who happened to be in London when Marmion came out, expressed himself to the
author, on his return to Keswick—“Half the poem I had read at Heber’s before my own copy arrived. I went
punctually to breakfast with him, and he was long enough dressing to let me devour so much
of it. The story is made of better materials than the Lay, yet they are not so well fitted together. As a whole, it has not pleased
me so much—in parts, it has pleased me more. There is nothing so finely conceived in your
former poem as the death of Marmion: there is nothing
finer in its conception any where. The introductory epistles I did not wish away, because,
as poems, they gave me great pleasure; but I wished them at the end of the volume, or at
the beginning—any where except where they were. My taste is perhaps
peculiar in disliking all interruptions in narrative poetry. When the poet lets his story
sleep, and talks in his own person, it has to me the same sort of unpleasant effect that is
produced at the end of an act. You are alive to know what follows, and lo—down comes the
curtain, and the fiddlers begin with their abominations. The general opinion, however, is
with me, in this particular instance, . . . . . .” I have no right to quote the rest
of Mr Southey’s letter, which is filled chiefly with business of
his own; but towards its close, immediately after mentioning a princely instance of
generosity on the part of his friend Mr Walter Savage
Landor to a brother poet, he has a noble sentence, which I hope to be
pardoned for extracting, as equally applicable to his own character and that of the man he
was addressing—“Great poets,” says the author of Thalaba, “have no envy; little ones are full
of it! I doubt whether any man ever criticised a good poem maliciously, who had not
written a bad one himself.” I must not omit to mention, that on his way from
London down to Keswick, Mr Southey had visited at Stamford the late
industrious antiquary Octavius Gilchrist, who was
also at this time one of Scott’s frequent correspondents.
Mr Gilchrist writes (May 21) to Scott,
“Southey pointed out to me a passage in Marmion, which he thought finer than any thing he remembered.”
Mr Wordsworth knew Scott too well not to use the same masculine freedom. “Thank
you,” he says, “for Marmion. I think your end has been attained. That it is not the end which I
should wish you to propose to yourself, you will be well aware, from what you know of my
notions of composition, both as to matter and manner. In the circle of my acquaintance, it
seems as well liked as the Lay, though I have
heard that in the world it is not so. Had the poem been much better than the Lay, it could scarcely have satisfied the public, which has too
much of the monster, the moral monster, in its composition. The spring has burst out upon
us all at once, and the vale is now in exquisite beauty; a gentle shower has fallen this
morning, and I hear the thrush, who has built in my orchard, singing amain. How happy we
should be to see you here again! Ever, my dear Scott, your sincere
friend, W. W.”
I pass over a multitude of the congratulatory effusions of inferior
names, but must not withhold part of a letter on a folio sheet written not in the first
hurry of excitement, but on the 2d of May, two months after Marmion had reached Sunninghill.
“I have,” says Ellis, “been endeavouring to divest myself of those
prejudices to which the impression on my own palate would naturally give rise,
and to discover the sentiments of those who have only tasted the general
compound, after seeing the sweetmeats picked out by my comrades and myself. I
have severely questioned all my friends whose critical discernment I could
fairly trust, and mean to give you the honest result of their collective
opinions; for which reason, inasmuch as I shall have a good deal to say,
besides which, there seems to be a natural connexion between foolscap and
criticism, I have ventured on this expanse of paper. In the first place, then,
all the world are agreed that you are like the elephant mentioned in the Spectator, who was the greatest
elephant in the world except himself, and consequently, that the only question
at issue is, whether the Lay or
Marmion shall be reputed
the most pleasing poem in our language—save and except one or two of Dryden’s fables. But,
with respect to the two rivals, I think the Lay is,
on the whole, the greatest favourite. It is admitted that
the fable of Marmion is greatly superior—that it
contains a greater diversity of character—that it inspires more interest—and
that it is by no means inferior in point of poetical expression; but it is
contended that the incident of Deloraine’s journey to Melrose surpasses any thing in
Marmion, and that the personal appearance of the
Minstrel, who, though the last, is by far the most charming of all minstrels,
is by no means compensated by the idea of an author shorn of his picturesque
beard, deprived of his harp, and writing letters to his intimate friends. These
introductory epistles, indeed, though excellent in themselves, are in fact only
interruptions to the fable; and accordingly, nine out of ten have perused them
separately, either after or before the poem and it is obvious that they cannot
have produced, in either case, the effect which was proposed—viz., of relieving
the readers’ attention, and giving variety to the whole. Perhaps,
continue these critics, it would be fair to say that Marmion delights us in spite of its introductory epistles—while the
Lay owes its principal charm to the venerable old
minstrel: the two poems may be considered as equally respectable to the talents
of the author; but the first, being a more perfect whole, will be more
constantly preferred. Now, all this may be very true—but it is no less true
that every body has already read Marmionmore than once—that it is the subject of general
conversation—that it delights all ages and all tastes, and that it is
universally allowed to improve upon a second reading. My own opinion is, that
both the productions are equally good in their different ways: yet, upon the
whole, I had rather be the author of Marmion than of
the Lay, because I think its species of excellence of
much more difficult attainment. What degree of bulk may be essentially
necessary to the corporeal part of an Epic poem, I know not; but sure I am that the story of Marmion might have furnished twelve books as easily as
six—that the masterly character of Constance would not have been less bewitching had it been much
more minutely painted—and that De Wilton
might have been dilated with great ease, and even to considerable advantage;—in
short, that had it been your intention merely to exhibit a spirited romantic
story, instead of making that story subservient to the delineation of the
manners which prevailed at a certain period of our history, the number and
variety of your characters would have suited any scale of painting. Marmion is to Deloraine what Tom Jones is
to Joseph Andrews the varnish of high
breeding nowhere diminishes the prominence of the features—and the minion of a
king is as light and sinewy a cavalier as the Borderer, rather less ferocious,
more wicked, less fit for the hero of a ballad, and far more for the hero of a
regular poem. On the whole, I can sincerely assure you, ‘sans phrase,’ that, had I seen Marmion without knowing the author, I should have
ranked it with Theodore and
Honoria, that is to say, on the very top shelf of English poetry.
Now for faults.” . . . . . . .
Mr Ellis proceeds to notice some minor blemishes,
which he hoped to see erased in a future copy; but as most, if not all, of these were
sufficiently dwelt on by the professional critics, whose strictures are affixed to the poem
in the last collective edition, and as, moreover, Scott
did not avail himself of any of the hints thus publicly, as well as privately tendered for
his guidance, I shall not swell my page by transcribing more of this elegant letter. The
part I have given may no doubt be considered as an epitome of the very highest and most
refined of London table-talk on the subject of Marmion, during the first freshness of its popularity, and before the Edinburgh Review, the only critical journal of
which any one in those days thought very seriously, had
pronounced its verdict.
When we consider some parts of that judgment, together with the
author’s personal intimacy with the editor, and the aid which he had of late been
affording to the Journal itself, it must be allowed that Mr
Jeffrey acquitted himself on this occasion in a manner highly creditable to
his courageous sense of duty; and that he relied on being considered as doing so by the
poet himself, illustrates equally his sagacity, and the manly candour and strength of mind,
for which Scott had all along been esteemed and
honoured, the most by those who knew him the best. The Number of the Edinburgh Review containing the article on Marmion, was accompanied by this note:—
To Walter Scott, Esq., Castle Street.
“Queen Street, Tuesday.
“Dear Scott—If I
did not give you credit for more magnanimity than any other of your irritable
tribe, I should scarcely venture to put this into your hands. As it is, I do it
with no little solicitude, and earnestly hope that it will make no difference
in the friendship which has hitherto subsisted between us. I have spoken of
your poem exactly as I think,
and though I cannot reasonably suppose that you will be pleased with every
thing I have said, it would mortify me very severely to believe I had given you
pain. If you have any amity left for me, you will not delay very long to tell
me so. In the mean time, I am very sincerely yours,
F. Jeffrey.”
The reader who has the Edinburgh
Review for April, 1808, will I hope pause here and read the article as it stands; endeavouring to put himself into the
situation of Scott when it was laid upon his desk,
together with this ominous billet from the critic, who, as it happened, had been for some
time engaged to dine that same Tuesday at his table in Castle Street. I have not room to
transcribe the whole; but no unfair notion of its spirit and tenor may be gathered from one
or two of the principal paragraphs. After an ingenious little dissertation on epic poetry
in general, the reviewer says—
“We are inclined to suspect that the success of
the work now before us will be less brilliant than that of the author’s former
publication, though we are ourselves of opinion that its intrinsic merits are nearly,
if not altogether equal; and that, if it had had the fate to be the elder born, it
would have inherited as fair a portion of renown as has fallen to the lot of its
predecessor. It is a good deal longer, indeed, and somewhat more ambitious; and it is
rather clearer, that it has greater faults than that it has greater beauties—though,
for our own parts, we are inclined to believe in both propositions. It has more flat
and tedious passages, and more ostentation of historical and antiquarian lore; but it
has also greater richness and variety, both of character and incident; and if it has
less sweetness and pathos in the softer passages, it has certainly more vehemence and
force of colouring in the loftier and busier representations of action and emotion. The
place of the prologuising minstrel is but ill supplied, indeed, by the epistolary
dissertations which are prefixed to each book of the present poem; and the
ballad-pieces and mere episodes which it contains have less finish and poetical beauty;
but there is more airiness and spirit in the higher delineations; and the story, if not
more skilfully conducted, is at least better complicated, and extended through a wider
field of adventure. The characteristics of both, however, are evidently the same; a
broken narrative—a redundancy of minute description—bursts of unequal and energetic
poetry—and a general tone of spirit and animation, unchecked by timidity or
affectation, and unchastened by any great delicacy of taste or elegance of
fancy.”
* * * * * * *
“But though we think this last romance of
Mr Scott’s about as good as the former,
and allow that it affords great indications of poetical talent, we must remind our
readers that we never entertained much partiality for this sort
of composition, and ventured on a former occasion to express our regret that an author
endowed with such talents should consume them in imitations of obsolete extravagance,
and in the representation of manners and sentiments in which none of his readers can be
supposed to take much interest, except the few who can judge of their exactness. To
write a modern romance of chivalry, seems to be much such a phantasy as to build a
modern abbey or an English pagoda. For once, however, it may be excused as a pretty
caprice of genius; but a second production of the same sort is entitled to less
indulgence, and imposes a sort of duty to drive the author from so idle a task, by a
fair exposition of the faults which are, in a manner, inseparable from its execution.
His genius, seconded by the omnipotence of fashion, has brought chivalry again into
temporary favour. Fine ladies and gentlemen now talk indeed of donjons, keeps, tabards,
scutcheons, tressures, caps of maintenance, portcullises, wimples, and we know not what
besides; just as they did in the days of Dr
Darwin’s popularity of gnomes, sylphs, oxygen, gossamer,
polygynia, and polyandria. That fashion, however, passed rapidly away, and Mr
Scott should take care that a different sort of pedantry does not
produce the same effects.”
The detailed exposition of faults follows; and it is, I am sure, done in
a style on which the critic cannot now reflect with perfect equanimity, any more than on
the lofty and decisive tone of the sweeping paragraphs by which it was introduced. All
this, however, I can suppose Scott to have gone through
with great composure; but he must, I think, have wondered, to say the least, when he found
himself accused of having “throughout neglected Scottish feelings and Scottish
characters!”—He who had just poured out all the patriotic enthusiasm of his
soul in so many passages of Marmion which
every Scotchman to the end of time will have by heart, painted the capital, the court, the
camp, the heroic old chieftains of Scotland in colours instinct with a fervour that can
never die; and dignified the most fatal of her national misfortunes by a celebration as
loftily pathetic as ever blended pride with sorrow,—a battle-piece which even his critic had pronounced to be
the noblest save in Homer! But not even this injustice
was likely to wound him very deeply. Coming from one of the recent witnesses of his
passionate agitation on the Mound, perhaps he would only smile at it.
At all events, Scott could make
allowance for the petulancies into which men the least disposed to injure the feelings of
others will sometimes be betrayed, when the critical rod is in their hands. He assured
Mr Jeffrey that the article had not disturbed
his digestion, though he hoped neither his booksellers nor the public would agree with the
opinions it expressed; and begged he would come to dinner at the hour previously appointed.
Mr Jeffrey appeared accordingly, and was received by his host with
the frankest cordiality; but had the mortification to observe that the mistress of the
house, though perfectly polite, was not quite so easy with him as usual. She, too, behaved
herself with exemplary civility during the dinner; but could not help saying, in her broken
English, when her guest was departing, “Well, good night, Mr
Jeffrey—dey tell me you have abused Scott in de
Review, and I hope Mr Constable has paid you very well for writing it.” This anecdote was not
perhaps worth giving; but it has been printed already in an exaggerated shape, so I thought
it as well to present the edition which I have derived from the lips of all the three
persons concerned. No one, I am sure, will think the worse of any of them for it,—least of
all of Mrs Scott. She might well be pardoned, if she
took to herself more than her own share in the misadventures as well as the successes of
the most affectionate of protectors. It was, I believe, about this time when, as
Scott has confessed, “the popularity of Marmion gave him such a heeze he
had for a moment almost lost his footing,” that a shrewd and sly observer, Mrs Grant of Laggan, said, wittily enough, upon leaving a brilliant assembly
where the poet had been surrounded by all the buzz and glare of fashionable
ecstasy,—“Mr Scott always seems to me like a glass,
through which the rays of admiration pass without sensibly affecting it; but the bit of
paper that lies beside it will presently be in a blaze—and no wonder.”
I shall not, after so much of and about criticism, say any thing more of
Marmion in this place, than that I have
always considered it as, on the whole, the greatest of Scott’s poems. There is a certain light, easy, virgin charm about the
Lay, which we look for in vain through the
subsequent volumes of his verse; but the superior strength, and breadth, and boldness both
of conception and execution in the Marmion appear to me
indisputable. The great blot, the combination of mean felony with so
many noble qualities in the character of the hero, was, as the poet says, severely
commented on at the time by the most ardent of his early friends, Leyden; but though he admitted the justice of that
criticism, he chose “to let the tree lie as it had fallen.” He was also
sensible that many of the subordinate and connecting parts of the narrative are flat,
harsh, and obscure—but would never make any serious attempt to do away with these
imperfections; and perhaps they, after all, heighten by contrast the effect of the passages
of high-wrought enthusiasm which alone he considered, in after days, with satisfaction. As
for the “epistolary dissertations,” it must, I take it, be allowed that they
interfered with the flow of the story, when readers were turning the leaves with the first
ardour of curiosity; and they were not, in fact, originally intended to be interwoven in
any fashion with the romance of Marmion. Though the author
himself does not allude to, and had perhaps forgotten the circumstance, when writing the
Introductory Essay of 1830—they were announced, by
an advertisement early in 1807, as “Six Epistles from Ettrick
Forrest,” to be published in a separate volume, similar to that of the
Ballads and Lyrical Pieces; and perhaps
it might have been better that this first plan had been adhered to. But however that may
be, are there any pages, among all he ever wrote, that one would be more sorry he should
not have written? They are among the most delicious portraitures that genius ever painted
of itself,—buoyant, virtuous, happy genius—exulting in its own energies, yet possessed and
mastered by a clear, calm, modest mind, and happy only in diffusing happiness around it.
With what gratification those Epistles were read by the friends to whom
they were addressed it would be superfluous to show. He had, in fact, painted them almost
as fully as himself; and who might not have been proud to find a place in such a gallery?
The tastes and habits of six of those men, in whose intercourse Scott found the greatest pleasure when his fame was approaching its
meridian splendour, are thus preserved for posterity; and when I reflect with what avidity
we catch at the least hint which seems to afford us a glimpse of the intimate circle of any
great poet of former ages, I cannot but believe that posterity would have held this record
precious, even had the individuals been in themselves far less remarkable than a Rose, an Ellis, a
Heber, a Skene, a Marriott, and an Erskine.
Many other friends, however, have found a part in these affectionate
sketches; and I doubt whether any manifestation of public applause afforded the poet so
much pleasure as the letter in which one of these, alluded to in the fourth Epistle as then
absent from Scotland by reason of his feeble health, acknowledged the emotions that had
been stirred in him when he came upon that unexpected page. This was
Colin Mackenzie of Portmore, the same who beat
him in a competition of rhymes at the High School, and whose ballad of Ellandonnan Castle had been
introduced into the third volume of the Minstrelsy. This accomplished and singularly modest
man, now no more, received Marmion at
Lympstone. “My dear Walter,” he says,
“amidst the greetings that will crowd on you, I know that those of a hearty, sincere,
admiring old friend will not be coldly taken. I am not going to attempt an enumeration of
beauties, but I must thank you for the elegant and delicate allusion in which you express
your friendship for myself—Forbes—and, above all,
that sweet memorial of his late excellent father.* I
find I have got the mal du pays, and must return
to enjoy the sight and society of a few chosen friends. You are not unaware of the place
you hold on my list, and your description of our committees†
has inspired me with tenfold ardour to renew a pleasure so highly enjoyed, and remembered
with such enthusiasm. Adieu, my dear friend. Ever yours,
C. M.”
His next-door neighbour at Ashestiel, Mr
Pringle of Whytbank, “the long-descended laird of Yair,”
writes not less touchingly on the verses in the 2d Epistle, where his beautiful place is
mentioned, and the poet introduces “those sportive boys, Companions of his mountain joys”— and paints the rapture with which they had heard him “call Wallace’ rampart holy ground.” “Your
own
* Mr Mackenzie had
married a daughter of Sir William Forbes of
Pitsligo, Bart., the biographer of Beattie.
† The supper meetings of the Cavalry Club. See Marmion, Introduction to Canto
IV.
benevolent heart,” says the good laird,
“would have enjoyed the scene, could you have witnessed the countenances of my
little flock grouped round your book; and perhaps you would have discovered that the
father, though the least audible at that moment, was not the most insensible to the
honour bestowed upon his children and his parent stream, both alike dear to his heart.
May my boys feel an additional motive to act well, that they may cast no discredit upon
their early friend!”
But there was one personal allusion which, almost before his ink was
dry, the poet would fain have cancelled. Lord Scott,
the young heir of Buccleuch, whose casual absence from “Yarrow’s bowers”
was regretted in that same epistle (addressed to his tutor, Mr
Marriott)— “No youthful baron’s left to grace The forest sheriff’s lonely chase, And ape in manly step and tone The majesty of Oberon” —this promising boy had left Yarrow to revisit it no more. He died a few days after
Marmion was published, and Scott, in writing on the event to his uncle Lord Montagu (to whom the poem was inscribed), signified a
fear that these verses might now serve but to quicken the sorrows of the mother.
Lord Montagu answers,—“I have been able to ascertain
Lady Dalkeith’s feelings in a manner that
will, I think, be satisfactory to you, particularly as it came from herself, without my
giving her the pain of being asked. In a letter I received yesterday, giving directions
about some books, she writes as follows:—‘And pray send me Marmion too—this may seem odd to you, but at some moments I am soothed by
things which at other times drive me almost mad.’” On the 7th of April,
Scott says to Lady Louisa
Stuart—“The death of poor dear Lord Scott was such a stunning blow to me, that I really felt for some
time totally indifferent to the labours of literary correction. I had very great hopes
from that boy, who was of an age to form, on the principles of his father and
grandfather, his feelings towards the numerous families who depend on them. But
God’s will be done. I intended to have omitted the lines referring to him in
Marmion in the second edition; for as to adding any, I
could as soon write the Iliad. But I am
now glad I altered my intention, as Lady Dalkeith has sent for the
book, and dwells with melancholy pleasure on whatever recalls the memory of the poor
boy. She has borne her distress like an angel, as she is, and always has been; but God
only can cure the wounds he inflicts.”
One word more as to these personal allusions. While he was correcting a
second proof of the passage, where Pitt and Fox are mentioned together, at Stanmore Priory, in April
1807, Lord Abercorn suggested that the compliment to
the Whig statesman ought to be still further heightened, and several lines— “For talents mourn untimely lost, When best employed, and wanted most,” &c.—*
were added accordingly. I have heard, indeed, that they came from the accomplished
Marquis’s own pen. Ballantyne, however, from
some inadvertence, had put the sheet to press before the revise, as it is called, arrived
in Edinburgh, and some few copies got abroad in which
* In place of this couplet, and the ten lines which follow it,
the original MS. of Marmion has
only the following:—
“If genius high, and judgment sound, And wit that loved to play, not wound, And all the reasoning powers divine, To penetrate, resolve, combine, Could save one mortal of the herd From error—Fox had never
err’d.” the additional couplets were omitted. A London journal
(the Morning Chronicle) was stupid and
malignant enough to insinuate that the author had his presentation copies struck off with,
or without, them according as they were for Whig or Tory hands. I mention the circumstance
now, only because I see by a letter of Heber’s
that Scott had thought it worth his while to contradict
the absurd charge in the newspapers of the day.
The feelings of political partisanship find no place in this poem; but
though the Edinburgh reviewers chose to complain of its “manifest neglect of Scottish feelings,” I take leave to suspect that the
boldness and energy of British patriotism which breathes in so many
passages, may have had more share than that alleged omission in pointing the pen that criticized Marmion. Scott had
sternly and indignantly rebuked and denounced the then too prevalent spirit of
anti-national despondence; he had put the trumpet to his lips, and done his part, at least,
to sustain the hope and resolution of his countrymen in that struggle from which it was the
doctrine of the Edinburgh Review that no sane
observer of the times could anticipate any thing but ruin and degradation. He must ever be
considered as the “mighty minstrel” of the Antigallican war; and it was Marmion that first announced him in that character.
Be all this as it may, Scott’s
connexion with the Edinburgh Review was now
broken off; and indeed it was never renewed, except in one instance, many years after, when
the strong wish to serve poor Maturin shook him for
a moment from his purpose. The loftiest and purest of human beings seldom act but under a
mixture of motives, and I shall not attempt to guess in what proportions he was swayed by
aversion to the political doctrines which the journal had lately been avowing with
increased openness—by dissatisfaction with its judg-ments of his own
works—or, lastly, by the feeling that, whether those judgments were or were not just, it
was but an idle business for him to assist by his own pen the popularity of the vehicle
that diffused them. That he was influenced more or less by all of these considerations,
appears highly probable; and I fancy I can trace some indications of each of them in a
letter with which I am favoured by an old friend of
mine,—a warm lover of literature, and a sincere admirer both of Scott
and Jeffrey, and though numbered among the Tories in
the House of Commons, yet one of the most liberal section of his party,—who happened to
visit Scotland shortly after the article on
Marmion appeared, and has set down his recollections of the course of table-talk
at a dinner where he for the first time met Scott in company with the
brilliant editor of the Edinburgh Review.
“There were,” he says, “only a few people
besides the two lions—and assuredly I have seldom passed a more agreeable day. A
thousand subjects of literature, antiquities, and manners were started; and much was I
struck, as you may well suppose, by the extent, correctness, discrimination, and
accuracy of Jeffrey’s information; equally
so with his taste, acuteness, and wit in dissecting every book, author, and story that
came in our way. Nothing could surpass the variety of his knowledge, but the easy
rapidity of his manner of producing it. He was then in his meridian. Scott, delighted to draw him out, delighted also to talk
himself, and displayed, I think, even a larger range of anecdote and illustration;
remembering every thing, whether true or false, that was characteristic or impressive;
every thing that was good, or lovely, or lively. It struck me that there was this great
difference—Jeffrey, for the most part, entertained us, when
books were under discussion, with the detection of faults, blunders, absurdities, or plagiarisms:
Scott took up the matter where he left it, recalled some
compensating beauty or excellence for which no credit had been allowed, and by the
recitation, perhaps, of one fine stanza, set the poor victim on his legs again. I
believe it was just about this time that Scott had abandoned his
place in Mr Jeffrey’s corps. The journal had been started
among the clever young society with which Edinburgh abounded when they were both
entering life as barristers; and Jeffrey’s principal
coadjutors for some time were Sydney Smith,
Brougham, Horner, Scott himself—and on scientific subjects,
Playfair; but clever contributors were
sought for in all quarters. Wit and fun were the first desiderata, and joined with
general talent and literature, carried all before them. Neutrality, or something of the
kind, as to party politics, seems to have been originally asserted—the plan being, as
Scott understood, not to avoid such questions altogether, but
to let them be handled by Whig or Tory indifferently, if only the writer could make his
article captivating in point of information and good writing. But it was not long
before Brougham dipped the concern deep in witty Whiggery; and it
was thought at the time that some very foolish neglects on the part of Pitt had a principal share in making several of these
brilliant young men decide on carrying over their weapons to the enemy’s camp.
Scott was a strong Tory, nay, by family recollections and
poetical feelings of association, a Jacobite. Jeffrey, however,
was an early friend and thus there was a connection of feelings on both sides.
Scott, as I was told, remonstrated against the deepening
Whiggery—Jeffrey alleged that he could not resist the wit.
Scott offered to try his hand at a witty bit of Toryism—but
the editor pleaded off, upon the danger of inconsistency. These
differences first cooled—and soon dissolved their federation.—To return to our gay
dinner. As the claret was taking its rounds, Jeffrey introduced
some good-natured eulogy of his old supporters—Sydney Smith,
Brougham, and Horner,
‘Come,’ says Scott, ‘you can’t
say too much about Sydney or Brougham,
but I will not admire your Horner: he always put me in mind of
Obadiah’s bull, who, although, as
Father Shandy observed, he never produced
calf, went through his business with such a grave demeanour, that he always
maintained his credit in the parish!’ The fun of the illustration tempted
him to this sally, I believe; but Horner’s talents did not
lie in humour, and his economical labours wore totally uncongenial to the mind of
Scott.”
I shall conclude this chapter with a summary of booksellers’
accounts. Marmion was first printed in a
splendid quarto, price one guinea and a half. The 2000 copies of this edition were all
disposed of in loss than a month, when a second of 3000 copies, in 8vo, was sent to press.
There followed a third and a fourth edition, each of 3000, in 1809; a fifth of 2000, early
in 1810; and a sixth of 8000, in two volumes, crown 8vo, with twelve designs by Singleton, before the end of that year; a seventh of 4000,
and an eighth of 5000 copies 8vo, in 1811; a ninth of 3000 in 1815; a tenth of 500, in
1820; an eleventh of 500, and a twelfth of 2000 copies, in foolscap—both in 1825. The
legitimate sale in this country, down to the time of its being included in the collective
edition of his poetical works, amounted to 31,000; and the aggregate of that sale down to
the at which I am writing (May 1836), may be at 50,000 copies, I presume it is right for me
to facilitate the task of future historians of our litera-ture by preserving these details as often as I can. Such particulars
respecting many of the great works even of the last century, are already sought for with
vain regret; and I anticipate no day when the student of English civilisation will pass
without curiosity the contemporary reception of the Tale of Flodden Field.
CHAPTER V. EDITION OF DRYDEN PUBLISHED—AND CRITICIZED BY
MR HALLAM—WEBER’S ROMANCES—EDITIONS OF
QUEENHOO HALL—CAPTAIN CARLETON’S
MEMOIRS—THE MEMOIRS OF ROBERT CARY, EARL OF
MONMOUTH—THE SADLER PAPERS—AND THE
SOMERS’ TRACTS—EDITION OF SWIFT BEGUN—LETTERS TO
JOANNA BAILLIE AND GEORGE ELLIS ON THE
AFFAIRS OF THE PENINSULA—JOHN STRUTHERS—JAMES
HOGG—VISIT OF MR MORRITT—MR
MORRITT’S REMINISCENCES OF
ASHESTIEL—SCOTT’S DOMESTIC LIFE—1808.
BeforeMarmion was published, a heavy task, begun earlier than the poem and continued
throughout its progress, had been nearly completed; and there appeared in the last week of
April, 1808, “The Works of John Dryden, now
first collected; illustrated with notes historical, critical, and explanatory, and a
Life of the Author. By Walter Scott, Esq.
Eighteen volumes, 8vo.” This was the bold speculation of William Miller of Albemarle Street, London; and the editor’s fee, at
forty guineas the volume, was L.756. The bulk of the collection, the neglect into which a
majority of the pieces included in it had fallen, the obsoleteness of the party politics
which had so largely exercised the author’s pen, and the indecorum, not seldom
running into flagrant indecency, by which transcendant genius had ministered to the
appetites of a licentious age, all combined to make the warmest of
Scott’s friends and admirers doubt whether even his skill
and reputation would be found sufficient to ensure the success of this undertaking. It was,
how ever, better received than any one,
except perhaps the courageous bookseller himself, had anticipated. The entire work was
reprinted in 1821; and more lately the Life of
Dryden has been twice republished in collective editions of
Scott’s prose miscellanies; nor, perhaps, does that class of
his writings include any piece of considerable extent that has, on the whole, obtained
higher estimation.
This edition of Dryden was criticised in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1808, with great ability, and,
on the whole, with admirable candour. The industry and perspicacity with which Scott had carried through his editorial researches and
annotations were acknowledged in terms which, had he known the name of his reviewer, must
have been doubly gratifying to his feelings; and it was confessed that, in the life of his
author, he had corrected with patient honesty, and filled up with lucid and expansive
detail, the sometimes careless and often naked outline of Johnson’s masterly Essay on the same subject. It would be superfluous to quote in this place a
specimen of critical skill which has already enjoyed such wide circulation, and which will
hereafter, no doubt, be included in the miscellaneous prose works of Hallam. The points of political
faith on which that great writer dissents from the editor of Dryden,
would, even if I had the inclination to pursue such a discussion, lead me far astray from
the immediate object of these pages; they embrace questions on which the best and wisest of
our countrymen will probably continue to take opposite sides, as long as our past history
excites a living interest, and our literature is that of an active nation. On the poetical
character of Dryden I think the editor and his critic will be found to
have expressed substantially much the same judgment; when they appear to differ the battle
strikes me as being about words rather than things, as is likely to
be the case when men of such abilities and attainments approach a subject remote from their
personal passions. As might have been expected, the terse and dexterous reviewer has often
the better in this logomachy; but when the balance is struck, we discover here, as
elsewhere, that Scott’s broad and masculine understanding had,
by whatever happy hardihood, grasped the very result to which others win their way by the
more cautious processes of logical investigation. While nothing has been found easier than
to attack his details, his general views on critical questions have seldom, if ever, been
successfully impugned.
I wish I could believe that Scott’s labours had been sufficient to recall Dryden to his rightful station, not in the opinion of
those who make literature the business or chief solace of their lives—for with them he had
never forfeited it—but in the general favour of the intelligent public. That such has been
the case, however, the not rapid sale of two editions, aided as they were by the greatest
of living names, can be no proof; nor have I observed among the numberless recent
speculations of the English booksellers, a single reprint of even those tales, satires, and
critical essays, not to be familiar with which would? in the last age, have been considered
as disgraceful in any one making the least pretension to letters. In the hope of exciting
the curiosity, at least, of some of the thousands of young persons who seem to be growing
up in contented ignorance of one of the greatest of our masters, I shall transcribe what
George Ellis, whose misgivings about Scott’s edition, when first undertaken,
had been so serious, was pleased to write some months after its completion.
“Claremont, 23d September, 1808.
“I must confess that I took up the book with some
degree of trepidation, considering an edition of such a writer as on every account
periculosæ plenum opus
aleæ; but as soon as I became acquainted with your plan
I proceeded boldly, and really feel at this moment sincerely grateful to you
for much exquisite amusement. It now seems to me that your critical remarks
ought to have occurred to myself. Such a passionate admirer of Dryden’sfables, the noblest specimen of
versification (in my mind) that is to be found in any modern language, ought to
have perused his theatrical pieces with more candour than I did, and to have
attributed to the bad taste of the age, rather than to his own, the numerous
defects by which those hasty compositions are certainly deformed. I ought to
have considered that whatever Dryden wrote must, for some
reason or other, be worth reading; that his bombast and his indelicacy, however
disgusting, were not without their use to any one who took an interest in our
literary history; that—in short, there are a thousand reflections which I ought
to have made and never did make, and the result was that yourDryden was to
me a perfectly new book. It is certainly painful to see a race-horse in a
hackney-chaise, but when one considers that he will suffer infinitely less from
the violent exertion to which he is condemned, than a creature of inferior
race—and that the wretched cock-tail on whom the same task is usually imposed,
must shortly become a martyr in the service, one’s conscience becomes
more at ease, and we are enabled to enjoy Dr
Johnson’s favourite pleasure of rapid motion without much
remorse on the score of its cruelty. Since, then, your hackneyman is not
furnished with a whip, and you can so easily canter from post to post, go on
and prosper!”
To return for a moment to Scott’sBiography of
Dryden—the only life of a great poet which he has left us, and also his only
detailed work on the personal fortunes of one to whom literature was
a profession—it was penned just when he had begun to apprehend his own destiny. On this
point of view, forbidden to contemporary delicacy, we may now pause with blameless
curiosity; and if I be not mistaken, it will reward our attention. Seriously as he must
have in those days been revolving the hazards of literary enterprise, he could not, it is
probable, have handled any subject of this class without letting out here and there
thoughts and feelings proper to his own biographer’s province; but, widely as he and
his predecessor may appear to stand apart as regards some of the most important both of
intellectual and moral characteristics, they had nevertheless many features of resemblance,
both as men and as authors; and I doubt if the entire range of our annals could have
furnished a theme more calculated to keep Scott’s scrutinizing
interest awake, than that which opened on him as he contemplated step by step the career of
Dryden.
There are grave lessons which that story was not needed to enforce upon
his mind; he required no such beacon to make him revolt from paltering with the dignity of
woman, or the passions of youth, or insulting by splenetic levities the religious
convictions of any portion of his countrymen. But Dryden’s prostitution of his genius to the petty bitternesses of
political warfare, and the consequences both as to the party he served, and the antagonists
he provoked, might well supply matter for serious consideration to the author of the Melville song. “Where,”
says Scott, “is the expert swordsman that does
not delight in the flourish of his weapon? and a brave man will least of all withdraw
himself from his ancient standard when the tide of battle beats against it.”
But he says also,—and I know enough of his own then recent experiences, in his intercourse
with some who had been among his earliest and
dearest associates, not to apply the language to the circumstances that suggested
it—“He who keenly engages in political controversy, must not only encounter
the vulgar abuse which he may justly contemn, but the altered eye of friends whose
regard is chilled;” nor when he adds, that “the protecting zeal of
his party did not compensate Dryden for the loss of those whom he
alienated in their service,” can I help connecting this reflection too with
his own subsequent abstinence from party personalities, in which, had the expert
swordsman’s delight in the flourish of his weapon prevailed, he might have rivalled
the success of either Dryden or Swift, to be repaid like them by the settled rancour of Whigs, and the
jealous ingratitude of Tories.
It is curious enough to compare the hesitating style of his apology for
that tinge of evanescent superstition which seems to have clouded occasionally Dryden’s bright and solid mind, with the open avowal
that he has “pride in recording his author’s decided admiration of old
ballads and popular tales;” and perhaps his personal feelings were hardly
less his prompter where he dismisses with brief scorn the sins of negligence and haste,
which had been so often urged against Dryden.
“Nothing,” he says, “is so easily attained as the power of
presenting the extrinsic qualities of fine painting, fine music, or fine poetry; the
beauty of colour and outline, the combination of notes, the melody of versification,
may be imitated by artists of mediocrity; and many will view, hear, or peruse their
performances, without being able positively to discover why they should not, since
composed according to all the rules, afford pleasure equal to those of Raphael, Handel, or Dryden. The deficiency lies in the
vivifying spirit which, like alcohol, may be reduced to the same
principle in all the fine arts. The French are said to possess
the best possible rules for building ships of war, although not equally remarkable for
their power of fighting them. When criticism becomes a pursuit separate from poetry,
those who follow it are apt to forget that the legitimate ends of the art for which
they lay down rules, are instruction and delight, and that these points being attained,
by what road soever, entitles a poet to claim the prize of successful merit. Neither
did the learned authors of these disquisitions sufficiently attend to the general
disposition of mankind, which cannot be contented even with the happiest imitations of
former excellence, but demands novelty as a necessary ingredient for amusement. To
insist that every epic poem shall have the plan of the Iliad, and every tragedy be modelled by the rules of
Aristotle, resembles the principle of the
architect who should build all his houses with the same number of windows and of
stories. It happened, too, inevitably, that the critics in the plenipotential authority
which they exercised, often assumed as indispensable requisites of the drama, or
epopeia, circumstances which, in the great authorities they
quoted, were altogether accidental or indifferent. These they erected into laws, and
handed down as essential; although the forms prescribed have often as little to do with
the merit and success of the original from which they are taken, as the shape of the
drinking glass with the flavour of the wine which it contains.” These
sentences appear, from the dates, to have been penned immediately after the biographer of
Dryden (who wrote no epic) had perused the Edinburgh Review on Marmion.
I conclude with a passage, in writing which he seems to have anticipated
the only serious critical charge that was ever brought against his edition of Dryden as a whole—namely, the loose and
irregular way in which his own æsthetical
notions are indicated, rather than expounded. “While Dryden,” says
Scott, “examined, discussed, admitted, or
rejected the rules proposed by others, he forbore, from prudence,
indolence, or a regard for the freedom of Parnassus, to
erect himself into a legislator. His doctrines are scattered without system or pretence
to it: it is impossible to read far without finding some maxim for doing, or
forbearing, which every student of poetry will do well to engrave upon the tablets of
his memory; but the author’s mode of instruction is neither harsh nor
dictatorial.”
On the whole it is impossible to doubt that the success of Dryden in rapidly reaching, and till the end of a long
life holding undisputed, the summit of public favour and reputation, in spite of his
“brave neglect” of minute finishing, narrow laws, and prejudiced
authorities, must have had a powerful effect in nerving Scott’s hope and resolution for the wide ocean of literary enterprise
into which he had now fairly launched his bark. Like Dryden, he felt
himself to be “amply stored with acquired knowledge, much of it the fruits of
early reading and application;” anticipated that, though, “while
engaged in the hurry of composition, or overcome by the lassitude of continued literary
labour,” he should sometimes “draw with too much liberality on a
tenacious memory,” no “occasional imperfections would deprive him of
his praise;” in short, made up his mind that “pointed and
nicely-turned lines, sedulous study, and long and repeated correction and
revision,” would all be dispensed with, provided their place were supplied, as in
Dryden, by “rapidity of conception, a readiness of
expressing every idea, without losing any thing by the way,”
“perpetual animation and elasticity of thought;” and language
“never laboured, never loitering, never (in
Dryden’s own phrase) cursedly
confined.”
Scott’s correspondence, about the time when his
Dryden was published, is a good deal
occupied with a wild project of his friend Henry
Weber—that of an extensive edition of our Ancient Metrical Romances, for
which, in their own original dimensions, the enthusiastic German supposed the public
appetite to have been set on edge by the “Specimens” of Ellis, and imperfectly gratified by the text of Sir Tristrem. Scott assured him that
Ellis’s work had been popular, rather in spite than by
reason of the antique verses introduced here and there among his witty and sparkling prose;
while Ellis told him, with equal truth, that the Tristrem had gone through two editions, simply owing to the celebrity of its
editor’s name; and that, of a hundred that had purchased the book, ninety-nine had
read only the preface and notes, but not one syllable of True
Thomas’s “quaint Inglis.” Weber, in
reply to Ellis, alleged that Scott had not had
leisure to consider his plan so fully as it deserved; that nothing could prevent its
success, provided Scott would write a preliminary essay, and let his
name appear in the title-page, along with his own; and though Scott
wholly declined this last proposal, he persisted for some months in a negotiation with the
London booksellers, which ended as both his patrons had foreseen.
“But how is this?”—(Ellis writes)—“Weber tells
me he is afraid Mr Scott will not be able to do any
thing for the recommendation of his Romances, because he is himself engaged in no less
than five different literary enterprises, some of them of immense extent. Five? Why, no
combination of blood and bone can possibly stand this; and Sir John Sinclair, however successful in pointing out the best modes of
feeding common gladiators, has not discovered the means of training minds to such
endless fatigue. I dare not ask you for an account of these projects, nor even for a
letter during the continuance of this seven years’ apprenticeship, and
only request that you will, after the completion of your labours, take measures to lay
my ghost, which will infallibly be walking before that time, and suffering all the
pains of unsatisfied curiosity. Seriously, I don’t quite like your imposing on
yourself such a series of tasks. Some one is, I believe, always
of service—because, whatever you write at the same time con
amore, comes in as a relaxation, and is likely to receive more
spirit and gaiety from that circumstance; besides which, every species of study perhaps
is capable of furnishing allusions, and adding vigour and solidity to poetry. Too
constant attention to what they call their art, and too much solicitude about its
minutiæ, has been, I think, the fault of every poet since Pope; perhaps it was his too perhaps the frequent and
varied studies imposed upon him by his necessities contributed, in some measure, to
Dryden’s characteristic splendour of
style. Yet, surely, the best poet of the age ought not to be incessantly employed in
the drudgeries of literature. I shall lament if you are effectually distracted from the
exercise of the talent in which you are confessedly without a rival.”
The poet answers as follows:—“My giving my name to
Weber’sRomances is out of the
question, as assuredly I have not time to do any thing that can entitle it
to stand in his titlepage; but I will do all I can for him in the business.
By the by, I wish he would be either more chary in his communications on
the subject of my employments, or more accurate. I often employ his
assistance in making extracts, &c., and I may say to him as Lord Ogleby does to Canton, that he never sees me badiner a little with a subject, but he suspects mischief—to wit,
an edition. In the mean time, suffice it to say, that I have done with
poetry for some time—it is a scourging crop, and ought not to be hastily
repeated. Editing, there-fore, may be considered as a
green crop of turnips or peas, extremely useful for those whose
circumstances do not admit of giving their farm a summer fallow. Swift is my grande opus at present, though I am
under engagements, of old standing, to write a Life of Thomson from some original materials. I
have completed an edition of some State Papers of Sir Ralph Sadler, which I believe you will find
curious; I have, moreover, arranged, for republication the more early
volumes of Somers’s
Tracts; but these are neither toilsome nor exhausting labours.
Swift, in fact, is my only task
of great importance. My present official employment leaves my time very
much my own, even while the courts are sitting and entirely so in the
vacation. My health is strong, and my mind active; I will therefore do as
much as I can with justice to the tasks I have undertaken, and rest when
advanced age and more independent circumstances entitle me to
repose.”
This letter is dated Ashestiel, October 8, 1808; but it carries us back
to the month of April, when the Dryden was
completed. His engagements with London publishers respecting the Somers and the Sadler, were, I believe, entered into before the end of 1807; but Constable appears to have first ascertained them, when he
accompanied the second cargo of Marmion to
the great southern market; and, alarmed at the prospect of losing his hold on Scott’s industry, he at once invited him to follow up
his Dryden by an Edition
of Swift on the same scale,—offering, moreover, to double the rate of payment
which he had contracted for with the London publisher of the Dryden;
that is to say, to give him L.1500 for the new undertaking. This munificent tender was
accepted without hesitation; and as early as May, I find Scott writing
to his literary allies in all
directions for books, pamphlets, and MSS. materials likely to be serviceable in completing
and illustrating the Life and Works of the Dean of St
Patrick’s. While these were accumulating about him, which they soon did in
greater abundance than he had anticipated, he concluded his labours on Sadler’s State Papers, characteristically undervalued in his letter to
Ellis, and kept pace, at the same time, with
Ballantyne, as the huge collection of the Somers’ Tracts continued to move through the press. The Sadler was published in the course of 1809, in three large volumes,
quarto; but the last of the thirteen equally ponderous tomes to which Somers extended, was not dismissed from his desk until towards the conclusion
of 1812.
But these were not his only tasks during the summer and autumn of 1808;
and if he had not “five different enterprises” on his
hands when Weber said so to Ellis, he had more than five very soon after. He edited
this year, Strutt’s unfinished romance of
Queenhoo-Hall, and equipped the
fourth volume with a conclusion in the fashion of the original;* but how little he thought
of this matter may be guessed from one of his notes to Ballantyne, in which he says, “I wish you would see how far the
copy of Queenhoo-Hall, sent last night, extends, that I may
not write more nonsense than enough.” The publisher of this work was
John Murray, of London. It was immediately
preceded by a reprint of Captain Carleton’sMemoirs of the War of the Spanish Succession, to which he gave a lively preface
and various notes; and followed by a similar edition of the Memoirs of Robert Cary Earl of Monmouth,—each
* See General Preface to Waverley, pp. xiv-xvii. and Appendix No. II. p.
lxv.
of these being a single octavo, printed by
Ballantyne and published by Constable.
The republication of Carleton,* Johnson’s eulogy of
which fills a pleasant page in Boswell,
had probably been suggested by the lively interest which Scott took in the first outburst of Spanish patriotism consequent on
Napoleon’s transactions at Bayonne. There is
one passage in the preface which I must indulge myself by transcribing. Speaking of the
absurd recall of Peterborough, from the command in
which he had exhibited such a wonderful combination of patience and prudence with military
daring, he says:—“One ostensible reason was, that
Peterborough’s parts were of too lively and mercurial a
quality, and that his letters showed more wit than became a General;—a commonplace
objection, raised by the dull malignity of commonplace minds, against those whom they
see discharging with ease and indifference the tasks which they themselves execute (if
at all) with the sweat of their brow and in the heaviness of their hearts. There is a
certain hypocrisy in business, whether civil or military, as well as in religion, which
they will do well to observe who, not satisfied with discharging their duty, desire
also the good repute of men.” It was not long before some of the dull
malignants of the Parliament House began to insinuate what at length found a dull and
dignified mouthpiece in the House of Commons—that if a Clerk of Session had any real
business to do, it could not be done well by a man who found time for more literary
enterprises than any other author of the age undertook—“wrote more
* I believe it is now pretty generally believed that Carleton’s Memoirs were
among the numberless fabrications of Defoe; but in this case, as in that of his Cavalier, he no
doubt had before him the rude journal of some officer who had really served in
the campaigns described with such an inimitable air of truth.
books,” Lord Archibald Hamilton serenely added, “than any
body could find leisure to read”—and, moreover, mingled in general society as
much as many that had no pursuit but pleasure.
The eager struggling of the different booksellers to engage Scott at this time, is a very amusing feature in the
voluminous correspondence before me. Had he possessed treble the energy for which it was
possible to give any man credit, he could never have encountered a tithe of the projects
that the post brought day after day to him, announced with extravagant enthusiasm, and
urged with all the arts of conciliation. I shall mention only one out of at least a dozen
gigantic schemes which were thus proposed before he had well settled himself to his Swift; and I do so, because something of the
kind was a few years later carried into execution. This was a General Edition of British Novelists, beginning with
De Foe and reaching to the end of the last
century; to be set forth with biographical prefaces and illustrative notes by
Scott, and printed of course by Ballantyne. The projector was Murray, who was now eager to start on all points in the race with Constable; but this was not, as we shall see presently,
the only business that prompted my enterprising friend’s first visit to Ashestiel.
Conversing with Scott, many years
afterwards, about the tumult of engagements in which he was thus involved, he said,
“Ay, it was enough to tear me to pieces, but there was a wonderful
exhilaration about it all: my blood was kept at fever-pitch—I felt as if I could have
grappled with any thing and every thing; then, there was hardly one of all my schemes
that did not afford me the means of serving some poor devil of a brother author. There
were always huge piles of materials to be arranged, sifted, and indexed—volumes of
extracts to be transcribed—journeys to be made hither and thither, for ascertaining little facts and dates,—in short, I could commonly keep
half-a-dozen of the ragged regiment of Parnassus in tolerable case.” I said
he must have felt something like what a locomotive engine on a railway might be supposed to
do, when a score of coal waggons are seen linking themselves to it the moment it gets the
steam up, and it rushes on its course regardless of the burden. “Yes,”
said he, laughing, and making a crashing cut with his axe (for we were felling larches);
“but there was a cursed lot of dung carts too.” He was seldom, in
fact, without some of these appendages; and I admired nothing more in him than the patient
courtesy, the unwearied gentle kindness with which he always treated them, in spite of
their delays and blunders, to say nothing of the almost incredible vanity and presumption
which more than one of them often exhibited in the midst of their fawning; and I believe,
with all their faults, the worst and weakest of them repaid him by a canine fidelity of
affection. This part of Scott’s character recalls by far the
most pleasing trait in that of his last predecessor in the plenitude of literary
authority—Dr Johnson. There was perhaps nothing
(except the one great blunder) that had a worse effect on the course of his pecuniary
fortunes, than the readiness with which he exerted his interest with the booksellers on
behalf of inferior writers. Even from the commencement of his connexion with Constable in particular, I can trace a continual series of
such applications. They stimulated the already too sanguine publisher to numberless risks;
and when these failed, the result was, in one shape or another, some corresponding
deduction from the fair profits of his own literary labour. “I like well,”
Constable was often heard to say in the sequel, “like well
Scott’s ain bairns—but heaven preserve me from those of his
fathering!”
Every now and then, however, he had the rich compensation of finding
that his interference had really promoted the worldly interests of some meritorious
obscure. Early in 1808 he tasted this pleasure, in the case of a poetical shoemaker of
Glasgow, Mr John Struthers, a man of rare worth and
very considerable genius, whose “Poor
Man’s Sabbath” was recommended to his notice by Joanna Baillie, and shortly after published, at his
desire, by Mr Constable. He thus writes to Miss
Baillie from Ashestiel, on the 9th of May, 1808:—
“Your letter found me in this quiet corner, and while
it always gives me pride and pleasure to hear from you, I am truly concerned at
Constable’s unaccountable
delays. I suppose that, in the hurry of his departure for London, his promise
to write to Mr Struthers had escaped; as
for any desire to quit his bargain, it is out of the question. If Mr
Struthers will send to my house in Castle Street, the manuscript
designed for the press, I will get him a short bill for the copy-money the
moment Constable returns, or perhaps before he comes down.
He may rely on the bargain being definitively settled, and the printing will, I
suppose, be begun immediately on the great bibliopolist’s return; on
which occasion I shall have, according to good old phrase, ‘a crow to
pluck with him, and a pock to put the feathers in.’ I heartily
wish we could have had the honour to see Miss
Agnes and you at our little farm, which is now in its glory—all
the twigs bursting into leaf, and all the lambs skipping on the hills. I have
been fishing almost from morning till night; and Mrs
Scott, and two ladies our guests, are wandering about on the
banks in the most Arcadian fashion in the world. We are just on the point of
setting out on a pilgrimage to the ‘bonny bush, aboon
Traquhair,’ which I believe will occupy us all the morning. Adieu, my dear Miss
Baillie. Nothing will give me more pleasure than to hear that you
have found the northern breezes fraught with inspiration. You are not entitled
to spare yourself, and none is so deeply interested in your labours as your
truly respectful friend and admirer,
Walter Scott.
“P.S. We quit our quiet pastures to return to
Edinburgh on the 10th. So Mr
Struthers’ parcel will find me there, if he is pleased
to intrust me with the care of it.”
Mr Struthers’ volume was unfortunate in
bearing a title so very like that of James
Grahame’sSabbath, which, though not written sooner, had been published a year or two
before. This much interfered with its success, yet it was not on the whole unsuccessful: it
put some L.30 or L.40 into the pocket of a good man, to whom this was a considerable
supply; but it made his name and character known, and thus served him far more essentially;
for he wisely continued to cultivate his poetical talents without neglecting the
opportunity, thus afforded him through them, of pursuing his original calling under better
advantages. It is said that the solitary and meditative generation of cobblers have
produced a larger list of murders and other domestic crimes than any other mechanical
trade, except the butchers; but the sons of Crispin
have, to balance their account, a not less disproportionate catalogue of poets; and
foremost among these stands the pious author of the Poor Man’s Sabbath; one of the very few that
have had sense and fortitude to resist the innumerable temptations to which any measure of
celebrity exposes persons of their class. I believe Mr Struthers still
survives to enjoy the retrospect of a long and virtuous life. His letters to Scott are equally creditable to his taste and his feelings, and sometime after we shall find
him making a pilgrimage of gratitude to Ashestiel.*
James Hogg was by this time beginning to be generally
known and appreciated in Scotland; and the popularity of his “Mountain Bard” encouraged Scott to more strenuous intercession in his behalf. I have
before me a long array of letters on this subject, which passed between
Scott and the Earl of Dalkeith
and his brother Lord Montagu, in 1808.
Hogg’s prime ambition at this period was to procure an
ensigncy in a militia regiment, and he seems to have set little by
Scott’s representations that the pay of such a situation was
very small, and that, if he obtained it, he would probably find his relations with his
brother officers far from agreeable. There was, however, another objection which
Scott could not hint to the aspirant himself, but which seems to
have been duly considered by those who were anxious to promote his views. Militia officers
of that day were by no means unlikely to see their nerves put to the test; and the
Shepherd’s—though he wrote some capital war-songs, especially Donald Macdonald—were not
heroically strung. This was in truth no secret among his early intimates, though he had not
measured himself at all exactly on that score, and was even tempted, when he found there
was no chance of the militia epaulette, to threaten that he would “list for a
soldier” in a marching regiment. Notwithstanding at least one melancholy precedent,
the excise, which would have suited him almost as badly as “hugging Brown
Bess,” was next thought of; and the
* I am happy to learn, as this page passes through the press,
from my friend Mr John Kerr of Glasgow, that
about three years ago Mr Struthers was
appointed keeper of Stirling’s Library, a collection of some consequence, in
that city. The selection of him for this respectable situation reflects honour on
the directors of the institution.—(December, 1836).
Shepherd himself seems to have entered into that plan with
considerable alacrity: but I know not whether he changed his mind, or what other cause
prevented such an appointment from taking place. After various shiftings he at last
obtained, as we shall see, from the late Duke of Buccleuch’s
munificence, the gratuitous life-rent of a small farm in the vale of Yarrow; and had he
contented himself with the careful management of its fields, the rest of his days might
have been easy. But he could not withstand the attractions of Edinburgh, which carried him
away from Altrive for months every year; and when at home, a warm and hospitable
disposition, so often stirred by vanity less pardonable than his, made him convert his
cottage into an unpaid hostelrie for the reception of endless troops of thoughtless
admirers; and thus, in spite of much help and much forbearance, he was never out of one set
of pecuniary difficulties before he had began to weave the meshes of some fresh
entanglement. In pace requiescat. There will
never be such an Ettrick Shepherd again.
The following is an extract from a letter of Scott’s to his brother Thomas,
dated 20th June, 1808.
“Excellent news to-day from Spain—yet I wish the patriots had a
leader of genius and influence. I fear the Castilian nobility are more sunk than the common
people, and that it will be easier to find armies than generals. A Wallace, Dundee, or
Montrose, would be the man for Spain at this
moment. It is, however, a consolation that, though the grandees of the earth, when the post
of honour becomes the post of danger, may be less ambitious of occupying it, there may be
some hidalgo among the mountains of Asturias with all the spirit of the Cid Ruy Diaz, or Don
Pelayo, or Don Quixote if you will,
whose gallantry was only impeachable from the objects on which he exercised it. It strikes
me as very singular to have all the
places mentioned in Don Quixote and Gil Blas now the scenes of real and important
events. Gazettes dated from Oviedo, and gorges fortified in the Sierra Morena, sounds like
history in the land of romance.
“James Hogg has driven his
pigs to a bad market. I am endeavouring, as a pis
aller, to have him made an Excise officer, that station being, with
respect to Scottish geniuses, the grave of all the Capulets. Witness Adam Smith, Burns,
&c.”
I mentioned the name of Joanna
Baillie (for “who,” as Scott
says in a letter of this time, “ever speaks of Miss
Sappho?”) in connexion with the MS. of the Poor Man’s Sabbath. From Glasgow, where she had
found out Struthers in April, she proceeded to
Edinburgh, and took up her abode for a week or two under Scott’s
roof. Their acquaintance was thus knit into a deep and respectful affection on both sides;
and henceforth they maintained a close epistolary correspondence, which will, I think,
supply this compilation with some of the most interesting of its materials. But within a
few weeks after Joanna’s departure, he was to commence another
intimacy not less sincere and cordial; and when I name Mr
Morritt of Rokeby, I have done enough to prepare many of my readers to
expect not inferior gratification from the still more abundant series of letters in which,
from this time to the end of his life, Scott communicated his thoughts
and feelings to one of the most accomplished men that ever shared his confidence. He had
now reached a period of life after which real friendships are but seldom formed; and it is
fortunate that another English one had been thoroughly compacted before death cut the ties
between him and George Ellis—because his dearest
intimates within Scotland had of course but a slender part in his
written correspondence.
Several mutual friends had written to recommend Mr Morritt to his acquaintance—among others, Mr W. S. Rose and Lady Louisa
Stuart. His answer to her ladyship I must insert here, for the sake of the
late inimitable Lydia White, who so long ruled
without a rival in the soft realm of blue Mayfair.
“Edinburgh, 16th June, 1808. “My dear Lady Louisa,
“Nothing will give us more pleasure than to have the
honour of showing every attention in our power to Mr and Mrs Morritt, and
I am particularly happy in a circumstance that at once promises me a great deal
of pleasure in the acquaintance of your Ladyship’s friends, and affords
me the satisfaction of hearing from you again. Pray don’t triumph over me
too much in the case of Lydia. I stood a
very respectable siege; but she caressed my wife, coaxed my children, and made,
by dint of cake and pudding, some impression even upon the affections of my
favourite dog:—so, when all the outworks were carried, the mere fortress had no
choice but to surrender on honourable terms. To the best of my thinking,
notwithstanding the cerulean hue of her stockings, and a most plentiful stock
of eccentric affectation, she is really at bottom a good-natured woman, with
much liveliness and some talent. She is now set out to the Highlands, where she
is likely to encounter many adventures. Mrs
Scott and I went as far as Loch Catrine with her, from which
jaunt I have just returned. We had most heavenly weather, which was peculiarly
favourable to my fair companions’ zeal for sketching every object that
fell in their way, from a castle to a pigeon-house. Did your Ladyship ever travel with a drawing
companion? Mine drew like cart-horses, as well in laborious zeal as in effect;
for, after all, I could not help hinting that the cataracts delineated bore a
singular resemblance to haycocks, and the rocks much correspondence to large
old-fashioned cabinets with their folding-doors open. So much for
Lydia, whom I left on her journey through the
Highlands, but by what route she had not resolved, I gave her three plans, and
think it likely she will adopt none of them: moreover, when the executive
government of postilions, landlords, and Highland boatmen devolves upon her
English servant instead of me, I am afraid the distresses of the errant damsels
will fall a little beneath the dignity of romances. All this nonsense is
entre nous, for
Miss White has been actively zealous in getting me
some Irish correspondence about Swift,
and otherwise very obliging.
“It is not with my inclination that I fag for the
booksellers; but what can I do? My poverty, and not my will consents. The
income of my office is only reversionary, and my private fortune much limited.
My poetical success fairly destroyed my prospects of professional success, and
obliged me to retire from the bar; for though I had a competent share of
information and industry, who would trust their cause to the author of the
Lay of the Last Minstrel? How,
although I do allow that an author should take care of his literary character,
yet I think the least thing that his literary character can do in return is to
take some care of the author, who is unfortunately, like Jeremy in Love for Love,
furnished with a set of tastes and appetites which would do honour to the
income of a Duke if he had it. Besides, I go to work with Swiftcon
amore; for, like Dryden, he is an early favourite of mine. The Marmion is nearly out, and I have
made one or two alterations on the third edition, with
which the press is now groaning. So soon as it is, it will make the number of
copies published within the space of six months amount to eight thousand,—an
immense number surely, and enough to comfort the author’s wounded
feelings, had the claws of the reviewers been able to reach him through the steel jack of true Border indifference. Your
Ladyship’s much obliged and faithful servant,
Walter Scott.”
Mr and Mrs
Morritt reached Edinburgh soon after this letter was written. Scott showed them the lions of the town and its vicinity,
exactly as if he had nothing else to attend to but their gratification; and Mr
Morritt recollects with particular pleasure one long day spent in rambling
along the Esk by Roslin and Hawthornden, “Where Jonson sat in Drummond’s social shade,” down to the old haunts of Lasswade.
“When we approached that village,” says the Memorandum
with which Mr Morritt favours me,
“Scott, who had laid hold of my arm,
turned along the road in a direction not leading to the place where the carriage was to
meet us. After walking some minutes towards Edinburgh, I suggested that we were losing
the scenery of the Esk, and, besides, had Dalkeith Palace yet to see.
‘Yes,’ said he, ‘and I have been bringing you where there
is little enough to be seen—only that Scotch cottage’ (one by the road
side, with a small garth); ‘but, though not worth looking at, I could not pass
it. It was our first country house when newly married, and many a contrivance we
had to make it comfortable. I made a dining-table for it with my own hands. Look at
these two miserable willow-trees on either side the gate into the enclosure; they
are tied together at the top to be an arch, and a cross made of two sticks over them is not yet decayed. To be sure it
is not much of a lion to show a stranger; but I wanted to see it again myself, for
I assure you that after I had constructed it, mamma’ (Mrs Scott) ‘and I
both of us thought it so fine, we turned out to see it by moonlight, and walked
backwards from it to the cottage door, in admiration of our own magnificence and
its picturesque effect. I did want to see if it was still there—so now we will look
after the barouche, and make the best of our way to Dalkeith.’ Such were
the natural feelings that endeared the Author of Marmion and the Lay to those who ‘saw him in his happier hours of social
pleasure.’ His person at that time may be exactly known from Raeburn’s first picture, which had just been
executed for his bookseller, Constable, and
which was a most faithful likeness of him and his dog Camp.
The literal fidelity of the portraiture, however, is its principal merit. The
expression is serious and contemplative, very unlike the hilarity and vivacity then
habitual to his speaking face, but quite true to what it was in the absence of such
excitement. His features struck me at first as commonplace and heavy,—but they were
almost always lighted up by the flashes of the mind within. This required a hand more
masterly than Raeburn’s; and indeed, in my own opinion,
Chantrey alone has in his bust attained
that, in his case, most difficult task of portraying the features faithfully, and yet
giving the real and transient expression of the countenance when animated.
“We passed a week in Edinburgh, chiefly in his society and that
of his friends the Mackenzies. We were so far on
our way to Brahan Castle, in Ross-shire. Scott
unlocked all his antiquarian lore, and supplied us with numberless data, such as no
guide-book could have furnished, and such as his own Monkbarns might have delighted to give. It would be idle to tell how
much plea-sure and instruction his advice added to a tour in
itself so productive of both, as well as of private friendships and intimacies, now too
generally terminated by death, but never severed by caprice or disappointment. His was
added to the number by our reception now in Edinburgh, and, on our return from the
Highlands, at Ashestiel—where he had made us promise to visit him, saying that the
farm-house had pigeon-holes enough for such of his friends as could live, like him, on
Tweed salmon and Forest mutton. There he was the cherished friend and kind neighbour of
every middling Selkirkshire yeoman, just as easily as in Edinburgh he was the companion
of clever youth and narrative old age in refined society. He carried us one day to
Melrose Abbey or Newark—another, to course with mountain greyhounds by Yarrow braes or
St Mary’s loch, repeating every ballad or legendary tale connected with the
scenery—and on a third, we must all go to a farmer’s kirn,
or harvest-home, to dance with Border lasses on a barn floor, drink whisky punch, and
enter with him into all the gossip and good fellowship of his neighbours, on a complete
footing of unrestrained conviviality, equality, and mutual respect. His wife and happy
young family were clustered round him, and the cordiality of his reception would have
unbent a misanthrope.
“At this period his conversation was more equal and animated
than any man’s that I ever knew. It was most characterised by the extreme
felicity and fun of his illustrations, drawn from the whole encyclopædia of life
and nature, in a style sometimes too exuberant for written narrative, but which to him
was natural and spontaneous. A hundred stories, always apposite, and often interesting
the mind by strong pathos, or eminently ludicrous, were daily told, which, with many
more, have since been transplanted, almost in the same language, into the Wa-verley novels and his other writings. These
and his recitations of poetry, which can never be forgotten by those who knew him, made
up the charm that his boundless memory enabled him to exert to the wonder of the gaping
lovers of wonders. But equally impressive and powerful was the language of his warm
heart, and equally wonderful were the conclusions of his vigorous understanding, to
those who could return or appreciate either. Among a number of such recollections, I
have seen many of the thoughts which then passed through his mind embodied in the
delightful prefaces annexed late in life to his poetry and novels. Those on literary
quarrels and literary irritability are exactly what he then expressed. Keenly enjoying
literature as he did, and indulging his own love of it in perpetual composition, he
always maintained the same estimate of it as subordinate and auxiliary to the purposes
of life, and rather talked of men and events than of books and criticism. Literary
fame, he always said, was a bright feather in the cap, but not the substantial cover of
a well-protected head. This sound and manly feeling was what I have seen described by
some of his biographers as pride; and it will always be thought so by those whose own
vanity can only be gratified by the admiration of others, and who mistake shows for
realities. None valued the love and applause of others more than Scott; but it was to the love and applause of those he
valued in return that he restricted the feeling without restricting the kindness. Men
who did not, or would not, understand this, perpetually mistook him and, after loading
him with undesired eulogy, perhaps in his own house neglected common attention or
civility to other parts of his family. It was on such an occasion that I heard him
murmur in my ear, ‘Author as I am, I wish these good people would recollect
that I began with being a gentleman, and don’t mean to give up the character.’ Such was all along his feeling,
and this, with a slight prejudice common to Scotchmen in favour of ancient and
respectable family descent, constituted what in Grub Street is called his pride. It was, at least, what Johnson would have justly called defensive
pride. From all other, and still more from mere vanity, I never knew any man so
remarkably free.”
The farmer at whose annual kirn Scott and all his
household were, in those days, regular guests, was Mr
Laidlaw, the Duke of Buccleuch’s
tenant on the lands of Peel, which are only separated from the eastern terrace of Ashestiel
by the ravine and its brook. Mr Laidlaw was himself possessed of some
landed property in the same neighbourhood, and being considered as wealthy, and fond of his
wealth, he was usually called among the country people Laird
Nippy; an expressive designation which it would be difficult to
translate. Though a very dry, demure, and taciturn old presbyterian, he could not resist
the Sheriff’s jokes, nay, he even gradually subdued his scruples so far, as to become
a pretty constant attendant at his “English printed
prayers” on the Sundays; which, indeed, were by this time rather more popular
than quite suited the capacity of the parlour-chapel. Mr
Laidlaw’s wife was a woman of superior mind and manners—a great
reader, and one of the few to whom Scott liked lending his books; for
most strict and delicate was he always in the care of them, and indeed, hardly any trivial
occurrence ever seemed to touch his temper at all, except any thing like irreverent
treatment of a book. The intercourse between the family at Ashestiel and this worthy woman
and her children, was a constant interchange of respect and kindness; but I remember to
have heard Scott say that the greatest compliment he had ever received
in his life was from the rigid old farmer himself; for, years after he had left Ashestiel,
he disco-vered casually that special care
had been taken to keep the turf seat on the Shirra’s knowe in
good repair: and this was much from Nippy.
And here I must set down a story which, most readers will smile to be
told, was often repeated by Scott; and always with an
air that seemed to me, in spite of his endeavours to the contrary, as grave as the usual
aspect of Laird Nippy of the Peel. This neighbour was a distant
kinsman of his dear friend William Laidlaw;—so
distant, that elsewhere in that condition they would scarcely have remembered any community
of blood; but they both traced their descent, in the ninth degree, to an ancestress who, in
the days of John Knox, fell into trouble from a
suspicion of witchcraft. In her time the Laidlaws were rich and
prosperous, and held rank among the best gentry of Tweeddale; but in some evil hour, her
husband, the head of his blood, reproached her with her addiction to the black art, and
she, in her anger, cursed the name and lineage of Laidlaw. Her only
son, who stood by, implored her to revoke the malediction; but in vain. Next day, however,
on the renewal of his entreaties, she carried him with her into the woods, made him slay a
heifer, sacrificed it to the power of evil in his presence, and then, collecting the ashes
in her apron, invited the youth to see her commit them to the river. “Follow
them,” said she, “from stream to pool, as long as they float
visible, and as many streams as you shall then have passed, for so many generations
shall your descendants prosper. After that they shall like the rest of the name be
poor, and take their part in my curse.” The streams he counted, were nine;
and now, Scott would say, “look round you in this country,
and sure enough the Laidlaws are one and all landless men, with
the single exception of Auld Nippy!” Many times had I
heard both him and William Laidlaw tell this
story, before any suspicion got abroad that Nippy’s wealth
rested on insecure foundations. Year after year, we never escorted a stranger by the Peel,
but I heard the tale;—and at last it came with a new conclusion;—“and now, think
whatever we choose of it, my good friend Nippy is a
bankrupt.”
Mr Morritt’s mention of the “happy
young family clustered round him” at Laird
Nippy’s kirn, reminds me that I ought to say a few words on Scott’s method of treating his children in their early
days. He had now two boys and two girls;—and he never had more.* He was not one of those
who take much delight in a mere infant; but no father ever devoted more time and tender
care to his offspring than he did to each of his, as they successively reached the age when
they could listen to him and understand his talk. Like their mute playmates, Camp and the greyhounds, they had at all times free access to his
study; he never considered their tattle
* I may as well transcribe here the rest of the record in
Scott’s family Bible. After what was
quoted in a former chapter it thus proceeds:
“24to die Octobris 1799. Margareta C. Scott, filiam apud Edinburgum edidit
15o Novembris 1799, in Ecclesiam Christianam recepta
fuit per baptismum dicta filia, nomenque ei adjectum Charlotte Sophia, per virum reverendum Danielem Sandford; sponsoribus prænobili Arthuro Marchione de Downshire, Sophia Dumergue, et Anna Rutherford matre mea.
“Margareta C. Scott
puerum edidit 28vo Octobris A.D. 1801 apud Edinburgum;
nomenque ei adjectum Gualterus, cum per v.
rev. Doctorem Danielem Sandford baptizatus
erat.
“M. C. Scott filiam
edidit apud Edinburgum 2do die February 1803, quæ in
Ecclesiam recepta fuit per virum reverendum Doctorem
Sandford, nomenque ei adjectum Anna
Scott.
“24to Decem: 1805. M. C. Scott apud Edinburgum puerum edidit; qui
baptizatus erat per virum reverendum Joannem
Thomson, Ministrum de Duddingstone prope Edinburgum, nomenque
Carolus illi datum.”
as any disturbance; they went and
came as pleased their fancy; he was always ready to answer their questions; and when they,
unconscious how he was engaged, entreated him to lay down his pen and tell them a story, he
would take them on his knee, repeat a ballad or a legend, kiss them, and set them down
again to their marbles or ninepins, and resume his labour as if refreshed by the
interruption. From a very early age he made them dine at table, and “to sit up to
supper” was the great reward when they had been “very good
bairns.” In short, he considered it as the highest duty as well as the
sweetest pleasure of a parent to be the companion of his children; he partook all their
little joys and sorrows, and made his kind unformal instructions to blend so easily and
playfully with the current of their own sayings and doings, that so far from regarding him
with any distant awe, it was never thought that any sport or diversion could go on in the
right way, unless papa were of the party, or that the rainiest day could be dull so he were
at home.
Of the irregularity of his own education he speaks with considerable
regret, in the autobiographical fragment written this year at Ashestiel; yet his practice
does not look as if that feeling had been strongly rooted in his mind;—for he never did
show much concern about regulating systematically what is usually called education in the
case of his own children. It seemed, on the contrary, as if he attached little importance
to any thing else, so he could perceive that the young curiosity was excited̬the
intellect, by whatever springs of interest, set in motion. He detested and despised the
whole generation of modern children’s books, in which the attempt is made to convey
accurate notions of scientific minutiæ: delighting cordially, on the other hand, in
those of the preceding age, which, addressing themselves chiefly to
the imagination, obtain through it, as he believed, the best chance of stirring our graver
faculties also. He exercised the memory, by selecting for tasks of recitation passages of
popular verse the most likely to catch the fancy of children; and gradually familiarized
them with the ancient history of their own country, by arresting attention, in the course
of his own oral narrations, on incidents and characters of a similar description. Nor did
he neglect to use the same means of quickening curiosity as to the events of sacred
history. On Sunday he never rode—at least not until his growing infirmity made his pony
almost necessary to him—for it was his principle that all domestic animals have a full
right to their Sabbath of rest; but after he had read the church service, he usually walked
with his whole family, dogs included, to some favourite spot at a considerable distance
from the house—most frequently the ruined tower of Elibank—and there dined with them in the
open air on a basket of cold provisions, mixing his wine with the water of the brook beside
which they all were grouped around him on the turf; and here, or at home, if the weather
kept them from their ramble, his Sunday talk was just such a series of biblical lessons as
that which we have preserved for the permanent use of rising generations, in his Tales of a Grandfather, on the early
history of Scotland. I wish he had committed that other series to writing too;—how
different that would have been from our thousand compilations of dead epitome and imbecile
cant! He had his Bible, the Old Testament especially, by heart; and on these days inwove
the simple pathos or sublime enthusiasm of Scripture, in whatever story he was telling,
with the same picturesque richness as he did, in his week-day tales, the quaint Scotch of
Pitscottie, or some rude romantic old rhyme from Barbour’sBruce
or Blind Harry’sWallace.
By many external accomplishments, either in girl or boy, he set little
store. He delighted to hear his daughters sing an old ditty, or one of his own framing;
but, so the singer appeared to feel the spirit of her ballad, he was not at all critical of
the technical execution. There was one thing, however, on which he fixed his heart hardly
less than the ancient Persians of the Cyropædia; like them, next to love of truth, he held love of horsemanship
for the prime point of education. As soon as his eldest girl could sit a pony, she was made
the regular attendant of his mountain rides; and they all, as they attained sufficient
strength, had the like advancement. He taught them to think nothing of tumbles, and
habituated them to his own reckless delight in perilous fords and flooded streams; and they
all imbibed in great perfection his passion for horses as well, I may venture to add, as
his deep reverence for the more important article of that Persian training.
“Without courage,” he said, “there cannot be truth; and
without truth there can be no other virtue.”
He had a horror of boarding-schools; never allowed his girls to learn
any thing out of his own house; and chose their governess—(Miss
Miller)—who about this time was domesticated with them, and never left them
while they needed one,—with far greater regard to her kind good temper and excellent moral
and religious principles, than to the measure of her attainments in what are called
fashionable accomplishments. The admirable system of education for boys in Scotland
combines all the advantages of public and private instruction; his carried their satchels
to the High-School, when the family was in Edinburgh, just as he had done before them, and
shared of course the evening society of their happy home. But he rarely, if ever, left them
in town, when he could himself be in the country; and at Ashestiel he was, for better or for worse, his eldest boy’s daily tutor, after he
began Latin.
The following letter will serve, among other things, to supply a few
more details of the domestic life of Ashestiel:—
To Miss Joanna Baillie—Hampstead.
“Sept. 20, 1808. “My dear Miss Baillie,
“The law, you know, makes the husband answerable for
the debts of his wife, and therefore gives him a right to approach her
creditors with an offer of payment; so that, after witnessing many fruitless
and broken resolutions of my Charlotte, I am
determined, rather than she and I shall appear longer insensible of your
goodness, to intrude a few lines on you to answer the letter you honoured her
with some time ago. The secret reason of her procrastination is, I believe,
some terror of writing in English—which you know is not her native language—to
one who is as much distinguished by her command of it as by the purposes she
adapts it to. I wish we had the command of what my old friend Pitscottie calls ‘a blink of the sun
or a whip of the whirlwind,’ to transport you to this solitude
before the frost has stripped it of its leaves. It is not, indeed (even I must
confess), equal in picturesque beauty to the banks of Clyde and Evan; but it is
so sequestered, so simple, and so solitary, that it seems just to have beauty
enough to delight its inhabitants, without a single attraction for any visitor,
except those who come for its inhabitants’ sake. And in good sooth,
whenever I was tempted to envy the splendid scenery of the lakes of
Westmoreland, I always endeavoured to cure my fit of spleen by recollecting
that they attract as many idle, insipid, and indolent gazers as any celebrated
beauty in the land, and that our scene of pastoral hills and pure streams is
like Touchstone’s mistress,
‘a poor thing, but mine own.’ I regret, however, that
these celebrated beauties should have frowned, wept, or pouted upon you, when
you honoured them by your visit in summer. Did Miss
Agnes Baillie and you meet with any of the poetical inhabitants
of that district—Wordsworth, Southey, or Coleridge? The two former would, I am sure, have been happy in
paying their respects to you; with the habits and tastes of the latter I am
less acquainted.
“Time has lingered with me from day to day in
expectation of being called southward; I now begin to think my journey will
hardly take place till winter, or early in spring. One of the most pleasant
circumstances attending it will be the opportunity to pay my homage to you, and
to claim withal a certain promise concerning a certain play, of which you were
so kind as to promise me a reading. I hope you do not permit indolence to lay
the paring of her little finger upon you; we cannot afford the interruption to
your labours which even that might occasion. And ‘what are you
doing?’ your politeness will perhaps lead you to say: in answer,—Why, I
am very like a certain ancient King, distinguished in the Edda, who, when Lok paid him a visit,— ‘Was twisting of collars his dogs to hold, And combing the mane of his courser bold.’ If this idle man’s employment required any apology, we must seek it
in the difficulty of seeking food to make savoury messes for our English
guests; for we are eight miles from market, and must call in all the country
sports to aid the larder. We had here, two days ago, a very pleasant English
family, the Morritts of Rokeby Park, in
Yorkshire. The gentleman wandered over all Greece, and
visited the Troad, to aid in confuting the hypothesis of old Bryant, who contended that Troy town was not
taken by the Greeks. His erudition is, however, not of an overbearing kind,
which was lucky for me, who am but a slender classical scholar. Charlotte’s kindest and best wishes attend
Miss Agnes Baillie, in which I
heartily and respectfully join; to you she offers her best apology for not
writing, and hopes for your kind forgiveness. I ought perhaps to make one for
taking the task off her hands, but We are both at your mercy; and I am ever
your most faithful, obedient and admiring servant,
Walter Scott.
“P.S. I have had a visit from the author of the Poor Man’s Sabbath, whose
affairs with Constable are, I hope,
settled to his satisfaction. I got him a few books more than were
originally stipulated, and have endeavoured to interest Lord Leven,* and through him Mr Wilberforce, and through them both the
saints in general, in the success of this modest and apparently worthy man.
Lord Leven has promised his exertions; and the
interest of the party, if exerted, would save a work tenfold inferior in
real merit. What think you of Spain? The days of William Wallace and the Cid Ruy Diaz de Bivar seem to be reviving
there.”
* The late Earl of Leven had
married a lady of the English family of
Thornton, whose munificent charities are familiar to the
readers of Cowper’sLife and Letters; hence, probably, his
Lordship’s influence with the party alluded to in the text.
CHAPTER VI. QUARREL WITH MESSRS CONSTABLE AND
HUNTER—JOHN BALLANTYNE ESTABLISHED AS A
BOOKSELLER IN EDINBURGH—SCOTT’S LITERARY PROJECTS—THE EDINBURGH ANNUAL REGISTER, &C.—MEETING OF JAMES
BALLANTYNE AND JOHN
MURRAY—MURRAY’S VISIT TO ASHESTIEL—POLITICS—THE
PENINSULAR WAR—PROJECT OF THE QUARTERLY REVIEW—CORRESPONDENCE
WITH ELLIS, GIFFORD,
MORRITT, SOUTHEY, SHARPE,
&C., 1808—1809.
The reader does not need to be reminded that Scott at this time had business enough on his hand besides
combing the mane of Brown Adam, and twisting couples for Douglas and Percy. He was deep in Swift; and the Ballantyne press was groaning under a multitude of works, some of them
already mentioned, with almost all of which his hand as well as his head had something,
more or less, to do. But a serious change was about to take place in his relations with the
spirited publishing house which had hitherto been the most efficient supporters of that
press; and his letters begin to be much occupied with differences and disputes which,
uninteresting as the details would now be, must have cost him many anxious hours in the
apparently idle autumn of 1808. Mr Constable had
then for his partner Mr Alexander Gibson Hunter,
afterwards Laird of Blackness, to whose intemperate language, much more than to any part of
Constable’s own conduct, Scott ascribed
this un-fortunate alienation; which, however, as well as most of my
friend’s subsequent misadventures, I am inclined to trace in no small degree to the
influence which a third person, hitherto unnamed, was about this time beginning to exercise
over the concerns of James Ballantyne.
John Ballantyne, a younger brother of Scott’s schoolfellow, had been originally bred to their
father’s trade of a merchant—(that is to say, a dealer in
everything from broadcloth to children’s tops)—at Kelso; but James’s rise in the world was not observed by him
without ambitious longings; for he too had a love, and he at least fancied that he had a
talent for literature. He left Kelso abruptly for the chances of the English metropolis.
After a short residence in London, where, among other things, he officiated for a few
months as clerk in a banking house, the continued intelligence of the printer’s
prosperity determined him to return to Scotland. Not finding any opening at the moment in
Edinburgh, he again tried the shop at Kelso; but his habits had not been improved by his
brief sojourn in London, and the business soon melted to nothing in his hands. His goods
were disposed of by auction for the benefit of his creditors—the paternal shop was finally
closed; and John again quitted his birthplace, under circumstances
which, as I shall show in the sequel, had left a deep and painful trace even upon that
volatile mind.
He was a quick, active, intrepid little fellow; and in society so very
lively and amusing, so full of fun and merriment, such a thoroughly light-hearted droll,
all-over quaintness and humorous mimicry; and, moreover, such a keen and skilful devotee to
all manner of field-sports, from fox-hunting to badger-baiting inclusive, that it was no
wonder he should have made a favourable impression on Scott, when he appeared in Edinburgh in this desti- tute plight, and offered to assist his brother in the management
of a concern by which James’s comparatively
indolent habits were now very severely tried. The contrast between the two brothers was not
the least of the amusement; indeed that continued to amuse him to the last. The elder of
these is painted to the life in an early letter of Leyden’s, which, on the doctor’s death, he, though not (I
fancy) without wincing, permitted Scott to print; “Methinks I
see you with your confounded black beard, bull-neck, and upper lip turned up to your nose,
while one of your eyebrows is cocked perpendicularly, and the other forms pretty well the
base of a right angled triangle, opening your great gloating eyes, and crying—But, Leyden!!!”
James was a short, stout, well-made man, and would have been
considered a handsome one, but for these grotesque frowns, starts, and twistings of his
features, set off by a certain mock majesty of walk and gesture, which he had perhaps
contracted from his usual companions, the emperors and tyrants of the stage. His voice in
talk was grave and sonorous, and he sung well (theatrically well), in a fine rich bass.
John’s tone in singing was a sharp treble—in conversation
something between a croak and a squeak. Of his style of
story-telling it is sufficient to say that the late Charles
Matthews’s “old Scotch lady” was but an imperfect copy of
the original, which the inimitable comedian first heard in my presence from his lips. He
was shorter than James, but lean as a scarecrow, and he rather hopped
than walked: his features, too, were naturally good, and he twisted them about quite as
much, but in a very different fashion. The elder brother was a gourmand—the younger liked
his bottle and his bowl, as well as, like Johnny
Armstrong, “a hawk, a hound, and a fair woman.”
Scott used to call the one Aldiborontiphoscophornio, the other Rigdumfunnidos. They both entertained him; they both
loved and revered him; and I believe would have shed their heart’s blood in his
service; but they both, as men of affairs, deeply injured him—and above all, the day that
brought John into pecuniary connexion with him was the blackest in his
calendar. A more reckless, thoughtless, improvident adventurer never rushed into the
serious responsibilities of business; but his cleverness, his vivacity, his unaffected
zeal, his gay fancy always seeing the light side of every thing, his imperturbable
good-humour and buoyant elasticity of spirits, made and kept him such a favourite, that I
believe Scott would have as soon ordered his dog to be hanged, as
harboured, in his darkest hour of perplexity, the least thought of discarding
“jocund Johnny.”
The great bookseller of Edinburgh was a man of calibre infinitely beyond
these Ballantynes. Though with a strong dash of the sanguine, without
which, indeed, there can be no great projector in any walk of life, Archibald Constable was one of the most sagacious persons
that ever followed his profession. A brother poet of Scott says to
him, a year or two before this time, “Our butteraceous friend at the Cross turns
out a deep drawwell;” and another eminent literator, still more closely
connected with Constable, had already, I believe, christened him
“The Crafty.” Indeed, his fair and very handsome
physiognomy carried a bland astuteness of expression, not to be mistaken by any who could
read the plainest of nature’s handwriting. He made no pretensions to
literature—though he was in fact a tolerable judge of it generally, and particularly well
skilled in the department of Scotch antiquities. He distrusted himself, however, in such
matters, being conscious that his early education had been very imperfect; and moreover, he
wisely considered the business of a critic as quite as much out of his “proper
line” as authorship itself. But of
that “proper line,” and his own qualifications for it, his estimation was
ample; and—often as I may have smiled at the lofty serenity of his self-complacence—I
confess I now doubt whether he rated himself too highly as a master in the true science of
the bookseller. He had, indeed, in his mercantile character, one deep and fatal flaw—for he
hated accounts, and systematically refused, during the most vigorous years of his life, to
examine or sign a balance-sheet; but for casting a keen eye over the remotest indications
of popular taste for anticipating the chances of success and failure in any given variety
of adventure—for the planning and invention of his calling—he was not, in his own day at
least, surpassed; and among all his myriad of undertakings, I question if any one that
really originated with himself, and continued to be superintended by his own care, ever did
fail. He was as bold as far-sighted—and his disposition was as liberal as his views were
wide. Had he and Scott from the beginning trusted as thoroughly as
they understood each other; had there been no third parties to step in, flattering an
overweening vanity on the one hand into presumption, and on the other side spurring the
enterprise that wanted nothing but a bridle, I have no doubt their joint career might have
been one of unbroken prosperity. But the Ballantynes were jealous of
the superior mind, bearing, and authority of Constable: and though he
too had a liking for them both personally—esteemed James’s literary tact, and was far too much of a humourist not to be
very fond of the younger brother’s company—he could never away with the feeling that
they intervened unnecessarily, and left him but the shadow where he ought to have had the
substantial lion’s share of confidence. On his part, again, he was too proud a man to
give entire confidence where that was withheld from himself; and more espe-cially, I can well believe that a frankness of communication as to the
real amount of his capital and general engagements of business, which would have been the
reverse of painful to him in habitually confidential intercourse with
Scott, was out of the question where
Scott’s proposals and suggestions were to be met in
conference, not with his own manly simplicity, but the buckram pomposity of the one, or the
burlesque levity of the other of his plenipotentiaries.
The disputes in question seem to have begun very shortly after the
contract for the Life and Edition of Swift
had been completed; and we shall presently see reason to infer that Scott to a certain degree was influenced at the moment by a soreness
originating in the recent conduct of Mr
Jeffrey’s Journal—that great primary source of the wealth and
authority of the house of Constable. The then
comparatively little-known bookseller of London, who
was destined to be ultimately Constable’s most formidable rival
in more than one department of publishing, has told me, that when he read the article on Marmion, and another on
general politics, in the same number of the Edinburgh
Review, he said to himself—“Walter Scott has
feelings both as a gentleman and a Tory, which these people must now have wounded. The
alliance between him and the whole clique of the Edinburgh
Review, its proprietor included, is shaken;” and, as far at least
as the political part of the affair was concerned, John Murray’s
sagacity was not at fault. We have seen with what thankful alacrity he accepted a small
share in the adventure of Marmion—and with
what brilliant success that was crowned; nor is it wonderful that a young bookseller,
conscious of ample energies, should now have watched with eagerness the circumstances which
seemed not unlikely to place within his own reach a more intimate connexion with the first great living author in whose works
he had ever had any direct interest. He forthwith took measures for improving and extending
his relations with James Ballantyne, through whom,
as he guessed, Scott could best be approached. His tenders of
employment for the Canongate press were such, that the apparent head of the firm proposed a
conference at Ferrybridge, in Yorkshire; and there Murray, after
detailing some of his own literary plans—particularly that already alluded to, of a Novelist’s Library—in his turn
sounded Ballantyne so far, as to resolve at once on pursuing his
journey into Scotland. Ballantyne had said enough to satisfy him that
the project of setting up a new publishing house in Edinburgh, in opposition to
Constable, was already all but matured; and he, on the instant,
proposed himself for its active co-operator in the metropolis.
Ballantyne proceeded to open his budget further, mentioning, among
other things, that the author of Marmion had “both
another Scotch poem and a Scotch novel on the stocks;” and had, moreover,
chalked out the design of an Edinburgh Annual
Register, to be conducted in opposition to the politics and criticism of
Constable’s Review. These tidings might have been enough to
make Murray proceed farther northwards; but there was a scheme of his
own which had for some time deeply occupied his mind, and the last article of this
communication determined him to embrace the opportunity of opening it in person at
Ashestiel. He arrived there about the middle of October. The 26th Number of the Edinburgh Review, containing Mr
Brougham’s celebrated article, entitled, “Don Cevallos, on the usurpation of Spain,” had
just been published; and one of the first things Scott mentioned in
conversation was, that he had so highly resented the tone of that essay, as to give orders
that his name might be discontinued on the list of subscribers.*
Mr Murray could not have wished better auspices for the matter he
had come to open; and, shortly after his departure, Scott writes as
follows, to his prime political confidant:—
To George Ellis, Esq., Claremont.
“Ashestiel, Nov. 2d, 1808. “Dear Ellis,
“We had, equally to our joy and surprise, a flying
visit from Heber, about three weeks ago.
He staid but three days but, between old stories and new, we made them very
merry in their passage. During his stay, John
Murray, the bookseller in Fleet Street, who has more real
knowledge of what concerns his business than any of his brethren—at least than
any of them that I know—came to canvass a most important plan, of which I am
now, in ‘dern privacie,’ to give you the outline. I had most
strongly recommended to our Lord Advocate† to think of some counter
measures against the Edinburgh
Review, which, politically speaking, is doing incalculable damage. I
do not mean this in a mere party view;—the present ministry are not all that I
could wish them—for (Canning excepted) I
doubt there is among them too much self-seeking, as it
was called in Cromwell’s’
time; and what is their misfortune, if not their fault, there is not among them
one in the decided situation of
* When the 26th Number appeared, Mr Scott wrote to Constable in these terms:
“The Edinburgh
Review had become such as to render it impossible for me
to continue a contributor to it.—Now, it is
such as I can no longer continue to receive or read it.”
The list of the then subscribers exhibits in an indignant dash of
Constable’s pen opposite Mr
Scott’s name, the word “Stopt!!!”’—Letter fromMr R. Cadell.
† The Right Hon.
John Campbell Colquhoun, husband of “Scott’s
early friend, Mary Anne Erskine.
paramount authority,
both with respect to the others and to the Crown, which is, I think, necessary,
at least in difficult times, to produce promptitude, regularity, and efficiency
in measures of importance. But their political principles are sound English
principles, and, compared to the greedy and inefficient horde which preceded
them, they are angels of light and of purity. It is obvious, however, that they
want defenders both in and out of doors. Pitt’s —‘Love and fear glued many friends to him; And now he’s fallen, those tough commixtures melt.’
Were this only to effect a change of hands, I should expect it with more
indifference; but I fear a change of principles is designed. The Edinburgh Review tells you coolly, ‘We foresee
a speedy revolution in this country as well as Mr Cobbett;’ and, to say the truth, by degrading
the person of the Sovereign—exalting the power of the French armies, and the
wisdom of their counsels—holding forth that peace (which they allow can only be
purchased by the humiliating prostration of our honour) is indispensable to the
very existence of this country—I think, that for these two years past, they
have done their utmost to hasten the accomplishment of their own prophecy. Of
this work 9000 copies are printed quarterly, and no genteel family can pretend
to be without it, because, independent of its politics, it gives the only
valuable literary criticism which can be met with. Consider, of the numbers who
read this work, how many are there likely to separate the literature from the
politics—how many youths are there upon whose minds the flashy and bold
character of the work is likely to make an indelible impression; and think what
the consequence is likely to be.
“Now, I think there is balm in Gilead for all this;
and that the cure lies in instituting such a Review in London as should be
conducted totally independent of bookselling influence, on a plan as liberal as
that of the Edinburgh, its
literature as well supported, and its principles English and constitutional.
Accordingly, I have been given to understand that Mr William Gifford is willing to become the conductor of such a
work, and I have written to him, at the Lord Advocate’s desire, a very
voluminous letter on the subject. Now, should this plan succeed, you must hang
your birding-piece on its hooks, take down your old Anti-jacobin armour, and
‘remember your swashing blow.’ It is not that I think
this projected Review ought to be exclusively or principally political—this
would, in my opinion, absolutely counteract its purpose, which I think should
be to offer to those who love their country, and to those whom we would wish to
love it, a periodical work of criticism conducted with equal talent, but upon
sounder principle than that which has gained so high a station in the world of
letters. Is not this very possible? In point of learning, you Englishmen have
ten times our scholarship; and as for talent and genius, ‘Are not
Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than any of the rivers in
Israel?’ Have we not yourself and your cousin, theRoses, Malthus, Matthias,
Gifford, Heber,
and his brother? Can I not procure you a
score of blue-caps who would rather write for us than for the Edinburgh Review if they got as much pay by it?
‘A good plot, good friends, and full of expectation—an excellent
plot, excellent friends!’
“Heber’s
fear was, lest we should fail in procuring regular steady contributors; but I
know so much of the interior discipline of reviewing, as to have no
apprehension of that. Provided we are once set a-going by a few dashing
numbers, there would be no fear of enlisting regular contributors; but the
amateurs must bestir them-selves in the first instance.
From Government we should be entitled to expect confidential communication as
to points of fact (so far as fit to be made public), in our political
disquisitions. With this advantage, our good cause and St George to boot, we may at least divide the field with our
formidable competitors, who, after all, are much better at cutting than
parrying, and whom uninterrupted triumph has as much unfitted for resisting a
serious attack, as it has done Buonaparte
for the Spanish war. Jeffrey is, to be
sure, a man of most uncommon versatility of talent, but what then? ‘General Howe is a gallant
commander, There are others as gallant as he.’ Think of all this, and let me hear from you very soon on the subject.
Canning is, I have good reason to
know, very anxious about the plan. I mentioned it to Robert Dundas, who was here with his lady for two days on a
pilgrimage to Melrose, and he approved highly of it. Though no literary man, he
is judicious, clair-voyant, and
uncommonly sound-headed, like his father, Lord
Melville. With the exceptions I have mentioned, the thing
continues a secret.
“I am truly happy you think well of the Spanish
business: they have begun in a truly manly and rounded manner, and barring
internal dissension, are, I think, very likely to make their part good.
Buonaparte’s army has come to
assume such a very motley description as gives good hope of its crumbling down
on the frost of adversity setting in. The Germans and Italians have deserted
him in troops, and I greatly doubt his being able to assemble a very huge force
at the foot of the Pyrenees, unless he trusts that the terror of his name will
be sufficient to keep Germany in subjugation, and Austria in awe. The finances
of your old Russian friends are said to be ruined out and
out; such is the account we have from Leith.
“Enough of this talk. Ever yours,
Walter Scott.”
The readiness with which Mr Ellis
entered into the scheme thus introduced to his notice, encouraged Scott to write still more fully; indeed, I might fill half a volume with
the correspondence now before me concerning the gradual organization, and ultimately
successful establishment of the Quarterly
Review. But my only object is to illustrate the liberality and sagacity of
Scott’s views on such a subject, and the characteristic
mixture of strong and playful language in which he developed them; and I conceive that this
end will be sufficiently accomplished, by extracting two more letters of this bulky series.
Already, as we have seen, before opening the matter even to Ellis, he
had been requested to communicate his sentiments to the proposed editor of the work, and he
had done so in these terms:—
To William Gifford, Esq. London.
“Edinburgh, October 25, 1808. “Sir,
“By a letter from the Lord Advocate of Scotland, in
consequence of a communication between his Lordship and Mr Canning on the subject of a new Review to be attempted in London, I
have the pleasure to understand that you have consented to become the editor, a
point which, in my opinion, goes no small way to ensure success to the
undertaking. In offering a few observations upon the details of such a plan, I
only obey the commands of our distinguished friends, without having the vanity
to hope that I can point out any thing which was not likely to have at once
occurred to a person of Mr Gifford’s literary experience and
eminence. I shall, however, beg permission to offer you my sentiments, in the
miscellaneous way in which they occur to me. The extensive reputation and
circulation of the Edinburgh
Review is chiefly owing to two circumstances: First, that it is
entirely uninfluenced by the booksellers, who have contrived to make most of
the other Reviews merely advertising sheets to puff off their own publications;
and, secondly, the very handsome recompense which the editor not only holds
forth to his regular assistants, but actually forces upon those whose
circumstances and rank make it a matter of total indifference to them. The
editor, to my knowledge, makes a point of every contributor receiving this
bonus, saying, that Czar Peter, when working
in the trenches, received pay as a common soldier. This general rule removes
all scruples of delicacy, and fixes in his service a number of persons who
might otherwise have felt shy in taking the price of their labours, and even
the more so because it was an object of convenience to them. There are many
young men of talent and enterprise who are extremely glad of a handsome apology
to work for fifteen or twenty guineas, although they would not willingly be
considered as hired reviewers. From this I deduce two points of doctrine:
first, that the work must be considered as independent of all bookselling
influence; secondly, that the labours of the contributors must be regularly and
handsomely recompensed, and that it must be a rule that each one shall accept
of the price of his labour. John Murray
of Fleet Street, a young bookseller of capital and enterprise, and with more
good sense and propriety of sentiment than fall to the share of most of the
trade, made me a visit at Ashestiel a few weeks ago, and as I found he had had
some communication with you upon the subject, I did not hesitate to communicate
my sentiments to him on these and some other points of
the plan, and I thought his ideas were most liberal and satisfactory.
“The office of the editor is of such importance, that
had you not been pleased to undertake it, I fear the plan would have fallen
wholly to the ground. The full power of control must, of course, be vested in
the editor for selecting, curtailing, and correcting the contributions to the
Review. But this is not all; for, as he is the person immediately responsible
to the bookseller that the work (amounting to a certain number of pages, more
or less) shall be before the public at a certain time, it will be the
editor’s duty to consider in due time the articles of which each number
ought to consist, and to take measures for procuring them from the persons best
qualified to write upon such and such subjects. But this is sometimes so
troublesome, that I foresee with pleasure you will be soon obliged to abandon
your resolution of writing nothing yourself. At the same time, if you will
accept of my services as a sort of jackal or lion’s provider, I will do
all in my power to assist in this troublesome department of editorial duty. But
there is still something behind, and that of the last consequence. One great
resource to which the Edinburgh editor
turns himself, and by which he gives popularity even to the duller articles of
his Review, is accepting contributions from persons of inferior powers of
writing, provided they understand the books to which the criticisms relate; and
as such are often of stupifying mediocrity, he renders them palatable by
throwing in a handful of spice—namely, any lively paragraph or entertaining
illustration that occurs to him in reading them over. By this sort of
veneering, he converts, without loss of time, or hinderance of business,
articles which, in their original state, might hang in the market, into such
goods as are not likely to disgrace those among which they are placed. This
seems to be a point in
which an editor’s assistance is of the last consequence, for those who
possess the knowledge necessary to review books of research or abstruse
disquisition, are very often unable to put the criticism into a readable, much
more a pleasant and captivating form; and as their science cannot be attained
‘for the nonce,’ the only remedy is to supply their deficiencies,
and give their lucubrations a more popular turn.
“There is one opportunity possessed by you in a
particular degree—that of access to the best sources of political information.
It would not, certainly, be advisable that the work should assume, especially
at the outset, a professed political character. On the contrary, the articles
on science and miscellaneous literature ought to be of such a quality as might
fairly challenge competition with the best of our contemporaries. But as the
real reason of instituting the publication is the disgusting and deleterious
doctrine with which the most popular of our Reviews disgraces its pages, it is
essential to consider how this warfare should be managed. On this ground, I
hope it is not too much to expect from those who have the power of assisting
us, that they should on topics of great national interest furnish the
reviewers, through the medium of their editor, with accurate views of points of
fact, so far as they are fit to be made public. This is the most delicate, and
yet most essential part of our scheme. On the one hand, it is certainly not to
be understood that we are to be held down to advocate upon all occasions the
cause of administration. Such a dereliction of independence would render us
entirely useless for the purpose we mean to serve. On the other hand, nothing
will render the work more interesting than the public learning, not from any
vaunt of ours, but from their own observation, that we have access to early and
accurate information in point of fact. The Edinburgh Review has profited much by the pains which the
Opposition party have taken to possess the writers of all the information they
could give them on public matters. Let me repeat that you, my dear sir, from
enjoying the confidence of Mr Canning
and other persons in power, may easily obtain the confidential information
necessary to give credit to the work, and communicate it to such as you may
think proper to employ in laying it before the public.
“Concerning the mode and time of publication, I think
you will be of opinion that monthly, in the present dearth of good subjects of
Review, would be too often, and that a quarterly publication would both give
you less trouble, and be amply sufficient for discussing all that is likely to
be worth discussion. The name to be assumed is of some consequence, though any
one of little pretension will do. We might, for example, revive the
‘English Review,’
which was the name of Gilbert
Stewart’s. Regular correspondents ought to be sought
after, but I should be little afraid of finding such, were the reputation of
the Review once decidedly established by three or four numbers of the very
first order. As it would be essential to come on the public by surprise, that
no unreasonable expectation or artificial misrepresentation might prejudice its
success, the authors employed in the first number ought to be few and of the
first rate. The choosing of subjects would also be a matter of anxious
consideration: for example, a good and distinct essay on Spanish affairs would
be sufficient to give a character to the work. The lucubrations of the Edinburgh Review, on that subject,
have done the work great injury with the public, and I am convinced that of the
many thousands of copies now distributed of each Number, the quantity might be
reduced one-half at least, by any work appearing, which, with the same
liter-ary talent and
independent character, should speak a political language more familiar to the
British ear than that of subjugation to France. At the same time, as I before
hinted, it will be necessary to maintain the respect of the public by impartial
disquisition; and I would not have it said, as may usually be predicated of
other Reviews, that the sentiments of the critic were less determined by the
value of the work than by the purpose it was written to serve. If a weak
brother will unadvisedly put forth his hand to support even the ark of the
constitution, I would expose his arguments, though I might approve of his
intention and of his conclusions. I should think an open and express
declaration of political tenets, or of opposition to works of a contrary
tendency, ought for the same reason to be avoided. I think, from the little
observation I have made, that the Whigs suffer most deeply from cool sarcastic
reasoning and occasional ridicule. Having long had a sort of command of the
press, from the neglect of all literary assistance on the part of those who
thought their good cause should fight its own battle, they are apt to feel with
great acuteness any assault in that quarter; and having been long accustomed to
push, have in some degree lost the power to parry. It will not, therefore, be
long before they make some violent retort, and I should not be surprised if it
were to come through the Edinburgh Review. We might
then come into close combat with a much better grace than if we had thrown down
a formal defiance. I am, therefore, for going into a state of hostility without
any formal declaration of war. Let our forces for a number or two consist of
volunteers and amateurs, and when we have acquired some reputation, we shall
soon levy and discipline forces of the line.
“After all, the matter is become very serious,—eight
or nine thousand copies of the Edinburgh
Review are regularly distributed, merely
because there is no other respectable and independent publication of the kind.
In this city, where there is not one Whig out of twenty men who read the work,
many hundreds are sold; and how long the generality of readers will continue to
dislike politics, so artfully mingled with information and amusement, is worthy
of deep consideration. But it is not yet too late to stand in the breach; the
first number ought, if possible, to be out in January, and if it can burst
among them like a bomb, without previous notice, the effect will be more
striking. Of those who might be intrusted in the first instance, you are a much
better judge than I am. I think I can command the assistance of a friend or two
here, particularly William Erskine, the
Lord Advocate’s brother-in-law and my most intimate friend. In London you
have Malthus, George Ellis, theRoses,
cum pluribus aliis. Richard Heber was with me when Murray came to my farm, and knowing his zeal
for the good cause, I let him into our counsels. In Mr Frere we have the hopes of a potent ally. The Rev. Reginald Heber would be an excellent
coadjutor, and when I come to town I will sound Matthias. As strict secrecy would of course be observed, the
diffidence of many might be overcome;—for scholars you can be at no loss while
Oxford stands where it did,—and I think there will be no deficiency in the
scientific articles.
“Once more I have to apologize for intruding on you
this hasty, and therefore long, and probably confused letter; I trust your
goodness will excuse my expressing any apology for submitting to your better
judgment my sentiments on a plan of such consequence. I expect to be called to
London early in the winter, perhaps next month. If you see Murray, as I suppose you will, I presume you
will communicate to him such of my sentiments as have the good fortune to
coincide with yours. Among
the works in the first Number, Fox’shistory, Grattan’s
speeches, a notable subject for a quizzing article, and any tract or pamphlet
that will give an opportunity to treat of the Spanish affairs, would be
desirable subjects of criticism. I am, with great respect, sir, your most
obedient servant,
Walter Scott.”
On the 18th of November, Scott enclosed to Mr
Ellis “the rough scroll” (that now transcribed) of
his letter to Mr Gifford; “this
being,” he says, “one of the very few epistles of which
I thought it will be as well to retain a copy.” He then proceeds
as follows: “Supposing you to have read said scroll, you must know
further, that it has been received in a most favourable manner by Mr
Gifford, who approves of its contents in all respects, and that
Mr Canning has looked it over, and
promised such aid as is therein required. I therefore wish you to be apprised
fully of what could hardly be made the subject of writing, unless in all the
confidence of friendship. Let me touch a string of much delicacy—the political
character of the Review. It
appears to me that this should be of a liberal and enlarged nature, resting
upon principles—indulgent and conciliatory as far as possible upon mere party
questions—but stern in detecting and exposing all attempts to sap our
constitutional fabric. Religion is another slippery station; here also I would
endeavour to be as impartial as the subject will admit of. This character of
impartiality, as well as the maintenance of a high reputation in literature, is
of as great consequence to such of our friends as are in the Ministry, as our
more direct efforts in their favour; for these will only be successful in
proportion to the influence we shall acquire by an extensive circulation; to
procure which, the former qualities will be essen-tially
necessary. Now, entre nous, will not
our editor be occasionally a little warm and pepperish?—essential qualities in
themselves, but which should not quite constitute the leading character of such
a publication. This is worthy of a memento.
“As our start is of such immense consequence,
don’t you think Mr Canning, though
unquestionably our Atlas, might for a day
find a Hercules on whom to devolve the
burthen of the globe, while he writes us a review? I know what an audacious
request this is; but suppose he should, as great statesmen sometimes do, take a
political fit of the gout, and absent himself from a large ministerial dinner,
which might give it him in good earnest,—dine at three on a chicken and pint of
wine,—and lay the foundation at least of one good article? Let us but once get
afloat, and our labour is not worth talking of; but, till then, all hands must
work hard.
“Is it necessary to say that I agree entirely with
you in the mode of treating even delinquents? The truth is, there is policy, as
well as morality, in keeping our swords clear as well as sharp, and not
forgetting the gentlemen in the critics. The public appetite is soon gorged
with any particular style. The common Reviews, before the appearance of the
Edinburgh, had become
extremely mawkish; and, unless when prompted by the malice of the bookseller or
reviewer, gave a dawdling, maudlin sort of applause to every thing that reached
even mediocrity. The Edinburgh folks squeezed into their sauce plenty of acid,
and were popular from novelty as well as from merit. The minor Reviews and
other periodical publications, have outrèd the matter still farther, and given us all
abuse, and no talent. But by the time the language of vituperative criticism
becomes general (which is now pretty nearly the case) it affects the tympanum
of the public ear no more than rogue or rascal from the cage of a parrot, or
blood-and-wounds from a horse-barrack. This, therefore, we have to trust to,
that decent, lively, and reflecting criticism, teaching men not to abuse books
only, but to read and to judge them, will have the effect of novelty upon a
public wearied with universal efforts at blackguard and indiscriminating
satire. I have a long and very sensible letter from John Murray the bookseller, in which he touches upon this point
very neatly. By the by, little Weber may
be very useful upon antiquarian subjects, in the way of collecting information
and making remarks; only, you or I must rewrite his lucubrations. I use him
often as a pair of eyes in consulting books and collating, and as a pair of
hands in making extracts. Constable, the
great Edinburgh editor, has offended me excessively by tyrannizing over this
poor Teutcher, and being rather rude when I interfered. It is a chance but I
may teach him that he should not kick down the scaffolding before his house is
quite built. Another bomb is about to break on him besides the Review. This is
an Edinburgh Annual Register, to
be conducted under the auspices of James
Ballantyne, who is himself no despicable composer, and has
secured excellent assistance. I cannot help him, of course, very far, but I
will certainly lend him a lift as an adviser. I want all my friends to befriend
this work, and will send you a prospectus when it is
published. It will be valde
anti-Foxite. This is a secret for the present.
“For heaven’s sake do not fail to hold a
meeting as soon as you can. Gifford will
be admirable at service, but will require, or I mistake him much, both a spur
and a bridle—a spur on account of habits of literary indolence induced by weak
health—and a bridle because, having renounced in some degree general society,
he cannot be supposed to have the habitual and instinctive feeling ena-bling him to judge at once and decidedly on the mode of
letting his shafts fly down the breeze of popular opinion. But he has worth,
wit, learning, and extensive information; is the friend of our friends in
power, and can easily correspond with them; is in no clanger of having private
quarrels fixed on him for public criticism; nor very likely to be embarrassed
by being thrown into action in public life alongside of the very people he has
reviewed, and probably offended. All this is of the last importance to the
discharge of his arduous duty. It would be cruel to add a word to this
merciless epistle, excepting love to Mrs
Ellis and all friends. Leyden, by the by, is triumphant at Calcutta—a Judge, of all things!—and making money! He has
flourished like a green bay tree under the auspices of Lord Minto, his countryman. Ever yours,
Walter Scott.”
Among others whom Scott endeavoured to
enlist in the service of the new Review was his brother Thomas, who on the breaking up of his affairs in Edinburgh, had retired to
the Isle of Man, and who shortly afterwards obtained the office in which he died, that of
paymaster to the 70th regiment. The poet had a high opinion of his brother’s literary
talents, and thought that his knowledge of our ancient dramatists, and his vein of comic
narration, might render him a very useful recruit. He thus communicates his views to
Thomas Scott, on the 19th November, and, as might be expected, the
communication is fuller and franker than any other on the subject.
To Thomas Scott, Esq., Douglas, Isle of Man.
Dear Tom,
“Owing to certain pressing business I have not yet had time to
complete my collection of Shadwell* for
you, though it is now nearly ready.—I wish you to have all the originals to
collate with the edition in 8vo. But I have a more pressing employment for your
pen, and to which I think it particularly suited. You are to be informed, but
under the seal of the strictest secrecy, that a plot has been long hatching by
the gentlemen who were active in the Anti-jacobin paper, to countermine the Edinburgh Review, by establishing one which
should display similar talent and independence with a better strain of
politics. The management of this work was much pressed upon me;† but
though great prospects of emolument were held out, I declined so arduous a
task, and it has devolved upon Mr
Gifford, author of the Baviad, with whose wit and learning you are
well acquainted. He made it a stipulation, however, that I should give all the
assistance in my power, especially at the commencement; to which I am, for many
reasons, nothing loth. Now, as I know no one who possesses more power of humour
or perception of the ridiculous than yourself, I think your leisure hours might
be most pleasantly passed in this way. Novels, light poetry, and quizzical
books of all kinds might be sent you by the packet; you glide back your reviews
in the same way, and touch, upon the publication of the number (quarterly), ten
guineas per printed sheet of sixteen pages. If you are shy of communicating
directly with Gifford, you may, for some time at least,
send your com-
* Mr T. Scott
had meditated an edition of Shadwell’s plays,—which, by the way, his brother
considered as by no means meriting the utter neglect into which they
have fallen, chiefly in consequence of Dryden’s satire.
† This circumstance was not revealed to
Mr Murray. I presume,
therefore, the invitation to Scott must have
proceeded from Mr Canning.
munications through me, and I will revise them. We want
the matter to be a profound secret till the first number
is out. If you agree to try your skill I will send you a novel or two. You must
understand, as Gadshill tells the
Chamberlain, that you are to be leagued with ‘Trojans that thou
dreamest not of, the which for sport sake are content to do the profession
some grace;’ and thus far I assure you that, if by paying
attention to your style and subject you can distinguish yourself creditably, it
may prove a means of finding you powerful friends were any thing opening in
your island. Constable, or rather that
Bear his partner, has behaved to me
of late not very civilly, and I owe Jeffrey a flap with a fox-tail on account of his review of Marmion, and thus
doth the whirligig of time bring about my revenges. The late articles on Spain
have given general disgust, and many have given up the Edinburgh Review on account of them.
“My mother holds out very well, and talks of writing
by this packet. Her cask of herrings, as well as ours, red and white, have
arrived safe, and prove most excellent. We have been both dining and supping
upon them with great gusto, and are much obliged by your kindness in
remembering us. Yours affectionately,
W. S.”
I suspect, notwithstanding the opinion to the contrary expressed in the
following extract, that the preparations for the new journal did not long escape the notice
of either the editor or the publishers of the Edinburgh Review. On receiving the celebrated
Declaration of Westminster on the subject of the Spanish war, which bears date the 15th
December, 1808, Scott says to Ellis—“I cannot help writing a few lines to
congratulate you on the royal declaration. I suspect by this time the author is at Claremont,* for, if I mistake
not egregiously, this spirited composition, as we say in Scotland, fathers itself in the
manliness of its style. It has appeared, too, at a most fortunate time, when neither friend
nor foe can impute it to temporary motives. Tell Mr
Canning that the old women of Scotland will defend the country with their
distaffs, rather than that troops enough be not sent to make good so noble a pledge. Were
the thousands that have mouldered away in petty conquests or Liliputian expeditions united
to those we now have in that country, what a band would Moore have under him! . . . . . . Jeffrey has offered
terms of pacification, engaging that no party politics should again appear in his Review. I
told him I thought it was now too late, and reminded him that I had often pointed out to
him the consequences of letting his work become a party tool. He said ‘he did not
care for the consequences—there were but four men he feared as opponents.’—‘Who
were these?’—‘Yourself for one.’—‘Certainly you pay me a great
compliment; depend upon it I will endeavour to deserve it.’—‘Why, you would not
join against me?’—‘Yes I would, if I saw a proper opportunity: not against you
personally, but against your politics.’—‘You are privileged to be
violent.’—‘I don’t ask any privilege for undue violence. But who are your
other foemen?’—‘George Ellis and
Southey.’ The fourth he did not name. All
this was in great good-humour; and next day I had a very affecting note from him, in answer
to an invitation to dinner. He has no suspicion of the Review whatever; but I thought I
could not handsomely suffer him to infer that I would be influenced
* Scott’s friend
had mentioned that he expected a visit from Mr
Canning, at Claremont, in Surrey; which beautiful seat continued in
the possession of the Ellis family, until it was purchased by
the crown, on the marriage of the Princess Charlotte of
Wales, in 1816.
by those private feelings respecting him, which, on more than one
occasion, he has laid aside when I was personally concerned.”
As to Messrs Constable and Co,, it
is not to be supposed that the rumours of the rival journal would tend to soothe those
disagreeable feelings between them and Scott, of which I
can trace the existence several months beyond the date of Mr
Murray’s arrival at Ashestiel. Something seems to have occurred before
the end of 1808 which induced Scott to suspect that, among other
sources of uneasiness had been a repentant grudge in the minds of those booksellers as to
their bargain about the new edition of Swift;
and on the 2d of January, 1809, I find him requesting, that if, on reflection, they thought
they had hastily committed themselves, the deed might be forthwith cancelled. On the 11th
of the same month, Messrs Constable reply as follows:—
To Walter Scott, Esq.
Sir,
“We are anxious to assure you that we feel no
dissatisfaction at any part of our bargain about Swift. Viewing it as a safe and respectable
speculation, we should be very sorry to agree to your relinquishing the
undertaking, and indeed rely with confidence on its proceeding as originally
arranged. We regret that you have not been more willing to overlook the
unguarded expression of our Mr Hunter
about which you complain. We are very much concerned that any circumstance
should have occurred that should thus interrupt our friendly intercourse; but
as we are not willing to believe that we have done any thing which should
prevent our being again friends, we may at least be permitted to express a hope
that matters may hereafter be restored to their old footing between us, when
the misrepresentations of interested persons may cease to be remembered. At any
rate, you will always find us, what we trust we have ever been, Sir, your
faithful servants,
A. Constable & Co.”
Scott answers:
To Messrs Constable and Co.
“Edinburgh, 12th January, 1809. “Gentlemen,
“To resume, for the last time, the disagreeable
subject of our difference, I must remind you of what I told Mr Constable personally, that no single
unguarded expression, much less the misrepresentation of any person whatever,
would have influenced me to quarrel with any of my friends. But if Mr Hunter will take the trouble to recollect
the general opinion he has expressed of my undertakings, and of my ability to
execute them, upon many occasions during the last five months, and his whole
conduct in the bargain about Swift, I think he ought to be the last to wish his interest
compromised on my account. I am only happy the breach has taken place before
there was any real loss to complain of, for although I have had my share of
popularity, I cannot expect it to be more lasting than that of those who have
lost it after deserving it much better.
“In the present circumstances, I have only a parting
favour to request of your house, which is, that the portrait for which I sat to
Raeburn shall be considered as done
at my debit, and for myself. It shall be of course forthcoming for the
fulfilment of any engagement you may have made about engraving, if such exists,
Sadler will now be soon out,
when we will have a settlement of our accounts. I am, gentlemen, your obedient
servant,
Walter Scott.”
Mr Constable declined, in very handsome terms, to
give up the picture. But for the present the breach was complete. Among other negotiations
which Scott had patronised twelve months before, was one
concerning the publication of Miss Seward’sPoems. On the 19th of March, 1809, he writes as follows to that
lady:—“Constable, like many other folks who learn to
undervalue the means by which they have risen, has behaved, or rather suffered his
partner to behave, very uncivilly towards me. But they may both live to know that they
should not have kicked down the ladder till they were sure of their footing. The very
last time I spoke to him on business was about your poems, which he promised faithfully
to write about. I understood him to decline your terms, in which I think he acted
wrong; but I had neither influence to change his opinion, nor inclination to interfere
with his resolution. He is a very enterprising, and, I believe, a thoroughly honest
man, but his vanity in some cases overpowers his discretion.”
One word as to the harsh language in which Constable’s then partner is mentioned in several of the preceding
letters. This Mr Hunter was, I am told by friends of
mine who knew him well, a man of considerable intelligence and accomplishments, to whose
personal connexions and weight in society the house of Constable and
Co. owed a great accession of business and influence. He was, however, a very keen
politician; regarded Scott’s Toryism with a fixed
bitterness; and, moreover, could never conceal his impression that
Scott ought to have embarked in no other literary undertakings
whatever, until he had completed his edition of
Swift. It is not wonderful that, not having been bred regularly to the
bookselling business, he should have somewhat misapprehended the obligation which
Scott had incurred when the bargain for that work was made; and his feeling
of his own station and consequence was no doubt such as to give his style of conversation
on doubtful questions of business, a tone for which Scott had not been
prepared by his previous intercourse with Mr Constable. The defection
of the poet was, however, at once regretted and resented by both these partners; and
Constable, I am told, often vented his wrath in figures as lofty
as Scott’s own. “Ay,” he would say, stamping
on the ground with a savage smile, “Ay, there is such a thing as rearing the oak
until it can support itself.”
All this leads us to the second stage, one still more unwise and
unfortunate than the first, in the history of Scott’s commercial connexion with the
Ballantynes. The scheme of starting a new bookselling house in
Edinburgh, begun in the shortsighted heat of pique, had now been matured;—I cannot add,
either with composed observation or rational forecast for it was ultimately settled that
the ostensible and chief managing partner should be a person without capital, and neither
by training nor by temper in the smallest degree qualified for such a situation; more
especially where the field was to be taken against long experience, consummate skill, and
resources which, if not so large as all the world supposed them, were still in comparison
vast, and admirably organized. The rash resolution was, however, carried into effect, and a
deed, deposited, for secrecy’s sake, in the hands of Scott,
bound him as one-third partner, James Ballantyne
having also a share, in this firm of John Ballantyne
and Co., booksellers, Edinburgh—“Rigdumfunnidos” was installed in Hanover Street as the avowed
rival of “The Crafty.”
The existing bond of copartnership is dated in July 1809; but I suspect
this had been a revised edition. It is certain that the new house were openly mustering
their forces some weeks before Scott desired to withdraw his Swift from the hands of the old one in January. This appears from several of
the letters that passed between him and Ellis while
Gifford was arranging the materials for the
first number of the Quarterly Review, and also
between him and his friend Southey, to whom,
perhaps, more than any other single writer, that journal owed its ultimate success.
To Ellis, for
example, he says, on the 13th December, 1808 “Now let me call your
earnest attention to another literary undertaking, which is, in fact, a
subsidiary branch of the same grand plan. I transmit the prospectus of an Edinburgh Annual Register. I have
many reasons for favouring this work as much as I possibly can. In the first
place, there is nothing even barely tolerable of this nature, though so
obviously necessary to future history. Secondly, Constable was on the point of arranging one on the footing of
the Edinburgh Review, and
subsidiary thereunto, a plan which has been totally disconcerted by our
occupying the vantage-ground. Thirdly, this work will be very well managed. The
twoMackenzies,* William
Erskine, cum plurimis
aliis, are engaged in the literary department, and that of
science is conducted by Professor
Leslie, a great philosopher, and as abominable an animal as I ever
saw. He writes, however, with great eloquence, and is an enthusiast in
mathematical, chemical, and mineralogical pursuits. I hope to draw upon you in
this matter, particularly in the historical department, to which your critical
labours will naturally turn your attention. You will ask what I propose to do
myself. In fact, though something will be expected, I cannot propose to be very
active, unless the Swift is
abandoned, of which I think there is some prospect, as I have reason to
complain of
* The Man of
Feeling, and Colin Mackenzie
of Portmore.
very indifferent usage, not indeed
from Constable, who is reduced to utter despair by the
circumstance, but from the stupid impertinence of his partner, a sort of Whig run mad. I have some
reason to believe that Ballantyne, whose
stock is now immensely increased, and who is likely to enlarge it by marriage,
will commence publisher. Constable threatened him with
withdrawing his business from him as a printer, on account of his being a
Constitutionalist. He will probably by this false step establish a formidable
rival in his own line of publishing, which will be most just retribution. I
intend to fortify Ballantyne by promising him my continued
friendship, which I hope may be of material service to him. He is much liked by
the literary people here; has a liberal spirit, and understanding business very
completely, with a good general idea of literature, I think he stands fair for
success.
“But, Oh! Ellis, these cursed, double cursed news, have sunk my spirits
so much, that I am almost at disbelieving a Providence. God forgive me! But I
think some evil demon has been permitted, in the shape of this tyrannical
monster whom God has sent on the nations visited in his anger. I am confident
he is proof against lead and steel, and have only hopes that he may be shot
with a silver bullet,* or drowned in the torrents of blood which he delights to
shed. Oh! for True Thomas and Lord Soulis’s cauldron.† Adieu, my
dear Ellis. God
* See note, “Proof against shot given by
Satan.”—Waverley Novels, vol. x. p. 40.
† “On a circle of stones they placed the pot, On a circle of stones but barely nine; They heated it red and fiery hot, Till the burnish’d brass did glimmer and
shine. They roll’d him up in a sheet of lead, A sheet of lead for a funeral pall; bless you! I have been these three days writing this by
snatches.”
The “cursed news” here alluded to were those of Napoleon’s advance by Somosierra, after the dispersion
of the armies of Blake and Castaños. On the 23d of the same month, when the
Treason of Morla and the fall of Madrid were known in Edinburgh, he thus resumes:—(Probably
while he wrote, some cause with which he was not concerned was occupying the Court of
Session:)
“Dear Ellis,—I
have nothing better to do but to vent my groans. I cannot but feel exceedingly
low. I distrust what we call thoroughbred soldiers terribly, when any thing
like the formation of extensive plans, of the daring and critical nature which
seems necessary for the emancipation of Spain, is required from them. Our army
is a poor school for genius—for the qualities which naturally and deservedly
attract the applause of our generals, are necessarily exercised upon a small
scale. I would to God Wellesley were now at
the head of the English in Spain. His late examination shows his acute and
decisive talents for command;* and although I believe in my conscience, that
when he found himself superseded, he suffered the pigs to run through the
busi- They plunged him in the cauldron red, And melted him, lead, and bones and all.”
See the Ballad of Lord
Soulis, and notes Border
Minstrelsy, vol. iv. pp. 235-266.
* This refers to Sir Arthur
Wellesley’s evidence before the Court of Inquiry
into the circumstances which led to the Convention (miscalled) of
Cintra. For the best answer to the then popular suspicion, which
Scott seems to have partaken, as
to the conduct of Sir Arthur when superseded in
the moment of victory at Vimiero, I refer to the contemporary
despatches lately published in Colonel
Gurwood’s invaluable compilation.
ness, when he might in some measure
have prevented them— ‘Yet give the haughty devil his due, Though bold his quarterings, they are true.’ Such a man, with an army of 40,000, or 50,000 British, with the remains of
the Gallician army, and the additional forces which every village would furnish
in case of success, might possess himself of Burgos, open a communication with
Arragon, and even Navarre, and place Buonaparte in the precarious situation of a general with
100,000 enemies between him and his supplies; for I presume neither Castaños nor Palafox are so broken as to be altogether
disembodied. But a general who is always looking over his shoulder, and more
intent on saving his own army than on doing the service on which he is sent,
will hardly, I fear, be found capable of forming or executing a plan which its
very daring character might render successful. What would we think of an
admiral who should bring back his fleet and tell us old Keppel’s story of a lee-shore, and the risk of his
Majesty’s vessels? Our sailors have learned that his Majesty’s
ships were built to be stranded, or burnt, or sunk, or at least to encounter
the risk of these contingencies, when his service requires it; and I heartily
wish our generals would learn to play for the gammon, and not to sit down
contented with a mere saving game. What, however, can we say of Moore, or how judge of his actions, since the
Supreme Junta have shown themselves so miserably incapable of the arduous
exertions expected from them? Yet, like Pistol, they spoke bold words at the bridge too, and I admired
their firmness in declaring O’Farrel, and the rest of the Frenchified Spaniards,
traitors. But they may have Roman pride, and want Roman talent to support it;
and in short, unless God Almighty should raise among them one of those
extraordinary geniuses who seem to be created for the
emergencies of an oppressed people, I confess I still incline to despondence.
If Canning could send a portion of his
own spirit with the generals he sends forth, my hope would be high indeed. The
proclamation was truly gallant.
“As to the Annual Register, I do agree that the Prospectus is in too stately a
tone—yet I question if a purer piece of composition would have attracted the
necessary attention. We must sound a trumpet before we open a show. You will
say we have added a tambourin; but the mob will the more readily stop and gaze;
nor would their ears be so much struck by a sonata from Viotti. Do you know the Review begins to get wind here? An Edinburgh
bookseller asked me to recommend him for the sale here, and said he heard it
confidentially from London.—Ever yours,
W. S.”
I may also introduce here a letter of about the same date, and referring
chiefly to the same subjects, addressed by Scott to his
friend, Mr Charles Sharpe,* then at Oxford. The
allusion at the beginning is to a drawing of Queen
Elizabeth, as seen “dancing high and disposedly,” in her
private chamber, by the Scotch ambassador, Sir James
Melville, whose description of the exhibition is one of the most amusing
things in his Memoirs. This production
of Mr Sharpe’s pencil, and the delight with which Scott used to
expatiate on its merits, must be well remembered by every one that ever visited the poet at
Abbotsford.—Some of the names mentioned in this letter as counted on by the projectors of
the Quarterly Review will, no doubt, amuse the
reader.
* Scott’s acquaintance with
Mr Sharpe began when the latter was very
young. He supplied Scott when compiling the Minstrelsy with the ballad of the Tower of Repentance,” &c. See
vol. iv. Pp. 307—323.
To Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., Christ Church,
Oxford.
“Edinburgh, 30th December, 1808. “My dear Sharpe,
“The inimitable virago came safe, and was welcomed by
the inextinguishable laughter of all who looked upon her caprioles. I was
unfortunately out of town for a few days, which prevented me from acknowledging
instantly what gave me so much pleasure, both on account of its intrinsic
value, and as a mark of your kind remembrance. You have, I assure you, been
upmost in my thoughts for some time past, as I have a serious design on your
literary talents, which I am very anxious to engage in one or both of the two
following schemes. Imprimis, it has
been long the decided resolution of Mr
Canning and some of his literary friends, particularly Geo. Ellis, Malthus, Frere,
W. Rose, &c., that something of
an independent Review ought to be started ill London. This plan is now on the
point of being executed, after much consultation. I have strongly advised that
politics be avoided, unless in cases of great national import, and that their
tone be then moderate and manly; but the general tone of the publication is to
be literary. William Gifford is editor,
and I have promised to endeavour to recruit for him a few spirited young men
able and willing to assist in such an undertaking. I confess you were chiefly
in my thoughts when I made this promise; but it is a subject which for a
thousand reasons I would rather have talked over than written about—among
others more prominent, I may reckon my great abhorrence of pen and ink, for
writing has been so long a matter of duty with me, that it is become as utterly
abominable to me as matters of duty usually are. Let me entreat you, therefore,
to lay hold of Macneill,* or any other
new book you like, and
* “The Pastoral, or Lyric Muse of
Scotland; in three Cantos,” 4to, by Hector Macneill, appeared in Dec.
1803.
give us a good hacking review of it. I retain so much the
old habit of a barrister, that I cannot help adding the fee is ten guineas a
sheet, which may serve to buy an odd book now and then—as good play for
nothing, you know, as work for nothing; but besides this, your exertions in
this cause, if you shall choose to make any, will make you more intimately
acquainted with a very pleasant literary coterie than introductions of a more
formal kind; and if you happen to know George Ellis
already, you must, I am sure, be pleased to take any trouble likely to produce
an intimacy between you. TheHebers are also
engaged, itemRogers, Southey,
Moore
(Anacreon), and others whose reputations Jeffrey has murdered, and who are rising to
cry wo upon him, like the ghosts in King Richard; for your acute and
perspicacious judgment must ere this have led you to suspect that this same new
Review, which by the way is to be called ‘the Quarterly,’ is intended as a rival to
the Edinburgh; and if it contains
criticism not very inferior in point of talent, with the same independence on
booksellers’ influence (which has ruined all the English Reviews), I do
not see why it should not divide with it the public favour. Observe carefully
this plan is altogether distinct from one which has been proposed by the veteran Cumberland, to which is annexed the
extraordinary proposal that each contributor shall place his name before his
article, a stipulation which must prove fatal to the undertaking. If I did not
think this likely to be a very well managed business, I would not recommend it
to your consideration; but you see I am engaged with no ‘fool land
rakers, no long staff sixpenny strikers, but with nobility and
tranquillity, burgomasters, and great oneyers,’ and so forth.
“The other plan refers to the enclosed prospectus,
and has long been a favourite scheme of mine, of William Erskine’s, and some of my other cronies here. Mr
Ballantyne, the editor, only undertakes
for the inferior departments of the work, and for keeping the whole matter in
train. We are most anxious to have respectable contributors, and the smallest
donation in any department, poetry, antiquities, &c. &c., will be most
thankfully accepted and registered. But the historical department is that in
which I would chiefly wish to see you engaged. A lively luminous picture of the
events of the last momentous year, is a task for the pen of a man of genius; as
for materials, I could procure you access to many of a valuable kind. The
appointments of our historian are L.300 a-year—no deaf nuts. Another person*
has been proposed, and written to, but I cannot any longer delay submitting the
thing to your consideration. Of course, you are to rely on every assistance
that can be afforded by your humble comdumble, as Swift says. I hope the great man will give us his answer
shortly and if his be negative, pray let yours be positive. Our politics we
would wish to be constitutional, but not party. You see, my good friend, what
it is to show your good parts before unquestionable judges.
“I am forced to conclude abruptly. Thine entirely,
W. Scott.”
Mr Morritt was by this time beginning to correspond
with the poet pretty frequently. The first of their letters, however, that serves to throw
light on Scott’s personal proceedings, is the following:—
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. Rokeby Park
Yorkshire.
“Edinburgh, 14th January, 1809. My dear Sir,
For a long while I thought my summons to
* Mr
Southey—who finally undertook the task proposed to him.
London would have been immediate, and that I should have
had the pleasure to wait upon you at Rokeby Park in my way to town. But, after
due consideration, the commissioners on our Scottish reform of judicial
proceedings resolved to begin their sittings at Edinburgh, and have been in
full activity ever since last St Andrew’s day. You are not ignorant that
in business of this nature, very much of the detail and of preparing the
materials for the various meetings, necessarily devolves upon the clerk, and I
cannot say but that my time has been fully occupied.
“Mean while, however, I have been concocting, at the
instigation of various loyal and well disposed persons, a grand scheme of
opposition to the proud critics of Edinburgh. It is now matured in all its
branches, and consists of the following divisions. A new review in London, to
be called the Quarterly, William Gifford to be the editor; George Ellis, Rose, Mr Canning if
possible, Frere, and all the ancient
Anti-Jacobins to be concerned. The first number is now in hand, and the allies,
I hope and trust, securely united to each other. I have promised to get them
such assistance as I can, and most happy should I be to prevail upon you to put
your hand to the ark. You can so easily run off an article either of learning
or of fun, that it would be inexcusable not to afford us your assistance. Then
sir, to turn the flank of Messrs Constable and Co. and to avenge myself of certain impertinences
which, in the vehemence of their Whiggery, they have dared to indulge in
towards me, I have prepared to start against them at Whitsunday first the
celebrated printer, Ballantyne (who had
the honour of meeting you at Ashestiel), in the shape of an Edinburgh
publisher, with a long purse and a sound political creed, not to mention an
alliance offensive and defensive with young John
Murray of Fleet Street, the most enlightened and
active of the London trade. By this means I hope to counterbalance the
predominating influence of Constable and Co., who at
present have it in their power and inclination to forward or suppress any book
as they approve or dislike its political tendency. Lastly, I have caused the
said Ballantyne to venture upon an Edinburgh Annual Register, of which I send you a
prospectus. I intend to help him myself as far as time will admit, and hope to
procure him many respectable coadjutors.
“My own motions southwards remain undetermined, but
I conceive I may get to town about the beginning of March, when I expect to
find you en famille in Portland
Place. Our Heber will then most likely
be in town, and altogether I am much better pleased that the journey is put off
till the lively season of gaiety.
“I am busy with my edition of Swift, and treasure your kind hints
for my direction as I advance. In summer I think of going to Ireland to pick up
any thing that may be yet recoverable of the Dean of St
Patrick’s. Mrs Scott
joins me in kindest and best respects to Mrs
Morritt. I am, with great regard, dear sir, your faithful humble
servant,
Walter Scott.”
The two following letters seem to have been written at the clerk’s
table, the first shortly before, and the second very soon after, the news of the battle of
Corunna reached Scotland:
To Robert Southey, Esq., Keswick.
Edinburgh, 14th January, 1809. “Dear Southey,
“I have been some time from home in the course of
the holidays, but immediately on my return set about
procuring the books you wished to see. There are only three of them in our
library, namely—
Dobrizzhofferde Abiponibus, 3 vols.
A French translation of Gomella’sHistory of Oronoquo.
RamuzioNavigazioni, &c. &c.
Of these I can only lay my hands immediately on Dobrizzhoffer, which I have sent off by the
Carlisle coach, addressed to the care of Jollie the bookseller for you. I do this at my own risk,
because we never grant license to send the books out of Scotland, and should I
be found to have done so I may be censured, and perhaps my use of the library
suspended. At the same time, I think it hard you should take a journey in this
deadly cold weather, and trust you will make early enquiry after the book. Keep
it out of sight while you use it, and return it as soon as you have finished. I
suppose these same Abipones were a nation to my own heart’s content,
being, as the titlepage informs me, bellicosi et
equestres, like our old Border lads. Should you think of
coming hither, which perhaps might be the means of procuring you more
information than I can make you aware of, I bespeak you for my guest. I can
give you a little chamber in the wall, and you shall go out and in as quietly
and freely as your heart can desire, without a human creature saying ‘why
doest thou so?’ Thalaba is in parturition too, and you should in decent curiosity
give an eye after him. Yet I will endeavour to recover the other books (now
lent out), and send them to you in the same way as Dob. travels, unless you recommend
another conveyance. But I expect this generosity on my part will rather stir
your gallantry to make us a visit when this abominable storm has passed away.
My present occupation is highly unpoetical—clouting, in short, and cobbling our
old Scottish system
of jurisprudence, with a view to reform. I am clerk to a commission under the
authority of Parliament for this purpose, which keeps me more than busy enough.
“I have had a high quarrel with Constable and Co. The Edinburgh Review has driven them quite crazy, and
its success led them to undervalue those who have been of most use to them—but
they shall dearly abye it. The worst is that, being out of a publishing house,
I have not interest to be of any service to Coleridge’s intended paper.* Ballantyne, the printer, intends to open shop here on the part
of his brother, and I am sure will do
all he can to favour the work. Does it positively go on?
“I have read Wordsworth’slucubrations in the Courier,† and much agree with him. Alas! we
want every thing but courage and virtue in this desperate contest. Skill,
knowledge of mankind, ineffable unhesitating villany, combination of movement
and combination of means, are with our adversary. We can only fight like
mastiffs, boldly, blindly, and faithfully. I am almost driven to the pass of
the Covenanters, when they told the Almighty in their prayers, he should no
longer be their God; and I really believe, a few Gazettes more will make me
turn Turk or Infidel. Believe me, in great grief of spirit, dear Southey, ever yours,
Walter Scott.
“Mrs Scott
begs kind remembrance to Mrs
Southey. The bed in the said chamber in the wall is a double
one.”
* Mr Coleridge’s
“Friend” was
originally published in weekly papers.
† Mr
Wordsworth’sRemarks on the Convention of Cintra were afterwards collected in a
pamphlet.
To the Same.
“Edinburgh, 31st January, 1809. “My dear Southey,
“Yesterday I received your letter, and to-day I
despatched Gomella and the
third volume of Ramuzio, The other two volumes can also be sent, if you should find it
necessary to consult them. The parcel is addressed to the paternal charge of
your Keswick carrier. There is no hurry in returning these volumes, so
don’t derange your operations by hurrying your extracts, only keep them
from any profane eye. I dipped into Gomella while I was waiting for intelligence from you, and was
much edified by the bonhommie with
which the miracles of the Jesuits are introduced.
“The news from Spain gave me such a mingled feeling,
that I never suffered so much in my whole life from the disorder of spirits
occasioned by affecting intelligence. My mind has naturally a strong military
bent, though my path in life has been so very different. I love a drum and a
soldier as heartily as ever Uncle Toby did,
and between the pride arising from our gallant bearing, and the deep regret
that so much bravery should run to waste, I spent a most disordered and
agitated night, never closing my eyes but what I was harassed with visions of
broken ranks, bleeding soldiers, dying horses—‘and all the current of
a heady fight.’ I agree with you that we want energy in our
cabinet—or rather their opinions are so different, that they come to wretched
compositions between them, which are worse than the worst course decidedly
followed out. Canning is most anxious to
support the Spaniards, and would have had a second army at Corunna, but for the
positive demand of poor General Moore
that empty transports should be sent thither. So the reinforcements were
disembarked. I fear
it will be found that Moore was rather an excellent
officer than a general of those comprehensive and daring views necessary in his
dangerous situation. Had Wellesley been
there the battle of Corunna would have been fought and won at Somosierra, and
the ranks of the victors would have been reinforced by the population of
Madrid. Would to God we had yet 100,000 men in Spain. I fear not Buonaparte’s tactics. The art of fence may
do a great deal, but ‘a la
staccato,’ as Mercutio says, cannot carry it away from national valour and
personal strength. The Opposition have sold or bartered every feeling of
patriotism for the most greedy and selfish egoisme.
“Ballantyne’s
brother is setting up here as a bookseller, chiefly for
publishing. I will recommend Coleridge’spaper to him as strongly as I can. I hope
by the time it is commenced he will be enabled to send him a handsome order.
From my great regard for his brother, I
shall give this young publisher what assistance I can. He is understood to
start against Constable and the
Reviewers, and publishes the Quarterly. Indeed he is in strict alliance, offensive and
defensive, with John Murray of Fleet
Street. I have also been labouring a little for the said Quarterly, which I believe you will detect. I hear very high things
from Gifford of your article. About your
visit to Edinburgh, I hope it will be a month later than you now propose,
because my present prospects lead me to think I must be in London the whole
month of April. Early in May I must return, and will willingly take the lakes
in my way in hopes you will accompany me to Edinburgh, which you positively
must not think of visiting in my absence.
“Lord
Advocate, who is sitting behind me, says the Ministers have
resolved not to abandon the Spaniards coute qui
coute. It is a spirited determination—but they must find a general who has, as the Turks say,
le Diable au corps, and who,
instead of standing staring to see what they mean to do, will teach them to
dread those surprises and desperate enterprises by which they have been so
often successful. Believe me, dear Southey, yours affectionately,
Walter Scott.
“Mrs Scott
joins me in best compliments to Mrs
Southey. I hope she will have a happy hour. Pray, write me
word when the books come safe. What is Wordsworth doing, and where the devil is his Doe? I am not sure if he
will thank me for proving that all the Nortons escaped
to Flanders, one excepted. I never knew a popular tradition so totally
groundless as that respecting their execution at York.”
CHAPTER VII. CASE OF A POETICAL TAILOR CONDEMNED TO DEATH AT EDINBURGH—HIS LETTERS TO
SCOTT—DEATH OF CAMP—SCOTT IN LONDON—MR
MORRITT’S DESCRIPTION OF HIM AS “A LION” IN TOWN—DINNER AT
MR
SOTHEBY’S—COLERIDGE’SFIRE, FAMINE, AND SLAUGHTER—THE QUARTERLY
REVIEW STARTED—FIRST VISIT TO ROKEBY—THE LADY OF THE
LAKE BEGUN—EXCURSION TO THE TROSSACHS AND LOCH LOMOND—LETTER ON
BYRON’SENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH
REVIEWERS—DEATH OF DANIEL SCOTT—CORRESPONDENCE ABOUT
MR CANNING’S DUEL WITH LORD
CASTLEREAGH—MISS BAILLIE’SFAMILY LEGEND ACTED AT EDINBURGH—THEATRICAL
ANECDOTES—KEMBLE—SIDDONS—TERRY—LETTER
ON THE DEATH OF MISS SEWARD. 1809—1810.
In the end of 1808, a young man, by name Andrew Stewart, who had figured for some years before as a
poetical contributor to the Scots Magazine, and
inserted there, among other things, a set of stanzas in honour of The Last Minstrel,* was tried, and capitally convicted, on a
charge of burglary. He addressed, some weeks after his sentence had been pronounced, the
following letters:—
* One verse of this production will suffice.
“Sweetest Minstrel that e’er sung Of valorous deeds by Scotia done, ‘Whose wild notes warbled in the win’, Delightful strain! O’er hills and dales, and vales amang, We’ve heard again,’ &c. To Walter Scott, Esq. Castle Street.
“Edinburgh Tolbooth, 20th January, 1809. “Sir,
“Although I am a stranger to you, yet I am not to
your works, which I have read and admired, and which will continue to be read
and admired as long as there remains a taste for true excellence. Previous to
committing the crime for which I am now convicted, I composed several poems in
the Scottish dialect, which I herewith send for your perusal, and humbly hope
you will listen to my tale of misery. I have been a truly unfortunate follower
of the Muses. I was born in Edinburgh, of poor, but honest parents. My father
is by trade a bookbinder, and my mother dying in 1798, he was left a widower,
with five small children, who have all been brought up by his own industry. As
soon as I was fit for a trade, he bound me apprentice to a tailor in Edinburgh,
but owing to his using me badly, I went to law. The consequence was, I got up
my indentures after being only two years in his service. To my father’s
trade I have to ascribe my first attachment to the Muses. I perused with
delight the books that came in the way; and the effusions of the poets of my
country I read with rapture. I now formed the resolution of not binding myself
to a trade again, as by that means I might get my propensity for reading
followed. I acted as clerk to different people, and my character was
irreproachable. I determined to settle in life, and for that purpose I married
a young woman I formed a strong attachment to. Being out of employment these
last nine months, I suffered all the hardships of want, and saw ‘Poverty with empty hand, And eager look, half-naked stand.’—Fergusson.
Reduced to this miserable situation, with my wife almost starving, and having no friends to render
me the smallest assistance, I resided in a furnished room till I was unable to
pay the rent, and then I was literally turned out of doors, like poor Dermody, in poverty and rags. Having no kind
hand stretched out to help me, I associated with company of very loose manners,
till then strangers to me, and by them I was led to commit the crime I am
condemned to suffer for. But my mind is so agitated, I can scarce narrate my
tale of misery. My age is only twenty-three, and to all appearance will be cut
off in the prime. I was tried along with my brother, Robert
Stewart, and John M’Intyre, for
breaking into the workshop of Peter More, calico-glazer,
Edinburgh, and received the dreadful sentence to be executed on the 22d of
February next. We have no friends to apply to for Royal Mercy. If I had any
kind friend to mention my case to my Lord Justice-Clerk, perhaps I might get my
sentence mitigated. You will see my poems are of the humorous cast. Alas! it is
now the contrary. I remain your unfortunate humble servant,
Andrew Stewart.”
To the Same.
“Tolbooth, Sunday.
“Sir I received your kind letter last night,
enclosing one pound sterling, for which I have only to request you will accept
the return of a grateful heart. My prayers, while on earth, will be always for
your welfare. Your letter came like a ministering angel to me. The idea of my
approaching end darts across my brain; and, as our immortal bard, Shakspeare, says, ‘harrows up my
soul.’ Some time since, when chance threw in my way Sir William Forbes’sLife of Beattie, the
account of the closing scene of Principal
Campbell, as therein mentioned, made a
deep impression on my mind. ‘At a time,’ says he,
‘when Campbell was just expiring, and had
told his wife and niece so, a cordial happened unexpectedly to give some
relief. As soon as he was able to speak he said, he wondered to see their
faces so melancholy and covered with tears at the apprehension of his
departure. ‘At that instant,’ said he,
‘I felt my mind in such a state in the thoughts
of my immediate dissolution, that I can express my feelings in no other
way than by saying I was in a rapture.’ There is
something awfully satisfactory in the above.
“I have to mention, as a dying man, that it was not
the greed of money that made me commit the crime, but the extreme pressure of
poverty and want.
“How silent seems all—not a whisper is heard, Save the guardians of night when they bawl; How dreary and wild appears all around; No pitying voice near my call. “O life, what are all thy gay pleasures and cares, When deprived of sweet liberty’s smile? Not hope in all thy gay charms arrayed, Can one heavy hour now beguile. “How sad is the poor convict’s sorrowful lot, Condemned in these walls to remain, When torn from those that are nearest his heart, Perhaps ne’er to view them again. “The beauties of morning now burst on my view, Remembrance of scenes that are past, When contentment sat smiling, and happy my lot, Scenes, alas! formed not for to last. “Now fled are the hours I delighted to roam Scotia’s hills, dales, and valleys among, And with rapture would list to the songs of her bards, And love’s tale as it flowed from the tongue.
“Nought but death now awaits me, how dread, but true, How ghastly its form does appear; Soon silent the muse that delighted to view And sing of the sweets of the year.
“You are the first gentleman I ever sent my poems to,
and I never corrected any of them, my mind has been in such a state. I remain,
sir, your grateful unfortunate servant,
Andrew Stewart.”
It appears that Scott, and his
good-natured old friend, Mr Manners the bookseller,
who happened at this time to be one of the bailies of Edinburgh, exerted their joint
influence in this tailor-poet’s behalf, and with such success, that his sentence was
commuted for one of transportation for life. A thin octavo pamphlet, entitled, “Poems, chiefly in the
Scottish dialect, by Andrew Stewart; printed for the benefit of the Author’s
Father, and sold by Manners and Miller, and A. Constable and Co., 1809,”
appeared soon after the convict’s departure for Botany Bay. But as to his fortunes in
that new world I possess no information. There seemed to me something so striking in the
working of his feelings as expressed in his letters to Scott, that I
thought the reader would forgive this little episode.
In the course of February, Mr John
Ballantyne had proceeded to London, for the purpose of introducing himself
to the chief publishers there in his new capacity, and especially of taking Mr Murray’s instructions respecting the Scotch
management of the Quarterly Review. As soon as
the spring vacation began, Scott followed him by sea. He
might naturally have wished to be at hand while his new partner was forming arrangements on
which so much must depend; but some circumstances in the procedure of
the Scotch Law Commission had made the Lord Advocate
request his presence at this time in town. There he and Mrs
Scott took up their quarters, as usual, under the roof of their kind old
friends the Dumergues; while their eldest girl enjoyed the advantage of being domesticated
with the Miss Baillies at Hampstead. They staid more
than two months, and this being his first visit to town since his fame had been crowned by
Marmion, he was of course more than
ever the object of general curiosity and attention. Mr
Morritt saw much of him, both at his own house in Portland Place and
elsewhere, and I transcribe a few sentences from his memoranda of
the period.
“Scott,” his friend
says, “more correctly than any other man I ever knew, appreciated the value of
that apparently enthusiastic engouement which
the world of London shows to the fashionable wonder of the year. During this sojourn of
1809, the homage paid him would have turned the head of any less gifted man of
eminence. It neither altered his opinions, nor produced the affectation of despising
it; on the contrary, he received it, cultivated it, and repaid it in its own coin.
‘All this is very flattering,’ he would say, ‘and very
civil; and if people are amused with hearing me tell a parcel of old stories, or
recite a pack of ballads to lovely young girls and gaping matrons, they are easily
pleased, and a man would be very ill-natured who would not give pleasure so cheaply
conferred.’ If he dined with us and found any new faces, ‘Well,
do you want me to play lion to-day?’ was his usual question—‘I
will roar if you like it to your heart’s content.’ He would,
indeed, in such cases put forth all his inimitable powers of entertainment and day
after day surprised me by their unexpected extent and variety. Then, as the party
dwindled, and we were left alone, he laughed at himself, quoted, ‘yet know
that I one Snug the joiner am—no lion fierce,’ &c.
and was at once himself again.
“He often lamented the injurious effects for literature and
genius resulting from the influence of London celebrity on weaker minds, especially in
the excitement of ambition for this subordinate and ephemeral reputation du salon. ‘It may be a
pleasant gale to sail with,’ he said, ‘but it never yet led to a
port that I should like to anchor in;’ nor did he willingly endure,
either in London or in Edinburgh, the little exclusive circles of literary society,
much less their occasional fastidiousness and petty partialities.
“One story which I heard of him from Dr Howley, now Archbishop of Canterbury (for I was not present), was
very characteristic. The doctor was one of a grand congregation of lions, where
Scott and Coleridge, cum multis altis,
attended at Sotheby’s. Poets and poetry
were the topics of the table, and there was plentiful recitation of effusions as yet
unpublished, which of course obtained abundant applause. Coleridge
repeated more than one, which, as Dr H. thought, were eulogized by
some of the company with something like affectation, and a desire to humble
Scott by raising a poet of inferior reputation on his
shoulders. Scott, however, joined in the compliments as cordially
as any body, until, in his turn, he was invited to display some of his occasional
poetry, much of which he must, no doubt, have written. Scott said
he had published so much, he had nothing of his own left that he could think worth
their hearing, but he would repeat a little copy of verses which he had shortly before
seen in a provincial newspaper, and which seemed to him almost as good as anything they
had been listening to with so much pleasure. He repeated the stanzas now so well known
of ‘Fire, Famine, and
Slaughter.’ The applauses that ensued were faint—then came slight
criticisms, from which Scott defended the
unknown author. At last, a more bitter antagonist opened, and fastening upon one line,
cried ‘this at least is absolute nonsense.’
Scott denied the charge—the Zoilus persisted—until Coleridge, out of all
patience, exclaimed, ‘For God’s sake let Mr Scott
alone—I wrote the poem.’ This exposition of the real worth of dinner
criticism can hardly be excelled.*
“He often complained of the real dulness of parties where each
guest arrived under the implied and tacit obligation of exhibiting some extraordinary
powers of talk or wit. ‘If,’ he said, ‘I encounter men of
the world, men of business, odd or striking characters of professional excellence
in any department, I am in my element, for they cannot lionize me without my
returning the compliment and learning something from them.’ He was much
with George Ellis, Canning, and Croker, and
delighted in them,—as indeed who did not?—but he loved to study eminence of every class
and sort, and his rising fame gave him easy access to gratify all his
curiosity.”
The meetings with Canning,
Croker, and Ellis, to which Mr Morritt alludes,
were, as may be supposed, chiefly occupied with the affairs of the Quarterly
* It may amuse the reader to turn to Mr Coleridge’s own stately account of this lion-show in
Grosvenor Street, in the preface to his celebrated Eclogue. There was one person present, it seems,
who had been in the secret of its authorship—Sir
Humphrey Davy; and no one could have enjoyed the scene more than he
must have done. “At the house,” Coleridge
says, “of a gentleman who, by the principles and corresponding virtues of a
sincere Christian, consecrates a cultivated genius and the favourable accidents of
birth, opulence, and splendid connexions, it was my good fortune to meet, in a
dinner party, with more men of celebrity in science or polite literature than are
commonly found collected around the same table. In the course of conversation, one
of the party reminded an illustrious poet,” &c. &c.—Coleridge’s Poetical
Works. Edition, 1835. Vol. I., P. 274.
Review. The first number of that Journal appeared
while Scott was in London: it contained three articles
from his pen—namely, one on the Reliques of Burns; another on the Chronicle of the Cid; and a third on Sir John Carr’sTour through Scotland. His conferences
with the editor and publisher were frequent; and the latter certainly contemplated, at this
time, a most close and intimate connexion with him, not only as a reviewer, but an author;
and, consequently, with both the concerns of the Messrs Ballantyne. Scott continued for some time to be a very
active contributor to the Quarterly Review; nor, indeed, was his
connexion with it ever entirely suspended. But John
Ballantyne transacted business in a fashion which soon cooled, and in no
very long time dissolved, the general “alliance offensive and defensive”
with Murray, which Scott had announced before
leaving Edinburgh to both Southey and
Ellis.
On his return northwards he spent a fortnight in Yorkshire with Mr Morritt; but his correspondence, from which I resume my
extracts, will show, among other things, the lively impression made on him by his first
view of Rokeby.
The next of these letters reminds me, however, that I should have
mentioned sooner the death of Camp, the first of not a few dogs
whose names will be “freshly remembered” as long as their master’s works
are popular. This favourite began to droop early in 1808, and became incapable of
accompanying Scott in his rides; but he preserved his
affection and sagacity to the last. At Ashestiel, as the servant was laying the cloth for
dinner, he would address the dog lying on his mat by the fire, and say, “Camp, my good fellow, the sheriff’s coming home by the
ford—or by the hill;” and the sick animal would immediately bestir himself to
welcome his master, going out at the back door or the front door, according to the direction given, and advancing as far as he was able, either towards
the ford of the Tweed, or the bridge over the Glenkinnon burn beyond Laird Nippy’s gate. He died about January 1809, and
was buried in a fine moonlight night, in the little garden behind the house in Castle
Street, immediately opposite to the window at which Scott usually sat
writing. My wife tells me she remembers the whole
family standing in tears about the grave, as her father himself smoothed down the turf
above Camp with the saddest expression of face she had ever seen
in him. He had been engaged to dine abroad that day, but apologized on account of
“the death of a dear old friend;” and Mr
Macdonald Buchanan was not at all surprised that he should have done so,
when it came out next morning that Camp was no more.
To George Ellis, Esq.
“Edinburgh, July 8, 1809. “My dear Ellis,
“We reached home about a fortnight ago, having
lingered a little while at Rokeby Park, the seat of our friend Morritt, and one of the most enviable places I
have ever seen, as it unites the richness and luxuriance of English vegetation
with the romantic variety of glen, torrent, and copse which dignifies our
northern scenery. The Greta and Tees, two most beautiful and rapid rivers, join
their currents in the demesne. The banks of the Tees resemble, from the height
of the rocks, the glen of Roslin, so much and justly admired. The Greta is the
scene of a comic romance,* of which I think I remember giving you the outline.
It concerns the history of a ‘Felon Sowe,’— ‘Which won’d in Rokeby wood, Ran endlong Greta side,’
* Scott printed
this Ballad in the Notes to his poem of Rokeby.
bestowed by Ralph of Rokeby on the
freres of Richmond—and the misadventures of the holy fathers in their awkward
attempts to catch this intractable animal. We had the pleasure to find all our
little folks well, and are now on the point of shifting quarters to Ashestiel.
I have supplied the vacancy occasioned by the death of poor old Camp with a terrier puppy of the old shaggy Celtic
breed. He is of high pedigree, and was procured with great difficulty by the
kindness of Miss Dunlop of Dunlop; so I
have christened him Wallace, as the donor is a
descendant of the Guardian of Scotland. Having given you all this curious and
valuable information about my own affairs, let me call your attention to the
enclosed, which was in fact the principal cause of my immediately troubling
you.” * * *
The enclosure, and the rest of the letter, refer to the private affairs
of Mr Southey, in whose favour Scott had for some time back been strenuously using his
interest with his friends in the Government. How well he had, while in London, read the
feelings of some of those ministers towards each other, appears from various letters
written upon his return to Scotland. It may be sufficient to quote part of one addressed to
the distinguished author whose fortunes he was exerting himself to promote. To him
Scott says (14th June),—“Mr
Canning’s opportunities to serve you will soon be numerous, or
they will soon be gone altogether; for he is of a different mould from some of his
colleagues, and a decided foe to those half measures which I know you detest as much as
I do. It is not his fault that the cause of Spain is not at this moment triumphant.
This I know, and the time will come when the world will know it too.”
Before fixing himself at Ashestiel for the autumn, he had undertaken to have a third poem ready for publication, by
John Ballantyne, by the end of the year, and
probably made some progress in the composition of the Lady of the Lake. On the rising of the Court in July, he went, accompanied by
Mrs Scott and his eldest
daughter, to revisit the localities, so dear to him in the days of his
juvenile rambling, which he had chosen for the scene of his fable. He gave a week to his
old friends at Cambusmore, and ascertained, in his own person, that a good horseman, well
mounted, might gallop from the shore of Loch Vennachar to the rock of Stirling within the
space allotted for that purpose to FitzJames. From
Cambusmore the party proceeded to Ross Priory, and, under the guidance of Mr Macdonald Buchanan, explored the islands of Loch
Lomond, Arrochar, Loch Sloy, and all the scenery of a hundred desperate conflicts between
the Macfarlanes, the Colquhouns, and the Clan
Alpine. At Buchanan House, which is very near Ross Priory, Scott’s
friends, Lady Douglas and Lady Louisa Stuart, were then visiting the Duke of Montrose; he joined them there, and read to them the
Stag Chase, which he had just completed under the full influence of the genius loci.
It was on this occasion, at Buchanan House, that he first saw Lord Byron’s “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.” On this subject
he says, in his Introduction to Marmion of
1830—“When Byron wrote his famous satire, I had my share
of flagellation among my betters. My crime was having written a poem for a thousand
pounds, which was no otherwise true than that I sold the copyright for that sum. Now,
not to mention that an author can hardly be censured for accepting such a sum as the
booksellers are willing to give him, especially as the gentlemen of the trade made no
complaints of their bargain, I thought the interference with my private affairs was rather beyond the limits of
literary satire. I was, moreover, so far from having had any thing to do with the
offensive criticism in the Edinburgh, that
I had remonstrated with the editor, because I
thought the ‘Hours of
Idleness’ treated with undue severity. They were written, like all
juvenile poetry, rather from the recollection of what had pleased the author in others,
than what had been suggested by his own imagination; but nevertheless I thought they
contained passages of noble promise.”
I need hardly transcribe the well-known lines— “Next view in state, proud prancing on his roan, The golden-crested haughty Marmion,”
down to “For this we spurn Apollo’s
venal son, And bid a long ‘good night to Marmion,’” with his lordship’s note on the last line—“Good night to Marmion, the pathetic and also prophetic exclamation of
Henry Blount, Esquire, on the death of honest
Marmion.” But it may entertain my readers to compare the style in which
Scott alludes to Byron’s assault in the preface of 1830 with that of one of his
contemporary letters on the subject. Addressing (August 7, 1809) the gentleman in whose behalf he had been interceding with
Mr Canning, he says “By the way, is the
ancient ****, whose decease is to open our quest,
thinking of a better world? I only ask because about three years ago I accepted the office
I hold in the Court of Session, the revenue to accrue to me only on the death of the
old incumbent. But my friend has since taken out
a new lease of life, and unless I get some Border lad to cut his throat, may, for aught I
know, live as long as I shall;—such odious deceivers are these
invalids. Mine reminds me of Sindbad’s Old Man of the Sea, and will certainly
throttle me if I can’t somehow dismount him. If I were once in possession of my
reversionary income, I would, like you, bid farewell to the drudgery of literature, and do
nothing but what I pleased, which might be another phrase for doing very little. I was
always an admirer of the modest wish of a retainer in one of Beaumont and Fletcher’splays— I would not be a serving man To carry the cloak-bag still, Nor would I be a falconer, The greedy hawks to fill; But I would live in a good house, And have a good master too, And I would eat and drink of the best, And no work would I do.’ In the mean time, it is funny enough to see a whelp of a young Lord Byron abusing me, of whose circumstances he knows nothing, for
endeavouring to scratch out a living with my pen. God help the bear if, having little else
to eat, he must not even suck his own paws. I can assure the noble imp of fame it is not my
fault that I was not born to a park and L.5000 a-year, as it is not his lordship’s
merit, although it may be his great good fortune, that he was not born to live by his
literary talents or success. Adieu, my dear friend. I shall be impatient to hear how your
matters fadge.”
This gentleman’s affairs are again alluded to in a letter to
Ellis, dated Ashestiel, September
14:—“I do not write to whet a purpose that is not blunted, but to express
my anxious wishes that your kind endeavours may succeed while it is called to-day, for, by all tokens, it will soon be yesterday with this Ministry. And they well deserve it, for
crossing, jostling, and hampering the measures of the only man among them fit
to be intrusted with the salvation of the country. The spring-tide may for
ought I know, break in this next session of Parliament. There is an evil fate
upon us in all we do at home and abroad, else why should the conqueror of Talavera be retreating from the
field of his glory at a moment when, by all reasonable calculation, he should
have been the soul and mover of a combined army of 150,000 English, Spaniards,
and Portuguese? And why should Gifford
employ himself at home in the thriftless exercise of correction, as if
Mercury, instead of stretching to a
race himself, were to amuse himself with starting a bedrid cripple, and making
a pair of crutches for him with his own hand? Much might have been done, and
may yet be done; but we are not yet in the right way. Is there no one among you
who can throw a Congreve rocket among the gerunds and supines of that model of
pedants, Dr Philopatris Parr? I
understand your foreign lingos too little to attempt it, but pretty things
might be said upon the memorable tureen which he begged of Lord Somebody, whom
he afterwards, wished to prove to be mad. For example, I would adopt some of
the leading phrases of independent, high-souled,
contentus parvo, and so forth, with which he is
bespattered in the Edinburgh, and declare it our
opinion, that, if indulged with the three wishes of Prior’s tale, he would answer, like
the heroine Corisca— ‘A ladle to my silver dish Is all I want, is all I wish.’ I did notreviewMiss Edgeworth, nor do I think it all well done; at least, it
falls below my opinion of that lady’s merits. Indeed, I have contributed
nothing to the last Review, and am, therefore, according to all rules, the more entitled to criticise it freely. The conclusion
of the article on Sir John Moore is transcendently written; and
I think I can venture to say, ‘aut Erasmus, aut
Diabolus’ Your sugar-cake is very far from being a
heavy bon-bon; but there I think we stop. The Missionaries, though
very good, is on a subject rather stale, and much of the rest is absolute
wading.
“As an excuse for my own indolence, I have been in
the Highlands for some time past; and who should I meet there, of all fowls in
the air, but your friend Mr Blackburn,
to whom I was so much obliged for the care he took of my late unfortunate relative, at your friendly
request. The recognition was unfortunately made just when I was leaving the
country, and as he was in a gig, and I on the driving-seat of a carriage, the
place of meeting a narrow Highland road, which looked as if forty patent
ploughs had furrowed it, we had not time or space for so long a greeting as we
could have wished. He has a capital good house on the banks of the Leven, about
three miles below its discharge from the lake, and very near the classical spot
where Matthew Bramble and his whole family
were conducted by Smollett, and where
Smollett himself was born. There is a new inducement
for you to come to Caledon. Your health, thank God, is now no impediment; and I
am told sugar and rum excel even whisky, so your purse must be proportionally
distended.”
The unfortunate brother, the blot of the family, to whom Scott alludes in this letter, had disappointed all the hopes
under which his friends sent him to Jamaica. It may be remarked, as characteristic of
Scott at this time, that in the various letters to Ellis concerning Daniel, he speaks of him as his relation, never as
his brother; and it must also be mentioned as a circumstance
suggesting that Daniel had retained, after all, some sense of pride, that his West Indian
patron was allowed by himself to remain, to the end of their connexion, in ignorance of
what his distinguished brother had thus thought fit to suppress. Mr Blackburn, in fact, never knew that
Daniel was Walter Scott’s brother,
until he was applied to for some information respecting him on my own behalf, after this
narrative was begun. The story is shortly, that the adventurer’s habits of
dissipation proved incurable; but he finally left Jamaica under a stigma which
Walter Scott regarded with utter severity. Being employed in some
service against a refractory or insurgent body of negroes, he had exhibited a lamentable
deficiency of spirit and conduct. He returned to Scotland a dishonoured man; and though he
found shelter and compassion from his mother, his brother would never see him again. Nay,
when soon after, his health, shattered by dissolute indulgence, and probably the
intolerable load of shame, gave way altogether, and he died as yet a young man, the poet
refused either to attend his funeral or to wear mourning for him like the rest of the
family. Thus sternly, when in the height and pride of his blood, could
Scott, whose heart was never hardened against the distress of an
enemy, recoil from the disgrace of a brother. It is a more pleasing part of my duty to add,
that he spoke to me, twenty years afterwards, in terms of great and painful contrition for
the austerity with which he had conducted himself on this occasion. I must add, moreover,
that he took a warm interest in a natural child whom
Daniel had bequeathed to his mother’s care; and after the
old lady’s death, religiously supplied her place as the boy’s protector.
About this time the edition of
Sir Ralph Sadler’s State Papers, &c. (3 vols. royal 4 to) was at
length completed by Scott, and published by Constable; but the letters which passed between the Editor
and the bookseller show that their personal estrangement had as yet
undergone slender alteration. The collection of the Sadler papers was chiefly the work of Mr Arthur
Clifford—but Scott drew up the Memoir and Notes, and
superintended the printing. His account of the Life of Sadler* extends to thirty pages; and both it and his notes are written
with all that lively solicitude about points of antiquarian detail, which accompanied him
through so many tasks less attractive than the personal career of a distinguished statesman
intimately connected with the fortunes of Mary Queen of
Scots. Some volumes of the edition of Somers’s Tracts (which he had undertaken for Mr Miller and other booksellers of London two or three
years before) were also published about the same period; but that compilation was not
finished (13 vols. royal 4to) until 1812. His part in it (for which the booksellers paid
him 1300 guineas) was diligently performed, and shows abundant traces of his sagacious
understanding and graceful expression. His editorial labours on Dryden, Swift, and these other collections, were gradually storing his mind with that
minute and accurate knowledge of the leading persons and events both of Scotch and English
history, which made his conversation on such subjects that of one who had rather lived with
than read about the departed; while, unlike other antiquaries, he always preserved the
keenest interest in the transactions of his own time.
The reader has seen that during his stay in London in the spring of this
year, Scott became strongly impressed with a suspicion
that the Duke of Portland’s Cabinet could not
much longer hold together; and the letters which have been quoted, when considered along
with the actual course of subsequent events, can leave little doubt
* Republished in the Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. iv.
that he had gathered this
impression from the tone of Mr Canning’s
private conversation as to the recent management of the War Department by Lord Castlereagh. It is now known that, as early as Easter,
the Secretary for Foreign Affairs had informed the head of the Government that, unless the
Secretary for War and the Colonies were replaced by a more competent person, he himself
must withdraw from the Ministry; that the Duke of Portland and the
majority of the Cabinet concurred in the necessity of Lord
Castlereagh’s removal, but pressed Mr Canning to
allow the matter to lie over until the conclusion of the Parliamentary Session; that
Mr Canning, reluctantly agreeing to this delay, continued to sit
for some months in the same Cabinet with the colleague whose eventual dismissal had been
conceded to his representation; and that when, on the 20th of September, the Duke
of Portland at length informed him of Mr
Canning’s resolution, with the date of its original communication to
his Grace and the other Ministers, Lord Castlereagh tendered his
resignation, and wrote the same day to Mr Canning, reproaching him
with double dealing. “Having,” he said, “pronounced it unfit
that I should remain charged with the conduct of the war, and made my situation as a
Minister of the Crown dependent on your will and pleasure, you continued to sit in the
same Cabinet with me, and leave me not only in the persuasion that I possessed your
confidence and support as a colleague, but allowed me, in breach of every principle of
good faith, both public and private, to originate and proceed in the execution of a new
enterprise of the most arduous and important nature (the Walcheren Expedition) with
your apparent concurrence and ostensible approbation. You were fully aware that, if my
situation in the government had been disclosed to me, I could not have submitted to
remain one moment in office, without the entire abandonment of my
private honour and public duty. You knew I was deceived, and you continued to deceive
me.”
The result was a duel on the morning of the 21st, in which Mr Canning was attended by Mr
Charles Ellis (now Lord Seaford) as his second.
Mr Canning, at the second fire, was severely wounded in the thigh,
while his antagonist, had a narrow escape, a button on the lapel of his coat having been
shot off. In consequence of this quarrel, both Lord Castlereagh and
Mr Canning retired from office; their example was followed by the
Duke of Portland himself; and after fruitless
negotiations with Lords Grey and Grenville, Mr Percival
became First Lord of the Treasury, as well as Chancellor of the Exchequer; while the
Marquis Wellesley took the Seals of the Foreign
Department, and Lord Liverpool removed from the Home
Office to that which Lord Castlereagh had occupied.
There were some other changes, but Scott’s friend,
Mr R. Dundas (now Lord
Melville), remained in his place at the head of the Board of Control.
While the public mind was occupied with the duel and its yet uncertain
results, Scott wrote as follows to the nearest relation
and most intimate friend of Mr Canning’s second:—
To George Ellis, Esq.
“Ashestiel, Sept. 26, 1809. “My dear Ellis,
“Your letter gave me great pleasure, especially the
outside, for Canning’s frank
assured me that his wound was at least not materially serious. So for once the
envelope of your letter was even more welcome than the contents. That harebrained Irishman’s letter car-ries absurdity upon the face of it,
for surely he would have had much more reason for personal animosity had
Canning made the matter public, against the wishes of
his uncle and every other person concerned, than for his consenting, at their
request, that it should remain a secret, and leaving it to them to make such
communication to Lord C. as they should think proper, and
when they should think proper. I am ill situated here for the explanations I
would wish to give, but I have forwarded copies of the letters to Lord Dalkeith, a high-spirited and independent
young nobleman, in whose opinion Mr Canning would, I
think, wish to stand well. I have also taken some measures to prevent the good
folks of Edinburgh from running after any straw that may be thrown into the
wind. I wrote a very hurried note to Mr C.
Ellis the instant I saw the accident in the papers, not knowing
exactly where you might be, and trusting he would excuse my extreme anxiety and
solicitude upon the occasion.
“I see, among other reports, that my friend,
Robert Dundas, is mentioned as
Secretary at War. I confess I shall be both vexed and disappointed if he, of
whose talents and opinions I. think very highly, should be prevailed on to
embark in so patched and crazy a vessel as can now be lashed together, and that
upon a sea which promises to be sufficiently boisterous. My own hopes of every
kind are as low as the heels of my boots, and methinks I would say to any
friend of mine as Tybalt says to Benvolio—‘What! art thou drawn among
these heartless hinds?’ I suppose the
Doctor will be move the first, and then
the Whigs will come in like a land-flood, and lay the country at the feet of
Buonaparte for peace. This, if his
devil does not fail, he will readily patch up, and send a few hundred thousands
among our coach-driving noblesse, and perhaps among our Princes of the Blood. With the influence acquired by such gages d’amitié, and by
ostentatious hospitality at his court to all those idiots who will forget the
rat-trap of the detenus, and crowd
there for novelty, there will be, in the course of five or six years, what we
have never yet seen, a real French party in this country. To this you are to
add all the Burdettites, men who, rather than want combustibles, will fetch
brimstone from hell. It is not these whom I fear, however, it is the vile and
degrading spirit of egoisme so
prevalent among the higher ranks, especially among the highest. God forgive me
if I do them injustice, but I think champagne duty free would go a great way to
seduce some of them; and is it not a strong symptom when people, knowing and
feeling their own weakness, will, from mere selfishness and pride, suffer the
vessel to drive on the shelves rather than she should be saved by the only
pilot capable of the task? I will be much obliged to you to let me know what is
likely to be done—whether any fight can yet be made, or if all is over.
Lord Melville had been furious for some
time against this Administration—I think he will hardly lend a hand to clear
the wreck. I should think, if Marquis
Wellesley returns, he might form a steady Administration, but
God wot he must condemn most of the present rotten planks before he can lay
down the new vessel. Above all, let me know how Canning’s recovery goes on. We must think what is to be
done about the Review. Ever yours truly,
W. S.”
Scott’s views as to the transactions of this
period, and the principal parties concerned in them, were considerably altered by the
observation of subsequent years; but I have been much interested with watching the course
of his sentiments and opinions on such subjects; and, in the belief that others may feel in
the same way with myself, I shall insert,
without comment, some further extracts from this correspondence:
To the Same.
“Ashestiel, Nov. 3, 1809. “My dear Ellis,
“I had your letter some time ago, which gave me less
comfort in the present public emergency than your letters usually do. Frankly,
I see great doubts, not to say an impossibility, of Canning’s attaining that rank among the Opposition which
will enable him to command the use of their shoulders to place him where you
cannot be more convinced that I am—he is entitled to stand. The condottieri of the Grenvilles,—for they have no political principles, and
therefore no political party, detached from their immense influence over
individuals—will hardly be seduced from their standard to that of
Canning, by an eloquence which has been exerted upon
them in vain, even when they might have hoped to be gainers by listening to it.
The soi-disant Whigs stick together
like burs. The ragged regiment of Burdett and Folkstone is
under yet stricter discipline, for you may have observed that no lover was ever
so jealous of his mistress as Sir Francis is of his mob
popularity—witness the fate of Paull,
Tierney, even Wardle; in short, of whomsoever presumed to
rival the brazen image whom the mob of Westminster has set up. That either, or
both of these parties, will be delighted with the accession of our
friend’s wisdom and eloquence, cannot for a moment be disputed. That the
Grenvilles, in particular, did he only propose to
himself a slice of the great pudding, would allow him to help himself where the
plums lie thickest, cannot be doubted. But I think it is very doubtful whether
they, closely banded and confident of triumph as they at
present are, will accept of a colleague upon terms which would make him a
master; and unless Canning has these, it appears to me
that we (the Republic) should be no better than if he had retained his office
in the present, or rather late, Administration. But how far, in throwing
himself altogether into the arms of Opposition at this crisis,
Canning will injure himself with the large and sound
party who profess Pittism, is, I really think, worthy of
consideration. The influence of his name is at present as great as you or I
could wish it; but those who wish to undermine it want but, according to our
Scottish proverb, ‘a hair to make a tether of.’ I admit his hand is
very difficult to play, and much as I love and admire him, I am most interested
because it is the decided interest of his country, that he should pique,
repique, and capot his antagonists. But you know much of the delicacy of the
game lies in discarding—so I hope he will be in no hurry
on throwing out his cards.
“I am the more anxious on this score, because I feel
an internal conviction that neither Marquis
Wellesley nor Lord Melville
will lend their names to bolster out this rump of an Administration. Symptoms
of this are said to have transpired in Scotland, but in this retirement I
cannot learn upon what authority. Should this prove so, I confess my best
wishes would be realized, because I cannot see how Percival could avoid surrendering at discretion, and taking,
perhaps, a peerage. We should then have an Administration à laPitt, which is a much better thing than an Opposition,
howsoever conducted or headed, which, like a wave of the sea, forms indeed but
a single body when it is rolling towards the shore, but dashes into foam and
dispersion the instant it reaches its object. Should Canning and the above named noble peers come
to understand each other, joined to all among the present Ministry whom their
na-tive good sense,
and an attachment to good warm places, will lead to hear reason, it does seem
to me that we might form a deeper front to the enemy than we have presented
since the death of Pitt, or rather since the dissolution
of his first Administration. But if this be a dream, as it may very probably
be, I still hope Canning will take his own ground in
Parliament, and hoist his own standard. Sooner or later it must be successful.
So much for politics—about which, after all, my neighbours the black-cocks know about as much as I do.
“I have a great deal to write you about a new poem which I have on the
anvil—also, upon the melancholy death of a favourite greyhound bitch—rest her
body, since I dare not say soul! She was of high blood and excellent promise.
Should any of your sporting friends have a whelp to spare, of a good kind, and
of the female sex, I would be grateful beyond measure, especially if she has
had the distemper. As I have quite laid aside the gun, coursing is my only and
constant amusement, and my valued pair of four-legged champions, Douglas and Percy, wax old
and unfeary. Ever yours truly,
W. S.”
To Walter Scott, Esq.
“Gloucester Lodge, Nov. 13, 1809. “My dear Sir,
“I am very sensibly gratified by your kind
expressions, whether of condolence or congratulation, and I acknowledge, if not
(with your Highland writer) the
synonymousness of the two terms, at least the union of the two sentiments, as
applied to my present circumstances. I am not so heroically fond of being out
(quátenus out), as not
to consider that a matter of condolence. But I am at the same time sufficiently
convinced of the desirableness of not being in, when one should be in to no
purpose, either of public advantage or personal credit,
to be satisfied that on that ground I am entitled to your congratulations.
“I should be very happy indeed to look forward, with
the prospect of being able to realize it, to the trip to Scotland which you
suggest to me; and still more to the visit included therein, which, as you hold
it out, would not be the least part of my temptation. Of this, however, I hope
we shall have opportunities of talking before the season arrives; for I reckon
upon your spring visit to London, and think of it, I assure you, with great
pleasure, as likely to happen at a period when I shall have it more in my power
than I have had on any former occasion to enjoy the advantage of it. You will
find me not in quite so romantic a scene of seclusion and tranquillity here as
that which you describe—but very tranquil and secluded nevertheless, at a mile
and a half’s distance from Hyde Park Corner—a distance considerable
enough, as I now am, to save me from any very overwhelming ‘unda salutantium.’
“Here, or any where else, I beg you to believe in the
very sincere satisfaction which I shall derive from your society, and which I
do derive from the assurance of your regard and good opinion. Ever, my dear
sir, very truly and faithfully yours,
Geo. Canning.
“P.S.—I expect, in the course of this week, to
send you a copy of a more ample statement of the circumstances of my
retirement, which the misrepresentations of some who, I think, must have known they were misrepresenting (though that I must not say), have
rendered necessary.”
I could not quote more largely from these political letters without
trespassing against the feelings of dis-tinguished individuals still alive. I believe the extracts which I have given are
sufficient to illustrate the sagacity with which Scott
had at that early period apprehended the dangers to which the political career of Mr Canning was exposed, by the jealousy of the old Tory
aristocracy on the one hand, and the insidious flatteries of Whig intriguers on the other.
Even in communications which he must have known would pass under Mr
Canning’s own eye, I think we may trace something of the lurking
suspicion, that a propensity to tamper with intrigue might eventually develope itself in
that great statesman’s otherwise noble character. In after years he certainly
expressed himself concerning the quarrel of 1809 as if, on a cool retrospect, he considered
the “harebrained Irishman” to have been
much more sinned against than sinning; but his original impressions on this point had of
course been modified by the subsequent lives of the two antagonists—as, indeed, his
correspondence will be found to confess. I willingly turn from
Scott’s politics to some other matters, which about this
time occupied a large share of his thoughts.
He had from his boyish days a great love for theatrical representation;
and so soon as circumstances enabled him to practise extended hospitality, the chief actors
of his time, whenever they happened to be in Scotland, were among the most acceptable of
his guests. Mr Charles Young was, I believe, the
first of them of whom he saw much: As early as 1803 I find him writing of that gentleman to
the Marchioness of Abercorn as a valuable addition to
the society of Edinburgh; and down to the end of Scott’s life
Mr Young was never in the north without visiting him.
Another graceful and intelligent performer in whom he took a special
interest, and of whom he saw a great deal in his private circle, was
Miss Smith, afterwards Mrs
Bartley. But at the period of which I am now treating, his principal
theatrical intimacy was with John Philip Kemble, and
his sister Mrs Siddons, both of whom he appears to
have often met at Lord Abercorn’s villa near
Stanmore, during his spring visits to London after the first establishment of his poetical
celebrity. Of John Kemble’s personal character and manners, he
has recorded his impressions in a pleasing reviewal of Mr Boaden’sMemoir.* The great tragedian’s love
of black-letter learning, especially of dramatic antiquities, afforded a strong bond of
fellowship; and I have heard Scott say that the only man who ever
seduced him into very deep potations in his middle life was Kemble. He
was frequently at Ashestiel, and the “fat Scotch butler,” whom Mr Skene has described to us, by name John Macbeth, made sore complaints of the bad hours kept
on such occasions in one of the most regular of households; but the watchings of the night
were not more grievous to “Cousin Macbeth,” as
Kemble called the honest beauffetier, than were the hazards and fatigues of the morning to
the representative of the Scotch usurper. Kemble’s miseries
during a rough gallop were quite as grotesque as those of his namesake, and it must be
owned that species of distress was one from the contemplation of which his host could never
derive any thing but amusement.
I have heard Scott chuckle with
particular glee over the recollection of an excursion to the vale of the Ettrick, near
which river the party were pursued by a bull. “Come, King John,” said he, “we must even take the
water,” and accordingly he and his daughter
* Miscellaneous Prose Works 3 vol. xx.
plunged into the stream. But King
John, halting on the bank and surveying the river, which happened to be full
and turbid, exclaimed, in his usual solemn manner, —“The flood is angry, Sheriff, Methinks I’ll get me up into a tree.”* It was well that the dogs had succeeded in diverting the bull, because there was no
tree at hand which could have sustained King John, nor, had that been
otherwise, could so stately a personage have dismounted and ascended with such alacrity as
circumstances would have required. He at length followed his friends through the river with
the rueful dignity of Don Quixote.
It was this intercourse which led Scott to exert himself very strenuously, when some change in the
administration of the Edinburgh stage became necessary—(I believe in 1808),—to prevail on
Mr Henry Siddons, the nephew of Kemble, to undertake the lease and management. Such an
arrangement would, he expected, induce both Kemble and his sister to be more in Scotland than hitherto; and what he
had seen of young Siddons himself led him to prognosticate a great
improvement in the whole conduct of the northern stage. His wishes were at length
accomplished in the summer of 1809. On this occasion he purchased a share, and became one
of the acting trustees for the general body of proprietors; and thenceforth, during a long
series of years, he continued to take a very lively concern in the proceedings of the
Edinburgh company. In this he was plentifully encouraged by his domestic camarilla; for his wife had all a Frenchwoman’s passion for the
* John Kemble’s
most familiar table-talk often flowed into blank verse; and so indeed did his
sister’s. Scott (who was a capital mimic) often repeated her tragic
exclamation to a footboy during a dinner at Ashestiel,
“You’ve brought me water, boy,—I asked for beer.” spectacle; and the elder of the two Ballantynes (both equally devoted to the company of players) was a regular
newspaper critic of theatrical affairs, and in that capacity had already attained a measure
of authority supremely gratifying to himself.
The first new play produced by Henry
Siddons was the Family
Legend of Joanna Baillie. This was, I
believe, the first of her dramas that ever underwent the test of representation in her
native kingdom; and Scott appears to have exerted
himself most indefatiga.bly in its behalf. He was consulted about all the minutiæ of costume, attended every rehearsal, and supplied the prologue. The
play was better received than any other which the gifted authoress has since subjected to
the same experiment; and how ardently Scott enjoyed its success will
appear from a few specimens of the many letters which he addressed to his friend on the
occasion.
The first of these letters is dated Edinburgh, October 27, 1809. He had
gone into town for the purpose of entering his eldest
boy at the High School:—
“On receiving your long kind letter yesterday, I
sought out Siddons, who was equally
surprised and delighted at your liberal arrangement about the Lady of the Rock.
I will put all the names to rights, and retain enough of locality and
personality to please the antiquary, without the least risk of bringing the
clan Gillian about our ears. I went through the theatre,
which is the most complete little thing of the kind I ever saw, elegantly
fitted up, and large enough for every purpose. I trust, with you, that in this
as in other cases, our Scotch poverty may be a counterbalance to our Scotch
pride, and that we shall not need in my time a larger or more expensive
building. Siddons himself observes, that even for the
purposes of show (so paramount now-adays) a moderate stage is
better fitted than a large one, because the machinery is pliable and manageable
in proportion to its size. With regard to the equipment of the Family Legend, I have been
much diverted with a discovery which I have made. I had occasion to visit our
Lord Provost (by profession a
stocking-weaver),* and was surprised to find the worthy magistrate filled with
a new born zeal for the drama. He spoke of Mr
Siddons’ merits with enthusiasm, and of Miss Baillie’s powers almost with tears
of rapture. Being a curious investigator of cause and effect, I never rested
until I found out that this theatric rage which had seized his lordship of a
sudden, was owing to a large order for hose, pantaloons, and plaids for
equipping the rival clans of Campbell and
Maclean, and which Siddons was
sensible enough to send to the warehouse of our excellent provost. . . . .
The Laird† is just gone to the
High School, and it is with inexpressible feeling that I hear him trying to
babble the first words of Latin, the signal of commencing serious study, for
his acquirements hitherto have been under the mild dominion of a governess. I
felt very like Leontes— “Looking on the lines Of my boy’s face, methought I did recall Thirty good years”—
* This magistrate was Mr
William Coulter, who died in office in April, 1810, and
is said to have been greatly consoled on his deathbed by the prospect
of so grand a funeral as must needs occur in the case of an actual Lord
Provost of Auld Reekie. Scott used
to take him off as, saying at some public meeting, “Gentlemen,
though doomed to the trade of a stocking-weaver, I was born with the
soul of a Sheepio!”
(Scipio.)
† Young Walter
Scott was called Gilnockie, the Laird of
Gilnockie, or simply the Laird,
in consequence of his childish admiration for Johnnie Armstrong, whose ruined tower
is still extant at Gilnockie on the Esk, nearly opposite Netherby.
And O my dear Miss Baillie, what a
tale thirty years can tell even in an uniform and unhazardous course of life!
How much I have reaped that I have never sown, and sown that I have never
reaped! Always, I shall think it one of the proudest and happiest circumstances
of my life that enables me to subscribe myself your faithful and affectionate
friend,
W. S.”
Three months later he thus communicates the result of the experiment.
To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead.
“Jan. 30th, 1810. “My dear Miss Baillie,
“You have only to imagine all that you could wish to
give success to a play, and your conceptions will still fall short of the
complete and decided triumph of the Family Legend. The house was crowded to a most extraordinary
degree; many people had come from your native capital of the west; every thing
that pretended to distinction, whether from rank or literature, was in the
boxes, and in the pit such an aggregate mass of humanity as I have seldom if
ever witnessed in the same space. It was quite obvious from the beginning, that
the cause was to be very fairly tried before the public, and that if any thing
went wrong, no effort, even of your numerous and zealous friends, could have
had much influence in guiding or restraining the general feeling. Some
good-natured persons had been kind enough to propagate reports of a strong
opposition, which, though I considered them as totally groundless, did not by
any means lessen the extreme anxiety with which I waited the rise of the
curtain. But in a short time I saw there was no ground whatever for apprehension, and
yet I sat the whole time shaking for fear a scene-shifter, or a carpenter, or
some of the subaltern actors should make some blunder, and interrupt the
feeling of deep and general interest which soon seized on the whole pit, box,
and gallery, as Mr Bayes has it. The scene
on the rock struck the utmost possible effect into the audience, and you heard
nothing but sobs on all sides. The banquet-scene was equally impressive, and so
was the combat. Of the greater scenes, that between Lorn and Helen in the
castle of Maclean, that between Helen and her lover, and the examination of
Maclean himself in Argyle’s castle, were applauded to the very
echo. Siddons announced the play
‘for the rest of the week,’ which was
received not only with a thunder of applause, but with cheering and throwing up
of hats and handkerchiefs. Mrs Siddons
supported her part incomparably, although just recovered from the indisposition
mentioned in my last. Siddons himself played Lorn very well indeed, and moved and looked with
great spirit. A Mr Terry, who promises
to be a fine performer, went through the part of the Old Earl with great taste
and effect. For the rest I cannot say much, excepting that from highest to
lowest they were most accurately perfect in their parts, and did their very
best. Malcolm de Grey was tolerable but stickish—Maclean
came off decently—but the conspirators were sad hounds. You are, my dear
Miss Baillie, too much of a democrat in your writings;
you allow life, soul, and spirit to these inferior creatures of the drama, and
expect they will be the better of it. Now it was obvious to me, that the poor
monsters, whose mouths are only of use to spout the vapid blank verse which
your modern playwright puts into the part of the confidant and subaltern
villain of his piece, did not know what to make of the energetic and poetical
diction which even these subordinate departments abound
with in the Legend. As the play greatly exceeded the usual length (lasting till
half-past ten), we intend, when it is repeated to-night, to omit some of the
passages where the weight necessarily fell on the weakest of our host, although
we may hereby injure the detail of the plot. The scenery was very good, and the
rock, without appearance of pantomime, was so contrived as to place
Mrs Siddons in a very precarious situation to all
appearance. The dresses were more tawdry than I should have judged proper, but
expensive and showy. I got my brother
John’s Highland recruiting party to reinforce the garrison
of Inverary, and as they mustered beneath the porch of the castle, and seemed
to fill the court-yard behind, the combat scene had really the appearance of
reality. Siddons has been most attentive, anxious,
assiduous, and docile, and had drilled his troops so well that the
prompter’s aid was unnecessary, and I do not believe he gave a single
hint the whole night; nor were there any false or ridiculous accents or
gestures even among the underlings, though God knows they fell often far short
of the true spirit. Mrs Siddons spoke the epilogue*
extremely well: the prologue,† which I will send you in its revised
state, was also very well received. Mrs
Scott sends her kindest compliments of congratulation; she had a
party of thirty friends in one small box, which she was obliged to watch like a
clucking hen till she had gathered her whole flock, for the crowd was
insufferable. I am going to see the Legend to-night,
when I shall enjoy it quietly, for last night I was so much interested in its
reception that I cannot say I was at leisure to attend to the feelings arising
from the representation itself. People are dying to read it. If you think of
suffering a single edition to be
* Written by Henry
Mackenzie.
† See Scott’s Poetical Works,
vol. viii. p. 387.
printed to gratify their curiosity, I
will take care of it. But I do not advise this, because until printed no other
theatres can have it before you give leave. My kind respects attend Miss Agnes Baillie, and believe me ever your
obliged and faithful servant,
Walter Scott.
“P.S. A friend of
mine writes dramatic criticism now and then. I have begged
him to send me a copy of the Edinburgh paper in which he inserts his
lucubrations, and I will transmit it to you: he is a play-going man, and
more in the habit of expressing himself on such subjects than most
people.—In case you have not got a playbill, I enclose one, because I think
in my own case I should like to see it.”
The Family Legend had
a continuous run of fourteen nights, and was soon afterwards printed and published by the
Ballantynes.
The theatrical critic alluded to
in the last of these letters was the elder of those brothers; the newspaper in which his
lucubrations then appeared was the Edinburgh Evening Courant; and so it continued until 1817, when the
Edinburgh Weekly
Journal was purchased by the printing company in the Canongate; ever
after which period it was edited by the prominent member of that firm, and from time to
time was the vehicle of many fugitive pieces by the unseen partner.
In one of these letters there occurs, for the first time, the name of a
person who soon obtained a large share of Scott’s
regard and confidence—the late ingenious comedian, Mr Daniel
Terry. He had received a good education, and been regularly trained as an
architect; but abandoned that profession, at an early period of life, for the stage, and
was now beginning to attract attention as a va-luable and efficient
actor in Henry Siddons’s new company at
Edinburgh. Already he and the Ballantynes were constant companions,
and through his familiarity with them, Scott had abundant
opportunities of appreciating his many excellent and agreeable qualities. He had the
manners and feelings of a gentleman. Like John
Kemble, he was deeply skilled in the old literature of the drama, and he
rivalled Scott’s own enthusiasm for the antiquities of
vertu. Their epistolary correspondence in
after days was frequent, and will supply me with many illustrations of
Scott’s minor tastes and habits. As their letters lie before
me, they appear as if they had all been penned by the same hand.
Terry’s idolatry of his new friend induced him to imitate
his writing so zealously, that Scott used to say, if he were called on
to swear to any document, the utmost he could venture to attest would be, that it was
either in his own hand or in Terry’s. The actor, perhaps
unconsciously, mimicked him in other matters with hardly inferior pertinacity. His small
lively features had acquired, before I knew him, a truly ludicrous cast of
Scott’s graver expression; he had taught his tiny eyebrow
the very trick of the poet’s meditative frown; and to crown all, he so habitually
affected his tone and accent that, though a native of Bath, a stranger could hardly have
doubted he must be a Scotchman. These things afforded Scott and all
their mutual acquaintances much diversion; but perhaps no Stoic could have helped being
secretly gratified by seeing a clever and sensible man convert himself into a living type
and symbol of admiration.
Charles Mathews and Terry were once thrown out of a gig together, and the former received an
injury which made him halt ever afterwards, while the latter escaped unhurt.
“Dooms, Dauniel,” said
Mathews when they next met, “what a pity that it wasna
your luck to get the game leg, mon!
Your Shirra wad hae been the very thing, ye ken,
an’ ye wad hae been croose till ye war coffined!”
Terry, though he did not always relish bantering on this subject,
replied readily and good-humouredly by a quotation from Peter
Pindar’sBozzy and Piozzi:— “When Foote his leg by some
misfortune broke, Says I to Johnson, all by way of joke, Sam, sir, in Paragraph
will soon be clever, He’ll take off Peter better now
than ever.”
Mathews’s mirthful caricature of Terry’s sober mimicry of Scott was one of the richest extravaganzas of his social hours; but indeed
I have often seen this Proteus dramatize the whole
Ballantyne group with equal success while Rigdumfunnidos screamed with delight, and Aldiborontiphoscophornio faintly chuckled, and the
Sheriff, gently smiling, pushed round his decanters.
Miss Seward died in March, 1809. She bequeathed her
poetry to Scott, with an injunction to publish it
speedily, and prefix a sketch of her life; while she made her letters (of which she had
kept copies) the property of Mr Constable, in the
assurance that due regard for his own interests would forthwith place the whole collection
before the admiring world. Scott superintended accordingly the edition of the lady’s verses,
which was published in three volumes in August, 1810, by John
Ballantyne and Co.; and Constable lost no time in
announcing her correspondence, which
appeared a year later, in six volumes. The following letter alludes to these productions,
as well as a comedy by Mr Henry Siddons, which he
had recently brought out on the Edinburgh stage; and lastly, to the Lady of the Lake, the printing of which had by this time made
great progress.
To Miss Joanna Baillie.
“Edinburgh, March 18, 1810.
“Nothing, my dear Miss
Baillie, can loiter in my hands, when you are commanding
officer. I have put the play
in progress through the press, and find my publishers, the Ballantynes, had previously determined to make
Mr Longman, the proprietor of your
other works, the offer of this. All that can be made of it in such a cause
certainly shall, and the booksellers shall be content with as little profit as
can in reason be expected. I understand the trade well, and will take care of
this. Indeed, I believe the honour weighs more with the booksellers here than
the profit of a single play. So much for business. You are quite right in the
risk I run of failure in a third
poem; yet I think I understand the British public well enough to set
every sail towards the popular breeze. One set of folks pique themselves upon
sailing in the wind’s eye another class drive right before it; now I
would neither do one or t’other, but endeavour to go, as the sailors
express it, upon a wind, and make use of it to carry me my own way, instead of
going precisely in its direction; or, to speak in a dialect with which I am
more familiar, I would endeavour to make my horse carry me, instead of
attempting to carry my horse. I have a vain-glorious presentiment of success
upon this occasion, which may very well deceive me, but which I would hardly
confess to any body but you, nor perhaps to you neither, unless I knew you
would find it out whether I told it you or no,— “You are a sharp observer, and you look Quite through the eyes of men.—
“I plead guilty to the charge of ill-breeding to
Miss ***. The despair which I used
to feel on receiving poor Miss Seward’s letters, whom I
really liked, gave me a most unsentimental horror for sentimental letters. The
crossest thing I ever did in my life was to poor, dear Miss
Seward; she wrote me in an evil hour (I had never seen her, mark
that!) a long and most passionate epistle upon the death of a dear friend, whom
I had never seen neither, concluding with a charge not to attempt answering the
said letter, for she was dead to the world, &c. &c. &c. Never were
commands more literally obeyed. I remained as silent as the grave, till the
lady made so many enquiries after me, that I was afraid of my death being
prematurely announced by a sonnet or an elegy. When I did see her, however, she
interested me very much, and I am now doing penance for my ill-breeding, by
submitting to edite her posthumous poetry, most of which is absolutely execrable. This,
however, is the least of my evils, for when she proposed this bequest to me,
which I could not in decency refuse, she combined it with a request that I
would publish her whole literary
correspondence. This I declined on principle, having a particular
aversion at perpetuating that sort of gossip; but what availed it? Lo! to
ensure the publication, she left it to an Edinburgh
bookseller; and I anticipate the horror of seeing myself
advertised for a live poet like a wild beast on a painted streamer, for I
understand all her friends are depicted therein in body, mind, and manners. So
much for the risks of sentimental correspondence.
“Siddons’ play was truly flat, but not unprofitable; he
contrived to get it well propped in the acting, and—though it was such a thing
as if you or I had written it (supposing, that is, what in your case, and I
think even in my own, is impossible) would have been damned seventyfold,—yet it
went through with applause. Such is the humour of the multitude; and they will
quarrel with venison for being dressed a day sooner than fashion requires, and batten on a neck of mutton, because, on the
whole, it is rather better than they expected; however,
Siddons is a good lad, and deserves success, through
whatever channel it comes. His mother is
here just now. I was quite shocked to see her, for the two last years have made
a dreadful inroad both on voice and person; she has, however, a very bad cold.
I hope she will be able to act Jane de
Montfort, which we have long planned. Very truly yours,
W. S.”
CHAPTER VIII. AFFAIR OF THOMAS SCOTT’S EXTRACTORSHIP DISCUSSED IN
THE HOUSE OF LORDS—SPEECHES OF LORD LAUDERDALE—LORD
MELVILLE, &C.—LORD HOLLAND AT THE FRIDAY
CLUB—PUBLICATION OF THE LADY OF THE LAKE—CORRESPONDENCE
CONCERNING VERSIFICATION WITH ELLIS AND
CANNING—THE POEM CRITICISED BY JEFFREY AND
MACKINTOSH—LETTERS TO SOUTHEY AND
MORRITT—ANECDOTES FROM JAMES
BALLANTYNE’S MEMORANDA—1810.
There occurred, while the latter cantos of the Lady of the Lake were advancing through the
press, an affair which gave Scott so much uneasiness,
that I must not pass it in silence. Each Clerk of Session had in those days the charge of a
particular office or department in the Great Register House of Scotland, and the
appointment of the subalterns, who therein recorded and extracted the decrees of the
Supreme Court, was in his hands. Some of these situations, remunerated, according to a
fixed rate of fees, by the parties concerned in the suits before the Court, were valuable,
and considered not at all below the pretensions of gentlemen who had been regularly trained
for the higher branches of the law. About the time when Thomas
Scott’s affairs as a Writer to the Signet fell into derangement, but
before they were yet hopeless, a post became vacant in his brother’s office, which
yielded an average income of L.400, and which he would very willingly have accepted. The
Poet, however, considered a respectable man, who had grown grey at an inferior desk in the
same depart-ment, as entitled to promotion, and exerted the right of
patronage in his favour accordingly, bestowing on his brother the place which this person
left. It was worth about L.250 a-year, and its duties being entirely mechanical, might be
in great part, and often had been in former times entirely, discharged by deputy.
Mr Thomas Scott’s appointment to this Extractorship took place at an early stage of the proceedings of that Commission
for enquiring into the Scotch System of Judicature, which had the poet for its secretary,
Thomas, very soon afterwards, was compelled to withdraw from
Edinburgh, and retired, as has been mentioned, to the Isle of Man, leaving his official
duties to the care of a substitute, who was to allow him a certain share of the fees, until
circumstances should permit his return. It was not, however, found so easy, as he and his
friends had anticipated, to wind up his accounts, and settle with his creditors. Time
passed on, and being an active man, in the prime vigour of life, he accepted a commission
in the Manx Fencibles, a new corps raised by the Lord of that island, the Duke of Athol, who willingly availed himself of the military
experience which Mr Scott had acquired in the course of his long
connexion with the Edinburgh Volunteers. These Manx Fencibles, however, were soon
dissolved, and Thomas Scott, now engaged in the peaceful occupation of
collecting materials for a History of the Isle of Man, to which his brother had strongly
directed his views, was anxiously expecting a final arrangement, which might allow him to
re-establish himself in Edinburgh, and resume his seat in the Register House, when he
received the intelligence that the Commission of Judicature had resolved to abolish that,
among many other similar posts. This was a severe blow; but it was announced, at the same
time, that the Commission meant to recommend to Parliament a scheme of compensation for the functionaries who
were to be discharged at their suggestion, and that his retired allowance would probably
amount to L.130 per annum.
In the spring of 1810, the Commission gave in its report, and was
dissolved; and a bill, embodying the details of an extensive reform, founded on its
suggestions, was laid before the House of Commons, who adopted most of its provisions, and
among others passed, without hesitation, the clauses respecting compensation for the
holders of abolished offices. But when the bill reached the House of Lords, several of
these clauses were severely reprobated by some Peers of the Whig party, and the case of
Thomas Scott, in particular, was represented as a gross and
flagrant job. The following extract from Hansard’s Debates will save me the trouble of further details:
“Thomas Scott.
“The
Earl of Lauderdale moved an amendment, ‘that those only be
remunerated who were mentioned in the schedule.’ The application of this amendment
was towards the compensation intended for Mr Thomas
Scott, the brother of Walter Scott. It
appeared the former was appointed to the office of an Extractor at a time when it must have
been foreseen that those offices would be abolished. Mr Thomas Scott
had not been connected previously with that sort of situation, but was recruiting for the
Manx Fencibles in the Isle of Man at the time, and had not served the office, but performed
its duties through the means of a deputy. He considered this transaction a perfect job. By
the present bill Mr T. Scott would have L.130 for life as an indemnity
for an office, the duties of which he never had performed, while those clerks who had
laboured for twenty years had no adequate remuneration.
“Viscount Melville supported the general provisions of the bill.
With respect to Mr T. Scott, he certainly had been
in business, had met with misfortunes, and on account of his circumstances went to the Isle
of Man; but with respect to his appointment, this was the fact; a situation in the same
office [of the Register House] with that of his brother, of L.400, became vacant, and he
[Walter Scott] thought it his duty to promote a person who had
meritoriously filled the situation which was afterwards granted to Mr T.
Scott. His brother was therefore so disinterested as to have appointed him
to the inferior instead of the superior situation. The noble viscount saw no injustice in
the case, and there was no partiality but what was excusable.
“Lord
Holland thought no man who knew him would suspect that he was
unfavourable to men of literature; on the contrary, he felt a great esteem for the literary
character of Walter Scott. He and his colleagues ever
thought it their duty to reward literary merit without regard to political opinions; and he
wished he could pay the same compliment to the noble and learned viscount, for he must ever
recollect that the poet Burns, of immortal memory,
had been shamefully neglected. But with respect to Mr Thomas
Scott, the question was quite different, for he was placed in a situation
which he and his brother knew at the time would be abolished; and from Parliament he
claimed an indemnity for what could not be pronounced any loss. It was unjust as regarded
others, and improper as it respected Parliament.
“The amendment was then proposed and negatived. The
bill was accordingly read the third time and passed.” Hansard, June, 1810,
I shall now extract various passages from Scott’s letters to his brother and other friends, which will show
what his feelings were while this affair continued under agitation.
To Thomas Scott, Esq., Douglas, Isle of Man.
“Edinburgh, 25th May, 1810. “My dear Tom,
“I write under some anxiety for your interest, though
I sincerely hope it is groundless. The devil or James Gibson* has put it into Lord
Lauderdale’s head to challenge your annuity in the House
of Lords on
* James Gibson, Esq. W.S. (now
Sir James Gibson Craig of Riccarton,
Bart.), had always been regarded as one of the most able
and active of the Scotch Whigs—whose acknowledged chief in those days
was the Earl of Lauderdale.
account of your non-residence, and
your holding a commission in the militia. His lordship kept his intention as
secret as possible, but fortunately it reached the kind and friendly ear of
Colin Mackenzie. Lord Melville takes the matter up stoutly, and I
have little doubt will carry his point, unless the whole bill is given up for
the season, which some concurring opposition from different quarters renders
not impossible. In that case, you must, at the expense of a little cash and
time, shew face in Edinburgh for a week or two and attend your office. But I
devoutly hope all will be settled by the bill being passed as it now stands.
This is truly a most unworthy exertion of private spite and malice, but I trust
it will be in vain.”
. . . . . .
“Edinburgh, June 12th. “Dear Tom,
“I have the pleasure to acquaint you that I have
every reason to believe that the bill will pass this week. It has been committed; upon which occasion Lord Lauderdale stated various objections, all of which were
repelled. He then adverted to your case with some sufficiently bitter
observations. Lord Melville advised him to
reserve his epithets till he was pleased to state his cause, as he would pledge
himself to show that they were totally inapplicable to the transaction. The
Duke of Montrose also intimated his
intention to defend it, which I take very kind of his Grace, as he went down on
purpose, and declared his resolution to attend whenever the business should be
stirred. So much for
‘The Lord of Graham, by every
chief adored, Who boasts his native philabeg restored.’” *
* These lines are slightly altered from the Rolliad, p. 308. The Duke had obtained the repeal of an act of Parliament forbidding the use
of the Highland garb.
“Edinburgh, 21st June, 1810. “My dear Tom,
“The bill was read a third time in the House of
Lords, on which occasion Lord Lauderdale
made his attack, which Lord Melville
answered. There was not much said on either side: Lord
Holland supported Lord Lauderdale, and the
bill passed without a division. So you have fairly doubled Cape Lauderdale. I
believe his principal view was to insult my feelings, in which he has been very
unsuccessful, for I thank God I feel nothing but the most hearty contempt both
for the attack and the sort of paltry malice by which alone it could be
dictated.”
The next letter is addressed to an old friend of Scott’s, who, though a stout Whig, had taken a lively interest in the
success of his brother’s parliamentary business.
To John Richardson, Esq., Fludyer Street,
Westminster.
“Edinburgh, 3d July, 1810 “My dear Richardson,
“I ought before now to have written you my particular
thanks for your kind attention to the interest which I came so strangely and
unexpectedly to have in the passing of the Judicature Bill. The only purpose
which I suppose Lord Lauderdale had in view
was to state charges which could neither be understood nor refuted, and to give
me a little pain by dragging my brother’s misfortunes into public notice. If the last was
his aim, I am happy to say it has most absolutely miscarried, for I have too
much contempt for the motive which dictated his Lordship’s eloquence to
feel much for its thunders. My brother loses by the bill from L.150 to L.200,
which no power short of an act of Parliament could have taken from him, and far
from having a view to the
compensation, he is a considerable loser by its being substituted for the
actual receipts of his office. I assure you I am very sensible of your kind and
friendly activity and zeal in my brother’s behalf.
“I received the Guerras* safe; it is a fine copy, and I
think very cheap, considering how difficult it is now to procure foreign books.
I shall be delighted to have the Traite des Tournois. I propose, on the 12th, setting forth for the
West Highlands, with the desperate purpose of investigating the caves of
Staffa, Egg, and Skye. There was a time when this was a heroic undertaking, and
when the return of Samuel Johnson from
achieving it was hailed by the Edinburgh literati with ‘per
varios casus,’ and other scraps of classical gratulation
equally new and elegant. But the harvest of glory has been entirely reaped by
the early discoverers; and in an age when every London citizen makes Lochlomond
his wash-pot, and throws his shoe over Ben-Nevis, a man may endure every
hardship and expose himself to every danger of the Highland seas, from
sea-sickness to the jaws of the great sea-snake, without gaining a single leaf
of laurel for his pains.
“The best apology for bestowing all this tediousness
upon you is, that John Burnet is dinning
into the ears of the Court a botheration about the politics of the magnificent
city of Culross. But I will release you sooner than I fear I shall escape
myself, with the assurance that I am ever yours most truly,
Walter Scott.”
I conclude the affair of Thomas
Scott with a brief extract from a letter which his brother addressed to him
a few weeks later:—“Lord Holland has been in
Edin-
* A copy of the Guerras Chiles de
Granada.
burgh, and we met accidentally at a public party. He made up to
me, but I remembered his part in your affair, and cut him with as little remorse as an
old pen.” The meeting here alluded to occurred at a dinner of the Friday
Club, at Fortune’s Tavern, to which Lord Holland was introduced
by Mr Thomas Thomson. Two gentlemen who were
present, inform me that they distinctly remember a very painful scene, for which, knowing
Scott’s habitual good-nature and urbanity, they had been
wholly unprepared. One of them (Lord Jeffrey) adds,
that this was the only example of rudeness he ever witnessed in him in the course of a
lifelong familiarity. I have thought it due to truth and justice not to omit this
disagreeable passage in Scott’s life, which shows how even his
mind could at times be unhinged and perverted by the malign influence of political spleen.
It is consolatory to add, that he enjoyed much agreeable intercourse in after days with
Lord Holland, and retained no feelings of resentment towards any
other of the Whig gentlemen named in the preceding correspondence.*
* I subjoin a list of the Members of The Friday Club, which was
instituted in June 1803 (on the model, I believe, of Johnson’s at the Turk’s Head), down to the period of
Scott’s death. The others marked, like his
name, by an asterisk, are also dead.
1803 *Sir James HallThomas Thomson *Professor Dugald
StewartDr John Thomson *Professor John
PlayfairJohn A. Murray (Lord Rev. Arch. Alison Advocate in 1835) Rev. Sidney SmithHenry Brougham (Lord *Rev. Peter
Elmslie Brougham) Alex. Irving (Lord Newton) *Henry
Mackenzie *Wm. Erskine
(Lord Kinnedder) H. Mackenzie (Lord George Cranstoun (Lord Corehouse) Mackenzie)Henry Cockburn (Lord Cockburn) *Malcolm
Laing *Walter ScottJohn Richardson
While these disagreeable affairs were still in progress, the poem of the
Lady of the Lake was completed. Scott was at the same time arranging the materials, and
superintending the printing, of the collection entitled “English Minstrelsy,” in which several of his
own minor poems first appeared, and which John
Ballantyne and Co. also published in the summer of 1810. The Swift, too, (to say nothing of reviews and the
like), was going on; and so was the Somers. A
new edition of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish
Border was moreover at press, and in it the editor included a few features of
novelty, particularly Mr Morritt’s spirited
ballad of the Curse of
Moy. He gives a lively description of his occupations in the following
letter addressed to that gentleman:—
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., 24,, Portland Place,
London.
“Edinburgh, 2d March, 1810. “My dear Morritt,
“You are very good to remember such a false knave as
I am, who have omitted so long to thank you for a
Francis Jeffrey (Lord John Allen Jeffrey) *Francis
HornerWilliam ClerkThomas Campbell 1804 *Alex.
Hamilton 1812 *George
Wilson *Dr
Coventry 1814 *Dr John
Gordon *Professor
John Robison 1816 Andrew
RutherfordGeorge Strickland 1817 James
Keay *Professor Dalzell 1825 Leonard
Horner *Lord
Webb SeymourProfessor Pillans *Earl of
Selkirk 1826 Count M. de
Flahault *Lord
Glenbervie *D.
Cathcart (Lord 1807 Rev. John
Thomson Alloway) 1810 John
Jeffrey 1827 Earl of
Minto 1811 T. F.
KennedyWilliam MurrayJ. Fullerton (Lord
Fullerton) 1830 Hon.
Mountstuart
Elphintonstone.
letter, bringing me the assurances of your health and
remembrance, which I do not value the less deeply and sincerely for my seeming
neglect. Truth is, I do not eat the bread of idleness. But I was born a
Scotchman, and a bare one, and was therefore born to fight my way with my left
hand where my right failed me, and with my teeth, if they were both cut off.
This is but a bad apology for not answering your kindness, yet not so bad when
you consider that it was only admitted as a cause of procrastination, and that
I have been—let me see—I have been Secretary to the Judicature Commission,
which sat daily during all the Christmas vacation. I have been editing
Swift, and correcting the press, at
the rate of six sheets a-week. I have been editing Somers at the rate of four ditto ditto. I have written
reviews—I have written songs—I have made selections—I have superintended
rehearsals—and all this independent of visiting, and of my official duty, which
occupies me four hours every working day except Mondays—and independent of a
new poem with which I am
threatening the world. This last employment is not the most prudent, but I
really cannot well help myself. My office, though a very good one for Scotland,
is only held in reversion; nor do I at present derive a shilling from it. I
must expect that a fresh favourite of the public will supersede me, and my
philosophy being very great on the point of poetical fame, I would fain, at the
risk of hastening my own downfall, avail myself of the favourable moment to
make some further provision for my little people. Moreover, I cannot otherwise
honestly indulge myself in some of the luxuries which, when long gratified,
become a sort of pseudo necessaries. As for the terrible parodies*
* I suppose this is an allusion to the “Lay of the Scotch
Fiddle,” “the Goblin Groom,” and some
other productions, like them, long since forgotten.
which have come forth, I can
only say with Benedict, ‘A college
of such witmongers cannot flout me out of my humour.’ Had I been
conscious of one place about my temper, were it even, metaphorically speaking,
the tip of my heel, vulnerable to this sort of aggression, I have that respect
for mine own ease, that I would have shunned being a candidate for public
applause, as I would avoid snatching a honey-comb from among a hive of live
bees. My present attempt is a poem, partly Highland—the scene Loch Katrine, temporeJacobi quinti. If I fail, as Lady Macbeth gallantly says, I fail, and there is only a story
murdered to no purpose; and if I succeed,, why then, as the song says— ‘Up with the bonnie blue bonnet, The dirk and the feather and a’.’
“I hope to show this ditty to you soon in Portland
Place, for it seems determined I must go to London, though the time is not
fixed. The pleasure of meeting you and half a dozen other friends, reconciles
me to this change of plan, for had I answered your letter the day I received
it, I would have said nothing was less likely than my going to town in spring.
I hope it will be so late as to afford me an opportunity of visiting Rokeby and
Greta Side on my return. The felon sow herself could not
think of them with more affection than I do; and though I love Portland Place
dearly, yet I would fain enjoy both. But this must be as the Fates and Destinies and Sisters three determine. Charlotte hopes to accompany me, and is
particularly gratified by the expectation of meeting Mrs Morritt. We think of our sunny days at
Rokeby with equal delight.
“Miss
Baillie’splay went off capitally here, notwithstanding her fond and
over-credulous belief in a Creator of the world. The fact is so generally
believed that it is man who makes the deity, that I am surprised it has never been maintained as a corollary, that the knife and
fork make the fingers. We wept till our hearts were sore, and applauded till
our hands were blistered—what could we more—and this in crowded theatres.
“I send a copy of the poetical collection, not for you, my
good friend, because you would not pay your literary subscription,* but for
Mrs Morritt. I thought of leaving it
as I came through Yorkshire, but as I can get as yet an
office frank, it will be safer in your charge. By a parity of reasoning, you
will receive a copy of the new edition of the Minstrelsy just finished, and about to be
shipped, enriched with your Curse of
Moy, which is very much admired by all to whom I have shown it. I am
sorry that dear —— —— is so far from
you. There is something about her that makes me think of her with a mixture of
affection and anxiety—such a pure and excellent heart, joined to such native
and fascinating manners, cannot pass unprotected through your fashionable
scenes without much hazard of a twinge at least, if not a stab. I remember we
talked over this subject once while riding on the banks of Tees, and somehow (I
cannot tell why) it falls like a death-bell on my ear. She is too artless for
the people that she has to live amongst. This is all vile croaking, so I will
end it by begging ten times love and compliments to Mrs
Morritt, in which Charlotte
heartily joins. Believe me ever, dear Morritt, yours most faithfully,
Walter Scott.”
Early in May the Lady of the
Lake came out—as her two elder sisters had done—in all the majesty of quarto,
with every accompanying grace of typography, and with,
* Scott alludes to some
translations of Italian poetry which he had wished for Mr Morritt’s permission to publish in the “English Minstrelsy.”
moreover, an engraved frontispiece of
Saxon’s portrait of Scott; the price of the book, two guineas. For the copyright
the poet had nominally received 2000 guineas, but as John
Ballantyne and Co. retained three-fourths of the property to themselves
(Miller of London purchasing the other fourth),
the author’s profits were, or should have been, more than this.
It ought to be mentioned, that during the progress of the poem his
feelings towards Constable were so much softened,
that he authorized John Ballantyne to ask, in his
name, that experienced bookseller’s advice respecting the amount of the first
impression, the method of advertising, and other professional details. Mr
Constable readily gave the assistance thus requested, and would willingly
have taken any share they pleased in the adventure. The property had been disposed of
before these communications occurred, and the triumphant success of the coup d’essai of the new firm was sufficient to
close Scott’s ears for a season against any
propositions of the like kind from the house at the Cross; but from this time there was no
return of any thing like personal ill-will between the parties. One article of this
correspondence will be sufficient.
To Mr Constable.
“Castle Street, 13th March, 1810. Dear Sir,
“I am sure if Mr
Hunter is really sorry for the occasion of my long absence from
your shop, I shall be happy to forget all disagreeable circumstances, and visit
it often as a customer and amateur. I think it necessary to add (before
departing from this subject, and I hope for ever), that it is not in my power
to restore our relative situation as author and publishers, because, upon the
breach between us, a large capital was diverted by the
Ballantynes from another object, and invested in their present
bookselling concern, under an express assurance from me of such support as my
future publications could give them; which is a pledge not to be withdrawn
without grounds which I cannot anticipate. But this is not a consideration
which need prevent our being friends and well-wishers. Yours truly,
W. Scott.”
Mr Robert Cadell, the publisher of this Memoir, who
was then a young man in training for his profession in Edinburgh, retains a strong
impression of the interest which the Lady of the
Lake excited there for two or three months before it was published.
“James Ballantyne,” he
says, “read the cantos from time to time to select coteries, as they advanced at
press. Common fame was loud in their favour; a great poem was on all hands anticipated.
I do not recollect that any of all the author’s works was ever looked for with
more intense anxiety, or that any one of them excited a more extraordinary sensation
when it did appear. The whole country rang with the praises of the poet—crowds set off
to view the scenery of Loch Katrine, till then comparatively unknown; and as the book
came out just before the season for excursions, every house and inn in that
neighbourhood was crammed with a constant succession of visitors. It is a
well-ascertained fact, that from the date of the publication of the Lady of the Lake the posthorse duty in Scotland rose in an extraordinary
degree, and indeed it continued to do so regularly for a number of years, the
author’s succeeding works keeping up the enthusiasm for our scenery which he had
thus originally created.”
I owe to the same correspondent the following details:—“The
quarto edition of 2050 copies disappeared in-stantly, and was followed in the course of the same year
by four editions in octavo, viz. one of 3000, a second of 3250, and a third and a
fourth each of 6000 copies; thus, in the space of a few months, the extraordinary
number of 20,000 copies were disposed of. In the next year (1811) there was another
edition of 3000; there was one of 2000 in 1814; another of 2000 in 1815; one of 2000
again in 1819; and two, making between them 2500, appeared in 1825: Since which time
the Lady of the Lake, in collective editions of his poetry, and in separate issues,
must have circulated to the extent of at least 20,000 copies more.” So that,
down to the month of July, 1836, the legitimate sale in Great Britain has been not less
than 50,000 copies.
I have little to add to what the Introduction of 1830, and some letters
already extracted have told us, concerning the history of the composition of this poem.
Indeed the coincidences of expression and illustration in the Introduction and those
private letters, written twenty years before, are remarkable. In both we find him quoting
Montrose’s lines, and in both he quotes also
“Up wi’ the bonnie blue bonnet,” &c. In truth, both
letters and Introduction were literal transcripts of his usual conversation on the subject.
“A lady,” he says, “to whom I was nearly related, and with
whom I lived during her whole life on the most brotherly terms of affection, was
residing with me (at Ashestiel) when the work was in progress, and used to ask me what
I could possibly do to rise so early in the morning. At last I told her the subject of
my meditations; and I can never forget the anxiety and affection expressed in her
reply. ‘Do not be so rash,’ she said, ‘my dearest cousin. You are
already popular—more so perhaps than you yourself will believe, or than even I or other
partial friends can fairly allow to your merit. You stand high do
not rashly attempt to climb higher and incur the risk of a fall; for, depend upon it, a
favourite will not be permitted even to stumble with impunity.’ I replied to this
affectionate expostulation in the words of Montrose: ‘He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, Who dares not put it to the touch, To win or lose it all.’ ‘If I fail,’ I said—for the dialogue is strong in my recollection, ‘it
is a sign that I ought never to have succeeded, and I will write
prose for life: you shall see no change in my temper, nor will I eat a single
meal the worse. But if I succeed— ‘Up wi’ the bonnie blue bonnet, The dirk and the feather an’ a’!
“Afterwards I showed my critic the first canto, which
reconciled her to my imprudence.”—The lady here alluded to was no doubt
Miss Christian Rutherford, his mother’s
sister, who, as I have already mentioned, was so little above his age, that they seem
always to have lived together on the terms of equality indicated in her use of the word
“cousin” in the dialogue before us. She was, however, about as devout a
Shakspearian as her nephew, and the use of cousin, for kinsman in
general, is common to all our elder dramatists.*
He says, in the same essay, “I remember that about the same
time a friend started in to ‘heeze up my hope,’ like the minstrel in the
old song. He was bred a farmer, but a man of powerful understanding, natural good
taste, and warm poetical feeling, perfectly competent to supply the wants of an
imperfect or irregular education. He was a passionate admirer of field sports, which we
* Thus Lady Capulet
exclaims, on seeing the corpse of Tybalt,
“Tybalt, my cousin! oh! my brother’s child!” often pursued together. As this friend
happened to dine with me at Ashestiel one day, I took the opportunity of reading to him
the first canto of the Lady of the Lake,
in order to ascertain the effect the poem was likely to produce upon a person who was
but too favourable a representative of readers at large. His reception of my
recitation, or prelection, was rather singular. He placed his hand across his brow, and
listened with great attention through the whole account of the stag-hunt, till the dogs
throw themselves into the lake to follow their master, who embarks with Ellen Douglas. He then started up with a sudden
exclamation, struck his hand on the table, and declared in a voice of censure
calculated for the occasion, that the dogs must have been totally ruined by being
permitted to take the water after such a severe chase. I own I was much encouraged by
the species of reverie which had possessed so zealous a follower of the sports of the
ancient Nimrod, who had been completely surprised out of all
doubts of the reality of the tale.” Scott
adds—“Another of his remarks gave me less pleasure. He detected the identity
of the king with the wandering knight, Fitz-James,
when he winds his bugle to summon his attendants. He was probably thinking of the
lively but somewhat licentious old ballad in which the dénouement of a royal intrigue” [one of James V. himself by the way] “takes place as follows:— He took a bugle from his side, He blew both loud and shrill, And four-and-twenty belted knights Came skipping owre the hill. ‘Then he took out a little knife, Let a’ his duddies fa’, And he was the bravest gentleman That was amang them a’. And we’ll go no more a roving’, &c. “This discovery, as Mr
Pepys says of the rent in his camlet cloak, ‘was but a trifle,
yet it troubled me;’ and I was at a good deal of pains to efface any
marks by which I thought my secret could be traced before the conclusion, when I relied
on it with the same hope of producing effect with which the Irish postboy is said to
reserve a ‘trot for the avenue.’”
I believe the shrewd critic here introduced was the poet’s
excellent cousin, Charles Scott, now laird of
Knowe-south. The story of the Irish postilion’s trot he owed to Mr Moore.
In their reception of this poem, the critics were for once in full
harmony with each other, and with the popular voice. The article in the Quarterly was written by George Ellis;
but its eulogies, though less discriminative, are not a whit more emphatic than those of
Mr Jeffrey in the rival Review. Indeed, I have always considered this last paper as the best specimen of
contemporary criticism on Scott’s poetry; and I
shall therefore indulge myself with quoting here two of its paragraphs:—
“There is nothing in Mr
Scott of the severe and majestic style of Milton—or of the terse and fine composition of Pope—or of the elaborate elegance and melody of
Campbell—or even of the flowing and
redundant diction of Southey,—but there is a
medley of bright images and glowing, set carelessly and loosely together a diction
tinged successively with the careless richness of Shakspeare, the harshness and antique simplicity of the old romances,
the homeliness of vulgar ballads and anecdotes, and the sentimental glitter of the most
modern poetry—passing from the borders of the ludicrous to those of the
sublime—alternately minute and energetic—sometimes artificial, and frequently
negligent, but always full of spirit and vivacity—abounding in images that are striking
at first sight to minds of every contexture—and never expressing a sentiment which it
can cost the most ordinary reader any exertion to comprehend. Upon the whole, we are
inclined to think more highly of the Lady of
the
* Introduction to the Lady of the Lake—1830.
Lake than of either of its
author’s former publications. We are more sure, however, that it has fewer
faults, than that it has greater beauties; and as its beauties bear a strong
resemblance to those with which the public has been already made familiar in these
celebrated works, we should not be surprised if its popularity were less splendid and
remarkable. For our own parts, however, we are of opinion, that it will be oftener read
hereafter than either of them; and that if it had appeared first in the series, their
reception would have been less favourable than that which it has experienced. It is
more polished in its diction, and more regular in its versification; the story is
constructed with infinitely more skill and address; there is a greater proportion of
pleasing and tender passages, with much less antiquarian detail; and, upon the whole, a
larger variety of characters, more artfully and judiciously contrasted. There is
nothing so fine, perhaps, as the battle in Marmion—or so picturesque as some of the scattered sketches in the Lay; but there is a richness and a spirit in
the whole piece which does not pervade either of those poems—a profusion of incident,
and a shifting brilliancy of colouring, that reminds us of the witchery of Ariosto and a constant elasticity, and occasional
energy, which seem to belong more peculiarly to the author now before us.”
“It is honourable to Mr
Scott’s genius that he has been able to interest the public so
deeply with this third presentment of the same chivalrous scenes; but we cannot help
thinking, that both his glory and our gratification would have been greater, if he had
changed his hand more completely, and actually given us a true Celtic story, with all
its drapery and accompaniments, in a corresponding style of decoration. Such a subject,
we are persuaded, has very great capabilities, and only wants to be introduced to
public notice by such a hand as Mr Scott’s, to make a still
more powerful impression than he has already effected by the resurrection of the tales
of romance. There are few persons, we believe, of any degree of poetical
susceptibility, who have wandered among the secluded valleys of the Highlands, and
contemplated the singular people by whom they are still tenanted with their love of
music and of song—their hardy and irregular life, so unlike the unvarying toils of the
Saxon mechanic—their devotion to their chiefs—their wild and lofty traditions—their
national enthusiasm—the melancholy grandeur of the scenes they inhabit—and the
multiplied superstitions which still linger among them without feeling that there is no
existing people so well adapted for the purposes of poetry, or so capable of furnishing
the occasions of new and striking inventions.
“We are persuaded, that if Mr Scott’s powerful and creative genius were to be turned in good
earnest to such a subject, something might be produced still more impressive and
original than even this age has yet witnessed.”*
The second of these paragraphs is a strikingly prophetic one; and if the
details already given negative the prediction of the first,—namely, that the immediate
popularity of the Lady of the Lake would be
less remarkable than that of the Lay or Marmion had been—its other prediction, that
the new poem would be “oftener read hereafter than either of the
former,” has, I believe, proved just. The Lay, if I may
venture to state the creed now established, is, I should say, generally considered as the
most natural and original, Marmion as the most powerful and
splendid, the Lady of the Lake as the most interesting, romantic,
picturesque, and graceful of his great poems.
Of the private opinions expressed at the time of its first publication
by his distinguished literary friends, and expressed with an ease and candour equally
honourable to them and to him, that of Mr Southey
was, as far as I know, the only one which called forth any thing like a critical reply; and
even here, more suo, he seems glad
* It may interest the reader to compare with this passage a
brief extract from Sir James
Mackintosh’s Indian Diary of 1811:—
“The subject of The
Lady,” says he, “is a common Highland irruption, but at a
point where the neighbourhood of the Lowlands affords the best contrast of
manners—where the scenery affords the noblest subject of description—and where the
wild clan is so near to the Court, that their robberies can be connected with the
romantic adventures of a disguised king, an exiled lord, and a high-born beauty.
The whole narrative is very fine. There are not so many splendid passages for
quotation as in the two former poems. This may indeed silence the objections of the
critics, but I doubt whether it will promote the popularity of the poem. It has
nothing so good as the Address to Scotland, or the Death of Marmion.”—Life of Mackintosh, v.
ii. p. 82.
to turn from his own productions to those
of his correspondent. It will be seen that Mr Southey had recently put
forth the first volume of his history of
Brazil; that his Kehama was
then in the Ballantyne press; and that he had
mentioned to Scott his purpose of writing another poem under the title
of “Don Pelayo” which in the issue was exchanged for
that of “Roderick the Last of the
Goths.”
To Robert Southey, Esq., Durham.
“Edinburgh, May 20, 1810. “My dear Southey,
“I am very sensible of the value of your kind
approbation of my efforts, and trust I shall, under such good auspices, keep my
ground with the public. I have studied their taste as much as a thing so
variable can be calculated upon, and I hope I have again given them an
acceptable subject of entertainment. What you say of the songs is very just,
and also of the measure. But, on the one hand, I wished to make a difference
between my former poems and this new attempt, in the general tenor of
versification, and on the other, having an eye to the benefits derivable from
the change of stanza, I omitted no opportunity which could be given or taken,
of converting my dog-trot into a hop-step-and-jump. I am impatient to see Kehama; James Ballantyne, who has a good deal of tact,
speaks very highly of the poetical fire and beauty which pervades it; and,
considering the success of Sir William
Jones, I should think the Hindhu mythology would not revolt the
common readers, for in that lies your only danger. As for Don Pelayo, it should be exquisite under
your management; the subject is noble, the parties finely contrasted in
manners, dress, religion, and all that the poet desires to bring into action;
and your complete knowledge of every historian who has
touched upon the period, promises the reader at once delight and instruction.
“Twenty times twenty thanks for the History of Brazil, which has
been my amusement, and solace, and spring of instruction for this month past. I
have always made it my reading-book after dinner, between the removal of the
cloth and our early tea-time. There is only one defect I can point out, and
that applies to the publishers—I mean the want of a good map. For, to tell you
the truth, with my imperfect atlas of South America, I can hardly trace these
same Tups of yours (which in our Border dialect
signifies rams), with all their divisions and
subdivisions, through so many ramifications, without a carte de pays. The history itself is most
singularly entertaining, and throws new light upon a subject which we have
hitherto understood very imperfectly. Your labour must have been immense, to
judge from the number of curious facts quoted, and unheard-of authorities which
you have collected. I have traced the achievements of the Portuguese
adventurers with greater interest than I remember to have felt since, when a
schoolboy, I first perused the duodecimo collection of Voyages and Discoveries
called the World Displayed—a
sensation which I thought had been long dead within me; for, to say the truth,
the philanthropic and cautious conduct of modern discoverers, though far more
amiable, is less entertaining than that of the old Buccaneers, and Spaniards
and Portuguese, who went to conquer and achieve adventures, and met with
strange chances of fate in consequence, which could never have befallen a
well-armed boat’s crew, not trusting themselves beyond their
watering-place, or trading with the natives on the principles of mercantile
good faith.
“I have some thoughts of a journey and voyage to the
Hebrides this year, but if I don’t make that out, I think I shall make a foray into your northern
counties, go to see my friend Morritt at
Greta Bridge, and certainly cast myself Keswick-ways either going or coming. I
have some literary projects to talk over with you, for the re-editing some of
our ancient classical romances and poetry, and so forth. I have great command
of our friends the Ballantynes, and I think, so far as the
filthy lucre of gain is concerned, I could make a very advantageous bargain for
the time which must necessarily be bestowed in such a labour, besides doing an
agreeable thing for ourselves, and a useful service to literature. What is
become of Coleridge’sFriend? I hope he had a letter
from me, enclosing my trifling subscription. How does our friend Wordsworth? I won’t write to him,
because he hates letter-writing as much as I do; but I often think on him, and
always with affection. If you make any stay at Durham let me know, as I wish
you to know my friend Surtees of
Mainsforth.* He is an excellent antiquary, some of the rust of
which study has clung to his manners; but he is good-hearted, and you would
make the summer eve (for so by the courtesy of the kalendar we must call these
abominable easterly blighting afternoons) short between you. I presume you are
with my friend Dr Southey, who, I hope,
has not quite forgotten me, in which faith I beg kind compliments to him, and
am ever yours most truly,
Walter Scott.”
George Ellis having undertaken, at Gifford’s request, to review the Lady of the Lake, does not appear to have addressed any
letter to the poet upon the subject, until
* This amiable gentleman, author of the History of Durham, in three volumes folio,—one
of the most learned as well as interesting works of its class,—was an early and
dear friend of Scott’s. He died at the
family seat of Mainsforth, near Durham, 11th February 1834, in his 55th year.
after his article had appeared. He then says simply, that he had
therein expressed his candid sentiments, and hoped his friend, as great a worshipper as
himself of Dryden’s tales, would
take in good part his remarks on the octosyllabic metre as applied to serious continued
narrative. The following was Scott’s reply:—
To G. Ellis, Esq.
My dear Ellis,
“I have been scandalously lazy in answering your kind
epistle, received I don’t know how long since; but then I had been long
your creditor, and I fancy correspondents, like merchants, are often glad to
plead their friends’ neglect of their accompt-current as an apology for
their own, especially when they know that the value of the payments being
adjusted, must leave a sad balance against them. I have run up an attempt on the Curse of Kehama for the Quarterly; a strange thing it is—the Curse, I mean—and the critique is not, as the
blackguards say, worth a damn; but what I could I did, which was to throw as
much weight as possible upon the beautiful passages, of which there are many,
and to slur over the absurdities, of which there are not a few. It is infinite
pity of Southey, with genius almost to
exuberance, so much learning and real good feeling of poetry, that, with the
true obstinacy of a foolish papa, he will be most
attached to the defects of his poetical offspring. This said Kehama affords cruel openings for the quizzers, and I suppose will
get it roundly in the Edinburgh
Review. I would have made a very different hand of it indeed, had
the order of the day been pour
déchirer.*
“I told you how much I was delighted with your
critique on the Lady; but, very
likely moved by the same
* See this article in his Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol.
xvii. pp. 301—337.
feeling for which I have just
censured Southey, I am still inclined to
defend the eight-syllable stanza, which I have somehow persuaded myself is more
congenial to the English language—more favourable to narrative poetry at
least—than that which has been commonly termed heroic verse. If you will take
the trouble to read a page of Pope’sIliad, you will probably find a good many lines out of which two
syllables may be struck without injury to the sense. The first lines of this
translation have been repeatedly noticed as capable of being cut down from
ships of the line into frigates, by striking out the two said-syllabled words,
as— ‘Achilles’ wrath to
Greece, the direful spring Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess sing, That wrath which sent to Pluto’sgloomy
reign The souls of mighty chiefs in battle slain, Whose bones unburied on the desert shore, Devouring dogs and hungry vultures
tore.’
“Now, since it is true that by throwing out the
epithets underscored, we preserve the sense without diminishing the force of
the verses—and since it is also true that scarcely one of the epithets are more
than merely expletive—I do really think that the structure of verse which
requires least of this sort of bolstering, is most likely to be forcible and
animated. The case is different in descriptive poetry, because there epithets,
if they are happily selected, are rather to be sought after than avoided, and
admit of being varied ad infinitum. But if in narrative you are frequently
compelled to tag your substantives with adjectives, it must frequently happen
that you are forced upon those that are merely commonplaces, such as ‘heavenly goddess,’ ‘desert shore,’ and so forth; and I need not tell you, that
whenever any syllable is obviously inserted for the completion of a couplet,
the reader is disposed to quarrel with it. Be-sides, the
eight-syllable stanza is capable of certain varieties denied to the heroic.
Double rhymes for instance, are congenial to it, which often give a sort of
Gothic richness to its cadences; you may also render it more or less rapid by
retaining or dropping an occasional syllable. Lastly, and which I think its
principal merit, it runs better into sentences than any length of line I know,
as it corresponds, upon an average view of our punctuation, very commonly with
the proper and usual space between comma and comma. Lastly the Second—and which
ought perhaps to have been said first,—I think I have somehow a better knack at
this ‘false gallop’ of verse, as Touchstone calls it, than at your more legitimate hexameters;
and so there is the short and long of my longs and shorts. Ever yours,
Walter Scott.”
Mr Ellis recurs to the octosyllabic measure of the
Lady of the Lake in his next letter.
“I don’t think,” says he, “after all the eloquence
with which you plead for your favourite metre, that you really like it from any other
motive than that sainte paresse—that
delightful indolence which induces one to delight in doing those things which we can do
with the least fatigue. If you will take the trouble of converting Dryden’sTheodore and Honoria (a narrative, is it not?)
into Hudibrastic measure, and after trying this on the first twenty lines you feel
pleased with the transformation, I will give up the argument; although, in point of
fact, I believe that I regret the variety of your own old stanza, much more than the
absence of that heroic measure, which you justly remark is not, without great
difficulty, capable of being moulded into sentences of various lengths. When,
therefore, you give us another poem, pray indulge me with rather a larger share of your
ancient dithyrambics.”
Canning, too, came to the side of Ellis in this debate. After telling Scott that “on a repeated perusal” he had
been “more and more delighted” with the Lady of the Lake, he says “But I should like to see
something a little different when you write next. In short, I have sometimes thought
(very presumptuously) that partly by persuasion, and partly by shewing the effect of a
change of dress of a fuller and more sweeping style upon some of your favourite
passages, I could induce you to present yourself next time in a Drydenic habit. Has
this ever occurred to you, and have you tried it, and not liked yourself so
well?” We shall see by and by what attention Scott gave to
these friendly suggestions.
Of the success of the new poem he speaks as follows in his Introduction
of 1830:—“It was certainly so extraordinary as to induce me for the moment to
conclude that I had at last fixed a nail in the proverbially inconstant wheel of
Fortune. I had attained, perhaps, that degree of public reputation at which prudence,
or certainly timidity, would have made a halt, and discontinued efforts by which I was
far more likely to diminish my fame than to increase it. But—as the celebrated
John Wilkes is said to have explained to
King George the Third, that he himself, amid his
full tide of popularity, was never a Wilkite—so I can with honest truth exculpate
myself from having been at any time a partisan of my own poetry, even when it was in
the highest fashion with the million. It must not be supposed that I was either so
ungrateful, or so superabundantly candid, as to despise or scorn the value of those
whose voice had elevated me so much higher than my own opinion told me I deserved. I
felt, on the contrary, the more grateful to the public, as receiving that from
partiality which I could not have claimed from merit: and I endeavoured to deserve the partiality by continuing such exertions as I was
capable of for their amusement.”
James Ballantyne has preserved in his Memorandum an
anecdote strikingly confirmative of the most remarkable statement in this page of Scott’s confessions. “I remember,” he
says, “going into his library shortly after the publication of the Lady of the Lake, and finding Miss Scott (who was then a very young girl) there by
herself I asked her ‘Well, Miss Sophia, how do you like the
Lady of the Lake?’ Her answer was given with
perfect simplicity ‘Oh, I have not read it; papa says there’s nothing so
bad for young people as reading bad poetry.’”
In fact, his children in those days had no idea of the source of his
distinction—or rather, indeed, that his position was in any respect different from that of
other Advocates, Sheriffs, and Clerks of Session. The eldest
boy came home one afternoon about this time from the High School, with tears
and blood hardened together upon his cheeks. “Well,
Wat,” said his father, “what have you been fighting
about to-day?” With that the boy blushed and hung his head, and at last
stammered out—that “he had been called a lassie.”
“Indeed!” said Mrs Scott,
“this was a terrible mischief to be sure.” “You may say
what you please, mamma,” Wat answered roughly,
“but I dinna think there’s a waufer (shabbier)
thing in the world than to be a lassie, to sit boring at a clout.” Upon
further enquiry, it turned out that one or two of his companions had dubbed him The Lady of the Lake, and the phrase was to him incomprehensible,
save as conveying some imputation on his prowess, which he accordingly vindicated in the
usual style of the Yards. Of the poem he had never before heard. Shortly after, this story
having got wind, one of Scott’s colleagues of the
Clerks’ Table said to the boy—“Gilknockie, my man, you
cannot surely help seeing that great people make more work about your papa than they do
about me or any other of your uncles—what is it, do you suppose,
that occasions this?” The little fellow pondered for a minute or two, and
then answered very gravely—“It’s commonly him that sees the hare
sitting.” And yet this was the man that had his children all along so very
much with him. In truth, however, young Walter had guessed pretty
shrewdly in the matter, for his father had all the tact of the Sutherland Highlander, whose
detection of an Irish rebel up to the neck in a bog, he has commemorated in a note upon
Rokeby. Like him, he was quick to catch
the sparkle of the future victim’s eye; and often said
jestingly of himself, that whatever might be thought of him as a maker (poet), he was an excellent trouveur.
Ballantyne adds:—“One day, about this same
time, when his fame was supposed to have reached its acmé, I said to
him—‘Will you excuse me, Mr Scott, but I
should like to ask you what you think of your own genius as a poet, in comparison with
that of Burns?’ He replied ‘There is
no comparison whatever—we ought not to be named in the same day.’
‘Indeed!’ I answered, ‘would you compare Campbell to Burns?’ ‘No,
James, not at all—If you wish to speak of a real poet,
Joanna Baillie is now the highest genius of
our country.’ But, in fact,” (continues
Ballantyne) “he had often said to me that neither his own nor
any modern popular style of composition was that from which he derived most pleasure. I
asked him what it was. He answered Johnson’s; and that he had more pleasure in reading London, and
The Vanity of Human
Wishes, than any other poetical composition he could mention; and I
think I never saw his countenance more indicative of high
admiration than while reciting aloud from those productions.”*
* In his Sketch of
Johnson’s Life (Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. iii. p 264) Scott says—“The deep
and pathetic morality of the Vanity of Human Wishes, has often extracted
tears from those whose eyes wander dry over pages professedly
sentimental.” And Lord Byron, in his
Ravenna Diary (1821), has the following entry on the same subject, “Read
Johnson’sVanity of Human Wishes,—all the examples and mode of giving them
sublime, as well as the latter part, with the exception of an occasional couplet.
’Tis a grand poem—and so true!—true as the 10th of
Juvenal himself. The lapse of ages changes
all things—time—language—the earth—the bounds of the sea—the stars of the sky, and
every thing about, around, and underneath man, except man himself, who has always
been, and always will be, an unlucky rascal. The infinite variety of lives conduct
but to death, and the infinity of wishes lead but to disappointment.”
(Life and Works, vol. v. p. 66).
Yet it is the cant of our day, above all of its poetasters, that
Johnson was no poet. To be sure, they say the same of
Pope—and hint it occasionally even of
Dryden.
CHAPTER IX. FIRST VISIT TO THE HEBRIDES—STAFFA—SKYE—MULL—IONA, ETC.—THE
LORD OF THE ISLES PROJECTED—LETTERS TO JOANNA
BAILLIE—SOUTHEY—AND MORRITT. 1810.
Walter Scott was at this
epoch in the highest spirits, and having strong reasons of various kinds for his resolution
to avail himself of the gale of favour, only hesitated in which quarter to explore the
materials of some new romance. His first and most earnest desire was to spend a few months
with the British army in the Peninsula, but this he soon resigned, from an amiable motive,
which a letter presently to be quoted will explain. He then thought of revisiting Rokeby
for he had, from the first day that he spent on that magnificent domain, contemplated it as
the scenery of a future poem. But the burst of enthusiasm which followed the appearance of
the Lady of the Lake finally swayed him to
undertake a journey, deeper than he had as yet gone, into the Highlands, and a warm invitation from the Laird of
Staffa,* a brother of his friend and colleague Mr Macdonald Buchanan, easily induced him to add a voyage to the Hebrides. He was accompanied by part of his
* The reader will find a warm tribute to Staffa’s
character as a Highland landlord, in Scott’sarticle
on Sir John Carr’s Caledonian Sketches, Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. xix.; and
some spirited verses, written at his mansion of Ulva, in
Scott’sPoetical Works, edition 1834, vol. x., p.
356.
family (not forgetting his dog Wallace),
and by several friends besides; among others his relation Mrs Apreece
(now Lady Davy), who had been, as he says in one of
his letters, “a lioness of the first magnitude in Edinburgh,” during the
preceding winter. He travelled slowly, with his own horses, through Argyllshire, as far as
Oban; but, indeed, even where post-horses might have been had, this was the mode he always
preferred in these family excursions, for he delighted in the liberty it afforded him of
alighting and lingering as often and as long as he chose: and, in truth, he often performed
the far greater part of the day’s journey on foot—examining the map in the morning so
as to make himself master of the bearings—and following his own fancy over some old disused
riding track, or along the margin of a stream, while the carriage, with its female
occupants, adhered to the proper road. At Oban, where they took to the sea, Mrs
Apreece met him by appointment.
He seems to have kept no journal during this expedition; but I shall
string together some letters which, with the notes that he contributed many years
afterwards to Mr Croker’sEdition of Boswell, may furnish a
tolerable sketch of the insular part of his progress, and of the feelings with which he
first inspected the localities of his last great poem—The Lord of the Isles. The first of these letters is dated from the Hebridean
residence of the young Laird of Staffa, now Sir Reginald
Macdonald Steuart Seton of Staffa, Allanton, and Touch, Baronet.
To Miss Joanna Baillie.
“Ulva House, July 19, 1810.
“I cannot, my dear Miss
Baillie, resist the temptation of writing to you from scenes
which you have rendered classical as well as immortal. We, which in the present case means my wife, my
eldest girl, and myself, are thus far in fortunate accomplishment of a
pilgrimage to the Hebrides. The day before yesterday we passed the Lady’s
Rock, in the Sound of Mull, so near that I could almost have touched it. This
is, you know, the Rock of your Family Legend. The boat, by my desire, went as
near as prudence permitted; and I wished to have picked a relic from it, were
it but a cockle shell, or a mussel, to have sent to you; but a spring tide was
running with such force and velocity as to make the thing impossible. About two
miles farther, we passed under the Castle of Duart, the seat of
Maclean, consisting of one huge (indeed immense)
square tower, in ruins, and additional turrets and castellated buildings (the
work, doubtless, of Benlora’s guardianship), on
which the roof still moulders. It overhangs the strait channel from a lofty
rock, without a single tree in the vicinity, and is surrounded by high and
barren mountains, forming altogether as wild and dreary a scene as I ever
beheld. Duart is confronted by the opposite castles of Dunstaffnage, Dunolly,
Ardtornish, and others, all once the abodes of grim feudal chiefs, who warred
incessantly with each other. I think I counted seven of these fortresses in
sight at once, and heard seven times seven legends of war and wonder connected
with them. We landed late, wet and cold, on the Island of Mull, near another
old castle called Aros, separated, too, from our clothes, which were in a large
wherry, which could not keep pace with our row-boat. Mr Macdonald of Staffa, my kind friend and
guide, had sent his piper (a constant attendant, mark that!) to rouse a
Highland gentleman’s family in the neighbourhood, where we were received
with a profusion of kindness and hospitality. Why should I appal you with a
description of our difficulties and distresses how—Charlotte lost her shoes, and little Sophia her whole collection of pebbles—how I was divorced from
my razors, and the whole party looked like a Jewish sanhedrim! By this time we
were accumulated as follows:—Sir George
Paul, the great philanthropist, Mrs
Apreece, a distant relation of mine, Hannah Mackenzie, a daughter of our friend Henry, and Mackinnon of Mackinnon, a young gentleman born and bred in
England, but nevertheless a Highland chief.* It seems his father had acquired
wealth, and this young man, who now visits the Highlands for the first time, is
anxious to buy back some of the family property which was sold long since. Some
twenty Mackinnons, who happened to live within hearing of
our arrival (that is, I suppose, within ten miles of Aros), came posting to see
their young chief, who behaved with great kindness, and propriety, and
liberality. Next day we rode across the isle on Highland ponies, attended by a
numerous retinue of gillies, and arrived at the head of the salt-water loch
called Loch an Gaoil, where Staffa’s boats awaited us with colours flying
and pipes playing. We proceeded in state to this lonely isle, where our
honoured lord has a very comfortable residence, and were received by a
discharge of swivels and musketry from his people.
“Yesterday we visited Staffa and Iona: The former is
one of the most extraordinary places I ever beheld. It exceeded, in my mind,
every description I had heard of it; or rather, the appearance of the cavern,
composed entirely of basaltic pillars as high as the roof of a
cathedral,† and running deep into the rock, eternally swept by
* William Alexander
Mackinnon, Esq., now member of Parliament for Lymington,
Hants.
† ——“that wondrous dome, Where, as to shame the temples deck’d By skill of earthly architect, Nature herself, it seem’d, would raise a deep and swelling sea, and paved as it
were with ruddy marble, baffles all description. You can walk along the broken
pillars, with some difficulty, and in some places with a little danger, as far
as the farthest extremity. Boats also can come in below when the sea is
placid,—which is seldom the case. I had become a sort of favourite with the
Hebridean boatmen, I suppose from my anxiety about their old customs, and they
were much pleased to see me get over the obstacles which stopped some of the
party. So they took the whim of solemnly christening a great stone seat at the
mouth of the cavern, Clachan an Bairdh, or the Poet’s
Stone. It was consecrated with a pibroch, which the echoes rendered tremendous,
and a glass of whisky, not poured forth in the ancient mode of libation, but
turned over the throats of the assistants. The head boatman, whose father had
been himself a bard, made me a speech on the occasion; but as it was in Gaelic,
I could only receive it as a silly beauty does a fine-spun compliment, bow, and
say nothing.
“When this fun was over (in which, strange as it A minster to her Maker’s praise! Not for a meaner use ascend Her columns, or her arches bend; Nor of a theme less solemn tells That mighty surge that ebbs and swells, And still, between each awful pause From the high vault an answer draws, In varied tone prolonged and high, That mocks the organ’s melody. Nor doth its entrance front in vain To old Iona’s holy fane, That Nature’s voice might seem to say, ‘Well hast thou done, frail Child of clay! Thy humble powers that stately shrine Task’d high and hard—but witness mine!’” Lord of the
Isles, Canto IV., St.
10. may seem, the men were quite serious), we went to Iona,
where there are some ancient and curious monuments. From this remote island the
light of Christianity shone forth on Scotland and Ireland. The ruins are of a
rude architecture, but curious to the antiquary. Our return was less
comfortable; we had to row twenty miles against an Atlantic tide and some wind,
besides the pleasure of seeing occasional squalls gathering to windward. The
ladies were sick, especially poor Hannah
Mackenzie, and none of the gentlemen escaped except Staffa and myself. The men, however, cheered
by the pipes, and by their own interesting boat-songs, which were uncommonly
wild and beautiful, one man leading and the others answering in chorus, kept
pulling away without apparently the least sense of fatigue, and we reached Ulva
at ten at night, tolerably wet, and well disposed for bed.
“Our friend Staffa is himself an excellent specimen of Highland
chieftainship; he is a cadet of Clanronald, and lord of a
cluster of isles on the western side of Mull, and a large estate (in extent at
least) on that island. By dint of minute attention to this property, and
particularly to the management of his kelp, he has at once trebled his income
and doubled his population, while emigration is going on all around him. But he
is very attentive to his people, who are distractedly fond of him, and has them
under such regulations as conduce both to his own benefit and their profit; and
keeps a certain sort of rude state and hospitality, in which they take much
pride. I am quite satisfied that nothing under the personal attention of the
landlord himself will satisfy a Highland tenantry, and that the substitution of
factors, which is now becoming general, is one great cause of emigration: This
mode of life has, however, its evils; and I can see them in this excellent man.
The habit of solitary power is
dangerous even to the best regulated minds, and this ardent and enthusiastic
young man has not escaped the prejudices incident to his situation. But I think
I have bestowed enough of my tediousness upon you. To ballast my letter, I put
in one of the hallowed green pebbles from the shore of St Columba—put it into
your work-basket until we meet, when you will give me some account of its
virtues. Don’t suppose the lapidaries can give you any information about
it, for in their profane eyes it is good for nothing. But the piper is sounding
to breakfast, so no more (excepting love to Miss
Agnes, Dr, and Mrs Baillie), from your truly affectionate
Walter Scott.
“P.S. I am told by the learned, the pebble will
wear its way out of the letter, so I will keep it till I get to Edinburgh.
I must not omit to mention that all through these islands I have found
every person familiarly acquainted with the Family Legend, and great
admirers.”
It would be idle to extract many of Scott’s notes on Boswell’sHebridean
Journal; but the following specimens appear too characteristic to be omitted. Of
the island Inchkenneth, where Johnson was received
by the head of the clan M’Lean, he says:—
“Inchkenneth is a most beautiful little islet of
the most verdant green, while all the neighbouring shore of Greban, as well as the
large islands of Colonsay and Ulva, are as black as heath and moss can make them. But
Ulva has a good anchorage, and Inchkenneth is surrounded by shoals. It is now
uninhabited. The ruins of the huts, in which Dr
Johnson was received by Sir Allan
M’Lean, were still to be seen, and some tatters of the paper
hangings were to be seen on the walls. Sir George
Onesiphorus Paul was at Inchkenneth with the same party of which I was a
member. He seemed to me to suspect many of the Highland tales which he heard, but he showed most incredulity on the subject of
Johnson’s having been entertained in the wretched huts
of which we saw the ruins. He took me aside, and conjured me to tell him the truth of
the matter. ‘This Sir Allan,’ said he,
‘was he a regular baronet, or was his title such a
traditional one as you find in Ireland?’ I assured my excellent
acquaintance that, ‘for my own part, I would have paid more respect to a
Knight of Kerry, or Knight of Glynn; yet Sir Allan
M’Lean was a regular baronet by patent;’ and, having
given him this information, I took the liberty of asking him, in return, whether he
would not in conscience prefer the worst cell in the jail at Gloucester (which he had
been very active in overlooking while the building was going on), to those exposed
hovels where Johnson had been entertained by rank and beauty. He
looked round the little islet, and allowed Sir Allan had some
advantage in exercising ground; but in other respects he thought the compulsory tenants
of Gloucester had greatly the advantage. Such was his opinion of a place, concerning
which Johnson has recorded that ‘it wanted little which
palaces could afford.’
“Sir Allan
M’Lean, like many Highland chiefs, was embarrassed in his private
affairs, and exposed to unpleasant solicitations from attorneys, called, in Scotland,
Writers (which, indeed, was the chief motive of his retiring to Inchkenneth). Upon one
occasion he made a visit to a friend, then residing at Carron Lodge, on the banks of
the Carron, where the banks of that river are studded with pretty villas. Sir
Allan, admiring the landscape, asked his friend whom that handsome seat
belonged to. ‘M——, the Writer to the Signet,’ was the
reply. ‘Umph!’ said Sir Allan, but not with an accent
of assent, ‘I mean that other house.’ ‘Oh! that belongs to a very
honest fellow, Jamie ——, also a Writer to the
Signet.’—‘Umph!’ said the Highland chief of
M’Lean, with more emphasis than before—‘And yon
smaller house?’—‘That belongs to a Stirling man; I forget his name, but I
am sure he is a writer too; for’—— Sir Allan, who had
recoiled a quarter of a circle backward at every response, now wheeled the circle
entire, and turned his back on the landscape, saying, ‘My good friend, I must own
you have a pretty situation here, but d—n your neighbourhood.’”
The following notices of Boswell
himself, and his father, Lord Auchinleck, may be taken
as literal transcripts from Scott’s Table-Talk:—
“Boswell
himself was callous to the contacts of Dr Johnson, and when telling them, always reminds one of a jockey receiving
a kick from the horse which he is showing off to a customer, and is grinning with pain
while he is trying to cry out, ‘Pretty rogue—no vice all fun.’ To him
Johnson’s rudeness was only ‘pretty Fanny’s
way.’ Dr Robertson had a sense of good
breeding, which inclined him rather to forego the benefit of
Johnson’s conversation than awaken his rudeness. . . . . . .
“Old Lord
Auchinleck was an able lawyer, a good scholar, after the manner of
Scotland, and highly valued his own advantages as a man of good estate and ancient
family; and, moreover, he was a strict Presbyterian and Whig of the old Scottish cast.
This did not prevent his being a terribly proud aristocrat; and great was the contempt
he entertained and expressed for his son James,
for the nature of his friendship, and the character of the personages of whom he was
engoué one after another.
‘There’s nae hope for Jamie, mon,’ he
said to a friend. ‘Jamie is gane clean gyte. What do you
think, mon? He’s done wi’ Paoli—he’s off wi’ the land louping scoundrel of a
Corsican; and whose tail do you think he has pinned himself to now, mon?’
Here the old judge summoned up a sneer of most sovereign contempt. ‘A dominie, mon—an auld dominie! he keeped a schule, and caud
it an acaadamy.’ Probably if this had been reported to Johnson, he would have felt it most galling, for he
never much liked to think of that period of his life; it would have aggravated his
dislike of Lord Auchinleck’s Whiggery and Presbyterianism.
These the old Lord carried to such an unusual height, that once, when a country man
came in to state some justice business, and being required to make his oath, declined
to do so before his Lordship, because he was not a covenanted magistrate. ‘Is
that a’ your objection, mon?’ said the judge; ‘come your
ways in here, and we’ll baith of us tak the solemn league and covenant
together.’ The oath was accordingly agreed and sworn to by both, and I
dare say it was the last time it ever received such homage. It may be surmised how far
Lord Auchinleck, such as he is here described, was likely to
suit a high Tory and Episcopalian like Johnson. As they approached
Auchinleck, Boswell conjured Johnson by all
the ties of regard, and in requital of the services he had rendered him upon his tour,
that he would spare two subjects in tenderness to his father’s prejudices; the
first related to Sir John Pringle, President of
the Royal Society, about whom there was then some dispute current; the second concerned
the general question of Whig and Tory. Sir John Pringle, as
Boswell says, esca-ped, but the
controversy between Tory and Covenanter raged with great fury, and ended in
Johnson’s pressing upon the old judge the question, what
good Cromwell, of whom he had said something
derogatory, had ever done to his country; when, after being much tortured,
Lord Auchinleck at last spoke out, ‘God! doctor, he gart
kings ken that they had a lith in their neck’—he taught
kings they had a joint in their necks.
Jamie then set to mediating between his father and the
philosopher, and availing himself of the judge’s sense of hospitality, which was
punctilious, reduced the debate to more order.”
The following letter, dated Ashestiel, August 9, appears to have been
written immediately on Scott’s return from this
expedition.
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. Rokeby Park.
“My dear Morritt,
“Your letter reached me in the very centre of the
Isle of Mull, from which circumstance you will perceive how vain it was for me
even to attempt availing myself of your kind invitation to Rokeby, which would
otherwise have given us so much pleasure. We deeply regretted the absence of
our kind and accomplished friends, the Clephanes, yet,
entre nous, as we were upon a
visit to a family of the Capulets, I do not
know but we may pay our respects to them more pleasantly at another time. There
subsist some aching scars of the old wounds which were in former times
inflicted upon each other by the rival tribes of
M’Lean and Macdonald, and
my very good friends the Laird of Staffa
and Mrs M’Lean Clephane are both
too true Highlanders to be without the characteristic prejudices of their
clans, which, in their case, divide two highly accomplished and most estimable
families, living almost within sight of each other, and on an island where
polished conversation cannot be supposed to abound.
“I was delighted, on the whole, with my excursion.
The weather was most excellent
during the whole time of our wanderings; and I need not tell you of Highland
hospitality. The cavern at Staffa, and indeed the island itself, dont on parle en histoire, is one of the
few lions which completely maintain an extended reputation. I do not know
whether its extreme resemblance to a work of art, from the perfect regularity
of the columns, or the grandeur of its dimensions, far exceeding the works of
human industry, joined to a certain ruggedness and magnificent irregularity, by
which nature vindicates her handiwork, are most forcibly impressed upon my
memory. We also saw the far-famed Island of Columba, where there are many
monuments of singular curiosity, forming a strange contrast to the squalid and
dejected poverty of the present inhabitants of the isle. We accomplished both
these objects in one day, but our return, though we had no alarms to boast of,
was fatiguing to the ladies, and the sea not affording us quite such a smooth
passage as we had upon the Thames (that morning we heard the voice of Lysons setting forth the contents of the
records in the White Tower), did, as one may say, excite a combustion in the
stomachs of some of our party. Mine being a staunch anti-revolutionist, was no
otherwise troublesome than by demanding frequent supplies of cold beef and
biscuit. Mrs Apreece was of our party.
Also —Sir George Paul, for
prison-house renowned, A wandering knight, on high adventures bound. —We left this celebrated philanthropist in a plight not unlike some of the
misadventures of ‘Him of the sorrowful figure.’ The worthy baronet
was mounted on a quadruped, which the owners called a pony, with his woful
valet on another, and travelling slowly along the coast of Mull, in order to
detect the point which approached nearest to the continent, protesting he would
not again put foot in a boat, till he had discovered
the shortest possible traject. Our separation reminded me of the disastrous
incident in Byron’sShipwreck, when they were
forced to abandon two of their crew on an unknown coast, and beheld them at a
distance commencing their solitary peregrination along the cliffs.
Walter Scott.”
The Iona pebble, mentioned in Scott’s letter from Ulva, being set in a brooch of the form of a
harp, was sent to Joanna Baillie some months later;
but it may be as well to insert here the letter which accompanied it. The young friend, to
whose return from a trip to the seat of war in the Peninsula it alludes, was John Miller, Esq., then practising at the Scotch bar, but
now an eminent King’s counsel of Lincoln’s Inn.
To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead.
“Edinburgh, Nov. 23, 1810.
“I should not have been so long your debtor, my dear
Miss Baillie, for your kind and
valued letter, had not the false knave, at whose magic touch the Iona pebbles
were to assume a shape in some degree appropriate to the person to whom they
are destined, delayed finishing his task. I hope you will set some value upon
this little trumpery brooch, because it is a harp, and a Scotch harp, and set
with Iona stones. This last circumstance is more valuable, if ancient tales be
true, than can be ascertained from the reports of dull modern lapidaries. These
green stones, blessed of St Columba, have a virtue, saith old Martin, to gratify each of them a single
wish of the wearer. I believe, that which is most frequently formed by those
who gather them upon the shores of the Saint, is for a fair wind to transport
them from his domains. Now, after this, you must suppose every thing respecting this said harp
sacred and hallowed. The very inscription is, you will please to observe, in
the ancient Celtic language and character, and has a very talismanic look. I
hope that upon you it will have the effect of a conjuration, for the words
Buail a’n Teud signify
Strike the String; and thus having, like the pedlars
who deal in like matters of value, exhausted all my eloquence in setting forth
the excellent outward qualities and mysterious virtues of my little keepsake, I
have only to add, in homely phrase, God give you joy to wear it. I am delighted
with the account of your brother’s
silvan empire in Glo’stershire. The planting and cultivation of trees
always seemed to me the most interesting occupation of the country. I cannot
enter into the spirit of common vulgar farming, though I am doomed to carry on,
in a small extent, that losing trade. It never occurred to me to be a bit more
happy because my turnips were better than my neighbours; and as for grieving my shearers, as we very emphatically term it in
Scotland, I am always too happy to get out of the way, that I may hear them
laughing at a distance when on the harvest rigg. ‘So every servant takes his course, And bad at first, they all grow worse’— I mean for the purposes of agriculture,—for my hind shall kill a salmon,
and my plough-boy find a hare sitting, with any man in the forest. But planting
and pruning trees I could work at from morning till night; and if ever my
poetical revenues enable me to have a few acres of my own, that is one of the
principal pleasures I look forward to. There is, too, a sort of
self-congratulation, a little tickling self-flattery in the idea that, while
you are pleasing and amusing yourself, you are seriously contributing to the
future welfare of the country, and that your very acorn
may send its future ribs of oak to future victories like Trafalgar.
“You have now by my calculation abandoned your
extensive domains and returned to your Hampstead villa, which, at this season
of the year, though the lesser, will prove, from your neighbourhood to good
society, the more comfortable habitation of the two. Dr Baillie’s cares are transferred (I
fear for some time) to a charge still more important than the poor Princess.* I trust in God that his skill
and that of his brethren may be of advantage to the poor King; for a Regency, from its unsettled and
uncertain tenure, must in every country, but especially where parties run so
high, be a lamentable business. I wonder that the consequences which have taken
place had not occurred sooner, during the long and trying suspense in which his
mind must have been held by the protracted lingering state of a beloved child.
“Your country neighbours interest me excessively. I
was delighted with the man, who remembered me, though he had forgotten
Sancho Panza; but I am afraid my
pre-eminence in his memory will not remain much longer than the worthy
squire’s government at Barataria. Mean while, the Lady of the Lake is likely to come to preferment
in an unexpected manner, for two persons of no less eminence than Messrs
Martin and Reynolds, play carpenters in ordinary to
Covent Garden, are employed in scrubbing, careening, and cutting her down into
one of those new-fashioned sloops called a melo-drama, to be launched at the
theatre; and my friend, Mr H. Siddons,
emulous of such a noble design, is at work on the same job here. It puts me in
mind of
The Princess
Amelia whose death was immediately followed by the
hopeless malady of King George III.
the observation with which
our parish smith accompanied his answer to an enquiry whom he had heard preach
on Sunday. ‘Mr such-a-one—O! sir, he made neat
work,’ thinking, doubtless, of turning off a horse-shoe
handsomely. I think my worthy artizans will make neat work too before they have
done with my unlucky materials—but, as Durandarte says in the cavern of Montesinos ‘Patience,
cousin, and shuffle the cards.’ Jeffrey was the author of the critique in the Edinburgh; he sent it to me in the sheet, with an
apology for some things in that of Marmion which he said contained needless asperities; and, indeed,
whatever I may think of the justice of some part of his criticism, I think his
general tone is much softened in my behalf.
“You say nothing about the drama on Fear, for which you have chosen so
admirable a subject, and which, I think, will be in your own most powerful
manner, I hope you will have an eye to its being actually represented. Perhaps
of all passions it is the most universally interesting; for although most part
of an audience may have been in love once in their lives, and many engaged in
the pursuits of ambition, and some perhaps have fostered deadly hate; yet there
will always be many in each case who cannot judge of the operations of these
motives from personal experience: Whereas, I will bet my life there is not a
soul of them but has felt the impulse of fear, were it but, as the old tale
goes, at snuffing a candle with his fingers. I believe I should have been able
to communicate some personal anecdotes on the subject, had I been enabled to
accomplish a plan I have had much at heart this summer, namely, to take a peep
at Lord Wellington and his merry men in
Portugal; but I found the idea gave Mrs
Scott more distress than I am entitled to do for the mere
gratification of my own curiosity. Not that there would have been any great danger,—for I could easily, as a non-combatant,
have kept out of the way of the “grinning
honour” of my namesake, Sir Walter
Blount, and I think I should have been overpaid for a little
hardship and risk by the novelty of the scene. I could have got very good
recommendations to Lord Wellington; and, I dare say, I
should have picked up some curious materials for battle scenery. A friend of mine made the very expedition, and
arriving at Oporto when our army was in retreat from the frontier, he was told
of the difficulty and danger he might encounter in crossing the country to the
southward, so as to join them on the march; nevertheless, he travelled on
through a country totally deserted, unless when he met bands of fugitive
peasantry flying they scarce knew whither, or the yet wilder groups of the
Ordinanza, or levy en masse, who,
fired with revenge or desire of plunder, had armed themselves to harass the
French detached parties. At length in a low glen he heard, with feelings that
may be easily conceived, the distant sound of a Highland bagpipe playing
‘The Garb of Old Gaul,’ and fell into
the quarters of a Scotch regiment, where he was most courteously received by
his countrymen, who assured ‘his honour he was just come in time to see
the pattle.’ Accordingly, being a young man of spirit, and a volunteer
sharp-shooter, he got a rifle, joined the light corps, and next day witnessed
the Battle of Busaco, of which he describes the carnage as being terrible. The
narrative was very simply told, and conveyed, better than any I have seen, the
impressions which such scenes are likely to make when they have the effect (I
had almost said the charm) of novelty. I don’t know why it is I never
found a soldier could give me an idea of a battle. I believe their mind is too
much upon the tactique to regard the
picturesque, just as the lawyers care very little for an elo-quent speech at the bar, if it
does not show good doctrine. The technical phrases of the military art, too,
are unfavourable to convey a description of the concomitant terror and
desolation that attends an engagement; but enough of this bald disjointed chat,
from ever yours,
W. S.”
There appeared in the London
Courier of September 15, 1810, an article signed S. T. C., charging
Scott with being a plagiarist, more especially from
the works of the poet for whose initials this signature had no doubt been meant to pass. On
reading this silly libel, Mr Southey felt satisfied
that Samuel Taylor Coleridge could have no concern
in its manufacture; but as Scott was not so well acquainted with
Coleridge as himself, he lost no time in procuring his
friend’s indignant disavowal, and forwarding it to Ashestiel.
Scott acknowledges this delicate attention as follows:—
To Robert Southey, Esq.
“Ashestiel, Thursday. “My dear Southey,
“Your letter, this morning received, released me from
the very painful feeling, that a man of Mr
Coleridge’s high talents, which I had always been among
the first to appreciate as they deserve, had thought me worthy of the sort of
public attack which appeared in the Courier of the 15th. The initials are so remarkable, and the trick
so very impudent, that I was likely to be fairly duped by it, for which I have
to request Mr Coleridge’s forgiveness. I believe
attacks of any sort sit as light upon me as they can on any one. If I have had
my share of them, it is one point, at least, in which I resemble greater
poets—but I should not like to have them come from the
hand of contemporary genius. A man, though he does not ‘wear his heart
upon his sleeve for daws to peck at,’ would not willingly be
stooped upon by a falcon. I am truly obliged to your friendship for so speedily
relieving me from so painful a feeling. The hoax was probably designed to set
two followers of literature by the ears, and I daresay will be followed up by
something equally impudent. As for the imitations, I have not the least
hesitation in saying to you, that I was unconscious at the time of
appropriating the goods of others, although I have not the least doubt that
several of the passages must have been running in my head. Had I meant to
steal, I would have been more cautious to disfigure the stolen goods. In one or
two instances the resemblance seems general and casual, and in one, I think, it
was impossible I could practise plagiarism, as Ethwald, one of the poems quoted, was
published after the Lay of the Last Minstrel. A witty rogue, the other day, who sent me
a letter subscribed Detector, proved me guilty of stealing a passage from one
of Vida’s Latin poems, which I had
never seen or heard of; yet there was so strong a general resemblance, as
fairly to authorize Detector’s suspicion.
“I renounced my Greta excursion in consequence of
having made instead a tour to the Highlands, particularly to the Isles. I
wished for Wordsworth and you a hundred
times. The scenery is quite different from that on the mainland, dark, savage,
and horrid, but occasionally magnificent in the highest degree. Staffa, in
particular, merits well its far-famed reputation: it is a cathedral arch,
scooped by the hand of nature, equal in dimensions and in regularity to the
most magnificent aisle of a gothic cathedral. The sea rolls up to the extremity
in most tremendous majesty, and with a voice like ten thousand giants shouting at once. I visited
Icolmkill also, where there are some curious monuments, mouldering among the
poorest and most naked wretches that I ever beheld. Affectionately yours,
W. Scott.”
The “lines of Vida” which “Detector” had enclosed to Scott as the obvious original of the address to
“Woman” in Marmion, closing
with “When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!” end as follows;—and it must be owned that, if Vida had really
written them, a more extraordinary example of casual coincidence could never have been
pointed out— “Cum dolor atque supercilio gravis imminet angor, Fungeris angelico sola ministerio!” Detector’s reference is “Vidaad Eranen
El. II. v. 21;”—but it is almost needless to add there are no such lines and no piece
bearing such a title in Vida’s works. Detector was no doubt some
young college wag, for his letter has a Cambridge post-mark.
CHAPTER X. LIFE OF MISS SEWARD—WAVERLEY
RESUMED—BALLANTYNE’S CRITIQUE ON THE FIRST CHAPTERS OF THE
NOVEL—WAVERLEY AGAIN LAID ASIDE—UNFORTUNATE SPECULATIONS OF
JOHN BALLANTYNE AND CO.; HISTORY OF THE
CULDEES—TIXALL POETRY; BEAUMONT
AND FLETCHER—EDINBURGH ANNUAL REGISTER,
ETC.—SCOTT’S ESSAY ON JUDICIAL REFORM—HIS SCHEME OF GOING TO
INDIA—LETTERS ON THE WAR IN THE PENINSULA—DEATH OF LORD PRESIDENT
BLAIR—AND OF LORD MELVILLE—PUBLICATION OF THE VISION OF DON RODERICK—THE INFERNO OF ALTESIDORA, ETC. 1810—1811.
In the course of this autumn appeared the Poetical Works of Miss Seward, in three volumes
12mo, with a Prefatory Memoir of her Life by Scott. This
edition had, as we have seen, been enjoined by her last will—but his part in it was an
ungrateful one, and the book was among the most unfortunate that James Ballantyne printed, and his brother published, in deference to the personal feelings
of their partner. He had been, as was natural, pleased and flattered by the attentions of
the Lichfield poetess in the days of his early aspirations after literary distinction; but
her verses, which he had with his usual readiness praised to herself beyond their worth,
appeared when collected a formidable monument of mediocrity. Her Correspondence, published at the same time by
Constable, was considered by him with still
greater aversion. He requested the bookseller to allow him to look over the MS., and draw his pen through passages in
which her allusions to letters of his own might compromise him as a critic on his poetical
contemporaries. To this request Constable handsomely acceded, although
it was evident that he thus deprived the collection of its best chance of popularity. I
see, on comparing her letters as they originally reached Scott, with
the printed copies, that he had also struck out many of her most extravagant rhapsodies
about himself and his works. No collection of this kind, after all, can be wholly without
value; I have already drawn from it some sufficiently interesting fragments, as the
biographers of other eminent authors of this time will probably do hereafter under the like
circumstances: and, however affected and absurd, Miss Seward’s
prose is certainly far better than her verse.
And now I come to a very curious letter of James Ballantyne’s, the date of which seems to fix pretty accurately
the time when Scott first resumed the long-forgotten MS.
of his Waverley. As in the Introduction of
1829 he mentions having received discouragement as to the opening part of the novel from
two friends, and as Ballantyne on this occasion writes as if he had
never before seen any portion of it, I conclude that the fragment of 1805 had in that year
been submitted to Erskine alone.
To Walter Scott, Esq., Ashestiel.
“Edinburgh, Sept. 15, 1810. Dear Sir,
“What you have sent of Waverley has amused me much; and certainly if
I had read it as part of a new novel, the remainder of which was open to my
perusal, I should have proceeded with avidity. So much for its general effect;
but you have sent me too little to enable me to form a
decided opinion. Were I to say that I was equally struck with Waverley as I was with the much smaller portion of the
Lady, which you first
presented to us as a specimen, the truth would not be in me; but the cases are
different. It is impossible that a small part of a fine novel can equally
impress one with the decided conviction of splendour and success as a small
part of a fine poem. I will state one or two things that strike me. Considering
that ‘sixty years since’ only leads us back to the year 1750, a
period when our fathers were alive and merry, it seems to me that the air of
antiquity diffused over the character is rather too great to harmonize with the
time. The period is modern; Johnson was
writing—and Garrick was acting—and in
fact scarcely any thing appears to have altered, more important than the cut of
a coat.
“The account of the studies of Waverley seems unnecessarily minute. There are
few novel readers to whom it would be interesting. I can see at once the
connection between the studies of Don
Quixote, or of the Female Quixote, and the events of
their lives; but I have not yet been able to trace betwixt Waverley’s character and his studies such
clear and decided connection. The account, in short, seemed to me too
particular; quite unlike your usual mode in your poetry, and less happy. It may
be, however, that the further progress of the character will defeat this
criticism. The character itself I think excellent and interesting, and I was
equally astonished and delighted to find in the last-written chapter, that you
can paint to the eye in prose as well as in verse,
“Perhaps your own reflections are rather too often
mixed with the narrative but I state this with much diffidence. I do not mean
to object to a train of reflections arising from some striking event, but I
don’t like their so
frequent recurrence. The language is spirited, but perhaps rather careless. The
humour is admirable. Should you go on? My opinion is, clearly—certainly. I have
no doubt of success, though it is impossible to guess how much. . . . . .
.—Ever respectfully,
J. B.”
The part of the letter which I have omitted, refers to the state of
Ballantyne’s business at the time when it
was written. He had, that same week, completed the eleventh edition of the Lay; and the fifth of the Lady of the Lake had not passed through his press, before new
orders from London called for the beginning of a sixth. I presume the printer’s
exultation on this triumphant success, had a great share in leading him to consider with
doubt and suspicion the propriety of his friend’s interrupting just then his career
as the great caterer for readers of poetry. However this and other matters may have stood,
the novel appears to have been forthwith laid aside again.
Some sentences refer to less fortunate circumstances in their joint
affairs. The publishing firm was as yet little more than a twelvemonth old, and already
James began to apprehend that some of their
mightiest undertakings would wholly disappoint Scott’s prognostications. He speaks with particular alarm of the
edition of Beaumont and Fletcher’s
plays, of which Weber had now dismissed
several volumes from his incompetent and presumptuous hand. How Scott
should ever have countenanced the project of an edition of an English book of this class,
by a mere drudging German, appears to me quite inexplicable. He
placed at Weber’s disposal his own annotated copy, which had
been offered some years before for the use of Gifford; but Weber’s text is thoroughly
disgraceful, and so are all the notes, except those which he owed to
his patron’s own pen. James Ballantyne augurs, and well might he
do so, not less darkly, as to “the Aston speculation”—that is, the bulky
collection entitled “Tixal
poetry.” “Over this,” he says, “the (Edinburgh) Review of the Sadler has thrown a heavy cloud—the
fact is, it seems to me to have ruined it. Here is the same editor and the same
printer, and your name withdrawn. I hope you agree with John and me, that this Aston business ought to be got rid of at almost
any sacrifice. We could not now even ask a London bookseller to take a share, and a net
outlay of near L.2500, upon a worse than doubtful speculation is surely most tolerable
and not to be endured.’”
Another unpromising adventure of this season, was the publication of the
History of the
Culdees (that is, of the clergy of the primitive Scoto-Celtic Church),
by Scott’s worthy old friend, Dr John
Jamieson, the author of the celebrated Dictionary. This work, treating of an obscure
subject, on which very different opinions were and are entertained by Episcopalians on the
one hand, and the adherents of Presbyterianism on the other, was also printed and published
by the Ballantynes, in consequence of the interest which Scott felt, not for the writer’s hypothesis, but for the
writer personally: and the result was another heavy loss to himself and his partners. But a
far more serious business was the establishment of the Edinburgh Annual Register, which, as we have seen, was
suggested by Scott in the very dawn of his bookselling projects. The
two first volumes were issued about this time, and expectation had been highly excited by
the announcement that the historical department was in the hands of Southey, while Scott and many other
eminent persons were to contribute regularly to its miscellaneous literature and science.
Mr Southey was fortunate in beginning his narrative with the great era of the Spanish
Revolt against Napoleon, and it exhibited his usual
research, reflection, elegance, and spirit. Several of the miscellanies also, were
admirable: Mr Southey inserted in the 2d volume for 1808, published in
1810, some of the most admired of his minor poems;—and Scott did the
like. He moreover drew up for that volume an Essay of considerable extent on those changes in the Scottish System of
Judicature, which had occupied the attention of the Commission under which he served as
secretary; and the sagacity of this piece appears, on the whole, as honourable to him, as
the clear felicity of its language. Nevertheless, the public were alarmed by the prospect
of two volumes annually: it was, in short, a new periodical publication on a large scale;
all such adventures are hazardous in the extreme; and none of them ever can succeed, unless
there be a skilful bookseller, and a zealous editor, who give a very large share of their
industry and intelligence, day after day, to the conduct of all its arrangements. Such a
bookseller John Ballantyne was not; such an editor,
with Scott’s multifarious engagements, he could not be for an
Annual Register; and who, indeed, could wish that this had been otherwise? The volumes
succeeded each other at irregular intervals; there was soon felt the want of one ever
active presiding spirit; and though the work was continued during a long series of years,
it never was the source of any thing but anxiety and disappointment to its original
projectors.
I am tempted, as Scott’sEssay on Judicial
Reform has never been included in any collection of his writings, to extract
here a few specimens of a composition which appears to be as characteristic of the man as
any that ever proceeded from his pen. His deep jealousy of the national honour of Scotland,
his fear lest the course of innovation at this time threatened should
end in a total assimilation of her Jurisprudence to the system of the more powerful sister
country, and his habitual and deep-rooted dread of change in matters affecting the whole
machinery of social existence, are expressed in, among others, the following passages:—
“An established system is not to be tried by those
tests which may with perfect correctness be applied to a new theory. A civilized
nation, long in possession of a code of law, under which, with all its inconveniences,
they have found means to flourish, is not to be regarded as an infant colony, on which
experiments in legislation may, without much charge of presumption, be hazarded. A
philosopher is not entitled to investigate such a system by those ideas which he has
fixed in his own mind as the standard of possible excellence. The only unerring test of
every old establishment is the effect it has actually produced;
for that must be held to be good from whence good is derived. The people have, by
degrees, moulded their habits to the law they are compelled to obey; for some of its
imperfections, remedies have been found; to others they have reconciled themselves;
till, at last, they have, from various causes, attained the object which the most
sanguine visionary could promise to himself from his own perfect unembodied system. Let
us not be understood to mean, that a superstitious regard for antiquity ought to stay
the hand of a temperate reform. But the task is delicate, and full of danger; perilous
in its execution, and extremely doubtful in its issue. Is there not rational ground to
apprehend, that, in attempting to eradicate the disease, the sound part of the
constitution may be essentially injured? Can we be quite certain that less
inconvenience will result from that newly-discovered and unknown remedy than from the
evil, which the juices and humours with which it has long been incorporated may have
neutralized?—that, after a thorough reformation has been achieved, it may not be found
necessary to counterwork the antidote itself, by having recourse to the very error we
have incautiously abjured? We are taught, by great authority, that ‘possibly they
may espy something that may, in truth, be mischievous in some particular case, but
weigh not how many inconveniences are, on the other side, prevented or remedied by that
which is the supposed vicious strictness of the law; and he that purchases a
reformation of a law with the introduction of greater inconveniences, by the amotion of
a mischief, makes an ill bargain. No human law can be absolutely perfect. It is sufficient that
it be best ut plurimum; and as to the
mischiefs that it occasions, as they are accidental and casual, so they may be
oftentimes, by due care, prevented, without an alteration of the main.’*
“Every great reform, we farther conceive, ought to
be taken at a point somewhat lower than the necessity seems to require. Montesquieu has a chapter, of which the title is,
Quit ne faut pas tout
corriger. Our improvement ought to contain within itself a
principle of progressive improvement. We are thus enabled to see our way distinctly
before us; we have, at the same time, under our eyes, the ancient malady, with the
palliatives by which the hand of time has controlled its natural symptoms, and the
effects arising from the process intended to remove it; and our course, whether we
advance or recede, will be safe, and confident, and honourable; whereas, by taking our
reform at the utmost possible stretch of the wrong complained of, we cannot fail to
bring into disrepute the order of things, as established, without any corresponding
certainty that our innovations will produce the result which our sanguine hopes have
anticipated; and we thus deprive ourselves of the chance of a secure retreat, in the
event of our failure.”
Nor does the following paragraph on the proposal for extending to
Scotland the system of Jury Trial in civil actions of all classes, appear to me less characteristic of Scott:—
“We feel it very difficult to associate with this
subject any idea of political or personal liberty; both of which have been supposed to
be secured, and even to be rendered more valuable, by means of the trial by jury in
questions of private right. It is perhaps owing to our want of information, or to the
phlegm and frigidity of our national character, that we cannot participate in that
enthusiasm which the very name of this institution is said to excite in many a
patriotic bosom. We can listen to the cabalistic sound of Trial by Jury, which has
produced effects only to be paralleled by those of the mysterious words uttered by the
Queen of the City of Enchantments, in the Arabian Tale, and retain the entire
possession of our form and senses. We understand that sentiment of a celebrated author,
that this barrier against the usurpation of power, in matters where power has any
concern, may probably avert from our island
* Lord
Hale on the Amendment of the Laws.
the fate of many states that now exist but in history; and we
think this great possession is peculiarly valuable in Scotland, where the privileges of
the public prosecutor are not controlled by those of a grand jury. The merits of the
establishment we are now examining are to be ascertained by a different test. It is
merely a contrivance for attaining the ends of private justice, for developing the
merits of a civil question in which individuals are interested; and that contrivance is
the best which most speedily and effectually serves the purpose for which it was
framed. In causes of that description no shield is necessary against the invasion of
power; the issue is to be investigated without leaning or partiality, for whatever is
unduly given to one party is unduly wrested from the other; and unless we take under
our consideration those advantages which time or accident may have introduced, we see
not what superiority can in the abstract be supposed to belong to this as a judicature
for the determination of all or the greater number of civil actions. We discover no
ground for suspecting that the judgments of a few well-educated and upright men may be
influenced by any undue bias; that an interest merely patrimonial is more safely lodged
in an obscure and evanescent body than in a dignified, independent, and permanent
tribunal, versed in the science to be administered, and responsible for the decisions
they pronounce;—and we suspect that a philosopher, contemplating both in his closet,
will augur more danger from a system which devolves on one set of men the
responsibility of doctrines taught them by another, than from that system which
attaches to the judges all the consequences of the law they deliver.”
Some, though not all, of the changes deprecated in this Essay, had been
adopted by the Legislature before it was published; others of them have since been
submitted to experiment; and I believe that, on the whole, his views may safely bear the
test to which time has exposed them—though as to the particular point of trial by jury in civil causes, the dreaded innovation, being conducted by wise
and temperate hands, has in its results proved satisfactory to the people at large, as well
as to the Bench and the Bar of Scotland. I have, however, chiefly introduced the above
extracts as illustrative of the dissatisfaction with which Scott considered the
commencement of a system of jurisprudential innovation; and though
it must not be forgotten that his own office as a Clerk of Session had never yet brought
him any thing but labour, and that he consequently complained from time to time of the
inroads this labour made on hours which might otherwise have been more profitably bestowed,
I suspect his antipathy to this new system, as a system, had no small share in producing
the state of mind indicated in a remarkable letter addressed, in the later part of this
year, to his brother Thomas. The other source of
uneasiness to which it alludes has been already touched upon and we shall have but too much
of it hereafter. He says to his brother (Ashestiel, 1st November, 1810), “I have
no objection to tell you in confidence, that, were Dundas to go out Governor-General to India, and were he willing to take
me with him in a good situation, I would not hesitate to pitch the Court of Session and
the booksellers to the Devil, and try my fortune in another climate.” He
adds, “but this is strictly entre
nous”—nor indeed was I aware, until I found this letter, that he had
ever entertained such a design as that which it communicates. Mr
Dundas (now Lord Melville), being deeply conversant in
our Eastern affairs, and highly acceptable to the Court of Directors in the office of
President of the Board of Control, which he had long filled, was spoken of, at various
times in the course of his public life, as likely to be appointed Governor-General of
India. He had, no doubt, hinted to Scott that in case he should ever
assume that high station it would be very agreeable for him to be accompanied by his early
friend: and there could be little question of his capacity to have filled with distinction
the part either of an Indian secretary or of an Indian judge.
But, though it is easy to account for his expressing in so marked a manner at this particular period his willingness to
relinquish literature as the main occupation of his time, it is impossible to consider the
whole course of his correspondence and conversation without agreeing in the conclusion of
Mr Morritt, that he was all along sincere in the
opinion that literature ought never to be ranked on the same scale of importance with the
conduct of business in any of the great departments of public life. This opinion he always
expressed, and I have no doubt that at any period preceding his acquisition of a landed
property, he would have acted on it, even to the extent of leaving Scotland, had a suitable
opportunity been afforded him to give that evidence of his sincerity. This is so remarkable
a feature in his character, that the reader will forgive me should I recur to it in the
sequel.
At the same time I have no notion that at this or any other period he
contemplated abandoning literature. Such a thought would hardly enter the head of the man,
not yet forty years of age, whose career had been one of unbroken success, and whose third
great work had just been received with a degree of favour, both critical and popular,
altogether unprecedented in the annals of his country. His hope, no doubt, was that an
honourable official station in the East might afford him both a world of new materials for
poetry, and what would in his case be abundance of leisure for turning them to account,
according to the deliberate dictates of his own judgment. What he desired to escape from
was not the exertion of his genius, which must ever have been to him the source of his most
exquisite enjoyment, but the daily round of prosaic and perplexing toils in which his
connexion with the Ballantynes had involved him. He was able to
combine the regular discharge of such functions with the exercise of the high powers of imagination, in a manner of which
history affords no other example; yet many, no doubt, were the weary hours, when he
repented him of the rash engagements which had imposed such a burden of mere taskwork on,
his energies. But his external position, before the lapse of another year, underwent a
change, which for ever fixed his destiny to the soil of his best affections and happiest
inspirations.
The letters of Scott to all his
friends have sufficiently shown the unflagging interest with which, among all his personal
labours and anxieties, he watched the progress of the great contest in the Peninsula. It
was so earnest that he never on any journey, not even in his very frequent passages between
Edinburgh and Ashestiel, omitted to take with him the largest and best map he had been able
to procure of the seat of war; upon this he was perpetually poring, tracing the marches and
countermarches of the French and English, by means of black and white pins; and not seldom
did Mrs Scott complain of this constant occupation of
his attention and her carriage. In the beginning of 1811, a committee was formed in London
to collect subscriptions for the relief of the Portuguese, who had seen their lands wasted,
their vines torn up, and their houses burnt in the course of Massena’s last unfortunate campaign; and Scott,
on reading the advertisement, immediately addressed Mr
Whitmore, the chairman, begging that the committee would allow him to
contribute to their fund the profits, to whatever they might amount, of a poem which he
proposed to write upon a subject connected with the localities of the patriotic struggle.
His offer was of course accepted; and “The Vision of Don Roderick” was begun as soon
as the Spring vacation enabled him to retire to Ashestiel.
On the 26th of April he writes thus to Mr
Morritt, who had lost a dear young friend in the battle of Barrosa.
“I rejoice with the heart of a Scotsman in the
success of Lord Wellington, and with all
the pride of a seer to boot. I have been for three years proclaiming him as the
only man we had to trust to—a man of talent and genius—not deterred by
obstacles, not fettered by prejudices, not immured within the pedantries of his
profession—but playing the general and the hero when most of our military
commanders would have exhibited the drill sergeant, or at best the adjutant.
These campaigns will teach us what we have long needed to know, that success
depends not on the nice drilling of regiments, but upon the grand movements and
combinations of an army. We have been hitherto polishing lunges, when we should
have studied the mechanical union of a huge machine. Now—our army begin to see
that the grand secret, as the French call it, consists
only in union, joint exertion, and concerted movement. This will enable us to
meet the dogs on fair terms as to numbers, and for the rest, ‘my soul
and body on the action both.’
“The downfal of Buonaparte’s military fame will be the signal of his
ruin, and, if we may trust the reports this day brings us from Holland, there
is glorious mischief on foot already. I hope we shall be able to fling fuel
into the flame immediately. A country with so many dykes and ditches must be
fearfully tenable when the peasants are willing to fight. How I should enjoy
the disconsolate visages of those Whig dogs, those dwellers upon the Isthmus,
who have been foretelling the rout and ruin which it only required their being
in power to have achieved! It is quite plain, from Sir Robert Wilson’s account, that they neglected to feed
the lamp of Russia,
and it only resulted from their want of opportunity that they did not quench
the smoking flax in the Peninsula—a thought so profligate that those who, from
party or personal interest, indulged it, ought to pray for mercy, and return
thanks for the providential interruption which obstructed their purpose, as
they would for a meditated but prevented parricide. But enough of the thorny
subject of politics.
“I grieve for your loss at Barrosa, but what more
glorious fall could a man select for himself or friend, than dying with his
sword in hand and the cry of victory in his ears?
“As for my own operations they are very trifling,
though sufficiently miscellaneous. I have been writing a sketch of Buonaparte’s tactics for the Edinburgh Register, and some other
trumpery of the same kind. Particularly I meditate some wild stanzas referring
to the Peninsula: if I can lick them into any shape I hope to get something
handsome from the booksellers for the Portuguese sufferers: ‘Silver
and gold have I none, but that which I have I will give unto
them.’ My lyrics are called the Vision of Don Roderick: you remember the story
of the last Gothic King of Spain descending into an enchanted cavern to know
the fate of the Moorish invasion—that is my machinery. Pray, don’t
mention this, for some one will snatch up the subject as I have been served
before: and I have not written a line yet. I am going to Ashestiel for eight
days, to fish and rhyme.”
The poem was published, in 4to, in July; and the immediate proceeds
were forwarded to the board in London. His friend the Earl of
Dalkeith seems to have been a member of the committee, and he writes thus to
Scott on the occasion:—
“Those with ample fortunes and thicker heads may easily give
100 guineas to a subscription, but the man is really to be envied who can draw that sum
from his own brains, and apply the produce so beneficially and to so exalted a
purpose.” I presume, however, that when his Lordship thus mentions 100
guineas, he alludes merely to the first instalment of Scott’s contribution.
In the original preface to this poem Scott alludes to two events which had “cruelly interrupted his
task”—the successive deaths of his kind friend the Lord President of the
Court of Session (Blair),* and his early patron,
Henry Dundas, Viscount
Melville: and his letters at the time afford additional evidence of the
shock his feelings had thus sustained.—
The following, to Mrs Scott of
Harden, is dated May 28th, 1811—
“My dear Madam,
“We are deprived of the prospect of waiting upon you
on the birth-day, by the confusion into which the business of this court is
thrown by the most unexpected and irreparable loss which it has sustained in
the death of the President—it is scarcely
possible to conceive a calamity which is more universally or will be so long
felt by the country. His integrity and legal knowledge, joined to a peculiar
dignity of thought, action, and expression, had begun to establish in the minds
of the public at large that confidence in the regular and solemn administration
of justice, which is so necessary to its usefulness and respectability. My
official situation, as well as the private intimacy of our families, makes me a
sincere mourner on this melancholy occasion, for I feel a severe personal
deprivation, besides the general share of
* The Right Hon. Robert
Blair of Avontoun, son of the Author of “The Grave.”
sorrow common to all
of every party or description who were in the way of witnessing his conduct.
“He was a rare instance of a man whose habits were
every way averse to the cultivation of popularity, rising, nevertheless, to the
highest point in the public opinion, by the manly and dignified discharge of
his duty. I have been really so much shocked and out of spirits, yesterday and
the day preceding, that I can write and think of nothing else,
“I have to send you the Vision of Don Roderick, as soon as we can get
it out—it is a trifle I have written to eke out the subscription for the
suffering Portuguese. Believe me, my dear Mrs Scott, ever yours most truly and
respectfully,
Walter Scott.”
The next letter is to Mr
Morritt, who, like himself, had enjoyed a large share of Lord Melville’s friendly regard; and had more than once
met his Lordship, after his fall, at the Poet’s house in Castle Street; where, by the
way, the old Statesman entered with such simple-heartedness into all the ways of the happy
circle, that it had come to be an established rule for the children to sit up to supper
whenever Lord Melville dined there.
“Edinburgh, July 1, 1811. “My dear M.
“I have this moment got your kind letter, just as I
was packing up Don Roderick for
you. This patriotic puppet-show has been finished under wretched auspices; poor
Lord Melville’s death so quickly
succeeding that of President Blair, one
of the best and wisest judges that ever distributed justice, broke my spirit
sadly. My official situation placed me in daily contact with the President, and
his ability and candour were the source of my daily
admiration. As for poor dear Lord Melville,
‘’Tis vain to name him whom we mourn in vain.’
Almost the last time I saw him, he was talking of you in the highest terms of
regard, and expressing great hopes of again seeing you at Dunira this summer,
where I proposed to attend you. Hei mihi! quid
hei mihi? humana perpessi sumus. His loss will
be long and severely felt here, and Envy is already paying her cold tribute of
applause to the worth that she maligned while it walked upon earth.
“There is a very odd coincidence between the deaths
of these eminent characters, and that of a very inferior person, a dentist of
this city, named Dubisson. He met the
President the day before his death, who used a particular expression in
speaking to him; the day before Lord
Melville died, he also met Dubisson nearly
on the same spot, and to the man’s surprise used the President’s
very words in saluting him. On this second death, he expressed (jocularly,
however) an apprehension that he himself would be the third—was taken ill and
died in an hour’s space. Was not this remarkable? Yours ever,
W. S.”
The Vision of Don
Roderick had features of novelty, both as to the subject and the manner of the
composition, which excited much attention, and gave rise to some sharp controversy. The
main fable was indeed from the most picturesque region of old romance; but it was made
throughout the vehicle of feelings directly adverse to those with which the Whig critics
had all along regarded the interference of Britain in behalf of the nations of the
Peninsula; and the silence which, while celebrating our other generals on that scene of
action, had been preserved with respect to Scott’s
own gallant countryman, Sir John Moore, was
considered or represented by them as
an odious example of genius hood-winked by the influence of party. Nor were there wanting
persons who affected to discover that the charm of Scott’s
poetry had to a great extent evaporated under the severe test to which he had exposed it,
by adopting, in place of those comparatively light and easy measures in which he had
hitherto dealt, the most elaborate one that our literature exhibits. The production,
notwithstanding the complexity of the Spenserian stanza, had been very rapidly executed;
and it shows, accordingly, many traces of negligence. But the patriotic inspiration of it
found an echo in the vast majority of British hearts; many of the Whig oracles themselves
acknowledged that the difficulties of the metre had been on the whole successfully
overcome; and even the hardest critics were compelled to express unqualified admiration of
various detached pictures and passages, which, in truth, as no one now disputes, neither he
nor any other poet ever excelled. The whole setting or framework—whatever relates in short
to the last of the Goths himself—was, I think, even then unanimously pronounced admirable;
and no party feeling could blind any man to the heroic splendour of such stanzas as those
in which the three equally gallant elements of a British army are contrasted. I incline to
believe that the choice of the measure had been in no small degree the result of those
hints which Scott had received on the subject of his favourite
octosyllabics, more especially from Ellis and
Canning; and, as we shall see presently, he
about this time made more than one similar experiment, in all likelihood from the same
motive.
Of the letters which reached him in consequence of the appearance of
The Vision, he has preserved several,
which had no doubt interested and gratified him at the time. One of these was from
Lady Wellington, to whom he
had never had the honour of being presented, but who could not, as she said, remain silent
on the receipt of such a tribute to the fame of “the first and best of
men.” Ever afterwards she continued to correspond with him, and indeed, among the
very last letters which the Duchess of Wellington appears to have
written, was a most affecting one, bidding him farewell, and thanking him for the solace
his works had afforded her during her fatal illness. Another was in these terms:—
To Walter Scott, Esq.
“Hinckley, July 26, 1811. “My dear Sir,
“I am very glad that you have essayed a new
metre—new I mean for you to use. That which you have chosen is perhaps at once
the most artificial and the most magnificent that our language affords; and
your success in it ought to encourage you to believe, that for you, at least,
the majestic march of Dryden (to my ear
the perfection of harmony) is not, as you seem to pronounce it, irrecoverable.
Am I wrong in imagining that Spenser does not use the plusquam-Alexandrine—the verse which is as much longer
than an Alexandrine, as an Alexandrine is longer than an ordinary heroic
measure? I have no books where I am, to which to refer. You use this—and in the
first stanza.
“Your poem has been met on my part by an exchange
somewhat like that of Diomed’s armour
against Glaucus’s—brass for gold—a
heavy speech upon bullion. If you have never thought upon the subject—as to my
great contentment I never had a twelvemonth ago—let me counsel you to keep
clear of it, and forthwith put my speech into the fire, unread. It has no one
merit but that of sincerity. I formed my opinion most reluctantly; having formed it, I could not
but maintain it; having maintained it in Parliament, I wished to record it
intelligibly. But it is one which, so far from cherishing and wishing to make
proselytes to, I would much rather renounce, if I could find a person to
convince me that it is erroneous. This is at least an unusual state of mind in
controversy. It is such as I do not generally profess on all subjects—such as
you will give me credit for not being able to maintain, for instance, when
either the exploits which you celebrate in your last poem, or your manner of
celebrating them, are disputed or disparaged. Believe me, with great regard and
esteem, very sincerely yours,
George Canning.”
But, of all the letters addressed to the author of the Vision of Don Roderick, I am very sure no one
was so welcome as that which reached him, some months after his poem had ceased to be new
in England, from a dear friend of his earliest days, who, after various chances and changes
of life, was then serving in Lord Wellington’s
army, as a captain in the 58th regiment. I am sure that Sir
Adam Ferguson’s good-nature will pardon my inserting here some
extracts from a communication which his affectionate schoolfellow very often referred to in
after years with the highest appearance of interest and pleasure.
To Walter Scott, Esq.
“Lisbon, 31st August, 1811. “My dear Walter,
“After such a length of silence between us, and, I
grant on my part, so unwarrantable, I think I see your face of surprise on
recognising this MS., and hear you exclaim—What strange wind has blown a letter
from Linton? I
must say, that although both you and my good friend
Mrs S. must long ago have set me down as
a most indifferent, not to say ungrateful sort of gentleman, far otherwise has
been the case, as in the course of my wanderings through this country, I have
often beguiled a long march, or watchful night’s duty, by thinking on the
merry fireside in North Castle Street. However, the irregular roving life we
lead, always interfered with my resolves of correspondence.
“But now, quitting self, I need not tell you how
greatly I was delighted at the success of the Lady of the Lake. I dare say you are by this time
well tired of such greetings—so I shall only say, that last spring I was so
fortunate as to get a reading of it, when in the lines of Torres Vedras, and
thought I had no inconsiderable right to enter into and judge of its beauties,
having made one of the party on your first visit to the Trossachs; and you will
allow, that a little vanity on my part on this account (every thing
considered), was natural enough. While the book was in my possession, I had
nightly invitations to evening parties! to read and
illustrate passages of it; and I must say that (though not conscious of much
merit in the way of recitation) my attempts to do justice to the grand opening
of the stag-hunt, were always followed with bursts of applause—for this Canto
was the favourite among the rough sons of the fighting Third Division. At that
time supplies of various kinds, especially any thing in the way of delicacies,
were very scanty; and, in gratitude, I am bound to declare, that to the good
offices of the Lady, I owed many a nice slice of ham,
and rummer of hot punch, which, I assure you, were amongst the most welcome
favours that one officer could bestow on another during the long rainy nights
of last January and February. By desire of my messmates of the Black-cuffs, I
some time ago sent a commission to London for a copy of the music of the
Boat-Song, ‘Hail to the Chief,’ as
per-formed
at Covent-Garden, but have not yet got it. If you can assist in this, I need
not say that on every performance a flowing bumper will go round to the Bard.
We have lately been fortunate in getting a good master to our band, who is
curious in old Scotch and Irish airs, and has harmonized Johnny Cope, &c. &c. . . . .
Lisbon, 6th October.
“I had written all the foregoing botheration,
intending to send it by a wounded friend going home to Scotland, when, to my no
small joy, your parcel, enclosing Don
Roderick, reached me. How kind I take it your remembering old
Linton in this way. A day or two
after I received yours I was sent into the Alentejo, where I remained a month,
and only returned a few days ago, much delighted with the trip. You wish to
know how I like the Vision; but as you can’t
look for any learned critique from me, I shall only say that I fully entered
into the spirit and beauty of it, and that I relished much the wild and
fanciful opening of the introductory part; yet what particularly delighted me
were the stanzas announcing the approach of the British fleets and armies to
this country, and the three delightful ones descriptive of the different
troops, English, Scotch, and Irish; and I can assure you the Pats are, to a
man, enchanted with the picture drawn of their countrymen, and the mention of
the great man himself. Your swearing, in the true character of a minstrel,
‘shiver my harp and burst its every chord,’ amused me
not a little. From being well acquainted with a great many of the situations
described, they had of course the more interest, and ‘Grim
Busaco’s iron ridge’ most happily paints the appearance of
that memorable field. You must know that we have got with us some bright
geniuses, natives of the dear country, and who go by the
name of ‘the poets.’ Of course a present of
this kind is not thrown away upon indifferent subjects, but it is read and
repeated with all the enthusiasm your warmest wish could desire. Should it be
my fate to survive, I am resolved to try my hand on a snug little farm either
up or down the Tweed, somewhere in your neighbourhood, and on this dream many a
delightful castle do I build.
“I am most happy to hear that the Club* goes on in
the old smooth style. I am afraid, however, that now * * * has become a judge, the delights of
Scrogum and The Tailor will be lost, till revived
perhaps by the old croupier in the shape of a battered half-pay officer. Yours
affectionately,
Adam Ferguson.”
More than one of the gallant captain’s chateaux en Espagne were, as we shall see, realized in the sequel.
I must not omit a circumstance which had reached Scott
from another source, and which he always took special pride in relating, namely, that in
the course of the day when the Lady of the
Lake first reached Sir Adam Ferguson, he
was posted with his company on a point of ground exposed to the enemy’s artillery;
somewhere no doubt on the lines of Torres Vedras. The men were ordered to lie prostrate on
the ground; while they kept that attitude, the Captain, kneeling at their head, read aloud
the description of the battle in Canto VI., and the listening soldiers only interrupted him
by a joyous huzza, whenever the French shot struck the bank close above them.
The only allusion which I have found, in Scott’s letters, to the Edinburgh Reviewon his
Vision, occurs in a letter to Mr Morritt
(26th September, 1811), which also contains the only hint of his having been about this
* See ante, vol. i. p. 153.
time requested to undertake the task
of rendering into English the Charlemagne of Lucien
Buonaparte. He says—“The Edinburgh Reviewers have been down on my
poor Don hand to fist; but, truly, as they are too fastidious
to approve of the campaign, I should be very unreasonable if I expected them to like
the celebration of it. I agree with them, however, as to the lumbering weight of the
stanza, and I shrewdly suspect it would require a very great poet indeed to prevent the
tedium arising from the recurrence of rhymes. Our language is unable to support the
expenditure of so many for each stanza: even Spenser himself, with all the license of using obsolete words and
uncommon spellings, sometimes fatigues the ear. They are also very wroth with me for
omitting the merits of Sir John Moore; but as I
never exactly discovered in what these lay, unless in conducting his advance and
retreat upon a plan the most likely to verify the desponding speculations of the
foresaid reviewers, I must hold myself excused for not giving praise where I was unable
to see that much was due. The only literary news I have to send you is, that
Lucien Buonaparte’s epic, in twenty-four chants, is about to appear. An application was made to me to
translate it, which I negatived of course, and that roundly.”*
I have alluded to some other new experiments in versification about
this time as probably originating in the many hints of Ellis, Canning, and probably of
Erskine, that, if he wished to do himself full
justice in poetical narration, he ought to attempt at least the rhyme of Dryden’sFables. Having essayed the most difficult of all English measures in Don Roderick, he this year tried also the
heroic couplet, and produced that imita-
* The ponderous epic entitled, Charlemagne, ou l’Eglise Delivrée, was
published in 1814; and an English version, by the Rev.
S. Butler and the Rev. F.
Hodgson, appeared in 1815. 2 vols. 4to.
tion of Crabbe, The Poacher:—on seeing
which, Crabbe, as his son’s biography tells us, exclaimed, “This man, whoever he is,
can do all that I can, and something more” This piece, together with some
verses, afterwards worked up into the Bridal of
Triermain, and another fragment in imitation of Moore’s Lyrics, when first forwarded to Ballantyne, were accompanied with a little note, in which he says:
“Understand I have no idea of parody, but serious imitation, if I can
accomplish it. The subject for my Crabbe is a character in his
line which he has never touched. I think of Wordsworth, too, and perhaps a ghost story after Lewis. I should be ambitious of trying Campbell; but his peculiarity consists so much in the
matter, and so little in the manner, that (to his praise be it spoken), I rather think
I cannot touch him.” The three imitations which he did execute appeared in
the Edinburgh Register for 1809, published in
the autumn of 1811. They were there introduced by a letter entitled The Inferno of Altisidora, in which he shadows out the
chief reviewers of the day, especially his friends Jeffrey and Gifford, with admirable
breadth and yet lightness of pleasantry. He kept his secret as to this Inferno, and all its
appendages, even from Miss Baillie—to whom he says,
on their appearance, that—“the imitation of Crabbe had struck
him as good; that of Moore as bad; and that of himself as
beginning well, but falling off grievously to the close.” He seems to have
been equally mysterious as to an imitation of the quaint love verses of the beginning of
the 17th century, which had found its way shortly before into the newspapers, under the
name of The Resolve;* but I find him
acknowledging its parentage to his brother Thomas,
whose sagacity had at once guessed at the truth. “As
* See Poetical Works, edition 1834, vol. viii. p. 374.
to the Resolve,” he says, “it is mine; and it is not—or, to be
less enigmatical, it is an old fragment, which I coopered up into its present state
with the purpose of quizzing certain judges of poetry, who have been extremely
delighted, and declare that no living poet could write in the same exquisite
taste.” These critics were his Friends of the Friday Club. When included in the
Register, however, the Resolve had
his name affixed to it. In that case his concealment had already answered its purpose. It
is curious to trace the beginnings of the systematic mystification which he afterwards put
in practice with regard to the most important series of his works.
The quarto edition of Don
Roderick having rapidly gone off, instead of reprinting the poem as usual in a
separate octavo, he inserted it entire ‘in the current volume of the Register; a sufficient proof how much that
undertaking was already felt to require extraordinary exertion on the part of its
proprietors. Among other minor tasks of the same year, he produced an edition of Wilson’s Secret History of the Court of King
James I., in two vols. 8vo, to which he supplied a copious preface, and a rich
body of notes. He also contributed two or three articles to the Quarterly Review.
CHAPTER XI. NEW ARRANGEMENT CONCERNING THE CLERKS OF
SESSION—SCOTT’S FIRST PURCHASE OF LAND—ABBOTSFORD;
TURNAGAIN, ETC.—JOANNA BAILLIE’SORRA, ETC.—DEATH OF JAMES GRAHAME—AND OF JOHN
LEYDEN. 1811.
Throughout 1811, Scott’s serious labour continued to be bestowed on the advancing
edition of Swift; but this and all other
literary tasks were frequently interrupted in consequence of an important step which he
took early in the year; namely, the purchase of the first portion of what became in the
sequel an extensive landed property in Roxburghshire. He had now the near prospect of
coming into the beneficial use of the office he had so long filled without emolument in the
Court of Session. For, connected with the other reforms in the Scotch judicature, was a
plan for allowing the retirement of functionaries, who had served to an advanced period of
life, upon pensions; should this meet the approbation of parliament, there was little doubt
that Mr George Home would avail himself of the
opportunity to resign the place of which he had now for five years executed none of the
duties; and the second Lord Melville, who had now
succeeded his father as the virtual Minister for Scotland, had so much at heart a measure
in itself obviously just and prudent, that little doubt could be entertained of the result
of his efforts in its behalf. The Clerks of Session, it had been already settled, were henceforth to be paid not by fees, but by fixed
salaries; the amount of each salary, it was soon after arranged, should be L.1300 per
annum; and contemplating a speedy accession of professional income so considerable as this,
and at the same time a vigorous prosecution of his literary career,
Scott fixed his eyes on a small farm within a few miles of
Ashestiel, which it was understood would presently be in the market, and resolved to place
himself by its acquisition in the situation to which he had probably from his earliest days
looked forward as the highest object of ambition, that of a Tweedside
Laird.—Sit mihi sedes utinam
senectæ!
And the place itself, though not to the general observer a very
attractive one, had long been one of peculiar interest for him. I have often heard him
tell, that when travelling in his boyhood with his father, from Selkirk to Melrose, the old
man suddenly desired the carriage to halt at the foot of an eminence, and said,
“we must get out here, Walter, and see a
thing quite in your line.” His father then conducted him to a rude stone on
the edge of an acclivity about half a mile above the Tweed at Abbotsford, which marks the
spot— “Where gallant Cessford’s
life-blood dear Reeked on dark Elliott’s border
spear.” This was the conclusion of the battle of Melrose, fought in 1526, between the Earls of
Angus and Home, and the two chiefs of the
race of Kerr, on the one side, and Buccleuch and
his clan on the other, in sight of the young King James
V., the possession of whose person was the object of the contest. This
battle is often motioned in the Border Minstrelsy, and the reader will find a long note on
it, under the lines which I have just quoted from the Lay of the Last Minstrel. In the names of various localities between Melrose
and Abbotsford, such as Skirmish-field, Charge-Law, and so forth, the
incidents of the fight have found a lasting record; and the spot where the retainer of
Buccleuch terminated the pursuit of the victors by the mortal
wound of Kerr of Cessford (ancestor of the Dukes of
Roxburghe), has always been called Turn-again. In his own future
domain the young minstrel had before him the scene of the last great Clan-battle of the
Borders.
On the 12th of May, 1811, he writes to James
Ballantyne, apologizing for some delay about proof-sheets. “My
attention,” he adds, “has been a little dissipated by considering a
plan for my own future comfort, which I hasten to mention to you. My lease of Ashestiel
is out—I now sit a tenant at will under a heavy rent, and at all the inconvenience of
one when in the house of another. I have, therefore, resolved to purchase a piece of
ground sufficient for a cottage and a few fields. There are two pieces, either of which
would suit me, but both would make a very desirable property indeed. They stretch along
the Tweed near half-way between Melrose and Selkirk, on the opposite side from
Lord Somerville, and could be had for between
L.7000 and L.8000—or either separate for about half the sum. I have serious thoughts of
one or both, and must have recourse to my pen to make the matter easy. The worst is the
difficulty which John might find in advancing so
large a sum as the copyright of a new poem; supposing it to be made payable within a
year at farthest from the work going to press,—which would be essential to my purpose.
Yet the Lady of the Lake came soon home. I
have a letter this morning giving me good hope of my Treasury business being carried
through: if this takes place, I will buy both the little farms, which will give me a
mile of the beautiful turn of Tweed, above Gala-foot—if not, I will confine myself to
one. As my income, in the event supposed, will be very considerable, it will afford a
sinking fund to clear off what debt I may
incur in making this purchase. It is proper John and you should be
as soon as possible apprized of these my intentions, which I believe you will think
reasonable in my situation, and at my age, while I may yet hope to sit under the shade
of a tree of my own planting. I shall not, I think, want any pecuniary assistance
beyond what I have noticed, but of course my powers of rendering it will be
considerably limited for a time. I hope this Register will give a start to its predecessors; I assure you I shall spare
no pains. John must lend his earnest attention to clear his hands
of the quire stock, and to taking in as little as he can unless in the way of exchange;
in short, reefing our sails, which are at present too much spread for our
ballast.”
He alludes in the same letter to a change in the firm of Messrs
Constable, which John Ballantyne had just announced to him; and, although some of his
prognostications on this business were not exactly fulfilled, I must quote his expressions
for the light they throw on his opinion of Constable’s temper
and character. “No association,” he says, “of the kind
Mr C. proposes, will stand two years with him for its head.
His temper is too haughty to bear with the complaints, and to answer all the minute
enquiries, which partners of that sort will think themselves entitled to make, and
expect to have answered. Their first onset, however, will be terrible, and
John must be prepared to lie by . . . . . The new poem would
help the presses.” The new partners to which he refers were Mr Robert Cathcart, Writer to the Signet, a man of high
worth and integrity, who continued to be connected with
Constable’s business until his death in November, 1812; and
Mr Robert Cadell, who afterwards married
Mr Constable’s eldest daughter.*
* This union was dissolved by the death of the lady within a year
Of the two adjoining farms, both of which he had at this time thought of
purchasing, he shortly afterwards made up his mind that one would be sufficient to begin
with; and he selected that nearest to Ashestiel, and comprising the scene of
Cessford’s slaughter. The person from whom he bought it was
an old friend of his own, whose sterling worth he venerated, and whose humorous
conversation rendered him an universal favourite among the gentry of the Forest—the late
Rev. Dr Robert Douglas, minister of
Galashiels—the same man to whom Mrs Cockburn
described the juvenile prodigy of George’s Square, in November 1777. Dr
Douglas had never resided on the property, and his efforts to embellish it
had been limited to one stripe of firs, so long and so narrow that Scott likened it to a black hair-comb. It ran from the precincts of the
homestead towards Turn-again, and has bequeathed the name of the
Doctor’s redding-kame to the mass of nobler trees amidst which its dark
straight line can now hardly be traced. The farm consisted of a rich meadow or haugh along
the banks of the river, and about a hundred acres of undulated ground behind, all in a
neglected state, undrained, wretchedly enclosed, much of it covered with nothing better
than the native heath. The farm-house itself was small and poor, with a common kail-yard on one flank, and a staring barn of the doctor’s
erection on the other; while in front appeared a filthy pond covered with ducks and
duckweed, from which the whole tenement had derived the unharmonious designation of Clarty Hole. But the Tweed was every thing to him—a beautiful river,
flowing broad and bright over a bed of milk-white pebbles, unless here and there where it
darkened into a deep pool, overhung as yet only by the birches and alders which had
survived the statelier growth
of the marriage. Mr Cadell, not long after the catastrophe of 1826, became sole
publisher of Scott’s later works.
of the primitive Forest; and the first hour that
he took possession he claimed for his farm the name of the adjoining ford, situated just above the influx of the classical tributary Gala. As might be
guessed from the name of Abbotsford, these lands had all belonged of
old to the great abbey of Melrose; and indeed the Duke of
Buccleuch, as the territorial representative of that religious brotherhood,
still retains some seignorial rights over them, and almost all the surrounding district.
Another feature of no small interest in Scott’s eyes was an
ancient Roman road leading from the Eildon hills to this ford, the remains of which,
however, are now mostly sheltered from view amidst his numerous plantations. The most
graceful and picturesque of all the monastic ruins in Scotland, the Abbey of Melrose
itself, is visible from many points in the immediate neighbourhood of the house; and last,
not least, on the rising ground full in view across the river, the traveller may still
observe the chief traces of that ancient British barrier, the Catrail, of which the reader
has seen frequent mention in Scott’s early letters to Ellis, when investigating the antiquities of Reged and
Strathclyde.
Such was the territory on which Scott’s prophetic eye already beheld rich pastures, embosomed among
flourishing groves, where his children’s children should thank the founder. But the
state of his feelings, when he first called these fields his own, will be best illustrated
by a few extracts from his letters. To his brother-in-law, Mr
Carpenter, he thus writes, from Ashestiel, on the 5th of August—
“As my lease of this place is out, I have bought, for about
£4000, a property in the neighbourhood, extending along the banks of the river
Tweed for about half a-mile. It is very bleak at present, having little to recommend it but the vicinity of the river; but as the ground is
well adapted by nature to grow wood, and is considerably various in form and
appearance, I have no doubt that by judicious plantations it may be rendered a very
pleasant spot; and it is at present my great amusement to plan the various lines which
may be necessary for that purpose. The farm comprehends about a hundred acres, of which
I shall keep fifty in pasture and tillage, and plant all the rest, which will be a very
valuable little possession in a few years, as wood bears a high price among us. I
intend building a small cottage here for my summer abode, being obliged by law, as well
as induced by inclination, to make this country my residence for some months every
year. This is the greatest incident which has lately taken place in our domestic
concerns, and I assure you we are not a little proud of being greeted as laird and lady of Abbotsford. We will
give a grand gala when we take possession of it, and as we are very clannish in this corner, all the Scotts in the country,
from the Duke to the peasant, shall dance on the green to the bagpipes, and drink
whisky punch. Now as this happy festival is to be deferred for more than a twelvemonth,
during which our cottage is to be built, &c. &c., what is there to hinder
brother and sister Carpenter from giving us their company upon so gratifying an
occasion? Pray, do not stay broiling yourself in India, for a moment longer than you
have secured comfort and competence. Don’t look forward to peace; it will never
come either in your day or mine.”
The same week he says to Joanna
Baillie—
“My dreams about my cottage go on; of about a
hundred acres I have manfully resolved to plant from sixty to seventy; as to my scale of
dwelling, why, you shall see my plan when I have adjusted it. My present
intention is to have only two spare bed-rooms, with dressing-rooms, each of
which will on a pinch have a couch bed; but I cannot relinquish my Border
principle of accommodating all the cousins and duniwastles, who will rather sleep on chairs, and on the floor, and
in the hay-loft, than be absent when folks are gathered together; and truly I
used to think Ashestiel was very much like the tent of Paribanou, in the Arabian Nights, that suited alike all numbers
of company equally; ten people fill it at any time, and I remember its lodging
thirty-two without any complaint. As for the go-about-folks, they generally pay
their score one way or other; for you who are always in the way of seeing, and
commanding, and selecting your society, are too fastidious to understand how a
dearth of news may make any body welcome that can tell one the current report
of the day. If it is any pleasure to these stragglers to say I made them
welcome as strangers, I am sure that costs me nothing—only I deprecate
publication, and am now the less afraid of it that I think scarce any
bookseller will be desperate enough to print a new Scottish tour. Besides, one
has the pleasure to tell over all the stories that have bored your friends a
dozen of times, with some degree of propriety. In short, I think, like a true
Scotchman, that a stranger, unless he is very unpleasant indeed, usually brings
a title to a welcome along with him; and to confess the truth, I do a little
envy my old friend Abouhassan his walks on
the bridge of Bagdad, and evening conversations, and suppers with the guests
whom he was never to see again in his life: he never fell into a scrape till he
met with the Caliph—and, thank God, no Caliphs frequent the brigg of Melrose,
which will be my nearest Rialto at Abbotsford.
“I never heard of a stranger that utterly baffled
all efforts to engage him in conversation, excepting one whom an acquaintance
of mine met in a stage coach. My friend,* who piqued himself on his talents for
conversation, assailed this tortoise on all hands, but in vain, and at length
descended to expostulation. ‘I have talked to you, my friend, on all
the ordinary subjects—literature, farming, merchandise—gaming, game-laws,
horse-races—suits at law politics, and swindling, and blasphemy, and
philosophy—is there any one subject that you will favour me by opening
upon?’ The wight writhed his countenance into a grin
‘Sir,’ said he, ‘can you say any thing clever
about bend leather?’ There, I own, I
should have been as much non-plussed as my acquaintance; but upon any less
abstruse subject, I think, in general, something may be made of a stranger,
worthy of his clean sheets, and beef-steak, and glass of port. You, indeed, my
dear friend, may suffer a little for me, as I should for you, when such a
fortuitous acquaintance talks of the intercourse arising from our meeting as
any thing beyond the effect of chance and civility: but these braggings break
no bones, and are always a compliment to the person of whom the discourse is
held, though the narrator means it to himself; for no one can suppose the
affectation of intimacy can be assumed unless from an idea that it exalts the
person who brags of it. My little folks are well, and I am performing the
painful duty of hearing my little boy his Latin lesson every morning; painful,
because my knowledge of the language is more familiar than grammatical, and
because little Walter has a disconsolate
yawn at intervals which is quite irresistible, and has nearly cost me a
dislocation of my jaws.”
* This friend was Mr
William Clerk.
In answering the letter which announced the acquisition of Abbotsford,
Joanna Baillie says, very prettily:—“Yourself, and Mrs
Scott, and the children, will feel sorry at leaving Ashestiel, which
will long have a consequence, and be the object of kind feelings with many, from having
once been the place of your residence. If I should ever be happy enough to be at
Abbotsford, you must take me to see Ashestiel too. I have a kind of tenderness for it,
as one has for a man’s first wife, when you hear he has married a
second.” The same natural sentiment is expressed in a manner characteristically
different, in a letter from the Ettrick Shepherd, of
about the same date:—“Are you not sorry at leaving auld
Ashestiel for gude an’ a’, after having been at so much trouble
and expense in making it a complete thing? Upon my word I was, on seeing it in the
papers.”
That Scott had many a pang in
quitting a spot which had been the scene of so many innocent and noble pleasures, no one
can doubt; but the desire of having a permanent abiding-place of his own, in his
ancestorial district, had long been growing upon his mind; and, moreover, he had laboured
in adorning Ashestiel, not only to gratify his own taste as a landscape gardener, but
because he had for years been looking forward to the day when Colonel (now General) Russell would return from India to claim possession
of his romantic inheritance. And he was overpaid for all his exertions, when the gallant
soldier sat down at length among the trees which an affectionate kinsman had pruned and
planted in his absence. He retained, however, to the end of his life, a certain
“tenderness of feeling” towards Ashestiel, which could not perhaps be better
shadowed than in Joanna Baillie’s similitude.
It was not his first country residence—nor could its immediate landscape be said to equal
the Vale of the Esk, either in actual picturesqueness, or (before
Marmion) in dignity of association. But
it was while occupying Ashestiel that he first enjoyed habitually the free presence of wild
and solitary nature; and I shall here quote part of a letter, in which he alludes to his
favourite wildernesses between Tweed and Yarrow, in language, to my mind, strongly
indicative of the regrets and misgivings with which he must have taken his farewell
wanderings over them in the summer and autumn of 1811.
Miss Baillie had then in the press a new volume of Tragedies, but had told her
friend that the publication, for booksellers’ reasons, would not take place until
winter. He answers (August 24th),—“Were it possible for me to hasten the treat I
expect by such a composition with you, I would promise to read the volume at the silence of
noonday, upon the top of Minchmuir, or Windlestrawlaw. The hour is allowed, by those
skilful in demonology, to be as full of witching as midnight itself; and I assure you, I
have felt really oppressed with a sort of fearful loneliness, when looking around the naked
and towering ridges of desolate barrenness, which is all the eye takes in from the top of
such a mountain—the patches of cultivation being all hidden in the little glens and
valleys—or only appearing to make one sensible how feeble and inefficient the efforts of
art have been to contend with the genius of the soil. It is in such a scene that the
unknown author of a fine, but unequal poem, called Albania, places the remarkable superstition which consists in hearing the noise
of a chase, with the baying of the hounds, the throttling sobs of the deer, the hollos of a
numerous band of huntsmen, and the ‘hoofs thick beating on the hollow
hill.’ I have often repeated his verses with some sen-sations of awe in such a place, and I am sure yours
would effect their purpose as completely.”*
Miss Baillie sent him, as soon as it was printed,
the book to which this communication
refers; she told him it was to be her last publication, and that she was getting her
knitting needles in order—meaning to begin her new course of industry with a purse, by way
of return for his Iona brooch. The poetess mentioned, at the same time, that she had met
the evening before with a Scotch lady, who boasted that “she had once been
Walter Scott’s
bedfellow.”—“Don’t start,” adds
Joanna, “it is thirty years since the irregularity took
place, and she describes her old bedfellow as the drollest looking, entertaining little
urchin that ever was seen. I told her that you are a great strong man, six feet high,
but she does not believe me.” In point of fact, the assigned date was a
lady’s one; for the irregularity in question occurred on board the Leith smack which
conveyed Walter Scott to London on his way to Bath, when he was only
four years of age, A. D. 1775.
Miss Baillie’s welcome volume contained, among others, her tragedy on the Passion of Fear; and Scott
gives so much of himself in the letter acknowledging this present that I must insert it at
length.
To Miss Joanna Baillie.
“My dear Friend,
“ . . . . It is too little to say I am enchanted
with the said third volume,
especially with the two first plays, which in every point not only sustain, but
even exalt your reputation as a dramatist. The whole character of
* The reader will find these lines from Albania (which Scott was very fond of repeating) quoted
in a Note to his ballad of “The Wild Huntsman.”—Poetical
Works, vol. vi. p. 308.
Orra is exquisitely supported
as well as imagined, and the language distinguished by a rich variety of fancy,
which I know no instance of excepting in Shakspeare. After I had read Orra
twice to myself, Terry read it over to
us a third time, aloud, and I have seldom seen a little circle so much affected
as during the whole fifth act. I think it would act charmingly, omitting,
perhaps, the baying of the hounds, which could not be happily imitated, and
retaining only the blast of the horn and the halloo of the huntsmen at a
distance. Only I doubt if we have now an actress that could carry through the
mad scene in the fifth act, which is certainly one of the most sublime that
ever were written. Yet I have a great quarrel with this beautiful drama, for
you must know you have utterly destroyed a song of mine, precisely in the turn
of your outlaw’s ditty, and sung by persons in somewhat the same
situation. I took out my unfortunate manuscript to look at it, but alas! it was
the encounter of the iron and the earthen pitchers in the fable. I was clearly
sunk, and the potsherds not worth gathering up. But only conceive that the
chorus should have run thus verbatim— ‘’Tis mirk midnight with peaceful men, With us ’tis dawn of day ’
And again— ‘Then boot and saddle, comrades boon, Nor wait the dawn of day.’*
* These lines were accordingly struck out of the
outlaw’s song in Rokeby. The verses of Orra, to which Scott alludes, are no doubt the following:—
“The wild-fire dances on the fen, The red star sheds its ray, Up rouse ye, then, my merry men, It is our opening day,” &c. Plays on the
Passions, vol. iii. p. 44.
“I think the Dream extremely powerful indeed, but I am rather glad we did
not hazard the representation. It rests so entirely on Osterloo, that I am
almost sure we must have made a bad piece of work of it. By-the-by a story is
told of an Italian buffoon, who had contrived to give his master, a petty
prince of Italy, a good hearty ducking, and a fright to boot, to cure him of an
ague; the treatment succeeded, but the potentate, by way of retaliation, had
his audacious physician tried for treason, and condemned to lose his head; the
criminal was brought forth, the priest heard his confession, and the poor
jester knelt down to the block. Instead of wielding his axe, the executioner,
as he had been instructed, threw a pitcher of water on the bare neck of the
criminal; here the jest was to have terminated, but poor Gonella was found dead on the spot. I believe the
catastrophe is very possible.* The latter half of the volume I have not perused
with the same attention, though I have devoured both the Comedy and the Beacon in a hasty manner. I think the
approbation of the public will make you alter your intention of taking up the
knitting-needle—and that I shall be as much to seek for my purse as for the
bank-notes which you say are to stuff it—though I have no idea where they are
to come from. But I shall think more of the purse than the notes, come when or
how they may.
“To return, I really think Fear the most dramatic
passion you have hitherto touched, because capable of being drawn to the most
extreme paroxysm on the stage. In Orra you have all gradations, from a timidity excited by a strong
and irritable imagination, to the extremity which altogether unhinges the
understanding. The most dreadful fright I ever had in my life (being neither
* This story is told, among others, by
Montaigne.
constitutionally timid, nor in the way of being exposed
to real danger), was in returning from Hampstead the day which I spent so
pleasantly with you. Although the evening was nearly closed, I foolishly chose
to take the short cut through the fields, and in that enclosure, where the path
leads close by a thick and high hedge—with several gaps in it, however—did I
meet one of your very thorough-paced London ruffians, at least judging from the
squalid and jail-bird appearance and blackguard expression of countenance. Like
the man that met the devil, I had nothing to say to him, if he had nothing to
say to me, but I could not help looking back to watch the movements of such a
suspicious figure, and to my great uneasiness saw him creep through the hedge
on my left hand. I instantly went to the first gap to watch his motions, and
saw him stooping, as I thought, either to lift a bundle or to speak to some
person who seemed lying in the ditch. Immediately after, he came cowering back
up the opposite side of the hedge, as returning towards me under cover of it. I
saw no weapons he had, except a stick, but as I moved on to gain the stile
which was to let me into the free field—with the idea of a wretch springing
upon me from the cover at every step I took—I assure you I would not wish the
worst enemy I ever had to undergo such a feeling as I had for about five
minutes; my fancy made him of that description which usually combines murder
with plunder, and though I was well armed with a stout stick and a very
formidable knife, which when opened becomes a sort of skene-dhu, or dagger, I confess my sensations, though those of a man
much resolved not to die like a sheep, were vilely short of heroism; so much
so, that when I jumped over the stile, a sliver of the wood run a third of an
inch between my nail and flesh, without my feeling the pain, or being sensible
such a thing had happened. However, I saw
my man no more, and it is astonishing how my spirits rose when I got into the
open field;—and when I reached the top of the little mount, and all the bells
in London (for aught I know) began to jingle at once, I thought I had never
heard any thing so delightful in my life—so rapid are the alternations of our
feelings. This foolish story,—for perhaps I had no rational ground for the
horrible feeling which possessed my mind for a little while, came irresistibly
to my pen when writing to you on the subject of terror.
“Poor Grahame, gentle, and amiable, and enthusiastic, deserves all you
can say of him; his was really a hallowed harp, as he was himself an Israelite
without guile. How often have I teazed him, but never out of his good-humour,
by praising Dundee and laughing at the
Covenanters!—but I beg your pardon, you are a Westland Whig too, and will
perhaps make less allowance for a descendant of the persecutors. I think his
works should be collected and published for the benefit of his family. Surely
the wife and orphans of such a man have a claim on the generosity of the
public.*
“Pray make my remembrance to the lady who so kindly
remembers our early intimacy. I do perfectly remember being an exceedingly
spoiled, chattering monkey, whom indifferent health and the cares of a kind
Grandmamma and Aunt, had made, I suspect, extremely
abominable to every body who had not a great deal of sympathy and good-nature,
which I daresay was the
* James
Grahame, author of The Sabbath, had been originally a
member of the Scotch Bar, and was an early friend of Scott’s. Not
succeeding in the law, he—(with all his love for the Covenanters)—took
orders in the Church of England, obtained a curacy in the county of
Durham, and died there, on the 14th of September 1811, in the 47th year
of his age. See a Memoir of his
Life and Writings in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1812, Part
ii., pp. 384-415.
case of my quondam bedfellow, since she recollects me so
favourably. Farewell, and believe me faithfully and respectfully, your sincere
friend,
Walter Scott.”
Miss Baillie, in her next letter, mentioned the name
of the “old bedfellow,” and that immediately refreshed Scott’s
recollection. “I do,” he replies, “remember Miss
Wright perfectly well. Oh, how I should like to talk over with her our
voyage in the good ship the Duchess of Buccleuch, Captain Beatson,
master; much of which, from the novelty doubtless of the scene, is strongly impressed
on my memory. A long voyage it was—of twelve days, if I mistake not, with the variety
of a day or two in Yarmouth Roads. I believe the passengers had a good deal of fun with
me; for I remember being persuaded to shoot one of them with an air-gun, who, to my
great terror, lay obstinately dead on the deck, and would not revive till I fell
a-crying, which proved the remedy specific upon the occasion.”
The mention of Mr Terry, in the
letter about Orra, reminds me to observe
that Scott’s intimacy with that gentleman began to
make very rapid progress from the date of the first purchase of Abbotsford. He spent
several weeks of that autumn at Ashestiel, riding over daily to the new farm, and assisting
his friend with advice, which his acquirements as an architect and draughtsman rendered
exceedingly valuable, as to the future arrangements about both house and grounds. Early in
1812 Terry proceeded to London, and made, on the 20th May, a very
successful debut on the boards of the Haymarket as Lord
Ogleby. He continued, however, to visit Scotland almost every season, and no
ally had more to do either with the plans ultimately adopted as to
Scott’s new structure, or with the collec-tion of literary and antiquarian curiosities
which now constitute its museum. From this time the series of letters between them is an
ample one. The intelligent zeal with which the actor laboured to promote the gratification
of the poet’s tastes and fancies on the one side: on the other,
Scott’s warm anxiety for Terry’s
professional success, the sagacity and hopefulness with which he counsels and cheers him
throughout, and the good-natured confidence with which he details his own projects—both the
greatest and the smallest,—all this seems to me to make up a very interesting picture. To
none of his later correspondents, with the one exception of Mr
Morritt, does Scott write with a more perfect
easy-heartedness than to Terry; and the quaint dramatic turns and
allusions with which these letters abound will remind all who knew him of the instinctive
courtesy with which he uniformly adopted in conversation a strain the most likely to fall
in with the habits of any companion. It has been mentioned that his acquaintance with
Terry sprung from Terry’s familiarity
with the Ballantynes; as it ripened, he had, in fact, learned to
consider the ingenious comedian as another brother of that race; and
Terry, transplanted to the south, was used and trusted by him, and
continued to serve and communicate with him, very much as if one of themselves had found it
convenient to establish his headquarters in London.
Among the letters written immediately after Scott had completed his bargain with Dr
Douglas, is one which (unlike the rest) I found in his own repositories:—
“For Doctor Leyden, Calcutta. “Favoured by theHon. Lady Hood.
“Ashestiel, 25th August, 1811. “My dear Leyden,
“You hardly deserve I should write to you, for I have written you two long letters since I saw Mr Purves, and received from him your valued
dagger,* which I preserve carefully till Buonaparte shall come or send for it. I might take a cruel
revenge on you for your silence, by declining Lady
Hood’s request to make you acquainted with her; in which
case, I assure you, great would be your loss. She is quite a congenial spirit;
an ardent Scotswoman, and devotedly attached to those sketches of traditionary
history which all the waters of the Burrampooter cannot, I suspect, altogether
wash out of your honour’s memory. This, however, is the least of her
praises. She is generous, and feeling, and intelligent, and has contrived to
keep her heart and social affections broad awake amidst the chilling and
benumbing atmosphere of London fashion. I ought perhaps first to have told you,
that Lady H. was the honourable Mary
Mackenzie, daughter of Lord
Seaforth, and is the wife of Sir Samuel
Hood, one of our most distinguished naval heroes, who goes out
to take the command in your seas. Lastly, she is a very intimate friend of
Mrs Scott’s and myself, and first
gained my heart by her admiration of the Scenes of Infancy. So you see, my good
friend, what your laziness would have cost you, if, listening rather to the
dictates of revenge than generosity, I had withheld my pen from the inkhorn.
But, to confess the truth, I fear two such minds would soon have found each
other out, like good dancers in a ball-room, without the assistance of a master
of ceremonies. So I may even play Sir Clement
Cotterel with a good grace, since I cannot further my vengeance
by withholding my good offices. My last went by favour of John
Pringle,† who carried you a copy of
* A Malay crease, now at Abbotsford.
† A son of Mr
Pringle of Whytbank.
the Lady of the Lake, a poem which I really think you
will like better than Marmion
on the whole, though not perhaps in particular passages. Pray let me know if it
carried you back to the land of mist and mountain?
“Lady
Hood’s departure being sudden, and your deserts not
extraordinary (speaking as a correspondent), I have not time to write you much
news. The best domestic intelligence is, that the Sheriff of Selkirkshire, his
lease of Ashestiel being out, has purchased about 100 acres, extending along
the banks of the Tweed just above the confluence of the Gala, and about three
miles from Melrose. There, saith fame, he designs to bigg himself a
bower—sibi et amicis—and
happy will he be when India shall return you to a social meal at his cottage.
The place looks at present very like ‘poor Scotland’s gear.’
It consists of a bank and a haugh as poor and bare as Sir John Falstaff’s regiment; though I fear, ere you come
to see, the verdant screen I am about to spread over its nakedness will have in
some degree removed this reproach. But it has a wild solitary air, and commands
a splendid reach of the Tweed; and, to sum all in the words of Touchstone, ‘it is a poor thing, but
mine own.’
“Our little folks, whom you left infants, are now
shooting fast forward to youth, and show some blood, as far as aptitude to
learning is concerned. Charlotte and I are
wearing on as easily as this fashious world will permit. The outside of my head
is waxing grizzled, but I cannot find that this snow has cooled either my brain
or my heart.—Adieu, dear Leyden!—Pray,
brighten the chain of friendship by a letter when occasion serves; and believe
me ever yours, most affectionately,
Walter Scott.”
On the 28th of August, 1811, just three days after this letter was
penned, John Leyden died. On the very day when Scott was writing it, he,
having accompanied the Governor-General, Lord Minto, on
the expedition against Java, dashed into the surf, that he might be the first Briton in the
armament who should set foot on the island. “When,” says
Scott, in his Sketch of
Leyden’s Life, “the well-concerted movements of the invaders had
given them possession of the town of Batavia, he displayed the same ill-omened
precipitation in his haste to examine a library, or rather warehouse of books, in which
many Indian MSS. of value were said to be deposited. The apartment had not been
regularly ventilated, and either from this circumstance, or already affected by the
fatal sickness peculiar to Batavia, Leyden, when he left the
place, had a fit of shivering, and declared the atmosphere was enough to give any
mortal a fever. The presage was too just. He took to his bed and died in three days, on
the eve of the battle which gave Java to the British empire— ‘Grata quies patriæ, sed et omnis terra
sepulchrum.’”*
The packet in which Lady Hood,
on her arrival in India, announced this event, and returned Scott’s unopened letter, contained also a very touching one from the
late Sir John Malcolm, who, although he had never at
that time seen the poet, assumed, as a brother Borderer lamenting a common friend, the
language of old acquaintanceship; and to this Scott replied in the
same style which, from their first meeting in the autumn of the next year, became that, on
both sides, of warm and respectful attachment. I might almost speak in the like tenor of a
third letter in the same melancholy packet, from another enthusiastic admirer of Leyden, Mr Henry
Ellis,† who
* This little biography of Leyden is included in Scott’s Miscellaneous Prose Works,
vol. iv. p. 137.
† Now the Right Honourable
Henry Ellis, appointed, in 1836, ambassador from the Court of St
James’s to the Shah of Persia.
also communicated to Scott
his spirited stanzas on that untimely fate; but his personal intercourse with this
distinguished diplomatist took place at a later period.
Before passing from the autumn of 1811, I may mention, that the letter
of James Hogg, from which I have quoted an expression
of regret as to Ashestiel, was one of many from the Shepherd bearing about this date, which
Scott esteemed worthy of preservation. Strange as
the fact may appear, Hogg, on the other hand, seems to have preserved
none of the answers; but the half of the correspondence is quite sufficient to show how
constantly and earnestly, in the midst of his own expanding toils and interests,
Scott had continued to watch over the struggling fortunes of the
wayward and imprudent Shepherd. His letters to the different members of the
Buccleuch family at this time are full of the same subject. I
shall insert one, addressed, on the 24th of August to the Countess
of Dalkeith, along with a presentation copy of Hogg’s “Forest Minstrel.” It appears to me a
remarkable specimen of the simplest natural feelings on more subjects than one, couched in
a dialect which, in any hands but the highest, is apt to become a cold one:—
Ashestiel, Aug. 24, 1811. Dear Lady Dalkeith,
“The Ettrick
Bard, who compiled the enclosed collection, which I observe is
inscribed to your Ladyship, has made it his request that I would transmit a
copy for your acceptance. I fear your Ladyship will find but little amusement
in it; for the poor fellow has just talent sufficient to spoil him for his own
trade, without having enough to support him by literature. But I embrace the
more readily an opportunity of intruding upon your Ladyship’s leisure,
that I might thank you for the very kind and affecting
letter with which you honoured me some time ago. You do me justice in believing
that I was deeply concerned at the irreparable loss you sustained in the dear
and hopeful boy* to whom all the friends
of the Buccleuch family looked forward with so much
confidence. I can safely say, that since that inexpressible misfortune, I
almost felt as if the presence of one, with whom the recollection of past
happiness might in some degree be associated, must have awakened and added to
your Ladyship’s distress, from a feeling that scenes of which we were not
to speak, were necessarily uppermost in the recollection of both. But your
Ladyship knows better than I can teach, that, where all common topics of
consolation would be inapplicable, Heaven provides for us the best and most
effectual lenitive in the progress of time, and in the constant and unremitting
discharge of the duties incumbent on the station in which we are placed. Those
of your Ladyship are important, in proportion to the elevation of your rank,
and the promising qualities of the young minds which I have with so much
pleasure seen you forming and instructing to be comforts, I trust, to yourself,
and an honour to society. Poor Lady
Rosslyn† is gone, with all the various talent and vivacity
that rendered her society so delightful. I regret her loss the more, as she
died without ever making up some unkindness she had towards me for these
foolish politics. It is another example of the great truth, that life is too
short for the indulgence of animo-
* Lord Scott.
See ante, p. 149.
† The Countess of Rosslyn, born Lady Harriet
Bouverie, a very intimate friend of Lady Dalkeith, died 8th August,
1810. She had, as has been mentioned before, written to Scott,
resenting somewhat warmly his song at the Melville dinner. See ante, p.
106.
sity. I have the honour to
be, with the greatest respect, your Ladyship’s obliged and very humble
servant,
Walter Scott.”
The Countess, in acknowledgment of
the dedication of the Forest Minstrel,
sent Hogg, through Scott’s hands, the donation of a hundred guineas—a sum which, to him,
in those days, must have seemed a fortune; but which was only the pledge and harbinger of
still more important benefits conferred soon after her Ladyship’s husband became the head of his house.
CHAPTER XII. THE POEM OF ROKEBY BEGUN—CORRESPONDENCE WITH
MR MORRITT—DEATH OF HENRY DUKE OF
BUCCLEUCH—GEORGE ELLIS—JOHN
WILSON—APPRENTICES OF EDINBURGH—SCOTT’S
“NICK-NACKATORIES”—LETTER TO MISS BAILLIE ON THE
PUBLICATION OF CHILDE HAROLD—CORRESPONDENCE WITH LORD
BYRON. 1811—1812.
Of the L.4000 which Scott
paid for the original farm of Abbotsford, he borrowed one half from his eldest brother.
Major John Scott; the other moiety was raised by
the Ballantynes, and advanced on the security of the as yet unwritten,
though long meditated poem of Rokeby. He
immediately, I believe by Terry’s counsel,
requested Mr Stark of Edinburgh, an architect of
whose talents he always spoke warmly, to give him a design for an ornamental cottage in the
style of the old English vicarage-house. But before this could be done, Mr
Stark died; and Scott’s letters will show how, in the sequel, his
building plans, checked for a season by this occurrence, gradually expanded,—until twelve
years afterwards the site was occupied not by a cottage but a castle.
His first notions are sketched as follows, in a letter addressed to
Mr Morritt very shortly after the purchase.
“We stay at Ashestiel this season, but migrate the next to our new
settlements. I have fixed only two points
respecting my intended cottage—one is, that ‘it shall be in my garden, or rather
kailyard—the other, that the little drawingroom shall open into a little conservatory,
in which conservatory there shall be a fountain. These are articles of taste which I
have long since determined upon; but I hope before a stone of my paradise is begun we
shall meet and collogue upon it.”
Three months later (December 20th, 1811), he opens the design of his new
poem in another letter to the squire of Rokeby, whose household, it appears, had just been
disturbed by the unexpected accouchement of a
fair visitant. The allusion to the Quarterly Review, towards the
close, refers to an humorous
article on Sir John Sinclair’s
pamphlets about the Bullion Question—a joint production of Mr
Ellis and Mr Canning.
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq.
“My Dear Morritt,
“I received your kind letter a week or two ago. The
little interlude of the bantling at Rokeby reminds me of a lady whose mother
happened to produce her upon very short notice, between the hands of a game at
whist, and who, from a joke of the celebrated David
Hume, who was one of the players, lived long distinguished by
the name of The Parenthesis. My wife had once nearly
made a similar blunder in very awkward circumstances. We were invited to dine
at Melville Castle (to which we were then near neighbours), with the Chief Baron* and his lady, its temporary
inhabitants,—when behold, the Obadiah whom
I despatched two hours before dinner from our cottage to summon the Dr Slop of Edinburgh, halting at Melville Lodge
to rest his wearied horse,
* The late Right
Honourable Robert Dundas, Chief Baron of the Scotch
Court of Exchequer.
make apologies, and so forth, encountered the Melville
Castle Obadiah sallying on the identical
errand, for the identical man of skill, who, like an active knight-errant,
relieved the two distressed dames within three hours of each other. A blessed
duet they would have made if they had put off their crying bout, as it is
called, till they could do it in concert.
“And now, I have a grand project to tell you of.
Nothing less than a fourth romance, in verse; the theme, during the English
civil wars of Charles I., and the scene,
your own domain of Rokeby. I want to build my cottage a little better than my
limited finances will permit out of my ordinary income; and although it is very
true that an author should not hazard his reputation, yet, as Bob Acres says, I really think Reputation should
take some care of the gentleman in return. Now, I have all your scenery deeply
imprinted in my memory, and moreover, be it known to you, I intend to refresh
its traces this ensuing summer, and to go as far as the borders of Lancashire,
and the caves of Yorkshire, and so perhaps on to Derbyshire. I have sketched a
story which pleases me, and I am only anxious to keep my theme quiet, for its
being piddled upon by some of your Ready-to-catch
literati, as John Bunyan calls them,
would be a serious misfortune to me. I am not without hope of seducing you to
be my guide a little way on my tour. Is there not some book (sense or nonsense,
I care not) on the beauties of Teesdale I mean a descriptive work? If you can
point it out or lend it me, you will do me a great favour, and no less if you
can tell me any traditions of the period. By which party was Barnard Castle
occupied? It strikes me that it should be held for the Parliament. Pray, help
me in this, by truth, or fiction, or tradition,—I care not which, if it be
picturesque. What the deuce is the name of that wild glen, where we had such a clamber on horseback up a stone
staircase?—Cat’s Cradle, or Cat’s Castle, I think it was. I wish
also to have the true edition of the traditionary tragedy of your old house at
Mortham, and the ghost thereunto appertaining, and you will do me
yeoman’s service in compiling the relics of so valuable a legend. Item—Do
you know any thing of a striking ancient castle belonging, I think, to the
Duke of Leeds, called Coningsburgh?*
Grose notices it, but in a very
flimsy manner. I once flew past it on the mail-coach, when its round tower and
flying buttresses had a most romantic effect in the morning dawn.
“The Quarterly is beyond my praise, and as much beyond me as I was
beyond that of my poor old nurse who died the other day. Sir John Sinclair has gotten the golden fleece
at last. Dogberry would not desire a richer
reward for having been written down an ass. L.6000 a-year!† Good faith,
the whole reviews in Britain should rail at me, with my free consent, better
cheap by at least a cypher. There is no chance, with all my engagements, to be
at London this spring. My little boy Walter is ill with the measles, and I expect the rest to catch
the disorder, which appears,* thank God, very mild. Mrs
Scott joins in kindest compliments to Mrs Morritt, many merry Christmases to you and
believe me, truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
I insert Mr Morritt’s
answer, both for the light which
* See note, Ivanhoe, Waverley
Novels, vol. xvii. pp. 335-339.
† Shortly after the appearance of the article alluded to,
Sir John Sinclair was appointed cashier
of Excise for Scotland. “It should be added,” says his
biographer, “that the emoluments of the situation were greatly reduced at
the death of Sir James Grant, his
predecessor.”—Quarterly
Journal of Agriculture, September 1836, p. 125.
it throws on various particular passages in the poem as we have it,
and because it shows that some of those features in the general plan, which were
unfavourably judged on its publication, had been early and very strongly recommended to the
poet’s own consideration by the person whom, on this occasion, he was most anxious to
please.
To Walter Scott, Esq.
“Rokeby, 28th December, 1811. “My dear Scott,
“I begin at the top of my paper, because your
request must be complied with, and I foresee that a letter on the antiquities
of Teesdale will not be a short one. Your project delights me much, and I
willingly contribute my mite to its completion. Yet, highly as I approve of the
scene where you lay the events of your romance, I have, I think, some
observations to make as to the period you have chosen for it. Of this, however,
you will be a better judge after I have detailed my antiquarian researches.
Now, as to Barnard Castle, it was built in Henry
I.’s time, by Barnard, son of
Guy Baliol, who landed with the Conqueror. It remained
with the Baliols till their attainder by Edward I. The tomb of Alan of Galloway was here in Leland’s time; and he gives the inscription.
Alan, if you remember, married Margaret of
Huntingdon, David’s
daughter, and was father, by her, of Devorgild, who married John
Baliol, and from whom her son, John
Baliol, claimed the crown of Scotland. Edward
I. granted the castle and liberties to Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick; it descended (with that title) to
the Nevills, and by Ann Nevill to
Richard Duke of Gloucester, afterwards King Richard III. It does not appear to whom
Henry VII. or his son re-granted it, but
it fell soon into the hands of the Nevills, Earls of Westmoreland, by whom it
was forfeited in the rising
of the North. It was granted by James I. to
the citizens of London, from whom Sir Henry
Vane received it by purchase. It does not seem to have ever been
used as a place of strength after the rising of the North; and when the Vanes
bought it of the citizens, it was probably in a dismantled state. It was,
however, a possession of the Vanes before the Civil Wars, and, therefore, with
a safe conscience you may swear it stood for the Parliament. The lady for whose
ghost you enquire at Rokeby, has been so buried in uncertainty, you may make
what you like of her. The most interesting fiction makes her the heiress of the
Rokebys, murdered in the woods of the Greta by a greedy collateral who
inherited the estate. She reached the house before she expired, and her blood
was extant in my younger days at Mortham tower. Others say it was a
Lady Rokeby, the wife of the owner, who was shot in
the walks by robbers; but she certainly became a ghost, and, under the very
poetic nom de guerre of
Mortham Dobby, she appeared dressed as a fine lady,
with a piece of white silk trailing behind her—without a head, indeed (though
no tradition states how she lost so material a member), but with many of its
advantages for she had long hair on her shoulders and eyes, nose, and mouth, in
her breast. The parson once, by talking Latin to her, confined her under the
bridge that crosses the Greta at my dairy, but the arch being destroyed by
floods in 1771, became incapable of containing a ghost any longer, and she was
seen after that time by some of the older parishioners. I often heard of her in
my early youth, from a sibyl who lived in the park to the age of 105, but since
her death I believe the history has become obsolete.
“The Rokebys were at all times
loyal, at least from Henry IV. downward. They
lived early at Mortham tower, which was, I believe, a
better building than the tower of Rokeby, for here also was one where my house
now stands. I fancy they got Mortham by marriage.* Colonel
Rokeby, the last possessor of the old blood, was ruined in the
Civil Wars by his loyalty and unthriftiness, and the estates were bought by the
Robinsons, one of whom the longSir Thomas Robinson, so well-known and
well-quizzed in the time of our grandfathers, after laying out most of the
estate on this place, sold the place and the estate together to my father in
1769. Oliver Cromwell paid a visit to
Barnard Castle in his way from Scotland, October, 1648. He does not seem to
have been in the castle, but lodged in the town, whence I conclude the castle
was then uninhabitable. Now I would submit to you, whether, considering the
course of events, it would not be expedient to lay the time of your romance as
early as the War of the Roses. For, 1st. As you seem to hint that there will be
a ghost or two in it, like the King of Bohemia’s
giants, they will be ‘more out of the way.’ 2d. Barnard Castle, at
the time I propose, belonged to Nevills and
Plantagenets, of whom something advantageous
(according to your cavalier views) may be brought forward; whereas, a short
time before the Civil Wars of the Parliament, the Vanes
became possessors, and still remain so; of whom, if any Tory bard should be
able to say any thing obliging, it will certainly be ‘insigne, recens, adhuc indicium ore
alio,’ and do honour to his powers of imagination. 3d. The
knights of Rokeby itself were of high rank and fair domain at the earlier
* The heiress of Mortham married
Rokeby in the reign of Edward II.; and his own castle at Rokeby having been
destroyed by the Scotch after the battle of Bannockburn, he built one
on his wife’s estate—the same of which considerable remains still
exist—on the northern bank of the Greta.
period, and were
ruining themselves ignobly at the other. 4th. Civil war for civil war; the
first had two poetical sides, and the last only one; for the roundheads, though
I always thought them politically right, were sad materials for poetry; even
Milton cannot make much of them. I
think no time suits so well with a romance, of which the scene lies in this
country, as the Wars of the two Roses—unless you sing the rising of the North;
and then you will abuse Queen Elizabeth,
and be censured as an abettor of Popery. How you would be involved in political
controversy—with all our Whigs, who are anti-Stuarts; and all our Tories, who
are anti-Papistical! I therefore see no alternative but boldly to venture back
to the days of the holy King Harry; for, God
knows, it is difficult to say any thing civil of us since that period. Consider
only, did not Cromwell himself pray that the Lord would
deliver him from Sir Harry Vane? and what
will you do with him? still more, if you take into the account the improvements
in and about the castle to which yourself was witness when we visited it
together?*
“There is a book of a few pages, describing the
rides through and about Teesdale; I have it not, but if I can get it I will
send it. It is very bare of information, but gives names. If you can get the
third volume of Hutchinson’sHistory of Durham, it would give you some
useful bits of information, though very ill written. The glen where we
clambered up to Cat-castle is itself called Deepdale. I fear we have few
traditions that have survived the change of farms, and property of all sorts,
* Mr Morritt
alludes to the mutilation of a curious vaulted roof of extreme
antiquity, in the great tower of Barnard Castle, occasioned by its
conversion into a manufactory of patent shot;—an improvement at which
the Poet had expressed some indignation.
which has long taken place in this neighbourhood. But we
have some poetical names remaining, of which we none of us know the antiquity,
or at least the origin. Thus, in the scamper we took from Deepdale and
Cat-castle, we rode next, if you remember, to Cotherstone, an ancient village
of the Fitzhughs on the Tees, whence I showed you a rock
rising over the crown of the wood, still called Pendragon Castle. The river
that joins the Tees at Cotherstone is yclept the Balder, I fancy in honour of
the son of Odin; for the farm contiguous to it retains the name of
Woden’s Croft. The parish in which it stands is Romaldkirk, the church of
St Romald the hermit, and was once a hermitage itself in Teesdale forest. The
parish next to Rokeby, on the Tees below my house, is Wycliff, where the old
reformer was born, and the day-star
of the Reformation first rose on England. The family of Rokeby, who were the
proprietors of this place, were valiant and knightly. They seem to have had
good possessions at the Conquest (see Doomsday Book); in Henry III.’s reign they were Sheriffs of Yorkshire. In
Edward II.’s reign, Froissart informs us, that, when the Scotch
army decamped in the night so ingeniously from Weardale that nobody knew the
direction of their march, a hue and cry was raised after, them, and a reward of
a hundred merks annual value in land was offered by the crown for whoever could
discover them, and that de Rokeby—I think Sir
Ralph—was the fortunate knight who ascertained their quarters on
the moors near Hexham. In the time of Henry
IV., the High-Sheriff of Yorkshire, who overthrew Northumberland and drove him to Scotland after
the battle at Shrewsbury, was also a Rokeby. Tradition says that this sheriff
was before this an adherent of the Percys, and was the
identical knight who dissuaded Hotspur
from the enterprise, on whose letter the angry warrior comments so freely in Shakspeare. They are indeed, I think,
mentioned as adherents of the Percys in Chevy Chace, and
fought under their banner; I hope, therefore, that they broke that connexion
from pure patriotism, and not for filthy lucre. Such are all the annals that
occur to me at present. If you will come here we can summon a synod of the
oldest women in the country, and you shall cross-examine them as much as you
please. There are many romantic spots, and old names rather than remains of
peels, and towers, once called castles, which belonged to
Scroops, Fitzhughs, and
Nevills, with which you should be intimate before you
finish your poem, and also the abbots and monks of Egglestone, who were old and
venerable people, if you carry your story back into Romish times; and you will
allow that the beauty of the situation deserves it, if you recollect the view
from and near the bridge between me and Barnard Castle. Coningsburgh Castle, a
noble building as you say, stands between Doncaster and Rotherham. I think it
belongs to Lord Fitzwilliam, but am not
sure. You may easily find the account of it in Grose, or any of the other antiquarians. The building is a
noble circular tower, buttressed all round, and with walls of immoderate
thickness. It is of a very early era, but I do not know its date,
“I have almost filled my letter with antiquarianism;
but will not conclude without repeating how much your intention has charmed us.
The scenery of our rivers deserves to become classic ground, and I hope the
scheme will induce you to visit and revisit it often. I will contrive to ride
with you to Wenslydale and the Caves at least, and the border of Lancashire,
&c. if I can; and to facilitate that trip, I hope you will bring Mrs Scott here, that our dames may not be
impatient of our absence. ‘I know each dale, and every alley
green,’ between Rokeby and the Lakes and
Caves, and have no scruple in recommending my own guidance, under which you
will be far more likely to make discoveries than by yourself; for the people
have many of them no knowledge of their own country. Should I, in consequence
of your celebrity, be obliged to leave Rokeby from the influx of cockney
romancers, artists, illustrators, and sentimental tourists, I shall retreat to
Ashestiel, or to your new cottage, and thus visit on you the sins of your
writings. At all events, however, I shall raise the rent of my inn at Greta
bridge on the first notice of your book, as I hear the people at Callander have
made a fortune by you. Pray give our kindest and best regards to Mrs
Scott, and believe me ever, dear Scott, yours very truly,
J. B. S. Morritt.”
In January, 1812, Scott entered upon
the enjoyment of his proper salary as a clerk of Session, which, with his sheriffdom, gave
him from this time till very near the close of his life, a professional income of L.1600
a-year. On the 11th of the same month he lost his kind friend and first patron, Henry, third Duke of Buccleuch, and fifth of Queensberry.
Both these events are mentioned in the following letter to Joanna Baillie, who, among other things, had told
Scott that the materials for his purse were now on her table, and
expressed her anxiety to know who was the author of some beautiful lines on the recent
death of their friend, James Grahame, the poet of
the Sabbath. These verses had, it
appears, found their way anonymously into the newspapers.
To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead.
“January 17th, 1812. “My dear friend,
“The promise of the purse has flattered my imagi-nation so very agreeably that I
cannot help sending you an ancient silver mouth-piece, to which, if it pleases
your taste, you may adapt your intended labours: this, besides, is a genteel
way of tying you down to your promise; and to bribe you still farther, I assure
you it shall not be put to the purpose of holding bank notes or vulgar bullion,
but reserved as a place of deposit for some of my pretty little medals and
nicknackatories. When I do make another poetical effort, I shall certainly
expect the sum you mention from the booksellers, for they have had too good
bargains of me hitherto, and I fear I shall want a great deal of money to make
my cottage exactly what I should like it. Mean while, between ourselves, my
income has been very much increased since I wrote to you, in a different way.
My predecessor in the office of Clerk of Session retired to make room for me,
on the amiable condition of retaining all the emoluments during his life,
which, from my wish to retire from the bar and secure a certain though distant
income, I was induced to consent to; and considering his advanced age and
uncertain health, the bargain was really not a bad one. But alas! like
Sindbad’s old man of the sea, my
coadjutor’s strength increased prodigiously after he had fairly settled
himself on my shoulders, so that after five years’ gratuitous labour I
began to tire of my burden. Fortunately, Mr
Bankes’ late superannuation act provides a rateable
pension for office-holders obliged to retire after long and faithful services;
and my old friend very handsomely consented to be transferred from my galled
shoulders to the broad back of the public, although he is likely to sustain a
considerable diminution of income by the exchange, to which he has declared
himself willing to submit as a penalty for having lived longer than he or I
expected. To me it will make a difference of L.1300
a-year, no trifle to us who have no wish to increase our expense in a single
particular, and who could support it on our former income without
inconvenience. This I tell you in confidence, because I know you will be very
well pleased with any good fortune which comes in my way. Every body who cares
a farthing for poetry is delighted with your volume, and well they may. You
will neither be shocked nor surprised at hearing that Mr Jeffrey has announced himself of a contrary
opinion. So, at least, I understand, for our very ideas of what is poetry
differ so widely, that we rarely talk upon these subjects. There is something
in his mode of reasoning that leads me greatly to doubt whether,
notwithstanding the vivacity of his imagination, he really has any feeling of poetical genius, or whether he has worn it
all off by perpetually sharpening his wit on the grindstone of criticism.
“I am very glad that you met my dear friend,
George Ellis,—a wonderful man, who,
through the life of a statesman and politician, conversing with princes, wits,
fine ladies, and fine gentlemen, and acquainted with all the intrigues and
tracasseries of the cabinets and ruelles of foreign
courts, has yet retained all warm and kindly feelings which render a man
amiable in society, and the darling of his friends.
“The author of the elegy upon poor Grahame, is John
Wilson, a young man of very considerable poetical powers. He is
now engaged in a poem called the Isle of Palms, something in the style of
Southey. He is an eccentric genius,
and has fixed himself upon the banks of Windermere, but occasionally resides in
Edinburgh, where he now is. Perhaps you have seen him;—his father was a wealthy Paisley manufacturer—his
mother a sister of Robert Sym. He seems an excellent, warm-hearted,
and
enthusiastic young man; something too much, perhaps, of the latter quality,
places him among the list of originals.
“Our streets in Edinburgh are become as insecure as
your houses in Wapping. Only think of a formal association among nearly fifty
apprentices, aged from twelve to twenty, to scour the streets and knock down
and rob all whom they found in their way. This they executed on the last night
of the year with such spirit, that two men have died, and several others are
dangerously ill, from the wanton treatment they received. The watchword of
these young heroes when they met with resistance was—Mar
him, a word of dire import; and which, as they were all armed with
bludgeons loaded with lead, and were very savage, they certainly used in the
sense of Ratcliffe Highway. The worst of all this is not so much the immediate
evil, which a severe example* will probably check for the present, as that the
formation and existence of such an association, holding regular meetings and
keeping regular minutes, argues a woful negligence in the masters of these
boys, the tradesmen and citizens of Edinburgh, of that wholesome domestic
discipline which they ought, in justice to God and to man, to exercise over the
youth intrusted to their charge; a negligence which cannot fail to be
productive of every sort of vice, crime, and folly, among boys of that age.
“Yesterday I had the melancholy task of attending
the funeral of the good old Duke of
Buccleuch. It was, by his own direction, very private; but
scarce a
* Three of these lads, all under eighteen years of
age, were executed on the scene of one of the murders here alluded to,
April the 22d, 1812. Their youth and penitence excited the deepest
compassion; but never certainly was a severe example more necessary.
dry eye among the assistants—a rare tribute to a person
whose high rank and large possessions removed him so far out of the social
sphere of private friendship. But the Duke’s mind was moulded upon the
kindliest and most single-hearted model, and arrested the affections of all who
had any connexion with him. He is truly a great loss to Scotland, and will be
long missed and lamented, though the successor to his rank is heir also to his
generous spirit and affections. He was my kind friend. Ever yours,
W. Scott.”
The next of his letters to Joanna
Baillie is curious, as giving his first impressions on reading Childe Harold. It contains also a striking
sketch of the feelings he throughout life expressed, as to what he had observed of society
in London with a not less characteristic display of some of his own minor amusements.
To Miss Joanna Baillie.
“Ashestiel, April 4th, 1812.
“I ought not, even in modern gratitude, which may be
moved by the gift of a purse, much less in minstrel sympathy, which values it
more as your work than if it were stuffed with guineas, to have delayed
thanking you, my kind friend, for such an elegant and acceptable token of your
regard. My kindest and best thanks also attend the young lady who would not
permit the purse to travel untenanted.* I shall be truly glad when I can offer
them in person, but of that there is no speedy prospect. I don’t believe
I shall see London this great while again, which I do not very much regret,
were it
* The purse contained an old coin from Joanna Baillie’s niece, the
daughter of the Doctor.
not that it postpones
the pleasure of seeing you and about half-a-dozen other friends. Without having
any of the cant of loving retirement, and solitude, and rural pleasures, and so
forth, I really have no great pleasure in the general society of London; I have
never been there long enough to attempt any thing like living in my own way,
and the immense length of the streets separates the objects you are interested
in so widely from each other, that three parts of your time are past in
endeavouring to dispose of the fourth to some advantage. At Edinburgh, although
in general society we are absolute mimics of London, and imitate them equally
in late hours, and in the strange precipitation with which we hurry from one
place to another, in search of the society which we never sit still to enjoy,
yet still people may manage their own parties and motions their own way. But
all this is limited to my own particular circumstances,—for in a city like
London, the constant resident has beyond all other places the power of
conducting himself exactly as he likes. Whether this is entirely to be wished
or not may indeed be doubted. I have seldom felt myself so fastidious about
books, as in the midst of a large library, where one is naturally tempted to
imitate the egregious epicure who condescended to take only one bite out of the
sunny side of a peach. I suspect something of scarcity is necessary to make you
devour the intellectual banquet with a good relish and digestion, as we know to
be the case with respect to corporeal sustenance. But to quit all this egotism,
which is as little as possible to the purpose, you must be informed that
Erskine has enshrined your letter
among his household papers of the most precious kind. Among your thousand
admirers you have not a warmer or more kindly heart; he tells me Jeffrey talks very favourably of this volume.
I should be glad, for his own sake, that he took some
opportunity to retrace the paths of his criticism; but after pledging himself
so deeply as he has done, I doubt much his giving way even unto conviction. As
to my own share, I am labouring sure enough, but I have not yet got on the
right path where I can satisfy myself I shall go on with courage, for
diffidence does not easily beset me, and the public, still more than the
ladies, ‘stoop to the forward and the bold;’ but then in
either case, I fancy, the suitor for favour must be buoyed up by some sense of
deserving it, whether real or supposed. The celebrated apology of Dryden for a passage which he could not
defend, ‘that he knew when he wrote it, it was bad enough to
succeed,’ was, with all deference to his memory, certainly
invented to justify the fact after it was committed.
“Have you seen the Pilgrimage of Childe Harold, by Lord Byron? It
is, I think, a very clever poem, bat gives no good symptom of the
writer’s heart or morals; his hero, notwithstanding the affected
antiquity of the style in some parts, is a modern man of fashion and fortune,
worn out and satiated with the pursuits of dissipation, and although there is a
caution against it in the preface, you cannot for your soul avoid concluding
that the author, as he gives an account of his own travels, is also doing so in
his own character. Now really this is too bad; vice ought to be a little more
modest, and it must require impudence at least equal to the noble Lord’s
other powers, to claim sympathy gravely for the ennui arising from his being
tired of his wassailers and his paramours. There is a monstrous deal of conceit
in it too, for it is informing the inferior part of the world that their little
old-fashioned scruples of limitation are not worthy of his regard, while his
fortune and possessions are such as have put all sorts of gratifications too
much in his
power to afford him any pleasure. Yet with all this conceit and assurance there
is much poetical merit in the book, and I wish you would read it.
“I have got Rob
Roy’s gun, a long Spanish-barrelled piece, with his
initials, R. M. C., for Robert Macgregor Campbell, which
latter name he assumed in compliment to the Argyle family, who afforded him a
good deal of private support, because he was a thorn in the side of their old
rival house of Montrose. I have, moreover, a relic of a
more heroic character; it is a sword which was given to the great Marquis of Montrose by Charles I., and appears to have belonged to his father, our
gentle King Jamie. It had been preserved for
a long time at Gartmore, but the present proprietor was selling his library, or
great part of it, and John Ballantyne,
the purchaser, wishing to oblige me, would not conclude a bargain, which the
gentleman’s necessity made him anxious about, till he flung the sword
into the scale; it is, independent of its other merits, a most beautiful blade.
I think a dialogue between this same sword and Rob
Roy’s gun, might be composed with good effect.
“We are here in a most extraordinary
pickle—considering that we have just entered upon April, when according to the
poet, ‘primroses paint the gay plain,’ instead of which both
hill and valley are doing penance in a sheet of snow of very respectable depth.
Mail-coaches have been stopt—shepherds, I grieve to say, lost in the snow; in
short, we experience all the hardships of a January storm at this late period
of the spring; the snow has been near a fortnight, and if it departs with dry
weather, we may do well enough, but if wet weather should ensue, the wheat crop
through Scotland will be totally lost. My thoughts are anxiously turned to the
Peninsula, though I think the Spaniards have but one
choice, and that is to choose Lord
Wellington dictator; I have no doubt he could put things right
yet. As for domestic politics, I really give them very little consideration.
Your friends, the Whigs, are angry enough, I suppose, with the Prince Regent, but those who were most apt to
flatter his follies, have little reason to complain of the usage they have met
with—and he may probably think that those who were true to the father in his
hour of calamity, may have the best title to the confidence of the son. The
excellent private character of the old King
gave him great advantages as the head of a free government. I fear the Prince
will long experience the inconveniences of not having attended to his own.
Mrs Siddons, as fame reports, has
taken another engagement at Covent Garden: surely she is wrong; she should have
no twilight, but set in the full possession of her powers.*
“I hope Campbell’s plan of lectures will answer.† I think
the brogue may be got over, if he will not trouble himself by attempting to
correct it, but read with fire and feeling; he is an animated reciter, but I
never heard him read.
“I have a great mind, before sealing this long
scrawl, to send you a list of the contents of the purse as they at present
stand,
“1st. Miss Elizabeth
Baillie’s purse-penny, called by the learned a denarius of
the Empress Faustina.
“2d. A gold brooch, found in a bog in Ireland,
* Mrs Siddons
made a farewell appearance at Covent Garden, as Lady Macbeth, on the 29th of June, 1812;
but she afterwards resumed her profession for short intervals more than
once, and did not finally bid adieu to the stage until the 9th of June,
1819.
† Mr Thomas
Campbell had announced his first course of lectures on
English Poetry about this time.
which, for aught
I know, fastened the mantle of an Irish Princess in the days of
Cuthullin, or Neal of the nine
hostages.
“3d. A toadstone—a celebrated amulet, which was
never lent to any one unless upon a bond for a thousand merks for its being
safely restored. It was sovereign for protecting new born children and their
mothers from the power of the fairies, and has been repeatedly borrowed from my
mother, on account of this virtue.
“4th. A coin of Edward
I., found in Dryburgh Abbey.
“5th. A funeral ring, with Dean Swift’s hair.
“So you see my nicknackatory is well supplied,
though the purse is more valuable than all its contents.
“Adieu, my dear friend, Mrs
Scott joins in kind respects to your sister, the Doctor, and
Mrs Baillie,
Walter Scott.”
A month later, the Edinburgh Review on Lord
Byron’sRomaunt
having just appeared, Scott says to Mr Morritt (May 12), “I agree very much in what
you say of Childe Harold. Though there is something provoking
and insulting to morality and to feeling in his misanthropical ennui, it gives,
nevertheless, an odd piquancy to his descriptions and reflections. This is upon the
whole a piece of most extraordinary power, and may rank its author with our first
poets. I see the Edinburgh Review has
hauled its wind.”
Lord Byron was, I need not say, the prime object of
interest this season in the fashionable world of London; nor did the Prince Regent owe the subsequent hostilities of the noble Poet
to any neglect on his part of the brilliant genius which had just been fully revealed in
the Childe Harold. Mr Murray, the publisher of the Romaunt, on hearing, on
the 29th of June, Lord Byron’s account of his introduction to his Royal Highness, conceived that, by
communicating it to Scott, he might afford the
opportunity of such a personal explanation between his two poetical friends, as should
obliterate on both sides whatever painful feelings had survived the offensive allusions to
Marmion in the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers; and this good-natured
step had the desired consequences. Mr Moore says
that the correspondence “begun in some enquiries which Mr Scott
addressed to Lord Byron on the subject of his interview with
Royalty;”* but he would not have used that expression, had he seen the following
letter:—
To the Right Honourable Lord Byron, &c. &c.
Care of John Murray, Esq., Fleet Street, London.
“Edinburgh, July 3d, 1812. “My Lord,
“I am uncertain if I ought to profit by the apology
which is afforded me, by a very obliging communication from our acquaintance,
John Murray of Fleet Street, to give
your Lordship the present trouble. But my intrusion concerns a large debt of
gratitude due to your Lordship, and a much less important, one of explanation,
which I think I owe to myself, as I dislike standing low in the opinion of any
person whose talents rank so highly in my own, as your Lordship’s most
deservedly do.
“The first count, as our
technical language expresses it, relates to the high pleasure I have received
from the Pilgrimage of Childe
Harold, and from its precursors; the former, with all its classical
associations, some of which are lost on so poor a scholar as I am, possesses
the additional charm of vivid and animated description, mingled with original
sentiment;—
* Life
and Works of Lord Byron, vol. ii. p. 155.
but besides this
debt, which I owe your Lordship in common with the rest of the reading public,
I have to acknowledge my particular thanks for your having distinguished by
praise, in the work which your Lordship rather dedicated in general to satire,
some of my own literary attempts. And this leads me to put your Lordship right
in the circumstances respecting the sale of Marmion, which had reached you in a distorted
and misrepresented form, and which, perhaps, I have some reason to complain,
were given to the public without more particular enquiry. The poem, my Lord,
was not written upon contract for a sum of money—though it is too true that it
was sold and published in a very unfinished state, which I have since
regretted, to enable me to extricate myself from some engagements which fell
suddenly upon me, by the unexpected misfortunes of a very near relation. So
that, to quote statute and precedent, I really come under the case cited by
Juvenal, though not quite in the
extremity of the classic author— Esurit, intactam Paridi nisi vendit Agaven. And so much for a mistake, into which your Lordship might easily fall,
especially as I generally find it the easiest way of stopping sentimental
compliments on the beauty, &c., of certain poetry, and the delights which
the author must have taken in the composition, by assigning the readiest reason
that will cut the discourse short, upon a subject where one must appear either
conceited, or affectedly rude and cynical.
“As for my attachment to literature, I sacrificed
for the pleasure of pursuing it very fair chances of opulence and professional
honours, at a time of life when I fully knew their value, and I am not ashamed
to say, that in deriving advantages in compensation from the partial favour of the public, I have added some comforts and
elegancies to a bare independence. I am sure your Lordship’s good sense
will easily put this unimportant egotism to the right account,—for though I do
not know the motive would make me enter into controversy with a fair or an unfair literary critic—I may be well excused for a wish
to clear my personal character from any tinge of mercenary or sordid feeling in
the eyes of a contemporary of genius. Your Lordship will likewise permit me to
add, that you would have escaped the trouble of this explanation, had I not
understood that the satire alluded to had been suppressed, not to be reprinted.
For in removing a prejudice on your Lordship’s own mind, I had no
intention of making any appeal by or through you to the public, since my own
habits of life have rendered my defence as to avarice or rapacity rather too
easy.
“Leaving this foolish matter where it lies, I have
to request your Lordship’s acceptance of my best thanks for the
flattering communication which you took the trouble to make Mr Murray on my behalf, and which could not
fail to give me the gratification, which I am sure you intended. I dare say our
worthy bibliopolist overcoloured his report of your Lordship’s
conversation with the Prince Regent, but I
owe my thanks to him nevertheless, for the excuse he has given me for intruding
these pages on your Lordship. Wishing you health, spirit, and perseverance, to
continue your pilgrimage through the interesting countries which you have still
to pass with Childe Harold, I
have the honour to be, my Lord, your Lordship’s obedient servant,
Walter Scott.
“P.S. Will your Lordship permit me a verbal
criticism on Childe Harold,
were it only to show I have read his Pilgrimage with attention?
‘Nuestra Dama de la Pena’
means, I suspect, not our Lady of Crime or Punishment, but our Lady of the
Cliff; the difference is, I believe, merely in the accentuation of
‘peña.’”
Lord Byron’s answer was in these terms:—
To Walter Scott, Esq. Edinburgh.
“St James’s Street, July 6, 1812. “Sir,
“I have just been honoured with your letter.—I feel
sorry that you should have thought it worth while to notice the evil works of
my nonage, as the thing is suppressed voluntarily, and
your explanation is too kind not to give me pain. The Satire was written when I was very young and
very angry, and fully bent on displaying my wrath and my wit, and now I am
haunted by the ghosts of my wholesale assertions. I cannot sufficiently thank
you for your praise; and now, waiving myself, let me talk to you of the
Prince Regent. He ordered me to be
presented to him at a ball: and after some sayings, peculiarly pleasing from
royal lips, as to my own attempts, he talked to me of you and your
immortalities; he preferred you to every bard past and present, and asked which
of your works pleased me most. It was a difficult question. I answered, I
thought the Lay. He said his own
opinion was nearly similar. In speaking of the others, I told him that I
thought you more particularly the poet of Princes, as
they never appeared more fascinating than in Marmion and the Lady of the Lake. He was pleased to
coincide, and to dwell on the description of your Jameses as no less royal than
poetical. He spoke alternately of Homer and
yourself, and seemed well acquainted with both; so that (with the exception of
the Turks and your humble servant) you were in very good company. I defy
Murray to have exaggerated his Royal Highness’s opinion of your powers, nor can I
pretend to enumerate all he said on the subject; but it may give you pleasure
to hear that it was conveyed in language which would only suffer by my
attempting to transcribe it; and with a tone and taste which gave me a very
high idea of his abilities and accomplishments, which I had hitherto considered
as confined to manners, certainly superior to those of
any living gentleman.
“This interview was accidental. I never went to the
levee; for having seen the courts of Mussulman and Catholic sovereigns, my
curiosity was sufficiently allayed: and my politics being as perverse as my
rhymes, I had, in fact, no business there. To be thus praised by your Sovereign
must be gratifying to you; and if that gratification is not alloyed by the
communication being made through me, the bearer of it will consider himself
very fortunately, and sincerely, your obliged and obedient servant,
Byron.
“P.S.—Excuse this scrawl, scratched in a great
hurry, and just after a journey.”
Scott immediately replied as follows:—
To the Right Hon. Lord Byron, &c. &c. &c.
“Abbotsford near Melrose, 16th July, 1812. “My Lord,
“I am much indebted to your Lordship for your kind
and friendly letter: and much gratified by the Prince
Regent’s good opinion of my literary attempts. I know so
little of courts or princes, that any success I may have had in hitting off the
Stuarts is, I am afraid, owing to a little old Jacobite leaven which I sucked
in with the numerous traditionary tales that amused my infancy. It is a
fortunate thing for the Prince himself that he has a literary turn, since nothing can so
effectually relieve the ennui of state, and the anxieties of power.
“I hope your Lordship intends to give us more of
Childe Harold. I was
delighted that my friend Jeffrey—for
such, in despite of many a feud, literary and political, I always esteem
him—has made so handsomely the amende
honorable for not having discovered in the bud the merits of
the flower; and I am happy to understand that the retractation so handsomely
made was received with equal liberality. These circumstances may perhaps some
day lead you to revisit Scotland, which has a maternal claim upon you, and I
need not say what pleasure I should have in returning my personal thanks for
the honour you have done me. I am labouring here to contradict an old proverb,
and make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, namely, to convert a bare haugh and brae, of about 100
acres, into a comfortable farm. Now, although I am living in a gardener’s
hut, and although the adjacent ruins of Melrose have little to tempt one who
has seen those of Athens, yet, should you take a tour which is so fashionable
at this season, I should be very happy to have an opportunity of introducing
you to any thing remarkable in my fatherland. My neighbour, Lord Somerville, would, I am sure, readily
supply the accommodations which I want, unless you prefer a couch in a closet,
which is the utmost hospitality I have at present to offer. The fair, or shall
I say the sage, Apreece that was, Lady Davy that is, is soon to show us how much
science she leads captive in Sir
Humphrey; so your Lordship sees, as the citizen’s wife says in
the farce—‘Threadneedle Street has some charms,’ since they
procure us such celebrated visitants. As for me, I would rather cross-question
your Lordship about the outside of Parnassus, than learn the nature of the
contents of all the other mountains in the world. Pray,
when under ‘its cloudy canopy’ did you hear any thing of the
celebrated Pegasus? Some say he has been brought off with other curiosities to
Britain, and now covers at Tattersal’s. I would fain have a cross from
him out of my little moss-trooper’s Galloway, and I think your Lordship
can tell me how to set about it, as I recognise his true paces in the
high-mettled description of Ali
Pacha’s military court.
“A wise man said—or, if not, I, who am no wise man,
now say, that there is no surer mark of regard than when your correspondent
ventures to write nonsense to you. Having, therefore, like Dogberry, bestowed all my tediousness upon your
Lordship, you are to conclude that I have given you a convincing proof that I
am very much your Lordship’s obliged and very faithful servant,
Walter Scott.”
From this time the epistolary intercourse between Scott and Byron continued
to be kept up; and it erelong assumed a tone of friendly confidence equally honourable to
both these great competitors, without rivalry, for the favour of the literary world.
The date of the letter last quoted immediately preceded that of
Scott’s second meeting with another of the
most illustrious of his contemporaries. He had met Davy at Mr Wordsworth’s when
in the first flush of his celebrity in 1804, and been, as one of his letters states, much
delighted with “the simple and unaffected style of his bearing—the most agreeable
characteristic of high genius.” Sir Humphrey, now at the
summit of his fame, had come by his marriage with Scott’s
accomplished relation, into possession of an ample fortune; and he and his bride were among
the first of the poet’s visitants in the original cabin at Abbotsford.
The following letter is an answer to one in which Mr Southey had besought Scott’s good offices in behalf of an application which he thought of
making to be appointed Historiographer Royal, in the room of Mr
Dutens, just dead. It will be seen that both poets regarded with much alarm
the symptoms of popular discontent which appeared in various districts, particularly among
the Luddites, as they were called, of Yorkshire, during the
uncertain condition of public affairs consequent on the assassination of the Prime
Minister, Mr Percival, by Bellingham, in the lobby of the House of Commons, on the
11th of May, 1812; and that Scott had, in his capacity of Sheriff, had
his own share in suppressing the tumults of the only manufacturing town of Selkirkshire.
The last sentence of the letter alludes to a hint dropped in the Edinburgh Review, that the author of the historical
department of the Edinburgh Annual Register,
ought to be called to the bar of the House of Commons, in consequence of the bold language
in which he had criticized the parliamentary hostility of the Whigs to the cause of Spain.
To Robert Southey, Esq., Keswick.
“Edinburgh, 4th June, 1812. “My dear Southey,
“It is scarcely necessary to say that the instant I
had your letter I wrote to the only friend I have in power, Lord Melville (if indeed he be now in power),
begging him for the sake of his own character, for the remembrance of his
father who wished you sincerely well, and by every other objuration I could
think of, to back your application. All I fear, if administration remain, is
the influence of the clergy, who have a strange disposition to job away among
themselves the rewards of literature. But I fear they are all to pieces above stairs, and much owing to rashness and
mismanagement; for if they could not go on without Canning and Wellesley, they
certainly should from the beginning have invited them in as companions, and not
mere retainers. On the whole, that cursed compound of madness and villany has
contrived to do his country more mischief at one blow than all her sages and
statesmen will be able to repair perhaps in our day. You are quite right in
apprehending a Jacquerie; the country is mined below our
feet. Last week, learning that a meeting was to be held among the weavers of
the large manufacturing village of Galashiels, for the purpose of cutting a
man’s web from his loom, I apprehended the ringleaders and disconcerted
the whole project; but in the course of my enquiries, imagine my surprise at
discovering a bundle of letters and printed manifestoes, from which it appeared
that the Manchester Weavers’ Committee corresponds with every
manufacturing town in the South and West of Scotland, and levies a subsidy of
2s. 6d. per man—(an immense sum)—for the ostensible purpose of petitioning
Parliament for redress of grievances, but doubtless to sustain them in their
revolutionary movements. An energetic administration, which had the confidence
of the country, would soon check all this; but it is our misfortune to lose the
pilot when the ship is on the breakers. But it is sickening to think of our
situation.
“I can hardly think there could have been any
serious intention of taking the hint of the Review, and yet liberty has so often been made
the pretext of crushing its own best supporters, that I am always prepared to
expect the most tyrannical proceedings from professed demagogues.
“I am uncertain whether the Chamberlain will be liable to removal—if not I should
hope you may be pretty sure of your object. Believe me ever yours faithfully,
Walter Scott.
“4th June.—What a different birthday from those
I have seen! It is likely I shall go to Rokeby for a few days this summer;
and if so, I will certainly diverge to spend a day at Keswick.”
Mr Southey’s application was unsuccessful—the
office he wished for having been bestowed, as soon as it fell vacant, on a person certainly
of vastly inferior literary pretensions—the late Rev. J. S.
Clarke, D.D., private librarian to the Regent.
END OF VOLUME SECOND.EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND CO., PAUL’S WORK.
MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. VOLUME THE THIRD. MDCCCXXXVII. ROBERT CADELL, EDINBURGH. JOHN MURRAY AND WHITTAKER AND CO., LONDON. CONTENTS OF VOLUME THIRD. PAGE CHAPTER I. The “Flitting” to Abbotsford—Plantations—George
Thomson—Rokeby and Triermain in progress—Excursion to Flodden—Bishop-Auckland—And Rokeby
Park—Correspondence with Crabbe—Life of Patrick
Carey, &c.—Publication of Rokeby—And of the
Bridal of Triermain— 1812—1813, 1 CHAPTER II. Affairs of John Ballantyne and Co.—Causes of their
Derangement—Letters of Scott to his Partners—Negotiation for Relief
with Messrs Constable—New Purchase of Land at
Abbotsford—Embarrassments continued—John Ballentyne’s
Expresses—Drumlanrig—Penrith, &c.—Scott’s Meeting with the
Marquis of Abercorn at Longtown—His Application to the
Duke of Buccleuch—Offer of the Poet-Laureateship Considered—And
Declined—Address of the City of Edinburgh to the Prince-Regent—Its Reception—Civic Honours
conferred on Scott—Question of Taxation on Literary Income—Letters to
Mr Morritt—Mr Southey—Mr
Richardson—Mr Crabbe—Miss Baillie
and Lord Byron— 1813, 55 PAGE CHAPTER III. Insanity of Henry Weber—Letters on the Abdication of
Napoleon, &c.—Publication of
Scott’s Life and Edition of
Swift—Essays for the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica—Completion and Publication of Waverley 1814, 109 CHAPTER IV. Voyage to the Shetland Isles, &c.—Scott’s Diary
kept on Board the Lighthouse Yacht—July and August—1814, 134 CHAPTER V. Diary on Board the Lighthouse Yacht continued—The Orkneys—Kirkwall—Hoy—The
Standing Stones of Stennis, &c.—August, 1814, 184 CHAPTER VI. Diary continued—Stromness—Bessy Millie’s Charm—Cape Wrath—Cave of
Sinowe—The Hebrides—Scalpa,—1814, 203 CHAPTER VII. Diary continued—Isle of Harris—Monuments of the Chiefs of Macleod—Isle of
Skye—Dunvegan Castle—Loch Oorrisltin—Macallister’s Cave—1814,
222 CHAPTER VIII. Diary continued—Cave of Egg—Iona—Staffa—Dunstaffnage—Dunluce
Castle—Giant’s Causeway—Isle of Arran, &c.—Diary concluded—August—September, 1814, 239 CHAPTER IX. Letters in Verse from Zetland and Orkney—Death of the Duchess of
Buccleuch—Correspondence with the Duke—Altrive Lake—Negotiation concerning
the Lord of the Isles completed—Success of Waverley—Contemporaneous Criticisms on the Novel—Letters to
Scott from Mr Morritt—Mr Lewis and
Miss Maclean Clephane—Letter from James
Ballantyne to Miss Edgeworth—1814,
278 PAGE CHAPTER X. Progress of the Lord of the Isles—Correspondence
with Mr Joseph Train—Rapid completion of the Lord
of the Isles—“Six Weeks at Christmas”—“Refreshing the
Machine”—Publication of the Poem—And of Guy
Mannering—Letters to Morritt—Terry—And
John Ballantyne—Anecdotes by James
Ballantyne—Visit to London—Meeting with Lord Byron—Dinners
at Carlton House—1814—1815, 306 CHAPTER XI. Battle of Waterloo—Letter of Sir Charles Bell—Visit to
the Continent—Waterloo Letters from Brussels and Paris—Anecdotes of
Scott at Paris—The Duke of Wellington—The
Emperor
Alexander—Blucher—Platoff—Party at
Ermenonville, &c.—London—Parting with—Lord
Byron—Scott’s Birmingham Knife—Return to
Abbotsford—Anecdotes by Mr Skene and James
Ballantyne—Notes on “The Field of Waterloo,”—1815, 346 CHAPTER XII. Poem of the Field of Waterloo published—Revision of
Paul’s Letters, &c.—Quarrel and Reconciliation with
Hogg—Football Match at Carterhaugh—Songs on the Banner of
Buccleuch—Dinner at Bowhill—Design for a Piece of Plate to the
Sutors of Selkirk—Letters to the Duke of Buccleuch—Joanna
Baillie—And Mr Morritt—1815,
386 APPENDIX. The Durham Garland— 405
MEMOIRSOF THELIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.CHAPTER I. THE “FLITTING” TO ABBOTSFORD—PLANTATIONS—GEORGE
THOMSON—ROKEBY AND TRIERMAIN IN PROGRESS—EXCURSION TO FLODDEN—BISHOP-AUCKLAND—AND ROKEBY
PARK—CORRESPONDENCE WITH CRABBE—LIFE OF PATRICK
CAREY, ETC.—PUBLICATION OF ROKEBY AND OF THE BRIDAL OF TRIERMAIN. 1812-1813.
Towards the end of May, 1812, the Sheriff finally removed from
Ashestiel to Abbotsford. The day when this occurred was a sad one for many a poor
neighbour—for they lost, both in him and his wife, very generous protectors. In such a
place, among the few evils which counterbalance so many good things in the condition of the
peasantry, the most afflicting is the want of access to medical advice. As far as their
means and skill would go, they had both done their utmost to supply this want; and
Mrs Scott, in particular, had made it so much her
business to visit the sick in their scattered cottages, and bestowed on them the contents
of her medicine-chest as well as of the larder and cellar, with such
unwearied kindness, that her name is never mentioned there to this day without some
expression of tenderness. Scott’s children
remember the parting scene as one of unmixed affliction—but it had had, as we shall see,
its lighter features.
Among the many amiable English friends whom he owed to his frequent
visits at Rokeby Park, there was, I believe, none that had a higher place in his regard
than the late Anne Lady Alvanley, the widow of the
celebrated Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas.
He was fond of female society in general; but her ladyship was a woman after his heart;
well born, and highly bred, but without the slightest tinge of the frivolities of modern
fashion; soundly informed, and a warm lover of literature and the arts, but holding in as
great horror as himself the imbecile chatter and affected ecstasies of the bluestocking
generation. Her ladyship had written to him early in May, by Miss Sarah
Smith (now Mrs Bartley), whom I have
already mentioned as one of his theatrical favourites; and his answer contains, among other
matters, a sketch of the “Forest Flitting.”
To the Right Honourable Lady Alvanley.
“Ashestiel, 25th May, 1812.
“I was honoured, my dear Lady Alvanley, by the kind letter which you sent me with our
friend Miss Smith, whose talents are, I
hope, receiving at Edinburgh the full meed of honourable applause which they so
highly merit. It is very much against my will that I am forced to speak of them
by report alone, for this being the term of removing, I am under the necessity
of being at this farm to superintend the transference of my goods and chattels,
a most miscellaneous collection, to a small property, about five
miles down the Tweed, which I purchased last year. The neighbours have been
much delighted with the procession of my furniture, in which old swords, bows,
targets, and lances, made a very conspicuous show. A family of turkeys was
accommodated within the helmet of some preux
chevalier of ancient Border fame; and the very cows, for
aught I know, were bearing banners and muskets. I assure your ladyship that
this caravan, attended by a dozen of ragged rosy peasant children, carrying
fishing-rods and spears, and leading poneys, greyhounds, and spaniels, would,
as it crossed the Tweed, have furnished no bad subject for the pencil, and
really reminded me of one of the gypsey groupes of Callot upon their march.
“Edinburgh, 28th May.
“I have got here at length, and had the pleasure
to hear Miss Smith speak the Ode on the Passions
charmingly last night. It was her benefit, and the house was tolerable,
though not so good as she deserves, being a very good girl, as well as an
excellent performer.
“I have read Lord
Byron with great pleasure, though pleasure is not quite the
appropriate word. I should say admiration—mixed with regret, that the
author should have adopted such an unamiable misanthropical tone.—The
reconciliation with Holland-house is extremely edifying, and may teach
young authors to be in no hurry to exercise their satirical vein. I
remember an honest old Presbyterian, who thought it right to speak with
respect even of the devil himself, since no one knew in what corner he
might one day want a friend. But Lord Byron is young,
and certainly has great genius, and has both time and capacity to make
amends for his errors. I wonder if he will pardon the Edinburgh reviewers, who have read their
recantation of their former strictures.
“Mrs Scott
begs to offer her kindest and most respectful compliments to your ladyship
and the young ladies. I hope we shall get into Yorkshire this season to see
Morritt: he and his lady are
really delightful persons. Believe me, with great respect, dear Lady Alvanley, your much honoured and obliged
Walter Scott.”
A week later, in answer to a letter, mentioning the approach of the
celebrated sale of books in which the Roxburghe Club originated, Scott says to his trusty ally, Daniel
Terry:—
“Edinburgh, 9th June, 1812. “My dear Terry,
“I wish you joy of your success, which, although all
reports state it as most highly flattering, does not exceed what I had hoped
for you. I think I shall do you a sensible pleasure in requesting that you will
take a walk over the fields to Hampstead one of these fine days, and deliver
the enclosed to my friend Miss Baillie,
with whom, I flatter myself, you will be much pleased, as she has all the
simplicity of real genius. I mentioned to her some time ago that I wished to
make you acquainted, so that the sooner you can call upon her the compliment
will be the more gracious. As I suppose you will sometimes look in at the
Roxburghe sale, a memorandum respecting any remarkable articles will be a great
favour.
“Abbotsford was looking charming, when I was obliged
to mount my wheel in this court, too fortunate that I have at length some share
in the roast meat I am daily engaged in turning. Our flitting and removal from
Ashestiel baffled all description; we had twenty-four cart-loads of the veriest
trash in nature, besides dogs, pigs, poneys, poultry, cows, calves, bare-headed
wenches, and bare-breeched
boys. In other respects we are going on in the old way, only poor Percy is dead. I intend to have an old stone set up by
his grave, with ‘Cy gist li preux
Percie,’ and I hope future antiquaries will debate
which hero of the house of Northumberland has left his bones in Teviotdale.*
Believe me yours very truly,
Walter Scott.”
This was one of the busiest summers of Scott’s busy life. Till the 12th of July he was at his post in the
Court of Session five days every week; but every Saturday evening found him at Abbotsford,
to observe the progress his labourers had made within doors and without in his absence; and
on Monday night he returned to Edinburgh. Even before the Summer Session commenced he
appears to have made some advance in his Rokeby, for he writes to Mr Morritt,
from Abbotsford, on the 4th of May—“As for the house and the poem, there are twelve
masons hammering at the one and one poor noddle at the other—so they are both in
progress;” and his literary labours throughout the long vacation were continued under
the same sort of disadvantage. That autumn he had, in fact, no room at all for himself. The
only parlour which had been hammered into any thing like habitable condition, served at
once for dining-room, drawing-room, school-room, and study. A window looking to the river
was kept sacred to his desk; an old bed-curtain was nailed up across the room close behind
his chair, and there, whenever the spade, the dibble, or the chisel (for he took his full
share in all the work on hand) was laid aside, he pursued his poetical tasks,
* The epitaph of this favourite greyhound may be seen on the edge
of the bank, a little way below the house of Abbotsford.
apparently undisturbed and unannoyed by the surrounding confusion of
masons and carpenters, to say nothing of the lady’s small talk, the children’s
babble among themselves, or their repetition of their lessons. The truth no doubt was, that
when at his desk he did little more, as far as regarded poetry, than write down the lines
which he had fashioned in his mind while pursuing his vocation as a planter, upon that bank
which received originally, by way of joke, the title of the thicket.
“I am now,” he says to Ellis
(Oct. 17), “adorning a patch of naked land with trees, facturis nepotibus umbram, for I shall never live to enjoy
their shade myself otherwise than in the recumbent posture of Tityrus or Menalcas.” But
he did live to see the thicket deserve not only that name, but a nobler one; and to fell
with his own hand many a well-grown tree that he had planted there.
Another plantation of the same date, by his eastern boundary, was less
successful. For this he had asked and received from his early friend, the Marchioness of Stafford, a supply of acorns from Trentham,
and it was named in consequence Sutherland bower; but the
field-mice, in the course of the ensuing winter, contrived to root up and devour the whole
of her ladyship’s goodly benefaction. A third space had been set apart, and duly
enclosed, for the reception of some Spanish chestnuts offered to him by an admirer
established in merchandise at Seville; but that gentleman had not been a very knowing ally
as to such matters, for when the chestnuts arrived, it turned out that they had been
boiled.
Scott writes thus to Terry, in
September, while the Roxburghe sale was still going on:—
“I have lacked your assistance, my dear sir, for
twenty whimsicalities this autumn. Abbotsford, as you will readily conceive, has considerably changed its face
since the auspices of Mother Retford were exchanged for
ours. We have got up a good garden wall, complete stables in the haugh,
according to Stark’s plan, and the
old farm-yard being enclosed with a wall, with some little picturesque
additions in front, has much relieved the stupendous height of the
Doctor’s barn. The new plantations have thriven amazingly well, the
acorns are coming up fast, and Tom
Purdie is the happiest and most consequential person in the
world. My present work is building up the well with some debris from the Abbey. O for your assistance, for I am afraid we
shall make but a botched job of it, especially as our materials are of a very
miscellaneous complexion. The worst of all is, that while my trees grow and my
fountain fills, my purse, in an inverse ratio, sinks to zero. This last
circumstance will, I fear, make me a very poor guest at the literary
entertainment your researches hold out for me. I should, however, like much to
have the Treatise on Dreams,
by the author of the New Jerusalem, which, as John Cuthbertson the smith said of the
minister’s sermon, must be neat work. The Loyal Poems by N. T. are probably by
poor Nahum Tate, who associated with
Brady in versifying the Psalms, and
more honourably with Dryden in the second part of Absalom and
Achitophel. I never saw them, however, but would give a guinea or
thirty shillings for the collection. Our friend John Ballantyne has, I learn, made a sudden sally to London,
and doubtless you will crush a quart with him or a pottle pot; he will satisfy
your bookseller for ‘The Dreamer,’ or any
other little purchase you may recommend for me. You have pleased Miss Baillie very much both in public and in
society, and though not fastidious, she is not, I think, particularly lavish of
applause either way. A most valuable person is she, and as warm-hearted as she is brilliant. Mrs
Scott and all our little folks are well. I am relieved o the
labour of hearing Walter’s lesson
by a gallant son of the church, who with
one leg of wood, and another of oak, walks to and fro from Melrose every day
for that purpose. Pray stick to the dramatic work,* and never suppose either
that you can be intrusive, or that I can be uninterested in whatever concerns
you. Yours,
W. S.”
The tutor alluded to at the close of this letter was Mr George Thomson, son of the minister of Melrose, who,
when the house afforded better accommodation, was and continued for many years to be
domesticated at Abbotsford. Scott had always a
particular tenderness towards persons afflicted with any bodily misfortune; and
Thomson, whose leg had been amputated in consequence of a rough
casualty of his boyhood, had a special share in his favour from the high spirit with which
he refused at the time to betray the name of the companion that had occasioned his mishap,
and continued ever afterwards to struggle against its disadvantages. Tall, vigorous,
athletic, a dauntless horseman, and expert at the singlestick, George
formed a valuable as well as picturesque addition to the tail of the
new laird, who often said, “In the Dominie, like myself, accident has spoiled a
capital lifeguardsman.” His many oddities and eccentricities in no degree
interfered with the respect due to his amiable feelings, upright principles, and sound
learning; nor did Dominie Thamson at all
quarrel in after times with the universal credence of the neighbourhood that he had
furnished many features for the inimitable personage whose designation so nearly
* An edition of the British Dramatists had, I believe, been
projected by Mr Terry.
resembled his own; and if he has not yet
“wagged his head” in a “pulpit o’ his ain,” he well knows it
has not been so for want of earnest and long-continued intercession on the part of the
author of Guy Mannering.
For many years Scott had accustomed
himself to proceed in the composition of poetry along with that of prose essays of various
descriptions; but it is a remarkable fact that he chose this period of perpetual noise and
bustle, when he had not even a summer-house to himself, for the new experiment of carrying
on two poems at the same time—and this too without suspending the heavy labour of his edition of Swift, to say nothing of the various
lesser matters in which the Ballantynes were, from day to day, calling
for the assistance of his judgment and his pen. In the same letter in which William Erskine acknowledges the receipt of the first four
pages of Rokeby, he adverts also to the
Bridal of Triermain as being already in
rapid progress. The fragments of this
second poem, inserted in the Register of the
preceding year, had attracted considerable notice; the secret of their authorship had been
well kept; and by some means, even in the shrewdest circles of Edinburgh, the belief had
become prevalent that they proceeded not from Scott but from
Erskine. Scott had no sooner completed his
bargain as to the copyright of the unwritten Rokeby, than he
resolved to pause from time to time in its composition, and weave those fragments into a
shorter and lighter romance, executed in a different metre, and to be published
anonymously, in a small pocket volume, as nearly as possible on the same day with the
avowed quarto. He expected great amusement from the comparisons which the critics would no
doubt indulge themselves in drawing between himself and this humble candidate; and
Erskine good-humouredly entered into the scheme, undertaking to do
nothing which should effectually suppress the notion of his
having set himself up as a modest rival to his friend. Nay, he suggested a further
refinement, which in the sequel had no small share in the success of this little plot upon
the sagacity of the reviewers. Having said that he much admired the opening of the first
canto of Rokeby, Erskine adds, “I
shall request your accoucheur to send me your little Dugald too
as he gradually makes his progress. What I have seen is delightful. You are aware how
difficult it is to form any opinion of a work, the general plan of which is unknown,
transmitted merely in legs and wings as they are formed and feathered. Any remarks must
be of the most minute and superficial kind, confined chiefly to the language, and other
such subordinate matters. I shall be very much amused if the secret is kept and the
knowing ones taken in. To prevent any discovery from your prose, what think you of
putting down your ideas of what the preface ought to contain, and allowing me to write
it over? And perhaps a quizzing review might be concocted.”
This last hint was welcome; and among other parts of the preface to
Triermain which threw out “the
knowing ones,” certain Greek quotations interspersed in it are now accounted
for. Scott, on his part, appears to have studiously
interwoven into the piece allusions to personal feelings and experiences more akin to his
friend’s history and character than to his own; and he did so still more largely,
when repeating this experiment, in the introductory parts of Harold the Dauntless.
The same post which conveyed William
Erskine’s letter above quoted, brought him an equally wise and kind
one from Mr Morritt, in answer to a fresh
application for some minute details about the scenery and local traditions of the Valley of
the Tees. Scott had promised to spend part of this
autumn at Rokeby Park himself; but now,
busied as he was with his planting operations at home, and continually urged by Ballantyne to have the poem ready for publication by
Christmas, he would willingly have trusted his friend’s knowledge in place of his own
observation and research. Mr Morritt gave him in reply various
particulars, which I need not here repeat, but added,—“I am really sorry, my dear
Scott, at your abandonment of your kind intention of visiting
Rokeby—and my sorrow is not quite selfish—for seriously, I wish you could have come, if but
for a few days, in order, on the spot, to settle accurately in your mind the localities of
the new poem, and all their petty circumstances, of which there are many that would give
interest and ornament to your descriptions. I am too much flattered by your proposal of
inscribing the poem to me, not to accept it with gratitude and pleasure. I shall always
feel your friendship as an honour—we all wish our honours to be permanent—and yours
promises mine at least a fair chance of immortality. I hope, however, you will not be
obliged to write in a hurry on account of the impatience of your booksellers. They are, I
think, ill advised in their proceeding, for surely the book will be the more likely to
succeed from not being forced prematurely into this critical world. Do not be persuaded to
risk your established fame on this hazardous experiment. If you want a few hundreds
independent of these booksellers, your credit is so very good, now that you have got rid of
your Old Man of the Sea, that it is no great merit to trust you, and I happen at this
moment to have five or six for which I have no sort of demand—so rather than be obliged to
spur Pegasus beyond the power of pulling him up when he is going too fast, do consult your
own judgment and set the midwives of the trade at defiance. Don’t be scrupulous to
the disadvantage of your muse, and above all be not offended at me
for a proposition which is meant in the true spirit of friendship. I am more than ever
anxious for your success—the Lady of the Lake
more than succeeded—I think Don Roderick is
less popular—I want this work to be another Lady at the least.
Surely it would be worth your while for such an object to spend a week of your time, and a
portion of your Old Man’s salary, in a mail-coach flight hither, were it merely to
renew your acquaintance with the country, and to rectify the little misconceptions of a
cursory view. Ever affectionately yours—J. B. S. M.”
This appeal was not to be resisted. Scott, I believe, accepted Mr
Morritt’s friendly offer so far as to ask his assistance in having
some of Ballantyne’s bills discounted: and he
proceeded the week after to Rokeby, by the way of Flodden and Hexham, travelling on
horseback, his eldest boy and girl on their poneys, while Mrs
Scott followed them in the carriage. Two little incidents that diversified
this ride through Northumberland have found their way into print already; but, as he was
fond of telling them both down to the end of his days, I must give them a place here also.
Halting at Flodden to expound the field of battle to his young folks, he found that Marmion had, as might have been expected,
benefitted the keeper of the public-house there very largely; and the village Boniface, overflowing with gratitude, expressed his anxiety
to have a Scott’s Head for his sign-post. The poet demurred to
this proposal, and assured mine host that nothing could be more appropriate than the
portraiture of a foaming tankard, which already surmounted his doorway. “Why, the
painter-man has not made an ill job,” said the landlord, “but I
would fain have something more connected with the book that has brought me so much good
cus-tom.” He produced a
well-thumbed copy, and handing it to the author, begged he would at least suggest a motto
from the Tale of Flodden Field. Scott opened the book at the
death-scene of the hero, and his eye was immediately caught by the
“inscription” in black letter “Drink, weary pilgrim, drink, and pray For the kind soul of Sibyl Grey,”
&c. “Well, my friend,” said he, “what more would you have? You need but
strike out one letter in the first of these lines, and make your painter-man, the next time
he comes this way, print between the jolly tankard and your own name “Drink, weary pilgrim, drink, and pay.”
Scott was delighted to find, on his return, that this
suggestion had been adopted, and for aught I know the romantic legend may still be visible.
The other story I shall give in the words of Mr. Gillies. “It happened at a small country town
that Scott suddenly required medical advice for one of his servants, and, on enquiring
if there was any doctor at the place, was told that there were two—one long
established, and the other a new comer. The latter gentleman, being luckily found at
home, soon made his appearance;—a grave, sagacious-looking personage, attired in black,
with a shovel hat, in whom, to his utter astonishment, Sir
Walter recognised a Scotch blacksmith, who had formerly practised, with
tolerable success, as a veterinary operator in the neighbourhood of Ashestiel
‘How, in all the world!’ exclaimed he, ‘can it be
possible that this is John Lundie?’ ‘In troth
is it, your honour just a’ that’s for
him.’—‘Well, but let us hear; you were a horse-doctor before; now, it seems, you are a man-doctor; how do you get on?’—‘Ou, just
extraordinar’ weel; for your honour maun ken my practice is vera sure and
orthodox. I depend entirely upon twa simples.’—‘And what may their names be? Perhaps it is a
secret?’—‘I’ll tell your honour,’ in a low tone;
‘my twa simples are just laudamy and calamy!’—‘Simples with a
vengeance!’ replied Scott. ‘But John, do you
never happen to kill any of your
patients?’—‘Kill? Ou ay, may be sae! Whiles they die, and whiles
no; but it’s the will o’ Providence. Ony how, your
honour, it wad be lang before it makes up for
Flodden!’”*
It was also in the course of this expedition that Scott first made acquaintance with the late excellent and
venerable Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham. The
travellers having reached Auckland over night, were seeing the public rooms of the Castle
at an early hour next morning, when the Bishop happened, in passing through one of them, to
catch a glimpse of Scott’s person, and immediately recognising
him, from the likeness of the engravings by this time multiplied, introduced himself to the
party, and insisted upon acting as cicerone. After showing them the picture-gallery and so
forth, his Lordship invited them to join the morning service of the chapel, and when that
was over insisted on their remaining to breakfast. But Scott and his
lordship were by this time so much pleased with each other that they could not part so
easily. The good Bishop ordered his horse, nor did Scott observe
without admiration the proud curvetting of the animal on which his lordship proposed to
accompany him during the next stage of his progress. “Why, yes, Mr
Scott,” said the gentle but high-spirited old man, “I
still like to feel my horse under me.” He
* Reminiscences of Sir Walter Scott, p.
56.
was then in his 79th year, and survived
to the age of ninety-two, the model in all things of a real prince of the Church. They
parted, after a ride of ten miles, with mutual regret; and on all subsequent rides in that
direction, Bishop-Auckland was one of the poet’s regular halting places.
At Rokeby, on this occasion, Scott
remained about a week; and I transcribe the following brief account of his proceedings
while there from Mr Morritt’sMemorandum:—“I had of course,” he says,
“had many previous opportunities of testing the almost conscientious fidelity
of his local descriptions; but I could not help being singularly struck with the lights
which this visit threw on that characteristic of his compositions. The morning after he
arrived he said, ‘You have often given me materials for romance—now I want a
good robber’s cave and an old church of the right sort.’ We rode
out, and he found what he wanted in the ancient slate quarries of Brignal and the
ruined Abbey of Egglestone. I observed him noting down even the peculiar little wild
flowers and herbs that accidentally grew round and on the side of a bold crag near his
intended cave of Guy Denzil; and could not help
saying, that as he was not to be upon oath in his work, daisies, violets, and primroses
would be as poetical as any of the humble plants he was examining. I laughed, in short,
at his scrupulousness; but I understood him when he replied, ‘that in nature
herself no two scenes are exactly alike, and that whoever copied truly what was
before his eyes, would possess the same variety in his descriptions, and exhibit
apparently an imagination as boundless as the range of nature in the scenes he
recorded; whereas—whoever trusted to imagination, would soon find his own mind
circumscribed, and contracted to a few favourite images, and the repetition of
these would sooner or later produce that very monotony and
barrenness which had always haunted descriptive poetry in the hands of any but the
patient worshippers of truth. Besides which,’ he said, ‘local
names and peculiarities make a fictitious story look so much better in the
face.’ In fact, from his boyish habits, he was but half satisfied with
the most beautiful scenery when he could not connect with it some local legend, and
when I was forced sometimes to confess, with the Knife-grinder, ‘Story! God
bless you! I have none to tell, sir’ he would laugh, and say,
‘then let us make one—nothing so easy as to make a
tradition.’” Mr Morritt adds, that he had
brought with him about half the Bridal of
Triermain—told him that he meant to bring it out the same week with Rokeby—and promised himself particular
satisfaction in laying a trap forJeffrey; who, however, as we shall see, escaped
the snare.
Some of the following letters will show with what rapidity, after
having refreshed and stored his memory with the localities of Rokeby, he proceeded in the
composition of the romance.
“I have this morning returned from Dalkeith House,
to which I was whisked amid the fury of an election tempest, and I found your
letter on my table. More on such a subject cannot be said among friends who
give each other credit for feeling as they ought.
“We peregrinated over Stanmore, and visited the
Castles of Bowes, Brough, Appleby, and Brougham with great interest. Lest our
spirit of chivalry thus excited should lack employment, we found ourselves,
that is, I did, at Carlisle, engaged in the service of
two distressed ladies, being no other
than our friends Lady Douglas and
Lady Louisa Stuart, who overtook us
there, and who would have had great trouble in finding quarters, the election
being in full vigour, if we had not anticipated their puzzle, and secured a
private house capable of holding us all. Some distress occurred, I believe,
among the waiting damsels, whose case I had not so carefully considered, for I
heard a sentimental exclamation—‘Am I to sleep with the
greyhounds?’ which I conceived to proceed from Lady
Douglas’ssuivante, from the exquisite sensibility of tone with which
it was uttered, especially as I beheld the fair one descend from the carriage
with three half-bound volumes of a novel in her hand. Not having in my power to
alleviate her woes, by offering her either a part or the whole of my own
couch—‘Transeat,’
quoth I, ‘cum cæteris
erroribus.’
“I am delighted with your Cumberland admirer,* and
give him credit for his visit to the vindicator of
Homer; but you missed one of another description, who passed
Rokeby with great regret, I mean General John
Malcolm, the Persian envoy, the Delhi resident, the poet, the
warrior, the polite man, and the Borderer. He is really a fine fellow. I met
him at Dalkeith, and we returned together;—he has just left me, after drinking
his coffee. A fine time we had of it, talking of Troy town, and Babel, and
Persepolis, and Delhi, and Langholm, and Burnfoot;† with all manner of
episodes about
* This alluded to a ridiculous hunter of lions, who,
being met by Mr Morritt in the
grounds at Rokeby, disclaimed all taste for picturesque beauties, but
overwhelmed their owner with Homeric Greek; of which he had told
Scott.
† Burnfoot is the name
of a farm-house on the Buccleuch estate, not far from Langholm, where
the late Sir John Malcolm and
his distinguished brothers were born. Their grandfather had, I believe,
found
Iskendiar Rustan, and Johnnie Armstrong. Do you know, that poem of
Ferdusi’s must be beautiful. He
read me some very splendid extracts which he had himself translated. Should you
meet him in London, I have given him charge to be acquainted with you, for I am
sure you will like each other. To be sure I know him little, but I like his
frankness and his sound ideas of morality and policy; and I have observed, that
when I have had no great liking to persons at the beginning, it has usually
pleased Heaven, as Slender says, to
decrease it on further acquaintance. Adieu, I must mount my horse. Our last
journey was so delightful that we have every temptation to repeat it. Pray give
our kind love to the lady, and believe me ever yours,
“I have been, and still am, working very hard, in
hopes to face the public by Christmas, and I think I have hitherto succeeded in
throwing some interest into the piece. It is, however, a darker and more gloomy
interest than I intended; but involving one’s self with bad company,
whether in fiction or in reality, is the way not to get out of it easily; so I
have been obliged to bestow more pains and trouble upon Bertram, and one or two blackguards whom he picks
up in the slate quarries, than what I originally designed. I am very desirous
to have your opinion of the three first Cantos, for which purpose, so soon as I
can get them collected,
refuge there after forfeiting a
good estate and an ancient baronetcy, in the affair of 1715. A monument
to the gallant General’s memory has recently been erected near
the spot of his birth.
I will send the sheets under
cover to Mr Freeling, whose omnipotent
frank will transmit them to Rokeby, where, I presume, you have been long since
comfortably settled— ‘So York shall overlook the town of York.’
“I trust you will read it with some partiality,
because, if I have not been so successful as I could wish in describing your
lovely and romantic glens, it has partly arisen from my great anxiety to do it
well, which is often attended with the very contrary effect. There are two or
three songs, and particularly one in praise of Brignal Banks, which I trust you
will like—because, entre nous, I like
them myself. One of them is a little dashing banditti song, called and entitled
Allen-a-Dale. I think you will be able to judge
for yourself in about a week. Pray, how shall I send you the entire goose, which will be too heavy to travel the same way with its
giblets—for the Carlisle coach is terribly
inaccurate about parcels. I fear I have made one blunder in mentioning the
brooks which flow into the Tees. I have made the Balder distinct from that
which comes down Thorsgill—I hope I am not mistaken. You will see the passage;
and if they are the same rivulet, the leaf must be cancelled.
“I trust this will find Mrs Morritt pretty well; and I am glad to find she has been
better for her little tour. We were delighted with ours, except in respect of
its short duration, and Sophia and
Walter hold their heads very high
among their untravelled companions, from the predominance acquired by their
visit to England. You are not perhaps aware of the polish which is supposed to
be acquired by the most transitory intercourse with your more refined side of
the Tweed. There was an honest carter who once applied to me respecting a plan
which he had formed of breeding his son, a great booby of
twenty, to the Church. As the best way of evading the scrape, I asked him
whether he thought his son’s language was quite adapted for the use of a
public speaker? to which he answered, with great readiness, that he could knap
English with any one, having twice driven his father’s cart to Etal
coal-hill.
“I have called my heroine Matilda. I don’t much like Agnes,
though I can’t tell why, unless it is because it begins like
Agag. Matilda is a name of
unmanageable length; but, after all, is better than none, and my poor damsel
was likely to go without one in my indecision.
“We are all hungering and thirsting for news from
Russia. If Boney’s devil does not
help him, he is in a poor way. The Leith letters talk of the unanimity of the
Russians as being most exemplary; and troops pour in from all quarters of their
immense empire. Their commissariat is well managed under the Prince Duke of Oldenburgh. This was their weak
point in former wars.
“Adieu! Mrs Scott
and the little people send love to Mrs
Morritt and you. Ever yours,
“I have just time to say that I have received your
letters, and am delighted that Rokeby pleases the owner. As I hope the whole will be printed off
before Christmas, it will scarce be worth while to send you the other sheets
till it reaches you altogether. Your criticisms are the best proof of your kind
attention to the poem. I need not say I will pay them every attention in the
next edition. But some of the faults are so interwoven with the story that they must stand. Denzil, for instance, is essential to me, though,
as you say, not very interesting; and I assure you that, generally speaking,
the poeta loquitur has a bad effect
in narrative; and when you have twenty things to tell, it is better to be
slatternly than tedious. The fact is, that the tediousness of many really good
poems arises from an attempt to support the same tone throughout, which often
occasions periphrasis, and always stiffness. I am quite sensible that I have
often carried the opposite custom too far; but I am apt to impute it partly to
not being able to bring out my own ideas well, and partly to haste—not to error
in the system. This would, however, lead to a long discussion, more fit for the
fireside than for a letter. I need not say that, the poem being in fact your
own, you are at perfect liberty to dispose of the sheets as you please. I am
glad my geography is pretty correct. It is too late to enquire if Rokeby is
insured, for I have burned it down in Canto V.; but I suspect you will bear me
no greater grudge than at the noble Russian who burned Moscow. Glorious news
to-day from the north—pereat iste!Mrs Scott, Sophia, and Walter join
in best compliments to Mrs Morritt; and
I am, in great haste, ever faithfully yours,
Walter Scott.
“P.S.—I have heard of Lady Hood by a letter from herself. She is
well, and in high spirits, and sends me a pretty topaz seal, with a
talisman which secures this letter, and signifies (it seems), which one
would scarce have expected from its appearance, my name.”
We are now close upon the end of this busy twelvemonth; but I must not
turn the leaf to 1813, without noticing one of its miscellaneous incidents—his first intercourse by letter with the poet Crabbe. Mr Hatchard, the publisher
of his “Tales,” forwarded a
copy of the book to Scott as soon as it was ready; and,
the bookseller having communicated to his author some flattering expressions in
Scott’s letter of acknowledgment, Mr Crabbe addressed him as
follows:—
To Walter Scott, Esq. Edinburgh.
“Merston, Grantham, 13th October, 1812. Sir,
“Mr Hatchard,
judging rightly of the satisfaction it would afford me, has been so obliging as
to communicate your two letters, in one of which you desire my ‘Tales’ to be sent; in the
other, you acknowledge the receipt of them; and in both you mention my verses
in such terms, that it would be affected in me were I to deny, and I think
unjust if I were to conceal, the pleasure you give me. I am indeed highly
gratified.
“I have long entertained a hearty wish to be made
known to a poet whose works are so greatly and so universally admired; and I
continued to hope that I might at some time find a common friend, by whose
intervention I might obtain that honour; but I am confined by duties near my
home, and by sickness in it. It may be long before I be in town, and then no
such opportunity might offer. Excuse me, then, sir, if I gladly seize this
which now occurs to express my thanks for the politeness of your expressions,
as well as my desire of being known to a gentleman who has delighted and
affected me, and moved all the passions and feelings in turn, I believe—Envy
surely excepted—certainly, if I know myself, but in a moderate degree. I truly
rejoice in your success; and while I am entertaining, in my way, a certain set
of readers, for the most part, probably, of peculiar turn and habit, I can with
pleasure see the effect you produce on all. Mr
Hatchard tells me that he hopes or expects that
thousands will read my ‘Tales,’ and I am convinced that your publisher might, in like
manner, so speak of your ten thousands; but this, though it calls to mind the
passage, is no true comparison with the related prowess of
David and Saul, because I have no
evil spirit to arise and trouble me on the occasion; though, if I had, I know
no David whose skill is so likely to allay it. Once more,
sir, accept my best thanks, with my hearty wishes for your health and
happiness, who am, with great esteem, and true respect,
Dear sir, your obedient servant, George Crabbe.”
I cannot produce Scott’s reply
to this communication. Mr Crabbe appears to have, in
the course of the year, sent him a copy of all his works, “ex dono auctoris,” and there passed between them several
letters, one or two of which I must quote.
To Walter Scott, Esq. Edinburgh.
“Know you, sir, a gentleman in Edinburgh, A. Brunton (the Rev.), who dates St John
Street, and who asks my assistance in furnishing hymns which have relation to
the Old or New Testament—any thing which might suit the purpose of those who
are cooking up a book of Scotch Psalmody? Who is Mr
Brunton? What is his situation? If I could help one who needed
help I would do it cheerfully but have no great opinion of this undertaking. .
. . . . . . . . .
With every good wish, yours sincerely, Geo. Crabbe.”
Scott’s answer to this letter expresses the
opinions he always held in conversation on the important subject to
which it refers; and acting upon which, he himself at various times declined taking any
part in the business advocated by Dr Brunton.
To the Rev. George Crabbe, Muston, Grantham.
“My dear Sir,
“I was favoured with your kind letter some time ago.
Of all people in the world, I am least entitled to demand regularity of
correspondence; for being, one way and another, doomed to a great deal more
writing than suits my indolence, I am sometimes tempted to envy the reverend
hermit of Prague, confessor to the niece of Queen
Gorboduc, who never saw either pen or ink. Mr Brunton is a very respectable clergyman of
Edinburgh, and I believe the work in which he has solicited your assistance is
one adopted by the General Assembly, or Convocation of the Kirk. I have no
notion that he has any individual interest in it; he is a well-educated and
liberal-minded man, and generally esteemed. I have no particular acquaintance
with him myself, though we speak together. He is at this very moment sitting on
the outside of the bar of our Supreme Court, within which I am fagging as a
clerk; but as he is hearing the opinion of the judges upon an action for
augmentation of stipend to him and to his brethren, it would not, I conceive,
be a very favourable time to canvass a literary topic. But you are quite safe
with him; and having so much command of scriptural language, which appears to
me essential to the devotional poetry of Christians, I am sure you can assist
his purpose much more than any man alive.
“I think those hymns which do not immediately recall
the warm and exalted language of the Bible are apt to be, however elegant,
rather cold and flat for the pur-poses of devotion. You will readily
believe that I do not approve of the vague and indiscriminate Scripture
language which the fanatics of old and the modern Methodists have adopted, but
merely that solemnity and peculiarity of diction, which at once puts the reader
and hearer upon his guard as to the purpose of the poetry. To my Gothic ear,
indeed, the Stabet Mater, the
Dies Iræ, and some of
the other hymns of the Catholic Church, are more solemn and affecting than the
fine classical poetry of Buchanan; the
one has the gloomy dignity of a Gothic church, and reminds us instantly of the
worship to which it is dedicated; the other is more like a Pagan temple,
recalling to our memory the classical and fabulous deities.* This is, probably,
all referable to the association of ideas—that is, if the ‘association of
ideas’ continues to be the universal pick-lock of all metaphysical
difficulties, as it was when I studied moral philosophy—or to any other more
fashionable universal solvent which may have succeeded to it in reputation.
Adieu, my dear sir,—I hope you and your family will long enjoy all happiness
and prosperity. Never be discouraged from the constant use of your charming
talent. The opinions of reviewers are really too contradictory to found any
thing upon them, whether they are favourable or otherwise; for it is usually
their principal object to display the abilities of the writers of the critical
lucubrations themselves. Your ‘Tales’ are universally admired here. I go but little out, but
the few judges whose opinions I have been accustomed to look up to, are
unanimous. Ever yours, most truly,
Walter Scott.”
* See Life of
Dryden, Scott’s
Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. i. p. 293.
To Walter Scott, Esq., Edinburgh.
My dear Sir,
“Law, then, is your profession—I mean a profession
you give your mind and time to—but how ‘fag as a clerk?’ Clerk is a name for a learned person, I know, in our
Church; but how the same hand which held the pen of Marmion, holds that with which a clerk fags,
unless a clerk means something vastly more than I understand—is not to be
comprehended. I wait for elucidation. Know you, dear sir, I have often thought
I should love to read reports—that is, brief histories
of extraordinary cases, with the judgments. If that is what is meant by reports, such reading must be pleasant, but, probably, I
entertain wrong ideas, and could not understand the books I think so engaging.
Yet I conclude there are histories of cases, and have
often thought of consulting Hatchard
whether he knew of such kind of reading, but hitherto I have rested in
ignorance. . . . . . . . . . . Yours truly,
George Crabbe.”
To the Rev. George Crabbe.
“My dear Sir,
“I have too long delayed to thank you for the most
kind and acceptable present of your three volumes. Now am I doubly armed, since
I have a set for my cabin at Abbotsford as well as in town; and, to say truth,
the auxiliary copy arrived in good time, for my original one suffers as much by
its general popularity among my young people, as a popular candidate from the
hugs and embraces of his democratical admirers. The clearness and accuracy of
your painting, whether natural or moral, renders, I have often remarked, your
works generally delightful to those whose youth might render them insensible to the other
beauties with which they abound. There are a sort of pictures—surely the most
valuable, were it but for that reason—which strike the uninitiated as much as
they do the connoisseur, though the last alone can render reason for his
admiration. Indeed our old friend Horace
knew what he was saying when he chose to address his ode, ‘Virginibus puerisque,’ and so did
Pope when he told somebody he had the
mob on the side of his version of
Homer, and did not mind the high-flying critics at Button’s.
After all, if a faultless poem could be produced, I am satisfied it would tire
the critics themselves, and annoy the whole reading world with the spleen.
“You must be delightfully situated in the Vale of
Belvoir—a part of England for which I entertain a special kindness, for the
sake of the gallant hero, Robin Hood, who,
as probably you will readily guess, is no small favourite of mine; his
indistinct ideas concerning the doctrine of meum and tuum
being no great objection to an outriding Borderer. I am happy to think that
your station is under the protection of the Rutland family, of whom fame speaks highly. Our lord of the
‘cairn and the scaur,’ waste wilderness and hungry hills, for many
a league around, is the Duke of Buccleuch,
the head of my clan; a kind and benevolent landlord, a warm and zealous friend,
and the husband of a lady—comme il y en a
peu. They are both great admirers of Mr Crabbe’s poetry, and would be happy
to know him, should he ever come to Scotland, and venture into the Gothic halls
of a Border chief. The early and uniform kindness of this family, with the
friendship of the late and present
Lord Melville, enabled me, some years
ago, to exchange my toils as a barrister, for the lucrative and respectable
situation of one of the Clerks of our Supreme Court,
which only requires a certain routine of official duty, neither laborious nor
calling for any exertion of the mind; so that my time is entirely at my own
command, except when I am attending the Court, which seldom occupies more than
two hours of the morning during sitting. I besides hold in commendam the Sheriffdom of Ettrick
Forest, which is now no forest; so that I am a pluralist as to law
appointments, and have, as Dogberry says,
‘two gowns and every thing handsome about me.’
“I have often thought it is the most fortunate
thing for bards like you and me to have an established profession, and
professional character, to render us independent of those worthy gentlemen, the
retailers, or, as some have called them, the midwives of literature, who are so
much taken up with the abortions they bring into the world, that they are
scarcely able to bestow the proper care upon young and flourishing babes like
ours. That, however, is only a mercantile way of looking at the matter; but did
any of my sons show poetical talent, of which, to my great satisfaction, there
are no appearances, the first thing I should do would be to inculcate upon him
the duty of cultivating some honourable profession, and qualifying himself to
play a more respectable part in society than the mere poet. And as the best
corollary of my doctrine, I would make him get your tale of ‘The Patron’ by heart
from beginning to end. It is curious enough that you should have republished
the ‘Village’
for the purpose of sending your young men to college, and I should have written
the Lay of the Last Minstrel for
the purpose of buying a new horse for the Volunteer Cavalry. I must now send
this scrawl into town to get a frank, for, God knows, it is not worthy of
postage. With the warmest wishes for your health, prosperity, and increase of fame though
it needs not—I remain most sincerely and affectionately yours,
Walter Scott.”*
The contrast of the two poets’ epistolary styles is highly
amusing; but I have introduced these specimens less on that account, than as marking the
cordial confidence which a very little intercourse was sufficient to establish between men
so different from each other in most of the habits of life. It will always be considered as
one of the most pleasing peculiarities in Scott’s
history that he was the friend of every great contemporary poet: Crabbe, as we shall see more largely in the sequel, was no
exception to the rule: yet I could hardly name one of them who, manly principles and the
cultivation of literature apart, had many points of resemblance to him; and surely not one
who had fewer than Crabbe.
Scott continued, this year, his care for the Edinburgh Annual Register—the historical
department of which was again supplied by Mr
Southey. The poetical miscellany owed its opening piece, the Ballad of Polydore, to the readiness with which
Scott entered into correspondence with its author, who sent it to
him anonymously, with a letter which, like the verses, might well have excited much
interest in his mind, even had it not concluded with stating the writer’s age to be
fifteen. Scott invited the youth to visit
him in the country, was greatly pleased with the modesty of his manners and the originality
of his conversation, and wrote to Joanna Baillie,
that, “though not one of the crimps for the muses,” he thought he could
hardly be mistaken in believing that
* Several of these letters having been enclosed in franked
covers, which have perished, I am unable to affix the exact dates to them.
in the boyish author of Polydore he had
discovered a true genius. When I mention the name of my friend William Howison of Clydegrove, it will be allowed that he prognosticated
wisely. He continued to correspond with this young gentleman and his father, and gave both
much advice, for which both were most grateful. There was inserted in the same volume a set
of beautiful stanzas, inscribed to Scott by Mr
Wilson, under the title of the “Magic Mirror,” in which that enthusiastic
young poet also bears a lofty and lasting testimony to the gentle kindness with which his
earlier efforts had been encouraged by him whom he designates, for the first time, by what
afterwards became one of his standing titles, that of “The Great Magician.”
“Onwards a figure came, with stately brow, And, as he glanced upon the ruin’d pile A look of regal pride, ‘Say, who art thou (His countenance bright’ning with a scornful smile, He sternly cried), ‘whose footsteps rash profane The wild romantic realm where I have willed to reign?’ “But ere to these proud words I could reply, How changed that scornful face to soft and mild! A witching frenzy glitter’d in his eye, Harmless, withal, as that of playful child. And when once more the gracious vision spoke, I felt the voice familiar to mine ear; While many a faded dream of earth awoke, Connected strangely with that unknown seer, Who now stretch’d forth his arm, and on the sand A circle round me traced, as with magician’s wand,” &c. &c.
Scott’s own chief contribution to this volume was
a brief account of the Life and Poems
(hitherto unpublished) of Patrick Carey, whom he
pronounces to have been not only as stout a cavalier, but almost as good a poet as his
contemporary Lovelace. That Essay
was expanded, and prefixed to an edition of Carey’s “Trivial Poems and Triolets,” which
Scott published in 1820; but its circulation in either shape has
been limited: and I believe I shall be gratifying the majority of my readers by here
transcribing some paragraphs of his beautiful and highly characteristic introduction of
this forgotten poet of the 17th century.
“The present age has been so distinguished for
research into poetical antiquities, that the discovery of an unknown bard is, in
certain chosen literary circles, held as curious as an augmentation of the number of
fixed stars would be esteemed by astronomers. It is true, these ‘blessed
twinklers of the night’ are so far removed from us, that they afford no
more light than serves barely to evince their existence to the curious investigator;
and in like manner the pleasure derived from the revival of an obscure poet is rather
in proportion to the rarity of his volume than to its merit; yet this pleasure is not
inconsistent with reason and principle. We know by every day’s experience the
peculiar interest which the lapse of ages confers upon works of human art. The clumsy
strength of the ancient castles, which, when raw from the hand of the builder, inferred
only the oppressive power of the barons who reared them, is now broken by partial ruin
into proper subjects for the poet or the painter; and, as Mason has beautifully described the change, ——‘Time Has mouldered into beauty many a tower, Which, when it frowned with all its battlements, Was only terrible’——
“The monastery, too, which was at first but a
fantastic monument of the superstitious devotion of monarchs, or of the purple pride of
fattened abbots, has gained, by the silent influence of antiquity, the power of
impressing awe and devotion. Even the stains and weather-taints upon the battlements of
such buildings add, like the scars of a veteran, to the affecting impression:
‘For time has softened what was harsh when new, And now the stains are all of sober hue; The living stains which nature’s hand alone, Profuse of life, pours forth upon the stone.’—Crabbe.
“If such is the effect of Time in adding interest
to the labours of the architect, if partial destruction is compensated by the
additional interest of that which remains, can we deny his exerting a similar influence
upon those subjects which are sought after by the bibliographer and poetical antiquary?
The obscure poet, who is detected by their keen research, may indeed have possessed but
a slender portion of that spirit which has buoyed up the works of distinguished
contemporaries during the course of centuries, yet still his verses shall, in the lapse
of time, acquire an interest, which they did not possess in the eyes of his own
generation. The wrath of the critic, like that of the son of
Ossian, flies from the foe that is low. Envy, base as she is,
has one property of the lion, and cannot prey on carcases; she must drink the blood of
a sentient victim, and tear the limbs that are yet warm with vital life. Faction, if
the ancient has suffered her persecution, serves only to endear him to the recollection
of posterity, whose generous compassion overpays him for the injuries he sustained
while in life. And thus freed from the operation of all unfavourable prepossessions,
his merit, if he can boast any, has more than fair credit with his readers. This,
however, is but part of his advantages. The mere attribute of antiquity is of itself
sufficient to interest the fancy, by the lively and powerful train of associations
which it awakens. Had the pyramids of Egypt, equally disagreeable in form and senseless
as to utility, been the work of any living tyrant, with what feelings, save those of
scorn and derision, could we have regarded such a waste of labour? But the sight, nay
the very mention of these wonderful monuments, is associated with the dark and sublime
ideas, which vary their tinge according to the favourite hue of our studies. The
Christian divine recollects the land of banishment and of refuge; to the eyes of the
historian’s fancy, they excite the shades of Pharaohs and of
Ptolemies, of Cheops and
Merops, and Sesostris drawn in triumph by
his sceptred slaves; the philosopher beholds the first rays of moral truth as they
dawned on the hieroglyphic sculptures of Thebes and Memphis; and the poet sees the
fires of magic blazing upon the mystic altars of a land of incantation. Nor is the
grandeur of size essential to such feelings, any more than the properties of grace and
utility. Even the rudest remnant of a feudal tower, even the obscure and almost
undistinguishable vestige of an altogether unknown edifice, has power to awaken such
trains of fancy. We have a fellow interest with the ‘son of the winged
days,’ over whose fallen habitation we tread:
‘The massy stones, though hewn most roughly, show The hand of man had once at least been there.’—Wordsworth.
“Similar combinations give a great part of the
delight we receive from ancient poetry. In the rude song of the Scald, we regard less
the strained imagery and extravagance of epithet, than the wild impressions which it
conveys of the dauntless resolution, savage superstition, rude festivity, and ceaseless
depredation of the ancient Scandinavians. In the metrical romance, we pardon the long,
tedious, and bald enumeration of trifling particulars; the reiterated sameness of the
eternal combats between knights and giants; the overpowering languor of the love
speeches, and the merciless length and similarity of description when Fancy whispers to
us, that such strains may have cheered the sleepless pillow of the Black Prince on the memorable eves of Cressy or
Poictiers. There is a certain romance of Ferumbras, which
Robert the Bruce read to his few followers to
divert their thoughts from the desperate circumstances in which they were placed, after
an unsuccessful attempt to rise against the English. Is there a true Scotsman who,
being aware of this anecdote, would be disposed to yawn over the romance of
Ferumbras? Or, on the contrary, would not the image of the
dauntless hero, inflexible in defeat, beguiling the anxiety of his war-worn attendants
by the lays of the minstrel, give to these rude lays themselves an interest beyond
Greek and Roman fame?”
The year 1812 had the usual share of minor literary labours such as
contributions to the journals; and before it closed, the Romance of Rokeby was finished. Though it had been long in hand, the
MS. sent to the printer bears abundant evidence of its being the prima cura: three cantos at least reached Ballantyne through the Melrose post—written on paper of
various sorts and sizes—full of blots and interlineations—the closing couplets of a
despatch now and then encircling the page, and mutilated by the breaking of the seal.
According to the recollection of Mr
Cadell, though James Ballantyne read
the poem, as the sheets were advancing through the press, to his usual circle of literary
dilettanti, their whispers were far from exciting in Edinburgh such an intensity of expectation as had been witnessed in
the case of The Lady of the Lake. He adds,
however, that it was looked for with undiminished anxiety in the south. “Send me
Rokeby,” Byron writes to
Murray, on seeing it advertised,—“Who
the devil is he? No matter—he has good connexions, and will be well
introduced.”* Such, I suppose, was the general feeling in London. I well
remember, being in those days a young student at Oxford, how the booksellers’ shops
there were beleaguered for the earliest copies, and how he that had been so fortunate as to
secure one, was followed to his chambers by a tribe of friends, all as eager to hear it
read as ever horse-jockeys were to see the conclusion of a match at Newmarket; and indeed
not a few of those enthusiastic academics had bets depending on the issue of the struggle,
which they considered the elder favourite as making, to keep his own ground against the
fiery rivalry of Childe Harold.
The poem was published a day or two before Scott returned to Edinburgh from Abbotsford, between which place and
Mertoun he had divided his Christmas vacation. On the 9th and 10th of January, 1813, he
thus addresses his friends at Sunninghill and Hampstead:—
To George Ellis, Esq.
“My dear Ellis,
“I am sure you will place it to any thing rather
than want of kindness, that I have been so long silent—so very long, indeed,
that I am not quite sure whether the fault is on my side or yours—but, be it
what it may, it can never, I am sure, be laid to forgetfulness in either. This
comes to train you on to the merciful reception of a Tale of the Civil Wars: not political, however,
but
* Byron’s Life and Works, vol.
ii. p. 169.
merely a
pseudo-romance of pseudo-chivalry. I have converted a lusty buccanier into a
hero with some effect; but the worst of all my undertakings is, that my rogue
always, in despite of me, turns out my hero. I know not how this should be—I am
myself, as Hamlet says, ‘indifferent
honest;’ and my father, though an attorney (as you will call him), was
one of the most honest men, as well as gentlemanlike, that ever breathed. I am
sure I can bear witness to that—for if he had at all smacked, or grown to, like
the son of Lancelot Gobbo, he might have
left us all as rich as Crœsus, besides
having the pleasure of taking a fine primrose path himself, instead of
squeezing himself through a tight gate and up a steep ascent, and leaving us
the decent competence of an honest man’s children. As to our more ancient
pedigree, I should be loath to vouch for them. My grandfather was a
horse-jockey and cattle-dealer, and made a fortune; my great-grandfather, a
Jacobite and traitor (as the times called him), and lost one; and after him
intervened one or two half-starved lairds, who rode a lean horse, and were
followed by leaner greyhounds; gathered with difficulty a hundred pounds from a
hundred tenants; fought duels; cocked their hats, and called themselves
gentlemen. Then we come to the old Border times, cattle-driving, halters, and
so forth, for which, in the matter of honesty, very little I suppose can be
said—at least in modern acceptation of the word. Upon the whole, I am inclined
to think it is owing to the earlier part of this inauspicious generation that I
uniformly find myself in the same scrape in my fables, and that, in spite of
the most obstinate determination to the contrary, the greatest rogue in my
canvass always stands out as the most conspicuous and prominent figure. All
this will be a riddle to you, unless you have received a certain packet, which
the Ballantynes were to have sent
under Freeling’s or Croker’s cover, so soon as they could
get a copy done up.
“And now let me gratulate you upon the renovated
vigour of your fine old friends the Russians. By the Lord, sir! it is most
famous this campaign of theirs. I was not one of the very sanguine persons who
anticipated the actual capture of Buonaparte—a hope which rather proceeded from the ignorance of
those who cannot conceive that military movements, upon a large scale, admit of
such a force being accumulated upon any particular point as may, by abandonment
of other considerations, always ensure the escape of an individual. But I had
no hope, in my time, of seeing the dry bones of the Continent so warm with life
again, as this revivification of the Russians proves them to be. I look
anxiously for the effect of these great events on Prussia, and even upon
Saxony; for I think Boney will hardly trust himself again
in Germany, now that he has been plainly shown, both in Spain and Russia, that
protracted stubborn unaccommodating resistance will foil those grand exertions
in the long run. All laud be to Lord
Wellington, who first taught that great lesson.
“Charlotte is
with me just now at this little scrub habitation, where we weary ourselves all
day in looking at our projected improvements, and then slumber over the fire, I
pretending to read, and she to work trout-nets, or cabbage-nets, or some such
article. What is Canning about? Is there
any chance of our getting him in? Surely Ministers cannot hope to do without
him. Believe me dear Ellis, ever truly
yours,
W. Scott.” “Abbotsford, 9th January, 1813.”
To Miss Joanna Baillie.
“Abbotsford, January 10, 1813.
“Your kind encouragement, my dear friend, has given
me spirits to complete the lumbering
quarto, which I hope has reached you by this time. I have gone on
with my story forth right, without troubling myself excessively about the
developement of the plot and other critical matters— ‘But shall we go mourn for that, my dear? The pale moon shines by night; And when we wander here and there, We then do go most right.’ I hope you will like Bertram to the
end; he is a Caravaggio sketch, which, I
may acknowledge to you—but tell it not in Gath—I rather pique myself upon; and
he is within the keeping of Nature, though critics will say to the contrary. It
may be difficult to fancy that any one should take a sort of pleasure in
bringing out such a character, but I suppose it is partly owing to bad reading,
and ill-directed reading, when I was young. No sooner had I corrected the last
sheet of Rokeby, than I escaped to this Patmos as
blithe as bird on tree, and have been ever since most decidedly idle—that is to
say, with busy idleness. I have been banking, and securing, and dyking against
the river, and planting willows, and aspens, and weeping-birches, around my new
old well, which I think I told you I had constructed last summer. I have now
laid the foundations of a famous back-ground of copse, with pendant trees in
front; and I have only to beg a few years to see how my colours will come out
of the canvass. Alas! who can promise that? But somebody will take my place—and
enjoy them, whether I do or no. My old friend and pastor, Principal Robertson (the historian), when he
was not expected to survive many weeks, still watched the
setting of the blossom upon some fruit-trees in the garden, with as much
interest as if it was possible he could have seen the fruit come to maturity,
and moralized on his own conduct, by observing that we act upon the same
inconsistent motive throughout life. It is well we do so for those that are to
come after us. I could almost dislike the man who refuses to plant
walnut-trees, because they do not bear fruit till the second generation; and
so—many thanks to our ancestors, and much joy to our successors, and truce to
my fine and very new strain of morality. Yours ever,
W. S.”
The following letter lets us completely behind the scenes at the
publication of Rokeby. The “horrid
story” it alludes to was that of a young woman found murdered on New Year’s Day
in the highway between Greta Bridge and Barnard Castle—a crime, the perpetrator of which
was never discovered. The account of a parallel atrocity in Galloway, and the mode of its
detection, will show the reader from what source Scott
drew one of the most striking incidents in his Guy Mannering:—
To J. S. S. Morritt, Esq., Rokeby Park.
“Edinburgh, 12th January, 1813. “Dear Morritt,
“Yours I have just received in mine office at the
Register-House, which will excuse this queer sheet of paper. The publication of
Rokeby was delayed till
Monday, to give the London publishers a fair start. My copies, that is, my
friends’, were all to be got off about Friday or Saturday; but yours may
have been a little later, as it was to be what they call a picked one. I will call at Ballantyne’s as I return from this
place, and close the letter with such news as I can get about it there. The
book has gone off here very bobbishly; for the impression of 3000 and upwards
is within two or three score of being exhausted, and the demand for these
continuing faster than they can be boarded. I am heartily glad of this, for now
I have nothing to fear but a bankruptcy in the Gazette of Parnassus; but the
loss of five or six thousand pounds to my good friends and school-companions
would have afflicted me very much. I wish we could whistle you here to-day.
Ballantyne always gives a christening dinner, at which the Duke of Buccleuch, and a great many of my
friends, are formally feasted. He has always the best singing that can be heard
in Edinburgh, and we have usually a very pleasant party, at which your health
as patron and proprietor of Rokeby will be faithfully
and honourably remembered.
“Your horrid story reminds me of one in Galloway,
where the perpetrator of a similar enormity on a poor idiot girl, was
discovered by means of the print of his foot which he left upon the clay floor
of the cottage in the death-struggle. It pleased Heaven (for nothing short of a
miracle could have done it) to enlighten the understanding of an old ram-headed
sheriff, who was usually nick-named Leather-head. The
steps which he took to discover the murderer were most sagacious. As the poor
girl was pregnant (for it was not a case of violation), it was pretty clear
that her paramour had done the deed, and equally so that he must be a native of
the district. The sheriff caused the minister to advertise from the pulpit that
the girl would be buried on a particular day, and that all persons in the
neighbourhood were invited to attend the funeral, to show their detestation of
such an enormous crime, as well as to evince their own
innocence. This was sure to bring the murderer to the funeral. When the people
were assembled in the kirk, the doors were locked by the sheriff’s order,
and the shoes of all the men were examined; that of the murderer was detected
by the measure of the foot, tread, &c., and a peculiarity in the mode in
which the sole of one of them had been patched. The remainder of the curious
chain of evidence upon which he was convicted will suit best with twilight, or
a blinking candle, being too long for a letter. The fellow bore a most
excellent character, and had committed this crime for no other reason that
could be alleged, than that, having been led accidentally into an intrigue with
this poor wretch, his pride revolted at the ridicule which was likely to attend
the discovery.
“On calling at Ballantyne’s, I find, as I had anticipated, that your
copy, being of royal size, requires some particular nicety in hot-pressing. It
will be sent by the Carlisle mail quam
primum. Ever yours,
Walter Scott.
“P.S. Love to Mrs
Morritt. John
Ballantyne says he has just about eighty copies left, out of
3250, this being the second day of publication, and the book a two guinea
one.”
It will surprise no one to hear that Mr
Morritt assured his friend he considered Rokeby as the best of all his poems. The admirable, perhaps
the unique fidelity of the local descriptions, might alone have swayed, for I will not say
it perverted, the judgment of the lord of that beautiful and thenceforth classical domain;
and, indeed, I must admit that I never understood or appreciated half the charm of this
poem until I had become familiar with its scenery. But Scott himself had not
designed to rest his strength on these descriptions. He said to James Ballantyne while the work was in progress (September 2), “I
hope the thing will do, chiefly because the world will not expect from me a poem of
which the interest turns upon character;” and in
another letter (October 28, 1812), “I think you will see the same sort of
difference taken in all my former poems, of which I would say, if it is fair for me to
say any thing, that the force in the Lay is
thrown on style—in Marmion, on
description—and in the Lady of the Lake,
on incident.”* I suspect some of these distinctions may have been matters of
after-thought; but as to Rokeby there can be no mistake. His own
original conceptions of some of its principal characters have been explained in letters
already cited; and I believe no one who compares the poem with his novels will doubt that,
had he undertaken their portraiture in prose, they would have come forth with effect hardly
inferior to any of all the groupes he ever created. As it is, I question whether even in
his prose there is any thing more exquisitely wrought out, as well as fancied, than the
whole contrast of the two rivals for the love of the heroine in Rokeby; and that heroine herself, too, has a very particular interest attached
to her. Writing to Miss Edgeworth five years after
this time (10th March, 1818), he says, “I have not read one of my poems since they
were printed, excepting last year the Lady of the Lake, which I
liked better than I expected, but not well
* Several letters to Ballantyne on the same subject are quoted in the notes to the last
edition of Rokeby. See Scott’s Poetical Works,
1834, vol. ix., pp. 1-3; and especially the note on p. 300, from which it appears
that the closing stanza was added, in deference to Ballantyne
and Erskine, though the author retained his
own opinion that “it spoiled one effect without producing
another.”
enough to induce me to go through the rest, so I may truly say with
Macbeth— ‘I am afraid to think of what I’ve done— Look on’t again I dare not.’
“This much of Matilda I recollect—(for that is not so easily forgotten)—that
she was attempted for the existing person of a lady who is now no more, so that I am
particularly flattered with your distinguishing it from the others, which are in
general mere shadows.” I can have no doubt that the lady he here alludes to,
was the object of his own unfortunate first love;
and as little, that in the romantic generosity, both of the youthful poet who fails to win
her higher favour, and of his chivalrous competitor, we have before us something more than
“a mere shadow.”
In spite of these graceful characters, the inimitable scenery on which
they are presented, and the splendid vivacity and thrilling interest of several chapters in
the story—such as the opening interview of Bertram and
Wycliff—the flight up the cliff on the Greta—the
first entrance of the cave at Brignall—the firing of Rokeby Castle—and the catastrophe in
Eglistone Abbey;—in spite certainly of exquisitely happy lines profusely scattered
throughout the whole composition, and of some detached images—that of the setting of the
tropical sun,* for example—which were never surpassed by any * “My noontide, India may declare; Like her fierce sun, I fired the air! Like him, to wood and cave bade fly Her natives, from mine angry eye. And now, my race of terror run, Mine be the eve of tropic sun! No pale gradations quench his ray, poet; in spite of all these merits, the immediate
success of Rokeby was greatly inferior to
that of the Lady of the Lake; nor has it ever
since been so much a favourite with the public at large as any other of his poetical
romances. He ascribes this failure, in his introduction of 1830, partly to the radically
unpoetical character of the Roundheads; but surely their character has its poetical side
also, had his prejudices allowed him to enter upon its study with impartial sympathy; and I
doubt not, Mr Morritt suggested the difficulty on
this score, when the outline of the story was as yet undetermined, from consideration
rather of the poet’s peculiar feelings, and powers as hitherto exhibited, than of the
subject absolutely. Partly he blames the satiety of the public ear, which had had so much
of his rhythm, not only from himself, but from dozens of mocking birds, male and female,
all more or less applauded in their day, and now all equally forgotten.* This circumstance,
too, had probably no slender effect; the more that, in defiance of all the hints of his
friends, he now, in his narrative, repeated (with more negligence) the uniform octosyllabic
couplets of the Lady of No twilight dews his wrath allay; With disk like battle-target red, He rushes to his burning bed, Dyes the wide wave with bloody light, Then sinks at once—and all is night.”—Canto
vi. 21.
* “Scott found
peculiar favour and imitation among the fair sex. There was Miss Halford, and Miss Mitford, and Miss
Francis; but, with the greatest respect be it spoken, none of
his imitators did much honour to the original except Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, until the appearance of
‘The Bridal of
Triermain’ and ‘Harold the Dauntless,’ which, in the opinion of some,
equalled if not surpassed him; and, lo! after three or four years, they turned
out to be the master’s own compositions.”—Byron, vol. xv., p. 96.
the Lake, instead of recurring to the more varied cadence of the
Lay or Marmion. It is fair to add that, among the London circles
at least, some sarcastic flings in Mr Moore’s
“Twopenny Post Bag” must
have had an unfavourable influence on this occasion.* But the cause of failure which the
Poet himself places last, was unquestionably the main one. The deeper and darker passion of
Childe Harold, the audacity of its
morbid voluptuousness, and the melancholy majesty of the numbers in which it defied the
world, had taken the general imagination by storm; and Rokeby,
with many beauties and some sublimities, was pitched, as a whole, on a key which seemed
tame in the comparison.
I have already adverted to the fact that Scott felt it a relief, not a fatigue, to compose the Bridal of Triermainpari
passu with Rokeby. In
answer, for example, to one of James
Ballantyne’s letters, urging accelerated speed with the weightier
romance, he says, “I fully share in your anxiety to get forward the grand work;
but, I assure you, I feel the more confidence from coquetting with the
guerilla.”
* See, for instance, the Epistle of Lady Corke—or that of Messrs Lackington, booksellers, to
one of their dandy authors—
“Should you feel any touch of poetical glow We’ve a scheme to suggest—Mr Scott,
you must know, (Who, we’re sorry to say it, now works for the Row), Having quitted the Borders to seek new renown, Is coming by long Quarto stages to town, And beginning with Rokeby (the
job’s sure to pay), Means to do all the gentlemen’s seats on the way. Now the scheme is, though none of our hackneys can beat him, To start a new Poet through Highgate to meet him; Who by means of quick proofs—no revises—long coaches— May do a few Villas before Scott approaches; Indeed if our Pegasus be not curst shabby, He’ll reach, without foundering, at least Woburn-Abbey.” &c.
&c.
The quarto of Rokeby was
followed, within two months, by the small volume which had been designed for a
twin-birth;—the MS. had been transcribed by one of the Ballantynes
themselves, in order to guard against any indiscretion of the press-people; and the
mystification, aided and abetted by Erskine, in no
small degree heightened the interest of its reception. Except Mr Morritt, Scott had, so far as I am
aware, no English confidant upon this occasion. Whether any of his daily companions in the
Parliament House were in the secret, I have never heard; but I can scarcely believe that
any of those intimate friends, who had known him and Erskine from
their youth upwards, could have for a moment believed the latter capable either of the
invention or the execution of this airy and fascinating romance in little. Mr Jeffrey, for whom chiefly “the trap had been
set,” was far too sagacious to be caught in it; but, as it happened, he made
a voyage that year to America, and thus lost the opportunity of immediately expressing his
opinion either of Rokeby or of the Bridal
of Triermain. The writer in the Quarterly Review seems to have been completely
deceived—“We have already spoken of it,” says the critic, “as an imitation of Mr
Scott’s style of composition; and if we are compelled to make the
general approbation more precise and specific, we should say, that if it be inferior in
vigour to some of his productions, it equals or surpasses them in elegance and beauty;
that it is more uniformly tender, and far less infected with the unnatural prodigies
and coarseness of the earlier romances. In estimating its merits, however, we should
forget that it is offered as an imitation. The diction undoubtedly reminds us of a
rhythm and cadence we have heard before; but the sentiments, descriptions, and
characters, have qualities that are native and
unborrowed.” Quarterly Review,
July, 1813.
If this writer was, as I suppose, Ellis, he probably considered it as a thing impossible that Scott should have engaged in such a scheme without giving him
a hint of it; but to have admitted into the secret any one who was likely to criticise the
piece, would have been to sacrifice the very object of the device. Erskine’s own suggestion, that “perhaps a
quizzical review might be got up,” led, I believe, to nothing more important
than a paragraph in one of the Edinburgh newspapers. He may be pardoned for having been not
a little flattered to find it generally considered as not impossible that he should have
written such a poem; and I have heard Ballantyne
say, that nothing could be more amusing than the style of his coquetting on the subject
while it was yet fresh; but when this first excitement was over, his natural feeling of
what was due to himself, as well as to his friend, dictated many a remonstrance; and,
though he ultimately acquiesced in permitting another minor romance to be put forth in the
same manner, he did so reluctantly, and was far from acting his part so well.
Scott says, in the Introduction to the Lord of the Isles, “As Mr Erskine was more than suspected of a taste for
poetry, and as I took care, in several places, to mix something that might resemble (as
far as was in my power) my friend’s feeling and manner, the train easily caught,
and two large editions were sold.” Among the passages to which he here
alludes, are no doubt those in which the character of the minstrel Arthur is shaded with the colourings of an almost effeminate gentleness.
Yet, in the midst of them, the “mighty minstrel” himself, from time to time,
escapes; as, for instance, where the lover
bids Lucy, in that exquisite picture of crossing a
mountain stream, trust to his “stalwart arm”— “Which could yon oak’s prone trunk uprear.” Nor can I pass the compliment to Scott’s own fair
patroness, where Lucy’s admirer is made to confess, with some
momentary lapse of gallantry, that he “Ne’er won—best meed to minstrel true— One favouring smile from fair Buccleuch;” nor the burst of genuine Borderism,— “Bewcastle now must keep the hold, Speir-Adam’s steeds must bide in stall; Of Hartleyburn the bowmen bold Must only shoot from battled wall; And Liddesdale may buckle spur, And Teviot now may belt the brand, Taras and Ewes keep nightly stir, And Eskdale foray Cumberland.”— But, above all, the choice of the scenery, both of the Introductions and of the story
itself, reveals the early and treasured predilections of the poet. For who that remembers
the circumstances of his first visit to the vale of St John, but must see throughout the
impress of his own real romance? I own I am not without a suspicion that, in one passage,
which always seemed to me a blot upon the composition—that in which Arthur derides the military coxcombries of his rival— “Who comes in foreign trashery Of tinkling chain and spur— A walking haberdashery Of feathers, lace, and fur;— In Rowley’s antiquated phrase, Horse-milliner of modern days;” there is a sly reference to the incidents of a certain ball, of
August, 1797, at the Gilsland Spa.*
Among the more prominent Erskinisms, are the eulogistic mention of
Glasgow, the scene of Erskine’s education; and the lines on Collins,—a supplement to whose Ode on the Highland Superstitions is, as far
as I know, the only specimen that ever was published of
Erskine’s verse.†
As a whole, the Bridal of Triermain appears to me as characteristic of
Scott as any of his larger poems. His genius
pervades and animates it beneath a thin and playful veil, which perhaps adds as much of
grace as it takes away of splendour. As Wordsworth
says of the eclipse on the lake of Lugano— “’Tis sunlight sheathed and gently charmed;” and I think there is at once a lightness and a polish of versification beyond what he
has elsewhere attained. If it be a miniature, it is such a one as a Cooper might have hung fearlessly beside the masterpieces
of Vandyke.
The Introductions contain some of the most exquisite passages he ever
produced; but their general effect has always struck me as unfortunate. No art can
reconcile us to contemptuous satire of the merest frivolities of modern life—some of them
already, in twenty years, grown obsolete—interlaid between such bright visions of the old
world of romance, when “Strength was gigantic, valour high, And wisdom soared beyond the sky, And beauty had such matchless beam As lights not now a lover’s dream.”
* See ante, vol. i., p. 266.
† It is included in the Border Minstrelsy. Scott’s Poetical Works, vol. i., p.
270.
The fall is grievous, from
the hoary minstrel of Newark, and his feverish tears on Killiecrankie, to a pathetic swain,
who can stoop to denounce as objects of his jealousy— “The landaulet and four blood bays— The Hessian boot and pantaloon.”
Before Triermain came
out, Scott had taken wing for Abbotsford; and indeed he seems to have so contrived it in
his earlier period, that he should not be in Edinburgh when any unavowed work of his was
published; whereas, from the first, in the case of books that bore his name on the
title-page, he walked as usual to the Parliament House, and bore all the buzz and tattle of
friends and acquaintance with an air of good-humoured equanimity, or rather total apparent
indifference. The following letter, which contains some curious matter of more kinds than
one, was written partly in town and partly in the country:—
To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead.
Edinburgh, March 13th, 1813. “My dearest Friend,
“The pinasters have arrived safe, and I can hardly
regret, while I am so much flattered by, the trouble you have had in collecting
them. I have got some wild larch trees from Loch Katrine, and both are to be
planted next week, when, God willing, I shall be at Abbotsford to superintend
the operation. I have got a little corner of ground laid out for a nursery,
where I shall rear them carefully till they are old enough to be set forth to
push their fortune on the banks of Tweed.—What I shall finally make of this
villa-work I don’t know, but in the mean time it is very entertaining. I
shall have to resist very flattering invitations this season; for I have
received hints, from more quarters than one, that my bow
would be acceptable at Carlton House in case I should be in London, which is
very flattering, especially as there were some prejudices to be got over in
that quarter. I should be in some danger of giving new offence, too; for,
although I utterly disapprove of the present rash and ill-advised course of the
princess, yet, as she always was most
kind and civil to me, I certainly could not, as a gentleman, decline obeying
any commands she might give me to wait upon her, especially in her present
adversity. So, though I do not affect to say I should be sorry to take an
opportunity of peeping at the splendours of royalty, prudence and economy will
keep me quietly at home till another day. My great amusement here this some
time past has been going almost nightly to see John
Kemble, who certainly is a great artist. It is a pity he shows
too much of his machinery. I wish he could be double-caped, as they say of
watches;—but the fault of too much study certainly does not belong to many of
his tribe. He is, I think, very great in those parts especially where character
is tinged by some acquired and systematic habits, like those of the Stoic
philosophy in Cato and Brutus, or of misanthropy in Penruddock: but sudden turns and natural bursts
of passion are not his forte. I saw him play Sir Giles
Overreach (the Richard III.
of middling life) last night; but he came not within a hundred miles of
Cooke, whose terrible visage, and
short, abrupt, and savage utterance, gave a reality almost to that
extraordinary scene in which he boasts of his own successful villany to a
nobleman of worth and honour, of whose alliance he is ambitious.
Cooke contrived somehow to impress upon the audience
the idea of such a monster of enormity as had learned to pique himself even
upon his own atrocious character. But Kemble was too
handsome, too plausible, and too smooth, to admit its being
probable that he should be blind to the unfavourable impression which these
extraordinary vaunts are likely to make on the person whom he is so anxious to
conciliate.
“Abbotsford, 21st March.
“This letter, begun in Edinburgh, is to take
wing from Abbotsford. John Winnos (now John Winnos is the sub-oracle of
Abbotsford, the principal being Tom
Purdie) John Winnos pronounces that the
pinaster seed ought to be raised at first on a hot-bed, and thence
transplanted to a nursery: so to a hot-bed they have been carefully
consigned, the upper oracle not objecting, in respect his talent lies in
catching a salmon, or finding a hare sitting—on which occasions (being a
very complete Scrub) he solemnly
exchanges his working jacket for an old green one of mine, and takes the
air of one of Robin Hood’s
followers. His more serious employments are ploughing, harrowing, and
overseeing all my premises; being a complete jack-of-all-trades, from the
carpenter to the shepherd, nothing comes strange to him; and being
extremely honest, and somewhat of a humourist, he is quite my right hand. I
cannot help singing his praises at this moment, because I have so many odd
and out-of-the-way things to do, that I believe the conscience of many of
our jog-trot countrymen would revolt at being made my instrument in
sacrificing good corn-land to the visions of Mr
Price’s theory. Mr
Pinkerton, the historian, has a play coming out at
Edinburgh; it is by no means bad poetry, yet I think it will not be
popular; the people come and go, and speak very notable things in good
blank verse, but there is no very strong interest excited: the plot also is
disagreeable, and liable to the objections (though in a less degree) which
have been urged against the Mysterious Mother: it is to be acted on
Wednesday; I will let you know its fate. P., with whom
I am in good habits, showed me the MS., but I referred him, with such
praise as I could conscientiously bestow, to the players and the public. I
don’t know why one should take the task of damning a man’s play
out of the hands of the proper tribunal. Adieu, my dear friend. I have
scarce room for love to Miss,
Mrs, and Dr B.
W. Scott.”
To this I add a letter to Lady Louisa
Stuart, who had sent him a copy of these lines, found by Lady Douglas on the back of a tattered bank note— “Farewell, my note, and wheresoe’er ye wend, Shun gaudy scenes, and be the poor man’s friend. You’ve left a poor one, go to one as poor, And drive despair and hunger from his door.” It appears that these noble friends had adopted, or feigned to adopt, the belief that
the Bridal of Triermain was a production of Mr R. P.
Gillies—who had about this time published an imitation of Lord Byron’sRomaunt, under the title of “Childe Alarique.”
To the Lady Louisa Stuart, &c. &c. &c. Bothwell Castle.
“Abbotsford, 28th April, 1813. “Dear Lady Louisa,
“Nothing can give me more pleasure than to hear
from you, because it is both a most acceptable favour to me, and also a sign
that your own spirits are recovering their tone. Ladies are, I think, very
fortunate in having a resource in work at a time when the mind rejects
intellectual amusement. Men have no resource but striding up and down the room,
like a bird that beats itself to pieces against the bars of its cage; whereas
needle-work is a sort of sedative, too
mechanical to worry the mind by distracting it from the points on which its
musings turn, yet gradually assisting it in regaining steadiness and composure;
for so curiously are our bodies and minds linked together, that the regular and
constant employment of the former on any process, however dull and uniform, has
the effect of tranquillizing, where it cannot disarm, the feelings of the
other. I am very much pleased with the lines on the guinea note, and if
Lady Douglas does not object I would
willingly mention the circumstance in the Edinburgh Annual Register. I think it will give the author great
delight to know that his lines had attracted attention, and had sent the paper
on which they were recorded, ‘heaven-directed, to the poor.’
Of course I would mention no names. There was, as your Ladyship may remember,
some years since, a most audacious and determined murder committed on a porter
belonging to the British Linen Company’s Bank at Leith, who was stabbed
to the heart in broad daylight, and robbed of a large sum in notes.* If ever
this crime comes to light, it will be through the circumstance of an idle young
fellow having written part of a playhouse song on one of the notes, which,
however, has as yet never appeared in circulation.
“I am very glad you like Rokeby, which is nearly out of fashion and
memory with me. It has been wonderfully popular, about ten thousand copies
having walked off already, in about three months, and the demand continuing
faster than it can be supplied. As to my imitator, the Knight of Triermain, I will endeavour to convey
to Mr Gillies (puisque Gillies il
est) your Ladyship’s very just strictures on the
Introduction to the second
* This murder, perpetrated in November, 1806,
remains a mystery in 1836.
Canto. But if he takes the opinion of a hacked old author
like myself, he will content himself with avoiding such bevues in future,
without attempting to mend those which are already made. There is an ominous
old proverb which says, confess and be hanged; and truly
if an author acknowledges his own blunders, I do not know who he can expect to
stand by him; whereas, let him confess nothing, and he will always find some
injudicious admirers to vindicate even his faults. So that I think after
publication the effect of criticism should be prospective, in which point of
view I daresay Mr G. will take your friendly hint,
especially as it is confirmed by that of the best judges who have read the
poem. Here is beautiful weather for April! an absolute snow-storm mortifying me
to the core by retarding the growth of all my young trees and shrubs. Charlotte begs to be most respectfully remembered
to your Ladyship and Lady D. We are
realizing the nursery tale of the man and his wife who lived in a vinegar
bottle, for our only sitting room is just twelve feet square, and my
Eve alleges that I am too big for our paradise. To
make amends, I have created a tolerable garden, occupying about an English
acre, which I begin to be very fond of. When one passes forty, an addition to
the quiet occupations of life becomes of real value, for I do not hunt and fish
with quite the relish I did ten years ago. Adieu, my dear Lady Louisa, and all good attend you.
Walter Scott.”
CHAPTER II. AFFAIRS OF JOHN BALLANTYNE AND CO.—CAUSES OF THEIR
DERANGEMENT—LETTERS OF SCOTT TO HIS PARTNERS—NEGOTIATION FOR RELIEF
WITH MESSRS CONSTABLE—NEW PURCHASE OF LAND AT
ABBOTSFORD—EMBARRASSMENTS CONTINUED—JOHN BALLANTYNE’S
EXPRESSES—DRUMLANRIG—PENRITH,ETC.—SCOTT’S MEETING WITH THE
MARQUIS OF ABERCORN AT LONGTOWN—HIS APPLICATION TO THE
DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH—OFFER OF THE POET-LAUREATESHIP—CONSIDERED—AND
DECLINED—ADDRESS OF THE CITY OF EDINBURGH TO THE PRINCE-REGENT—ITS RECEPTION—CIVIC HONOURS
CONFERRED ON SCOTT—QUESTION OF TAXATION ON LITERARY INCOME—LETTERS TO
MR MORRITT—MR SOUTHEY—MR
RICHARDSON—MR CRABBE—MISS BAILLIE
AND LORD BYRON—1813.
About a month after the publication of the Bridal of Triermain, the affairs of the Messrs
Ballantyne, which had never apparently been in good order since
the establishment of the bookselling firm, became so embarrassed as to call for Scott’s most anxious efforts to disentangle them.
Indeed, it is clear that there had existed some very serious perplexity in the course of
the preceding autumn; for Scott writes to John Ballantyne, while Rokeby was in progress (August 11, 1812)—“I have a letter from
James, very anxious about your health and
state of spirits. If you suffer the present inconveniences to depress you too much, you
are wrong; and if you conceal any part of them, are very unjust to us all. I am always ready to make any sacrifices to do justice to
engagements, and would rather sell any thing, or every thing, than be less than true
men to the world.”
I have already, perhaps, said enough to account for the general want of
success in this publishing adventure; but Mr James
Ballantyne sums up the case so briefly in his death-bed paper, that I may
here quote his words. “My brother,” he says, “though an active
and pushing, was not a cautious bookseller, and the large sums received never formed an
addition to stock. In fact, they were all expended by the partners, who, being then
young and sanguine men, not unwillingly adopted my brother’s hasty results. By
May, 1813, in a word, the absolute throwing away of our own most valuable publications,
and the rash adoption of some injudicious speculations of Mr
Scott, had introduced such losses and embarrassments, that after a very
careful consideration, Mr Scott determined to dissolve the
concern.” He adds,—“This became a matter of less difficulty, because
time had in a great measure worn away the differences between Mr
Scott and Mr Constable, and
Mr Hunter was now out of
Constable’s concern.* A peace, therefore, was speedily
made up, and the old habits of intercourse were restored.”
How reluctantly Scott had made up his
mind to open such a negotiation with Constable, as
involved a complete exposure of the mismanagement of John
Ballantyne’s business as a publisher, will appear from a letter dated
about the Christmas of 1812, in which he says to James, who had proposed asking Constable to take a
share both in Rokeby and in the Annual Register, “You must be aware,
that in stating the objections which occur to me to taking in
Constable, I think they ought to give way either to absolute
necessity or to very
* Mr
Hunter died in March, 1812.
strong grounds of advantage. But I am
persuaded nothing ultimately good can be expected from any connexion with that house,
unless for those who have a mind to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. We will
talk the matter coolly over, and in the mean while, perhaps you could see W. Erskine, and learn what impression this odd union
is like to make among your friends. Erskine is sound-headed, and
quite to be trusted with your whole story. I must own I can
hardly think the purchase of the Register is equal to the
loss of credit and character which your surrender will be conceived to
infer.” At the time when he wrote this, Scott no doubt
anticipated that Rokeby would have success not less decisive than
the Lady of the Lake; but in this
expectation—though 10,000 copies in three months would have seemed to any other author a
triumphant sale—he had been disappointed. And mean while the difficulties of the firm,
accumulating from week to week, had reached, by the middle of May, a point which rendered
it absolutely necessary for him to conquer all his scruples.
Mr Cadell, then Constable’s partner, says in his Memoranda,—“Prior to this time the reputation of John Ballantyne and Co. had been decidedly on the
decline. It was notorious in the trade that their general speculations had been
unsuccessful; they were known to be grievously in want of money. These rumours were
realized to the full by an application which Messrs B. made to
Mr Constable in May, 1813, for pecuniary aid, accompanied by
an offer of some of the books they had published since 1809, as a purchase, along with
various shares in Mr Scott’s own poems. Their
difficulties were admitted, and the negotiation was pressed urgently; so much so, that
a pledge was given, that if the terms asked were acceded to, John
Ballantyne and Co. would endeavour to wind up
their concerns, and cease, as soon as possible, to be publishers.”
Mr Cadell adds:—“I need hardly remind you that this was a
period of very great general difficulty in the money market. It was the crisis of the
war. The public expenditure had reached an enormous height; and even the most
prosperous mercantile houses were often pinched to sustain their credit. It may easily,
therefore, be supposed that the Messrs Ballantyne had during many
months besieged every banker’s door in Edinburgh, and that their agents had done
the like in London.”
The most important of the requests which the labouring house made to
Constable was, that he should forthwith take
entirely to himself the stock, copyright, and future management of the Edinburgh Annual Register. Upon examining the state of this
book, however, Constable found that the loss on it had never been less
than L.1000 per annum, and he therefore declined that matter for the present. He promised,
however, to consider seriously the means he might have of ultimately relieving them from
the pressure of the Register, and, in the mean time, offered to
take 300 sets of the stock on hand. The other purchases he finally made on the 18th of May,
were considerable portions of Weber’s unhappy
Beaumont and Fletcher—of an
edition of Defoe’s novels, in twelve
volumes—of a collection entitled Tales of the
East, in three large volumes, 8vo, double columned—and of another in one volume,
called Popular Tales about 800 copies—of the Vision of Don Roderick—and a fourth of the remaining
copyright of Rokeby, price L.700. The
immediate accommodation thus received amounted to L.2000; and Scott, who had personally conducted the latter part of the negotiation,
writes thus to his junior partner, who had gone a week or two earlier to London in quest of
some similar assistance there:
To Mr John Ballantyne, care of Messrs
Longman &c. Co., London.
“Printing-office, May 18th, 1813. “Dear John,
“After many offs and ons, and as many projets and contre-projets as the treaty of Amiens, I have at length
concluded a treaty with Constable, in
which I am sensible he has gained a great advantage;* but what could I do
amidst the disorder and pressure of so many demands? The arrival of your
long-dated bills decided my giving in, for what could James or I do with them? I trust this
sacrifice has cleared our way, but many rubs remain; nor am I, after these hard
skirmishes, so able to meet them by my proper credit.
Constable, however, will be a zealous ally; and for
the first time these many weeks I shall lay my head on a quiet pillow, for now
I do think that, by our joint exertions, we shall get well through the storm,
save Beaumont from
depreciation, get a partner in our heavy concerns, reef our topsails, and move
on securely under an easy sail. And if, on the one hand, I have sold my gold
too cheap, I have, on the other, turned my lead to gold. Brewster† and Singers‡ are the only heavy things to
which I have not given a blue eye. Had your news of Cadell’s sale§ reached us here, I could not have
harpooned my grampus so deeply as I have done, as nothing but Rokeby would have barbed the hook.
“Adieu, my dear John. I have the most sincere
* “These and after purchases of books from the
stock of J. Ballantyne and Co.
were resold to the trade by Constable’s firm, at less than one half and one
third of the prices at which they were thus obtained.”—Note fromMr R. Cadell.
† Dr
Brewster’s edition of Ferguson’s Astronomy, 2
vols. 8vo, with plates, 4to, Edin. 1811. 36s.
Dr Singers’ General View of the
County of Dumfries, 8vo. Edin. 1812. 18s.
§ A trade sale of Messrs Cadell and Davies in the Strand.
regard for you, and you may depend on my considering your
interest with quite as much attention as my own. If I have ever expressed
myself with irritation in speaking of this business, you must impute it to the
sudden, extensive, and unexpected embarrassments in which I found myself
involved all at once. If to your real goodness of heart and integrity, and to
the quickness and acuteness of your talents, you added habits of more universal
circumspection, and, above all, the courage to tell disagreeable truths to
those whom you hold in regard, I pronounce that the world never held such a man
of business. These it must be your study to add to your other good qualities.
Mean time, as some one says to Swift, I
love you with all your failings. Pray make an effort and love me with all mine.
Yours truly,
W. S.”
Three days afterwards, Scott resumes the subject as follows:
To Mr John Ballantyne, London.
“Edinburgh, 21st May, 1813. “Dear John,
“Let it never escape your recollection, that
shutting your own eyes, or blinding those of your friends, upon the actual
state of business, is the high road to ruin. Meanwhile, we have recovered our
legs for a week or two. Constable will,
I think, come in to the Register.
He is most anxious to maintain the printing-office; he sees most truly that the
more we print the less we publish; and for the same reason he will, I think,
help us off with our heavy quire-stock.
“I was aware of the distinction between the state and the calendar as to the
latter including the printing-office bills, and I summed and docked them (they
are marked with red ink), but
there is still a difference of L.2000 and upwards on the calendar against the
business. I sometimes fear that, between the long dates of your bills, and the
tardy settlements of the Edinburgh trade, some difficulties will occur even in
June; and July I always regard with deep anxiety. As for loss, if I get out
without public exposure, I shall not greatly regard the rest. Radcliffe the physician said, when he lost
L.2000 on the South-Sea scheme, it was only going up 2000 pair of stairs; I
say, it is only writing 2000 couplets, and the account is balanced. More of
this hereafter. Yours truly,
W. Scott.
“P.S. James has behaved very well during this whole transaction,
and has been most steadily attentive to business. I am convinced that the
more he works the better his health will be. One or other of you will need
to be constantly in the printing-office henceforward—it is the
sheet-anchor.”
The allusion in this postscript to James Ballantyne’s health reminds me that Scott’s letters to himself are full of hints on that
subject, even from a very early period of their connexion; and these hints are all to the
same effect. James was a man of lazy habits, and not a little addicted
to the more solid, and perhaps more dangerous, part of the indulgences of the table. One
letter (dated Ashestiel 1810) will be a sufficient specimen:—
To Mr James Ballantyne.
“My dear James,
“I am very sorry for the state of your health, and
should be still more so, were I not certain that I can prescribe for you as
well as any physician in Edin-burgh. You have naturally an
athletic constitution and a hearty stomach, and these agree very ill with a
sedentary life and the habits of indolence which it brings on. Your stomach
thus gets weak, and from those complaints of all others arise—most certainly
flatulence, hypochondria, and all the train of unpleasant feelings connected
with indigestion. We all know the horrible sensation of the nightmare arises
from the same cause which gives those waking nightmares commonly called the
blue devils. You must positively put yourself on a regimen as to eating, not
for a month or two, but for a year at least, and take regular exercise—and my
life for yours. I know this by myself, for if I were to eat and drink in town
as I do here, it would soon finish me, and yet I am sensible I live too
genially in Edinburgh as it is. Yours very truly,
W. Scott.”
Among Scott’s early pets at
Abbotsford there was a huge raven, whose powers of speech were remarkable, far beyond any
parrot’s that he had ever met with; and who died in consequence of an excess of the
kind to which James Ballantyne was addicted.
Thenceforth, Scott often repeated to his old friend, and occasionally
scribbled by way of postscript to his notes on business “When you are craving, Remember the Raven.” Sometimes the formula is varied to “When you’ve dined half, Think on poor Ralph!”
His preachments of regularity in book-keeping to John, and of abstinence from good cheer to James Bal-lantyne, were equally vain; but on the other hand
it must be allowed that they had some reason for displeasure—(the more felt because they
durst not, like him, express their feelings)—when they found that scarcely had these
“hard skirmishes” terminated in the bargain of May 18th, before Scott was preparing fresh embarrassments for himself, by
commencing a negotiation for a considerable addition to his property at Abbotsford. As
early as the 20th of June, he writes to Constable as
being already aware of this matter, and alleges his anxiety “to close at once with
a very capricious person,” as the only reason that could have induced him to
make up his mind to sell the whole copyright of an as yet unwritten poem, to be entitled
“The Nameless Glen.” This copyright he then
offered to dispose of to Constable for L.5000; adding, “this
is considerably less in proportion than I have already made on the share of Rokeby sold to yourself, and surely that
is no unfair admeasurement.” A long correspondence ensued, in the course of
which Scott mentions “the
Lord of the Isles,” as a title which had suggested itself to him in place
of “the Nameless Glen;” but as the negotiation did
not succeed, I may pass its details. The new property which Scott was
so eager to acquire, was that hilly tract stretching from the old Roman road near
Turn-again towards the Cauldshiels Loch: a then desolate and naked mountain-mere, which he
likens, in a letter of this summer (to Lady Louisa
Stuart), to the Lake of the Genie and the Fisherman in the Arabian Tale. To
obtain this lake at one extremity of his estate, as a contrast to the Tweed at the other,
was a prospect for which hardly any sacrifice would have appeared too much; and he
contrived to gratify his wishes in the course of that July, to which
he had spoken of himself in May as looking forward “with the deepest
anxiety.”
Nor was he, I must add, more able to control some of his minor tastes.
I find him writing to Mr Terry, on the 20th of June,
about “that splendid lot of ancient armour, advertised by Winstanley,” a celebrated auctioneer in
London, of which he had the strongest fancy to make his spoil, though he was at a loss to
know where it should be placed when it reached Abbotsford; and on the 2d of July, this
acquisition also having been settled, he says to the same correspondent “I have
written to Mr Winstanley. My bargain with Constable was otherwise arranged, but Little John is to find the needful article, and I
shall take care of Mr Winstanley’s interest, who has behaved
too handsomely in this matter to be trusted to the mercy of our little friend the
Picaroon, who is, notwithstanding his many excellent qualities, a little on the score
of old Gobbo—doth somewhat smack—somewhat grow to. We shall be at Abbotsford on the
12th, and hope soon to see you there. I am fitting up a small room above Peter-house, where an unceremonious bachelor may consent to do
penance, though the place is a cock-loft, and the access that which leads many a bold
fellow to his last nap a ladder.”* And a few weeks later, he says, in the
same sort, to his sister-in-law, Mrs Thomas Scott,
“In despite of these hard times, which affect my patrons the booksellers very much, I
am buying old
* The court of offices, built on the haugh at Abbotsford in
1812, included a house for the faithful coachman, Peter
Mathieson. One of Scott’s
Cantabrigian friends, Mr W. S. Rose, gave the
whole pile soon afterwards the name, which it retained to the end, of Peter-House. The loft at Peter-House continued to be
occupied by occasional bachelor guests until the existing mansion was completed.
books and old armour as usual, and adding
to what your old friend* Burns calls ‘A fouth of auld nick-nackets, Rusty aim caps and jingling jackets, Wad haud the Lothians three in tackets A towmont glide, And parritch-pats and auld saut-backets, Afore the flude.’”
Notwithstanding all this, it must have been with a most uneasy mind
that he left Edinburgh to establish himself at Abbotsford that July. The assistance of
Constable had not been granted, indeed it had
not been asked, to an extent at all adequate for the difficulties of the case; and I have
now to transcribe, with pain and reluctance, some extracts from Scott’s letters, during the ensuing autumn, which speak the language
of anxious, and indeed humiliating distress; and give a most lively notion of the incurable
recklessness of his younger partner.
To Mr John Ballantyne.
“Abbotsford, Saturday, 24th July. “Dear John,
“I sent you the order, and have only to hope it
arrived safe and in good time. I waked the boy at three o’clock myself,
having slept little, less on account of the money than of the time. Surely you
should have written, three or four days before, the probable amount of the
deficit, and, as on former occasions, I would have furnished you with means of
meeting it.
* Mrs Thomas
Scott had met Burns frequently in early life at
Dumfries. Her brother, the late Mr David
MacCulloch, was a great favourite with the poet, and the
best singer of his songs that I ever heard.
These expresses, besides every other inconvenience,
excite surprise in my family and in the neighbourhood. I know no justifiable
occasion for them but the unexpected return of a bill. I do not consider you as
answerable for the success of plans, but I do and must hold you responsible for
giving me, in distinct and plain terms, your opinion as to any difficulties
which may occur, and that in such time that I may make arrangements to obviate
them if possible.
“Of course if any thing has gone wrong you will come
out here to-morrow. But if, as I hope and trust, the cash arrived safe, you
will write to me, under cover to the Duke of
Buccleuch, Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfries-shire. I shall set out
for that place on Monday morning early.
W. S.”
To Mr James Ballantyne.
“Abbotsford, 25th July, 1813. “Dear James,
“I address the following jobation for John to you, that you may see whether I do not
well to be angry, and enforce upon him the necessity of constantly writing his
fears as well as his hopes. You should rub him often on this point, for his
recollection becomes rusty the instant I leave town and am not in the way to
rack him with constant questions. I hope the presses are doing well, and that
you are quite stout again. Yours truly,
W. S.”
Enclosure. To Mr John Ballantyne.
“My good friend John,
“The post brings me no letter from you, which I am much surprised at, as
you must suppose me anxious to learn that your express arrived. I think he must
have reached you before post-hours, and James or you might have found a minute to say so in a single
line. I once more request that you will be a business-like correspondent, and
state your provisions for every week prospectively. I do not expect you to warrant them, which you rather perversely seem to insist
is my wish, but I do want to be aware of their nature and extent, that I may
provide against the possibility of miscarriage. The calendar, to which you
refer me, tells me what sums are due, but cannot tell your shifts to pay them,
which are naturally altering with circumstances, and of which alterations I
request to have due notice. You say you could not
supposeSir W. Forbes would
have refused the long dated bills; but that you had such an apprehension is
clear, both because in the calendar these bills were rated two months lower,
and because, three days before, you wrote me an enigmatical expression of your
apprehensions, instead of saying plainly there was a chance of your wanting
L.350, when I would have sent you an order to be used conditionally.
“All I desire is unlimited confidence and frequent
correspondence, and that you will give me weekly at least the fullest
anticipation of your resources, and the probability of their being effectual. I
may be disappointed in my own, of which you shall have equally timeous notice.
Omit no exertions to procure the use of money, even for a month or six weeks,
for time is most precious. The large balance due in January from the trade, and
individuals, which I cannot reckon at less than L.4000, will put us finally to
rights; and it will be a shame to founder within sight of harbour. The greatest
risk we run is from such ill-considered despatches as those of Friday. Suppose
that I had gone to Drumlanrig—suppose the poney had set
up—suppose a thousand things—and we were ruined for want of your telling your
apprehensions in due time. Do not plague yourself to vindicate this sort of
management; but if you have escaped the consequences (as to which you have left
me uncertain), thank God, and act more cautiously another time. It was quite
the same to me on what day I sent that draft; indeed it must have been so if I
had the money in my cash account, and if I had not, the more time given me to
provide it the better.
“Now, do not affect to suppose that my displeasure
arises from your not having done your utmost to realize funds, and that utmost
having failed. It is one mode, to be sure, of exculpation, to suppose
one’s self accused of something they are not charged with, and then to
make a querulous or indignant defence, and complain of the injustice of the
accuser. The head and front of your offending is precisely your not writing
explicitly, and I request this may not happen again. It is your fault, and I
believe arises either from an ill-judged idea of smoothing matters to me—as if
I were not behind the curtain—or a general reluctance to allow that any danger
is near, until it is almost unparriable. I shall be very sorry if any thing I
have said gives you pain; but the matter is too serious for all of us to be
passed over without giving you my explicit sentiments. To-morrow I set out for
Drumlanrig, and shall not hear from you till Tuesday or Wednesday. Make
yourself master of the post-town—Thornhill, probably, or Sanquhar. As Sir W. F. & Co. have cash to meet my
order, nothing, I think, can have gone wrong, unless the boy perished by the
way. Therefore, in faith and hope, and—that I may lack none of the Christian
virtues—in charity with your dilatory worship, I remain very truly yours,
W. S.”
Scott proceeded, accordingly, to join a gay and festive circle, whom
the Duke of Buccleuch had assembled about him on first
taking possession of the magnificent Castle of Drumlanrig, in Nithsdale, the principal
messuage of the dukedom of Queensberry, which had recently lapsed into his family. But,
post equitem sedet atra cura,—another of
John Ballantyne’s unwelcome missives,
rendered necessary by a neglect of precisely the same kind as before, reached him in the
midst of this scene of rejoicing. On the 31st, he again writes:
To Mr John Ballantyne, Bookseller, Edinburgh.
“Drumlanrig, Friday. “Dear John,
“I enclose the order. Unfortunately, the Drumlanrig
post only goes thrice-a-week; but the Marquis of
Queensberry, who carries this to Dumfries, has promised that the
guard of the mail-coach shall deliver it by five to-morrow. I was less anxious,
as your note said you could clear this month. It is a cruel thing, that no
State you furnish excludes the arising of such unexpected claims as this for
the taxes on the printing-office. What unhappy management, to suffer them to
run ahead in such a manner!—but it is in vain to complain. Were it not for your
strange concealments, I should anticipate no difficulty in winding up these
matters. But who can reckon upon a State where claims are kept out of view
until they are in the hands of a writer? If you have no
time to say that this comes safe to hand, I suppose
James may favour me so far. Yours
truly,
W. S.
“Let the guard be rewarded.
“Let me know exactly what you can do and hope to
do for next month; for it signifies nothing raising money for you, unless I
see it is to be of real service. Observe, I make you responsible for
nothing but a fair statement. The guard is known to
the Marquis, who has good-naturedly
promised to give him this letter with his own hand; so it must reach you in
time, though probably past five on Saturday.”
Another similar application reached Scott the day after the guard delivered his packet. Rewrites thus, in
reply:—
To Mr John Ballantyne.
“Drumlanrig, Sunday. “Dear John,
“I trust you got my letter yesterday by five, with
the draft enclosed. I return your draft accepted. On Wednesday I think of
leaving this place, where, but for these damned affairs, I should have been
very happy.
W. S.”
Scott had been for some time under an engagement to meet
the Marquis of Abercorn at Carlisle, in the first week
of August, for the transaction of some business connected with his brother Thomas’s late administration of that
nobleman’s Scottish affairs; and he had designed to pass from Drumlanrig to Carlisle
for this purpose, without going back to Abbotsford. In consequence of these repeated
harassments, however, he so far altered his plans as to cut short his stay at Drumlanrig,
and turn homewards for two or three days, where James
Ballantyne met him with such a statement as in some measure relieved his
mind.
He then proceeded to fulfil his engagement with Lord Abercorn, whom he encountered travelling in a very
peculiar style between Carlisle and Longtown. The ladies of the family and the household
occupied four or five carriages, all drawn by the Marquis’s own horses, while the
noble Lord himself brought up the rear,
mounted on a small pony, but decorated over his riding dress with the ribbon and star of
the Garter. On meeting the cavalcade, Scott turned with
them, and he was not a little amused when they reached the village of Longtown, which he
had ridden through an hour or two before, with the preparations which he found there made
for the dinner of the party. The Marquis’s major-domo and cook had arrived there at
an early hour in the morning, and every thing was now arranged for his reception in the
paltry little public-house, as nearly as possible in the style usual in his own lordly
mansions. The ducks and geese that had been dabbling three or four hours ago in the
village-pond, were now ready to make their appearance under numberless disguises as entrées; a regular bill-of-fare flanked the noble
Marquis’s allotted cover; every huckaback towel in the place had been pressed to do
service as a napkin; and, that nothing might be wanting to the mimicry of splendour, the
landlady’s poor remnants of crockery and pewter had been furbished up, and mustered
in solemn order on a crazy old beauffet, which was to represent a sideboard worthy of
Sardanapalus. I think it worth while to preserve
this anecdote, which Scott delighted in telling, as perhaps the last
relic of a style of manners, now passed away, and never likely to be revived among us.
Having despatched this dinner and his business, Scott again turned southwards, intending to spend a few days with Mr Morritt at Rokeby; but on reaching Penrith, the
landlord there, who was his old acquaintance (Mr Buchanan), placed a
letter in his hands: ecce iterum—it was once more
a cry of distress from John Ballantyne. He thus
answered it—
To Mr John Ballantyne.
Penrith, Aug. 10, 1813. “Dear John,
“I enclose you an order for L.350. I shall remain at
Rokeby until Saturday or Sunday, and be at Abbotsford on Wednesday at latest.
“I hope the printing-office is going on well. I
fear, from the state of accompts between the companies, restrictions on the
management and expense will be unavoidable, which may trench upon James’s comforts. I cannot observe
hitherto that the printing-office is paying off, but rather adding to its
embarrassments; and it cannot be thought that I have either means or
inclination to support a losing concern at the rate of L.200 a-month. If
James could find a monied partner, an active man who
understood the commercial part of the business, and would superintend the
conduct of the cash, it might be the best for all parties; for I really am not
adequate to the fatigue of mind which these affairs occasion me, though I must
do the best to struggle through them. Believe me yours, &c.,
W. S.”
At Brough he encountered a messenger who brought him such a painful
account of Mrs Morritt’s health, that he
abandoned his intention of proceeding to Rokeby; and, indeed, it was much better that he
should be at Abbotsford again as soon as possible, for his correspondence shows a continued
succession, during the three or four ensuing weeks, of the same annoyances that had pursued
him to Drumlanrig and to Penrith. By his desire, the Ballantynes had,
it would seem, before the middle of August, laid a statement of their affairs before
Constable. Though the statement was not so clear
and full as Scott had wished it to be,
Constable, on consi-dering it, at once assured them, that to go on raising
money in driblets would never effectually relieve them; that, in short, one or both of the
companies must stop, unless Mr Scott could find means to lay his hand,
without farther delay, on at least L.4000; and I gather that, by way of inducing
Constable himself to come forward with part at least of this
supply, John Ballantyne again announced his
intention of forthwith abandoning the bookselling business altogether, and making an effort
to establish himself—on a plan which Constable had shortly before
suggested—as an auctioneer in Edinburgh. The following letters need no comment:—
To Mr John Ballantyne.
“Abbotsford, Aug. 16, 1813. “Dear John,
“I am quite satisfied it is impossible for
J. B. and Co. to continue business longer than is
absolutely necessary for the sale of stock and extrication of their affairs.
The fatal injury which their credit has sustained, as well as your adopting a
profession in which I sincerely hope you will be more fortunate, renders the
closing of the bookselling business inevitable. With regard to the printing, it
is my intention to retire from that also so soon as I can possibly do so with
safety to myself, and with the regard I shall always entertain for James’s interest. Whatever loss I may
sustain will be preferable to the life I have lately led, when I seem
surrounded by a sort of magic circle, which neither permits me to remain at
home in peace, nor to stir abroad with pleasure. Your first exertion as an
auctioneer may probably be on ‘that distinguished, select, and
inimitable collection of books, made by an amateur of this city retiring
from business.’ I do not feel either health or confidence in my
own powers sufficient to authorize me to take a long
price for a new poem, until these affairs shall have been in some measure
digested. This idea has been long running in my head, but the late fatalities
which have attended this business have quite decided my resolution. I will
write to James to-morrow, being at present annoyed with a
severe headach. Yours truly,
W. Scott.”
Were I to transcribe all the letters to which these troubles gave rise,
I should fill a volume before I had reached the end of another twelvemonth. The two next I
shall quote are dated on the same day (the 24th August), which may, in consequence of the
answer the second of them received, be set down as determining the crisis of 1813.
To Mr James Ballantyne.
“Abbotsford, 24th August, 1813. “Dear James,
“Mr
Constable’s advice is, as I have always found it, sound,
sensible, and friendly—and I shall be guided by it. But I have no wealthy
friend who would join in security with me to such an extent; and to apply in
quarters where I might be refused, would ensure disclosure. I conclude
John has shown Mr
C. the state of the affairs; if not, I would wish him to do so
directly. If the proposed accommodation could be granted to the firm on my
personally joining in the security, the whole matter would be quite safe, for I
have to receive in the course of the winter some large sums from my
father’s estate,* Besides which, I shall certainly be able to go to press
in November with a new poem; or, if Mr Con-
* He probably alludes to the final settlement of
accounts with the Marquis of
Abercorn.
stable’s additional
security would please the bankers better, I could ensure Mr
C. against the possibility of loss, by assigning the copyrights,
together with that of the new poem, or even my library, in his relief. In fact,
if he looks into the affairs, he will I think see that there is no prospect of
any eventual loss to the creditors, though I may be a loser myself. My property
here is unincumbered; so is my house in Castle Street; and I have no debts out
of my own family, excepting a part of the price of Abbotsford, which I am to
retain for four years. So that, literally, I have no claims upon me unless
those arising out of this business; and when it is considered that Clerkship, L.1300 Sheriffdom, 300 Mrs Scott, 200 Interest, 100 Somers, (say) 200______L.2100 my income is above L.2000 a-year, even if the printing-office pays
nothing, I should hope no one can possibly be a loser by me. I am sure I would
strip myself to my shirt rather than it should be the case; and my only reason
for wishing to stop the concern was to do open justice to all persons. It must
have been a bitter pill to me. I can more confidently expect some aid from
Mr Constable, or from Longman’s house, because they can look into the concern
and satisfy themselves how little chance there is of their being losers, which
others cannot do. Perhaps between them they might manage to assist us with the
credit necessary, and go on in winding up the concern by occasional
acceptances.
“An odd thing has happened. I have a letter, by
order of the Prince Regent, offering me the
laureateship, in the most flattering terms. Were I my own man, as you call it,
I would refuse this offer (with all gratitude); but, as I am situated, L.300 or
L.400 a-year is not to be sneezed at upon a point of poetical honour—and it makes me a better man to that extent. I have not yet
written, however. I will say little about Constable’s handsome behaviour, but shall not forget it.
It is needless to say I shall wish him to be consulted in every step that is
taken. If I should lose all I advanced to this business, I should be less vexed
than I am at this moment. I am very busy with Swift at present, but shall certainly come to
town if it is thought necessary; but I should first wish Mr
Constable to look into the affairs to the bottom. Since I have
personally superintended them, they have been winding up very fast, and we are
now almost within sight of harbour. I will also own it was partly ill-humour at
John’s blunder last week that
made me think of throwing things up. Yours truly,
W. S.”
After writing and despatching this letter, an idea occurred to
Scott that there was a quarter, not hitherto alluded
to in any of these anxious epistles, from which he might consider himself as entitled to
ask assistance, not only with little, if any, chance of a refusal, but (owing to particular
circumstances) without incurring any very painful sense of obligation. On the 25th he says
to John Ballantyne—“After some meditation,
last night, it occurred to me I had some title to ask the Duke
of Buccleuch’s guarantee to a cash account for L.4000, as
Constable proposes. I have written to him
accordingly, and have very little doubt that he will be my surety. If this cash account
be in view, Mr Constable will certainly assist
us until the necessary writings are made out—I beg your pardon—I daresay I am
very stupid; but very often you don’t consider that I can’t follow details
which would be quite obvious to a man of business—for instance, you tell me daily,
‘that if the sums I count upon are
forthcoming, the results
must be as I suppose.’ But in a week the scene is changed, and all I can do, and
more, is inadequate to bring about these results. I protest I don’t know if at
this moment L.4000 will clear us out. After all, you are vexed, and so am I; and it is
needless to wrangle who has a right to be angry. Commend me to James. Yours truly,
W. S.”
Having explained to the Duke of
Buccleuch the position in which he stood obliged either to procure some
guarantee which would enable him to raise L.4000, or to sell abruptly all his remaining
interest in the copyright of his works; and repeated the statement of his personal property
and income, as given in the preceding letter to James
Ballantyne—Scott says to his noble
friend:—
“I am not asking nor desiring any loan from your
Grace, but merely the honour of your sanction to my credit as a good man for
L.4000; and the motive of your Grace’s interference would be sufficiently
obvious to the London Shylocks, as your constant kindness and protection is no
secret to the world. Will your Grace consider whether you can do what I
propose, in conscience and safety, and favour me with your answer?—I have a
very flattering offer from the Prince
Regent, of his own free motion, to make me poet-laureate; I am very
much embarrassed by it. I am, on the one hand, afraid of giving offence where
no one would willingly offend, and perhaps losing an opportunity of smoothing
the way to my youngsters through life; on the other hand, the office is a
ridiculous one, somehow or other they and I should be well quizzed,—yet that I
should not mind. My real feeling of reluctance lies deeper—it is, that favoured
as I have been by the public, I should be considered, with some justice, I
fear, as engrossing a petty emolument which might do real
service to some poorer brother of the Muses. I shall be most anxious to have
your Grace’s advice on this subject. There seems something churlish, and
perhaps conceited, in repelling a favour so handsomely offered on the part of
the Sovereign’s representative—and on the other hand, I feel much
disposed to shake myself free from it. I should make but a bad courtier, and an
ode-maker is described by Pope as a poet
out of his way or out of his senses. I will find some excuse for protracting my
reply till I can have the advantage of your Grace’s opinion; and remain,
in the mean time, very truly
Your obliged and grateful Walter Scott.
“P.S—I trust your Grace will not suppose me
capable of making such a request as the enclosed, upon any idle or
unnecessary speculation; but, as I stand situated, it is a matter of deep
interest to me to prevent these copyrights from being disposed of either
hastily or at under prices. I could have half the booksellers in London for
my sureties, on a hint of a new poem; but bankers do not like people in
trade, and my brains are not ready to spin another web. So your Grace must
take me under your princely care, as in the days of lang syne; and I think
I can say, upon the sincerity of an honest man, there is not the most
distant chance of your having any trouble or expense through my
means.”
The Duke’s answer was in all respects such as might have been
looked for from the generous kindness and manly sense of his character.
To Walter Scott, Esq., Abbotsford.
“Drumlanrig Castle, August 28th, 1813. “My dear sir,
“I received yesterday your letter of the 24th. I
shall with pleasure comply with your request of guaranteeing the L.4000. You
must, however, furnish me with the form of a letter to this effect, as I am
completely ignorant of transactions of this nature.
“I am never willing to offer
advice, but when my opinion is asked by a friend I am ready to give it. As to
the offer of His Royal Highness to appoint you laureate, I shall frankly say
that I should be mortified to see you hold a situation which, by the general
concurrence of the world, is stamped ridiculous. There is no good reason why
this should be so; but so it is. Walter Scott, Poet Laureate,
ceases to be the Walter Scott of the Lay, Marmion, &c. Any future poem of yours would not come forward
with the same probability of a successful reception. The poet laureate would
stick to you and your productions like a piece of court
plaster. Your muse has hitherto been independent”on’t put
her into harness. We know how lightly she trots along when left to her natural
paces, but do not try driving. I would write frankly and openly to His Royal
Highness, but with respectful gratitude, for he has paid you a compliment. I
would not fear to state that you had hitherto written when in poetic mood, but
feared to trammel yourself with a fixed periodical exertion; and I cannot but
conceive that His Royal Highness, who has much taste, will at once see the many
objections which you must have to his proposal, but which you cannot write.
Only think of being chaunted and recitatived by a parcel of hoarse and
squeaking choristers on a birthday, for the edification of the bishops, pages,
maids of honour, and gentlemen-pen-sioners! Oh, horrible,
thrice horrible! Yours sincerely,
Buccleuch, &c.”
The letter which first announced the Prince Regent’s proposal,
was from his Royal Highness’s librarian, Dr James Stanier
Clarke; but before Scott answered it he
had received a more formal notification from the late Marquis of
Hertford, then Lord Chamberlain. I shall transcribe both these documents.
To Walter Scott, Esq., Edinburgh.
“Pavilion, Brighton, August 18, 1813. “My dear sir,
“Though I have never had the honour of being
introduced to you, you have frequently been pleased to convey to me very kind
and flattering messages,* and I trust, therefore, you will allow me, without
any further ceremony, to say—That I took an early opportunity this morning of
seeing the Prince Regent, who arrived here
late yesterday; and I then delivered to his Royal Highness my earnest wish and
anxious desire that the vacant situation of poet laureate might be conferred on
you. The Prince replied, ‘that you had already been written to, and
that if you wished it every thing would be settled as I could
desire.’
“I hope, therefore, I may be allowed to
congratulate you on this event. You are the man to whom it ought first to have
been offered, and it gave me sincere pleasure to find that those sentiments of
high approbation
* The Royal librarian had forwarded to Scott presentation copies of his
successive publications—The Progress of Maritime Discovery—Falconer’s Shipwreck, with a Life
of the Author—Naufragia—A
Life of Nelson, in two quarto volumes, &c. &c.
&c.
which my Royal Master had so often
expressed towards you in private, were now so openly and honourably displayed
in public. Have the goodness, dear sir, to receive this intrusive letter with
your accustomed courtesy, and believe me, yours very sincerely,
J. S. Clarke, Librarian to H. R. H. the Prince Regent.”
To Walter Scott, Esq. Edinburgh.
“Ragley, 31st August, 1813. “Sir,
“I thought it my duty to his Royal Highness the
Prince Regent, to express to him my
humble opinion that I could not make so creditable a choice as in your person
for the office, now vacant, of poet laureate. I am now authorized to offer it
to you, which I would have taken an earlier opportunity of doing, but that,
till this morning, I have had no occasion of seeing his Royal Highness since
Mr Pye’s death. I have the
honour to be, sir, your most obedient, humble servant,
Ingram Hertford.”
The following letters conclude this matter.
To the Most Noble the Marquis of Hertford, &c.
&c Ragley, Warwickshire.
“Abbotsford, 4th Sept. “My Lord,
“I am this day honoured with your Lordship’s
letter of the 31st August, tendering for my acceptance the situation of poet
laureate in the Royal Household. I shall always think it the highest honour of
my life to have been the object of the good opinion implied in your
Lordship’s recommendation, and in the gracious
acquiescence of his Royal Highness the Prince
Regent. I humbly trust I shall not forfeit sentiments so highly
valued, although I find myself under the necessity of declining, with every
acknowledgement of respect and gratitude, a situation above my deserts, and
offered to me in a manner so very flattering. The duties attached to the office
of poet laureate are not indeed very formidable, if judged of by the manner in
which they have sometimes been discharged. But an individual selected from the
literary characters of Britain, upon the honourable principle expressed in your
Lordship’s letter, ought not, in justice to your Lordship, to his own
reputation, but above all to his Royal Highness, to accept of the office,
unless he were conscious of the power of filling it respectably, and attaining
to excellence in the execution of the tasks which it imposes. This confidence I
am so far from possessing, that, on the contrary, with all the advantages which
do now, and I trust ever will, present themselves to the poet whose task it may
be to commemorate the events of his Royal Highness’s administration, I am
certain I should feel myself inadequate to the fitting discharge of the
regularly recurring duty of periodical composition, and should thus at once
disappoint the expectation of the public, and, what would give me still more
pain, discredit the nomination of his Royal Highness.
“Will your Lordship permit me to add, that though
far from being wealthy, I already hold two official situations in the line of
my profession, which afford a respectable income. It becomes me, therefore, to
avoid the appearance of engrossing one of the few appointments which seem
specially adapted for the provision of those whose lives have been dedicated
exclusively to literature, and who too often derive from their labours more
credit than emolument.
“Nothing could give me greater pain than being
thought ungrateful to his Royal Highness’s goodness, or insensible to the
honourable distinction his undeserved condescension has been pleased to bestow
upon me. I have to trust to your Lordship’s kindness for laying at the
feet of his Royal Highness, in the way most proper and respectful, my humble,
grateful, and dutiful thanks, with these reasons for declining a situation
which, though every way superior to my deserts, I should chiefly have valued as
a mark of his Royal Highness’s approbation.
For your Lordship’s unmerited goodness, as well as
for the trouble you have had upon this occasion, I can only offer you my
respectful thanks, and entreat that you will be pleased to believe me, my Lord
Marquis, your Lordship’s much obliged and much honoured humble servant,
Walter Scott.”
To His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, &c.,
Drumlanrig Castle.
“Abbotsford, Sept. 5, 1813. “My dear Lord Duke,
“Good advice is easily followed when it jumps with
our own sentiments and inclinations. I no sooner found mine fortified by your
Grace’s opinion than I wrote to Lord
Hertford, declining the laurel in the most civil way I could
imagine. I also wrote to the Prince’s
librarian, who had made himself active on the occasion, dilating
at somewhat more length than I thought respectful to the Lord Chamberlain, my
reasons for declining the intended honour. My wife has made a copy of the last
letter, which I enclose for your Grace’s perusal—there is no occasion
either to preserve or return it—but I am desirous you should know what I have
put my apology upon, for I may reckon on its being misre-presented. I certainly should never have survived the recitative described by
your Grace—it is a part of the etiquette I was quite unprepared for, and should
have sunk under it. It is curious enough that Drumlanrig should always have
been the refuge of bards who decline court promotion. Gay, I think, refused to be a gentleman-usher, or some such
post; and I am determined to abide by my post of Grand Ecuyer Trenchant of the
Chateau, varied for that of tale-teller of an evening.
“I will send your Grace a copy of the letter of
guarantee when I receive it from London. By an arrangement with Longman and Co., the great booksellers in
Paternoster-row, I am about to be enabled to place their security, as well as
my own, between your Grace and the possibility of hazard. But your kind
readiness to forward a transaction which is of such great importance both to my
fortune and comfort, can never be forgotten—although it can scarce make me more
than I have always been, my dear Lord, your Grace’s much obliged and
truly faithful
Walter Scott.”
Copy—Enclosure.To the Rev. J. S. Clarke, &c. &c. &c.
Pavilion, Brighton.
“Abbotsford, 4th September, 1813. “Sir,
“On my return to this cottage, after a short
excursion, I was at once surprised and deeply interested by the receipt of your
letter. I shall always consider it as the proudest incident of my life that his
Royal Highness the Prince Regent, whose
taste in literature is so highly distinguished, should have thought of naming
me to the situation of poet laureate. I feel, therefore, no small embarrassment
lest I should incur the suspicion of churlish ingratitude in declining an
appointment in every point of view
so far above my deserts, but which I should chiefly have valued as conferred by
the unsolicited generosity of his Royal Highness, and as entitling me to the
distinction of terming myself an immediate servant of his Majesty. But I have
to trust to your goodness in representing to his Royal Highness, with my most
grateful, humble, and dutiful acknowledgements, the circumstances which compel
me to decline the honour which his undeserved favour has proposed for me. The
poetical pieces I have hitherto composed have uniformly been the hasty
production of impulses, which I must term fortunate, since they have attracted
his Royal Highness’s notice and approbation. But I strongly fear, or
rather am absolutely certain, that I should feel myself unable to justify, in
the eye of the public, the choice of his Royal Highness, by a fitting discharge
of the duties of an office which requires stated and periodical exertion. And
although I am conscious how much this difficulty is lessened under the
government of his Royal Highness, marked by paternal wisdom at home and
successes abroad which seem to promise the liberation of Europe, I still feel
that the necessity of a regular commemoration would trammel my powers of
composition at the very time when it would be equally my pride and duty to tax
them to the uttermost. There is another circumstance which weighs deeply in my
mind while forming my present resolution. I have already the honour to hold two
appointments under Government, not usually conjoined, and which afford an
income, far indeed from wealth, but amounting to decent independence. I fear,
therefore, that in accepting one of the few situations which our establishment
holds forth as the peculiar provision of literary men, I might be justly
censured as availing myself of his Royal Highness’s partiality to engross
more than my share of the public revenue, to the preju-dice of competitors equally meritorious at least, and otherwise unprovided
for; and as this calculation will be made by thousands who know that I have
reaped great advantages by the favour of the public, without being aware of the
losses which it has been my misfortune to sustain, I may fairly reckon that it
will terminate even more to my prejudice than if they had the means of judging
accurately of my real circumstances. I have thus far, sir, frankly exposed to
you, for his Royal Highness’s favourable consideration, the feelings
which induce me to decline an appointment offered in a manner so highly
calculated to gratify, I will not say my vanity only, but my sincere feelings
of devoted attachment to the crown and constitution of my country, and to the
person of his Royal Highness, by whom its government has been so worthily
administered. No consideration on earth would give me so much pain as the idea
of my real feelings being misconstrued on this occasion, or that I should be
supposed stupid enough not to estimate the value of his Royal Highness’s
favour, or so ungrateful as not to feel it as I ought. And you will relieve me
from great anxiety if you will have the goodness to let me know if his Royal
Highness is pleased to receive favourably my humble and grateful apology.
“I cannot conclude without expressing my sense of
your kindness and of the trouble you have had upon this account, and I request
you will believe me, sir, your obliged humble servant,
“On my return here I found, to my no small
surprise, a letter tendering me the laurel vacant by the death of the poetical Pye. I have declined the appointment, as being incompetent to
the task of annual commemoration; but chiefly as being provided for in my
professional department, and unwilling to incur the censure of engrossing the
emolument attached to one of the few appointments which seems proper to be
filled by a man of literature who has no other views in life. Will you forgive
me, my dear friend, if I own I had you in my recollection. I have given
Croker the hint, and otherwise
endeavoured to throw the office into your option. I am uncertain if you will
like it, for the laurel has certainly been tarnished by some of its wearers,
and, as at present managed, its duties are inconvenient, and somewhat liable to
ridicule. But the latter matter might be amended, as I think the Regent’s good sense would lead him to lay
aside these regular commemorations; and as to the former point, it has been
worn by Dryden of old, and by Warton in modern days. If you quote my own
refusal against me, I reply—first, I have been luckier than you in holding two
offices not usually conjoined; secondly, I did not refuse it from any foolish
prejudice against the situation, otherwise how durst I mention it to you, my
elder brother in the muse? but from a sort of internal hope that they would
give it to you, upon whom it would be so much more worthily conferred. For I am
not such an ass as not to know that you are my better in poetry, though I have
had, probably but for a time, the tide of popularity in my favour. I have not
time to add ten thousand other reasons, but I only wished to tell you how the
matter was, and to beg you to think before you reject the offer which I flatter
myself will be made to you. If I had not been, like Dogberry, a fellow with two
gowns already, I should have jumped at it like a cock at a gooseberry. Ever
yours most truly,
Walter Scott.”
Immediately after Mr Croker
received Scott’s letter here alluded to, Mr Southey was invited to accept the vacant laurel; and,
to the honour of the Prince Regent, when he signified
that his acceptance must depend on the office being thenceforth so modified as to demand
none of the old formal odes, leaving it to the poet-laureate to choose his own time for
celebrating any great public event that might occur, his Royal Highness had the good sense
and good taste at once to acquiesce in the propriety of this alteration. The office was
thus relieved from the burden of ridicule which had, in spite of so many illustrious names,
adhered to it; and though its emoluments did not in fact amount to more than L.100 a-year
(instead of the L.300 or L.400 at which Scott rated them when he
declined it), they formed no unacceptable addition to Mr
Southey’s income. Scott’s answer to his
brother poet’s affectionate and grateful letter on the conclusion of this affair, is
as follows.
To R. Southey, Esq., Keswick.
“Edinburgh, November 13, 1813.
“I do not delay, my dear Southey, to say my gratulor. Long may you
live, as Paddy says, to rule over us, and
to redeem the crown of Spenser and of
Dryden to its pristine dignity. I am
only discontented with the extent of your royal revenue, which I thought had
been L.400, or L.300 at the very least. Is there no getting rid of that
iniquitous modus, and requiring the butt in kind? I
would have you think of it: I know no man so well entitled to Xeres sack as
yourself, though many bards would make a better figure at drinking it. I should
think that in due time a memorial might get some relief in this part of the
appointment—it should be at least L.100 wet and L.100 dry. When you have
carried your point of discarding the ode, and my point of getting the sack, you will be exactly in the situation
of Davy in the farce, who stipulates for
more wages, less work, and the key of the ale-cellar. I was greatly delighted
with the circumstances of your investiture. It reminded me of the porters at
Calais with Dr Smollett’s baggage,
six of them seizing upon one small portmanteau, and bearing it in triumph to
his lodgings. You see what it is to laugh at the superstitions of a
gentleman-usher, as I think you do somewhere. ‘The whirligig of time
brings about his revenges.’
“Adieu, my dear Southey; my best wishes attend all that you do, and my best
congratulations every good that attends you—yea even this, the very least of
Providence’s mercies, as a poor clergyman said when pronouncing grace
over a herring. I should like to know how the prince received you; his address
is said to be excellent, and his knowledge of literature far from despicable.
What a change of fortune even since the short time when we met! The great work
of retribution is now rolling onward to consummation, yet am I not fully
satisfied—pereat iste—there
will be no permanent peace in Europe till Buonaparte sleeps with the tyrants of old. My best compliments
attend Mrs Southey and your family. Ever
yours,
Walter Scott.”
To avoid returning to the affair of the laureateship, I have placed
together such letters concerning it as appeared important. I regret to say that, had I
adhered to the chronological order of Scott’s
correspondence, ten out of every twelve letters between the date of his application to the
Duke of Buccleuch, and his removal to Edinburgh on
the 12th of November, would have continued to tell the same story of pecuniary difficulty,
urgent and almost daily applications for new advances to the
Ballantynes, and endeavours, more or less successful, but in no
case effectually so, to relieve the pressure on the bookselling firm by sales of its heavy
stock to the great publishing houses of Edinburgh and London. Whatever success these
endeavours met with, appears to have been due either directly or indirectly to Mr Constable; who did a great deal more than prudence
would have warranted, in taking on himself the results of its unhappy adventures,—and, by
his sagacious advice, enabled the distressed partners to procure similar assistance at the
hands of others, who did not partake his own feelings of personal kindness and sympathy.
“I regret to learn,” Scott writes to him on the
16th October, “that there is great danger of your exertions in our favour, which
once promised so fairly, proving finally abortive, or at least being too tardy in their
operation to work out our relief. If any thing more can be honourably and properly done
to avoid a most unpleasant shock, I shall be most willing to do it; if not—God’s
will be done! There will be enough of property, including my private fortune, to pay
every claim; and I have not used prosperity so ill, as greatly to fear adversity. But
these things we will talk over at meeting; mean while believe me, with a sincere sense
of your kindness and friendly views, very truly yours, W.
S.” I have no wish to quote more largely from the letters which passed
during this crisis between Scott and his partners. The pith and
substance of his, to John Ballantyne at least, seems
to be summed up in one brief postscript:—“For God’s
sake, treat me as a man, and not as a milch-cow!”
The difficulties of the Ballantynes were by this
time well known throughout the commercial circles not only of Edinburgh, but of London; and
a report of their actual bankruptcy, with
the addition that Scott was engaged as their surety to
the extent of L.20,000, found its way to Mr Morritt
about the beginning of November. This dear friend wrote to him, in the utmost anxiety, and
made liberal offers of assistance in case the catastrophe might still be averted; but the
term of Martinmas, always a critical one in Scotland, had passed before this letter reached
Edinburgh, and Scott’s answer will show symptoms of a clearing
horizon. I think also there is one expression in it which could hardly have failed to
convey to Mr Morritt that his friend was involved, more deeply than he
had ever acknowledged, in the concerns of the Messrs Ballantyne.
To J. S. S. Morritt, Esq., Rokeby Park.
Edinburgh, 20th November, 1813.
“I did not answer your very kind letter, my dear
Morritt, until I could put your
friendly heart to rest upon the report you have heard, which I could not do
entirely until this term of Martinmas was passed. I have the pleasure to say
that there is no truth whatever in the Ballantynes’
reported bankruptcy. They have had severe difficulties for the last four months
to make their resources balance the demands upon them, and I, having the price
of Rokeby, and other monies in
their hands, have had considerable reason for apprehension, and no slight
degree of plague and trouble. They have, however, been so well supported, that
I have got out of hot water upon their account. They are winding up their
bookselling concern with great regularity, and are to abide hereafter by the
printing-office, which, with its stock, &c., will revert to them fairly.
“I have been able to redeem the offspring of my
brain, and they are like to pay me like grateful children. This matter has set
me a thinking about money more seriously than ever I did
in my life, and I have begun by insuring my life for L.4000, to secure some
ready cash to my family should I slip girths suddenly. I think my other
property, library, &c., may be worth about L.12,000, and I have not much
debt.
“Upon the whole, I see no prospect of any loss
whatever. Although in the course of human events I may be disappointed, there
certainly can be none to vex your kind and affectionate heart on my account. I
am young, with a large official income, and if I lose any thing now, I have
gained a great deal in my day. I cannot tell you, and will not attempt to tell
you, how much I was affected by your letter so much, indeed, that for several
days I could not make my mind up to express myself on the subject. Thank God!
all real danger was yesterday put over—and I will write, in two or three days,
a funny letter, without any of these vile cash matters, of which it may be said
there is no living with them nor without them. Ever yours, most truly,
Walter Scott.”
All these annoyances produced no change whatever in Scott’s habits of literary industry. During these
anxious months of September, October, and November, he kept feeding James Ballantyne’s press, from day to day, both with
the annotated text of the closing volumes of Swift’s works, and with the MS. of his Life of the Dean. He had also
proceeded to mature in his own mind the plan of the Lord of the Isles, and executed such a portion of the First Canto as gave him
confidence to renew his negotiation with Constable
for the sale of the whole, or part of its copyright. It was, moreover, at this period,
that, looking into an old cabinet in search of some fishing-tackle, his eye chanced to
light once more on the Ashestiel fragment of Waverley.—He read
over those introductory chapters—thought they had been undervalued—and determined to finish
the story.
All this while, too, he had been subjected to those interruptions from
idle strangers, which from the first to the last, imposed so heavy a tax on his celebrity;
and he no doubt received such guests with all his usual urbanity of attention. Yet I was
not surprised to discover, among his hasty notes to the Ballantynes,
several of tenour akin to the following specimens:—
“Sept. 2d, 1813.
“My temper is really worn to a
hair’s-breadth. The intruder of yesterday hung on me till twelve to-day.
When I had just taken my pen, he was relieved, like a sentry leaving guard, by
two other lounging visiters; and their post has now been supplied by some
people on real business.” Again “Monday Evening. “Oh James—oh James—Two
Irish dames Oppress me very sore; I groaning send one sheet I’ve penned— For hang them! there’s no more.”
A scrap of nearly the same date to his brother Thomas may be introduced, as belonging to the same state
of feeling “Dear Tom, I observe what you say as to
Mr * * * * ; and as you may often be exposed to similar
requests, which it would be difficult to parry, you can sign such letters of
introduction as relate to persons whom you do not delight to honour short,
T. Scott; by which abridgement of
your name I shall understand to limit my civilities.”
It is proper to mention, that, in the very agony of these perplexities,
the unfortunate Maturin received from him a timely
succour of L.50, rendered doubly acceptable by the kind and judicious
letter of advice in which it was enclosed; and I have before me ample evidence that his
benevolence had been extended to other struggling brothers of the trade, even when he must
often have had actual difficulty to meet the immediate expenditure of his own family. All
this, however, will not surprise the reader.
Nor did his general correspondence suffer much interruption; and, as
some relief after so many painful details, I shall close the narrative of this anxious year
by a few specimens of his miscellaneous communications.
To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead.
“Abbotsford, Sept. 12, 1813. “My dear Miss Baillie,
“I have been a vile lazy correspondent, having been
strolling about the country, and indeed a little way into England, for the
greater part of July and August; in short, ‘aye skipping here and
there,’ like the Tanner of
Tamworth’s horse. Since I returned, I have had a gracious
offer of the laurel on the part of the Prince
Regent. You will not wonder that I have declined it, though with
every expression of gratitude which such an unexpected compliment demanded.
Indeed, it would be high imprudence in one having literary reputation to
maintain, to accept of an offer which obliged him to produce a poetical
exercise on a given theme twice a-year; and besides, as my loyalty to the royal
family is very sincere, I would not wish to have it thought mercenary. The
public has done its part by me very well, and so has Government: and I thought
this little literary provision ought to be bestowed on one who has made
literature his sole profession. If the Regent means to make it respectable, he
will abolish the foolish custom of the annual odes, which is a drudgery no person of talent could ever
willingly encounter or come clear off from, if he was so rash. And so, peace be
with the laurel ‘Profaned by Cibber
and contemned by Gray,’
“I was for a fortnight at Drumlanrig, a grand old
chateau which has descended, by the death of the late Duke of Queensberry, to the Duke of
Buccleuch. It is really a most magnificent pile, and when
embosomed amid the wide forest scenery, of which I have an infantine
recollection, must have been very romantic. But old Q. made wild devastation
among the noble trees, although some fine ones are still left, and a quantity
of young shoots are, in despite of the want of every kind of attention, rushing
up to supply the place of the fathers of the forest from whose stems they are
springing. It will now I trust be in better hands, for the reparation of the
castle goes hand in hand with the rebuilding of all the cottages, in which an
aged race of pensioners of Duke Charles,
and his pious wife,—‘Kitty,
blooming, young and gay,’—have, during the last reign, been
pining into rheumatisms and agues, in neglected poverty.
“All this is beautiful to witness; the indoor work
does not please me so well, though I am aware that, to those who are to inhabit
an old castle, it becomes often a matter of necessity to make alterations by
which its tone and character are changed for the worse. Thus a noble gallery,
which ran the whole length of the front, is converted into bedrooms—very
comfortable, indeed, but not quite so magnificent; and as grim a dungeon as
ever knave or honest man was confined in, is in some danger of being humbled
into a wine-cellar. It is almost impossible to draw your breath, when you
recollect that this, so many feet under ground, and totally bereft of air and light, was built for the imprisonment of human beings,
whether guilty, suspected, or merely unfortunate. Certainly, if our frames are
not so hardy, our hearts are softer than those of our forefathers, although
probably a few years of domestic war, or feudal oppression, would bring us back
to the same case-hardening both in body and sentiment.
“I meant to have gone to Rokeby, but was prevented
by Mrs Morritt being unwell, which I
very much regret, as I know few people that deserve better health. I am very
glad you have known them, and I pray you to keep up the acquaintance in winter.
I am glad to see by this day’s paper that our friend Terry has made a favourable impression on his
first appearance at Covent-Garden—he has got a very good engagement there for
three years, at twelve guineas a-week, which is a handsome income. This little
place comes on as fast as can be reasonably hoped; and the pinasters are all
above the ground, but cannot be planted out for twelve months. My kindest
compliments—in which Mrs Scott always
joins—attend Miss Agnes, the Doctor, and his family. Ever, my dear friend,
yours most faithfully,
Walter Scott.”
To Daniel Terry, Esq., London.
“Abbotsford, 20th October, 1813. “Dear Terry,
“You will easily believe that I was greatly pleased
to hear from you. I had already learned from The Courier (what I had anticipated too strongly to
doubt for one instant) your favourable impression on the London public. I think
nothing can be more judicious in the managers than to exercise the various
powers you possess, in their various extents. A man of genius is apt to be
limited to one single style, and to become per-force a mannerist, merely because the public is not
so just to its own amusement as to give him an opportunity of throwing himself
into different lines; and doubtless the exercise of our talents in one unvaried
course, by degrees renders them incapable of any other, as the over use of any
one limb of our body gradually impoverishes the rest. I shall be anxious to
hear that you have played Malvolio, which is, I think, one of your coups-de-maître, and in which envy
itself cannot affect to trace an imitation. That same charge of imitation, by
the way, is one of the surest scents upon which dunces are certain to open.
Undoubtedly, if the same character is well performed by two individuals, their
acting must bear a general resemblance—it could not be well performed by both
were it otherwise. But this general resemblance, which arises from both
following nature and their author, can as little be termed imitation as the
river in Wales can be identified with that of Macedon. Never mind these
dunderheads, but go on your own way, and scorn to laugh on the right side of
your mouth, to make a difference from some ancient comedian who, in the same
part, always laughed on the left. Stick to the public—be uniform in your
exertions to study even those characters which have little in them, and to give
a grace which you cannot find in the author. Audiences are always grateful for
this—or rather—for gratitude is as much out of the question in the Theatre, as
Bernadotte says to Boney it is amongst sovereigns—or rather, the
audience is gratified by receiving pleasure from a part which they had no
expectation would afford them any. It is in this view that, had I been of your
profession, and possessed talents, I think I should have liked often those
parts with which my brethren quarrelled, and studied to give them an effect
which their intrinsic merit did not entitle them to. I have some thoughts of
being in town in spring (not resolutions, by any means);
and it will be an additional motive to witness your success, and to find you as
comfortably established as your friends in Castle Street earnestly hope and
trust you will be.
“The summer—an uncommon summer in beauty and
serenity—has glided away from us at Abbotsford, amidst our usual petty cares
and petty pleasures. The childrens’ garden is in apple-pie order, our own
completely cropped and stocked, and all the trees flourishing like the green
bay of the Psalmist. I have been so busy about our domestic arrangements, that
I have not killed six hares this season. Besides, I have got a cargo of old
armour, sufficient to excite a suspicion that I intend to mount a squadron of
cuirassiers. I only want a place for my armoury; and, thank God, I can wait for
that, these being no times for building. And this brings me to the loss of poor
Stark, with whom more genius has
died than is left behind among the collected universality of Scottish
architects. O, Lord!—but what does it signify?—Earth was born to bear, and man
to pay (that is, lords, nabobs, Glasgow traders, and those who have
wherewithal) so wherefore grumble at great castles and cottages, with which the
taste of the latter contrives to load the back of Mother Terra?—I have no
hobby-horsical commissions at present, unless if you meet the Voyages of Captain Richard, or
Robert Falconer, in one volume—‘cowheel, quoth Sancho’—I mark them for my own.
Mrs Scott, Sophia, Anne, and the
boys, unite in kind remembrances. Ever yours truly,
W. Scott.”
To the Right Hon. Lord Byron, 4, Bennet Street, St
James’s, London.
“Abbotsford, 6th Nov. 1813. “My dear Lord,
“I was honoured with your Lordship’s letter
of the 27th September,* and
have sincerely to regret that there is such a prospect of your leaving Britain,
without my achieving your personal acquaintance. I heartily wish your Lordship
had come down to Scotland this season, for I have never seen a finer, and you
might have renewed all your old associations with Caledonia, and made such new
ones as were likely to suit you. I dare promise you would have liked me well
enough—for I have many properties of a Turk—never trouble myself about
futurity—am as lazy as the day is long—delight in collecting silver-mounted
pistols and ataghans, and go out of my own road for no one—all which I take to
be attributes of your good Moslem. Moreover, I am somewhat an admirer of
royalty, and in order to maintain this part of my creed, I shall take care
never to be connected with a court, but stick to the ignotum pro mirabili.
“The author of the Queen’s Wake will be delighted with your
approbation. He is a wonderful creature for his opportunities, which were far
inferior to those of the generality of Scottish peasants. Burns, for instance—(not that their extent of
talents is to be compared for an instant)—had an education not much worse than
the sons of many gentlemen in Scotland. But poor Hogg literally could neither read nor write till a very late
period of his life; and when he first distinguished himself by his poetical
talent, could neither spell nor write grammar. When I first knew him he used to
send me his poetry, and was both indignant and horrified when I pointed out to
him parallel passages in authors whom
* The letter in question has not been preserved in
Scott’s collection of
correspondence. This leaves some allusions in the answer obscure.
he had never read, but whom all the world would have
sworn he had copied. An evil fate has hitherto attended him, and baffled every
attempt that has been made to place him in a road to independence. But I trust
he may be more fortunate in future.
“I have not yet seen Southey in the Gazette as Laureate. He is a real poet, such as we read of in
former times, with every atom of his soul and every moment of his time
dedicated to literary pursuits, in which he differs from almost all those who
have divided public attention with him. Your Lordship’s habits of
society, for example, and my own professional and official avocations, must
necessarily connect us much more with our respective classes in the usual
routine of pleasure or business, than if we had not any other employment than
vacare musis. But
Southey’s ideas are all poetical, and his whole
soul dedicated to the pursuit of literature. In this respect, as well as in
many others, he is a most striking and interesting character.
“I am very much interested in all that concerns
your Giaour, which is
universally approved of among our mountains. I have heard no objection except
by one or two geniuses, who run over poetry as a cat does over a harpischord,
and they affect to complain of obscurity. On the contrary, I hold every real
lover of the art is obliged to you for condensing the narrative, by giving us
only those striking scenes which you have shown to be so susceptible of poetic
ornament, and leaving to imagination the says I’s and says he’s,
and all the minutiæ of detail which might be proper in giving evidence
before a court of justice. The truth is, I think poetry is most striking when
the mirror can be held up to the reader, and the same kept constantly before
his eyes; it requires most uncommon powers to support a direct and downright narration; nor can I
remember many instances of its being successfully maintained even by our
greatest bards.
“As to those who have done me the honour to take my
rhapsodies for their model, I can only say they have exemplified the ancient
adage, ‘one fool makes many;’ nor do I think I have yet had much
reason to suppose I have given rise to any thing of distinguished merit. The
worst is, it draws on me letters and commendatory verses, to which my sad and
sober thanks in humble prose are deemed a most unmeet and ungracious reply. Of
this sort of plague your Lordship must ere now have had more than your share,
but I think you can hardly have met with so original a request as concluded the
letter of a bard I this morning received, who limited his demands to being
placed in his due station on Parnassus—and invested with
a post in the Edinburgh Custom House.
“What an awakening of dry bones seems to be taking
place on the Continent! I could as soon have believed in the resurrection of
the Romans as in that of the Prussians—yet it seems a real and active
renovation of national spirit. It will certainly be strange enough if that
tremendous pitcher, which has travelled to so many fountains, should be at
length broken on the banks of the Saale; but from the highest to the lowest we
are the fools of fortune. Your Lordship will probably recollect where the
Oriental tale occurs, of a Sultan who consulted Solomon on
the proper inscription for a signet-ring, requiring that the maxim which it
conveyed should be at once proper for moderating the presumption of prosperity
and tempering the pressure of adversity. The apophthegm supplied by the Jewish
sage was, I think, admirably adapted for both purposes, being comprehended in the words ‘And this also shall
pass away.’
“When your Lordship sees Rogers, will you remember me kindly to him? I
hope to be in London next spring, and renew my acquaintance with my friends
there. It will be an additional motive if I could flatter myself that your
Lordship’s stay in the country will permit me the pleasure of waiting
upon you. I am, with much respect and regard, your Lordship’s truly
honoured and obliged humble servant,
Walter Scott.
“I go to Edinburgh next week, multum gemens.”
To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead.
“Edinburgh, 10th Dec. 1813.
“Many thanks, my dear friend, for your kind token
of remembrance, which I yesterday received. I ought to blush, if I had grace
enough left, at my long and ungenerous silence: but what shall I say? The habit
of procrastination, which had always more or less a dominion over me, does not
relax its sway as I grow older and less willing to take up the pen. I have not
written to dear Ellis this age,—yet
there is not a day that I do not think of you and him, and one or two other
friends in your southern land. I am very glad the whisky came safe: do not
stint so laudable an admiration for the liquor of Caledonia, for I have plenty
of right good and sound Highland Ferintosh, and I can always find an
opportunity of sending you up a bottle.
“We are here almost mad with the redemption of
Holland, which has an instant and gratifying effect on the trade of Leith, and
indeed all along the east coast of Scotland. About L.100,000 worth of various
commodities, which had been dormant in cellars and warehouses, was sold the
first day the news arrived, and Orange ribbons and Orange Boven was the order
of the day among all ranks. It is a most miraculous revivification which it has
been our fate to witness. Though of a tolerably sanguine temper, I had fairly
adjourned all hopes and expectations of the kind till another generation: the
same power, however, that opened the windows of heaven and the fountains of the
great deep, has been pleased to close them, and to cause his wind to blow upon
the face of the waters, so that we may look out from the ark of our
preservation and behold the reappearance of the mountain crests, and old,
beloved, and well-known landmarks, which we had deemed swallowed up for ever in
the abyss: the dove with the olive branch would complete the simile, but of
that I see little hope. Buonaparte is that
desperate gambler, who will not rise while he has a stake left; and, indeed, to
be King of France would be a poor pettifogging enterprise, after having been
almost Emperor of the World. I think he will drive things on, till the fickle
and impatient people over whom he rules get tired of him and shake him out of
the saddle. Some circumstances seem to intimate his having become jealous of
the Senate; and indeed any thing like a representative body, however
imperfectly constructed, becomes dangerous to a tottering tyranny. The sword
displayed on both frontiers may, like that brandished across the road of
Balaam, terrify even dumb and irrational subjection
into utterance: but enough of politics, though now a more cheerful subject than
they have been for many years past.
“I have had a strong temptation to go to the
Continent this Christmas; and should certainly have done
so, had I been sure of getting from Amsterdam to Frankfort, where, as I know
Lord Aberdeen and Lord Cathcart, I might expect a welcome. But
notwithstanding my earnest desire to see the allied armies cross the Rhine,
which I suppose must be one of the grandest military spectacles in the world, I
should like to know that the roads were tolerably secure, and the means of
getting forward attainable. In Spring, however, if no unfortunate change takes
place, I trust to visit the camp of the allies, and see all the pomp and power
and circumstance of war, which I have so often imagined, and sometimes
attempted to embody in verse. Johnnie
Richardson is a good, honourable, kind-hearted little fellow as
lives in the world, with a pretty taste for poetry, which he has wisely kept
under subjection to the occupation of drawing briefs and revising conveyances.
It is a great good fortune to him to be in your neighbourhood, as he is an
idolator of genius, and where could he offer up his worship so justly? And I am
sure you will like him, for he is really ‘officious, innocent,
sincere.’* Terry, I hope,
will get on well; he is industrious, and zealous for the honour of his art.
Ventidius must have been an excellent
part for him, hovering between tragedy and comedy, which is precisely what will
suit him. We have a woful want of him here, both in public and private, for he
was one of the most easy and quiet chimney-corner companions that I have had
for these two or three years past.
“I am very glad if any thing I have written to you
could give pleasure to Miss Edgeworth,
though I am sure it will fall very short of the respect which I have for
* Scott’s
old friend, Mr John Richardson,
had shortly before this time taken a house in Miss Baillie’s neighbourhood, on
Hampstead Heath.
her brilliant
talents. I always write to you à la
volée, and trust implicitly to your kindness and
judgment upon all occasions where you may choose to communicate any part of my
letters.* As to the taxing men, I must battle them as I can: they are worse
than the great Emathian conqueror, who ‘bade spare The house of Pindarus, when
temple and tower Went to the ground.’ Your pinasters are coming up gallantly in the nursery-bed at Abbotsford. I
trust to pay the whole establishment a Christmas visit, which will be, as
Robinson Crusoe says of his glass of
rum, ‘to mine exceeding refreshment.’ All Edinburgh have
been on tiptoe to see Madame de Stael,
but she is now not likely to honour us with a visit, at which I cannot prevail
on myself to be very sorry; for as I tired of some of her works, I am afraid I
should disgrace my taste by tiring of the authoress too. All my little people
are very well, learning, with great pain and diligence, much which they will
have forgotten altogether, or nearly so, in the course of twelve years hence;
but the habit of learning is something in itself, even when the lessons are
forgotten.
“I must not omit to tell you that a friend of mine,
with whom that metal is more plenty than with me, has given me some gold mohurs
to be converted into a ring for enchasing King
Charles’ hair; but this is not to be done until I get to
London, and get a very handsome pattern. Ever, most truly and sincerely, yours,
W. Scott.”
The last sentence of this letter refers to a lock of the hair of
Charles I., which, at Dr Baillie’s request, Sir
* Miss Baillie had
apologized to him for having sent an extract of one of his letters to her friend at
Edgeworthstown.
Henry Halford had transmitted to Scott when the royal martyr’s remains were discovered at
Windsor, in April 1813. Sir John Malcolm had given
him some Indian coins to supply virgin gold for the setting of this relic; and for some
years he constantly wore the ring, which is a massive and beautiful one, with the word Remember surrounding it in highly relieved black-letter.
The poet’s allusion to “taxing men” may require
another word of explanation. To add to his troubles during this autumn of 1813, a demand
was made on him by the commissioners of the income-tax, to return in one of their schedules
an account of the profits of his literary exertions during the three last years. He
demurred to this, and took the opinion of high authorities in Scotland, who confirmed him
in his impression that the claim was beyond the statute. The grounds of his resistance are
thus briefly stated in one of his letters to his legal friend in London.
To John Richardson, Esq., Fludyer Street,
Westminster.
“My dear Richardson,
“I have owed you a letter this long time, but
perhaps my debt might not yet be discharged, had I not a little matter of
business to trouble you with. I wish you to lay before either the King’s
counsel, or Sir Samuel Romilly and any
other you may approve, the point whether a copyright, being sold for the term
during which Queen Anne’s act warranted the property
to the author, the price is liable in payment of the property tax. I contend it
is not so liable, for the following reasons:—1st, It is a patent right,
expected to produce an annual, or at least an incidental profit, during the
currency of many years; and surely it was never contended that if a man sold a
theatrical patent, or a patent for machinery, property tax should be levied
in the first place on the full price as paid to the seller, and then on the
profits as purchased by the buyer. I am not very expert at figures, but I think
it clear that a double taxation takes place. 2d, It should be considered that a
book may be the work not of one year, but of a man’s whole life; and as
it has been found, in a late case of the Duke of
Gordon, that a fall of timber was not subject to property tax
because it comprehended the produce of thirty years, it seems at least equally
fair that mental exertions should not be subjected to a harder principle of
measurement. 3d, The demand is, so far as I can learn, totally new and unheard
of. 4th, Supposing that I died and left my manuscripts to be sold publicly
along with the rest of my library, is there any ground for taxing what might be
received for the written book, any more than any rare printed book which a
speculative bookseller might purchase with a view to re-publication? You will
know whether any of these things ought to be suggested in the brief. David Hume, and every lawyer here whom I have
spoken to, consider the demand as illegal. Believe me truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
Mr Richardson having prepared a case, obtained upon
it the opinions of Mr Alexander (afterwards Sir William Alexander and Chief Baron of the Exchequer),
and of the late Sir Samuel Romilly. These eminent
lawyers agreed in the view of their Scotch brethren; and after a tedious correspondence,
the Lords of the Treasury at last decided that the Income-Tax Commissioners should abandon
their claim upon the produce of literary labour. I have thought it worth while to preserve
some record of this decision, and of the authorities on which it rested, in case such a
demand should ever be renewed hereafter. In the beginning of December, the Town-Council of Edinburgh resolved to send a deputation to congratulate the
Prince Regent on the prosperous course of public
events, and they invited Scott to draw up their address,
which, on its being transmitted for previous inspection to Mr
William Dundas, then member for the city, and through him shown privately to
the Regent, was acknowledged to the penman, by his Royal Highness’s command, as
“the most elegant congratulation a sovereign ever received, or a subject
offered.”* The Lord Provost of
Edinburgh presented it accordingly at the levee of the 10th, and it was
received most graciously. On returning to the north, the Magistrates expressed their sense
of Scott’s services on this occasion by presenting him with the
freedom of his native city, and also with a piece of plate, which the reader will find
alluded to, among other matters of more consequence, in a letter to be quoted presently.
At this time Scott further expressed
his patriotic exultation in the rescue of Europe, by two songs for the anniversary of the
death of Pitt; one of which has ever since, I
believe, been chaunted at that celebration;— “O dread was the time and more dreadful the omen, When the brave on Marengo lay slaughter’d in
vain,Ӡ &c.
* Letter from the Right Hon. W.
Dundas, dated 6th December, 1813.
† See Scott’s Poetical Works, vol. xi. p. 309. Edition, 1834.
CHAPTER III. INSANITY OF HENRY WEBER—LETTERS ON THE ABDICATION OF
NAPOLEON, ETC.—PUBLICATION OF SCOTT’S
LIFE AND EDITION OF SWIFT—ESSAYS FOR THE SUPPLEMENT TO THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA—COMPLETION AND PUBLICATION OF WAVERLEY. 1814.
I have to open the year 1814 with a
melancholy story. Mention has been made, more than once, of Henry Weber, a poor German scholar, who escaping to this country in 1804,
from misfortunes in his own, excited Scott’s
compassion, and was thenceforth furnished, through his means, with literary employment of
various sorts. Weber was a man of considerable learning; but
Scott, as was his custom, appears to have formed an exaggerated
notion of his capacity, and certainly countenanced him, to his own severe cost, in several
most unfortunate undertakings. When not engaged on things of a more ambitious character, he
had acted for ten years as his protector’s amanuensis, and when the family were in
Edinburgh, he very often dined with them. There was something very interesting in his
appearance and manners; he had a fair, open countenance, in which the honesty and the
enthusiasm of his nation were alike visible; his demeanour was gentle and modest; and he
had not only a stock of curious antiquarian knowledge, but the reminiscences, which he
detailed with amusing simplicity, of an early life chequered with
many strange enough adventures. He was, in short, much a favourite with
Scott and all the household; and was invited to dine with them so
frequently, chiefly because his friend was aware that he had an unhappy propensity to
drinking, and was anxious to keep him away from places where he might have been more likely
to indulge it. This vice, however, had been growing on him; and of late
Scott had found it necessary to make some rather severe
remonstrances about habits which were at once injuring his health, and interrupting his
literary industry.
They had, however, parted kindly when Scott left Edinburgh at Christmas 1813,—and the day after his return
Weber attended him as usual in his library,
being employed in transcribing extracts during several hours, while his friend, seated over
against him, continued working at the Life of Swift.
The light beginning to fail, Scott threw himself back in his chair,
and was about to ring for candles, when he observed the German’s eyes fixed upon him
with an unusual solemnity of expression. “Weber,”
said he, “what’s the matter with you?” “Mr
Scott,” said Weber rising, “you
have long insulted me, and I can bear it no longer. I have brought a pair of pistols
with me, and must insist on your taking one of them instantly;” and with that
he produced the weapons, which had been deposited under his chair, and laid one of them on
Scott’s manuscript. “You are mistaken, I
think,” said Scott, “in your way of setting about
this affair—but no matter. It can, however, be no part of your object to annoy
Mrs Scott and the children; therefore, if you
please, we will put the pistols into the drawer till after dinner, and then arrange to
go out together like gentlemen.” Weber answered with
equal coolness, “I believe that will be better,” and laid the second pistol also on the table.
Scott locked them both in his desk, and said, “I am glad
you have felt the propriety of what I suggested—let me only request further that
nothing may occur while we are at dinner to give my wife any suspicion of what has been
passing.” Weber again assented, and
Scott withdrew to his dressing-room, from which he immediately
despatched a message to one of Weber’s intimate companions, and
then dinner was served, and Weber joined the family circle as usual.
He conducted himself with perfect composure, and every thing seemed to go on in the
ordinary way, until whisky and hot water being produced, Scott,
instead of inviting his guest to help himself, mixed two moderate tumblers of toddy, and
handed one of them to Weber, who, upon that, started up with a furious
countenance, but instantly sat down again, and when Mrs Scott
expressed her fear that he was ill, answered placidly that he was liable to spasms, but
that the pain was gone. He then took the glass, eagerly gulped down its contents, and
pushed it back to Scott. At this moment the friend who had been sent
for made his appearance, and Weber, on seeing him enter the room,
rushed past him and out of the house, without stopping to put on his hat. The friend, who
pursued instantly, came up with him at the end of the street, and did all he could to
soothe his agitation, but in vain. The same evening he was obliged to be put into a strait
waistcoat; and though, in a few days, he exhibited such symptoms of recovery that he was
allowed to go by himself to pay a visit in the North of England, he there soon relapsed,
and continued ever afterwards a hopeless lunatic, being supported to the end of his life in
June, 1818, at Scott’s expense in an asylum at York.
The reader will now appreciate the gentle delicacy of the following
letter:—
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. Rokeby, Greta Bridge.
“Edinburgh, 7th January, 1814. “Many happy New-years to you and Mrs Morritt. “My dear
Morritt,
“I have postponed writing a long while, in hopes to
send you the Life of Swift.
But I have been delayed by an odd accident. Poor Weber, whom you may have heard me mention as a sort of grinder
of mine, who assisted me in various ways, has fallen into a melancholy state.
His habits, like those of most German students, were always too convivial—this,
of course, I guarded against while he was in my house, which was always once
a-week at least; but unfortunately he undertook a long walk through the
Highlands of upwards of 2000 miles, and, I suppose, took potations pottle deep
to support him through the fatigue. His mind became accordingly quite
unsettled, and after some strange behaviour here, he was fortunately prevailed
upon to go to * * * * who resides in
Yorkshire. It is not unlikely, from something that dropped from him, that he
may take it into his head to call at Rokeby, in which case you must parry any
visit, upon the score of Mrs
Morritt’s health. If he were what he used to be, you would
be much pleased with him; for besides a very extensive general acquaintance
with literature, he was particularly deep in our old dramatic lore, a good
modern linguist, a tolerable draughtsman and antiquary, and a most excellent
hydrographer. I have not the least doubt that if he submits to the proper
regimen of abstinence and moderate exercise, he will be quite well in a few
weeks or days—if not, it is miserable to think what may happen. The being
suddenly deprived of his services in this melancholy way, has flung me back at
least a month with Swift, and left me no time to
write to my friends, for all my memoranda, &c. were in his hands, and had
to be new-modelled, &c. &c.
“Our glorious prospects on the Continent called
forth the congratulations of the City of Edinburgh amongothers. The Magistrates
asked me to draw their address, which was presented by the Lord Provost in person, who happens to be a
gentleman of birth and fortune.* The Prince
said some very handsome things respecting the address, with which the
Magistrates were so much elated, that they have done the genteel thing (as
Winifred Jenkins says) by their
literary adviser, and presented me with the freedom of the city, and a handsome
piece of plate. I got the freedom at the same time with Lord Dalhousie and Sir
Thomas Graham, and the Provost gave a very brilliant
entertainment. About 150 gentlemen dined at his own house, all as well served
as if there had been a dozen. So if one strikes a cuff on the one side from
ill-will, there is a pat on the other from kindness, and the shuttlecock is
kept flying. To poor Charlotte’s great
horror, I chose my plate in the form of an old English tankard, an utensil for
which I have a particular respect, especially when charged with good ale, cup,
or any of those potables. I hope you will soon see mine.†
* The late Sir John
Marjoribanks of Lees, Bart.
† The inscription for this tankard was penned by
the late celebrated Dr James
Gregory, Professor of the Practice of Physic in the University
of Edinburgh; and I therefore transcribe it.
GUALTERUM SCOTT DE ABBOTSFORD VIRUM SUMMI INGENII SCRIPTOREM ELEGANTEM POETARUM SUI SECULI FACILE PRINCIPEM PATRIÆ DECUS OB VARIA ERGA IPSAM MERITA IN CIVIUM SUORUM NUMERUM GRATA ADSCRIPSIT CIVITAS EDINBURGENSIS ET HOC CANTHARO DONAVIT A. D. M.DCCC.XIII.
“Your little friends, Sophia and Walter, were
at a magnificent party on Twelfth Night at Dalkeith, where the Duke and Duchess entertained all Edinburgh. I think they have dreamed of
nothing since but Aladdin’s lamp and
the palace of Haroun Alraschid. I am
uncertain what to do this spring. I would fain go on the Continent for three or
four weeks, if it be then safe for noncombatants. If not, we will have a merry
meeting in London, and, like Master
Silence, ‘Eat, drink, and make good cheer, And thank heaven for the merry year.’ I have much to say about Triermain. The fourth edition is at press. The Empress-Dowager of Russia has expressed such an
interest in it, that it will be inscribed to her, in some doggrel sonnet or
other, by the unknown author. This is funny enough. Love a thousand times to
dear Mrs Morritt, who, I trust, keeps
pretty well. Pray write soon a modest request from
Walter Scott.”
The last of Weber’s
literary productions were the analyses of the old German Poems of the Helden Buch, and the Nibelungen Lied, which appeared in a massive quarto,
entitled Illustrations of Northern
Antiquities, published in the summer of 1814, by his and Scott’s friend, Mr Robert
Jameson. Scott avowedly contributed to this collection
an account of the Eyrbiggia Saga, which has since been included
in his Prose Miscellanies (Vol. V.,
edition 1834); but any one who examines the share of the work which goes under
Weber’s name, will see that Scott had a
considerable hand in that also. The rhymed versions from the Nibelungen
Lied came, I can have no doubt, from his pen; but he never reclaimed these, or
any other similar benefactions, of
which I have traced not a few; nor, highly curious and even beautiful as many of them are,
could they be intelligible, if separated from the prose narrative on which
Weber embroidered them, in imitation of the style of Ellis’sSpecimens of Metrical Romance.
The following letters, on the first abdication of Napoleon, are too characteristic to be omitted here. I need
not remind the reader how greatly Scott had calmed his opinions, and
softened his feelings, respecting the career and fate of the most extraordinary man of our
age, before he undertook to write his history.
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., Portland Place,
London.
“Abbotsford, 30th April, 1814.
“‘Joy—joy in London now!’—and in
Edinburgh, moreover, my dear Morritt;
for never did you or I see, and never again shall we see, according to all
human prospects, a consummation so truly glorious, as now bids fair to conclude
this long and eventful war. It is startling to think that, but for the
preternatural presumption and hardness of heart displayed by the arch-enemy of
mankind, we should have had a hollow and ominous truce with him, instead of a
glorious and stable peace with the country over which he tyrannized, and its
lawful ruler. But Providence had its own wise purposes to answer—and such was
the deference of France to the ruling power—so devoutly did they worship the
Devil for possession of his burning throne, that, it may be, nothing short of
his rejection of every fair and advantageous offer of peace could have driven
them to those acts of resistance which remembrance of former convulsions had
rendered so fearful to them. Thank God! it is done at last: and—although I
rather grudge him even the mouthful of air which he may draw in the Isle of
Elba —yet I question whether the moral lesson would have
been completed either by his perishing in battle, or being torn to pieces
(which I should greatly have preferred), like the De
Witts, by an infuriated crowd of conscripts and their parents.
Good God! with what strange feelings must that man retire from the most
unbounded authority ever vested in the hands of one man, to the seclusion of
privacy and restraint. We have never heard of one good action which he did, at
least for which there was not some selfish or political reason; and the train
of slaughter, pestilence, and famine and fire, which his ambition has
occasioned, would have outweighed five hundredfold the private virtues of a
Titus. These are comfortable reflections to carry with
one to privacy. If he writes his own history, as he proposes, we may gain
something; but he must send it here to be printed. Nothing less than a
neck-or-nothing London bookseller, like John
Dunton of yore, will venture to commit to the press his strange
details uncastrated. I doubt that he has stamina to undertake such a labour;
and yet, in youth, as I know from the brothers of Lauriston, who were his
school-companions, Buonaparte’s habits were
distinctly and strongly literary. Spain, the Continental System, and the
invasion of Russia he may record as his three leading blunders—an awful lesson
to sovereigns that morality is not so indifferent to politics as Machiavelians
will assert. Res nolunt diu male
administrari. Why can we not meet to talk over these matters
over a glass of claret; and when shall that be? Not this spring, I fear, for
time wears fast away, and I have remained here nailed among my future oaks,
which I measure daily with a foot-rule. Those which were planted two years ago,
begin to look very gaily, and a venerable plantation of four years old looks as
bobbish as yours at the dairy by Greta side. Besides, I am arranging this cottage a
little more conveniently, to put off the plague and expense of building another
year; and I assure you, I expect to spare Mrs
Morritt and you a chamber in the wall, with a dressing-room, and
every thing handsome about you. You will not stipulate, of course, for many
square feet. You would be surprised to hear how the Continent is awakening from
its iron sleep. The utmost eagerness seems to prevail about English literature.
I have had several voluntary epistles from different parts of Germany, from men
of letters, who are eager to know what we have been doing, while they were
compelled to play at blindman’s buff with the ci-devant Empereur. The feeling of the French officers,
of whom we have many in our vicinity, is very curious, and yet natural.* Many
of them, companions of Buonaparte’s victories, and
who hitherto have marched with him from conquest to conquest, disbelieve the
change entirely. This is all very stupid to write to you, who are in the centre
of these wonders; but what else can I say, unless I should send you the measure
of the future fathers of the forest? Mrs
Scott is With me heres—the children in Edinburgh. Our kindest
love attends Mrs Morritt. I hope to hear soon that her
health continues to gain ground.
“I have a letter from Southey, in high spirits on the glorious news. What a pity this
last battle† was fought. But I am glad the rascals were beaten once more.
Ever yours,
Walter Scott.”
* A good many French officers, prisoners of war, had been living on
parole in Melrose, and the adjoining villages; and Mr and Mrs Scott had been
particularly kind and hospitable to them.
† The battle of Thoulouse.
To Robert Southey, Esq., Keswick.
“Edinburgh, 17th June, 1814. “My dear Southey,
“I suspended writing to thank you for the Carmen Triumphale—(a happy
omen of what you can do to immortalize our public story)—until the feverish
mood of expectation and anxiety should be over. And then, as you truly say,
there followed a stunning sort of listless astonishment and complication of
feeling, which if it did not lessen enjoyment, confused and confounded
one’s sense of it. I remember the first time I happened to see a launch,
I was neither so much struck with the descent of the vessel, nor with its
majestic sweep to its moorings, as with the blank which was suddenly made from
the withdrawing so large an object, and the prospect which was at once opened
to the opposite side of the dock crowded with spectators. Buonaparte’s fall strikes me something in
the same way; the huge bulk of his power, against which a thousand arms were
hammering, was obviously to sink when its main props were struck away—and yet
now—when it has disappeared—the vacancy which it leaves in our minds and
attention, marks its huge and preponderating importance more strongly than even
its presence. Yet I so devoutly expected the termination, that in discussing
the matter with Major Philips, who seemed to partake of
the doubts which prevailed during the feverish period preceding the capture of
Paris, when he was expressing his apprehensions that the capital of France
would be defended to the last, I hazarded a prophecy that a battle would be
fought on the heights of Mont Martre—(no great saga-city, since it was the
point where Marlborough proposed to attack, and for which Saxe projected a
scheme of defence)—and that if the allies were successful, which I little
doubted, the city would surrender, and the Senate proclaim the dethronement of
Buonaparte. But I never thought nor imagined that he
would have given in as he has done. I always considered him as possessing the
genius and talents of an Eastern conqueror; and although I never supposed that
he possessed, allowing for some difference of education, the liberality of
conduct and political views which were sometimes exhibited by old Hyder Ally, yet I did think he might have shown
the same resolved and dogged spirit of resolution which induced Tippoo Saib to die manfully upon the breach of
his capital city with his sabre clenched in his hand. But this is a poor devil,
and cannot play the tyrant so rarely as Bottom the
Weaver proposed to do. I think it is Strap in Roderick
Random, who seeing a highwayman that had lately robbed him, disarmed
and bound, fairly offers to box him for a shilling. One has really the same
feeling with respect to Buonaparte, though if he go out of
life after all in the usual manner, it will be the strongest proof of his own
insignificance, and the liberality of the age we live in. Were I a son of
Palm or Hoffer, I should be tempted to take a long shot at him in his
retreat to Elba. As for coaxing the French by restoring all our conquests, it
would be driving generosity into extravagance; most of them have been colonized
with British subjects, and improved by British capital, and surely we owe no
more to the French nation than any well-meaning individual might owe to a
madman, whom—at the expense of a hard struggle, black eyes, and bruises—he has
at length overpowered, knocked down, and by the wholesome discipline of a
bull’s pizzle and strait-jacket, brought to the handsome enjoyment of his
senses. I think with you, what we return to them should be well paid for; and
they should have no Pondicherry to be a nest of smugglers, nor Mauri-tius to nurse a hornet-swarm of privateers. In short,
draw teeth, and pare claws, and leave them to fatten themselves in peace and
quiet, when they are deprived of the means of indulging their restless spirit
of enterprise.
“—The above was written at Abbotsford last month,
but left in my portfolio there till my return some days ago; and now, when I
look over what I have written, I am confirmed in my opinion that we have given
the rascals too good an opportunity to boast that they have got well off. An
intimate friend of mine,* just returned
from a long captivity in France, witnessed the entry of the King, guarded by the Imperial Guards, whose
countenances betokened the most sullen and ferocious discontent. The mob, and
especially the women, pelted them for refusing to cry ‘Vive le
Roi.’ If Louis is well advised, he
will get rid of these fellows gradually, but as soon as possible.
‘Joy, joy in London now!’ What a scene has been going on
there; I think you may see the Czar
appear on the top of one of your stages one morning. He is a fine fellow, and
has fought the good fight. Yours affectionately,
Walter Scott.”
On the 1st of July, 1814, Scott’sLife and Edition
of Swift, in nineteen volumes 8vo, at length issued from the press. This
adventure, undertaken by Constable in 1808, had been
proceeded in during all the variety of their personal relations, and now came forth when
author and publisher felt more warmly towards each other than perhaps they had ever before
done. The impression was of 1250 copies; and a reprint of similar extent was
* Sir Adam Ferguson, who
had been taken prisoner in the course of the Duke of
Wellington’s retreat from Burgos.
called for in 1824. The
Life of Swift has subsequently been
included in the author’s Miscellanies, and has obtained a very wide circulation.
By his industrious enquiries, in which, as the preface gratefully
acknowledges, he found many zealous assistants, especially among the Irish literati,*
Scott added to this edition many admirable pieces,
both in prose and verse, which had never before been printed, and still more which had
escaped notice amidst old bundles of pamphlets and broadsides. To the illustration of these
and of all the better known writings of the Dean, he
brought the same qualifications which had, by general consent, distinguished his Dryden, “uniting,” as the
Edinburgh Review expresses it,
“to the minute knowledge and patient research of the Malones and Chalmerses, a vigour of judgment, and a vivacity of style to which they
had no pretensions.” His biographical narrative, introductory essays, and
notes on Swift, show, indeed, an intimacy of acquaintance with the
obscurest details of the political, social, and literary history of the period of Queen Anne, which it is impossible to consider without feeling
a lively regret that he never accomplished a long cherished purpose of preparing a Life and
Edition of Pope on a similar scale. It has been
specially unfortunate for that “true deacon of the craft,” as
Scott often called Pope, that first Goldsmith, and then Scott should have
taken up, only to abandon it, the project of writing his life and editing his works.
The Edinburgh Reviewer thus
characterises Scott’sMemoir of the Dean of St Patrick’s:
* The names which he particularly mentions, are those of the late
Matthew Weld Hartstonge, Esq., of Dublin,
Theophilus Swift, Esq., Major Tickell, Thomas
Steele, Esq., Leonard Macnally,
Esq., and the Rev. M. Berwick.
“It is not every where extremely well written, in a
literary point of view, but it is drawn up in substance with great intelligence,
liberality, and good feeling. It is quite fair and moderate in politics; and perhaps rather
too indulgent and tender towards individuals of all descriptions—more full, at least, of
kindness and veneration for genius and social virtue, than of indignation at baseness and
profligacy. Altogether, it is not much like the production of a mere man of letters, or a
fastidious speculator in sentiment and morality; but exhibits throughout, and in a very
pleasing form, the good sense and large toleration of a man of the world, with much of that
generous allowance for the ‘Fears of the brave and follies of the wise,’ which genius too often requires, and should therefore always be most forward to show.
It is impossible, however, to avoid noticing that Mr
Scott is by far too favourable to the personal character of his author, whom
we think it would really be injurious to the cause of morality to allow to pass either as a
very dignified, or a very amiable person. The truth is, we think, that he was extremely
ambitious, arrogant, and selfish; of a morose, vindictive, and haughty temper; and though
capable of a sort of patronising generosity towards his dependents, and of some attachment
towards those who had long known and flattered him, his general demeanour, both in public
and private life, appears to have been far from exemplary; destitute of temper and
magnanimity, and we will add, of principle, in the former; and in the latter, of
tenderness, fidelity, or compassion.”—Edinburgh
Review, vol. xvii., p. 9.
I have no desire to break a lance in this place in defence of the
personal character of Swift. It does not appear to
me that he stands at all distinguished among politicians (least of all, among the
politicians of his time) for laxity of principle; nor can I consent to charge his private
demeanour with the absence either of tenderness, or fidelity, or compassion. But who ever
dreamed—most assuredly not Scott—of holding up the Dean
of St Patrick’s as on the whole an “exemplary character?” The
biographer felt, whatever his critic may have thought on the subject, that a vein of morbid
humour ran through Swift’s whole existence, both mental and physical, from the beginning. “He early
adopted,” says Scott, “the custom of observing
his birth-day, as a term not of joy but of sorrow, and of reading, when it annually
recurred, the striking passage of Scripture in which Job laments
and execrates the day upon which it was said in his father’s house that a man-child was born;” and I should have expected
that any man who had considered the black close of the career thus early clouded, and read
the entry of Swift’s diary on the funeral of Stella, his epitaph on himself, and the testament by which
he disposed of his fortune, would have been willing, like Scott, to
dwell on the splendour of his immortal genius, and the many traits of manly generosity
“which he unquestionably exhibited,” rather than on the faults and
foibles of nameless and inscrutable disease, which tormented and embittered the far greater
part of his earthly being. What the critic says of the practical and business-like style of
Scott’s biography, appears very just—and I think the
circumstance eminently characteristic—nor, on the whole, could his edition, as an edition,
have been better dealt with than in the Essay which I have quoted. It was, by the way,
written by Mr Jeffrey, at Constable’s particular request. “It was, I
think, the first time I ever asked such a thing of him,” the bookseller said
to me; “and I assure you the result was no encouragement to repeat such
petitions.” Mr Jeffrey attacked
Swift’s whole character at great length, and with consummate
dexterity; and, in Constable’s opinion, his article threw such a
cloud on the Dean, as materially checked, for a time, the popularity of his writings.
Admirable as the paper is, in point of ability, I think Mr Constable
may have considerably exaggerated its effects; but in those days it must have been
difficult for him to form an impartial opinion upon such a question; for, as Johnson said of Cave, that “he could not spit over his window
without thinking of The Gentleman’s
Magazine,” I believe Constable allowed nothing to
interrupt his paternal pride in the concerns of his Review, until the Waverley
Novels supplied him with another periodical publication still more important to
his fortunes.
And this consummation was not long delayed; a considerable addition
having by that time been made to the original fragment, there appeared in The Scot’s Magazine, for February 1st, 1814,
an announcement, that “Waverley; or,
’tis Sixty Years Since, a novel, in 3 vols, 12mo,” would be
published in March. And before Scott came into
Edinburgh, at the close of the Christmas vacation on the 12th of January, Mr Erskine had perused the greater part of the first
volume, and expressed his decided opinion that Waverley would
prove the most popular of all his friend’s writings. The MS. was forthwith copied by
John Ballantyne, and sent to press. As soon as a
volume was printed, Ballantyne conveyed it to Constable, who did not for a moment doubt from what pen it
proceeded, but took a few days to consider of the matter, and then offered L.700 for the
copyright. When we recollect what the state of novel literature in those days was, and that
the only exceptions to its mediocrity, the Irish Tales of Miss
Edgeworth, however appreciated in refined circles, had a circulation so
limited that she had never realized a tithe of L.700 by the best of them—it must be allowed
that Constable’s offer was a liberal one.
Scott’s answer, however, transmitted through the same
channel, was, that L.700 was too much, in case the novel should not be successful, and too
little in case it should. He added, “If our fat friend had said L.1000, I should
have been staggered.” John did not forget to hint this
last circumstance to Constable, but the latter did not choose to act upon it; and he ultimately
published the work, on the footing of an equal division of profits between himself and the
author. There was a considerable pause between the finishing of the first volume and the
beginning of the second. Constable had, in 1812, acquired the
copyright of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and
was now preparing to publish the valuable Supplement to that work, which has since, with
modifications, been incorporated into its text. He earnestly requested
Scott to undertake a few articles for the Supplement; he
agreed—and, anxious to gratify the generous bookseller, at once laid aside his tale until
he had finished two essays—those on Chivalry and the Drama. They appear to have been
completed in the course of April and May, and he received for each of them (as he did
subsequently for that on Romance)—L.100.
The two next letters will give us, in more exact detail than the
author’s own recollection could supply in 1830, the history of the completion of
Waverley. It was published on the 7th
of July; and two days afterwards he thus writes:—
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. M. P., London.
“Edinburgh, 9th July, 1814. “My dear Morritt,
“I owe you many apologies for not sooner answering
your very entertaining letter upon your Parisian journey. I heartily wish I had
been of your party, for you have seen what I trust will not be seen again in a
hurry; since, to enjoy the delight of a restoration, there is a necessity for a
previous bouleversement of every
thing that is valuable in morals and policy, which seems to have been the case
in France since 1790.* The Duke
* Mr Morritt
had, in the spring of this year, been present at the first levee held
at the Tuileries by Monsieur, (afterwards Charles X.),
of Buccleuch told me
yesterday of a very good reply of Louis to
some of his attendants, who proposed shutting the doors of his apartments to
keep out the throng of people. ‘Open the door,’ he said,
‘to John Bull; he has suffered
a great deal in keeping the door open for me.’
“Now, to go from one important subject to another, I
must account for my own laziness, which I do by referring you to a small
anonymous sort of a novel, in three volumes, Waverley, which you will receive by the mail
of this day. It was a very old attempt of mine to embody some traits of those
characters and manners peculiar to Scotland, the last remnants of which
vanished during my own youth, so that few or no traces now remain. I had
written great part of the first volume, and sketched other passages, when I
mislaid the MS., and only found it by the merest accident as I was rummaging
the drawers of an old cabinet; and I took the fancy of finishing it, which I
did so fast, that the last two volumes were written in three weeks. I had a
great deal of fun in the accomplishment of this task, though I do not expect
that it will be popular in the south, as much of the humour, if there be any,
is local, and some of it even professional. You, however, who are an adopted
Scotchman, will find some amusement in it. It has made a very strong impression
here, and the good people of Edinburgh are busied in tracing the author, and in
finding out originals for the portraits it contains. In the first case, they
will probably find it difficult to convict the guilty author, although he is
far from escaping suspicion. Jeffrey has
offered to make oath that it is mine, and another great critic has tendered his
affidavit ex contrario; so that these
authorities have divided
as representative of his brother
Louis XVIII. Mr M. had not been
in Paris till that time since 1789.
the Gude Town. However,
the thing has succeeded very well, and is thought highly of. I don’t know
if it has got to London yet. I intend to maintain my incognito. Let me know your opinion about it. I should be most happy
if I could think it would amuse a painful thought at this anxious moment. I was
in hopes Mrs Morritt was getting so much
better that this relapse affects me very much. Ever yours truly,
W. Scott.”
“P.S.—As your conscience has very few things to
answer for, you must still burthen it with the secret of the Bridal. It is spreading very
rapidly, and I have one or two little fairy romances, which will make a
second volume, and which I would wish published, but not with my name. The
truth is, that this sort of muddling work amuses me, and I am something in
the condition of Joseph Surface, who
was embarrassed by getting himself too good a reputation; for many things
may please people well enough anonymously, which, if they have me in the
title-page, would just give me that sort of ill name which precedes
hanging—and that would be in many respects inconvenient if I thought of
again trying a grande opus”
This statement of the foregoing letter (repeated still more precisely
in a following one), as to the time occupied in the composition of the second and third
volumes of Waverley, recalls to my memory
a trifling anecdote, which, as connected with a dear friend of my youth, whom I have not
seen for many years, and may very probably never see again in this world, I shall here set
down, in the hope of affording him a momentary, though not an unmixed pleasure, when he may
chance to read this compilation on a distant shore—and also in the hope that my humble record may impart to some active mind in the rising
generation a shadow of the influence which the reality certainly exerted upon his.
Happening to pass through Edinburgh in June, 1814, I dined one day with the gentleman in
question (now the Honourable William Menzies, one of
the Supreme Judges at the Cape of Good Hope), whose residence was then in George Street,
situated very near to, and at right angles with, North Castle Street. It was a party of
very young persons, most of them, like Menzies and myself, destined
for the bar of Scotland, all gay and thoughtless, enjoying the first flush of manhood, with
little remembrance of the yesterday or care of the morrow. When my companion’s worthy
father and uncle, after seeing two or three bottles go round, left the juveniles to
themselves, the weather being hot, we adjourned to a library which had one large window
looking northwards. After carousing here for an hour or more, I observed that a shade had
come over the aspect of my friend, who happened to be placed immediately opposite to
myself, and said something that intimated a fear of his being unwell.
“No,” said he, “I shall be well enough presently, if you will
only let me sit where you are, and take my chair; for there is a confounded hand in
sight of me here, which has often bothered me before, and now it won’t let me
fill my glass with a good will.” I rose to change places with him
accordingly, and he pointed out to me this hand which, like the writing on
Belshazzar’s wall, disturbed his hour of hilarity. “Since we sat
down,” he said, “I have been watching it—it fascinates my eye—it never
stops—page after page is finished and thrown on that heap of MS., and still it goes on
unwearied—and so it will be till candles are brought in, and God knows how long after
that. It is the same every night—I can’t stand the sight of it when I am not at
my books.”—“Some
stupid, dogged, engrossing clerk, probably,” exclaimed myself, or some other
giddy youth in our society. “No, boys,” said our host, “I well
know what hand it is—’tis Walter
Scott’s.” This was the hand that, in the evenings of three
summer weeks, wrote the two last volumes of Waverley. Would that
all who that night watched it, had profited by its example of diligence as largely as
William Menzies!
In the next of these letters Scott
enclosed to Mr Morritt the Prospectus of a new
edition of the old poems of the Bruce and
the Wallace, undertaken by the learned
lexicographer, Dr John Jamieson; and he announces
his departure on a sailing excursion round the north of Scotland. It will be observed, that
when Scott began his letter, he had only had Mr
Morritt’s opinion of the first volume of Waverley, and that before he closed it, he had received
his friend’s honest criticism on the work as a whole, with the expression of an
earnest hope that he would drop his incognito on the title-page of a
second edition.
J. S. S. Morritt, Esq. M.P. Portland Place, London.
Abbotsford, July 24, 1814. “My dear Morritt,
“I am going to say my vales to you for some weeks, having accepted an
invitation from a committee of the Commissioners for the Northern Lights (I
don’t mean the Edinburgh
Reviewers, but the bonâ
fide commissioners for the beacons), to accompany them upon
a nautical tour round Scotland, visiting all that is curious on continent and
isle. The party are three gentlemen with whom I am very well acquainted,
William Erskine being one. We have a
stout cutter, well fitted up and manned for the service by Government; and to
make assurance double sure, the admiral has sent a sloop of war to cruise in the dangerous points of our tour, and
sweep the sea of the Yankee privateers, which sometimes annoy our northern
latitudes. I shall visit the Clephanes
in their solitude—and let you know all that I see that is rare and
entertaining, which, as we are masters of our time and vessel, should add much
to my stock of knowledge.
“As to Waverley, I will play Sir
Fretful for once, and assure you that I left the story to flag
in the first volume on purpose; the second and third have rather more bustle
and interest. I wished (with what success Heaven knows) to avoid the ordinary
error of novel-writers, whose first volume is usually their best. But since it
has served to amuse Mrs Morritt and you
usque ab initio, I have no
doubt you will tolerate it even unto the end. It may really boast to be a
tolerably faithful portrait of Scottish manners, and has been recognised as
such in Edinburgh. The first edition of a thousand instantly disappeared, and
the bookseller informs me that the second, of double the quantity, will not
supply the market for long. As I shall be very anxious to know how
Mrs Morritt is, I hope to have a few lines from you on
my return, which will be about the end of August or beginning of September. I
should have mentioned that we have the celebrated engineer, Stevenson, along with us. I delight in these
professional men of talent; they always give you some new lights by the
peculiarity of their habits and studies, so different from the people who are
rounded, and smoothed, and ground down for conversation, and who can say all
that every other person says, and—nothing more.
“What a miserable thing it is that our royal family
cannot be quiet and decent at least, if not correct and moral in their
deportment. Old farmer George’s manly
simplicity, modesty of expense, and domestic virtue, saved this country at its most
perilous crisis; for it is inconceivable the number of persons whom these
qualities united in his behalf, who would have felt but feebly the abstract
duty of supporting a crown less worthily worn.
“—I had just proceeded thus far when your kind
favour of the 21st reached Abbotsford. I am heartily glad you continued to like
Waverley to the end. The
hero is a sneaking piece of imbecility; and if he had married Flora, she would have set him up upon the
chimney-piece, as Count
Borowlaski’s wife used to do with him.* I am a bad hand at
depicting a hero properly so called, and have an unfortunate propensity for the
dubious characters of borderers, buccaneers, Highland robbers, and all others
of a Robin-Hood description. I do not know
why it should be, as I am myself, like Hamlet,
indifferent honest; but I suppose the blood of the old cattle-drivers of
Teviotdale continues to stir in my veins.
“I shall not own Waverley; my chief reason is, that it would
prevent me of the pleasure of writing again. David
Hume, nephew of the historian, says the author must be of a
Jacobite family and predilections, a yeoman-cavalry man, and a Scottish lawyer,
and desires me to guess in whom these happy attributes are united. I shall not
plead guilty, however; and, as such seems to be the fashion of the day, I hope
charitable people will
* Count
Borowlaski was a Polish dwarf, who, after realizing some
money as an itinerant object of exhibition, settled, married, and died
at Durham. He was a well-bred creature, and much noticed by the clergy
and other gentry of that city. Indeed, even when travelling the country
as a show, he had always maintained a sort of dignity. I remember him
as going from house to house, when I was a child, in a sedan chair,
with a servant in livery following him, who took the fee—M. le Comte himself (dressed in a
scarlet coat and bag wig) being ushered into the room like any ordinary
visitor.
believe my affidavit in
contradiction to all other evidence. The Edinburgh faith now is, that Waverley is written by Jeffrey, having been composed to lighten the tedium of his late
Transatlantic voyage. So you see the unknown infant is like to come to
preferment. In truth, I am not sure it would be considered quite decorous for
me, as a Clerk of Session, to write novels. Judges being monks, Clerks are a
sort of lay brethren, from whom some solemnity of walk and conduct may be
expected. So, whatever I may do of this kind, I shall whistle it down the wind
to prey on fortune. I will take care, in the next edition, to make the
corrections you recommend. The second is, I believe, nearly through the press.
It will hardly be printed faster than it was written; for though the first
volume was begun long ago, and actually lost for a time, yet the other two were
begun and finished between the 4th June and the 1st July, during all which I
attended my duty in Court, and proceeded without loss of time or hinderance of
business.
“I wish, for poor auld Scotland’s sake, and
for the Manes of Bruce and Wallace, and for the living comfort of a very
worthy and ingenious dissenting clergyman, who has collected a library and medals of some
value, and brought up, I believe, sixteen or seventeen children (his
wife’s ambition extended to twenty) upon about L.150 a-year—I say I wish,
for all these reasons, you could get me among your wealthy friends a name or
two for the enclosed proposals. The price is, I think, too high; but the
booksellers fixed it two guineas above what I proposed. I trust it will be yet
lowered to five guineas, which is a more comeatable sum than six. The poems
themselves are great curiosities, both to the philologist and antiquary; and
that of Bruce is
invaluable, even to the historian. They have been hitherto wretchedly edited.
“I am glad you are not to pay for this scrawl. Ever
yours,
Walter Scott.”
“P.S. I do not see how my silence can be
considered as imposing on the public. If I give my name to a book without
writing it, unquestionably that would be a trick. But, unless in the case
of his averring facts which he may be called upon to defend or justify, I
think an author may use his own discretion in giving or withholding his
name. Harry Mackenzie never put his
name in a title-page till the last edition of his works; and Swift only owned one out of his thousand
and one publications. In point of emolument, every body knows that I
sacrifice much money by withholding my name; and what should I gain by it,
that any human being has a right to consider as an unfair advantage? In
fact, only the freedom of writing trifles with less personal
responsibility, and perhaps more frequently than I otherwise might do.
W. S.”
I am not able to give the exact date of the following reply to one of
John Ballantyne’s expostulations on the
subject of the secret:—
“No, John, I will not own the book— I won’t, you Picaroon. When next I try St Grubby’s brook, The A. of Wa— shall bait the hook— And flat-fish bite as soon, As if before them they had got The worn-out wriggler Walter Scott.”
CHAPTER IV. VOYAGE TO THE SHETLAND ISLES, ETC.—SCOTT’S DIARY
KEPT ON BOARD THE LIGHTHOUSE YACHT—JULY AND AUGUST, 1814.
The gallant composure with which Scott, when he had dismissed a work from his desk, awaited the decision of
the public—and the healthy elasticity of spirit with which he could meanwhile turn his
whole zeal upon new or different objects—are among the features in his character which will
always, I believe, strike the student of literary history as most remarkable. We have now
seen him before the fate of Waverley had
been determined—before he had heard a word about its reception in England, except from one
partial confidant—preparing to start on a voyage to the northern isles, which was likely to
occupy the best part of two months, and in the course of which he could hardly expect to
receive any intelligence from his friends in Edinburgh. The diary which he kept during this
expedition, is—thanks to the leisure of a landsman on board—a very full one; and written
without the least notion probably that it would ever be perused except in his own family
circle, it affords such a complete and artless portraiture of the man, as he was in
himself, and as he mingled with his friends and companions, at one of the most interesting
periods of his life, that I am persuaded every reader, will be pleased to see it printed in its original
state. A few extracts from it were published by himself, in one of the Edinburgh Annual Registers—he also drew from it some of the
notes to his Lord of the Isles, and the
substance of several others for his romance of the
Pirate. But the recurrence of these detached passages will not be complained
of—expounded and illustrated as the reader will find them by the personal details of the
context.
I have been often told by one of the companions of this voyage, that
heartily as Scott entered throughout into their social
enjoyments, they all perceived him, when inspecting for the first time scenes of remarkable
grandeur, to be in such an abstracted and excited mood, that they felt it would be the
kindest and discreetest plan to leave him to himself. “I often,” said Lord Kinnedder, “on coming up from the cabin at
night, found him pacing the deck rapidly, muttering to himself—and went to the
forecastle, lest my presence should disturb him. I remember that at Loch Corriskin, in
particular, he seemed quite overwhelmed with his feelings; and we all saw it, and
retiring unnoticed, left him to roam and gaze about by himself, until it was time to
muster the party and be gone.” Scott used to mention the
surprise with which he himself witnessed Erskine’s emotion on
first entering the cave of Staffa—“Would you believe it?” he
said—“my poor Willie sat down and wept like a
woman!” Yet his own sensibilities, though betrayed in a more masculine and
sterner guise, were perhaps as keen as well as deeper than his amiable friend’s.
The poet’s Diary, contained in five little paper books, is as
follows:—
“VACATION 1814. “VOYAGE IN THE LIGHTHOUSE YACHT TO NOVA ZEMBLA, AND
THE LORD KNOWS WHERE.
“July 29th, 1814.—Sailed
from Leith about one o’clock on board the Lighthouse Yacht, conveying six
guns, and ten men, commanded by Mr Wilson. The
company—Commissioners of the Northern Lights; Robert Hamilton, Sheriff of Lanarkshire; William Erskine, Sheriff of Orkney and
Zetland; Adam Duff, Sheriff of
Forfarshire. Non-commissioners—Ipse Ego; Mr David Marjoribanks, son to John Marjoribanks, Provost of Edinburgh, a
young gentleman; Rev. Mr Turnbull,
Minister of Tingwall, in the presbytery of Shetland. But the official chief of
the expedition is Mr Stevenson, the
Surveyor-Viceroy over the commissioners a most gentlemanlike and modest man,
and well known by his scientific skill.
“Reached the Isle of May in the evening; went
ashore, and saw the light an old tower, and much in the form of a border-keep,
with a beacon-grate on the top. It is to be abolished for an oil
revolving-light, the gratefire only being ignited upon the leeward side when
the wind is very high. Quære—Might not the grate revolve? The isle had once a
cell or two upon it. The vestiges of the chapel are still visible. Mr Stevenson proposed demolishing the old
tower, and I recommended ruining it à la
picturesque—i. e. demolishing it partially. The island
might be made a delightful residence for seabathers.
“On board again in the evening: watched the progress
of the ship round Fifeness, and the revolving motion of the now distant
Bell-Rock light until the wind
grew rough, and the landsmen sick. To bed at eleven, and slept sound.
“30th July—Waked at six by
the steward: summoned to visit the Bell-Rock, where the beacon is well worthy
attention. Its dimensions are well known; but no description can give the idea
of this slight, solitary, round tower, trembling amid the billows, and fifteen
miles from Arbroath, the nearest shore. The fitting up within is not only
handsome, but elegant. All work of wood (almost) is wainscot; all hammer-work
brass; in short, exquisitely fitted up. You enter by a ladder of rope, with
wooden steps, about thirty feet from the bottom, where the mason-work ceases to
be solid, and admits of round apartments. The lowest is a storehouse for the
people’s provisions, water, &c.; above that a storehouse for the
lights, of oil, &c.; then the kitchen of the people, three in number; then
their sleeping-chamber; then the saloon or parlour, a neat little room; above
all, the lighthouse; all communicating by oaken ladders, with brass rails, most
handsomely and conveniently executed. Breakfasted in the parlour.* On board
again at nine, and run down, through a rough sea, to Aberbrothock, vulgarly
called Arbroath. All sick, even Mr
Stevenson. God grant this occur seldom! Landed and dined at
Arbroath, where we were to take up Adam
Duff. We visited the appointments of the lighthouse
establishment—a handsome tower, with two wings. These contain the lodgings of
the keepers of the light—very handsome, indeed, and very clean. They might be
thought too handsome, were it not of consequence to give those men, intrusted
* On being requested while at breakfast to inscribe
his name in the album of the tower, Scott penned immediately the lines “Pharos Loquitur,”
which may be seen in the last edition of his Poetical Works, Vol. X. p. 355.
with a duty so laborious and slavish, a consequence in
the eyes of the public and in their own. The central part of the building forms
a single tower, corresponding with the lighthouse. As the keepers’
families live here, they are apprised each morning by a signal that all is
well. If this signal be not made, a tender sails for the rock directly. I
visited the abbey church for the third time, the first being—eheu!*—the second with T.
Thomson. Dined at Arbroath, and came on board at night, where I
made up this foolish journal, and now beg for wine and water. So the vessel is
once more in motion.
“31st July. Waked at seven;
vessel off Fowlsheugh and Dunnottar. Fair wind, and delightful day; glide
enchantingly along the coast of Kincardineshire, and open the bay of Nigg about
ten. At eleven, off Aberdeen; the gentlemen go ashore to Girdle-Ness, a
projecting point of rock to the east of the harbour of Fort-Dee. There the
magistrates of Aberdeen wish to have a fort and beacon-light. The Oscar, whaler, was lost here last year, with all her
hands, excepting two; about forty perished. Dreadful, to be wrecked so near a
large and populous town! The view of Old and New Aberdeen from the sea is quite
beautiful. About noon, proceed along the coast of Aberdeenshire, which, to the
northwards, changes from a bold and rocky to a low and sandy character. Along
the bay of Belhelvie, a whole parish was swallowed up by the shifting sands,
and is still a desolate waste. It belonged to the Earls of Errol, and was
rented at L.500 a-year at the time. When these sands are past, the land is all
arable. Not a tree to be seen; nor a grazing cow, or sheep, or even
* This is, without doubt, an allusion to some happy
day’s excursion when his first love was of the party.
a labour-horse at grass, though
this be Sunday. The next remarkable object was a fragment of the old castle of
Slains, on a precipitous bank, overlooking the sea. The fortress was destroyed
when James VI. marched north [A. D. 1594],
after the battle of Glenlivat, to reduce Huntly and Errol to
obedience. ‘The family then removed to their present mean habitation, for
such it seems, a collection of low houses forming a quadrangle, one side of
which is built on the very verge of the precipice that overhangs the ocean.
What seems odd, there are no stairs down to the beach. Imprudence, or ill
fortune as fatal as the sands of Belhelvie, has swallowed up the estate of
Errol, excepting this dreary mansionhouse, and a farm or two adjoining. We took
to the boat, and running along the coast, had some delightful sea-views to the
northward of the castle. The coast is here very rocky; but the rocks, being
rather soft, are wasted and corroded by the constant action of the waves, and
the fragments which remain, where the softer parts have been washed away,
assume the appearance of old Gothic ruins. There are open arches, towers,
steeples, and so forth. One part of this scaur is called Dun
Buy, being coloured yellow by the dung of the sea-fowls, who build
there in the most surprising numbers. We caught three young gulls. But the most
curious object was the celebrated Buller of Buchan, a huge rocky cauldron, into
which the sea rushes through a natural arch of rock. I walked round the top; in
one place the path is only about two feet wide, and a monstrous precipice on
either side. We then rowed into the cauldron or buller from beneath, and saw
nothing around us but a regular wall of black rock, and nothing above but the
blue sky. A fishing hamlet had sent out its inhabitants, who, gazing from the
brink, looked like sylphs looking down upon gnomes. In the side of the cauldron opens a deep black cavern. Johnson says it might be a retreat from storms, which is
nonsense. In a high gale the waves rush in with incredible violence. An old
fisher said he had seen them flying over the natural wall of the buller, which
cannot be less than 200 feet high. Same old man says Slains is now inhabited by
a Mr Bowles, who comes so far from the southward that
naebody kens whare he comes frae. ‘Was he frae the
Indies?’—‘Na; he did not think he came that road. He was
far frae the southland. Naebody ever heard the name of the place; but he
had brought more guid out o’ Peterhead than a’ the Lords he had
seen in Slains, and he had seen three.’ About half-past five we
left this interesting spot, and after a hard pull, reached the yacht. Weather
falls hazy, and rather calm; but at sea we observe vessels enjoying more wind.
Pass Peterhead, dimly distinguishing two steeples, and a good many masts.
Mormounthill said to resemble a coffin—a likeness of which we could not judge,
Mormount being for the present invisible. Pass Rattray-Head: near this cape are
dangerous shelves, called the Bridge of Rattray. Here the wreck of the Doris merchant vessel came on shore, lost last year with
a number of passengers for Shetland. We lie off all night.
“1st August.—Off
Frasersburgh—a neat little town. Mr
Stevenson and the commissioners go on shore to look at a light
maintained there upon an old castle, on a cape called Kinnaird’s Head.
The morning being rainy, and no object of curiosity ashore, I remain on board,
to make up my journal, and write home.
“The old castle, now bearing the light, is a
picturesque object from the sea. It was the baronial mansion of the
Frasers, now Lords Saltoun—an old
square tower with a minor fortification towards the landing-place on the sea-side. About
eleven, the Commissioners came off, and we leave this town, the extreme point
of the Moray Firth, to stretch for Shetland—salute the Castle with three guns,
and stretch out with a merry gale. See Mormount, a long flattish topped hill
near to the West Troup-head, and another bold cliff promontory projecting into
the frith. Our gale soon failed, and we are now all but becalmed; songs,
ballads, recitations, backgammon, and picquet for the rest of the day. Noble
sunset and moon rising; we are now out of sight of land.
“2d August.—At sea in the
mouth of the Moray Frith. This day almost a blank—light baffling airs, which do
us very little good, most of the landsmen sick, more or less; picquet,
backgammon, and chess the only resources.—p.m. A
breeze, and we begin to think we have passed the Fair Isle, lying between
Shetland and Orkney, at which it was our intention to have touched. In short,
like one of Sindbad’s adventures, we
have run on till neither captain nor pilot know exactly where we are. The
breeze increases—weather may be called rough; worse and worse after we are in
our berths, nothing but booming, trampling, and whizzing of waves about our
ears, and ever and anon, as we fall asleep, our ribs come in contact with those
of the vessel; hail Duff and the
Udaller* in the after-cabin, but
they are too sick to answer. Towards morning, calm (comparative), and a nap.
“3d August.—At sea as before;
no appearance of land; proposed that the Sheriff of Zetland do issue a
meditatione fugæ warrant
against his territories, which seem to fly from us. Pass two whalers; speak the
nearest, who had come out of Lerwick, which is about twenty
* Erskine—sheriff of Shetland and Orkney.
miles distant; stand on with a fine breeze. About nine
at night, with moonlight and strong twilight, we weather the point of
Bard-head, and enter a channel about three-quarters of a mile broad, which
forms the southern entrance to the harbour of Lerwick, where we cast anchor
about half-past ten, and put Mr Turnbull
on shore.
“4th August.—Harbour of
Lerwick. Admire the excellence of this harbour of the metropolis of Shetland.
It is a most beautiful place, screened on all sides from the wind by hills of a
gentle elevation. The town, a fishing village, built irregularly upon a hill
ascending from the shore, has a picturesque appearance. On the left is Fort
Charlotte, garrisoned of late by two companies of veterans. The Greenlandmen,
of which nine fine vessels are lying in the harbour, add much to the liveliness
of the scene. Mr Duncan,
sheriff-substitute, came off to pay his respects to his principal; he is
married to a daughter of my early acquaintance, Walter Scott of Scots-hall. We go ashore. Lerwick, a
poor-looking place, the streets flagged instead of being causewayed, for there
are no wheel-carriages. The streets full of drunken riotous sailors, from the
whale-vessels. It seems these ships take about 1000 sailors from Zetland every
year, and return them as they come back from the fishery. Each sailor may gain
from L.20 to L.30, which is paid by the merchants of Lerwick, who have agencies
from the owners of the whalers in England. The whole return may be between
L.25,000 and L.30,000. These Zetlanders, as they get a part of this pay on
landing, make a point of treating their English messmates, who get drunk of
course, and are very riotous. The Zetlanders themselves do not get drunk, but
go straight home to their houses, and reserve their hilarity for the winter
season, when they spend their wages
in dancing and drinking. Erskine finds
employment as Sheriff, for the neighbourhood of the fort enables him to make
main forte, and secure a
number of the rioters. We visit F. Charlotte, which is a neat little fort
mounting ten heavy guns to the sea, but only one to the land. Major
F. the Governor, showed us the fort; it commands both entrances
of the harbour: the north entrance is not very good, but the south, capital.
The water in the harbour is very deep, as frigates of the smaller class lie
almost close to the shore. Take a walk with Captain
M’Diararid, a gentlemanlike and intelligent officer of the
garrison; we visit a small fresh-water loch called Cleik-him-in; it borders on the sea, from which it is only divided by
a sort of beach, apparently artificial; though the sea lashes the outside of
this beach, the water of the lake is not brackish. In this lake are the remains
of a Picts’ Castle, but ruinous. The people think the Castle has not been
built on a natural island, but on an artificial one formed by a heap of stones.
These Duns or Picts’ Castles, are so small, it is impossible to conceive
what effectual purpose they could serve excepting a temporary refuge for the
chief.—Leave Cleik-him-in, and proceed along the coast.
The ground is dreadfully encumbered with stones; the patches, which have been sown with oats and barley, bear very good
crops, but they are mere patches, the cattle and ponies feeding among them and
secured by tethers. The houses most wretched, worse than the worst herd’s
house I ever saw. It would be easy to form a good farm by enclosing the ground
with Galloway dykes, which would answer the purpose of clearing it at the same
time of stones; and as there is plenty of lime-shell, marie, and alga-marina,
manure could not be wanting. But there are several obstacles to improvement,
chiefly the undivided state of the properties, which lie run-rig; then the claims of Lord Dundas, the lord of the country; and
above all, perhaps, the state of the common people, who, dividing their
attention between the fishery and the cultivation, are not much interested in
the latter, and are often absent at the proper times of labour. Their ground is
chiefly dug with the spade, and their ploughs are beyond description awkward.
An odd custom prevails—any person, without exception (if I understand rightly)
who wishes to raise a few kail, fixes upon any spot he pleases, encloses it
with a dry stone-wall, uses it as a kail-yard till he works out the soil, then
deserts it and makes another. Some dozen of these little enclosures, about
twenty or thirty feet square, are in sight at once. They are called planty-cruives; and the Zetlanders are so far from
reckoning this an invasion, or a favour on the part of the proprietor, that
their most exaggerated description of an avaricious person is one who would
refuse liberty for a planty-cruive; or to infer the
greatest contempt of another, they will say, they would not hold a planty-cruive of him. It is needless to notice how much
this license must interfere with cultivation.
“Leaving the cultivated
land, we turn more inland, and pass two or three small lakes. The muirs are
mossy and sterile in the highest degree; the hills are clad with stunted
heather, intermixed with huge great stones; much of an astringent root with a
yellow flower, called Tormentil, used by the islanders
in dressing leather in lieu of the oak bark. We climbed a hill about three
miles from Lerwick to a cairn, which presents a fine view of the indented coast
of the island, and the distant isles of Mousa and others. Unfortunately the day
is rather hazy—return by a circuitous route, through the same sterile country.
These muirs are used as a commonty by the proprietors of the parishes in which
they lie, and each, without any regard to the extent of his peculiar property, puts as much
stock upon them as he chooses. The sheep are miserable-looking, hairy-legged
creatures, of all colours, even to sky-blue. I often wondered where
Jacob got speckled lambs; I think now they must have
been of the Shetland stock. In our return, pass the upper end of the little
lake of Cleik-him-in, which is divided by a rude
causeway from another small loch, communicating with it, however, by a sluice,
for the purpose of driving a mill. But such a mill! The wheel is horizontal,
with the cogs turned diagonally to the water; the beam stands upright, and is
inserted in a stone-quern of the old-fashioned construction. This simple
machine is enclosed in a hovel about the size of a pig-stye, and there is the
mill!* There are about 500 such mills in Shetland, each incapable of grinding
more than a sack at a time.
“I cannot get a distinct account of the nature of
the land rights. The Udal proprietors have ceased to exist, yet proper feudal
tenures seem ill understood. Districts of ground are in many instances
understood to belong to Townships or Communities, possessing what may be arable
by patches, and what is muir as a commonty, pro
indiviso. But then individuals of such a Township often take it upon them
to grant feus of particular parts of the property thus possessed pro indiviso. The town of Lerwick is built upon a part
of the commonty of Sound, the proprietors of the houses having feu rights from
different heritors of that Township, but why from one rather than another, or
how even the whole Township combining (which has not yet been attempted) could
grant such a right upon principle, seems altogether uncertain. In the mean time
the chief stress is laid upon occupance. I should have supposed upon
* Here occurs a rude scratch of
drawing.
principle, that Lord
Dundas, as superior, possessed the dominium
eminens, and ought to be resorted to as the source of land rights. But
it is not so. It has been found that the heritors of each Township hold
directly of the Crown, only paying the Scat, or Norwegian land-tax, and other
duties to his lordship, used and wont. Besides, he has what are called property
lands in every Township, or in most, which he lets to his tenants.
Lord Dundas is now trying to introduce the system of
leases and a better kind of agriculture. Return home and dine at
Sinclair’s, a decent inn—Captain M’Diarmid and
other gentlemen dine with us. Sleep at the inn on a straw couch.
“5th August, 1814.—Hazy
disagreeable morning—Erskine trying the
rioters—notwithstanding which a great deal of rioting still in the town. The
Greenlanders, however, only quarrelled among themselves, and the Zetland
sailors seemed to exert themselves in keeping peace. They are, like all the
other Zetlanders I have seen, a strong, clear-complexioned, handsome race, and
the women are very pretty. The females are rather slavishly employed, however,
and I saw more than one carrying home the heavy sea-chests of their husbands,
brothers, or lovers, discharged from on board the Greenlanders. The Zetlanders
are, however, so far provident, that when they enter the navy they make liberal
allowance of their pay for their wives and families. Not less than L.15,000
a-year has been lately paid by the Admiralty on this account; yet this influx
of money, with that from the Greenland fishery, seems rather to give the means
of procuring useless indulgences than of augmenting the stock of productive
labour. Mr Collector Ross tells me that
from the King’s books it appears that the quantity of spirits, tea,
coffee, tobacco, snuff, and sugar, imported annually into Lerwick for the
consump-tion of Zetland, averages
at sale price, L.20,000 yearly, at the least. Now the inhabitants of Zetland,
men, women, and children, do not exceed 22,000 in all, and the proportion of
foreign luxuries seems monstrous, unless we allow for the habits contracted by
the seamen in their foreign trips. Tea, in particular, is used by all ranks,
and porridge quite exploded.
“We parade Lerwick. The most remarkable thing is
that, the main street being flagged, and all the others very narrow lanes
descending the hill by steps, any thing like a cart of the most ordinary and
rude construction, seems not only out of question when the town was built, but
in its present state quite excluded. A road of five miles in length, on the
line between Lerwick and Scalloway, has been already made—upon a very awkward
and expensive plan, and ill-lined as may be supposed. But it is proposed to
extend this road by degrees: carts will then be introduced, and by crossing the
breed of their ponies judiciously, they will have Galloways to draw them. The
streets of Lerwick (as one blunder perpetrates another) will then be a bar to
improvement, for till the present houses are greatly altered no cart can
approach the quay. In the garden of Captain Nicolson,
R.N., which is rather in a flourishing state, he has tried various trees,
almost all of which have died except the willow. But the plants seem to me to
be injured in their passage; seeds would perhaps do better. We are visited by
several of the notables of the island, particularly Mr
Mowat, a considerable proprietor, who claims acquaintance with
me as the friend of my father, and remembers me as a boy. The day clearing up,
Duff and I walk with this good old gentleman to Cleik-him-in, and with some trouble drag a boat off the beach into
the fresh-water loch, and go to visit the Picts’ castle. It is of
considerable size, and consists of three circular walls,
of huge natural stones admirably combined without cement. The outer circuit
seems to have been simply a bounding wall or bulwark. The second or interior
defence contains lodgements such as I shall describe. This inner circuit is
surrounded by a wall of about sixteen or eighteen feet thick, composed, as I
said, of huge massive stones placed in layers with great art, but without
mortar or cement. The wall is not perpendicular, but the circle lessens
gradually towards the top, as an old-fashioned pigeon-house. Up the interior of
this wall, there proceeds a circular winding gallery, ascending in the form of
an inclined plane, so as to gain the top by circling round like a cork-screw
within the walls. This is enlightened by little apertures (about two feet by
three) into the inside, and also, it is said, by small slits—of which I saw
none. It is said there are marks of galleries within the circuit, running
parallel to the horizon; these I saw no remains of; and the interior gallery,
with its apertures, is so extremely low and narrow, being only about three feet
square, that it is difficult to conceive how it could serve the purpose of
communication. At any rate, the size fully justifies the tradition prevalent
here, as well as in the south of Scotland, that the Picts were a diminutive
race. More of this when we see the more perfect specimen of a Pict castle in
Mousa, which we resolve to examine, if it be possible. Certainly I am deeply
curious to see what must be one of the most ancient houses in the world, built
by a people who, while they seem to have bestowed much pains on their
habitations, knew neither the art of cement, of arches, or of stairs. The
situation is wild, dreary, and impressive. On the land side are huge sheets and
fragments of rocks, interspersed with a stinted vegetation of grass and heath,
which bears no proportion to the rocks and stones. From the top of his tower the Pictish Monarch might look out
upon a stormy sea, washing a succession of rocky capes, reaches, and headlands,
and immediately around him was the deep fresh-water loch on which his fortress
was constructed. It communicates with the land by a sort of causeway, formed,
like the artificial islet itself, by heaping together stones till the pile
reached the surface of the water. This is usually passable, but at present
overflooded.—Return and dine with Mr
Duncan, Sheriff-substitute—are introduced to Dr Edmonstone, author of a History of
Shetland, who proposes to accompany us to-morrow to see the Cradle of Noss. I
should have mentioned that Mr Stevenson
sailed this morning with the yacht to survey some isles to the northward; he
returns on Saturday, it is hoped.
“6th August.—Hire a
six-oared boat, whaler-built, with a taper point at each end, so that the
rudder can be hooked on either at pleasure. These vessels look very frail, but
are admirably adapted to the stormy seas, where they live when a ship’s
boat stiffly and compactly built must necessarily perish. They owe this to
their elasticity and lightness. Some of the rowers wear a sort of coats of
dressed sheep leather, sewed together with thongs. We sailed out at the
southern inlet of the harbour, rounding successively the capes of the Hammer,
Kirkubus, the Ving, and others, consisting of bold cliffs, hollowed into
caverns, or divided into pillars and arches of fantastic appearance, by the
constant action of the waves. As we passed the most northerly of these capes,
called, I think, the Ord, and turned into the open sea, the scenes became yet
more tremendously sublime. Rocks upwards of three or four hundred feet in
height, presented themselves in gigantic succession, sinking perpendicularly
into the main, which is very deep even within a few
fathoms of their base. One of these capes is called the Bard-head; a huge
projecting arch is named the Giant’s Leg. ‘Here the lone sea-bird wakes his wildest cry.’ Not lone, however, in one sense, for their numbers, and the variety of
their tribes, are immense, though I think they do not quite equal those of
Dunbuy, on the coast of Buchan. Standing across a little bay, we reached the
Isle of Noss, having hitherto coasted the shore of Bressay. Here we see a
detached and precipitous rock, or island, being a portion rent by a narrow
sound from the rest of the cliff, and called the Holm. This detached rock is
wholly inaccessible, unless by a pass of peril, entitled the Cradle of Noss,
which is a sort of wooden chair, travelling from precipice to precipice on
rings, which run upon two cables stretched across over the gulf. We viewed this
extraordinary contrivance from beneath, at the distance of perhaps one hundred
fathoms at least. The boatmen made light of the risk of crossing it, but it
must be tremendous to a brain disposed to be giddy. Seen from beneath, a man in
the basket would resemble a large crow or raven floating between rock and rock.
The purpose of this strange contrivance is to give the tenant the benefit of
putting a few sheep upon the Holm, the top of which is level, and affords good
pasture. The animals are transported in the cradle by one at a time, a shepherd
holding them upon his knees. The channel between the Holm and the isle is
passable by boats in calm weather, but not at the time when we saw it. Rowing
on through a heavy tide, and nearer the breakers than any but Zetlanders would
have ventured, we rounded another immensely high cape, called by the islanders
the Noup of Noss, but by sailors Hang-Cliff, from its having a projecting
appear-ance. This was the
highest rock we had yet seen, though not quite perpendicular. Its height has
never been measured: I should judge it exceeds 600 feet; it has been
conjectured to measure 800 and upwards. Our steersman had often descended this
precipitous rock, having only the occasional assistance of a rope, one end of
which he secured from time to time round some projecting cliff. The collecting
sea-fowl for their feathers was the object, and he might gain five or six
dozen, worth eight or ten shillings, by such an adventure. These huge
precipices abound with caverns, many of which run much farther into the rock
than any one has ventured to explore. We entered (with much hazard to our boat)
one called the Orkney-man’s Harbour, because an Orkney vessel run in
there some years since to escape a French privateer. The entrance was lofty
enough to admit us without striking the mast, but a sudden turn in the
direction of the cave would have consigned us to utter darkness if we had gone
in farther. The dropping of the sea-fowl and cormorants into the water from the
sides of the cavern, when disturbed by our approach, had something in it wild
and terrible.
“After passing the Noup, the precipices become
lower, and sink into a rocky shore with deep indentations, called by the
natives, Gios. Here we would fain have landed to visit
the Cradle from the top of the cliff, but the surf rendered it impossible. We
therefore rowed on like Thalaba in
‘Allah’s name,’ around the Isle of Noss, and landed upon the
opposite side of the small sound which divides it from Bressay. Noss exactly
resembles in shape Salisbury crags, supposing the sea to flow down the valley
called the Hunter’s bog, and round the foot of the precipice. The eastern
part of the isle is fine smooth pasture, the best I have seen in these isles, sloping upwards to the verge of the
tremendous rocks which form its western front.
“As we are to dine at Gardie-House (the seat of
young Mr Mowat), on the Isle of Bressay, Duff and I—who went together on this occasion
resolve to walk across the island, about three miles, being by this time
thoroughly wet. Bressay is a black and heathy isle, full of little lochs and
bogs. Through storm and shade, and dense and dry, we find our way to Gardie,
and have then to encounter the sublunary difficulties of wanting the keys of
our portmanteaus, &c., the servants having absconded to see the Cradle.
These being overcome, we are most hospitably treated at Gardie. Young
Mr Mowat, son of my old friend, is an improver, and a moderate
one. He has got a ploughman from Scotland, who acts as grieve, but as yet with
the prejudices and inconveniences which usually attach themselves to the most
salutary experiments. The ploughman complains that the Zetlanders work as if a
spade or hoe burned their fingers, and that though they only got a shilling
a-day, yet the labour of three of them does not exceed what one good hand in
Berwickshire would do for 2s. 6d. The islanders retort, that a man can do no
more than he can; that they are not used to be taxed to their work so severely;
that they will work as their fathers did, and not otherwise; and at first the
landlord found difficulty in getting hands to work under his Caledonian
taskmaster. Besides, they find fault with his ho, and
gee, and wo, when ploughing.
‘He speaks to the horse,’ they say, ‘and they
gang—and there’s something no canny about the man.’ In
short, between the prejudices of laziness and superstition, the ploughman leads
a sorry life of it; yet these prejudices are daily abating, under the steady
and indulgent management of the
proprietor. Indeed, nowhere is improvement in agriculture more necessary. An
old-fashioned Zetland plough is a real curiosity. It had but one handle, or
stilt, and a coulter, but no sock; it ripped the furrow, therefore, but did not
throw it aside. When this precious machine was in motion, it was dragged by
four little bullocks yoked a-breast, and as many ponies harnessed, or rather
strung, to the plough by ropes and thongs of raw hide. One man went before,
walking backward, with his face to the bullocks, and pulling them forward by
main strength. Another held down the plough by its single handle, and made a
sort of slit in the earth, which two women, who closed the procession,
converted into a furrow, by throwing the earth aside with shovels. An antiquary
might be of opinion that this was the very model of the original plough
invented by Triptolemus; and it is but justice to Zetland
to say, that these relics of ancient agricultural art will soon have all the
interest attached to rarity. We could only hear of one of these ploughs within
three miles of Lerwick.
“This and many other barbarous habits to which the
Zetlanders were formerly wedded, seem only to have subsisted because their
amphibious character of fishers and farmers induced them to neglect
agricultural arts. A Zetland farmer looks to the sea to pay his rent; if the
land finds him a little meal and kail, and (if he be a very clever fellow) a
few potatoes, it is very well. The more intelligent part of the landholders are
sensible of all this, but argue like men of good sense and humanity on the
subject. To have good farming, you must have a considerable farm, upon which
capital may be laid out to advantage. But to introduce this change suddenly
would turn adrift perhaps twenty families, who now
occupy small farms pro indiviso,
cultivating by patches, or rundale and runrig, what part of the property is arable, and stocking the pasture
as a common upon which each family turns out such stock as they can rear,
without observing any proportion as to the number which it can support. In this
way many townships, as they are called, subsist indeed, but in a precarious and
indigent manner. Fishing villages seem the natural resource for this excess of
population; but, besides the expense of erecting them, the habits of the people
are to be considered, who, with ‘one foot on land and one on sea,’
would be with equal reluctance confined to either element. The remedy seems to
be, that the larger proprietors should gradually set the example of better
cultivation, and introduce better implements. They will, by degrees, be
imitated by the inferior proprietors, and by their tenants; and, as turnips and
hay crops become more general, a better and heavier class of stock will
naturally be introduced.
“The sheep in particular might be improved into a
valuable stock, and would no doubt thrive, since the winters are very
temperate. But I should be sorry that extensive pasture farms were introduced,
as it would tend to diminish a population invaluable for the supply of our
navy. The improvement of the arable land, on the contrary, would soon set them
beyond the terrors of famine with which the islanders are at present
occasionally visited; and, combined with fisheries, carried on not by farmers,
but by real fishers, would amply supply the inhabitants, without diminishing
the export of dried fish. This separation of trades will in time take place,
and then the prosperous days of Zetland will begin. The proprietors are already
upon the alert, studying the means of gradual improvement, and no humane person
would wish them to
drive it on too rapidly, to the distress and perhaps destruction of the
numerous tenants who have been bred under a different system.
“I have gleaned something of the peculiar
superstitions of the Zetlanders, which are numerous and potent. Witches,
fairies, &c., are as numerous as ever they were in Teviotdale. The latter
are called Trows, probably from the Norwegian Dwärg (or dwarf) the D being
readily converted into T. The dwarfs are the prime agents in the machinery of
Norwegian superstition. The trows do not differ from the
fairies of the Lowlands, or Sighean of the Highlanders.
They steal children, dwell within the interior of green hills, and often carry
mortals into their recesses. Some, yet alive, pretend to have been carried off
in this way, and obtain credit for the marvels they tell of the subterranean
habitations of the trows. Sometimes, when a person becomes melancholy and
low-spirited, the trows are supposed to have stolen the real being, and left a
moving phantom to represent him. Sometimes they are said to steal only the
heart—like Lancashire witches. There are cures in each case. The party’s
friends resort to a cunning man or woman, who hangs about the neck a triangular
stone in the shape of a heart, or conjures back the lost individual, by
retiring to the hills and employing the necessary spells. A common receipt,
when a child appears consumptive and puny, is, that the conjurer places a bowl
of water on the patient’s head, and pours melted lead into it through the
wards of a key. The metal assumes of course a variety of shapes, from which he
selects a portion, after due consideration, which is sewn into the shirt of the
patient. Sometimes no part of the lead suits the seer’s fancy. Then the
operation is recommenced, until he obtains a fragment of such a configuration
as suits his mystical purpose. Mr Duncan told us he had been treated in this
way when a boy.
“A worse and most horrid opinion prevails, or did
prevail, among the fishers—namely, that he who saves a drowning man will
receive at his hands some deep wrong or injury. Several instances were quoted
to-day in company, in which the utmost violence had been found necessary to
compel the fishers to violate this inhuman prejudice. It is conjectured to have
arisen as an apology for rendering no assistance to the mariners as they
escaped from a shipwrecked vessel, for these isles are infamous for plundering
wrecks. A story is told of the crew of a stranded vessel who were warping
themselves ashore by means of a hawser which they had fixed to the land. The
islanders (of Unst, as I believe) watched their motions in silence, till an old
man reminded them that if they suffered these sailors to come ashore, they
would consume all their winter stock of provisions. A Zetlander cut the hawser,
and the poor wretches, twenty in number, were all swept away. This is a tale of
former times—the cruelty would not now be active; but I
fear that even yet the drowning mariner would in some places receive no
assistance in his exertions, and certainly he would in most be plundered to the
skin upon his landing. The gentlemen do their utmost to prevent this infamous
practice. It may seem strange that the natives should be so little affected by
a distress to which they are themselves so constantly exposed. But habitual
exposure to danger hardens the heart against its consequences, whether to
ourselves or others. There is yet living a man—if he can be called so—to whom
the following story belongs: He was engaged in catching sea-fowl upon one of
the cliffs, with his father and brother. All three were suspended by a cord,
according to custom, and overhanging
the ocean, at the height of some hundred feet. This man being uppermost on the
cord, observed that it was giving way, as unable to support their united
weight. He called out to his brother who was next to him—‘Cut away a
nail below, Willie,’ meaning he should cut
the rope beneath, and let his father drop. Willie refused,
and bid him cut himself, if he pleased. He did so, and his brother and father
were precipitated into the sea. He never thought of concealing or denying the
adventure in all its parts. We left Gardie-House late; being on the side of the
Isle of Bressay, opposite to Lerwick, we were soon rowed across the bay. A
laugh with Hamilton,* whose gout keeps
him stationary at Lerwick, but whose good-humour defies gout and every other
provocation, concludes the evening.
“7th August, 1814. Being Sunday, Duff, Erskine, and I rode to Tingwall upon Zetland ponies, to
breakfast with our friend Parson
Turnbull, who had come over in our yacht. An ill-conducted and
worse-made road served us four miles on our journey. This Via
Flaminia of Thule terminates, like its prototype, in a bog. It is,
however, the only road in these isles, except about half
* Robert
Hamilton, Sheriff of Lanarkshire, and afterwards one of
the Clerks of Session, was a particular favourite with Scott—first, among many other good
reasons, because he had been a soldier in his youth, had fought
gallantly and been wounded severely in the American war, and was a very
Uncle Toby in military
enthusiasm; 2dly, because he was a brother antiquary of the genuine
Monkbarns breed; 3dly (last not least), because he was, in spite of the
example of the head of his name and race, a steady Tory. Mr
Hamilton sent for Scott when upon
his deathbed in 1831, and desired him to choose, and carry off as a
parting memorial, any article he liked in his collection of arms.
Sir Walter (by that time sorely shattered in
his own health) selected the sword with which his good friend had been
begirt at Bunker’s Hill.
a mile made by Mr Turnbull. The
land in the interior much resembles the Peel-heights, near Ashestiel; but, as
you approach the other side of the island, becomes better. Tingwall is rather a
fertile valley, up which winds a loch of about two miles in length. The kirk
and manse stand at the head of the loch, and command a view down the valley to
another lake beyond the first, and thence over another reach of land, to the
ocean, indented by capes and studded with isles; among which, that of St
Ninian’s, abruptly divided from the mainland by a deep chasm, is the most
conspicuous. Mr Turnbull is a Jedburgh man by birth, but a
Zetlander by settlement and inclination. I have reason to be proud of my
countryman;—he is doing his best, with great patience and judgment, to set a
good example both in temporals and spirituals, and is generally beloved and
respected among all classes. His glebe is in far the best order of any ground I
have seen in Zetland. It is enclosed chiefly with dry-stone, instead of the
useless turf-dikes; and he has sown grass, and has a hay-stack, and a second
crop of clover, and may claim well-dressed fields of potatoes, barley, and
oats. The people around him are obviously affected by his example. He gave us
an excellent discourse and remarkably good prayers, which are seldom the
excellence of the Presbyterian worship. The congregation were numerous, decent,
clean, and well-dressed. The men have all the air of seamen, and are a
good-looking hardy race. Some of the old fellows had got faces much resembling
Tritons; if they had had conchs to blow, it would have completed them. After
church, ride down the loch to Scalloway—the country wild but pleasant, with
sloping hills of good pasturage, and patches of cultivation on the lower
ground. Pass a huge standing stone, or pillar. Here, it is said, the son of an
old Earl of the Orkneys met his fate. He had re-belled against his father, and fortified
himself in Zetland. The Earl sent a party to dislodge him, who, not caring to
proceed to violence against his person, failed in the attempt. The Earl then
sent a stronger force, with orders to take him dead or alive. The young
Absalom’s castle was stormed—he himself fled
across the loch, and was overtaken and slain at this pillar. The Earl
afterwards executed the perpetrators of the slaughter, though they had only
fulfilled his own mandate.
“We reach Scalloway, and visit the ruins of an old
castle, composed of a double tower, or keep, with turrets at the corners. It is
the principal, if not the only ruin of Gothic times in Zetland, and is of very
recent date, being built in 1600. It was built by Patrick Stewart, Earl of Orkney, afterwards deservedly executed
at Edinburgh for many acts of tyranny and oppression. It was this rapacious
Lord who imposed many of those heavy duties still levied from the Zetlanders by
Lord Dundas. The exactions by which he
accomplished this erection were represented as grievous. He was so dreaded,
that upon his trial one Zetland witness refused to say a word till he was
assured that there was no chance of the Earl returning to Scalloway. Over the
entrance of the castle are his arms, much defaced, with the unicorns of
Scotland for supporters, the assumption of which was one of the articles of
indictment. There is a Scriptural inscription also above the door, in Latin,
now much defaced.— ‘PATRICIUS ORCHADIÆ ET ZETLANDIÆ
COMES. A. D. 1600.CUJUS FUNDAMEN SAXUM EST, DOMUS ILLA MANEBITSTABILIS: E CONTRA, SI SIT ARENA,
PERIT.’
“This is said to have been furnished to Earl Patrick by a Presbyterian divine, who slily
couched under it an allusion to the evil practices by which the Earl had
established his power. He perhaps trusted that the
language might disguise the import from the Earl.* If so, the Scottish nobility
are improved in literature, for the Duke of
Gordon pointed out an error in the Latinity.
“Scalloway has a beautiful and very safe harbour,
but as it is somewhat difficult of access, from a complication of small
islands, it is inferior to Lerwick. Hence, though still nominally the capital
of Zetland, for all edictal citations are made at Scalloway, it has sunk into a
small fishing hamlet. The Norwegians made their original settlement in this
parish of Tingwall. At the head of this loch, and just below the manse, is a
small round islet accessible by stepping-stones, where they held their courts;
hence the islet is called Law-ting—Ting, or Thing, answering to our word
business, exactly like the Latin negotium. It seems odd that in Dumfries-shire, and even in
the Isle of Man, where the race and laws were surely Celtic, we have this
Gothic word Ting and Ting-wald applied in the same way. We dined with Mr Scott of Scalloway, who, like several
families of this name in Shetland, is derived from the house of Scotstar-
* In his reviewal of Pitcairn’s Trials (1831), Scott says “In erecting this
Earl’s Castle of Scalloway, and other expensive edifices, the
King’s tenants were forced to work in quarries, transport stone,
dig, delve, climb, and build, and submit to all possible sorts of
servile and painful labour, without either meat, drink, hire, or
recompense of any kind. ‘My father,’ said Earl Patrick, ‘built his house
at Sumburgh on the sand, and it has given way already; this of mine
on the rock shall abide and endure.’ He did not or would
not understand that the oppression, rapacity, and cruelty by means of
which the house arose, were what the clergyman really pointed to in his
recommendation of a motto. Accordingly, the huge tower remains wild and
desolate—its chambers filled with sand, and its rifted walls and
dismantled battlements giving unrestrained access to the roaring sea
blast.”—For more of Earl Patrick, see Scott’s
Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. xxi. pp. 230, 233; vol.
xxiii. pp. 327, 329.
vet. They are very
clannish, marry much among themselves, and are proud of their descent. Two
young ladies, daughters of Mr Scott’s, dined with
us—they were both Mrs Scotts, having married brothers the
husband of one was lost in the unfortunate Doris. They
were pleasant, intelligent women, and exceedingly obliging. Old Mr
Scott seems a good country gentleman. He is negotiating an
exchange with Lord Dundas, which will give
him the Castle of Scalloway and two or three neighbouring islands: the rest of
the archipelago (seven I think in number) are already his own. He will thus
have command of the whole fishing and harbour, for which he parts with an
estate of more immediate value, lying on the other side of the mainland. I
found my name made me very popular in this family, and there were many
enquiries after the state of the Buccleuch family, in
which they seemed to take much interest. I found them possessed of the
remarkable circumstances attending the late projected sale of Ancrum, and the
death of Sir John Scott, and thought it
strange that, settled for three generations in a country so distant, they
should still take an interest in those matters. I was loaded with shells and
little curiosities for my young people.
“There was a report (January was two years) of a
kraken or some monstrous fish being seen off Scalloway. The object was visible
for a fortnight, but nobody dared approach it, although I should have thought
the Zetlanders would not have feared the devil if he came by water. They
pretended that the suction, when they came within a certain distance, was so
great as to endanger their boats. The object was described as resembling a
vessel with her keel turned upmost in the sea, or a small ridge of rock or
island. Mr Scott thinks it might have
been a vessel overset, or a large whale; if the latter, it seems odd they
should not have known it, as whales are the intimate
acquaintances of all Zetland sailors. Whatever it was, it disappeared after a
heavy gale of wind, which seems to favour the idea that it was the wreck of a
vessel. Mr Scott seems to think Pontopiddan’s narrations and
descriptions are much more accurate than we inland men suppose; and I find most
Zetlanders of the same opinion. Mr
Turnbull, who is not credulous upon these subjects, tells me
that this year a parishioner of his, a well-informed and veracious person, saw
an animal, which, if his description was correct, must have been of the species
of sea-snake, driven ashore on one of the Orkneys two or three years ago. It
was very long, and seemed about the thickness of a Norway log, and swam on the
top of the waves, occasionally lifting and bending its head. Mr
T. says he has no doubt of the veracity of the narrator, but
still thinks it possible it may have been a mere log or beam of wood, and that
the spectator may have been deceived by the motion of the waves, joined to the
force of imagination. This for the Duke of
Buccleuch.
“At Scalloway my curiosity was gratified by an
account of the sword-dance, now almost lost, but still practised in the Island
of Papa, belonging to Mr Scott. There
are eight performers, seven of whom represent the Seven Champions of
Christendom, who enter one by one with their swords drawn, and are presented to
the eighth personage, who is not named. Some rude couplets are spoken (in English, not Norse), containing a
sort of panegyric upon each champion as he is presented. They then dance a sort
of cotillion, as the ladies described it, going through a number of evolutions
with their swords. One of my three Mrs Scotts readily
promised to procure me the lines, the rhymes, and the form of the dance. I
regret much that young Mr Scott was absent during this
visit; he is described as a reader and an enthusiast in poetry. Probably I might have
interested him in preserving the dance, by causing young persons to learn it. A
few years since a party of Papa-men came to dance the sword-dance at Lerwick as
a public exhibition with great applause. The warlike dances of the northern
people, of which I conceive this to be the only remnant in the British
dominions,* are repeatedly alluded to by their poets and historians. The
introduction of the Seven Champions savours of a later period, and was probably
ingrafted upon the dance when mysteries and moralities (the first scenic
representations) came into fashion. In a stall pamphlet, called the history of Buckshaven, it is said those fishers sprung
from Danes, and brought with them their war-dance or sword-dance, and a rude
wooden cut of it is given. We resist the hospitality of our entertainers, and
return to Lerwick despite a most downright fall of rain. My pony stumbles
coming down hill; saddle sways round, having but one girth and that too long,
and lays me on my back. N.B. The bogs in Zetland as soft as those in
Liddisdale. Get to Lerwick about ten at night. No yacht has appeared.
“8th August.—No yacht, and a
rainy morning; bring up my journal. Day clears up, and we go to pay our
farewell visits of thanks to the hospitable Lerwegians, and at the Fort. Visit
kind old Mr Mowat, and walk with him and Collector Ross to the point of Quaggers, or
Twaggers, which forms one arm of the southern entrance to the sound of Bressay.
From the eminence
* Mr W. S.
Rose informs me that, when he was at school at
Winchester, the morris-dancers there used to exhibit a sword-dance
resembling that described at Camacho’s
wedding in Don Quixote;
and Mr Morritt adds, that
similar dances are even yet performed in the villages about Rokeby
every Christmas.
a delightful sea view, with several of those narrow
capes and deep reaches or inlets of the sea, which indent the shores of that
land. On the right hand a narrow bay, bounded by the isthmus of Sound, with a
house upon it resembling an old castle. In the indenture of the bay, and
divided from the sea by a slight causeway, the lake of Cleik-him-in, with its Pictish Castle. Beyond this the bay opens
another yet; and, behind all, a succession of capes, headlands and islands, as
far as the cape called Sumburgh-head, which is the furthest point of Zetland in
that direction. Inland, craggy, and sable muirs, with cairns, among which we
distinguish the Wart or Ward of Wick, to which we walked on the 4th. On the
left the island of Bressay, with its peaked hill called the Wart of Bressay.
Over Bressay see the top of Hang-cliff. Admire the Bay of Lerwick, with its
shipping, widening out to the northwards, and then again contracted into a
narrow sound, through which the infamous Bothwell was pursued by Kirkaldy of
Grange, until he escaped through the dexterity of his pilot, who
sailed close along a sunken rock, upon which Kirkaldy,
keeping the weather-gage, struck, and sustained damage. The rock is visible at
low water, and is still called the Unicorn, from the name of
Kirkaldy’s vessel. Admire Mr
Mowat’s little farm, of about thirty acres, bought about
twenty years since for L.75, and redeemed from the miserable state of the
surrounding country, so that it now bears excellent corn; here also was a hay
crop. With Mr Turnbull’s it makes
two. Visit Mr Ross, collector of the
customs, who presents me with the most superb collection of the stone axes (or
adzes, or whatever they are), called celts. The
Zetlanders call them thunderbolts, and keep them in
their houses as a receipt against thunder; but the Collector has succeeded in
obtaining several. We are now to
dress for dinner with the Notables of Lerwick, who give us an entertainment in
their Town-hall. Oho!
“Just as we were going to dinner, the yacht
appeared, and Mr Stevenson landed. He
gives a most favourable account of the isles to the northward, particularly
Unst. I believe Lerwick is the worst part of Shetland. Are hospitably received
and entertained by the Lerwick gentlemen. They are a quick intelligent
race—chiefly of Scottish birth, as appears from their names
Mowat, Gifford,
Scott, and so forth. These are the chief proprietors.
The Norwegian or Danish surnames, though of course the more ancient, belong,
with some exceptions, to the lower ranks. The Veteran Corps expects to be
disbanded, and the officers and Lerwegians seem to part with regret. Some of
the officers talk of settling here. The price of every thing is moderate, and
the style of living unexpensive. Against these conveniences are to be placed a
total separation from public life, news, and literature; and a variable and
inhospitable climate. Lerwick will suffer most severely if the Fort is not
occupied by some force or other; for, between whisky and frolic, the Greenland
sailors will certainly burn the little town. We have seen a good deal, and
heard much more of the pranks of these unruly guests. A gentleman of Lerwick,
who had company to dine with him, observed beneath his window a party of
sailors eating a leg of roast mutton, which he witnessed with philanthropic
satisfaction, till he received the melancholy information, that that individual
leg of mutton, being the very sheet-anchor of his own entertainment, had been
violently carried off from his kitchen, spit and all, by these honest
gentlemen, who were now devouring it. Two others having carried off a sheep,
were apprehended, and brought before a Justice of the Peace, who questioned them respecting the fact. The first denied he
had taken the sheep, but said he had seen it taken away by a fellow with a red
nose and a black wig—(this was the Justice’s
description)—‘Don’t you think he was like his honour,
Tom?’ he added, appealing to his
comrade. ‘By G—, Jack,’ answered
Tom, ‘I believe it was the very
man!’ Erskine has been busy
with these facetious gentlemen, and has sent several to prison, but nothing
could have been done without the soldiery. We leave Lerwick at eight
o’clock, and sleep on board the yacht.
“9th August, 1814.—Waked at
seven, and find the vessel has left Lerwick harbour, and is on the point of
entering the sound which divides the small island of Mousa (or Queen’s
island) from Coningsburgh, a very wild part of the main island so called. Went
ashore, and see the very ancient castle of Mousa, which stands close on the
sea-shore. It is a Pictish fortress, the most entire probably in the world. In
form it resembles a dice-box, for the truncated cone is continued only to a
certain height, after which it begins to rise perpendicularly, or rather with a
tendency to expand outwards. The building is round, and has been surrounded
with an outer-wall, of which hardly the slightest vestiges now remain. It is
composed of a layer of stones, without cement; they are not of large size, but
rather small and thin. To give a vulgar comparison, it resembles an old ruinous
pigeon-house. Mr Stevenson took the
dimensions of this curious fort, which are as follows:—Outside diameter at the
base is fifty-two feet; at the top thirty-eight feet. The diameter of the
interior at the base is nineteen feet six inches; at the top twenty-one feet;
the curve in the inside being the reverse of the outside, or nearly so. The
thickness of the walls at the base seventeen feet; at the top eight feet six
inches. The height outside forty-two feet; the inside
thirty-four feet. The door or entrance faces the sea, and the interior is
partly filled with rubbish. When you enter you see, in the inner wall, a
succession of small openings like windows, directly one above another, with
broad flat stones, serving for lintels; these are about nine inches thick. The
whole resembles a ladder. There were four of these perpendicular rows of
windows or apertures, the situation of which corresponds with the cardinal
points of the compass. You enter the galleries contained in the thickness of
the wall by two of these apertures, which have been broken down. These interior
spaces are of two descriptions: one consists of a winding ascent, not quite an
inclined plane, yet not by any means a regular stair; but the edges of the
stones, being suffered to project irregularly, serve for rude steps—or a kind
of assistance. Through this narrow staircase, which winds round the building,
you creep up to the top of the castle, which is partly ruinous. But besides the
staircase, there branch off at irregular intervals horizontal galleries, which
go round the whole building, and receive air from the holes I formerly
mentioned. These apertures vary in size, diminishing as they run, from about
thirty inches in width by eighteen in height, till they are only about a foot
square. The lower galleries are full man height, but narrow. They diminish both
in height and width as they ascend, and as the thickness of the wall in which
they are enclosed diminishes. The uppermost gallery is so narrow and low, that
it was with great difficulty I crept through it. The walls are built very
irregularly, the sweep of the cone being different on the different sides.
“It is said by Torfæus that this fort was repaired and strengthened by
Erlind, who, having forcibly carried off the mother of
Harold Earl of the Orkneys, re-solved to defend himself to extremity in this place against the insulted
Earl. How a castle could be defended which had no opening to the outside for
shooting arrows, and which was of a capacity to be pulled to pieces by the
assailants, who could advance without annoyance to the bottom of the wall
(unless it were battlemented upon the top), does not easily appear. But to
Erlind’s operations the castle of Mousa possibly
owes the upper and perpendicular, or rather overhanging, part of its elevation,
and also its rude staircase. In these two particulars it seems to differ from
all other Picts’ castles, which are ascended by an inclined plane, and
generally, I believe, terminate in a truncated cone, without that strange
counterpart of the perpendicular or projecting part of the upper wall. Opposite
to the castle of Mousa are the ruins of another Pictish fort: indeed, they all
communicate with each other through the isles. The island of Mousa is the
property of a Mr Piper, who has improved it considerably,
and values his castle. I advised him to clear out the interior, as he tells us
there are three or four galleries beneath those now accessible, and the
difference of height between the exterior and interior warrants his assertion.
“We get on board, and in time, for the wind
freshens, and becomes contrary. We beat down to Sumburghhead, through rough
weather. This is the extreme south-eastern point of Zetland; and as the
Atlantic and German oceans unite at this point, a frightful tide runs here,
called Sumburgh-rost. The breeze, contending with the tide, flings the breakers
in great style upon the high broken cliffs of Sumburgh-head. They are all one
white foam, ascending to a great height. We wished to double this point, and
lie by in a bay between that and the northern or north-western cape, called
Fitful-head, and which seems higher than Sumburgh itself—and tacked repeatedly with this
view; but a confounded islet, called The Horse, always
baffled us, and, after three heats, fairly distanced us. So we run into a
roadstead, called Quendal bay, on the south-eastern side, and there anchor for
the night. We go ashore with various purposes—Stevenson to see the site of a proposed lighthouse on this
tremendous cape—Marjoribanks to shoot
rabbits—and Duff and I to look about us.
I ascended the head by myself, which is lofty, and commands a wild sea-view.
Zetland stretches away, with all its projecting capes and inlets, to the
north-eastward. Many of these inlets approach each other very nearly; indeed,
the two opposite bays at Sumburgh-head seem on the point of joining, and
rendering that cape an island. The two creeks from those east and western seas
are only divided by a low isthmus of blowing sand, and similar to that which
wastes part of the east coast of Scotland. It has here blown like the deserts
of Arabia, and destroyed some houses, formerly the occasional residences of the
Earls of Orkney. The steep and rocky side of the cape, which faces the west,
does not seem much more durable. These lofty cliffs are all of sand-flag, a
very loose and perishable kind of rock, which slides down in immense masses,
like avalanches, after every storm, The rest lies so loose, that, on the very
brow of the loftiest crag, I had no difficulty in sending down a fragment as
large as myself: he thundered down in tremendous style, but splitting upon a
projecting cliff, descended into the ocean like a shower of shrapnel shot. The
sea beneath rages incessantly among a thousand of the fragments which have
fallen from the peaks, and which assume an hundred strange shapes. It would
have been a fine situation to compose an ode to the Genius of Sumburgh-head, or
an Elegy upon a Cormorant—or to have written and spoken madness of any kind in
prose or poetry. But I gave vent to my excited feelings
in a more simple way; and sitting gently down on the steep green slope which
led to the beach, I e’en slid down a few hundred feet, and found the
exercise quite an adequate vent to my enthusiasm. I recommend this exercise
(time and place suiting) to all my brother scribblers, and I have no doubt it
will save much effusion of Christian ink. Those slopes are covered with
beautiful short herbage. At the foot of the ascent, and towards the isthmus, is
the old house of Sumburgh, in appearance a most dreary mansion. I found, on my
arrival at the beach, that the hospitality of the inhabitants had entrapped my
companions. I walked back to meet them, but escaped the gin and water. On board
about nine o’clock at night. A little schooner lies between us and the
shore, which we had seen all day buffeting the tide and breeze like ourselves.
The wind increases, and the ship is made snug—a sure
sign the passengers will not be so.
“10th August, 1814.—The omen
was but too true—a terrible combustion on board, among plates, dishes, glasses,
writing-desks, &c. &c.; not a wink of sleep. We weigh and stand out
into that delightful current called Sumburgh-rost, or
rust. This tide certainly owes us a grudge, for it
drove us to the eastward about thirty miles on the night of the first, and
occasioned our missing the Fair Isle, and now it has caught us on our return.
All the landsmen sicker than sick, and our Viceroy, Stevenson, qualmish. This is the only time that I have felt
more than temporary inconvenience, but this morning I have headach and nausea;
these are trifles, and in a well-found vessel, with a good pilot, we have none
of that mixture of danger which gives dignity to the traveller. But he must
have a stouter heart than mine, who can contemplate without horror the
situation of a vessel of an inferior description caught among these headlands and reefs of rocks,
in the long and dark winter nights of these regions. Accordingly, wrecks are
frequent. It is proposed to have a light on Sumburgh-head, which is the first
land made by vessels coming from the eastward; Fitful-head is higher, but is to
the west, from which quarter few vessels come.
“We are now clear of Zetland, and about ten
o’clock reach the Fair Isle;* one of their boats comes off, a
strange-looking thing without an entire plank in it, excepting one on each
side, upon the strength of which the whole depends, the rest being patched and
joined. This trumpery skiff the men manage with the most astonishing dexterity,
and row with remarkable speed; they have two banks, that is, two rowers on each
bench, and use very short paddles. The wildness of their appearance, with long
elf-locks, striped worsted caps, and shoes of raw hide—the fragility of their
boat and their extreme curiosity about us and our cutter, give them a title to
be distinguished as natives. One of our people told
their steersman, by way of jeer, that he must have great confidence in
Providence to go to sea in such a vehicle; the man very sensibly replied, that
without the same confidence he would not go to sea in the best tool in England. We take to our boat and row for about
three miles round the coast, in order to land at the inhabited part of the
island. This coast abounds with grand views of rocks and bays. One immense
portion of rock is (like the Holm of Noss) separated by a chasm from the
mainland. As it is covered with herbage on the top, though a literal precipice
all round, the natives contrive to ascend the rock by a place which would make
a goat dizzy, and then drag the sheep up by ropes,
* This is a solitary island, lying about half-way
between Orkney and Zetland.
though they sometimes carry a sheep up on their
shoulders. The captain of a sloop of war, being ashore while they were at this
work, turned giddy and sick while looking at them. This immense precipice is
several hundred feet high, and is perforated below, by some extraordinary
apertures, through which a boat might pass; the light shines distinctly through
these hideous chasms. After passing a square bay called the North-haven,
tenanted by sea-fowl and seals (the first we have yet seen), we come in view of
the small harbour. Land, and breakfast, for which, till now, none of us felt
inclination. In front of the little harbour is the house of the tacksman,
Mr Strong, and in view are three small assemblages of
miserable huts, where the inhabitants of the isle live. There are about thirty
families and 250 inhabitants upon the Fair Isle. It
merits its name, as the plain upon which the hamlets are situated bears
excellent barley, oats, and potatoes, and the rest of the isle is beautiful
pasture, excepting to the eastward, where there is a moss, equally essential to
the comfort of the inhabitants, since it supplies them with peats for fuel. The
Fair Isle is about three miles long and a mile and a half broad. Mr
Strong received us very courteously. He lives here, like
Robinson Crusoe, in absolute solitude
as to society, unless by a chance visit from the officers of a man-of-war.
There is a signal-post maintained on the island by Government, under this
gentleman’s inspection; when any ship appears that cannot answer his
Signals, he sends off to Lerwick and Kirkwall to give the alarm.
Rogers* was off here last year, and nearly cut off one
of Mr Strong’s express boats, but the active
islanders outstripped his people by speed of rowing. The inhabitants pay
Mr Strong for the possessions>
* An American Commodore.
which they occupy under him as
subtenants, and cultivate the isle in their own way, i.
e. by digging instead of ploughing (though the ground is quite open
and free from rocks, and they have several scores of ponies), and by raising
alternate crops of barley, oats, and potatoes; the first and last are admirably
good. They rather overmanure their crops; the possessions lie runrig, that is,
by alternate ridges, and the outfield or pasture ground is possessed as common
to all their cows and ponies. The islanders fish for Mr
Strong at certain fixed rates, and the fish is his property,
which he sends to Kirkwall, Lerwick, or elsewhere, in a little schooner, the
same which we left in Quendal bay, and about the arrival of which we found them
anxious. An equal space of rich land on the Fair Isle, situated in an inland
county of Scotland, would rent for L.3000 a-year at the very least, To be sure
it would not be burdened with the population of 250 souls, whose bodies
(fertile as it is) it cannot maintain in bread, they being supplied chiefly
from the mainland. Fish they have plenty, and are even nice in their choice.
Skate they will not touch; dog-fish they say is only food for Orkney-men, and
when they catch them, they make a point of tormenting the poor fish for eating
off their baits from the hook, stealing the haddocks from their lines, and
other enormities. These people, being about half-way between Shetland and
Orkney, have unfrequent connexion with either archipelago, and live and marry
entirely among themselves. One lad told me, only five persons had left the
island since his remembrance, and of those, three were pressed for the navy.
They seldom go to Greenland; but this year five or six of their young men were
on board the whalers. They seemed extremely solicitous about their return, and
repeatedly questioned us about the names of the whalers
which were at Lerwick, a point on which we could give little information.
“The manners of these islanders seem primitive and
simple, and they are sober, good-humoured, and friendly—but jimp honest. Their comforts are, of course, much dependent on their master’s pleasure; for so they call
Mr Strong. But they gave him the highest character for
kindness and liberality, and prayed to God he might long be their ruler. After
mounting the signal-post hill, or Malcolm’s Head, which is faced by a
most tremendous cliff, we separated on our different routes. The Sheriff went to rectify the only enormity on
the island, which existed in the person of a drunken schoolmaster; Marchie* went to shoot sea-fowl, or rather to
frighten them, as his calumniators allege. Stevenson and Duff went
to inspect the remains or vestiges of a Danish lighthouse upon a distant hill,
called, as usual, the Ward, or Ward-hill, and returned with specimens of copper
ore. Hamilton went down to cater fish
for our dinner and see it properly cooked—and I to see two remarkable
indentures in the coast called Rivas, perhaps from their
being rifted or riven. They are exactly like the Buller
of Buchan, the sea rolling into a large open basin within the land through a
natural archway. These places are close to each other—one is oblong, and it is
easy to descend into it by a rude path; the other gulf is inaccessible from the
land, unless to a crags-man, as these venturous climbers call themselves. I sat
for about an hour upon the verge, like the cormorants around me, hanging my
legs over the precipice; but I could not get free of two or three well-meaning
islanders, who held me fast by the skirts all the time—
* Mr
Marjoribanks.
for it must be conceived, that
our numbers and appointments had drawn out the whole population to admire and
attend us. After we separated, each, like the nucleus of a comet, had his own
distinct train of attendants.—Visit the capital town, a wretched assemblage of
the basest huts, dirty without, and still dirtier within; pigs, fowls, cows,
men, women, and children, all living promiscuously under the same roof, and in
the same room—the brood-sow making (among the more opulent) a distinguished
inhabitant of the mansion. The compost, a liquid mass of utter abomination, is
kept in a square pond of seven feet deep; when I censured it, they allowed it
might be dangerous to the bairns; but appeared unconscious of any other
objection. I cannot wonder they want meal, for assuredly they waste it. A great
bowie or wooden vessel of porridge is made in the
morning; a child comes and sups a few spoonfuls; then Mrs Sow takes her share;
then the rest of the children or the parents, and all at pleasure; then come
the poultry when the mess is more cool; the rest is flung upon the dunghill—and
the goodwife wonders and complains when she wants meal in winter. They are a
long-lived race, notwithstanding utter and inconceivable dirt and sluttery. A
man of sixty told me his father died only last year, aged ninety-eight; nor was
this considered as very unusual.
“The clergyman of Dunrossness, in Zetland, visits
these poor people once a-year, for a week or two during summer. In winter this
is impossible, and even the summer visit is occasionally interrupted for two
years. Mariages and baptisms are performed, as one of the Isles-men told me,
by the slump, and one of the children was old enough
to tell the clergyman who sprinkled him with water, ‘Deil be in your
fingers.’ Last time, four couple were married; sixteen children
baptized. The schoolmaster reads a portion of Scripture
in the church each Sunday, when the clergyman is absent; but the present man is
unfit for this part of his duty. The women knit worsted stockings, night-caps,
and similar trifles, which they exchange with any merchant vessels that
approach their lonely isle. In these respects they greatly regret the American
war; and mention with unction the happy days when they could get from an
American trader a bottle of peach-brandy or rum in exchange for a pair of
worsted-stockings or a dozen of eggs. The humanity of their master interferes much with the favourite but dangerous occupation of
the islanders, which is fowling, that is, taking the
young sea-fowl from their nests among these tremendous crags. About a fortnight
before we arrived, a fine boy of fourteen had dropped from the cliff, while in
prosecution of this amusement, into a roaring surf, by which he was instantly
swallowed up. The unfortunate mother was labouring at the peat-moss at a little
distance. These accidents do not, however, strike terror into the survivors.
They regard the death of an individual engaged in these desperate exploits, as
we do the fate of a brave relation who falls in battle, when the honour of his
death furnishes a balm to our sorrow. It, therefore, requires all the
tacksman’s authority to prevent a practice so pregnant with danger. Like
all other precarious and dangerous employments, the occupation of the crags-men
renders them unwilling to labour at employments of a more steady description.
The Fair Isle inhabitants are a good-looking race, more like Zetlanders than
Orkneymen. Evenson, and other names of a Norwegian or
Danish derivation, attest their Scandinavian descent. Return and dine at
Mr Strong’s, having sent our cookery ashore, not
to overburthen his hospitality. In this place, and perhaps in the very cottage
now inhabited by Mr
Strong, the Duke of Medina
Sidonia, Commander-in-Chief of the Invincible Armada, wintered,
after losing his vessel to the eastward of the island. It was not till he had
spent some weeks in this miserable abode, that he got off to Norway.
Independently of the moral consideration, that, from the pitch of power in
which he stood a few days before, the proudest peer of the proudest nation in
Europe found himself dependent on the jealous and scanty charity of these
secluded islanders, it is scarce possible not to reflect with compassion on the
change of situation from the palaces of Estremadura to the hamlet of the Fair
Isle— ‘Dost thou think on thy deserts, son of Hodeirah? Dost thou long for the gale of Arabia?’
“Mr Strong gave me a curious
old chair belonging to Quendale, a former proprietor of the Fair Isle, and
which a more zealous antiquary would have dubbed ‘the Duke’s
chair.’ I will have it refitted for Abbotsford, however. About eight
o’clock we take boat, amid the cheers of the inhabitants, whose minds,
subdued by our splendour, had been secured by our munificence, which consisted
in a moderate benefaction of whisky and tobacco, and a few shillings laid out
on their staple commodities. They agreed no such day had been seen in the isle.
The signal-post displayed its flags, and to recompense these distinguished
marks of honour, we hung out our colours, stood into the bay, and saluted with
three guns, ‘Echoing from a thousand caves,’ and then bear away for Orkney, leaving, if our vanity does not deceive us,
a very favourable impression on the mind of the inhabitants of the Fair Isle.
The tradition of the Fair Isle is unfavourable to those shipwrecked strangers, who are said to have committed several acts
of violence to extort the supplies of provision, given them sparingly and with
reluctance by the islanders, who were probably themselves very far from being
well supplied.
“I omitted to say we were attended in the morning
by two very sportive whales, but of a kind, as some of our crew who had been on
board Greenland-men assured us, which it was very dangerous to attack. There
were two Gravesend smacks fishing off the isle. Lord, what a long draught
London makes!
“11th August, 1814.—After a
sound sleep to make amends for last night, we find, at awaking, the vessel off
the Start of Sanda, the first land in the Orkneys which we could make. There a
lighthouse has been erected lately upon the best construction. Landed and
surveyed it. All in excellent order, and the establishment of the keepers in
the same style of comfort and respectability as elsewhere, far better than the
house of the master of the Fair Isle, and rivalling my own baronial mansion of
Abbotsford. Go to the top of the tower and survey the island, which, as the
name implies, is level, flat, and sandy, quite the reverse of those in Zetland:
it is intersected by creeks and small lakes, and though it abounds with shell
marle, seems barren. There is one dreadful inconvenience of an island life, of
which we had here an instance. The keeper’s wife had an infant in her
arms—her first-born, too, of which the poor woman had been delivered without
assistance. Erskine told us of a horrid
instance of malice which had been practised in this island of Sanda. A decent
tenant, during the course of three or four successive years, lost to the number
of twenty-five cattle, stabbed as they lay in their fold by some abominable
wretch. What made the matter stranger was, that the poor man could not recollect any reason why he should have
had the ill-will of a single being, only that in taking up names for the
militia, a duty imposed upon him by the Justices, he thought he might possibly
have given some unknown offence. The villain was never discovered.
“The wrecks on this coast were numerous before the
erection of the lighthouse. It was not uncommon to see five or six vessels on
shore at once. The goods and chattels of the inhabitants are all said to savour
of Flotsome and Jetsome, as the
floating wreck and that which is driven ashore are severally called. Mr Stevenson happened to observe that the boat
of a Sanda farmer had bad sails—‘If it had been His (i. e. God’s) will that you hadna built sae many lighthouses
hereabout’—answered the Orcadian, with great
composure—‘I would have had new sails last winter.’ Thus
do they talk and think upon these subjects; and so talking and thinking, I fear
the poor mariner has little chance of any very anxious attempt to assist him.
There is one wreck, a Danish vessel, now aground under our lee. These Danes are
the stupidest seamen, by all accounts, that sail the sea. When this light upon
the Start of Sanda was established, the Commissioners, with laudable anxiety to
extend its utility, had its description and bearings translated into Danish and
sent to Copenhagen. But they never attend to such trifles. The Norwegians are
much better liked, as a clever, hardy, sensible people. I forgot to notice
there was a Norwegian prize lying in the Sound of Lerwick, sent in by one of
our cruisers. This was a queer-looking, half-decked vessel, all tattered and
torn and shaken to pieces, looking like Coleridge’s Spectre Ship. It was pitiable to see such a
prize. Our servants went aboard, and got one of their loaves, and gave a
dreadful account of its composition. I got and cut a crust of it; it was
rye-bread, with a slight mixture of pine-fir bark or
sawings of deal. It was not good, but (as Charles
XII. said) might be eaten. But after all, if the people can be
satisfied with such bread as this, it seems hard to interdict it to them. What
would a Londoner say if, instead of his roll and muffins, this black bread,
relishing of tar and turpentine, were presented for his breakfast? I would to
God there could be a Jehovah-jireh, ‘a ram caught in the
thicket,’ to prevent the sacrifice of that people.
“The few friends who may see this Journal are much
indebted for these pathetic remarks to the situation under which they are
recorded; for since we left the lighthouse we have been struggling with adverse
wind (pretty high too), and a very strong tide, called the Rost of the Start,
which, like Sumburgh Rost, bodes no good to our roast and boiled. The worst is
that this struggle carries us past a most curious spectacle, being no less than
the carcasses of two hundred and sixty-five whales, which have been driven
ashore in Taftsness bay, now lying close under us. With all the inclination in
the world, it is impossible to stand in close enough to verify this massacre of
Leviathans with our own eyes, as we do not care to run the risk of being drawn
ashore ourselves among the party. In fact, this species of spectacle has been
of late years very common among the isles. Mr
Stevenson saw upwards of a hundred and fifty whales lying upon
the shore in a bay at Unst, in his northward trip. They are not large, but are
decided whales, measuring perhaps from fifteen to twenty-five feet. They are
easily mastered, for the first that is wounded among the sounds and straits so
common in the isles, usually runs ashore. The rest follow the blood, and, urged
on by the boats behind, run ashore also. A cut with one of the long whaling
knives under the back-fin, is usually fatal to these huge animals. The two
hundred and sixty-five whales now
lying within two or three miles of us were driven ashore by seven boats only.
“Five o’clock.—We are
out of the Rost (I detest that word), and driving fast through a long sound
among low green islands, which hardly lift themselves above the sea—not a cliff
or hill to be seen—what a contrast to the land we have left! We are standing
for some creek or harbour, called Lingholm-bay, to lie to or anchor for the
night; for to pursue our course by night, and that a thick one, among these
isles, and islets, and sandbanks, is out of the question—clear moonlight might
do. Our sea is now moderate. But oh, gods and men, what misfortunes have
travellers to record! Just as the quiet of the elements had reconciled us to
the thought of dinner, we learn that an unlucky sea has found its way into the
galley during the last infernal combustion, when the lee-side and bolt-sprit
were constantly under water; so our soup is poisoned with salt water our cod
and haddocks, which cost ninepence this blessed morning, and would have been
worth a couple of guineas in London, are soused in their primitive element—the
curry is undone—and all gone to the devil. We all apply ourselves to comfort
our Lord High Admiral Hamilton, whose
despair for himself and the public might edify a patriot. His good humour which
has hitherto defied every incident, aggravated even by the gout supported by a
few bad puns, and a great many fair promises on the part of the steward and
cook, fortunately restores his equilibrium.
“Eight o’clock.—Our
supplemental dinner proved excellent, and we have glided into an admirable
road-stead or harbour, called Lingholm-bay, formed by the small island of
Lingholm embracing a small basin dividing that islet from the larger isle of
Stronsay. Both, as well as Sanda, Eda, and others which we have passed, are low, green, and sandy. I have seen nothing to-day
worth marking, except the sporting of a very large whale at some distance, and
H.’s face at the news of the
disaster in the cook-room. We are to weigh at two in the morning, and hope to
reach Kirkwall, the capital of Orkney, by breakfast to-morrow. I trust there
are no rusts or rosts in the
road. I shall detest that word even when used to signify verd-antique or patina
in the one sense, or roast venison in the other. Orkney shall begin a new
volume of these exquisite memoranda.
“Omission.—At Lerwick
the Dutch fishers had again appeared on their old haunts. A very interesting
meeting took place between them and the Lerwegians, most of them being old
acquaintances. They seemed very poor, and talked of having been pillaged of
every thing by the French, and expected to have found Lerwick ruined by the
war. They have all the careful, quiet, and economical habits of their country,
and go on board their busses with the utmost haste so soon as they see the
Greenland sailors, who usually insult and pick quarrels with them. The great
amusement of the Dutch sailors is to hire the little ponies, and ride up and
down upon them. On one occasion, a good many years ago, an English sailor
interrupted this cavalcade, frightened the horses, and one or two Dutchmen got
tumbles. Incensed at this beyond their usual moderation, they pursued the cause
of their overthrow, and wounded him with one of their knives. The wounded man
went on board his vessel, the crew of which, about fifty strong, came ashore
with their long flinching knives with which they cut up the whales, and falling
upon the Dutchmen, though twice their numbers, drove them all into the sea,
where such as could not swim were in some risk of being drowned. The instance
of aggression, or rather violent
retaliation, on their part, is almost solitary. In general they are extremely
quiet, and employ themselves in bartering their little merchandise of gin and
gingerbread for Zetland hose and night-caps.”
CHAPTER V. DIARY ON BOARD THE LIGHTHOUSE YACHT CONTINUED—THE ORKNEYS—KIRKWALL—HOY—THE
STANDING STONES OF STENNIS, ETC.—AUGUST, 1814.
“12th August, 1814.—With a
good breeze and calm sea we weighed at two in the morning, and worked by short
tacks up to Kirkwall bay, and find ourselves in that fine basin upon rising in
the morning. The town looks well from the sea, but is chiefly indebted to the
huge old cathedral that rises out of the centre. Upon landing we find it but a
poor and dirty place, especially towards the harbour. Farther up the town are
seen some decent old-fashioned houses, and the Sheriff’s interest secures
us good lodgings. Marchie goes to hunt for
a pointer. The morning, which was rainy, clears up pleasantly, and Hamilton, Erskine, Duff, and I walk
to Malcolm Laing’s, who has a
pleasant house about half a-mile from the town. Our old acquaintance, though an
invalid, received us kindly; he looks very poorly, and cannot walk without
assistance, but seems to retain all the quick, earnest, and vivacious
intelligence of his character and manner. After this visit the antiquities of
the place, viz.: the Bishop’s palace, the Earl of Orkney’s castle,
and the cathedral, all situated within a stonecast of each other. The two
former are ruinous. The most prominent part of the ruins of the Bishop’s
palace is a large round tower, similar to that of Bothwell in architecture, but not
equal to it in size. This was built by Bishop
Reid, temporeJacobi V., and there is a rude
statue of him in a niche in the front. At the north-east corner of the building
is a square tower of greater antiquity, called the Mense or Mass Tower; but, as
well as a second and smaller round tower, it is quite ruinous. A suite of
apartments of different sizes fill up the space between these towers, all now
ruinous. The building is said to have been of great antiquity, but was
certainly in a great measure re-edified in the sixteenth century. Fronting this
castle or palace of the Bishop, and about a gun-shot distant, is that of the
Earl of Orkney. The Earl’s palace was built by Patrick Stewart, Earl of Orkney, the same who erected that of
Scalloway, in Shetland. It is an elegant structure, partaking at once of the
character of a palace and castle. The building forms three sides of an oblong
square, but one of the sides extends considerably beyond the others. The great
hall must have been remarkably handsome, opening into two or three huge rounds
or turrets, the lower part of which is divided by stone shafts into three
windows. It has two immense chimneys, the arches or lintels of which are formed
by a flat arch, as at Crichton Castle. There is another very handsome apartment
communicating with the hall like a modern drawingroom, and which has, like the
former, its projecting turrets. The hall is lighted by a fine Gothic-shafted
window at one end, and by others on the sides. It is approached by a spacious
and elegant staircase of three flights of steps. The dimensions may be sixty
feet long, twenty broad, and fourteen high, but doubtless an arched roof sprung
from the side walls, so that fourteen feet was only the height from the ground
to the arches. Any modern architect, wishing to emulate the real Gothic
architecture, and apply it to the purposes of modern
splendour, might derive excellent hints from this room. The exterior ornaments
are also extremely elegant. The ruins, once the residence of this haughty and
oppressive Earl, are now so disgustingly nasty, that it required all the zeal
of an antiquary to prosecute the above investigation. Architecture seems to
have been Earl Patrick’s prevailing taste. Besides
this castle and that of Scalloway, he added to or enlarged the old castle of
Bressay. To accomplish these objects, he oppressed the people with severities
unheard-of even in that oppressive age, drew down on himself a shameful though
deserved punishment, and left these dishonoured ruins to hand down to posterity
the tale of his crimes and of his fall. We may adopt, though in another sense,
his own presumptuous motto—Sic Fuit, Est, et
Erit.
“We visit the cathedral, dedicated to St Magnus, which greeted the sheriff’s
approach with a merry peal. Like that of Glasgow, this church has escaped the
blind fury of Reformation. It was founded in 1138, by Ronald, Earl of
Orkney, nephew of the Saint. It is of great size, being 260 feet
long, or thereabout, and supported by twenty-eight Saxon pillars, of good
workmanship. The round arch predominates in the building, but I think not
exclusively. The steeple (once a very high spire) rises upon four pillars of
great strength, which occupy each angle of the nave. Being destroyed by
lightning, it was rebuilt upon a low and curtailed plan. The appearance of the
building is rather massive and gloomy than elegant, and many of the exterior
ornaments, carving around the door-ways, &c., have been injured by time. We
entered the cathedral, the whole of which is kept locked, swept, and in good
order, although only the eastern end is used for divine worship. We walked some
time in the nave and west-ern end,
which is left unoccupied, and has a very solemn effect as the avenue to the
place of worship. There were many tombstones on the floor and elsewhere, some,
doubtless, of high antiquity. One, I remarked, had the shield of arms hung by
the corner, with a helmet above it of a large proportion, such as I have seen
on the most ancient seals. But we had neither time nor skill to decipher what
noble Orcadian lay beneath. The church is as well fitted up as could be
expected; much of the old carved oak remains, but with a motley mixture of
modern deal pews. All, however, is neat and clean, and does great honour to the
kirk-session who maintain its decency. I remarked particularly Earl Patrick’s seat, adjoining to that of
the magistrates, but surmounting it and every other in the church; it is
surrounded with a carved screen of oak, rather elegant, and bears his arms and
initials, and the motto I have noticed. He bears the royal arms without any
mark of bastardy (his father was a natural son of James
V.) quarterly, with a lymphad or galley, the ancient arms of the
county. This circumstance was charged against him on his trial.* I understand
the late Mr Gilbert
* “This noted oppressor was finally
brought to trial, and beheaded at the Cross of Edinburgh [6th
February, 1614.] It is said that the King’s mood was
considerably heated against him by some ill-chosen and worse
written Latin inscriptions with which his father and himself had
been unlucky enough to decorate some of their insular palaces. In
one of these, Earl Robert, the father, had
given his own designation thus: ‘Orcadiæ Comes RexJacobi
quinti filius.’ In this case he was not,
perhaps, guilty of any thing worse than bad Latin. But James VI. who had a keen nose for
puzzling out treason, and with whom an assault and battery upon
Priscian ranked in nearly
the same degree of crime, had little doubt that the use of the
nominative Rex, instead of the genitive Regis, had a treasonable savour.”
Scott’sMiscellaneous Prose Works, vol. xxiii. p. 232.
Laing Meason left the interest of L.1000
to keep up this cathedral.
“There are in the street facing the cathedral the
ruins of a much more ancient castle; a proper feudal fortress belonging to the
Earls of Orkney, but called the King’s Castle. It appears to have been
very strong, being situated near the harbour, and having, as appears from the
fragments, very massive walls. While the wicked Earl
Patrick was in confinement, one of his natural sons defended
this castle to extremity against the King’s troops, and only surrendered
when it was nearly a heap of ruins, and then under condition he should not be
brought in evidence against his father.
“We dine at the inn, and drink the Prince Regent’s health, being that of the
day—Mr Baikie of Tankerness dines
with us.
“13th August, 1814.—A bad
morning, but clears up. No letters from Edinburgh. The country about Kirkwall
is flat, and tolerably cultivated. We see oxen generally wrought in the small
country carts, though they have a race of ponies, like those of Shetland, but
larger. Marchie goes to shoot on a hill
called Whiteford, which slopes away about two or three miles from Kirkwall. The
grouse is abundant, for the gentleman who chaperons
Marchie killed thirteen brace and a half, with a
snipe. There are no partridges nor hares. The soil of Orkney is better, and its
air more genial than Shetland; but it is far less interesting, and possesses
none of the wild and peculiar character of the more northern archipelago. All
vegetables grow here freely in the gardens, and there are one or two attempts
at trees where they are sheltered by walls. How ill they succeed may be
conjectured from our bringing with us a quantity of brushwood, commissioned by
Malcolm Laing from Aberhrothock, to
be sticks to his pease. This trash
we brought two hundred miles. I have little to add, except that the Orkney
people have some odd superstitions about a stone on which they take oaths to
Odin. Lovers often perform this
ceremony in pledge of mutual faith, and are said to account it a sacred
engagement. It is agreed that we go on board after dinner, and sail with the
next tide. The magistrates of Kirkwall present us with the freedom of their
ancient burgh; and Erskine, instead of
being cumbered with drunken sailors, as at Lerwick, or a drunken schoolmaster,
as at Fair Isle, is annoyed by his own substitute. This will occasion his
remaining two days at Kirkwall, during which time it is proposed we shall visit
the lighthouse upon the dangerous rocks called the Skerries, in the Pentland
Firth; and then, returning to the eastern side of Pomona, take up the
counsellor at Stromness. It is further settled that we leave
Marchie with Erskine to get
another day’s shooting. On board at ten o’clock, after a little
bustle in expediting our domestics, washerwomen, &c.
“14th August, 1814.—Sail
about four, and in rounding the main land of Orkney, called Pomona, encounter a
very heavy sea; about ten o’clock, get into the Sound of Holm or Ham, a
fine smooth current meandering away between two low green islands, which have
little to characterise them. On the right of the Sound is the mainland, and a
deep bay called Scalpa Flow indents it up to within two miles of Kirkwall. A
canal through this neck of the island would be of great consequence to the
burgh. We see the steeple and church of Kirkwall across the island very
distinctly. Getting out of the Sound of Holm, we stand into the harbour or
roadstead of Widewall, where we find seven or eight foreign vessels bound for
Ireland, and a sloop belonging to the lighthouse service. These roadsteads are
common all through the Orkneys, and afford excellent
shelter for small vessels. The day is pleasant and sunny, but the breeze is too
high to permit landing at the Skerries. Agree, therefore, to stand over for the
mainland of Scotland, and visit Thurso. Enter the Pentland Frith, so celebrated
for the strength and fury of its tides, which is boiling even in this pleasant
weather; we see a large ship battling with this heavy current, and though with
all her canvass set and a breeze, getting more and more involved. See the two
Capes of Dungsby or Duncansby, and Dunnet-head, between which lies the
celebrated John o’ Groat’s house, on the north-eastern extremity of
Scotland. The shores of Caithness rise bold and rocky before us, a contrast to
the Orkneys, which are all low, excepting the Island of Hoy. On Duncansby-head
appear some remarkable rocks, like towers, called the stacks of Duncansby; near
this shore runs the remarkable breaking tide called the Merry
Men of Mey, whence Mackenzie
takes the scenery of a poem— ‘Where the dancing men of Mey, Speed the current to the land.’ Here, according to his locality, the Caithness man witnessed the vision,
in which was introduced the song translated by Gray, under the title of the Fatal Sisters. On this subject, Mr Baikie told me the following remarkable
circumstance: A clergyman told him that while some remnants of the Norse were
yet spoken in North Ronaldsha, he carried thither the translation of
Mr Gray, then newly published, and read it to some of
the old people as referring to the ancient history of their islands. But so
soon as he had proceeded a little way, they exclaimed they knew it very well in
the original, and had often sung it to himself when he asked them for an old
Norse song; they called it The
Enchantresses. The breeze dies away between two wicked little
islands called Swona and Stroma, the latter belonging to Caithness, the former
to Orkney. Nota Bene.—The inhabitants
of the rest of the Orcades despise those of Swona for eating limpets, as being
the last of human meannesses. Every land has its fashions. The Fair-Islesmen
disdain Orkney-men for eating dog-fish. Both islands have dangerous reefs and
whirlpools, where, even, in this fine day, the tide rages furiously. Indeed,
the large high unbroken billows, which at every swell hide from our deck each
distant object, plainly intimate what a dreadful current this must be when
vexed by high or adverse winds. Finding ourselves losing ground in the tide,
and unwilling to waste time, we give up Thurso—run back into the roadstead or
bay of Long-Hope, and anchor under the fort. The bay has four entrances and
safe anchorage in most winds, and having become a great rendezvous for shipping
(there are nine vessels lying here at present), has been an object of attention
with Government.
“Went ashore after dinner, and visited the fort,
which is only partly completed; it is a flêche to the sea, with eight guns, twenty-four
pounders, but without any land defences; the guns are mounted en barbette, without embrasures, each upon
a kind of movable stage, which stage wheeling upon a pivot in front, and
traversing by means of wheels behind, can be pointed in any direction that may
be thought necessary. Upon this stage, the gun-carriage moves forward and
recoils, and the depth of the parapet shelters the men even better than an
embrasure; at a little distance from this battery they are building a Martello
tower, which is to cross the fire of the battery, and also that of another
projected tower upon the opposite point of the bay. The expedience of these
towers seems excessively problematical. Suppo-sing them
impregnable, or nearly so, a garrison of fourteen or fifteen men may be always
blockaded by a very trifling number, while the enemy dispose of all in the
vicinity at their pleasure. In the case of Long-Hope, for instance, a frigate
might disembark 100 men, take the fort in the rear, where it is undefended even
by a palisade, destroy the magazines, spike and dismount the cannon, carry off
or cut out any vessels in the roadstead, and accomplish all the purposes that
could bring them to so remote a spot, in spite of a sergeant’s party in
the Martello tower, and without troubling themselves about them at all.
Meanwhile, Long-Hope will one day turn out a flourishing place; there will soon
be taverns and slop-shops, where sailors rendezvous in such numbers; then will
come quays, docks, and warehouses; and then a thriving town. Amen, so be it.
This is the first fine day we have enjoyed to an end since Sunday, 31st ult.
Rainy, cold, and hazy, have been our voyages around these wild islands; I hope
the weather begins to mend, though Mr Wilson, our master,
threatens a breeze to-morrow. We are to attempt the Skerries, if possible; if
not, we will, I believe, go to Stromness.
“15th August, 1814.—Fine
morning; we get again into the Pentland Frith, and with the aid of a pilot-boat
belonging to the lighthouse service, from South Ronaldshaw, we attempt the
Skerries. Notwithstanding the fair weather, we have a specimen of the violence
of the flood-tide, which forms whirlpools on the shallow sunken rocks by the
islands of Swona and Stroma, and. in the deep water makes strange, smooth,
whirling, and swelling eddies, called by the sailors, wells. We run through the wells of Tuftile in
particular, which, in the least stress of weather, wheel a large ship round and
round, without respect either to helm or sails. Hence the distinction of wells and
waves in old English: the well being that smooth, glassy, oily-looking eddy, the force of which
seems to the eye almost resistless. The bursting of the waves in foam around
these strange eddies has a bewildering and confused appearance, which it is
impossible to describe. Get off the Skerries about ten o’clock, and land
easily; it is the first time a boat has got there for several days. The Skerries* is an island about 60 acres, of fine short
herbage, belonging to Lord Dundas; it is
surrounded by a reef of precipitous rocks, not very high, but inaccessible,
unless where the ocean has made ravines among them, and where stairs have been
cut down to the water for the lighthouse service. Those inlets have a romantic
appearance, and have been christened by the sailors, the Parliament House, the
Seals’ Lying-in-Hospital, &c. The last inlet, after rushing through a
deep chasm, which is open overhead, is continued under ground, and then again
opens to the sky in the middle of the island: in this hole the seals bring out
their whelps; when the tide is high, the waves rise up through this aperture in
the middle of the isle—like the blowing of a whale in noise and appearance.
There is another round cauldron of solid rock, to which the waves have access
through a natural arch in the rock, having another and lesser arch rising just
above it; in hard weather, the waves rush through both apertures with a horrid
noise; the workmen called it the Carron Blast, and indeed, the variety of
noises, which issued from the abyss, somewhat reminded me of that engine. Take
my rifle and walk round the cliffs in search of seals, but see none, and only
disturb the digestion of certain aldermen-cormorants, who were sit-
* “A Skerrie means a flattish rock which the
sea does not overflow.” Edmundstone’sView of the
Zetlands.
ting on the points of the crags after a good fish
breakfast; only made one good shot out of four. The lighthouse is too low, and
on the old construction, yet it is of the last importance. The keeper is an old
man-of-war’s-man, of whom Mr
Stevenson observed, that he was a great swearer when he first
came; but after a year or two’s residence in this solitary abode, became
a changed man. There are about fifty head of cattle on the island; they must be
got in and off with great danger and difficulty. There is no water upon the
isle except what remains after rain in some pools; these sometimes dry in
summer, and the cattle are reduced to great straits. Leave the isle about one;
and the wind and tide being favourable, crowd all sail, and get on at the rate
of fourteen miles an hour. Soon reach our old anchorage at the Long-Hope, and
passing, stand to the north-westward, up the sound of Hoy for Stromness.
“I should have mentioned, that in going down the
Pentland Firth this morning we saw Johnnie
Groat’s house, or rather the place where it stood, now
occupied by a storehouse. Our pilot opines there was no such man as Johnnie Groat, for, he says, he cannot hear that
any body ever saw him. This reasoning would put down
most facts of antiquity; they gather shells on the shore called Johnnie Groat’s
buckies, but I cannot procure any at present. I may also add, that the
interpretation given to wells may apply to the Wells of Slain, in the fine ballad of Clerk Colvin; such eddies in the romantic vicinity of Slains Castle
would be a fine place for a mermaid.
“Our wind fails us, and what is worse, becomes
westerly; the Sound has now the appearance of a fine landlocked bay, the
passages between the several islands being scarce visible. We have a superb
view of Kirkwall Cathedral, with a strong gleam of sunshine upon it. Gloomy weather begins to
collect around us, particularly on the island of Hoy, which, covered with gloom
and vapour, now assumes a majestic mountainous character. On Pomona we pass the
Hill of Orphir, which reminds me of the clergyman of that parish, who was
called to account for some of his inaccuracies to the General Assembly; one
charge he held particularly cheap, viz., that of drunkenness.
‘Reverend Moderator,’ said he, in reply, ‘I do drink, as other gentlemen do.’ This
Orphir of the north must not be confounded with the Ophir of the south. From
the latter came gold, silver, and precious stones; the former seems to produce
little except peats. Yet these are precious commodities, which some of the
Orkney Isles altogether want, and lay waste and burn the turf of their land
instead of importing coal from Newcastle. The Orcadians seem by no means an
alert or active race; they neglect the excellent fisheries which lie under
their very noses, and in their mode of managing their boats, as well as in the
general tone of urbanity and intelligence, are excelled by the less favoured
Zetlanders. I observe they always crowd their boat with people in the bows,
being the ready way to send her down in any awkward circumstance. There are
remains of their Norwegian descent and language in North Ronaldshaw, an isle I
regret we did not see. A missionary preacher came ashore there a year or two
since, but being a very little black-bearded unshaved man, the seniors of the
isle suspected him of being an ancient Pecht or Pict, and no
canny, of course. The schoolmaster came down to entreat our worthy
Mr Stevenson, then about to leave
the island, to come up and verify whether the preacher was an ancient Pecht,
yea or no. Finding apologies were in vain, he rode up to the house where the
unfortunate preacher, after three nights’
watching, had got to bed, little conceiving under what odious suspicion he had
fallen. As Mr S. declined disturbing him, his boots were
produced, which being a little,—little—very little pair,
confirmed, in the opinion of all the bystanders, the suspicion of Pechtism.
Mr S. therefore found it necessary to go into the poor
man’s sleeping apartment, where he recognised one
Campbell, heretofore an ironmonger in Edinburgh, but
who had put his hand for some years to the missionary plough; of course he
warranted his quondam acquaintance to be no ancient Pecht. Mr
Stevenson carried the same schoolmaster who figured in the
adventure of the Pecht to the mainland of Scotland, to be examined for his
office. He was extremely desirous to see a tree; and, on seeing one, desired to
know what girss it was that grew at the top
on’t—the leaves appearing to him to be grass. They still speak a little
Norse, and indeed I hear every day words of that language; for instance,
Ja kul, for ‘Yes, sir.’ We creep slowly up Hoy Sound, working
under the Pomona shore; but there is no hope of reaching Stromness till we have
the assistance of the evening tide. The channel now seems like a Highland loch;
not the least ripple on the waves. The passage is narrowed, and (to the eye)
blocked up by the interposition of the green and apparently fertile isle of
Graemsay, the property of Lord
Armadale.* Hoy looks yet grander, from comparing its black and steep
mountains with this verdant isle. To add to the beauty of the Sound, it is
rendered lively by the successive appearance of seven or eight whaling vessels
from Davies’ Straits; large strong ships, which pass successively, with
all their sails set,
* The late Sir William
Honeyman, Bart. a Judge of the Court of Session by the
title of Lord Armadale.
enjoying the little wind that
is. Many of these vessels display the garland; that is, a wreath of ribbons
which the young fellows on board have got from their sweethearts, or come by
otherwise, and which hangs between the foremast and mainmast, surmounted
sometimes by a small model of the vessel. This garland is hung up upon the 1st
May, and remains till they come into port. I believe we shall dodge here till
the tide makes about nine, and then get into Stromness; no boatman or sailor in
Orkney thinks of the wind in comparison of the tides and currents. We must not
complain, though the night gets rainy, and the Hill of Hoy is now completely
invested with vapour and mist. In the forepart of the day we executed very
cleverly a task of considerable difficulty and even danger.
“16th August, 1814.—Get into
Stromness bay, and anchor before the party are up. A most decided rain all
night. The bay is formed by a deep indention in the mainland, or Pomona; on one
side of which stands Stromness a fishing village and harbour of call for the
Davies’ Straits whalers, as Lerwick is for the Greenlanders. Betwixt the
vessels we met yesterday, seven or eight which passed us this morning, and
several others still lying in the bay, we have seen between twenty and thirty
of these large ships in this remote place. The opposite side of Stromness bay
is protected by Hoy, and Græmsay lies between them; so that the bay seems
quite land-locked, and the contrast between the mountains of Hoy, the soft
verdure of Græmsay, and the swelling hill of Orphir on the mainland, has a
beautiful effect. The day clears up, and Mr Rae, Lord Armadale’s factor, comes off from
his house, called Clestrom, upon the shore opposite to Stromness, to breakfast
with us. We go ashore with him. His farm is well cultivated, and he has
procured an excellent breed of horses from Lanarkshire,
of which county he is a native; strong hardy Galloways, fit for labour or
hacks. By this we profited, as Mr Rae mounted us all, and
we set off to visit the Standing Stones of Stenhouse or Stennis.
“At the upper end of the bay, about half way
between Clestrom and Stromness, there extends a loch of considerable size, of
fresh water, but communicating with the sea by apertures left in a long bridge
or causeway which divides them. After riding about two miles along this lake,
we open another called the Loch of Harray, of about the same dimensions, and
communicating with the lower lake, as the former does with the sea, by a
stream, over which is constructed a causeway, with openings to suffer the flow
and reflux of the water, as both lakes are affected by the tide. Upon the
tongues of land which, approaching each other, divide the lakes of Stennis and
Harray, are situated the Standing Stones. The isthmus on the eastern side
exhibits a semicircle of immensely large upright pillars of unhewn stone,
surrounded by a mound of earth. As the mound is discontinued, it does not seem
that the circle was ever completed. The flat or open part of the semicircle
looks up a plain, where, at a distance, is seen a large tumulus. The highest of
these stones may be about sixteen or seventeen feet, and I think there are none
so low as twelve feet. At irregular distances are pointed out other unhewn
pillars of the same kind. One, a little to the westward, is perforated with a
round hole, perhaps to bind a victim; or rather, I conjecture, for the purpose
of solemnly attesting the deity, which the Scandinavians did by passing their
head through a ring, videEyrbiggia Saga. Several barrows are scattered around this strange
monument. Upon the opposite isthmus is a complete circle, of ninety-five paces
in diameter, surrounded by standing stones, less in size than the others, being only from ten
or twelve to fourteen feet in height, and four in breadth. A deep trench is
drawn around this circle on the outside of the pillars, and four tumuli, or
mounds of earth, are regularly placed, two on each side.
“Stonehenge excels these monuments, but I fancy
they are otherwise unparalleled in Britain. The idea that such circles were
exclusively Druidical is now justly exploded. The northern nations all used
such erections to mark their places of meeting, whether for religious purposes
or civil policy; and there is repeated mention of them in the Sagas. See the Eyrbiggia Saga, for
the establishment of the Helga-fels, or holy mount, where the people held their
Comitia, and where sacrifices were offered to Thor and Woden. About the
centre of the semicircle is a broad flat stone, probably once the altar on
which human victims were sacrificed.—Mr Rae seems to think
the common people have no tradition of the purpose of these stones, but
probably he has not enquired particularly. He admits they look upon them with
superstitious reverence; and it is evident that those which have fallen down
(about half the original number) have been wasted by time, and not demolished.
The materials of these monuments lay near, for the shores and bottom of the
lake are of the same kind of rock. How they were raised, transported, and
placed upright, is a puzzling question. In our ride back, noticed a round
entrenchment, or tumulus, called the Hollow of Tongue.
“The hospitality of Mrs Rae
detained us to an early, dinner at Clestrom. About four o’clock took our
longboat and rowed down the bay to visit the Dwarfie Stone of Hoy. We have all
day been pleased with the romantic appearance of that island, for though the
Hill of Hoy is not very high, perhaps about 1200 feet, yet rising per-pendicularly (almost) from the sea, and being very steep
and furrowed with ravines, and catching all the mists from the western ocean,
it has a noble and picturesque effect in every point of view. We land upon the
island, and proceed up a long and very swampy valley broken into peatbogs. The
one side of this valley is formed by the Mountain of Hoy, the other by another
steep hill, having at the top a circular, belt of rock; upon the slope of this
last hill, and just where the principal mountain opens into a wide and
precipitous and circular corrie or hollow, lies the
Dwarfie Stone. It is a huge sandstone rock, of one solid stone, being about
seven feet high, twenty-two feet long, and seventeen feet broad. The upper end
of this stone is hewn into a sort of apartment containing two beds of stone and
a passage between them. The uppermost and largest is five feet eight inches
long, by two feet broad, and is furnished with a stone pillow. The lower,
supposed for the Dwarf’s Wife, is shorter, and rounded off, instead of
being square at the corners. The entrance may be about three feet and a-half
square, Before it lies a huge stone, apparently intended to serve the purpose
of a door, and shaped accordingly. In the top, over the passage which divides
the beds, there is a hole to serve for a window or chimney, which was doubtless
originally wrought square with irons, like the rest of the work, but has been
broken out by violence into a shapeless hole. Opposite to this stone, and
proceeding from it in a line down the valley, are several small barrows, and
there is a very large one on the same line, at the spot where we landed. This
seems to indicate that the monument is of heathen times, and probably was meant
as the temple of some northern edition of the Dii
Manes. There are no symbols of Christian devotion and
the door is to the westward; it therefore does not seem to have been the abode of a hermit, as
Dr Barry* has conjectured. The
Orcadians have no tradition on the subject, excepting that they believe it to
be the work of a dwarf, to whom, like their ancestors, they attribute
supernatural powers and malevolent disposition. They conceive he may be seen
sometimes sitting at the door of his abode, but he vanishes on a nearer
approach. Whoever inhabited this den, certainly enjoyed ‘Pillow cold and sheets not warm.’
“Duff,
Stevenson, and I now walk along the
skirts of the Hill of Hoy, to rejoin Robert
Hamilton, who in the mean while had rode down to the
clergyman’s house, the wet and boggy walk not suiting his gout. Arrive at
the manse completely wet, and drink tea there. The clergyman (Mr Hamilton) has procured some curious
specimens of natural history for Bullock’s Museum, particularly a pair of fine eaglets. He
has just got another of the golden, or white kind, which he intends to send
him. The eagle, with every other ravenous bird, abounds among the almost
inaccessible precipices of Hoy, which afford them shelter, while the moors,
abounding with grouse, and the small uninhabited islands and holms, where sheep
and lambs are necessarily left unwatched, as well as the all-sustaining ocean,
give these birds of prey the means of support. The clergyman told us, that a
man was very lately alive in the Island of , who,
when an infant, was transported from thence by an eagle over a broad sound, or
arm of the sea, to the bird’s nest in Hoy. Pursuit being instantly made,
and the eagle’s nest being known, the infant was found there playing with
the young eaglets. A more ludicrous instance of
* History of the Orkney Islands, by the Rev. George Barry, D.D. 4to.
Edinburgh; 1805.
transportation he himself witnessed. Walking in the
fields, he heard the squeaking of a pig for some time, without being able to
discern whence it proceeded, until looking up, he beheld the unfortunate
grunter in the talons of an eagle, who soared away with him towards the summit
of Hoy. From this it may be conjectured, that the island is very thinly
inhabited. In fact, we only saw two or three little wigwams. After tea we
walked a mile farther, to a point where the boat was lying, in order to secure
the advantage of the flood-tide. We rowed with toil across one stream of tide,
which set strongly up between Græmsay and Hoy; but, on turning the point
of Græmsay, the other branch of the same flood-tide carried us with great
velocity alongside our yacht, which we reached about nine o’clock.
Between riding, walking, and running, we have spent a very active and
entertaining day.
“Domestic Memoranda—The eggs
on Zetland and Orkney are very indifferent, having an earthy taste and being
very small. But the hogs are an excellent breed—queer wild-looking creatures,
with heads like wild-boars, but making capital bacon.”
CHAPTER VI. DIARY CONTINUED—STROMNESS—BESSY MILLIE’S CHARM—CAPE
WRATH—CAVE OF SMOWE—THE HEBRIDES—SCALPA, ETC. 1814.
“Off Stromness, 17th August, 1814.—Went on shore after breakfast, and
found W. Erskine and Marjoribanks had been in this town all last
night, without our hearing of them or they of us. No letters from Abbotsford or
Edinburgh. Stromness is a little dirty straggling town, which cannot be
traversed by a cart, or even by a horse, for there are stairs up and down, even
in the principal streets. We paraded its whole length like turkeys in a string,
I suppose to satisfy ourselves that there was a worse town in the Orkneys than
the metropolis, Kirkwall. We clomb, by steep and dirty lanes, an eminence
rising above the town, and commanding a fine view. An old hag lives in a
wretched cabin on this height, and subsists by selling winds. Each captain of a
merchantman, between jest and earnest, gives the old woman sixpence, and she
boils her kettle to procure a favourable gale. She was a miserable figure;
upwards of ninety, she told us, and dried up like a mummy. A sort of
clay-coloured cloak, folded over her head, corresponded in colour to her
corpselike complexion. Fine light-blue eyes, and nose and chin that almost met,
and a ghastly expression of cunning, gave her quite the effect of Hecate. She told us she remembered Gowthepirate, who was born near the House of Clestrom, and
afterwards commenced buccanier. He came to his native country about 1725, with
a snow which he commanded, carried off two women from
one of the islands, and committed other enormities. At length, while he was
dining in a house in the Island of Eda, the islanders, headed by Malcolm Laing’s grandfather, made him
prisoner and sent him to London, where he was hanged. While at Stromness, he
made love to a Miss Gordon, who pledged her faith to him
by shaking hands, an engagement which, in her idea, could not be dissolved
without her going to London to seek back again her ‘faith and
troth,’ by shaking hands with him again after execution. We left our
Pythoness, who assured us there was nothing evil in the intercession she was to
make for us, but that we were only to have a fair wind through the benefit of
her prayers. She repeated a sort of rigmarole which I suppose she had ready for
such occasions, and seemed greatly delighted and surprised with the amount of
our donation, as every body gave her a trifle, our faithful Captain
Wilson making the regular offering on behalf of the ship. So
much for buying a wind. Bessy Millie’s habitation is
airy enough for Æolus himself, but if
she is a special favourite with that divinity, he has a strange choice. In her
house I remarked a quern, or hand-mill. A cairn, a little higher, commands a
beautiful view of the bay, with its various entrances and islets. Here we found
the vestiges of a bonfire, lighted in memory of the battle of Bannockburn,
concerning which every part of Scotland has its peculiar traditions. The
Orcadians say that a Norwegian prince, then their ruler, called by them
Harold, brought 1400 men of Orkney to the assistance
of Bruce, and that the King, at a critical
period of the engagement, touched him with his scabbard, saying, ‘The
day is against
us.’—‘I trust,’ returned the Orcadian,
‘your Grace will venture again;’ which has given rise to
their motto, and passed into a proverb. On board at half-past three, and find
Bessy Millie a woman of her word, for the expected
breeze has sprung up, if it but last us till we double Cape Wrath. Weigh anchor
(I hope) to bid farewell to Orkney.*
“The land in Orkney is, generally speaking,
excellent, and what is not fitted for the plough, is admirably adapted for
pasture. But the cultivation is very bad, and the mode of using these extensive
commons, where they tear up, without remorse, the turf of the finest pasture,
in order to make fuel, is absolutely execrable. The practice has already peeled
and exhausted much fine land, and must in the end ruin the country entirely. In
other respects, their mode of cultivation is to manure for barley and oats, and
then manure again, and this without the least idea of fallow or green crops.
Mr Rae thinks that his example—and he farms very
well—has had no effect upon the natives, except in the article of potatoes,
which they now cultivate a little more, but crops of turnips are unknown. For
this slovenly labour the Orcadians cannot, like the Shetland men, plead the
occupation of fishing, which is wholly neglected by them, excepting that about
this time of the year all the people turn out for the dogfish; the liver of
which affords oil, and the bodies are a food as much valued here by the lower
classes as it is contemned in Zetland. We saw
* Lord
Teignmouth, in his recent “Sketches of the Coasts and Islands of
Scotland,” says—“The publication of the Pirate satisfied the
natives of Orkney as to the authorship of the Waverley Novels. It was
remarked by those who had accompanied Sir
Walter Scott in his excursions in these Islands that
the vivid descriptions which the work contains were confined to
those scenes which he visited.”—Vol. i. p. 28.
nineteen boats out at this work. But cod, tusk, ling,
haddocks, &c., which abound round these isles, are totally neglected. Their
inferiority in husbandry is therefore to be ascribed to the prejudices of the
people, who are all peasants of the lowest order. On Lord Armadale’s estate, the number of
tenantry amounts to 300, and the average of rent is about seven pounds each.
What can be expected from such a distribution; and how is the necessary
restriction to take place, without the greatest immediate distress and hardship
to these poor creatures? It is the hardest chapter in Economicks; and if I were
an Orcadian laird, I feel I should shuffle on with the old useless creatures,
in contradiction to my better judgment. Stock is improved in these islands, and
the horses seem to be better bred than in Shetland; at least, I have seen more
clever animals. The good horses find a ready sale; Mr Rae
gets twenty guineas readily for a colt of his rearing—to be sure, they are very
good.
“Six o’Clock.—Our
breeze has carried us through the Mouth of Hoy, and so into the Atlantic. The
northwestern face of the island forms a ledge of high perpendicular cliffs,
which might have surprised us more, had we not already seen the Ord of Bressay,
the Noup of Noss, and the precipices of the Fair Isle. But these are formidable
enough. One projecting cliff, from the peculiarities of its form, has acquired
the name of the Old Man of Hoy, and is well known to mariners as marking the
entrance to the Mouth. The other jaw of this mouth is formed by a lower range
of crags, called the Burgh of Birsa. The access through this strait would be
easy, were it not for the Island of Græmsay, lying in the very throat of
the passage, and two other islands covering the entrance to the harbour of
Stromness. Græmsay is infamous for shipwrecks, and the chance of these God-sends, as they were impiously called, is said sometimes to have doubled the
value of the land. In Stromness, I saw many of the sad relics of shipwrecked
vessels applied to very odd purposes, and indeed to all sorts of occasions. The
gates, or grinds, as they are here called, are usually
of ship planks and timbers, and so are their bridges, &c. These casualties
are now much less common since the lights on the Skerries and the Start have
been established. Enough of memoranda for the present. We have hitherto kept
our course pretty well; and a King’s ship about eighteen guns or so, two
miles upon our lea-boom, has shortened sail, apparently to take us under her
wing, which may not be altogether unnecessary in the latitude of Cape Wrath,
where several vessels have been taken by Yankee-Doodle. The sloop-of-war looks
as if she could bite hard, and is supposed by our folks to be the Malay. If we
can speak the captain we will invite him to some grouse, or send him some, as
he likes best, for Marchie’s campaign
was very successful.
“18th August,
1814.—Bessy Millie’s charm has failed us. After
a rainy night, the wind has come round to the north-west, and is getting almost
contrary. We have weathered Whitten-head, however, and Cape Wrath, the
north-western extremity of Britain, is now in sight. The weather gets rainy and
squally. Hamilton and Erskine keep their berths. Duff and I sit upon deck, like two great bears, wrapt in
watch-cloaks, the sea flying over us every now and then. At length, after a
sound buffeting with the rain, the doubling Cape Wrath with this wind is
renounced as impracticable, and we stand away for Loch Eribol, a lake running
into the extensive country of Lord Reay. No
sickness; we begin to get hardy sailors in that particular. The ground rises
upon us very bold and mountainous, especially a very high steep mountain,
called Ben-y-Hope, at the head of a lake called Loch
Hope. The weather begins to mitigate as we get under the lea of the land. Loch
Eribol opens, running up into a wild and barren scene of crags and hills. The
proper anchorage is said to be at the head of the lake, but to go eight miles
up so narrow an inlet would expose us to be wind-bound. A pilot boat comes off
from Mr Anderson’s house, a principal tacksman of
Lord Reay’s. After some discussion we anchor
within a reef of sunken rocks, nearly opposite to Mr
Anderson’s house of Rispan; the situation is not, we are
given to understand, altogether without danger if the wind should blow hard,
but it is now calm. In front of our anchorage a few shapeless patches of land,
not exceeding a few yards in diameter, have been prepared for corn by the
spade, and bear wretched crops. All the rest of the view is utter barrenness;
the distant hills, we are told, contain plenty of deer, being part of a forest
belonging to Lord Reay, who is proprietor of all the
extensive range of desolation now under our eye. The water has been kinder than
the land, for we hear of plenty of salmon, and haddocks, and lobsters, and send
our faithful minister of the interior, John Peters, the
steward, to procure some of those good things of this very indifferent land,
and to invite Mr Anderson to dine with us. Four
o’clock, John has just returned, successful in both
commissions, and the evening concludes pleasantly.
“19th August, 1814.—Loch Eribol, near Cape Wrath. Went off before eight a.m. to breakfast with our friend Mr
Anderson. His house, invisible from the vessel at her moorings,
and, indeed, from any part of the entrance into Loch Eribol, is a very
comfortable one, lying obscured behind a craggy eminence. A little creek,
winding up behind the crag, and in front of the house, forms a small harbour,
and gives a romantic air of concealment and snugness. There we found a ship upon the
stocks, built from the keel by a Highland carpenter, who had magnanimously
declined receiving assistance from any of the ship-carpenters who happened to
be here occasionally, lest it should be said he could not have finished his
task without their aid. An ample Highland breakfast of excellent new-taken
herring, equal to those of Lochfine. fresh haddocks, fresh eggs, and fresh
butter, not forgetting the bottle of whisky, and bannocks of barley and
oat-cakes, with the Lowland luxuries of tea and coffee. After breakfast, took
the long-boat, and under Mr Anderson’s pilotage, row
to see a remarkable natural curiosity, called Uamh Smowe, or the Largest Cave.
Stevenson, Marchie, and Duff go by
land. Take the fowling-piece and shoot some sea-fowl, and a large hawk of an
uncommon appearance. Fire four shots, and kill three times. After rowing about
three miles to the westward of the entrance from the sea to Loch Eribol, we
enter a creek, between two ledges of very high rocks, and landing, find
ourselves in front of the wonder we came to see. The exterior apartment of the
cavern opens under a tremendous rock, facing the creek, and occupies the full
space of the ravine where we landed. From the top of the rock to the base of
the cavern, as we afterwards discovered by plumb, is eighty feet, of which the
height of the arch is fifty-three feet; the rest, being twenty-seven feet, is
occupied by the precipitous rock under which it opens; the width is fully in
proportion to this great height, being 110 feet. The depth of this exterior
cavern is 200 feet, and it is apparently supported by an intermediate column of
natural rock. Being open to daylight and the sea air, the cavern is perfectly
clean and dry, and the sides are incrusted with stalactites. This immense
cavern is so well-proportioned, that I was not aware of
its extraordinary height and extent, till I saw our two friends, who had
somewhat preceded us, having made the journey by land, appearing like pigmies
among its recesses. Afterwards, on entering the cave, I climbed up a sloping
rock at its extremity, and was much struck with the prospect, looking outward
from this magnificent arched cavern upon our boat and its crew, the view being
otherwise bounded by the ledge of rocks which formed each side of the creek. We
now propose to investigate the farther wonders of the cave of Smowe. In the
right or west side of the cave opens an interior cavern of a different aspect.
The height of this second passage may be about twelve or fourteen feet, and its
breadth about six or eight, neatly formed into a Gothic portal by the hand of
nature. The lower part of this porch is closed by a ledge of rock, rising to
the height of between five and six feet, and which I can compare to nothing but
the hatch-door of a shop. Beneath this hatch a brook finds its way out, forms a
black deep pool before the Gothic archway, and then escapes to the sea, and
forms the creek in which we landed. It is somewhat difficult to approach this
strange pass, so as to gain a view into the interior of the cavern. By
clambering along a broken and dangerous cliff, you can, however, look into it;
but only so far as to see a twilight space filled with dark-coloured water in
great agitation, and representing a subterranean lake, moved by some fearful
convulsion of nature. How this pond is supplied with water you cannot see from
even this point of vantage, but you are made partly sensible of the truth by a
sound like the dashing of a sullen cataract within the bowels of the earth.
Here the adventure has usually been abandoned, and Mr
Anderson only mentioned two travellers whose curiosity had led
them farther. We were resolved, however, to see the ad-ventures of this new cave of Montesinos to an end.
Duff had already secured the use of a fisher’s
boat and its hands, our own log-boat being too heavy and far too valuable to be
ventured upon this Cocytus. Accordingly the skiff was dragged up the brook to
the rocky ledge or hatch which barred up the interior cavern, and there, by
force of hands, our boat’s crew and two or three fishers first raised the
boat’s bow upon the ledge of rock, then brought her to a level, being
poised upon that narrow hatch, and lastly launched her down into the dark and
deep subterranean lake within. The entrance was so narrow, and the boat so
clumsy, that we, who were all this while clinging to the rock like sea-fowl,
and with scarce more secure footing, were greatly alarmed for the safety of our
trusty sailors. At the instant when the boat sloped inward to the cave, a
Highlander threw himself into it with great boldness and dexterity, and, at the
expense of some bruises, shared its precipitate fall into the waters under the
earth. This dangerous exploit was to prevent the boat drifting away from us,
but a cord at its stern would have been a safer and surer expedient.
“When our enfant
perdu had recovered breath and legs, he brought the boat
back to the entrance, and took us in. We now found ourselves embarked on a deep
black pond of an irregular form, the rocks rising like a dome all around us,
and high over our heads. The light, a sort of dubious twilight, was derived
from two chasms in the roof of the vault, for that offered by the entrance was
but trifling. Down one of those rents there poured from the height of eighty
feet, in a sheet of foam, the brook, which, after supplying the subterranean
pond with water, finds its way out beneath the ledge of rock that blocks its
entrance. The other skylight, if I may so term it, looks out at the clear blue
sky. It is impossible for description to explain the
impression made by so strange a place, to which we had been conveyed with so
much difficulty. The cave itself, the pool, the cataract, would have been each
separate objects of wonder, but all united together, and affecting at once the
ear, the eye, and the imagination, their effect is indescribable. The length of
this pond, or loch, as the people here call it, is seventy feet over, the
breadth about thirty at the narrowest point, and it is of great depth.
“As we resolved to proceed, we directed the boat to
a natural arch on the right hand, or west side of the cataract. This archway
was double, a high arch being placed above a very low one, as in a Roman
aqueduct. The ledge of rock which forms this lower arch is not above two feet
and a half high above the water, and under this we were to pass in the boat; so
that we were fain to pile ourselves flat upon each other like a layer of
herrings. By this judicious disposition we were pushed in safety beneath this
low-browed rock into a region of utter darkness. For this, however, we were
provided, for we had a tinder-box and lights. The view back upon the twilight
lake we had crossed, its sullen eddies wheeling round and round, and its echoes
resounding to the ceaseless thunder of the waterfall, seemed dismal enough, and
was aggravated by temporary darkness, and in some degree by a sense of danger.
The lights, however, dispelled the latter sensation, if it prevailed to any
extent, and we now found ourselves in a narrow cavern, sloping somewhat upward
from the water. We got out of the boat, proceeded along some slippery places
upon shelves of the rock, and gained the dry land. I cannot say dry, excepting comparatively. We were then in an arched
cave, twelve feet high in the roof, and about eight feet in breadth, which went
wind-ing into the bowels of the
earth for about an hundred feet. The sides, being (like those of the whole
cavern) of limestone rock, were covered with stalactites, and with small drops
of water like dew, glancing like ten thousand thousand sets of birth-day
diamonds under the glare of our lights. In some places these stalactites branch
out into broad and curious ramifications, resembling coral and the foliage of
submarine plants.
“When we reached the extremity of this passage, we
found it declined suddenly to a horrible ugly gulf, or well, filled with dark
water, and of great depth, over which the rock closed. We threw in stones,
which indicated great profundity by their sound; and growing more familiar with
the horrors of this den, we sounded with an oar, and found about ten feet depth
at the entrance, but discovered, in the same manner, that the gulf extended
under the rock, deepening as it went, God knows how far. Imagination can figure
few deaths more horrible than to be sucked under these rocks into some
unfathomable abyss, where your corpse could never be found to give intimation
of your fate. A water kelpy, or an evil spirit of any aquatic propensities,
could not choose a fitter abode; and, to say the truth, I believe at our first
entrance, and when all our feelings were afloat at the novelty of the scene,
the unexpected plashing of a seal would have routed the whole dozen of us. The
mouth of this ugly gulf was all covered with slimy alluvious substances, which
led Mr Stevenson to observe, that it
could have no separate source, but must be fed from the waters of the outer
lake and brook, as it lay upon the same level, and seemed to rise and fall with
them, without having any thing to indicate a separate current of its own.
Rounding this perilous hole, or gulf, upon the aforesaid: alluvious sub-stances, which, formed its shores, we reached the
extremity of the cavern, which there ascends like a vent, or funnel, directly
up a sloping precipice, but hideously black, and slippery from wet and
sea-weeds. One of our sailors, a Zetlander, climbed up a good way, and by
holding up a light, we could plainly perceive that this vent closed after
ascending to a considerable height; and here, therefore, closed the adventure
of the cave of Smowe, for it appeared utterly impossible to proceed further in
any direction whatever. There is a tradition, that the first Lord
Reay went through various subterranean abysses, and at length
returned, after ineffectually endeavouring to penetrate to the extremity of the
Smowe cave; but this must be either fabulous, or an exaggerated account of such
a journey as we performed. And under the latter supposition, it is a curious
instance how little the people in the neighbourhood of this curiosity have
cared to examine it.
“In returning, we endeavoured to familiarize
ourselves with the objects in detail, which, viewed together, had struck us
with so much wonder. The stalactites, or limy incrustations, upon the walls of
the cavern, are chiefly of a dark-brown colour, and in this respect, Smowe is
inferior, according to Mr Stevenson, to
the celebrated cave of Macallister in the Isle of Skye. In returning, the men
with the lights, and the various groups and attitudes of the party, gave a good
deal of amusement. We now ventured to clamber along the side of the rock above
the subterranean water, and thus gained the upper arch, and had the
satisfaction to see our admirable and good-humoured commodore, Hamilton, floated beneath the lower arch into
the second cavern. His goodly countenance being illumined by a single candle,
his recumbent posture, and the appear-ance of a hard-favoured fellow guiding the boat,
made him the very picture of Bibo, in the
catch, when he wakes in Charon’s
boat,
‘When Bibo thought fit from
this world to retreat, As full of Champagne as an egg’s full of meat, He waked in the boat, and to Charon
he said, That he would be row’d back, for he was not yet dead.
“Descending from our superior station on the upper
arch we now again embarked, and spent some time in rowing about and examining
this second cave. We could see our dusky entrance, into which daylight streamed
faint, and at a considerable distance; and under the arch of the outer cavern
stood a sailor, with an oar in his hand, looking, in the perspective, like a
fairy with his wand. We at length emerged unwillingly from this extraordinary
basin, and again enjoyed ourselves in the large exterior cave. Our boat was
hoisted with some difficulty over the ledge, which appears the natural barrier
of the interior apartments, and restored in safety to the fishers, who were
properly gratified for the hazard which their skiff, as well as one of
themselves, had endured. After this we resolved to ascend the rocks, and
discover the opening by which the cascade was discharged from above into the
second cave. Erskine and I, by some
chance, took the wrong side of the rocks, and, after some scrambling, got into
the face of a dangerous precipice, where Erskine, to my
great alarm, turned giddy, and declared he could not go farther. I clambered up
without much difficulty, and shouting to the people below, got two of them to
assist the Counsellor, who was brought into, by the means which have sent many
a good fellow out of, the world—I mean a rope. We easily found the brook, and
traced its descent till it precipitates itself down a chasm of the rock into
the subter-ranean apartment, where we first made its
acquaintance. Divided by a natural arch of stone from the chasm down which the
cascade falls, there is another rent, which serves as a skylight to the cavern,
as I already noticed. Standing on a natural foot-bridge, formed by the arch
which divides these two gulfs, you have a grand prospect into both. The one is
deep, black, and silent, only affording at the bottom a glimpse of the dark and
sullen pool which occupies the interior of the cavern. The right-hand rent,
down which the stream discharges itself, seems to ring and reel with the
unceasing roar of the cataract which envelopes its side in mist and foam. This
part of the scene alone is worth a day’s journey. After heavy rains, the
torrent is discharged into this cavern with astonishing violence; and the size
of the chasm being inadequate to the reception of such a volume of water, it is
thrown up in spouts like the blowing of a whale. But at such times the entrance
of the cavern is inaccessible.
“Taking leave of this scene with regret, we rowed
back to Loch Eribol. Having yet an hour to spare before dinner, we rowed across
the mouth of the lake to its shore on the east side. This rises into a steep
and shattered stack of mouldering calcareous rock and stone, called Whiten
Head. It is pierced with several caverns, the abode of seals and cormorants. We
entered one, where our guide promised to us a grand sight, and so it certainly
would have been to any who had not just come from Smowe. In this last cave the
sea enters through a lofty arch, and penetrates to a great depth; but the
weight of the tide made it dangerous to venture very far, so we did not see the
extremity of Friskin’s Cavern, as it is called. We shot several
cormorants in the cave, the echoes roaring like thunder at every discharge. We
received, however, a proper rebuke
from Hamilton, our commodore, for
killing any thing which was not fit for eating. It was
in vain I assured him that the Zetlanders make excellent hare-soup out of these
sea-fowl. He will listen to no subordinate authority, and rules us by the
Almanach des Gourmands. Mr Anderson
showed me the spot where the Norwegian monarch, Haco, moored his fleet, after the discomfiture he received at
Largs. He caused all the cattle to be driven from the hills; and houghed and
slain upon a broad flat rock, for the refreshment of his dispirited army.
Mr Anderson dines with us, and very handsomely
presents us with a stock of salmon, haddocks, and so forth, which we requite by
a small present of wine from our sea stores. This has been a fine day; the
first fair day here for these eight weeks.
“20th August 1814.—Sail by
four in the morning, and by half-past six, are off Cape Wrath. All hands ashore
by seven, and no time allowed to breakfast, except on beef and biscuit. On this
dread Cape, so fatal to mariners, it is proposed to build a lighthouse, and
Mr Stevenson has fixed on an
advantageous situation. It is a high promontory, with steep sides that go sheer
down to the breakers, which lash its feet. There is no landing, except in a
small creek about a mile and a half to the eastward. There the foam of the sea
plays at long bowls with a huge collection of large stones, some of them a ton
in weight, but which these fearful billows chuck up and down as a child tosses
a ball. The walk from thence to the Cape was over rough boggy ground, but good
sheep pasture. Mr —— Dunlop, brother to the laird of
Dunlop, took from Lord Reay, some years
since, a large track of sheep-land, including the territories of Cape Wrath,
for about L.300 a-year, for the period of two-nineteen years and a life-rent.
It is needless to say, that the tenant has an immense profit, for the value of pasture is now understood here.
Lord Reay’s estate, containing 150,000 square
acres, and measuring eighty miles by sixty, was, before commencement of the
last leases, rented at L.1200 a-year. It is now worth L.5,000, and Mr
Anderson says he may let it this ensuing year (when the leases
expire) for about L.15,000. But then he must resolve to part with his people,
for these rents can only be given upon the supposition that sheep are generally
to be introduced on the property. In an economical, and perhaps in a political
point of view, it might be best that every part of a country were dedicated to
that sort of occupation for which nature has best fitted it. But to effect this
reform in the present instance, Lord Reay must turn out
several hundred families who have lived under him and his fathers for many
generations, and the swords of whose fathers probably won the lands from which
he is now expelling them. He is a good-natured man, I suppose, for Mr
A. says he is hesitating whether he shall not take a more
moderate rise (L.7000 or L.8000), and keep his Highland tenantry. This last war
(before the short peace), he levied a fine fencible corps (the
Reay fencibles), and might have doubled their number.
Wealth is no doubt strength in a country, while all is quiet and governed by
law, but on any altercation or internal commotion, it ceases to be strength,
and is only the means of tempting the strong to plunder the possessors. Much
may be said on both sides.*
“Cape Wrath is a striking point, both from the
dignity of its own appearance, and from the mental associa-
* The whole of the immense district called Lord Reay’s
country—the habitation as far back as history reaches of the clan
Mackay—has passed, since Sir W. Scott’s journal was written,
into the hands of the noble family of Sutherland.
tion of its being the extreme
cape of Scotland, with reference to the north-west. There is no land in the
direct line between this point and America. I saw a pair of large eagles, and
if I had had the rifle-gun might have had a shot, for the birds, when I first
saw them, were perched on a rock within about sixty or seventy yards. They are,
I suppose, little disturbed here, for they showed no great alarm. After the
Commissioners and Mr Stevenson had
examined the headland, with reference to the site of a lighthouse, we strolled
to our boat, and came on board between ten and eleven. Get the boat up upon
deck, and set sail for the Lewis with light winds and a great swell of tide.
Pass a rocky islet called Gousla. Here a fine vessel was lately wrecked; all
her crew perished but one, who got upon the rocks from the boltsprit, and was
afterwards brought off. In front of Cape Wrath are some angry breakers, called
the Staggs; the rocks which occasion them are visible at
low water. The country behind Cape Wrath swells in high sweeping elevations,
but without any picturesque or dignified mountainous scenery. But on sailing
westward a few miles, particularly after doubling a headland called the Stour
of Assint, the coast assumes the true Highland character, being skirted with a
succession of picturesque mountains of every variety of height and outline.
These are the hills of Ross-shire—a waste and thinly-peopled district at this
extremity of the island. We would willingly have learned the names of the most
remarkable, but they are only laid down in the charts by the cant names given
them by mariners, from their appearance, as the Sugar-loaf, and so forth. Our
breeze now increases, and seems steadily favourable, carrying us on with
exhilarating rapidity, at the rate of eight knots an hour, with the romantic
outline of the mainland under our lee-beam, and the dusky shores of the Long
Island beginning to appear ahead. We remain on deck long
after it is dark, watching the phosphoric effects occasioned, or made visible,
by the rapid motion of the vessel, and enlightening her course with a continued
succession of sparks and even flashes of broad light, mingled with the foam
which she flings from her bows and head. A rizard haddock and to bed. Charming
weather all day.
“2lst August, 1814.—Last
night went out like a lamb, but this morning came in like a lion, all roar and
tumult. The wind shifted and became squally; the mingled and confused tides
that run among the Hebrides got us among their eddies, and gave the cutter such
concussions, that, besides reeling at every wave, she trembled from head to
stern, with a sort of very uncomfortable and ominous vibration. Turned out
about three, and went on deck; the prospect dreary enough, as we are beating up
a narrow channel between two dark and disconsolate-looking islands, in a gale
of wind and rain, guided only by the twinkling glimmer of the light on an
island called Ellan Glas.—Go to bed and sleep soundly, notwithstanding the
rough rocking. Great bustle about four; the light-keeper having seen our flag,
comes off to be our pilot, as in duty bound. Asleep again till eight. When I
went on deck, I found we had anchored in the little harbour of Scalpa, upon the
coast of Harris, a place dignified by the residence of Charles Edward in his hazardous attempt to
escape in 1746. An old man, lately alive here, called Donald
Macleod, was his host and temporary protector, and could not,
until his dying hour, mention the distresses of the Adventurer without tears.
From this place, Charles attempted to go to Stornoway; but
the people of the Lewis had taken arms to secure him, under an idea that he was
coming to plunder the country. And although his faithful attendant,
Donald Macleod, induced them by fair words, to lay
aside their purpose, yet
they insisted upon his leaving the island. So the unfortunate Prince was
obliged to return back to Scalpa. He afterwards escaped to South Uist, but was
chased in the passage by Captain
Fergusson’s sloop of war. The harbour seems a little neat
secure place of anchorage. Within a small island, there seems more shelter than
where we are lying; but it is crowded with vessels, part of those whom we saw
in the Long-Hope—so Mr Wilson chose to remain outside. The
ground looks hilly and barren in the extreme; but I can say little for it, as
an incessant rain prevents my keeping the deck. Stevenson and Duff,
accompanied by Marchie, go to examine the
lighthouse on Ellan Glas. Hamilton and
Erskine keep their beds, having
scarce slept last night—and I bring up my journal. The day continues bad, with
little intermission of rain. Our party return with little advantage from their
expedition, excepting some fresh butter from the lighthouse. The harbour of
Scalpa is composed of a great number of little uninhabited islets. The masts of
the vessels at anchor behind them have a good effect. To bed early, to make
amends for last night, with the purpose of sailing for Dunvegan in the Isle of
Skye with daylight.”
CHAPTER VII. DIARY CONTINUED—ISLE OF HARRIS—MONUMENTS OF THE CHIEFS OF MACLEOD—ISLE OF
SKYE—DUNVEGAN CASTLE—LOCH CORRISKIN—MACALLISTER’S CAVE. 1814.
“22d August, 1814.—Sailed
early in the morning from Scalpa Harbour, in order to cross the Minch, or
Channel, for Dunvegan; but the breeze being contrary, we can only creep along
the Harris shore, until we shall gain the advantage of the tide. The east coast
of Harris, as we now see it, is of a character which sets human industry at
utter defiance, consisting of high sterile hills, covered entirely with stones,
with a very slight sprinkling of stunted heather. Within, appear still higher
peaks of mountains. I have never seen any thing more unpropitious, excepting
the southern side of Griban, on the shores of Loch-na-Gaoil, in the Isle of
Mull. We sail along this desolate coast (which exhibits no mark of human
habitation) with the advantage of a pleasant day and a brisk, though not a
favourable gale. Two o’clock—Row ashore to see the
little harbour and village of Rowdill, on the coast of Harris. There is a
decent three-storied house, belonging to the laird, Mr Macleod of the Harris, where we were told two of his female
relations lived. A large vessel had been stranded last year, and two or three
carpenters were about repairing her, but in such a style of Highland laziness
that I suppose she may float next century. The harbour is neat enough, but
wants little more cover to the eastward. The ground, on landing, does not seem altogether so
desolate as from the sea. In the former point of view, we overlook all the
retired glens and crevices which, by infinite address and labour, are rendered
capable of a little cultivation. But few and evil are the patches so cultivated
in Harris, as far as we have seen. Above the house is situated the ancient
church of Rowdill. This pile was unfortunately burned down by accident some
years since, by fire taking to a quantity of wood laid in for fitting it up. It
is a building in the form of a cross, with a rude tower at the eastern end,
like some old English churches. Upon this tower are certain pieces of
sculpture, of a kind the last which one would have expected on a building
dedicated to religious purposes. Some have lately fallen in a storm, but enough
remains to astonish us at the grossness of the architect and the age.
“Within the church are two ancient monuments. The
first, on the right hand of the pulpit, presents the effigy of a warrior
completely armed in plate armour, with his hand on his two-handed broadsword.
His helmet is peaked, with a gorget or upper corslet which seems to be made of
mail. His figure lies flat on the monument, and is in bas relief, of the
natural size. The arch which surmounts this monument is curiously carved with
the figures of the apostles. In the flat space of the wall beneath the arch,
and above the tombstone, are a variety of compartments, exhibiting the arms of
the Macleods, being a galley with the sails spread, a rude
view of Dunvegan Castle, some saints and religious emblems, and a Latin
inscription, of which our time, (or skill) was inadequate to decipher the first
line; but the others announced the tenant of the monument to be Alexander, filiusWillielmi
MacLeod, de Dunvegan, Anno
Dnim.cccc.xxviii. A much older
monument (said also to represent a Laird of Macleod)
lies in the transept, but without any arch over it. It represents the grim
figure of a Highland chief, not in feudal armour like the former, but dressed
in a plaid—(or perhaps a shirt of mail)—reaching down below the knees, with a
broad sort of hem upon its lower extremity. The figure wears a high-peaked open
helmet, or scull-cap, with a sort of tippet of mail attached to it, which falls
over the breast of the warrior, pretty much as women wear a handkerchief or
short shawl. This remarkable figure is bearded most tyrannically, and has one
hand on his long two-handed sword, the other on his dirk, both of which hang at
a broad belt. Another weapon, probably his knife, seems to have been also
attached to the baldric. His feet rest on his two dogs entwined together, and a
similar emblem is said to have supported his head, but is now defaced, as
indeed the whole monument bears marks of the unfortunate fire. A lion is placed
at each end of the stone. Who the hero was whom this martial monument
commemorated, we could not learn. Indeed, our Cicerone was but imperfect. He
chanced to be a poor devil of an excise-officer who had lately made a seizure
of a still upon a neighbouring island, after a desperate resistance. Upon
seeing our cutter, he mistook it, as has often happened to us, for an armed
vessel belonging to the revenue, which the appearance and equipment of the
yacht, and the number of men, make her resemble considerably.* He was much
disappointed when he found we had nothing to do with the tribute to Cæsar,
and begged us not to undeceive the natives, who were so much irritated against
him that he found it necessary to wear a loaded pair of pistols in each pocket,
which he showed to our Master, Wilson, to convince him of
the perilous state in which he found himself while exercising so obnoxious a
duty in the midst of a fierce-tempered people, and at many miles distance from any possible countenance or
assistance. The village of Rowdill consists of Highland huts of the common
construction, i. e. a low circular wall of large stones,
without mortar, deeply sunk in the ground, surmounted by a thatched roof
secured by ropes, without any chimney but a hole in the roof. There may be
forty such houses in the village. We heard that the laird was procuring a
schoolmaster—he of the parish being ten miles distant—and there was a neatness
about the large house which seems to indicate that things are going on well.
Adjacent to the churchyard were two eminences, apparently artificial. Upon one
was fixed a stone, seemingly the staff of a cross; upon another the head of a
cross, with a sculpture of the crucifixion. These monuments (which refer
themselves to Catholic times of course) are popularly called, The Croshlets—crosslets, or little crosses.
“Get on board at five, and stand across the Sound
for Skye with the ebb-tide in our favour. The sunset being delightful, we enjoy
it upon deck, admiring the Sound on each side bounded by islands. That of Skye
lies in the east, with some very high mountains in the centre, and a bold rocky
coast in front, opening up into several lochs, or arms of the sea;—that of Loch
Folliart, near the upper end of which Dunvegan is situated, is opposite to us,
but our breeze has failed us, and the flood-tide will soon set in, which is
likely to carry us to the northward of this object of our curiosity until next
morning. To the west of us lies Harris, with its variegated ridges of
mountains, now clear, distinct, and free from clouds. The sun is just setting
behind the Island of Bernera, of which we see one conical hill. North Uist and
Benbecula continue from Harris to the southerly line of what is called the Long
Island. They are as bold and mountainous, and probably as barren as Harris—worse they cannot be. Unnumbered islets and
holms, each of which has its name and its history, skirt these larger isles,
and are visible in this clear evening as distinct and separate objects, lying
lone and quiet upon the face of the undisturbed and scarce-rippling sea. To our
berths at ten, after admiring the scenery for some time.
“23d August, 1814.—Wake under
the Castle of Dunvegan, in the Loch of Folliart. I had sent a card to the
Laird of Macleod in the morning, who
came off before we were dressed, and carried us to his castle to breakfast. A
part of Dunvegan is very old; ‘its birth tradition notes
not.’ Another large tower was built by the same Alaster
Macleod whose burial-place and monument we saw yesterday at
Rowdill. He had a Gaelic surname, signifying the Hump-backed. Roderick More (knighted by James VI.) erected a long edifice combining these
two ancient towers: and other pieces of building, forming a square, were
accomplished at different times. The whole castle occupies a precipitous mass
of rock overhanging the lake, divided by two or three islands in that place,
which form a snug little harbour under the walls. There is a court-yard looking
out upon the sea, protected by a battery, at least a succession of embrasures,
for only two guns are pointed, and these unfit for service. The ancient
entrance rose up a flight of steps cut in the rock, and passed into this
courtyard through a portal, but this is now demolished. You land under the
castle, and, walking round, find yourself in front of it. This was originally
inaccessible, for a brook coming down on the one side, a chasm of the rocks on
the other, and a ditch in front, made it impervious. But the late
Macleod built a bridge over the stream, and the
present laird is executing an entrance suitable to the character of this
remarkable fortalice, by making a portal between two advanced towers and an outer court, from which
he proposes to throw a drawbridge over to the high rock in front of the castle.
This, if well executed, cannot fail to have a good and characteristic effect.
We were most kindly and hospitably received by the chieftain, his lady, and his sister;* the two last are pretty and accomplished young women,
a sort of persons whom we have not seen for some time; and I was quite as much
pleased with renewing my acquaintance with them as with the sight of a good
field of barley just cut (the first harvest we have seen), not to mention an
extensive young plantation and some middle-aged trees, though all had been
strangers to mine eyes since I left Leith. In the garden—or rather the orchard
which was formerly the garden is a pretty cascade, divided into two branches,
and called Rorie More’s Nurse, because he loved to
be lulled to sleep by the sound of it. The day was rainy, or at least
inconstant, so we could not walk far from the castle. Besides the assistance of
the laird himself, who was most politely and easily attentive, we had that of
an intelligent gentlemanlike clergyman, Mr Suter, minister
of Kilmore, to explain the carte-de-pays. Within the castle we saw a remarkable
drinking-cup, with an inscription dated A.D. 993, which I have described
particularly elsewhere.† I saw also a fairy flag, a pennon of silk, with
something like round red rowan-berries wrought upon it. We also saw the
drinking-horn of Rorie More, holding about three pints
English measure, an ox’s horn tipped with silver, not nearly so large as
Watt of Harden’s bugle. The
rest of the curiosities in the castle are chiefly In-
* Miss Macleod, now Mrs Spencer Perceval.
† See Note, Lord of the Isles, Scott’s Poetical Works,
vol. x. p. 294.
dian, excepting an old dirk and the fragment of a
two-handed sword. We learn that most of the Highland superstitions, even that
of the second-sight, are still in force. Gruagach, a sort of tutelary divinity, often mentioned by
Martin in his History of the Western Islands, has
still his place and credit, but is modernized into a tall man, always a
Lowlander, with a long coat and white waistcoat. Passed a very pleasant day. I
should have said the fairy-flag had three properties. Produced in battle, it
multiplied the numbers of the Macleods—spread on the
nuptial bed, it ensured fertility and lastly, it brought herring into the
loch.*
* The following passage from the last of Scott’sLetters on
Demonology, (written in 1830), refers to the night of this 23d
of August, 1814. He mentions that twice in his life he had experienced the
sensation which the Scotch call eerie; gives a
night-piece of his early youth in the castle of Glammis, which has already
been quoted (ante, voL i. p. 212.); and proceeds
thus:—“Amid such tales of ancient tradition, I had from
Macleod and his lady the
courteous offer of the haunted apartment of the castle, about which, as
a stranger, I might be supposed interested. Accordingly I took
possession of it about the witching hour. Except, perhaps, some
tapestry hangings, and the extreme thickness of the walls, which argued
great antiquity, nothing could have been more comfortable than the
interior of the apartment; but if you looked from the windows, the view
was such as to correspond with the highest tone of superstition. An
autumnal blast, sometimes clear, sometimes driving mist before it,
swept along the troubled billows of the lake, which it occasionally
concealed, and by fits disclosed. The waves rushed in wild disorder on
the shore, and covered with foam the steep pile of rocks, which, rising
from the sea in forms something resembling the human figure, have
obtained the name of Macleod’s Maidens, and, in such a night,
seemed no bad representative of the Norwegian goddesses, called
Choosers of the Slain, or Riders of the Storm. There was something of
the dignity of danger in the scene; for, on a platform beneath the
windows, lay an ancient battery of cannon, which had sometimes been
used against privateers even of late years. The distant scene was a
view of that part of the Quillen mountains which
“24th August, 1814.—This
morning resist with difficulty Macleod’s kind and pressing entreaty to send round the
ship and go to the cave at Airds by land; but our party is too large to be
accommodated without inconvenience, and divisions are always awkward. Walk and
see Macleod’s farm. The plantations seem to thrive
admirably, although I think he hazards planting his trees greatly too tall.
Macleod is a spirited and judicious improver, and if
he does not hurry too fast, cannot fail to be of service to his people. He
seems to think and act much like a chief, without the fanfaronade of the
character. See a female school patronised by Mrs
M. There are about twenty girls, who learn reading, writing, and
spinning; and being compelled to observe habits of cleanliness and neatness
when at school, will probably be the means of introducing them by degrees at
home. The roads around the castle are, generally speaking, very good; some are
old, some made under the operation of the late act.
Macleod says almost all the contractors for these last
roads have failed, being tightly looked after by Government, which I confess I
think very right. If Government is to give relief where a disadvantageous
contract has been engaged in, it is
are called, from their form, Macleod’s
Dining-Tables. The voice of an angry cascade, termed the Nurse of
Rorie Mhor, because that
chief slept best in its vicinity, was heard from time to time
mingling its notes with those of wind and wave. Such was the
haunted room at Dunvegan; and, as such, it well deserved a less
sleepy inhabitant. In the language of Dr Johnson, who has stamped his memory on this
remote place, ‘I looked around me, and wondered that I was
not more affected; but the mind is not at all times equally
ready to be moved.’ In a word, it is necessary to
confess that, of all I heard or saw, the most engaging spectacle
was the comfortable bed in which I hoped to make amends for some
rough nights on shipboard, and where I slept accordingly without
thinking of ghost or goblin, till I was called by my servant in the
morning.”
plain it cannot be refused in similar instances, so that
all calculations of expenses in such operations are at an end. The day being
delightfully fair and warm, we walk up to the Church of Kilmore. In a cottage,
at no great distance, we heard the women singing as they waulked the cloth by rubbing it with their hands and feet, and
screaming all the while in a sort of chorus. At a distance, the sound was wild
and sweet enough, but rather discordant when you approached too near the
performers. In the churchyard (otherwise not remarkable) was a pyramidical
monument erected to the father of the celebrated Simon, Lord Lovat, who was fostered at Dunvegan. It is now
nearly ruinous, and the inscription has fallen down. Return to the castle, take
our luncheon, and go aboard at three—Macleod accompanying
us in proper style with his piper. We take leave of the castle, where we have
been so kindly entertained, with a salute of seven guns. The chief returns
ashore, with his piper playing ‘the Macleods’
gathering,’ heard to advantage along the calm and placid loch,
and dying as it retreated from us.
“The towers of Dunvegan, with the banner which
floated over them in honour of their guests, now showed to great advantage. On
the right were a succession of three remarkable hills, with round flat tops,
popularly called Macleod’s Dining-Tables. Far behind these, in the
interior of the island, arise the much higher and more romantic mountains,
called Quillen, or Cuillin, a name which they have been said to owe to no less
a person than Cuthullin, or Cuchullin, celebrated by Ossian. I ought, I believe, to notice, that Macleod and Mr Suter have
both heard a tacksman of Macleod’s, called
Grant, recite the celebrated Address to the Sun; and another person, whom they named, repeat the
description of Cuchullin’s car. But
all agree as to the gross infidelity of Macpherson as a translator and editor. It ends in the explanation of the Adventures, in
the Cave of Montesinos, afforded to the Knight of La
Mancha, by the ape of Gines de
Passamonte—some are true and some are false. There is little
poetical tradition in this country, yet there should be a great deal,
considering how lately the bards and genealogists existed as a distinct order.
Macleod’shereditary
piper is called MacCrimmon, but the present holder of the
office has risen above his profession. He is an old man, a lieutenant in the
army, and a most capital piper, possessing about 200 tunes and pibrochs, most
of which will probably die with him, as he declines to have any of his sons
instructed in his art. He plays to Macleod and his lady,
but only in the same room, and maintains his minstrel privilege by putting on
his bonnet so soon as he begins to play. These MacCrimmons
formerly kept a college in Skye for teaching the pipe-music.
Macleod’s present piper is of the name, but
scarcely as yet a deacon of his craft. He played every day at dinner. After
losing sight of the Castle of Dunvegan, we open another branch of the loch on
which it is situated, and see a small village upon its distant bank. The
mountains of Quillen continue to form a background to the wild landscape with
their variegated and peaked outline. We approach Dunvegan-head, a bold bluff
cape, where the loch joins the ocean. The weather, hitherto so beautiful that
we had dined on deck en seigneurs, becomes overcast and hazy, with little or no
wind. Laugh and lie down.
“25th August, 1814.—Rise
about eight o’clock, the yacht gliding delightfully along the coast of
Skye with a fair wind and excellent day. On the opposite side lie the islands
of Canna, Rum, and Muick, popularly Muck. On opening the Sound between Rum and
Canna, see a steep circular rock, forming one side of the harbour, on the point
of which we can discern the remains of a tower of small
dimensions, built, it is said, by a King of the Isles to secure a wife of whom
he was jealous. But, as we kept the Skye side of the Sound, we saw little of
these islands but what our spy-glasses could show us; the coast of Skye is
highly romantic, and at the same time displayed a richness of vegetation on the
lower grounds, to which we have hitherto been strangers. We passed three salt
water lochs, or deep embayments, called Loch Bracadale, Loch Eynort, and Loch
Britta—and about eleven o’clock open Loch Scavig. We were now under the
western termination of the high mountains of Quillen, whose weatherbeaten and
serrated peaks we had admired at a distance from Dunvegan. They sunk here upon
the sea, but with the same bold and peremptory aspect which their distant
appearance indicated. They seemed to consist of precipitous sheets of naked
rock, down which the torrents were leaping in a hundred lines of foam. The
tops, apparently inaccessible to human foot, were rent and split into the most
tremendous pinnacles; towards the base of these bare and precipitous crags, the
ground, enriched by the soil washed away from them, is verdant and productive.
Having past within the small isle of Soa, we enter Loch Scavig under the
shoulder of one of these grisly mountains, and observe that the opposite side
of the loch is of a milder character softened down into steep green
declivities. From the depth of the bay advanced a headland of high rocks which
divided the lake into two recesses, from each of which a brook seemed to issue.
Here Macleod had intimated we should
find a fine romantic loch, but we were uncertain up what inlet we should
proceed in search of it. We chose, against our better judgment, the southerly
inlet, where we saw a house which might afford us information. On manning our
boat and rowing ashore, we
observed a hurry among the inhabitants, owing to our being as usual suspected
for king’s men, although, Heaven knows, we have
nothing to do with the revenue but to spend the part of it corresponding to our
equipment. We find that there is a lake adjoining to each branch of the bay,
and foolishly walk a couple of miles to see that next the farm-house, merely
because the honest man seemed jealous of the honour of his own loch, though we
were speedily convinced it was not that which we had been recommended to
examine. It had no peculiar merit excepting from its neighbourhood to a very
high cliff or mountain of precipitous granite; otherwise, the sheet of water
does not equal even Cauldshiels Loch. Returned and re-embarked in our boat, for
our guide shook his head at our proposal to climb over the peninsula which
divides the two bays and the two lakes. In rowing round the headland surprised
at the infinite number of sea-fowl, then busy apparently with a shoal of fish;
at the depth of the bay, find that the discharge from this second lake forms a
sort of waterfall or rather rapid; round this place were assembled hundreds of
trouts and salmon struggling to get up into the fresh water; with a net we
might have had twenty salmon at a haul, and a sailor, with no better hook than
a crooked pin, caught a dish of trouts during our absence.
“Advancing up this huddling and riotous brook, we
found ourselves in a most extraordinary scene; we were surrounded by hills of
the boldest and most precipitous character, and on the margin of a lake which
seemed to have sustained the constant ravages of torrents from these rude
neighbours. The shores consisted of huge layers of naked granite, here and
there intermixed with bogs, and heaps of gravel and sand marking the course of
torrents. Vegetation there was little or none, and the
mountains rose so perpendicularly from the water’s edge, that Borrowdale
is a jest to them. We proceeded about one mile and a half up this deep, dark,
and solitary lake, which is about two miles long, half a mile broad, and, as we
learned, of extreme depth. The vapour which enveloped the mountain ridges
obliged us by assuming a thousand shapes, varying its veils in all sort of
forms, but sometimes clearing off altogether. It is true it made us pay the
penalty by some heavy and downright showers, from the frequency of which, a
Highland boy, whom we brought from the farm, told us the lake was popularly
called the Water Kettle. The proper name is Loch Corriskin, from the deep corrie or hollow in the mountains of Cuillin, which
affords the basin for this wonderful sheet of water. It is as exquisite as a
savage scene, as Loch Katrine is as a scene of stern beauty. After having
penetrated so far as distinctly to observe the termination of the lake, under
an immense mountain which rises abruptly from the head of the waters, we
returned, and often stopped to admire the ravages which storms must have made
in these recesses when all human witnesses were driven to places of more
shelter and security. Stones, or rather large massive fragments of rock of a
composite kind, perfectly different from the granite barriers of the lake, lay
upon the rocky beach in the strangest and most precarious situations, as if
abandoned by the torrents which had borne them down from above; some lay loose
and tottering upon the ledges of the natural rock, with so little security that
the slightest push moved them, though their weight exceeded many tons. These
detached rocks were chiefly what are called plum-pudding stones. Those which
formed the shore were granite. The opposite side of the lake seemed quite
pathless, as a huge mountain, one of the detached ridges of the Quillen, sinks
in a profound and almost
perpendicular precipice down to the water. On the left hand side, which we
traversed, rose a higher and equally inaccessible mountain, the top of which
seemed to contain the crater of an exhausted volcano. I never saw a spot on
which there was less appearance of vegetation of any kind; the eye rested on
nothing but brown and naked crags,* and the rocks on which we walked by the
side of the loch were as bare as the pavement of Cheapside. There are one or
two spots of islets in the loch which seem to bear juniper, or some such low
bushy shrub.
* ‘Rarely human eye has known A scene so stern as that dread lake, With its dark ledge of barren stone. Seems that primeval earthquake’s sway Hath rent a strange and shatter’d way Through the rude bosom of the hill; And that each naked precipice, Sable ravine, and dark abyss, Tells of the outrage still. The wildest glen, but this, can show Some touch of Nature’s genial glow; On high Benmore green mosses grow, And heath-bells bud in deep Glencroe, And copse on Cruchan-Ben; But here above, around, below, On mountain or in glen, Nor tree, nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower, Nor aught of vegetative power, The weary eye may ken; For all is rocks at random thrown, Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone, As if were here denied The summer’s sun, the spring’s sweet dew, That clothe with many a varied hue The bleakest mountain-side.’ Lord of the Isles, iii. 14.
“Returned from our extraordinary walk and went on
board. During dinner, our vessel quitted Loch Scavig, and having doubled its
southern cape, opened the bay or salt-water Loch of Sleapin. There went again
on shore to visit the late discovered and much celebrated cavern, called
Macallister’s Cave. It opens at the end of a deep ravine running upward
from the sea, and the proprietor, Mr Macallister of Strath
Aird, finding that visiters injured it, by breaking and carrying away the
stalactites with which it abounds, has secured this cavern by an eight or nine
feet wall, with a door. Upon enquiring for the key, we found it was three miles
up the loch at the laird’s house. It was now late, and to stay until a
messenger had gone and returned three miles, was not to be thought of, any more
than the alternative of going up the loch and lying there all night. We
therefore, with regret, resolved to scale the wall, in which attempt, by the
assistance of a rope and some ancient acquaintance with orchard breaking, we
easily succeeded. The first entrance to this celebrated cave is rude and
unpromising, but the light of the torches with which we were provided, is soon
reflected from roof, floor, and walls, which seem as if they were sheeted with
marble, partly smooth, partly rough with frost-work and rustic ornaments, and
partly wrought into statuary. The floor forms a steep and difficult ascent, and
might be fancifully compared to a sheet of water, which, while it rushed
whitening and foaming down a declivity, had been suddenly arrested and
consolidated by the spell of an enchanter. Upon attaining the summit of this
ascent, the cave descends with equal rapidity to the brink of a pool of the
most limpid water, about four or five yards broad. There opens beyond this pool
a portal arch, with beautiful white chasing upon the sides, which pro-mises a continuation
of the cave. One of our sailors swam across, for there was no other mode of
passing, and informed us (as indeed we partly saw by the light he carried),
that the enchantment of Macallister’s cave terminated with this portal,
beyond which there was only a rude ordinary cavern speedily choked with stones
and earth. But the pool, on the brink of which we stood, surrounded by the most
fanciful mouldings in a substance resembling white marble, and distinguished by
the depth and purity of its waters, might be the bathing grotto of a Naiad. I
think a statuary might catch beautiful hints from the fanciful and romantic
disposition of the stalactites. There is scarce a form or group that an active
fancy may not trace among the grotesque ornaments which have been gradually
moulded in this cavern by the dropping of the calcareous water, and its
hardening into petrifactions; many of these have been destroyed by the
senseless rage of appropriation among recent tourists, and the grotto has lost
(I am informed), through the smoke of torches, much of that vivid silver tint
which was originally one of its chief distinctions. But enough of beauty
remains to compensate for all that may be lost. As the easiest mode of return,
I slid down the polished sheet of marble which forms the rising ascent, and
thereby injured my pantaloons in a way which my jacket is ill calculated to
conceal. Our wearables, after a month’s hard service, begin to be frail,
and there are daily demands for repairs. Our eatables also begin to assume a
real nautical appearance—no soft bread—milk a rare commodity—and those
gentlemen most in favour with John Peters, the steward,
who prefer salt beef to fresh. To make amends, we never hear of sea-sickness,
and the good-humour and harmony of the party continue uninterrupted. When we
left the cave we carried off two grandsons of Mr
Macallister’s, re-markably fine
boys; and Erskine, who may be called
L’ami des Enfans,
treated them most kindly, and showed them all the curiosities in the vessel,
causing even the guns to be fired for their amusement, besides filling their
pockets with almonds and raisins. So that, with a handsome letter of apology, I
hope we may erase any evil impression Mr Macallister may
adopt from our storming the exterior defences of his cavern. After having sent
them ashore in safety, stand out of the bay with little or no wind, for the
opposite island of Egg.”
CHAPTER VIII. DIARY CONTINUED—CAVE OF EGG—IONA—STAFFA—DUN-STAFFNAGE—DUNLUCE
CASTLE—GIANTS’ CAUSEWAY—ISLE OF ARRAN, ETC.—DIARY CONCLUDED, AUGUST—SEPTEMBER, 1814.
“26th August, 1814.—At seven
this morning were in the Sound which divides the Isle of Rum from that of Egg.
Rum is rude, barren and mountainous; Egg, although hilly and rocky, and
traversed by one remarkable ridge called Scuir-Egg, has, in point of soil, a
much more promising appearance. Southward of both lies Muick, or Muck, a low
and fertile island, and though the least, yet probably the most valuable of the
three. Caverns being still the order of the day, we man the boat and row along
the shore of Egg, in quest of that which was the memorable scene of a horrid
feudal vengeance. We had rounded more than half the island, admiring the
entrance of many a bold natural cave which its rocks exhibit, but without
finding that which we sought, until we procured a guide. This noted cave has a
very narrow entrance, through which one can hardly creep on knees and hands. It
rises steep and lofty within, and runs into the bowels of the rock to the depth
of 255 measured feet. The height at the entrance may be about three feet, but
rises to eighteen or twenty, and the breadth may vary in the same proportion.
The rude and stony bottom of this cave is strewed with the bones of men, women, and children, being the sad relics of the ancient
inhabitants of the island, 200 in number, who were slain on the following
occasion:—The Macdonalds of the Isle of Egg, a people
dependent on Clanranald, had done some injury to the
Laird of Macleod. The tradition of the isle says, that
it was by a personal attack on the chieftain, in which his back was broken; but
that of the other isles bears that the injury was offered to two or three of
the Macleods, who, landing upon Egg and using some freedom
with the young women, were seized by the islanders, bound hand and foot, and
turned adrift in a boat, which the winds and waves safely conducted to Skye. To
avenge the offence given, Macleod sailed with such a body
of men as rendered resistance hopeless. The natives, fearing his vengeance,
concealed themselves in this cavern, and after strict search, the Macleods went
on board their galleys, after doing what mischief they could, concluding the
inhabitants had left the isle. But next morning they espied from their vessel a
man upon the island, and, immediately landing again, they traced his retreat,
by means of a light snow on the ground, to this cavern.
Macleod then summoned the subterraneous garrison, and
demanded that the individuals who had offended him, should be delivered up.
This was peremptorily refused. The chieftain thereupon caused his people to
divert the course of a rill of water, which, falling over the, mouth of the
cave, would have prevented his purposed vengeance. He then kindled at the
entrance of the cavern a huge fire, and maintained it until all within were
destroyed by suffocation. The date of this dreadful deed must have been recent,
if one can judge from the fresh appearance of those relics. I brought off, in
spite of the prejudices of our sailors, a skull, which seems that of a young
woman.
“Before re-embarking, we visit another cave opening
to the sea, but of a character widely different, being a large open vault as
high as that of a cathedral, and running back a great way into the rock at the
same height; the height and width of the opening give light to the whole. Here,
after 1745, when the Catholic priests were scarcely tolerated, the priest of
Egg used to perform the Romish service. A huge ledge of rock, almost half-way
up one side of the vault, served for altar and pulpit; and the appearance of a
priest and Highland congregation in such an extraordinary place of worship,
might have engaged the pencil of Salvator. Most of the inhabitants of Egg are still Catholics, and
laugh at their neighbours of Rum, who, having been converted by the cane of
their chieftain, are called Protestants of the yellow
stick. The Presbyterian minister and Catholic priest live upon this
little island on very good terms. The people here were much irritated against
the men of a revenue vessel who had seized all the stills, &c., in the
neighbouring Isle of Muck, with so much severity as to take even the
people’s bedding. We had been mistaken for some time for this obnoxious
vessel. Got on board about two o’clock, and agreed to stand over for
Coll, and to be ruled by the wind as to what was next to be done. Bring up my
journal.
“27th August, 1814.—The wind,
to which we resigned ourselves, proves exceedingly tyrannical, and blows
squally the whole night, which, with the swell of the Atlantic, now unbroken by
any islands to windward, proves a means of great combustion in the cabin. The
dishes and glasses in the steward’s cupboards become
locomotive—portmanteaus and writing-desks are more active than necessary—it is
scarce possible to keep one’s self within bed, and impossible to stand
upright if you rise. Having crept upon deck about four in the morn-ing, I find we are beating to windward off the Isle of
Tyree, with the determination on the part of Mr
Stevenson, that his constituents should visit a reef of rocks
called Skerry Vhor, where he thought it would be
essential to have a lighthouse. Loud remonstrances on the part of the
Commissioners, who one and all declare they will subscribe to his opinion,
whatever it may be, rather than continue this infernal buffeting. Quiet
perseverance on the part of Mr S., and great kicking,
bouncing, and squabbling upon that of the Yacht, who seems to like the idea of
Skerry Vhor as little as the Commissioners. At length, by dint of exertion,
come in sight of this long ridge of rocks (chiefly under water), on which the
tide breaks in a most tremendous style. There appear a few low broad rocks at
one end of the reef, which is about a mile in length. These are never entirely
under water, though the surf dashes over them. To go through all the forms,
Hamilton, Duff, and I resolve to land upon these bare rocks in company
with Mr Stevenson. Pull through a very heavy swell with
great difficulty, and approach a tremendous surf dashing over black pointed
rocks. Our rowers, however, get the boat into a quiet creek between two rocks,
where we contrive to land well wetted. I saw nothing remarkable in my way,
excepting several seals, which we might have shot, but, in the doubtful
circumstances of the landing, we did not care to bring guns. We took possession
of the rock in name of the Commissioners, and generously bestowed our own great
names on its crags and creeks. The rock was carefully measured by Mr
S. It will be a most desolate position for a lighthouse—the Bell
Rock and Eddystone a joke to it, for the nearest land is the wild island of
Tyree, at fourteen miles’ distance. So much for the Skerry Vhor.
“Came on board proud of our achievement; and, to the great delight of all parties, put
the ship before the wind, and run swimmingly down for Iona. See a large
square-rigged vessel, supposed an American. Reach Iona about five
o’clock. The inhabitants of the isle of Columba, understanding their
interest as well as if they had been Deal boatmen, charged two guineas for
pilotage, which Captain W. abridged into fifteen
shillings, too much for ten minutes’ work. We soon got on shore, and
landed in the bay of Martyrs, beautiful for its white sandy beach. Here all
dead bodies are still landed, and laid for a time upon a small rocky eminence,
called the Sweyne, before they are interred. Iona, the last time I saw it,
seemed to me to contain the most wretched people I had any where seen. But
either they have got better since I was here, or my eyes, familiarized with the
wretchedness of Zetland and the Harris, are less shocked with that of Iona.
Certainly their houses are better than either, and the appearance of the people
not worse. This little fertile isle contains upwards of 400 inhabitants, all
living upon small farms, which they divide and subdivide as their families
increase, so that the country is greatly over-peopled, and in some danger of a
famine in case of a year of scarcity. Visit the nunnery and Reilig Oran, or
burial-place of St Oran, but the night coming on we return
on board.
“28th August, 1814.—Carry our
breakfast ashore—take that repast in the house of Mr
Maclean, the schoolmaster and cicerone of the island—and resume
our investigation of the ruins of the cathedral and the cemetery. Of these
monuments, more than of any other, it may be said with propriety, ‘You never tread upon them but you set Your feet upon some ancient history.’ I do not mean to attempt a description of what is so well-known as the
ruins of Iona. Yet I think it has been as yet
inadequately performed, for the vast number of carved tombs containing the
reliques of the great, exceeds credibility. In general, even in the most noble
churches, the number of the vulgar dead exceed in all proportion the few of
eminence who are deposited under monuments. Iona is in all respects the
reverse; until lately the inhabitants of the isle did not presume to mix their
vulgar dust with that of chiefs, reguli, and abbots. The number, therefore, of
carved and inscribed tombstones is quite marvellous, and I can easily credit
the story told by Sacheverell, who
assures us that 300 inscriptions had been collected, and were lost in the
troubles of the 17th century. Even now many more might be deciphered than have
yet been made public, but the rustic step of the peasants and of Sassenach
visitants is fast destroying these faint memorials of the valiant of the isles.
A skilful antiquary remaining here a week, and having (or assuming) the power
of raising the half-sunk monuments, might make a curious collection. We could
only gaze and grieve; yet had the day not been Sunday, we would have brought
our seamen ashore, and endeavoured to have raised some of these monuments. The
celebrated ridges called Jomaire na’n
Righrean, or Graves of the Kings, can now scarce be said
to exist, though their site is still pointed out. Undoubtedly, the thirst of
spoil, and the frequent custom of burying treasures with the ancient princes,
occasioned their early violation; nor am I any sturdy believer in their being
regularly ticketed off by inscriptions into the tombs of the Kings of Scotland,
of Ireland, of Norway, and so forth. If such inscriptions ever existed, I
should deem them the work of some crafty bishop or abbot, for the credit of his
diocese or convent. Macbeth is said to
have been the last King of Scotland here buried; sixty preceded him, all
doubtless as powerful in their day, but now un-known—carent quia vate
sacro. A few weeks’ labour of Shakspeare, an obscure player, has done more
for the memory of Macbeth than all the gifts, wealth, and
monuments of this cemetery of princes have been able to secure to the rest of
its inhabitants. It also occurred to me in Iona (as it has on many similar
occasions) that the traditional recollections concerning the monks themselves
are wonderfully faint, contrasted with the beautiful and interesting monuments
of architecture which they have left behind them. In Scotland particularly, the
people have frequently traditions wonderfully vivid of the persons and
achievements of ancient warriors, whose towers have long been levelled with the
soil. But of the monks of Melrose, Kelso, Aberbrothock, Iona, &c. &c.
&c., they can tell nothing but that such a race existed, and inhabited the
stately ruins of these monasteries. The quiet, slow, and uniform life of those
recluse beings, glided on, it may be, like a dark and silent stream, fed from
unknown resources, and vanishing from the eye, without leaving any marked trace
of its course. The life of the chieftain was a mountain torrent thundering over
rock and precipice, which, less deep and profound in itself, leaves on the
minds of the terrified spectators those deep impressions of awe and wonder
which are most readily handed down to posterity.
“Among the various monuments exhibited at Iona, is
one where a Maclean lies in the same grave with one of the
Macfies or Macduffies of
Colonsay, with whom he had lived in alternate friendship and enmity during
their lives. ‘He lies above him during death,’ said one of
Maclean’s followers, as his chief was interred,
‘as he was above him during life.’ There is a very
ancient monument lying among those of the Macleans, but
perhaps more ancient than any of them; it has a knight riding on horseback, and
behind him a minstrel playing on a harp; this is
conjectured to be Reginald Macdonald of the Isles, but
there seems no reason for disjoining him from his kindred who sleep in the
cathedral. A supposed ancestor of the Stewarts, called
Paul Pearson, or Paul the
purse-bearer (treasurer to the King of Scotland), is said to lie
under a stone near the Lords of the Isles. Most of the monuments engraved by
Pennant are still in the same state
of preservation, as are the few ancient crosses which are left. What a sight
Iona must have been, when 360 crosses, of the same size and beautiful
workmanship, were ranked upon the little rocky ridge of eminences which form
the background to the cathedral! Part of the tower of the cathedral has fallen
since I was here. It would require a better architect than I am, to say any
thing concerning the antiquity of these ruins, but I conceive those of the
nunnery and of the Reilig nan Oran,
or Oran’s chapel, are decidedly the most ancient.
Upon the cathedral and buildings attached to it, there are marks of repairs at
different times, some of them of a late date, being obviously designed not to
enlarge the buildings, but to retrench them. We take a reluctant leave of Iona,
and go on board.
“The haze and dullness of the atmosphere seem to
render it dubious if we can proceed, as we intended, to Staffa to-day for mist
among these islands is rather unpleasant. Erskine reads prayers on deck to all hands, and introduces a
very apt allusion to our being now in sight of the first Christian Church from
which Revelation was diffused over Scotland and all its islands. There is a
very good form of prayer for the Lighthouse Service, composed by the Rev. Mr Brunton.* A pleasure vessel lies under
our lee from Belfast, with an Irish
* The Rev. Alexander
Brunton, D.D., now (1836) Professor of Oriental
Languages in the University of Edinburgh.
party related to Macniel of Colonsay. The haze is fast
degenerating into downright rain, and that right heavy—verifying the words of
Collins— ‘And thither where beneath the showery west The mighty Kings of three fair realms are laid.’ After dinner, the weather being somewhat cleared, sailed for Staffa, and
took boat. The surf running heavy up between the island and the adjacent rock,
called Booshala, we landed at a creek near the Cormorant’s cave. The mist
now returned so thick as to hide all view of Iona, which was our land-mark; and
although Duff, Stevenson, and I, had been formerly on the
isle, we could not agree upon the proper road to the cave. I engaged myself,
with Duff and Erskine, in a clamber
of great toil and danger, and which at length brought me to the Cannon-ball, as they call a round granite stone moved by
the sea up and down in a groove of rock, which it has worn for itself, with a
noise resembling thunder. Here I gave up my research, and returned to my
companions, who had not been more fortunate. As night was now falling, we
resolved to go aboard and postpone the adventure of the enchanted cavern until
next day. The yacht came to an anchor with the purpose of remaining off the
island all night, but the hardness of the ground, and the weather becoming
squally, obliged us to return to our safer mooring at Y-Columb-Kill.
“29th August, 1814.—Night
squally and rainy—morning ditto—we weigh, however, and return toward Staffa,
and, very happily, the day clears as we approach the isle. As we ascertained
the situation of the cave, I shall only make this memorandum, that when the
weather will serve, the best landing is to the lee of Booshala, a little
conical islet or rock, composed of basaltic columns placed in an oblique or
sloping position. In this way, you land at once on the
flat causeway, formed by the heads of truncated pillars, which leads to the
cave. But if the state of tide renders it impossible to land under Booshala,
then take one of the adjacent creeks; in which case, keeping to the left hand
along the top of the ledge of rocks which girdles in the isle, you find a
dangerous and precipitous descent to the causeway aforesaid, from the table.
Here we were under the necessity of towing our Commodore, Hamilton, whose gallant heart never fails him,
whatever the tenderness of his toes may do. He was successfully lowered by a
rope down the precipice, and proceeding along the flat terrace or causeway
already mentioned, we reached the celebrated cave. I am not sure whether I was
not more affected by this second, than by the first view of it. The stupendous
columnar side walls—the depth and strength of the ocean with which the cavern
is filled—the variety of tints formed by stalactites dropping and petrifying
between the pillars, and resembling a sort of chasing of yellow or
cream-coloured marble filling the interstices of the roof—the corresponding
variety below, where the ocean rolls over a red, and in some places, a
violet-coloured rock, the basis of the basaltic pillars—the dreadful noise of
those august billows so well corresponding with the grandeur of the scene—are
all circumstances elsewhere unparalleled. We have now seen in our voyage the
three grandest caverns in Scotland, Smowe, Macallister’s cave, and
Staffa; so that, like the Troglodytes of yore, we may be supposed to know
something of the matter. It is, however, impossible to compare scenes of
natures so different, nor, were I compelled to assign a preference to any of
the three, could I do it but with reference to their distinct characters, which
might affect different individuals in different degrees. The characteristic of
the Smowe cave may in this case
be called the terrific, for the difficulties which oppose the stranger are of a
nature so uncommonly wild as, for the first time at least, convey an impression
of terror with which the scenes to which he is introduced fully correspond. On
the other hand, the dazzling whiteness of the incrustations in
Macallister’s cave, the elegance of the entablature, the beauty of its
limpid pool, and the graceful dignity of its arch, render its leading features
those of severe and chastened beauty. Staffa, the third of these subterraneous
wonders, may challenge sublimity as its principal characteristic. Without the
savage gloom of the Smowe cave, and investigated with more apparent ease,
though, perhaps, with equal real danger, the stately regularity of its columns
forms a contrast to the grotesque imagery of Macallister’s cave,
combining at once the sentiments of grandeur and beauty. The former is,
however, predominant, as it must necessarily be in any scene of the kind.
“We had scarce left Staffa when the wind and rain
returned. It was Erskine’s object
and mine, to dine at Torloisk on Loch Tua, the seat of my valued friend
Mrs Maclean Clephane, and her
accomplished daughters. But in going up Loch Tua between Ulva and Mull with
this purpose, ‘So thick was the mist on the ocean green, Nor cape nor headland could be seen.’ It was late before we came to anchor in a small bay presented by the
little island of Gometra, which may be regarded as a continuation of Ulva. We
therefore dine aboard, and after dinner, Erskine and I
take the boat and row across the loch under a heavy rain. We could not see the
house of Torloisk, so very thick was the haze, and we were a good deal puzzled
how and where to achieve a landing; at length, espying a cart-road, we resolved to trust to its guidance, as we knew we
must be near the house. We therefore went ashore with our servants,
à la bonne aventure,
under a drizzling rain. This was soon a matter of little consequence, for the
necessity of crossing a swollen brook wetted me considerably, and
Erskine, whose foot slipped, most completely. In wet
and weary plight we reached the house after a walk of a mile, in darkness,
dirt, and rain, and it is hardly necessary to say, that the pleasure of seeing
our friends soon banished all recollection of our unpleasant voyage and
journey.
“30th August, 1814.—The rest
of our friends come ashore by invitation, and breakfast with the ladies, whose
kindness would fain have delayed us for a few days, and at last condescended to
ask for one day only—but even this could not be, our time wearing short.
Torloisk is finely situated upon the coast of Mull, facing Staffa. It is a good
comfortable house, to which Mrs Clephane
has made some additions. The grounds around have been dressed, so as to smooth
their ruggedness, without destroying the irregular and wild character peculiar
to the scene and country. In this, much taste has been displayed. At Torloisk,
as at Dunvegan, trees grow freely and rapidly, and the extensive plantations
formed by Mrs C. serve to show that nothing but a little
expense and patience on the part of the proprietors, with attention to planting
in proper places at first, and in keeping up fences afterward, are awanting to
remove the reproach of nakedness so often thrown upon the Western Isles. With
planting comes shelter, and the proper allotment and division of fields. With
all this Mrs Clephane is busied, and, I trust,
successfully; I am sure, actively and usefully. Take leave of my fair friends,
with regret that I cannot prolong my stay for a day or two. When we come on
board, we learn that Staffa-Macdonald is just come to his house of Ulva; this is a sort of
unpleasant dilemma, for we cannot now go there without some neglect towards
Mrs Maclean Clephane; and, on the other hand, from his
habits with all of us, he may be justly displeased with our quitting his very
threshold without asking for him. However, upon the whole matter, and being
already under weigh, we judged it best to work out of the loch, and continue
our purpose of rounding the northern extremity of Mull, and then running down
the Sound between Mull and the mainland. We had not long pursued our voyage
before we found it was like to be a very slow one. The wind fell away entirely,
and after repeated tacks we could hardly clear the extreme north-western point
of Mull by six o’clock—which must have afforded amusement to the ladies
whose hospitable entreaties we had resisted, as we were almost all the while
visible from Torloisk. A fine evening, but scarce a breath of wind.
“31st August, 1814.—Went on
deck between three and four in the morning, and found the vessel almost
motionless in a calm sea, scarce three miles advanced on her voyage. We had,
however, rounded the northwestern side of Mull, and were advancing between the
north-eastern side and the rocky and wild shores of Ardnamurchan on the
mainland of Scotland. Astern were visible in bright moonlight the distant
mountains of Rum; yet nearer, the remarkable ridge in the Isle of Egg, called
Scuir-Egg; and nearest of all the low isle of Muick. After enjoying this
prospect for some time, returned to my berth. Rise before eight—a delightful
day, but very calm, and the little wind there is decidedly against us. Creeping
on slowly, we observe, upon the shore of Ardnamurchan, a large old castle,
called Mingary. It appears to be surrounded with a very high wall, forming a
kind of polygon, in order to adapt itself to the angles
of a precipice overhanging the sea, on which the castle is founded. Within or
beyond the wall, and probably forming part of an inner court, I observed a
steep roof and windows, probably of the 17th century. The whole, as seen with a
spyglass, seems ruinous. As we proceed, we open on the left hand Loch Sunart,
running deep into the mainland, crossed by distant ridges of rocks, and
terminating apparently among the high mountains above Strontian. On the right
hand we open the Sound of Mull, and pass the Bloody Bay, which acquired that
name from a desperate battle fought between an ancient Lord of the Isles and
his son. The latter was assisted by the M‘Leans of
Mull, then in the plenitude of their power, but was defeated.
This was a seafight; gallies being employed on each side. It has bequeathed a
name to a famous pibroch.
“Proceeding southward, we open the beautiful bay of
Tobermory, or Mary’s Well. The mouth of this fine natural roadstead is
closed by an isle called Colvay, having two passages, of which only one, the
northerly, is passable for ships. The bay is surrounded by steep hills, covered
with copsewood, through which several brooks seek the sea in a succession of
beautiful cascades. The village has been established as a fishing station by
the Society for British Fisheries. The houses along the quay are two and three
stories high, and well built; the feuars paying to the Society sixpence per
foot of their line of front. On the top of a steep bank, rising above the first
town, runs another line of second-rate cottages, which pay fourpence per foot;
and behind are huts, much superior to the ordinary sheds of the country, which
pay only twopence per foot. The town is all built upon a regular plan, laid
down by the Society. The new part is reasonably clean, and the old not
unreasonably dirty. We landed at an excellent quay, which is not yet finished,
and found the
little place looked thriving and active. The people were getting in their
patches of corn; and the shrill voices of the children, attending their parents
in the field, and loading the little ponies which are used in transporting the
grain, formed a chorus not disagreeable to those whom it reminds of similar
sounds at home. The praise of comparative cleanliness does not extend to the
lanes around Tobermory, in one of which I had nearly been effectually bogged.
But the richness of the round steep green knolls, clothed with copse, and
glancing with cascades, and a pleasant peep at a small fresh-water loch
embosomed among them—the view of the bay, surrounded and guarded by the island
of Colvay—the gliding of two or three vessels in the more distant Sound—and the
row of the gigantic Ardnamurchan mountains closing the scene to the north,
almost justify the eulogium of Sacheverel, who, in 1688, declared the bay of Tobermory might
equal any prospect in Italy. It is said that Sacheverel
made some money by weighing up the treasures lost in the Florida, a vessel of the Spanish Armada, which was wrecked in the
harbour. He himself affirms, that though the use of diving-bells was at first
successful, yet the attempt was afterwards disconcerted by bad weather.
“Tobermory takes its name from a spring dedicated
to the Virgin, which was graced by a chapel; but no vestiges remain of the
chapel, and the spring rises in the middle of a swamp, whose depth and dirt
discouraged the nearer approach of Protestant pilgrims. Mr Stevenson, whose judgment is
unquestionable, thinks that the village should have been built on the island
called Colvay, and united to the continent by a key, or causeway, built along
the southermost channel, which is very shallow. By this means the people would
have been much nearer the fishings, than retired into the depth of the bay.
“About three o’clock we get on board, and a
brisk and favourable breeze arises which carries us smoothly down the Sound. We
soon pass Arros, with its fragment of a castle, behind which is the house of
Mr Maxwell (an odd name for this country), chamberlain
to the Duke of Argyle, which reminds me of
much kindness and hospitality received from him and Mr
Stewart, the sheriff-substitute, when I was formerly in Mull. On
the shore of Morven, on the opposite side, pass the ruins of a small fortalice,
called Donagail, situated as usual on a precipice overhanging the sea. The
‘woody Morven,’ though the quantity of shaggy diminutive
copse, which springs up where it obtains any shelter, still shows that it must
once have merited the epithet, is now, as visible from the Sound of Mull, a
bare country—of which the hills towards the sea have a slope much resembling
those in Selkirkshire, and accordingly afford excellent pasture, and around
several farm-houses well cultivated and improved fields. I think I observe
considerable improvement in husbandry, even since I was here last; but there is
a difference in coming from Oban and Cape Wrath.—Open Loch Alline, a beautiful
salt-water lake, with a narrow outlet to the Sound. It is surrounded by round
hills, sweetly fringed with green copse below, and one of which exhibits to the
spy-glass ruins of a castle. There is great promise of beauty in its interior,
but we cannot see every thing. The land on the southern bank of the entrance
slopes away into a sort of promontory, at the extremity of which are the very
imperfect ruins of the castle of Ardtornish, to which the Lords of the Isles
summoned parliaments, and from whence one of them dated a treaty with the Crown
of England as an independent Prince. These ruins are seen to most advantage
from the south, where they are brought into a line with one high fragment towards the
west predominating over the rest. The shore of the promontory on the south side
becomes rocky, and when it slopes round to the west rises into a very bold and
high precipitous bank, skirting the bay on the western side, partly cliffy,
partly covered with brushwood, with various streams dashing over it from a
great height. Above the old castle of Ardtornish, and about where the
promontory joins the land, stands the present mansion, a neat white-washed
house, with several well enclosed and well cultivated fields surrounding it.
“The high and dignified character assumed by the
shores of Morven after leaving Ardtornish, continues till we open the Loch
Linnhe, the commencement of the great chain of inland lakes running up to
Fort-William, and which it is proposed to unite with Inverness by means of the
Caledonian Canal. The wisdom of the plan adopted in this national measure seems
very dubious. Had the canal been of more moderate depth, and the burdens
imposed upon passing vessels less expensive, there can be no doubt that the
coasters, sloops, and barks, would have carried on a great trade by means of
it. But the expense and plague of locks, &c. may prevent these humble
vessels from taking this abridged voyage, while ships above twenty or thirty
tons will hesitate to engage themselves in the intricacies of a long lake
navigation, exposed, without room for manoeuvring, to all the sudden squalls of
the mountainous country. Ahead of us, in the mouth of Loch Linnhe, lies the low
and fertile isle of Lismore, formerly the appanage of the Bishops of the Isles,
who, as usual, knew where to choose church patrimony. The coast of the Mull, on
the right hand of the Sound, has a black, rugged, and unimproved character.
Above Scallister bay are symptoms of improvement. Moon-light has risen upon us as we pass Duart castle, now an indistinct mass upon
its projecting promontory. It was garrisoned for Government so late as 1780,
but is now ruinous. We see, at about a mile’s distance, the fatal shelve
on which Duart exposed the daughter of
Argyle, on which Miss Baillie’s play of the Family Legend is founded,
but now, ‘Without either sound or sign of their shock, The waves roll over the Lady’s rock.’ The placid state of the sea is very different from what I have seen it,
when six stout rowers could scarce give a boat headway through the conflicting
tides. These fits of violence so much surprised and offended a body of the
Camerons, who were bound upon some expedition to Mull, and had been accustomed
to the quietness of lake-navigation, that they drew their dirks, and began to
stab the waves—from which popular tale this run of tide is called the Men of Lochaber. The weather being delightfully
moderate, we agree to hover hereabout all night, or anchor under the Mull
shore, should it be necessary, in order to see Dunstaffnage to-morrow morning.
The isle of Kerrera is now in sight, forming the bay of Oban. Beyond lie the
varied and magnificent summits of the chain of mountains bordering Loch Linnhe,
as well as those between Loch Awe and Loch Etive, over which the summit of Ben
Cruachan is proudly prominent. Walk on deck, admiring this romantic prospect
until ten; then below, and turn in.
“1st September, 1814.—Rise
betwixt six and seven, and having discreetly secured our breakfast, take boat
for the old castle of Dunstaffnage, situated upon a promontory on the side of
Loch Linnhe and near to Loch Etive. Nothing could exceed the beauty of the day
and of the prospect. We coasted the low, large, and fertile isle of Lismore, where a
Catholic Bishop, Chisholm, has
established a seminary of young men intended for priests, and what is a better
thing, a valuable lime-work. Report speaks well of the lime, but indifferently
of the progress of the students. Tacking to the shore of the loch, we land at
Dunstaffnage, once, it is said, the seat of the Scottish monarchy, till success
over the Picts and Saxons transferred their throne to Scoone, Dumfermline, and
at length to Edinburgh. The Castle is still the King’s (nominally), and
the Duke of Argyle (nominally also), is hereditary keeper.
But the real right of property is in the family of the depute-keeper, to which
it was assigned as an appanage, the first possessor being a natural son of an
Earl of Argyle. The shell of the castle, for little
more now remains, bears marks of extreme antiquity. It is square in form, with
round towers at three of the angles, and is situated upon a lofty precipice,
carefully scarped on all sides to render it perpendicular. The entrance is by a
staircase, which conducts you to a wooden landing-place in front of the
portal-door. This landing-place could formerly be raised at pleasure, being of
the nature of a drawbridge. When raised, the place was inaccessible. You pass
under an ancient arch, with a low vault (being the porter’s lodge) on the
right hand, and flanked by loopholes, for firing upon any hostile guest who
might force his passage thus far. This admits you into the inner-court, which
is about eighty feet square. It contains two mean-looking buildings, about
sixty or seventy years old; the ancient castle having been consumed by fire in
1715. It is said that the nephew of the proprietor was the incendiary. We went
into the apartments, and found they did not exceed the promise of the exterior;
but they admitted us to walk upon the battlements of the old castle, which
displayed a most splendid prospect. Beneath, and far projected into the loch,
were seen the woods and houses of Campbell of Lochnell. A little summer-house,
upon an eminence, belonging to this wooded bank, resembles an ancient monument.
On the right, Loch Etive, after pouring its waters like a furious cataract over
a strait called Connell-ferry, comes between the castle and a round island
belonging to its demesne, and nearly insulates the situation. In front is a low
rocky eminence on the opposite side of the arm, through which Loch Etive flows
into Loch Linnhe. Here was situated Beregenium, once, it
is said, a British capital city; and, as our informant told us, the largest
market-town in Scotland. Of this splendour are no remains but a few trenches
and excavations, which the distance did not allow us to examine. The ancient
masonry of Dunstaffnage is mouldering fast under time and neglect. The
foundations are beginning to decay, and exhibit gaps between the rock and the
wall; and the battlements are become ruinous. The inner court is encumbered
with ruins. A hundred pounds or two would put this very ancient fortress in a
state of preservation for ages, but I fear this is not to be expected. The
stumps of large trees, which had once shaded the vicinity of the castle, gave
symptoms of decay in the family of Dunstaffnage. We were told of some ancient
spurs and other curiosities preserved In the castle, but they were locked up.
In the vicinity of the castle is a chapel which had once been elegant, but by
the building up of windows, &c., is now heavy enough. I have often observed
that the means adopted in Scotland for repairing old buildings are generally as
destructive of their grace and beauty, as if that had been the express object.
Unfortunately most churches, particularly, have gone through both stages of
destruction, Laving been first repaired by the building-up of the beautiful
shafted windows, and then the roof being suffered to fall in, they became ruins
indeed, but without any
touch of the picturesque farther than their massive walls and columns may
afford. Near the chapel of Dunstaifnage is a remarkable echo,
“Reimbarked, and rowing about a mile and a half or
better along the shore of the lake, again landed under the ruins of the old
castle of Dunolly. This fortress, which, like that of Dunstaffnage, forms a
marked feature in this exquisite landscape, is situated on a bold and
precipitous promontory overhanging the lake. The principal part of the ruins
now remaining is a square tower or keep of the ordinary size, which had been
the citadel of the castle; but fragments of other buildings, overgrown with
ivy, show that Dunolly had once been a place of considerable importance. These
had enclosed a courtyard, of which the keep probably formed one side, the
entrance being by a very steep ascent from the land side, which had formerly
been cut across by a deep moat, and defended doubtless by outworks and a
drawbridge. Beneath the castle stands the modern house of Dunolly, a decent
mansion, suited to the reduced state of the MacDougalls of
Lorn, who, from being Barons powerful enough to give battle to
and defeat Robert Bruce, are now declined
into private gentlemen of moderate fortune.
“This very ancient family is descended from
Somerled, Thane, or rather, under that name, King of Argyle and the Hebrides. He had two sons, to one
of whom he left his insular possessions—and he became founder of the dynasty of
the Lords of the Isles, who maintained a stirring independence during the
middle ages. The other was founder of the family of the MacDougalls
of Lorn. One of them being married to a niece of the
Red Cumming, in revenge of his slaughter at Dumfries,
took a vigorous part against Robert Bruce in
his struggles to maintain the independence of Scotland. At length the King, turning his whole strength towards MacDougall, encountered him at a pass near
Loch Awe; but the Highlanders, being possessed of the strong ground, compelled
Bruce to retreat, and again gave him battle at Dalry,
near Tynedrum, where he had concentrated his forces. Here he was again
defeated, and the tradition of the MacDougall family
bears, that in the conflict the Lord of Lorn engaged hand to hand with
Bruce, and was struck down by that monarch. As they
grappled together on the ground, Bruce being uppermost, a
vassal of MacDougall, called
MacKeoch, relieved his master by pulling
Bruce from him. In this close struggle the King left
his mantle and brooch in the hands of his enemies, and the latter trophy was
long preserved in the family, until it was lost in an accidental fire.
Barbour tells the same story, but I
think with circumstances somewhat different. When Bruce
had gained the throne for which he fought so long, he displayed his resentment
against the MacDougalls of Lorn, by depriving them of the
greatest part of their domains, which were bestowed chiefly upon the Steward of
Scotland. Sir Colin Campbell, the Knight of Loch Awe, and
the Knight of Glenurchy, Sir Campbell, married
daughters of the Steward, and received with them great portion of the
forfeiture of MacDougall. Bruce even
compelled or persuaded the Lord of the Isles to divorce his wife, who was a
daughter of MacDougall, and take in marriage a relation of
his own. The son of the divorced lady was not permitted to succeed to the
principality of the Isles, on account of his connexion with the obnoxious
MacDougall. But a large appanage was allowed him upon
the Mainland, where he founded the family of Glengarry.
“The family of MacDougall
suffered farther reduction during the great civil war, in which they adhered to
the Stewarts, and
in 1715 they forfeited the small estate of Dunolly, which was then all that
remained of what had once been a principality. The then representative of the
family fled to France, and his son (father of the present proprietor) would
have been without any means of education, but for the spirit of clanship, which
induced one of the name, in the humble situation of keeper of a public-house at
Dumbarton, to take his young chief to reside with him, and be at the expense of
his education and maintenance until his fifteenth or sixteenth year. He proved
a clever and intelligent man, and made good use of the education he received.
When the affair of 1745 was in agitation, it was expected by the south-western
clans that, Charles Edward would have
landed near Oban, instead of which he disembarked at Loch-nan-uagh, in Arisaig.
Stuart of Appin sent information of his landing to
MacDougall, who gave orders to his brother to hold the
clan in readiness to rise, and went himself to consult with the chamberlain of
the Earl of Breadalbane, who was also in the secret. He
found this person indisposed to rise, alleging that
Charles had disappointed them both in the place of
landing, and the support he had promised. MacDougall then
resolved to play cautious, and went to visit the Duke
of Argyle, then residing at Roseneath, probably without any
determined purpose as to his future proceedings. While he was waiting the
Duke’s leisure, he saw a horseman arrive at full gallop, and shortly
after, the Duke entering the apartment where MacDougall
was, with a map in his hand, requested him, after friendly salutations, to
point out Loch-nan-uagh on that map. MacDougall instantly
saw that the secret of Charles’s landing had
transpired, and resolved to make a merit of being the first who should give
details. The persuasions of the Duke determined him to remain quiet, and the
reward was the restoration of the little estate of
Dunolly, lost by his father in 1715. This gentleman lived to a very advanced
stage of life, and was succeeded by Peter
MacDougall, Esq. now of Dunolly. I had these particulars
respecting the restoration of the estate from a near relation of the family,
whom we met at Dunstaffnage.
“The modern house of Dunolly is on the neck of land
under the old castle, having on the one hand the lake with its islands and
mountains, on the other, two romantic eminences tufted with copsewood, of which
the higher is called Barmore, and is now planted. I have seldom seen a more
romantic and delightful situation, to which the peculiar state of the family
gave a sort of moral interest. Mrs MacDougall, observing
strangers surveying the ruins, met us on our return, and most politely insisted
upon our accepting fruit and refreshments. This was a compliment meant to
absolute strangers, but when our names became known to her, the good
lady’s entreaties that we would stay till Mr
MacDougall returned from his ride, became very pressing. She was
in deep mourning for the loss of an eldest son, who had fallen bravely in Spain
and under Wellington, a death well becoming
the descendant of so famed a race. The second son, a lieutenant in the navy,
had, upon this family misfortune, obtained leave to visit his parents for the
first time after many years’ service, but had now returned to his ship.
Mrs M. spoke with melancholy pride of the death of her
eldest son, with hope and animation of the prospects of the survivor. A third
is educated for the law. Declining the hospitality offered us, Mrs
M. had the goodness to walk with us along the shore towards
Oban, as far as the property of Dunolly extends, and showed us a fine spring,
called Tobar nan Gall, or the Well of the Stranger,
where our sailors supplied them-selves
with excellent water, which has been rather a scarce article with us, as it
soon becomes past a landsman’s use on board ship. On the sea-shore, about
a quarter of a mile from the castle, is a huge fragment of the rock called plumb-pudding stone, which art or nature has formed into
a gigantic pillar. Here it is said Fion or
Fingal tied his dog Bran—here also the celebrated Lord of the Isles tied up his dogs
when he came upon a visit to the Lords of Lorn. Hence it is called Clack nan Con; i. e. the Dog’s Stone. A tree grew
once on the top of this bare mass of composite stone, but it was cut down by a
curious damsel of the family, who was desirous to see a treasure said to be
deposited beneath it. Enjoyed a pleasant walk of a mile along the beach to
Oban, a town of some consequence, built in a semicircular form, around a good
harbour formed by the opposite isle of Kerrera, on which Mrs
M. pointed out the place where Alexander II. died while, at the head of a powerful armament,
he meditated the reduction of the Hebrides.—The field is still called
Dal-ry—the King’s field.
“Having taken leave of Mrs
MacDougall, we soon satisfied our curiosity concerning Oban,
which owed its principal trade to the industry of two brothers, Messrs
Stevenson, who dealt in ship-building. One is now
dead, the other almost retired from business, and trade is dull in the place.
Heard of an active and industrious man, who had set up a nursery of young
trees, which ought to succeed, since at present, whoever wants plants must send
to Glasgow; and how much the plants suffer during a voyage of such length, any
one may conceive. Go on board after a day delightful for the serenity and
clearness of the weather, as well as for the objects we had visited. I forgot
to say, that through Mr
MacDougall’s absence we lost an opportunity of seeing a
bronze figure of one of his ancestors, called Bacach, or the lame, armed and mounted as for a
tournament. The hero flourished in the twelfth century. After a grand council
of war, we determine, as we are so near the coast of Ulster, that we will stand
over and view the celebrated Giant’s Causeway: and Captain
Wilson receives directions accordingly.
“2d Sept. 1814.—Another most
beautiful day. The heat, for the first time since we sailed from Leith, is
somewhat incommodious; so we spread a handsome awning, to save our complexions,
God wot, and breakfast beneath it in style. The breeze is gentle, and quite
favourable. It has conducted us from the extreme cape of Mull, called the Black
Head of Mull, into the Sound of Hay. We view in passing that large and fertile
island, the property of Campbell of
Shawfield, who has introduced an admirable style of farming
among his tenants. Still farther behind us retreats the island of Jura, with
the remarkable mountains called the Paps of Jura, which form a landmark at a
great distance. They are very high, but in our eyes, so much accustomed of late
to immense height, do not excite much surprise. Still farther astern is the
small isle of Scarba, which, as we see it, seems to be a single hill. In the
passage or sound between Scarba and the extremity of Jura, is a terrible run of
tide, which, contending with the sunk rocks and islets of that foul channel,
occasions the succession of whirlpools, called the Gulf of Corrievreckan. Seen
at this distance we cannot judge of its terrors. The sight of Corrievreckan and
of the low rocky isle of Colonsay, betwixt which and Hay we are now passing,
strongly recalls to my mind poor John
Leyden and his tale of the Mermaid and MacPhail of Colonsay.*
Pro-
* See
Minstrelsy of the Border—Scott’s Poetical Works,
vol. iv., pp. 285-306.
bably the name of the hero
should have been MacFie, for to the
MacDuffies (by abridgement
MacFies) Colonsay of old pertained. It is said the
last of these MacDuffies was executed as an oppressor by
order of the Lord of the Isles, and lies buried in the adjacent small island of
Oransay, where there is an old chapel with several curious monuments, which, to
avoid losing this favourable breeze, we are compelled to leave unvisited.
Colonsay now belongs to a gentleman named MacNiel. On the right beyond it, opens at a distance the
western coast of Mull, which we already visited in coming from the northward.
We see the promontory of Ross, which is terminated by Y-Columb-kill, also now
visible. The shores of Loch Tua and Ulva are in the blue distance, with the
little archipelago which lies around Staffa. Still farther, the hills of Rum
can just be distinguished from the blue sky. We are now arrived at the extreme
point of Hay, termed, from the strong tides, the Runs of
Ilay. We here only feel them as a large but soft swell of the sea, the
weather being delightfully clear and serene. In the course of the evening we
lose sight of the Hebrides, excepting Hay, having now attained the western side
of that island.
“3d September, 1814.—In the
morning early, we are off Innistulhan, an islet very like Inchkeith in size and
appearance, and, like Inchkeith, displaying a lighthouse. Messrs Hamilton, Duff, and Stevenson go
ashore to visit the Irish lighthouse and compare notes. A fishing-boat comes
off with four or five stout lads, without neckkerchiefs or hats, and the best
of whose joint garments selected would hardly equip an Edinburgh beggar. Buy
from this specimen of Paddy in his native
land some fine John Dories for threepence each. The mainland of Ireland
adjoining to this island (being part of the county of Donegal) resembles
Scotland, and though hilly, seems well cultivated upon
the whole. A brisk breeze directly against us. We beat to windward by
assistance of a strong tide-stream, in order to weather the head of Innishowen,
which covers the entrance of Lough Foyle, with the purpose of running up the
loch to see Londonderry, so celebrated for its siege in 1689. But short tacks
and long tacks were in vain, and at dinner-time, having lost our tide, we find
ourselves at all disadvantage both against wind and sea. Much combustion at our
meal, and the manoeuvres by which we attempted to eat and drink remind me of
the enchanted drinking-cup in the old ballad,— ‘Some shed it on their shoulder, Some shed it on their thigh; And he that did not hit his mouth Was sure to hit his eye.’ In the evening, backgammon and cards are in great request. We have had our
guns shotted all this day for fear of the Yankees—a privateer having been seen
off Tyree Islands, and taken some vessels as is reported. About nine
o’clock weather the Innishowen head, and enter the Lough, and fire a gun
as a signal for a pilot. The people here are great smugglers; and at the report
of the gun, we see several lights on shore disappear. About the middle of the
day too, our appearance (much resembling a revenue cutter) occasioned a smoke
being made in the midst of a very rugged cliff on the shore a signal probably
to any of the smugglers’ craft that might be at sea. Come to anchor in
eight fathom water, expecting our pilot.
“4th September, 1814.—Waked
in the morning with good hope of hearing service in Derry Cathedral, as we had
felt ourselves under weigh since daylight; but these expectations vanished
when, going on deck, we found
ourselves only half-way up Lough Foyle, and at least ten miles from Derry. Very
little wind, and that against us; and the navigation both shoally and
intricate. Called a council of war; and after considering the difficulty of
getting up to Derry, and the chance of being wind-bound when we do get there,
we resolve to renounce our intended visit to that town. We had hardly put the
ship about, when the Irish Æolus shifted his trumpet, and opposed our
exit, as he had formerly been unfavourable to our progress up the lake. At
length, we are compelled to betake ourselves to towing, the wind fading into an
absolute calm. This gives us time enough to admire the northern, or Donegal,
side of Lough Foyle—the other being hidden from us by haze and distance.
Nothing can be more favourable than this specimen of Ireland.—A beautiful
variety of cultivated slopes, intermixed with banks of wood; rocks skirted with
a distant ridge of heathy hills, watered by various brooks; the glens or banks
being, in general, planted or covered with copse; and finally, studded by a
succession of villas and gentlemen’s seats, good farm-houses, and neat
white-washed cabins. Some of the last are happily situated upon the verge of
the sea, with banks of copse or a rock or two rising behind them, and the white
sand in front. The land, in general, seems well cultivated and enclosed—but in
some places the enclosures seem too small, and the ridges too crooked, for
proper farming. We pass two gentlemen’s seats, called White Castle and
Red Castle; the last a large good-looking mansion, with trees, and a pretty
vale sloping upwards from the sea. As we approach the termination of the Lough,
the ground becomes more rocky and barren, and the cultivation interrupted by
impracticable patches, which have been necessarily abandoned. Come in view of
Green Castle, a large ruinous castle, said to have belonged to the Macwilliams. The remains are
romantically situated upon a green bank sloping down to the sea, and are partly
covered with ivy. From their extent, the place must have been a
chieftain’s residence of the very first consequence. Part of the ruins
appear to be founded upon a high red rock, which the eye at first blends with
the masonry. To the east of the ruins, upon a cliff overhanging the sea, are a
modern fortification and barrack-yard, and beneath, a large battery for
protection of the shipping which may enter the Lough; the guns are not yet
mounted. The Custom-house boat boards us and confirms the account that American
cruisers are upon the coast. Drift out of the Lough, and leave behind us this
fine country, all of which belongs in property to Lord
Donegal; other possessors only having long leases, as sixty
years, or so forth. Red Castle, however, before distinguished as a very
good-looking house, is upon a perpetual lease. We discharge our pilot—the
gentlemen go ashore with him in the boat, in order to put foot on Irish land. I
shall defer that pleasure till I can promise myself something to see. When our
gentlemen return we read prayers on deck. After dinner go ashore at the small
fishing-village of Port Rush, pleasantly situated upon a peninsula, which forms
a little harbour. Here we are received by Dr
Richardson, the inventor of the fiorin-grass (or of some of its
excellencies). He cultivates this celebrated vegetable on a very small scale,
his whole farm not exceeding four acres. Here I learn, with inexpressible
surprise and distress, the death of one of the most valued of the few friends whom these memoranda might interest.* She
was, indeed, a rare example of the soundest good sense, and the most exquisite
purity of moral feel-
* Harriet, Duchess of
Buccleuch, died Aug. 24, 1814.
ing, united with the utmost
grace and elegance of personal beauty, and with manners becoming the most
dignified rank in British society. There was a feminine softness in all her
deportment, which won universal love, as her firmness of mind and correctness
of principle commanded veneration. To her family her loss is inexpressibly
great. I know not whether it was the purity of her mind or the ethereal cast of
her features and form, but I could never associate in my mind her idea and that
of mortality; so that the shock is the more heavy, as being totally unexpected.
God grant comfort to the afflicted survivor and his family!
“5th September, 1814.—Wake,
or rather rise at six, for I have waked the whole night, or fallen into broken
sleeps only to be hag-ridden by the night-mare. Go ashore with a heavy heart,
to see sights which I had much rather leave alone. Land under Dunluce, a ruined
castle built by the MacGilligans, or
MacQuillens, but afterwards taken from them by a
Macdonnell, ancestor of the Earls of Antrim, and
destroyed by Sir John Perrot,
Lord-Lieutenant in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth. This Macdonnell came from the
Hebrides at the head of a Scottish colony. The site of the castle much
resembles Dunnottar, but is on a smaller scale. The ruins occupy perhaps more
than an acre of ground, being the level top of a high rock advanced into the
sea, by which it is surrounded on three sides, and divided from the mainland by
a deep chasm. The access was by a narrow bridge, of which there now remains but
a single rib, or ledge, forming a doubtful and a precarious access to the
ruined castle. On the outer side of the bridge are large remains of outworks,
probably for securing cattle, and for domestic offices—and the vestiges of a
chapel. Beyond the bridge are an outer and inner gateway, with their defences.
The large gateway forms one angle of the square
enclosure of the fortress, and at the other landward angle is built a large
round tower. There are vestiges of similar towers occupying the angles of the
precipice overhanging the sea. These towers were connected by a curtain, on
which artillery seems to have been mounted. Within this circuit are the ruins
of an establishment of feudal grandeur on the large scale. The great hall,
forming, it would seem, one side of the inner court, is sixty paces long,
lighted by windows which appear to have been shafted with stone, but are now
ruined. Adjacent are the great kitchen and ovens, with a variety of other
buildings, but no square tower, or keep. The most remarkable part of Dunluce,
however, is, that the whole mass of plum-pudding rock on which the fort is
built, is completely perforated by a cave sloping downwards from the inside of
the moat or dry-ditch beneath the bridge, and opening to the sea on the other
side. It might serve the purpose of a small harbour, especially if they had, as
is believed, a descent to the cave from within the castle. It is difficult to
conceive the use of the aperture to the land, unless it was in some way
enclosed and defended. Above the ruinous castle is a neat farm-house.
Mrs More, the good-wife, a Scoto-Hibernian, received
us with kindness and hospitality which did honour to the nation of her birth,
as well as of her origin, in a house whose cleanliness and neatness might have
rivalled England. Her churn was put into immediate motion on our behalf, and we
were loaded with all manner of courtesy, as well as good things. We heard here
of an armed schooner having been seen off the coast yesterday, which fired on a
boat that went off to board her, and would seem therefore to be a privateer, or
armed smuggler.
“Return onboard for breakfast, and then again take
boat for the Giant’s Causeway having first shotted the guns, and agreed
on a signal, in case this alarming stranger should again make his appearance. Visit
two caves, both worth seeing, but not equal to those we have seen; one, called
Port Coon, opens in a small cove, or bay—the outer reach opens into an inner
cave, and that again into the sea. The other, called Down Kerry, is a sea-cave,
like that on the eastern side of Loch Eribol—a high arch, up which the sea
rolls:—the weather being quiet, we sailed in very nearly to the upper end. We
then rowed on to the celebrated Causeway, a platform composed of basaltic
pillars, projecting into the sea like the pier of a harbour. As I was tired,
and had a violent headach, I did not land, but could easily see that the
regularity of the columns was the same as at Staffa; but that Island contains a
much more extensive and curious specimen of this curious phenomenon.
“Row along the shores of this celebrated point,
which are extremely striking as well as curious. They open into a succession of
little bays, each of which has precipitous banks graced with long ranges of the
basaltic pillars, sometimes placed above each other, and divided by masses of
interweaving strata, or by green sloping banks of earth of extreme steepness.
These remarkable ranges of columns are in some places chequered by horizontal
strata of a red rock or earth, of the appearance of ochre; so that the green of
the grassy banks, the dark-grey or black appearance of the columns, with those
red seams and other varieties of the interposed strata, have most uncommon and
striking effects. The outline of these cliffs is as singular as their
colouring. In several places the earth has wasted away from single columns, and
left them standing insulated and erect, like the ruined colonnade of an ancient
temple, upon the verge of the precipice. In other places, the disposition of
the basaltic ranges present singular appearances, to which the guides give
names agreeable to the images which they are supposed to
represent. Each of the little bays or inlets has also its appropriate name. One
is called the Spanish Bay, from one of the Spanish Armada having been wrecked
there. Thus our voyage has repeatedly traced the memorable remnants of that
celebrated squadron. The general name of the cape adjacent to the Causeway, is
Bengore Head. To those who have seen Staffa, the peculiar appearance of the
Causeway itself will lose much of its effect; but the grandeur of the
neighbouring scenery will still maintain the reputation of Bengore Head. The
people ascribe all these wonders to Fin
MacCoul, whom they couple with a Scottish giant called Ben-an
something or other. The traveller is plied by guides, who make their profit by
selling pieces of crystal, agate, or chalcedony, found in the interstices of
the rocks. Our party brought off some curious joints of the columns, and, had I
been quite as I am wont to be, I would have selected four to be capitals of a
rustic porch at Abbotsford. But, alas! alas! I am much out of love with vanity
at this moment. From what we hear at the Causeway, we have every reason to
think that the pretended privateer has been a gentleman’s
pleasure-vessel.—Continue our voyage southward, and pass between the Main of
Ireland and the Isle of Rachrin, a rude heathy-looking island, once a place of
refuge to Robert Bruce. This is said, in
ancient times, to have been the abode of banditti, who plundered the
neighbouring coast. At present it is under a long lease to a Mr
Gage, who is said to maintain excellent order among the
islanders. Those of bad character he expels to Ireland, and hence it is a
phrase among the people of Rachrin, when they wish ill to any one,
‘May Ireland be his hinder
end.’ On the Main we see the village of Ballintry, and a number
of people collected, the remains of an Irish fair. Close by is a small islet, called Sheep
Island. We now take leave of the Irish coast, having heard nothing of its
popular complaints, excepting that the good lady at Dunluce made a heavy moan
against the tithes, which had compelled her husband to throw his whole farm
into pasture. Stand over toward Scotland, and see the Mull of Cantyre light.
“6th September, 1814.—Under
the lighthouse at the Mull of Cantyre; situated on a desolate spot among rocks,
like a Chinese pagoda in Indian drawings. Duff and Stevenson go
ashore at six. Hamilton follows, but is
unable to land, the sea having got up. The boat brings back letters, and I have
the great comfort to learn all are well at Abbotsford. About eight the tide
begins to run very strong, and the wind rising at the same time, makes us
somewhat apprehensive for our boat, which had returned to attend
D. and S. We observe them set off
along the hills on foot, to walk, as we understand, to a bay called Carskey,
five or six miles off, but the nearest spot at which they can hope to re-embark
in this state of the weather. It now becomes very squally, and one of our
jibsails splits. We are rather awkwardly divided into three parties—the
pedestrians on shore, with whom we now observe Captain
Wilson, mounted upon a pony—the boat with four sailors, which is
stealing along in-shore, unable to row, and scarce venturing to carry any
sail—and we in the yacht, tossing about most exceedingly. At length we reach
Carskey, a quiet-looking bay, where the boat gets into shore, and fetches off
our gentlemen. After this the coast of Cantyre seems cultivated and arable, but
bleak and unenclosed, like many other parts of Scotland. We then learn that we
have been repeatedly in the route of two American privateers, who have made
many captures in the Irish Channel, particularly at
Innistruhul, at the back of Islay, and on the Lewis. They are the Peacock, of twenty-two guns, and 165 men, and a schooner
of eighteen guns, called the Prince of Neuchatel.
These news, added to the increasing inclemency of the weather, induce us to
defer a projected visit to the coast of Galloway; and indeed it is time one of
us was home on many accounts. We therefore resolve, after visiting the
lighthouse at Pladda, to proceed for Greenock. About four drop anchor off
Pladda, a small islet lying on the south side of Arran. Go ashore and visit the
establishment. When we return on board, the wind being unfavourable for the
mouth of Clyde, we resolve to weigh anchor and go into Lamlash Bay.
“7th September, 1814.—We had
amply room to repent last night’s resolution, for the wind, with its
usual caprice, changed so soon as we had weighed anchor, blew very hard, and
almost directly against us, so that we were beating up against it by short
tacks, which made a most disagreeable night; as between the noise of the wind
and the sea, the clattering of the ropes and sails above, and of the moveables
below, and the eternal ‘ready about,’ which
was repeated every ten minutes when the vessel was about to tack, with the
lurch and clamour which succeeds, sleep was much out of the question. We are
not now in the least sick, but want of sleep is uncomfortable, and I have no
agreeable reflections to amuse waking hours, excepting the hope of again
rejoining my family. About six o’clock went on deck to see Lamlash Bay,
which we have at length reached after a hard struggle. The morning is fine and
the wind abated, so that the coast of Arran looks extremely well. It is
indented with two deep bays. That called Lamlash, being covered by an island
with an entrance at either end, makes a secure roadstead. The other bay, which takes its
name from Brodick Castle, a seat of the Duke of
Hamilton, is open. The situation of the castle is very fine,
among extensive plantations, laid out with perhaps too much formality, but
pleasant to the eye, as the first tract of plantation we have seen for a long
time. One stripe, however, with singular want of taste, runs straight up a
finely-rounded hill, and turning by an obtuse angle, cuts down the opposite
side with equal lack of remorse. This vile habit of opposing the line of the
plantation to the natural line and bearing of the ground, is one of the
greatest practical errors of early planters. As to the rest, the fields about
Brodick, and the lowland of Arran in general, seem rich, well enclosed, and in
good cultivation. Behind and around rise an amphitheatre of mountains, the
principal a long ridge with fine swelling serrated tops, called Goat-Fell. Our
wind now altogether dies away, while we want its assistance to get to the mouth
of the Firth of Clyde, now opening between the extremity of the large and
fertile Isle of Bute, and the lesser islands called the Cumbrays. The fertile
coast of Ayrshire trends away to the south-westward, displaying many villages
and much appearance of beauty and cultivation. On the north-eastward arises the
bold and magnificent screen formed by the mountains of Argyllshire and
Dunbartonshire, rising above each other in gigantic succession. About noon, a
favourable breath of wind enables us to enter the mouth of the Clyde, passing
between the larger Cumbray and the extremity of Bute. As we advance beyond the
Cumbray and open the opposite coast, see Largs, renowned for the final defeat
of the Norwegian invaders by Alexander
III. [A. D. 1263.] The ground of battle was a sloping, but
rather gentle ascent from the sea, above the modern Kirk of Largs. Had
Haco gained the victory, it would have opened all the
south-west of Scotland to his arms. On Bute, a fine
and well-improved island, we open the Marquis of
Bute’s house of Mount Stewart, neither apparently large
nor elegant in architecture, but beautifully situated among well-grown trees,
with an open and straight avenue to the sea-shore. The whole isle is prettily
varied by the rotation of crops: and the rocky ridges of Goat-Fell and other
mountains in Arran are now seen behind Bute as a background. These ridges
resemble much the romantic and savage outline of the mountains of Cuillin, in
Skye. On the southward of Largs is Kelburn, the seat of Lord Glasgow, with extensive plantations; on the
northward Skelmorlie, an ancient seat of the Montgomeries.
The Firth, closed to appearance by Bute and the Cumbrays, now resembles a long
irregular inland lake, bordered on the one side by the low and rich coast of
Renfrewshire, studded with villages and seats, and on the other by the Highland
mountains. Our breeze dies totally away, and leaves us to admire this prospect
till sunset. I learn incidentally, that, in the opinion of honest
Captain Wilson, I have been myself the cause of all
this contradictory weather. ‘It is all,’ says the Captain to
Stevenson, ‘owing to the
cave at the Isle of Egg,’—from which I had abstracted a skull.
Under this odium I may labour yet longer, for assuredly the weather has been
doggedly unfavourable. Night quiet and serene, but dead calm—a fine contrast to
the pitching, rolling, and walloping of last night.
“8th September.—Waked very
much in the same situation—a dead calm, but the weather very serene. With much
difficulty, and by the assistance of the tide, we advanced up the Firth, and
passing the village of Gourock, at length reached Greenock. Took an early
dinner, and embarked in the steam-boat for Glasgow. We took leave of our little
yacht under the repeated cheers of the sailors, who had been
much pleased with their erratic mode of travelling about, so different from the
tedium of a regular voyage. After we reached Glasgow—a journey which we
performed at the rate of about eight miles an hour, and with a smoothness of
motion which probably resembles flying—we supped together and prepared to
separate.—Erskine and I go tomorrow
to the Advocate’s at Killermont, and thence to Edinburgh. So closes my
Journal. But I must not omit to say, that among five or six persons, some of
whom were doubtless different in tastes and pursuits, there did not occur,
during the close communication of more than six weeks aboard a small vessel,
the slightest difference of opinion. Each seemed anxious to submit his own
wishes to those of his friends. The consequence was, that by judicious
arrangement all were gratified in their turn, and frequently he who made some
sacrifices to the views of his companions, was rewarded by some unexpected
gratification calculated particularly for his own amusement. Thus ends my
little excursion, in which, bating one circumstance, which must have made me
miserable for the time wherever I had learned it, I have enjoyed as much
pleasure as in any six weeks of my life. We had constant exertion, a succession
of wild and uncommon scenery, good humour on board, and objects of animation
and interest when we went ashore— ‘Sed fugit interea—fugit irrevocabile
tempus.’”
CHAPTER IX. LETTER IN VERSE FROM ZETLAND AND ORKNEY—DEATH OF THE DUCHESS OF
BUCCLEUCH—CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE DUKE—ALTRIVE LAKE—NEGOTIATION CONCERNING
THE LORD OF THE ISLES COMPLETED—SUCCESS OF WAVERLEY—CONTEMPORANEOUS CRITICISMS ON THE NOVEL—LETTERS TO
SCOTT FROM MR MORRITT—MR
LEWIS—AND MISS MACLEAN CLEPHANE—LETTER FROM
JAMES BALLANTYNE TO MISS EDGEWORTH. 1814.
I question if any man ever drew his own
character more fully or more pleasingly than Scott has
clone in the preceding diary of a six weeks’ pleasure voyage. We have before us,
according to the scene and occasion, the poet, the antiquary, the magistrate, the planter,
and the agriculturist; but every where the warm yet sagacious philanthropist—every where
the courtesy, based on the unselfishness, of the thoroughbred gentleman;—and surely never
was the tenderness of a manly heart portrayed more touchingly than in the closing pages. I
ought to mention that Erskine received the news of
the Duchess of Buccleuch’s death on the day when
the party landed at Dunstaffnage; but, knowing how it would affect
Scott, took means to prevent its reaching him until the expedition
should be concluded. He heard the event casually mentioned by a stranger during dinner at
Port Rush, and was for the moment quite overpowered.
Of the letters which Scott wrote to
his friends during those happy six weeks, I have recovered only one, and it is, thanks to
the leisure of the yacht, in verse. The strong and easy heroics of the first section prove,
I think, that Mr Canning did not err when he told
him that if he chose he might emulate even Dryden’s command of that noble measure; and the dancing anapaests of
the second show that he could with equal facility have rivalled the gay graces of Cotton, Anstey, or
Moore. This epistle did not reach the Duke of Buccleuch until his lovely Duchess was no more; and I shall annex to it some communications relating
to that affliction which afford a contrast, not less interesting than melancholy, to the
light-hearted glee reflected in the rhymes from the region of Magnus Troill.
To his Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, &c. &c.
&c.
“Lighthouse Yacht in the Sound of Lerwick, Zetland, 8th
August, 1814. “Health to the Chieftain from his clansman true! From her true minstrel health to fair Buccleuch! Health from the isles, where dewy Morning weaves Her chaplet with the tints that Twilight leaves; Where late the sun scarce vanished from the sight, And his bright pathway graced the short-lived night, Though darker now as autumn’s shades extend, The north winds whistle and the mists ascend. Health from the land where eddying whirlwinds toss The storm-rocked cradle of the Cape of Noss; On outstretched cords the giddy engine slides, His own strong arm the bold adventurer guides, And he that lists such desperate feat to try, May, like the sea-mew, skim ’twixt surf and sky, And feel the mid-air gales around him blow, And see the billows rage five hundred feet below. ‘Here by each stormy peak and desert shore, The hardy islesman tugs the daring oar, Practised alike his venturous course to keep Through the white breakers or the pathless deep, By ceaseless peril and by toil to gain A wretched pittance from the niggard main. And when the worn-out drudge old ocean leaves, What comfort greets him and what hut receives? Lady! the worst your presence ere has cheered (When want and sorrow fled as you appeared) Were to a Zetlander as the high dome Of proud Drumlanrig to my humble home. Here rise no groves, and here no gardens blow, Here even the hardy heath scarce dares to grow; But rocks on rocks, in mist and storm arrayed, Stretch far to sea their giant colonnade, With many a cavern seam’d, the dreary haunt Of the dun seal and swarthy cormorant. Wild round their rifted brows with frequent cry, As of lament, the gulls and gannets fly, And from their sable base, with sullen sound, In sheets of whitening foam the waves rebound. “Yet even these coasts a touch of envy gain From those whose land has known oppression’s chain; For here the industrious Dutchman comes once more To moor his fishing craft by Bressay’s shore; Greets every former mate and brother tar, Marvels how Lerwick ’scaped the rage of war, Tells many a tale of Gallic outrage done, And ends by blessing God and Wellington. Here too the Greenland tar, a fiercer guest, Claims a brief hour of riot, not of rest; Proves each wild frolic that in wine has birth, And wakes the land with brawls and boisterous mirth. A sadder sight on yon poor vessel’s prow The captive Norse-man sits in silent wo, And eyes the flags of Britain as they flow. Hard fate of war, which bade her terrors sway His destined course, and seize so mean a prey; A bark with planks so warp’d and seams so riven, She scarce might face the gentlest airs of heaven: Pensive he sits, and questions oft if none Can list his speech and understand his moan; In vain—no islesman now can use the tongue Of the bold Norse, from whom their lineage sprung. Not thus of old the Norse-men hither came, Won by the love of danger or of fame; On every storm-beat cape a shapeless tower Tells of their wars, their conquests, and their power; For ne’er for Grecia’s vales, nor Latian Land, Was fiercer strife than for this barren strand— A race severe—the isle and ocean lords, Loved for its own delight the strife of swords— With scornful laugh the mortal pang defied, And blessed their gods that they in battle died. “Such were the sires of Zetland’s simple race, And still the eye may faint resemblance trace In the blue eye, tall form, proportion fair, The limbs athletic, and the long light hair— (Such was the mien, as Scald and Minstrel sings, Of fair-haired Harold, first of Norway’s Kings); But their high deeds to scale these crags confined, Their only warfare is with waves and wind. “Why should I talk of Mousa’s castled coast? Why of the horrors of the Sumburgh Rost? May not these bald disjointed lines suffice, Penn’d while my comrades whirl the rattling dice— While down the cabin skylight lessening shine The rays, and eve is chased with mirth and wine?— Imagined, while down Mousa’s desert bay Our well-trimm’d vessel urged her nimble way— While to the freshening breeze she leaned her side— And bade her bowsprit kiss the foamy tide—? “Such are the lays that Zetland Isles supply; Drenched with the drizzly spray and dropping sky, Weary and wet, a sea-sick minstrel I.— W. Scott.” “Postscriptum. “Kirkwall, Orkney, Aug. 13, 1814. “In respect that your grace has commissioned a Kraken, You will please be informed that they seldom are taken; It is January two years, the Zetland folks say, Since they saw the last Kraken in Scalloway bay; He lay in the offing a fortnight or more, But the devil a Zetlander put from the shore, Though bold in the seas of the North to assail The morse and the sea-horse, the grampus and whale. If your Grace thinks I’m writing the thing that is not, You may ask at a namesake of ours, Mr
Scott— (He’s not from our clan, though his merits deserve it, But springs, I’m inform’d, from the Scotts of
Scotstarvet);* He questioned the folks, who beheld it with eyes, But they differed confoundedly as to its size. For instance, the modest and diffident swore That it seemed like the keel of a ship, and no more— Those of eyesight more clear, or of fancy more high, Said it rose like an island ’twixt ocean and sky— But all of the hulk had a steady opinion That ’twas sure a live subject of Neptune’s dominion— And I think, my Lord Duke, your Grace hardly would wish To cumber your house such a kettle of fish. Had your order related to night-caps or hose, Or mittens of worsted, there’s plenty of those. Or would you be pleased but to fancy a whale? And direct me to send it—by sea or by mail? The season, I’m told, is nigh over, but still I could get you one fit for the lake at Bowhill. Indeed, as to whales, there’s no need to be thrifty, Since one day last fortnight two hundred and fifty, Pursued by seven Orkney men’s boats and no more, Betwixt Truffness and Luffness were drawn on the shore! You’ll ask if I saw this same wonderful sight; I own that I did not, but easily might— For this mighty shoal of leviathans lay On our lee-beam a mile, in the loop of the bay,’ And the islesmen of Sanda were all at the spoil, And flinching (so term it) the blubber to boil; (Ye spirits of lavender drown the reflection That awakes at the thoughts of this odorous dissection). To see this huge marvel, full fain would we go,
* The Scotts of Scotstarvet, and other families of the
name in. Fife and elsewhere, claim no kindred with the great clan of the
Border and their aruiorial bearings are entirely different.
But Wilson, the wind, and the current said no. We have now got to Kirkwall, and needs I must stare When I think that in verse I have once called it fair; ’Tis a base little borough, both dirty and mean— There is nothing to hear, and there’s nought to be seen, Save a church, where, of old times, a prelate harangued, And a palace that’s built by an earl that was hanged. But farewell to Kirkwall—aboard we are going, The anchor’s a-peak, and the breezes are blowing; Our Commodore calls all his band to their places, And ’tis time to release you—good night to your Graces!”
To His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, &c.
“Glasgow, Sept. 8, 1814. “My dear Lord Duke,
“I take the earliest opportunity, after landing, to
discharge a task so distressing to me, that I find reluctance and fear even in
making the attempt, and for the first time address so kind and generous a
friend without either comfort and confidence in myself, or the power of
offering a single word of consolation to his affliction. I learned the late
calamitous news (which indeed no preparation could have greatly mitigated)
quite unexpectedly, when upon the Irish coast; nor could the shock of an
earthquake have affected me in the same proportion. Since that time I have been
detained at sea, thinking of nothing but what has happened, and of the painful
duty I am now to perform. If the deepest interest in this inexpressible loss
could qualify me for expressing myself upon a subject so distressing, I know
few whose attachment and respect for the lamented object of our sorrows can, or ought to exceed my own, for never
was more attractive kindness and condescension displayed by one of her sphere,
or returned with deeper and more heartfelt gratitude by one in my own. But
selfish regret and sorrow, while they claim a painful and unavailing as-cendance, cannot drown the recollection of the virtues
lost to the world, just when their scene of acting had opened wider, and to her
family when the prospect of their speedy entry upon life rendered her precept
and example peculiarly important. And such an example! for of all whom I have
ever seen, in whatever rank, she possessed most the power of rendering virtue
lovelycombining purity of feeling and soundness of judgment with a
sweetness and affability which won the affections of all who had the happiness
of approaching her. And this is the partner of whom it has been God’s
pleasure to deprive your Grace, and the friend for whom I now sorrow, and shall
sorrow while I can remember any thing. The recollection of her excellencies can
but add bitterness, at least in the first pangs of calamity, yet it is
impossible to forbear the topic: it runs to my pen as to my thoughts, till I
almost call in question, for an instant, the Eternal Wisdom which has so early
summoned her from this wretched world, where pain and grief and sorrow is our
portion, to join those to whom her virtues, while upon earth, gave her so
strong a resemblance. Would to God I could say, be
comforted; but I feel every common topic of consolation must be, for
the time at least, even an irritation to affliction. Grieve, then, my dear
Lord, or I should say my dear and much honoured friend, for sorrow for the time
levels the highest distinctions of rank; but do not grieve as those who have no
hope. I know the last earthly thoughts of the departed sharer of your joys and
sorrows must have been for your Grace and the dear pledges she has left to your
care. Do not, for their sake, suffer grief to take that exclusive possession
which disclaims care for the living, and is not only useless to the dead, but
is what their wishes would have most earnestly deprecated. To time, and to God,
whose are both time and eternity, belongs the office of future consolation;
it is enough to require from the sufferer under such a dispensation to bear his
burthen of sorrow with fortitude, and to resist those feelings which prompt us
to believe that that which is galling and grievous is therefore altogether
beyond our strength to support. Most bitterly do I regret some levity which I
fear must have reached you when your distress was most poignant, and most
dearly have I paid for venturing to anticipate the time which is not ours,
since I received these deplorable news at the very moment when I was collecting
some trifles that I thought might give satisfaction to the person whom I so
highly honoured, and who, among her numerous excellencies, never failed to seem
pleased with what she knew was meant to afford her pleasure.
“But I must break off, and have perhaps already
written too much. I learn by a letter from Mrs
Scott, this day received, that your Grace is at
Bowhillin the beginning of next weekI will be in the vicinity
and when your Grace can receive me without additional pain, I shall have the
honour of waiting upon you. I remain, with the deepest sympathy, my Lord Duke,
your Grace’s truly distressed and most grateful servant,
Walter Scott.”
The following letter was addressed to Scott by the Duke of Buccleuch, before
he received that which the Poet penned on landing at Glasgow. I present it here, because it
will give a more exact notion of what Scott’s relations with his
noble patron really were, than any other single document which I could produce; and to set
that matter in its just light is essential to the business of this narrative. But I am not
ashamed to confess that I embrace with satisfaction the opportunity
of thus offering to the readers of the present time a most instructive lesson. They will
here see what pure and simple virtues and humble piety may be cultivated as the only
sources of real comfort in this world and consolation in the prospect of
futurity,among circles which the giddy and envious mob are apt to regard as
intoxicated with the pomps and vanities of wealth and rank; which so many of our popular
writers represent systematically as sunk in selfish indulgenceas viewing all below
them with apathy and indifferenceand last, not least, as upholding, when they do
uphold, the religious institutions of their country, merely because they have been taught
to believe that their own hereditary privileges and possessions derive security from the
prevalence of Christian maxims and feelings among the mass of the people.
To Walter Scott, Esq., Post Office, Greenock.
“Bowhill, Sept. 3, 1814. “My dear Sir,
“It is not with the view of distressing you with my
griefs, in order to relieve my own feelings, that I address you at this moment.
But knowing your attachment to myself, and more particularly the real affection
which you bore to my poor wife, I thought
that a few lines from me would be acceptable, both to explain the state of my
mind at present, and to mention a few circumstances connected with that
melancholy event.
“I am calm and resigned. The blow was so severe that
it stunned me, and I did not feel that agony of mind which might have been
expected. I now see the full extent of my misfortune; but that extended view of
it has come gradually upon me. I am fully aware how imperative it is upon me to
exert myself to the utmost on account of my children. I must
not depress their spirits by a display of my own melancholy feelings. I have
many new duties to perform,—or rather, perhaps, I now feel more pressingly the
obligation of duties which the unceasing exertions of my poor wife rendered
less necessary, or induced me to attend to with less than sufficient accuracy.
I have been taught a severe lesson; it may and ought to be a useful one. I feel
that my lot, though a hard one, is accompanied by many alleviations denied to
others. I have a numerous family, thank God, in health, and profiting,
according to their different ages, by the admirable lessons they have been
taught. My daughter, Anne, worthy of so
excellent a mother, exerts herself to the utmost to supply her place, and has
displayed a fortitude and strength of mind beyond her years, and (as I had
foolishly thought) beyond her powers. I have most kind friends willing and
ready to afford me every assistance. These are my worldly comforts, and they
are numerous and great.
“Painful as it may be, I cannot reconcile it to
myself to be totally silent as to the last scene of this cruel tragedy. As she
had lived, so she died—an example of every noble feeling—of love, attachment,
and the total want of every thing selfish. Endeavouring to the last to conceal
her suffering, she evinced a fortitude, a resignation, a Christian courage,
beyond all power of description. Her last injunction was to attend to her poor
people. It was a dreadful but instructive moment. I have learned that the most
truly heroic spirit may be lodged in the tenderest and the gentlest breast.
Need I tell you that she expired in the full hope and
expectation, nay, in the firmest certainty of passing to a better world,
through a steady reliance on her Saviour. If ever there was a proof of the
efficacy of our religion in moments of the deepest affliction, and in the hour
of death, it was exemplified in her conduct. But I will
no longer dwell upon a subject which must be painful to you. Knowing her
sincere friendship for you, I have thought it would give you pleasure, though a
melancholy one, to hear from me that her last moments were such as to be envied
by every lover of virtue, piety, and true and genuine religion.
“I will endeavour to do in all things what I know
she would wish. I have therefore determined to lay myself open to all the
comforts my friends can afford me. I shall be most happy to cultivate their
society as heretofore. I shall love them more and more because I know they
loved her. Whenever it suits your convenience I shall he happy to see you here.
I feel that it is particularly my duty not to make my house the house of
mourning to my children; for I know it was her decided opinion that it is most
mischievous to give an early impression of gloom to the mind.
“You will find me tranquil, and capable of going
through the common occupations of society. Adieu for the present. Yours very
sincerely,
Buccleuch, &c.”
To His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, &c. &;c.
&c.
“Edinburgh, 11th Sept. 1814. “My dear Lord Duke,
“I received your letter (which had missed me at
Greenock) upon its being returned to this place, and cannot sufficiently
express my gratitude for the kindness which, at such a moment, could undertake
the task of writing upon such a subject to relieve the feelings of a friend.
Depend upon it, I am so far worthy of your Grace’s kindness that, among
many proofs of it, this affecting and most distressing one can never be
forgotten. It gives
me great though melancholy satisfaction, to find that your Grace has had the
manly and Christian fortitude to adopt that resigned and patient frame of
spirit, which can extract from the most bitter calamity a wholesome mental
medicine. I trust in God that, as so many and such high duties are attached to
your station, and as he has blessed you with the disposition that draws
pleasure from the discharge of them, your Grace will find your first exertions,
however painful, rewarded with strength to persevere, and finally, with that
comfort which attends perseverance in that which is right. The happiness of
hundreds depends upon your Grace almost directly, and the effect of your
example in the country, and of your constancy in support of a constitution
daily undermined by the wicked and designing, is almost incalculable. Justly,
then, and well has your Grace resolved to sacrifice all that is selfish in the
indulgence of grief, to the duties of your social and public situation. Long
may you have health and strength to be to your dear and hopeful family an
example and guide in all that becomes their high rank. It is enough that one
light, and alas, what a light that was! has. been recalled by the Divine Will
to another and a better sphere.
“I wrote a hasty and unconnected letter immediately
on landing. I am detained for two days in this place, but shall wait upon your
Grace immediately on my return to Abbotsford. If my society cannot, in the
circumstances, give much pleasure, it will, I trust, impose no restraint.
“Mrs Scott
desires me to offer her deepest sympathy upon this calamitous occasion. She has
much reason, for she has lost the countenance of a friend such as she cannot
expect the course of human life again to supply I am
ever, with much and affectionate respect, your Grace’s truly faithful
humble servant,
Walter Scott.”
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., M.P., Worthing.
“Edinburgh, September 14, 1814. “My dear Morritt,
“‘At the end of my tour on the 22d
August’!!! Lord help us!—this comes of going to the Levant and the
Hellespont, and your Euxine, and so forth. A poor devil who goes to Nova Zembla
and Thule is treated as if he had been only walking as far as Barnard Castle or
Cauldshiel’s Loch.* I would have you to know I only returned on the 10th
current, and the most agreeable thing I found was your letter. I am sure you
must know I had need of something pleasant, for the news of
* Lord Byron
writes to Mr Moore, August 3,
1814:—“Oh! I nave had the most amusing letter from
Hogg, the Ettrick
Minstrel and Shepherd. I think very highly of him as a poet, but he
and half of these Scotch and Lake troubadours are spoilt by living
in little circles and petty coteries. London and the world is the
only place to take the conceit out of a man—in the milling phrase.
Scott, he says, is gone to
the Orkneys in a gale of wind, during which wind, he affirms, the
said Scott he is sure is not at his ease, to
say the least of it. Lord! Lord! if these home-keeping minstrels
had crossed your Atlantic or my Mediterranean, and tasted a little
open boating in a white squall—or a gale in ‘the
Gut,’—or the Bay of Biscay, with no gale at all—how it would
enliven and introduce them to a few of the sensations!—to say
nothing of an illicit amour or two upon shore, in the way of Essay
upon the Passions, beginning with simple adultery, and compounding
it as they went along.” Life and Works, vol. iii. p. 102. Lord Byron, by the
way, had written on July the 24th to Mr
Murray, “Waverley is the best and most
interesting novel I have redde since—I don’t know
when,” &c. Ibid. p. 98.
the death of
the beautiful, the kind, the affectionate, and generous Duchess of Buccleuch gave me a shock, which, to
speak God’s truth, could not have been exceeded unless by my own
family’s sustaining a similar deprivation. She was indeed a light set
upon a hill, and had all the grace which the most accomplished manners and the
most affable address could give to those virtues by which she was raised still
higher than by rank. As she always distinguished me by her regard and
confidence, and as I had many opportunities of seeing her in the active
discharge of duties in which she rather resembled a descended angel than an
earthly being, you will excuse my saying so much about my own feelings on an
occasion where sorrow has been universal. But I will drop the subject. The
survivor has displayed a strength and
firmness of mind seldom equalled, where the affection has been so strong and
mutual, and amidst the very high station and commanding fortune which so often
render self-control more difficult, because so far from being habitual. I trust
for his own sake, as well as for that of thousands to whom his life is directly
essential, and hundreds of thousands to whom his example is important, that
God, as he has given him fortitude to bear this inexpressible shock, will add
strength of constitution to support him in the struggle. He has written to me
on the occasion in a style becoming a man and a Christian, submissive to the
will of God, and willing to avail himself of the consolations which remain
among his family and friends. I am going to see him, and how we shall meet, God
knows; but though ‘an iron man of iron mould’ upon many of
the occasions of life in which I see people most affected, and a peculiar
contemner of the commonplace sorrow which I see paid to the departed, this is a
case in which my stoicism will not serve me. They both gave me reason to think
they loved me, and I returned their regard with the most
sincere attachment—the distinction of rank being, I think, set apart on all
sides. But God’s will be done. I will dwell no longer upon this subject.
It is much to learn that Mrs Morritt is
so much better, and that if I have sustained a severe wound from a quarter so
little expected, I may promise myself the happiness of your dear wife’s
recovery.
“I will shortly mention the train of our voyage,
reserving particulars till another day. We sailed from Leith and skirted the
Scottish coast, visiting the Buller of Buchan and other remarkable objects—went
to Shetland—thence to Orkney—from thence round Cape Wrath to the Hebrides,
making descents every where, where there was any thing to be seen—thence to
Lewis and the Long Island—to Skye—to Iona—and so forth, lingering among the
Hebrides as long as we could. Then we stood over to the coast of Ireland, and
visited the Giant’s Causeway and Port Rush, where Dr Richardson, the inventor (discoverer I
would say) of the celebrated fiorin grass resides. By the way, he is a
chattering charlatan, and his fiorin a mere humbug. But if he were Cicero, and his invention were potatoes, or any
thing equally useful, I should detest the recollection of the place and the
man, for it was there I learned the death of my friend. Adieu, my dear
Morritt; kind compliments to your
lady; like poor Tom, ‘I cannot
daub it farther.’ When I hear where you are, and what you are
doing, I will write you a more cheerful epistle. Poor Mackenzie, too, is gone—the brother of our
friend Lady Hood—and another Mackenzie, son to the Man of Feeling. So short time have I been
absent, and such has been the harvest of mortality among those whom I regarded.
“I will attend to your corrections in Waverley. My principal employment for
the autumn will be reducing the knowledge I have acquired of the localities of
the islands into scenery and stage-room for the ‘Lord of the Isles,’ of which renowned
romance I think I have repeated some portions to you. It was elder born than
Rokeby, though it gave place
to it in publishing.
“After all, scribbling is an odd propensity. I
don’t believe there is any ointment, even that of the Edinburgh Review, which can cure the infected.
Once more yours entirely,
Walter Scott.”
Before I pass from the event which made August 1814 so black a month in
Scott’s calendar, I may be excused for once
more noticing the kind interest which the Duchess of
Buccleuch had always taken in the fortunes of the Ettrick Shepherd, and introducing a most characteristic epistle which she
received from him a few months before her death. The Duchess—“fearful”
(as she said) “of seeing herself in print” did not answer the Shepherd,
but forwarded his letter to Scott, begging him to explain that
circumstances did not allow the Duke to concede what he requested, but to assure him that
they both retained a strong wish to serve him whenever a suitable opportunity should
present itself. Hogg’s letter was as follows:—
To her Grace the Duchess of Buccleuch, Dalkeith
Palace. Favoured by Messrs Grieve and Scott,
hatters, Edinburgh.*
“Ettrickbank, March 17, 1814. “May it please your Grace,
“I have often grieved you by my applications for
* Mr Grieve
was a man of cultivated mind and generous disposition, and a most kind
and zealous friend of the Shepherd.
this and that. I am sensible of this, for I have had
many instances of your wishes to be of service to me, could you have known what
to do for that purpose. But there are some eccentric characters in the world,
of whom no person can judge or know what will prove beneficial, or what may
prove their bane. I have again and again received of your Grace’s private
bounty, and though it made me love and respect you the more, I was nevertheless
grieved at it. It was never your Grace’s money that I wanted, but the
honour of your countenance; indeed my heart could never yield to the hope of
being patronised by any house save that of Buccleuch, whom
I deemed bound to cherish every plant that indicated any thing out of the
common way on the Braes of Ettrick and Yarrow.
“I know you will be thinking that this long prelude
is to end with a request. No, Madam! I have taken the resolution of never
making another request. I will, however, tell you a story which is, I believe,
founded on a fact:
“There is a small farm at the head of a water called
* * * * * , possessed by a mean fellow named * * *. A third of it has been
taken off and laid into another farm—the remainder is as yet unappropriated.
Now, there is a certain poor bard, who has two old parents, each of them
upwards of eighty-four years of age; and that bard has no house nor home to
shelter those poor parents in, or cheer the evening of their lives. A single
line, from a certain very great and very beautiful lady, to a certain Mr Riddell,* would ensure that small pendicle
to the bard at once. But she will grant no such thing! I appeal to your Grace
if she is not a
* Major
Riddell, the Duke’s Chamberlain at Branksome
Castle.
very bad lady that?
I am your Grace’s ever obliged and grateful
James Hogg, The Ettrick
Shepherd.”
Though the Duke of Buccleuch would
not dismiss a poor tenant merely because Hogg called
him “a mean fellow,” he had told Scott that
if he could find an unappropriated “pendicle,” such as this letter referred to,
he would most willingly bestow it on the Shepherd. It so happened, that when
Scott paid his first visit at Bowhill after the death of the
Duchess, the Ettrick Shepherd was mentioned: “My friend,” said the Duke,
“I must now consider this poor man’s case as her legacy;” and
to this feeling Hogg owed, very soon afterwards, his establishment at
Altrive, on his favourite Braes of Yarrow.
As Scott passed through Edinburgh on
his return from his voyage, the negotiation as to the Lord of the Isles, which had been protracted through several months, was
completed—Constable agreeing to give fifteen
hundred guineas for one half of the copyright, while the other moiety was retained by the
author. The sum mentioned had been offered by Constable at an early
stage of the affair, but it was not until now accepted, in consequence of the earnest wish
of Scott and Ballantyne to
saddle the publisher of the new poem with part of their old “quire
stock,”—which, however, Constable ultimately persisted in
refusing. It may easily be believed that John Ballantyne’s
management of money matters during Scott’s six weeks’
absence had been such as to render it doubly convenient for the Poet to have this matter
settled on his arrival in Edinburgh—and it may also be supposed that the progress of Waverley during that interval had tended to put the chief parties in good
humour with each other.
In returning to Waverley, I must observe most distinctly that nothing can be more unfounded
than the statement which has of late years been frequently repeated in Memoirs of Scott’s Life, that the sale of the first edition of this
immortal Tale was slow. It appeared on the 7th of July, and the whole impression (1000
copies) had disappeared within five weeks; an occurrence then unprecedented in the case of
an anonymous novel, put forth, at what is called among publishers, the
dead season. A second edition, of 2000 copies, was at least projected by the 24th
of the same month,*—that appeared before the end of August, and it too had gone off so
rapidly, that when Scott passed through Edinburgh, on his way from the
Hebrides, he found Constable eager to treat, on the
same terms as before, for a third of 1000 copies. This third edition was published in
October, and when a fourth of the like extent was called for in November, I find
Scott writing to John
Ballantyne:—“I suppose Constable won’t
quarrel with a work on which he has netted L.612 in four months, with a certainty of
making it L.1000 before the year is out:” and, in fact, owing to the
diminished expense of advertising, the profits of this fourth edition were to each party
L.440. To avoid recurring to these details, I may as well state at once that a fifth
edition of 1000 copies appeared in January 1815; a sixth of 1500 in June 1816; a seventh of
2000 in October 1817; an eighth of 2000 in April 1821; that in the collective editions,
prior to 1829, 11,000 were disposed of; and that the sale of the current edition, with
notes, begun in 1829, has already reached 40,000 copies. Well might
Constable
* See letter to Mr
Morritt, ante, p. 129.
regret that he had not ventured to offer L.1000 for
the whole copyright of Waverley!
I must now look back for a moment to the history of the composition. The
letter of September 1810 was not the only piece of discouragement which Scott had received, during the progress of Waverley, from his
first confidant. My good friend, James Ballantyne,
in his death-bed memorandum, says,—“When Mr
Scott first questioned me as to my hopes of him as a novelist, it
somehow or other did chance that they were not very high. He saw this, and
said—‘Well, I don’t see why I should not succeed as well as other
people. At all events, faint heart never won fair lady—’tis only
trying.’ When the first volume was completed, I still could not get myself to
think much of the Waverley-Honour scenes; and in this I afterwards found that I
sympathized with many. But, to my utter shame be it spoken, when I reached the
exquisite descriptions of scenes and manners at Tully-Veolan, what did I do but
pronounce them at once to be utterly vulgar! When the success of the work so entirely
knocked me down as a man of taste, all that the good-natured author said
was—‘Well, I really thought you were wrong about the Scotch. Why,
Burns, by his poetry, had already
attracted universal attention to every thing Scottish, and I confess I
couldn’t see why I should not be able to keep the flame alive, merely because
I wrote Scotch in prose, and he in rhyme.’”—It is, I think,
very agreeable to have this manly avowal to compare with the delicate allusion which
Scott makes to the affair in his Preface to the Novel.
The only other friends originally intrusted with his secret appear to
have been Mr Erskine and Mr Morritt. I know not at what stage the former altered the opinion which
he formed on seeing the tiny fragment of 1805. The latter did not,
as we have seen, receive the book until it was completed; but he anticipated, before he
closed the first volume, the station which public opinion would ultimately assign to
Waverley. “How the story may continue,” Mr Morritt
then wrote, “I am not able to divine; but, as far as I have read, pray let us
thank you for the Castle of Tully-Veolan, and the delightful drinking-bout at Lucky Mac-Leary’s, for the characters of the
Laird of Balmawhapple and the Baron of Bradwardine: and no less for Davie Gellatly, whom I take to be a transcript of
William Rose’s motley follower,
commonly yclept Caliban.* If the completion be
equal to what we have just devoured, it deserves a place among our standard works far
better than its modest appearance and anonymous titlepage will at first gain it in
these days of prolific story-telling. Your manner of narrating is so different from the
slipshod sauntering verbiage of common novels, and from the stiff, precise, and prim
sententiousness of some of our female moralists, that I think it can’t fail to
strike any body who knows what style means; but, amongst the gentle class, who swallow
every blue-backed book in a circulating library for the sake of the story, I should
fear half the knowledge of nature it contains, and all the real humour, may be thrown
away. Sir Everard, Mrs
Rachael, and the Baron, are, I think, in the first rank of portraits for
nature and character; and I could depone to their likeness in any court of taste. The
ballad of St Swithin, and scraps of old
songs, were measures of danger, if you meant to continue your concealment;
but, in truth, you
* Of David Hinves,
Mr Rose’s faithful and
affectionate attendant, here alluded to, the reader will find some notices
hereafter; for when he appeared at Abbotsford in my time he seemed to be
considered by Scott, not in the light of an
ordinary servant, but as the friend of his master, and consequently as his own
friend too.
wear your disguise something after
the manner of Bottom, the weaver; and in spite of
you the truth will soon peep out.” And next day he resumes,—“We have
finished Waverley, and were I to tell
you all my admiration, you would accuse me of complimenting. You have quite attained
the point which your postscript-preface mentions as your
object—the discrimination of Scottish character, which had hitherto been slurred over
with clumsy national daubing.” He adds, a week or two later,—“After
all, I need not much thank you for your confidence. How could you have hoped that I
should not discover you? I had heard you tell half the anecdotes before some turns you
owe to myself; and no doubt most of your friends must have the same sort of thing to
say.”
Monk Lewis’s letter on the subject is so
short, that I must give it as it stands:
To Walter Scott, Esq., Abbotsford.
“The Albany, Aug. 17, 1814. “My dear Scott,
“I return some books of yours which you lent me
‘sixty years since’ and I hope they will
reach you safe. I write in great haste; and yet I must mention, that hearing
‘Waverley’
ascribed to you, I bought it, and read it with all impatience. I am now told it
is not yours, but William
Erskine’s. If this is so, pray tell him from me that I
think it excellent in every respect, and that I believe every word of it. Ever
yours,
M. G. Lewis.”
Another friend (and he had, I think, none more dear), the late
Margaret Maclean Clephane of Torloisk, afterwards Marchioness of Northampton, writes thus from Kirkness, in
Kinross-shire, on the 11th October:—“In this place I feel a
sort of pleasure, not unallied to pain, from the many recollections that every venerable
tree, and every sunny bank, and every honeysuckle bower occasions; and I have found
something here that speaks to me in the voice of a valued friend—Waverley. The question that rises,
it is perhaps improper to give utterance to. If so, let it pass as an exclamation.—Is it
possible that Mr Erskine can have written it? The
poetry, I think, would prove a different descent in any court in Christendom. The turn of
the phrases in many places is so peculiarly yours, that I fancy I hear your voice repeating
them; and there wants but verse to make all Waverley an
enchanting poem—varying to be sure from grave to gay, but with so deepening an interest as
to leave an impression on the mind that few very few poems could awaken.—But, why did not
the author allow me to be his Gaelic Dragoman? Oh! Mr ——, whoever you are, you might have
safely trusted M. M. C.”
There was one person with whom it would, of course, have been more than
vain to affect any concealment. On the publication of the third edition, I find him writing
thus to his brother Thomas, who had by this time
gone to Canada as paymaster of the 70th regiment:—“Dear Tom,
a novel here, called Waverley, has had
enormous success. I sent you a copy, and will send you another, with the Lord of the Isles, which will be out at
Christmas. The success which it has had, with some other circumstances, has induced
people ‘To lay the bantling at a certain door, Where laying store of faults, they’d fain heap more.’ You will guess for yourself how far such a report has credibility; but by no means
give the weight of your opinion to the Transatlantic public; for you must know there is
also a counter-report, that you have written the said Waverley. Send me a
novel intermixing your exuberant and natural humour, with any incidents and
descriptions of scenery you may see particularly with characters and traits of manners.
I will give it all the cobbling that is necessary, and, if you do but exert yourself, I
have not the least doubt it will be worth L.500; and, to encourage you, you may, when
you send the MS., draw on me for L.100, at fifty days’ sight so that your labours
will at any rate not be quite thrown away. You have more fun and descriptive talent
than most people; and all that you want—i. e. the mere practice
of composition—I can supply, or the devil’s in it. Keep this matter a dead
secret, and look knowing when Waverley is spoken of. If you
are not Sir John Falstaff, you are as good a man as
he, and may therefore face Colville of the Dale.
You may believe I don’t want to make you the author of a book you have never
seen; but if people will, upon their own judgment suppose so, and also on their own
judgment give you L.500 to try your hand on a novel, I don’t see that you are a
pin’s-point the worse. Mind that your MS. attends the draft. I am perfectly
serious and confident, that in two or three months you might clear the cobs. I beg my
compliments to the hero who is afraid of Jeffrey’s scalping-knife.”
In truth, no one of Scott’s
intimate friends ever had, or could have had, the slightest doubt as to the parentage of
Waverley: nor, although he abstained
from communicating the fact formally to most of them, did he ever affect any real
concealment in the case of such persons; nor, when any circumstance arose which rendered
the withholding of direct confidence on the subject incompatible with perfect freedom of
feeling on both sides, did he hesitate to make the avowal.
Nor do I believe that the mystification ever answered much purpose, among literary men of eminence beyond the circle of
his personal acquaintance. But it would be difficult to suppose that he had ever wished
that to be otherwise; it was sufficient for him to set the mob of readers at gaze, and
above all, to escape the annoyance of having productions, actually known to be his, made
the daily and hourly topics of discussion in his presence. Mr
Jeffrey had known Scott from his youth
and, in reviewingWaverley, he was at no pains to conceal his
conviction of its authorship. He quarrelled, as usual, with carelessness of style, and some
artificialities of plot, but rendered justice to the substantial merits of the work, in
language which I shall not mar by abridgement. The Quarterly was far less favourable in its verdict. Indeed, the articles on Waverley, and afterwards on Guy Mannering,
which appeared in that journal, will bear the test of ultimate opinion as badly as any
critical pieces which our time has produced. They are written in a captious, cavilling
strain of quibble, which shows as complete blindness to the essential interest of the
narrative, as the critic betrays on the subject of
the Scottish dialogue, which forms its liveliest ornament, when he pronounces that to be
“a dark dialogue of Anglified Erse.” With this remarkable exception,
the professional critics were, on the whole, not slow to confess their belief that, under a
hackneyed name and trivial form, there had at last appeared a work of original creative
genius, worthy of being placed by the side of the very few real masterpieces of prose
fiction. Loftier romance was never blended with easier, quainter humour, by Cervantes himself. In his familiar delineations, he had
combined the strength of Smollett with the native
elegance and unaffected pathos of Goldsmith; in his
darker scenes, he had revived that real tragedy which appeared to have left our stage with
the age of Shakspeare; and elements of interest so diverse had
been blended and interwoven with that nameless grace which, more surety perhaps than even
the highest perfection in the command of any one strain of sentiment, marks the master-mind
cast in Nature’s most felicitous mould.
Scott, with the consciousness avowed long afterwards in
his General Preface that he should never in all likelihood have thought of a Scotch novel
had he not read Maria Edgeworth’s exquisite
pieces of Irish character, desired James Ballantyne
to send her a copy of Waverley on its
first appearance, inscribed “from the author.” Miss
Edgeworth, whom Scott had never then seen, though some
literary correspondence had passed between them, thanked the nameless novelist, under cover
to Ballantyne, with the cordial generosity of kindred genius; and the
following answer, not from Scott, but from
Ballantyne—(who had kept a copy, now before me)—is not to be
omitted:—
To Miss Edgeworth, Edgeworthstown, Ireland.
“Edinburgh, 11th November, 1814. “Madam,
“I am desired by the Author
of Waverley to acknowledge, in his name, the honour you have
done him by your most flattering approbation of his work a distinction which he
receives as one of the highest that could be paid him, and which he would have
been proud to have himself stated his sense of, only that being impersonal, he
thought it more respectful to require my assistance, than to write an anonymous
letter.
“There are very few who have had the opportunities
that have been presented to me, of knowing how very elevated is the admiration
entertained by the Author of Waverley for the genius of Miss
Edgeworth. From the intercourse that took place betwixt us while
the work was going through my press, I
know that the exquisite truth and power of your characters operated on
his mind at once to excite and subdue it. He felt that the success of his book
was to depend upon the characters, much more than upon the story; and he
entertained so just and so high an opinion of your eminence in the management
of both, as to have strong apprehensions of any comparison which might be
instituted betwixt his picture and story and yours; besides, that there is a
richness and naiveté in Irish character and humour,
in which the Scotch are certainly defective, and which could hardly fail, as he
thought, to render his delineations cold and tame by the contrast. ‘If
I could but hit Miss Edgeworth’s wonderful power
of vivifying all her persons, and making them live as beings in your mind, I should not be afraid:’—Often has
the Author of Waverley used such language to me; and
I knew that I gratified him most when I could say,—‘Positively, this
is equal to Miss Edgeworth.’ You will thus
judge, Madam, how deeply he must feel such praise as you have bestowed upon his
efforts. I believe he himself thinks the Baron the best drawn character in his
book—I mean the Bailie—honest Bailie
Macwheeble. He protests it is the most true, though from many causes he did not expect it to be the most
popular. It appears to me, that amongst so many splendid portraits, all drawn
with such strength and truth, it is more easy to say which is your favourite
than which is best. Mr Henry Mackenzie
agrees with you in your objection to the resemblance to Fielding. He says, you should never be forced
to recollect, maugre all its internal
evidence to the contrary, that such a work is a work of fiction, and all its
fine creations but of air. The character of Rose is less finished than the author had at one period
intended; but I believe the characters of humour grew upon his liking, to the
prejudice, in some degree, of those of a more elevated and sentimental kind.
Yet what can surpass Flora and her gallant
brother?
“I am not authorized to say—but I will not resist
my impulse to say to Miss Edgeworth,
that another novel, descriptive of more ancient manners still, may be expected
ere long from the Author of Waverley. But I
request her to observe, that I say this in strict confidence—not certainly
meaning to exclude from the knowledge of what will give them pleasure, her
respectable family.
“Mr Scott’s
poem, the Lord of the Isles,
promises fully to equal the most admired of his productions. It is, I think,
equally powerful, and certainly more uniformly polished and sustained. I have
seen three Cantos. It will consist of six.
“I have the honour to be, Madam, with the utmost
admiration and respect,
Your most obedient and most humble servant, James Ballantyne.”
CHAPTER X. PROGRESS OF THE LORD OF THE ISLES—CORRESPONDENCE
WITH MR JOSEPH TRAIN—RAPID COMPLETION OF THE LORD
OF THE ISLES—“SIX WEEKS AT CHRISTMAS”—“REFRESHING THE
MACHINE”—PUBLICATION OF THE POEM AND OF GUY
MANNERING—LETTERS TO MORRITT—TERRY—AND JOHN
BALLANTYNE—ANECDOTES BY JAMES BALLANTYNE—VISIT TO
LONDON—MEETING WITH LORD BYRON—DINNERS AT CARLTON HOUSE. 1814-1815.
By the 11th of November, then, the Lord of the Isles had made great progress, and Scott had also authorized Ballantyne to negotiate among the booksellers for the publication of a
second novel. But before I go further into these transactions, I must introduce the
circumstances of Scott’s first connexion with an able and
amiable man, whose services were of high importance to him, at this time and ever after, in
the prosecution of his literary labours. Calling at Ballantyne’s printing-office while Waverley was in the press, he happened to take up a
proof-sheet of a volume, entitled “Poems, with notes illustrative of
traditions in Galloway and Ayrshire, by Joseph
Train, Supervisor of Excise at Newton Stewart.” The sheet
contained a ballad on an Ayrshire tradition, ‘about a certain “Witch of
Carrick,” whose skill in the black art was, it seems, instrumental in the destruction
of one of the scattered vessels of the Spanish Armada. The ballad begins: “Why gallops the palfrey with Lady Dunore? Who drives away Turnberry’s kine from the shore? Go tell it in Carrick, and tell it in Kyle— Although the proud Dons are now passing the Moil,* On this magic clew, That in fairyland grew, Old Elcine de Aggart has taken in hand To wind up their lives ere they win to our strand.” Scott immediately wrote to the author, begging to be included in his list of
subscribers for a dozen copies, and suggesting at the same time a verbal alteration in one
of the stanzas of this ballad. Mr Train acknowledged his letter with
gratitude, and the little book reached him just as he was about to embark in the Lighthouse
yacht. He took it with him on his voyage, and on returning home again, wrote to
Mr Train, expressing the gratification he had received from
several of his metrical pieces, but still more from his notes, and requesting him, as he
seemed to be enthusiastic about traditions and legends, to communicate any matters of that
order connected with Galloway which he might not himself think of turning to account;
“for,” said Scott, “nothing interests
me so much as local anecdotes; and, as the applications for charity usually conclude,
the smallest donation will be thankfully accepted.”
Mr Train, in a little narrative with which he has
favoured me, says, that for some years before this time he had been engaged, in alliance
with a friend of his, Mr Denniston, in collecting
materials for a History of Galloway; they had circulated lists of queries among the clergy
and parish schoolmasters, and had thus, and by their own personal researches, accumulated
“a great variety of the most excellent materials for that purpose;”
* The Mull of Cantyre.
but that, from the hour of his correspondence with Walter Scott, he “renounced every idea of authorship
for himself,” resolving, “that thenceforth his chief pursuit should
be collecting whatever he thought would be most interesting to him;” and that Mr Denniston was easily
persuaded to acquiesce in the abandonment of their original design. “Upon
receiving Mr Scott’s letter” (says
Mr Train), “I became still more zealous in the pursuit of
ancient lore, and being the first person who had attempted to collect old stories in
that quarter with any view to publication, I became so noted, that even beggars, in the
hope of reward, came frequently from afar to Newton-Stewart, to recite old ballads and
relate old stories to me.” Erelong, Mr Train visited
Scott both at Edinburgh and at Abbotsford; a true affection
continued ever afterwards to be maintained between them; and this generous ally was, as the
prefaces to the Waverley Novels
signify, one of the earliest confidants of that series of works, and certainly the most
efficient of all the author’s friends in furnishing him with materials for their
composition. Nor did he confine himself to literary services; whatever portable object of
antiquarian curiosity met his eye, this good man secured and treasured up with the same
destination; and if ever a catalogue of the museum at Abbotsford shall appear, no single
contributor, most assuredly, will fill so large a space in it as Mr
Train.
His first considerable communication, after he had formed the unselfish
determination above-mentioned, consisted of a collection of anecdotes concerning the
Galloway gypsies, and “a local story of an astrologer, who calling at a farm-house
at the moment when the good wife was in travail, had, it was said, predicted the future
fortune of the child, almost in the words placed in the mouth of John
M’Kinlay, in the Introduction to Guy Mannering.” Scott told him, in reply, that the story of the astrologer
reminded him of “one he had heard in his youth;” that is to say, as the
Introduction explains, from this M’Kinlay; but Mr Train has, since his friend’s death, recovered a
rude Durham ballad, which, in fact, contains a great deal more of
the main fable of Guy Mannering than either his own written, or
M’Kinlay’s oral edition of the Gallovidian anecdote had conveyed; and—possessing, as I do, numberless evidences
of the haste with which Scott drew up his beautiful Prefaces and
Introductions of 1829, 1830, and 1831,—I am strongly inclined to think that he must in his
boyhood have read the Durham Broadside or Chapbook itself as well as heard the old
serving-man’s Scottish version of it.
However this may have been, Scott’s answer to Mr
Train proceeded in these words: “I am now to solicit a
favour, which I think your interest in Scottish antiquities will induce you
readily to comply with. I am very desirous to have some account of the present
state of Turnberry Castle—whether any vestiges of it
remain—what is the appearance of the ground—the names of the neighbouring
places—and above all, what are the traditions of the place (if any) concerning
its memorable surprise by Bruce, upon his
return from the coast of Ireland, in the commencement of the brilliant part of
his career. The purpose of this is to furnish some hints for notes to a work in
which I am now engaged, and I need not say I will have great pleasure in
mentioning the source from which I derive my information. I have only to add,
with the modest importunity of a lazy correspondent, that the sooner you oblige
me with an answer (if you can assist me on the subject), the greater will the
obligation be on me, who am already your obliged humble servant,
W. Scott.”
The recurrence of the word Turnberry in the
ballad of Elcine de Aggart, had of course suggested this
application, which was dated on the 7th of November. “I had often,” says
Mr Train, “when a boy, climbed the
brown hills, and traversed the shores of Carrick, but I could not sufficiently remember
the exact places and distances as to which Mr Scott
enquired; so, immediately on receipt of his letter, I made a journey into Ayrshire to
collect all the information I possibly could, and forwarded it to him on the 18th of
the same month.” Among the particulars thus communicated, was the local
superstition that on the anniversary of the night when Bruce landed at Turnberry from Arran, the same meteoric gleam which had
attended his voyage reappeared, unfailingly, in the same quarter of the heavens. With this
circumstance Scott was much struck. “Your
information,” he writes on the 22d November, “was particularly
interesting and acceptable, especially that which relates to the supposed preternatural
appearance of the fire, &c., which I hope to make some use of.” What use
he did make of it, if any reader has forgotten, will be seen by reference to stanzas 7—17
of the 5th Canto of the Poem; and the notes to
the same Canto embody, with due acknowledgment, the more authentic results of Mr
Train’s pilgrimage to Carrick.
I shall recur presently to this communication from Mr Train; but must pause for a moment to introduce two
letters, both written in the same week with Scott’s request as to the localities of Turnberry. They both give us
amusing sketches of his buoyant spirits at this period of gigantic exertion; and the first
of them, which relates chiefly to Maturin’s
Tragedy of Bertram, shows how he could
still continue to steal time for attention to the affairs of brother authors less energetic
than himself.
To Daniel Terry, Esq.
“Abbotsford, November 10, 1814. “My dear Terry,
“I should have long since answered your kind letter
by our friend Young, but he would tell
you of my departure with our trusty and well-beloved Erskine, on a sort of a voyage to Nova Zembla.
Since my return, I have fallen under the tyrannical dominion of a certain Lord of the Isles. Those Lords were
famous for oppression in the days of yore, and if I can judge by the posthumous
despotism exercised over me, they have not improved by their demise. The
peine forte et dure is, you
know, nothing in comparison to being obliged to grind verses; and so devilish
repulsive is my disposition, that I can never put any wheel into constant and
regular motion, till Ballantyne’s
devil claps in his proofs, like the hot cinder which you Bath folks used to
clap in beside an unexperienced turnspit, as a hint to be expeditious in his
duty. O long life to the old hermit of Prague, who never saw pen and ink—much
happier in that negative circumstance than in his alliance with the niece of
King Gorboduc.
“To talk upon a blither subject, I wish you saw
Abbotsford, which begins this season to look the whimsical, gay, odd cabin that
we had chalked out. I have been obliged to relinquish Stark’s plan, which was greatly too
expensive. So I have made the old farmhouse my corps
de logis, with some outlying places for kitchen,
laundry, and two spare bed-rooms, which run along the east wall of the
farm-court, not without some picturesque effect. A perforated cross, the spoils
of the old kirk of Galashiels, decorates an advanced door, and looks very well.
This little sly bit of sacrilege has given our spare rooms the name of the chapel. I earnestly invite you to a pew there, which
you will find as commodious for the purpose of a nap as
you have ever experienced when, under the guidance of old Mrs
Smollett, you were led to St George’s, Edinburgh.
“I have been recommending to John Kemble (I dare say without any chance of
success) to peruse a MS. Tragedy of Maturin’s, author of Montorio: it is one of those things which
will either succeed greatly or be damned gloriously, for its merits are marked,
deep, and striking, and its faults of a nature obnoxious to ridicule. He had
our old friend Satan (none of your sneaking
St John Street devils, but the archfiend himself) brought on the stage bodily.
I believe I have exorcised the foul fiend—for, though in reading he was a most
terrible fellow, I feared for his reception in public. The last act is ill
contrived. He piddles (so to speak) through a cullender, and divides the whole
horrors of the catastrophe (though God wot there are enough of them) into a
kind of drippity-droppity of four or five scenes, instead of inundating the
audience with them at once in the finale, with a grand ‘gardez l’eau.’ With all this,
which I should say had I written the thing myself, it is grand and powerful;
the language most animated and poetical; and the characters sketched with a
masterly enthusiasm. Many thanks for Captain Richard Falconer.* To your
kindness I owe the two
* “The Voyages, Dangerous Adventures, and
Imminent Escapes of Capt. Rich. Falconer. Containing the
Laws, Customs, and Manners of the Indians in America; his shipwrecks;
his marrying an Indian wife; his narrow escape from the Island of
Dominico, &c. Intermixed with the Voyages and Adventures of
Thomas Randal, of Cork, Pilot; with his
Shipwreck in the Baltick, being the only man that escap’d. His
being taken by the Indians of Virginia, &c. And an Account of his
Death. The Fourth Edition. London. Printed for
J. Marshall, at the Bible in Gracechurch
Street. 1734.”
On the fly-leaf is the following note, in
Scott’s handwriting:—
“books in the
world I most longed to see, not so much for their intrinsic merits, as because
they bring back with vivid associations the sentiments of my childhood—I might
almost say infancy. Nothing ever disturbed my feelings more than when, sitting
by the old oak table, my aunt, Lady
Raeburn, used to read the lamentable catastrophe of the
ship’s departing without Captain
Falconer, in consequence of the whole party making free with
lime-punch on the eve of its being launched. This and Captain Bingfield,* I much wished to read
once more, and I owe the possession of both to your kindness. Every body that I
see talks highly of your steady interest with the public, wherewith, as I never
doubted of it, I am pleased but not surprised. We are just now leaving this for
the winter: the children went
“This book I read in
early youth. I am ignorant whether it is altogether fictitious and
written upon De Foe’s
plan, which it greatly resembles, or whether it is only an
exaggerated account of the adventures of a real person. It is very
scarce, for, endeavouring to add it to the other favourites of my
infancy, I think I looked for it ten years to no purpose, and at
last owed it to the active kindness of Mr Terry. Yet Richard
Falconer’s adventures seem to have passed
through several editions.”
* “The Travels and Adventures of William Bingfield, Esq.,
containing, as surprizing a Fluctuation of Circumstances, both by Sea
and Land, as ever befel one man. With An Accurate Account of the Shape,
Nature, and Properties of that most furious,and amazing Animal, the
Dog-Bird. Printed from his own Manuscript. With a beautiful
Frontispiece. 2 Vols. 12mo. London:—Printed for E.
Withers, at the Seven Stars, in Fleet Street.
1753.” On the fly-leaf of the first volume Scott has written as follows:—“I
read this scarce little Voyage
Imaginaire when I was about ten years old, and
long after sought for a copy without being able to find a person who
would so much as acknowledge having heard of William Bingfield or his Dog-birds, until the
indefatigable kindness of my friend Mr
Terry, of the Hay Market, made me master of this copy. I
am therefore induced to think the book is of very rare
occurrence.”
yesterday. Tom
Purdie, Finella, and the greyhounds,
all in excellent health; the latter have not been hunted this season!!! Can add
nothing more to excite your admiration. Mrs
Scott sends her kind compliments.
W. Scott.”
The following, dated a day after, refers to some lines which Mr Morritt had sent him from Worthing.
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., M.P., Worthing.
Abbotsford, Nov. 11, 1814. “My dear Morritt,
“I had your kind letter with the beautiful verses.
May the muse meet you often on the verge of the sea or among your own woods of
Rokeby! May you have spirits to profit by her visits (and that implies all good
wishes for the continuance of Mrs
M.’s convalescence), and may I often, by the fruits of
your inspiration, have my share of pleasure! My muse is a Tyranness, and not a
Christian queen, and compels me to attend to longs and shorts, and I know not
what, when, God wot, I had rather be planting evergreens by my new old
fountain. You must know that, like the complaint of a fine young boy who was
complimented by a stranger on his being a smart fellow, ‘I am sair
halded down by the bubbly jock.’ In other
words, the turkey cock, at the head of a family of some forty or fifty
infidels, lays waste all my shrubs. In vain I remonstrate with Charlotte upon these occasions; she is in league
with the hen-wife, the natural protectress of these pirates; and I have only
the inhuman consolation that I may one day, like a cannibal, eat up my enemies.
This is but dull fun, but what else have I to tell you about? It would be worse
if, like Justice
Shallow’sDavy, I
should consult you upon sowing down the headland with
wheat. My literary tormentor is a certain Lord of the Isles, famed for his tyranny of yore, and not unjustly.
I am bothering some tale of him I have had long by me into a sort of romance. I
think you will like it: it is Scottified up to the teeth, and somehow I feel
myself like the liberated chiefs of the Rolliad, ‘who boast their native philabeg
restored.’ I believe the frolics one can cut in this loose garb are
all set down by you Sassenachs to the real agility of the wearer, and not the
brave, free, and independent character of his clothing. It is, in a word, the
real Highland fling, and no one is supposed able to dance it but a native. I
always thought that epithet of Gallia Braccata implied subjugation, and was never
surprised at Cæsar’s easy
conquests, considering that his Labienus and all his merry
men wore, as we say, bottomless breeks. Ever yours,
W. S.”
Well might he describe himself as being hard at work with his Lord of the Isles. The date of Ballantyne’s letter to Miss Edgeworth (November 11), in which he mentions the third Canto as
completed; that of the communication from Mr Train
(November 18), on which so much of Canto fifth was grounded; and that of a note from
Scott to Ballantyne (December
16, 1814), announcing that he had sent the last stanza of the poem: these dates, taken
together, afford conclusive evidence of the fiery rapidity with which the three last Cantos
of the Lord of the Isles were composed.
He writes, on the 25th December, to Constable that he “had corrected the last proofs, and was setting
out for Abbotsford to refresh the machine.” And in what did his refreshment
of the machine consist? Besides having written within this year the greater part (almost
I believe the whole) of the Life of Swift—Waverley—and the Lord of the
Isles—he had given two essays to the Encyclopædia Supplement, and published, with an Introduction and notes,
one of the most curious pieces of family history ever produced to the world, on which he
laboured with more than usual zeal and diligence, from his warm affection for the noble
representative of its author. This inimitable “Memorie of the Somervilles” came out in October;
and it was speedily followed by an annotated reprint of the strange old treatise, entitled
“Rowland’s letting off the
humours of the blood in the head vein, 1611.” He had also kept up his
private correspondence on a scale which I believe never to have been exemplified in the
case of any other person who wrote continually for the press—except, perhaps, Voltaire; and, to say nothing of strictly professional
duties, he had, as a vast heap of documents now before me proves, superintended from day to
day, except during his Hebridean voyage, the still perplexed concerns of the
Ballantynes, with a watchful assiduity that might have done credit
to the most diligent of tradesmen. The “machine” might truly require
“refreshment.”
It was, as has been seen, on the 7th of November that Scott acknowledged the receipt of that communication from
Mr Train which included the story of the
Galloway astrologer. There can be no doubt that this story recalled to his mind, if not the
Durham ballad, the similar but more detailed corruption of it which he had heard told by
his father’s servant, John M’Kinlay, in the days of
George’s Square and Green Breeks, and which he has preserved in the introduction to
Guy Mannering, as the groundwork of
that tale. It has been shown that the three last Cantos of the Lord of the Isles were written between the 11th of November
and the 25th of December; and it is therefore scarcely to be supposed that any part of this novel had been
penned before he thus talked of “refreshing the machine.” It is quite
certain that when James Ballantyne wrote to
Miss Edgeworth on the 11th November, he could
not have seen one page of Guy Mannering, since he in that letter
announces that the new novel of his nameless friend would depict manners more ancient than
those of 1745. And yet it is equally certain that before the Lord of the
Isles “was published, which took place on the 18th of January, 1815, two
volumes of Guy Mannering had been not only written and copied by
an amanuensis, but printed.
Scott thus writes to Morritt,
in sending him his copy of the Lord of the
Isles.
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. M. P. Worthing.
“Edinburgh, 19th January, 1815. “My dear Morritt,
“I have been very foolishly putting off my writing
until I should have time for a good long epistle; and it is astonishing what a
number of trifles have interfered to prevent my commencing on a great scale.
The last of these has been rather of an extraordinary kind, for your little
friend Walter has chose to make himself
the town-talk, by taking what seemed to be the small-pox, despite of
vaccination in infancy, and inoculation with the variolous matter thereafter,
which last I resorted to by way of making assurance double sure. The medical
gentleman who attended him is of opinion that he has had the real small-pox,
but it shall never be averred by me—for the catastrophe of Tom Thumb is enough to deter any thinking person
from entering into a feud with the cows. Walter is quite
well again, which was the principal matter I was interested in. We had very
nearly been in a bad scrape, for I had fixed the Monday
on which he sickened, to take him with me for the Christmas vacation to
Abbotsford. It is probable that he would not have pleaded headach when there
was such a party in view, especially as we were to shoot wild-ducks one day
together at Cauldshiels Loch; and what the consequence of such a journey might
have been, God alone knows.
“I am clear of the Lord of the Isles, and I trust you have your
copy. It closes my poetic labours upon an extended scale: but I daresay I shall
always be dabbling in rhyme until the solve
senescentem. I have directed the copy to be sent to
Portland Place. I want to shake myself free of Waverley, and accordingly have made a
considerable exertion to finish an odd little tale within such time as will
mistify the public, I trust—unless they suppose me to be Briareus. Two volumes are already printed, and
the only persons in my confidence, W.
Erskine, and Ballantyne,
are of opinion that it is much more interesting than Waverley. It is a tale of private life, and only varied by the
perilous exploits of smugglers and excisemen. The success of Waverley has given me a spare hundred or two, which I have resolved
to spend in London this spring, bringing up Charlotte and Sophia
with me. I do not forget my English friends—but I fear they will forget me,
unless I show face now and then. My correspondence gradually drops, as must
happen when people do not meet; and I long to see Ellis, Heber, Gifford, and one or two more. I do not include
Mrs Morritt and you, because we are
much nearer neighbours, and within a whoop and a holla in comparison. I think
we should come up by sea, if I were not a little afraid of
Charlotte being startled by the March winds—for our
vacation begins 12th March.
“You will have heard of poor Caberfae’s death? What a pity it is he should have
outlived his promising young representative. His state was truly pitiable—all
his fine faculties lost in paralytic imbecility, and yet not so entirely so,
but that he perceived his deprivation as in a glass darkly. Sometimes he was
fretful and anxious because he did not see his son; sometimes he expostulated
and complained that his boy had been allowed to die without his seeing him; and
sometimes, in a less clouded state of intellect, he was sensible of, and
lamented his loss in its full extent. These, indeed, are the ‘fears of
the brave and follies of the wise,’ which sadden and humiliate
the lingering hours of prolonged existence. Our friend Lady Hood will now be Caberfae herself. She
has the spirit of a chieftainess in every drop of her blood, but there are few
situations in which the cleverest women are so apt to be imposed upon as in the
management of landed property, more especially of an Highland estate. I do fear
the accomplishment of the prophecy, that when there should be a deaf Caberfae,
the house was to fall.*
* Francis Lord
Seaforth died 11th January, 1815, in his 60th year, having
outlived four sons, all of high promise. His title died with him, and he
was succeeded in his estates by his daughter, Lady
Hood, now the Hon. Mrs Stewart
Mackenzie of Seaforth. See some verses on Lord
Seaforth’s death, in Scott’s Poetical Works, vol.
viii. p. 392, Edit. 1834. The Celtic designation of the chief of the clan
MacKenzie, Caberfae, means Staghead, the bearing of the family. The prophecy
which Scott alludes to in this letter,
is also mentioned by Sir Humphry Davy
in one of his Journals; (see his Life, by Dr Davy, vol. ii., p. 72) and it was, if the account be
correct, a most extraordinary one, for it connected the fall of the house
of Seaforth not only with the appearance of a deaf Caberfae, but with the contemporaneous
appearance of various different physical misfortunes in several of the
other great Highland chiefs; all of which are said and were certainly
believed both by Scott and
Davy—to have actually occurred within the memory of
the generation that has not yet passed away. Mr
Morritt can testify thus far—
“I am delighted to find Mrs Morritt is recovering health and strength—better walking on
the beach at Worthing than on the plainstanes of
Prince’s Street, for the weather is very severe here indeed. I trust
Mrs M. will, in her milder climate, lay in such a
stock of health and strength as may enable you to face the north in Autumn. I
have got the nicest crib for you possible, just about twelve feet square, and
in the harmonious vicinity of a piggery. You never saw so minute an
establishment,—but it has all that we wish for, and all our friends will care
about; and we long to see you there. Charlotte sends the kindest remembrances to Mrs
Morritt.
“As for politics, I have thought little about them
lately; the high and exciting interest is so completely subsided, that the wine
is upon the lees. As for America, we have so managed as to give her the
appearance of triumph, and what is worse, encouragement to resume the war upon
a more favourable opportunity. It was our business to have given them a fearful
memento that the babe unborn should have remembered; but, having missed this
opportunity, I believe that this country would submit with great reluctance to
continue a war, for which there is really no specific object. As for the
continental monarchs, there is no guessing what the folly of Kings and
Ministers may do; but, God knows! would any of them look at home, enough is to
be done which might strengthen and improve their dominions in a different
manner than by mere extension. I trust Ministers will go out rather than be
engaged in war again, upon any account. If France is wise (I have no fear that
any superfluous feeling of humanity will stand
that he “heard the prophecy
quoted in the Highlands at a time when Lord
Seaforth had two sons both alive and in good health—So
that it certainly was not made après
coup.”
in the way), she will
send 10,000 of her most refractory troops to fight with Christophe and the yellow fever in the Island
of St Domingo, and then I presume they may sit down in quiet at home.
“But my sheet grows to an end, and so does the
pleading of the learned counsel, who is thumping the poor bar as I write. He
hems twice. Forward, sweet Orator
Higgins!—at least till I sign myself, dear Morritt, yours most truly,
Walter Scott.”
Guy Mannering was published on the 24th
of February that is exactly two months after the Lord
of the Isles was dismissed from the author’s desk; and making but a narrow
allowance for the operations of the transcriber, printer, bookseller, &c., I think the
dates I have gathered together, confirm the accuracy of what I have often heard Scott say, that his second novel “was the work of six
weeks at a Christmas.” Such was his recipe “for refreshing the
machine.”
I am sorry to have to add, that this severity of labour, like the
repetition of it which had such deplorable effects at a later period of his life, was the
result of his anxiety to acquit himself of obligations arising out of his connexion with
the commercial speculations of the Ballantynes. The approach of
Christmas 1814 brought with it the prospect of such a recurrence of difficulties about the
discount of John’s bills, as to render it
absolutely necessary that Scott should either apply
again for assistance to his private friends, or task his literary powers with some such
extravagant effort as has now been recorded. The great object, which was still to get rid
of the heavy stock that had been accumulated before the storm of May 1813, at length
determined the chief partner to break up, as soon as possible, the con-cern which his own sanguine rashness, and the gross irregularities of his mercurial
lieutenant, had so lamentably perplexed; but Constable, having already enabled the firm to avoid public exposure more
than once, was not now, any more than when he made his contract for the Lord of the Isles, disposed to burden himself with an
additional load of Weber’s “Beaumont and Fletcher,” and other
almost as unsaleable books. While they were still in hopes of overcoming his scruples, it
happened that a worthy friend of Scott’s, the late Mr Charles Erskine, his sheriff-substitute in
Selkirkshire, had immediate occasion for a sum of money which he had some time before
advanced, at Scott’s personal request, to the firm of
John Ballantyne and Company; and, on receiving his application,
Scott wrote as follows:—
To Mr John Ballantyne, Bookseller, Edinburgh.
“Abbotsford, Oct. 14, 1814. “Dear John,
“Charles
Erskine wishes his money, as he has made a purchase of land.
This is a new perplexity—for paid he must be forthwith—as his advance was
friendly and confidential. I do not at this moment see how it is to be raised,
but believe I shall find means. In the mean while, it will be necessary to
propitiate the Leviathans of Paternoster-row. My idea is, that you or James should write to them to the following
effect:—That a novel is offered you by the Author of
Waverley; that the author is desirous it should be out before
Mr Scott’spoem, or as soon thereafter as possible; and that
having resolved, as they are aware, to relinquish publishing, you only wish to
avail yourselves of this offer to the extent of helping off some of your stock.
I leave it to you to consider whether you should con-descend on any particular work to offer
them as bread to their butter—or on any particular amount—as L.500. One thing
must be provided, that Constable shares
to the extent of the Scottish sale—they, however, managing. My reason for
letting them have this scent of roast meat is, in case it should be necessary
for us to apply to them to renew bills in December. Yours,
W. S.”
Upon receiving this letter, John
Ballantyne suggested to Scott that he
should be allowed to offer, not only the new novel, but the next edition of Waverley, to Longman, Murray, or Blackwood—in the hope that the prospect of being let in to
the profits of the already established favourite, would overcome effectually the hesitation
of one or other of these houses about venturing on the encumbrance which Constable seemed to shrink from with such pertinacity; but
upon this ingenious proposition Scott at once set his
veto.
“Dear John,” he writes, (Oct. 17, 1814), “your expedients are
all wretched, as far as regards me. I never will give Constable, or any one, room to say I have
broken my word with him in the slightest degree. If I lose every thing else, I
will at least keep my honour unblemished; and I do hold myself bound in honour
to offer him a Waverley, while
he shall continue to comply with the conditions annexed. I intend the new novel to operate as
something more permanent than a mere accommodation; and if I can but be
permitted to do so, I will print it before it is sold to any one, and then
propose, first, to Constable and Longman, second, to Murray and Blackwood, to take the whole at such a rate as will give them
one-half of the fair profits; granting acceptances which, upon an edition of
3000, which we shall be quite authorized to print, will amount to an immediate command of L.1500; and to this we may couple
the condition, that they must take L.500 or L.600 of the old stock. I own I am
not solicitous to deal with Constable alone, nor am I at
all bound to offer him the new novel on any terms; but he, knowing of the
intention, may expect to be treated with at least, although it is possible we
may not deal. However, if Murray and
Blackwood were to come forward with any handsome
proposal as to the stock, I should certainly have no objection to James’s giving the pledge of the
Author of W. for his next work. You are
like the crane in the fable, when you boast of not having got any thing from
the business; you may thank God that it did not bite your head off. Would to
God I were at let-a-be for let-a-be;—but you have done your best, and so must
I. Yours truly,
W. S.”
Both Mr Murray, and Longman’s partner, Mr
Rees, were in Scotland about this time; and the former at least paid
Scott a visit at Abbotsford. Of course, however,
whatever propositions they may have made, were received by one or other of the
Ballantynes. The result was, that the house of
Longman undertook Guy
Mannering on the terms dictated by Scott—namely, granting bills for L.1500, and relieving John Ballantyne and Company of stock to the extent of
L.500 more; and Constable’s first information
of the transaction was from Messrs Longman themselves, when they, in
compliance with Scott’s wish as signified in the letter last
quoted, offered him a share in the edition which they had purchased. With one or two
exceptions, originating in circumstances nearly similar, the house of
Constable published all the subsequent series of the Waverley Novels.
I must not, however, forget that The Lord of the Isles was published a month
before Guy Mannering. The poem was
received with an interest much heightened by the recent and growing success of the
mysterious Waverley. Its appearance, so
rapidly following that novel, and accompanied with the announcement of another prose tale,
just about to be published, by the same hand, puzzled and confounded the mob of dulness.*
The more sagacious few said to themselves—Scott is
making one serious effort more in his old line, and by this it will be determined whether
he does or does not altogether renounce that for his new one.
The Edinburgh
Review on the Lord of the Isles
begins with—
“Here is another genuine Lay of the Great Minstrel,
with all his characteristic faults, beauties, and irregularities. The same glow of
colouring—the same energy of narration—the same amplitude of description are
conspicuous—with the same still more characteristic disdain of puny graces and small
originalities—the true poetical hardihood, in the strength of which he urges on his Pegasus
fearlessly through dense and rare, and aiming gallantly at the great ends of truth and
effect, stoops but rarely to study the means by which they are to be attained; avails
himself without scruple of common sentiments and common images wherever they seem fitted
for his purpose; and is original by the very boldness of his borrowing, and impressive by
his disregard of epigram and emphasis.”
The conclusion of the contemporaneous article in the Quarterly Review, is as follows:
“The many beautiful passages which we have
extracted from the poem, combined with the brief remarks subjoined to each canto, will
sufficiently show, that although the Lord of the
Isles is not likely to add very much to the reputation of Mr Scott, yet this must be imputed rather to the greatness of
his previous reputation, than
* John Ballantyne put
forth the following paragraph in the Scots
Magazine of December, 1814:
“Mr Scott’s poem
of the Lord of the Isles will appear
early in January. The Author of Waverley is about to amuse the
public with a new novel, in three volumes, entitled Guy Mannering.”
to the absolute inferiority of the poem itself. Unfortunately, its
merits are merely incidental, while its defects are mixed up with the very elements of the
poem. But it is not in the power of Mr Scott to write with tameness;
be the subject what it will (and he could not easily have chosen one more impracticable),
he impresses upon whatever scenes he describes so much movement and activity, he infuses
into his narrative such a flow of life, and, if we may so express ourselves, of animal
spirits, that without satisfying the judgment, or moving the feelings, or elevating the
mind, or even very greatly interesting the curiosity, he is able to seize upon, and, as it
were, exhilarate the imagination of his readers, in a manner which is often truly
unaccountable. This quality Mr Scott possesses in an admirable degree;
and supposing that he had no other object in view than to convince the world of the great
poetical powers with which he is gifted, the poem before us would be quite sufficient for
his purpose. But this is of very inferior importance to the public; what they want is a
good poem, and, as experience has shown, this can only be constructed upon a solid
foundation of taste, and judgment, and meditation.”
These passages appear to me to condense the result of deliberate and
candid reflection, and I have therefore quoted them. The most important remarks of either
Essayist on the details of the plot and execution are annexed to the last edition of the
poem; and show such an exact coincidence of judgment in two masters of their calling, as
had not hitherto been exemplified in the professional criticism of his metrical romances.
The defects which both point out, are, I presume, but too completely explained by the
preceding statement of the rapidity with which this, the last of those great performances,
had been thrown off; nor do I see that either Reviewer has failed to do sufficient justice
to the beauties which redeem the imperfections of the Lord of the Isles except as regards the whole character of Bruce, its real hero, and the picture of the Battle of
Bannockburn, which, now that one can compare these works from something like the same point
of view, does not appear to me in
the slightest particular inferior to the Flodden of Marmion.
This poem is now, I believe, about as popular as Rokeby; but it has never reached the same station in
general favour with the Lay, Marmion, or the Lady
of the Lake. The first edition of 1800 copies in quarto, was, however, rapidly
disposed of, and the separate editions in 8vo, which ensued before his poetical works were
collected, amounted together to 12,250 copies. This, in the case of almost any other
author, would have been splendid success; but as compared with what he had previously
experienced, even in his Rokeby, and still more so, as compared
with the enormous circulation at once attained by Lord
Byron’s early tales, which were then following each other in almost
breathless succession, the falling off was decided. One evening, some days after the poem
had been published, Scott requested James Ballantyne to call on him, and the Printer found him
alone in his library, working at the third volume of Guy Mannering. I give what follows, from
Ballantyne’sMemoranda:
“‘Well, James,’ he said,
‘I have given you a week—what are people saying about the Lord of the Isles?’ I
hesitated a little, after the fashion of Gil
Blas, but he speedily brought the matter to a point.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘speak out, my good fellow; what has put
it into your head to be on so much ceremony with me all of a sudden? But, I see how
it is, the result is given in one word—Disappointment.’ My silence admitted his inference to the fullest
extent. His countenance certainly did look rather blank for a few seconds; in truth, he
had been wholly unprepared for the event; for it is a singular fact that before the
public, or rather the booksellers, had given their decision, he no more knew whether he
had written well or ill, than whether a die thrown out of a box was to turn up a size
or an ace. However, he instantly resumed his spirits, and
expressed his wonder rather that his poetical popularity should have lasted so long,
than that it should have now at last given way. At length, he said with perfect
cheerfulness, ‘Well, well, James, so be it—but you know
we must not droop, for we can’t afford to give over. Since one line has
failed, we must just stick to something else:’—and so he dismissed me,
and resumed his novel.”
Ballantyne concludes the anecdote in these
words:—“He spoke thus, probably unaware of the undiscovered wonders then slumbering
in his mind. Yet still he could not but have felt that the production of a few poems was
nothing in comparison of what must be in reserve for him, for he was at this time scarcely
more than forty.* An evening or two after, I called again on him, and found on the table a
copy of the Giaour, which he seemed to have
been reading. Having an enthusiastic young lady in my house, I asked him if I might carry
the book home with me, but chancing to glance on the autograph blazon, ‘To the Monarch of Parnassus, from one of his
subjects,’ instantly retracted my request, and said I had not observed
Lord Byron’s inscription before.
‘What inscription?’ said he; ‘O yes, I had forgot, but
inscription or no inscription, you are equally welcome.’ I again took it up,
and he continued, ‘James, Byron hits the
mark where I don’t even pretend to fledge my arrow.’ At this time he had never
seen Byron, but I knew he meant soon to be in London, when, no doubt,
the mighty consummation of the meeting of the two bards would be accomplished; and I
ventured to say that he must be looking forward to it with some interest. His countenance
became fixed, and he answered impressively, ‘O, of course.’ In a minute
or two after-
* He was not forty-four till August, 1815.
wards he rose from his chair,
paced the room at a very rapid rate, which was his practice in certain moods of mind, then
made a dead halt, and bursting into an extravaganza of laughter,
‘James,’ cried he, ‘I’ll
tell you what Byron should say to me when we are about to accost
each other— “Art thou the man whom men famed Grizzle call?” ‘And then how germane would be my answer— “Art thou the still more famed Tom
Thumb the small?” “This,” says the printer, “is a specimen of his peculiar
humour; it kept him full of mirth for the rest of the evening.”
The whole of the scene strikes me as equally and delightfully
characteristic; I may add, hardly more so of Scott than
of his printer; for Ballantyne, with all his
profound worship of his friend and benefactor, was in truth, even more than he, an
undoubting acquiescer in “the decision of the public, or rather of the
booksellers;” and among the many absurdities into which his reverence for the
popedom of Paternoster Row led him, I never could but consider, with special astonishment,
the facility with which he seemed to have adopted the notion that the Byron of 1814 was really entitled to supplant
Scott as a popular poet. Appreciating, as a man of his talents
could hardly fail to do, the splendidly original glow and depth of Childe Harold, he always appeared to me quite blind to the
fact, that in the Giaour, in the Bride of Abydos, in Parisina, and indeed, in all his early serious
narratives, Byron owed at least half his success to clever, though
perhaps unconscious imitation of Scott, and no trivial share of the
rest to the lavish use of materials which Scott never employed, only
because his genius was, from the beginning to the end of his career, under the guidance of
high and chivalrous feelings of moral recti-tude. All this
Lord Byron himself seems to have felt most completely—as witness
the whole sequence of his letters and diaries;* and I think I see many symptoms that both
the decision of the million, and its index, “the decision of the booksellers,”
tend the same way at present; but my business is to record, as far as my means may permit,
the growth and structure of one great mind, and the effect which it produced upon the
actual witnesses of its manifestations, not to obtrude the conjectures of a partial
individual as to what rank posterity may assign it amongst or above contemporary rivals.
The following letter was addressed to Lord
Byron on the receipt of that copy of the Giaour to which Mr
Ballantyne’sMemorandum refers: I believe
the inscription to Scott first appeared on the ninth
edition of the poem,
To the Right Hon. Lord Byron, London.
“My Lord,
“I have long owed you my best thanks for the
uncommon pleasure I had in perusing your high-spirited Turkish fragment. But I should hardly have
ventured to offer them, well-knowing how you must be overwhelmed by volunteer
intrusions of approbation (which always look as if the writer valued his
opinion at fully
* E. G. “If they
want to depose Scott, I only
wish they would not set me up as a competitor. I like the man and
admire his works to what Mr
Braham calls Entusymusy. All
such stuff can only vex him, and do me no
good.”—Byron (1813), vol. ii. p. 259.
“Scott
is certainly the most wonderful writer of the day. His novels are a
new literature in themselves, and his poetry as good as any—if not
better—(only on an erroneous system)—and only ceased to be popular,
because the vulgar learned were tired of hearing ‘Aristides called the Just’ and
Scott the Best, and ostracised
him.”—Byron (1821), vol. v. p. 72.
more than it may be worth)
unless I had to-day learned that I have an apology for entering upon the
subject, from your having so kindly sent me a copy of the poem. I did not
receive it sooner, owing to my absence from Edinburgh, where it had been lying
quietly at my house in Castle Street; so that I must have seemed ungrateful,
when, in truth, I was only modest. The last offence may be forgiven, as not
common in a lawyer and poet; the first is said to be equal to the crime of
witchcraft, but many an act of my life has shown that I am no conjurer. If I
were, however, ten times more modest than twenty years’ attendance at the
bar renders probable, your flattering inscription would cure me of so
unfashionable a malady. I might, indeed, lately have had a legal title to as
much supremacy on Parnassus as can be conferred by a sign-manual, for I had a
very flattering offer of the laurel, but as I felt obliged, for a great many
reasons, to decline it, I am altogether unconscious of any other title to sit
high upon the forked hill.
“To return to the Giaour; I had lent my first edition, but the
whole being imprinted in my memory, I had no difficulty in tracing the
additions, which are great improvements, as I should have conjectured aforehand
merely from their being additions. I hope your lordship intends to proceed with
this fascinating style of composition. You have access to a stream of
sentiments, imagery, and manners which are so little known to us as to convey
all the interest of novelty, yet so endeared to us by the early perusal of
Eastern tales, that we are not embarrassed with utter ignorance upon the
subject. Vathek, bating some
passages, would have made a charming subject for a tale. The conclusion is
truly grand. I would give a great deal to know the originals from which it was
drawn. Excuse this hasty scrawl, and believe me, my
lord, your lordship’s much obliged, very humble servant,
Walter Scott.”
If January brought the writer of this letter
“disappointment,” there was abundant consolation in store for February, 1815.
Guy Mannering was received with eager
curiosity, and pronounced by acclamation fully worthy to share the honours of Waverley. The easy transparent flow of its
style; the beautiful simplicity, and here and there the wild solemn magnificence of its
sketches of scenery; the rapid, ever-heightening interest of the narrative; the unaffected
kindliness of feeling, the manly purity of thought, every where mingled with a gentle
humour and a homely sagacity; but above all, the rich variety and skilful contrast of
characters and manners, at once fresh in fiction and stamped with the unforgeable seal of
truth and nature: these were charms that spoke to every heart and mind; and the few murmurs
of pedantic criticism were lost in the voice of general delight, which never fails to
welcome the invention that introduces to the sympathy of imagination a new group of
immortal realities.
The earlier chapters of the present narrative have anticipated much of
what I might, perhaps with better judgment, have reserved for this page. Taken together
with the author’s introduction and notes, those anecdotes of his days of youthful
wandering must, however, have enabled the reader to trace almost as minutely as he could
wish, the sources from which the novelist drew his materials, both of scenery and
character; and Mr Train’sDurham Garland, which I print in the Appendix
to this volume,* exhausts my information concerning the humble
* See Appendix, post p. 405.
groundwork on which fancy reared
this delicious romance.
The first edition was, like that of Waverley, in three little volumes, with a humility of
paper and printing which the meanest novelist would now disdain to imitate; the price a
guinea. The 2000 copies of which it consisted were sold the day after the publication; and
within three months came a second and a third impression, making together 5000 copies more.
The sale, before those novels began to be collected, had reached nearly 10,000; and since
then (to say nothing of foreign reprints of the text, and myriads of translations into
every tongue of Europe) the domestic sale has amounted to 50,000.
On the rising of the Court of Session in March, Mr and Mrs Scott went by sea to London with their eldest girl, whom, being yet too young for general
society, they again deposited with Joanna Baillie at
Hampstead, while they themselves resumed, for two months, their usual quarters at kind Miss
Dumergue’s, in Piccadilly. Six years had
elapsed since Scott last appeared in the metropolis; and
brilliant as his reception had then been, it was still more so on the present occasion.
Scotland had been visited in the interim, chiefly from the interest excited by his
writings, by crowds of the English nobility, most of whom had found introduction to his
personal acquaintance—not a few had partaken of his hospitality at Ashestiel or Abbotsford.
The generation among whom, I presume, a genius of this order feels his own influence with
the proudest and sweetest confidence on whose fresh minds and ears he has himself made the
first indelible impressions the generation with whose earliest romance of the heart and
fancy his idea had been blended, was now grown to the full stature; the success of these
recent novels, seen on every table, the subject of every conversation, had, with those who
did not doubt their parentage, far more than counterweighed his
declination, dubious after all, in the poetical balance; while the mystery that hung over
them quickened the curiosity of the hesitating and conjecturing many and the name on which
ever and anon some new circumstance accumulated stronger suspicion, loomed larger through
the haze in which he had thought fit to envelope it. Moreover this was a period of high
national pride and excitement.
“O who, that shared them, ever shall forget The emotions of the spirit-rousing time, When breathless in the mart the couriers met, Early and late, at evening and at prime; When the loud cannon and the merry chime Hail’d news on news, as field on field was won, When Hope, long doubtful, soared at length sublime, And our glad eyes, awake as day begun, Watch’d Joy’s broad banner rise, to meet the rising sun? “O these were hours, when thrilling joy repaid A long, long course of darkness, doubts, and fears! The heartsick faintness of the hope delayed, The waste, the wo, the bloodshed, and the tears, That tracked with terror twenty rolling years— All was forgot in that blithe jubilee. Her downcast eye even pale Affliction rears, To sigh a thankful prayer, amid the glee That hailed the Despot’s fall, and peace and liberty!”*
At such a time Prince and people were well prepared to hail him who,
more perhaps than any other master of the pen, had contributed to sustain the spirit of
England throughout the struggle, which was as yet supposed to have been terminated on the
field of Thoulouse. “Thank Heaven you are coming at last”—Joanna Baillie had written a month or two
before—“Make up your mind to be stared at only a little less than the
Czar of Muscovy, or old Blucher.”
* Lord of the
Isles, Canto vi. 1.
And now took place James
Ballantyne’s “mighty consummation of the meeting of the two
bards.” Scott’s own account of it, in a letter to
Mr Moore, must be in the hands of most of my
readers; yet I think it ought also to find a place here.
“It was” (says Scott) “in the spring of 1815 that, chancing to be in
London, I had the advantage of a personal introduction to Lord Byron. Report had prepared me to meet a man
of peculiar habits and a quick temper, and I had some doubts whether we were
likely to suit each other in society. I was most agreeably disappointed in this
respect. I found Lord Byron in the highest degree
courteous, and even kind. We met for an hour or two almost daily, in Mr
Murray’s drawingroom, and found a great deal to say to each other. We
also met frequently in parties and evening society, so that for about two
months I had the advantage of a considerable intimacy with this distinguished
individual. Our sentiments agreed a good deal, except upon the subjects of
religion and politics, upon neither of which I was inclined to believe that
Lord Byron entertained very fixed opinions. I remember
saying to him, that I really thought that if he lived a few years he would
alter his sentiments. He answered, rather sharply, ‘I suppose you are
one of those who prophesy I shall turn Methodist.’ I replied,
‘No—I don’t expect your conversion to be of such an ordinary
kind. I would rather look to see you retreat upon the Catholic faith, and
distinguish yourself by the austerity of your penances. The species of
religion to which you must, or may, one day attach yourself, must exercise
a strong power on the imagination.’ He smiled gravely, and seemed
to allow I might be right.
“On politics, he used sometimes to express a high,
strain of what is now called Liberalism; but it appeared to me that the
pleasure it afforded him, as a vehicle for displaying his wit and satire
against individuals in office, was at the bottom of this
habit of thinking, rather than any real conviction of the political principles
on which he talked. He was certainly proud of his rank and ancient family, and,
in that respect, as much an aristocrat as was consistent with good sense and
good breeding. Some disgusts, how adopted I know not, seemed to me to have
given this peculiar (and, as it appeared to me) contradictory cast of mind:
but, at heart, I would have termed Byron a
patrician on principle.
“Lord
Byron’s reading did not seem to me to have been very
extensive either in poetry or history. Having the advantage of him in that
respect, and possessing a good competent share of such reading as is little
read, I was sometimes able to put under his eye objects which had for him the
interest of novelty. I remember particularly repeating to him the fine poem of
Hardyknute, an
imitation of the old Scottish ballad, with which he was so much affected, that
some one who was in the same apartment asked me what I could possibly have been
telling Byron by which he was so much agitated.
“I saw Byron for
the last time in 1815, after I returned from France. He dined, or lunched, with
me at Long’s, in Bond Street. I never saw him so full of gaiety and
good-humour, to which the presence of Mr
Mathews, the comedian, added not a little. Poor Terry was also present. After one of the
gayest parties I ever was present at, my fellow-traveller, Mr Scott of Gala, and I set off for Scotland,
and I never saw Lord Byron again. Several letters passed
between us—one perhaps every half year. Like the old heroes in Homer, we exchanged gifts. I gave
Byron a beautiful dagger mounted with gold, which had
been the property of the redoubted Elfi
Bey. But I was to play the part of Diomed in the Iliad, for Byron sent me, some time after, a
large sepulchral vase of silver. It was full of dead men’s bones, and had inscriptions on two
sides of the base. One ran thus: ‘The bones contained in this urn were
found in certain ancient sepulchres within the long walls of Athens, in the
month of February, 1811.’ The other face bears the lines of
Juvenal—‘Expende—quot libras in duce summo invenies?—Mors sola
fatetur quantula sint hominum corpuscula.’
“To these I have added a third inscription, in
these words ‘The gift of Lord Byron to
Walter Scott.’* There was a letter
with this vase, more valuable to me than the gift itself, from the kindness
with which the donor expressed himself towards me. I left it naturally in the
urn with the bones; but it is now missing. As the theft was not of a nature to
be practised by a mere domestic, I am compelled to suspect the inhospitality of
some individual of higher station, most gratuitously exercised certainly,
since, after what I have here said, no one will probably choose to boast of
possessing this literary curiosity.
“We had a good deal of laughing, I remember, on
what the public might be supposed to think, or say, concerning the gloomy and
ominous nature of our mutual gifts.
“I think I can add little more to my recollections
of Byron. He was often melancholy—almost
gloomy. When I observed him in this humour, I used either to
* Mr Murray
had, at the time of giving the vase, suggested to Lord Byron, that it would increase the
value of the gift to add some such inscription; but the noble poet
answered modestly:—
“April 9, 1815.
“Dear Murray—I have a great
objection to your proposition about inscribing the
vase—which is, that it would appear ostentatious on my
part; and of course I must send it as it is, without any
alteration. Yours ever, Byron.”
wait till it went off of its own accord, or till some
natural and easy mode occurred of leading him into conversation, when the
shadows almost always left his countenance, like the mist rising from a
landscape. In conversation he was very animated.
“I met with him very frequently in society; our
mutual acquaintances doing me the honour to think that he liked to meet with
me. Some very agreeable parties I can recollect particularly one at Sir George Beaumont’s—where the amiable
landlord had assembled some persons distinguished for talent. Of these I need
only mention the late Sir Humphry Davy,
whose talents for literature were as remarkable as his empire over science.
Mr Richard Sharpe and Mr Rogers were also present.
“I think I also remarked in Byron’s temper starts of suspicion, when he seemed to
pause and consider whether there had not been a secret, and perhaps offensive,
meaning in something casually said to him. In this case, I also judged it best
to let his mind, like a troubled spring, work itself clear, which it did in a
minute or two. I was considerably older, you will recollect, than my noble
friend, and had no reason to fear his misconstruing my sentiments towards him,
nor had I ever the slightest reason to doubt that they were kindly returned on
his part. If I had occasion to be mortified by the display of genius which
threw into the shade such pretensions as I was then supposed to possess, I
might console myself that, in my own case, the materials of mental happiness
had been mingled in a greater proportion.
“I rummage my brains in vain for what often rushes
into my head unbidden—little traits and sayings which recall his looks, manner,
tone, and gestures; and I have always continued to think that a crisis of life
was arrived in which a new career of fame was opened to him, and that had he been permitted to
start upon it, he would have obliterated the memory of such parts of his life
as friends would wish to forget.”
I have nothing to add to this interesting passage, except that
Joanna Baillie’s tragedy of The Family Legend being performed at one of the
theatres during Scott’s stay in town, Lord Byron accompanied the authoress and Mr and Mrs Scott to witness the representation; and that the vase
with the Attic bones appears to have been sent to Scott very soon
after his arrival in London, not, as Mr Moore had
gathered from the hasty diction of his “Reminiscences,” at some
“subsequent period of their acquaintance.” This is sufficiently
proved by the following note:
To the Right Honourable Lord Byron, &c.
&c.
“Piccadilly, Monday. “My dear Lord,
“I am not a little ashamed of the value of the
shrine in which your Lordship has enclosed the Attic relics; but were it yet
more costly, the circumstance could not add value to it in my estimation, when
considered as a pledge of your Lordship’s regard and friendship. The
principal pleasure which I have derived from my connexion with literature, has
been the access which it has given me to those who are distinguished by talents
and accomplishments; and, standing so high as your Lordship justly does in that
rank, my satisfaction in making your acquaintance has been proportionally
great. It is one of those wishes which, after having been long and earnestly
entertained, I have found completely gratified upon becoming personally known
to you; and I trust you will permit me to profit by it
frequently, during my stay in town. I am, my dear Lord, your truly obliged and
faithful
Walter Scott.”
It was also in the spring of 1815 that Scott had, for the first time, the honour of being presented to the
Prince Regent. His Royal Highness had (as has been
seen from a letter to Joanna Baillie, already
quoted) signified, more than a year before this time, his wish that the poet should revisit
London—and, on reading his Edinburgh Address in particular, he said to Mr Dundas, that “Walter
Scott’s charming behaviour about the laureateship had made him
doubly desirous of seeing him at Carlton-House.” More lately, on receiving a
copy of the Lord of the Isles, his Royal
Highness’s librarian had been commanded to write to him in these terms:—
To Walter Scott, Esq. Edinburgh.
“Carlton House, January, 19, 1815. “My dear Sir,
“You are deservedly so great a favourite with the
Prince Regent, that his librarian is not
only directed to return you the thanks of his Royal Highness for your valuable
present, but to inform you that the Prince Regent particularly wishes to see
you whenever you come to London; and desires you will always, when you are
there, come into his library whenever you please. Believe me always, with
sincerity, one of your warmest admirers and most obliged friends,
J. S. Clarke.”
On hearing from Mr Croker (then
Secretary to the Admiralty) that Scott was to be in town
by the middle of March, the Prince said “Let me know when he comes, and
I’ll get up a snug little dinner that will suit him;” and, after he had
been presented and graciously received at the levee, he was invited
to dinner accordingly, through his excellent friend Mr
Adam (now Lord Chief Commissioner of the Jury Court in Scotland), who at
that time held a confidential office in the royal household. The Regent had consulted with
Mr Adam also as to the composition of the party. “Let us
have,” said he, “just a few friends of his own and the more Scotch
the better;” and both the Chief Commissioner and Mr
Croker assure me that the party was the most interesting and agreeable one
in their recollection. It comprised, I believe, the Duke of
York—the late Duke of Gordon (then
Marquess of Huntly)—the Marquess of
Hertford (then Lord Yarmouth)—the Earl of Fife—and Scott’s early
friend Lord Melville. “The Prince and
Scott,” says Mr Croker,
“were the two most brilliant story-tellers in their several ways, that I have
ever happened to meet; they were both aware of their forte, and
both exerted themselves that evening with delightful effect. On going home, I really
could not decide which of them had shone the most. The Regent was enchanted with
Scott, as Scott with him; and on all his
subsequent visits to London, he was a frequent guest at the royal table.” The
Lord Chief Commissioner remembers that the Prince was particularly delighted with the
poet’s anecdotes of the old Scotch judges and lawyers, which his Royal Highness
sometimes capped by ludicrous traits of certain ermined sages of his own acquaintance.
Scott told, among others, a story, which he was fond of telling,
of his old friend the Lord Justice-Clerk Braxfield;
and the commentary of his Royal Highness on hearing it amused Scott,
who often mentioned it afterwards. The anecdote is
this:—Braxfield, whenever he went on a particular circuit, was in
the habit of visiting a gentleman of good fortune in the neighbourhood of one of the assize
towns, and staying at least one night, which, being both of them ardent chess-players, they
usually concluded with their favourite game. One Spring circuit the battle was not decided
at daybreak, so the Justice-Clerk said,—“Weel, Donald, I must
e’en come back this gate in the harvest, and let the game lie ower for the
present;” and back he came in October, but not to his old friend’s
hospitable house; for that gentleman had, in the interim, been apprehended on a capital
charge (of forgery), and his name stood on the Porteous Roll, or
list of those who were about to be tried under his former guest’s auspices. The laird
was indicted and tried accordingly, and the jury returned a verdict of guilty. Braxfield forthwith put on his cocked hat (which
answers to the black cap in England), and pronounced the sentence of the law in the usual
terms—“To be hanged by the neck until you be dead; and may the Lord have mercy upon
your unhappy soul!” Having concluded this awful formula in his most sonorous cadence,
Braxfield, dismounting his formidable beaver, gave a familiar nod
to his unfortunate acquaintance, and said to him, in a sort of chuckling whisper
“And now, Donald, my man, I think I’ve checkmated
you for ance.” The Regent laughed heartily at this specimen of
Macqueen’s brutal humour; and “I’faith,
Walter,” said he, “this old bigwig seems to
have taken things as coolly as my tyrannical self. Don’t you remember Tom Moore’s description of me at breakfast— ‘The table spread with tea and toast, Death-warrants and the Morning
Post?’
Towards midnight, the Prince called
for “a bumper, with all the honours, to the Author of
Waverley,” and
looked significantly, as he was charging his own glass, to Scott.
Scott seemed somewhat puzzled for a moment, but instantly
recovering himself, and filling his glass to the brim, said, “Your royal highness
looks as if you thought I had some claim to the honours of this toast, I have no such
pretensions, but shall take good care that the real Simon Pure
hears of the high compliment that has now been paid him.” He then drank off
his claret, and joined with a stentorian voice in the cheering, which the Prince himself
timed. But before the company could resume their seats, his Royal Highness exclaimed,
“Another of the same, if you please, to the Author of Marmion—and now, Walter, my man,
I have checkmated you for ance.” The second bumper was
followed by cheers still more prolonged: and Scott then rose and
returned thanks in a short address, which struck the Lord Chief Commissioner as
“alike grave and graceful.” This story has been circulated in a very
perverted shape. I now give it on the authority of my venerated friend, who was—unlike,
perhaps, some others of the company at that hour—able to hear accurately, and content to
see single. He adds, that having occasion, the day after, to call on the Duke of York, his Royal Highness said to him—“upon my
word, Adam, my brother went rather too near the wind
about Waverley—but nobody could have
turned the thing more prettily than Walter Scott did—and upon the
whole I never had better fun.”
The Regent, as was his custom with
those he most delighted to honour, uniformly addressed the poet, even at their first
dinner, by his Christian name, “Walter.”
Before he left town he again dined at Carlton House, when the party
was a still smaller one than before, and the merriment, if possible, still more free. That
nothing might be wanting, the Prince sung several
capital songs in the course of that evening as witness the lines in
Sultan Serendib—
“I love a Prince will bid the bottle pass, Exchanging with his subjects glance and glass, In fitting time can, gayest of the gay, Keep up the jest and mingle in the lay. Such Monarchs best our freeborn humour suit, But despots must be stately, stern, and mute.”
Before he returned to Edinburgh, on the 22d of May, the Regent sent him a gold snuff-box, set in brilliants, with a
medallion of his Royal Highness’s head on the lid, “as a
testimony” (writes Mr Adam, in transmitting
it) “of the high opinion his Royal Highness entertains of your genius and
merit.”
I transcribe what follows, from James
Ballantyne’sMemoranda:—“After
Mr Scott’s first interview with his
Sovereign, one or two intimate friends took the liberty of enquiring, what judgment he
had formed of the Regent’s talents? He
declined giving any definite answer—but repeated, that ‘he was the first
gentleman he had seen—certainly the first English gentleman
of his day; there was something about him which, independently of the prestige, the “divinity,” which hedges a King,
marked him as standing entirely by himself; but as to his abilities, spoken of as
distinct from his charming manners, how could any one form a fair judgment of that
man who introduced whatever subject he chose, discussed it just as long as he
chose, and dismissed it when he chose?’”
Ballantyne adds, “What I have now to say is
more important, not only in itself, but as it will enable you to give a final
contradiction to an injurious report which has been in circulation; viz. that the
Regent asked him as to the authorship of
Waverley, and received a distinct
and solemn denial. I took the bold freedom of requesting to know from
him whether his Royal Highness had questioned him on that subject, and what
had been his answer. He glanced at me with a look of wild surprise, and said,
‘What answer I might have made to such a question, put to me by my
sovereign, perhaps I do not, or rather perhaps I do know; but I was never put to
the test. He is far too well-bred a man ever to put so ill-bred a
question.’”
The account I have already given of the convivial scene alluded to
would probably have been sufficient; but it can do no harm to place Ballantyne’s, or rather Scott’s own testimony also on record.
I ought not to have omitted, that during Scott’s residence in London, in April 1815, he lost one of the
English friends, to a meeting with whom he had looked forward with the highest pleasure.
Mr George Ellis died on the 15th of that month,
at his seat of Sunninghill. This threw a cloud over what would otherwise have been a period
of unmixed enjoyment. Mr Canning penned the epitaph
for that dearest of his friends; but he submitted it to Scott’s consideration before it was engraved.
CHAPTER XI. BATTLE OF WATERLOO—LETTER OF SIR CHARLES BELL—VISIT TO
THE CONTINENT—WATERLOO—LETTERS FROM BRUSSELS AND PARIS—ANECDOTES OF
SCOTT AT PARIS—THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON—THE
EMPEROR
ALEXANDER—BLUCHER—PLATOFF—PARTY AT
ERMENONVILLE, ETC.—LONDON—PARTING WITH LORD
BYRON—SCOTT’S BIRMINGHAM KNIFE—RETURN TO
ABBOTSFORD—ANECDOTES BY MR SKENE AND JAMES
BALLANTYNE. 1815.
Goethe expressed, I
fancy, a very general sentiment, when he said, that to him the great charm and value of my
friend’s Life of Buonaparte seemed
quite independent of the question of its accuracy as to small details; that he turned
eagerly to the book, not to find dates sifted, and countermarches analyzed, but to
contemplate what could not but be a true record of the broad impressions made on the mind
of Scott by the marvellous revolutions of his own time
in their progress. Feeling how justly in the main that work has preserved those
impressions, though gracefully softened and sobered in the retrospect of peaceful and more
advanced years, I the less regret that I have it not in my power to quote any letters of
his touching the reappearance of Napoleon on the soil
of France—the immortal march from Cannes—the reign of the Hundred Days, and the
preparations for another struggle, which fixed the gaze of Europe in May 1815.
That he should have been among the first civilians who hurried over to
see the field of Waterloo, and hear English bugles sound about the walls of Paris, could have surprised none who knew the
lively concern he had always taken in the military efforts of his countrymen, and the
career of the illustrious captain, who had taught them to re-establish the renown of
Agincourt and Blenheim,— “Victor of Assaye’s Eastern plain, Victor of all the fields of Spain.” I had often heard him say, however, that his determination was, if not fixed, much
quickened, by a letter of an old acquaintance of his, who had, on the arrival of the news
of the 18th of June, instantly repaired to Brussels, to tender his professional skill in
aid of the overburdened medical staff of the conqueror’s army. When, therefore, I
found the letter in question preserved among Scott’s papers, I perused it with a peculiar interest; and I now
venture, with the writer’s permission, to present it to the reader. It was addressed
by Sir Charles Bell to his brother, an eminent
barrister in Edinburgh, who transmitted it to Scott. “When I
read it,” said he, “it set me on fire.” The marriage of
Miss Maclean Clephane of Torloisk with the Earl of
Compton (now Marquis of Northampton), which took place
on the 24th of July, was in fact the only cause why he did not leave Scotland instantly;
for that dear young friend had chosen Scott for her guardian, and on
him accordingly devolved the chief care of the arrangements on this occasion. The extract
sent to him by Mr George Joseph Bell is as follows:—
“Brussels, 2d July, 1815.
“This country, the finest in the world, has been of
late quite out of our minds. I did not, in any degree, anticipate the pleasure
I should enjoy, the admiration forced from me, on coming
into one of these antique towns, or in journeying through this rich garden. Can
you recollect the time when there were gentlemen meeting at the Cross of
Edinburgh, or those whom we thought such? They are all collected here. You see
the very men, with their scraggy necks sticking out of the collars of their
old-fashioned square-skirted coats—their canes—their cocked-hats; and, when
they meet, the formal bow, the hat off to the ground, and the powder flying in
the wind. I could divert you with the odd resemblances of the Scottish faces
among the peasants, too—but I noted them at the time with my pencil, and I
write to you only of things that you won’t find in my pocket-book.
“I have just returned from seeing the French
wounded received in their hospital; and could you see them laid out naked, or
almost so—100 in a row of low beds on the ground though wounded, exhausted,
beaten, you would still conclude with me that these were men capable of
marching unopposed from the west of Europe to the east of Asia. Strong,
thickset, hardy veterans, brave spirits and unsubdued, as they cast their wild
glance upon you,—their black eyes and brown cheeks finely contrasted with the
fresh sheets,—you would much admire their capacity of adaptation. These fellows
are brought from the field after lying many days on the ground; many dying—many
in the agony many miserably racked with pain and spasms; and the next mimicks
his fellow, and gives it a tune,—Aha, vous chantez
bien! How they are wounded you will see in my notes. But
I must not have you to lose the present impression on me of the formidable
nature of these fellows as exemplars of the breed in France. It is a forced
praise; for from all I have seen, and all I have heard of their fierceness,
cruelty, and bloodthirstiness, I cannot convey to you my detestation of this race of
trained banditti. By what means they are to be kept in subjection until other
habits come upon them, I know not; but I am convinced that these men cannot be
left to the bent of their propensities.
“This superb city is now ornamented with the finest
groupes of armed men that the most romantic fancy could dream of. I was struck
with the words of a friend—E.: ‘I saw,’
said he, ‘that man returning from the field on the 16th.’
(This was a Brunswicker of the Black or Death Hussars.) ‘He was
wounded, and had had his arm amputated on the field. He was among the first
that came in. He rode straight and stark upon his horse the bloody clouts
about his stump pale as death, but upright, with a stern, fixed expression
of feature, as if loth to lose his revenge.’ These troops are
very remarkable in their fine military appearance; their dark and ominous dress
sets off to advantage their strong, manly, northern features and white
mustachios; and there is something more than commonly impressive about the
whole effect.
“This is the second Sunday after the battle, and
many are not yet dressed. There are 20,000 wounded in this town, besides those
in the hospitals, and the many in the other towns;—only 3000 prisoners; 80,000,
they say, killed and wounded on both sides.”
I think it not wonderful that this extract should have set Scott’s imagination effectually on fire; that he should
have grasped at the idea of seeing probably the last shadows of real warfare that his own
age would afford; or that some parts of the great surgeon’s simple phraseology are
reproduced, almost verbatim, in the first of “Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk.” No sooner was
Scott’s purpose known, than some of his young neighbours in
the country proposed to join his excursion; and, in company with
three of them, namely, his kinsman, John Scott of
Gala—Alexander Pringle, the younger,
of Whytbank (now M. P. for Selkirkshire)—and Robert
Bruce, advocate (now Sheriff of Argyle)—he left Edinburgh for the south, at
5 a.m., on the 27th of July.
They travelled by the stage-coach, and took the route of Hull and
Lincoln to Cambridge; for Gala and Whytbank, being both members of that university, were anxious to seize
this opportunity of revisiting it themselves, and showing its beautiful architecture to
their friend. After this wish had been gratified, they proceeded to Harwich, and thence, on
the 3d of August, took ship for Helvoetsluys.
“The weather was beautiful,” says Gala, “so we all went outside the coach from
Cambridge to Harwich. At starting, there was a general complaint of thirst, the
consequence of some experiments overnight on the celebrated bishop of my Alma Mater; our friend, however, was in
great glee, and never was a merrier basket than he made it all
the morning. He had cautioned us, on leaving Edinburgh, never to name names in such
situations, and our adherence to this rule was rewarded by some amusing incidents. For
example, as we entered the town where we were to dine, a heavy-looking man, who was to
stop there, took occasion to thank Scott for the
pleasure his anecdotes had afforded him: ‘You have a good memory,
sir,’ said he; ‘mayhap, now, you sometimes write down what you hear
or be a-reading about?’ He answered very gravely, that he did
occasionally put down a few notes, if any thing struck him particularly. In the
afternoon, it happened that he sat on the box, while the rest of us were behind him.
Here, by degrees, he became quite absorbed in his own reflections. He frequently
repeated to himself, or composed perhaps, for a good while, and often smiled or
raised his hand, seeming completely occupied and amused. His neighbour, a vastly
scientific and rather grave professor, in a smooth drab Benjamin and broad-brimmed
beaver, cast many a curious sidelong glance at him, evidently suspecting that all was
not right with the upper story, but preserved perfect politeness. The poet was,
however, discovered by the captain of the vessel in which we crossed the Channel, and a
perilous passage it was, chiefly in consequence of the unceasing tumblers in which this
worthy kept drinking his health.”
Before leaving Edinburgh, Scott had
settled in his mind the plan of “Paul’s
Letters;” for on that same day, his agent, John Ballantyne, addressed the following letter, from his marine villa near
Newhaven—
To Messrs Constable and Co.
“Trinity, 27th July, 1815. “Dear Sirs,
“Mr Scott left
town to-day for the Continent. He proposes writing from thence a series of
letters on a peculiar plan, varied in matter and style, and to different
supposititious correspondents.
“The work is to form a demy 8vo volume of
twenty-two sheets, to sell at 12s. It is to be begun immediately on his arrival
in France, and to be published, if possible, the second week of September, when
he proposes to return.
“We print 3000 of this, and I am empowered to offer
you one-third of the edition, Messrs Longman and Co. and Mr
Murray having each the same share: the terms, twelve
months’ acceptance for paper and print, and half profits at six months,
granted now, as under. The over copies will pay the charge for advertising. I
am, &c.
Before Scott reached Harwich, he
knew that this offer had been accepted without hesitation; and thenceforth, accordingly, he
threw his daily letters to his wife into the form of communications meant for an imaginary
group, consisting of a spinster sister, a statistical laird, a rural clergyman of the
Presbyterian Kirk, and a brother, a veteran officer on half-pay. The rank of this last
personage corresponded, however, exactly with that of his own elder brother, John Scott, who also, like the Major of the book, had
served in the Duke of York’s unfortunate campaign
of 1797; the sister is only a slender disguise for his aunt Christian Rutherfurd, already often mentioned; Lord Somerville, long President of the Board of Agriculture, was Paul’s laird; and the shrewd and unbigoted Dr Douglas of Galashiels was his “minister of the
gospel.” These epistles, after having been devoured by the little circle at
Abbotsford, were transmitted to Major John Scott, his mother and Miss Rutherfurd in
Edinburgh; from their hands they passed to those of James
Ballantyne and Mr Erskine, both of
whom assured me that the copy ultimately sent to the press consisted, in great part, of the
identical sheets that had successively reached Melrose through the post. The rest had of
course been, as Ballantyne expresses it, “somewhat
cobbled;” but, on the whole,
Paul’s Let-ters
are to be considered as a true and faithful journal of this expedition; insomuch, that I
might perhaps content myself, in this place, with a simple reference to that delightful
volume. He found time, however, to write letters during his absence from Britain, to some
others of his friends; and a specimen or two of these may interest the reader. I have also
gathered, from the companions of the journey, a few more particulars, which
Scott’s modesty withheld him from recording; and some
trivial circumstances which occur to me, from recollection of his own conversation, may
also be acceptable.
But I hope that, if the reader has not perused Paul’s Letters recently, he will refresh his memory,
before he proceeds further, by bestowing an hour on that genuine fragment of the
author’s autobiography. He is now, unless he had the advantage of Scott’s personal familiarity, much better acquainted
with the man than he could have been before he took up this compilation of his private
correspondence—and especially before he perused the full diary of the lighthouse yacht in
1814; and a thousand little turns and circumstances which may have, when he originally read
the book, passed lightly before his eye, will now, I venture to say, possess a warm and
vivid interest, as inimitably characteristic of a departed friend. The kindest of husbands
and fathers never portrayed himself with more unaffected truth than in this vain effort, if
such he really fancied he was making, to sustain the character of “a cross old
bachelor.” The whole man, just as he was, breathes in every line, with all
his compassionate and benevolent sympathy of heart, all his sharpness of observation, and
sober shrewdness of reflection; all his enthusiasm for nature, for country life, for simple
manners and simple pleasures, mixed up with an equally glowing enthusiasm, at which, many
may smile, for the tiniest relics of feudal antiquity—and last, not
least, a pulse of physical rapture for the “circumstance of war,” which bears
witness to the blood of Boltfoot and Fire the
Braes.
At Brussels, Scott found the small
English garrison left there in command of Major-General Sir
Frederick Adam, the son of his highly valued friend, the present Lord Chief Commissioner of the Jury Court in Scotland.
Sir Frederick had been wounded at Waterloo, and could not as yet
mount on horseback; but one of his aides-de-camp, Captain Campbell,
escorted Scott and his party to the field of battle, on which occasion
they were also accompanied by another old acquaintance of his, Major Pryse Gordon, who being then on half-pay, happened to be domesticated
with his family at Brussels. Major Gordon has since published two
lively volumes of “Personal
Memoirs;” and Gala bears witness to the fidelity of certain reminiscences of
Scott at Brussels and Waterloo, which occupy one of the chapters
of this work. I shall, therefore, extract the passage.
“Sir Walter
Scott accepted my services to conduct him to Waterloo: the General’s
aide-de-camp was also of the party. He made no secret of his having undertaken to write
something on the battle; and perhaps he took the greater interest on this account in every
thing that he saw. Besides, he had never seen the field of such a conflict; and never
having been before on the Continent, it was all new to his comprehensive mind. The day was
beautiful; and I had the precaution to send out a couple of saddle-horses, that he might
not be fatigued in walking over the fields, which had been recently ploughed up. In our
rounds we fell in with Monsieur de Costar, with
whom he got into conversation. This man had attracted so much notice by his pretended story
of being about the person of Napoleon, that he was of
too much importance to be passed by: I did not, indeed, know as much of this fellow’s
charlatanism at that time as afterwards, when I saw him confronted with a blacksmith of La
Belle Alliance, who had been his companion in a hiding-place ten miles from the field
during the whole day; a fact which he could not deny. But he had got up a tale so plausible
and so profitable, that he could afford to
bestow hush-money on the companion of his flight, so that the imposition was but little
known; and strangers continued to be gulled. He had picked up a good deal of information
about the positions and details of the battle; and being naturally a sagacious Wallon, and
speaking French pretty fluently, he became the favourite cicerone, and every lie he told
was taken for gospel. Year after year, until his death in 1824, he continued his
popularity, and raised the price of his rounds from a couple of francs to five; besides as
much for the hire of a horse, his own property; for he pretended that the fatigue of
walking so many hours was beyond his powers. It has been said that in this way he realized
every summer a couple of hundred Napoleons.
“When Sir Walter
had examined every point of defence and attack, we adjourned to the ‘Original Duke of
Wellington’ at Waterloo, to lunch after the fatigues of the ride. Here he had a
crowded levee of peasants, and collected a great many trophies, from cuirasses down to
buttons and bullets. He picked up himself many little relics, and was fortunate in
purchasing a grand cross of the legion of honour. But the most precious memorial was
presented to him by my wife—a French soldier’s book, well stained with blood, and
containing some songs popular in the French army, which he found so interesting that he
introduced versions of them in his Paul’s
Letters;’ of which he did me the honour to send me a copy, with a letter,
saying, ‘that he considered my wife’s gift as the most valuable of all his
Waterloo relics.’
“On our return from the field, he kindly passed the
evening with us, and a few friends whom we invited to meet him. He charmed us with his
delightful conversation, and was in great spirits from the agreeable day he had passed; and
with great good-humour promised to write a stanza in my wife’s album. On the
following morning he fulfilled his promise by contributing some beautiful verses on
Hougoumont. I put him into my little library to prevent interruption, as a great many
persons had paraded in the Pare opposite my
window to get a peep of the celebrated man, many having dogged him from his hotel.
“Brussels affords but little worthy of the notice
of such a traveller as the Author of ‘Waverley;’ but he greatly admired the splendid tower of the Maison de
Ville, and the ancient sculpture and style of architecture of the buildings which surround
the Grand Place.
“He told us, with great humour, a laughable
incident which had occurred to him at Antwerp. The morning after his arrival at that city from Holland, he started at an early hour to visit the tomb of
Rubens in the Church of St Jacques, before his
party were up. After wandering about for some time, without finding the object he had in
view, he determined to make enquiry, and observing a person stalking about, he addressed
him in his best French; but the stranger, pulling off his hat, very respectfully replied in
the pure Highland accent, ‘I’m vary sorry, Sir, but I canna speak ony thing
besides English.’—‘This is very unlucky indeed, Donald,’ said
Sir Walter, ‘but we must help one another;
for to tell you the truth, I’m not good at any other tongue but the English, or
rather, the Scotch.’—‘Oh, sir, maybe,’ replied the
Highlander, ‘you are a countryman, and ken my maister Captain
Cameron of the 79th, and could tell me whare he lodges. I’m just
cum in, sir, frae a place they ca’ Machlin,* and ha’
forgotten the name of the captain’s quarters; it was something like the Laaborer.’—‘I can, I think, help you with
this, my friend,’ rejoined Sir Walter. ‘There
is an inn just opposite to you (pointing to the Hotel du Grand
Laboureur): I dare say that will be the captain’s quarters’;
and it was so. I cannot do justice to the humour with which Sir Walter
recounted this dialogue.Ӡ
The following is the letter which Scott addressed to the Duke of
Buccleuch, immediately after seeing the field of Waterloo; and it may amuse
the reader to compare it with Major Gordon’s
chapter, and with the writer’s own fuller, and, of course, “cobbled”
detail, in the pages of Paul:—
To his Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, &c.
“My dear Lord Duke,
“I promised to let you hear of my wanderings,
however unimportant; and have now the pleasure of informing your Grace, that I
am at this present time an inhabitant of the Premier Hotel de Cambrai, after
having been about a week upon the Continent. We landed at Helvoet, and
proceeded to Brussels, by Ber-
* Mechlin—the Highlander gave it the familiar
pronunciation of a Scotch village, Mauchline, celebrated in many of
Burns’s poems.
† See Major
Gordon’sPersonal Memoirs, (1830), vol. ii.
pp. 325-338.
gen-op-Zoom and
Antwerp, both of which are very strongly fortified. The ravages of war are
little remarked in a country so rich by nature; but every thing seems at
present stationary, or rather retrograde, where capital is required. The
chateaux are deserted, and going to decay; no new houses are built, and those
of older date are passing rapidly into the possession of a class inferior to
those for whom we must suppose them to have been built. Even the old
gentlewoman of Babylon has lost much of her splendour, and her robes and pomp
are of a description far subordinate to the costume of her more magnificent
days. The dresses of the priests were worn and shabby, both at Antwerp and
Brussels, and reminded me of the decayed wardrobe of a bankrupt theatre: yet,
though the gentry and priesthood have suffered, the eternal bounty of nature
has protected the lower ranks against much distress. The unexampled fertility
of the soil gives them all, and more than they want; and could they but sell
the grain which they raise in the Netherlands, nothing else would be wanting to
render them the richest people (common people, that is to say) in the world.
“On Wednesday last, I rode over the field of
Waterloo, now for ever consecrated to immortality. The more ghastly tokens of
the carnage are now removed, the bodies both of men and horses being either
burned or buried; but all the ground is still torn with the shot and shells,
and covered with cartridges, old hats, and shoes, and various relics of the
fray which the peasants have not thought worth removing. Besides, at Waterloo
and all the hamlets in the vicinage, there is a mart established for cuirasses;
for the eagles worn by the imperial guard on their caps; for casques, swords,
carabines, and similar articles. I have bought two handsome cuirasses, and
intend them, one for Bowhill, and one for Abbotsford, if
I can get them safe over, which Major Pryse
Gordon has promised to manage for me. I have also, for your
Grace, one of the little memorandum-books, which I picked up on the field, in
which every French soldier was obliged to enter his receipts and expenditure,
his services, and even his punishments. The field was covered with fragments of
these records. I also got a good MS. collection of French songs, probably the
work of some young officer, and a croix of the Legion of Honour. I enclose,
under another cover, a sketch of the battle, made at Brussels. It is not, I
understand, strictly accurate; but sufficiently so to give a good notion of
what took place. In fact, it would require twenty separate plans to give an
idea of the battle at its various stages. The front, upon which the armies
engaged, does not exceed a long mile. Our line, indeed, originally extended
half a-mile farther towards the village of Brain-la-Leude; but as the French
indicated no disposition to attack in that direction, the troops which occupied
this space were gradually concentrated by Lord
Wellington, and made to advance till they had reached
Hougomont—a sort of chateau, with a garden and wood attached to it, which was
powerfully and effectually maintained by the Guards during the action. This
place was particularly interesting. It was a quiet-looking gentleman’s
house, which had been burnt by the French shells. The defenders, burnt out of
the house itself, betook themselves to the little garden, where, breaking
loop-holes through the brick walls, they kept up a most destructive fire on the
assailants, who had possessed themselves of a little wood which surrounds the
villa on one side. In this spot vast numbers had fallen; and, being hastily
buried, the smell is most offensive at this moment. Indeed, I felt the same
annoyance in many parts of the field; and, did I live near the spot, I should be anxious about
the diseases which this steaming carnage might occasion. The rest of the
ground, excepting this chateau, and a farm-house called La Hay Sainte, early
taken, and long held, by the French, because it was too close under the brow of
the descent on which our artillery was placed to admit of the pieces being
depressed so as to play into it, the rest of the ground, I say, is quite open,
and lies between two ridges, one of which (Mont St Jean) was constantly
occupied by the English; the other, upon which is the farm of La Belle
Alliance, was the position of the French. The slopes between are gentle and
varied; the ground every where practicable for cavalry, as was well experienced
on that memorable day. The cuirassiers, despite their arms of proof, were quite
inferior to our heavy dragoons. The meeting of the two bodies occasioned a
noise, not unaptly compared to the tinkering and hammering of a smith’s
shop. Generally the cuirassiers came on stooping their heads very low, and
giving point; the British frequently struck away their casques while they were
in this position, and then laid at the bare head. Officers and soldiers all
fought, hand to hand, without distinction; and many of the former owed their
life to dexterity at their weapon, and personal strength of body.
Shaw, the milling Life-Guards’ man, whom your
Grace may remember among the champions of The Fancy, maintained the honour of
the fist, and killed or disabled upwards of twenty Frenchmen, with his single
arm, until he was killed by the assault of numbers. At one place, where there
is a precipitous sand or gravel pit, the heavy English cavalry drove many of
the cuirassiers over pell-mell, and followed over themselves like fox-hunters.
The conduct of the infantry and artillery was equally, or, if possible, more
distinguished, and it was all fully necessary; for, besides that our army was much outnumbered, a great part of the
sum-total were foreigners. Of these, the Brunswickers and Hanoverians behaved
very well; the Belgians but sorrily enough. On one occasion, when a Belgic
regiment fairly ran off, Lord Wellington
rode up to them, and said, ‘My lads, you must be a little blown; come,
do take your breath for a moment, and then we’ll go back, and try if
we can do a little better;’ and he actually carried them back to
the charge. He was, indeed, upon that day, every where, and the soul of every
thing; nor could less than his personal endeavours have supported the spirits
of the men through a contest so long, so desperate, and so unequal. At his last
attack, Buonaparte brought up 15,000 of
his Guard, who had never drawn trigger during the day. It was upon their
failure that his hopes abandoned him.
“I spoke long with a shrewd Flemish peasant, called
John De Costar, whom he had seized
upon as his guide, and who remained beside him the whole day, and afterwards
accompanied him in his flight as far as Charleroi. Your Grace may be sure that
I interrogated Mynheer very closely about what he heard and saw. He guided me
to the spot where Buonaparte remained
during the latter part of the action. It was in the highway from Brussels to
Charleroi, where it runs between two high banks, on each of which was a French
battery. He was pretty well sheltered from the English fire; and, though many
bullets flew over his head, neither he nor any of his suite were touched. His
other stations, during that day, were still more remote from all danger. The
story of his having an observatory erected for him is a mistake. There is such
a thing, and he repaired to it during the action; but it was built or erected
some months before, for the purpose of a trigonometrical survey of the country,
by the King of the Netherlands. Bony’s last
position was nearly fronting a tree, where the Duke of
Wellington was stationed; there was not more than a quarter of a
mile between them; but Bony was well sheltered, and the
Duke so much exposed, that the tree is barked in several places by the
cannon-balls levelled at him. As for Bony, De
Costar says he was very cool during the whole day, and even gay.
As the cannon-balls flew over them, De Costar ducked; at
which the Emperor laughed, and told him they would hit him all the same. At
length, about the time he made his grand and last effort, the fire of the
Prussian artillery was heard upon his right, and the heads of their columns
became visible pressing out of the woods. Aid-de-camp after aid-de-camp came
with the tidings of their advance, to which Bony only
replied, attendez, attendez un
instant, until he saw his troops, fantassins et cavaliers, return in disorder from the
attack. He then observed hastily to a general beside him, je crois qu’ils sont
mélés. The person to whom he spoke, hastily raised the
spyglass to his eye; but Bony, whom the first glance had
satisfied of their total discomfiture, bent his face to the ground, and shook
his head twice, his complexion being then as pale as death. The general then
said something, to which Buonaparte answered, c’est trop tard sauvons nous. Just
at that moment, the allied troops, cavalry and infantry, appeared in full
advance on all hands; and the Prussians, operating upon the right flank of the
French, were rapidly gaining their rear. Bony, therefore,
was compelled to abandon the high-road, which, besides, was choked with dead,
with baggage, and with cannon; and, gaining the open country, kept at full
gallop, until he gained, like Johnnie
Cope, the van of the flying army. The marshals followed his
example; and it was the most complete sauve qui
peut that can well be imagined. Nevertheless, the prisoners who were brought into Brussels maintained
their national impudence, and boldly avowed their intention of sacking the city
with every sort of severity. At the same time they had friends there. One man
of rank and wealth went over to Bony during the action,
and I saw his hotel converted into an hospital for wounded soldiers. It
occupied one-half of one of the sides of the Place Royale, a noble square,
which your Grace has probably seen. But, in general, the inhabitants of
Brussels were very differently disposed; and their benevolence to our poor
wounded fellows was unbounded. The difficulty was to prevent them from killing
their guests with kindness, by giving them butcher’s meat and wine during
their fever. As I cannot put my letter into post until we get to Paris, I shall
continue it as we get along.
“12th August, Roye, in
Picardy.—I imagine your Grace about this time to be tolerably well
fagged with a hard day on the moors. If the weather has been as propitious as
with us, it must be delightful. The country through which we have travelled is
most uncommonly fertile, and skirted with beautiful woods; but its present
political situation is so very uncommon, that I would give the world your Grace
had come over for a fortnight. France may be considered as neither at peace or
war. Valenciennes, for example, is in a state of blockade; we passed through
the posts of the allies, all in the utmost state of vigilance, with patroles of
cavalry, and videttes of infantry, up to the very gates, and two or three
batteries were manned and mounted. The French troops were equally vigilant at
the gates, yet made no objections to our passing through the town. Most of them
had the white cockade, but looked very sulky, and were in obvious disorder and
confusion. They had not yet made their terms with the King, nor accepted a
com-mander appointed by him; but as they obviously feel their party desperate,
the soldiers are running from the officers, and the officers from the soldiers.
In fact, the multiplied hosts which pour into this country, exhibiting all the
various dresses and forms of war which can be imagined, must necessarily render
resistance impracticable. Yet, like Satan,
these fellows retain the unconquered propensity to defiance, even in the midst
of defeat and despair. This morning we passed a great number of the disbanded
garrison of Conde, and they were the most horrid-looking cut-throats I ever
saw, extremely disposed to be very insolent, and only repressed by the
consciousness that all the villages and towns around are occupied by the
allies. They began by crying to us, in an ironical tone, Vive le Roi; then followed, sotto voce, Sacre B——, Mille diables, and
other graces of French eloquence. I felt very well pleased that we were armed,
and four in number; and still more so that it was daylight, for they seemed
most mischievous ruffians. As for the appearance of the country, it is,
notwithstanding a fine harvest, most melancholy. The windows of all the
detached houses on the road are uniformly shut up; and you see few people,
excepting the peasants who are employed in driving the contributions to
maintain the armies. The towns are little better, having for the most part been
partially injured by shells or by storm, as was the case both of Cambrai and
Peronne. The men look very sulky; and if you speak three words to a woman, she
is sure to fall a-crying. In short, the politesse and good humour of this people have fled with
the annihilation of their self-conceit; and they look on you as if they thought
you were laughing at them, or come to enjoy the triumph of our arms over
theirs. Postmasters and landlords are all the same, and hardly to be
propitiated even by English money, although they charge
us about three times as much as they durst do to their countryfolks. As for the
Prussians, a party of cavalry dined at our hotel at Mons, eat and drank of the
best the poor devils had left to give, called for their horses, and laughed in
the face of the landlord when he offered his bill, telling him they should pay
as they came back. The English, they say, have always paid honourably, and upon
these they indemnify themselves. It is impossible to marchander, for if you object, the poor landlady begins
to cry, and tells you she will accept whatever your
lordship pleases, but that she is almost ruined and bankrupt, &c.
&c. &c.
“This is a long stupid letter, but I will endeavour
to send a better from Paris. Ever your Grace’s truly obliged,
Walter Scott.”
The only letter which Scott
addressed to Joanna Baillie, while in Paris, goes
over partly the same ground:—I transcribe the rest.
“Paris, 6th Sept. 1815. “My dear Friend,
“I owe you a long letter, but my late travels and
the date of this epistle will be a tolerable plea for your indulgence. The
truth is, I became very restless after the battle of Waterloo, and was only
detained by the necessity of attending a friend’s marriage from setting
off instantly for the Continent. At length, however, I got away to Brussels,
and was on the memorable field of battle about five weeks after it had been
fought. . . .
“If our army had been all British, the day would
have been soon decided; but the Duke, or,
as they call him here, from his detestation of all manner of foppery, the Beau, had not above 35,000 British. All this was to be supplied by treble
exertion on the part of our troops. The Duke was every where during the battle;
and it was the mercy of Heaven that protected him, when all his staff had been
killed or wounded round him. I asked him, among many other questions, if he had
seen Buonaparte; he said ‘No; but
at one time, from the repeated shouts of Vive
l’Empereur, I thought he must be
near.’ This was when John De
Costar placed him in the hollow way. I think, so near as I can
judge, there may at that time have been a quarter of a mile between these two
great generals.
“The fate of the French, after this day of decisive
appeal, has been severe enough. There were never people more mortified, more
subdued, and apparently more broken in spirit. They submit with sad civility to
the extortions of the Prussians and the Russians, and avenge themselves at the
expense of the English, whom they charge three prices for everything, because
they are the only people who pay at all. They are in the right, however, to
enforce discipline and good order, which not only maintains the national
character in the mean time, but will prevent the army from suffering by habits
of indulgence. I question if the Prussians will soon regain their discipline
and habits of hardihood. At present their powers of eating and drinking, which
are really something preternatural, are exerted to the very utmost. A thin
Prussian boy, whom I sometimes see, eats in one day as much as three English
ploughmen. At daybreak he roars for chocolate and eggs; about nine he
breakfasts more solemnly à la
fourchette, when, besides all the usual apparatus of an
English déjeuner, he eats a
world of cutlets, oysters, fruit, &c., and drinks a glass of brandy and a
bottle of champagne. His dinner might serve Garagantua, at which he gets himself about three parts drunk—a
circumstance which does not prevent the charge upon cold
meat, with tea and chocolate, about six o’clock; and concluding the whole
with an immense supper. Positively the appetite of this lad reminds one of the
Eastern tale of a man taken out of the sea by a ship’s crew, who, in
return, ate up all the provisions of the vessel. He was, I think, flown away
with by a roc; but from what quarter of the heavens the French are to look for
deliverance from these devourers, I cannot presume to guess.
“The needless wreck and ruin which they make in the
houses, adds much to the inconvenience of their presence, Most of the chateaux,
where the Prussians are quartered, are what is technically called rumped, that is to say, plundered out and out. In the
fine chateau of Montmorency, for instance, the most splendid apartments, highly
ornamented with gilding and carving, were converted into barracks for the
dirtiest and most savage-looking hussars I have yet seen. Imagine the work
these fellows make with velvet hangings and embroidery. I saw one hag boiling
her camp-kettle with part of a picture frame; the picture Itself has probably
gone to Prussia. With all this greediness and love of mischief, the Prussians
are not blood-thirsty; and their utmost violence seldom exceeds a blow or two
with the flat of the sabre. They are also very civil to the women, and in both
respects behave much better than the French did in their country; but they
follow the bad example quite close enough for the sake of humanity and of
discipline. As for our people, they live in a most orderly and regular manner.
All the young men pique themselves on imitating the Duke of Wellington in non-chalance and
coolness of manner; so they wander about every where, with their hands in the
pockets of their long waistcoats, or cantering upon Cossack ponies, staring and
whistling, and trotting to and fro, as if all Paris was theirs. The French hate
them
sufficiently for the hauteur of their manner and
pretensions, but the grounds of dislike against us are drowned in the actual
detestation afforded by the other powers.
“This morning I saw a grand military
spectacle,—about 20,000 Russians pass in review before all the Kings and
Dominations who are now resident at Paris. The Emperor, King of Prussia,
Duke of Wellington, with their numerous
and brilliant attendance of generals, staff-officers, &c., were in the
centre of what is called the Place Louis Quinze, almost on the very spot where
Louis XVI. was beheaded. A very long
avenue, which faces the station where they were placed, was like a glowing
furnace, so fiercely were the sunbeams reflected from the arms of the host by
which it was filled. A body of Cossacks kept the ground with their pikes, and,
by their wild appearance, added to the singularity of the scene. On one hand
was the extended line of the Tuileries, seen through the gardens and the rows
of orange trees; on the other, the long column of troops advancing to the
music. Behind was a long colonnade, forming the front to the palace, where the
Chamber of Representatives are to hold their sittings; and in front of the
monarchs was a superb row of buildings, on which you distinguish the bronze
pillar erected by Napoleon to commemorate
his victories over Russia, Prussia, and Austria, whose princes were now
reviewing their victorious armies in what was so lately his capital. Your
fancy, my dear friend, will anticipate, better than I can express, the thousand
sentiments which arose in my mind from witnessing such a splendid scene, in a
spot connected with such various associations. It may give you some idea of the
feelings of the French—once so fond of spectacles—to
know that, I think, there were not a hundred of that nation looking on. Yet
this country will soon recover the actual losses she has
sustained, for never was there a soil so blessed by nature, or so rich in corn,
wine, and oil, and in the animated industry of its inhabitants. France is at
present the fabled giant, struggling, or rather lying supine, under the load of
mountains which have been precipitated on her; but she is not, and cannot be
crushed. Remove the incumbent weight of 600,000 or 700,000 foreigners, and she
will soon stand upright—happy, if experience shall have taught her to be
contented to exert her natural strength only for her own protection, and not
for the annoyance of her neighbours. I am cut short in my lucubrations, by an
opportunity to send this letter with Lord
Castlereagh’s despatches; which is of less consequence, as
I will endeavour to see you in passing through London. I leave this city for
Dieppe on Saturday, but I intend to go round by Harfleur, if possible. Ever
your truly obliged and affectionate,
Walter Scott.”
“Paul” modestly
acknowledges, in his last letter, the personal attentions which he received while in Paris,
from Lords Cathcart, Aberdeen, and Castlereagh; and hints
that, through their intervention, he had witnessed several of the splendid fêtes given by the Duke
of Wellington, where he saw half the crowned heads of Europe grouped among
the gallant soldiers who had cut a way for them to the guilty capital of France. Scott’s reception, however, had been distinguished to a
degree of which Paul’s language gives no notion.
The noble lords above-named welcomed him with cordial satisfaction; and the Duke
of Wellington, to whom he was first presented by Sir John Malcolm, treated him then, and ever afterwards, with a kindness
and confidence, which, I have often heard him say, he considered as “the highest
dis-tinction of his life.” He used
to tell, with great effect, the circumstances of his introduction to the Emperor
Alexander, at a dinner given by the Earl of Cathcart.
Scott appeared, on that occasion, in the blue and red dress of the
Selkirkshire Lieutenancy; and the Czar’s first question, glancing at his lameness,
was, “In what affair were you wounded?” Scott
signified that he suffered from a natural infirmity; upon which the Emperor said,
“I thought Lord Cathcart mentioned that you had
served.” Scott observed that the Earl looked a little
embarrassed at this, and promptly answered, “O, yes; in a certain sense I have
served—that is, in the yeomanry cavalry; a home force resembling the Landwehr, or
Landsturm.”—“Under what commander?”—“Sous
M. le Chevalier Rae.”—“Were
you ever engaged?”—“In some slight actions such as the battle of the
Cross Causeway and the affair of Moredun-Mill.”—“This,”
says Mr Pringle of Whytbank, “was, as he
saw in Lord Cathcart’s face, quite sufficient, so he managed
to turn the conversation to some other subject.” It was at the same dinner
that he first met Platoff,* who seemed to take a
great fancy to him, though, adds my friend, “I really don’t think they had
any common language to converse in.” Next day, however, when
Pringle and Scott were walking together in
the Rue de la Paix, the Hetman happened to come up, cantering with some of his Cossacks; as
soon as he saw
* Scott acknowledges, in a note to St Ronan’s Well (vol. i., p. 252), that he
took from Platoff this portrait of Mr Touchwood:—“His face, which at the
distance of a yard or two seemed hale and smooth, appeared, when closely
examined, to be seamed with a million of wrinkles, crossing each other in every
direction possible, but as fine as if drawn by the point of a very fine
needle.” Thus did every little peculiarity remain treasured in his
memory, to be used in due time for giving the air of minute reality to some
imaginary personage.
Scott, he jumped off his horse, leaving it to the Pulk, and, running
up to him, kissed him on each side of the cheek with extraordinary demonstrations of
affection—and then made him understand, through an aid-de-camp, that he wished him to join
his staff at the next great review, when he would take care to mount him on the gentlest of
his Ukraine horses. So mounted, accordingly, he witnessed the great closing spectacle on the Champ de Mars.
It will seem less surprising that Scott should have been honoured with much attention by the leading soldiers
and statesmen of Germany then in Paris. The fame of his poetry had already been established
for some years in that country. Yet it may be doubted whether Blücher had heard of Marmion any more than Platoff; and old
Blucher struck Scott’s
fellow-travellers as taking more interest in him than any foreign general, except only the
Hetman.
A striking passage in Paul’s
tenth letter indicates the high notion which Scott had
formed of the personal qualities of the Prince of
Orange. After depicting, with almost prophetic accuracy, the dangers to
which the then recent union of Holland and Belgium must be exposed, he concludes with
expressing his hope that the firmness and sagacity of the King of the Netherlands, and the
admiration which his heir’s character and bearing had already excited among all, even
Belgian observers, might ultimately prove effective in redeeming this difficult experiment
from the usual failure of “arrondissements, indemnities, and all the other terms of modern
date, under sanction of which cities and districts, and even kingdoms, have been passed
from one government to another, as the property of lands or stock is transferred by a
bargain between private parties.”
It is not less curious to compare, with the subsequent course of affairs in France, the following brief
hint in Paul’s 16th letter:—“The general
rallying point of the Liberalistes is an avowed dislike to the
present monarch and his immediate connexions. They will sacrifice, they pretend, so
much to the general inclinations of Europe, as to select a king from the Bourbon race;
but he must be one of their own choosing, and the Duke of
Orleans is most familiar in their mouths.” Thus, in its very
bud, had his eye detected the conjuration de quinze
ans!
Among the gay parties of this festive period, Scott mentioned with special pleasure one fine day given to an excursion to
Ermenonville, under the auspices of Lady Castlereagh.
The company was a large one, including most of the distinguished personages whom I have
been naming, and they dined al fresco among the scenes of Rousseau’s retirement, but in a fashion less
accordant with the spirit of his rêveries d’un promeneur solitaire, than with
the song which commemorates some earlier tenants of that delicious valley— “La belle Gabrielle Etoit dans ces lieux— Et le souvenir d’elle Nous rend heureux,” &c.
At some stage of this merry day’s proceedings, the ladies got
tired of walking, and one of Lord Castlereagh’s
young diplomatists was despatched into a village in quest of donkeys for their
accommodation. The attaché returned by and
by with a face of disappointment, complaining that the charge the people made was so
extravagant, he could not think of yielding to the extortion. “Marshal Forwards” said nothing, but nodded to an aid-de-camp. They had
passed a Prussian picket a little while before;—three times the requisite number of donkeys
appeared presently, driven before half a dozen hussars, who were
followed by the screaming population of the refractory hamlet; and “an angry man
was Blücher,” said Scott, “when Lord Castlereagh
condescended to go among them, all smiles, and sent them back with more Napoleons than
perhaps the fee-simple of the whole stud was worth.”
Another evening of more peaceful enjoyment has left a better record.
But I need not quote here the “Lines on
St Cloud.”* They were sent, on the 16th of August, to the late Lady Alvanley, with whom and her daughters he spent much of
his time while in Paris.
As yet, the literary reputation of Scott had made but little way among the French nation; but some few of
their eminent men vied even with the enthusiastic Germans in their courteous and unwearied
attentions to him. The venerable Chevalier, in particular, seemed anxious to embrace every
opportunity of acting as his Cicerone; and many mornings were spent in exploring, under his
guidance, the most remarkable scenes and objects of historical and antiquarian interest
both in Paris and its neighbourhood. He several times also entertained
Scott and his young companions at dinner; but the last of those
dinners was thoroughly poisoned by a preliminary circumstance. The poet, on entering the
saloon, was presented to a stranger, whose physiognomy struck him as the most hideous he
had ever seen; nor was his disgust lessened, when he found, a few minutes afterwards, that
he had undergone the accollade of David “of the blood-stained brush.”
From Paris, Mr Bruce and
Mr Pringle went on to Switzerland, leaving the
poet and Gala to return home together, which they
did by way of Dieppe, Brighton, and London. It was here, on the 14th of September,
* See Poetical Works, vol. xi. p. 295.
that Scott
had that last meeting with Lord Byron, alluded to in his
communication to Mr Moore, already quoted. He
carried his young friend in the morning to call on Lord Byron, who
agreed to dine with them at their hotel, where he met also Charles Matthews and Daniel Terry.
The only survivor of the party has recorded it in his note-book as the most interesting day
he ever spent. “How I did stare,” he says, “at
Byron’s beautiful pale face, like a spirit’s good
or evil. But he was bitter—what a contrast to
Scott! Among other anecdotes of British prowess and spirit,
Scott mentioned that a young gentleman —— —— —— had been
awfully shot in the head while conveying an order from the Duke, and yet staggered on, and delivered his message when at the point
of death. ‘Ha!’ said Byron, ‘I daresay
he could do as well as most people without his head—it was never of much use to
him.’ Waterloo did not delight him, probably—and
Scott could talk or think of scarcely any thing
else.”
Matthews accompanied them as far as Warwick and
Kenilworth, both of which castles the poet had seen before, but now re-examined with
particular curiosity. They spent a night on this occasion at Birmingham; and early next
morning Scott sallied forth to provide himself with a
planter’s knife of the most complex contrivance and finished workmanship. Having
secured one to his mind, and which for many years after was his constant pocket-companion,
he wrote his name on a card, “Walter Scott, Abbotsford,”
and directed it to be engraved on the handle. On his mentioning this acquisition at
breakfast, young Gala expressed his desire to equip
himself in like fashion, and was directed to the shop accordingly. When he had purchased a
similar knife, and produced his name in turn for the engraver, the master cutler eyed the
signature for a mo-ment, and exclaimed “John Scott
of Gala! Well, I hope your ticket may serve me in as good stead as
another Mr Scott’s has just done. Upon my word, one of my
best men, an honest fellow from the North, went out of his senses when he saw it—he
offered me a week’s work if I would let him keep it to himself—and I took
Saunders at his word.”
Scott used to talk of this as one of the most gratifying
compliments he ever received in his literary capacity.
Their next halt was at Rokeby; but since Scott had heard from thence, Mrs
Morritt’s illness had made such alarming progress, that the travellers
regretted having obtruded themselves on the scene of affliction, and resumed their journey
early next morning.
Reaching Abbotsford, Scott found
with his family his old friend Mr Skene of Rubislaw,
who had expected him to come home sooner, and James
Ballantyne, who had arrived with a copious budget of bills, calendars,
booksellers’ letters, and proof-sheets. From each of these visiters’ memoranda I now extract an anecdote. Mr
Skene’s is of a small enough matter, but still it places the man so
completely before myself, that I am glad he thought it worth setting down. “During
Scott’s absence,” says his friend, “his
wife had had the tiny drawingroom of the cottage fitted up with new chintz furniture—every
thing had been set out in the best style—and she and her girls had been looking forward to
the pleasure which they supposed the little surprise of the arrangements would give him. He
was received in the spruce fresh room, set himself comfortably down in the chair prepared
for him, and remained in the full enjoyment of his own fireside, and a return to his family
circle, without the least consciousness that any change had taken place—until, at length,
Mrs Scott’s patience could hold out no longer,
and his attention was expressly call-ed to it. The vexation he showed at having caused
such a disappointment, struck me as amiably characteristic—and in the course of the
evening, he every now and then threw out some word of admiration, to reconsole mamma.”
Ballantyne’s note of their next
morning’s conference is in these terms. “He had just been reviewing a
pageant of emperors and kings, which seemed, like another Field of the Cloth of Gold,
to have been got up to realize before his eyes some of his own splendid descriptions. I
begged him to tell me what was the general impression left on his mind. He answered,
that he might now say he had seen and conversed with all classes of society, from the
palace to the cottage, and including every conceivable shade of science and
ignorance—but that he had never felt awed or abashed except in the presence of one
man—the Duke of Wellington. I expressed some
surprise. He said I ought not, for that the Duke of Wellington
possessed every one mighty quality of the mind in a higher degree than any other man
did, or had ever done. He said he beheld in him a great soldier and a great
statesman—the greatest of each. When it was suggested that the Duke, on his part, saw
before him a great poet and novelist, he smiled, and said, ‘What would the
Duke of Wellington think of a few bits
of novels, which perhaps he had never read, and for which the strong
probability is that he would not care a sixpence if he had?’ You are
not” (adds Ballantyne) “to suppose that he
looked either sheepish or embarrassed in the presence of the Duke—indeed you well know
that he did not, and could not do so; but the feeling, qualified and modified as I have
described it, unquestionably did exist to a certain extent. Its origin forms a curious
moral problem; and may probably be traced to a secret consciousness, which he might not
himself advert to, that the Duke, however great as a soldier and
statesman, was so defective in imagination as to be incapable of appreciating that
which had formed the charm of his own life, as well as of his works.”
It is proper to add to Mr
Ballantyne’s solution of his “curious moral problem,” that
he was, in his latter days, a strenuous opponent of the Duke of
Wellington’s politics; to which circumstance he ascribes, in these
same memoranda, the only coolness that ever occurred between him and
Scott. I need hardly repeat, what has been already
distinctly stated more than once, that Scott never considered any
amount of literary distinction as entitled to be spoken of in the same breath with mastery
in the higher departments of practical life least of all, with the glory of a first-rate
captain. To have done things worthy to be written, was in his eyes a dignity to which no
man made any approach, who had only written things worthy to be read. He on two occasions,
which I can never forget, betrayed painful uneasiness when his works were alluded to as
reflecting honour on the age that had produced Watt’s improvement of the steam-engine, and the safety-lamp of
Sir Humphry Davy. Such was his modest creed—but
from all I ever saw or heard of his intercourse with the Duke of
Wellington, I am not disposed to believe that he partook it with the only
man in whose presence he ever felt awe and abashment.*
* I think it very probable that Scott had his own first interview with the Duke of Wellington in his mind when he described the introduction of
Roland Graham to the Regent Murray, in the novel of The Abbot: “Such was the personage before whom Roland Graham now presented himself with a feeling of
breathless awe, very different from the usual boldness and vivacity of his temper.
In fact he was, from education and nature, much more easily controlled by the moral
superiority arising from the elevated talents and
A charming page in Mr Washington
Irving’s “Abbotsford and Newstead,” affords us another anecdote connected with this
return from Paris. Two years after this time, when the amiable American visited Scott, he walked with him to a quarry, where his people were
at work. “The face of the humblest dependant” (he says)
“brightened at his approach—all paused from their labour, to have a pleasant
‘crack wi’ the laird.’ Among the rest was a tall straight old fellow,
with a healthful complexion and silver hairs, and a small round-crowned white hat. He
had been about to shoulder a hod, but paused, and stood looking at
Scott with a slight sparkling of his blue eye, as if waiting
his turn; for the old fellow knew he was a favourite. Scott
accosted him in an affable tone, and asked for a pinch of snuff. The old man drew forth
a horn snuff-box. ‘Hoot, man,’ said Scott,
‘not that old mull. Where’s the bonnie French one that I brought you
from Paris?’—‘Troth, your honour,’ replied the old
fellow, ‘sic a mull as that is nae for week-days.’ On leaving the
quarry, Scott informed me, that, when absent at Paris, he had
purchased several trifling articles as presents for his dependants, and, among others,
the gay snuff-box in question, which was so carefully reserved for Sundays by the
veteran. ‘It was not so much the value of the gifts,’ said he,
‘that pleased them, as the idea that the laird should think of them when
so far away.’”
One more incident of this return—it was told to me
renown of those with whom he conversed, than by pretensions founded only on rank
or external show. He might have braved with indifference the presence of an
Earl merely distinguished by his belt and coronet; but he felt overawed in that
of the eminent soldier and statesman, the wielder of a nation’s power,
and the leader of her armies.” Waverley Novels, vol. xx., p. 292.
by himself, some years afterwards, with gravity, and even sadness.
“The last of my chargers,” he said, “was a high-spirited
and very handsome one, by name Daisy, all over white,
without a speck, and with such a mane as Rubens
delighted to paint. He had, among other good qualities, one always particularly
valuable in my case, that of standing like a rock to be mounted. When he was brought to
the door, after I came home from the Continent, instead of signifying, by the usual
tokens, that he was pleased to see his master, he looked askant at me like a devil; and
when I put my foot in the stirrup, he reared bolt upright, and I fell to the ground
rather awkwardly. The experiment was repeated twice or thrice, always with the same
result. It occurred to me that he might have taken some capricious dislike to my dress;
and Tom Purdie, who always falls heir to the
white hat and green jacket, and so forth, when Mrs
Scott has made me discard a set of garments, was sent for, to try
whether these habiliments would produce him a similar reception from his old friend
Daisy: But Daisy allowed
Tom to back him with all manner of gentleness. The thing was
inexplicable—but he had certainly taken some part of my conduct in high dudgeon and
disgust; and after trying him again, at the interval of a week, I was obliged to part
with Daisy and wars and rumours of wars being over, I
resolved thenceforth to have done with such dainty blood. I now stick to a good sober
cob.” Somebody suggested, that Daisy might have
considered himself as ill-used, by being left at home when the Laird went on his journey.
“Ay,” said he, “these creatures have many thoughts of their
own, no doubt, that we can never penetrate.” Then, laughing,
“Troth,” said he, “maybe some bird had whispered Daisy that I had been to see the grand reviews at Paris on a little scrag of a Cossack,
while my own gallant trooper was left behind bearing Peter and the
post-bag to Melrose.”
A few letters, written shortly after this return to Abbotsford, will,
among other things, show with what zeal he at once resumed his literary industry, if indeed
that can be said to have been at all interrupted by a journey, in the course of which a
great part of Paul’s narrative, and also
of the poem of “the Field of
Waterloo,” must have been composed.
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. M.P. Rokeby Park.
“Abbotsford, 2d Oct. 1815. “My dear Morritt,
“Few things could have given me more real pain,
than to see Mrs Morritt under such
severe suffering, and the misery you sustain in witnessing it. Yet let us trust
in the goodness of Providence, which restored the health so deservedly dear to
you from as great a state of depression upon a former occasion. Our visit was
indeed a melancholy one, and, I fear, added to your distress, when, God knows,
it required no addition. The contrast of this quiet bird’s nest of a
place, with the late scene of confusion and military splendour which I have
witnessed, is something of a stunning nature, and, for the first five or six
days, I have been content to fold my hands, and saunter up and down in a sort
of indolent and stupified tranquillity, my only attempt at occupation having
gone no farther than pruning a young tree now and then. Yesterday, however, and
to-day, I began, from necessity, to prune verses, and have been correcting
proofs of my little attempt at a poem on
Waterloo. It will be out this week, and you shall have a copy by the
Carlisle coach, which pray judge favourably, and
remember it is not always the grandest actions which are best adapted for the
arts of poetry and painting. I believe I shall give offence to my old friends
the Whigs, by not condoling with Buonaparte. Since his sentence of transportation, he has begun
to look wonderfully comely in their eyes. I would they had hanged him, that he
might have died a perfect Adonis. Every
reasonable creature must think the Ministers would have deserved the cord
themselves, if they had left him in a condition again to cost us the loss of
10,000 of our best and bravest, besides thirty millions of good money. The very
threats and frights which he has given the well-meaning people of this realm
(myself included), deserved no less a punishment than banishment, since the
‘putting in bodily fear’ makes so material a part of every criminal
indictment. But, no doubt, we shall see Ministers attacked for their want of
generosity to a fallen enemy, by the same party who last year, with better
grounds, assailed them for having left him in a situation again to disturb the
tranquillity of Europe. My young friend Gala has left me, after a short visit to Abbotsford. He is my
nearest (conversable) neighbour, and I promise myself much comfort in him, as
he has a turn both for the sciences and for the arts, rather uncommon among our
young Scotch lairds. He was delighted with Rokeby and its lord, though he saw
both at so melancholy a period, and endured, not only with good humour but with
sympathy, the stupidity of his fellow-traveller, who was not by any means
dans son brillant for some
time after leaving you.
“We visited Corby Castle on our return to Scotland,
which remains, in point of situation, as beautiful as when its walks were
celebrated by David Hume, in the only
rhymes he was ever known to be guilty of. Here they are, from a pane of glass
in an inn at Carlisle: ‘Here chicks in eggs for breakfast sprawl, Here godless boys God’s glories squall, Here Scotchmen’s heads do guard the wall, But Corby’s walks atone for all.’ Would it not be a good quiz to advertise The Poetical
Works of David Hume, with notes, critical,
historical, and so forth—with an historical enquiry into the use of eggs for
breakfast, a physical discussion on the causes of their being addled; a history
of the English church music, and of the choir of Carlisle in particular; a full
account of the affair of 1745, with the trials, last speeches, and so forth, of
the poor plaids who were strapped up at Carlisle; and,
lastly, a full and particular description of Corby, with the genealogy of every
family who ever possessed it? I think, even without more than the usual waste
of margin, the Poems of David would make a decent twelve
shilling touch. I shall think about it, when I have exhausted mine own century of inventions.
“I do not know whether it is perverseness of taste,
or old associations, but an excellent and very handsome modern house, which
Mr Howard has lately built at Corby,
does not, in my mind, assimilate so well with the scenery as the old irregular
monastic hall, with its weatherbeaten and antique appearance, which I remember
there some years ago.
“Out of my Field of Waterloo has sprung an odd wild sort of thing, which I
intend to finish separately, and call it the Dance of Death.* These matters take up my time
so much, that I must bid you adieu for the present. Besides, I am summoned to
attend a grand chasse, and I see the
children are all mounted upon the
* This was published in the Edinburgh Annual Register in 1815.—See
Poetical
Works, Ed. 1834, vol. xi. p. 297.
ponies. By the way, Walter promises to be a gallant horseman. Ever most truly
yours,
Walter Scott.”
I shall close this chapter with a transcript of some Notes on the
proof sheets of the “Field of
Waterloo.” John Ballantyne being at
Abbotsford on the 3d of October, his brother the printer addressed the packet containing
the sheets to him. John appears to have considered James’s observations on the margin before Scott saw them; and the record of the style in which the Poet
repelled, or yielded to, his critics, will at all events illustrate his habitual
good-nature.
John Ballantyne writes on the fly-leaf of the proofs
to his confidential clerk:—“Mr Hodgson, I beg these sheets and
all the MS. may be carefully preserved just as they stand, and put in my father’s
desk. J. B.”
James prefaces his animadversions with this
quotation:— “Cut deep and spare not.—Penruddock”
The Notes are these:—
Stanza I.—“Fair Brussells, them art far
behind.”
James Ballantyne.—I do not like this line. It
is tame, and the phrase “far behind,” has, to my feeling, some associated
vulgarity.
Scott.—Stet.
Stanza II. “Let not the
stranger with disdain The architecture view.”
James.—These two words are cacophonous. Would
not its do?’
Scott.—Th. is a bad sound. Ts. a much worse.
Read their.
Stanza IV. “A stranger might reply.”
James.—My objection to this is probably
fantastical, and I state it only, because from the first moment to the last, it has always
made me boggle. I don’t like a stranger—Query, “The
questioned”—The “spectator”—“gazer,” &c.
Scott.—Stranger is
appropriate—it means stranger to the circumstances.
Stanza VI.—James.—You had changed “garner-house profound,” which I think
quite admirable, to “garner under ground,” which I think quite otherways. I
have presumed not to make the change—must I?
Scott.—I acquiesce, but with doubts; profound sounds affected.
Stanza VIII.—“The deadly tug of war at length Must limits find in human strength, And cease when these are passed. Vain hope! &c.”
James.—I must needs repeat, that the deadly tug
did cease in the case supposed. It lasted long very long; but,
when the limits of resistance, of human strength were past that is, after they had fought
for ten hours, then the deadly tug did cease. Therefore the
“hope” was not “vain.”
Scott.—I answer it did not, because the
observation relates to the strength of those actually engaged, and when their strength was
exhausted other squadrons were brought up. Suppose you saw two lawyers scolding at the bar,
you might say this must have an end—human lungs cannot hold out—but, if the debate were
continued by the senior counsel, your well-grounded expectations would be
disappointed—“Cousin, thou wert not wont to be so dull!”—
Ibid.—“Nor ceased the intermitted shot.”
James.—Mr
Erskine contends that “intermitted” is redundant.
Scott.—“Nor ceased the storm of shell and shot.”
Stanza X. “Never shall our country say We gave one inch of ground away, When battling for her right.”
James.—In conflict?
John B.—Warring? I am
afraid battling must stand.
Scott.—All worse than the text.
Stanza XI.—“Peal’d wildly the imperial
name.”
James.—I submit with diffidence whether this be
not a somewhat tame conclusion to so very animated a stanza? And, at any rate, you will
observe, that as it stands, you have no rhyme whatever to “The Cohort eagles fly.”—You have no rhyme to fly. Flew and fly, also, are perhaps too near,
considering that each word closes a line of the same sort. I don’t well like
“Thus in a torrent,” either. If it were, “In
one broad torrent,” &c., it strikes me that it would be more spirited.
Scott.—Granted as to most of these observations
Read, “in one dark torrent broad and strong,” &c.
The “imperial name” is true, therefore must stand.
Stanza XII.—“Nor was one forward footstep stopped.”
James.—This staggering word was intended, I
presume, but I don’t like it.
Scott.—Granted. Read staid, &c.
Ibid.—“Down were the eagle banners sent, Down, down the horse and horsemen went.”
James.—This is very spirited and very fine; but
it is unquestionably liable to the charge of being very nearly a direct repetition of
yourself. See Lord of the Isles, Canto vi. St.
24:—
“Down! down! in headlong overthrow, Horseman and horse, the foremost go,” &c.
This passage is at once so striking and so recent, that
its close similarity to the present, if not indeed its identity, must strike every reader;
and really, to borrow from one’s self, is hardly much better than to borrow from
one’s neighbours. And yet again, a few lines lower: “As hammers on the anvils reel, Against the cuirass clangs the steel.” See Lady of the Lake, Canto vi., Stanza
18:— “I heard the broadswords’ deadly clang, As if an hundred anvils rang.” Here is precisely the same image, in very nearly the same words.
Scott.—I have altered the expression, but made
a note, which, I think, will vindicate my retaining the simile.
Stanza XIII.—“As their own Ocean-rocks hold stance.”
John.—I do not know such an English word as stance.
Scott.—Then we’ll make it one for the nance.
Ibid.—“And newer standards
fly.”
James.—I don’t like newer.
Scott.—“And other
standards fly.”
Ibid.—“Or can thy memory fail to quote, Heard to thy cost the vengeful note.”
James.—Would to God you would alter this quote!
John.—Would to God I
could!—I certainly should.—
Scott.— “Or can thy memory fail to know, Heard oft before in hour of wo.” Or— “Or dwells not in thy memory still, Heard frequent in thine hour of ill.”
Stanza XV.—“Wrung forth by pride, regret, and shame.”
James.—I have ventured to submit to your
choice—
“Wrung forth by pride, and rage, and shame.”
Regret appearing a faint epithet amidst such a combination of bitter
feelings.
Scott.—Granted.
Ibid.—“So mingle banner, wain, and gun, Where in one tide of horror run The warriors,” &c.
James.—In the first place, warriors running in
a tide, is a clashing metaphor; in the second, the warriors running at all is a little
homely. It is true, no doubt; but really running is little better than scampering. For
these causes, one or both, I think the lines should be altered.
Scott.—You are wrong in one respect. A tide is
always said to run, but I thought of the tide without attending to the equivoque, which
must be altered. Read,— “Where the tumultuous flight rolls on.”
Stanza. XVI—“found gallant
grave.”
James.—This is surely a singular epithet to a
grave. I think the whole of this stanza eminently fine; and, in particular, the conclusion.
Scott.— ——“found soldier’s
grave.”——
Stanza XXI.—“RedoubledPicton’s soul
of fire.”
James.—From long association, this epithet
strikes me as conveying a semi-ludicrous idea.
Scott.—It is here appropriate, and your
objection seems merely personal to your own association.
Ibid.—“Through his friend’s heart to wound his own.”
James.—Quaere—Pierce, or
rather stab—wound is faint.
Scott.— —“Pierce.”
Stanza XXI.—“Forgive, brave
fallen, the imperfect lay.”
James.—Don’t like “brave
fallen” at all; nor “appropriate praise,” three lines after. The latter
in particular is prosaic.
Scott.—“Forgive, brave
dead.”
——“The dear earned
praise.”
CHAPTER XII. POEM OF THE FIELD OF WATERLOO PUBLISHED—REVISION OF
PAUL’S LETTERS, ETC.—QUARREL AND RECONCILIATION WITH
HOGG—FOOTBALL MATCH AT CARTERHAUGH—SONGS ON THE BANNER OF
BUCCLEUCH—DINNER AT BOWHILL—DESIGN FOR A PIECE OF PLATE TO THE
SUTORS OF SELKIRK—LETTERS TO THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH—JOANNA
BAILLIE—AND MR MORRITT. 1815.
The poem of “the
Field of Waterloo” was published before the end of October; the profits of
the first edition being the author’s contribution to the fund raised for the relief
of the widows and children of the soldiers slain in the battle. This piece appears to have
disappointed those most disposed to sympathize with the author’s views and feelings.
The descent is indeed heavy from his Bannockburn to his Waterloo: the presence, or all but
visible reality of what his dreams cherished, seems to have overawed his imagination, and
tamed it into a weak pomposity of movement. The burst of pure native enthusiasm upon the
Scottish heroes that fell around the Duke of
Wellington’s person, bears, however, the broadest marks of “the
Mighty Minstrel.”— “Saw gallant Miller’s fading
eye Still bent where Albyn’s standards fly, And Cameron, in the shock of steel, Die like the offspring of Lochiel,” &c.;— and this is far from being the only
redeeming passage. There is one, indeed, in which he illustrates what he then thought
Buonaparte’s poorness of spirit in
adversity, which always struck me as pre-eminently characteristic of Scott’s manner of interweaving, both in prose and verse,
the moral energies with analogous natural description, and combining thought with imagery—
“Or is thy soul like mountain tide, That swelled by winter storm and shower, Rolls down in turbulence of power, A torrent fierce and wide; Reft of these aids, a rill obscure, Shrinking unnoticed, mean and poor, Whose channel shows displayed The wrecks of its impetuous course, But not one symptom of the force By which these wrecks were made!”
The poem was the first upon a subject likely to be sufficiently
hackneyed; and, having the advantage of coming out in a small cheap form—(prudently
imitated from Murray’s innovation with the
tales of Byron, which was the death-blow to the system
of verse in quarto)—it attained rapidly a measure of circulation above what had been
reached either by Rokeby or the Lord of the Isles.
Meanwhile the revision of Paul’s Letters was proceeding; and Scott had almost immediately on his return to Abbotsford concluded his
bargain for the first edition of a third novel—The Antiquary—to be published also in the approaching winter. Harold the Dauntless, too, was from time to
time taken up as the amusement of horæ
subsecivæ. As for Scott’s out of doors
occupations of that autumn, sufficient light will be thrown on them by the following
letter; from which it is seen that he had now completed a rather tedious negotiation with
an-other bonnet-laird, and definitively added the lands of Kaeside to the original estate of Abbotsford.
To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hamptead.
“November 12, 1815, Abbotsford.
“I have been long in acknowledging your letter, my
dear friend, and yet you have not only been frequent in my thoughts, as must
always be the case, but your name has been of late familiar in my mouth as a
household word. You must know that the pinasters you had the goodness to send
me some time since, which are now fit to be set out of the nursery, have
occupied my mind as to the mode of disposing of them. Now, mark the event;
there is in the middle of what will soon be a bank of fine young wood, a
certain old gravel-pit, which is the present scene of my operations. I have
caused it to be covered with better earth, and gently altered with the spade,
so as, if possible, to give it the air of one of those accidental hollows which
the surface of a hill frequently presents. Having arranged my ground, I intend
to plant it all round with the pinasters, and other varieties of the pine
species, and in the interior I will have a rustic seat, surrounded by all kinds
of evergreen shrubs (laurels in particular), and all varieties of the holly and
cedar, and so forth, and this is to be called and entitled Joanna’sBower. We are determined in the choice of our ornaments
by necessity, for our ground fronts (in poetic phrase) the rising sun, or, in
common language, looks to the east; and being also on the north side of the
hill—(don’t you shiver at the thought?)—why, to say truth, George Wynnos and I are both of opinion that
nothing but evergreens will flourish there; but I trust I shall convert a
present deformity into a very pretty little hobby-horsical sort of thing. It
will not bear
looking at for years, and that is a pity: but it will so far resemble the
person from whom it takes name, that it is planted, as she has written, for the
benefit as well of posterity as for the passing generation. Time and I, says
the Spaniard, against any two; and, fully confiding in the proverb, I have just
undertaken another grand task. You must know, I have purchased a large lump of
wild land, lying adjoining to this little property, which greatly more than
doubles my domains. The land is said to be reasonably bought, and I am almost
certain I can turn it to advantage by a little judicious expenditure; for this
place is already allowed to be worth twice what it cost me; and our people here
think so little of planting, and do it so carelessly, that they stare with
astonishment at the alteration which well planted woods make on the face of a
country. There is, besides, a very great temptation, from the land running to
within a quarter of a mile of a very sweet wild sheet of water, of which (that
is, one side of it) I have every chance to become proprietor: this is a
poetical circumstance not to be lost sight of, and accordingly I keep it full
in my view. Amid these various avocations, past, present, and to come, I have
not thought much about Waterloo,
only that I am truly glad you like it. I might, no doubt, have added many
curious anecdotes, but I think the pamphlet long enough as it stands, and never
had any design of writing copious notes.
“I do most devoutly hope Lord Byron will succeed in his proposal of bringing out one of
your dramas; that he is your sincere admirer is only synonymous with his being
a man of genius; and he has, I am convinced, both the power and inclination to
serve the public, by availing himself of the treasures you have laid before
them. Yet I long for ‘some yet untasted spring,’ and heartily wish you would take Lord B. into your counsels,
and adjust, from your yet unpublished materials, some drama for the public. In
such a case, I would, in your place, conceal my name till the issue of the
adventure. It is a sickening thing to think how many angry and evil passions
the mere name of admitted excellence brings into full activity. I wish you
would consider this hint, and I am sure the result would be great gratification
to the public, and to yourself that sort of satisfaction which arises from
receiving proofs of having attained the mark at which you aimed. Of this last,
indeed, you cannot doubt, if you consult only the voices of the intelligent and
the accomplished; but the object of the dramatist is professedly to delight the
public at large, and therefore I think you should make the experiment fairly.
“Little
Sophia is much obliged by your kind and continued recollection:
she is an excellent good child, sufficiently sensible, very affectionate, not
without perception of character; but the gods have not made her poetical, and I
hope she will never attempt to act a part which nature has not called her to. I
am myself a poet, writing to a poetess, and therefore cannot be suspected of a
wish to degrade a talent, to which, in whatever degree I may have possessed it,
I am indebted for much happiness: but this depends only on the rare coincidence
of some talent falling in with a novelty in style and diction and conduct of
story, which suited the popular taste; and were my children to be better poets
than me, they would not be such in general estimation, simply because the
second cannot be the first, and the first (I mean in point of date) is every
thing, while others are nothing, even with more intrinsic merit. I am therefore
particularly anxious to store the heads of my young damsels with something
better than the tags of rhymes; and I hope Sophia is old enough (young
though she be) to view her little incidents of celebrity, such as they are, in
the right point of view. Mrs Scott and she
are at present in Edinburgh: the rest of the children are with me in this
place; my eldest boy is already a bold horseman and a fine shot, though only
about fourteen years old. I assure you I was prouder of the first black cock he
killed, than I have been of any thing whatever since I first killed one myself,
and that is twenty years ago. This is all stupid gossip; but, as Master Corporal Nym says, ‘things must
be as they may:’ you cannot expect grapes from thorns, or much
amusement from a brain bewildered with thorn hedges at Kaeside, for such is the
sonorous title of my new possession, in virtue of which I subscribe myself,
Abbotsford & Kaeside.”
There is now to be mentioned a little pageant of December 1815, which
perhaps interested Abbotsford and Kaeside, not very much less than
the “Field of the Cloth of Gold,” as James
Ballantyne calls it, of the preceding autumn. This was no other than a
football match, got up under the auspices of the Duke of
Buccleuch, between the men of the Vale of Yarrow and the Burghers of
Selkirk, the particulars of which will be sufficiently explained by an extract from Ballantyne’s newspaper, written, I can
have no doubt, by the Sheriff of the Forest. But the part taken in this solemnity by the
Ettrick Shepherd reminds me of an extraordinary
epistle which Scott had received from him some months
before this time, and of the account given by Hogg himself, in one of
his autobiographies, of the manner in which Scott’s kindness
terminated the alienation it refers to.
The Shepherd, being as usual in pecuniary straits,
had projected a work, to be called “The Poetic Mirror,” in which should appear some
piece by each popular poet of the time, the whole to be edited by himself, and published
for his benefit; and he addressed, accordingly, to his brother bards, a circular petition
for their best assistance. Scott—like Byron and most of the other persons thus applied to—declined
the proposition. The letter in which he signified his refusal has not been preserved;
indeed it is sufficiently remarkable, that of all the many letters which
Hogg must have received from his distinguished contemporaries, he
appears to have kept not one; but Scott’s decided aversion to
joint-stock adventures in authorship must have been well known ere now to
Hogg—and at all events nobody can suspect that his note of refusal
was meant to be an unfriendly communication. The Shepherd, however, took some phrase in
high dudgeon, and penned an answer virulently insolent in spirit and in language, accusing
him of base jealousy of his own superior natural genius. I am not sure whether it was on
this or another occasion of the like sort, that James varied the usual
formulas of epistolary composition, by beginning with “Damned Sir,” and
ending, “Believe me, sir, yours with disgust, &c.;” but certainly
the performance was such that no intercourse took place between the parties for some weeks,
or perhaps months, afterwards. The letter in which Hogg at length
solicits a renewal of kindliness, says nothing, it may be observed, of the circumstance
which, according to his autobiography,
confirmed by the recollection of two friends, whom he names in the letter itself (Mr John Grieve and Mr William
Laidlaw), had really caused him to repent of his suspicions, and their
outrageous expression. The fact was, that hearing, shortly after the receipt of the
offensive epistle, that Hogg was confined to his lodgings, in an
obscure alley of Edinburgh called
Gabriel’s Road, by a dangerous illness, Scott called on
Mr Grieve to make enquiries about him, and to offer to take on
himself the expenses of the best medical attendance. He had, however, cautioned the worthy
hatter that no hint of this offer must reach Hogg; and in consequence,
it might perhaps be the Shepherd’s feeling at the time that he should not, in
addressing his life-long benefactor, betray any acquaintance with this recent interference
on his behalf. There can be doubt, however, that he obeyed the genuine dictates of his
better nature when he penned this apologetic effusion:—
To Walter Scott, Esq. Castle Street.
“Gabriel’s Road, February 28, 1815. “Mr Scott,
“I think it is great nonsense for two men who are
friends at heart, and who ever must be so—indeed it is not in the nature of
things that they can be otherwise—should be professed enemies.
“Mr Grieve
and Mr Laidlaw, who were very severe on
me, and to whom I was obliged to show your letter, have long ago convinced me
that I mistook part of it, and that it was not me you held in such contempt,
but the opinion of the public. The idea that you might mean that (though I
still think the reading will bear either construction) has given me much pain;
for I know I answered yours intemperately, and in a mortal rage. I meant to
have enclosed yours, and begged of you to return mine, but I cannot find it,
and am sure that some one to whom I have been induced to show it, has taken it
away. However, as my troubles on that subject were never like to wear to an
end, I could no longer resist telling you that I am extremely vexed about it. I
desire not a renewal of our former intimacy, for haply,
after what I have written, your family would not suffer it; but I wish it might
be understood that, when we meet by chance, we might
shake hands, and speak to one another, as old acquaintances, and likewise that
we may exchange a letter occasionally, for I find there are many things which I
yearn to communicate to you, and the tears rash to my eyes when I consider that
I may not.
“If you allow of this, pray let me know, and if you
do not, let me know. Indeed, I am anxious to hear from you, for ‘as
the day of trouble is with me, so shall my strength be.’ To be
friends from the teeth forwards is common enough; but it
strikes me that there is something still more ludicrous in the reverse of the
picture, and so to be enemies—and why should I be, from the
teeth forwards,
Yours sincerely, James Hogg?”
Scott’s reply was, as Hogg says, “a brief note, telling him to think no more of the
business, and come to breakfast next morning.” The misunderstanding being
thus closed, they appear to have counselled and co-operated together in the most cordial
fashion, in disciplining their rural allies for the muster of Carterhaugh the Duke of Buccleuch’s brother-in-law, the Earl of Home, having appointed the Shepherd his Lieutenant
over the Yarrow Band, while the Sheriff took under his special cognizance the Sutors, i.e. shoemakers, of Selkirk—for so the burgesses of that
town have for ages styled themselves, and under that denomination their warlike prowess in
days of yore has been celebrated in many an old ballad, besides the well-known one which
begins with “’Tis up wi’ the Sutors o’ Selkirk, And ’tis down wi’ the Earl of Home!” In order to understand all the
allusions in the newspaper record of this important day, one must be familiar with the
notes to the Minstrelsy of the Scottish
Border; but I shall not burden it with further comment here.
“football match.
“On Monday, 4th December, there was played, upon the
extensive plain of Carterhaugh, near the junction of the Ettrick and Yarrow, the greatest
match at the ball which has taken place for many years. It was held by the people of the
Dale of Yarrow, against those of the parish of Selkirk; the former being brought to the
field by the Right Hon. the Earl of Home, and the
Gallant Sutors by their Chief Magistrate, Ebenezer Clarkson,
Esq. Both sides were joined by many volunteers from other parishes; and the
appearance of the various parties marching from their different glens to the place of
rendezvous, with pipes playing and loud acclamations, carried back the coldest imagination
to the old times when the Foresters assembled with the less peaceable purpose of invading
the English territory, or defending their own. The romantic character of the scenery aided
the illusion, as well as the performance of a feudal ceremony previous to commencing the
games.
“His Grace the Duke of
Buccleuch and Queensberry came upon the ground about 11 o’clock,
attended by his sons, the young Earl of Dalkeith and
Lord John Scott; the Countess of Home; the Ladies Ann,
Charlotte, and Isabella
Scott; Lord and Lady Montagu and family; the Hon. General Sir
Edward Stopford, K. B.; Sir John Riddell of
Riddell; Sir Alexander Don of Newton;
Mr Elliot Lockhart, member for the county;
Mr Pringle of Whytebank, younger; Mr Pringle of Torwoodlee; Captain Pringle, Royal Navy; Mr Boyd of
Broadmeadows and family; Mr Chisholm of
Chisholm; Major Pott of Todrig;
Mr Walter Scott, Sheriff of Selkirkshire, and
family,—and many other gentlemen and ladies.—The ancient banner of the
Buccleuch family, a curious and venerable relique, emblazoned with
armorial bearings, and with the word “Bellendaine” the
ancient war-cry of the clan of Scott, was then displayed, as on former
occasions when the chief took the field in person, whether for the purpose of war or sport.
The banner was delivered by Lady Ann Scott to Master Walter Scott, younger of Abbotsford, who attended
suitably mounted and armed, and riding over the field, displaying it to the sound of the
war-pipes, and amid the acclamations of the assembled spectators,
who could not be fewer than 2000 in number. That this singular renewal of an ancient
military custom might not want poetical celebrity, verses were distributed among the spectators, composed for the occasion by
Mr Walter Scott and the Ettrick
Shepherd.—Mr James Hogg acted as aide-de-camp to the
Earl of Home in the command of the Yarrow men, and Mr
Robert Henderson of Selkirk to Mr
Clarkson, both of whom contributed not a little to the good order of the
day.
“The ball was thrown up between the parties by the
Duke of Buccleuch, and the first game was gained,
after a severe conflict of an hour and a half duration, by the Selkirk men. The second game
was still more severely contested, and after a close and stubborn struggle of more than
three hours, with various fortune, and much display of strength and agility on both sides,
was at length carried by the Yarrow men. The ball should then have been thrown up a third
time, but considerable difficulty occurred in arranging the voluntary auxiliaries from
other parishes, so as to make the match equal; and, as the day began to close, it was found
impossible to bring the strife to an issue, by playing a decisive game.
“Both parties, therefore, parted with equal
honours, but, before they left the ground, the Sheriff threw up his hat, and in Lord Dalkeith’s name and his own, challenged the Yarrow
men, on the part of the Sutors, to a match to be played upon the first convenient
opportunity, with 100 picked men only on each side. The challenge was mutually accepted by
Lord Home, on his own part, and for Lord John Scott, and was received with acclamation by the
players on both sides. The principal gentlemen present took part with one side or other,
except the Duke of Buccleuch, who remains neutral.
Great play is expected, and all bets are to be paid by the losers to the poor of the
winning parish. We cannot dismiss the subject without giving our highest commendation to
the Earl of Home, and to Mr
Clarkson, for the attention which they showed in promoting the spirit and
good order of the day. For the players themselves, it was impossible to see a finer set of
active and athletic young fellows than appeared on the field. But what we chiefly admired
in their conduct was, that though several hundreds in number, exceedingly keen for their
respective parties, and engaged in so rough and animated a contest, they maintained the
most perfect good humour, and showed how unnecessary it is to discourage manly and athletic
exercises among the common people, under pretext of maintaining subordination and good
order. We have only to regret, that the great concourse of spectators rendered it difficult
to mention the names of the
several players who distinguished themselves by feats of strength or agility; but we must
not omit to record, that the first ball was hailed by
Robert Hall, mason in Selkirk, and the
second by George Brodie, from Greatlaws, upon
Aill-water.
“The Selkirk party wore slips of fir as their mark
of distinction—the Yarrow men, sprigs of heath.
“Refreshments were distributed to the players by
the Duke of Buccleuch’s domestics, in a booth
erected for the purpose; and no persons were allowed to sell ale or spirits on the field.
“In the evening there was a dance at the
Duke’s hunting-seat at Bowhill, attended by the nobility and gentry who had witnessed
the sport of the day; and the fascination of Gow’s violin and band detained them in the dancing-room till the dawn
of the winter morning.”
The newspaper then gives the songs above alluded to—viz., Scott’s “Lifting of the Banner:”— “From the brown crest of Newark its summons extending, Our signal is waving in smoke and in flame, And each Forester blythe, from his mountain descending, Bounds light o’er the heather to join in the game; Then up with the Banner! let forest winds fan her! She has blazed over Ettrick eight ages and more; In sport we’ll attend her, in battle defend her, With heart and with hand, like our Fathers before,” &c.* —and that excellent ditty by Hogg, entitled
“The Ettrick Garland, to the
Ancient Banner of the House of Buccleuch:”— “And hast thou here, like hermit grey, Thy mystic characters unroll’d, O’er peaceful revellers to play, Thou emblem of the days of old?” “All hail! memorial of the brave, The liegeman’s pride, the Border’s awe! May thy grey pennon never wave On sterner field than Carterhaugh!” &c.
I have no doubt the Sheriff of the Forest was a prouder
* See Poetical Works, (Edit. 1834) vol. xi. p.
312.
man, when he saw his boy ride about Carterhaugh with the pennon of
Bellenden, than when Platoff mounted himself for the
imperial review of the Champ deMars.
It is a pity that I should have occasion to allude, before I quit a scene so characteristic
of Scott, to another outbreak of Hogg’s jealous humour. His Autobiography informs us, that when the more
distinguished part of the company assembled on the conclusion of the sport to dine at
Bowhill, he was proceeding to place himself at a particular table—but the Sheriff seized
his arm, told him that was reserved for the nobility, and seated him at an inferior board
“between himself and the Laird of
Harden”—the first gentleman of the clan Scott. “The fact
is,” says Hogg, “I am convinced he was sore afraid
of my getting to be too great a favourite among the young ladies of
Buccleuch!” Who can read this, and not be reminded of Sancho Panza and the Duchess? And, after all, he quite mistook what
Scott had said to him; for certainly there was, neither on this,
nor on any similar occasion at Bowhill, any high table for the
nobility, though there was a side-table for the children,
at which when the Shepherd of Ettrick was about to seat himself, his friend probably
whispered that it was reserved for the “little lords and
ladies, and their playmates.” This blunder may seem undeserving of any
explanation; but it is often in small matters that the strongest feelings are most
strikingly betrayed—and this story is, in exact proportion to its silliness, indicative of
the jealous feeling which mars and distorts so many of Hogg’s
representations of Scott’s conduct and demeanour.
It appears from the account of this football match in the Edinburgh Journal, that Scott took a lead in proposing a renewal of the contest. This,
however, never occurred; and that it ought not to do so, had probably occurred from the
first to the Duke of Buccleuch, who is mentioned as having alone abstained
from laying any bets on the final issue.
When Mr Washington Irving
visited Scott two years afterwards at Abbotsford, he
told his American friend that “the old feuds and local interests, and revelries
and animosities of the Scotch, still slept in their ashes, and might easily be roused;
their hereditary feeling for names was still great; it was not always safe to have even
the game of football between villages;—the old clannish spirit was too apt to break
out.”*
The good Duke of Buccleuch’s
solitary exemption from these heats of Carterhaugh, might read a significant lesson to
minor politicians of all parties on more important scenes. In pursuance of the same
peace-making spirit, he appears to have been desirous of doing something gratifying to the
men of the town of Selkirk, who had on this occasion taken the field against his Yarrow
tenantry. His Grace consulted Scott about the design of
a piece of plate to be presented to their community; and his letter on this weighty subject
must not be omitted in the memoirs of a Sheriff of Selkirk:
To his Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, &c.,
Bowhill.
“Edinburgh, Thursday. “My dear Lord,
“I have proceeded in my commission about the cup.
It will be a very handsome one. But I am still puzzled to dispose of the
birse† in a becoming manner.
* Irving’sAbbotsford and Newstead, 1835,
p. 40.
† A birse, or bunch of
hog’s bristles, forms the cognizance of
the sutors. When a new burgess is admitted into their community, the
birse passes round with the cup of welcome,
and every elder brother dips it into the wine, and draws it through his
mouth, before it reaches the happy neophyte, who of course pays it
similar respect.
It is a most unmanageable decoration. I tried it upright
on the top of the cup; it looked like a shaving-brush, and the goblet might be
intended to make the lather. Then I thought I had a brilliant idea. The arms of
Selkirk are a female seated on a sarcophagus, decorated with the arms of
Scotland, which will make a beautiful top to the cup. So I thought of putting
the birse into the lady’s other hand; but, alas! it looked so precisely
like the rod of chastisement uplifted over the poor child, that I laughed at
the drawing for half an hour. Next, I tried to take off the castigatory
appearance, by inserting the bristles in a kind of handle; but then it looked
as if the poor woman had been engaged in the capacities of housemaid and
child-keeper at once, and, fatigued with her double duty, had sat down on the
wine-cooler, with the broom in one hand, and the bairn in the other. At length,
after some conference with Charles
Sharpe, I have hit on a plan, which, I think, will look very
well, if tolerably executed, namely, to have the lady seated in due form on the
top of the lid (which will look handsome and will be well taken), and to have a
thistle wreathed around the sarcophagus and rising above her head, and from the
top of the thistle shall proceed the birse. I will bring a drawing with me, and
they shall get the cup ready in the mean time. I hope to be at Abbotsford on
Monday night, to stay for a week. My cat has eat two or three birds, while
regaling on the crumbs that were thrown for them. This was a breach of
hospitality; but oportet vivere—and
micat inter omnes—with which
stolen pun, and my respectful compliments to Lord
Montagu and the ladies, I am, very truly, your Grace’s
most faithful and obliged servant,
Walter Scott.”
“P.S.—Under another cover, which I have just
re-ceived, I
send the two drawings of the front and reverse of the lid of the proposed
cup. Your Grace will be so good as understand that the thistle, the top of
which is garnished with the bristle,—is entirely detached, in working, from
the figure, and slips into a socket. The following lines are humbly
suggested for a motto, being taken from an ancient Scottish
canzonetta,—unless the Yarrow committee can find any better:—
‘The sutor ga’e the sow a kiss; Grumph! quo’ the sow, it’s a’ for my
birss.’”
Some weeks before the year 1815 closed, Mr
Morritt sustained the heaviest of domestic afflictions; and several letters
on that sad subject had passed between Rokeby and Abbotsford, before the date of the
following:—
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., M.P., Rokeby Park.
“Edinburgh, 22d Dec. 1815. “My dear Morritt,
“While you know what satisfaction it would have
given me to have seen you here, I am very sensible of the more weighty reasons
which you urge for preferring to stay at Rokeby for some time. I only hope you
will remember that Scotland has claims on you, whenever you shall find your own
mind so far at ease as to permit you to look abroad for consolation; and if it
should happen that you thought of being here about our time of vacation, I have
my time then entirely at my own command, and I need not say, that as much of it
as could in any manner of way contribute to your amusement, is most heartily at
yours. I have myself at present the melancholy task of watching the declining
health of my elder brother, Major Scott,
whom, I think, you have seen.
“My literary occupation is getting through the
press the Letters of Paul, of
whose lucubrations I trust soon to send you a copy. As the observations of a
bystander, perhaps you will find some amusement in them, especially as I had
some channels of information not accessible to every one. The recess of our
courts, which takes place to-morrow, for three weeks, will give me ample time
to complete this job, and also the second volume of Triermain, which is nearly finished,—a strange
rude story, founded partly on the ancient northern traditions respecting the
Berserkers, whose peculiar habits, and fits of martial frenzy, make such a
figure in the Sagas. I shall then set myself seriously to the Antiquary, of which I have only
a very general sketch at present; but when once I get my pen to the paper it
will walk fast enough. I am sometimes tempted to leave it alone, and try
whether it will not write as well without the assistance of my head as with it.
A hopeful prospect for the reader. In the mean while, the snow, which is now
falling so fast as to make it dubious when this letter may reach Rokeby, is
likely to forward these important avocations, by keeping me a constant resident
in Edinburgh, in lieu of my plan of going to Abbotsford, where I had a number
of schemes in hand in the way of planting and improving. I believe I told you I
have made a considerable addition to my little farm, and extended my domains
towards a wild lake, which I have a good prospect of acquiring also. It has a
sort of legendary fame; for the persuasion of the solitary shepherds who
approach its banks, is, that it is tenanted by a very large amphibious animal,
called by them a water-bull, and which several of them pretend to have seen. As
his dimensions greatly exceed those of an otter, I am tempted to think with
Trinculo, ‘This is the devil,
and no monster.’ But, after all, is it not strange, that as to
almost all the lakes in
Scotland, both Lowland and Highland, such a belief should prevail? and that the
description popularly given uniformly corresponds with that of the
hippopotamus? Is it possible, that at some remote period, that remarkable
animal, like some others which have now disappeared, may have been an
inhabitant of our large lakes? Certainly the vanishing of the mammoth and other
animals from the face of creation, renders such a conjecture less wild than I
would otherwise esteem it. It is certain we have lost the beaver, whose bones
have been more than once found in our Selkirkshire bogs and marl-mosses. The
remains of the wild bull are very frequently found; and I have more than one
scull, with the horns of most formidable dimensions.
“About a fortnight ago, we had a great foot-ball
match in Selkirkshire, when the Duke of
Buccleuch raised his banner (a very curious and ancient pennon)
in great form. Your friend Walter was
banner-bearer, dressed like a forester of old, in green, with a green bonnet,
and an eagle feather in it; and, as he was well mounted, and rode handsomely
over the field, he was much admired by all his clansmen.
“I have thrown these trifles together, without much
hope that they will afford you amusement; but I know you will wish to know what
I am about, and I have but trifles to send to those friends who interest
themselves about a trifler. My present employment is watching, from time to
time, the progress of a stupid cause, in order to be ready to reduce the
sentence into writing, when the court shall have decided whether
Gordon of Kenmore or MacMichan of
Meikleforthhead be the superior of the lands of Tarschrechan and
Dalbrattie, and entitled to the feudal casualities payable forth thereof, which
may amount to twopence sterling, once in half a-dozen of years. Marry, sir,
they make part of a freehold quali-fication, and the
decision may wing a voter. I did not send the book you received by the Selkirk
coach. I wish I could have had sense enough to send any thing which could
afford you consolation. I think our friend Lady
Louisa was likely to have had this attention; she has, God
knows, been herself tried with affliction, and is well acquainted with the
sources from which comfort can be drawn. My wife joins in kindest remembrances,
as do Sophia and Walter. Ever yours affectionately,
Walter Scott.”
This letter is dated the 22d of December. On the 26th, John Ballantyne, being then at Abbotsford, writes to
Messrs Constable: “Paul is all in hand;” and an envelope, addressed to
James Ballantyne on the 29th, has preserved
another little fragment of Scott’s playful
doggrell:
“Dear James—I’m done, thank God,
with the long yarns Of the most prosy of Apostles—Paul; And now advance, sweet Heathen of
Monkbarns, Step out, old quizz, as fast as I can scrawl.”
APPENDIX.
Anonymous THE DURHAM GARLAND.—IN THREE PARTS.
[The following is the Garland referred to at pages 300 and 332, in
connexion with the novel of Guy
Mannering. The ballad was taken down from the recitation of
Mrs Young of Castle-Douglas, who, as her family
informed Mr Train, had long been in the
habit of repeating it over to them once in the year, in order that it might not
escape from her memory. No copy of the printed broadside has as yet been
recovered.]
Part I. 1. A worthy Lord of birth and state, Who did in Durham live of late— But I will not declare his name, By reason of his birth and fame. 2. This Lord he did a hunting go, If you the truth of all would know, He had indeed a noble train, Of Lords and Knights and Gentlemen. 3. This noble Lord he left the train Of Lords and Knights and Gentlemen; And hearing not the horn to blow, He could not tell which way to go. 4. But he did wander to and fro, Being weary, likewise full of woe: At last Dame Fortune was so kind That he the Keeper’s house did find. 5. He went and knocked at the door, He thought it was so late an hour. The Forester did let him in, And kindly entertained him. 6. About the middle of the night, When as the stars did shine most bright, This Lord was in a sad surprise, Being wakened by a fearful noise. 7. Then he did rise and call with speed, To know the reason then indeed, Of all that shrieking and those cries Which did disturb his weary eyes. 8. “I’m sorry, Sir,” the Keeper said— “That you should be so much afraid; But I do hope all will be well, For my Wife she is in travail.” 9. The noble Lord was learned and wise, To know the Planets in the skies. He saw one evil Planet reign, He called the Forester again. 10. He gave him then to understand, He’d have the Midwife hold her hand; But he was answered by the maid, “My Mistress is delivered.” 11. At one o’clock that very morn, A lovely infant there was born; It was indeed a charming boy, Which brought the man and wife much joy. 12. The Lord was generous, kind, and free, And proffered Godfather to be; The Goodman thanked him heartily For his goodwill and courtesy. 13. A Parson was sent for with speed, For to baptize the child indeed; And after that, as I heard say, In mirth and joy they spent the day. 14. This Lord did noble presents give, Which all the servants did receive. They prayed God to enrich his store, For they never had so much before. 15. And likewise to the child he gave A present noble, rich, and brave; It was a charming cabinet, That was with pearls and jewels set. 16. And within it was a chain of gold, Would dazzle eyes for to behold; A richer gift, as I may say, Was not beheld this many a day. 17. He charged his father faithfully, That he himself would keep the key, Until the child could write and read— And then to give him it indeed;— 18. “Pray do not open it at all Whatever should on you befall; For it may do my godson good, If it be rightly understood.” 19. This Lord did not declare his name, Nor yet the place from whence he came, But secretly he did depart, And left them grieved to the heart. Part II. I. The second part I now unfold, As true a story as e’er was told, Concerning of a lovely child, Who was obedient, sweet, and mild. 2. This child did take his learning so, If you the truth of all would know, At eleven years of age indeed, Both Greek and Latin he could read. 3. Then thinking of his cabinet, That was with pearls and jewels set, He asked his father for the key, Which he gave him right speedily; 4. And when he did the same unlock, He was with great amazement struck When he the riches did behold, And likewise saw the chain of Gold. 5. But searching farther he did find A paper which disturbed his mind, That was within the cabinet, In Greek and Latin it was writ. 6. My child, serve God that is on high, And pray to him incessantly;Obey your parents, love your king, That nothing may your conscience sting. 7. At seven years hence your fate will be, You must be hanged upon a tree;Then pray to God both night and day, To let that hour pass away. 8. When he these woeful lines did read, He with a sigh did say indeed, “If hanging be my destiny, My parents shall not see me die; 9. “For I will wander to and fro, I’ll go where I no one do know; But first I’ll ask my parents’ leave, In hopes their blessing to receive.” 10. Then locking up his cabinet, He went from his own chamber straight Unto his only parents dear, Beseeching them with many a tear 11. That they would grant what he would have— “But first your blessing I do crave, And beg you’ll let me go away, ’Twill do me good another day.” 12. * * * * * * * * * * * * “And if I live I will return, When seven years are past and gone.” 13. Both man and wife did then reply, “I fear, my son, that we shall die, If we should yield to let you go, Our aged hearts would break with woe. 14. But he entreated eagerly, While they were forced to comply, And give consent to let him go, But where, alas! they did not know. 15. In the third part you soon shall find, That fortune was to him most kind, And after many dangers past, He came to Durham at the last. Part III. 1. He went by chance, as I heard say, To that same house that very day, In which his Godfather did dwell; But mind what luck to him befel:— 2. This child did crave a service there, On which came out his Godfather, And seeing him a pretty youth, He took him for his Page in truth. 3. Then in this place he pleased so well, That ’bove the rest he bore the bell; This child so well the Lord did please, He raised him higher by degrees. 4. He made him Butler sure indeed, And then his Steward with all speed, Which made the other servants spite, And envy him both day and night. 5. He was never false unto his trust, But proved ever true and just; And to the Lord did hourly pray To guide him still both night and day. 6. In this place, plainly it appears, He lived the space of seven years; His parents then he thought upon, And of his promise to return. 7. Then humbly of his Lord did crave, That he his free consent might have To go and see his parents dear, He had not seen this many a year. 8. Then having leave away he went, Not dreaming of the false intent That was contrived against him then By wicked, false, deceitful men. 9. They had in his portmanteau put This noble Lord’s fine golden cup; That when the Lord at dinner was, The cup was missed as come to pass. 10. “Where can it be?” this Lord did say, “We had it here but yesterday.”— The Butler then replied with speed, “If you will hear the truth indeed, 11. “Your darling Steward which is gone, With feathered nest away is flown; I’ll warrant you he has that, and more That doth belong unto your store.” 12. “No,” says this Lord, “that cannot be, For I have tried his honesty;” “Then,” said the Cook, “my Lord, I die Upon a tree full ten feet high.” 13. Then hearing what these men did say, He sent a messenger that day, To take him with a hue and cry, And bring him back immediately. 14. They searched his portmanteau with speed, In which they found the cup indeed; Then was he struck with sad surprise, He could not well believe his eyes. 15. The assizes then were drawing nigh, And he was tried and doomed to die; And his injured innocence Could nothing say in his defence. 16. But going to the gallows tree, On which he thought to hanged be, He clapped his hands upon his breast, And thus in tears these words exprest:— 17. “Blind Fortune will be Fortune still I see, let man do what he will; For though this day I needs must die, I am not guilty—no, not I.” 18. This noble Lord was in amaze, He stood and did with wonder gaze; Then he spoke out with words so mild,— “What mean you by that saying, Child?” 19. “Will that your Lordship,” then said he, “Grant one day’s full reprieve for me, A dismal story I’ll relate, Concerning of my wretched fate.” 20. “Speak up, my child,” this Lord did say, “I say you shall not die this day— And if I find you innocent, I’ll crown your days with sweet content.” 21. He told him all his dangers past, He had gone through from first to last, He fetched the chain and cabinet, Likewise the paper that was writ. 22. When that this noble Lord did see, He ran to him most eagerly, And in his arms did him embrace, Repeating of those words in haste.— 23. “My Child, my Child, how blessed am I Thou art innocent, and shall not die; For I’m indeed thy Godfather, And thou was’t born in fair Yorkshire. 24. “I have indeed one daughter dear, Which is indeed my only heir; And I will give her unto thee, And crown you with felicity.” 25. So then the Butler and the Cook (’Twas them that stole the golden cup) Confessed their faults immediately, And for it died deservedly. 26. This goodly youth, as I do hear, Thus raised, sent for his parents dear, Who did rejoice their Child to see— And so I end my Tragedy.
END OF VOLUME THIRD.EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND CO., PAUL’S WORK.
MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. VOLUME THE FOURTH. MDCCCXXXVII. ROBERT CADELL, EDINBURGH. JOHN MURRAY AND WHITTAKER AND CO., LONDON. CONTENTS OF VOLUME FOURTH. PAGE CHAPTER I. Publication of Paul’s Letters to his
Kinsfolk—Guy Mannering “Terryfied”—Death
of Major John Scott—Letters to Thomas
Scott—Publication of the Antiquary—History of 1814 for
the Edinburgh Annual Register—Letters on the History of Scotland
projected—Publication of the first Tales of my Landlord by Murray
and Blackwood—Anecdotes by Mr Train—Quarterly
Review on the Tales—Building at Abbotsford begun—Letters to
Morritt, Terry, Murray,
and the Ballantynes— 1816, 1 CHAPTER II. Harold the Dauntless published—Scott aspires
to be a Baron of the Exchequer—Letter to the Duke of Buccleuch
concerning Poachers, &c.—First attack of Cramp in the Stomach—Letters to
Morritt—Terry—and Mrs Maclean
Clephane—Story of the Doom of Devorgoil—John
Komble’s retirement from the Stage—William
Laidlaw established at Kaeside—Novel of Rob Roy
projected—Letter to Southey on the relief of the Poor, &c—Letter
to Lord Montagu on Hogg’sQueen’s Wake, and on the death of Frances Lady
Douglas— 1817, 40 PAGE CHAPTER III. Excursion to the Lennox—Glasgow—and Drumlanrig—Purchase of
Toftfield—Establishment of the Ferguson Family at Huntly Burn—Lines
written in illness—Visits of Washington Irving—Lady
Byron and Sir David Wilkie—Progress of the Building at
Abbotsford—Letters to Morritt—Terry,
&c.—Conclusion of Rob Roy— 1817, 80 CHAPTER IV. Rob Roy published—Negotiation concerning the Second Series of
Tales of My Landlord—Commission to search for the Scottish
Regalia—Letters to the Duke of Buccleuch—Mr
Croker—Mr Morritt—Mr
Murray—Mr Maturin, &c.—Correspondence on Rural
Affairs with Mr Laidlaw—And on the Buildings at Abbotsford with
Mr Terry—Death of Mrs Murray Keith and
Mr George Bullock— 1818, 108 CHAPTER V. May 1818,—Dinner at Mr Home
Drummond’s—Scott’s Edinburgh Den—Details of
his Domestic Life in Castle Street—His Sunday Dinners—His Evening Drives, &c.—His
conduct in the General Society of Edinburgh—Dinners at John
Ballantyne’s Villa—and at James
Ballantyne’s in St John Street on the appearance of a New
Novel—Anecdotes of the Ballantynes, and of
Constable, 144 CHAPTER VI. Publication of the Heart of Mid-Lothian—Its
Reception in Edinburgh and in England—Abbotsford in October—Melrose Abbey—Dryburgh,
&c.—Lion Hunters from America—Tragedy of the Cherokee
Lovers—Scott’s Dinner to the Selkirkshire Yeomen— 1818, 176 CHAPTER VII. Declining Health of Charles Duke of Buccleuch—Letter on
the Death of Queen Charlotte—Provincial Antiquities, &c.—Extensive
Sale of Copyrights to Constable and Co.—Death of Mr Charles
Carpenter—Scott receives and accepts the offer of a
Baronetcy—He declines to renew his application for a Seat on the Exchequer Bench—Letters to
Morritt— Richardson—Miss Baillie—The Duke of
Buccleuch—Lord Montagu—Captain Adam
Ferguson—Rob Roy played at Edinburgh—Letter from
Jedediah Cleishbotham to Mr Charles Mackay—
1818—1819, 206 CHAPTER VIII. Recurrence of Scott’s Illness—Death of the
Duke of Buccleuch—Letters to Captain
Ferguson—Lord Montagu—Mr
Southey—And Mr Shortreed—Scott’s
Sufferings while dictating the Bride of Lammermoor—Anecdotes by
James Ballantyne, &c.—Appearance of the Third Series of Tales of My Landlord—Anecdote of the Earl of
Buchan—March—June 1819— 231 CHAPTER IX. Gradual Re-establishment of Scott’s Health—Ivanhoe in Progress—His Son Walter joins the
Eighteenth Regiment of Hussars—Scott’s Correspondence with his
Son—Miscellaneous Letters to Mrs Maclean Clephane—M. W.
Hartstonge—J. G. Lockhart—John
Ballantyne—John Richardson—Miss
Edgeworth—Lord Montagu, &c.—Abbotsford Visited by
Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg—Death of Mrs William
Erskine— 1819, 279 CHAPTER X. Political Alarms—The Radicals—Levies of Volunteers—Project of the Buccleuch
Legion—Death of Scott’s Mother—Her Brother Dr
Rutherford—And her Sister Christian—Letters to
Lord Montagu—Mr Thomas Scott—Cornet
Scott—Mr Laidlaw—And Lady Louisa
Stuart—Publication of Ivanhoe— 1819, 318 CHAPTER XI. The Visionary—The Peel of Darnick—Scott’s Saturday
Excursions to Abbotsford—A Sunday there in
February—Constable—John
Ballantyne—Thomas Purdie, &c.—Prince
Gustavus Vasa—Proclamation of King George
IV—Publication of the Monastery— 1820, 345 CHAPTER XII. Scott Revisits London—His Portrait by Lawrence,
and Bust by Chantrey—Anecdotes by
Allan Cunningham—Letters to Mrs
Scott—Laidlaw, &c.—His Baronetcy Gazetted—Marriage
of his Daughter Sophia—Letter to “The Baron of
Galashiels”—Visit of Prince Gustavus Vasa at Abbotsford—Tenders
of Honorary Degrees from Oxford and Cambridge—Letter to Mr Thomas
Scott— 1820, 360
MEMOIRSOF THELIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.CHAPTER I. PUBLICATION OF PAUL’S LETTERS TO HIS KINSFOLK—GUY MANNERING
“TERRY-FIED”—DEATH OF MAJOR JOHN SCOTT—LETTERS TO THOMAS SCOTT—PUBLICATION OF
THE ANTIQUARY—HISTORY OF 1814 FOR THE EDINBURGH ANNUAL REGISTER—LETTERS ON THE HISTORY OF
SCOTLAND PROJECTED—PUBLICATION OF THE FIRST TALES OF MY LANDLORD BY MURRAY AND
BLACKWOOD—ANECDOTES BY MR TRAIN—QUARTERLY REVIEW ON THE TALES—BUILDING AT ABBOTSFORD
BEGUN—LETTERS TO MORRITT, TERRY, MURRAY, AND THE BALLANTYNES. 1816.
The year 1815 may be considered as, for Scott’s peaceful tenor of life, an eventful one. That which followed
has left almost its only traces in the successive appearance of nine volumes, which attest
the prodigal genius, and hardly less astonishing industry of the man. Early in January were
published Paul’s Letters to his
Kinsfolk, of which I need not now say more than that they were received with lively
curiosity, and gene-ral, though not vociferous applause. The first
edition was an octavo, of 6000 copies; and it was followed, in the course of the next two
or three years, by a second and a third, amounting together to 3000 more. The popularity of
the novelist was at its height; and this admitted, if not avowed, specimen of
Scott’s prose, must have been perceived, by all who had any
share of discrimination, to flow from the same pen.
Mr Terry produced in the spring of 1816 a dramatic
piece, entitled, “Guy
Mannering,” which met with great success on the London boards, and still
continues to be a favourite with the theatrical public; what share the novelist himself had
in this first specimen of what he used to call “the art of Terryfying” I cannot exactly say; but his correspondence shows that the
pretty song of the Lullaby* was not his only contribution to it; and I infer that he had
taken the trouble to modify the plot, and re-arrange, for stage purposes, a considerable
part of the original dialogue. The casual risk of discovery, through the introduction of
the song which had, in the mean time, been communicated to one of his humble dependents,
the late Alexander Campbell, editor of Albyn’s Anthology (commonly known at
Abbotsford as, by way of excellence, “The
Dunniewassail,”) and Scott’s
suggestions on that difficulty, will amuse the reader of the following letter:
To D. Terry, Esq. Alfred Place, Bloomsbury,
London.
“Abbotsford, 18th April, 1816. “My dear Terry,
“I give you joy of your promotion to the dignity of
an householder, and heartily wish you all the success you so well deserve, to
answer the approaching enlarge-
See Scott’s Poetical Works, (Edit. 1834), vol. xi., p.
317.
ment of your
domestic establishment. You will find a house a very devouring monster, and
that the purveying for it requires a little exertion, and a great deal of
self-denial and arrangement. But when there is domestic peace and contentment,
all that would otherwise be disagreeable, as restraining our taste and
occupying our time, becomes easy. I trust Mrs
Terry will get her business easily over, and that you will soon
‘dandle Dickie on your knee.’ I have been at the spring
circuit, which made me late in receiving your letter, and there I was
introduced to a man whom I never saw in my life before, namely, the proprietor
of all the Pepper and Mustard family, in other words, the genuine Dandle Dinmont. Dandie is
himself modest, and says, ‘he b’lives its only the dougs that is
in the buik, and no himsel.’ As the surveyor of taxes was going
his ominous rounds past Hyndlea, which is the abode of Dandie, his whole pack rushed out upon the man of execution,
and Dandie followed them (conscious that
their number greatly exceeded his return), exclaiming, ‘the tae hauf
o’ them is but whalps, man.’ In truth, I knew nothing of
the man, except his odd humour of having only two names for twenty dogs. But
there are lines of general resemblance among all these hill-men, which there is
no missing; and Jamie Davidson of
Hyndlea certainly looks Dandie
Dinmont remarkably well. He is much flattered with the
compliment, and goes uniformly by the name among his comrades, but has never
read the book. Ailie used to read it to him, but it set
him to sleep. All this you will think funny enough. I am afraid I am in a
scrape about the song, and that
of my own making; for as it never occurred to me that there was any thing odd
in my writing two or three verses for you, which have no connexion with the
novel, I was at no pains to disown them; and Campbell is just that sort of crazy
creature, with whom there is no confidence, not from want of honour and
disposition to oblige, but from his flighty temper. The music of Cadil gŭ lo is already
printed in his publication, and nothing can be done with him, for fear of
setting his tongue a-going. Erskine and
you may consider whether you should barely acknowledge an obligation to an
unknown friend, or pass the matter altogether in silence. In my opinion, my
first idea was preferable to both, because I cannot see what earthly connexion
there is between the song and the novel, or how acknowledging the one is
fathering the other. On the contrary, it seems to me that acknowledgment tends
to exclude the idea of farther obligation than to the extent specified. I
forgot also that I had given a copy of the lines to Mrs Macleod of Macleod, from whom I had the air. But I remit
the matter entirely to you and Erskine, for there must be
many points in it which I cannot be supposed a good judge of. At any rate,
don’t let it delay your publication, and believe I shall be quite
satisfied with what you think proper.
“I have got from my friend Glengarry the noblest dog ever seen on the
Border since Johnnie Armstrong’s
time. He is between the wolf and deer greyhound, about six feet long from the
tip of the nose to the tail, and high and strong in proportion: he is quite
gentle, and a great favourite: tell Will.
Erskine he will eat off his plate without being at the trouble
to put a paw on the table or chair. I showed him to
Matthews, who dined one day in Castle Street before I
came here, where, except for Mrs S., I am
like unto ‘The spirit who dwelleth by himself, In the land of mist and snow’— for it is snowing and hailing eternally, and will kill all the lambs to a certainty,
unless it changes in a few hours. At any rate, it will cure us of the
embarrassments arising from plenty and low markets. Much good luck to your
dramatic exertions: when I can be of use, command me. Mrs
Scott joins me in regards to Mrs
Terry, and considers the house as the greatest possible bargain:
the situation is all you can wish. Adieu! yours truly,
Walter Scott.”
“P.S.—On consideration, and comparing
difficulties, I think I will settle with Campbell to take my name from the verses, as they stand in
his collection. The verses themselves I cannot take away without imprudent
explanations; and as they go to other music, and stand without any name,
they will probably not be noticed, so you need give yourself no farther
trouble on the score. I should like to see my copy: pray send it to the
post-office, under cover to Mr
Freeling, whose unlimited privilege is at my service on all
occasions.”
Early in May appeared the novel of “the Antiquary,” which seems to have been begun a
little before the close of 1815. It came out at a moment of domestic distress.
Throughout the year 1815 Major John
Scott had been drooping. He died on the 8th of May, 1816; and I extract the
letter in which this event was announced to Mr Thomas Scott by his only surviving brother.
To Thomas Scott, Esq. Paymaster of the 70th
Regiment, Canada.
“Edinburgh, 15th May, 1816. “My dear Tom,
“This brings you the melancholy news of our brother
John’s concluding his long and
lingering illness by death, upon Thursday last. We had thought it impos-sible he should survive the winter, but, as the weather
became milder, he gathered strength, and went out several times. In the
beginning of the week he became worse, and on Wednesday kept his bed. On
Thursday, about two o’clock, they sent me an express to Abbotsford—the
man reached me at nine. I immediately set out, and travelled all night but had
not the satisfaction to see my brother alive. He had died about four
o’clock, without much pain, being completely exhausted. You will
naturally feel most anxious about my mother’s state of health and spirits. I am happy to say,
she has borne this severe shock with great firmness and resignation, is
perfectly well in her health, and as strong in her mind as ever you knew here.
She feels her loss, but is also sensible that protracted existence, with a
constitution so irretrievably broken up, could have been no blessing. Indeed I
must say, that, in many respects, her situation will be more comfortable on
account of this removal, when the first shock is over; for to watch an invalid,
and to undergo all the changes of a temper fretted by suffering, suited ill
with her age and habits. The funeral, which took place yesterday, was decent
and private, becoming our father’s eldest son, and the head of a quiet
family. After it, I asked Hay Donaldson
and Mr MacCulloch* to look over his
papers, in case there should be any testamentary provision, but none such was
found; nor do I think he had any intention of altering the destination which
divides his effects between his surviving brothers.
Your affectionate W. S.”
* The late Mr Hay Donaldson,
W.S.—an intimate friend of both Thomas and
Walter Scott, and Mr
Macculloch of Ardwell, the brother of Mrs
Thomas Scott.
A few days afterwards, he hands to Mr Thomas
Scott a formal statement of pecuniary affairs; the result of which was, that
the Major had left something not much under L.6000. Major
Scott, from all I have heard, was a sober, sedate bachelor, of dull mind and
frugal tastes, who, after his retirement from the army, divided his time between his
mother’s primitive fireside, and the society of a few whist-playing brother officers,
that met for an evening rubber at Fortune’s tavern. But, making every allowance for
his retired and thrifty habits, I infer that the payments made to each of the three
brothers out of their father’s estate must have, prior to 1816, amounted to L.5000.
From the letter conveying this statement (29th May), I extract a few sentences:—
“Dear Tom,
“ . . . . . Should the possession of this sum, and
the certainty that you must, according to the course of nature, in a short
space of years succeed to a similar sum of L.3000 belonging to our mother,
induce you to turn your thoughts to Scotland, I shall be most happy to forward
your views with any influence I may possess; and I have little doubt that,
sooner or later, something may be done. But, unfortunately, every avenue is now
choked with applicants, whose claims are very strong; for the number of
disbanded officers, and public servants dismissed in consequence of Parliament
turning restive and refusing the income-tax, is great and increasing. Economy
is the order of the day, and I assure you they are shaving properly close. It
would, no doubt, be comparatively easy to get you a better situation where you
are, but then it is bidding farewell to your country, at least for a long time,
and separating your children from all knowledge of those with whom they are
naturally connected. I shall anxiously expect to hear from
you on your views and wishes. I think, at all events, you ought to get rid of
the drudgery of the paymastership—but not without trying to exchange it for
something else. I do not know how it is with you—but I do not feel myself quite
so young as I was when we met last, and I should like
well to see my only brother return to his own country and settle, without
thoughts of leaving it, till it is exchanged for one that is dark and distant.
. . . . . I left all Jack’s
personal trifles at my mother’s disposal. There was nothing of the
slightest value, excepting his gold watch, which was my sister’s, and a
good one. My mother says he had wished my son Walter should have it, as his male representative which I can
only accept on condition your little Walter will accept a
similar token of regard from his remaining uncle.—Yours affectionately,
W. S.”
The letter in which Scott communicated
his brother’s death to Mr Morritt, gives us
his own original opinion of The
Antiquary. It has also some remarks on the separation of Lord and Lady Byron and the
“domestic verses” of the noble poet.
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. M. P. London.
“Edinburgh, May 16, 1816. “My dear Morritt,
“I have been occupied of late with scenes of domestic
distress, my poor brother, Major John
Scott, having last week closed a life which wasting disease had
long rendered burthensome. His death, under all the circumstances, cannot be
termed a subject of deep affliction; and though we were always on fraternal
terms of mutual kindness and good-will, yet our habits of life, our taste for
society and circles of friends were so totally different, that there was less frequent
intercourse between us than our connexion and real liking to each other might
have occasioned. Yet it is a heavy consideration to have lost the last but one
who was interested in our early domestic life, our habits of boyhood, and our
first friends and connexions. It makes one look about and see how the scene has
changed around him, and how he himself has been changed with it. My only
remaining brother is in Canada, and seems to have an intention of remaining
there; so that my mother, now upwards of
eighty, has now only one child left to her out of thirteen whom she has borne.
She is a most excellent woman, possessed, even at her advanced age, of all the
force of mind and sense of duty which have carried her through so many domestic
griefs, as the successive death of eleven children, some of them come to men
and women’s estate, naturally infers. She is the principal subject of my
attention at present, and is, I am glad to say, perfectly well in body and
composed in mind.
“Nothing can give me more pleasure than the prospect
of seeing you in September, which will suit our motions perfectly well. I trust
I shall have an opportunity to introduce you to some of our glens which you
have not yet seen. But I hope we shall have some mild weather before that time,
for we are now in the seventh month of winter, which almost leads me to suppose
that we shall see no summer this season. As for spring, that is past praying
for. In the month of November last, people were skating in the neighbourhood of
Edinburgh; and now, in the middle of May, the snow is lying white on
Arthur’s Seat, and on the range of the Pentlands. It is really fearful,
and the sheep are perishing by scores. Jam satis
terræ nivis, &c. may well be taken up
as the song of eighteen hundred and sixteen.
“So Lord
Byron’s romance seems to be concluded for one while and it
is surely time, after he has announced, or rather they themselves have
announced, half a dozen blackguard newspaper editors, to have been his
confidants on the occasion. Surely it is a strange thirst of public fame that
seeks such a road to it. But Lord Byron, with high genius
and many points of a noble and generous feeling, has Childe Harolded himself, and outlawed himself, into too great a
resemblance with the pictures of his imagination. He has one excuse, however,
and it is a sad one. I have been reckoned to make a good hit enough at a
pirate, or an outlaw, or a smuggling bandit; but I cannot say I was ever so
much enchanted with my work as to think of carrying off a drift of my neighbour’s sheep, or half a dozen of his milk
cows. Only I remember, in the rough times, having a scheme with the Duke of Buccleuch, that when the worst came to
the worst, we should repair Hermitage Castle, and live, like Robin Hood and his
merry men, at the expense of all round us. But this presupposed a grand
bouleversement of society. In
the mean while, I think my noble friend is something like my old peacock, who
chooses to bivouac apart from his lady, and sit below my bedroom window, to
keep me awake with his screeching lamentation. Only I own he is not equal in
melody to Lord Byron, for Fare-thee-well—and if for
ever, &c., is a very sweet dirge indeed. After all,
C’est genie mal
logé, and that’s all that can be said about it.
“I am quite reconciled to your opinions on the
income-tax, and am not at all in despair at the prospect of keeping L.200
a-year in my pocket, since the ministers can fadge without it. But their
throwing the helve after the hatchet, and giving up the malt-duty because they
had lost the other, was droll enough. After all, our fat friend* must learn to live within compass,
and fire off no more crackers in the Park, for John
Bull is getting dreadfully sore on all sides when money is
concerned.
“I sent you, some time since, the Antiquary. It is not so interesting as its
predecessors—the period did not admit of so much romantic situation. But it has
been more fortunate than any of them in the sale, for 6000 went off in the
first six days, and it is now at press again; which is very flattering to the
unknown author. Another incognito proposes immediately to resume the second
volume of Triermain, which is at
present in the state of the Bear and Fiddle. Adieu, dear Morritt. Ever yours,
Walter Scott.”
Speaking of his third novel in a letter of the same date to Terry, Scott says,
“It wants the romance of Waverley and the adventure of Guy Mannering; and yet there is some salvation about it, for if a man will
paint from nature, he will be likely to amuse those who are daily looking at
it.”
After a little pause of hesitation, The Antiquary attained popularity not inferior to Guy Mannering; and,
* Shortly after Beau
Brummell (immortalized in Don Juan)
fell into disgrace with the Prince Regent, and
was dismissed from the society of Carlton House, he was riding with another
gentleman in the Park, when the Prince met them. His Royal Highness stopt to speak
to Brummell’s companion—the Beau continued to jog on—and
when the other dandy rejoined him, asked with an air of sovereign indifference,
“Who is your fat friend?” Such, at least, was the story that
went the round of the newspapers at the time, and highly tickled Scott’s fancy. I have heard that nobody enjoyed
so much as the Prince of Wales himself an earlier specimen of
the Beau’s assurance. Taking offence at some part of His Royal
Highness’s conduct or demeanour, “Upon my word,” observed
Mr Brummell, “if this kind of thing goes on, I
shall be obliged to cut Wales, and bring the old King into fashion.”
though the author appears for a moment to have shared the doubts which
he read in the countenance of James Ballantyne, it
certainly was, in the sequel, his chief favourite among all his novels. Nor is it difficult
to account for this preference, without laying any stress on the fact, that, during a few
short weeks, it was pretty commonly talked of as a falling off from its immediate
predecessors—and that some minor critics re-echoed this stupid whisper in print. In that
view, there were many of its successors that had much stronger claims on the parental
instinct of protection. But the truth is, that although Scott’s
Introduction of 1830 represents him as pleased with fancying that, in the principal
personage, he had embalmed a worthy friend of his boyish days, his own antiquarian
propensities, originating, perhaps in the kind attentions of George Constable of Wallace-Cragie, and fostered not a little, at about as
ductile a period, by those of old Clerk of Eldin,
and John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, had by degrees so
developed themselves, that he could hardly, even when the Antiquary was published, have scrupled about recognising a quaint caricature of
the founder of the Abbotsford Museum, in the inimitable portraiture of the Laird of
Monkbarns. The Descriptive Catalogue of that collection, which he began towards the close
of his life, but, alas! never finished, is entitled “Reliquiæ
Trottcosianæ—or the Gabions of the late Jonathan
Oldbuck, Esq.”
But laying this, which might have been little more than a good-humoured
pleasantry, out of the question, there is assuredly no one of all his works on which more
of his own early associations have left their image. Of those early associations, as his
full-grown tastes were all the progeny, so his genius, in all its happiest efforts, was the
“Recording Angel;” and when George
Constable first expounded his “Gabions” to the child that was to immortalize his name, they were
either wandering hand in hand over the field where the grass still grew rank upon the grave
of Balmawhapple, or sauntering on the beach where the
Mucklebackets of Prestonpans dried their nets,
singing, “Weel may the boatie row, and better may she speed, O weel may the boatie row that wins the bairns’ bread”— or telling wild stories about cliff-escapes and the funerals of shipwrecked fishermen.
Considered by itself, without reference to these sources of personal
interest, this novel seems to me to possess, almost throughout, in common with its two
predecessors, a kind of simple unsought charm, which the subsequent works of the series
hardly reached, save in occasional snatches:—like them it is, in all its humbler and softer
scenes, the transcript of actual Scottish life, as observed by the man himself. And I think
it must also be allowed that he has nowhere displayed his highest art, that of skilful
contrast, in greater perfection. Even the tragic romance of Waverley does not set off its Macwheebles and Callum Begs better than
the oddities of Jonathan Oldbuck and his circle are
relieved, on the one hand, by the stately gloom of the Glenallans, on
the other, by the stern affliction of the poor fisherman, who, when discovered repairing
the “auld black bitch o’ a boat” in which his boy had been lost,
and congratulated by his visiter on being capable of the exertion, makes answer,
“And what would you have me to do, unless I wanted to see four children
starve, because one is drowned? it’s weel wi you gentles, that
can sit in the house wi’ handkerchers at your een, when ye lose a friend; but
the like o’ us maun to our wark again, if our hearts were beating as hard as
my hammer.”
It may be worth noting, that it was in correcting the proof-sheets of this novel that Scott first took to
equipping his chapters with mottoes of his own fabrication. On one occasion he happened to
ask John Ballantyne, who was sitting by him, to hunt
for a particular passage in Beaumont and Fletcher. John did as he was bid, but
did not succeed in discovering the lines. “Hang it,
Johnnie,” cried Scott, “I
believe I can make a motto sooner than you will find one.” He did so
accordingly; and from that hour, whenever memory failed to suggest an appropriate epigraph,
he had recourse to the inexhaustible mines of “old play”
or “old ballad,” to which we owe some of the most
exquisite verses that ever flowed from his pen.
Unlike, I believe, most men, whenever Scott neared the end of one composition, his spirits seem to have caught a
new spring of buoyancy, and before the last sheet was sent from his desk, he had crowded
his brain with the imagination of another fiction. The Antiquary was published, as we have seen, in May,
but by the beginning of April he had already opened to the Ballantynes
the plan of the first Tales of my Landlord;
and—to say nothing of Harold the Dauntless,
which he began shortly after the Bridal of
Triermain was finished, and which he seems to have kept before him for two years
as a congenial plaything, to be taken up whenever the coach brought no proof-sheets to jog
him as to serious matters—he had also, before this time, undertaken to write the historical
department of the Register for 1814. Mr Southey had, for reasons upon which I do not enter,
discontinued his services to that work; and it was now doubly necessary, after trying for
one year a less eminent hand, that if the work were not to be dropped altogether, some
strenuous exertion should be made to sustain its character. Scott had
not yet collected the materials requisite for his historical sketch of a year distinguished for the importance and
complexity of its events; but these, he doubted not, would soon reach him, and he felt no
hesitation about pledging himself to complete, not only that sketch, but four new volumes
of prose romances—and his Harold the Dauntless also, if Ballantyne could make any suitable arrangement on that
score—between the April and the Christmas of 1816.
The Antiquary had been published by
Constable, but I presume that, in addition to
the usual stipulations, he had been again, on that occasion, solicited to relieve John Ballantyne and Co.’s stock to an extent which
he did not find quite convenient; and at all events he had, though I know not on what
grounds, shown a considerable reluctance of late to employ James Ballantyne and Co. as printers. One or other of these impediments is
alluded to in a note of Scott’s, which, though
undated, has been pasted into John Ballantyne’s private letterbook among the
documents of the period in question. It is in these words:
“Dear John,
“I have seen the great
swab, who is supple as a glove, and will do all, which some interpret nothing. However, we shall do well enough.
W. S.”
Constable had been admitted, almost from, the
beginning, into the secret of the Novels and for that, among other
reasons, it would have been desirable for the Novelist to have him continue the publisher
without interruption; but Scott was led to suspect, that
if he were called upon to conclude a bargain for a fourth novel before the third had made
its appearance, his scruples as to the matter of printing might at
least protract the treaty; and why Scott should have been urgently desirous of seeing the transaction
settled before the expiration of the half-yearly term of Whitsunday, is sufficiently
explained by the fact, that while so much of the old unfortunate stock of John Ballantyne and Co. still remained on hand—and with it
some occasional recurrence of commercial difficulty as to floating
bills was to be expected—the sanguine author had gone on purchasing one patch of
land after another, until his estate at Abbotsford had already grown from 150 to nearly
1000 acres. The property all about his original farm had been in the hands of various small
holders (Scotticé cock-lairds); these persons were sharp enough
to understand, ere long, that their neighbour could with difficulty resist any temptation
that might present itself in the shape of an offer of more acres; and thus he proceeded
buying up lot after lot of unimproved ground, at extravagant prices, his appetite
increasing by what it fed on, while the ejected yeomen set themselves down elsewhere to
fatten at their leisure upon the profits, most commonly the anticipated profits, of
“The Scotch Novels.”
He was ever and anon pulled up with a momentary misgiving, and resolved
that the latest acquisition should be the last, until he could get rid entirely of
“John Ballantyne and Co.”; but John Ballantyne was, from the utter lightness of his mind,
his incapacity to look a day before him, and his eager impatience to enjoy the passing
hour, the very last man in the world who could, under such circumstances, have been a
serviceable agent. Moreover John, too, had his professional ambition;
he was naturally proud of his connexion, however secondary, with the publication of these
works and this connexion, though subordinate, was still very profitable; he must have
suspected, that should his name disappear altogether from the list of booksellers, it would be a very difficult matter for him
to retain any concern in them; and I cannot, on the whole, but consider it as certain,
that, the first and more serious embarrassments being overcome, he was far from continuing
to hold by his patron’s anxiety for the ultimate and total abolition of their unhappy
copartnership. He, at all events, unless when some sudden emergency arose, flattered
Scott’s own gay imagination, by uniformly
representing every thing in the most smiling colours; and though
Scott, in his replies, seldom failed to introduce some passing hint of
caution such as “Nullum numen abest si sit
prudentia” he more and more took home to himself the agreeable
cast of his Rigdum’s anticipations, and
wrote to him in a vein as merry as his own—e. g.—“As for our
stock, “’Twill be wearing awa’, John, Like snaw-wreaths when it’s thaw, John,”
&c. &c. &c.
I am very sorry, in a word, to confess my conviction that John Ballantyne, however volatile and light-headed, acted
at this period with cunning selfishness, both by Scott
and by Constable. He well knew that it was to
Constable alone that his firm had more than once owed its escape
from utter ruin and dishonour; and he must also have known, that had a fair,
straightforward effort been made for that purpose, after the triumphant career of the Waverley series had once commenced,
nothing could have been more easy than to bring all the affairs of his “back-stock,
&c.,” to a complete close, byentering into a distinct and candid treaty on that
subject, in connexion with the future works of the great Novelist, either with
Constable or with any other first-rate house in the trade. But
John, foreseeing that, were that unhappy concern quite out of the
field, he must himself subside into a mere subordinate member of his
brother’s printing company, seems to have parried the blow by the only arts of any
consequence in which he ever was an adept. He appears to have systematically disguised from
Scott the extent to which the whole
Ballantyne concern had been sustained by
Constable—especially during his Hebridean tour of 1814, and his
Continental one of 1815—and prompted and enforced the idea of trying other booksellers from
time to time, instead of adhering to Constable, merely for the selfish
purposes, first, of facilitating the immediate discount of bills; secondly, of further
perplexing Scott’s affairs, the entire disentanglement of which
would have been, as he fancied, prejudicial to his own personal importance.
It was resolved, accordingly, to offer the risk and half profits of the
first edition of another new novel or rather collection of novels not to Messrs Constable, but to Mr
Murray of Albemarle Street, and Mr
Blackwood, who was then Murray’s agent in
Scotland; but it was at the same time resolved, partly because Scott wished to try another experiment on the public sagacity, but partly
also, no question, from the wish to spare Constable’s feelings,
that the title-page of the “Tales of my
Landlord” should not bear the magical words “by the Author of
Waverley.” The facility with which both
Murray and Blackwood embraced such a
proposal, as no untried novelist, being sane, could have dreamt of hazarding, shows that
neither of them had any doubt as to the identity of the author. They both considered the
withholding of the avowal on the forthcoming title-page as likely to check very much the
first success of the book; but they were both eager to prevent
Constable’s acquiring a sort of prescriptive right to
publish for the unrivalled novelist, and willing to disturb his tenure at this additional,
and as they thought it, wholly unnecessary risk.
How sharply the unseen parent watched this first negotiation of his
Jedediah Cleishbotham, will
appear from one of his letters:
To Mr John Ballantyne, Hanover Street,
Edinburgh.
“Abbotsford, April 29, 1816. “Dear John,
“James has
made one or two important mistakes in the bargain with Murray and Blackwood. Briefly as follows:
“1stly. Having only authority from me to promise 6000
copies, he proposes they shall have the copyright for
ever. I will see their noses cheese first.
“2dly. He proposes I shall have twelve months’
bills—I have always got six. However, I would not stand on that.
“3dly. He talks of volumes being put into the
publishers’ hands to consider and decide on. No such thing; a bare
perusal at St John Street* only.
“Then for omissions—It is not stipulated that we supply the paper and print of successive
editions. This must be nailed, and not left to understanding. Secondly, I will
have London bills as well as Blackwood’s.
“If they agree to these conditions, good and well. If
they demur, Constable must be instantly
tried; giving half to the Longmans, and
we drawing on them for that moiety, or
Constable lodging their bill in
our hands. You will understand it is a four volume touch—a work totally
different in style and structure from the others; a new cast, in short, of the
net which has hitherto made miraculous draughts. I do not limit you to terms,
because I think you will make them better than I can do. But he must do more
than others, since
* James
Ballantyne’s dwelling-house was in this street,
adjoining the Canongate of Edinburgh.
he will not or cannot print with us. For every point but
that, I would rather deal with Constable than any one; he
has always shown himself spirited, judicious, and liberal. Blackwood must be brought to the point instantly; and whenever he
demurs, Constable must be treated with, for there is no
use in suffering the thing to be blown on. At the same time, you need not
conceal from him that there were some proposals elsewhere, but you may add,
with truth, I would rather close with him. Yours truly,
W. S.
“P.S.—I think Constable should jump at this affair; for I believe the
work will be very popular.”
Messrs Murray and Blackwood agreed to all the author’s conditions here
expressed. They also relieved John Ballantyne and
Co. of stock to the value of L.500; and at least Mr
Murray must, moreover, have subsequently consented to anticipate the period
of his payments. At all events, I find, in a letter of Scott’s, dated in the subsequent August, this new echo of the old
advice:—
To Mr John Ballantyne.
“Dear John,
“I have the pleasure to enclose Murray’s
acceptances. I earnestly recommend to you to push realizing as much as you can.
‘Consider weel, gude man, We hae but borrowed gear; The horse that I ride on, It is John
Murray’s mear.’ Yours truly, W. Scott.”
I know not how much of the tale of the Black Dwarf had been seen by Blackwood, in St John Street, before he concluded this bargain for himself and his friend
Murray; but when the closing sheets of that
novel reached him, he considered them as by no means sustaining the delightful promise of
the opening ones. He was a man of strong talents, and, though without any thing that could
be called learning, of very respectable information, greatly superior to what has, in this
age, been common in his profession; acute, earnest, eminently zealous in whatever he put
his hand to; upright, honest, sincere, and courageous. But as Constable owed his first introduction to the upper world of literature and
of society in general to his Edinburgh Review,
so did Blackwood his to the Magazine, which has now made his name familiar to the world—and at the period
of which I write that miscellany was unborn; he was known only as a diligent antiquarian
bookseller of the old town of Edinburgh, and the Scotch agent of the great London
publisher, Murray. The abilities, in short, which he lived to
develope, were as yet unsuspected unless, perhaps, among a small circle; and the knowledge
of the world, which so few men gather from any thing but painful collision with various
conflicting orders of their fellow-men, was not his. He was to the last plain and blunt; at
this time I can easily believe him to have been so, to a degree which Scott might look upon as “ungracious”—I take the
epithet from one of his letters to James Ballantyne.
Mr Blackwood, therefore, upon reading what seemed to him the lame
and impotent conclusion of a well-begun story, did not search about for any glossy
periphrase, but at once wrote to beg that James Ballantyne would
inform the unknown author that such was his opinion. This might possibly have been endured;
but Blackwood, feeling, I have no doubt, a genuine enthusiasm for the
author’s fame, as well as a just tradesman’s anxiety as to his own adventure,
proceeded to suggest the outline of what would, in his judgment, be a
better upwinding of the plot of the Black Dwarf, and concluded
his epistle, which he desired to be forwarded to the nameless novelist, with announcing his
willingness, in case the proposed alteration were agreed to, that the whole expense of
cancelling and reprinting a certain number of sheets should be charged to his own personal
account with “James Ballantyne and Co.” His letter appears
to have further indicated that he had taken counsel with some literary person, on whose
taste he placed great reliance, and who, if he had not originated, at least approved of the
proposed process of recasting. Had Scott never possessed any such
system of inter-agency as the Ballantynes supplied, he would, among
other and perhaps greater inconveniences, have escaped that of the want of personal
familiarity with several persons, with whose confidence,—and why should I not add? with the
innocent gratification of whose little vanities—his own pecuniary interests were often
deeply connected. A very little personal contact would have introduced such a character as
Blackwood’s to the respect, nay, to the affectionate
respect, of Scott, who, above all others, was, ready to sympathize
cordially with honest and able men, in whatever condition of life he discovered them. He
did both know and appreciate Blackwood better in after times; but in
1816, when this plain-spoken communication reached him, the name was little more than a
name, and his answer to the most solemn of go-betweens, was in these terms, which I
sincerely wish I could tell how Signior Aldiborontiphoscophornio
translated into any dialect submissible to Blackwood’s
apprehension.
“Dear James,
“I have received Blackwood’s impudent letter. G—— d—— his soul! Tell him
and his coadjutor that I belong to the Black Hussars of Literature, who neither give nor receive
criticism. I’ll be cursed but this is the most impudent proposal that
ever was made.
W. S.”
This, and a few other documents referring to the same business, did not
come into my hands until both Ballantyne and
Blackwood were no more: and it is not surprising
that Mr Murray’s recollection, if (which I
much doubt) he had been at all consulted about it, should not, at this distance of time,
preserve any traces of its details. “I remember nothing,” he writes to
me, “but that one of the very proudest days of my life was that on which I
published the first Tales of my Landlord;
and a vague notion that I owed the dropping of my connexion with the Great Novelist to
some trashy disputes between Blackwood and the
Ballantynes.”
While these volumes were in progress, Scott found time to make an excursion into Perthshire and Dumbartonshire,
for the sake of showing the scenery, made famous in the Lady of the Lake and Waverley, to his wife’s old friends Miss Dumergue and Mrs Sarah
Nicolson,* who had never before been in Scotland. The account which he gives
of these ladies’ visit at Abbotsford, and this little tour, in a letter to Mr Morritt, shows the “Black Hussar of
Literature” in his gentler and more habitual mood.
To J. S. S. Morritt, Esq. M.P. Rokeby Park.
“Abbotsford, 21st August, 1816. “My dear Morritt,
“I have not had a moment’s kindly leisure to
answer your kind letter, and to tell how delighted I shall be to see you in
this least of all possible dwellings, but
* The sister of Miss Jane
Nicolson.—See vol. i, ante, pp.
268, 372.
where we, nevertheless, can contrive a pilgrim’s
quarters and the warmest welcome for you and any friend of your journey;—if
young Stanley, so much the better. Now, as to the
important business with the which I have been occupied, you are to know we have
had our kind hostesses of Piccadilly upon a two months’ visit to us. We
owed them so much hospitality, that we were particularly anxious to make
Scotland agreeable to the good girls. But, alas! the wind has blown, and the
rain has fallen, in a style which beats all that ever I remembered. We
accomplished, with some difficulty, a visit to Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond,
and, by dint of the hospitality of Cambusmore and the Ross, we defied bad
weather, wet roads, and long walks. But the weather settled into regular
tempest, when we settled at Abbotsford; and, though the natives, accustomed to
bad weather (though not at such a time of year), contrived to brave the
extremities of the season, it only served to increase the dismay of our unlucky
visitors, who, accustomed only to Paris and London, expected fiacres at the Milestane Cross, and a pair
of oars at the Deadman’s Haugh. Add to this, a strong disposition to
commérage, when there
was no possibility of gratifying it, and a total indisposition to scenery or
rural amusements, which were all we had to offer—and you will pity both hosts
and guests. I have the gratification to think I fully supported the hospitality
of my country. I walked them to death. I talked them to death. I showed them
landscapes which the driving rain hardly permitted them to see, and told them
of feuds about which they cared as little as I do about their next door news in
Piccadilly. Yea, I even played at cards, and as I had Charlotte for a partner, so ran no risk of being scolded, I got
on pretty well. Still the weather was so execrable, that, as the old drunken
landlord used to say at Arroquhar, ‘I was perfectly ashamed of it;’ and, to
this moment, I wonder how my two friends fought it out so patiently as they
did. But the young people and the cottages formed considerable resources.
Yesterday they left us, deeply impressed with the conviction, which I can
hardly blame, that the sun never shone in Scotland,—which that noble luminary
seems disposed to confirm, by making this the first fair day we have seen this
month—so that his beams will greet them at Longtown, as if he were determined
to put Scotland to utter shame.
“In you I expect a guest of a different calibre; and
I think (barring downright rain) I can promise you some sport of one kind or
other. We have a good deal of game about us; and Walter, to whom I have resigned my gun and license, will be an
excellent attendant. He brought in six brace of moorfowl on the 12th, which had
(si fas est diceri) its own
effect in softening the minds of our guests towards this unhappy climate. In
other respects things look melancholy enough here. Corn is, however, rising;
and the poor have plenty of work, and wages which, though greatly inferior to
what they had when hands were scarce, assort perfectly well with the present
state of the markets. Most folks try to live as much on their own produce as
they can, by way of fighting off distress; and though speculating farmers and
landlords must suffer, I think the temporary ague-fit will, on the whole, be
advantageous to the country. It will check that inordinate and unbecoming
spirit of expense, or rather extravagance, which was poisoning all classes, and
bring us back to the sober virtues of our ancestors. It will also have the
effect of teaching the landed interest, that their connexion with their farmers
should be of a nature more intimate than that of mere payment and receipt of
rent, and that the largest offerer for a lease is often the person least
entitled to be prefer-red as a tenant. Above all, it will
complete the destruction of those execrable quacks, terming themselves
land-doctors, who professed, from a two days’ scamper over your estate,
to tell you its constitution,—in other words its value,—acre by acre. These
men, paid according to the golden hopes they held out, afforded by their
reports one principal means of deceiving both landlord and tenant, by setting
an ideal and extravagant value upon land, which seemed to entitle the one to
expect, and the other to offer, rent far beyond what any expectation formed by
either, upon their own acquaintance with the property, could rationally have
warranted. More than one landed gentleman has cursed, in my presence, the day
he ever consulted one of those empirics, whose prognostications induced him to
reject the offers of substantial men, practically acquainted with the locale. Ever, my dear Morritt, most truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
In October, 1816, appeared the Edinburgh Annual Register, containing Scott’s historical sketch of the year 1814—a composition which would
occupy two such volumes as the reader now has in his hand. Though executed with
extraordinary rapidity, the sketch is as clear as spirited; but I need say no more of it
here, as the author travels mostly over the same ground again in his Life of Napoleon.
Scott’s correspondence proves, that during this
autumn he had received many English guests besides the good spinsters of Piccadilly and
Mr Morritt. I regret to add, it also proves that
he had continued all the while to be annoyed with calls for money from John Ballantyne; yet before the 12th of November called
him to Edinburgh, he appears to have nearly finished the first “Tales of my Landlord.” He had, moreover, concluded a
nego-tiation with Constable and Longman for a series of Letters on the History of Scotland: of which,
however, if he ever wrote any part, the MS. has not been discovered. It is probable that he
may have worked some detached fragments into his long subsequent “Tales of a Grandfather.” The following letter
shows likewise that he was now busy with plans of building at Abbotsford, and deep in
consultation on that subject with an artist eminent for his skill in Gothic architecture,
Mr Edward Blore, R.A.
To Daniel Terry, Esq.
“November 12th, 1816. “My dear Terry,
“I have been shockingly negligent in acknowledging
your repeated favours; but it so happened, that I have had very little to say,
with a great deal to do; so that I trusted to your kindness to forgive my
apparent want of kindness, and indisputable lack of punctuality. You will
readily suppose that I have heard with great satisfaction of the prosperity of
your household, particularly of the good health of my little namesake and his
mother. Godmothers of yore used to be fairies; and though only a godfather, I
think of sending you, one day, a fairy gift—a little drama, namely, which, if the
audience be indulgent, may be of use to him. Of course, you will stand
godfather to it yourself: it is yet only in embryo—a sort of poetical Hans in Kelder—nor am I sure when I can bring him
forth; not for this season, at any rate. You will receive, in the course of a
few days, my late whereabouts in four volumes: there are
two tales the last of which I really prefer to any fictitious narrative I have
yet been able to produce—the first is wish-washy enough. The subject of the
second tale lies among the old Scottish Cameronians—nay, I’ll tickle ye off a Covenanter as readily as old
Jack could do a young Prince; and a rare fellow he is,
when brought forth in his true colours. Were it not for the necessity of using
scriptural language, which is essential to the character, but improper for the
stage, it would be very dramatic. But of all this you will judge by and by. To
give the go-by to the public, I have doubled and leaped into my form, like a
hare in snow: that is, I have changed my publisher, and come forth like a
maiden knight’s white shield (there is a conceit!) without any adhesion
to fame gained in former adventures (another!) or, in other words, with a
virgin title-page (another!).—I should not be so lighthearted about all this,
but that it is very nearly finished and out, which is always a blithe moment
for Mr Author. And now to other matters. The books came safe, and were unpacked
two days since, on our coming to town most ingeniously were they stowed in the
legs of the very handsome stand for Lord
Byron’s vase, with which our friend George Bullock has equipped me. I was made
very happy to receive him at Abbotsford, though only for a start; and no less
so to see Mr Blore, from whom I received
your last letter. He is a very fine young man, modest, simple, and unaffected
in his manners, as well as a most capital artist. I have had the assistance of
both these gentlemen in arranging an addition to the cottage at Abbotsford,
intended to connect the present farm-house with the line of low buildings to
the right of it. Mr Bullock will show you the plan, which
I think is very ingenious. He has promised to give it his consideration with
respect to the interior; and Mr Blore has drawn me a very
handsome elevation, both to the road and to the river. I expect to get some
decorations from the old Tolbooth of Edinburgh, particularly the copestones of
the door-way, or lintels, as we call them, and a niche or two—one very handsome
indeed! Better get a niche from the Tolbooth than a
niche in it, to which such building operations are apt
to bring the projectors. This addition will give me:—first,—a handsome boudoir,
in which I intend to place Mr
Bullock’sShakspeare,* with his superb cabinet, which serves as a
pedestal. This opens into the little drawingroom, to which it serves as a
chapel of ease; and on the other side, to a handsome dining-parlour of 27 feet
by 18, with three windows to the north, and one to the south, the last to be
Gothic, and filled with stained glass. Besides these commodities, there is a
small conservatory or greenhouse; and a study for myself, which we design to
fit up with ornaments from Melrose Abbey. Bullock made
several casts with his own hands—masks, and so forth, delightful for cornices,
&c.
“Do not let Mrs
Terry think of the windows till little Wat is duly cared after.† I am informed
by Mr Blore that he is a fine thriving
fellow, very like papa. About my armorial bearings: I will send you a correct
drawing of them as soon as I can get hold of Blore;
namely—of the scutcheons of my grandsires on each side, and my own. I could
detail them in the jargon of heraldry, but it is better to speak to your eyes
by translating them into coloured drawings, as the sublime science of armory
has fallen into some neglect of late years, with
* A cast from the monumental effigy at
Stratford-upon-Avon—now in the library at Abbotsford was the gift of
Mr George Bullock, long
distinguished in London as a collector of curiosities for sale, and
honourably so by his “Mexican
Museum” which formed during several years a popular
exhibition throughout the country. This ingenious man was, as the
reader will see in the sequel, a great favourite with Scott.
† Mrs
Terry had offered the services of her elegant pencil in
designing some windows of painted glass for Scott’s armoury, &c.
all its mascles, buckles, crescents, and boars of the
first, second, third, and fourth.
“I was very sorry I had no opportunity of showing
attention to your friend Mr Abbot, not
being in town at the time. I grieve to say, that neither the genius of
Kean, nor the charms of Miss O’Neill could bring me from the
hill-side and the sweet society of Tom
Purdie. All our family are very well—Walter as tall nearly as I am, fishing salmon and shooting
moor-fowl and black-cock, in good style; the girls growing up, and, as yet, not
losing their simplicity of character; little Charles excellent at play, and not deficient at learning, when
the young dog will take pains. Abbotsford is looking pretty at last, and the
planting is making some show. I have now several hundred acres thereof, running
out as far as beyond the lake. We observe with great pleasure the steady rise
which you make in public opinion, and expect, one day, to hail you
stage-manager. Believe me, my dear Terry, always very much your?,
W. Scott.”
“P.S. The Counsellor, and both the
Ballantynes are well and hearty.”
On the first of December the first series of the Tales of my Landlord appeared, and notwithstanding the
silence of the title-page, and the change of publishers, and the attempt which had
certainly been made to vary the style both of delineation and of language, all doubts
whether they were or were not from the same hand with Waverley had worn themselves out before the lapse of a
week. The enthusiasm of their reception among the highest literary circles of London may be
gathered from the following letter:—
“Although I dare not address you as the author of
certain ‘Tales’
(which, however, must be written either by Walter
Scott or the Devil), yet nothing can restrain me from thinking
it is to your influence with the author that I am indebted for the essential
honour of being one of their publishers, and I must intrude upon you to offer
my most hearty thanks—not divided, but doubled—alike for my worldly gain
therein, and for the great acquisition of professional reputation which their
publication has already procured me. I believe I might, under any oath that
could be proposed, swear that I never experienced such unmixed pleasure as the
reading of this exquisite work has afforded me; and if you could see me, as the
author’s literary chamberlain, receiving the unanimous and vehement
praises of every one who has read it, and the curses of those whose needs my
scanty supply could not satisfy, you might judge of the sincerity with which I
now entreat you to assure him of the most complete success. Lord Holland said, when I asked his
opinion—‘Opinion! We did not one of us go to bed last
night—nothing slept but my gout.’ Frere, Hallam, Boswell,* Lord
Glenbervie, William
Lamb,† all agree that it surpasses all the other novels.
Gifford’s estimate is
increased at every reperusal. Heber says
there are only two men in the world—Walter Scott and
Lord Byron. Between you you have given
existence to a third. Ever your faithful servant,
John Murray.”
* The late James Boswell,
Esq., of the Temple—second son of Bozzy.
† The Honourable William Lamb—now
Lord Melbourne.
To this cordial effusion Scott
returned the following answer. It was necessary, since he had fairly resolved against
compromising his incognito, that he should be prepared not only to repel the impertinent
curiosity of strangers, but to evade the proffered congratulations of overflowing kindness.
He contrived, however, to do so, on this and all similar occasions, in a style of equivoque
which could never be seriously misunderstood:—
To John Murray, Esq., Albemarle Street, London.
“Edinburgh, 18th December, 1816. “My dear Sir,
“I give you heartily joy of the success of the Tales, although I do not claim that
paternal interest in them which my friends do me the credit to assign me. I
assure you I have never read a volume of them until they were printed, and can
only join with the rest of the world in applauding the true and striking
portraits which they present of old Scottish manners. I do not expect implicit
reliance to be placed on my disavowal, because I know very well that he who is
disposed not to own a work must necessarily deny it, and that otherwise his
secret would be at the mercy of all who choose to ask the question, since
silence in such a case must always pass for consent, or rather assent. But I
have a mode of convincing you that I am perfectly serious in my denial—pretty
similar to that by which Solomon
distinguished the fictitious from the real mother—and that is, by reviewing the
work, which I take to be an operation equal to that of quartering the child.
But this is only on condition I can have Mr
Erskine’s assistance, who admires the work greatly more
than I do, though I think the painting of the second tale both true and powerful. I knew
Old Mortality very well; his name
was Pater- son, but few
knew him otherwise than by his nickname. The first tale is not very original in its
concoction, and lame and impotent in its conclusion. My love to Gifford. I have been over head and ears in
work this summer, or I would have sent the Gypsies; indeed I was partly stopped
by finding it impossible to procure a few words of their language.
“Constable
wrote to me about two months since, desirous of having a new edition of Paul; but not hearing from you, I
conclude you are still on hand. Longman’s people had then only sixty copies.
“Kind compliments to Heber, whom I expected at Abbotsford this summer; also to
Mr Croker and all your four
o’clock visitors. I am just going to Abbotsford to make a small addition
to my premises there. I have now about 700 acres, thanks to the booksellers and
the discerning public. Yours truly,
Walter Scott.
“P.S. I have much to ask about Lord Byron, if I had time. The third canto of
the Childe is inimitable.
Of the last poems, there are one or two which indicate rather an irregular
play of imagination.* What a pity that a man of such exquisite genius will
not be contented to be happy on the ordinary terms! I declare my heart
bleeds when I think of him, self-banished from the country to which he is
an honour.”
Mr Murray, gladly embracing this offer of an article
for his journal on the Tales of My Landlord,
begged Scott to take a wider scope, and, dropping all
respect for the idea of a divided parentage, to place together any materials he might have
for the illustration of the Waverley
Novels in general; he suggested, in particular, that,
* Parisina—The Dream—and the “Domestic Pieces,” had been
recently published.
instead of drawing up a long-promised disquisition on the Gypsies in a
separate shape, whatever he had to say concerning that picturesque generation might be
introduced by way of comment on the character of Meg Merilees. What Scott’s original
conception had been I know not; he certainly gave his reviewal all the breadth which
Murray could have wished, and inter
alia, diversified it with a few anecdotes of the Scottish Gypsies.
But the late excellent biographer of John Knox,
Dr Thomas M’Crie, had, in the mean time,
considered the representation of the Covenanters in the story of Old Mortality as so unfair as to demand at his hands a
very serious rebuke. The Doctor forthwith published, in a magazine called the Edinburgh Christian Instructor, a set of papers, in which the historical
foundations of that tale were attacked with indignant warmth; and though
Scott, when he first heard of these invectives, expressed his
resolution never even to read them, he found the impression they were producing so strong,
that he soon changed his purpose, and finally devoted a very large part of his article for the Quarterly Review to an elaborate defence of his own picture
of the Covenanters.*
* Since I have mentioned this reviewal, I may as well, to avoid recurrence to it,
express here my conviction, that Erskine, not
Scott, was the author of the critical estimate
of the Waverley novels which it
embraces although for the purpose of mystification Scott had taken
the trouble to transcribe the paragraphs in which that estimate is contained. At the
same time I cannot but add that, had Scott really been the sole
author of this reviewal, he need not have incurred the severe censure which has been
applied to his supposed conduct in the matter. After all, his judgment of his own works
must have been allowed to be not above, but very far under the mark; and the whole
affair would, I think, have been considered by every candid person exactly as the
letter about Solomon and the rival mothers was by
Murray, Gifford, and “the four o’clock visitors” of
Albemarle Street—as a good joke. A better joke certainly than the allusion to the
report of Thomas Scott being the real author of
Before the first Tales of my
Landlord were six weeks’ old, two editions of 2000 copies disappeared, and
a third of 2000 was put to press; but notwithstanding this rapid success, which was still
farther continued, and the friendly relations which always subsisted between the author and
Mr Murray, circumstances ere long occurred which
carried the publication of the work into the hands of Messrs Constable.
The author’s answer to Dr M’Crie, and his
Introduction of 1830, have exhausted the historical materials on which he constructed his
Old Mortality; and the origin of the
Black Dwarf, as to the conclusion of
which story he appears on reflection to have completely adopted the opinion of honest
Blackwood, has already been sufficiently
illustrated by an anecdote of his early wanderings in Tweeddale. The latter tale, however
imperfect, and unworthy as a work of art to be placed high in the catalogue of his
productions, derives a singular interest from its delineation of the dark feelings so often
connected with physical deformity; feelings which appear to have diffused their shadow over
the whole genius of Byron and which, but for this single
picture, we
Waverley, at the close of the
article, was never penned; and I think it includes a confession over which a
misanthrope might have chuckled:—“We intended here to conclude this long
article, when a strong report reached us of certain Transatlantic confessions,
which, if genuine (though of this we know nothing), assign a different author
to these volumes than the party suspected by our Scottish correspondents. Yet a
critic may be excused seizing upon the nearest suspicious person, on the
principle happily expressed by Claverhouse,
in a letter to the Earl of Linlithgow. He
had been, it seems, in search of a gifted weaver, who used to hold forth at
conventicles: ‘I sent for the webster (weaver), they brought in his
brother for him: though he, may be, cannot preach like his brother, I doubt
not but he is as well-principled as he, wherefore I thought it would be no
great fault to give him the trouble to go to jail with the
rest!’”—Miscellaneous Prose Works, Vol. xix, Pp. 85-6.
should hardly have conceived ever to have passed through Scott’s happier mind. All the bitter blasphemy of spirit
which, from infancy to the tomb, swelled up in Byron against the unkindness of nature;
which sometimes perverted even his filial love into a sentiment of diabolical malignity;
all this black and desolate train of reflections must have been encountered and
deliberately subdued by the manly parent of the Black Dwarf.
Old Mortality, on the other hand, is remarkable as the
novelists first attempt to re-people the past by the power of imagination working on
materials furnished by books. In Waverley
he revived the fervid dreams of his boyhood, and drew, not from printed records, but from
the artless oral narratives of his Invernahyles. In Guy Mannering, he embodied characters and manners
familiar to his own wandering youth. But whenever his letters mention Old Mortality in its progress, they represent him as strong in the confidence
that the industry with which he had pored over a library of forgotten tracts would enable
him to identify himself with the time in which they had birth, as completely as if he had
listened with his own ears to the dismal sermons of Peden, ridden with Claverhouse and
Dalzell in the rout of Bothwell, and been an
advocate at the bar of the Privy-Council, when Lauderdale catechised and tortured the assassins of Archbishop Sharp. To reproduce a departed age with such
minute and lifelike accuracy as this tale exhibits, demanded a far more energetic sympathy
of imagination than had been called for in any effort of his serious verse. It is indeed
most curiously instructive for any student of art to compare the Roundheads of Rokeby with the Bluebonnets of Old Mortality. For the rest the story is framed with a deeper skill
than any of the preceding novels; the canvass is a broader one; the characters are
contrasted and projected with a power and
felicity which neither he nor any other master ever surpassed; and, notwithstanding all
that has been urged against him as a disparager of the Covenanters, it is to me very
doubtful whether the inspiration of romantic chivalry ever prompted him to nobler emotions
than he has lavished on the re-animation of their stern and solemn enthusiasm. This work
has always appeared to me the Marmion of
his novels.
I have disclaimed the power of farther illustrating its historical
groundworks, but I am enabled by Mr Train’s
kindness to give some interesting additions to Scott’s own account of this novel as a composition. The generous
Supervisor visited him in Edinburgh in May 1816, a few days after the publication of the
Antiquary, carrying with him several
relics which he wished to present to his collection, among others a purse that had belonged
to Rob Roy; and also a fresh heap of traditionary
gleanings, which he had gathered among the tale-tellers of his district. One of these last
was in the shape of a letter to Mr Train from a Mr
Broadfoot, “schoolmaster at the clachan of Penningham, and author of
the celebrated song of the Hills of Galloway”—with which I
confess myself unacquainted. Broadfoot had facetiously signed his
communication, Clashbottom—“a professional appellation, derived,”
says Mr Train, “from the use of the birch, and by which he
was usually addressed among his companions, who assembled, not at the Wallace Inn of
Gandercleuch, but at the sign of the Shoulder of Mutton in Newton-Stewart.”
Scott received these gifts with benignity, and invited the
friendly donor to breakfast next morning. He found him at work in his library, and surveyed
with enthusiastic curiosity the furniture of the room, especially its only picture, a
portrait of Graham of Claverhouse.
Train expressed the surprise with which every one who had known
Dundee only in the pages of the Presbyterian
Annalists, must see for the first time that beautiful and melancholy visage, worthy of the
most pathetic dreams of romance. Scott replied, “that no
character had been so foully traduced as the Viscount of
Dundee—that, thanks to Wodrow,
Cruikshanks, and such chroniclers, he, who
was every inch a soldier and a gentleman, still passed among the Scottish vulgar for a
ruffian desperado, who rode a goblin horse, was proof against shot, and in league with
the Devil.” “Might he not,” said Mr
Train, “be made, in good hands, the hero of a national romance as
interesting as any about either Wallace or
Prince Charlie?” “He
might,” said Scott, “but your western zealots
would require to be faithfully portrayed in order to bring him out with the right
effect.” “And what,” resumed Train,
“if the story were to be delivered as if from the mouth of Old Mortality? Would he not do
as well as the Minstrel did in the Lay?” “Old
Mortality!” said Scott”—who was
he?” Mr Train then told what he could remember of old
Paterson, and seeing how much his story interested the hearer,
offered to enquire farther about that enthusiast on his return to Galloway. “Do so
by all means,” said Scott—“I assure you I shall
look with anxiety for your communication.” He said nothing at this time of
his own meeting with Old Mortality in the churchyard of Dunotter—and I
think there can be no doubt that that meeting was thus recalled to his recollection; or
that to this intercourse with Mr Train we owe the whole machinery of
the Tales of my Landlord, as well as the
adoption of Claverhouse’s period for the scene of one of its
first fictions. I think it highly probable that we owe a further obligation to the worthy
Supervisor’s presentation of Rob Roy’sspleuchan.
The original design for the First Series of
JedediahCleishbotham was, as Scott told me, to include four separate tales illustrative of four
districts of the country, in the like number of volumes; but, his imagination once kindled
upon any theme, he could not but pour himself out freely—so that notion was soon abandoned.
CHAPTER II. HAROLD THE DAUNTLESS PUBLISHED—SCOTT ASPIRES
TO BE A BARON OF THE EXCHEQUER—LETTER TO THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH
CONCERNING POACHERS, ETC.—FIRST ATTACK OF CRAMP IN THE STOMACH—LETTERS TO
MORRITT—TERRY—AND MRS MACLEAN
CLEPHANE—STORY OF THE DOOM OF DEVORGOIL—JOHN
KEMBLE’S RETIREMENT FROM THE STAGE—WILLIAM
LAIDLAW ESTABLISHED AT KAESIDE—NOVEL OF ROB ROY
PROJECTED—LETTER TO SOUTHEY ON THE RELIEF OF THE POOR, ETC.—LETTER TO
LORD MONTAGU ON HOGG’SQUEEN’S WAKE, AND ON THE DEATH OF FRANCES LADY
DOUGLAS. 1817.
Within less than a month, the Black Dwarf and Old Mortality were followed by “Harold the Dauntless, by the author of the Bridal of Triermain.” This poem had been, it appears,
begun several years back; nay, part of it had been actually printed before the appearance
of Childe Harold, though that circumstance
had escaped the author’s remembrance when he penned, in 1830, his Introduction to the
Lord of the Isles; for he there says,
“I am still astonished at my having committed the gross error of selecting the
very name which Lord Byron had made so
famous.” The volume was published by Messrs Constable, and had, in those booksellers’ phrase, “considerable
success.” It has never, however, been placed on a level with Triermain; and though it contains many vigorous pictures, and splendid verses,
and here and there some happy humour, the confusion and harsh transitions of the fable,
and the dim rudeness of character and manners, seem sufficient to account for this
inferiority in public favour. It is not surprising that the author should have redoubled
his aversion to the notion of any more serious performance in verse. He had seized on an
instrument of wider compass, and which, handled with whatever rapidity, seemed to reveal at
every touch, treasures that had hitherto slept unconsciously within him. He had thrown off
his fetters, and might well go forth rejoicing in the native elasticity of his strength.
It is at least a curious coincidence in literary history, that, as
Cervantes, driven from the stage of Madrid by the
success of Lope de Vega, threw himself into prose
romance, and produced, at the moment when the world considered him as silenced for ever,
the Don Quixote which has outlived
Lope’s two thousand triumphant dramas—so Scott, abandoning verse to Byron, should have rebounded from his fall by the only prose romances which
seem to be classed with the masterpiece of Spanish genius, by the general judgment of
Europe.
I shall insert two letters, in which he announces the publication of
Harold the Dauntless. In the first of
them he also mentions the light and humorous little piece entitled The Sultan of Serendib, or the Search after Happiness,
originally published in a weekly paper, after the fashion of the old Essayists, which about
this time issued from John Ballantyne’s
premises, under the appropriate name of “the Sale-Room.” The paper had slender success; and
though Scott wrote several things for it, none of them,
except this metrical essay, attracted any notice. The
Sale-Room was, in fact, a dull and hopeless concern; and I should
scarcely have thought it worth mentioning, but for the confirmation it
lends to my suspicion that Mr John Ballantyne was very unwilling,
after all his warnings, to retire completely from the field of publishing.
To J. S. S. Morritt, Esq. M. P. Rokeby Park.
“Edinburgh, Jan. 30, 1817. “My dear Morritt,
“I hope to send you in a couple of days Harold the Dauntless, which has
not turned out so good as I thought it would have done. I begin to get too old
and stupid, I think, for poetry, and will certainly never again adventure on a
grand scale. For amusement, and to help a little publication that is going on
here, I have spun a doggrel tale called the Search after Happiness, of which I shall send a
copy by post, if it is of a frankable size; if not, I can put it up with the
Dauntless. Among other misfortunes of Harold is his name, but the thing was partly printed
before Childe Harold was in
question.
“My great and good news at present is, that the bog
(that perpetual hobbyhorse) has produced a commodity of most excellent marle,
and promises to be of the very last consequence to my wild ground in the
neighbourhood; for nothing can equal the effect of marle as a top-dressing.
Methinks (in my mind’s eye, Horatio)
I see all the blue-bank, the hinny-lee, and the other provinces of my poor
kingdom, waving with deep ryegrass and clover, like the meadows at Rokeby. In
honest truth, it will do me yeoman’s service.
“My next good tidings are, that Jedediah carries the world before him. Six
thousand have been disposed of, and three thousand more are pressing onward,
which will be worth L.2500 to the worthy pedagogue of Gandercleuch. Some of the
Scotch Whigs, of the right old fanatical leaven, have waxed wroth with
Jedediah— ‘But shall we go mourn for that, my dear? The cold moon shines by night, And when we wander here and there, We then do go most right.’ After all, these honest gentlemen are like Queen Elizabeth in their ideas of portrait-painting. They
require the pictures of their predecessors to be likenesses, and at the same
time demand that they shall be painted without shade, being probably of
opinion, with the virgin majesty of England, that there is no such thing in
nature.
“I presume you will be going almost immediately to
London—at least all our Scotch members are requested to be at their posts, the
meaning of which I cannot pretend to guess. The finances are the only ticklish
matter, but there is, after all, plenty of money in the country, now that our
fever-fit is a little over. In Britain, when there is the least damp upon the
spirits of the public, they are exactly like people in a crowd, who take the
alarm, and shoulder each other to and fro till some dozen or two of the weakest
are borne down and trodden to death; whereas, if they would but have patience
and remain quiet, there would be a safe and speedy end to their embarrassment.
How we want Billie Pitt now to get up and
give the tone to our feelings and opinions!
“As I take up this letter to finish the same, I hear
the Prince Regent has been attacked and
fired at. Since he was not hurt (for I should be sincerely sorry for my fat
friend), I see nothing but good luck to result from this assault. It will make
him a good manageable boy, and, I think, secure you a quiet Session of
Parliament. Adieu, my dear Morritt, God
bless you. Let me know if the gimcracks come safe—I mean the book, &c. Ever
yours,
Walter Scott.”
To the Lady Louisa Stuart, Gloucester Place,
London.
“Edinburgh, Jan. 31, 1817. “My dear Lady Louisa,
“This accompanies Harold the Dauntless. I
thought once I should have made it something clever, but it turned vapid upon
my imagination; and I finished it at last with hurry and impatience. Nobody
knows, that has not tried the feverish trade of poetry, how much it depends
upon mood and whim: I don’t wonder, that, in dismissing all the other
deities of Paganism, the Muse should have been retained by common consent; for,
in sober reality, writing good verses seems to depend upon something separate
from the volition of the author. I sometimes think my fingers set up for
themselves, independent of my head; for twenty times I have begun a thing on a
certain plan, and never in my life adhered to it (in a work of imagination,
that is) for half an hour together. I would hardly write this sort of
egotistical trash to any one but yourself, yet it is very true for all that.
What my kind correspondent had anticipated on account of Jedediah’s effusions, has actually taken
place; and the author of a very good
life of Knox has, I
understand, made a most energetic attack, upon the score that the old
Covenanters are not treated with decorum. I have not read it, and certainly
never shall. I really think there is nothing in the book that is not very fair
and legitimate subject of raillery; and I own I have my suspicions of that very
susceptible devotion which so readily takes offence: such men should not read
books of amusement; but do they suppose, because they are virtuous, and choose
to be thought outrageously so, ‘there shall be no cakes and
ale?’—‘Ay, by our lady, and ginger shall be hot in the
mouth too.’ As for the consequences to the author, they can only
affect his fortune or his temper—the former, such as it is, has been long fixed beyond shot of
these sort of fowlers; and for my temper, I considered always that, by
subjecting myself to the irritability which much greater authors have felt on
occasions of literary dispute, I should be laying in a plentiful stock of
unhappiness for the rest of my life. I therefore make it a rule never to read
the attacks made upon me. I remember being capable of something like this sort
of self-denial at a very early period of life, for I could not be six years
old. I had been put into my bed in the nursery, and two servant girls sat down
by the embers of the fire, to have their own quiet chat, and the one began to
tell a most dismal ghost story, of which I remember the commencement distinctly
at this moment; but perceiving which way the tale was tending, and though
necessarily curious, being at the same time conscious that, if I listened on, I
should be frightened out of my wits for the rest of the night, I had the force
to cover up my head in the bed-clothes, so that I could not hear another word
that was said. The only inconvenience attending a similar prudential line of
conduct in the present case, is, that it may seem like a deficiency of spirit;
but I am not much afraid of that being laid to my charge—my fault in early life
(I hope long since corrected) having lain rather the other way. And so I say,
with mine honest Prior— ‘Sleep, Philo,
untouch’d, on my peaceable shelf, Nor take it amiss that so little I heed thee; I’ve no malice at thee, and some love for myself— Then why should I answer, since first I must read thee?’
“So you are getting finely on in London. I own I am
very glad of it. I am glad the banditti act like banditti, because it will make
men of property look round them in time. This country is very like the toys
which folks buy for children, and which, tumble them about in any way the
urchins will, are always brought to their feet again, by
the lead deposited in their extremities. The mass of property has the same
effect on our Constitution, and is a sort of ballast which will always right the vessel, to use a sailor’s phrase, and
bring it to its due equipoise.
“Ministers have acted most sillily in breaking up the
burgher volunteers in large towns. On the contrary, the service should have
been made coercive. Such men have a moral effect upon the minds of the
populace, besides their actual force, and are so much interested in keeping
good order, that you may always rely on them, especially as a corps, in which
there is necessarily a common spirit of union and confidence. But all this is
nonsense again, quoth my Uncle Toby to
himself.—Adieu, my dear Lady Louisa; my
sincere good wishes always attend you.
W. S.”
Not to disturb the narrative of his literary proceedings, I have deferred
until now the mention of an attempt which Scott made
during the winter of 1816-1817, to exchange his seat at the Clerk’s table for one on
the bench of the Scotch Court of Exchequer. It had often occurred to me, in the most
prosperous years of his life, that such a situation would have suited him better in every
respect than that which he held, and that his never attaining a promotion, which the
Scottish public would have considered so naturally due to his character and services,
reflected little honour on his political allies. But at the period when I was entitled to
hint this to him, he appeared to have made up his mind that the rank of Clerk of Session
was more compatible than that of a Supreme Judge with the habits of a literary man, who was
perpetually publishing, and whose writings were generally of the imaginative order. I had
also witnessed the zeal with which he seconded the views of more than one of his own friends, when their ambition was directed to the
Exchequer bench. I remained, in short, ignorant that he ever had seriously thought of it
for himself, until the ruin of his worldly fortunes in 1826; nor had I any information that
his wish to obtain it had ever been distinctly stated, until certain letters, one of which
I shall introduce, were placed in my hands after his death, by the present Duke of Buecleuch. The late
Duke’s answers to these letters are also before me; but of them it is
sufficient to say, that, while they show the warmest anxiety to serve
Scott, they refer to private matters, which ultimately rendered it
inconsistent with his Grace’s feelings to interfere at the time in question with the
distribution of Crown patronage. I incline to think, on the whole, that the death of this
nobleman, which soon after left the influence of his house in abeyance, must have, far more
than any other circumstance, determined Scott to renounce all notions
of altering his professional position.
To the Duke of Buccleuch, &c. &c.
“Edinburgh, 11th Dec. 1816. “My dear Lord Duke,
“Your Grace has been so much my constant and kind
friend and patron through the course of my life, that I trust I need no apology
for thrusting upon your consideration some ulterior views, which have been
suggested to me by my friends, and which I will either endeavour to prosecute,
time and place serving, or lay aside all thoughts of, as they appear to your
Grace feasible, and likely to be forwarded by your patronage. It has been
suggested to me, in a word, that there would be no impropriety in my being put
in nomination as a candidate for the situation of a Baron of Exchequer, when a
vacancy shall take place. The difference of the emolument
between that situation and those which I now hold, is just L.400 a-year, so
that, in that point of view, it is not a very great object. But there is a
difference in the rank, and also in the leisure afforded by a Baron’s
situation; and a man may, without condemnation, endeavour, at my period of
life, to obtain as much honour and ease as he can handsomely come by. My
pretensions to such an honour (next to your Grace’s countenancing my
wishes) would rest very much on the circumstance that my nomination would
vacate two good offices (Clerk of Session and Sheriff of Selkirkshire) to the
amount of L.1000 and L.300 a-year; and, besides, would extinguish a pension of
L.300 which I have for life, over and above my salary as Clerk of Session, as
having been in office at the time when the Judicature Act deprived us of a part
of our vested fees and emoluments. The extinction of this pension would be just
so much saved to the public. I am pretty confident also that I should be
personally acceptable to our friend the Chief
Baron.* But whether all or any of these circumstances will weigh
much in my favour, must solely and entirely rest with your Grace, without whose
countenance it would be folly in me to give the matter a second thought. With
your patronage, both my situation and habits of society may place my hopes as
far as any who are likely to apply; and your interest would be strengthened by
the opportunity of placing some good friend in Selkirkshire, besides converting
the Minstrel of the Clan into a Baron, a transmutation worthy of so powerful
and kind a chief. But if your Grace thinks I ought to drop thoughts of this
preferment, I am bound to say, that I think myself as well provided for
* The late Right Honourable Robert Dundas of Arniston, Chief Baron of
the Scotch Exchequer; one of Scott’s earliest and kindest friends
in that distinguished family.
by my friends and the
public as I have the least title to expect, and that I am perfectly contented
and grateful for what I have received. Ever your Grace’s faithful and
truly obliged servant,
Walter Scott.”
The following letter, to the same noble friend, contains a slight
allusion to this affair of the Barony; but I insert it for a better reason. The Duke had,
it seems, been much annoyed by some depredations on his game in the district of Ettrick
Water; and more so by the ill use which some boys from Selkirk made of his liberality, in
allowing the people of that town free access to his beautiful walks on the banks of the
Yarrow, adjoining Newark and Bowhill. The Duke’s forester, by name Thomas
Hudson, had recommended rigorous measures with reference to both these
classes of offenders, and the Sheriff was of course called into council:
To His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, &c. &c. &c.
“Abbotsford, January 11, 1817. “My dear Lord Duke,
“I have been thinking anxiously about the
disagreeable affair of Tom Hudson, and the impudent
ingratitude of the Selkirk rising generation, and I will take the usual liberty
your friendship permits me, of saying what occurs to me on each subject.
Respecting the shooting, the crime is highly punishable, and we will omit no
enquiries to discover the individuals guilty. Charles Erskine, who is a good police officer, will be
sufficiently active. I know my friend and kinsman, Mr
Scott of Harden, feels very anxious to oblige your Grace, and I
have little doubt that if you will have the goodness to mention to him this
unpleasant circumstance, he would be anxious to put his game under such
regula-tions as should be agreeable to you. But I
believe the pride and pleasure he would feel in obliging your Grace, as heading
one of the most ancient and most respectable branches of your name (if I may be
pardoned for saying so much in our favour), would be certainly much more
gratified by a compliance with your personal request, than if it came through
any other channel. Your Grace knows there are many instances in life in which
the most effectual way of conferring a favour is condescending to accept one. I
have known Harden long and most intimately—a more
respectable man either for feeling, or talent, or knowledge of human life, is
rarely to be met with. But he is rather indecisive—requiring some instant
stimulus in order to make him resolve to do, not only what he knows to be
right, but what he really wishes to do, and means to do one time or other. He
is exactly Prior’sEarl of Oxford:— ‘Let that be done which Mat doth say’ ‘Yea,’ quoth the Earl, ‘but not
to-day.’ And so exit Harden and enter Selkirk.
“I know hardly any thing more exasperating than the
conduct of the little blackguards, and it will be easy to discover and make an
example of the biggest and most insolent. In the mean while, my dear Lord,
pardon my requesting you will take no general or sweeping resolution as to the
Selkirk folks. Your Grace lives near them—your residence, both from your direct
beneficence, and the indirect advantages which they derive from that residence,
is of the utmost consequence; and they must be made sensible that all these
advantages are endangered by the very violent and brutal conduct of their
children. But I think your Grace will be inclined to follow this up only for
the purpose of correction, not for that of requital. They are so much beneath
you, and so much in your power, that this would be unworthy of you—especially
as all the
inhabitants of the little country town must necessarily be included in the
punishment. Were your Grace really angry with them, and acting accordingly, you
might ultimately feel the regret of my old schoolmaster, who, when he had
knocked me down, apologized by saying he did not know his own strength. After
all, those who look for any thing better than ingratitude from the uneducated
and unreflecting mass of a corrupted population, must always be deceived; and
the better the heart is that has been expanded towards them, their wants, and
their wishes, the deeper is the natural feeling of disappointment. But it is
our duty to fight on, doing what good we can (and surely the disposition and
the means were never more happily united than in your Grace), and trusting to
God Almighty, whose grace ripens the seeds we commit to the earth, that our
benefactions shall bear fruit. And now, my Lord, asking your pardon for this
discharge of my conscience, and assuring your Grace I have no wish to exchange
my worsted gown, or the remote Pisgah exchange of a silk
one, for the cloak of a presbyterian parson, even with the certainty of
succeeding to the first of your numerous Kirk-presentations, I take the liberty
to add my own opinion. The elder boys must be looked out and punished, and the
parents severely reprimanded, and the whole respectable part of the town made
sensible of the loss they must necessarily sustain by the discontinuance of
your patronage. And at, or about the same time, I should think it proper if
your Grace were to distinguish by any little notice such Selkirk people working
with you as have their families under good order.
“I am taking leave of Abbotsford multum gemens, and have been just giving
directions for planting upon Turnagain, When shall we
eat a cold luncheon there, and look at the view, and root up the monster in his
abyss? I assure you, none of your numerous vassals can
show a finer succession of distant prospects. For the homeview—ahem!—We must
wait till the trees grow. Ever your Grace’s truly faithful
W. Scott.”
While the abortive negotiation as to the Exchequer was still pending,
Scott was visited, for the first time since his
childish years, with a painful illness, which proved the harbinger of a series of attacks,
all nearly of the same kind, continued at short intervals during more than two years.
Various letters, already introduced, have indicated how widely his habits of life when in
Edinburgh differed from those of Abbotsford. They at all times did so to a great extent;
but he had pushed his liberties with a most robust constitution to a perilous extreme while
the affairs of the Ballantynes were labouring, and he was now to pay
the penalty.
The first serious alarm occurred towards the close of a merry dinner
party in Castle Street (on the 5th of March), when Scott
suddenly sustained such exquisite torture from cramp in the stomach, that his masculine
powers of endurance gave way, and he retired from the room with a scream of agony which
electrified his guests. This scene was often repeated, as we shall see presently. His
friends in Edinburgh continued all that spring in great anxiety on his account. Scarcely,
however, had the first symptoms yielded to severe medical treatment, than he is found to
have beguiled the intervals of his suffering by planning a dramatic piece on a story
supplied to him by one of Train’s
communications, which he desired to present to Terry
on behalf of the actor’s first-born son, who had been christened by the name of
Walter Scott Terry.*
* This young gentleman is now an officer in the East India
Company’s army.
Such was the origin of “the Fortunes of Devorgoil”—a piece which, though completed
soon afterwards, and submitted by Terry to many
manipulations with a view to the stage, was never received by any manager, and was first
published, towards the close of the author’s life, under the title, slightly altered
for an obvious reason, of “the Doom of
Devorgoil.” The sketch of the story which he gives in the following letter
will probably be considered by many besides myself as well worth the drama. It appears that
the actor had mentioned to Scott his intention of Terryfying “the Black
Dwarf.”
To Daniel Terry, Esq., London.
“Edinburgh, 12th March, 1817. “Dear Terry,
“I am now able to write to you on your own affairs,
though still as weak as water from the operations of the medical faculty, who,
I think, treated me as a recusant to their authority, and having me once at
advantage, were determined I should not have strength to rebel again in a
hurry. After all, I believe it was touch and go; and considering how much I
have to do for my own family and others, my elegy might have been that of the
Auld Man’s Mare— ‘The peats and turf are all to lead, What ail’d the beast to die?’ You don’t mention the nature of your undertaking in your last, and
in your former you spoke both of the Black Dwarf and of Triermain. I have some doubts whether the town will endure a second
time the following up a well-known tale with a dramatic representation—and
there is no vis comica to redeem the
Black Dwarf, as in the case of
Dominie Sampson. I have thought of two
subjects for you, if, like the Archbishop’s homilies, they do not smell
of the apoplexy. The first is a noble and very dra-matic
tradition preserved in Galloway, which runs briefly thus:—The Barons of Plenton
(the family name, I think, was——by Jupiter, forgot!) boasted of great
antiquity, and formerly of extensive power and wealth, to which the ruins of
their huge castle, situated on an inland loch, still bear witness. In the
middle of the seventeenth century, it is said, these ruins were still inhabited
by the lineal descendant of this powerful family. But the ruinous halls and
towers of his ancestors were all that had descended to him, and he cultivated
the garden of the castle, and sold its fruits for a subsistence. He married in
a line suitable rather to his present situation than the dignity of his
descent, and was quite sunk into the rank of peasantry, excepting that he was
still called—more in mockery, or at least in familiarity, than in respect—the
Baron of Plenton. A causeway connected the castle with the mainland; it was cut
in the middle, and the moat only passable by a drawbridge which yet subsisted,
and which the poor old couple contrived to raise every night by their joint
efforts, the country being very unsettled at the time. It must be observed,
that the old man and his wife occupied only one apartment in the extensive
ruins, a small one adjoining to the drawbridge; the rest was waste and
dilapidated. As they were about to retire one night to rest, they were deterred
by a sudden storm, which, rising in the wildest manner possible, threatened to
bury them under the ruins of the castle. While they listened in terror to the
complicated sounds of thunder, wind, and rain, they were astonished to hear the
clang of hoofs on the causeway, and the voices of people clamouring for
admittance. This was a request not rashly to be granted. The couple looked out,
and dimly discerned through the storm that the causeway was crowded with
riders. ‘How many of you are there?’ demanded John.—‘Not more than the hall will hold,’ was the
answer; ‘but open the gate, lower the bridge, and do not keep the ladies in the rain.’
John’s heart was melted for the ladies, and,
against his wife’s advice, he undid the bolts, sunk the drawbridge, and
bade them enter in the name of God. Having done so, he instantly retired into
his sanctum sanctorum to await the
event, for there was something in the voices and language of his guests that
sounded mysterious and awful. They rushed into the castle, and appeared to know
their way through all its recesses. Grooms were heard hurrying their horses to
the stables—sentinels were heard mounting guard—a thousand lights gleamed from
place to place through the ruins, till at length they seemed all concentrated
in the baronial hall, whose range of broad windows threw a resplendent
illumination on the moss-grown court below. After a short time, a domestic,
clad in a rich but very antique dress, appeared before the old couple, and
commanded them to attend his lord and lady in the great hall. They went with
tottering steps, and to their great terror found themselves in the midst of a
most brilliant and joyous company; but the fearful part of it was, that most of
the guests resembled the ancestors of John’s family,
and were known to him by their resemblance to pictures which mouldered in the
castle, or by traditionary description. At the head, the founder of the race,
dressed like some mighty baron, or rather some Galwegian prince, sat with his
lady. There was a difference of opinion between these ghostly personages
concerning our honest John. The chief was inclined to
receive him graciously; the lady considered him, from his mean marriage, as
utterly unworthy of their name and board. The upshot is, that the chief
discovers to his descendant the means of finding a huge treasure concealed in
the castle; the lady assures him that the discovery shall never avail him. In the morning no trace can be discovered of the
singular personages who had occupied the hall. But John sought for and
discovered the vault where the spoils of the Southrons were concealed, rolled
away the covering stone, and feasted his eyes on a range of massy chests of
iron, filled doubtless with treasure. As he deliberated on the best means of
bringing them up, and descending into the vault, he observed it began slowly to
fill with water. Baling and pumping were resorted to, and when he had exhausted
his own and his wife’s strength, they summoned the assistance of the
neighbourhood. But the vengeance of the visionary lady was perfect; the waters
of the lake had forced their way into the vault, and John,
after a year or two spent in draining and so forth, died broken-hearted, the
last baron of Plenton.
“Such is the tale, of which the incidents seem new,
and the interest capable of being rendered striking; the story admits of the
highest degree of decoration, both by poetry, music, and scenery, and I propose
(in behalf of my godson) to take some pains in dramatizing it. As thus you
shall play John, as you can speak a little Scotch; I will
make him what the Baron of Bradwardine
would have been in his circumstances, and he shall be alternately ludicrous
from his family pride and prejudices, contrasted with his poverty, and
respectable from his just and independent tone of feeling and character. I
think Scotland is entitled to have something on the stage to balance Macklin’s two worthies.* You understand
the dialect will be only tinged with the national dialect—not that the baron is
to speak broad Scotch, while all the others talk English. His wife and he shall
have one child, a daughter, suitored unto by the conceited young parson or
schoolmaster of
* Sir Archy
Mac-Sarcasm and Sir Pertinax
MacSycophant.
the village, whose addresses are
countenanced by her mother—and by Halbert the
hunter, a youth of unknown descent. Now this youth shall be the
rightful heir and representative of the English owners of the treasure, of
which they had been robbed by the baron’s ancestors, for which unjust act
their spirits still walked the earth. These, with a substantial character or
two, and the ghostly personages, shall mingle as they may—and the discovery of
the youth’s birth shall break the spell of the treasure-chamber. I will
make the ghosts talk as never ghosts talked in the body or out of it; and the
music may be as unearthly as you can get it. The rush of the shadows into the
castle shall be seen through the window of the baron’s apartment in the
flat scene. The ghosts’ banquet, and many other circumstances, may give
great exercise to the scene-painter and dresser. If you like this plan, you had
better suspend any other for the present. In my opinion it has the infinite
merit of being perfectly new in plot and structure, and I will set about the
sketch as soon as my strength is restored in some measure by air and exercise.
I am sure I can finish it in a fortnight then. Ever yours truly,
W. Scott.”
About the time when this letter was written, a newspaper paragraph having
excited the apprehension of two—or I should say three—of his dearest friends that his life
was in actual danger, Scott wrote to them as follows—
To John B. S. Morritt, Esq., M.P., Portland Place, London.
“Edinburgh, 20th March, 1817. “My dear Morritt,
“I hasten to acquaint you that I am in the land of
life, and thriving, though I have had a slight shake, and still feel the
consequences of medical treatment. I had been plagued all
through this winter with cramps in my stomach, which I endured as a man of
mould might, and endeavoured to combat them by drinking scalding water, and so
forth. As they grew rather unpleasantly frequent, I had reluctant recourse to
Baillie. But before his answer
arrived, on the 5th, I had a most violent attack, which broke up a small party
at my house, and sent me to bed roaring like a bull-calf. All sorts of remedies
were applied, as in the case of Gil
Blas’ pretended colic, but such was the pain of the real
disorder, that it outdeviled the Doctor hollow. Even heated salt, which was
applied in such a state that it burned my shirt to rags, I hardly felt when
clapped to my stomach. At length the symptoms became inflammatory, and
dangerously so, the seat being the diaphragm. They only gave way to very
profuse bleeding and blistering, which, under higher assistance, saved my life.
My recovery was slow and tedious from the state of exhaustion. I could neither
stir for weakness and giddiness, nor read for dazzling in my eyes, nor listen
for a whizzing sound in my ears, nor even think for lack of the power of
arranging my ideas. So I had a comfortless time of it for about a week. Even
yet I by no means feel, as the copy-book hath it, ‘The lion bold, which the lamb doth hold—’ on the contrary, I am as weak as water. They tell me (of course) I must
renounce every creature comfort, as my friend Jedediah calls it. As for dinner and so forth, I care little
about it but toast and water, and three glasses of wine, sound like hard laws
to me. However, to parody the lamentation of Hassan,
the camel-driver, ‘The lily health outvies the grape’s bright ray, And life is dearer than the usquebæ—’ so I shall be amenable to discipline. But in my own secret mind I suspect the state of my bowels
more than any thing else. I take enough of exercise and enough of rest; but
unluckily they are like a Lapland year, divided as one night and one day. In
the vacation I never sit down; in the session-time I seldom rise up. But all
this must be better arranged in future; and I trust I shall live to weary out
all your kindness.
“I am obliged to break off hastily. I trust I shall
be able to get over the Fell in the end of summer, which will rejoice me much,
for the sound of the woods of Rokeby is lovely in mine ear. Ever yours,
Walter Scott.”
To Mrs Maclean Clephane, of Torloisk, Mull.
Edinburgh, 23d March, 1817. “My dear Mrs and
Miss Clephane,
“Here comes to let you know you had nearly seen the
last sight of me, unless I had come to visit you on my red beam, like one of
Fingal’s heroes, which, Ossianic
as you are, I trow you would readily dispense with. The cause was a cramp in my
stomach, which, after various painful visits, as if it had been sent by
Prospero, and had mistaken me for
Caliban, at length chose to conclude by
setting fire to its lodging, like the Frenchmen as they retreated through
Russia, and placed me in as proper a state of inflammation as if I had had the
whole Spafields’ committee in my unfortunate stomach. Then bleeding and
blistering was the word; and they bled and blistered till they left me neither
skin nor blood. However, they beat off the foul fiend, and I am bound to praise
the bridge which carried me over. I am still very totterish, and very giddy,
kept to panada, or rather to porridge, for I spurned at all foreign slops, and
adhered to our ancient oatmeal manufacture. But I have no apprehension of any
return of the serious part of the malady, and I am now
recovering my strength, though looking somewhat cadaverous upon the occasion.
“I much approve of your going to Italy by sea; indeed
it is the only way you ought to think of it. I am only sorry you are going to
leave us for a while; but indeed the isle of Mull might be Florence to me in
respect of separation, and cannot be quite Florence to you, since Lady Compton is not there. I lately heard her
mentioned in a company where my interest in her was not known, as one of the
very few English ladies now in Italy whom their acquirements, conduct, and mode
of managing time, induce that part of foreign society, whose approbation is
valuable, to consider with high respect and esteem. This I think is very
likely; for, whatever folks say of foreigners, those of good education and high
rank among them, must have a supreme contempt for the frivolous, dissatisfied,
empty, gad-about manners of many of our modern belles. And we may say among
ourselves, that there are few upon whom high accomplishments and information
sit more gracefully.
“John Kemble
is here to take leave, acting over all his great characters, and with all the
spirit of his best years. He played Coriolanus last night (the first time I have ventured out),
fully as well as I ever saw him; and you know what a complete model he is of
the Roman. He has made a great reformation in his habits; given up wine, which
he used to swallow by pailfulls,—and renewed his youth like the eagles. He
seems to me always to play best those characters in which there is a
predominating tinge of some over-mastering passion, or acquired habit of acting
and speaking, colouring the whole man. The patrician pride of Coriolanus, the stoicism of Brutus and Cato, the rapid and hurried ve-hemence of Hotspur, mark the class of characters I mean. But he fails
where a ready and pliable yielding to the events and passions of life makes
what may be termed a more natural personage. Accordingly I think his Macbeth, Lear, and especially his Richard, inferior in spirit and truth. In Hamlet the natural fixed melancholy of the
prince places him within Kemble’s range;—yet many
delicate and sudden turns of passion slip through his fingers. He is a lordly
vessel, goodly and magnificent when going large before the wind, but wanting
the facility to go ‘ready about,’ so that he
is sometimes among the breakers before he can wear ship. Yet we lose in him a
most excellent critic, an accomplished scholar, and one who graced our forlorn
drama with what little it has left of good sense and gentlemanlike feeling. And
so exit he. He made me write some lines to speak when he withdraws, and he has
been here criticising and correcting till he got them quite to his mind, which
has rather tired me. Most truly yours while
Walter Scott.”
On the 29th of March, 1817, John Philip
Kemble, after going through the round of his chief parts, to the delight of
the Edinburgh audience, took his final leave of them as Macbeth, and in the costume of that character delivered a farewell address,
penned for him by Scott.*
* See Poetical
Works, vol. xi. p. 348. Scott’sFarewell for Kemble first appeared
in “The Sale-Room,” for April
5th, 1817; and in the introductory note, James
Ballantyne says,—“The character fixed upon, with happy
propriety, for Kemble’s closing
scene, was Macbeth. He had laboured under a
severe cold for a few days before, but on the memorable night the physical
annoyance yielded to the energy of his mind. ‘He was,’ he said, in
the Green-room, immediately before the curtain rose, ‘determined to leave
behind him the most perfect specimen of his art which he had ever shown;’
and his success was complete. ‘At the moment of the tyrant’s
death
No one who witnessed that scene, and heard the lines as then recited,
can ever expect to be again interested to the same extent by any thing occurring within the
walls of a theatre; nor was I ever present at any public dinner in all its circumstances
more impressive, than was that which occurred a few days afterwards, when
Kemble’s Scotch friends and admirers assembled round
him—Francis Jeffrey being chairman, Walter Scott and John
Wilson the croupiers.
Shortly before this time Mr William
Laidlaw had met with misfortunes, which rendered it necessary for him to
give up the lease of a farm, on which he had been for some years settled, in Mid-Lothian.
He was now anxiously looking about him for some new establishment, and it occurred to
Scott that it might be mutually advantageous, as
well as agreeable, if his excellent friend would consent to come and occupy a house on his
property, and endeavour, under his guidance, to make such literary exertions as might raise
his income to an amount adequate for his comfort. The prospect of obtaining such a
neighbour was, no doubt, the more welcome to “Abbotsford and Kaeside,” from its
opening at this period of fluctuating health; and Laidlaw, who had for
twenty years loved and revered him, considered the proposal
the curtain fell by the universal acclamation of the audience. The applauses
were vehement and prolonged; they ceased were resumed—rose again—were
reiterated—and again were hushed. In a few minutes the curtain ascended, and
Mr Kemble came forward in the dress
of Macbeth (the audience by a consentaneous
movement rising to receive him), to deliver his farewell.” ...
“Mr Kemble delivered the lines with exquisite
beauty, and with an effect that was evidenced by the tears and sobs of many of
the audience. His own emotions were very conspicuous. When his farewell was
closed he lingered long on the stage, as if unable to retire. The house again
stood up, and cheered him with the waving of hats and long shouts of
applause.”
with far greater delight than the most
lucrative appointment on any noble domain in the island could have afforded him. Though
possessed of a lively and searching sagacity as to things in general, he had always been as
to his own worldly interests simple as a child. His tastes and habits were all modest; and
when he looked forward to spending the remainder of what had not hitherto been a successful
life, under the shadow of the genius that he had worshipped almost from boyhood, his gentle
heart was all happiness. He surveyed with glistening eyes the humble cottage in which his
friend proposed to lodge him, his wife, and his little ones, and said to himself that he
should write no more sad songs on Forest Flittings.*
Scott’s notes to him at this time afford a truly
charming picture of thoughtful and respectful delicacy on both sides. Mr Laidlaw, for example, appears to have hinted that he
feared his friend, in making the proposal as to the house at Kaeside, might have perhaps in
some degree overlooked the feelings of “Laird Moss,” who, having sold his land
several months before, had as yet continued to occupy his old homestead.
Scott answers:—
To Mr W. Laidlaw.
“Edinburgh, April 5, 1817. “My dear Sir,
“Nothing can give me more pleasure than the prospect
of your making yourself comfortable at Kaeside till some good thing casts up. I
have not put Mr Moss to
* Mr Laidlaw has not published many verses; but his
song of “Lucy’s
Flitting”—a simple and pathetic picture of a poor
Ettrick maiden’s feelings in leaving a service where she had been
happy—has long been and must ever be a favourite with all who
understand the delicacies of the Scottish dialect, and the manners of
the district in which the scene is laid.
any inconvenience, for I only requested an answer, giving
him leave to sit if he had a mind—and of free will he leaves my premises void
and redd at Whitsunday. I suspect the house is not in good order, but we shall
get it brushed up a little. Without affectation I consider myself the obliged
party in this matter—or at any rate it is a mutual benefit, and you shall have
grass for a cow, and so forth—whatever you want. I am sure when you are so near
I shall find some literary labour for you that will make ends meet. Yours, in
haste,
W. Scott.”
He had before this time made considerable progress in another historical
sketch (that of the year 1815) for the Edinburgh
Annual Register; and the first literary labour which he provided for Laidlaw, appears to have been arranging for the same
volume a set of newspaper articles, usually printed under the head of Chronicle, to which
were appended some little extracts of new books of travels, and the like miscellanies. The
Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, subsequently
known by the name of its projector, Blackwood,
commenced in April of this year; and one of its editors, Mr
Thomas Pringle, being a Teviotdale man and an old acquaintance of
Laidlaw’s, offered to the latter the care of its Chronicle department also,—not perhaps without calculating that, in
case Laidlaw’s connexion with the new journal should become at
all a strict one, Scott would be induced to give it
occasionally the benefit of his own literary assistance. He accordingly did not write—being
unwell at the time—but dictated to Pringle a
collection of anecdotes concerning Scottish
gypsies, which attracted a good deal of notice;* and, I
* These anecdotes were subsequently inserted in the Introduction
to Guy Mannering.
believe, he also assisted
Laidlaw in drawing up one or more articles on the subject of
Scottish superstitions. But the bookseller and Pringle soon
quarrelled, and, the Magazine assuming, on the retirement of the latter, a high Tory
character, Laidlaw’s Whig feelings induced him to renounce its
alliance; while Scott, having no kindness for
Blackwood personally, and disapproving (though he chuckled over
it) the reckless extravagance of juvenile satire, which, by and by, distinguished his
journal, appears to have easily acquiesced in the propriety of
Laidlaw’s determination. I insert mean time a few notes,
which will show with what care and kindness he watched over
Laidlaw’s operations for the Annual Register.
To Mr Laidlaw, at Kaeside.
Edinburgh, June, 16, 1817. “Dear Sir,
“I enclose you ‘rare guerdon,’ better
than remuneration,—namely, a cheque for L.25, for the Chronicle part of the
Register. The incidents
selected should have some reference to amusement as well as information, and
may be occasionally abridged in the narration; but, after all, paste and
scissors form your principal materials. You must look out for two or three good
original articles; and, if you would read and take pains to abridge one or two
curious books of travels, I would send out the volumes. Could I once get the
head of the concern fairly round before the wind again, I am sure I could make
it L.100 a-year to you. In the present instance it will be at least L.50. Yours
truly,
W. S.”
To the Same.
“Edinburgh, July 3, 1817. “My dear Sir,
“I send you Adam’s and
Riley’s Travels. You will
observe I don’t want a review of the books, or a detail of these
persons’ adventures, but merely a short article expressing the light,
direct or doubtful, which they have thrown on the interior of Africa.
‘Recent Discoveries in Africa,’ will be a proper title. I hope to
find you materially amended, or rather quite stout, when I come out on
Saturday. I am quite well this morning. Yours, in haste,
W. S.
“P.S.—I add Mariner’sTonga Islands and Campbell’s Voyage. Pray, take great
care of them, as I am a coxcomb about my books, and hate specks or spots.
Take care of yourself, and want for nothing that Abbotsford can
furnish.”
These notes have carried us down to the middle of the year. But I must
now turn to some others which show that before Whitsuntide, when Laidlaw settled at Kaeside, negotiations were on foot
respecting another novel.
To Mr John Ballantyne, Hanover Street,
Edinburgh.
“Abbotsford, Monday. [April, 1817.] “Dear John,
“I have a good subject for a work of fictionin petto. What do you think Constable would give for a smell of it? You
ran away without taking leave the other morning, or I wished to have spoken to
you about it. I don’t mean a continuation of Jedediah, because there might be some delicacy
in putting that by the
original publishers. You may write if any thing occurs to you on this subject.
It will not interrupt my History. By the way, I have a great lot of the Register ready for delivery, and no
man asks for it. I shall want to pay up some cash at Whitsunday, which will
make me draw on my brains. Yours truly,
W. Scott.”
To the Same.
“Abbotsford, Saturday, May 3, 1817. “Dear John,
“I shall be much obliged to you to come here with
Constable on Monday, as he proposes
a visit, and it will save time. By the way, you must attend that the usual
quantity of stock is included in the arrangement—that is L.600 for 6000 copies.
My sum is L.1700, payable in May a round advance, by’r Lady, but I think
I am entitled to it, considering what I have twined off hitherto on such
occasions.
“I make a point on your coming with Constable, health allowing. Yours truly,
W. S.”
The result of this meeting is indicated in a note scribbled by John Ballantyne at the bottom of the foregoing letter,
before it was seen by his brother the printer.
“Half-past 3 o’clock, Tuesday. “Dear James,
“I am this moment returned from Abbotsford, with
entire and full success. Wish me joy. I shall gain above L.600—Constable taking my share of stock also. The
title is Rob
Royby the author of
Waverley!!! Keep this letter for me.
J. B.”
On the same page there is written, in fresher ink, which marks, no
doubt, the time when John pasted it into his
collection of private papers now before me—
”N.B—I did gain above L.1200—J.
B.”
The title of this novel was suggested by Constable, and he told me years afterwards the difficulty he had to get it
adopted by the author. “What!” said he, “Mr Accoucheur, must
you be setting up for Mr Sponsor too?—but let’s hear it.”
Constable said the name of the real hero would be the best
possible name for the book. “Nay,” answered Scott, “never let me have to write up to a name. You well know I
have generally adopted a title that told nothing.”—The bookseller, however,
persevered; and after the trio had dined, these scruples gave way.
On rising from table, according to Constable, they sallied out to the green before the door of the cottage,
and all in the highest spirits enjoyed the fine May evening. John Ballantyne, hopping up and down in his glee, exclaimed, “is
Rob’s gun here, Mr Scott; would you object to my trying the auld barrel
with a few dejoy?” “Nay,
Mr Puff,” said Scott, “it would burst and blow
you to the devil before your time.” “Johnny, my man,” said
Constable, “what the mischief puts drawing at sight into
your head?” Scott laughed heartily at this innuendo; and
then observing that the little man felt somewhat sore, called attention to the notes of a
bird in the adjoining shrubbery. “And by the by,” said he, as they
continued listening, “’tis a long time, Johnny, since
we have had the Cobbler of Kelso.” Mr Puff forthwith jumped up on a mass of
stone, and seating himself in the proper attitude of one working with his awl, began a
favourite interlude, mimicking a certain son of Crispin, at whose stall Scott and he had often lingered when they were schoolboys, and a
blackbird, the only companion of his cell, that used to sing to him, while he talked and
whistled to it all day long. With this performance Scott was always
delighted: nothing could be richer than the contrast of the bird’s wild sweet notes,
some of which he imitated with wonderful skill, and the accompaniment of the
Cobbler’s hoarse cracked voice, uttering all manner of endearing epithets, which
Johnny multiplied and varied in a style worthy of the Old Women in
Rabelais at the birth of Pantagruel. I often wondered that Matthews, who borrowed so many good things from John
Ballantyne, allowed this Cobbler, which was certainly the masterpiece, to
escape him.
Scott himself had probably exceeded that evening the
three glasses of wine sanctioned by his Sangrados. “I never,” said
Constable, “had found him so disposed to
be communicative about what he meant to do. Though he had had a return of his illness but
the day before, he continued for an hour or more to walk backwards and forwards on the
green, talking and laughing—he told us he was sure he should make a hit in a Glasgow
weaver, whom he would ravel up with Rob; and fairly outshone the Cobbler, in an extempore dialogue
between the bailie and the cateran—something not unlike what the book gives us as passing
in the Glasgow tolbooth.”
Mr Puff might well exult in the “full and entire
success” of this trip to Abbotsford. His friend had made it a sine qua non in the bargain with Constable, that he should have a third share in the
bookseller’s moiety of the copyright and though Johnny had no more trouble about the publishing or selling of Rob Roy than his own Cobbler of Kelso, this
stipulation had secured him a bonus of L.1200, before two years passed. Moreover, one must admire his adroitness in persuading
Constable, during their journey back to Edinburgh, to relieve him
of that fraction of his own old stock, with which his unhazardous share in the new bargain
was burdened. Scott’s kindness continued as long
as John Ballantyne lived to provide for him a constant succession of
similar advantages at the same easy rate; and Constable, from
deference to Scott’s wishes, and from his own liking for the
humorous auctioneer, appears to have submitted with hardly a momentary grudge to this heavy
tax on his most important ventures.
The same week Scott received Southey’s celebrated letter to Mr William Smith, M.P. for Norwich. The poet of Keswick had also
forwarded to him somewhat earlier his Pilgrimage to Waterloo, which piece contains a touching allusion to the
affliction the author had recently sustained in the death of a fine boy. Scott’s letter on this occasion was as follows:—
To Robert Southey, Esq., Keswick.
Selkirk, May 9th, 1817. “My dear Southey,
“I have been a strangely negligent correspondent for
some months past, more especially as I have had you rarely out of my thoughts,
for I think you will hardly doubt of my sincere sympathy in events which have
happened since I have written. I shed sincere tears over the Pilgrimage to Waterloo. But in the
crucible of human life, the purest gold is tried by the strongest heat, and I
can only hope for the continuance of your present family blessings to one so
well formed to enjoy the pure happiness they afford. My health has, of late,
been very indifferent. I was very nearly succumbing under a violent
inflammatory attack, and still feel the effects of the necessary treatment. I
believe they took
one-third of the blood of my system, and blistered in proportion; so that both
my flesh and my blood have been in a wofully reduced state. I got out here some
weeks since, where, by dint of the insensible exercise which one takes in the
country, I feel myself gathering strength daily, but am still obliged to
observe a severe regimen. It was not to croak about myself, however, that I
took up the pen, but to wish you joy of your triumphant answer to that coarse-minded William Smith. He deserved all he has got,
and, to say the truth, you do not spare him, and have no cause. His attack
seems to have proceeded from the vulgar insolence of a low mind desirous of
attacking genius at disadvantage. It is the ancient and eternal strife of which
the witch speaks in Thalaba. Such a man as he feels he has no alliance with such as you,
and his evil instincts lead him to treat as hostile whatever he cannot
comprehend. I met Smith once during his stay in
Edinburgh,* and had, what I seldom have with any one in society, a high quarrel
with him. His mode of travelling had been from one gentleman’s seat to
another, abusing the well-known hospitality of the Highland lairds by taking
possession of their houses, even during their absence, domineering in them when
they were present, and not only eating the dinner of to-day, but requiring that
the dinner of to-morrow should also be made ready and carried forward with him,
to save the expense of inns. All this was no business of mine, but when, in the
middle of a company consisting of those to whom he had owed this hospitality,
he abused the country, of which he knew little—the language, of which he
* Scott’s
meeting with this Mr Smith
occurred at the table of his friend and colleague, Hector Macdonald Buchanan. The
company, except Scott and
Smith, were all, like their hospitable
landlord, Highlanders.
knew nothing and the people, who have their faults, but
are a much more harmless, moral, and at the same time high-spirited population
than, I venture to say, he ever lived amongst—I thought it was really too bad,
and so e’en took up the debate, and gave it him over the knuckles as
smartly as I could. Your pamphlet, therefore, fed fat my ancient grudge against
him as well as the modern one, for you cannot doubt that my blood boiled at
reading the report of his speech. Enough of this gentleman, who, I think, will
not walk out of the round in a hurry again, to slander the conduct of
individuals.
“I am at present writing at our head-court of
freeholders—a set of quiet, unpretending, but sound-judging country gentlemen,
and whose opinions may be very well taken as a fair specimen of those men of
sense and honour, who are not likely to be dazzled by literary talent, which
lies out of their beat, and who, therefore, cannot be of partial counsel in the
cause; and I never heard an opinion more generally, and evenwarmly expressed,
than that your triumphant vindication brands Smith as a slanderer in all time coming. I think you may not be
displeased to know this, because what men of keen feelings and literary
pursuits must have felt cannot be unknown to you, and you may not have the same
access to know the impression made upon the general class of society.
“I have to thank you for the continuation of the
History of Brazil one of
your gigantic labours; the fruit of a mind so active, yet so patient of labour.
I am not yet far advanced in the second volume, reserving it usually for my
hour’s amusement in the evening, as children keep their dainties for
bonne bouche: but as far as I
have come, it possesses all the interest of the commencement, though a more
faithless and worthless set than both Dutch and Portuguese I have never read of; and it requires your
knowledge of the springs of human action, and your lively description of
‘hair-breadth ’scapes,’ to make one care whether the hog
bites the dog, or the dog bites the hog. Both nations were in rapid declension
from their short-lived age of heroism, and in the act of experiencing all those
retrograde movements which are the natural consequence of selfishness on the
one hand, and bigotry on the other.
“I am glad to see you are turning your mind to the
state of the poor. Should you enter into details on the subject of the best
mode of assisting them, I would be happy to tell you the few observations I
have made—not on a very small scale neither, considering my fortune, for I have
kept about thirty of the labourers in my neighbourhood in constant employment
this winter. This I do not call charity, because they executed some extensive
plantations and other works, which I could never have got done so cheaply, and
which I always intended one day to do. But neither was it altogether selfish on
my part, because I was putting myself to inconvenience in incurring the expense
of several years at once, and certainly would not have done so, but to serve
mine honest neighbours, who were likely to want work but for such exertion.
From my observation, I am inclined greatly to doubt the salutary effect of the
scheme generally adopted in Edinburgh and elsewhere for relieving the poor. At
Edinburgh, they are employed on public works at so much a-day—tenpence, I
believe, or one shilling, with an advance to those who have families. This rate
is fixed below that of ordinary wages, in order that no person may be employed
but those who really cannot find work elsewhere. But it is attended with this
bad effect, that the people regard it partly as charity, which is
humiliating,—and partly as an imposition, in taking their labour below its
usual saleable value; to which many add a third view of
the subject—namely, that this sort of half-pay is not given them for the
purpose of working, but to prevent their rising in rebellion. None of these
misconceptions are favourable to hard labour, and the consequence is, that I
never have seen such a set of idle fainéants as those employed on this system in the
public works, and I am sure that, notwithstanding the very laudable intention
of those who subscribed to form the fund, and the yet more praiseworthy,
because more difficult, exertions of those who superintend it, the issue of the
scheme will occasion full as much mischief as good to the people engaged in it.
Private gentlemen, acting on something like a similar system, may make it
answer better, because they have not the lazy dross of a metropolis to contend
with—because they have fewer hands to manage—and above all, because an
individual always manages his own concerns better than those of the country can
be managed. Yet all who have employed those who were distressed for want of
work at under wages, have had, less or more, similar complaints to make. I
think I have avoided this in my own case, by inviting the country-people to do
piecework by the contract. Two things only are necessary—one is, that the
nature of the work should be such as will admit of its being ascertained, when
finished, to have been substantially executed. All sort of spade-work and
hoe-work, with many other kinds of country labour, fall under this description,
and the employer can hardly be cheated in the execution, if he keeps a
reasonable look out. The other point is to take care that the undertakers, in
their anxiety for employment, do not take the job too cheap. A little
acquaintance with country labour will enable one to regulate this; but it is an
essential point, for if you do not keep them to their bargain, it is making a
jest of the thing, and forfeiting the very advantage you have in view—that,
namely, of inducing the
labourer to bring his heart and spirit to his work. But this he will do where
he has a fair bargain, which is to prove a good or bad one according to his own
exertions. In this case you make the poor man his own friend, for the profits
of his good conduct are all his own. It is astonishing how partial the people
are to this species of contract, and how diligently they labour, acquiring or
maintaining all the while those habits which renders them honourable and useful
members of society. I mention this to you, because the rich, much to their
honour, do not, in general, require to be so much stimulated to benevolence, as
to be directed in the most useful way to exert it.
“I have still a word to say about the poor of our
own parish of Parnassus. I have been applied to by a very worthy friend,
Mr Scott of Sinton, in behalf of an
unfortunate Mr Gilmour, who, it seems,
has expended a little fortune in printing, upon his own account, poems which,
from the sample I saw, seem exactly to answer the description of Dean Swift’s country house— ‘Too bad for a blessing, too good for a curse, I wish from my soul they were better or worse.” But you are the dean of our corporation, and, I am informed, take some
interest in this poor gentleman. If you can point out any way in which I can
serve him, I am sure my inclination is not wanting, but it looks like a very
hopeless case. I beg my kindest respects to Mrs
Southey, and am always sincerely and affectionately yours,
Walter Scott.”
About this time Hogg took
possession of Altrive Lake, and some of his friends in Edinburgh set on foot a subscription
edition of his Queen’s Wake (at a
guinea each copy), in the hope of thus raising a sum adequate to the stocking of the little
farm. The following letter alludes to this affair; and also to the
death of Frances Lady Douglas, sister to Duke Henry of Buccleuch, whose early kindness to Scott has been more than once mentioned.
To the Right Honourable Lord Montagu, &c. &c. &c.
“Abbotsford, June 8, 1817. “My dear Lord,
“I am honoured with your letter, and will not fail
to take care that the Shepherd profits by your kind intentions, and those of
Lady Montagu. This is a scheme which I
did not devise, for I fear it will end in disappointment, but for which I have
done, and will do all I possibly can. There is an old saying of the
seamen’s, ‘every man is not born to be a boatswain,’ and I
think I have heard of men born under a sixpenny planet, and doomed never to be
worth a groat. I fear something of this vile sixpenny influence had gleamed in
at the cottage window when poor Hogg
first came squeaking into the world. All that he made by his original book he
ventured on a flock of sheep to drive into the Highlands to a farm he had taken
there, but of which he could not get possession, so that all the stock was
ruined and sold to disadvantage. Then he tried another farm, which proved too
dear, so that he fairly broke upon it. Then put forth divers publications,
which had little sale and brought him accordingly few pence, though some
praise. Then came this Queen’s
Wake, by which he might and ought to have made from L.100 to
L.200—for there were, I think, three editions—when lo! his bookseller turned
bankrupt, and paid him never a penny. The Duke has now, with his wonted
generosity, given him a cosie bield, and the object of the present attack upon
the public, is to get if possible as much cash together as will stock it. But
no one has loose guineas now to give to poor poets, and I greatly doubt the
scheme succeeding, unless it
is more strongly patronised than can almost be expected. In bookselling
matters, an author must either be the conjuror, who commands the devil, or the
witch who serves him—and few are they whose situation is sufficiently
independent to enable them to assume the higher character—and this is injurious
to the indigent author in every respect, for not only is he obliged to turn his
pen to every various kind of composition, and so to injure himself with the
public by writing hastily, and on subjects unfitted for his genius; but
moreover, those honest gentlemen, the booksellers, from a natural association,
consider the books as of least value, which they find they can get at least
expense of copy-money, and therefore are proportionally careless in pushing the
sale of the work. Whereas a good round sum out of their purse, like a moderate
rise of rent on a farm, raises the work thus acquired in their own eyes, and
serves as a spur to make them clear away every channel, by which they can
discharge their quires upon the public. So much for bookselling, the most
ticklish and unsafe, and hazardous of all professions, scarcely with the
exception of horse-jockeyship.
“You cannot doubt the sincere interest I take in
Lady Montagu’s health. I was very
glad to learn from the Duke, that the late
melancholy event had produced no permanent effect on her constitution, as I
know how much her heart must have suffered.* I saw our regretted friend for the last time at the Theatre, and
made many schemes to be at Bothwell this next July. But thus the world glides
from us, and those we most love and honour are withdrawn from the stage before
us. I know not why it was that among the few for whom I had so much respectful
regard, I never had associated
* Lady Montagu
was the daughter of the late Lord
Douglas by his first marriage with Lady Lucy Grahame, daughter of the
second Duke of Montrose.
the idea of early deprivation with Lady
Douglas. Her excellent sense, deep information, and the wit
which she wielded with so much good humour, were allied apparently to a healthy
constitution which might have permitted us to enjoy, and be instructed by her
society for many years. Dis aliter
visum, and the recollection dwelling on all the delight
which she afforded to society, and the good which she did in private life, is
what now remains to us of her wit, wisdom, and benevolence. The Duke keeps his
usual health, with always just so much of the gout, however, as would make me
wish that he had more a kind wish for which I do not observe that he is
sufficiently grateful. I hope to spend a few days at Drumlanrig Castle, when
that ancient mansion shall have so far limited its courtesy as to stand covered
in the presence of the wind and rain, which I believe is not yet the case. I am
no friend to ceremony, and like a house as well when it does not carry its roof
en chapeau bras. I heartily
wish your Lordship joy of the new mansion at Ditton, and hope my good stars
will permit me to pay my respects there one day. The discovery of the niches
certainly bodes good luck to the house of Montagu, and as
there are three of them, I presume it is to come threefold. From the care with
which they were concealed, I presume they had been closed in the days of
Cromwell, or a little before, and
that the artist employed (like the General, who told his soldiers to fight
bravely against the Pope, since they were Venetians before they were
Christians) had more professional than religious zeal, and did not even,
according to the practice of the time, think it necessary to sweep away Popery
with the besom of destruction.* I am here on
* Lord
Montagu’s house at Ditton Park, near Windsor, had
recently been destroyed by fire and the ruins revealed some niches with
antique candlesticks, &c., belonging to a domestic chapel that had
been converted to other purposes from the time, I believe, of Henry VIII.
a stolen visit of two days, and find
my mansion gradually enlarging. Thanks to Mr
Atkinson (who found out a practical use for our romantic
theory), it promises to make a comfortable station for offering your Lordship
and Lady Montagu a pilgrim’s meal, when you next
visit Melrose Abbey, and that without any risk of your valet (who I recollect
is a substantial person) sticking between the wall of the parlour and the backs
of the chairs placed round the table. This literally befel Sir Harry Macdougal’s fat butler, who
looked like a ship of the line in the loch at Bowhill, altogether unlike his
master, who could glide wherever a weasel might make his way. Mr
Atkinson has indeed been more attentive than I can express, when
I consider how valuable his time must be.* We are attempting no castellated
conundrums to rival those Lord Napier used
to have executed in sugar, when he was Commissioner, and no cottage neither,
but an irregular somewhat—like an old English hall, in which your squire of
L.500 a-year used to drink his ale in days of yore.
“I am making considerable plantations (that is
considering), being greatly encouraged by the progress of those I formerly laid
out. Read the veracious Gulliver’s
account of the Windsor Forest of Lilliput, and you will have some idea of the
solemn gloom of my Druid shades.
Your Lordship’s truly faithful Walter Scott.
“This is the 8th of June, and not an ash tree in
leaf yet. The country cruelly backward, and whole fields destroyed by the
grub. I dread this next season.”
* Mr Atkinson, of St
John’s Wood, was the architect of Lord
Montagu’s new mansion at Ditton, as well as the artist ultimately
employed, in arranging Scott’s interior at
Abbotsford.
CHAPTER III. EXCURSION TO THE LENNOX—GLASGOW—AND DRUMLANRIG—PURCHASE OF
TOFTFIELD—ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FERGUSON FAMILY AT HUNTLY BURN—LINES
WRITTEN IN ILLNESS—VISITS OF WASHINGTON IRVING—LADY
BYRON—AND SIR DAVID WILKIE—PROGRESS OF THE BUILDING AT
ABBOTSFORD—LETTERS TO MORRITT—TERRY,
&c.—CONCLUSION OF ROB ROY— 1817.
During the summer term of 1817, Scott seems to have laboured chiefly on his History of 1815, for the Register, which was published in August; but he
also found time to draw up the Introduction for a richly embellished quarto, entitled
“Border Antiquities,” which
came out a month later. This valuable essay, containing large additions to the information
previously embodied in the Minstrelsy, has been included in the late collection of his
Miscellaneous Prose, and has thus
obtained a circulation not to be expected for it in the original costly form.
Upon the rising of the Court in July, he made an excursion to the Lennox,
chiefly that he might visit a cave at the head of Loch Lomond, said to have been a
favourite retreat of his hero, Rob Roy. He was
accompanied to the seat of his friend, Mr Macdonald
Buchanan, by Captain Adam
Ferguson—the long Linton of the days
of his apprenticeship; and thence to Glasgow, where, under the auspices of a kind and
intelligent acquaintance, Mr John Smith, bookseller,
he refreshed his recollection of the noble
cathedral, and other localities of the birth-place of Bailie
Jarvie. Mr Smith took care also to show the tourists
the most remarkable novelties in the great manufacturing establishments of his flourishing
city; and he remembers particularly the delight which Scott expressed on seeing the process of singeing muslin that is, of
divesting the finished web of all superficial knots and irregularities, by passing it, with
the rapidity of lightning, over a rolling bar of red-hot iron. “The man that
imagined this,” said Scott, “was theShakspeareof the Wabsters— ‘Things out of hope are compass’d oft with
vent’ring.’”
The following note indicates the next stages of his progress:—
To his Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, Drumlanrig
Castle.
“Sanquhar, 2 o’clock, July 30, 1817. “From Ross, where the clouds on Ben-Lomond are sleeping— From Greenock, where Clyde to the Ocean is sweeping— From Largs, where the Scotch gave the Northmen a drilling— From Ardrossan, whose harbour cost many a shilling— From Old Cumnock, where beds are as hard as a plank, sir— From a chop and green pease, and a chicken in Sanquhar, This eve, please the Fates, at Drumlanrig we anchor. W. S.”
The Poet and Captain Ferguson
remained a week at Drumlanrig, and thence repaired together to Abbotsford. By this time,
the foundations of that part of the existing house, which extends from the hall westwards
to the original court-yard, had been laid; and Scott now
found a new source of constant occupation in watching the proceedings of his masons. He
had, moreover, no lack of employment further a-field,—for he was now negotiating with
another neighbouring landowner for the purchase of an addition, of more consequence than
any he had hitherto made, to his estate. In the course of the autumn
he concluded this matter, and became, for the price of L.10,000, proprietor of the lands of
Toftfield* on which there had recently been erected a
substantial mansion-house, fitted, in all points, for the accommodation of a genteel
family. This circumstance offered a temptation which much quickened
Scott’s zeal for completing his arrangement. The venerable
Professor Ferguson had died a year before;
Captain Adam Ferguson was at home on half-pay; and
Scott now saw the means of securing for himself, henceforth, the
immediate neighbourhood of the companion of his youth, and his amiable sisters.
Ferguson, who had written, from the lines of Torres Vedras, his
hopes of finding, when the war should be over, some sheltering cottage upon the Tweed,
within a walk of Abbotsford, was delighted to see his dreams realized; and the family took
up their residence next spring at the new house of Toftfield, on which
Scott then bestowed, at the ladies’ request, the name of
Huntly Burn:—this more harmonious designation being taken from the mountain brook which
passes through its grounds and garden, the same famous in tradition as the scene of
Thomas the Rhymer’s interviews with the
Queen of Fairy. The upper part of the Rhymer’s Glen, through which this brook finds
its way from the Cauldshiels Loch to Toftfield, had been included in a previous purchase.
He was now master of all these haunts of “True Thomas,”
and of the whole ground of the battle of Melrose from Skirmish-Field
to Turn-again. His enjoyment of the new territories was,
* On completing this purchase, Scott writes to John
Ballantyne:—“Dear John, I have closed
with Usher for his beautiful patrimony,
which makes me a great laird. I am afraid the people will take me up for coining.
Indeed, these novels, while their attractions last, are something like it. I am
very glad of your good prospects. Still I cry, Prudence! Prudence! Yours truly,
W. S.”
however, interrupted by various returns of his
cramp, and the depression of spirit which always attended, in his case, the use of opium,
the only medicine that seemed to have power over the disease.
It was while struggling with such languor, on one lovely evening of this
autumn, that he composed the following beautiful
verses. They mark the very spot of their birth,—namely, the then naked height
overhanging the northern side of the Cauldshiels Loch, from which Melrose Abbey to the
eastward, and the hills of Ettrick and Yarrow to the west, are now visible over a wide
range of rich woodland,—all the work of the poet’s hand:—
“The sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill, In Ettrick’s vale, is sinking sweet; The westland wind is hush and still— The lake lies sleeping at my feet. Yet not the landscape to mine eye Bears those bright hues that once it bore; Though evening, with her richest dye, Flames o’er the hills of Ettrick’s shore. “With listless look along the plain I see Tweed’s silver current glide, And coldly mark the holy fane Of Melrose rise in ruin’d pride. The quiet lake, the balmy air, The hill, the stream, the tower, the tree,— Are they still such as once they were, Or is the dreary change in me? “Alas, the warp’d and broken board, How can it bear the painter’s dye! The harp of strain’d and tuneless chord, How to the minstrel’s skill reply! To aching eyes each landscape lowers, To feverish pulse each gale blows chill; And Araby’s or Eden’s bowers Were barren as this moorland hill.”
He again alludes to his illness in a letter to Mr Morritt:—
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. M.P. Rokeby.
“Abbotsford, Aug. 11, 1817. “My dear Morritt,
“I am arrived from a little tour in the west of
Scotland, and had hoped, in compliance with your kind wish, to have indulged
myself with a skip over the Border as far as Rokeby, about the end of this
month. But my fate denies me this pleasure; for, in consequence of one or two
blunders, during my absence, in executing my new premises, I perceive the
necessity of remaining at the helm while they are going on. Our masons, though
excellent workmen, are too little accustomed to the gimcracks of their art, to
be trusted with the execution of a bravura plan, without constant inspection.
Besides, the said labourers lay me under the necessity of labouring a little
myself; and I find I can no longer with impunity undertake to make one
week’s hard work supply the omissions of a fortnight’s idleness.
Like you, I have abridged my creature-comforts—as Old
Mortality would call them—renouncing beer and ale on all
ordinary occasions; also pastry, fruit, &c. and all that tends to acidity.
These are awkward warnings; but sat est
vixisse. To have lived respected and regarded by some of the
best men in our age, is enough for an individual like me; the rest must be as
God wills, and when he wills.
“The poor laws into which you have ventured for the
love of the country, form a sad quagmire. They are like John Bunyan’s Slough of Despond, into
which, as he observes, millions of cart loads of good resolutions have been
thrown, without perceptibly mending the way. From what you say, and from what I
have heard from
others, there is a very natural desire to trust to one or two empirical
remedies, such as general systems of education, and so forth. But a man with a
broken constitution might as well put faith in Spilsbury or Godbold. It is not
the knowledge, but the use which is made of it, that is productive of real
benefit. To say that the Scottish peasant is less likely than the Englishman to
become an incumbrance on his parish, is saying, in other words, that this
country is less populous,—that there are fewer villages and towns,—that the
agricultural classes, from the landed proprietor down to the cottager, are
individually more knit and cemented together;—above all, that the Scotch
peasant has harder habits of life, and can endure from his infancy a worse fare
and lodging than your parish almshouses offer. There is a terrible evil in
England to which we are strangers,—the number, to-wit, of tippling houses,
where the labourer, as a matter of course, spends the overplus of his earnings.
In Scotland there are few; and the Justices are commendably inexorable in
rejecting all application for licenses where there appears no public necessity
for granting them. A man, therefore, cannot easily spend much money in liquor,
since he must walk three or four miles to the place of suction and back again,
which infers a sort of malice
prepense of which few are capable; and the habitual
opportunity of indulgence not being at hand, the habits of intemperance, and of
waste connected with it, are not acquired. If financiers would admit a general
limitation of the ale-houses over England to one-fourth of the number, I am
convinced you would find the money spent in that manner would remain with the
peasant, as a source of self-support and independence. All this applies chiefly
to the country; in towns, and in the manufacturing districts, the evil could
hardly be diminished by such regulations. There would,
perhaps, be no means so effectual as that (which will never be listened to) of
taxing the manufacturers according to the number of hands which they employ on
an average, and applying the produce in maintaining the manufacturing poor. If
it should be alleged that this would injure the manufacturers, I would boldly
reply,—‘And why not injure, or rather limit, speculations, the excessive
stretch of which has been productive of so much damage to the principles of the
country, and to the population, whom it has, in so many respects, degraded and
demoralized?’ For a great many years, manufactures, taken in a general
point of view, have not partaken of the character of a regular profession, in
which all who engaged with honest industry and a sufficient capital might
reasonably expect returns proportional to their advances and labour—but have,
on the contrary, rather resembled a lottery, in which the great majority of the
adventurers are sure to be losers, although some may draw considerable
advantage. Men continued for a great many years to exert themselves, and to pay
extravagant wages, not in hopes that there could be a reasonable prospect of an
orderly and regular demand for the goods they wrought up, but in order that
they might be the first to take advantage of some casual opening which might
consume their cargo, let others shift as they could. Hence extravagant wages on
some occasions; for these adventurers who thus played at hit or miss, stood on
no scruples while the chance of success remained open. Hence, also, the
stoppage of work, and the discharge of the workmen, when the speculators failed
of their object. All this while the country was the sufferer;—for whoever
gained, the result, being upon the whole a loss, fell on the nation, together
with the task of maintaining a poor, rendered effeminate and vicious by over-
wages and over-living, and
necessarily cast loose upon society. I cannot but think that the necessity of
making some fund beforehand, for the provision of those whom they debauch, and
render only fit for the almshouse, in prosecution of their own adventures,
though it operated as a check on the increase of manufactures, would be a
measure just in itself, and beneficial to the community. But it would never be
listened to;—the weaver’s beam, and the sons of
Zeruiah, would be too many for the proposers.
“This is the eleventh of August; Walter, happier than he will ever be again,
perhaps, is preparing for the moors. He has a better dog than Trout, and rather less active. Mrs Scott and all our family send kind love. Yours ever,
W. S.”
Two or three days after this letter was written, Scott first saw Washington Irving,
who has recorded his visit in a delightful Essay, which, however, having been penned nearly twenty years afterwards,
betrays a good many slips of memory as to names and dates. Mr Irving
says he arrived at Abbotsford on the 27th of August 1816; but he describes the walls of the
new house as already overtopping the old cottage; and this is far from being the only
circumstance he mentions which proves that he should have written 1817.* The
* I have before me two letters of Mr
Irving’s to Scott, both
written in September 1817, from Edinburgh, and referring to his visit (which
certainly was his only one at Abbotsford) as immediately preceding. There is also
in my hands a letter from Scott to his friend John Richardson, of Fludyer Street, dated 22d
September, 1817, in which he says, “When you see Tom Campbell, tell him, with my best love,
that I have to thank him for making me known to Mr Washington
Irving, who is one of the best and pleasantest acquaintances I
have made this many a day.”
picture which my amiable friend has drawn of his reception, shows to
all who remember the Scott and the Abbotsford of those days, how
consistent accuracy as to essentials may be with forgetfulness of trifles.
Scott had received “the History of New York by Knickerbocker,”
shortly after its appearance in 1812, from an accomplished American traveller, Mr Brevoort; and the admirable humour, of this early work
had led him to anticipate the brilliant career which its author has since run. Mr Thomas Campbell being no stranger to
Scott’s high estimation of Irving’s genius, gave him a letter of introduction, which, halting
his chaise on the high-road above Abbotsford, he modestly sent down to the house
“with a card, on which he had written, that he was on his way to the ruins of
Melrose, and wished to know whether it would be agreeable to Mr
Scott to receive a visit from him in the course of the
morning.” Scott’s family well remember the delight
with which he received this announcement—he was at breakfast, and sallied forth instantly,
dogs and children after him as usual, to greet the guest, and conduct him in person from
the highway to the door.
“The noise of my chaise,” says Irving, “had disturbed the quiet of the
establishment. Out sallied the warder of the castle, a black greyhound, and leaping on
one of the blocks of stone, began a furious barking. This alarm brought out the whole
garrison of dogs, all open-mouthed and vociferous. In a little while, the lord of the
castle himself made his appearance. I knew him at once, by the likenesses that had been
published of him. He came limping up the gravel walk, aiding himself by a stout
walking-staff, but moving rapidly and with vigour. By his side jogged along a large
iron-grey staghound, of most grave demeanour, who took no part in the clamour of the
canine rabble, but seemed to consider himself bound, for the dignity of the house, to
give me a courteous reception.
“Before Scott
reached the gate, he called out in a hearty tone, welcoming me to Abbotsford, and
asking news of Campbell. Arrived at the door of
the chaise, he grasped me warmly by the hand: ‘Come, drive down, drive down to the
house,’ said he; ‘ye’re just in time for breakfast, and
afterwards ye shall see all the wonders of the Abbey.
“I would have excused myself on the plea of having
already made my breakfast. ‘Hut, man,’ cried he, ‘a ride in
the morning in the keen air of the Scotch hills is warrant enough for a second
breakfast.’
“I was accordingly whirled to the portal of the
cottage, and in a few moments found myself seated at the breakfast-table. There was no
one present but the family, which consisted of Mrs
Scott; her eldest daughter, Sophia, then a fine girl about seventeen; Miss Ann Scott, two or three years younger; Walter, a well-grown strip, ling; and Charles, a lively boy, eleven or twelve years of age.
“I soon felt myself quite at home, and my heart in
a glow, with the cordial welcome I experienced. I had thought to make a mere morning
visit, but found I was not to be let off so lightly. ‘You must not think our
neighbourhood is to be read in a morning like a newspaper,’ said
Scott; ‘it takes several days of study
for an observant traveller, that has a relish for auld-world trumpery. After
breakfast you shall make your visit to Melrose Abbey; I shall not be able to
accompany you, as I have some household affairs to attend to; but I will put you in
charge of my son Charles, who is very
learned in all things touching the old ruin and the neighbourhood it stands in; and
he and my friend Johnnie Bower, will tell you the whole truth
about it, with a great deal more that you are not called upon to believe, unless
you be a true and nothing-doubting antiquary. When you come back, I’ll take
you out on a ramble about the neighbourhood. To-morrow we will take a look at the
Yarrow, and the next day we will drive over to Dryburgh Abbey, which is a line old
ruin, well worth your seeing.’ In a word, before
Scott had got through with his plan, I found myself committed
for a visit of several days, and it seemed as if a little realm of romance was suddenly
open before me.”
After breakfast, while Scott, no
doubt, wrote a chapter of Rob Roy, Mr Irving, under young Charles’s guidance, saw Melrose Abbey, and Johnnie
Bower the elder, whose son long since inherited his office as showman of the
ruins, and all his enthusiasm about them and their poet. The senior on this occasion
“was loud in his praises of the affability of Scott.
‘He’ll come here sometimes,’ said he,
‘with great folks in his company, and the first I’ll know of it is
hearing his voice calling out Johnny!—Johnny
Bower!—and when I go out I’m sure to be greeted with a joke or
a pleasant word. He’ll stand and crack an’ laugh wi’ me just like
an auld wife,—and to think that of a man that has such an awfu
knowledge o’ history!’”
On his return from the Abbey, Irving found Scott ready for a ramble. I
cannot refuse myself the pleasure of extracting some parts of his description of it.
“As we sallied forth, every dog in the
establishment turned out to attend us, There was the old staghound, Maida, that I have already mentioned, a noble animal, and Hamlet, the black greyhound, a wild thoughtless youngster, not
yet arrived at the years of discretion; and Finette, a
beautiful setter, with soft, silken hair, long pendant ears, and a mild eye, the
parlour favourite. When in front of the house, we were joined by a superannuated
greyhound, who came from the kitchen wagging his tail; and was cheered by Scott as an old friend and comrade. In our walks, he would
frequently pause in conversation, to notice his dogs, and speak to them as if rational
companions; and, indeed, there appears to be a vast deal of rationality in these
faithful attendants on man, derived from their close intimacy with him. Maida deported himself with a gravity becoming his age and
size, and seemed to consider himself called upon to preserve a great degree of dignity
and decorum in our society. As he jogged along a little distance ahead of us, the young
dogs would gambol about him, leap on his neck, worry at his ears, and endeavour to
tease him into a gambol. The old dog would keep on for a long time with imperturbable
solemnity, now and then seeming to rebuke the wantonness of his young companions. At
length he would make a sudden turn, seize one of them, and tumble him in the dust, then
giving a glance at us, as much as to say, ‘You see, gentlemen, I can’t
help giving way to this nonsense,’ would resume his gravity, and jog on
as before. Scott amused himself with these peculiarities.
‘I make no doubt,’ said he, ‘when Maida is alone with these young dogs, he throws gravity aside, and
plays the boy as much as any of them; but he is ashamed to do so in our company,
and seems to say—Ha’ done with your nonsense, youngsters: what will the laird
and that other gentleman think of me if I give way to such
foolery?’”
“Scott amused
himself with the peculiarities of another of his dogs, a little shamefaced terrier,
with large glassy eyes, one of the most sensitive little bodies to insult and indignity
in the world. ‘If ever he whipped him,’ he said, ‘the
little fellow would sneak off and hide himself from the light of day in a lumber
garret, from whence there was no drawing him forth but by the sound of the
chopping-knife, as if chopping up his victuals, when he would steal forth with
humiliated and downcast look, but would skulk away again if any one regarded
him.’
“While we were discussing the humours and
peculiarities of our canine companions, some object provoked their spleen, and produced
a sharp and petulant barking from the smaller fry; but it was some time before Maida was sufficiently roused to ramp forward two or three
bounds, and join the chorus with a deep-mouthed bow wow. It was but a transient
outbreak, and he returned instantly, wagging his tail, and looking up dubiously in his
master’s face, uncertain whether he would receive censure or applause.
‘Ay, ay, old boy!’ cried Scott, ‘you have done wonders; you have shaken the Eildon
hills with your roaring: you may now lay by your artillery for the rest of the day.
Maida,’ continued he, ‘is like
the great gun at Constantinople; it takes so long to get it ready, that the smaller
guns can fire off a dozen times first: but when it does go off, it plays the very
devil!’
“These simple anecdotes may serve to show the
delightful play of Scott’s humours and
feelings in private life. His domestic animals were his friends. Every thing about him
seemed to rejoice in the light of his countenance.
“Our ramble took us on the hills commanding an
extensive prospect. ‘Now,’ said Scott, ‘I have brought you, like the pilgrim in the Pilgrim’s Progress, to the
top of the Delectable Mountains, that I may show you all the goodly regions
hereabouts. Yonder is Lammermuir, and Smailholme; and there you have Galashiels,
and Torwoodlee, and Gala Water; and in that direction you see Teviotdale and the
Braes of Yarrow, and Ettrick stream winding along like a silver thread, to throw
itself into the Tweed.’ He went on thus to call over names celebrated in
Scottish song, and most of which had recently received a romantic interest from his own
pen. In fact, I saw a great part of the Border country spread out before me, and could
trace the scenes of those poems and romances which had in a manner bewitched the
world.
“I gazed about me for a time with mute surprise, I
may almost say, with disappointment, I beheld a mere succession of grey waving hills, line beyond line, as far as my eye could reach,
monotonous in their aspect, and so destitute of trees, that one could almost see a
stout fly walking along their profile; and the far-famed Tweed appeared a naked stream,
flowing between bare hills, without a tree or thicket on its banks; and yet such had
been the magic web of poetry and romance thrown over the whole, that it had a greater
charm for me than the richest scenery I had beheld in England. I could not help giving
utterance to my thoughts. Scott hummed for a moment
to himself, and looked grave; he had no idea of having his muse complimented at the
expense of his native hills. ‘It may be pertinacity,’ said he at
length; ‘but to my eye. these grey hills, and all this wild border country,
have beauties peculiar to themselves. I like the very nakedness of the land; it has
something bold, and stern, and solitary about it. When I have been for some time in
the rich scenery about Edinburgh, which is like ornamented garden land, I begin to
wish myself back again among my own honest grey hills; and if I did not see the
heather, at least once a-year, I think I should
die!’ The last words were said with an honest warmth, accompanied by a
thump on the ground with his staff, by way of emphasis, that showed his heart was in
his speech. He vindicated the Tweed, too, as a beautiful stream in itself; and
observed, that he did not dislike it for being bare of trees, probably from having been
much of an angler in his time; and an angler does not like to have a stream overhung by
trees, which embarrass him in the exercise of his rod and line.
“I took occasion to plead, in like manner, the
associations of early life for my disappointment in respect to the surrounding scenery.
I had been so accustomed to see hills crowned with forests, and streams breaking their
way through a wilderness of trees, that all my ideas of romantic landscape were apt to
be well wooded. ‘Ay, and that’s the great charm of your
country,’ cried Scott. ‘You love
the forest as I do the heather; but I would not have you think I do not feel the
glory of a great woodland prospect. There is nothing I should like more than to be
in the midst of one of your grand wild original forests, with the idea of hundreds
of miles of untrodden forest around me. I once saw at Leith an immense stick of
timber, just landed from America. It must have been an enormous tree when it stood
in its native soil, at its full height, and with all its branches. I gazed at it
with admiration; it seemed like one of the gigantic obelisks which are now and then
brought from Egypt to shame the pigmy monuments of Europe; and, in fact, these vast
aboriginal trees, that have sheltered the Indians before the intrusion of the white men, are the
monuments and antiquities of your country.’
“The conversation here turned upon Campbell’s poem of Gertrude of Wyoming, as illustrative of the
poetic materials furnished by American scenery. Scott cited
several passages of it with great delight. ‘What a pity it is,’ said
he, ‘that Campbell does not write more, and oftener, and
give full sweep to his genius! He has wings that would bear him to the skies; and
he does, now and then, spread them grandly, but folds them up again, and resumes
his perch, as if he was afraid to launch away. What a grand idea is
that,’ said he, ‘about prophetic boding, or, in common parlance,
second sight ‘Coming events cast their shadows before!’ The fact is,’ added he, ‘Campbell is, in a
manner, a bugbear to himself. The brightness of his early success is a detriment to
all his further efforts. He is of raid of the shadow that his own
fame casts before him.’
“We had not walked much farther, before we saw the
two Miss Scotts advancing along the hill-side to meet us. The
morning’s studies being over, they had set off to take a ramble on the hills, and
gather heather blossoms with which to decorate their hair for dinner. As they came
bounding lightly like young fawns, and their dresses fluttering in the pure summer
breeze, I was reminded of Scott’s own
description of his children, in his introduction to one of the cantos of Marmion: ‘My imps, though hardy, bold, and wild, As best befits the mountain child,’ &c. As they approached, the dogs all sprang forward, and gambolled around them. They
joined us with countenances full of health and glee. Sophia, the eldest, was the most lively and joyous, having much of her
father’s varied spirit in conversation, and seeming to catch excitement from his
words and looks; Ann was of a quieter mood,
rather silent, owing, in some measure, no doubt, to her being some years
younger.”
Having often, many years afterwards, heard Irving speak warmly of William
Laidlaw, I must not omit the following passage:—
“One of my pleasantest rambles with Scott about the neighbour-hood of
Abbotsford, was taken in company with Mr William
Laidlaw, the steward of his estate. This was a gentleman for whom
Scott entertained a particular value. He had been born to a
competency, had been well educated, his mind was richly stored with varied information,
and he was a man of sterling moral worth. Having been reduced by misfortune,
Scott had got him to take charge of his estate. He lived at a
small farm, on the hillside above Abbotsford, and was treated by
Scott as a cherished and confidential friend, rather than a
dependant.
“That day at dinner we had Mr Laidlaw and his wife, and a female friend, who
accompanied them. The latter was a very intelligent respectable person, about the
middle age, and was treated with particular attention and courtesy by Scott. Our dinner was a most agreeable one, for the guests
were evidently cherished visiters to the house, and felt that they were appreciated.
When they were gone, Scott spoke of them in the most cordial
manner. ‘I wished to show you,’ said he, ‘some of our
really excellent, plain Scotch people: not fine gentlemen and ladies, for such you
can meet every where, and they are every where the same. The character of a nation
is not to be learnt from its fine folks.’ He then went on with a
particular eulogium on the lady who had accompanied the Laidlaws.
She was the daughter, he said, of a poor country clergyman, who had died in debt, and
left her an orphan and destitute. Having had a good plain education, she immediately
set up a child’s school, and had soon a numerous flock under her care, by which
she earned a decent maintenance. That, however, was not her main object. Her first care
was to pay off her father’s debts, that no ill word or ill will might rest upon
his memory. This, by dint of Scotch economy, backed by filial reverence and pride, she
accomplished, though in the effort she subjected herself to every privation. Not
content with this, she in certain instances refused to take pay for the tuition of the
children of some of her neighbours, who had befriended her father in his need, and had
since fallen into poverty. ‘In a word,’ added
Scott, ‘she’s a fine old Scotch girl, and I
delight in her more than in many a fine lady I have known, and I have known many of
the finest.’
“The evening passed away delightfully in a
quaint-looking apartment, half study, half drawingroom. Scott read several passages from the old romance of Arthur, with a fine
deep sonorous voice, and a gravity of tone that seemed to suit the antiquated
black-letter volume. It was a rich treat to hear such a work read by such a person, and
in such a place; and his appearance, as he sat reading, in a large arm-chair, with his
favourite hound Maida at his feet, and surrounded by books and reliques, and Border trophies,
would have formed an admirable and most characteristic picture. When I retired for the
night, I found it almost impossible to sleep: the idea of being under the roof of
Scott; of being on the Borders on the Tweed: in the very
centre of that region which had, for some time past, been the favourite scene of
romantic fiction; and, above all, the recollections of the ramble I had taken, the
company in which I had taken it, and the conversation which had passed, all fermented
in my mind, and nearly drove sleep from my pillow.
“On the following morning the sun darted his beams
from over the hills through the low lattice of my window. I rose at an early hour, and
looked out between the branches of eglantine which overhung the casement. To my
surprise, Scott was already up, and forth, seated on
a fragment of stone, and chatting with the workmen employed in the new building. I had
supposed, after the time he had wasted upon me yesterday, he would be closely occupied
this morning: but he appeared like a man of leisure, who had nothing to do but bask in
the sunshine, and amuse himself. I soon dressed myself and joined him. He talked about
his proposed plans of Abbotsford: happy would it have been for him could he have
contented himself with his delightful little vine-covered cottage, and the simple, yet
hearty and hospitable, style in which he lived at the time of my visit!”
Among other visiters who succeeded the distinguished American that
autumn were Lady Byron, the wife of the poet, and the
great artist, Mr, now Sir David Wilkie, who then
executed for Captain Ferguson that pleasing little
picture, in which Scott and his family are represented
as a group of peasants, while the gallant soldier himself figures by them in the character
of a gamekeeper, or perhaps poacher. Mr Irving has
given, in the little work from which I have quoted so liberally, an amusing account of the
delicate scruples of Wilkie about soliciting
Scott to devote a morning to the requisite sitting, until, after
lingering for several days, he at length became satisfied that, by whatever magic his host
might contrive to keep Ballantyne’s presses in
full play, he had always abundance of leisure for matters less important than
Ferguson’s destined heirloom. I shall
now, however, return to his correspondence; and begin with a letter to Joanna Baillie on Lady Byron’s
visit.
To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead.
“Abbotsford, Sept. 26, 1817. “My dear Miss Baillie,
“A series of little trinketty sort of business, and
occupation, and idleness, have succeeded to each other so closely that I have
been scarce able, for some three weeks past, to call my time my own for half an
hour together; but enough of apologies they are vile things, and I know you
will impute my negligence to any thing rather than forgetting or undervaluing
your friendship. You know, by this time, that we have had a visit from
Lady Byron, delightful both on its own
account, and because it was accompanied with good news and a letter from you. I
regret we could not keep her longer than a day with us, which was spent on the
banks of the Yarrow, and I hope and believe she was pleased with us, because I
am sure she will be so with every thing that is intended to please her:
meantime her visit gave me a most lawyer-like fit of the bile. I have lived too
long to be surprised at any instance of human caprice, but still it vexes me.
Now, one would suppose Lady Byron, young, beautiful, with
birth, and rank, and fortune, and taste, and high accomplishments, and
admirable good sense, qualified to have made happy one whose talents are so
high as Lord Byron’s, and whose marked
propensity it is to like those who are qualified to admire and understand his
talents; and yet it has proved otherwise. I can safely say, my heart ached for
her all the time we were together; there was so much patience and decent
resignation to a situation which must have pressed on her thoughts, that she
was to me one of the most interesting creatures I had seen for a score of
years. I am sure I should
not have felt such strong kindness towards her had she been at the height of
her fortune, and in the full enjoyment of all the brilliant prospects to which
she seemed destined. You will wish to hear of my complaint. I think, thank God,
that it is leaving me—not suddenly, however, for I have had some repetitions,
but they have become fainter and fainter, and I have not been disturbed by one
for these three weeks. I trust, by care and attention, my stomach will return
to its usual tone, and I am as careful as I can. I have taken hard exercise
with good effect, and am often six hours on foot without stopping or sitting
down, to which my plantations and enclosures contribute not a little. I have,
however, given up the gun this season, finding myself unable to walk up to the
dogs; but Walter has taken it in hand,
and promises to be a first-rate shot; he brought us in about seven or eight
brace of birds the evening Lady Byron came to us, which
papa was of course a little proud of. The black-cocks are getting very plenty
on our moor ground at Abbotsford, but I associate them so much with your beautiful poem,* that I
have not the pleasure I used to have in knocking them down. I wish I knew how
to send you a brace. I get on with mylabours here; my house is about to be
roofed in, and a comical concern it is. Yours truly,
W. S.”
The next letter refers to the Duke of
Buccleuch’s preparations for a cattle-show at Bowhill, which was
followed by an entertainment on a large scale to his Grace’s Selkirkshire neighbours
and tenantry, and next day by a fox-hunt, after Dandie
Dinmont’s fashion, * “Good-morrow to thy sable beak, And glossy plumage dark and sleek, Thy crimson moon, and azure eye, Cock of the heath, so wildly shy!” &c. among the rocks of the Yarrow. The Sheriff attended with his tail on; and Wilkie, too, went
with him. It was there that Sir David first saw Hogg, and the Shepherd’s greeting was graceful. He
eyed the great painter for a moment in silence, and then stretching out his hand,
said,—“Thank God for it. I did not know that you were so young a
man!”
To the Duke of Buccleuch, &c. &c. &c.
Drumlanrig Castle.
“My dear Lord Duke,
“I am just honoured with your Grace’s of the
27th. The posts, which are as cross as pye-crust, have occasioned some delay.
Depend on our attending at Bowhill on the 20th, and staying over the show. I
have written to Adam Ferguson, who will
come with a whoop and a hollo. So will the Ballantynes—flageolet* and all—for
the festival, and they shall be housed at Abbotsford. I have an inimitably good
songster in the person of Terence
Magrath, who teaches my girls. He beats almost all whom I have
ever heard attempt Moore’s songs,
and I can easily cajole him also out to Abbotsford for a day or two. In jest or
earnest, I never heard a better singer in a room, though his voice is not quite
full enough for a concert; and for an after-supper song, he almost equals Irish
Johnstone.†
“Trade of every kind is recovering, and not a loom
idle in Glasgow. The most faithful respects of this family attend the Ladies
and all at Drumlanrig. I ever am your Grace’s truly obliged and grateful
Walter Scott.
* The flageolet alludes to
Mr Alexander Ballantyne, the
third of the brothers—a fine musician, and a most amiable and modest man,
never connected with Scott in any
business matters, but always much his favourite in private.
† Mr Magrath
has now been long established in his native city of Dublin. His musical
excellence was by no means the only merit that attached Scott to his society while he remained in
Edinburgh.
“Given from my Castle of Grawacky, this second day of the month called October, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Seventeen Years.
“There is a date nearly as long as the letter.
“I hope we shall attack the foxes at Bowhill. I
will hazard Maida.”
We have some allusions to this Bowhill party in another letter; the
first of several which I shall now insert according to their dates, leaving them, with a
few marginal notes, to tell out the story of 1817:
To Daniel Terry, Esq., London.
“Abbotsford, October 24, 1817. “Dear Terry,
“Bullock has
not gone to Skye, and I am very glad he has not, for to me who knew the
Hebrides well, the attempt seemed very perilous at this season. I have
considerably enlarged my domains since I wrote to you, by the purchase of a
beautiful farm adjacent. The farm-house, which is new and excellent, I have let
to Adam Ferguson and his sisters. We
will be within a pleasant walk of each other, and hope to end our lives, as
they began, in each other’s society. There is a beautiful brook, with
remnants of natural wood, which would make Toftfield rival Abbotsford, but for
the majestic Tweed. I am in treaty for a field or two more; one of which
contains the only specimen of a Peel-house, or defensive residence of a small
proprietor, which remains in this neighbourhood. It is an orchard, in the
hamlet of Darnick, to which it gives a most picturesque effect. Blore admires it very much. We are all well
here, but crowded with company. I have been junketting this week past at
Bowhill. Mr Magrath has been with us these two or three days, and has seen his
ward, Hamlet,* behave most princelike on Newark Hill
and elsewhere. He promises to be a real treasure. Notwithstanding, Mr
Magrath went to Bowhill with me one day, where his vocal talents
gave great pleasure, and I hope will procure him the notice and protection of
the Buccleuch family. The Duke says my building engrosses, as a common centre, the
thoughts of Mr Atkinson and Mr
Bullock, and wishes he could make them equally anxious in his
own behalf. You may believe this flatters me not a little.
“P.S.—I agree with you that the tower will look
rather rich for the rest of the building; yet you may be assured, that with
diagonal chimneys and notched gables, it will have a very fine effect, and is
in Scotch architecture by no means incompatible. My house has been like a cried fair, and extreme the inconvenience of having no
corner sacred to my own use, and free from intrusion. Ever truly yours,
W. S.”
To the Same.
“Abbotsford, 29th October, 1817. “My dear Terry,
“I enclose a full sketch of the lower story, with
accurate measurements of rooms, casements, door-ways, chimneys, &c. that
Mr Atkinson’s good will may
not want means to work upon. I will speak to the subjects of your letter
separately, that I may omit none of them. 1st, I cannot
possibly surrender the window to the west in the
* This fine greyhound, a gift from Terry, had been sent to Scotland under
the care of Mr Magrath.
Terry had called the dog Marmion, but Scott
rechristened him Hamlet, in honour of his
“inky coat.”
library,* although I
subscribe to all you urge about it. Still it is essential in point of light to
my old eyes, and the single northern aspect would not serve me. Above all, it
looks into the yard, and enables me to summon Tom
Purdie without the intervention of a third party. Indeed, as I
can have but a few books about me, it is of the less consequence. 2dly, I resign the idea of coving the library to your
better judgment, and I think the Stirling Heads† will be admirably
disposed in the glass of the armoury window. I have changed my mind as to
having doors on the book-presses, which is, after all, a great bore. No person
will be admitted into my sanctum, and I can have the door locked during my
absence. 3dly, I expect Mr
Bullock here every day, and should be glad to have the drawings
for the diningroom wainscot, as he could explain them to the artists who are to
work them. This (always if quite convenient) would be the more desirable, as I
must leave this place in a fortnight at farthest—the more’s the pity—and,
consequently, the risk of blunders will be considerably increased. I should
like if the pannelling of the wainscot could admit of a press on each side of
the sideboard. I don’t mean a formal press with a high door, but some
crypt, or, to speak vulgarly, cupboard, to put away
bottles of wine, &c. You know I am my own butler, and such accommodation is
very convenient. We begin roofing to-morrow. Wilkie admires the whole as a composition,
* Before the second and larger part of the present
house of Abbotsford was built, the small room, subsequently known as
the breakfast parlour, was during several years Scott’s sanctum.
† This alludes to certain pieces of painted
glass, representing the heads of some of the old Scotch kings, copied
from the carved ceiling of the presence-chamber in Stirling Castle.
There are engravings of them in a work called “Lacunar Strevelinense.” Edinb. 4to,
1817.
and that is high authority. I agree that the fountain
shall be out of doors in front of the green-house; there may be an enclosure
for it with some ornamented mason-work, as in old gardens, and it will occupy
an angle, which I should be puzzled what to do with, for turf and gravel would
be rather meagre, and flowers not easily kept. I have the old fountain
belonging to the Cross of Edinburgh, which flowed with wine at the coronation
of our kings and on other occasions of public rejoicing. I send a sketch of
this venerable relic, connected as it is with a thousand associations. It is
handsome in its forms and proportions—a free-stone basin about three feet in
diameter, and five inches and a half in depth, very handsomely hollowed. A
piece has been broken off one edge, but as we have the fragment, it can easily
be restored with cement. There are four openings for pipes in the
circumference—each had been covered with a Gothic masque, now broken off and
defaced, but which may be easily restored. Through these the wine had fallen
into a larger and lower reservoir. I intend this for the centre of my fountain.
I do not believe I should save L.100 by retaining Mrs
Redford, by the time she was raised, altered, and beautified,
for, like the Highlandman’s gun, she wants stock, lock, and barrel to put
her into repair. In the mean time, the cabin is convenient. Yours ever,
W. S.”
To Mr William Laidlaw, Kaeside.
“Edinburgh, Nov. 10th. 1817. “Dear Willie,
“I have no intention to let the Whitehaugh without
your express approbation, and I wish you to act as my adviser and
representative in these matters. I would hardly have ventured to purchase so
much land without the certainty of your counsel and co-operation. . . . . . .
On the other side you will
find a small order on the banker at Galashiels, to be renewed half-yearly; not
by way of recompensing your friendship ‘with a load of barren
money,’ but merely to ease my conscience in some degree for the
time which I must necessarily withdraw from the labour which is to maintain
your family. Believe me, dear Willie,
yours truly,
W. Scott.”
To the Same.
“Edinburgh, 19th Nov. 1817. “Dear Willie,
“I hope you will not quarrel with my last. Believe me
that, to a sound-judging, and philosophical mind this same account of Dr. and
Cr., which fills up so much time in the world, is comparatively of very small
value. When you get rich, unless I thrive in the same proportion, I will
request your assistance for less, for little, or for nothing, as the case may
require; but while I wear my seven-league boots to stride in triumph over moss
and muir, it would be very silly in either of us to let a cheque twice a-year
of L.25 make a difference between us. But all this we will talk over when we
meet. I meditate one day a coup-de-maitre, which will make my friend’s advice
and exertion essential—indeed worthy of much better remuneration. When you
come, I hope you will bring us information of all my rural proceedings. Though
so lately come to town, I still remember, at my waking hours, that I can
neither see Tom Purdie nor
Adam Paterson,* and rise with the more unwillingness.
I was unwell on Monday and Tuesday, but am quite recovered. Yours truly,
W. S.”
* Adam Paterson was the intelligent foreman of
the company of masons then employed at Abbotsford.
To Thomas Scott, Esq., Paymaster, 70th Regiment,
Kingston, Canada.
“Edinburgh, 13th Dec. 1817. “My dear Tom,
“I should be happy to attend to your commission about
a dominie for your boy, but I think there will be much risk in yoking yourself
with one for three or four years. You know what sort of black cattle these are,
and how difficult it is to discern their real character, though one may give a
guess at their attainments. When they get good provender in their guts, they
are apt to turn out very different animals from what they were in their
original low condition, and get frisky and troublesome. I have made several
enquiries, however, and request to know what salary you would think reasonable,
and also what acquisitions he ought to possess. There is no combating the
feelings which you express for the society of your son, otherwise I really
think that a Scottish education would be highly desirable; and should you at
any time revert to this plan, you may rely on my bestowing the same attention
upon him as upon my own boys.
“I agree entirely with you on the necessity of your
remaining in the regiment while it is stationary, and retiring on half-pay when
it marches; but I cannot so easily acquiesce in your plan of settling in
Canada. On the latter event taking place, on the contrary, I think it would be
highly advisable that you should return to your native country. In the course
of nature you must soon be possessed of considerable property, now liferented
by our mother, and I should think that even your present income would secure
you comfort and independence here. Should you remain in Canada, you must
consider your family as settlers in that state, and as I cannot believe that it
will remain very long separated from America, I should almost think this equal
to depriving them of the
advantages of British subjects—at least of those which they might derive from
their respectable connexions in this country. With respect to your son, in
particular, I have little doubt that I could be of considerable service to him
in almost any line of life he might chance to adopt here, but could of course
have less influence on his fortunes, were he to remain on the Niagara. I
certainly feel anxious on this subject, because the settlement of your
residence in America would be saying, in other words, that we two, the last
remains of a family once so numerous, are never more to meet upon this side of
time. My own health is very much broken up by the periodical recurrence of
violent cramps in the stomach, which neither seem disposed to yield to medicine
nor to abstinence. The complaint, the doctors say, is not dangerous in itself,
but I cannot look forward to its continued recurrence, without being certain
that it is to break my health, and anticipate old age in cutting me short. Be
it so my dear Tom—Sat est vixisse—and I am too much of a
philosopher to be anxious about protracted life, which, with all its
infirmities and deprivations, I have never considered as a blessing. In the
years which may be before me, it would be a lively satisfaction to me to have
the pleasure of seeing you in this country, with the prospect of a comfortable
settlement. I have but an imperfect account to render of my doings here. I have
amused myself with making an addition to my cottage in the country; one little
apartment is to be fitted up as an armoury for my old relics and curiosities.
On the wicket I intend to mount your deer’s
foot*—as an appropriate knocker. I hope the young ladies liked their
watches,
* Thomas
Scott had sent his brother the horns and feet of a
gigantic stag, shot by him in Canada. The feet were ultimately
suspended to bell-cords in the armoury at Abbotsford; and the horns
mounted as drinking cups.
and that all your books, stationary, &c., came safe
to hand. I am told you have several kinds of the oak peculiar to America. If
you can send me a few good acorns, with the names of the kinds they belong to,
I will have them reared with great care and attention. The heaviest and
smoothest acorns should be selected, as one would wish them, sent from such a
distance, to succeed, which rarely happens unless they are particularly well
ripened. I shall be as much obliged to you as Sancho was to the Duchess, or,” to speak more correctly,
the Duchess to Sancho, for a similar
favour. Our mother keeps her health
surprisingly well now, nor do I think there is any difference, unless that her
deafness is rather increased. My eldest boy is upwards of six feet high;
therefore born, as Sergeant Kite says, to
be a great man. I should not like such a rapid growth, but that he carries
strength along with it; my youngest boy is a very sharp little fellow and the
girls give us great satisfaction. Ever affectionately yours,
Walter Scott.”
The following note is without date. It accompanied, no doubt, the last
proof-sheet of Rob Roy, and was therefore in
all probability written about ten days before the 31st of December, 1817 on which day the
novel was published.
To Mr James Ballantyne, St John Street.
“Dear James, With great joy I send you Roy. ’Twas a tough job, But we’re done with Rob.
“I forget if I mentioned Terry in my list of Friends. Pray send me two or three copies
as soon as you can. It were pity to
make the Grinder* pay carriage. Yours ever,
W. S.”
The novel had indeed been “a tough job” for lightly
and airily as it reads, the author had struggled almost throughout with the pains of cramp
or the lassitude of opium. Calling on him one day to dun him for copy, James Ballantyne found him with a clean pen and a blank
sheet before him, and uttered some rather solemn exclamation of surprise. “Ay, ay,
Jemmy,” said he, “’tis easy for you
to bid me get on, but how the deuce can I make Rob
Roy’s wife speak with such a curmurring in
my guts?”
* They called Daniel Terry
among themselves “The Grinder,” in double allusion to the song of Terry, the Grinder, and to some harsh under-notes of their
friend’s voice.
CHAPTER IV. ROB ROY PUBLISHED—NEGOTIATION CONCERNING THE SECOND SERIES OF
TALES OF MY LANDLORD—COMMISSION TO SEARCH FOR THE SCOTTISH
REGALIA—LETTERS TO THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH—MR
CROKER—MR MORRITT—MR
MURRAY—MR MATURIN, &c.—CORRESPONDENCE ON RURAL
AFFAIRS WITH MR LAIDLAW—AND ON THE BUILDINGS AT ABBOTSFORD WITH
MR TERRY—DEATH OF MRS MURRAY KEITH AND
MR GEORGE BULLOCK— 1818.
Rob Roy and his wife,
Bailie Nicol Jarvie and his housekeeper,
Die Vernon and Rashleigh
Osbaldistone—these boldly drawn and most happily contrasted personages were
welcomed as warmly as the most fortunate of their predecessors. Constable’s resolution to begin with an edition of 10,000, proved to
have been as sagacious as bold; for within a fortnight a second impression of 3000 was
called for; and the subsequent sale of this novel has considerably exceeded 40,000 more.
Scott, however, had not waited for this new burst of
applause. As soon as he came within view of the completion of Rob Roy, he desired John
Ballantyne to propose to Constable
and Co. a second series of the Tales of my
Landlord, to be comprised, like the first, in four volumes, and ready for
publication by “the King’s birth-day;” that is, the 4th of June, 1818.
“I have hungered and thirsted,” he wrote, “to see the end
of those shabby borrowings among friends; they have all been wiped out except the good
Duke’s L.4000—and I will
not suffer either new offers of land or any thing else to come in the way of that
clearance. I expect that you will be able to arrange this resurrection of Jedediah, so that L.5000 shall be at my order.”
Mr Rigdum used to glory in recounting that he
acquitted himself on this occasion with a species of dexterity not contemplated in his
commission. He well knew how sorely Constable had
been wounded by seeing the first Tales of Jedediah published by Murray and Blackwood—and that the
utmost success of Rob Roy would only double
his anxiety to keep them out of the field, when the hint should be dropt that a second MS.
from Gandercleuch might shortly be looked for. He, therefore, took a convenient opportunity
to mention the new scheme as if casually so as to give Constable the
impression that the author’s purpose was to divide the second series, also between
his old rival in Albemarle Street, of whom his jealousy was always most sensitive, and his
neighbour Blackwood, whom, if there had been no other grudge, the
recent conduct and rapidly increasing sale of his Magazine would have been sufficient to
make Constable hate with a perfect hatred. To see not only his old
Scots Magazine eclipsed, but the authority of
the Edinburgh Review itself bearded on its own
soil by this juvenile upstart, was to him gall and wormwood; and, moreover, he himself had
come in for his share in some of those grotesque jeux
d’esprit by which, at this period, Blackwood’s young Tory wags delighted to assail their
elders and betters of the Whig persuasion. To prevent the proprietor of this new journal
from acquiring any thing like a hold on the author of
Waverley, and thus competing with himself not only in periodical literature,
but in the highest of the time, was an object for which, as John
Ballantyne shrewdly guessed, Constable would have made
at that moment almost any sacrifice. When, therefore, the haughty but
trembling bookseller “The Lord High Constable” (as he had
been dubbed by these jesters) signified his earnest hope that the second Tales of my Landlord were destined to come out under the same auspices with
Rob Roy, the plenipotentiary answered with an air of deep
regret, that he feared it would be impossible for the author to dispose of the work unless
to publishers who should agree to take with it the whole of the remaining stock of
“John Ballantyne and Co.;” and
Constable, pertinaciously as he had stood out against many more
modest propositions of this nature, was so worked upon by his jealous feelings, that his
resolution at once gave way. He agreed on the instant to do all that
John seemed to shrink from asking and at one sweep cleared the
Augean stable in Hanover Street of unsaleable rubbish to the amount of L.5270! I am assured
by his surviving partner that when he had finally
redisposed of the stock, he found himself a loser by fully two-thirds of this sum.
Burthened with this heavy condition, the agreement for the sale of 10,000
copies of the embryo series was signed before the end of November, 1817; and on the 7th of
January, 1818, Scott wrote as follows to his noble
friend:—
To the Duke of Buccleuch, &c. &c.
“My dear Lord Duke,
“I have the great pleasure of enclosing the
discharged bond which your Grace stood engaged in for me, and on my account.
The accommodation was of the greatest consequence to me, as it enabled me to
retain possession of some valuable literary property, which I must otherwise
have suffered to be sold at a time when the booksellers had no money to buy it.
My dear Lord, to wish that all your numerous and extensive acts of kindness may be attended
with similar advantages to the persons whom you oblige, is washing you what to
your mind will be the best recompense; and to wish that they may be felt by all
as gratefully as by me, though you may be careless to hear about that part of
the story, is only wishing what is creditable to human nature. I have this
moment your more than kind letter, and congratulate your Grace that, in one
sense of the word, you can be what you never will be in any other, ambidexter. But I am sorry you took so much trouble, and
I fear pains besides, to display your new talent. Ever your Grace’s truly
faithful
Walter Scott.”
The closing sentence of this letter refers to a fit of the gout which had
disabled the Duke’s right hand, but not cooled his zeal on a subject which,
throughout January, 1818, occupied, I firmly believe, much more of his
correspondent’s thoughts by day and dreams by night, than any one, or perhaps than
all others, besides. The time now approached when a Commission to examine the Crown-room in
the Castle of Edinburgh, which had sprung from one of Scott’s conversations with the Prince
Regent in 1815, was at length to be acted upon. The minstrel of the
“Rough Clan” had taken care that the name of his chief should stand at the head
of the document; but the Duke’s now precarious health ultimately prevented him from
being present at the discovery of the long buried and almost forgotten regalia of Scotland.
The two following letters on this subject are of the same date—Edinburgh, 14th January,
1818.
To the Duke of Buccleuch, &c. &c.
Bowhill.
“My dear Lord,
“You will hear from the Advocate, that the Com-mission for opening the Regalia is arrived, and that the
Commissioners held their first meeting yesterday. They have named next
Wednesday (in case your Grace can attend) for opening the mysterious chest. So
this question will be put to rest for ever.
“I remember among the rebel company which debauched
my youth, there was a drunken old Tory, who used to sing a ballad made about
these same regalia at the time of the Union, in which they were all destined to
the basest uses; the crown, for example, ‘To make a can for Brandy Nan To puke in when she’s tipsy.’ The rest of the song is in a tone of equally pure humour; the chorus ran ‘Farewell, thou ancient kingdom— Farewell, thou ancient kingdom, Who sold thyself for English pelf— Was ever such a thing done?’ I hope your Grace feels yourself sufficiently interested in the recovery
of these ancient symbols of national independence, so long worn by your
forefathers, and which were never profaned by the touch of a monarch of a
foreign dynasty.—Here is fine planting weather. I trust it is as good in the
Forest and on Tweedside. Ever your Grace’s truly faithful
Walter Scott.”
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., M.P., Rokeby.
“Dear Morritt,
“Our fat friend
has remembered a petition which I put up to him, and has granted a Commission
to the Officers of State and others (my unworthy self included)—which trusty
and well-beloved persons are to in-stitute a search after the Regalia of Scotland. There has an odd mystery hung
about the fate of these royal symbols of national independence. The spirit of
the Scotch at the Union clang fondly to these emblems; and to sooth their
jealousy, it was specially provided by an article of the Union, that the
Regalia should never be removed, under any pretext, from the kingdom of
Scotland. Accordingly, they were deposited, with much ceremony, as an authentic
instrument bears, in a strong chest, secured by many locks, and the chest
itself placed in a strong room, which again was carefully bolted up and
secured, leaving to national pride the satisfaction of pointing to the barred
window, with the consciousness that there lay the Regalia of Scotland. But this
gratification was strangely qualified by a surmise, which somehow became
generally averred, stating, that the Regalia had been sent to London; and you
may remember that we saw at the Jewel Office a crown, said to
be the ancient Crown of Scotland. If this transfer (by the way highly
illegal) was ever made, it must have been under some secret warrant; for no
authority can be traced for such a proceeding in the records of the Secretary
of State’s Office. Fifteen or twenty years ago, the Crown-room, as it is
called, was opened by certain Commissioners, under authority of a sign-manual.
They saw the fatal chest, strewed with the dust of an hundred years, about six
inches thick: a coating of like thickness lay on the floor; and I have heard
the late President Blair say, that the
uniform and level appearance of the dust warranted them to believe that the
chest, if opened at all after 1707, must have been violated within a short time
of that date, since, had it been opened at a later period, the dust accumulated
on the lid, and displaced at opening it, must have been lying around the chest.
But the Commissioners did not think their warrant
entitled them to force this chest, for which no keys could be found; especially
as their warrant only entitled them to search for records—not for crowns and sceptres.
“The mystery, therefore, remained unpenetrated; and
public curiosity was left to console itself with the nursery rhime— ‘On Tintock tap there is a mist, And in the mist there is a kist.’ Our fat friend’s curiosity,
however, goes to the point at once, authorizing and enjoining an express search
for the Regalia. Our friend of Buccleuch is
at the head of the commission, and will, I think, be as keen as I or any one to
see the issue.
“I trust you have read Rob by this time. I think he smells of the
cramp. Above all, I had too much flax on my distaff; and as it did not consist
with my patience or my plan to make a fourth volume, I was obliged at last to
draw a rough, coarse, and hasty thread. But the book is well liked here, and
has reeled off in great style. I have two stories on the anvil, far superior to
Rob Roy in point of interest. Ever yours,
Walter Scott.”
The Commissioners, who finally assembled on the 4th of February, were,
according to the record “the Right Hon. Charles
Hope, Lord President of the Court of Session; the Right Hon. David Boyle, Lord Justice Clerk; the
Right Hon. William Adam, Lord Chief
Commissioner of the Jury Court; Major-General John
Hope (Commanding the Forces in Scotland); the Solicitor General
(James Wedderburn, Esq.); the Lord Provost
of Edinburgh (Kincaid Mackenzie, Esq.);
William Clerk, Esq., Principal Clerk of the
Jury Court; Henry Jardine, Esq., Deputy Remembrancer in the
Exchequer; Thomas Thompson, Esq., Deputy Clerk
Register of Scotland; and Walter Scott, Esq., one of
the Principal Clerks of Session.”
Of the proceedings of this day, the reader has a full and particular
account in an Essay which Scott penned shortly
afterwards, and which is included in his Prose Miscellanies (vol. vii.) But I must not omit the contemporaneous letters
in which he announced the success of the quest to his friend the Secretary of the Admiralty, and through him to the
Regent—
To J. W. Croker, Esq. M.P., &c. &c.
Admiralty, London.
“Edinburgh, 4th Feb., 1818. “My dear Croker,
“I have the pleasure to assure you the Regalia of
Scotland were this day found in perfect preservation. The Sword of State and
Sceptre showed marks of hard usage at some former period; but in all respects
agree with the description in Thomson’swork.* I will send you a complete
account of the opening to-morrow, as the official account will take some time
to draw up. In the mean time, I hope you will remain as obstinate in your
unbelief as St Thomas, because then you will come down to
satisfy yourself. I know nobody entitled to earlier information, save one, to whom you can perhaps find the means of
communicating the result of our researches. The post is just going off. Ever
yours truly,
Walter Scott.”
* Collection of
Inventories and other Records of the Royal Wardrobe and Jewel-House, &c.
Edin. 1815, 4to.
To the Same.
“Edinburgh, 5th February, 1818. “My dear Croker,
“I promised I would add something to my report of
yesterday, and yet I find I have but little to say. The extreme solemnity of
opening sealed doors of oak and iron, and finally breaking open a chest which
had been shut since 7th March, 1707, about a hundred and eleven years, gave a
sort of interest to our researches, which I can hardly express to you, and it
would be very difficult to describe the intense eagerness with which we watched
the rising of the lid of the chest, and the progress of the workmen in breaking
it open, which was neither an easy nor a speedy task. It sounded very hollow
when they worked on it with their tools, and I began to lean to your faction of
the Little Faiths. However, I never could assign any probable or feasible
reason for withdrawing these memorials of ancient independence; and my doubts
rather arose from the conviction that many absurd things are done in public as
well as in private life merely out of a hasty impression of passion or
resentment. For it was evident the removal of the Regalia might have greatly
irritated people’s minds here, and offered a fair pretext of breaking the
Union which, for thirty years, was the predominant wish of the Scottish nation.
“The discovery of the Regalia has interested
people’s minds much more strongly than I expected, and is certainly
calculated to make a pleasant and favourable impression upon them in respect to
the kingly part of the constitution. It would be of the utmost consequence that
they should be occasionally shown to them, under proper regulations, and for a
small fee. The Sword of State is a most beautiful piece of workmanship, a
present from Pope Julius II. to James IV. The scabbard is richly decorated with
filigree work of silver, double gilded, representing oak leaves and acorns,
executed in a taste worthy that classical age in which the arts revived. A
draughtsman has been employed to make sketches of these articles, in order to
be laid before his Royal Highness. The fate of these Regalia, which his Royal
Highness’ goodness has thus restored to light and honour, has, on one or
two occasions been singular enough. They were, in 1652, lodged in the Castle of
Dunnottar, the seat of the Earl Marischal,
by whom, according to his ancient privilege, they were kept. The castle was
defended by George Ogilvie of Barra,
who, apprehensive of the progress which the English made in reducing the strong
places in Scotland, became anxious for the safety of these valuable memorials.
The ingenuity of his lady had them
conveyed out of the castle in a bag on a woman’s back, among some hards, as they are called, of lint. They were carried to
the Kirk of Kinneff, and intrusted to the care of the clergyman named
Grainger, and his wife, and buried under the pulpit.
The Castle of Dunnottar, though very strong and faithfully defended, was at
length under necessity of surrendering, being the last strong place in Britain
on which the royal flag floated in those calamitous times.
Ogilvie and his lady were threatened with the utmost
extremities by the Republican General
Morgan, unless they should produce the Regalia. The governor
stuck to it that he knew nothing of them, as in fact they had been carried away
without his knowledge. The Lady maintained she had given them to John Keith, second son of the Earl Marischal, by
whom, she said, they had been carried to France. They suffered a long
imprisonment, and much ill usage. On the Restoration, the old Countess Marischal, founding upon the story
Mrs Ogilvie had told to screen her husband, obtained for her own son, John
Keith, the earldom of Kintore, and the post of Knight Marischal,
with L.400 a-year, as if he had been in truth the preserver of the Regalia. It
soon proved that this reward had been too hastily given, for
Ogilvie of Barra produced the Regalia, the honest
clergyman refusing to deliver them to any one but those from whom he received
them. Ogilvie was made a Knight Baronet, however, and got
a new charter of the lands acknowledging the good service. Thus it happened
oddly enough, that Keith who was abroad during the
transaction, and had nothing to do with it, got the earldom, pension, &c.,
Ogilvie only inferior honours, and the poor clergyman
nothing whatever, or, as we say, the hares foot to lick.
As for Ogilvie’s lady, she died before the
Restoration, her health being ruined by the hardships she endured from the
Cromwellian satellites. She was a Douglas, with all the
high spirit of that proud family. On her deathbed, and not till then, she told
her husband where the honours were concealed, charging him to suffer death
rather than betray them. Popular tradition says, not very probably, that
Grainger and his wife were booted (that is, tortured with the engine called the boots). I think
the Knight Marischal’s office rested in the Kintore family until 1715,
when it was resumed on account of the bearded Earl’s accession to the
Insurrection of that year. He escaped well, for they might have taken his
estate and his earldom. I must save post, however, and conclude abruptly. Yours
ever,
Walter Scott.”
On the 5th, after the foregoing letter had been written at the
Clerk’s table, Scott and several of his brother
Commissioners revisited the Castle, accompanied by some of the ladies of their families.
His daughter tells me that her father’s conversation had worked her
feelings up to such a pitch, that when the lid was again removed, she nearly fainted, and
drew back from the circle. As she was retiring, she was startled by his voice exclaiming,
in a tone of the deepest emotion, “something between anger and despair,”
as she expresses it,—“By G— No!” One of the Commissioners, not quite entering
into the solemnity with which Scott regarded this business, had, it
seems, made a sort of motion as if he meant to put the crown on the head of one of the
young ladies near him, but the voice and aspect of the Poet were more than sufficient to
make the worthy gentleman understand his error; and respecting the enthusiasm with which he
had not been taught to sympathize, he laid down the ancient diadem with an air of painful
embarrassment. Scott whispered “pray, forgive me;”
and turning round at the moment, observed his daughter deadly pale, and leaning by the
door. He immediately drew her out of the room, and when the air had somewhat recovered her,
walked with her across the Mound to Castle Street. “He never spoke all the way
home,” she says, “but every now and then, I felt his arm tremble;
and from that time I fancied he began to treat me more like a woman than a child. I
thought he liked me better, too, than he had ever done before.”
These little incidents may give some notion of the profound seriousness
with which his imagination had invested this matter. I am obliged to add, that in the
society of Edinburgh at the time, even in the highest Tory circles, it did not seem to
awaken much even of curiosity—to say nothing of any deeper feeling; there was, however, a
great excitement among the common people of the town, and a still greater among the
peasantry, not only in the neighbourhood, but all over Scotland; and
the Crown-room, becoming thenceforth one of the established lions of
a city much resorted to, moreover, by stranger tourists, was likely, on the most moderate
scale of admission-fee, to supply a revenue sufficient for remunerating responsible and
respectable guardianship. This post would, as Scott
thought, be a very suitable one for his friend, Captain Adam
Ferguson; and he exerted all his zeal for that purpose. The Captain was
appointed: his nomination, however, did not take place for some months after; and the
postscript of a letter to the Duke of Buccleuch, dated
May 14th, 1818, plainly indicates the interest on which Scott mainly
relied for its completion:—“If you happen,” he writes, “to see
Lord Melville, pray give him a jog about
Ferguson’s affair; but between ourselves, I depend
chiefly on the kind offices of Willie Adam, who
is an auld sneck-drawer.” The Lord Chief Commissioner, at all times ready to
lend Scott his influence with the Royal Family, had, on the present
occasion, the additional motive of warm and hereditary personal regard for
Ferguson.
I have placed together such letters as referred principally to the
episode of the Regalia; but shall now give in the order of time, a few which will
sufficiently illustrate the usual course of his existence, while the Heart of Mid-Lothian was in progress. It appears that he
resumed, in the beginning of this year, his drama of
Devorgoil; his letters to Terry are of
course full of that subject, but they contain, at the same time, many curious indications
of his views and feelings as to theatrical affairs in general and mixed up with these a
most characteristic record of the earnestness with which he now watched the interior
fitting up, as he had in the season before the outward architecture, of the new edifice at
Abbotsford. Mean while it will be seen that he found leisure hours for various
contributions to periodical works; among others
an article on Kirkton’s Church
History, and another on (of all subjects in the world) military bridges, for the Quarterly Review; a spirited version of the old German ballad
on the Battle of Sempach, and a
generous criticism on Mrs Shelly’s romance of Frankenstein, for Blackwood’s Magazine. This being the first winter and
spring of Laidlaw’s establishment at Kaeside,
communications as to the affairs of the farm were exchanged weekly whenever
Scott was in Edinburgh, and they afford delightful evidence of
that paternal solicitude for the wellbeing of his rural dependants, which all along kept
pace with Scott’s zeal as to the economical improvement, and the
picturesque adornment of his territories.
To D. Terry, Esq., London.
“Edinburgh, 23d Jan. 1818. “My dear Terry,
“You have by this time the continuation of the drama,
down to the commencement of the third act, as I have your letter on the subject
of the first. You will understand that I only mean them as sketches; for the
first and second acts are too short, and both want much to combine them with
the third. I can easily add music to Miss
Devorgoil’s part. As to Braham, he is a beast of an actor, though an angel of a singer,
and truly I do not see what he could personify. Let me know, however, your
thoughts and wishes, and all shall be moulded to the best of my power to meet
them; the point is to make it take if we can; the rest
is all leather and prunella. A great many things must occur to you technically
better, in the way of alteration and improvement, and you know well that,
though too indolent to amend things on my own conviction, I am always ready to
make them meet my friends’ wishes if possible. We shall both wish it better than I can make it, but there is no reason
why we should not do for it all that we can. I advise you to take some sapient
friend into your counsels, and let me know the result, returning the MS. at the
same time.
“I am now anxious to complete Abbotsford. I think I
told you I mean to do nothing whatever to the present house, but to take it
away altogether at some future time, so that I finish the upper story without
any communication with Mrs Bedford’sci-devant mansion, and shall place
the opening in the lower story, wherever it will be most suitable for the new
house, without regard to defacing the temporary drawingroom. I am quite
feverish about the armoury. I have two pretty complete suits of armour, one
Indian one, and a cuirassier’s, with boots, casque, &c.; many
helmets, corslets, and steel caps, swords and poniards without end, and about a
dozen of guns, ancient and modern. I have besides two or three battle-axes and
maces, pikes and targets, a Highlander’s accoutrement complete, a great
variety of branches of horns, pikes, bows and arrows, and the clubs and creases
of Indian tribes. Mr Bullock promised to
give some hint about the fashion of disposing all these matters; and now our
spring is approaching, and I want but my plans to get on. I have reason to be
proud of the finishing of my castle, for even of the tower for which I
trembled, not a stone has been shaken by the late terrific gale, which blew a
roof clear off in the neighbourhood. It was lying in the road like a saddle, as
Tom Purdie expressed it. Neither has
a slate been lifted, though about two yards of slating were stripped from the
stables in the haugh, which you know were comparatively less exposed.
“I am glad to hear of Mrs
Terry’s improved health and good prospects. As for young
Master Mumble-crust, I have no doubt he will be a credit to us
all. Yours ever truly,
W. Scott.”
As the letters to Mr Laidlaw did
not travel by post, but in the basket which had come laden with farm-produce for the use of
the family in Edinburgh, they have rarely any date but the day of the week. This is,
however, of no consequence.
To Mr Laidlaw, Kaeside.
“Wednesday. [Jan. 1818.] “Dear Willie,
“Should the weather be rough, and you nevertheless
obliged to come to town, do not think of riding, but take the Blucher.*
Remember your health is of consequence to your family. Pray, talk generally
with the notables of Darnick—I mean Rutherford, and so forth, concerning the
best ordering of the road to the marle; and also of the foot-road. It appears
to me some route might be found more convenient than the present, but that
which is most agreeable to those interested shall also be most agreeable for
me. As a patriotic member of the community of Darnick, I consider their rights
equally important as my own.
“I told you I should like to convert the present
steading at Beechland into a little hamlet of labourers, which we will name
Abbotstown. The art of making people happy is to leave them much to their own
guidance, but some little regulation is necessary. In the first place I should
like to have active and decent people there; then it is to be considered on
what footing they should be. I conceive the best possible is, that they should
pay for
* A stage-coach so called which runs betwixt
Edinburgh and Melrose.
their cottages, and cow-grass, and potato ground, and be
paid for their labour at the ordinary rate. I would give them some advantages
sufficient to balance the following conditions, which, after all, are
conditions in my favour—1st, That they shall keep their cottages, and little
gardens, and doors, tolerably neat; and 2d, That the men shall on no account
shoot, or the boys break timber, or take birds’ nests, or go among the
planting. I do not know any other restrictions, and these are easy. I should
think we might settle a few families very happily here, which is an object I
have much at heart, for I have no notion of the proprietor who is only
ambitious to be lord of the ‘beast and the brute,’ and chases the
human face from his vicinity. By the by, could we not manage to have a piper
among the colonists?
“We are delighted to hear that your little folks like
the dells. Pray, in your walks try to ascertain the locality of St John’s
Well, which cures the botts, and which John
Moss claims for Kaeside; also the true history of the
Carline’s Hole. Ever most truly yours,
W. Scott.
“I hope Mrs
Laidlaw does not want for any thing that she can get from
the garden or elsewhere.”
To Daniel Terry, Esq.
“8th February, 1818. “My dear Terry,
“Yours arrived, unluckily, just half an hour after my
packet was in the Post-office, so this will cost you 9d., for which I grieve.
To answer your principal question first, the drama is ‘Yours, Terry, yours
in every thought.’
“I should never have dreamed of making such an
attempt in my own proper person; and if I had such a vision, I should have been anxious
to have made it something of a legitimate drama, such as a literary man,
uncalled upon by any circumstance to connect himself with the stage, might have
been expected to produce. Now this is just what any gentleman in your situation
might run off, to give a little novelty to the entertainment of the year, and
as such will meet a mitigated degree of criticism, and have a better chance of
that productive success, which is my principal object in
my godson’s behalf. If any time
should come when you might wish to disclose the secret, it will be in your
power, and our correspondence will always serve to show that it was only at my
earnest request, annexed as the condition of bringing the play forward, that
you gave it your name—a circumstance which, with all the attending particulars,
will prove plainly that there was no assumption on your part.
“A beautiful drama might be made on the concealment
of the Scotch regalia during the troubles. But it would interfere with the
democratic spirit of the times, and would probably ——‘By party rage, Or right or wrong, be hooted from the stage.’
“I will never forgive you if you let any false idea
of my authorial feelings prevent your acting in this affair as if you were the
real parent, not the godfather of the piece. Our facetious friend J. B. knows nought of such a matter being
en train, and never will
know. I am delighted to hear my windows are finished. Yours very truly,
Walter Scott.”
To Mr Laidlaw, Kaeside.
“Wednesday. [Feb. 1818]. “Dear Willie,
“I am not desirous to buy more land at present, unless I were to deal with Mr
Rutherford or Hicton, and I would rather
deal with them next year than this, when I would have all my payments made for
what I am now buying. Three or four such years as the last would enable me with
prudence and propriety to ask Nicol*
himself to flit and remove.
“I like the idea of the birch-hedge much, and if
intermixed with holly and thorns, I think it might make an impenetrable
thicket, having all the advantages of a hedge without the formality. I fancy
you will also need a great number of (black) Italian poplars which are among
the most useful and best growers, as well as most beautiful of plants which
love a wet soil.
“I am glad the saws are going.† We may begin by
and by with wrights, but I cannot but think that a handy labourer might be
taught to work at them. I shall insist on Tom learning the process perfectly himself.
“As to the darkness of the garrets, they are intended
for the accommodation of travelling geniuses, poets, painters, and so forth,
and a little obscurity will refresh their shattered brains. I daresay
Lauchie‡ will shave his
knoll, if it is required—it may to the barber’s with the Laird’s
hebdomadal beard—and Packwood would have thought it the
easier job of the two.
“I saw Blackwood yesterday, and Hogg the day
* Mr Nicol Mylne of
Faldonside. This gentleman’s property is a
valuable and extensive one, situated immediately to the westward of
Abbotsford; and Scott continued, year after year, to dream of adding it
also to his own.
† A saw-mill had just been erected at
Toftfield.
‡ A cocklaird adjoining Abbotsford at the
eastern side. His farm is properly Lochbreist
but in the neighbourhood he was generally known as Laird
Lauchie—or Lauchie
Langlegs. Washington Irving describes him, in his “Abbotsford,”
with high gusto. He was a most absurd original.
before, and I understand
from them you think of resigning the Chronicle department of the Magazine.
Blackwood told me that if you did not like that part
of the duty, he would consider himself accountable for the same sum he had
specified to you for any other articles you might communicate from time to
time. He proposes that Hogg should do the Chronicle: He
will not do it so well as you, for he wants judgment and caution, and likes to
have the appearance of eccentricity where eccentricity is least graceful; that,
however, is Blackwood’s affair. If you really do not
like the Chronicle, there can be no harm in your giving it up. What strikes me
is, that there is a something certain in having such a department to conduct,
whereas you may sometimes find yourself at a loss when you have to cast about
for a subject every month. Blackwood is rather in a bad
pickle just now—sent to Coventry by the trade, as the booksellers call
themselves, and all about the parody of the two beasts.* Surely these gentlemen think them-
* An article in one of the early numbers of Blackwood’s Magazine,
entitled The Chaldee MS., in which the literati and
booksellers of Edinburgh were quizzed en
masse—Scott
himself among the rest. It was in this lampoon that Constable first saw himself designated
in print by the sobriquet of “The
Crafty,” long before bestowed on him by one of his own most
eminent Whig supporters; but nothing nettled him so much as the
passages in which he and Blackwood are represented entreating the support of
Scott for their respective Magazines, and
waved off by “the Great Magician” in the same identical
phrases of contemptuous indifference. The description of
Constable’s visit to Abbotsford may be
worth transcribing—for Sir David
Wilkie, who was present when Scott
read it, says he was almost choked with laughter, and he afterwards
confessed that the Chaldean author had given a sufficiently accurate
version of what really passed on the occasion:—
“26. But when the Spirits were gone, he
(The Crafty) said unto
himself, I will arise and go unto a magician, which is of my friends: of a surety he
will devise some remedy, and free me out of all my distresses.
selves rather formed of porcelain clay than of common
potter’s ware. Dealing in satire against all others, their own dignity
suffers so cruelly from an ill-imagined joke! If B. had
good books to sell, he might set them all at defiance. His Magazine does well,
and beats Constable’s; but we will
talk of this when we meet.
“As for Whiggery in general, I can only say, that as
no man can be said to be utterly overset until his rump has been higher than
his head, so I cannot read in history of any free state which has been brought
to slavery until the rascal and uninstructed populace had had their short hour
of anarchical government, which naturally leads to the stern repose of military
despotism. Property, morals, education, are the proper qualifica-
“27. So he arose and came unto that great
magician, which hath his
dwelling in the old fastness, hard by the River Jordan, which is by
the Border.
“28. And the magician opened his mouth and
said, Lo! my heart wisheth thy good, and let the thing prosper
which is in thy hands to do it.
“29. But thou seest that my hands are full
of working, and my labour is great. For, lo, I have to feed all the
people of my land, and none knoweth whence his food cometh; but
each man openeth his mouth, and my hand filleth it with pleasant
things.
“30. Moreover, thine adversary also is of my
familiars.
“31. The land is before thee: draw thou up
thine hosts for the battle on the mount of Proclamation, and defy
boldly thine enemy, which hath his camp in the place of Princes;
quit ye as men, and let favour be shown unto him which is most
valiant.
“32. Yet be thou silent; peradventure will I
help thee some little.
“33. But the man which is Crafty saw that the magician loved
him not. For he knew him of old, and they had had many dealings;
and he perceived that he would not assist him in the day of his
adversity.
“34. So he turned about, and went out of
his fastness. And he shook the dust from his feet, and said,
Behold, I have given this magician much money, yet see now, he hath
utterly deserted me. Verily, my fine gold hath
perished.”—Chap. III.
tions for those who should hold
political rights, and extending them very widely greatly lessens the chance of
these qualifications being found in electors. Look at the sort of persons
chosen at elections, where the franchise is very general, and you will find
either fools who are content to flatter the passions of the mob for a little
transient popularity, or knaves who pander to their follies, that they make
their necks a footstool for their own promotion. With these convictions I am
very jealous of Whiggery, under all modifications, and I must say my
acquaintance with the total want of principle in some of its warmest professors
does not tend to recommend it. Somewhat too much of this. My compliments to the
goodwife. Yours truly,
Walter Scott.”
To the Same.
“Wednesday. [Feb. 1818.] “Dear Willie,
“I have no idea Usher* will take the sheep land again, nor would I press it on
him. As my circumstances stand, immediate revenue is much less my object than
the real improvement of this property, which amuses me besides; our wants are
amply supplied by my L.1600 a-year official income; nor have we a wish or a
motive to extend our expenses beyond that of the decencies and hospitality of
our station in life; so that my other resources remain for buying land in
future, or improving what we have. No doubt Abbotsford, in maintaining our
establishment during the summer, may be reckoned L.150
* John Usher,
the ex-proprietor of Toftfield, was eventually Scott’s tenant on part of those lands for many
years. He was a man of far superior rank and intelligence to the rest
of the displaced lairds—and came presently to be one of
Scott’s trusty rural friends, and a
frequent companion of his sports.
or L.200 saved on what we must otherwise buy, and if we
could arrange to have mutton and beef occasionally, it would be a still greater
saving. All this you will consider: for Tom, thoroughly honest and very clever in his way, has no kind
of generalizing, and would often like to save sixpence in his own department at
the expense of my paying five shillings in another. This is his fault, and when
you join to it a Scotch slovenliness which leads him to see things
half-finished without pain or anxiety, I do not know any other he has—but such
as they are these must be guarded against. For our housemaid (for housekeeper
we must not call her), I should like much a hawk of a nest so good as that you
mention; but would not such a place be rather beneath her views? Her duty would
be to look to scrupulous cleanliness within doors, and employ her leisure in
spinning, or plain-work, as wanted. When we came out for a blink, she would be
expected to cook a little in a plain way, and play maid of all works; when we
were stationary, she would assist the housemaid and superintend the laundry.
Probably your aunt’s granddaughter will have pretensions to something
better than this; but as we are to be out on the 12th March, we will talk it
over. Assuredly a well-connected steady person would be of the greatest
consequence to us. I like your plan of pitting much, and to compromise betwixt
you and Tom, do one half with superior attention, and slit
in the others for mere nurses. But I am no friend to that same slitting.
“I adhere to trying a patch or two of larches of a
quarter of an acre each upon the Athole plan, by way of experiment. We can
plant them up if they do not thrive. On the whole, three-and-a-half feet is, I
think, the right distance. I have no fear of the ground being impoverished.
Trees are not like arable crops, which necessarily derive their sustenance from
the superficial earth—the roots of
trees go far and wide, and, if incommoded by a neighbour, they send out suckers
to procure nourishment elsewhere. They never hurt each other till their tops
interfere, which may be easily prevented by timely weeding.
“I rejoice in the sawmill. Have you settled with
Harper? and how do Ogg and
Bashan* come on? I cannot tell you how delighted
I am with the account Hogg gives me of
Mr Grieve. The great Cameron was chaplain in the house of my great
something grandfather, and so I hope Mr Grieve will be
mine. If, as the King of Prussia said to
Rousseau, ‘a little
persecution is necessary to make his home entirely to his mind,’
he shall have it; and what persecutors seldom promise, I will stop whenever he
is tired of it. I have a pair of thumbikins also much at his service, if he
requires their assistance to glorify God and the Covenant. Sincerely, I like
enthusiasm of every kind so well, especially when united with worth of
character, that I shall be delighted with this old gentleman. Ever yours,
W. Scott.”
The last paragraph of this letter refers to an uncle of Laidlaw’s (the father of Hogg’s friend John Grieve),
who at this time thought of occupying a cottage on Scott’s estate. He was a preacher of the Cameronian sect, and had
long ministered to a very small remnant of “the hill-folk” scattered among the
wilds of Ettrick. He was a very good man, and had a most venerable and apostolical
benignity of aspect; but his prejudices were as extravagant as those of Cameron his patriarch himself could have been. The project
of his removal to Tweedside was never realized.
* A yoke of oxen.
The following admirable letter was written at the request of Messrs
Constable, who had, on Scott’s recommendation, undertaken the publication of Mr Maturin’s novel, “Women, or Pour et Contre.”
The reverend author’s “Bertram” had, it may be remembered, undergone some rather rough usage in
Coleridge’s “Biographia Literaria;” and he was now
desirous to revenge himself by a preface of the polemical sort:—
To the Rev. C. R. Maturin, Dublin.
“26th February, 1818. “Dear Sir,
“I am going to claim the utmost and best privilege
of sincere friendship and good-will, that of offering a few words of well-meant
advice; and you may be sure that the occasion seems important to induce me to
venture so far upon your tolerance. It respects the preface to your work, which Constable and Co. have sent to me. It is as
well written as that sort of thing can be; but will you forgive me if I say—it
is too much in the tone of the offence which gave rise to it, to be agreeable
either to good taste or to general feeling. Coleridge’swork has been little read or heard of,
and has made no general impression whatever—certainly no impression
unfavourable to you or your Play. In the opinion, therefore, of many, you will
be resenting an injury of which they are unacquainted with the existence. If I
see a man beating another unmercifully, I am apt to condemn him upon the first
blush of the business, and hardly excuse him though I may afterwards learn he
had ample provocation. Besides, your diatribe is not hujus loci. We take up a novel for amusement, and this
current of controversy breaks out upon us like a stream of lava out of the side
of a beautiful green hill; men will say you should have reserved your disputes
for re-views or periodical
publications, and they will sympathize less with your anger, because they will
not think the time proper for expressing it. We are bad judges, bad physicians,
and bad divines in our own case; but, above all, we are seldom able, when
injured or insulted, to judge of the degree of sympathy which the world will
bear in our resentment and our retaliation. The instant, however, that such
degree of sympathy is exceeded, we hurt ourselves and not our adversary; I am
so convinced of this, and so deeply fixed in the opinion, that besides the
uncomfortable feelings which are generated in the course of literary debate, a
man lowers his estimation in the public eye by engaging in such controversy,
that, since I have been dipped in ink, I have suffered no personal attacks (and
I have been honoured with them of all descriptions) to provoke me to reply. A
man will certainly be vexed on such occasions, and I have wished to have the
knaves where the muircock was the bailie—or, as you
would say, upon the sod—but I never let the thing cling
to my mind, and always adhered to my resolution, that if my writings and tenor
of life did not confute such attacks, my words never should. Let me entreat you
to view Coleridge’s violence as a thing to be
contemned, not retaliated—the opinion of a British public may surely be set in
honest opposition to that of one disappointed and wayward man. You should also
consider, en bon Chrétien, that
Coleridge has had some room to be spited at the world,
and you are, I trust, to continue to be a favourite with the public—so that you
should totally neglect and despise criticism, however virulent, which arises
out of his bad fortune and your good.
“I have only to add, that Messrs Constable and Co. are seriously alarmed for
the effects of the preface upon the public mind as unfavourable to the work. In
this they must be tolerable judges, for their experience
as to popular feeling is very great; and as they have met your wishes, in all
the course of the transaction, perhaps you will be disposed to give some weight
to their opinion upon a point like this. Upon my own part I can only say, that
I have no habits of friendship, and scarce those of acquaintance with Coleridge—I have not even read his autobiography—but I
consider him as a man of genius, struggling with bad habits and difficult
circumstances. It is, however, entirely upon your account that I take the
liberty of stating an opinion on a subject of such delicacy. I should wish you
to give your excellent talents fair play, and to ride this race without
carrying any superfluous weight; and I am so well acquainted with my old
friend, the public, that I could bet a thousand pounds to a shilling that the
preface (if that controversial part of it is not cancelled) will greatly
prejudice your novel.
“I will not ask your forgiveness for the freedom I
have used, for I am sure you will not suspect me of any motives but those which
arise from regard to your talents and person; but I shall be glad to hear
(whether you follow my advice or no) that you are not angry with me for having
volunteered to offer it.
“My health is, I think, greatly improved; I have had
some returns of my spasmodic affection, but tolerable in degree, and yielding
to medicine. I hope gentle exercise and the air of my hills will set me up this
summer. I trust you will soon be out now. I have delayed reading the sheets in
progress after vol. I., that I might enjoy them when collected. Ever yours,
&c.,
“I am delighted to hear the plantings get on so
well. The weather here has been cruelly changeable—fresh one day—frost the
next—snow the third. This morning the snow lay three inches thick, and before
noon it was gone, and blowing a tempest. Many of the better ranks are ill of
the typhus fever, and some deaths. How do your poor folks come on? Let
Tom advance you money when it is
wanted. I do not propose, like the heroine of a novel, to convert the hovels of
want into the abodes of elegant plenty, but we have enough to spare to relieve
actual distress, and do not wish to economize where we can find out (which is
difficult) where the assistance is instantly useful.
“Don’t let Tom forget hedgerow trees, which he is very unwilling to
remember; and also to plant birches, oaks, elms, and suchlike round-headed
trees along the verges of the Kaeside plantations; they make a beautiful
outline, and also a sort of fence, and were not planted last year because the
earth at the sunk fences was too newly travelled. This should be mixed with
various bushes, as hollies, thorns, so as to make a wild hedge, or thickety
obstruction to the inroads of cattle. A few sweetbriers, alders, honeysuckles,
laburnums, &c., should be thrown in. A verdant screen may be made in this
way of the wildest and most beautiful description, which should never be dipt,
only pruned, allowing the loose branches to drop over those that are taken
away. Tom is very costive about trees, and talks only of
300 poplars. I shall send at least double that number; also some hag-berries,
&c. He thinks he is saving me money, when he is starving my projects; but
he is a pearl of honesty and good intention, and I like him the better for needing driving where expense is likely. Ever
yours,
W. Scott.”
To John Murray, Esq., Albemarle Street, London.
“Abbotsford, 23d March, 1818. “Dear Murray, ‘Grieve not for me, my dearest dear, I am not dead but sleepeth here’—
“I have little to plead for myself, but the old and
vile apologies of laziness and indisposition. I think I have been so unlucky of
late as to have always the will to work when sitting at the desk hurts me, and
the irresistible propensity to be lazy, when I might, like the man whom
Hogarth introduces into Bridewell
with his hands strapped up against the wall, ‘better work than stand
thus.’ I laid Kirkton* aside half finished, from a desire to get the original
edition of the lives of
Cameron, &c., by Patrick
Walker, which I had not seen since a boy, and now I have got it,
and find, as I suspected, that some curious morceaux have been cut out by subsequent
editors.† I will, without loss of time, finish the article, which I think you will like.
Blackwood kidnapped an article for his
Magazine on the Frankenstein
* Scott’sarticle on Kirkton’s History of the Church of
Scotland, edited by Mr C. K.
Sharpe, appeared in the 36th number of the Quarterly Review. See Miscellaneous Prose
Works, vol. xix. p. 213.
† Scott
expressed great satisfaction on seeing the Lives of the
Covenanters—Cameron,
Peden, Semple, Wellwood,
Cargill,
Smith, Renwick, &c., reprinted without mutilation in the
“Biographia
Presbyteriana. Edin. 1827.” The publisher of this
collection was the late Mr John
Stevenson, long chief clerk to John Ballantyne, and usually styled by
Scott “True
Jock,” in opposition to one of his old master’s
many aliases—viz.: “Leein’
Johnnie.”
story,* which I intended for you. A
very old friend and school companion of mine, and a gallant soldier, if ever
there was one, Sir Howard Douglas, has
asked me to review his work on Military Bridges. I
must get a friend’s assistance for the scientific part, and add some
balaam of mine own (as printers’ devils say) to make up four or five
pages. I have no objection to attemptLord Orford if I
have time, and find I can do it with ease. Though far from admiring his
character, I have always had a high opinion of his talents, and am well
acquainted with his works. The letters you have published are, I think, his
very best—lively, entertaining, and unaffected.† I am greatly obliged to
you for these and other literary treasures, which I owe to your goodness from
time to time. Although not thankfully acknowledged as they should be in course,
these things are never thanklessly received.
“I could have sworn that Beppo was founded on Whistlecraft, as both were on Anthony Hall,‡ who, like Beppo, had more wit than grace.
“I am not, however, in spirits at present for
treating either these worthies, or my friend Rose, though few have warmer wishes to any of the trio. But
this confounded changeable weather has twice within this fortnight brought back
my cramp in the stomach. Adieu. My next shall be with a packet. Yours truly,
W. Scott.”
In the next letter we have Scott’s lamentation over
* See Scott’s Prose Miscellanies, vol. 18, p. 250.
† The Letters of Horace Walpole to George Montague.
‡ Anthony
Hall is only known as Editor of one of Leland’s works: I have no doubt Scott was thinking of John Hall Stevenson, author of “Crazy Tales;” the
friend, and (it is said) the Eugenius of Sterne.
§ I believe Mr
Rose’s “Court
and Parliament of Beasts” is here alluded to.
the death of Mrs Murray
Keith—the Mrs Bethune Baliol of his Chronicles of the Canongate. The person
alluded to under the designation of “Prince of the Black Marble
Islands,” was Mr George Bullock, already
often mentioned as, with Terry and Mr Atkinson, consulted about all the arrangements of the
rising house at Abbotsford. Scott gave him this title from the Arabian
Nights, on occasion of his becoming the lessee of some marble quarries in the Isle of
Anglesea.
To D. Terry, Esq. London.
“April 30th, 1818. Selkirk. “My dear Terry,
“Your packet arrived this morning. I was much
disappointed not to find the Prince of the Black
Islands’ plan in it, nor have I heard a word from him
since anent it, or anent the still more essential articles of doors and
windows. I heard from Hector MacDonald
Buchanan, that the said doors and windows were packing a
fortnight since, but there are no news of them. Surely our friend’s heart
has grown as hard as his materials; or the spell of the enchantress, which
confined itself to the extremities of his predecessor, has extended over his
whole person. Mr Atkinson has kept
tryste charmingly, and the cieling of the diningroom will be superb. I have
got, I know not how many casts from Melrose and other places, of pure Gothic
antiquity. I must leave this on the 12th, and I could bet a trifle the doors,
&c. will arrive the very day I set out, and be all put up à la bonne aventure. Mean time I am
keeping open house, not much to my convenience, and I am afraid I shall be
stopped in my plastering by the want of these matters. The exposed state of my
house has led to a mysterious disturbance. The night before last we were awaked
by a violent noise, like drawing heavy boards along the new part of the house. I fancied something had
fallen, and thought no more ahout it. This was about two in the morning. Last
night, at the same witching hour, the very same noise occurred. Mrs S., as you know, is rather timbersome, so up
got I, with Beardie’s broadsword
under my arm, ‘So bolt upright, And ready to fight.’ But nothing was out of order, neither can I discover what occasioned the
disturbance. However, I went to bed, grumbling against Tenterden Street* and
all its works. If there was no entrance but the key-hole, I should warrant
myself against the ghosts. We have a set of idle fellows called workmen about
us, which is a better way of accounting for nocturnal noises than any that is
to be found in Baxter or Glanville.
“When you see Mr
Atkinson, will you ask him how far he is satisfied with the arch
between the armoury and the anteroom, and whether it pleases him as it now
stands? I have a brave old oaken cabinet, as black as ebony, 300 years old at
least, which will occupy one side of the anteroom for the present. It is seven
feet and a half long, about eighteen inches deep, and upwards of six feet
high—a fine stand for china, &c.
“You will be sorry to hear that we have lost our
excellent old friend, Mrs Murray Keith.
She enjoyed all her spirits and excellent faculties till within two days of her
death, when she was seized with a feverish complaint, which eighty-two years
were not calculated to resist. Much tradition, and of the very best kind, has
died with this excellent old lady; one of the few persons whose spirits and
cleanliness, and freshness of mind and body, made old age lovely and desirable.
In the general case it seems scarce endurable.
* Bullock’s manufactory was in this street.
“It seems odd to me that Rob Roy* should have made good fortune; pray
let me know something of its history. There is in Jedediah’s present work a thing capable of being woven
out a Bourgeoise tragedy. I think of contriving that it shall be in your hands
some time before the public see it, that you may try to operate upon it
yourself. This would not be difficult, as vol. 4, and part of 3d contain a
different story. Avowedly I will never write for the
stage; if I do, ‘call me horse.’ And indeed
I feel severely the want of knowledge of theatrical business and effect:
however, something we will do. I am writing in the noise and babble of a
head-court of freeholders, therefore my letter is incoherent, and therefore it
is written also on long paper; but therefore, moreover, it will move by frank,
as the member is here, and stands upon his popularity. Kind compliments to
Mrs Terry and Walter. Yours very truly,.
Walter Scott.”
On the morning that Mr Terry
received the foregoing letter in London, Mr William
Erskine was breakfasting with him; and the chief subject of their
conversation was the sudden death of George Bullock,
which had occurred on the same night, and as nearly as they could ascertain, at the very
hour when Scott was roused from his sleep by the
“mysterious disturbance” here described, and sallied from his chamber with old
Beardie’s Killiecrankie claymore in his
hand. This coincidence, when Scott received
Erskine’s minute detail of what had happened in Tenterden
street, made a much stronger impression on his mind than might be gathered from the tone of
an ensuing communication.
* A drama founded on the novel of Rob Roy had been produced, with great success, on the
London stage.
To D. Terry, Esq., London.
“Abbotsford, 4th May, 1818. Dear Terry,
“I received with the greatest surprise, and the most
sincere distress, the news of poor George
Bullock’s death. In the full career of honourable
industry,—distinguished by his uncommon taste and talent,—esteemed by all who
transacted business with him,—and loved by those who had the pleasure of his
more intimate acquaintance,—I can scarce conceive a more melancholy summons. It
comes as a particular shock to me, because I had, particularly of late, so much
associated his idea with the improvements here, in which his kind and
enthusiastic temper led him to take such interest; and in looking at every
unfinished or projected circumstance, I feel an impression of melancholy which
will for some time take away the pleasure I have found in them. I liked
George Bullock because he had no trumpery selfishness
about his heart, taste, or feelings. Pray let me know about the circumstances
of his family, &c. I feel most sincerely interested in all that concerns
him. It must have been a dreadful surprise to Mr
Atkinson and you who lived with him so much. I need not, I am
sure, beg you to be in no hurry about my things. The confusion must be cruelly
great, without any friend adding to it; and in fact, at this moment, I am very
indifferent on the subject. The poor kind fellow! He took so much notice of
little Charles, and was so domesticated
with us all, that I really looked with a schoolboy’s anxiety for his
being here in the season, to take his own quiet pleasures, and to forward mine.
But God’s will be done. All that surviving friends can do upon such a
loss is, if possible, to love each other still better. I beg to be kindly
remembered to Mrs Terry and Monsieur Walter. Ever most truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
To the Same.
“Edinburgh, 16th May, 1818. “My dear Terry,
“Mr Nasmyth*
has obligingly given me an opportunity of writing to you a few lines, as he is
setting out for London. I cannot tell you how much I continue to be grieved for
our kind-hearted and enthusiastic friend Bullock. I trust he has left his family comfortably settled,
though with so many plans which required his active and intelligent mind to
carry them through, one has natural apprehensions upon that score. When you can
with propriety make enquiry how my matters stand, I should be glad to know.
Hector Macdonald tells me that my
doors and windows were ready packed, in which case, perhaps, the sooner they
are embarked the better, not only for safety, but because they can only be in
the way, and the money will now be the more acceptable. Poor
Bullock had also the measures for my chimneypieces,
for grates of different kinds, and orders for beds, dining-room tables and
chairs. But how far these are in progress of being executed, or whether they
can now be executed, I must leave to your judgment and enquiry. Your good sense
and delicacy will understand the façon de
faire better than I can point it out. I shall never have
the pleasure in these things that I expected.
“I have just left Abbotsford to attend the summer
session—left it when the leaves were coming out—the most delightful season for
a worshipper of the country like me. The Home-bank, which we saw at first green
with turnips, will now hide a man somewhat taller than Johnnie Ballantyne in its shades. In fact, the
trees cover the ground, and have a very pretty bosky effect; from six years to
ten or twelve, I think wood is as beau-
* Mr Alexander
Nasmyth, an eminent landscape painter of Edinburgh—the
father of Mrs Terry.
tiful as ever it is afterwards until
it figures as aged and magnificent. Your hobble-de-hoy tree of twenty or
twenty-five years’ standing is neither so beautiful as in its infancy,
nor so respectable as in its age.
“Counsellor
Erskine is returned much pleased with your hospitality, and
giving an excellent account of you. Were you not struck with the fantastical
coincidence of our nocturnal disturbances at Abbotsford with the melancholy
event that followed? I protest to you the noise resembled half-a-dozen men hard
at work putting up boards and furniture, and nothing can be more certain than
that there was nobody on the premises at the time. With a few additional
touches, the story would figure in Glanville or Aubrey’sCollection. In the mean time, you may
set it down with poor Dubisson’s
warnings,* as a remarkable coincidence coming under your own observation. I
trust we shall see you this season. I think we could hammer a neat comedie bourgeoise out of the Heart of Mid-Lothian. Mrs Scott and family join in kind compliments to
Mrs Terry; and I am, ever yours
truly,
Walter Scott.”
It appears from one of these letters to Terry, that, so late as the 30th of April, Scott still designed to include two separate stories in the second series
of the Tales of my Landlord. But he must have
changed his plan soon after that date; since the four volumes, entirely occupied with the
Heart of Mid-Lothian, were before the
public in the course of June. The story thus deferred, in consequence of the extent to
which that of Jeanie Deans grew on his hands, was the
Bride of Lammermoor.
* See ante, vol. ii., p. 344.
CHAPTER V. MAY, 1818—DINNER AT MR HOME
DRUMMOND’S—SCOTT’S EDINBURGH DEN—DETAILS OF
HIS DOMESTIC LIFE IN CASTLE STREET—HIS SUNDAY DINNERS—HIS EVENING DRIVES, ETC.—HIS CONDUCT
IN THE GENERAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH—DINNERS AT JOHN BALLANTYNE’S
VILLA—AND AT JAMES BALLANTYNE’S IN ST JOHN STREET ON THE
APPEARANCE OF A NEW NOVEL—ANECDOTES OF THE BALLANTYNES, AND OF
CONSTABLE.
On the 12th of May, as we have seen, Scott left Abbotsford, for the summer session in Edinburgh.
At this moment, his position, take it for all in all, was, I am inclined
to believe, what no other man had ever won for himself by the pen alone. His works were the
daily food, not only of his countrymen, but of all educated Europe. His society was courted
by whatever England could show of eminence. Station, power, wealth, beauty, and genius
strove with each other in every demonstration of respect and worship—and, a few political
fanatics and envious poetasters apart, wherever he appeared in town or in country, whoever
had Scotch blood in him, “gentle or simple,” felt it move more rapidly through
his veins when he was in the presence of Scott. To
descend to what many looked on as higher
things, he considered himself, and was considered by all about him, as rapidly
consolidating a large fortune: the annual profits of his novels alone had, for several
years, been not less than L.10,000: his domains were daily increased his castle was rising
and perhaps few doubted that ere long he might receive from the just favour of his Prince
some distinction in the way of external rank, such as had seldom before been dreamt of as
the possible consequence of a mere literary celebrity. It was about this time that the
compiler of these pages first had the opportunity of observing the plain easy modesty which
had survived the many temptations of such a career; and the kindness of heart pervading, in
all circumstances, his gentle deportment, which made him the rare, perhaps the solitary,
example of a man signally elevated from humble beginnings, and loved more and more by his
earliest friends and connexions, in proportion as he had fixed on himself the homage of the
great, and the wonder of the world.
It was during the sitting of the General Assembly of the Kirk in May
1818, that I first had the honour of meeting him in private society: the party was not a
large one, at the house of a much-valued common friend—Mr Home
Drummond of Blair Drummond, the grandson of Lord
Kames. Mr Scott, ever apt to consider too
favourably the literary efforts of others, and more especially of very young persons,
received me, when I was presented to him, with a cordiality which I had not been prepared
to expect from one filling a station so exalted. This, however, is the same story that
every individual, who ever met him under similar circumstances, has had to tell. When the
ladies retired from the dinner-table I happened to sit next him; and he, having heard that
I had lately returned from a tour in Germany, made that country and its recent literature
the subject of some conversation. In the course of it, I told him
that when, on reaching the inn at Weimar, I asked the waiter, whether Goethe was then in the town, the man stared as if he had
not heard the name before; and that on my repeating the question, adding Goethe der grosse dichter (the
great poet), he shook his head as doubtfully as before until the landlady solved our
difficulties, by suggesting that perhaps the traveller might mean “the
Herr Geheimer-Rath (Privy-Counsellor)
Von Goethe”
Scott seemed amused with this, and said, “I hope you will
come one of these days and see me at Abbotsford; and when you reach Selkirk or Melrose,
be sure you ask even the landlady for nobody but the
Skeriff.” He appeared particularly interested when I described
Goethe as I first saw him, alighting from a carriage, crammed with
wild plants and herbs which he had picked up in the course of his morning’s
botanizing among the hills above Jena. “I am glad,” said he,
“that my old master has pursuits somewhat akin to my own. I am no botanist,
properly speaking; and though a dweller on the banks of the Tweed, shall never be
knowing about Flora’s beauties;* but how I
should like to have a talk with him about trees!” I mentioned how much any
one must be struck with the majestic beauty of Goethe’s
countenance (the noblest certainly by far that I have ever yet seen)
“Well,” said he, “the grandest demigod I ever saw was Dr Carlyle, minister of Musselburgh, commonly called
Jupiter Carlyle, from having sat
more than once for the king of gods and men to Gavin
Hamilton and a shrewd, clever old carle was he, no doubt, but no more a
poet than his precentor. As * “What beauties does Flora disclose, How sweet are her smiles upon Tweed.” &c. —Crawford. for poets, I have seen, I believe, all
the best of our own time and country—and, though Burns had the most glorious eyes imaginable, I never thought any of
them would come up to an artist’s notion of the character, except Byron.” A reverend gentleman present, (I think,
Principal Nicoll of St Andrews), expressed his
regret that he had never seen Lord Byron. “And the
prints,” resumed Scott, “give one no impression
of him—the lustre is there, Doctor, but it is not lighted up.
Byron’s countenance is a thing to
dream of. A certain fair lady, whose
name has been too often mentioned in connexion with his, told a friend of mine that,
when she first saw Byron it was in a crowded room, and she did not
know who it was, but her eyes were instantly nailed, and she said to herself that pale face is my fate. And poor soul, if a godlike face and
godlike powers could have made any excuse for devilry, to be sure she had
one.” In the course of this talk, an old friend and schoolfellow of
Scott’s asked him across the table if he had any faith in
the antique busts of Homer? “No,
truly,” he answered, smiling, “for if there had been either limners or
stuccoyers worth their salt in those days, the owner of such a headpiece would never
have had to trail the poke. They would have alimented the honest man decently among
them for a lay-figure.”
A few days after this, I received a communication from the Messrs
Ballantyne, to the effect that Mr
Scott’s various avocations had prevented him from fulfilling his
agreement with them as to the historical department of the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1816, and that it would be
acceptable to him as well as them, if I could undertake to supply it in the course of the
autumn. This proposal was agreed to on my part, and I had consequently occasion to meet him
pretty often during that summer session. He told me that if the war had gone on, he should have liked to do the historical summary as before; but
that the prospect of having no events to record but radical riots, and the passing or
rejecting of corn bills and poor bills, sickened him; that his health was no longer what it
had been; and that though he did not mean to give over writing altogether—(here he smiled
significantly, and glanced his eye towards a pile of MS. on the desk by him)—he thought
himself now entitled to write nothing but what would rather be an amusement than a fatigue
to him—“Juniores ad labores”
He at this time occupied as his den a square small
room, behind the dining parlour in Castle Street. It had but a single Venetian window,
opening on a patch of turf not much larger than itself, and the aspect of the place was on
the whole sombrous. The walls were entirely clothed with books; most of them folios and
quartos, and all in that complete state of repair which at a glance reveals a tinge of
bibliomania. A dozen volumes or so, needful for immediate purposes of reference, were
placed close by him on a small movable frame—something like a dumb-waiter. All the rest
were in their proper niches, and wherever a volume had been lent, its room was occupied by
a wooden block of the same size, having a card with the name of the borrower and date of
the loan, tacked on its front. The old bindings had obviously been retouched and regilt in
the most approved manner; the new, when the books were of any mark, were rich but never
gaudy—a large proportion of blue morocco—all stamped with his device
of the portcullis, and its motto clausus tutus
ero—being an anagram of his name in Latin. Every case and shelf was
accurately lettered, and the works arranged systematically; history and biography on one
side—poetry and the drama on another—law books and dictionaries behind his own chair. The
only table was a massive piece of
furniture which he had had constructed on the model of one at Rokeby; with a desk and all
its appurtenances on either side, that an amanuensis might work opposite to him when he
chose; and with small tiers of drawers, reaching all round to the floor. The top displayed
a goodly array of session papers, and on the desk below were, besides the MS. at which he
was working, sundry parcels of letters, proof-sheets, and so forth, all neatly done up with
red tape. His own writing apparatus was a very handsome old box, richly carved, lined with
crimson velvet, and containing ink-bottles, taper-stand, &c. in silver—the whole in
such order that it might have come from the silversmith’s window half an hour before.
Besides his own huge elbow chair, there were but two others in the room, and one of these
seemed, from its position, to be reserved exclusively for the amanuensis. I observed,
during the first evening I spent with him in this sanctum, that
while he talked, his hands were hardly ever idle. Sometimes he folded
letter-covers—sometimes he twisted paper into matches, performing both tasks with great
mechanical expertness and nicety; and when there was no loose paper fit to be so dealt
with, he snapped his fingers, and the noble Maida aroused
himself from his lair on the hearth-rug, and laid his head across his master’s knees,
to be caressed and fondled. The room had no space for pictures except one, an original
portrait of Claverhouse, which hung over the
chimneypiece, with a Highland target on either side, and broadswords and dirks (each having
its own story), disposed star-fashion round them. A few green tin-boxes, such as solicitors
keep title-deeds in, were piled over each other on one side of the window; and on the top
of these lay a fox’s tail, mounted on an antique silver handle, wherewith, as often
as he had occasion to take down a book, he gently brushed the dust
off the upper leaves before opening it. I think I have mentioned all the furniture of the
room except a sort of ladder, low, broad, well-carpeted, and strongly guarded with oaken
rails, by which he helped himself to books from his higher shelves. On the top step of this
convenience, Hinse of Hinsfeldt,—(so called from one of the
German Kinder-märchen)—a venerable tom-cat,
fat and sleek, and no longer very locomotive, usually lay watching the proceedings of his
master and Maida with an air of dignified equanimity; but when
Maida chose to leave the party, he signified his
inclinations by thumping the door with his huge paw, as violently, as ever a fashionable
footman handled a knocker in Grosvenor Square; the Sheriff rose and opened it for him with
courteous alacrity,—and then Hinse came down purring from his
perch, and mounted guard by the foot-stool, viceMaida absent upon furlough.
Whatever discourse might be passing was broken, every now and then, by some affectionate
apostrophe to these four-footed friends. He said they understood every thing he said to
them, and I believe they did understand a great deal of it. But at all events, dogs and
cats, like children, have some infallible tact for discovering at once who is, and who is
not, really fond of their company; and I venture to say, Scott was
never five minutes in any room before the little pets of the family, whether dumb or
lisping, had found out his kindness for all their generation.
I never thought it lawful to keep a journal of what passes in private
society, so that no one need expect from the sequel of this narrative any detailed record
of Scott’s familiar talk. What fragments of it
have happened to adhere to a tolerably retentive memory, and may be put into black and
white without wounding any feelings which my friend, were he alive, would have wished to spare, I shall introduce as the
occasion suggests or serves; but I disclaim on the threshold any thing more than this; and
I also wish to enter a protest once for all against the general fidelity of several
literary gentlemen who have kindly forwarded to me private lucubrations of theirs, designed
to BoswellizeScott, and which they may
probably publish hereafter. To report conversations fairly, it is a necessary prerequisite
that we should be completely familiar with all the interlocutors, and understand thoroughly
all their minutest relations, and points of common knowledge, and common feeling, with each
other. He who does not, must be perpetually in danger of misinterpreting sportive allusion
into serious statement; and the man who was only recalling, by some jocular phrase or
half-phrase, to an old companion, some trivial reminiscence of their boyhood or youth, may
be represented as expressing, upon some person or incident casually tabled, an opinion
which he had never framed, or if he had, would never have given words to in any mixed
assemblage—not even among what the world calls friends at his own
board. In proportion as a man is witty and humorous, there will always be about him and his
a widening maze and wilderness of cues and catchwords, which the uninitiated will, if they
are bold enough to try interpretation, construe, ever and anon, egregiously amiss—not
seldom into arrant falsity. For this one reason, to say nothing of many others, I consider
no man justified in journalizing what he sees and hears in a domestic circle where he is
not thoroughly at home; and I think there are still higher and better reasons why he should
not do so where he is.
Before I ever met Scott in private, I
had, of course, heard many people describe and discuss his style of
conversation. Every body seemed to agree that it overflowed with hearty good humour, as
well as plain unaffected good sense and sagacity; but I had heard not a few persons of
undoubted ability and accomplishment maintain, that the genius of the great poet and
novelist rarely, if ever, revealed itself in his talk. It is needless to say, that the
persons I allude to were all his own countrymen, and themselves imbued, more or less, with
the conversational habits derived from a system of education in which the study of
metaphysics occupies a very large share of attention. The best table-talk of Edinburgh was,
and probably still is, in a very great measure made up of brilliant disquisition—such as
might be transferred without alteration to a professor’s note-book, or the pages of a
critical Review—and of sharp word-catchings, ingenious thrusting and parrying of
dialectics, and all the quips and quibblets of bar pleading. It was the talk of a society
to which lawyers and lecturers had, for at least a hundred years, given the tone. From the
date of the Union Edinburgh ceased to be the headquarters of the Scotch nobility—and long
before the time of which I speak they had all but entirely abandoned it as a place of
residence. I think I never knew above two or three of the Peerage to have houses there at
the same time and these were usually among the poorest and most insignificant of their
order. The wealthier gentry had followed their example. Very few of that class ever spent
any considerable part of the year in Edinburgh, except for the purposes of educating their
children, or superintending the progress of a lawsuit; and these were not more likely than
a score or two of comatose and lethargic old Indians, to make head against the established
influences of academical and forensic celebrity. Now Scott’s tastes and resources had not much in
common with those who had inherited and preserved the chief authority in this provincial
hierarchy of rhetoric. He was highly amused with watching their dexterous logomachies—but
his delight in such displays arose mainly, I cannot doubt, from the fact of their being,
both as to subject-matter and style and method, remote a Scævolæ studiis. He sat by, as he would have done at a
stage-play or a fencing-match, enjoying and applauding the skill exhibited, but without
feeling much ambition to parade himself as a rival either of the foil or the buskin. I can
easily believe, therefore, that in the earlier part of his life—before the blaze of
universal fame had overawed local prejudice, and a new generation, accustomed to hear of
that fame from their infancy, had grown up—it may have been the commonly adopted creed in
Edinburgh, that Scott, however distinguished otherwise, was not to be
named as a table-companion in the same day with this or that master of luminous
dissertation or quick rejoinder, who now sleeps as forgotten as his grandmother. It was
natural enough that persons brought up in the same circle with him, who remembered all his
beginnings, and had but slowly learned to acquiesce in the justice of his claim to
unrivalled honour in literature, should have clung all the closer for that late
acquiescence to their original estimate of him as inferior to themselves in other titles to
admiration. It was also natural that their prejudice on that score should be readily taken
up by the young aspirants who breathed, as it were, the atmosphere of their professional
renown. Perhaps, too, Scott’s steady Toryism, and the effect of
his genius and example in modifying the intellectual sway of the long dominant Whigs in the
north, may have had some share in this matter. However all that may have been, the sub-stance of what I had been accustomed to hear certainly was, that
Scott had a marvellous stock of queer stories, which he often told
with happy effect, but that, bating these drafts on a portentous memory, set off with a
simple old-fashioned naiveté of humour and pleasantry, his
strain of talk was remarkable neither for depth of remark nor felicity of illustration;
that his views and opinions on the most important topics of practical interest were
hopelessly perverted by his blind enthusiasm for the dreams of by-gone ages; and that, but
for the grotesque phenomenon presented by a great writer of the 19th century gravely
uttering sentiments worthy of his own Dundees and
Invernahyles, the main texture of his discourse
would be pronounced by any enlightened member of modern society rather bald and poor than
otherwise. I think the epithet most in vogue was commonplace.
It will easily be believed, that, in companies such as I have been
alluding to, made up of, or habitually domineered over by voluble Whigs and political
economists, Scott was often tempted to put forth his
Tory doctrines and antiquarian prejudices in an exaggerated shape—in colours, to say the
truth, altogether different from what they assumed under other circumstances, or which had
any real influence upon his mind and conduct on occasions of practical moment. But I fancy
it will seem equally credible, that the most sharp-sighted of these social critics may not
always have been capable of tracing, and doing justice to, the powers which
Scott brought to bear upon the topics which they, not he, had
chosen for discussion. In passing from a gas-lit hall into a room with wax candles, the
guests sometimes complain that they have left splendour for gloom; but let them try by what
sort of light it is most satisfactory to read, write, or embroider, or consider at leisure
under which of the two either men or
women look their best.
The strongest, purest, and least observed of all lights is, however,
daylight; and his talk was commonplace, just as sunshine is, which gilds the most
indifferent objects, and adds brilliancy to the brightest. As for the old-world anecdotes
which these clever persons were condescending enough to laugh at as pleasant extravagances,
serving merely to relieve and set off the main stream of debate, they were often enough, it
may be guessed, connected with the theme in hand by links not the less apt that they might
be too subtle to catch their bedazzled and self-satisfied optics. There might be keener
knowledge of human nature than was “dreamt of in their philosophy” which
passed with them for commonplace, only because it was clothed in plain familiar household
words, not dressed up in some pedantic masquerade of antithesis. “There are
people,” says Landor, “who
think they write and speak finely, merely because they have forgotten the language in
which their fathers and mothers used to talk to them;” and surely there are a
thousand homely old proverbs, which many a dainty modern would think it beneath his dignity
to quote either in speech or writing, any one of which condenses more wit (take that word
in any of its senses) than could be extracted from all that was ever said or written by the
doctrinaires of the Edinburgh school. Many of those gentlemen
held Scott’s conversation to be commonplace
exactly for the same reason that a child thinks a perfectly limpid stream, though perhaps
deep enough to drown it three times over, must needs be shallow. But it will be easily
believed that the best and highest of their own idols had better means and skill of
measurement: I can never forget the pregnant expression of one of the ablest of that school
and party—Lord Cockburn—who,
when some glib youth chanced to echo in his hearing the consolatory tenet of local
mediocrity, answered quietly—“I have the misfortune to think differently from you—in
my humble opinion Walter Scott’ssense is a still more wonderful thing than his genius.”
Indeed I have no sort of doubt that, long before 1818, full justice was
done to Scott, even in these minor things, by all those
of his Edinburgh acquaintance, whether Whig or Tory, on whose personal opinion he could
have been supposed to set much value. With few exceptions, the really able lawyers of his
own or nearly similar standing had ere that time attained stations of judicial dignity, or
were in the springtime of practice; and in either case they were likely to consider general
society much in his own fashion, as the joyous relaxation of life, rather than the theatre
of exertion and display. Their tables were elegantly, some of them sumptuously spread; and
they lived in a pretty constant interchange of entertainments upon a large scale, in every
circumstance of which, conversation included, it was their ambition to imitate those
voluptuous metropolitan circles, wherein most of them had from time to time mingled, and
several of them with distinguished success. Among such prosperous gentlemen, like himself
past the mezzo cammin,
Scott’s picturesque anecdotes, rich easy humour, and gay
involuntary glances of mother-wit, were, it is not difficult to suppose, appreciated above
contributions of a more ambitious stamp; and no doubt his London reputation de salon (which had by degrees risen to a high pitch,
although he cared nothing for it) was not without its effect in Edinburgh. But still the
old prejudice lingered on in the general opinion of the place, especially among the smart
praters of the Outer-House, whose glimpses of the social habits of their superiors were likely to
be rare, and their gall-bladders to be more distended than their purses.
In truth it was impossible to listen to Scott’s oral narrations, whether gay or serious, or to the felicitous
fun with which he parried absurdities of all sorts, without discovering better qualities in
his talk than wit—and of a higher order; I mean especially a power
of vivid painting—the true and primary sense of what is called Imagination. He was like Jacques
though not a “Melancholy Jacques;”
and “moralized” a common topic “into a thousand
similitudes.” Shakspeare and the
banished Duke would have found him “full of matter.” He disliked mere
disquisitions in Edinburgh, and prepared impromptus in London; and
puzzled the promoters of such, things sometimes by placid silence, sometimes by broad
merriment. To such men he seemed common-place—not so to the most
dexterous masters in what was to some of them almost a science; not so to Rose, Hallam,
Moore, or Rogers,—to Ellis, Macintosh, Croker,
of Canning.
Scott managed to give and receive such great dinners as
I have been alluding to at least as often as any other private gentleman in Edinburgh; but
he very rarely accompanied his wife and daughters to the evening assemblies, which commonly
ensued under other roofs—for early to rise, unless in the case of
spare-fed anchorites, takes for granted early to bed. When he had no
dinner engagement, he frequently gave a few hours to the theatre; but still more
frequently, when the weather was fine, and still more, I believe, to his own satisfaction,
he drove out with some of his family, or a single friend, in an open carriage; the
favourite rides being either to the Blackford Hills, or to Ravelston, and so home by
Corstorphine; or to the beach of Portobello, where Peter was always instructed to keep his horses as
near as pos-sible to the sea. More than once, even in the first summer
of my acquaintance with him, I had the pleasure of accompanying him on these evening
excursions; and never did he seem to enjoy himself more fully than when placidly surveying
at such sunset or moonlight hours, either the massive outlines of his “own
romantic town,” or the tranquil expanse of its noble estuary. He delighted,
too, in passing when he could, through some of the quaint windings of the ancient city
itself, now deserted, except at mid-day, by the upper world. How often have I seen him go a
long way round about, rather than miss the opportunity of halting for a few minutes on the
vacant esplanade of Holyrood, or under the darkest shadows of the Castle rock, where it
overhangs the Grassmarket, and the huge slab that still marks where the gibbet of Porteous and the Covenanters had its station. His coachman
knew him too well to move at a Jehu’s pace amidst such scenes as
these. No funeral hearse crept more leisurely than did his landau up the Canongate or the
Cowgate; and not a queer tottering gable but recalled to him some long-buried memory of
splendour or bloodshed, which, by a few words, he set before the hearer in the reality of
life. His image is so associated in my mind with the antiquities of his native place, that
I cannot now revisit them without feeling as if I were treading on his gravestone.
Whatever might happen on the other evenings of the week, he always dined
at home on Sunday, and usually some few friends were then with him, but never any person
with whom he stood on ceremony. These were, it may readily be supposed, the most agreeable
of his entertainments. He came into the room rubbing his hands, his face bright and
gleesome, like a boy arriving at home for the holydays, his Peppers and Mustards gambolling about his heels, and
even the stately Maida grinning and wagging his tail in sympathy. Among the most
regular guests on these happy evenings were, in my time, as had long before been the case,
Mrs Maclean Clephane of Torloisk, (with whom he
agreed cordially on all subjects except the authenticity of Ossian), and her daughters, whose guardian he had become, at their own
choice. The eldest of them had been for some years married to the Earl Compton (now
Marquis of Northampton), and was of course seldom
in the north; but the others had much of the same tastes and accomplishments which so
highly distinguished the late Lady Northampton; and
Scott delighted especially in their proficiency in
the poetry and music of their native isles. Mr and
Mrs Skene of Rubislaw were frequent attendants
and so were the Macdonald-Buchanans of Drumakiln,
whose eldest daughter, Isabella, was his chief favourite among all his
nieces of the Clerk’s table—as was, among the nephews, my own dear friend and companion, Joseph Hume, a singularly graceful young man, rich in the
promise of hereditary genius, but, alas! cut off in the early bloom of his days. The
well-beloved Erskine was seldom absent; and very
often Terry or James
Ballantyne came with him—sometimes, though less frequently, Constable. Among other persons who now and then appeared
at these “dinners without the silver dishes,” as
Scott called them, I may mention to say nothing of such old
cronies as Mr Clerk, Mr
Thomson, and Mr Kirkpatrick
Sharpe—Sir Alexander Boswell of
Auchinleck, who had all his father Bozzy’s cleverness, good humour, and joviality, without one touch of
his meaner qualities,—wrote Jenny dang the
Weaver, and some other popular songs, which he sang capitally—and was
moreover a thorough bibliomaniac; the late Sir Alexander Don of
Newton, in all courteous and elegant accomplishments the model of a
cavalier; and last, not least, William
Allan, R. A., who had shortly before this time returned to Scotland from
several years of travel in Russia and Turkey. At one of these plain hearty dinners,
however, the company rarely exceeded three or four, besides the as yet undivided family.
Scott had a story of a topping goldsmith on the Bridge
who prided himself on being the mirror of Amphitryons,
and accounted for his success by stating that it was his invariable custom to set his own
stomach at ease, by a beef-steak and a pint of port in his backshop, half an hour before
the arrival of his guests. But the host of Castle Street had no occasion to imitate this
prudent arrangement, for his appetite at dinner was neither keen nor nice. Breakfast was
his chief meal. Before that came he had gone through the severest part of his day’s
work, and he then set to with the zeal of Crabbe’sSquire Tovell— “And laid at once a pound upon his plate.” No foxhunter ever prepared himself for the field by more substantial appliances. His
table was always provided, in addition to the usually plentiful delicacies of a Scotch
breakfast, with some solid article, on which he did most lusty execution—a round of beef—a
pasty, such as made Gil Blas’s eyes water—or,
most welcome of all, a cold sheep’s head, the charms of which primitive dainty he has
so gallantly defended against the disparaging sneers of Dr
Johnson and his bear-leader.* A huge
brown loaf flanked his elbow, and it was placed upon a broad wooden trencher, that he might
cut and come again with the bolder knife. Often did the Clerks’
coach, commonly called among themselves the Lively—which
trundled round every morning to pick up the
* See Croker’sBoswell (edit. 1831), vol. iii. p. 88.
brotherhood, and then deposited them at the
proper minute in the Parliament Close—often did this lumbering hackney arrive at his door
before he had fully appeased what Homer calls
“the sacred rage of hunger”: and vociferous was the merriment of the
learned uncles, when the surprised poet swung forth to join them,
with an extemporized sandwich, that looked like a ploughman’s luncheon, in his hand.
But this robust supply would have served him in fact for the day. He never tasted any thing
more before dinner, and at dinner he ate almost as sparingly as Squire Tovell’s niece from the boarding-school— ——“Who cut the sanguine flesh in frustums fine, And marvelled much to see the creatures dine.”
The only dishes he was at all fond of were the old-fashioned ones, to
which he had been accustomed in the days of Saunders
Fairford; and which really are excellent dishes, such, in truth, as Scotland
borrowed from France before Catherine de Medicis
brought in her Italian virtuosi to revolutionize the kitchen like
the court. Of most of these, I believe, he has in the course of his novels found some
opportunity to record his esteem. But, above all, who can forget that his King Jamie, amidst the splendours of Whitehall, thinks himself
an ill-used monarch unless his first course includes cockyleekie?
It is a fact, which some philosophers may think worth setting down, that
Scott’s organization, as to more than one of
the senses, was the reverse of exquisite. He had very little of what musicians call an ear;
his smell was hardly more delicate. I have seen him stare about, quite unconscious of the
cause, when his whole company betrayed their uneasiness at the approach of an overkept
haunch of venison; and neither by the nose nor the palate could he distinguish corked wine
from sound. He could never tell Madeira from Sherry—nay, an Oriental
friend having sent him a butt of sheeraz, when he remembered the
circumstance some time afterwards, and called for a bottle to have Sir John Malcolm’s opinion of its quality, it turned
out that his butler, mistaking the label, had already served up half the binn as sherry. Port he considered as physic: he never willingly swallowed
more than one glass of it, and was sure to anathematize a second, if offered, by repeating
John Home’s epigram— “Bold and erect the Caledonian stood, Old was his mutton, and his claret good; Let him drink port, the English statesman cried— He drank the poison, and his spirit died.” In truth, he liked no wines except sparkling Champagne and claret; but even as to this
last he was no connoisseur; and sincerely preferred a tumbler of whisky-toddy to the most
precious “liquid ruby” that ever flowed in the cup of a prince. He rarely took
any other potation when quite alone with his family; but at the Sunday board he circulated
the Champagne briskly during dinner, and considered a pint of claret each man’s fair
share afterwards. I should not omit, however, that his Bourdeaux was uniformly preceded by
a small libation of the genuine mountain dew, which he poured with
his own hand, more majorum, for each guest—making
use for the purpose of such a multifarious collection of ancient Highland quaighs (little cups of curiously dovetailed wood, inlaid with silver) as no
Lowland sideboard but his was ever equipped with—but commonly reserving for himself one
that was peculiarly precious in his eyes, as having travelled from Edinburgh to Derby in
the canteen of Prince Charlie. This relic had been
presented to “the wandering Ascanius” by some very careful follower, for its bottom is of glass,
that he who quaffed might keep his eye
the while upon the dirk hand of his companion.
The sound of music—(even, I suspect, of any sacred music but
psalm-singing)—would be considered indecorous in the streets of Edinburgh on a Sunday
night; so, upon the occasions I am speaking of, the harp was silent, and Otterburne and The Bonny House of Airlie must needs be dispensed with. To make
amends, after tea in the drawing-room, Scott usually
read some favourite author, for the amusement of his little circle; or Erskine, Ballantyne, or Terry did so, at his
request. He himself read aloud high poetry with far greater simplicity, depth, and effect,
than any other man I ever heard; and, in Macbeth or Julius
Cæsar, or the like, I doubt if Kemble
could have been more impressive. Yet the changes of intonation were so gently managed, that
he contrived to set the different interlocutors clearly before us, without the least
approach to theatrical artifice. Not so the others I have mentioned: they all read cleverly
and agreeably, but with the decided trickery of stage recitation. To them he usually gave
the book when it was a comedy, or, indeed, any other drama than Shakspeare’s or Joanna
Baillie’s. Dryden’sFables, Johnson’s two Satires, and certain detached scenes
of Beaumont and Fletcher, especially that in the Lover’s Progress, where
the ghost of the musical innkeeper makes his appearance, were frequently selected. Of the
poets, his contemporaries, however, there was not one that did not come in for his part. In
Wordsworth, his pet pieces were, I think, the
Song for Brougham
Castle, the Laodamia, and some of the early sonnets:—in Southey, Queen Orraca, Fernando Ramirez, the Lines on the Holly Tree—and, of his larger poems, the Thalaba. Crabbe was perhaps, next to
Shakspeare, the standing resource; but in those days Byron was pouring out his spirit fresh
and full; and, if a new piece from his hand had appeared, it was sure to be read by
Scott the Sunday evening afterwards, and that with such delighted
emphasis, as showed how completely the elder bard had kept all his enthusiasm for poetry at
the pitch of youth, all his admiration of genius free, pure, and unstained by the least
drop of literary jealousy. Rare and beautiful example of a happily constituted and
virtuously disciplined mind and character!
Very often something read aloud by himself or his friends suggested an
old story of greater compass than would have suited a dinner-table—and he told it, whether
serious or comical, or, as more frequently happened, part of both, exactly in every respect
in the tone and style of the notes and illustrations to his novels. A great number of his
best oral narratives have, indeed, been preserved in those parting lucubrations; and not a
few in his letters. Yet very many there were of which his pen has left no record—so many,
that, were I to task my memory, I could, I believe, recall the outlines at least of more
than would be sufficient to occupy a couple of these volumes. Possibly, though well aware
how little justice I could do to such things, rather than think of their perishing for
ever, and leaving not even a shadow behind, I may at some future day hazard the attempt.
Let me turn, meanwhile, to some dinner-tables very different from his
own, at which, from this time forward, I often met Scott. It is very true of the societies I am about to describe, that he was
“among them, not of them;” and it is also most true that this fact
was apparent in all the demeanour of his bibliopolical and typographical allies towards him
whenever he visited them under their roofs—not a bit less so than when they were received
at his own board; but still, considering how closely his most important worldly affairs were
connected with the personal character of the Ballantynes, I think it a
part, though neither a proud nor a very pleasing part, of my duty as his biographer, to
record my reminiscences of them and their doings in some detail.
James Ballantyne then lived in St John Street, a row
of good, old-fashioned, and spacious houses, adjoining the Canongate and Holyrood, and at
no great distance from his printing establishment. He had married a few years before the
daughter of a wealthy farmer in Berwickshire—a
quiet, amiable woman, of simple manners, and perfectly domestic habits: a group of fine
young children were growing up about him; and he usually, if not constantly, had under his
roof his aged mother, his and his wife’s tender care of whom it was most pleasing to
witness. As far as a stranger might judge, there could not be a more exemplary household,
or a happier one; and I have occasionally met the poet in St John Street when there were no
other guests but Erskine, Terry, George
Hogarth,* and another intimate friend or two, and when James
Ballantyne was content to appear in his own true and best colours, the kind
head of his family, the respectful but honest school-fellow of Scott, the easy landlord of a plain, comfortable table. But when any great
event was about to take place in the business, especially on the eve of a new novel, there
were doings of a higher strain in St John Street; and to be present at one of those scenes
was truly a rich treat, even—if not especially—for persons who, like myself, had no more
knowledge than the rest of the world as to the
* George Hogarth, Esq.,
W.S., brother of Mrs James Ballantyne. This
gentleman is now, well known in the literary world; especially by a History of Music, of which
all who understand that science speak highly.
authorship of Waverley. Then were congregated about the printer all his own literary allies,
of whom a considerable number were by no means personally familiar with “the great unknown:”—who, by the way, owed to him that
widely adopted title;—and He appeared among the rest with his usual open aspect of buoyant
good-humour—although it was not difficult to trace, in the occasional play of his features,
the diversion it afforded him to watch all the procedure of his swelling confidant, and the
curious neophytes that surrounded the well-spread board.
The feast was, to use one of James’s own favourite epithets, gorgeous; an
aldermanic display of turtle and venison, with the suitable accompaniments of iced punch,
potent ale, and generous Madeira. When the cloth was drawn the burley preses arose, with
all he could muster of the port of John Kemble, and
spouted with a sonorous voice the formula of Macbeth— “Fill full! I drink to the general joy of the whole table!” This was followed by “the King, God bless him!” and second
came—“Gentlemen, there is another toast which never has been nor shall be
omitted in this house of mine—I give you the health of Mr
Walter Scott, with three times three!” All honour having been
done to this health, and Scott having briefly thanked the company with
some expressions of warm affection to their host, Mrs
Ballantyne retired; the bottles passed round twice or thrice in the usual
way; and then James rose once more, every vein on his brow distended,
his eyes solemnly fixed upon vacancy, to propose, not as before in his stentorian key, but
with “’bated breath,” in the sort of whisper by which a stage conspirator
thrills the gallery “Gentlemen, a bumper to the immortal Au-thor of Waverley!” The uproar of cheering,
in which Scott made a fashion of joining, was succeeded by deep
silence, and then Ballantyne proceeded “In his Lord-Burleigh-look, serene
and serious, A something of imposing and mysterious”— to lament the obscurity in which his illustrious but too modest correspondent still
chose to conceal himself from the plaudits of the world—to thank the company for the manner
in which the nominis umbra had been received—and
to assure them that the Author of Waverley would, when informed of the
circumstance, feel highly delighted “the proudest hour of his life,”
&c. &c. The cool, demure fun of Scott’s features during
all this mummery was perfect; and Erskine’s
attempt at a gay non-chalance was still more ludicrously
meritorious. Aldiborontiphoscophornio, however,
bursting as he was, knew too well to allow the new novel to be made the subject of
discussion. Its name was announced, and success to it crowned another cup; but after that
no more of Jedediah. To cut the thread, he rolled out
unbidden some one of his many theatrical songs, in a style that would have done no
dishonour to almost any orchestra—The Maid of
Lodi, or, perhaps, the Bay of
Biscay, oh!—or The sweet little
cherub that sits up aloft. Other toasts followed, interspersed with
ditties from other performers; old George Thomson,
the friend of Burns, was ready for one with The Moorland Wedding, or Wittie brew’d a peck o’ maut; and so it
went on, until Scott and Erskine, with any
clerical or very staid personage that had chanced to be admitted, saw fit to withdraw. Then
the scene was changed. The claret and olives made way for broiled bones and a mighty bowl
of punch; and when a few glasses of the hot beverage had restored his powers,
James opened ore rotunda
on the merits of the forthcoming romance. “One chapter—one chapter only” was the cry. After “nay,
byr Lady, nay!” and a few more coy shifts, the proof-sheets were at length
produced, and James, with many a prefatory hem, read aloud what he
considered as the most striking dialogue they contained.
The first I heard so read was the interview between Jeanie Deans, the Duke of
Argyle, and Queen Caroline, in Richmond
Park; and notwithstanding some spice of the pompous tricks to which he was addicted, I must
say he did the inimitable scene great justice. At all events, the effect it produced was
deep and memorable, and no wonder that the exulting typographer’s one bumper more toJedediah
Cleishbotham preceded his parting-stave, which was uniformly The Last Words of Marmion, executed
certainly with no contemptible rivalry of Braham.
What a different affair was a dinner, although probably including many
of the same guests, at the junior partner’s. He in those days retained, I think, no
private apartments attached to his auction-rooms in Hanover Street, over the door of which
he still kept emblazoned “John Ballantyne and
Company, Booksellers.” At any rate, such of his entertainments as I ever saw
Scott partake of, were given at his villa near to
the Frith of Forth, by Trinity; a retreat which the little man had named “Harmony
Hall,” and invested with an air of dainty voluptuous finery, contrasting strikingly
enough with the substantial citizen-like snugness of his elder brother’s domestic
appointments. His house was surrounded by gardens so contrived as to seem of considerable
extent, having many a shady tuft, trellised alley, and mysterious alcove, interspersed
among their bright parterres. It was a fairy-like labyrinth, and there was no want of
pretty Armidas, such as they might be, to glide
half-seen among its mazes. The
sitting-rooms opened upon gay and perfumed conservatories, and
John’s professional excursions to Paris and Brussels in
quest of objects of virtu, had supplied both the
temptation and the means to set forth the interior in a fashion that might have satisfied
the most fastidious petite maitresse of Norwood
or St Denis. John too was a married man: he had, however, erected for
himself a private wing, the accesses to which, whether from the main building or the
bosquet, were so narrow that it was physically impossible for the handsome and portly
lady who bore his name to force her person
through any one of them. His dinners were in all respects Parisian, for his wasted palate
disdained such John Bull luxuries as were all in all
with James. The piquant pasty of Strasburg or Perigord was never to
seek; and even the pièce de résistance was probably a
boar’s head from Coblentz, or a turkey ready stuffed with truffles from the Palais
Royal. The pictures scattered among John’s innumerable mirrors,
were chiefly of theatrical subjects—many of them portraits of beautiful actresses—the same
Peg Woffingtons, Bellamys, Kitty Clives, and so
forth, that found their way in the sequel to Charles
Matthews’s gallery at Highgate. Here that exquisite comedian’s
own mimicries and parodies were the life and soul of many a festival, and here, too, he
gathered from his facetious host not a few of the richest materials for his at homes and monopolylogues. But, indeed,
whatever actor or singer of eminence visited Edinburgh, of the evenings when he did not
perform several were sure to be reserved for Trinity. Here Braham quavered, and here Liston
drolled his best—here Johnstone, and Murray, and Yates,
mixed jest and stave—here Kean revelled and rioted
and here the Roman Kemble often played the Greek
from sunset to dawn. Nor did the popular cantatrice or danseuse of the
time disdain to freshen her roses, after a laborious week, amidst
these Paphian arbours of Harmony Hall.
Johnny had other tastes that were equally expensive.
He had a well-furnished stable, and followed the foxhounds whenever the cover was within an
easy distance. His horses were all called after heroes in Scott’s poems or novels; and at this time he usually rode up to his
auction on a tall milk-white hunter, yclept Old
Mortality; attended by a leash or two of greyhounds,—Die Vernon, Jenny Dennison, and so
forth, by name. The featherweight himself appeared uniformly, hammer-in-hand, in the
half-dress of some sporting club—a light grey frock, with emblems of the chase on its
silver buttons, white cord breeches, and jockey-boots in Meltonian order. Yet he affected
in the pulpit rather a grave address; and was really one of the most plausible and imposing
of the Puff tribe. Probably Scott’s presence overawed his
ludicrous propensities; for the poet was, when sales were going on, almost a daily
attendant in Hanover Street, and himself not the least energetic of the numerous
competitors for Johnny’s uncut fifteeners, Venetian lamps, Milanese cuirasses, and old Dutch cabinets. Maida, by the way, was so well aware of his master’s habits,
that about the time when the Court of Session was likely to break up for the day, he might
usually be seen couched in expectation among Johnny’s own tail
of greyhounds at the threshold of the mart.
It was at one of those Trinity dinners this summer, that I first saw
Constable. Being struck with his appearance, I
asked Scott who he was, and he told me—expressing some
surprise—that any body should have lived a winter or two in Edinburgh without knowing, by
sight at least, a citizen whose name was so familiar to the world. I happened to say that I
had not been prepared to find the great bookseller a man of such gentlemanlike and even distinguished bearing.
Scott smiled and answered—“Ay,
Constable is indeed a grandlooking chield. He puts me in mind
of Fielding’s apology for Lady Booby—to wit, that Joseph
Andrews had an air which, to those who had not seen many noblemen, would
give an idea of nobility.” I had not in those days been much initiated in the
private jokes of what is called, by way of excellence, the trade,
and was puzzled when Scott, in the course of the dinner, said to
Constable, “Will your Czarish Majesty do me the honour to
take a glass of Champagne?” I asked the master of the feast for an
explanation. “Oh!” said he, “are you so green as not to know
that Constable long since dubbed himself The
Czar of Muscovy, John MurrayThe Emperor of the West, and Longman and his string of partners The
Divan?”—“And what title,” I asked, “has
Mr John Ballantyne himself found in this new
almanac imperial?” “Let that flee stick to
the wa’,” quoth Johnny; “When I set up for a
bookseller, The Crafty christened me The Dey of
Alljeers—but he now considers me as next thing to dethroned.” He
added—“His majesty the autocrat is too fond of these nicknames. One day a
partner of the house of Longman was dining with him in the
country, to settle an important piece of business, about which there occurred a good
deal of difficulty. ‘What fine swans you have in your pond there,’
said the Londoner, by way of parenthesis.—‘Swans!’ cried
Constable—‘they are only geese, man. There are just
five of them, if you please to observe, and their names are
Longman, Hurst,
Rees, Orme, and Brown.’
This skit cost The Crafty a good bargain.”
It always appeared to me that James
Ballantyne felt his genius rebuked in the presence of Constable; his manner was constrained, his smile servile,
his hilarity elaborate. Not so with Johnny: the little fellow never seemed more airily frolicsome than when he
capered for the amusement of the Czar.* I never, however, saw those two together, where I
am told the humours of them both were exhibited to the richest advantage—I mean at the
Sunday dinners with which Constable regaled, among others, his own
circle of literary serfs, and when “Jocund Johnny” was
very commonly his croupier. There are stories enough of practical jokes upon such
occasions, some of them near akin to those which the author of Humphrey
Clinker has thought fit to record of his own suburban villa, in the most
diverting of young Melford’s letters to Sir Watkin Philips. I have heard, for example, a luculent
description of poor Elshender
Campbell, and another drudge of the same class, running a race after
dinner for a new pair of breeches, which Mr David
Bridges, tailor in ordinary to this northern potentate—himself a wit, a
virtuoso, and the croupier on that day in lieu of Rigdum—had been
instructed to bring with him, and display before the threadbare rivals. But I had these
pictures from John Ballantyne, and I daresay they might be
overcharged. That Constable was a most bountiful and generous patron
to the ragged tenants of Grub Street there can, however, be no doubt; and as little that
John himself acted on all occasions by them in the same spirit,
and this to an extent greatly beyond what prudence (if he had ever consulted that guide in
any thing) would have dictated.
* “Now, John,” cried Constable one
evening after he had told one of his best stories—“Now,
John, is that true?” His object evidently was,
in Iago’s phrase, to let
down the pegs; but Rigdum answered gaily, “True,
indeed? Not one word of it!—any blockhead may stick to truth, my hearty—but
’tis a sad hamperer of genius.”
When I visited Constable, as I
often did at a period somewhat later than that of which I now speak, and for the most part
in company with Scott, I found the bookseller
established in a respectable country gentleman’s seat, some six or seven miles out of
Edinburgh, and doing the honours of it with all the ease that might have been looked for
had he been the long-descended owner of the place. There was no foppery, no show, no idle
luxury, but to all appearance the plain abundance and simple enjoyment of hereditary
wealth. His conversation was manly and vigorous, abounding in Scotch anecdotes of the old
time, which he told with a degree of spirit and humour only second to his great
author’s. No man could more effectually control, when he had a mind, either the
extravagant vanity which, on too many occasions, made him ridiculous, or the despotic
temper, which habitually held in fear and trembling all such as were in any sort dependent
on his Czarish Majesty’s pleasure. In him I never saw (at this period) any thing but
the unobtrusive sense and the calm courtesy of a well-bred gentleman. His very equipage
kept up the series of contrasts between him and the two Ballantynes.
Constable went back and forward between the town and Polton in a
deep-hung and capacious green barouche, without any pretence at heraldic blazonry, drawn by
a pair of sleek, black, long-tailed horses, and conducted by a grave old coachman in plain
blue livery. The Printer of the Canongate drove himself and his wife about the streets and
suburbs in a snug machine, which did not overburthen one powerful and steady cob; while the
gay auctioneer, whenever he left the saddle for the box, mounted a bright blue dog-cart,
and rattled down the Newhaven road with two high-mettled steeds, prancing tandem before
him, and most probably—especially if he was on his way to the races
at Musselburgh—with some “sweet singer of Israel” flaming, with all her
feathers, beside him. On such occasions, by the by, Johnny sometimes
had a French horn with him, and he played on it with good skill, and with an energy by no
means prudent in the state of his lungs.
The Sheriff told with peculiar
unction the following anecdote of this spark. The first time he went over to pick up
curiosities at Paris, it happened that he met, in the course of his traffickings, a certain
brother bookseller of Edinburgh, as unlike him as one man could well be to another—a grave,
dry Presbyterian, rigid in all his notions as the buckle of his wig. This precise worthy
having ascertained John’s address, went to
call on him, a day or two afterwards, with the news of some richly illuminated missal,
which he might possibly be glad to make prize of. On asking for his friend, a smiling
laquais de place informed him that Monsieur had gone out, but that Madame was at
home. Not doubting that Mrs Ballantyne had
accompanied her husband on his trip, he desired to pay his respects to Madame, and was ushered in accordingly. “But oh, Mr
Scott!” said, or rather groaned the austere elder, on his
return from this modern Babylon “oh, Mr Scott, there was nae
Mrs John yonder, but a painted Jezabel sittin’ up in her
bed, wi’ a wheen impudent French limmers like hersel’, and twa or three
whiskered blackguards, takin’ their collation o’ nicknacks and champagne
wine! I ran out o’ the house as if I had been shot. What judgment will this
wicked warld come to! The Lord pity us!” Scott was a
severe enough censor in the general of such levities, but somehow, in the case of
Rigdumfunnidos, he seemed to regard them with much the same
toleration as the naughty tricks of a monkey in the “Jardin des Plantes.”
Why did Scott persist in mixing up
all his most important concerns with such people as I have been describing? I asked himself
that question too unceremoniously at a long subsequent period, and in due time the reader
shall see the answer I received. But it left the main question, to my apprehension, as much
in the dark as ever. I shall return to the sad subject hereafter more seriously; but in the
meantime let it suffice to say, that he was the most patient, long-suffering, affectionate,
and charitable of mankind; that in the case of both the Ballantynes he
could count, after all, on a sincerely, nay, a passionately devoted attachment to his
person; that, with the greatest of human beings, use is in all but unconquerable power; and
that he who so loftily tossed aside the seemingly most dangerous assaults of flattery, the
blandishment of dames, the condescension of princes, the enthusiasm of crowds—had still his
weak point upon which two or three humble besiegers, and one unwearied, though most
frivolous underminer, well knew how to direct their approaches. It was a favourite saw of
his own, that the wisest of our race often reserve the average stock of folly to be all
expended upon some one flagrant absurdity.
CHAPTER VI. PUBLICATION OF THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN—ITS
RECEPTION IN EDINBURGH AND IN ENGLAND—ABBOTSFORD IN OCTOBER—MELROSE ABBEY—DRYBURGH,
ETC.—LION-HUNTERS FROM AMERICA—TRAGEDY OF THE CHEROKEE
LOVERS—SCOTT’S DINNER TO THE SELKIRKSHIRE YEOMEN. 1818.
Hoping to be forgiven for a long digression, the biographer
willingly returns to the thread of Scott’s story.
The Heart of Mid-Lothian appeared, as has
been mentioned, before the close of June 1818; and among the letters which he received soon
afterwards from the friends by this time in the secret, there is one which (though I do not
venture to name the writer) I am tempted to take the
liberty of quoting:
“ . . . . . . Now for it . . . . I can speak to the
purpose, as I have not only read it myself, but am in a house where every body
is tearing it out of each other’s hands, and talking of nothing else. So
much for its success—the more flattering, because it overcomes a prejudice.
People were beginning to say the author would wear himself out; it was going on
too long in the same key, and no striking notes could possibly be produced. On
the contrary, I think the interest is stronger here than in any of the former
ones (always excepting my first-love Waverley) and one may congratulate you upon having effected what
many have tried to do, and nobody yet succeeded in, making the perfectly good character the
most interesting. Of late days, especially since it has been the fashion to
write moral and even religious novels, one might almost say of some of the wise
good heroines, what a lively girl once said to ***** of her well-meaning
aunt—‘Upon my word she is enough to make any body
wicked.’ And though beauty and talents are heaped on the right side,
the writer, in spite of himself, is sure to put agreeableness on the wrong; the
person, from whose errors he means you should take warning, runs away with your
secret partiality in the mean time. Had this very story been conducted by a
common hand, Effie would have attracted all
our concern and sympathy, Jeanie only cold
approbation. Whereas Jeanie, without youth,
beauty, genius, warm passions, or any other novel-perfection, is here our
object from beginning to end. This is ‘enlisting the affections in the
cause of virtue’ ten times more than ever Richardson did; for whose male and female
pedants, all-excelling as they are, I never could care half so much as I found
myself inclined to do for Jeanie before I
finished the first volume.
“You know I tell you my opinion just as I should do
to a third person, and I trust the freedom is not unwelcome. I was a little
tired of your Edinburgh lawyers in the introduction; English people in general
will be more so, as well as impatient of the passages alluding to Scotch law
throughout. Mr Saddletree will not
entertain them. The latter part of the fourth volume unavoidably flags to a
certain degree; after Jeanie is happily
settled at Roseneath, we have no more to wish for. But the chief fault I have
to find relates to the reappearance and shocking fate of the boy. I hear on all
sides—‘Oh I do not like that!’—I cannot say what I would
have had instead; but I do not like it either; it is a lame, huddled
conclusion. I know you so well in it by the by!—you grow
tired yourself, want to get rid of the story, and hardly care how. Sir George Staunton finishes his career very
fitly; he ought not to die in his bed, and for Jeanie’s sake one would not have him hanged. It is
unnatural, though, that he should ever have gone within twenty miles of the
tolbooth, or shown his face in the streets of Edinburgh, or dined at a public
meeting, if the Lord Commissioner had been his brother. Here ends my
per contra account. The
opposite page would make my letter too long, if I entered equally into
particulars. Carlisle and Corby-castles in Waverley did not affect me more deeply than
the prison and trial scenes. The end of poor Madge
Wildfire is also most pathetic. The meeting at Muschat’s
cairn tremendous. Dumbiedykes and Rory Bean are delightful. And I shall own that my
prejudices were secretly gratified by the light in which you place John of Argyle, whom Mr Coxe so ran down to please Lord
Orford. You have drawn him to the very life. I heard so much of
him in my youth, so many anecdotes, so often ‘as the Duke of
Argyle used to say’ that I really believe I am
almost as good a judge as if I had seen and lived with him. The late Lady ****** told me, that when she married, he was
still remarkably handsome; with manners more graceful and engaging than she
ever saw in any one else; the most agreeable person in conversation, the best
teller of a story. When fifty-seven thus captives eighteen, the natural powers
of pleasing must be extraordinary. You have likewise coloured Queen Caroline exactly right—but I was bred up
in another creed about Lady Suffolk, of
whom, as a very old deaf woman, I have some faint recollection. Lady
****** knew her intimately, and never would allow she had been
the King’s mistress, though she owned it was currently believed. She said
he had just enough liking for
her to make the Queen very civil to her, and very jealous and spiteful; the
rest remained always uncertain at most, like a similar scandal in our days,
where I, for one, imagine love of seeming influence on one side, and love of
lounging, of an easy house and a good dinner on the other, to be all the
criminal passions’ concerned. However, I confess, Lady
****** had that in herself which made her not ready to think the
worst of her fellow-women.
“Did you ever hear the history of John Duke of Argyle’s marriage, and
constant attachment, before and after, to a woman not handsomer or much more
elegant than Jeanie Deans, though very
unlike her in understanding? I can give it you, if you wish it, for it is at my
finger’s ends. Now I am ancient myself, I should be a great treasure of
anecdote to any body who had the same humour, but I meet with few who have.
They read vulgar tales in books, Wraxall, and so forth, what the footmen and maids only gave credit
to at the moment, but they desire no farther information. I dare swear many of
your readers never heard of the Duke of Argyle before.
‘Pray, who was Sir Robert
Walpole,’ they ask me, ‘and when did he
live?’—or perhaps—‘Was not the great Lord Chatham in Queen
Anne’s days?’
“We have, to help us, an exemplification on two legs
in our country apothecary, whom you have painted over and over without the
honour of knowing him; an old, dry, arguing, prosing, obstinate Scotchman, very
shrewd, rather sarcastic, a sturdy Whig and Presbyterian, tirant un peu sur le democrat. Your books
are birdlime to him, however; he hovers about the house to obtain a volume when
others have done with it. I long to ask him whether douce Davie was any way sib to him. He acknowledges he would
not now go to Muschat’s
Cairn at night for any money he had such a horror of it ‘sixty years
ago’ when a laddie. But I am come to the end of my fourth page, and will
not tire you with any more scribbling.” . . . . . .
“P.S.—If I had known nothing, and the whole world had
told me the contrary, I should have found you out in that one
parenthesis,—‘for the man was mortal, and had been a
schoolmaster.’”
This letter was addressed from a great country house in the south; and
may, I presume, be accepted as a fair index of the instantaneous English popularity of
Jeanie Deans. From the choice of localities, and
the splendid blazoning of tragical circumstances that had left the strongest impression on
the memory and imagination of every inhabitant, the reception of this tale in Edinburgh was
a scene of all-engrossing enthusiasm, such as I never witnessed there on the appearance of
any other literary novelty. But the admiration and delight were the same all over Scotland.
Never before had he seized such really noble features of the national character as were
canonized in the person of his homely heroine: no art had ever devised a happier running
contrast than that of her and her sister or interwoven a portraiture of lowly manners and
simple virtues, with more graceful delineations of polished life, or with bolder shadows of
terror, guilt, crime, remorse, madness, and all the agony of the passions.
In the introduction and notes to the Heart of MidLothian, drawn up in 1830, we are presented with
details concerning the suggestion of the main plot, and the chief historical incidents made
use of, to which I can add nothing of any moment.
The 12th of July restored the author as usual to the supervision of his trees and carpenters; but he had already
told the Ballantynes, that the story which he had found it impossible
to include in the recent series of Jedediah should be
forthwith taken up as the opening one of a third; and instructed John to embrace the first favourable opportunity of
offering Constable the publication of this, on the
footing of 10,000 copies again forming the first edition; but now at length without any
more stipulations connected with the unfortunate “old stock” of the Hanover
Street Company.
Before he settled himself to his work, however, he made a little tour of
the favourite description with his wife and children—halting for a few days at Drumlanrig,
thence crossing the Border to Carlisle and Rokeby, and returning by way of Alnwick. On the
17th August, he writes thus to John Ballantyne from
Drumlanrig: “This is heavenly weather, and I am making the most of it, as I shall
have a laborious autumn before me. I may say of my head and fingers as the farmer of
his mare, when he indulged her with an extra feed— ‘Ye ken that Maggie winna sleep For that or Simmer.’ We have taken our own horses with us, and I have my poney, and ride when I find it
convenient.”
The following seems to have been among the first letters he wrote after
his return.
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. M. P. Rokeby.
“Abbotsford, 10th Sept. 1818. “My dear Morritt,
“We have been cruising to and fro since we left your
land of woods and streams. Lord Melville
wished me to come and stay two days with him at Melville Castle, which has
broken in upon my time a little, and interrupted my
purpose of telling you as how we arrived safe at Abbotsford, without a drop of
rain, thus completing a tour of three weeks in the same fine weather in which
we commenced it—a thing which never fell to my lot before. Captain Ferguson is inducted into the office
of Keeper of the Regalia, to the great joy, I think, of all Edinburgh. He has
entered upon a farm (of eleven acres) in consequence of this advancement, for
you know it is a general rule, that whenever a Scotsman gets his head above water, he immediately turns it to land. As he has already taken all the advice of all the notables
in and about the good village of Darnick, we expect to see his farm look like a
tailor’s book of patterns, a snip of every several opinion which he has
received occupying its appropriate corner. He is truly what the French call
un drole de corps.
“I wish you would allow your coachman to look out for
me among your neighbours a couple of young colts (rising three would be the
best age) that would match for a carriage some two years hence. I have plenty
of grass for them in the mean while, and should never know the expense of their
keep at Abbotsford. He seemed to think he could pick them up at from L.25 to
L.30, which would make an immense saving hereafter. Peter Matheson and he had arranged some sort of plan of this
kind. For a pair of very ordinary carriage-horses in Edinburgh they ask L.140
or more; so it is worth while to be a little provident. Even then you only get
one good horse, the other being usually a brute. Pray you excuse all this
palaver— ‘These little things are great to little men.’ Our harvest is almost all in, but as farmers always grumble about
something, they are now growling about the lightness of the crop. All the young
part of our household are wrapt
up in uncertainty concerning the Queen’s illness—for—if her Majesty parts cable, there
will be no Forest Ball, and that is a terrible prospect. On Wednesday (when no
post arrives from London) Lord Melville
chanced to receive a letter with a black seal by express, and as it was of
course argued to contain the expected intelligence of poor
Charlotte, it sold a good many ells of black cloth and
stuffs before it was ascertained to contain no such information. Surely this
came within the line of high treason, being an imagining of the Queen’s
death. Ever yours truly,
Walter Scott.
P.S. Once more anent the colts.
I am indifferent about colour; but, cæteris
paribus, would prefer black or brown to bright bay
or grey. I mention two off—as the age at which they can be best judged of
by the buyer.”
Of the same date I find written in pencil, on what must have been the
envelope of some sheriff’s-process, this note, addressed to Mr Charles Erskine, the sheriff-substitute of
Selkirkshire:—
“September 10, 1818. “Dear Charles,
“I have read these papers with all attention this
morning but think you will agree with me that there must be an Eke to the
Condescendence. Order the Eke against next day. Tom leaves with this packet a blackcock, and (more’s the
pity) a grey hen. Yours,
W. S.”
And again he thus writes by post to James
Ballantyne:—
“Abbotsford, September 10, 1813. “Dear James,
“I am quite satisfied with what has been done as to
the London bills. I am glad the presses move. I have been interrupted sadly
since my return by tourist gazers—this day a confounded pair of Cambridge boys
have robbed me of two good hours, and you of a sheet of copy—though whether a
good sheet or no, deponent saith not. The story is a dismal one, and I doubt
sometimes whether it will bear working out to much length after all. Query, if
I shall make it so effective in two volumes as my mother does in her quarter of
an hour’s crack by the fireside. But nil
desperandum. You shall have a bunch to-morrow or next
day—and when the proofs come in, my pen must and shall step out. By the by, I
want a supply of pens—and ditto of ink. Adieu for the present, for I must go
over to Toftfield, to give orders anent the dam and the
footpath, and see item as to what should be done anent steps at the Rhymer’s Waterfall, which I think may be made to turn out
a decent bit of a linn, as would set True Thomas his worth
and dignity. Ever yours,
W. S.”
It must, I think, be allowed that these careless scraps, when combined,
give a curious picture of the man who was brooding over the first chapters of the Bride of Lammermoor. One of his visitors of
that month was Mr R. Cadell, who was of course in
all the secrets of the house of Constable; and
observing how his host was harassed with lion-hunters, and what a number of hours he spent
daily in the company of his work-people, he expressed, during one of their walks, his
wonder that Scott should ever be able to write books at
all while in the country. “I
know,” he said, “that you contrive to get a few hours in your own
room, and that may do for the mere pen-work; but when is it that you think?”
“O,” said Scott, “I lie simmering over things for an hour or so before I get up—and there’s the
time I am dressing to overhaul my half-sleeping half-waking projet de chapitre—and when I get the paper before me, it commonly
runs off pretty easily. Besides, I often take a dose in the plantations, and, while
Tom marks out a dyke or a drain as I have
directed, one’s fancy may be running its ain riggs in some other world.”
It was in the month following that I first saw Abbotsford. He invited my
friend John Wilson (now Professor of Moral
Philosophy at Edinburgh) and myself to visit him for a day or two on our return from an
excursion to Mr Wilson’s beautiful villa on the Lake of
Windermere, but named the particular day (October 8th) on which it would be most convenient
for him to receive us; and we discovered on our arrival, that he had fixed it from a
good-natured motive. We found him walking in one of his plantations, at no great distance
from the house, with five or six young people, and his friends Lord Melville and Captain Ferguson.
Having presented us to the First Lord of the Admiralty, he fell back a little and said,
“I am glad you came to-day, for I thought it might be of use to you both, some
time or other, to be known to my old schoolfellow here, who is, and I hope will long
continue to be, the great giver of good things in the Parliament House. I trust you
have had enough of certain pranks with your friend Ebony, and if so, Lord Melville will have too much
sense to remember them.”* We then walked round the
* Ebony was Mr Blackwood’s own usual designation in the jeux d’esprit of his young Magazine, in
many of which the persons thus
plantation, as yet in a very young state, and came back to the house
by a formidable work which he was constructing for the defence of his haugh against the
wintry violences of the Tweed; and he discoursed for some time with keen interest upon the
comparative merits of different methods of embankment, but stopped now and then to give us
the advantage of any point of view in which his new building on the eminence above pleased
his eye. It had a fantastic appearance—being but a fragment of the existing edifice—and not
at all harmonizing in its outline with “Mother Retford’s” original
tenement to the eastward. Scott, however, expatiated
con amore on the rapidity with which,
being chiefly of darkish granite, it was assuming a “time-honoured” aspect.
Ferguson, with a grave and respectful look, observed,
“yes, it really has much the air of some old fastness hard by the river
Jordan.” This allusion to the Chaldee MS., already quoted, in the manufacture of which
Ferguson fancied Wilson and myself to have
had a share, gave rise to a burst of laughter among Scott’s
merry young folks and their companions, while he himself drew in his nether lip, and
rebuked the Captain with “Toots, Adam! toots,
Adam!” He then returned to his embankment, and
described how a former one had been entirely swept away in one night’s flood. But the
Captain was ready with another verse of the Chaldee MS., and
groaned out, by way of echo—“Verily my fine gold hath perished!”
Whereupon the “Great Magician” elevated his huge oaken staff as if to lay it on
the waggish soldier’s back—but flourished it gaily over his own head, and laughed
louder than the
addressed by Scott were conjoint culprits. They both were then, as may be
inferred, sweeping the boards of the Parliament House as “briefless
barristers.”
youngest of the company. As we walked
and talked, the Pepper and Mustard
terriers kept snuffing about among the bushes and heather near us, and started every five
minutes a hare, which scudded away before them and the ponderous staghound Maida—the Sheriff and all his tail hollowing and cheering in
perfect confidence that the dogs could do no more harm to poor puss than the venerable
tom-cat, Hinse of Hinsfeldt, who pursued the vain chase with the
rest.
At length we drew near Peterhouse, and found
sober Peter himself and his brother-in-law, the
facetious factotum Tom Purdie, superintending, pipe
in mouth, three or four sturdy labourers busy in laying down the turf for a bowling-green.
“I have planted hollies all round it, you see,” said Scott, “and laid out an arbour on the right-hand side
for the laird; and here I mean to have a game at bowls after dinner every day in fine
weather—for I take that to have been among the indispensables of our old vie de chateau.” But I must not forget
the reason he gave me some time afterwards for having fixed on that spot for his
bowling-green. “In truth,” he then said, “I wished to have a
smooth walk and a canny seat for myself within earshot of
Peter’s evening psalm.” The coachman was a
devout Presbyterian, and many a time have I in after-years accompanied
Scott on his evening stroll, when the principal object was to
enjoy, from the bowling-green, the unfailing melody of this good man’s family worship
and heard him repeat, as Peter’s manly voice led the humble
choir within, that beautiful stanza of Burns’sSaturday
Night:— “They chaunt their artless notes in simple guise; They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim,” &c.
It was near the dinner-hour before we reached the house, and presently I
saw assembled a larger company than I should have fancied to be at
all compatible with the existing accommodations of the place; but it turned out that
Captain Ferguson, and the friends whom I have
not as yet mentioned, were to find quarters elsewhere for the night. His younger brother,
Captain John Ferguson of the Royal Navy (a
favourite lieutenant of Lord Nelson’s), had come
over from Huntly Burn; there were present also, Mr Scott of
Gala, whose residence is within an easy distance; Sir Henry Hay MacDougal of Mackerstone, an old baronet
with gay, lively, and highly polished manners, related in the same degree to both Gala and
the Sheriff; Sir Alexander Don, the member for
Roxburghshire, whose elegant social qualities have been alluded to in the preceding
chapter; and Dr Scott of Darnlee, a modest and intelligent gentleman,
who having realized a fortune in the East India Company’s medical service, had
settled within two or three miles of Abbotsford, and though no longer practising his
profession, had kindly employed all the resources of his skill in the endeavour to
counteract his neighbour’s recent liability to attacks of cramp.—Our host and one or
two others appeared, as was in those days a common fashion with country gentlemen, in the
lieutenancy uniform of their county. How fourteen or fifteen people contrived to be seated
in the then diningroom of Abbotsford I know not—for it seemed quite full enough when it
contained only eight or ten; but so it was—nor, as Sir Harry
Macdougal’s fat valet, warned by former experience, did not join the
train of attendants, was there any perceptible difficulty in the detail of the
arrangements. Every thing about the dinner was, as the phrase runs, in excellent style; and
in particular, the potage à laMeg Merrilees, announced as an attempt
to imitate a device of the Duke of Buccleuch’s
celebrated cook—by name Monsieur Florence—seemed, to those at least who were better
acquainted with the Kaim of Derncleuch than with the cuisine of
Bowhill,* a very laudable specimen of the art. The champagne circulated nimbly—and I never
was present at a gayer dinner. It had advanced a little beyond the soup when it received an
accompaniment which would not, perhaps, have improved the satisfaction of Southern guests,
had any such been present. A tall and stalwart bagpiper, in complete Highland costume,
appeared pacing to and fro on the green before the house, and the window being open, it
seemed as if he might as well have been straining his lungs within the parlour. At a pause
of his strenuous performance, Scott took occasion to explain that
John of Skye was a recent
acquisition to the rising hamlet of Abbotstown; that the man was a capital hedger and
ditcher, and only figured with the pipe and philabeg on high occasions in the after-part of
the day; “but indeed,” he added, laughing, “I fear
John will soon be discovering that the hook and mattock are
unfavourable to his chanter hand.” When the cloth was drawn, and the
never-failing salver of quaighs introduced, John of
Skye, upon some well-known signal, entered the room, but en militaire, without removing his bonnet, and taking
his station behind the landlord, received from his hand the largest of the Celtic bickers
brimful of Glenlivet. The man saluted the company in his own dialect, tipped off the
contents (probably a quarter of an English pint of raw aquavitæ) at a gulp, wheeled
about as solemnly as if the whole ceremony had
* I understand that this new celebrated soup was extemporized by M. Florence on
Scott’s first visit to Bowhill after
the publication of Guy Mannering.
Florence had served—and
Scott having on some sporting party made his personal
acquaintance, he used often afterwards to gratify the Poet’s military
propensities by sending up magnificent representations in pastry of citadels taken
by the Emperor, &c.
been a movement on parade, and forthwith recommenced his pibrochs and
gatherings, which continued until long after the ladies had left the table, and the
autumnal moon was streaming in upon us so brightly as to dim the candles.
I had never before seen Scott in such
buoyant spirits as he showed this evening—and I never saw him in higher afterwards; and no
wonder, for this was the first time that he, Lord
Melville, and Adam Ferguson, daily
companions at the High-school of Edinburgh, and partners in many joyous scenes of the early
volunteer period, had met since the commencement of what I may call the serious part of any
of their lives. The great poet and novelist was receiving them under his own roof, when his
fame was at its acmé, and his fortune seemed culminating to
about a corresponding height—and the generous exuberance of his hilarity might have
overflowed without moving the spleen of a Cynic. Old stories of the
Yards and the Crosscauseway were relieved by sketches of
real warfare, such as none but Ferguson (or Charles Matthews, had he been a soldier) could ever have
given; and they toasted the memory of Greenbreeks and the health of
the Beau with equal devotion.
When we rose from table, Scott
proposed that we should all ascend his western turret, to enjoy a moonlight view of the
valley. The younger part of his company were too happy to do so: some of the seniors, who
had tried the thing before, found pretexts for hanging back. The stairs were dark, narrow,
and steep; but the Sheriff piloted the way, and at length there were as many on the top as
it could well afford footing for. Nothing could be more lovely than the panorama; all the
harsher and more naked features being lost in the delicious moonlight; the Tweed and the
Gala winding and spark-ling beneath our
feet; and the distant ruins of Melrose appearing, as if carved of alabaster, under the
black mass of the Eildons. The poet, leaning on his battlement, seemed to hang over the
beautiful vision as if he had never seen it before. “If I live,” he
exclaimed, “I will build me a higher tower, with a more spacious platform, and a
staircase better fitted for an old fellow’s scrambling.” The piper was
heard retuning his instrument below, and he called to him for Lochaber no more. John of
Skye obeyed, and as the music rose, softened by the distance,
Scott repeated in a low key the melancholy words of the song of
exile.
On descending from the tower, the whole company were assembled in the
new dining-room, which was still under the hands of the carpenters, but had been
brilliantly illuminated for the occasion. Mr Bruce
took his station, and old and young danced reels to his melodious accompaniment until they
were weary, while Scott and the Dominie looked on with gladsome faces, and beat time now
and then, the one with his staff, the other with his wooden leg. A tray with mulled wine
and whisky punch was then introduced, and Lord Melville
proposed a bumper, with all the honours, to the Roof-tree. Captain Ferguson having sung Johnnie Cope, called on the young ladies for Kenmures on and awa; and our host then
insisted that the whole party should join, standing in a circle hand-in-hand more majorum, in the hearty chorus of “Weel may we a’ be, Ill may we never see, God bless the king and the gude companie!” —which being duly performed, all dispersed. Such was the
handsel, for Scott protested against its being considered as
the house-heating, of the new Abbotsford.
When I began this chapter I thought it would be a short one, but it is
surprising how, when one digs into his memory, the smallest details of a scene that was
interesting at the time, shall by degrees come to light again. I now recall, as if I had
seen and heard them yesterday, the looks and words of eighteen years ago. Awaking between
six and seven next morning, I heard Scott’s voice
close to me, and looking out of the little latticed window of the then detached cottage
called the chapel, saw him and Tom Purdie pacing
together on the green before the door, in earnest deliberation over what seemed to be a
rude daub of a drawing, and every time they approached my end of their parade I was sure to
catch the words Blue Bank. It turned out in the course of the day,
that a field of clay near Toftfield went by this name, and that the draining of it was one
of the chief operations then in hand. My friend Wilson, mean while, who lodged also in the chapel, tapped at my door, and
asked me to rise and take a walk with him by the river, for he had some angling project in
his head. He went out and joined in the consultation about the Blue Bank, while I was
dressing; presently Scott hailed me at the casement, and said he had
observed a volume of a new edition of Goethe on my
table—would I lend it him for a little? He carried off the volume accordingly, and
retreated with it to his den. It contained the Faust, and, I believe, in a more complete shape than he had before seen that
masterpiece of his old favourite. When we met at breakfast a couple of hours after, he was
full of the poem—dwelt with enthusiasm on the airy beauty of its lyrics, the terrible
pathos of the scene before the Mater Dolorosa, and the
deep skill shown in the various subtle shadings of character between Mephistophiles and poor Margaret. He remarked, however, of the Introduction (which I suspect was
new to him) that blood would out—that,
consummate artist as he was, Goethe was a German, and that nobody but
a German would ever have provoked a comparison with the book of
Job, “the grandest poem that ever was written.” He added,
that he suspected the end of the story had been left in
obscuro, from despair to match the closing scene of our own
Marlowe’sDoctor Faustus. Mr
Wilson mentioned a report that Coleridge was engaged on a translation of the Faust. “I hope it is so,” said Scott;
“Coleridge made Schiller’sWallenstein far finer than he found it, and so he will do by this. No man
has all the resources of poetry in such profusion, but he cannot manage them so as to
bring out any thing of his own on a large scale at all worthy of his genius. He is like
a lump of coal rich with gas, which lies expending itself in puffs and gleams, unless
some shrewd body will clap it into a cast-iron box, and compel the compressed element
to do itself justice. His fancy and diction would have long ago placed him above all
his contemporaries, had they been under the direction of a sound judgment and a steady
will.* I
* In the Introduction to The Lay of the Last
Minstrel, 1830, Sir Walter
says, “Were I ever to take the unbecoming freedom of censuring a man
of Mr Coleridge’s
extraordinary talents, it would be on account of the caprice and indolence
with which he has thrown from him, as in mere wantonness, those unfinished
scraps of poetry, which, like the Torso of antiquity, defy the skill of his
poetical brethren to complete them. The charming fragments which the author
abandons to their fate, are surely too valuable to be treated like the
proofs of careless engravers, the sweepings of whose studios often make the
fortune of some pains-taking collector.” And in a note to The Abbot,
alluding to Coleridge’s beautiful and tantalizing
fragment of Christabel,
he adds, “Has not our own imaginative poet cause to fear that future
ages will desire to summon him from his place of rest, as Milton longed
‘To call up him who left half told The story of Cambuscan bold.” don’t now expect a great original poem from
Coleridge, but he might easily make a sort of fame for himself
as a poetical translator, that would be a thing completely unique and sui generis.”
While this criticism proceeded, Scott
was cutting away at his brown loaf and a plate of kippered salmon in a style which strongly
reminded me of Dandie Dinmont’s luncheon at
Mump’s Hall; nor was his German topic at all the predominant one. On the contrary,
the sentences which have dwelt on my memory dropt from him now and then, in the pauses, as
it were, of his main talk; for though he could not help recurring, ever and anon, to the
subject, it would have been quite out of his way to make any literary matter the chief
theme of his conversation, when there was a single person present who was not likely to
feel much interested in its discussion.—How often have I heard him quote on such occasions
Mr Vellum’s advice to the butler in Addison’s excellent play of the Drummer—“Your
conjuror, John, is indeed a twofold personage—but he
eats and drinks like other people!”
I may, however, take this opportunity of observing, that nothing could
have been more absurdly unfounded than the statement which I have seen repeated in various
sketches of his Life and Manners, that he habitually abstained from conversation on
literary topics. In point of fact, there were no topics on which he talked more openly or
more earnestly; but he, when in society, lived and talked for the persons with whom he
found himself surrounded, and if he did not always choose to enlarge upon the subjects
which his companions for the time suggested, it was simply because he thought or fancied
that these had selected, out of deference or flattery, subjects about which they really
cared little more than they knew. I have already repeated, over and again, my conviction that Scott considered literature per se, as a thing of
far inferior importance to the high concerns of political or practical life; but it would
be too ridiculous to question that literature nevertheless engrossed, at all times and
seasons, the greater part of his own interest and reflection: nor can it be doubted, that
his general preference of the society of men engaged in the active business of the world,
rather than that of, so called, literary people, was grounded substantially on his feeling
that literature, worthy of the name, was more likely to be fed and nourished by the
converse of the former than by that of the latter class.
Before breakfast was over the post-bag arrived, and its contents were so
numerous, that Lord Melville asked Scott what election was on hand—not doubting that there must
be some very particular reason for such a shoal of letters. He answered that it was much
the same most days, and added, “though no one has kinder friends in the franking
line, and though Freeling and Croker especially are always ready to stretch the
point of privilege in my favour, I am nevertheless a fair contributor to the revenue,
for I think my bill for letters seldom comes under L.150 a-year; and as to
coach-parcels, they are a perfect ruination.” He then told with high
merriment a disaster that had lately befallen him. “One morning last
spring,” he said, “I opened a huge lump of a despatch, without looking
how it was addressed, never doubting that it had travelled under some omnipotent frank
like the First Lord of the Admiralty’s, when, lo and behold, the contents proved
to be a MS. play, by a young lady of New York, who kindly requested me to read and
correct it, equip it with prologue and epilogue, procure for it a favourable reception
from the manager of Drury Lane, and make Murray
or Constable bleed handsomely for the copyright;
and on inspecting the cover, I found that I had been charged five
pounds odd for the postage. This was bad enough—but there was no help, so I groaned and
submitted. A fortnight or so after another packet, of not less formidable bulk,
arrived, and I was absent enough to break its seal too without examination. Conceive my
horror when out jumped the same identical tragedy of The Cherokee Lovers, with a second epistle from the
authoress, stating that, as the winds had been boisterous, she feared the vessel
intrusted with her former communication might have foundered, and therefore judged it
prudent to forward a duplicate.”
Scott said he must retire to answer his letters, but
that the sociable and the ponies would be at the door by one o’clock, when he
proposed to show Melrose and Dryburgh to Lady Melville
and any of the rest of the party that chose to accompany them; adding that his son
Walter would lead any body who preferred a gun
to the likeliest place for a black-cock, and that Charlie Purdie
(Tom’s brother) would attend upon
Mr Wilson and whoever else chose to try a cast
of the salmon-rod. He withdrew when all this was arranged, and appeared at the time
appointed, with perhaps a dozen letters sealed for the post, and a coach-parcel addressed
to James Ballantyne, which he dropt at the
turnpike-gate as we drove to Melrose. Seeing it picked up by a dirty urchin, and carried
into a hedge pothouse, where half-adozen nondescript wayfarers were smoking and tippling, I
could not but wonder that it had not been the fate of some one of those innumerable packets
to fall into unscrupulous hands, and betray the grand secret. That very morning we had seen
two post-chaises drawn up at his gate, and the enthusiastic travellers, seemingly decent
tradesmen and their families, who must have been packed in a manner worthy of Mrs Gilpin, lounging about to catch a glimpse of him at his going forth. But it was impossible in those days
to pass between Melrose and Abbotsford without encountering some odd figure, armed with a
sketch-book, evidently bent on a peep at the Great Unknown; and it must be allowed that
many of these pedestrians looked as if they might have thought it very excusable to make
prize, by hook or by crook, of a MS. chapter of the Tales of my Landlord.
Scott showed us the ruins of Melrose in detail; and as
we proceeded to Dryburgh, descanted learnedly and sagaciously on the good effects which
must have attended the erection of so many great monastic establishments in a district so
peculiarly exposed to the inroads of the English in the days of the Border wars.
“They were now and then violated,” he said, “as their
aspect to this hour bears witness; but for once that they suffered, any lay property
similarly situated must have been harried a dozen times. The
bold Dacres, Liddells, and
Howards, that could get easy absolution at York or Durham for
any ordinary breach of a truce with the Scots, would have had to dree
a heavy dole had they confessed plundering from the fat brothers, of the same
order perhaps, whose lines had fallen to them on the wrong side of the
Cheviot.” He enlarged too on the heavy penalty which the Crown of Scotland had
paid for its rash acquiescence in the wholesale robbery of the church at the Reformation.
“The proportion of the soil in the hands of the clergy had,” he
said, “been very great—too great to be continued. If we may judge by their share
in the public burdens, they must have had nearly a third of the land in their
possession. But this vast wealth was now distributed among a turbulent nobility, too
powerful before; and the Stuarts soon found that in the bishops
and lord ab-bots they had lost the only means of balancing their
factions, so as to turn the scale in favour of law and order; and by and by the haughty
barons themselves, who had scrambled for the worldly spoil of the church, found that
the spiritual influence had been concentrated in hands as haughty as their own, and
connected with no feelings likely to buttress their order any more than the Crown—a new
and sterner monkery, under a different name, and essentially plebeian. Presently the
Scotch were on the verge of republicanism, in state as well as kirk, and, I have
sometimes thought, it was only the accession of King
Jamie to the throne of England that could have given monarchy a chance
of prolonging its existence here.” One of his friends asked what he supposed
might have been the annual revenue of the abbey of Melrose in its best day. He answered
that he suspected, if all the sources of their income were now in clever hands, the produce
could hardly be under L.100,000 a-year; and added, “making every allowance for
modern improvements, there can be no question that the sixty brothers of Melrose
divided a princely rental. The superiors were often men of very high birth, and the
great majority of the rest were younger brothers of gentlemen’s families. I fancy
they may have been, on the whole, pretty near akin to your Fellows of All Souls—who,
according to their statute, must be bene nati, bene vestiti,
et mediocriter docti. They had a good house in Edinburgh, where,
no doubt, my lord abbot and his chaplains maintained a hospitable table during the
sittings of Parliament.” Some one regretted that we had no lively picture of
the enormous revolution in manners that must have followed the downfall of the ancient
Church in Scotland. He observed that there were, he fancied, materials enough for
constructing such a one, but that they were mostly scattered in records —“of which,” said he, “who knows any
thing to the purpose except Tom Thomson and
John Riddell? It is common to laugh at such
researches, but they pay the good brains that meddle with them; and had
Thomson been as diligent in setting down his discoveries as he
has been in making them, he might, long before this time of day, have placed himself on
a level with Ducange or Camden. The change in the country-side,” he
continued, “must indeed have been terrific; but it does not seem to have been felt
very severely by a certain Boniface of St Andrews, for when
somebody asked him, on the subsidence of the storm, what he thought of all that had
occurred, ‘Why,’ answered mine host, ‘it comes to this, that the
moderautor sits in my meikle chair, where the dean sat
before, and in place of calling for the third stoup of Bourdeaux, bids
Jenny bring ben anither bowl of toddy.’”
At Dryburgh Scott pointed out to us
the sepulchral aisle of his Haliburton ancestors, and said he hoped, in God’s
appointed time, to lay his bones among their dust. The spot was, even then, a sufficiently
interesting and impressive one; but I shall not say more of it at present.
On returning to Abbotsford, we found Mrs
Scott and her daughters doing penance under the merciless curiosity of a
couple of tourists who had arrived from Selkirk soon after we set out for Melrose. They
were rich specimens—tall, lanky young men, both of them rigged out in new jackets and
trowsers of the Macgregor tartan; the one, as they had revealed, being
a lawyer, the other a Unitarian preacher, from New England. These gentlemen, when told on
their arrival that Mr Scott was not at home, had shown
such signs of impatience, that the servant took it for granted they must have serious
business, and asked if they would wish to speak a word with his lady.
They grasped at this, and so conducted themselves in the interview, that Mrs
Scott never doubted they had brought letters of introduction to her husband,
and invited them accordingly to partake of her luncheon. They had been walking about the
house and grounds with her and her daughters ever since that time, and appeared at the
porch, when the Sheriff and his party returned to dinner, as if they had been already
fairly enrolled on his visiting list. For the moment he too was taken in—he fancied that
his wife must have received and opened their credentials—and shook hands with them with
courteous cordiality. But Mrs Scott, with all her overflowing
good-nature, was a sharp observer; and she, before a minute had elapsed, interrupted the
ecstatic compliments of the strangers, by reminding them that her husband would be glad to
have the letters of the friends who had been so good as to write by them. It then turned
out that there were no letters to be produced;—and Scott, signifying
that his hour for dinner approached, added, that as he supposed they meant to walk to
Melrose, he could not trespass further on their time. The two lion-hunters seemed quite
unprepared for this abrupt escape; but there was about Scott, in
perfection, when he chose to exert it, the power of civil repulsion; he bowed the
overwhelmed originals to his door, and on re-entering the parlour, found Mrs
Scott complaining very indignantly that they had gone so far as to pull out
their note-book, and beg an exact account, not only of his age but of her own.
Scott, already half relenting, laughed heartily at this misery. He
observed, however, that, “if he were to take in all the world, he had better put
up a sign-post at once— ‘Porter, ale, and British spirits, Painted bright between twa trees;’ and that no traveller of respectability
could ever be at a loss for such an introduction as would ensure his best
hospitality.” Still he was not quite pleased with what had happened—and as we
were about to pass, half an hour afterwards, from the drawingroom to the diningroom, he
said to his wife, “Hang the Yahoos, Charlotte—but we should
have bid them stay dinner.”—“Devil a bit,” quoth Captain John Ferguson, who had again come over from Huntly
Burn, and had been latterly assisting the lady to amuse her Americans “Devil a
bit, my dear, they were quite in a mistake I could see. The one asked Madame whether
she deigned to call her new house Tullyveolan or Tillytudlem—and the other, when Maida
happened to lay his nose against the window, exclaimed pro-di-gi-ous! In short, they evidently meant all their humbug not for you,
but for the culprit of Waverley, and
the rest of that there rubbish.” “Well, well, Skipper,”
was the reply,—“for a’ that, the loons would hae been nane the waur o’
their kail.”
From this banter it may be inferred that the younger Ferguson had not as yet been told the Waverley secret—which to any of that house could never
have been any mystery. Probably this, or some similar occasion soon afterwards, led to his
formal initiation; for during the many subsequent years that the veil was kept on, I used
to admire the tact with which, when in their topmost high-jinks humour, both
“Captain John” and “The Auld
Captain” eschewed any the most distant allusion to the affair.
And this reminds me that, at the period of which I am writing, none of
Scott’s own family, except of course his wife,
had the advantage in that matter of the Skipper. Some of them too, were apt, like him, so
long as no regular confidence had been reposed in them, to avail themselves of the
author’s reserve for their own sport among friends. Thus one morning, just as
Scott was opening the door of the parlour, the rest of the party being
already seated at the breakfast table, the Dominie
was in the act of helping himself to an egg, marked with a peculiar hieroglyphic by
Mrs Thomas Purdie, upon which Anne
Scott, then a lively rattling girl of sixteen, lisped out,
“That’s a mysterious looking egg, Mr Thomson—what if it
should have been meant for the Great Unknown?” Ere the Dominie
could reply, her father advanced to the foot of the table, and having seated himself and
deposited his stick on the carpet beside him, with a sort of whispered
whistle—“What’s that Lady Anne’s*
saying,” quoth he; “I thought it had been well known that the keelavined egg must be a soft one for the
Sherra?” And so he took his egg, and while we all smiled in silence,
poor Anne said gaily, in the midst of her blushes, “Upon my
word, papa, I thought Mr John Ballantyne might
have been expected.” This allusion to Johnny’s
glory in being considered as the accredited representative of Jedediah Cleishbotham, produced a laugh—at which the Sheriff frowned—and
then laughed too.
I remember nothing particular about our second day’s dinner,
except that it was then I first met my dear and honoured friend William Laidlaw. The evening passed rather more quietly than the preceding
one. Instead of the dance in the new dining-room, we had a succession of old ballads sung
to the harp and guitar by the young ladies of the house; and Scott, when they seemed to have done enough, found some reason for taking
down
* When playing, in childhood, with the young ladies of the
Buccleuch family, she had been overheard saying to her
namesake Lady Anne Scott, “Well, I
do wish I were Lady Anne too—it is so much prettier than
Miss;” thenceforth she was commonly addressed in the family by the
coveted title.
a volume of Crabbe, and read us one of his favourite tales “Grave Jonas Kindred, Sybil Kindred’s sire, Was six feet high, and looked six inches higher,” &c. But jollity revived in full vigour when the supper-tray was introduced; and to cap all
merriment, Captain Ferguson dismissed us with the
Laird of Cochpen. Lord and Lady Melville were to return
to Melville Castle next morning, and Mr Wilson and I
happened to mention, that we were engaged to dine and sleep at the seat of my friend and
relation, Mr Pringle of Torwoodlee, on our way to
Edinburgh. Scott immediately said that he would send word in the
morning to the Laird, that he and Adam Ferguson meant to accompany
us—such being the unceremonious style in which country neighbours in Scotland visit each
other. Next day accordingly we all rode over together to Mr
Pringle’s beautiful seat the “distant
Torwoodlee” of the Lay of the
Last Minstrel, but distant not above five or six miles from Abbotsford—coursing
hares as we proceeded, but inspecting the antiquities of the Catrail
to the interruption of our sport. We had another joyous evening at Torwoodlee.
Scott and Ferguson returned home at night,
and the morning after, as Wilson and I mounted for Edinburgh, our kind
old host, his sides still sore with laughter, remarked that “the Sheriff and the
Captain together were too much for any company.”
There was much talk between the Sheriff and Mr Pringle about the Selkirkshire Yeomanry Cavalry, of which the latter had
been the original commandant. Young Walter Scott had
been for a year or more Cornet in the corps, and his father was consulting Torwoodlee about
an entertainment which he meant to give them on his son’s approaching birthday. It
was then that the new dining-room was to be first heated in good earnest; and Scott very kindly
pressed Wilson and myself, at parting, to return for
the occasion—which, however, we found it impossible to do. The reader must therefore be
satisfied with what is said about it in one of the following letters:—
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., M.P., Rokeby.
“Abbotsford 5th Nov. 1818. “My dear Morritt,
“Many thanks for your kind letter of 29th October.
The matter of the colts being as you state, I shall let it lie over until next
year, and then avail myself of your being in the neighbourhood to get a good
pair of four-year-olds, since it would be unnecessary to buy them a year
younger, and incur all the risks of disease and accident, unless they could
have been had at a proportional under value.
“* * * * * *
leaves us this morning after a visit of about a week. He improves on
acquaintance, and especially seems so pleased with every thing, that it would
be very hard to quarrel with him. Certainly, as the Frenchman said,
il a un grand talent pour le
silence. I take the opportunity of his servant going direct
to Rokeby to charge him with this letter, and a plaid which my daughters
entreat you to accept of as a token of their warm good
wishes. Seriously, you will find it a good bosom friend in an easterly wind, a
black frost, or when your country avocations lead you to face a dry wap of snow. I find it by far the lightest and most
comfortable integument which I can use upon such occasions.
“We had a grand jollification here last week: the
whole troop of Forest Yeomanry dining with us. I assure you the scene was gay
and even grand, with glittering sabres, waving standards, and screaming
bagpipes; and that it might not lack
spectators of taste, who should arrive in the midst of the hurricane, but
Lord and Lady Compton, whose presence gave a great zest to the whole
affair. Every thing went off very well, and as cavalry have the great advantage
over infantry that their legs never get drunk, they retired in decent disorder
about ten o’clock. I was glad to see Lord and Lady
Compton so very comfortable, and surrounded with so fine a
family, the natural bond of mutual regard and affection. She has got very
jolly, but otherwise has improved on her travels. I had a long chat with her,
and was happy to find her quite contented and pleased with the lot she has
drawn in life. It is a brilliant one in many respects to be sure; but still I
have seen the story of the poor woman, who, after all rational subjects of
distress had been successively remedied, tormented herself about the screaming
of a neighbour’s peacock—I say I have seen this so often realized in
actual life, that I am more afraid of my friends making themselves
uncomfortable, who have only imaginary evils to indulge, than I am for the
peace of those who, battling magnanimously with real inconvenience and danger,
find a remedy in the very force of the exertions to which their lot compels
them.
“I sympathize with you for the dole which you are dreeing under the
inflictions of your honest proser. Of all the boring machines ever devised,
your regular and determined storyteller is the most peremptory and powerful in
his operations. This is a rainy day, and my present infliction is an idle
cousin, a great amateur of the pipes, who is performing incessantly in the next
room for the benefit of a probationary minstrel, whose pipes scream
à la distance, as the
young hoarse cock-chicken imitates the gallant and triumphant screech of a
veteran Sir Chanticleer. Yours affectionately,
W. Scott.”
CHAPTER VII. DECLINING HEALTH OF CHARLES DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH—LETTER ON
THE DEATH OF QUEEN CHARLOTTE—PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES, ETC.—EXTENSIVE
SALE OF COPYRIGHTS TO CONSTABLE AND CO.—DEATH OF MR CHARLES
CARPENTER—SCOTT RECEIVES AND ACCEPTS THE OFFER OF A
BARONETCY—HE DECLINES TO RENEW HIS APPLICATION FOR A SEAT ON THE EXCHEQUER BENCH—LETTERS TO
MORRITT—RICHARDSON—MISS
BAILLIE—THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH—LORD
MONTAGU—CAPT. ADAM FERGUSON—ROB
ROY PLAYED AT EDINBURGH—LETTER FROM JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM,
TO MR CHARLES MACKAY—1818—1819
I have now to introduce a melancholy subject
one of the greatest afflictions that ever Scott encountered. The health of Charles Duke of Buccleuch was by this time beginning to give
way, and Scott thought it his duty to intimate his very
serious apprehensions to his noble friend’s brother.
To the Right Hon. Lord Montagu, Ditton Park,
Windsor.
“Edinburgh, 12th Nov., 1818. “My dear Lord,
“I am about to write to you with feelings of the
deepest anxiety. I have hesitated for two or three days whether I should
communicate to your Lordship the sincere alarm which I entertain on account of
the Duke’s present state of health,
but I have come to persuade myself, that it will be discharging a part of the
duty which I owe to him to
mention my own most distressing apprehensions. I was at the cattle-show on the
6th, and executed the delegated task of toastmaster, and so forth. I was told
by * * * that the Duke is under the
influence of the muriatic bath, which occasions a good deal of uneasiness when
the medicine is in possession of the system. The Duke observed the strictest
diet, and remained only a short time at table, leaving me to do the honours,
which I did with a sorrowful heart, endeavouring, however, to persuade myself
that * * *’s account, and the natural depression of
spirits incidental to his finding himself unable for the time to discharge the
duty to his guests, which no man could do with so much grace and kindness, were
sufficient to account for the alteration of his manner and appearance. I spent
Monday with him quietly and alone, and I must say that all I saw and heard was
calculated to give me the greatest pain. His strength is much less, his spirits
lower, and his general appearance far more unfavourable than when I left him at
Drumlanrig a few weeks before. What * * *, and, indeed,
what the Duke himself says of the medicine, may be true but * *
* is very sanguine, and, like all the personal physicians
attached to a person of such consequence, he is too much addicted to the placebo—at least I think so too apt to fear to give
offence by contradiction, or by telling that sort of truth which may contravert
the wishes or habits of his patient. I feel I am communicating much pain to
your Lordship, but I am sure that, excepting yourself, there is not a man in
the world whose sorrow and apprehension could exceed mine in having such a task
to discharge; for, as your Lordship well knows, the ties which bind me to your
excellent brother are of a much stronger kind than usually connect persons so
different in rank. But the alteration in voice and person, in features, and in
spirits, all argue the decay of natural strength, and the
increase of some internal disorder, which is gradually triumphing over the
system. Much has been done in these cases by change of climate. I hinted this
to the Duke at Drumlanrig, but I found his mind totally averse to it. But he
made some enquiries at Harden (just
returned from Italy), which seemed to imply that at least the idea of a winter
in Italy or the south of France was not altogether out of his consideration.
Your Lordship will consider whether he can or ought to be pressed upon this
point. He is partial to Scotland, and feels the many high duties which bind him
to it. But the air of this country, with its alternations of moisture and dry
frost, although excellent for a healthy person, is very trying to a
valetudinarian.
“I should not have thought of volunteering to
communicate such unpleasant news, but that the family do not seem alarmed. I am
not surprised at this, because, where the decay of health is very gradual, it
is more easily traced by a friend who sees the patient from interval to
interval, than by the affectionate eyes which are daily beholding him.
“Adieu, my dear Lord. God knows you will scarce read
this letter with more pain than I feel in writing it. But it seems
indispensable to me to communicate my sentiments of the Duke’s present
situation to his nearest relation and dearest friend. His life is invaluable to
his country and to his family, and how dear it is to his friends can only be
estimated by those who know the soundness of his understanding, the uprightness
and truth of his judgment, and the generosity and warmth of his feelings. I am
always, my dear Lord, most truly yours,
“Walter Scott.”
Scott’s letters of this and the two following
months are very much occupied with the
painful subject of the Duke of Buccleuch’s
health; but those addressed to his Grace himself are, in general, in a more jocose strain
than usual. His friend’s spirits were sinking, and he exerted himself in this way, in
the hope of amusing the hours of langour at Bowhill. These letters are headed
“Edinburgh Gazette Extraordinary,” No. 1, No. 2, and so on; but they deal so
much in laughable gossip about persons still living, that I find it difficult to make any
extracts from them. The following paragraphs, however, from the Gazette of November the
20th, give a little information as to his own minor literary labours:—
“The article on
Gourgaud’s Narrative* is by a certain Vieux
Routier of your Grace’s acquaintance, who would willingly
have some military hints from you for the continuation of the article, if at any time
you should feel disposed to amuse yourself with looking at the General’s most
marvellous performance. His lies are certainly like the father who begot them. Do not
think that at any time the little trumpery intelligence this place affords can
interrupt my labours, while it amuses your Grace. I can scribble as fast in the Court
of Session as any where else, without the least loss of time or hinderance of business.
At the same time, I cannot help laughing at the miscellaneous trash I have been putting
out of my hand and the various motives which made me undertake the jobs. An article for the Edinburgh Review†—this for the love of Jeffrey, the editor—the first for ten years. Do.,
being the article Drama for the
* Article
on General Gourgaud’s Memoirs in Blackwood’s Magazine for November, 1818.
† Article on Maturin’sWomen, or Pour et Contre. (Misc. Prose Works, Vol.
xviii.)
Encyclopedia—this for the sake of Mr Constable, the publisher. Do. for the Blackwoodian Magazine—this for love of the cause I espoused. Do. for
the Quarterly Review*—this for the love of myself, I believe, or, which is
the same thing, for the love of L.100, which I wanted for some odd purpose. As all
these folks fight like dog and cat among themselves, my situation is much like the
Suave mare magno, and so forth. . .
.
“I hope your Grace will never think of answering the Gazettes
at all, or even replying to letters of business, until you find it quite convenient and
easy. The Gazette will continue to appear as materials occur. Indeed I expect, in the
end of next week, to look in upon Bowhill, per the Selkirk mail, about eight at night,
with the hope of spending a day there, which will be more comfortable than at
Abbotsford, where I should feel like a mouse below a firlot. If I find the Court can
spare so important a person for one day, I shall order my pony up to meet me at
Bowhill, and, supposing me to come on Friday night, I can easily return by the Blucher
on Monday, dining and sleeping at Huntly Burn on the Sunday. So I shall receive all
necessary reply in person.”
Good Queen Charlotte died on the
17th of this month; and in writing to Mr Morritt on
the 21st, Scott thus expresses what was, I believe, the
universal feeling at the moment:—
“So we have lost the old Queen. She has only had the sad
prerogative of being kept alive by nursing for some painful weeks, whereas perhaps a
subject might have closed the scene earlier. I fear the effect of this event
* Article on
Childe Harold, Canto IV.
(Misc. Prose Works,
Vol. xvii.)
on public manners—were there but a
weight at the back of the drawingroom door, which would slam it in the face of w——s,
its fall ought to be lamented; and I believe that poor Charlotte really adopted her rules of etiquette upon a feeling of duty.
If we should suppose the Princess of Wales to
have been at the head of the matronage of the land for these last ten years, what would
have been the difference on public opinion! No man of experience will ever expect the
breath of a court to be favourable to correct morals—sed si
non caste caute tamen. One half of the mischief is done by the
publicity of the evil, which corrupts those which are near its influence, and fills
with disgust and apprehension those to whom it does not directly extend. Honest old
Evelyn’s account of Charles the Second’s court presses on one’s
recollection, and prepares the mind for anxious apprehensions.”
Towards the end of this month Scott
received from his kind friend Lord Sidmouth, then
Secretary of State for the Home Department, the formal announcement of the Prince Regent’s desire (which had been privately
communicated some months earlier through the Lord Chief
Commissioner Adam) to confer on him the rank of Baronet. When
Scott first heard of the Regent’s gracious intention, he had
signified considerable hesitation about the prudence of his accepting any such accession of
rank; for it had not escaped his observation, that such airy sounds, however modestly
people may be disposed to estimate them, are apt to entail in the upshot additional cost
upon their way of living, and to affect accordingly the plastic fancies, feelings, and
habits of their children. But Lord Sidmouth’s letter happened to
reach him a few days after he had heard of the sudden death of his wife’s brother,
Charles Carpenter, who had bequeathed the
reversion of his fortune to his sister’s family; and this
circumstance disposed Scott to wave his scruples, chiefly with a view
to the professional advantage of his eldest son, who had by this time fixed on the life of
a soldier. As is usually the case, the estimate of Mr
Carpenter’s property transmitted at the time to England proved to have
been an exaggerated one; as nearly as my present information goes, the amount was doubled.
But as to the only question of any interest, to wit, how Scott himself
felt on all these matters at the moment, the following letter to one whom he had long
leaned to as a brother, will be more satisfactory than any thing else it is in my power to
quote:—
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. M.P., Rokeby.
“Edinburgh, 7th December, 1818. “My dear Morritt,
“I know you are indifferent to nothing that concerns
us, and therefore I take an early opportunity to acquaint you with the mixture
of evil and good which has very lately befallen us. On Saturday last we had the
advice of the death of my wife’s
brother Charles Carpenter, commercial
resident at Salem, in the Madras Establishment. This event has given her great
distress. She has not, that we know of, a single blood-relation left in the
world, for her uncle, the Chevalier de la Volere, colonel
of a Russian regiment, is believed to have been killed in the campaign of
1813.* My wife has been very unwell for two days, and is only now sitting up
and mixing with us. She has that sympathy which we are all bound to pay, but
feels she wants that personal interest in her sorrow which could only be
grounded on a personal acquaintance with the deceased.
* I know nothing of the history or fate of this
gentleman, except that he was an ardent royalist, and emigrated from France
early in the Revolution.
“Mr Carpenter
has, with great propriety, left his property in life-rent to his wife—the
capital to my children. It seems to amount to about L.40,000. Upwards of
L.30,000 is in the British funds, the rest, to an uncertain value, in India. I
hope this prospect of independence will not make my children different from
that which they have usually been docile, dutiful, and affectionate. I trust it
will not. At least, the first expression of their feelings was honourable, for
it was a unanimous wish to give up all to their mother. This I explained to
them was out of the question; but that if they should be in possession at any
time of this property, they ought, among them, to settle an income of L.400 or
L.500 on their mother for her life, to supply her with a fund at her own
uncontrolled disposal, for any indulgence or useful purpose that might be
required. Mrs Scott will stand in no need of
this, but it is a pity to let kind affections run to waste; and if they never
have it in their power to pay such a debt, their willingness to have done so
will be a pleasant reflection. I am Scotchman enough to hate the breaking up of
family ties, and the too close adherence to personal property. For myself, this
event makes me neither richer nor poorer directly, but
indirectly it will permit me to do something for my poor brother Tom’s family, besides pleasing myself in
‘plantings, and policies, and biggings,’* with a safe
conscience.
“There is another thing I have to whisper to your
faithful ear. Our fat friend being desirous
to honour Literature in my unworthy person, has intimated to me, by his organ
the Doctor, that, with consent ample
and unanimous of all the potential voices of all his ministers, each more happy
than another of course on so joyful an
* I believe this is a quotation from some old Scotch
chronicler on the character of King James
V.
occasion, he proposes to club me Baronet. It would be
easy saying a parcel of fine things about my contempt of rank, and so forth;
but although I would not have gone a step out of my way to have asked, or
bought, or begged, or borrowed a distinction, which to me personally will
rather be inconvenient than otherwise, yet, coming as it does directly from the
source of feudal honours, and as an honour, I am really gratified with
it;—especially as it is intimated, that it is his Royal Highness’s
pleasure to heat the oven for me expressly, without waiting till he has some
new batch of Baronets ready in dough. In plain English, I am to be gazetted per se. My poor friend Carpenter’s bequest to my family has taken away a certain
degree of impecuniosity, a necessity of saving
cheese-parings and candle-ends, which always looks inconsistent with any little
pretension to rank. But as things now stand, Advance banners in the name of God
and Saint Andrew. Remember, I anticipate the jest,
‘I like not such grinning honours, as Sir
Walter hath.’* ‘After all, if one must speak
for themselves, I have my quarters and emblazonments, free of all stain but
Border theft and High Treason, which I hope are gentlemanlike crimes; and I
hope Sir Walter Scott will not sound worse
than Sir Humphry Davy, though my merits
are as much under his, in point of utility, as can well be imagined. But a name
is something, and mine is the better of the two. Set down this flourish to the
account of national and provincial pride, for you must know we have more
Messieurs de Sotenville† in our
Border counties than any where else in the Lowlands—I cannot say for the
Highlands. The Duke of Buccleuch, greatly
to my joy, resolves to France for a season. Adam
Ferguson goes with him, to glad him by the way. Charlotte and the
“Sir Walter
Blunt—1
King Henry IV.,” Act V. Scene 3.
† See Moliere’s “George Dandin.”
young folks join in kind
compliments. Most truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
A few additional circumstances are given in a letter of the same week to
Joanna Baillie. To her, after mentioning the
testamentary provisions of Mr Carpenter, Scott says,—
“My dear Friend, I am going to tell you a little
secret. I have changed my mind, or rather existing circumstances have led to my
altering my opinions in a case of sublunary honour. I have now before me
Lord Sidmouth’s letter,
containing the Prince’s gracious and
unsolicited intention to give me a Baronetcy. It will neither make me better
nor worse than I feel myself—in fact, it will be an incumbrance rather than
otherwise; but it may be of consequence to Walter, for the title is worth something in the army, although
not in a learned profession. The Duke of
Buccleuch and Scott of
Harden, who, as the heads of my clan and the sources of my
gentry, are good judges of what I ought to do, have both given me their earnest
opinion to accept of an honour directly derived from the source of honour, and
neither begged nor bought, as is the usual fashion. Several of my ancestors
bore the title in the 17th century; and were it of consequence, I have no
reason to be ashamed of the decent and respectable persons who connect me with
that period when they carried into the field, like Madoc— ‘The crescent, at whose gleam the Cambrian oft, Cursing his perilous tenure, wound his horn’— so that, as a gentleman, I may stand on as good a footing as other new
creations. Respecting the reasons peculiar to myself which have made the Prince
show his respect for general literature in my person, I cannot be a good judge,
and your friendly zeal will make you a partial one: the
purpose is fair, honourable, and creditable to the Sovereign, even though it
should number him among the monarchs who made blunders in literary patronage.
You know Pope says ‘The Hero William, and
the Martyr Charles, One knighted Blackmore, and
one pension’d Quarles.’* So let the intention sanctify the error, if there should be one, on this
great occasion. The time of this grand affair is uncertain; it is coupled with
an invitation to London, which it would be inconvenient to me to accept, unless
it should happen that I am called to come up by the affairs of poor Carpenter’s estate. Indeed, the
prospects of my children form the principal reason for a change of sentiments
upon this flattering offer, joined to my belief that, though I may still be a
scribbler from inveterate habit, I shall hardly engage again in any work of
consequence.
“We had a delightful visit from the Richardsons, only rather too short; he will
give you a picture of Abbotsford, but not as it exists in my mind’s eye,
waving with all its future honours. The pinasters are thriving very well, and
in a year or two more Joanna’s Bower will be worthy of the name. At
present it is like Sir Roger de
Coverley’s portrait, which hovered between its resemblance
to the good knight and to a Saracen. Now the said bower has still such a
resemblance to its original character of a gravel pit, that it is not fit to be
shown to ‘bairns and fools,’ who, according to our old canny
proverb, should never see half done work; but Nature, if she works slowly,
works surely, and your laurels at Abbotsford will soon flourish as fair as
those you have won on Parnassus. I rather fear that a quantity of game which
was shipped awhile ago at Inverness for the Doctor, never reached him: it is rather a tran-
* Imitations of Horace, B. ii. Ep.
1. v. 386.
sitory commodity in London; there were
ptarmigan, grouse, and black game. I shall be grieved if they have miscarried.
My health, thank God, continues as strong as at any period in my life; only I
think of rule and diet more than I used to do, and observe as much as in me
lies the advice of my friendly physician, who took such kind care of me; my
best respects attend him, Mrs Baillie,
and Mrs Agnes. Ever, my dear friend,
most faithfully yours,
W. S.”
In the next of these letters Scott
alludes, among other things, to a scene of innocent pleasure which I often witnessed
afterwards. The whole of the ancient ceremonial of the daft days, as
they are called in Scotland, obtained respect at Abbotsford. He said it was uncanny, and
would certainly have felt it very uncomfortable, not to welcome the new year in the midst
of his family and a few old friends, with the immemorial libation of a het pint; but of all the consecrated ceremonies of the time none gave him such
delight as the visit which he received as Laird from all the children on his estate, on the
last morning of every December when, in the words of an obscure poet often quoted by him, “The cottage bairns sing blythe and gay, At the ha’ door for hogmanay.”
To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead.
“Abbotsford, 1st January, 1819. “My dear Friend,
“Many thanks for your kind letter: ten brace of
ptarmigan sailed from Inverness about the 24th, directed for Dr Baillie; if they should have reached, I
hope you would seize some for yourself and friends, as I learn the Doctor is on
duty at Windsor. I do not know the name of the vessel,
but they were addressed to Dr Baillie, London, which I
trust was enough, for there are not two. The Doctor has been exercising his
skill upon my dear friend and chief, the Duke of
Buccleuch, to whom I am more attached than to any person beyond
the reach of my own family, and has advised him to do what, by my earnest
advice, he ought to have done three years ago namely,—to go to Lisbon: he left
this vicinity with much reluctance to go to Thoulouse, but if he will be
advised, should not stop save in Portugal or the south of Spain. The Duke is
one of those retired and high-spirited men who will never be known until the
world asks what became of the huge oak that grew on the brow of the hill, and
sheltered such an extent of ground. During the late distress, though his own
immense rents remained in arrears, and though I know he was pinched for money,
as all men were, but more especially the possessors of entailed estates, he
absented himself from London in order to pay with ease to himself the labourers
employed on his various estates. These amounted (for I have often seen the roll
and helped to check it) to nine hundred and fifty men, working at day wages,
each of whom on a moderate average might maintain three persons, since the
single men have mothers, sisters, and aged or very young relations to protect
and assist. Indeed it is wonderful how much even a small sum, comparatively,
will do in supporting the Scottish labourer, who is in his natural state
perhaps one of the best, most intelligent, and kind-hearted of human beings;
and in truth I have limited my other habits of expense very much since I fell
into the habit of employing mine honest people. I wish you could have seen
about a hundred children, being almost entirely supported by their
fathers’ or brothers’ labour, come down yesterday to dance to the
pipes, and get a piece of cake and
bannock, and pence a-piece (no very deadly largess) in honour of hogmanay. I
declare to you, my dear friend, that when I thought the poor fellows who kept
these children so neat, and well taught, and well behaved, were slaving the
whole day for eighteenpence or twenty-pence at the most, I was ashamed of their
gratitude, and of their becks and bows. But after all, one does what one can,
and it is better twenty families should be comfortable according to their
wishes and habits, than half that number should be raised above their
situation. Besides, like Fortunio in the
fairy tale, I have my gifted men—the best wrestler and cudgel-player—the best
runner and leaper—the best shot in the little district; and as I am partial to
all manly and athletic exercises, these are great favourites, being otherwise
decent persons, and bearing their faculties meekly. All this smells of sad
egotism, but what can I write to you about save what is uppermost in my own
thoughts; and here am I, thinning old plantations and planting new ones; now
undoing what has been done, and now doing what I suppose no one would do but
myself, and accomplishing all my magical transformations by the arms and legs
of the aforesaid genii, conjured up to my aid at eighteen-pence a-day. There is
no one with me but my wife, to whom the change of scene and air, with the
facility of easy and uninterrupted exercise, is of service. The young people
remain in Edinburgh to look after their lessons, and Walter, though passionately fond of shooting,
only staid three days with us, his mind running entirely on mathematics and
fortification, French and German. One of the excellencies of Abbotsford is very
bad pens and ink; and besides, this being New Year’s Day, and my
writing-room above the servants’ hall, the progress of my correspondence
is a little interrupted by the Piper
singing Gaelic songs to the servants, and their applause
in consequence. Adieu, my good and indulgent friend: the best influences of the
New Year attend you and yours, who so well deserve all that they can bring.
Most affectionately yours,
Walter Scott.”
Before quitting the year 1818, I ought to have mentioned that among
Scott’s miscellaneous occupations in its
autumn, he found time to contribute some curious materials toward a new edition of Burt’s Letters from the North of
Scotland, which had been undertaken by his old acquaintance, Mr Robert Jameson. During the winter session he appears to
have made little progress with his novel; his painful seizures of cramp were again
recurring frequently, and he probably thought it better to allow the story of Lammermoor to lie over until his health should be
re-established. In the mean time he drew up a set of topographical and historical essays,
which originally appeared in the successive numbers of the splendidly illustrated work,
entitled Provincial Antiquities of
Scotland.* But he did this merely to gratify his own love of the subject, and
because, well or ill, he must be doing something. He declined all pecuniary recompense; but
afterwards, when the success of the publication was secure, accepted from the proprietors
some of the beautiful drawings by Turner,
Thomson, and other artists, which had been prepared to accompany
his text. These drawings are now in the little breakfast room at Abbotsford—the same which
had been constructed for his own den, and which I found him occupying as such in the spring
of 1819.
In the course of December, 1818, he also opened an important negotiation
with Messrs Constable, which
* These charming essays are now reprinted in his Miscellaneous Prose Works
(Edit. 1834), Vol. vii.
was completed early in the ensuing year. The
cost of his building had, as is usual, exceeded his calculation; and he had both a large
addition to it, and some new purchases of land in view. Moreover, his eldest son had now
fixed on the cavalry, in which service every step infers very considerable expense. The
details of this negotiation are remarkable; Scott
considered himself as a very fortunate man when Constable, who at
first offered L.10,000 for all his then existing copyrights, agreed to give for them
L.12,000. Meeting a friend in the street, just after the deed had been executed, he said he
wagered no man could guess at how large a price Constable had
estimated his “eild kye” (cows barren from age). The copyrights thus
transferred were, as specified in the instrument—
“The said Walter
Scott, Esq.’s present share, being the entire copyright, of Waverley.
Do. do. Guy Mannering.Do. do. Antiquary.Do. do. Rob Roy.Do. do. Tales of my Landlord,
1st series.Do. do. do. 2d series.Do. do. do. 3d series.Do. do. Bridal of
Triermain.Do. do. Harold the
Dauntless.Do. do. Sir Tristrem.Do. do. Roderick
Collection.Do. do. Paul’s
Letters.Do.being one eighth of the Lay of the Last Minstrel.Do.being one half of the Lady of the Lake.Do.being one half of Rokeby.Do.being one half of the Lord of the Isles.”
The instrument contained a clause binding Messrs Constable never to divulge the name of the Author of Waverley during his life under a penalty of L.2000.
I may observe, that had these booksellers fulfilled their part of this agreement, by paying off prior to their insolvency in 1826, the whole
bonds for L.12,000, which they signed on the 2d of February, 1819, no interest in the
copyrights above specified could have been expected to revert to the Author of Waverley; but more of this in due season.
He alludes to the progress of the treaty in the following letter to
Captain Adam Ferguson, who had, as has already
appeared, left Scotland with the Duke of Buccleuch. His
Grace hearing, when in London, that one of the Barons of Exchequer at Edinburgh meant
speedily to resign, the Captain had, by his desire, written to urge on Scott the propriety of renewing his application for a seat on
that bench; which, however, Scott at once refused to do. There were
several reasons for this abstinence; among others, he thought such a promotion at this time
would interfere with a project which he had formed of joining “the Chief and the
Aid-de-camp” in the course of the spring, and accomplishing in their society the tour
of Portugal and Spain—perhaps of Italy also. Some such excursion had been strongly
recommended to him by his own physicians, as the likeliest means of interrupting those
habits of sedulous exertion at the desk, which they all regarded as the true source of his
recent ailments, and the only serious obstacle to his cure; and his standing as a Clerk of
Session, considering how largely he had laboured in that capacity for infirm brethren,
would have easily secured him a twelvemonth’s leave of absence from the Judges of his
Court. But the principal motive was, as we shall see, his reluctance to interfere with the
claims of the then Sheriff of MidLothian, his own and Ferguson’s
old friend and schoolfellow, Sir William Rae who,
however, accepted the more ambitious post of Lord Advocate, in the course of the ensuing
summer.
To Captain Adam Ferguson, Ditton Park; Windsor.
“15th January, 1819. “Dear Adam,
“Many thanks for your kind letter, this moment
received. I would not for the world stand in Jackie (I beg his pardon, Sir John)
Peartree’s way.* He has merited the cushion
en haut, and besides he needs
it. To me it would make little difference in point of income. The otium cum dignitate, if it ever come, will
come as well years after this as now. Besides, I am afraid the opening will be
soon made, through the death of our dear friend the Chief Baron, of whose health the accounts are unfavourable.
Immediate promotion would be inconvenient to me, rather than otherwise, because
I have the desire, like an old fool as I am, courir
un peu le monde. I am beginning to draw out from my
literary commerce. Constable has offered
me L.10,000 for the copyrights of published works which have already produced
more than twice the sum. I stand out for L.12,000. Tell this to the Duke; he
knows how I managed to keep the hen till the rainy day was past. I will write
two lines to Lord Melville, just to make my
bow for the present, resigning any claims I have through the patronage of my
kindest and best friend, for I have no other, till the next opportunity. I
should have been truly vexed if the Duke had thought of writing about this. I
don’t wish to hear from him till I can have his account of the lines of
Torres Vedras. I care so little how or where I travel, that I am not sure at
all whether I shall not come to Lisbon and surprise you, instead of going to
Italy by Switzerland; that is, providing the state of Spain would allow me,
without any unreason-
* Jackie Peartree had, it
seems, been Sir William
Rae’s nickname at the High School. He probably
owed it to some exploit in an orchard.
able danger of my throat, to get from Lisbon to Madrid,
and thence to Gibraltar. I am determined to roll a little about, for I have
lost much of my usual views of summer pleasure here. But I trust we shall have
one day the Maid of Lorn (recovered of her
lameness), and Charlie Stuart (reconciled to bogs),
and Sybil Grey (no longer retrograde), and the Duke
set up by a southern climate, and his military and civil aides-de-camp, with
all the rout of younkers and dogs, and a brown hill side, introductory to a
good dinner at Bowhill or Drumlanrig, and a merry evening. Amen, and God send
it. As to my mouth being stopped with the froth of the title, that is, as the
learned Partridge says, a
non sequitur. You know the schoolboy’s expedient of first asking
mustard for his beef, and then beef for his mustard. Now, as they put the
mustard on my plate, without my asking it, I shall consider myself, time and
place serving, as entitled to ask a slice of beef; that is to say, I would do
so if I cared much about it; but as it is, I trust it to time and chance,
which, as you, dear Adam, know, have
(added to the exertions of kind friends) been wonderful allies of mine. People
usually wish their letters to come to hand, but I hope you will not receive
this in Britain. I am impatient to hear you have sailed. All here are well and
hearty. The Baronet* and I propose to go
up to the Castle to-morrow to fix on the most convenient floor of the Crown
House for your mansion, in hopes you will stand treat for gin-grog and Cheshire
cheese on your return, to reward our labour. The whole expense will fall within
the Treasury order, and it is important to see things made convenient. I will
write a long letter to the Duke to Lisbon. Yours ever,
Walter Scott.
* Mr William
Clerk.
“P.S.—No news here, but that the goodly hulk of
conceit and tallow, which was called Macculloch, of
the Royal Hotel, Prince’s Street, was put to bed dead-drunk on
Wednesday night, and taken out the next morning dead-by-itself-dead. Mair
skaith at Sheriffmuir.”
To J. Richardson, Esq., Fludyer Street,
Westminster.
“Many thanks to you for your kind letter. I own I did
mystify Mrs ***** a little about the
report you mention; and I am glad to hear the finesse succeeded.* She came up
to me with a great overflow of gratitude for the delight and pleasure, and so
forth, which she owed to me on account of these books. Now, as she knew very
well that I had never owned myself the author, this was not polite politeness, and she had no right to force me up into a corner
and compel me to tell her a word more than I chose, upon a subject which
concerned no one but myself—and I have no notion of being pumped by any old
dowager Lady of Session, male or female. So I gave in dilatory defences, under
protestation to add and eke; for I trust, in learning a new slang, you have not
forgot the old. In plain words, I denied the charge, and as she insisted to
know who else could write these novels, I suggested Adam Ferguson as a person having all the information and
capacity necessary for that purpose. But the inference that he was the author
was of her own deducing; and thus ended her attempt, notwithstanding her having
primed the pump with a good dose of flattery. It is remarkable, that among all
my real friends to whom I did not
* The wife of one of the Edinburgh Judges is alluded to.
choose to communicate this matter, not one ever thought
it proper or delicate to tease me about it. Respecting the knighthood, I can
only say, that coming as it does, and I finding myself and my family in
circumstances which will not render the petit
titre ridiculous, I think there would be more vanity in
declining than in accepting what is offered to me by the express wish of the
Sovereign as a mark of favour and distinction. Will you be so kind as to
enquire and let me know what the fees, &c., of a baronetcy amount to—for I
must provide myself accordingly, not knowing exactly when this same title may
descend upon me. I am afraid the sauce is rather smart. I should like also to
know what is to be done respecting registration of arms, and so forth. Will you
make these enquiries for me sotto
voce? I should not suppose, from the persons who sometimes
receive this honour, that there is any enquiry about descent or genealogy; mine
were decent enough folks, and enjoyed the honour in the seventeenth century, so
I shall not be first of the title; and it will sound like that of a Christian
knight, as Sir Sidney Smith said. I had
a letter from our immortal Joanna some
fortnight since, when I was enjoying myself at Abbotsford. Never was there such
a season, flowers springing, birds singing, grubs eating the wheat as if it was
the end of May. After all, nature had a grotesque and inconsistent appearance,
and I could not help thinking she resembled a withered beauty who persists in
looking youthy, and dressing conform thereto. I thought the loch should have
had its blue frozen surface, and russet all about it, instead of an unnatural
gaiety of green. So much are we the children of habit, that we cannot always
enjoy thoroughly the alterations which are most for our advantage. They have
filled up the historical chair here. I own I wish it had been with our friend
Campbell, whose genius is such an honour
to his country. But he has cast anchor I suppose in the south. Your friend,
Mrs Scott, was much cast down with her
brother’s death. His bequest to my family leaves my own property much at
my own disposal, which is pleasant enough. I was foolish enough sometimes to be
vexed at the prospect of my library being sold sub
hasta, which is now less likely to happen. I always am,
most truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
On the 15th of February, 1819, Scott
witnessed the first representation, on the Edinburgh boards, of the most meritorious and
successful of all the Terry-fications, though Terry himself was not
the manufacturer. The drama of Rob Roy will never again be got up so well, in all its parts, as it
then was by William Murray’s company; the
manager’s own Captain
Thornton was excellent and so was the Dugald Creature of a Mr
Duff—there was also a good Mattie—(about whose equipment, by the by,
Scott felt such interest that he left his box between the Acts to
remind Mr Murray that she “must have a mantle with her
lanthorn”);—but the great and unrivalled attraction was the personification
of Bailie Jarvie by Charles Mackay, who, being himself a native of Glasgow,
entered into the minutest peculiarities of the character with high gusto, and gave the west
country dialect in its most racy perfection. It was extremely diverting to watch the play
of Scott’s features during this admirable realization of his
conception; and I must add, that the behaviour of the Edinburgh audience on all such
occasions, while the secret of the novels was preserved, reflected great honour on their
good taste and delicacy of feeling. He seldom, in those days, entered his box without
receiving some mark of general respect and admiration; but I never
heard of any pretext being laid hold of to connect these demonstrations with the piece he
had come to witness, or, in short, to do or say any thing likely to interrupt his quiet
enjoyment of the evening in the midst of his family and friends. The Rob Roy had a continued run of forty-one nights, during
February and March; and it was played once a week, at least, for many years afterwards.*
Mackay, of course, always selected it for his benefit; and I now
print from Scott’s MS. a letter, which, no doubt, reached the
mimic Bailie in the handwriting of one of the
Ballantynes, on the first of these occurrences.
To Mr Charles Mackay, Theatre-Royal, Edinburgh.
Private.
“Friend Mackay,
“My lawful occasions having brought me from my
residence at Gandercleuch to this great city, it was my lot to fall into
company with certain friends, who impetrated from me a consent to behold the
stage-play, which hath been framed forth of an history entitled Rob
(seu potius Robert) Roy,
which history, although it existeth not in mine erudite work, entitled Tales of my Landlord, hath nathless
a near relation in style and structure to those pleasant narrations. Wherefore,
having surmounted those arguments whilk were founded upon the unseemliness of a
personage in my place and profession appearing in an open stage-play house, and
having buttoned the terminations of my cravat into my bosom, in order to
preserve mine incognito, and indued an outer coat over mine usual garments, so
that the hue thereof might not betray my calling, I did place myself (much
“Between February 15th, 1819, and March 14th,
1837, Rob Roy was played
in the Theatre-Royal, Edinburgh, 285 times.” Letter fromMr W. Murray.
elbowed by those who little
knew whom they did incommode) in that place of the Theatre called the
two-shilling gallery, and beheld the show with great delectation, even from the
rising of the curtain to the fall thereof.
“Chiefly, my facetious friend, was I enamoured of the
very lively representation of Bailie Nicol
Jarvie, in so much that I became desirous to communicate to thee
my great admiration thereof, nothing doubting that it will give thee
satisfaction to be apprised of the same. Yet further, in case thou shouldst be
of that numerous class of persons who set less store by good words than good
deeds, and understanding that there is assigned unto each stage-player a
special night, called a benefit (it will do thee no harm to know that the
phrase cometh from two Latin words, bene and facio),
on which their friends and patrons show forth their benevolence, I now send
thee mine in the form of a five-ell web (hoc
jocose, to express a note for L.5), as a meet present
for the Bailie, himself a weaver, and the son of a worthy deacon of that craft.
The which propine I send thee in token that it is my purpose, business and
health permitting, to occupy the central place of the pit on the night of thy
said beneficiary or benefit.
“Friend Mackay! from one, whose profession it is to teach others, thou must
excuse the freedom of a caution. I trust thou wilt remember that, as excellence
in thine art cannot be attained without much labour, so neither can it be
extended, or even maintained, without constant and unremitted exertion; and
farther, that the decorum of a performer’s private character (and it
gladdeth me to hear that thine is respectable) addeth not a little to the value
of his public exertions.
“Finally, in respect there is nothing perfect in this
world,—at least I have never received a wholly faultless
version from the very best of my pupils—I pray thee not to let Rob Roy twirl thee around in the
ecstacy of thy joy, in regard it oversteps the limits of nature, which
otherwise thou so sedulously preservest in thine admirable national
portraicture of Bailie Nicol Jarvie. I
remain thy sincere friend and well-wisher,
Jedediah Cleishbotham.”
CHAPTER VIII. RECURRENCE OF SCOTT’S ILLNESS—DEATH OF THE
DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH—LETTERS TO CAPTAIN
FERGUSON—LORD MONTAGU—MR
SOUTHEY—AND MR SHORTREED—SCOTT’S
SUFFERINGS WHILE DICTATING THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR—ANECDOTES BY
JAMES BALLANTYNE, ETC.—APPEARANCE OF THE THIRD SERIES OF TALES OF MY LANDLORD—ANECDOTE OF THE EARL OF
BUCHAN,—MARCH—JUNE,—1819.
It had been Scott’s
purpose to spend the Easter vacation in London, and receive his baronetcy; but this was
prevented by the serious recurrence of the malady which so much alarmed his friends in the
early part of the year 1817, and which had continued ever since to torment him at
intervals. The subsequent correspondence will show that afflictions of various sorts were
accumulated on his head at the same period:
To the Lord Montagu, Ditton Park, Windsor.
“Edinburgh, 4th March, 1819. “My dear Lord,
“The Lord
President tells me he has a letter from his son, Captain Charles Hope, R.N., who had just taken leave of our High
Chief, upon the deck of the Liffey. He had not seen the Duke for
a fortnight, and was pleasingly surprised to find his health and general
appearance so very much improved. For my part, having watched him with such
unremitting attention, I feel very confident in the effect of a change of air
and of climate. It is with great pleasure that I find the Duke has received an
answer from me respecting a matter about which he was anxious, and on which I
could make his mind quite easy. His Grace wished Adam Ferguson to assist him as his confidential secretary; and
with all the scrupulous delicacy that belongs to his character, he did not like
to propose this, except through my medium as a common friend. Now, I can answer
for Adam, as I can for myself, that he will have the
highest pleasure in giving assistance in every possible way the Duke can
desire; and if forty years’ intimacy can entitle one man to speak for
another, I believe the Duke can find no where a person so highly qualified for
such a confidential situation. He was educated for business, understands it
well, and was long a military secretary his temper and manners your Lordship
can judge as well as I can, and his worth and honour are of the very first
water. I confess I should not be surprised if the Duke should wish to continue
the connexion even afterwards, for I have often thought that two hours’
letter-writing, which is his Grace’s daily allowance, is rather worse
than the duty of a Clerk of Session, because there is no vacation. Much of this
might surely be saved by an intelligent friend on whose style of expression,
prudence, and secrecy his Grace could put perfect reliance. Two words marked on
any letter by his own hand, would enable such a person to refuse more or less
positively—to grant directly or conditionally—or, in short, to main-tain the exterior forms of the very
troublesome and extensive correspondence which his Grace’s high situation
entails upon him. I think it is Mons. Le Duc de
Saint Simon who tells us of one of Louis
XIV.’s ministers qui’l
avoit la plume—which he explains, by saying, it was his
duty to imitate the King’s handwriting so closely, as to be almost
undistinguishable, and make him on all occasions parler très noblement. I wonder how the Duke gets
on without such a friend. In the mean time, however, I am glad I can assure him
of Ferguson’s willing and ready assistance while
abroad; and I am happy to find still farther that he had got that assurance
before they sailed, for tedious hours occur on board of ship, when it will
serve as a relief to talk over any of the private affairs which the Duke wishes
to intrust to him.
“I have been very unwell from a visitation of my old
enemy the cramp in my stomach, which much resembles, as I conceive, the process
by which the diel would make one’s king’s-hood into a spleuchan,* according t’o the anathema of Burns. Unfortunately, the opiates which the
medical people think indispensable to relieve spasms, bring on a habit of body
which has to be counteracted by medicines of a different tendency, so as to
produce a most disagreeable see-saw—a kind of pull-devil, pull-baker
contention, the field of battle being my unfortunate præcordia. Or, to say truth, it reminds me of a certain Indian
king I have read of in an old voyage, to whom the captain of an European ship
generously presented a lock and key, with which the sable potentate was so much
delighted, that to the great neglect, both of his household duties and his
affairs of state, he spent a whole month in the re-
* Kings-hood—“The
second of the four stomachs of ruminating animals.” Jamieson.—Spleuchan—The
Gaelic name of the Highlander’s tobacco-pouch.
peated operation of locking and unlocking his back-door. I
am better to-day, and I trust shall be able to dispense with these
alternations, which are much less agreeable in my case than in that of the
Sachem aforesaid; and I still hope to be in London in April.
“I will write to the Duke regularly, for distance of place acts in a contrary ratio
on the mind and on the eye: trifles, instead of being diminished, as in
prospect, become important and interesting, and therefore he shall have a
budget of them. Hogg is here busy with
his Jacobite songs. I wish
he may get handsomely through, for he is profoundly ignorant of history, and it
is an awkward thing to read in order that you may write.* I give him all the
help I can, but he sometimes poses me. For instance he came yesterday, open
mouth, enquiring what great dignified clergyman had distinguished himself at
Killiecrankie—not exactly the scene where one would have expected a churchman
to shine—and I found with some difficulty, that he had mistaken Major-General Canon, called, in
Kennedy’s Latin song, Canonicus Gallovidiensis, for the canon of a
cathedral. Ex ungue leonem. Ever, my
dear Lord, your truly obliged and faithful
Walter Scott.”
Before this letter reached Lord
Montagu, his brother
* “I am sure I produced two volumes of Jacobite Relics, such as no
man in Scotland or England could have produced but myself.” So says
Hogg,—ipse—see his
Autobiography, 1832, p. 88. I never saw the Shepherd so elated as
he was on the appearance of a very severe article on this book in the Edinburgh
Review; for, to his exquisite delight, the hostile critic selected tor exceptive
encomium one “old Jacobite strain,” viz. “Donald M’Gillavry,” which Hogg had
fabricated the year before. Scott, too, enjoyed
this joke almost as much as the Shepherd.
had sailed for Lisbon. The Duke of Wellington had placed his house in that capital (the Palace
das Necessidades) at the Duke of Buccleuch’s disposal; and in the affectionate
care and cheerful society of Captain Ferguson, the
invalid had every additional source of comfort that his friends could have wished for him.
But the malady had gone too far to be arrested by a change of climate; and the letter which
he had addressed to Scott, when about to embark at
Portsmouth, is endorsed with these words “The last I ever received from my dear
friend the Duke of Buccleuch. Alas! alas!” The principal
object of this letter was to remind Scott of his promise to sit to
Raeburn for a portrait, to be hung up in that
favourite residence where the Duke had enjoyed most of his society. “My prodigious
undertaking,” writes his Grace, “of a west wing at Bowhill, is
begun. A library of forty-one feet by twenty-one, is to be added to the present
drawing-room. A space for one picture is reserved over the fire-place, and in this warm
situation I intend to place the Guardian of Literature. I should be happy to have my
friend Maida appear. It is now almost proverbial,
‘Walter Scott and his Dog.’
Raeburn should be warned that I am as well acquainted with my
friend’s hands and arms as with his nose—and Vandyke was of my opinion. Many of R.’s
works are shamefully finished—the face studied, but every thing else neglected. This is
a fair opportunity of producing something really worthy of his skill.”
I shall insert by and by Scott’s
answer—which never reached the Duke’s hand—with another letter of the same date to
Captain Ferguson; but I must first introduce
one, addressed a fortnight earlier to Mr Southey,
who had been distressed by the accounts he received of Scott’s
health from an American traveller, Mr George Ticknor of Boston—a friend, and worthy to be such, of Mr Washington Irving. The Poet Laureate, by the way, had
adverted also to an impudent trick of a London
bookseller, who shortly before this time announced certain volumes of Grub
Street manufacture, as “A New Series of
the Tales of my Landlord,” and who, when John
Ballantyne, as the “agent for the Author of Waverley,” published
a declaration that the volumes thus advertised were not from that writer’s pen, met
John’s declaration by an audacious rejoinder—impeaching his
authority, and asserting that nothing, but the personal appearance in the field of the
gentleman for whom Ballantyne pretended to act, could shake his belief
that he was himself in the confidence of the true Simon
Pure. This affair gave considerable uneasiness at the time, and for a moment
the dropping of Scott’s mask seems to have been pronounced
advisable by both Ballantyne and Constable. But he was not to be worked upon by such means as these. He
calmly replied, “The author who lends himself to such a trick must be a
blockhead—let them publish, and that will serve our purpose better than any thing we
ourselves could do.” I have forgotten the names of the “tales,”
which, being published accordingly, fell stillborn from the press. Mr
Southey had likewise dropped some allusions to another newspaper story of
Scott’s being seriously engaged in a dramatic work; a rumour
which probably originated in the assistance he had lent to Terry in some of the recent highly popular adaptations of his novels to the
purposes of the stage; though it is not impossible that some hint of the Devorgoil matter may have transpired. “It is
reported,” said the Laureate, “that you are about to bring forth a
play, and I am greatly in hopes it may be true; for I am verily persuaded that in this
course you might run as brilliant a career
as you have already done in narrative—both in prose and rhyme;—for as for believing
that you have a double in the field—not I! Those same powers would be equally certain
of success in the drama, and were you to give them a dramatic direction, and reign for
a third seven years upon the stage, you would stand alone in literary history. Indeed
already I believe that no man ever afforded so much delight to so great a number of his
contemporaries in this or in any other country. God bless you, my dear Scott, and
believe me ever yours affectionately, R. S.”
Mr Southey’s letter had further announced his wife’s
safe delivery of a son; the approach of the
conclusion of his History of Brazil; and
his undertaking of the Life of Wesley.
To Robert Southey, Esq. Keswick, Cumberland.
“Abbotsford, 4th April, 1819. “My dear Southey,
“Tidings, from you must be always acceptable, even
were the bowl in the act of breaking at the fountain—and my health is at
present very totterish. I have gone through a cruel
succession of spasms and sickness, which have terminated in a special fit of
the jaundice, so that I might sit for the image of Plutus, the god of specie, so far as complexion goes. I shall
like our American acquaintance the
better that he has sharpened your remembrance of me, but he is also a wondrous
fellow for romantic lore and antiquarian research, considering his country. I
have now seen four or five well-lettered Americans, ardent in pursuit of
knowledge, and free from the ignorance and forward presumption which
distinguish many of their countrymen. I hope they will inoculate their country
with a love of letters, so nearly allied to a desire of
peace and a sense of public justice, virtues to which the great Transatlantic
community is more strange than could be wished. Accept my best and most sincere
wishes for the health and strength of your latest pledge of affection. When I
think what you have already suffered, I can imagine with what mixture of
feelings this event must necessarily affect you; but you need not to be told
that we are in better guidance than our own. I trust in God this late blessing
will be permanent, and inherit your talents and virtues. When I look around me,
and see how many men seem to make it their pride to misuse high qualifications,
can I be less interested than I truly am, in the fate of one who has uniformly
dedicated his splendid powers to maintaining the best interests of humanity? I
am very angry at the time you are to be in London, as I must be there in about
a fortnight, or so soon as I can shake off this depressing complaint, and it
would add not a little, that I should meet you there. My chief purpose is to
put my eldest son into the army. I could have wished he had chosen another
profession, but have no title to combat a choice which would have been my own
had my lameness permitted. Walter has
apparently the dispositions and habits fitted for the military profession, a
very quiet and steady temper, an attachment to mathematics and their
application, good sense and uncommon personal strength and activity, with
address in most exercises, particularly horsemanship.
“—I had written thus far last week when I was
interrupted, first by the arrival of our friend Ticknor with Mr
Cogswell, another well-accomplished Yankee (by the by, we have them
of all sorts, e.g. one Mr **********, rather a fine man,
whom the girls have christened, with some humour, the Yankee Doodle Dandie.)
They have had Tom Drum’s entertainment, for I have
been seized with one or two
successive crises of my cruel malady, lasting in the utmost anguish from eight
to ten hours. If I had not the strength of a team of horses I could never have
fought through it, and through the heavy fire of medical artillery, scarce less
exhausting—for bleeding, blistering, calomel, and ipecacuanha have gone on
without intermission—while, during the agony of the spasms, laudanum became
necessary in the most liberal doses, though inconsistent with the general
treatment. I did not lose my senses, because I resolved to keep them, but I
thought once or twice they would have gone overboard, top and top-gallant. I
should be a great fool, and a most ungrateful wretch, to complain of such
inflictions as these. My life has been, in all its private and public
relations, as fortunate perhaps as was ever lived, up to this period; and
whether pain or misfortune may lie behind the dark curtain of futurity, I am
already a sufficient debtor to the bounty of Providence to be resigned to it.
Fear is an evil that has never mixed with my nature, nor has even unwonted good
fortune rendered my love of life tenacious; and so I can look forward to the
possible conclusion of these scenes of agony with reasonable equanimity, and
suffer chiefly through the sympathetic distress of my family.
——“Other ten days have passed away, for I would not
send this Jeremiad to teaze you, while its termination seemed doubtful. For the
present, ‘The game is done—I’ve won, I’ve won, Quoth she, and whistles thrice.’* I am this day, for the first time, free from the relics of my disorder,
and, except in point of weakness, perfectly well. But no broken-down hunter had
ever so many
* These lines are from Coleridge’sAncient Mariner.
sprung sinews, whelks, and
bruises. I am like Sancho after the doughty
affair of the Yanguesian Carriers, and all through the unnatural twisting of
the muscles under the influence of that Goule the cramp.
I must be swathed in Goulard and Rosemary spirits—probatum est.
“I shall not fine and renew a lease of popularity
upon the theatre. To write for low, ill-informed, and conceited actors, whom
you must please, for your success is necessarily at their mercy, I cannot away
with. How would you, or how do you think I should, relish being the object of
such a letter as Kean* wrote t’other day to a poor author, who, though a pedantic blockhead,
had at least the right to be treated like a gentleman by a copper-laced,
twopenny tear-mouth, rendered mad by conceit and success? Besides, if this
objection were out of the way, I do not think the character of the audience in
London is such that one could have the least pleasure in pleasing them. One
half come to prosecute their debaucheries so openly, that it would degrade a
bagnio. Another set to snooze off their beef-steaks and port wine; a third are
critics of the fourth column of the newspaper; fashion, wit, or literature
there is not; and, on the whole, I would far rather write verses for mine
honest friend Punch and his audience. The
only thing that could tempt me to be so silly, would be to assist a friend in
such a degrading task who was to have the whole profit and shame of it.
“Have you seen decidedly the most full and methodized
collection of Spanish romances (ballads) published by the industry of Depping (Altenburgh, and Leipsic), 1817? It is
quite delightful. Ticknor had set me
agog to see it, without affording me any hope it could be had in
* The reader will find something about this
actor’s quarrel with Mr
Bucke, author of “The Italians,” in Barry Cornwall’sLife of
Kean, vol. ii., p. 178.
London, when by one of these fortunate
chances which have often marked my life, a friend, who had been lately on the
Continent, came unexpectedly to enquire for me, and plucked it forth
par maniere de cadeau. God
prosper you, my dear Southey, in your
labours; but do not work too hard—experto
crede. This conclusion, as well as the confusion of my
letter, like the Bishop of Grenada’s
sermon, savours of the apoplexy. My most respectful compliments attend
Mrs S. Yours truly,
Walter Scott.
“P.S. I shall long to see the conclusion of the
Brazil history,
which, as the interest comes nearer, must rise even above the last noble
volume. Wesley you alone can touch;
but will you not have the hive about you? When I was about twelve years
old, I heard him preach more than once, standing on a chair, in Kelso
churchyard. He was a most venerable figure, but his sermons were vastly too
colloquial for the taste of Saunders.
He told many excellent stories. One I remember, which he said had happened
to him at Edinburgh. ‘A drunken dragoon (said
Wesley) was commencing an assertion in military
fashion, G—d eternally d——n me, just as I was passing. I touched the poor
man on the shoulder, and when he turned round fiercely, said calmly, you
mean God bless you.’ In the mode of telling
the story he failed not to make us sensible how much his patriarchal
appearance, and mild yet bold rebuke, overawed the soldier, who touched his
hat, thanked him, and, I think, came to chapel that evening.”
To Robert Shortreed, Esq., Sheriff Substitute, &c., Jedburgh.
“Abbotsford, 13th April, 1819. “Dear Bob,
“I am very desirous to procure, and as soon as possible, Mrs Shortreed’s
excellent receipt for making yeast. The Duke of
Buccleuch complains extremely of the sour yeast at Lisbon as
disagreeing with his stomach, and I never tasted half such good bread as
Mrs Shortreed has baked at home. I am sure you will be
as anxious as I am that the receipt should be forwarded to his Grace as soon as
possible. I remember Mrs Shortreed giving a most distinct
account of the whole affair. It should be copied over in a very distinct hand,
lest Mons. Florence makes blunders.
“I am recovering from my late indisposition, but as
weak as water. To write these lines is a fatigue. I scarce think I can be at
the circuit at all—certainly only for an hour or two. So on this occasion I
will give Mrs Shortreed’s kind hospitality a little
breathing time. I am tired even with writing these few lines. Yours ever,
Walter Scott.”*
To His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, &c.,
Lisbon.
“Abbotsford, 15th April, 1819. “My dear Lord Duke,
“How very strange it seems that this should be the
first letter I address your Grace, and you so long absent from Scotland, and
looking for all the news and nonsense of which I am in general such a faithful
reporter. Alas! I have been ill—very—very—ill—only Dr Baillie says there is nothing of consequence about my malady
except the pain—a pretty exception—said pain being
intense enough to keep me roaring as loud as
* “Sir Walter got not only the recipe for
making bread from us—but likewise learnt the best mode of cutting it
‘in a family way.’ The bread-board and large knife used at
Abbotsford at breakfasttime, were adopted by Sir Walter, after seeing
them ‘work well’ in our family.”—Note byMr
Andrew Shortrede.
your Grace’s ci-devant John of Lorn, and of, generally speaking, from
six to eight hours’ incessant duration, only varied by intervals of
deadly sickness. Poor Sophia was alone
with me for some time, and managed a half distracted pack of servants with
spirit, and sense, and presence of mind, far beyond her years, never suffering
her terror at seeing me in a state so new to her and so alarming to divert her
mind an instant from what was fit and proper to be done. Pardon this side
compliment to your Grace’s little Jacobite, to whom you have always been
so kind. If sympathy could have cured me, I should not have been long ill.
Gentle and simple were all equally kind, and even old Tom
Watson crept down from Falshope to see how I was coming on, and
to ejaculate ‘if any thing ailed the Shirra, it would be sair on the
Duke.’ The only unwelcome resurrection was that of old * * *, whose feud with me (or rather
dryness) I had well hoped was immortal; but he came jinking over the moor with
daughters and ponies, and God knows what, to look after my precious health. I
cannot tolerate that man; it seems to me as if I hated him for things not only
past and present, but for some future offence which is as yet in the womb of
fate.
“I have had as many remedies sent me for cramp and
jaundice as would set up a quack doctor—three from Mrs Plummer, each better than the other one—at least from every
gardener in the neighbourhood—besides all sort of recommendations to go to
Cheltenham, to Harrowgate, to Jericho for aught I know. Now if there is one
thing I detest more than another, it is a watering-place, unless a very
pleasant party be previously formed, when, as Tony
Lumpkin says, ‘a gentleman may be in a
concatenation.’ The most extraordinary recipe was that of my
Highland piper, John Bruce, who spent a whole Sunday in
selecting twelve stones from twelve south-running streams, with the purpose
that I should sleep upon them, and be whole. I caused him to be told that the
recipe was infallible, but that it was absolutely necessary to success that the
stones should be wrapt up in the petticoat of a widow who had never wished to
marry again, upon which the piper renounced all hope of completing the charm. I
had need of a softer couch than Bruce had destined me, for
so general was the tension of the nerves all over the body, although the pain
of the spasms in the stomach did not suffer the others to be felt, that my
whole left leg was covered with swelling and inflammation, arising from the
unnatural action of the muscles, and I had to be carried about like a child. My
right leg escaped better, the muscles there having less irritability, owing to
its lame state. Your grace may imagine the energy of pain in the nobler parts,
when cramps in the extremities, sufficient to produce such effects, were
unnoticed by me during their existence. But enough of so disagreeable a
subject.
“Respecting the portrait, I shall be equally proud
and happy to sit for it, and hope it may be so executed as to be in some degree
worthy of the preferment to which it is destined.* But neither my late golden
hue, for I was covered with jaundice, nor my present silver complexion (looking
much more like a spectre than a man) will present any idea of my quondam
beef-eating physiognomy. I must wait till the age of
brass, the true juridical bronze of my profession, shall again appear
on my frontal. I hesitate a little about Rae-
* The position in the Library at Bowhill, originally
destined by the late Duke of
Buccleuch for a portrait that never was executed, is now
filled by that which Raeburn
painted in 1808 for Constable,
and which has been engraved for the first volume of this work.
burn, unless your Grace is quite
determined. He has very much to do; works just now chiefly for cash, poor
fellow, as he can have but a few years to make money; and has twice already
made a very chowder-headed person of me. I should like much (always with your
approbation) to try Allan, who is a man
of real genius, and has made one or two glorious portraits, though his
predilection is to the historical branch of the art. We did rather a handsome
thing for him, considering that in Edinburgh we are neither very wealthy nor
great amateurs. A hundred persons subscribed ten guineas a-piece to raffle* for
his fine picture of the Circassian Chief
* Three pictures were ultimately raffled for; and
the following note, dated April the 1st, 1819, shows how keenly and
practically Scott, almost in the
crisis of his malady, could attend to the details of such a
business:
To J. G. Lockhart,
Esq., Advocate, Edinburgh.
“I have been dreadfully ill since
I wrote to you, but I think I have now got the turn fairly.
It was quite time, for though the doctors say the disease
is not dangerous, yet I could not have endured six days
more agony. I have a summons from the ingenious Mr David Bridges to attend to
my interests at his shop next Saturday, or send some
qualified person to act on my behalf. I suppose this
mysterious missive alludes to the plan about Allan’s pictures, and
at any rate I hope you will act for me. I should think a
raffle with dice would give more general satisfaction than
a lottery. You would be astonished what unhandsome
suspicions well educated and sensible persons will take
into their heads, when a selfish competition awakens the
mean and evil passions of our nature. Let each subscriber
throw the dice in person or by proxy, leaving out all who
throw under a certain number, and let this be repeated till
the number is so far reduced that the three who throw
highest may hold the prizes. I have much to say to you, and
should you spare me a day about the end of next week, I
trust you will find me pretty bobbish. Always yours
affectionately,
W. S.
The Mr David
Bridges here mentioned has occurred already.—
selling slaves to the Turkish Pacha a beautiful and
highly poetical picture. There was another small picture added by way of second
prize, and, what is curious enough, the only two peers on the list, Lord Wemyss and Lord
Fife, both got prizes. Allan has made a
sketch which I shall take to town with me when I can go, in hopes Lord Stafford, or some other picture-buyer, may
fancy it, and order a picture. The subject is the murder of Archbishop Sharp on Magus Moor, prodigiously
well treated. The savage ferocity of the assassins, crowding one on another to
strike at the old prelate on his knees—contrasted with the old man’s
figure—and that of his daughter endeavouring to interpose for his protection,
and withheld by a ruffian of milder mood than his fellows:—the dogged fanatical
severity of Rathillet’s
countenance, who remained on horseback witnessing, with stern fanaticism, the
murder he did not choose to be active in, lest it should be said that he struck
out of private revenge—are all amazingly well combined in the sketch. I
question if the artist can bring them out with equal spirit in the painting
which he meditates. Sketches give a sort of fire to the imagination of the
spectator, who is apt to fancy a great deal more for himself than the pencil,
in the finished picture, can possibly present to his eye afterwards. Constable has offered
Allan three hundred pounds to make sketches for an
edition of the Tales of My
Landlord, and other novels of that cycle, and says he will give him
the same sum next year, so, from being pinched enough, this very deserving
artist suddenly finds himself at his ease. He was long at Odessa with the
Duke of Richelieu, and is a very
entertaining person.
“I saw with great pleasure Wilkie’s sketch of your
See ante,
p. 172. The jokers in Blackwood made him happy, by dubbing him “The
Director-General of the Fine Arts for Scotland.”
Grace, and I think
when I get to town I shall coax him out of a copy, to me invaluable. I hope,
however, when you return, you will sit to Lawrence. We should have at least one picture of your Grace
from the real good hand. Sooth to speak, I cannot say much for the juvenile
representations at Bowhill and in the library at Dalkeith. Return, however,
with the original features in good health, and we shall not worry you about
portraits. The library at Bowhill will be a delightful room, and will be some
consolation to me who must, I fear, lose for some time the comforts of the
eating-room, and substitute panada and toast and water for the bonny haunch and
buxom bottle of claret. Truth is, I must make great restrictions on my
creature-comforts, at least till my stomach recovers its tone and ostrich-like
capacity of digestion. Our spring here is slow, but not unfavourable: the
country looking very well, and my plantings for the season quite completed. I
have planted quite up two little glens, leading from the Aid-de-Camp’s habitation up to the
little loch, and expect the blessings of posterity for the shade and shelter I
shall leave where, God knows, I found none.
“It is doomed this letter is not to close without a
request. I conclude your Grace has already heard from fifty applicants that the
kirk of Middlebie is vacant, and I come forward as the fifty-first (always
barring prior engagements and better claims) in behalf of George Thomson, a son of the minister of
Melrose, being the grinder of my boys, and therefore deeply entitled to my
gratitude and my good offices, as far as they can go. He is nearer Parson Abraham Adams than any living creature I
ever saw—very learned, very religious, very simple, and extremely absent. His
father, till very lately, had but a sort of half stipend, during the incumbency
of a certain notorious Mr MacLagan, to
whom he acted only as assistant. The poor devil was
brought to the grindstone (having had the want of precaution to beget a large
family), and became the very figure of a fellow who used to come upon the stage
to sing, ‘Let us all be unhappy together.’ This poor lad
George was his saving angel, not only educating
himself, but taking on him the education of two of his brothers, and
maintaining them out of his own scanty pittance. He is a sensible lad, and by
no means a bad preacher, a staunch Anti-Gallican, and orthodox in his
principles. Should your Grace find yourself at liberty to give countenance to
this very innocent and deserving creature, I need not say it will add to the
many favours you have conferred on me, but I hope the parishioners will have
also occasion to say, ‘Weel bobbit, George of
Middlebie.’ Your Grace’s Aide-de-camp, who
knows young Thomson well, will give you a better idea of
him than I can do. He lost a leg by an accident in his boyhood, which spoiled
as bold and fine looking a grenadier as ever charged bayonet against a
Frenchman’s throat. I think your Grace will not like him the worse for
having a spice of military and loyal spirit about him. If you knew the poor
fellow, your Grace would take uncommon interest in him, were it but for the odd
mixture of sense and simplicity, and spirit and good morals. Somewhat too much
of him.
“I conclude you will go to Mafra, Cintra, or some of
these places, which Baretti describes so
delightfully, to avoid the great heats, when the Palace de las Necessidades
must become rather oppressive. By the by, though it were only for the credit of
the name, I am happy to learn it has that useful English comfort, a water
closet. I suppose the armourer of the
Liffey has already put it in complete repair. Your
Grace sees the most secret passages respecting great men cannot be hidden from their friends. There is
but little news here but death in the clan. Harden’s sister is dead—a cruel blow to Lady Die,* who is upwards of eighty-five, and
accustomed to no other society. Again, Mrs Frank Scott,
his uncle’s widow, is dead, unable to survive the loss of two fine young
men in India, her sons, whose death closely followed each other. All this is
sad work; but it is a wicked and melancholy world we live in. God bless you, my
dear, dear Lord. Take great care of your health, for the sake of all of us. You
are the breath of our nostrils, useful to thousands, and to many of these
thousands indispensable. I will write again very soon, when I can keep my
breast longer to the desk without pain, for I am not yet without frequent
relapses, when they souse me into scalding water without a moment’s
delay, where I lie, as my old grieve Tom
Purdie said last night, being called to assist at the operation,
‘like a haulded saumon’ I write a
few lines to the Aide-de-Camp, but I am afraid of putting this letter beyond
the bounds of Lord Montagu’s frank.
When I can do any thing for your Grace here, you know I am most pleased and
happy. Ever respectfully and affectionately your Grace’s
Walter Scott.”
To Captain Adam Ferguson, &c. &c.
&c.
“Abbotsford, April 16, 1819. “My dear Adam,
“Having only been able last night to finish a long
letter to the Chief, I now add a few lines
for the Aide-de-Camp. I have had the pleasure to hear of you regularly from
Jack,† who is very regular in
steering this way
* See ante, vol. i., p. 248.
† Captain John
Ferguson, R.N.
when packets arrive; and I observe with great
satisfaction that you think our good Duke’s health is on the mending
hand. Climate must operate as an alterative, and much cannot perhaps be
expected from it at first.—Besides, the great heat must be a serious drawback.
But I hope you will try by and by to get away to Cintra, or some of those
sequestered retreats where there are shades and cascades to cool the air. I
have an idea the country there is eminently beautiful. I am afraid the Duke has
not yet been able to visit Torres Vedras, but you must
be meeting with things every where to put you in mind of former scenes. As for
the Senhoras, I have little doubt that the difference betwixt your military
hard fare and Florence’s high sauces and jellies
will make them think that time has rather improved an old friend than
otherwise. Apropos of these ticklish subjects. I am a suitor to the Duke, with
little expectation of success (for I know his engagements) for the kirk of
Middlebie to George Thomson, the very
Abraham Adams of Presbytery. If the
Duke mentions him to you (not otherwise) pray lend him a lift. With a kirk and
a manse the poor fellow might get a good farmer’s daughter, and beget
grenadiers for his Majesty’s service. But as I said before, I daresay all
St Hubert’s black pack are in full cry upon the
living, and that he has little or no chance. It is something, however, to have
tabled him, as better may come of it another day.
“All at Huntly Burn well and hearty, and most kind in
their attentions during our late turmoils. Bauby* came
over to offer her services as sick-nurse, and I have drunk scarce any thing but
delicious ginger beer of Miss Bell’s brewing, since
my troubles commenced. They
* Bauby—i.e. Barbara, was a kind old housekeeper
of the Miss Fergusons.
have been, to say the
least, damnable; and I think you would hardly know me. When I crawl out on
Sybil Grey, I am the very image of Death on the
pale horse, lanthorn-jawed, decayed in flesh, stooping as if I meant to eat the
poney’s ears, and unable to go above a footpace. But although I have had,
and must expect, frequent relapses, yet the attacks are more slight, and I
trust I shall mend with the good weather. Spring sets in very pleasantly and in
a settled fashion. I have planted a number of shrubs, &c. at Huntly Burn,
and am snodding up the drive of the old farm house, enclosing the Toftfield,
and making a good road from the parish road to your gate. This I tell you to
animate you to pick up a few seeds both of forest trees, shrubs, and
vegetables; we will rear them in the hot-house, and divide honourably.
Avis au lecteur. I have been
a good deal intrusted to the care of Sophia, who is an admirable sick-nurse. Mamma has been called to town by two important avocations, to
get a cook—no joking matter—and to see Charles, who was but indifferent, but has recovered. You must
have heard of the death of Joseph Hume,
David’s only son. Christ! what
a calamity—just entering life—with the fairest prospects—full of talent, and
the heir of an old and considerable family—a fine career before him. All this
he was one day, or rather one hour—or rather in the course of five minutes—so
sudden was the death—and then a heap of earth. His disease is unknown;
something about the heart, I believe; but it had no alarming appearance,
nothing worse than a cold and sore throat, when convulsions came, and death
ensued. It is a complete smash to poor David, who had just
begun to hold his head up after his wife’s death. But he bears it
stoutly, and goes about his business as usual. A woful case. London is now out
of the question with me; I have no prospect of being now
able to stand the journey by sea or land; but the best is, I have no pressing
business there. The Commie* takes charge
of Walter’s matters—cannot, you
know, be in better hands; and Lord Melville
talks of gazetting quam primum. I
will write a long letter very soon, but my back, fingers, and eyes ache with
these three pages. All here send love and fraternity. Yours ever most truly,
Walter Scott.
“P.S.—By the by, old
Kennedy, the tinker, swam for his life at Jedburgh, and was
only, by the sophisticated and timid evidence of a seceding doctor, who
differed from all his brethren, saved from a well-deserved gibbet. He goes
to botanize for fourteen years. Pray tell this to the Duke, for he was ‘An old soldier of the Duke’s, And the Duke’s old soldier.’ Six of his brethren, I am told, were in court, and kith and kin
without end. I am sorry so many of the clan are left. The cause of quarrel
with the murdered man was an old feud between two gipsey clans, the
Kennedies and Irvings, which,
about forty years since, gave rise to a desperate quarrel and battle on
Hawick Green, in which the grandfathers of both
Kennedy, and Irving whom he
murdered, were engaged.”
In the next of these letters there is allusion to a drama on the story of the Heart of Mid-Lothian, of which Mr Terry had transmitted the MS. to Abbotsford and which ultimately proved
very successful. Terry had, shortly before this time, become the acting manager of the
Haymarket theatre.
* The Lord Chief
Commissioner Adam.
To D. Terry, Esq. Haymarket, London.
“Abbotsford, 18th April, 1819. “Dear Terry,
“I am able (though very weak) to answer your kind
enquiries. I have thought of you often, and been on the point of writing or
dictating a letter, but till very lately I could have had little to tell you of
but distress and agony, with constant relapses into my unhappy malady, so that
for weeks I seemed to lose rather than gain ground, all food nauseating on my
stomach, and my clothes hanging about me like a potato-bogle,* with from five
or six to ten hours of mortal pain every third day; latterly the fits have been
much milder, and have at last given way to the hot bath without any use of
opiates; an immense point gained, as they hurt my general health extremely.
Conceive my having taken, in the course of six or seven hours, six grains of
opium, three of hyoscyamus, near 200 drops of laudanum, and all without any
sensible relief of the agony under which I laboured. My stomach is now getting
confirmed, and I have great hopes the bout is over; it has been a dreadful
set-to. I am sorry to hear Mrs Terry is
complaining; you ought not to let her labour, neither at Abbotsford sketches
nor at any thing else, but study to keep her mind amused as much as possible.
As for Walter, he is a shoot of an Aik,† and I have no fear of him; I hope he
remembers Abbotsford and his soldier namesake.
“I send the MS.—I wish you had written for it earlier.
My touching or even thinking of it was out of the question; my corrections
would have smelled as cruelly of the cramp, as the Bishop of Grenada’s homily‡ did of the apoplexy.
Indeed I hold myself inadequate to estimate those criticisms which rest on
stage effect, having
been of late very little of a play-going person. Would to
Heaven these sheets could do for you what Rob Roy has done for Murray; he has absolutely netted upwards of
L.3000: to be sure the man who played
the Bailie made a piece of acting equal to whatever has been seen in the
profession. For my own part, I was actually electrified by the truth, spirit,
and humour which he threw into the part. It was the living Nicol Jarvie: conceited, pragmatical, cautious,
generous, proud of his connexion with Rob
Roy, frightened for him at the same time, and yet extremely
desirous to interfere with him as an adviser: The tone in which he seemed to
give him up for a lost man after having provoked him into some burst of
Highland violence—‘Ah Rab,
Rab!’ was quite
inimitable. I do assure you I never saw a thing better played. It is like it
may be his only part, for no doubt the Patavinity and knowledge of the
provincial character may have aided him much; but still he must be a wonderful
fellow; and the houses he drew were tremendous.
“I am truly glad you are settled in London—a
‘rolling stone’ the proverb is something musty: it is always
difficult to begin a new profession; I could have wished you quartered nearer
us, but we shall always hear of you. The becoming stage-manager at the
Haymarket, I look upon as a great step; well executed, it cannot but lead to
something of the same kind elsewhere. You must be aware of stumbling over a
propensity which easily besets you from the habit of not having your time fully
employed—I mean what the women very expressively call dawdling. Your motto must be Hoc
age. Do instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours
of reflection or recreation after business, and never before it. When a
regiment is under march, the rear is often thrown into confusion because the
front do not move
steadily and without interruption. It is the same thing with business. If that
which is first in hand is not instantly, steadily, and regularly despatched,
other things accumulate behind till affairs begin to press all at once, and no
human brain can stand the confusion; pray mind this—it is one of your few weak
points—ask Mrs Terry else. A habit of
the mind it is which is very apt to beset men of intellect and talent,
especially when their time is not regularly filled up, but left at their own
arrangement. But it is like the ivy round the oak, and ends by limiting, if it
does not destroy, the power of manly and necessary exertion. I must love a man
so well to whom I offer such a word of advice, that I will not apologize for
it, but expect to hear you are become as regular as a Dutch clock—hours,
quarters, minutes, all marked and appropriated. This is a great cast in life,
and must be played with all skill and caution.
“We wish much to have a plan of the great bed, that
we may hang up the tester. Mr Atkinson
offered to have it altered or exchanged; but with the expense of land-carriage
and risk of damage, it is not to be thought of. I enclose a letter to thank him
for all his kindness. I should like to have the invoice when the things are
shipped. I hope they will send them to Leith and not to Berwick. The plasterer
has broke a pane in the armoury. I enclose a sheet with the size, the black
lines being traced within the lead, and I add a rough drawing of the arms,
which are those of my mother. I should like it replaced as soon as possible,
for I will set the expense against the careless rascal’s account.
“I have got a beautiful scarlet paper inlaid with
gold (rather crimson than scarlet) in a present from India, which will hang the
parlour to a T: But we shall want some articles from town to enable us to take
possession of the parlour—namely, a carpet—you mentioned
a wainscot pattern, which
would be delightful—item grates for said parlour and
armoury—a plain and unexpensive pattern, resembling that in my room (which
vents most admirably), and suited by half-dogs for burning wood. The sideboard
and chairs you have mentioned. I see Mr
Bullock (George’s
brother) advertises his museum for sale. I wonder if a good set of real tilting
armour could be got cheap there. James
Ballantyne got me one very handsome bright steel cuirassier of
Queen Elizabeth’s time, and
two less perfect for L.20—dog cheap; they make a great figure in the armoury.
Hangings, curtains, &c. I believe we shall get as well in Edinburgh as in
London; it is in your joiner and cabinet work that your infinite superiority
lies.
“Write to me if I can do aught about the play—though
I fear not: much will depend on Dumbiedykes, in whom Liston
will be strong. Sophia has been chiefly
my nurse, as an indisposition of little Charles called Charlotte to
town. She returned yesterday with him. All beg kind compliments to you and
Mrs Terry and little Walter. I remain your very feeble but
convalescent to command,
Walter Scott.
“P.S.—We must not forget the case for the leaves
of the table while out of use; without something of the kind I am afraid
they will be liable to injury, which is a pity, as they are so very
beautiful.”*
The accounts of Scott’s
condition circulated in Edinburgh in the course of this April were so alarming that I
should not have thought of accepting his invitation to
* The Duke of Buccleuch had
given Scott some old oak-roots from Drumlanrig,
out of which a very beautiful set of dinner-tables had been manufactured by Messrs
Bullock.
revisit Abbotsford, unless John Ballantyne had given me better tidings, about the end
of the month. He informed me that his “illustrious friend” (for so both the
Ballantynes usually spoke of him) was so much recovered as to have
resumed his usual literary tasks, though with this difference, that he now, for the first
time in his life, found it necessary to employ the hand of another. I have now before me a
letter of the 8th April, in which Scott says to
Constable, “Yesterday I began to
dictate, and did it easily and with comfort. This is a great point—but I must proceed
by little and little; last night I had a slight return of the enemy—but baffled
him;” and he again writes to the bookseller on the
11th,—“John Ballantyne is here, and returns with
copy, which my increasing strength permits me to hope I may now furnish
regularly.”
The copy (as MS. for the press is technically called) which Scott was thus dictating, was that of the Bride of Lammermoor; and his amanuenses were William Laidlaw and John
Ballantyne; of whom he preferred the latter, when he could be at Abbotsford,
on account of the superior rapidity of his pen; and also because John
kept his pen to the paper without interruption, and though with many an arch twinkle in his
eyes, and now and then an audible smack of his lips, had resolution to work on like a
well-trained clerk; whereas good Laidlaw entered with such keen zest
into the interest of the story as it flowed from the author’s lips, that he could not
suppress exclamations of surprise and delight—“Gude keep us a?!—the like o’
that! eh sirs! eh sirs!”—and so forth—which did not promote despatch. I have
often, however, in the sequel, heard both these secretaries describe the astonishment with
which they were equally affected when Scott began this experiment. The
affectionate Laidlaw beseeching him to stop dictating, when his
audible suffering filled every pause, “Nay,
Willie,” he answered, “only see that the
doors are fast. I would fain keep all the cry as well as all the wool to ourselves; but
as to giving over work, that can only be when I am in woollen.”
John Ballantyne told me that after the first day he always took
care to have a dozen of pens made before he seated himself opposite to the sofa on which
Scott lay, and that though he often turned himself on his pillow
with a groan of torment, he usually continued the sentence in the same breath. But when
dialogue of peculiar animation was in progress, spirit seemed to triumph altogether over
matter—he arose from his couch and walked up and down the room, raising and lowering his
voice, and as it were acting the parts. It was in this fashion that
Scott produced the far greater portion of The
Bride of Lammermoor—the whole of the Legend of Montrose and almost the whole of Ivanhoe. Yet, when his health was fairly re-established,
he disdained to avail himself of the power of dictation, which he had thus put to the
sharpest test, but resumed, and for many years resolutely adhered to, the old plan of
writing every thing with his own hand. When I once, some time afterwards, expressed my
surprise that he did not consult his ease, and spare his eyesight at all events, by
occasionally dictating, he answered, “I should as soon think of getting into a
sedan chair while I can use my legs.”
On one of the envelopes in which a chapter of the Bride of Lammermoor reached the printer in the Canongate
about this time (May 2, 1819) there is this note in the author’s own handwriting:—
“Dear James,—These matters
will need more than your usual carefulness. Look sharp—double sharp—my trust is constant in
thee:—
‘Tarry woo, tarry woo, Tarry woo is ill to spin; Card it weel, card it weel, Card it weel ere ye begin. When ’tis carded, row’d, and spun. Then the work is hafflins done; But when woven, drest, and clean, It may be cleading for a queen.’ So be it.—W. S.”
But to return—I rode out to Abbotsford with John Ballantyne towards the end of the spring vacation, and though he had
warned me of a sad change in Scott’s appearance,
it was far beyond what I had been led to anticipate. He had lost a great deal of flesh—his
clothes hung loose about him—his countenance was meagre, haggard, and of the deadliest
yellow of the jaundice—and his hair, which a few weeks before had been but slightly
sprinkled with grey, was now almost literally snow-white. His eye, however, retained its
fire unquenched; indeed it seemed to have gained in brilliancy from the new langour of the
other features; and he received us with all the usual cordiality, and even with little
perceptible diminishment in the sprightliness of his manner. He sat at table while we
dined, but partook only of some rice pudding; and after the cloth was drawn, while sipping
his toast and water, pushed round the bottles in his old style, and talked with easy
cheerfulness of the stout battle he had fought, and which he now seemed to consider as won.
“One day there was,” he said, “when I
certainly began to have great doubts whether the mischief was not getting at my
mind—and I’ll tell you how I tried to reassure myself on that score. I was quite
unfit for any thing like original composition; but I thought if I could turn an old
German ballad I had been reading into decent rhymes, I might dismiss my worst
apprehensions—and you shall see what came of the experiment.” He then desired his daughter Sophia to fetch the MS. of The Noble
Moringer, as it had been taken down from his dictation, partly by her and partly
by Mr Laidlaw, during one long and painful day while
he lay in bed. He read it to us as it stood, and seeing that both Ballantyne and I were much pleased with the verses, he
said he should copy them over, make them a little “tighter about the
joints,” and give me them to be printed in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1816, to consult him about
which volume had partly been the object of my visit; and this promise he redeemed before I
left him.
The reading of this long ballad, however (it consists of forty-three
stanzas)* seemed to have exhausted him: he retired to his bed-room; and an hour or two
after, when we were about to follow his example, his family were distressed by the
well-known symptoms of another sharp recurrence of his affliction. A large dose of opium
and the hot bath were immediately put in requisition. His good neighbour, Dr
Scott of Darnlee, was sent for, and soon attended; and in the course of
three or four hours we learned that he was once more at ease. But I can never forget the
groans which, during that space, his agony extorted from him. Well knowing the iron
strength of his resolution, to find him confessing its extremity, by cries audible not only
all over the house, but even to a considerable distance from it (for Ballantyne and I, after he was put into his bath, walked
forth to be out of the way, and heard him distinctly at the bowling-green)—it may be
supposed that this was sufficiently alarming, even to my companion; how much more to me,
who had never before listened to that voice, except in the gentle accents of kindness and
merriment.
I told Ballantyne that I saw this
was no time for my
* See Scott’s Poetical Works (Edition, 1834), Vol. vi. p. 343.
visit, and that I should start for
Edinburgh again at an early hour and begged he would make my apologies in the propriety of
which he acquiesced. But as I was dressing, about seven next morning, Scott himself tapped at my door, and entered, looking better I
thought than at my arrival the day before. “Don’t think of going,”
said he, “I feel hearty this morning, and if my devil does come back again, it
won’t be for three days at any rate. For the present, I want nothing to set me up
except a good trot in the open air, to drive away the accursed vapours of the laudanum
I was obliged to swallow last night. You have never seen Yarrow, and when I have
finished a little job I have with Jocund Johnny, we shall all take
horse and make a day of it.” When I said something about a ride of twenty
miles being rather a bold experiment after such a night, he answered, that he had ridden
more than forty, a week before, under similar circumstances, and felt nothing the worse. He
added that there was an election on foot, in consequence of the death of Sir John Riddell of Riddell, Member of Parliament for the
Selkirk district of Burghs, and that the bad health and absence of the Duke of Buccleuch rendered it quite necessary that he should
make exertions on this occasion. “In short,” said he, laughing,
“I have an errand which I shall perform—and as I must pass Newark, you had
better not miss the opportunity of seeing it under so excellent a Cicerone as the old
minstrel, ‘Whose withered cheek and tresses grey Shall yet see many a better day.’”
About eleven o’clock, accordingly, he was mounted, by the help of
Tom Purdie, upon a staunch, active cob yclept
Sybil Grey, exactly such a creature
as is described in Mr Dinmont’sDumple—while Ballantyne sprung into the saddle of noble Old Mortality, and we proceeded to
the town of Selkirk, where Scott halted to do business
at the Sheriff-Clerk’s, and begged us to move onward at a gentle pace until he should
overtake us. He came up by and by at a canter, and seemed in high glee with the tidings he
had heard about the canvass. And so we rode by Philiphaugh, Carterhaugh, Bowhill, and
Newark, he pouring out all the way his picturesque anecdotes of former times—more
especially of the fatal field where Montrose was
finally overthrown by Leslie. He described the battle
as vividly as if he had witnessed it; the passing of the Ettrick at daybreak by the
Covenanting General’s heavy cuirassiers, many of them old soldiers of Gustavus Adolphus, and the wild confusion of the Highland
host when exposed to their charge on an extensive haugh as flat as a
bowling-green. He drew us aside at Slain-men’s-lee, to observe
the green mound that marks the resting-place of the slaughtered royalists; and pointing to
the apparently precipitous mountain, Minchmoor, over which Montrose
and his few cavaliers escaped, mentioned that, rough as it seemed, his mother remembered
passing it in her early days in a coach and six, on her way to a ball at Peebles—several
footmen marching on either side of the carriage to prop it up, or drag it through bogs, as
the case might require. He also gave us, with all the dramatic effect of one of his best
chapters, the history of a worthy family who, inhabiting at the time of the battle a
cottage on his own estate, had treated with particular kindness a young officer of
Leslie’s army quartered on them for a night or two before.
When parting from them to join the troops, he took out a purse of gold, and told the good
woman that he had a presentiment he should not see another sun set, and in that case would
wish his money to remain in her kind hands; but, if he should survive, he had no doubt she would restore it honestly. The young man
returned mortally wounded, but lingered awhile under her roof, and finally bequeathed to
her and hers his purse and his blessing. “Such,” he said, “was
the origin of the respectable lairds of ——, now my good neighbours.”
The prime object of this expedition was to talk over the politics of
Selkirk with one of the Duke of Buccleuch’s great
store-farmers, who, as the Sheriff had learned,
possessed private influence with a doubtful bailie or deacon among the Souters. I forget
the result, if ever I heard it. But next morning, having, as he assured us, enjoyed a good
night in consequence of this ride, he invited us to accompany him on a similar errand
across Bowden Moor, and up the Valley of the Ayle; and when we reached a particularly bleak
and dreary point of that journey, he informed us that he perceived in the waste below a
wreath of smoke, which was the appointed signal that a wavering
Souter of some consequence had agreed to give him a personal interview where no Whiggish
eyes were likely to observe them;—and so, leaving us on the road, he proceeded to thread
his way westwards, across moor and bog, until we lost view of him. I think a couple of
hours might have passed before he joined us again, which was, as had been arranged, not far
from the village of Lilliesleaf. In that place, too, he had some negotiation of the same
sort to look after; and when he had finished it, he rode with us all round the ancient
woods of Riddell, but would not go near the house; I suppose lest any of the afflicted
family might still be there. Many were his lamentations over the catastrophe which had just
befallen them. “They are,” he said, “one of the most venerable
races in the south of Scotland—they were here long before these glens had ever heard
the name of Soulis or of Douglas—to say
nothing of Buccleuch: they can show a Pope’s bull of the
tenth cen-tury, authorizing the then Riddell
to marry a relation within the forbidden degrees. Here they have been for a thousand
years at least; and now all the inheritance is to pass away, merely because one good
worthy gentleman would not be contented to enjoy his horses, his hounds, and his bottle
of claret, like thirty or forty predecessors, but must needs turn scientific
agriculturist, take almost all his fair estate into his own hand, superintend for
himself perhaps a hundred ploughs, and try every new nostrum that has been tabled by
the quackish improvers of the time. And what makes the thing ten
times more wonderful is, that he kept day-book and ledger, and all the rest of it, as
accurately as if he had been a cheesemonger in the Grassmarket.” Some of the
most remarkable circumstances in Scott’s own subsequent life
have made me often recall this conversation—with more wonder than he expressed about the
ruin of the Riddells.
I remember he told us a world of stories, some tragical, some comical,
about the old lairds of this time-honoured lineage; and among others, that of the seven
Bibles and the seven bottles of ale, which he afterwards inserted in a note to The Bride of
Lammermoor.* He was also full of
* “It was once the universal custom to place ale, wine,
or some strong liquor, in the chamber of an honoured guest, to assuage his
thirst should he feel any on awakening in the night, which, considering that
the hospitality of that period often reached excess, was by no means unlikely.
The author has met some instances of it in former days, and in old-fashioned
families. It was, perhaps, no poetic fiction that records how
‘My cummer and I lay down to sleep With two pint stoups at our bed feet; And aye when we waken’d we drank them dry: What think you o’ my cummer and I?’
“It is a current story in Teviotdale, that in the house
of an ancient
anecdotes about a friend of his father’s, a
minister of Lilliesleaf, who reigned for two generations the most popular preacher in
Teviotdale; but I forget the orator’s name. When the original of Saunders Fairford congratulated him in his latter days on the
undiminished authority he still maintained—every kirk in the neighbourhood being left empty
when it was known he was to mount the tent at any country
sacrament—the shrewd divine answered, “Indeed, Mr Walter, I
sometimes think it’s vera surprising. There’s aye a talk of this or that
wonderfully gifted young man frae the college; but whenever I’m to be at the same
occasion with ony o’ them, I e’en mount the
white horse in the Revelations, and he dings them a’.”
Thus Scott amused himself and us as
we jogged homewards: and it was the same the following day, when (no
family of distinction, much addicted to the Presbyterian cause, a Bible was
always put into the sleeping apartment of the guests, along with a bottle of
strong ale. On some occasion there was a meeting of clergymen in the vicinity
of the castle, all of whom were invited to dinner by the worthy Baronet, and
several abode all night. According to the fashion of the times, seven of the
reverend guests were allotted to one large barrack-room, which was used on such
occasions of extended hospitality. The butler took care that the divines were
presented, according to custom, each with a Bible and a bottle of ale. But
after a little consultation among themselves, they are said to have recalled
the domestic as he was leaving the apartment. ‘My friend,’
said one of the venerable guests, ‘you must know, when we meet
together as brethren, the youngest minister reads aloud a portion of
Scripture to the rest; only one Bible, therefore, is necessary; take away
the other six, and in their place bring six more bottles of
ale.’
“This synod would have suited the ‘hermit
sage’ of Johnson, who answered a
pupil who enquired for the real road to happiness, with the celebrated
line, ‘Come, my lad, and drink some beer!’ —See Waverley Novels, Edit. 1834, Vol. xiv. p. 91.
election matters pressing) he rode with us to the western peak of the
Eildon hills, that he might show me the whole panorama of his Teviotdale, and expound the
direction of the various passes by which the ancient forayers made their way into England,
and tell the names and the histories of many a monastic chapel and baronial peel, now
mouldering in glens and dingles that escape the eye of the traveller on the highways. Among
other objects on which he descanted with particular interest were the ruins of the earliest
residence of the Kerrs of Cessford, so often opposed in arms to his
own chieftains of Branksome, and a desolate little kirk on the adjoining moor, where the
Dukes of Roxburghe are still buried in the same vault with the
hero who fell at Turnagain. Turning to the northward, he showed us the crags and tower of
Smailholme, and behind it the shattered fragment of Erceldoune—and repeated some pretty
stanzas ascribed to the last of the real wandering minstrels of this district, by name
Burn:—
“Sing Erceldoune, and Cowdenknowes, Where Homes had ance commanding, And Drygrange, wi’ the milk-white ewes, ’Twixt Tweed and Leader standing. The bird that flees through Redpath trees And Giedswood banks each morrow, May chaunt and sing—sweet Leader’s houghs And Bonny howms of Yarrow. “But Minstrel Burn cannot assuage His grief, while life endureth, To see the changes of this age Which fleeting time procureth; For mony a place stands in hard case, Where blythe folks kent nae sorrow, With Homes that dwelt on Leader side, And Scotts that dwelt on Yarrow.”
That night he had again an attack of his cramp, but not so serious as the former. Next morning he
was again at work with Ballantyne at an early hour;
and when I parted from him after breakfast, he spoke cheerfully of being soon in Edinburgh
for the usual business of his Court. I left him, however, with dark prognostications; and
the circumstances of this little visit to Abbotsford have no doubt dwelt on my mind the
more distinctly, from my having observed and listened to him throughout under the painful
feeling that it might very probably be my last.
On the 5th of May he received the intelligence of the death of the
Duke of Buccleuch, which had occurred at Lisbon on
the 20th April; and next morning he wrote as follows to his Grace’s brother:
To the Lord Montagu, &c. &c. &c., Ditton
Park, Windsor.
“Abbotsford, 6th May, 1819. “My dear Lord,
“I heard from Lord
Melville, by yesterday’s post, the calamitous news which
your Lordship’s very kind letter this moment confirmed, had it required
confirmation. For this fortnight past my hopes have been very faint indeed, and
on Wednesday, when I had occasion to go to Yarrow, and my horse turned from
habit to go up the avenue at Bowhill, I felt deeply impressed that it was a
road I should seldom travel for a long time at least. To your Lordship, let me
add to myself, this is an irreparable loss, for such a fund of excellent sense,
high principle, and perfect honour, have been rarely combined in the same
individual. To the country the inestimable loss will be soon felt, even by
those who were insensible to his merits, or wished to detract from them, when
he was amongst us. In my opinion he never recovered his domestic calamity.
He wrote to me a few days after that
cruel event, a most affectionate and re-markable letter,
explaining his own feelings, and while he begged that I would come to him,
assuring me that I should find him the same he would be for the future years of
his life. He kept his word; but I could see a grief of that calm and
concentrated kind which claims the hours of solitude and of night for its
empire, and gradually wastes the springs of life.
“Among the thousand painful feelings which this
melancholy event had excited, I have sometimes thought of his distance from
home. Yet this was done with the best intention, and upon the best advice, and
was perhaps the sole chance which remained for re-establishment. It has pleased
God that it has failed, but the best means were used under the best direction,
and mere mortality can do no more. I am very anxious about the dear young
ladies, whose lives were so much devoted to their father, and shall be
extremely desirous of knowing how they are. The Duchess has so much firmness of mind, and Lady M. so much affectionate prudence, that they
will want no support that example and kindness can afford. To me the world
seems a sort of waste without him. We had many joint objects, constant
intercourse, and unreserved communication, so that through him and by him I
took interest in many things altogether out of my own sphere, and it seems to
me as if the horizon were narrowed and lowered around me. But God’s will
be done: it is all that brother or friend can or dare say. I have reluctance to
mention the trash which is going on here. Indeed, I think little is altered
since I wrote to your Lordship fully, excepting that last night late, Chisholm* arrived at Abbotsford from Lithgow,
recalled by the news which had somehow reached Edinburgh—as I suspect by some
officiousness of . . . . . . He
* Mr Chisholm
was the Tory Candidate for the Selkirk burghs.
left Lithgow in such a state
that there is no doubt he will carry that burgh, unless Pringle* gets Selkirk. He is gone off this
morning to try the possible and impossible to get the single vote which he
wants, or to prevail on one person to stand neuter. It is possible he may
succeed, though this event, when it becomes generally known, will be greatly
against his efforts. I should care little more about the matter, were it not
for young Walter,† and for the
despite I feel at the success of speculations which were formed on the
probability of the event which has happened. Two sons of ******** came here yesterday, and with their
father’s philosophical spirit of self-accommodation, established
themselves for the night. Betwixt them and
Chisholm’s noise, my head and my stomach
suffered so much (under the necessity of drowning feelings which I could not
express), that I had a return of the spasms, and I felt as if a phantasmagoria
was going on around me. Quiet, and some indulgence of natural and solitary
sorrow, have made me well. To-day I will ride up to Selkirk and see the
magistrates, or the chief of them. It is necessary they should not think the
cause deserted. If it is thought proper to suspend the works at Bowhill,
perhaps the measure may be delayed till the decision of this matter.
“I am sure, my dear Lord, you will command me in all
I can do. I have only to regret it is so little. But to show that my gratitude
has survived my benefactor, would be the pride and delight of my life. I never
thought it possible that a man could have loved another so much where the
distance of rank was so very great. But why recur to things so painful? I pity
poor Adam Ferguson, whose affections
were so much engaged by
* Mr Pringle of
Clifton, the Whig candidate.
† Walter
Francis, the present Duke of
Buccleuch.
the Duke’s
kindness, and who has with his gay temper a generous and feeling heart. The
election we may lose, but not our own credit, and that of the family—that you
may rest assured of. My best respects and warmest sympathy attend the dear
young ladies, and Lady Montagu. I shall be
anxious to know how the Duchess-Dowager does under this great calamity. The
poor boy—what a slippery world is before him, and how early a dangerous,
because a splendid, lot, is presented to him! But he has your personal
protection. Believe me, with a deep participation in your present distress,
your Lordship’s most faithfully,
Walter Scott.”
Scott drew up for Ballantyne’s newspaper of that week the brief character of Charles, Duke of Buccleuch, which has since been included in
his Prose Miscellanies (Vol. iv.);
and the following letter accompanied a copy of it to Ditton Park.
To the Lord Montagu, &c. &c. &c.
“My dear Lord,
“I send you the newspaper article under a different
cover. I have studied so much to suppress my own feelings, and so to give a
just, calm, and temperate view of the excellent subject of our present sorrow,
such as I conceive might be drawn by one less partially devoted to him, that it has to my own eye a cold and
lifeless resemblance of an original so dear to me. But I was writing to the
public, and to a public less acquainted with him than a few years’
experience would have made them. Even his own tenantry were but just arrived at
the true estimation of his character. I wrote, therefore, to insure credit and
belief, in a tone greatly under my own feelings. I have ordered twenty-five
copies to be put in a different shape, of
which I will send your Lordship twenty. It has been a painful task, but I feel
it was due from me. I am just favoured with your letter. I beg your Lordship
will not write more frequently than you find quite convenient, for you must
have now more than enough upon you. The arrangement respecting Boughton* is
what I expected—the lifeless remains will be laid where the living thoughts had
long been. I grieve that I shall not see the last honours, yet I hardly know
how I could have gone through the scene.
“Nothing in the circumstances could have given me the
satisfaction which I receive from your Lordship’s purpose of visiting
Scotland, and bringing down the dear young ladies, who unite so many and such
affecting ties upon the regard and affection of every friend of the family. It
will be a measure of the highest necessity for the political interest of the
family, and your Lordship will have an opportunity of hearing much information
of importance, which really could not be made subject of writing. The
extinction of fire on the hearths of this great house would be putting out a
public light, and a public beacon in the time of darkness and storms. Ever your
most faithful
W. S.”
On the 11th of May Scott returned to
Edinburgh, and was present next day at the opening of the Court of Session; when all who
saw him were as much struck as I had been at Abbotsford with the lamentable change his
illness had produced in his appearance. He was un-
* Boughton, in Northamptonshire. This seat came into the
possession of Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, by his
marriage with the daughter and heiress of
John, the last Duke of
Montagu, who survived for many years her son Duke
Charles. At Boughton, as the reader will see, Scott’s early friend, the Duchess Harriet of Buccleuch had been buried in 1814.
able to persist in attendance at the Clerk’s table for several
weeks afterwards I think he seldom if ever attempted it; and I well remember that, when the
Third Series of the Tales of My Landlord at
length came out (which was on the 10th of June), he was known to be confined to bed, and
the book was received amidst the deep general impression that we should see no more of that
parentage. On the 13th he wrote thus to Captain
Ferguson, who had arrived in London with the remains of the Duke of Buccleuch:—
To Captain Adam Ferguson, &c. &c. Montagu
House, Whitehall.
“My dear Adam, I am sorry to say I have had another eight days’ visit
of my disorder, which has confined me chiefly to my bed. It is not attended
with so much acute pain as in spring, but with much sickness and weakness. It
will perhaps shade off into a mild chronic complaint—if it returns frequently
with the same violence I shall break up by degrees, and follow my dear
Chief. I do not mean that there is the
least cause for immediate apprehension, but only that the constitution must be
injured at last, as well by the modes of cure, or rather of relief, as by the
pain. My digestion as well as my appetite are for the present quite gone—a
change from former days of Leith and Newhaven parties. I thank God I can look
at this possibility without much anxiety, and without a shadow of fear.
“Will you, if your time serves, undertake two little
commissions for me? One respects a kind promise of Lord Montagu to put George
Thomson’s name on a list for kirk preferment. I
don’t like to trouble him with letters—he must be overwhelmed with
business, and has his dear brother’s punctuality in replying even to
those which require none. I would fain have that Scottish Abr. Adams pro-vided for if possible. My other request
is, that you will, if you can, see Terry, and ask him what is doing about my diningroom chairs, and
especially about the carpet, for I shall not without them have the use of what
Slender calls ‘mine own great
parlour’ this season. I should write to him, but am really
unable. I hope you will soon come down—a sight of you would do me good at the
worst turn I have yet had. The Baronet*
is very kind, and comes and sits by me. Every body likes the Regalia, and I
have heard of no one grudging their hog†—but you
must get something better. I have been writing to the Commie‡ about this. He has been
inexpressibly kind in Walter’s
matter, and the Duke of York has promised an
early commission. When you see our friend, you can talk over this, and may
perhaps save him the trouble of writing particular directions what further is
to be done. Iago’s rule, I
suppose—‘put money in thy purse.’ I wish in passing you
would ask how the ladies are in Piccadilly. Yours ever,
W. Scott.”
The Bride of Lammermoor,
and the Legend of Montrose, would hare been
read with indulgence, had they needed it; for the painful circumstances under which they
must have been produced were known wherever an English newspaper made its way; but I
believe that, except in numerous typical errors, which sprung of necessity from the
author’s inability to correct any proof-sheets, no one ever affected to perceive in
either tale the slightest symptom of his malady. Dugald
Dalgetty was placed by acclamation in the same rank with Bailie Jarvie—a conception equally new, just, and humorous,
and worked out in all the
* Mr William Clerk. † A shilling.
‡ The Lord Chief-Commissioner
Adam.
details, as if it had formed the luxurious entertainment of a chair
as easy as was ever shaken by Rabelais; and though
the character of Montrose himself seemed hardly to have
been treated so fully as the subject merited, the accustomed rapidity of the
novelist’s execution would have been enough to account for any such defect. Of
Caleb Balderstone—(the hero of one of the many
ludicrous delineations which he owed to the late Lord
Haddington, a man of rare pleasantry, and one of the best tellers of old
Scotch stories that I ever heard)—I cannot say that the general opinion was then, nor do
believe it ever since has been, very favourable. It was pronounced at the time, by more
than one critic, a mere caricature; and, though Scott
himself would never in after days admit this censure to be just, he allowed that
“he might have sprinkled rather too much parsley over his chicken.”
But even that blemish, for I grant that I think it a serious one, could not disturb the
profound interest and pathos of the Bride of Lammermoor—to my
fancy the most pure and powerful of all the tragedies that Scott ever penned. The reader
will be well pleased, however, to have, in place of any critical observations on this work,
the following particulars of its composition from the notes which its printer dictated when
stretched on the bed from which he well knew he was never to rise.
“The book” (says James
Ballantyne), “was not only written, but published, before Mr Scott was able to rise from his bed; and he assured me,
that when it was first put into his hands in a complete shape, he did not recollect one
single incident, character, or conversation it contained! He did not desire me to
understand, nor did I understand, that his illness had erased from his memory the
original incidents of the story, with which he had been acquainted from his boyhood.
These remained rooted where they had ever been; or, to speak more ex-plicitly, he remembered the general
facts of the existence of the father and mother, of the son and daughter, of the rival
lovers, of the compulsory marriage, and the attack made by the bride upon the hapless
bridegroom, with the general catastrophe of the whole. All these things he recollected,
just as he did before he took to his bed; but he literally recollected nothing else:
not a single character woven by the romancer, not one of the many scenes and points of
humour, nor any thing with which he was connected as the writer of the work.
‘For a long time,’ he said, ‘I felt myself very uneasy
in the course of my reading, lest I should be startled by meeting something
altogether glaring and fantastic. However, I recollected that you had been the
printer, and I felt sure that you would not have permitted any thing of this sort
to pass.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘upon the whole,
how did you like it?’ ‘Why,’ he said, ‘as a
whole, I felt it monstrous gross and grotesque; but still the worst of it made me
laugh, and I trusted the good-natured public would not be less
indulgent.’ I do not think I ever ventured to lead to the discussion of this
singular phenomenon again; but you may depend upon it, that what I have now said is as
distinctly reported as if it had been taken down in short-hand at the moment; I should
not otherwise have ventured to allude to the matter at all. I believe you will agree
with me in thinking that the history of the human mind contains nothing more
wonderful.”
Soon after Scott re-appeared in the
Parliament-house, he came down one Saturday to the vaulted chambers below, where the
Advocates’ Library was then kept, to attend a meeting of the Faculty, and as the
assembly was breaking up he asked me to walk home with him, taking Ballantyne’s printing office in our way. He moved
languidly, and said, if he were to stay in town many days, he must
send for Sybil Grey; but his conversation was heart-whole; and,
in particular, he laughed till, despite his weakness, the stick was flourishing in his
hand, over the following almost incredible specimen of that most absurd personage the late
Earl of Buchan.
Hearing one morning shortly before this time, that Scott was actually in
extremis, the Earl proceeded to
Castle Street, and found the knocker tied up. He then descended to the door in the area,
and was there received by honest Peter Mathieson,
whose face seemed to confirm the woful tidings, for in truth his master was ill enough.
Peter told his Lordship that he had the strictest orders to admit
no visiter; but the Earl would take no denial, pushed the bashful coachman aside, and
elbowed his way up stairs to the door of Scott’s bed-chamber. He
had his fingers upon the handle before Peter could give warning to
Miss Scott; and when she appeared to remonstrate
against such an intrusion, he patted her on the head like a child, and persisted in his
purpose of entering the sick-room so strenuously, that the young lady found it necessary to
bid Peter see the Earl down stairs again, at whatever damage to his
dignity. Peter accordingly, after trying all his eloquence in vain,
gave the tottering, bustling, old, meddlesome coxcomb a single shove,—as respectful, doubt
not, as a shove can ever be,—and he accepted that hint, and made a rapid exit.
Scott, mean while, had heard the confusion, and at length it was
explained to him; when, fearing that Peter’s gripe might have
injured Lord Buchan’s feeble person, he desired James Ballantyne, who had been sitting by his bed, to
follow the old man home—make him comprehend, if he could, that the family were in such
bewilderment of alarm, that the ordinary rules of civility were out of the question—and, in
fine, enquire what had been the object of his lordship’s intended visit.
James proceeded
forthwith to the Earl’s house in George Street, and found him strutting about his
library in a towering indignation. Ballantyne’s elaborate
demonstrations of respect, however, by degrees softened him, and he condescended to explain
himself. “I wished,” said he, “to embrace Walter
Scott before he died, and inform him that I had long considered it as a
satisfactory circumstance that he and I were destined to rest together in the same
place of sepulture. The principal thing, however, was to relieve his mind as to the
arrangements of his funeral—to show him a plan which I had prepared for the
procession—and, in a word, to assure him that I took upon myself the whole conduct of
the ceremonial at Dryburgh.” He then exhibited to
Ballantyne a formal programme, in which, as may be supposed, the
predominant feature was not Walter Scott, but David Earl of
Buchan. It had been settled, inter
alia, that the said Earl was to pronounce an eulogium over the grave,
after the fashion of French Academicians in the Père la
Chaise.
And this silliest and vainest of busy-bodies was the elder brother of
Thomas and Henry
Erskine! But the story is well known of his boasting one day to the late
Duchess of Gordon of the extraordinary talents of
his family—when her unscrupulous grace asked him, very coolly, whether the wit had not come
by the mother, and been all settled on the younger branches?
Scott, as his letters to be quoted presently will show, had several more
attacks of his disorder, and some very severe ones, during the autumn of 1819; nor, indeed,
had it quite disappeared until about Christmas. But from the time of his return to
Abbotsford in July, when he adopted the system of treatment recommended by a skilful
physician (Dr Dick), who had had large experience in
maladies of this kind during his Indian life, the seizures gradually became less violent,
and his confidence that he was ultimately to baffle the enemy
remained unshaken.
As I had no opportunity of seeing him again until he was almost entirely
re-established, I shall leave the progress of his restoration to be collected from his
correspondence. But I must not forget to set down what his daughter Sophia afterwards told me of his conduct upon one night,
in June, when he really did despair of himself. He then called his children about his bed,
and took leave of them with solemn tenderness. After giving them, one by one, such advice
as suited their years and characters, he added, “For myself, my dears, I am
unconscious of ever having done any man an injury, or omitted any fair opportunity of
doing any man a benefit. I well know that no human life can appear otherwise than weak
and filthy in the eyes of God; but I rely on the merits and intercession of our
Redeemer.” He then laid his hand on their heads, and said, “God
bless you! Live so that you may all hope to meet each other in a better place
hereafter. And now leave me that I may turn my face to the wall.” They obeyed
him: but he presently fell into a deep sleep; and when he awoke from it after many hours,
the crisis of extreme danger was felt by himself, and pronounced by his physician, to have
been overcome.
CHAPTER IX. GRADUAL RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF SCOTT’S HEALTH—IVANHOE IN PROGRESS—HIS SON WALTER JOINS THE
EIGHTEENTH REGIMENT OF HUSSARS—SCOTT’S CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS
SON—MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS TO MRS MACLEAN CLEPHANE—M. W.
HARTSTONGE—J. G. LOCKHART—JOHN
BALLANTYNE—JOHN RICHARDSON—MISS
EDGEWORTH—LORD MONTAGU, ETC.—ABBOTSFORD VISITED BY
PRINCE LEOPOLD OF SAXE-COBURG—DEATH OF MRS WILLIAM
ERSKINE— 1819.
BeforeScott left
Edinburgh, on the 12th of July, he had not only concluded his bargain with Constable for another novel, but, as will appear from some of
his letters, made considerable progress in the dictation of Ivanhoe.
That he already felt great confidence on the score of his health, may be
inferred from his allowing his son Walter, about the
middle of the month, to join the 18th Regiment of Hussars, in which he had, shortly before,
received his commission as Cornet.
Scott’s letters to his son, the first of his
family that left the house, will merit henceforth a good deal of the reader’s
attention. Walter was, when he thus quitted
Abbotsford to try his chances in the active world, only in the eighteenth year of his age;
and the fashion of education in Scotland is such, that he had scarcely ever slept a night
under a different roof from his parents, until this separation occurred. He had been
treated from his cradle with all the indulgence that a man of sense can ever permit himself to show to any of his children; and for several years he had now
been his father’s daily companion in all his out of doors occupations and amusements.
The parting was a painful one; but Scott’s ambition centered in
the heir of his name, and instead of fruitless pinings and lamentings, he henceforth made
it his constant business to keep up such a frank correspondence with the young man as might
enable himself to exert over him, when at a distance, the gentle influence of kindness,
experience, and wisdom. The series of his letters to his son is, in my opinion, by far the
most interesting and valuable, as respects the personal character and temper of the writer.
It will easily be supposed that, as the young officer entered fully into his father’s
generous views of what their correspondence ought to be, and detailed every little incident
of his new career with the same easy confidence as if he had been writing to a friend or
elder brother not very widely differing from himself in standing, the answers abound with
opinions on subjects with which I have no right to occupy or entertain my readers; but I
shall introduce, in the prosecution of this work, as many specimens of
Scott’s paternal advice as I can hope to render generally
intelligible without indelicate explanations and more especially such as may prove
serviceable to other young persons when first embarking under their own pilotage upon the
sea of life. Scott’s manly kindness to his boy, whether he is
expressing approbation or censure of his conduct, can require no pointing out; and his
practical wisdom was of that liberal order, based on such comprehensive views of man and
the world, that I am persuaded it will often be found available to the circumstances of
their own various cases, by young men of whatever station or profession.
I shall, nevertheless, adhere as usual to the chronologi-cal order; and one or two miscellaneous letters must
accordingly precede the first article of his correspondence with the Cornet. He alludes,
however, to the youth’s departure in the following
To Mrs Maclean Clephane of Torloisk.
“Abbotsford, July 15th, 1819. “Dear Mrs Clephane,
“Nothing could give me more pleasure than to hear you
are well, and thinking of looking this way. You will find all my things in very
different order from when you were here last, and plenty of room for matron and
miss, man and maid. We have no engagements, except to Newton Don about the 20th
August—if we be alive—no unreasonable proviso in so long an engagement. My
health, however, seems in a fair way of being perfectly restored. It is a joke
to talk of any other remedy than that forceful but most unpleasant one—calomel. I cannot say I ever felt advantage from any
thing else; and I am perfectly satisfied that, used as an alterative, and taken
in very small quantities for a long time, it must correct all the inaccuracies
of the biliary organs. At least it has done so in my case more radically than I
could have believed possible. I have intermitted the regime for some days, but
begin a new course next week for precaution. Dr
Dick, of the East India Company’s service, has put me on
this course of cure, and says he never knew it fail unless when the liver was
irreparably injured. I believe I shall go to Carlsbad next year. If I must go
to a watering-place, I should like one where I might hope to see and learn
something new myself, instead of being hunted down by some of the confounded
lion-catchers who haunt English spas. I have not the art of being savage to
those people, though few are more annoyed by them. I always think of Snug the Joiner—
‘——If I should as lion come in strife Into such place, ’twere pity on my life.’
“I have been delayed in answering your kind letter by
Walter’s departure from us to
join his regiment, the 18th Dragoons. He has chosen a profession for which he
is well suited, being of a calm but remarkably firm temper—fond of mathematics,
engineering, and all sorts of calculation—clear-headed, and good-natured. When
you add to this a good person and good manners, with great dexterity in
horsemanship and all athletic exercises, and a strong constitution, one hopes
you have the grounds of a good soldier. My own selfish wish would have been
that he should have followed the law; but he really had no vocation that way,
wanting the acuteness and liveliness of intellect indispensable to making a
figure in that profession. So I am satisfied all is for the best, only I shall
miss my gamekeeper and companion in my rides and walks. But so it was, is, and
must be—the young must part from the nest, and learn to wing their own way
against the storm.
“I beg my best and kindest compliments to Lady Compton. Stooping to write hurts me, or I
would have sent her a few lines. As I shall be stationary here for all this
season, I shall not see her, perhaps, for long enough. Mrs Scott and the girls join in best love, and I am ever, dear
Mrs Clephane, your faithful and most
obedient servant,
Walter Scott.”
I have had some hesitation about introducing the next letter—which refers
to the then recent publication of a sort of mock-tour in Scotland, entitled “Peter’s Letters to his
Kinsfolk.” Nobody but a very young and a very thoughtless person could have
dreamt of putting forth such a book; yet the Epistles of the imaginary Dr Morris have been so often denounced as a mere string
of libels, that I think it fair to show how much more leniently Scott judged of them at the time. Moreover, his letter is a good specimen
of the liberal courtesy with which, on all occasions, he treated the humblest aspirants in
literature. Since I have alluded to Peter’s Letters at all,
I may as well take the opportunity of adding that they were not wholly the work of one
hand.
To J. G. Lockhart, Esq. Carnbroe House,
Hollytown.
“Abbotsford, July 19th, 1819. “My dear Sir,
“Distinguendum
est. When I receive a bookex
dono of the author, in the general case I offer my
thanks with all haste before I cut a leaf, lest peradventure I should feel more
awkward in doing so afterwards, when they must not only be tendered for the
well printed volumes themselves, and the attention which sent them my way, but
moreover for the supposed pleasure I have received from the contents. But with
respect to the learned Dr Morris, the
case is totally different, and I formed the immediate resolution not to say a
word about that gentleman’s labours without having read them at least
twice over a pleasant task, which has been interrupted partly by my being
obliged to go down the country, partly by an invasion of the Southron, in the
persons of Sir John Shelley, famous on
the turf, and his lady. I wish Dr Morris
had been of the party, chiefly for the benefit of a little Newmarket man,
called Cousins, whose whole ideas, similes, illustrations,
&c. were derived from the course and training stable. He was perfectly
good-humoured, and I have not laughed more this many a day.
“I think the Doctor has got over his ground
admirably;—only the general turn of the book is perhaps too favourable, both to the state of our public society, and of individual
character: ‘His fools have their follies so lost in a crowd Of virtues and feelings, that folly grows proud.’* But it was, in every point of view, right to take this more favourable
tone, and to throw a Claude Lorraine
tint over our northern landscape. We cannot bear the actual bare truth, either
in conversation, or that which approaches nearest to conversation, in a work
like the Doctor’s, published within the circle to which it refers.
“For the rest, the Dr has fully maintained his high
character for force of expression, both serious and comic, and for acuteness of
observation—rem acu
tetigit—and his scalpel has not been idle, though his lenient
hand has cut sharp and clean, and poured balm into the wound. What an
acquisition it would have been to our general information to have had such a
work written, I do not say fifty, but even five-and-twenty years ago; and how
much of grave and gay might then have been preserved, as it were, in amber,
which have now mouldered away. When I think that at an age not much younger
than yours I knew Black, Ferguson, Robertson, Erskine,
Adam Smith, John Home, &c. &c., and at least saw
Burns, I can appreciate better than
any one the value of a work which, like this, would have handed them down to
posterity in their living colours. Dr
Morris ought, like Nourjahad, to revive every half century, to record the fleeting
manners of the age, and the interesting features of those who will be only
known to posterity by their works. If I am very partial to the Doctor, which I
am not inclined to deny, remember I have been bribed by his kind and delicate
account of his visit to Abbotsford. Like old Cumberland, or like my own grey cat, I will e’en
* Goldsmith’sRetaliation.
purr, and put up my back, and enjoy his
kind flattery, even when I know it goes beyond my merits.
“I wish you would come and spend a few days here,
while this delightful weather lasts. I am now so well as quite to enjoy the
society of my friends, instead of the woful pickle in which I was in spring,
when you last favoured me. It was, however, dignus
vindice nodus, for no less a deity descended to my aid
than the potent Mercury himself, in the
shape of calomel, which I have been obliged to take daily, though in small
quantities, for these two months past. Notwithstanding the inconveniences of
this remedy, I thrive upon it most marvellously, having recovered both sleep
and appetite; so when you incline to come this way, you will find me looking
pretty bobbishly.—Yours very truly,
Walter Scott.”
On the same day, Scott wrote as
follows, to John Ballantyne, who had started for
London, on his route to Paris in quest of articles for next winter’s auction-room and
whose good offices he was anxious to engage on behalf of the Cornet, in case they should
happen to be in the metropolis at the same time.
To Mr John Ballantyne, care of Messrs Longman and
Co., London.
“Abbotsford, July 19th, 1819. “Dear John,
“I have only to say, respecting matters here, that
they are all going on quietly. The first volume is very nearly finished, and
the whole will be out in the first or second week of September. It will be well
if you can report yourself in Britain by that time at farthest, as something
must be done on the back of this same Ivanhoe.
“Walter left
us on Wednesday night, and will be in town by the time
this reaches you. looking, I fancy, very like a cow in a fremd loaning.* He
will be heard of at Miss
Dumergue’s. Pray look after him, and help him about his
purchases.
“I hope you will be so successful in your foreign
journey as to diddle the Edinburgh folk out of some cash this winter. But
don’t forget September, if you wish to partake the advantages thereof.
“I wish you would see what good reprints of old books
are come out this year at Triphook’s, and send me a note of them.—Yours very truly,
W. Scott.”
John Ballantyne found the Cornet in London, and did
for him what his father had requested.
To Mr John Ballantyne.
Abbotsford, July 26, 1819. “Dear John,
“I have yours with the news of Walter’s rattle-traps, which are
abominably extravagant. But there is no help for it but submission. The things
seem all such as cannot well be wanted. How the devil they mount them to such a
price the tailors best know. They say it takes nine tailors to make a
man—apparently one is sufficient to ruin him. We shall rub through here well
enough, though James is rather glumpy
and dumpy—chiefly, I believe, because his child is unwell. If you can make any
more money for me in London, good and well. I have no spare cash till Ivanhoe comes forth.—Yours truly,
W. Scott.
—P.S. Enclosed are sundry letters of introduction for
the ci-devantLaird of Gilnockie.”
* Anglice—a strange lane.
To Miss Edgeworth of Edgeworthstown.
“Abbotsford, July 21, 1819. “My Dear Miss Edgeworth,
“When this shall happen to reach your hands, it will
be accompanied by a second edition of Walter
Scott, a tall copy, as collectors say,
and bound in Turkey leather, garnished with all sorts of fur and frippery—not
quite so well lettered, however, as the old and vamped
original edition. In other, and more intelligible phrase, the tall cornet of
Hussars, whom this will introduce to you, is my eldest son, who is now just
leaving me to join his regiment in Ireland. I have charged him, and he is
himself sufficiently anxious, to avoid no opportunity of making your
acquaintance, as to be known to the good and the wise is by far the best
privilege he can derive from my connexion with literature. I have always felt
the value of having access to persons of talent and genius to be the best part
of a literary man’s prerogative, and you will not wonder, I am sure, that
I should be desirous this youngster should have a share of the same benefit.
“I have had dreadful bad health for many months past,
and have endured more pain than I thought was consistent with life. But the
thread, though frail in some respects, is tough in others; and here am I with
renewed health, and a fair prospect of regaining my strength much exhausted by
such a train of suffering.
“I do not know when this will reach you, my
son’s motions being uncertain. But, find you where or when it will, it
comes, dear Miss Edgworth, from the
sincere admirer of your genius, and of the patriotic and excellent manner in
which it has always been exerted. In which character I subscribe myself ever
yours truly,
Walter Scott.”
I believe at the time when the foregoing letter was written, Scott and Miss Edgworth
had never met. The next was addressed to a gentleman, whose acquaintance the poet had
formed when collecting materials for his edition of Swift. On that occasion Mr
Hartstonge was of great service to Scott—and he appears
to have paid him soon afterwards a visit at Abbotsford. Mr Hartstonge
was an amiable and kind hearted man, and enthusiastically devoted to literature; but his
own poetical talents were undoubtedly of the sort that finds little favour either with gods
or columns. He seems to have written shortly before this time to enquire about his old
acquaintance’s health.
To Matthew Weld Hartstonge, Esq., Molesworth Street,
Dublin.
“Abbotsford, July 21, 1819. “My Dear Sir,
. . . . . . . . . “Fortunately God Mercury descended in the shape of calomel to
relieve me in this dignis vindice
nodus, and at present my system is pretty strong. In the
mean while my family are beginning to get forwards. Walter—(you remember my wading into Cauldshiels loch to save
his little frigate from wreck)—is now a Cornet of six feet two inches in your
Irish 18th Hussars; the regiment is now at Cork, and will probably be next
removed to Dublin, so you will see your old friend with a new face; be-furred,
be-feathered, and be-whiskered in the highest military ton. I have desired him to call upon you,
should he get to Dublin on leave, or come there upon duty. I miss him here very
much, for he was my companion, gamekeeper, &c. &c., and when one loses
one’s own health and strength, there are few things so pleasant as to see
a son enjoying both in the vigour of hope and promise. Think of this, my good
friend, and as you have kind affections to make some good girl happy, settle yourself in life while you are
young, and lay up by so doing, a stock of domestic happiness, against age or
bodily decay. There are many good things in life, whatever satirists and
misanthropes may say to the contrary, but probably the best of all, next to a
conscience void of offence (without which, by the by, they can hardly exist),
are the quiet exercise and enjoyment of the social feelings, in which we are at
once happy ourselves, and the cause of happiness to them who are dearest to us.
I have no news to send you from hence. The addition to my house is completed
with battlement and bartisan, but the old cottage remains hidden among
creepers, until I shall have leisure, i. e. time, and
money—to build the rest of my mansion—which I will not do hastily, as the
present is amply sufficient for accommodation. Adieu, my dear sir, never reckon
the degree of my regard by the regularity of my correspondence, for besides the
vile diseases of laziness and procrastination, which have always beset me, I
have had of late both pain and languor sufficient to justify my silence.
Believe me, however, always most truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
The first letter the young Cornet received from his father after mounting
his “rattle-traps” was the following:
To Cornet Walter Scott, 18th Hussars, Cork.
“Abbotsford, Aug. 1, 1819. “Dear Walter,
“I was glad to find you got safe to the hospitable
quarters of Piccadilly, and were put on the way of achieving your business well
and expeditiously. You would receive a packet of introductory letters by
John Ballantyne, to whom I addressed
them.
“I had a very kind letter two days ago from your
Colonel.* Had I got it sooner it
would have saved some expense in London, but there is no help for it now. As
you are very fully provided with all these appointments, you must be particular
in taking care of them, otherwise the expense of replacing them will be a great
burden, Colonel Murray seems disposed to show you much
attention. He is, I am told, rather a reserved man, which indeed is the manner
of his family. You will, therefore, be the more attentive to what he says, as
well as to answer all advances he may make to you with cordiality and
frankness; for if you be shy on the one hand, and he reserved on the other, you
cannot have the benefit of his advice, which I hope and wish you may gain, I
shall be guided by his opinion respecting your allowance: he stipulates that
you shall have only two horses (not to be changed without his consent), and on
no account keep a gig. You know of old how I detest that mania of driving
wheel-barrows up and down, when a man has a handsome horse and can ride him.
They are both foolish and expensive things, and, in my opinion, are only fit
for English bagmen—therefore gig it not, I pray you.
“In buying your horses you will be very cautious. I
see Colonel Murray has delicacy about
assisting you directly in the matter—for he says very truly that some gentlemen
make a sort of traffic in horse-flesh—from which his duty and inclination
equally lead him to steer clear. But he will take care that you don’t buy
any that are unfit for service, as in the common course they must be approved
by the commandant as chargers. Besides which, he will
probably give you some private hints, of which avail yourself, as there is
every chance of your needing much advice in this business. Two
* The then commandant of the 18th Hussars was
Lieut.-Colonel the Hon. Henry
Murray, brother to the Earl of
Mansfield.
things I preach on my own
experience. 1st, Never to buy an aged horse, however showy. He must have done
work, and, at any rate, will be unserviceable in a few years. 2dly, To buy
rather when the horse is something low in condition, that you may the better
see all his points. Six years is the oldest at which I would purchase. You will
run risk of being jockeyed by knowing gentlemen of your own corps parting with
their experienced chargers to oblige you. Take care of
this. Any good tempered horse learns the dragoon duty in wonderfully short
time, and you are rider enough not to want one quite broke in. Look well about
you, and out into the country. Excellent horses are bred all through Munster,
and better have a clever young one than an old regimental brute foundered by
repeated charges and bolts. If you see a brother officer’s horse that
pleases you much, and seems reasonable, look particularly how he stands on his
forelegs, and for that purpose see him in the stable. If he shifts and shakes a
little, have nothing to say to him. This is the best I can advise, not doubting
you will be handsomely excised after all. The officer who leaves his corps may
be disposing of good horses, and perhaps selling reasonable. One who continues
will not, at least should not, part with a good horse without some great
advantage.
“You will remain at Cork till you have learned your
regimental duty, and then probably be despatched to some outquarter. I need not
say how anxious I am that you should keep up your languages, mathematics, and
other studies. To have lost that which you already in some degree possess—and
that which we don’t practise we soon forget—would be a subject of
unceasing regret to you hereafter. You have good introductions, and don’t
neglect to avail yourself of them. Something in this respect your name may do
for you— a fair advantage, if used with discretion and
propriety. By the way, I suspect you did not call on John Richardson.
“The girls were very dull after you left us; indeed
the night you went away, Anne had
hysterics, which lasted some time. Charles also was down in the mouth, and papa and mamma a little
grave and dejected. I would not have you think yourself of too great importance
neither, for the greatest personages are not always long missed, and to make a
bit of a parody, ‘Down falls the rain, up gets the sun, Just as if Walter were not
gone.’ We comfort ourselves with the hopes that you are to be happy in the
occupation you have chosen, and in your new society. Let me know if there are
any well-informed men among them, though I don’t expect you to find out
that for some time. Be civil to all till you can by degrees find out who are
really best deserving.
“I enclose a letter from Sophia, which doubtless contains all the news. St
Boswell’s Fair rained miserably, and disappointed the misses. The weather
has since been delightful, and harvest advances fast. All here goes its old
round—the habits of age do not greatly change, though those of youth do. Mamma
has been quite well, and so have I—but I still take calomel. I was obliged to
drink some claret with Sir A. Don,
Sir John Shelley, and a funny little
Newmarket quizzy, called Cousins, whom they brought here
with them the other day, but I was not the worse. I wish you had Sir
J. S. at your elbow when you are buying your horses—he is a very
knowing man on the turf. I like his lady
very much. She is perfectly feminine in her manners, has good sense, and plays
divinely on the harp; besides all which, she shoots wild boars, and is the boldest horsewoman I
ever saw. I saw her at Paris ride like a lapwing in the midst of all the
aide-de-camps and suite of the Duke of
Wellington.
“Write what your horses come to, &c. Your outfit
will be an expensive matter; but once settled it will be fairly launching you
into life in the way you wished, and I trust you will see the necessity of
prudence and a gentlemanlike economy, which consists chiefly in refusing
oneself trifling indulgences until we can easily pay for them. Once more, I beg
you to be attentive to Colonel Murray
and to his lady. I hear of a disease among the moorfowl. I suppose they are
dying for grief at your departure. Ever, my dear boy, your affectionate father,
Walter Scott.”
To the same.
“7th August, 1819. “Dear Walter,
“. . . . I shall be curious to know how you like your
brother officers, and how you dispose of your time. The drills and
riding-school will, of course, occupy much of your mornings for some time. I
trust, however, you will keep in view drawing, languages, &c. It is
astonishing how far even half an hour a-day, regularly bestowed on one object,
will carry a man in making himself master of it. The habit of dawdling away
time is easily acquired, and so is that of putting every moment either to use
or to amusement.
“You will not be hasty in forming intimacies with any
of your brother officers, until you observe which of them are most generally
respected, and likely to prove most creditable friends. It is seldom that the
people who put themselves hastily forward to please, are those most worthy of being known. At the same time you will
take care to return all civility which is offered, with readiness and
frankness. The Italians have a proverb, which I hope you have not forgot poor
Pierrotti’s lessons so far as not to
comprehend—‘Volto sciolto e pensieri
stretti.’ There is no occasion to let any one see
what you exactly think of him; and it is the less prudent, as you will find
reason, in all probability, to change your opinion more than once.
“I shall be glad to hear of your being fitted with a
good servant. Most of the Irish of that class are scapegraces—drink, steal, and
lie like the devil. If you could pick up a canny Scot it would be well. Let me
know about your mess. To drink hard is none of your habits, but even drinking
what is called a certain quantity every day hurts the stomach, and by
hereditary descent yours is delicate. I believe the poor Duke of Buccleuch laid the foundation of that
disease which occasioned his premature death in the excesses of
Villar’s regiment, and I am sorry and ashamed to
say, for your warning, that the habit of drinking wine, so much practised when
I was a young man, occasioned, I am convinced, many of my cruel stomach
complaints. You had better drink a bottle of wine on any particular occasion,
than sit and soak and sipple at an English pint every day.
“All our bipeds are well. Hamlet had an inflammatory attack, and I began to think he was
going mad, after the example of his great namesake, but Willie Laidlaw bled him, and he has recovered.
Pussy is very well. Mamma, the girls, and Charlie join in love. Yours affectionately,
W. S.
“P.S.—Always mention what letters of mine you
have received, and write to me whatever comes into your head. It is the privilege of great
boys when distant that they cannot tire papas by any length of detail upon
any subject.”
“I am very much obliged to Colonel Murray for the trouble he has taken on
your behalf. I hope he has received the letter which I wrote to him a fortnight
since under Mr Freeling’s cover.
It enclosed a parcel of letters to you. I took the liberty of asking his advice
what allowance you should have to assist you. You know pretty well my
circumstances and your own, and that I wish you to be comfortable, but not in
any respect extravagant; and this for your own sake, and not for that of money,
which I never valued very much, perhaps not so much as I ought to have done. I
think by speaking to Colonel Murray you may get at his
opinion, and I have so much trust in your honour and affection as to confide in
your naming your own allowance. Mean time, lest the horse should starve while
the grass grows, I enclose a cheque upon Messrs Coutts for L.50, to accompt of your first year’s
allowance. Your paymaster will give you the money for it I dare say. You have
to indorse the bill, i. e. write your name on the back
of it.
“All concerned are pleased with your kind tokens of
remembrance from London. Mamma and I like the caricatures very much. I think,
however, scarce any of them shows the fancy and talent of old Gilray: he became insane, I suppose by
racking his brain in search of extravagant ideas, and was supported in his
helpless condition by the woman who keeps the great print shop in St
James’ Street, who had the generosity to remember that she had made
thousands by his labour.
“Every thing here goes on in the old fashion, and we
are all as well as possible, saving that Charles rode to Lawrence fair yesterday in a private excursion,
and made himself sick with eating gingerbread, whereby he came to disgrace.
“Sophia has
your letter of the 4th, which she received yesterday. The enclosed will help
you to set up shop and to get and pay whatever is necessary. I wish we had a
touch of your hand to make the parties rise in the morning, at which they show
as little alertness as usual.
“I beg you will keep an account of money received and
paid. Buy a little book ruled for the purpose, for pounds, shillings, and
pence, and keep an account of cash received and expended. The balance ought to
be cash in purse, if the book is regularly kept. But any very small expenses
you can enter as “sundries, L.0: 3: 6.” which saves trouble.
“You will find this most satisfactory and useful.
But, indeed, arithmetic is indispensable to a soldier who means to rise in his
profession. All military movements depend upon calculation of time, numbers,
and distance.
“Dogs all well—cat sick—supposed with eating birds in
their feathers. Sisters, brother, and mamma join in love to the “poor
wounded hussa-a-r”—I dare say you have heard the song, if not, we shall
send it for the benefit of the mess. Yours affectionately,
Walter Scott.
“P.S.—Yesterday the 12th
would, I suppose, produce some longings after the Peel heights.”
In the following letter to Mr
Richardson, we see Scott busied about
certain little matters of heraldic importance which had to be settled before his patent of
baronetcy could be properly made out. He also alludes to two little volumes, which he edited during this autumn—the Memorials of the Haliburtons, a thin quarto (never
published)—and the poems of Patrick Carey,
of which he had given specimens some years before in the Annual Register.
To John Richardson, Esq. Fludyer Street,
Westminster.
“I am sorry Walter did not get to your kind domicile. But he staid but
about five or six days in London, and great was his haste, as you may well
suppose. He had a world of trinkums to get, for you know there goes as much to
the man-millinery of a young officer of hussars as to that of an heiress on her
bridal day. His complete equipage, horses not included, cost about L.360, and
if you add a couple of blood horses, it will be L.200 more, besides the price
of his commission, for the privilege of getting the hardness of his skull tried
by a brickbat at the next meeting of Radical Reformers. I am not much afraid of
these folks, however, because I remember 1793 and 1794, when the same ideas
possessed a much more formidable class of the people, being received by a large
proportion of farmers, shopkeepers, and others, possessed of substance. A mere
mob will always be a fire of loose straw; but it is melancholy to think of the
individual mischief that may be done. I did not find it quite advisable to take
so long a journey as London this summer. I am quite recovered; but my last
attack was of so dreadful a nature, that I wish to be quite insured against
another—i. e. as much as one can be insured against
such a circumstance—before leaving home for any length of time.
“To return to the vanities of this world from what
threatened to hurry me to the next, I enclose a
drawing of my arms with the supporters which the heralds here assign me. Our
friend Harden seems to wish I would adopt
one of his Mer-maidens, otherwise they should be both Moors, as on the left
side. I have also added an impression of my seal. You can furnish Sir George Naylor with as much of my genealogy
as will serve the present purpose. I shall lose no time in connecting myself by
a general service with my granduncle, the last
Haliburton of Dryburgh Abbey, or Newmains, as they call it. I
spoke to the Lyon-office people in Edinburgh. I find my entry there will be an
easy matter, the proofs being very pregnant and accessible. I would not stop
for a trifling expense to register my pedigree in England, as for as you think
may be necessary, to show that it is a decent one. My ancestors were brave and
honest men, and I have no reason to be ashamed of them, though they were
neither wealthy nor great.
“As something of an antiquary and genealogist, I
should not like there were any mistakes in this matter, so I send you a small
note of my descent by my father and my paternal grandmother, with a memorandum
of the proofs by which they may be supported, to which I might add a whole
cloud of oral witnesses. I hate the being suspected of fishing for a pedigree,
or bolstering one up with false statements. How people can bring themselves to
this I cannot conceive. I send you a copy of the Haliburton MS., of which I have printed
twenty for the satisfaction of a few friends. You can have any part of them
copied in London which ought to be registered. I should like if Sir George Naylor would take the trouble of
looking at the proofs, which are chiefly extracts from the public records. I
take this opportunity to send you also a copy of a little amateur-book— Carey’s Poems a thorough
bred Cavalier, and, I think, no bad versifier. Kind compliments to Mrs Richardson. Yours, my dear Richardson, most truly,
Walter Scott.”
To Cornet W. Scott, 18th Hussars, Cork.
“Abbotsford, 4th Sept, 1819. “Dear Walter,
“Your very acceptable letter of the 26th reached me
to-day. I had begun to be apprehensive that the draft had fallen into the hands
of the Philistines, but the very long calm must have made the packets slow in
their progress, which I suppose was the occasion of the delay. Respecting the
allowance, Colonel Murray informs me
that from L.200 to L.250, in addition to the pay of a Cornet, ought to make a
young man very comfortable. He adds, which I am much pleased to hear, that your
officers are, many of them, men of moderate fortune and disposed to be
economical. I had thought of L.200 as what would suit us both, but when I see
the account which you very properly keep, I shall be better able to determine.
It must be considered that any uncommon expense, as the loss of a horse or the
like, may occasion an extra draught over and above the allowance. I like very
much your methodical arrangement as to expenses; it is rather a tiresome thing
at first to keep an accompt of pounds, shillings, and pence, but it is highly
necessary, and enables one to see how the money actually goes. It is, besides,
a good practical way of keeping up acquaintance with arithmetic, and you will
soon find that the principles on which all military movements turn are
arithmetical, and that though one may no doubt learn to do them by rote, yet to
understand them, you must have recourse to numbers.
Your adjutant will explain this to you. By the way, as he is a foreigner, you
will have an opportunity to keep up a little of your
French and German. Both are highly necessary to you; the knowledge of the last,
with few other qualifications, made several officers’ fortunes last war.
“I observe with pleasure you are making
acquaintances among the gentry, which I hope you will not drop for want of
calling, &c. I trust you have delivered all your recommendations, for it is
an affront to omit doing so, both to the person who writes them, and those for
whom they are designed. On the other hand, one always holds their head a little
better up in the world when they keep good society. Lord and Lady Melville are
to give you recommendations when you go to Dublin. I was at Melville Castle for
two days and found them both well. I was also one day at Langholm lodge to meet
Lord Montagu. Possibly, among your
Irish friends, you may get some shooting. I shall be glad you avail yourself of
any such opportunities, and also that, when you get your own horses, you hunt
in the winter, if you be within the reach of hounds. Nothing confirms a man in
horsemanship so well as hunting, though I do not recommend it to beginners, who
are apt to learn to ride like grooms. Besides the exercise, field-sports make a
young soldier acquainted with the country, and habituate him to have a good eye
for distance and for taking up the carte du
pays in general, which is essential to all, but
especially to officers of light troops, who are expected to display both
alertness and intelligence in reporting the nature of the country, being in
fact the eyes of the army. In every point of view, field-sports are preferable
to the in-doors’ amusement of a billiard-table, which is too often the
lounging-place for idle young officers, where there is nothing to be got but a
habit of throwing away time, and an acquaintance with the very worst society—I
mean at public billiard-rooms
—for unquestionably the game itself is a pretty one, when practised among
gentlemen and not made a constant habit of. But public billiard-tables are
almost always the resort of black-legs and sharpers, and all that numerous
class whom the French call Chevaliers d’
Industrie, and we knights of the
whipping-post.
“I am glad you go to the anatomical lectures. An
acquaintance with our own very extraordinary frame is a useful branch of
general knowledge, and as you have some turn for drawing, it will also enable
you to judge of the proper mode of disposing the limbs and muscles of your
figures, should you prosecute the art so far. In fact, there is no branch of
study can come much amiss to a young man, providing he does study, and very
often the precise occupation of the time must be trusted to taste and
opportunity.
“The White Boys made a great noise when I was a boy.
But Ireland (the more is the pity) has never been without White Boys, or Right
Boys, or Defenders, or Peep-of-day Boys, or some wild association or another
for disturbing the peace of the country. We shall not be many degrees better if
the Radical reformers be not checked. The Manchester Yeomen behaved very well,
upsetting the most immense crowd ever was seen, and notwithstanding the lies in
the papers, without any unnecessary violence. Mr
Hunt pretends to have had several blows on his head with sabres,
but has no wound to show for it. I am disposed to wish he had got such a one as
once on a day I could have treated him to. I am apt to think his politic pate
would have broached no more sedition.
“Miss
Rutherford and Eliza
Russell are now with us. We were also favoured with a visit of
the Miss ——s, who are rather empty canisters, though I
dare say very good girls. Anne tired of
them most in-hospitably. Mrs
MacLean Clephane and her two unmarried daughters are now here;
being, as we say, pears of another tree. Your sisters seem very fond of the
young ladies, and I am glad of it, for they will see that a great deal of
accomplishment and information may be completely reconciled with liveliness,
fun, good-humour, and good-breeding.
“All here send love. Dogs and cat are well. I dare
say you have heard from some other correspondent that poor Lady Wallace died of an inflammation, after two days’
illness. Trout* has returned here several times,
poor fellow, and seems to look for you; but Henry
Scott is very kind to him, and he is a great favourite.
“As you Hussars smoke, I will give you one of my
pipes, but you must let me know how I can send it safely. It is a very handsome
one, though not my best. I will keep my Meer-schaum
until I make my continental tour, and then you shall have that also. I hope you
will get leave for a few months, and go with me. Yours very affectionately,
Walter Scott.”
About this time, as the succeeding letters will show, Abbotsford had the
honour of a short visit from Prince Leopold of
Saxe-Coburg, now King of the Belgians. Immediately afterwards Scott heard of the death of Mrs
William Erskine, and repaired to Edinburgh, to condole with his afflicted
friend. His allusions mean while, to views of buying more land on Tweedside, are numerous.
These speculations are explained in a most characteristic style to the Cornet; and we see
that one of them was cut short by the tragical death of a bonnet-laird already
* Lady Wallace
was a pony; Trout a favourite
pointer which the Cornet had given, at leaving home, to the young Laird of Harden,
now the Master of Polwarth.
introduced to the reader’s notice namely,
Lauchie Longlegs, the admired of Geoffrey Crayon.
To Cornet Walter Scott, 18th Hussars, Cork.
“Abbotsford, 27th Sept. 1819. “My dear Walter,
“Your letter of the 10th gave me the pleasant
assurance that you are well and happy, and attending to your profession. We
have been jogging on here in the old fashion, somewhat varied by an unexpected
visit, on Friday last, from no less a person than Prince Leopold. I conclude you will have all the particulars of
this important event from the other members of the family, so I shall only say
that when I mentioned the number of your regiment, the Prince said he had
several friends in the 18th, and should now think he had one more, which was
very polite. By the way, I hear an excellent character of your officers for
regularity and gentlemanlike manners. This report gives me great pleasure, for
to live in bad society will deprave the best manners, and to live in good will
improve the worst.
“I am trying a sort of bargain with neighbour
Nicol Milne at present. He is very
desirous of parting with his estate of Faldonside, and if he will be contented
with a reasonable price, I am equally desirous to be the purchaser. I conceive
it will come to about L.30,000 at least. I will not agree to give a penny more;
and I think that sum is probably L.2000 and more above its actual marketable
value. But then it lies extremely convenient for us, and would, joined to
Abbotsford, make a very gentlemanlike property, worth at least L.1800 or L.2000
a-year. I can command about L.10,000 of my own, and if I be spared life and
health, I should not fear rubbing off the rest of the price, as Nicol is in no hurry for payment. As you will succeed me
in my landed property, I think it right to communicate my views to you. I am
much moved by the prospect of getting at about L.2000 or L.3000 worth of marle,
which lies on Milne’s side of the loch, but which
can only be drained on my side, so that he can make no use of it. This would
make the lands of Abbotsford worth 40s. an acre over-head, excepting the sheep
farm. I am sensible I might dispose of my money to more advantage, but probably
to none which, in the long run, would be better for you—certainly to none which
would be productive of so much pleasure to myself. The woods are thriving, and
it would be easy, at a trifling expense, to restore Faldonside loch, and stock
it with fish. In fact, it would require but a small dam-head. By means of a
little judicious planting, added to what is already there, the estate might be
rendered one of the most beautiful in this part of Scotland. Such are my
present plans, my dear boy, having as much your future welfare and profit in
view as the immediate gratification of my own wishes.
“I am very sorry to tell you that poor Mrs William Erskine is no more. She was sent
by the medical people on a tour to the lakes of Cumberland, and was taken ill
at Lowood, on Windermere. Nature, much exhausted by her previous indisposition,
sunk under four days’ illness. Her husband was with her and two of her
daughters—he is much to be pitied.
“Mr Rees, the
bookseller, told me he had met you in the streets of Cork, and reported well of
the growth of your Schnurr-bart. I hope you know what
that means. Pray write often, as the post comes so slow. I keep all your
letters, and am much pleased with the frankness of the style. No word of your
horses yet? but it is better not to be
impatient, and to wait for good ones. I have been three times on Newark, and
killed six hares each time. The two young dogs are capital good.
“I must not omit to tell you our old, and, I may
add, our kind neighbour Lauchie, has
departed, or, as Tom expresses it, has
been fairly ftytten out o’ the warld. You know the
old quarrel betwixt his brother and him about the wife—in an ill-fated hour
Jock the brother came down to Lochbreist with a sister
from Edinburgh, who was determined to have her share of the scolding-match;
they attacked poor old Lauchie like mad folks, and reviled
his wife in all sort of evil language. At length his passion was wrought up to
a great pitch, and he answered, with much emotion, that if she were the
greatest —— in Edinburgh, it was not their business, and as he uttered this
speech, he fell down on his back, and lay a dead man before them. There is
little doubt the violence of the agitation had broke a blood-vessel in the
heart or brain. A very few days since he was running up and down calling for a
coffin, and wishing to God he was in one; to which Swanston,* who was present, answered, he could not apply to a
better hand, and he would make him one if he had a mind. He has left a will of
his own making, but from some informality I think it will be set aside. His
land cannot come into the market until his girl comes of age, which, by the
way, makes me more able for the other bargain. His death took place at his own
door, and shocking enough it is that an inoffensive creature should have been
murdered (for in foro
conscientiæ it is little better) in such a way. I went
to the funeral. Very few people would take notice of Jock,
whom they look on as a second
* John
Swanston had then the care of the saw mill at Toftfield;
he was one of Scott’s most
valued dependants, and in the sequel succeeded Tom Purdie as his henchman.
Cain. The blackcocks are very plenty. I put up fourteen
cocks and hens in walking up the Clappercleuch to look at the wood. Do you not
wish you had been on the outside with your gun? Tom has
kept us well supplied with game; he boasts that he shot fifteen times without a
miss. I shall be glad to hear that you do the same on Mr Newenham’s grounds. Mamma, the girls,
and Charles all join in love and affection. Believe me ever, dear Walter,
Your affectionate father, Walter Scott.”
To the Lord Montagu, &c. &c. &c.
“Abbotsford, 3d October, 1819. “My dear Lord,
“I am honoured with your Buxton letter. . . . . .
AnentPrince Leopold, I only heard of his
approach at eight o’clock in the morning, and he was to be at Selkirk by
eleven. The magistrates sent to ask me to help them to receive him. It occurred
to me he might be coming to Melrose to see the Abbey, in which case I could not
avoid asking him to Abbotsford, as he must pass my very door. I mentioned this
to Mrs Scott, who was lying quietly in bed,
and I wish you had heard the scream she gave on the occasion. ‘What
have we to offer him?’ ‘Wine and cake,’ said
I, thinking to make all things easy; but she ejaculated, in a tone of utter
despair, ‘Cake!! where am I to get cake?’ However, being
partly consoled with the recollection that his visit was a very improbable
incident, and curiosity, as usual, proving too strong for alarm, she set out
with me in order not to miss a peep of the great man. James Skene and his lady were with us, and we gave our carriages
such additional dignity as a pair of leaders could add, and went to meet him in
full puff. The Prince very
civilly told me, that, though he could not see Melrose on this occasion, he
wished to come to Abbotsford for an hour. New despair on the part of
Mrs Scott, who began to institute a domiciliary search
for cold meat through the whole city of Selkirk, which produced one shoulder of cold lamb. In the mean while, his Royal
Highness received the civic honours of the birse*
very graciously. I had hinted to Bailie
Lang,† that it ought only to be licked symbolically on the present occasion; so he flourished it three times
before his mouth, but without touching it with his lips, and the Prince
followed his example as directed. Lang made an excellent
speech, sensible, and feeling, and well delivered. The Prince seemed much
surprised at this great propriety of expression and behaviour in a magistrate,
whose people seemed such a rabble, and whose whole band of music consisted in a
drum and fife. He noticed to Bailie Anderson, that Selkirk
seemed very populous in proportion to its extent. ‘On an occasion like
this it seems so,’ answered the Bailie, neatly enough I thought. I
question if any magistrates in the kingdom, lord mayors and aldermen not
excepted, could have behaved with more decent and quiet good-breeding.
Prince Leopold repeatedly alluded to this during the
time he was at Abbotsford. I do not know how Mrs Scott
ultimately managed; but with broiled salmon, and black-cock, and partridges,
she gave him a very decent lunch; and I chanced to have some very fine old
hock, which was mighty germain to the matter.
“The Prince
seems melancholy, whether naturally or from habit, I do not pretend to say; but
I do not remember thinking him so at Paris, where I saw him
* See ante, vol. iii. p. 399.
† Scott’s good friend, Mr Andrew Lang, Procurator-fiscal for
Selkirkshire, was then chief magistrate of the county town.
frequently, then a much poorer man than myself; yet he
showed some humour, for, alluding to the crowds that followed him every where,
he mentioned some place where he had gone out to shoot, but was afraid to
proceed for fear of ‘bagging a boy.’ He said he really thought of
getting some shooting-place in Scotland, and promised me a longer visit on his
return. If I had had a day’s notice to have warned the
waters, we could have met him with a very respectable number of the
gentry; but there was no time for this, and probably he liked it better as it
was. There was only young Clifton who
could have come, and he was shy and cubbish, and would not, though requested by
the Selkirk people. He was perhaps ashamed to march through Coventry with them.
It hung often and sadly on my mind that he was
wanting who could and would have received him like a Prince
indeed; and yet the meeting betwixt them, had they been fated to meet, would
have been a very sad one. I think I have now given your lordship a very full,
true, and particular account of our royal visit, unmatched even by that of
King Charles at the Castle of
Tillietudlem. That we did not speak of it for more than a week after it
happened, and that that emphatic monosyllable, The
Prince, is not heard amongst us more than ten times a-day, is, on the
whole, to the credit of my family’s understanding. The piper is the only one whose brain he seems
to have endangered; for, as the Prince said he preferred him to any he had
heard in the Highlands—(which, by the way, shows his Royal Highness knows
nothing of the matter),—the fellow seems to have become incapable of his
ordinary occupation as a forester, and has cut stick and stem without remorse
to the tune of Phail Phranse,
i. e. the Prince’s welcome.
“I am just going to the head-court with Donaldson, and go a day sooner to exhume certain old monuments of
the Rutherfords at Jedburgh. Edgerstone* is to meet me at Jedburgh for this research, and
then we shall go up with him to dinner. My best respects attend Lady Montagu. I wish this letter may reach you on
a more lively day than it is written in, for it requires little to add to its
dulness. Tweed is coming down very fast, the first time this summer. Believe
me, my dear Lord, most truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
To W. Scott, Esq., 18th Hussars, Cork.
“Abbotsford, 14th October, 1819. “Dear Walter,
“I had your last letter, and am very glad you find
pleasant society. Mrs Dundas of Arniston
is so good as to send you some introductions, which you will deliver as soon as
possible. You will be now in some degree accustomed to meet with strangers, and
to form your estimate of their character and manners. I hope, in the mean time,
the French and German are attended to; please to mention in your next letter
what you are reading, and in what languages. The hours of youth, my dear
Walter, are too precious to be spent
all in gaiety. We must lay up in that period when our spirit is active, and our
memory strong, the stores of information which are not only to facilitate our
progress through life, but to amuse and interest us in our later stage of
existence. I very often think what an unhappy person I should have been, if I
had not done something more or less
* The late John
Rutherford of Edgerstone, long M.P. for Roxburghshire,
was a person of high worth and universally esteemed. Scott used to say Edgerstone was his
beau ideal of the
character of a country gentleman. He was, I believe, the head of the
once great and powerful clan of Rutherford.
towards improving my understanding when I was at your
age; and I never reflect, without severe self-condemnation, on the
opportunities of acquiring knowledge which I either trifled with, or altogether
neglected. I hope you will be wiser than I have been, and experience less of
that self-reproach.
“My last acquainted you with Mrs Erskine’s death, and I grieve to say
we have just received intelligence that our kind neighbour and good friend
Lord Somerville is at the very last
gasp. His disease is a dysentery, and the symptoms, as his brother writes to
Mr Samuel Somerville, are mortal. He
is at Vevay, upon his road, I suppose, to Italy, where he had purposed spending
the winter. His death, for I understand nothing else can be expected, will be
another severe loss to me; for he was a kind, good friend, and at my time of
day men do not readily take to new associates. I must own this has been one of
the most melancholy years I ever past. The poor Duke, who loved me so well—Mrs
Erskine—Lord Somerville not to mention
others with whom I was less intimate, make it one year of mourning. I should
not forget the Chief Baron, who, though
from ill health we met of late seldom, was always my dear friend, and indeed
very early benefactor. I must look forwards to seeing in your success and
respectability, and in the affection and active improvement of all of you,
those pleasures which are narrowed by the death of my contemporaries. Men
cannot form new intimacies at my period of life, but must be happy or otherwise
according to the good fortune and good conduct of those near relatives who rise
around them.
“I wish much to know if you are lucky in a servant.
Trust him with as little cash as possible, and keep short accounts. Many a good
servant is spoiled by neglecting this simple precaution. The man is tempted to
some expense of his own, gives way to
it, and then has to make it up by a system of overcharge and peculation; and
thus mischief begins, and the carelessness of the master makes a rogue out of
an honest lad, and cheats himself into the bargain.
“I have a letter from your uncle Tom, telling me his eldest daughter is to be forthwith married to
a Captain Huxley of his own regiment. As
he has had a full opportunity of being acquainted with the young gentleman, and
approves of the match, I have to hope that it will be a happy one. I fear there
is no great fortune in the case on either side, which is to be regretted.
“Of domestic affairs I have little to tell you. The
harvest has been excellent, the weather delightful; but this I must often have
repeated. To-day I was thinning out fir-trees in the thicket, and the men were
quite exhausted with the heat, and I myself, though only marking the trees,
felt the exercise sufficiently warm. The wood is thriving delightfully. On the
28th we are to have a dance in honour of your birthday. I wish you could look
in upon us for the day at least—only I am afraid we could not part with you
when it was over, and so you would be in the guise of Cinderella, when she outstaid her time at the ball, and all her
finery returned into its original base materials. Talking of balls, the girls
would tell you the Melrose hop, where mamma presided, went off well.
“I expect poor Erskine and his daughter next week, or the week after. I went
into town to see him and found him bearing his great loss with his natural
gentleness and patience. But he was sufficiently distressed, as he has great
reason to be. I also expect Lord and
Lady Melville here very soon. Sir William Rae (now Lord Advocate) and his lady
came to us on Saturday. On Sunday Maida walked with
us, and in jumping the paling at the Greentongue park
contrived to hang himself up by the hind leg. He howled at first, but seeing us
making towards him he stopped crying, and waved his tail by way of signal, it
was supposed, for assistance. He sustained no material injury, though his leg
was strangely twisted into the bars, and he was nearly hanging by it. He showed
great gratitude, in his way, to his deliverers.
“This is a long letter, and little in it; but that
is nothing extraordinary. All send best love—and I am ever, dear Walter, your affectionate father,
Walter Scott.”
To Thomas Scott, Esq. Paymaster 18th Regiment,
Canada.
“Abbotsford, 16th Oct. 1819. “Dear Tom,
“I received yesterday your very acceptable letter,
containing the news of Jessie’s
approaching marriage, in which, as a match agreeable to her mother and you, and
relieving your minds from some of the anxious prospects which haunt those of
parents, I take the most sincere interest. Before this reaches you, the event
will probably have taken place. Mean time, I enclose a letter to the bride or
wife, as the case may happen to be. I have sent a small token of good-will to
ballast my good wishes, which you will please to value for the young lady, that
she may employ it as most convenient or agreeable to her. A little more fortune
would perhaps have done the young folks no harm; but Captain Huxley, being such as you describe
him, will have every chance of getting forward in his profession; and the
happiest marriages are often those in which there is, at first, occasion for
prudence and economy. I do certainly feel a little of the surprise which you
hint at, for time flies over our heads one scarce marks how, and children become marriageable ere we
consider them as out of the nursery. My eldest son, Walter, has also wedded himself but it is to a regiment of
hussars. He is at present a cornet in the 18th, and quartered in Cork barracks.
He is capital at most exercises, but particularly as a horseman. I do not
intend he shall remain in the cavalry, however, but shall get him into the line
when he is capable of promotion. Since he has chosen this profession, I shall
be desirous that he follows it out in good earnest, and that can only be done
by getting into the infantry.
“My late severe illness has prevented my going up to
London to receive the honour which the Prince
Regent has announced his intention to inflict upon me. My
present intention is, if I continue as well as I have been, to go up about
Christmas to get this affair over. My health was restored (I trust permanently)
by the use of calomel, a very severe and painful remedy, especially in my
exhausted state of body, but it has proved a radical one. By the way, Radical is a word in very bad odour here, being used to
denote a set of blackguards a hundred times more mischievous and absurd than
our old friends in 1794 and 1795. You will learn enough of the doings of the
Radical Reformers from the papers. In Scotland we
are quiet enough, excepting in the manufacturing districts, and we are in very
good hands, as Sir William Rae, our old
commander, is Lord Advocate. Rae has been here two or
three days, and left me yesterday—he is the old man, sensible, cool-headed, and
firm, always thinking of his duty, never of himself. He enquired kindly after
you, and I think will be disposed to serve you, should an opportunity offer.
Poor William Erskine has lost his
excellent wife, after a long and wasting
illness. She died at Lowood on Windermere, he having been recommended to take
her upon a tour about three weeks before her death. I own
I should scarce forgive a physician who should contrive to give me this
addition to family distress. I went to town last week to see him, and found
him, upon the whole, much better than I expected. I saw my mother on the same occasion, admirably well
indeed. She is greatly better than this time two years, when she rather quacked
herself a little too much. I have sent your letter to our mother, and will not
fail to transmit to our other friends the agreeable news of your
daughter’s settlement. Our cousin, Sir Harry
Macdougal, is marrying his eldest daughter to Sir Thomas Brisbane, a very good match on both
sides. I have been paying a visit on the occasion, which suspends my closing
this letter. I hope to hear very soon from you. Respecting our silence, I like
a ghost only waited to be spoken to, and you may depend on me as a regular
correspondent, when you find time to be one yourself. Charlotte and the girls join in kind love to Mrs Scott and all the family. I should like to
know what you mean to do with young Walter, and whether I can assist you in that matter. Believe
me, dear Tom, ever your affectionate
brother,
W. Scott.”
To Daniel Terry, Esq., London.
“Abbotsford, Nov. 10, 1819. “My dear Terry,
“I should be very sorry if you thought the interest
I take in you and yours so slight as not to render your last letter extremely
interesting. We have all our various combats to fight in this best of all
possible worlds, and, like brave fellow-soldiers, ought to assist one another
as much as possible. I have little doubt, that if God spares me till my little
namesake be fit to take up his share of the burden, I may have interest enough
to be of great
advantage to him in the entrance of life. In the present state of your own
profession, you would not willingly, I suppose, choose him to follow it; and,
as it is very seductive to young people of a lively temper and good taste for
the art, you should, I think, consider early how you mean to dispose of little
Walter, with a view, that is, to the
future line of life which you would wish him to adopt. Mrs Terry has not the good health which all
who know her amiable disposition and fine accomplishments would anxiously wish
her; yet, with impaired health and the caution which it renders necessary, we
have very frequently instances of the utmost verge of existence being attained,
while robust strength is cut off in the middle career. So you must be of good
heart, and hope the best in this as in other cases of a like affecting nature.
I go to town on Monday, and will forward under Mr
Freeling’s cover as much of Ivanhoe as is finished in print. It is
completed, but in the hands of a very slow transcriber; when I can collect it I
will send you the MS., which you will please to keep secret from every eye. I
think this will give a start, if it be worth taking, of about a month, for the
work will be out on the 20th of December. It is certainly possible to adapt it
to the stage, but the expense of scenery and decoration would be great, this
being a tale of chivalry, not of character. There is a tale in existence, by
dramatizing which, I am certain, a most powerful effect might be produced: it
is called Undine, and I believe has been translated
into French by Mademoiselle Montolieu,
and into English from her version: do read it, and tell me your opinion: in
German the character of Undine is
exquisite. The only objection is that the catastrophe is unhappy, but this
might be altered. I hope to be in London for ten days the end of next month; and so good by for the present, being in great
haste, most truly yours,
W. Scott.”
I conclude this chapter with a letter, written two or three days before
Scott quitted Abbotsford for the winter session. It
is addressed to his friend Hartstonge, who had taken
the opportunity of the renewal of Scott’s correspondence to
solicit his opinion and assistance touching a MS. drama; and the reader will be diverted
with the style in which the amiable tragedian is treated to his quietus:—
To Matthew Weld Hartstonge, Esq., Dublin.
“Abbotsford, 11th Nov., 1819. “My Dear Sir,
“I was duly favoured with your packet, containing
the play, as well as your very kind letter. I will endeavour (though extremely
unwilling to offer criticism on most occasions) to meet your confidence with
perfect frankness. I do not consider the Tragedy as likely to make that
favourable impression on the public which I would wish that the performance of
a friend should effect—and I by no means recommend to you to hazard it upon the
boards. In other compositions the neglect of the world takes nothing from the
merit of the author; but there is something ludicrous in being affiché as the author of an
unsuccessful play. Besides, you entail on yourself the great and eternal plague
of altering and retrenching to please the humours of performers, who are,
speaking generally, extremely ignorant, and capricious in proportion. These are
not vexations to be voluntarily undertaken; and the truth is, that in the
present day there is only one reason which seems to me adequate for the encountering the plague of
trying to please a set of conceited performers and a very motley audience,—I
mean the want of money, from which, fortunately, you are exempted. It is very
true that some day or other a great dramatic genius may arise to strike out a
new path; but I fear till this happens no great effect will be produced by
treading in the old one. The reign of Tragedy seems to be over, and the very
considerable poetical abilities which have been lately applied to it have
failed to revive it. Should the public ever be indulged with small theatres
adapted to the hours of the better ranks in life, the dramatic art may recover;
at present it is in abeyance—and I do therefore advise you in all sincerity to
keep the Tragedy (which I return under cover) safe under your own charge. Pray
think of this as one of the most unpleasant offices of friendship—and be not
angry with me for having been very frank, upon an occasion when frankness may
be more useful than altogether palatable.
“I am much obliged to you for your kind intentions
towards my young Hussar. We have not
heard from him for three weeks. I believe he is making out a meditated visit to
Killarney. I am just leaving the country for Edinburgh, to attend my duty in
the courts; but the badness of the weather in some measure reconciles me to the
unpleasant change. I have the pleasure to continue the most satisfactory
accounts of my health; it is to external appearance as strong as in my
strongest days—indeed, after I took once more to Sancho’s favourite occupations of eating and sleeping, I
recovered my losses wonderfully. Very truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
CHAPTER X. POLITICAL ALARMS—THE RADICALS—LEVIES OF VOLUNTEERS—PROJECT OF THE BUCCLEUCH
LEGION—DEATH OF SCOTT’S MOTHER—HER BROTHER DR
RUTHERFORD—AND HER SISTER CHRISTIAN—LETTERS TO
LORD MONTAGU—MR THOMAS SCOTT—CORNET
SCOTT—MR LAIDLAW AND LADY LOUISA
STUART—PUBLICATION OF IVANHOE. 1819.
Towards the winter of 1819 there prevailed a spirit of alarming
insubordination among the mining population of Northumberland and the weavers of the west
of Scotland; and Scott was particularly gratified with
finding that his own neighbours at Galashiels had escaped the contagion. There can be
little doubt that this exemption was principally owing to the personal influence and
authority of the Laird of Abbotsford and Sheriff of the Forest; but the people of
Galashiels were also fortunate in the qualities of their own beneficent landlords,
Mr Scott of Gala, and Mr Pringle of Torwoodlee. The progress of the western Reformers by degrees led even the most important Whigs in that district to exert themselves in the organization of volunteer
regiments, both mounted and dismounted; and, when it became generally suspected that
Glasgow and Paisley maintained a dangerous correspondence with the refractory colliers of
Northumberland—Scott and his friends the Lairds of Torwoodlee and
Gala determined to avail themselves of the loyalty and spirit of the men of Ettrick and Teviotdale, and proposed first
raising a company of sharpshooters among their own immediate neighbours, and
afterwards—this plan receiving every encouragement—a legion or brigade upon a large scale,
to be called the Buccleuch Legion. During November and December, 1819, these matters formed
the chief daily care and occupation of the author of Ivanhoe; and though he was still obliged to dictate most
of the chapters of his novel, we shall see that, in case it should be necessary for the
projected levy of Foresters to march upon Tynedale, he was prepared to place himself at
their head.
He had again intended, as soon as he should have finished Ivanhoe, to proceed to London and receive his
baronetcy; but as that affair had been crossed at Easter by his own illness, so at
Christmas it was again obliged to be put off in consequence of a heavy series of domestic
afflictions. Within one week Scott lost his excellent
mother, his uncle Dr
Daniel Rutherford, Professor of Botany in the University of Edinburgh—and
their sister, Christian Rutherford, already often
mentioned as one of the dearest and most esteemed of all his friends and connexions.
The following letters require no further introduction or comment.
To the Lord Montagu, Buxton.
“Abbotsford, 12th Nov. 1619. “My dear Lord,
* * * * * * “I wish I had any news to send your
Lordship, but the best is we are all quiet here. The Galashiels weavers, both
men and masters, have made their political creed known to me, and have sworn
themselves anti-radical. They came in solemn procession, with their banners,
and my own piper at their head, whom they had borrowed for the nonce. But the Tweed being in flood, we could only communicate like
Wallace and Bruce across the Carron. However, two deputies came through in
the boat, and made me acquainted with their loyal purposes. The evening was
crowned with two most distinguished actions—the weavers refusing, in the most
peremptory manner, to accept of a couple of guineas to buy whisky, and the
renowned John of Skye, piper in ordinary
to the Laird of Abbotsford, no less steadily refusing a very handsome
collection, which they offered him for his minstrelsy. All this sounds very
nonsensical, but the people must be humoured and countenanced when they take
the right turn, otherwise they will be sure to take the wrong. The accounts
from the West sometimes make me wish our little
Duke five or six years older, and able to get on horseback. It
seems approaching to the old song— ‘Come fill up our cup, come fill up our can, Come saddle the horses, and call up our men, Come open the gates, and let us go free, And we’ll show them the bonnets of bonny Dundee.’
“I am rather too old for that work now, and I cannot
look forward to it with the sort of feeling that resembled pleasure—as I did in
my younger and more healthy days. However, I have got a good following here,
and will endeavour to keep them together till times mend.
“My respectful compliments attend Lady Montagu, and I am always, with the greatest
regard, your Lordship’s very faithful
Walter Scott.”
To Cornet Walter Scott, 18th Hussars.
“Edinburgh, 13th Nov. 1819. “Dear Walter,
“I am much surprised and rather hurt at not hear-ing from you for so long a
while. You ought to remember that, however pleasantly the time may be passing
with you, we at home have some right to expect that a part of it (a very small
part will serve the turn) should be dedicated, were it but for the sake of
propriety, to let us know what you are about. I cannot say I shall be flattered
by finding myself under the necessity of again complaining of neglect. To write
once a week to one or other of us is no great sacrifice, and it is what I
earnestly pray you to do.
“We are to have great doings in Edinburgh this
winter. No less than Prince Gustavus of
Sweden is to pass the season here, and do what Princes call
studying. He is but half a Prince either, for this Northern Star is somewhat
shorn of his beams. His father was, you
know, dethroned by Buonaparte, at least by
the influence of his arms, and one of his generals, Bernadotte, made heir of the Swedish throne in his stead. But
this youngster, I suppose, has his own dreams of royalty, for he is nephew to
the Emperor of Russia (by the mother’s side), and that is a likely
connexion to be of use to him, should the Swedish nobles get rid of
Bernadotte, as it is said they wish to do. Lord Melville has recommended the said Prince
particularly to my attention, though I do not see how I can do much for him.
“I have just achieved my grand remove from
Abbotsford to Edinburgh—a motion which you know I do not make with great
satisfaction. We had the Abbotsford hunt last week. The company was small, as
the newspapers say, but select, and we had excellent sport, killing eight
hares. We coursed on Gala’s
ground, and he was with us. The dinner went off with its usual alacrity, but we
wanted you and Sally to ride and mark for us.
“I enclose another letter from Mrs Dundas of Arniston. I am afraid you have
been careless in not delivering those I formerly forwarded, because in one of
them, which Mrs Dundas got from a friend, there was
enclosed a draught for some money. I beg you will be particular in delivering
any letters intrusted to you, because though the good-nature of the writers may
induce them to write to be of service to you, yet it is possible that they may,
as in this instance, add things which are otherwise of importance to their
correspondents. It is probable that you may have picked up among your military
friends the idea that the mess of a regiment is all in all sufficient to
itself; but when you see a little of the world you will be satisfied that none
but pedants—for there is pedantry in all professions—herd exclusively together,
and that those who do so are laughed at in real good company. This you may take
on the authority of one who has seen more of life and society, in all its
various gradations, from the highest to the lowest, than a whole hussar
regimental mess, and who would be much pleased by knowing that you reap the
benefit of an experience which has raised him from being a person of small
consideration, to the honour of being father of an officer of hussars. I
therefore enclose another letter from the same kind friend, of which I pray you
to avail yourself. In fact, those officers who associate entirely among
themselves see and know no more of the world than their messman, and get
conceited and disagreeable by neglecting the opportunities offered for
enlarging their understanding. Every distinguished soldier whom I have known,
and I have known many, was a man of the world, and accustomed to general
society.
“To sweeten my lecture, I have to inform you that,
this being quarter day, I have a remittance of L.50 to send you whenever you
are pleased to let me know it will be
acceptable—for, like a ghost, I will not speak again till I am spoken to.
“I wish you not to avail yourself of your leave of
absence this winter, because, if my health continues good, I shall endeavour to
go on the Continent next summer, and should be very desirous to have you with
me; therefore, I beg you to look after your French and German. We had a visit
from a very fine fellow indeed at Abbotsford, Sir
Thomas Brisbane, who long commanded a brigade in the peninsula.
He is very scientific, but bores no one with it, being at the same time a well
informed man on all subjects, and particularly alert in his own profession, and
willing to talk about what he has seen. Sir Harry
Hay Macdougal, whose eldest daughter he is to marry, brought him
to Abbotsford on a sort of wedding visit, as we are cousins according to the
old fashion of country kin; Beardie, of
whom Sir Harry has a beautiful picture, being a son of an
Isabel Macdougal, who was, I fancy, grand-aunt to
Sir Harry.
“Once more, my dear Walter, write more frequently, and do not allow yourself to
think that the first neglect in correspondence I have ever had to complain of
has been on your part. I hope you have received the Meerschaum pipe.—I remain
your affectionate father,
Walter Scott.”
To the Same.
“Edinburgh, 3d December, 1819. “My dear Walter,
“I hope your servant proves careful and trusty. Pray
let me know this. At any rate, do not trust him a bit further than you can help
it, for in buying any thing you will get it much cheaper yourself than he will.
We are now settled for the winter; that is, all of them excepting myself, who
must soon look southwards. On Saturday we had a grand
visiter, i. e., the Crown
Prince of Sweden, under the name of Count
Itterburg. His travelling companion or tutor is Baron
de Polier, a Swiss of eminence in literature and rank. They took
a long look at King Charles XII., who, you
cannot have forgotten, keeps his post over the diningroom chimney; and we were
all struck with the resemblance betwixt old Iron-head, as the janissaries
called him, and his descendant. The said descendant is a very fine lad, with
very soft and mild manners, and we passed the day very pleasantly. They were
much diverted with Captain Adam, who
outdid his usual outdoings, and, like the barber of Bagdad, danced the dance
and sung the song of every person he spoke of.
“I am concerned I cannot give a very pleasant
account of things here. Glasgow is in a terrible state. The Radicals had a plan
to seize on 1000 stand of arms, as well as a depot of ammunition which had been
sent from Edinburgh Castle for the use of the volunteers. The
Commander-in-Chief, Sir Thomas Bradford,
went to Glasgow in person, and the whole city was occupied with patroles of
horse and foot, to deter them from the meditated attack on the barracks. The
arms were then delivered to the volunteers, who are said to be 4000 on paper;
how many effective and trustworthy, I know not. But it war new sight in
Scotland on a Sunday to see all the inhabitants in arms, soldiers patroling the
streets, and the utmost precaution of military service exacted and observed in
an apparently peaceful city.
“The Old Blue Regiment of volunteers was again
summoned together yesterday. They did not muster very numerous, and looked most
of them a little ancient. However, they are getting
recruits fast, and then the veterans may fall out of the ranks. The
Commander-in-Chief has told the President that he may soon be obli-ged to leave the charge of the castle
to these armed citizens. This looks serious. The President* made one of the most eloquent addresses that ever
was heard, to the Old Blues. The Highland chiefs have offered to raise their
clans, and march them to any point in Scotland where their services shall be
required. To be sure, the Glasgow folks would be a little surprised at the
arrival of Dugald Dhu, ‘brogues
an’ brochan an’ a’.’ I shall, I think, bid Ballantyne send you a copy of his weekly paper, which often
contains things you would like to see, and will keep you in mind of Old
Scotland.
“They are embodying a troop of cavalry in
Edinburgh—nice young men and good horses. They have paid me the compliment to
make me an honorary member of the corps, as my days of active service have been
long over. Pray take care, however, of my sabre, in case the time comes which
must turn out all.
“I have almost settled that, if things look
moderately tranquil in Britain in spring or summer, I will go abroad, and take
Charles, with the purpose of leaving
him, for two or three years, at the famous institution of Fellenborg, near
Berne, of which I hear very highly. Two of Fraser
Tytler’s sons are there, and he makes a very favourable
report of the whole establishment. I think that such a residence abroad will
not only make him well acquainted with French and German, as indeed he will
hear nothing else, but also prevent his becoming an Edinburgh petit-maitre of fourteen or fifteen, which
he could otherwise scarce avoid. I mentioned to you that I should be
particularly glad to get you leave of absence, providing it does not interfere
with your duty, in order that you may go with us. If I have cash
* The Right Honourable
Charles Hope, Lord President of the Court of Session,
was Colonel-commandant of the Old Blues, or First Regiment of Edinburgh
Volunteers.
enough I will also take your sister and mamma, and you
might return home with them by Paris, in case I went on to Italy. All this is
doubtful, but I think it is almost certain that Charles
and I go, and hope to have you with us. This will be probably about July next,
and I wish you particularly to keep it in view. If these dark prospects become
darker, which God forbid! neither you nor I will have it in our power to leave
the post to which duty calls us.
“Mamma and the girls are quite well, and so is
Master Charles, who is of course
more magnificent, as being the only specimen of youthhead at home. He has got
an old broadsword hanging up at his bedhead, which, to be the more ready for
service, hath no sheath. To this I understand we are to trust for our defence
against the Radicals. Anne
(notwithstanding the assurance) is so much afraid of the disaffected, that last
night, returning with Sophia from
Portobello, where they had been dancing with the Scotts of
Harden, she saw a Radical in every man that the carriage passed.
Sophia is of course wise and philosophical, and mamma
has not yet been able to conceive why we do not catch and hang the whole of
them, untried and unconvicted. Amidst all their various emotions, they join in
best love to you; and I always am very truly yours,
W. Scott.
“P.S I shall set off for London on the
25th.”
To the Same.
“Edinburgh, 17th December, 1819. “My dear Walter,
“I have a train of most melancholy news to acquaint
you with. On Saturday I saw your grandmother perfectly well, and on Sunday the girls drank tea
with her, when the good old lady
was more than usually in spirits; and, as if she had wished to impress many
things on their memory, told over a number of her old stories with her usual
alertness and vivacity. On Monday she had an indisposition, which proved to be
a paralytic affection, and on Tuesday she was speechless, and had lost the
power of one side, without any hope of recovery, although she may linger some
days. But what is very remarkable, and no less shocking, Dr Rutherford, who attended his sister in
perfect health upon Tuesday, died himself upon the Wednesday morning. He had
breakfasted without intimating the least illness, and was dressed to go out,
and particularly to visit my mother, when he sunk backwards, and died in his
daughter Anne’s arms, almost without a groan. To add
to this melancholy list, our poor friend, Miss
Christie, is despaired of. She was much affected by my
mother’s fatal indisposition, but does not know as yet of her
brother’s death.
“Dr
Rutherford was a very ingenious as well as an excellent man,
more of a gentleman than his profession too often are, for he could not take
the backstairs mode of rising in it, otherwise he might have been much more
wealthy. He ought to have had the Chemistry class, as he was one of the best
chemists in Europe;* but superior interest assigned it to another, who, though
a neat experimentalist, is not to be compared to poor
Daniel for originality of genius. Since you knew him
his health was broken and his spirits dejected, which may be traced
* “The subject of his Thesis is singular, and entitles Rutherford to rank very high among the chemical
philosophers of modern times. Its title is “De Aere
Mephitico,” &c.—It is universally admitted that Dr
Rutherford first discovered this gas—the reputation of
his discovery being speedily spread through Europe, his character as a
chemist of the first eminence was firmly established, and much was
to the loss of his eldest son on board an East Indiaman,
and also, I think, to a slight paralytic touch which he had some years ago.
“To all this domestic distress I have to add the
fearful and unsettled state of the country. All the regular troops are gone to
Glasgow. The MidLothian Yeomanry and other corps of volunteers went there on
Monday, and about 5000 men occupied the town. In the mean while, we were under
considerable apprehension here, the Castle being left in the charge of the city
volunteers and a few veterans.
“All our corner, high and low, is loyal. Torwoodlee, Gala, and I, have offered to raise a corps, to be called the
Loyal Foresters, to act any where south of the Forth. If matters get worse, I
will ask leave of absence for you from the Commander-in-chief, because your
presence will be materially useful to levy men, and you can only be idle where
you are, unless Ireland should be disturbed. Your old corps of the Selkirkshire
Yeomanry have been under orders, and expect to be sent either to Dumfries or
Carlisle. Berwick is dismantled, and they are removing the stores, cannon,
&c., from one of the strongest places here, for I defy the devil to pass
the bridge at Berwick, if reasonably well kept by 100 men. But there is a
spirit of consternation implied in many of the orders, which, entre nous, I like worse than what I see
or know of the circumstances which infer real danger. For myself I am too old
to fight, but nobody is too old to die, like a man of virtue and honour, in
defence of the principles he has always maintained.
“I would have you to keep yourself ready to return
augured from a young man in his
twenty-second year having distinguished himself so
remarkably.”—Bower’sHistory of
the University of Edinburgh, vol. iii. (1830), pp.
260-1.
here suddenly, in case the Duke of York should permit your temporary services
in your own country, which, if things grow worse, I will certainly ask. The
fearful thing is the secret and steady silence observed by the Radicals in all
they do. Yet, without any thing like effective arms or useful discipline,
without money and without a commissariat, what can they do, but, according to
their favourite toast, have blood and plunder? Mamma and the girls, as well as
Charles, send kind love. Your
affectionate father,
Walter Scott.”
To Mr William Laidlaw, Kaeside.
“Edinburgh, Dec. 20, 1819. “My dear Willie,
“Distress has been very busy with me since I wrote
to you. I have lost, in the course of one week, my valued relations, Dr and Miss
Rutherford—happy in this, that neither knew of the other’s
dissolution. My dear mother has offered
me deeper subject of affliction, having been struck with the palsy, and being
now in such a state that I scarce hope to see her again.
“But the strange times compel me, under this
pressure of domestic distress, to attend to public business. I find Mr Scott of Gala agrees with me in thinking we
should appeal at this crisis to the good sense and loyalty of the lower orders,
and we have resolved to break the ice, and be the first in the Lowlands, so far
as I have yet heard of, to invite our labourers and those over whom
circumstances and fortune give us influence, to rise with us in arms, and share
our fate. You know, as well as any one, that I have always spent twice the
income of my property in giving work to my neighbours, and I hope they will not
be behind the Galashiels people, who are very zealous.
Gala and I go hand in hand, and
propose to raise at least a company each of men, to be drilled as sharpshooters
or infantry, which will be a lively and interesting amusement for the young
fellows. The dress we propose to be as simple, and at the same time as
serviceable as possible; a jacket and trowsers of Galashiels grey cloth, and a
smart bonnet with a small feather, or, to save even that expense, a sprig of
holly. And we will have shooting at the mark, and prizes, and fun, and a little
whisky, and daily pay when on duty or drill. I beg of you, dear Willie, to communicate my wish to all who have
received a good turn at my hand, or may expect one, or may be desirous of doing
me one—(for I should be sorry Darnick and Brigend were beat)—and to all other
free and honest fellows who will take share with me on this occasion. I do not
wish to take any command farther than such as shall entitle me to go with the
corps, for I wish it to be distinctly understood that, in whatever capacity,
I go with them, and take a share in good or bad as
it casts up. I cannot doubt that I will have your support, and I hope you will
use all your enthusiasm in our behalf. Morrison volunteers
as our engineer. Those who I think should be spoke to are the following, among
the higher class—
“John Usher.*
He should be lieutenant, or his son ensign.
“Sam
Somerville.† I will speak to him—he may be lieutenant, if
Usher declines; but I think in that
case Usher should give us his son.
* Mr Usher has
already been mentioned as Scott’s
predecessor in the property of Toftfield. He now resided near those lands,
and was Scott’s fenant on the greater part of them.
† Samuel
Somerville, W. S. (a son of the historian of Queen Anne) had a pretty villa at Lowood, on
the Tweed, immediately opposite the seat of his relation, Lord Somerville, of whose estate he had the
management.
“Young Nicol
Milne* is rather young, but I will offer to his father to take him in.
“Harper† is a
sine quo non. Tell him I
depend on him for the honour of Darnick. I should propose to him to take a
gallant halbert.
“Adam
Ferguson thinks you should be our adjutant. John Ferguson I propose for captain. He is
steady, right bold, and has seen much fire. The auld captain will help us in
one shape or other. For myself, I know not what they propose to make of me, but
it cannot be any thing very active. However, I should like to have a steady
quiet horse, drilled to stand fire well, and if he has these properties, no
matter how stupid, so he does not stumble. In this case the price of such a
horse will be no object.
“These, my dear friend, are your beating orders. I
would propose to raise about sixty men, and not to take old men. John the
Turk‡ will be a capital corporal; and I hope in general that all my young
fellows will go with me, leaving the older men to go through necessary labour.
Sound Tom what he would like. I think,
perhaps, he would prefer managing matters at home in your absence and mine at
drill.
“John of Skye
is cock-a-hoop upon the occasion, and I suppose has made fifty blunders about
it by this time. You must warn Tom Jamieson,
Gordon Winness, John
Swanston (who will carry off all the prizes at shooting),
Davidson, and so forth.
“If you think it necessary, a little handbill might
be
* Nicol Milne,
Esq. (now advocate), eldest son of the Laird of Faldonside.
† Harper, keeper of a
little inn at Darnick, was a gallant and spirited yeoman—uniformly the
gainer of the prizes at every contest of strength and agility in that
district.
‡ One of Scott’s foresters—thus designated as being, in
all senses of the word, a gallant fellow.
circulated. But it may be better to see if Government
will accept our services; and I think, in the situation of the country, when
work is scarce, and we offer pay for their playing themselves, we should have
choice of men. But I would urge no one to do what he did not like.
“The very precarious state of my poor mother
detains me here, and makes me devolve this troublesome duty upon you. All you
have to do, however, is to sound the men, and mark down those who seem zealous.
They will perhaps have to fight with the pitmen and colliers of Northumberland,
for defence of their firesides, for these literal blackguards are got beyond
the management of their own people. And if such is the case, better keep them
from coming into Scotland, than encounter the mischief they might do there.
Yours always most truly,
Walter Scott.”
To Thomas Scott, Esq., 70th Regiment, Kingston, Canada.
“Edinburgh, 22d December, 1819. “My dear Tom,
“I wrote you about ten days since, stating that we
were all well here. In that very short space a change so sudden and so
universal has taken place among your friends here, that I have to communicate
to you a most miserable catalogue of losses. Our dear mother was on Sunday the 12th December in all
her usual strength and alertness of mind. I had seen and conversed with her on
the Saturday preceding, and never saw her better in my life of late years. My
two daughters drank tea with her on Sunday, when she was uncommonly lively,
telling them a number of stories, and being in rather unusual spirits, probably
from the degree of excitation which sometimes is remarked to precede a
paralytic affection. In the course of Monday she re-ceived that fatal summons, which at first seemed
slight; but in the night betwixt Monday and Tuesday our mother lost the use
both of speech and of one side. Since that time she has lain in bed constantly,
yet so sensible as to see me and express her earnest blessing on all of us. The
power of speech is totally lost; nor is there any hope at her advanced age,
that the scene can last long. Probably a few hours will terminate it. At any
rate, life is not to be wished, even for our nearest and dearest, in those
circumstances. But this heavy calamity was only the commencement of our family
losses. Dr Rutherford, who had seemed
perfectly well, and had visited my mother upon Tuesday the 14th, was suddenly
affected with gout in his stomach, or some disease equally rapid, on Wednesday
the 15th, and without a moment’s warning or complaint, fell down a dead
man, almost without a single groan. You are aware of his fondness for animals;
he was just stroking his cat after eating his breakfast, as usual, when,
without more warning than a half-uttered exclamation, he sunk on the ground,
and died in the arms of his daughter Anne. Though the
Doctor had no formed complaint, yet I have thought him looking poorly for some
months; and though there was no failure whatever in intellect, or any thing
which approached it, yet his memory was not so good, and I thought he paused
during the last time he attended me, and had difficulty in recollecting the
precise terms of his recipe. Certainly there was a great decay of outward
strength. We were very anxious about the effect this fatal news was likely to
produce on the mind and decayed health of our aunt, Miss C. Rutherford, and resolved, as her health had been
gradually falling off ever since she returned from Abbotsford, that she should
never learn any thing of it until it was impossible to conceal it longer. But
God had so ordered it that she was never to know the loss
she had sustained, and which she would have felt so deeply. On Friday the 17th
December, the second day after her brother’s death, she expired, without
a groan and without suffering, about six in the morning. And so we lost an
excellent and warm-hearted relation, one of the few women I ever knew whose
strength of mental faculties enabled her, at a mature period of life, to supply
the defects of an imperfect education. It is a most uncommon and afflicting
circumstance, that a brother and two sisters should be taken ill the same
day—that two of them should die without any rational possibility of the
survivance of the third—and that no one of the three could be affected by
learning the loss of the other. The Doctor was buried on Monday 20th, and
Miss Rutherford this day (Wednesday 22d), in the
burial place adjoining to and surrounding one of the new Episcopal chapels,*
where Robert Rutherford† had
purchased a burial ground of some extent, and parted with one half to the
Russells. It is surrounded with a very high wall, and
all the separate burial grounds, five I think in number, are separated by party
walls going down to the depth of twelve feet, so as to prevent the possibility
either of encroachment, or of disturbing the relics of the dead. I have
purchased one half of Miss
Russell’s interest in this sad spot, moved by its extreme
seclusion, privacy, and security. When poor Jack was buried in the Greyfriars’ churchyard, where my
father and Anne lie, if I thought their graves more
encroached upon than I
* St John’s Chapel.
† Robert
Rutherford, Esq., W.S., son to the Professor of Botany.
‡ “Our family heretofore buried in
the Grey Friar’s Churchyard, close by the entrance to
Heriot’s Hospital, and on the southern or left-hand side as
you pass from the churchyard.”—MS.
Memorandum.
liked to witness; and in this
new place I intend to lay our poor mother when the scene shall close; so that
the brother and the two sisters, whose fate has been so very closely entwined
in death may not be divided in the grave,—and this I hope you will approve of.
“Thursday, December 23d.—My mother
still lingers this morning, and as her constitution is so excellent, she may
perhaps continue to exist some time, or till another stroke. It is a great
consolation that she is perfectly easy. All her affairs of every sort have been
very long arranged for this great change, and with the assistance of Donaldson and Macculloch, you may depend, when the event takes place, that
your interest will be attended to most pointedly. I hope our civil tumults here
are like to be ended by the measures of Parliament. I mentioned in my last that
Kinloch of Kinloch was to be tried
for sedition. He has forfeited his bail, and was yesterday laid under outlawry
for non-appearance. Our neighbours in Northumberland are in a deplorable state;
upwards of 50,000 blackguards are ready to rise between Tyne and Wear.* On the
other hand, the Scottish frontiers are steady and loyal, and arming fast.
Scott of Gala and I have offered 200
men, all fine strapping young fellows, and good marksmen, willing to go any
where with us. We could easily double the number. So the necessity of the times
has made me get on horseback once more. Our mother has at different times been
perfectly conscious of her situation, and knew every one, though totally unable
to speak. She seemed to take a very affectionate farewell of me the last time I
saw her, which was the day before yesterday; and as she was much agitated,
Dr Keith advised I should not see
her again unless she seemed to desire it, which
* This was a ridiculous exaggerated report of that
period of alarm.
hitherto she has not done. She sleeps constantly, and
will probably be so removed. Our family sends love to yours. Yours most
affectionately,
Walter Scott.”
Scott’s excellent mother died on the 24th December—the day after he closed the foregoing
letter to his brother.
On the 18th, in the midst of these accumulated afflictions, the romance
of Ivanhoe made its appearance. The date
has been torn from the following letter, but it was evidently written while all these
events were fresh and recent.
To the Lady Louisa Stuart, Dillon Park,
Windsor.
“Dear Lady Louisa,
“I am favoured with your letter from Ditton, and am
glad you found any thing to entertain you in Ivanhoe. Novelty is what this giddy-paced time
demands imperiously, and I certainly studied as much as I could to get out of
the old beaten track, leaving those who like to keep the road, which I have
rutted pretty well. I have had a terrible time of it this year, with the loss
of dear friends and near relations; it is almost fearful to count up my losses,
as they make me bankrupt in society. My brother-in-law; our never-to-be-enough regretted Duke; Lord Chief
Baron,* my early, kind, and constant friend, who took me up when
I was a young fellow of little mark or likelihood; the wife of my intimate friend William Erskine; the only son of my friend David Hume, a youth of great promise, and just
entering into life, who had grown up under my eye from
* The Right Hon. Robert
Dundas of Arniston died 17th June, 1819.
childhood; my
excellent mother; and, within a few
days, her surviving brother and
sister. My mother was the only one
of these whose death was the natural consequence of very advanced life. And our
sorrows are not at an end. A sister of my mother’s, Mrs Russell of Ashestiel, long deceased, had
left (besides several sons, of whom only
one now survives and is in India) three daughters, who lived
with her youngest sister, Miss
Rutherford, and were in the closest habits of intimacy with us.
The eldest of these girls, and a most excellent creature she is, was in summer
so much shocked by the sudden news of the death of one of the brothers I have
mentioned, that she was deprived of the use of her limbs by an affection either
nervous or paralytic. She was slowly recovering from this afflicting and
helpless situation when the sudden fate of her aunts and uncle, particularly of
her who had acted as a mother to the family, brought on a new shock; and though
perfectly possessed of her mind, she has never since been able to utter a word.
Her youngest sister, a girl of one or two and twenty, was so much shocked by
this scene of accumulated distress, that she was taken very ill, and having
suppressed and concealed her disorder, relief came too late, and she has been
taken from us also. She died in the arms of the elder sister, helpless as I
have described her; and to separate the half dead from the actual corpse was
the most melancholy thing possible. You can hardly conceive, dear Lady Louisa, the melancholy feeling of seeing
the place of last repose belonging to the devoted family open four times within
so short a space, and to meet the same group of sorrowing friends and relations
on the same sorrowful occasion. Looking back on those whom I have lost, all
well known to me excepting my brother-in-law, whom I could only judge of by the
general report in his favour, I can scarce con-ceive a
group possessing more real worth and amiable qualities, not to mention talents
and accomplishments. I have never felt so truly what Johnson says so well— ‘Condemn’d to Hope’s delusive
mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts, or slow decline, Our social comforts drop away.’*
“I am not sure whether it was your ladyship, or the
poor Duchess of Buccleuch, who met my
mother once, and flattered me by
being so much pleased with the good old lady. She had a mind peculiarly well
stored with much acquired information and natural talent, and as she was very
old, and had an excellent memory, she could draw without the least exaggeration
or affectation the most striking pictures of the past age. If I have been able
to do any thing in the way of painting the past times, it is very much from the
studies with which she presented me. She connected a long period of time with
the present generation, for she remembered, and had often spoken with, a person
who perfectly recollected the battle of Dunbar, and Oliver Cromwell’s subsequent entry into Edinburgh. She
preserved her faculties to the very day before her final illness; for our
friends Mr and Mrs
Scott of Harden visited her on the Sunday; and, coming to our
house after, were expressing their surprise at the alertness of her mind, and
the pleasure which she had in talking over both ancient and modern events. She
had told them with great accuracy, the real story of the Bride of Lammermuir, and pointed out wherein it
differed from the novel. She had all the names of the parties, and detailed
(for she was a great genealogist) their connexion with existing families. On
the subse-
* Lines on the death of Mr Robert
Levet.
quent Monday she was struck with a
paralytic affection, suffered little, and that with the utmost patience; and
what was God’s reward, and a great one to her innocent and benevolent
life, she never knew that her brother and sister, the last thirty years younger
than herself, had trodden the dark path before her. She was a strict economist,
which she said enabled her to be liberal; out of her little income of about
L.300 a-year she bestowed at least a third in well chosen charities, and with
the rest lived like a gentlewoman, and even with hospitality more general than
seemed to suit her age; yet I could never prevail on her to accept of any
assistance. You cannot conceive how affecting it was to me to see the little
preparations of presents which she had assorted for the New Year—for she was a
great observer of the old fashions of her period—and to think that the kind
heart was cold which delighted in all these acts of kindly affection. I should
apologize, I believe, for troubling your ladyship with these melancholy
details, but you would not thank me for a letter written with constraint, and
my mind is at present very full of this sad subject, though I scarce know any
one to whom I would venture to say so much. I hear no good news of
Lady Anne, though Lord
Montagu writes cautiously. The weather is now turning milder,
and may, I hope, be favourable to her complaint. After my own family, my
thought most frequently turns to these orphans, whose parents I loved and
respected so much.—I am always, dear Lady
Lousia, your very respectful and obliged
Walter Scott.”
There is in the library at Abbotsford a fine copy of Baskerville’s folio Bible, two vols., printed at
Cambridge in 1763; and there appears on the blank leaf, in the trembling handwriting of
Scott’s mother, this in-scription—“To my dear son, Walter Scott, from his
affectionate mother, Anne Rutherford, January
1st, 1819.” Under these words her son has written as follows:—“This
Bible was the gift of my grandfather Dr John
Rutherford to my mother, and presented by her to me; being, alas! the
last gift which I was to receive from that excellent parent, and, as I verily believe,
the thing which she most loved in the world,—not only in humble veneration of the
sacred contents, but as the dearest pledge of her father’s affection to her. As
such she gave it to me; and as such I bequeath it to those who may represent
me—charging them carefully to preserve the same, in memory of those to whom it has
belonged. 1820.”
If literary success could have either filled Scott’s head or hardened his heart, we should have no such letters as
those of December, 1819. Ivanhoe was
received throughout England with a more clamorous delight than any of the Scotch novels had been. The volumes (three in number) were now, for the first
time, of the post 8vo form, with a finer paper than hitherto, the press-work much more
elegant, and the price accordingly raised from eight shillings the volume to ten; yet the
copies sold in this original shape were twelve thousand.
I ought to have mentioned sooner, that the original intention was to
bring out Ivanhoe as the production of a
new hand, and that, to assist this impression, the work was printed in a size and manner
unlike the preceding ones; but Constable, when the
day of publication approached, remonstrated against this experiment, and it was accordingly
abandoned.
The reader has already been told that Scott dictated the greater part of this romance. The portion of the MS.
which is his own appears, however, not only as well and
firmly executed as that of any of the Tales of My
Landlord, but distinguished by having still fewer erasures and interlineations,
and also by being in a smaller hand. The fragment is beautiful to look at—many pages
together without one alteration. It is, I suppose, superfluous to add, that in no instance
did Scott re-write his prose before sending it to the press. Whatever
may have been the case with his poetry, the world uniformly received the prima cura of the novelist.
As a work of art, Ivanhoe is perhaps the first of all Scott’s efforts, whether in prose or
in verse; nor have the strength and splendour of his imagination been displayed to higher
advantage than in some of the scenes of this romance. But I believe that no reader who is
capable of thoroughly comprehending the author’s Scotch characters and Scotch
dialogue will ever place even Ivanhoe, as a work of genius, on
the same level with Waverley or the Heart of Mid-Lothian.
There is, to me, something so remarkably characteristic of Scott’s mind and manner in a particular passage of the
Introduction, which he penned ten years afterwards for this work, that I must be pardoned
for extracting it here. He says:—“The character of the fair Jewess found so much
favour in the eyes of some fair readers, that the writer was censured, because, when
arranging the fates of the characters of the drama, he had not assigned the hand of
Wilfred to Rebecca, rather than the less interesting Rowena. But, not to mention that the prejudices of the age rendered
such an union almost impossible, the author may, in passing, observe, that he thinks a
character of a highly virtuous and lofty stamp, is degraded rather than exalted by an
attempt to reward virtue with temporal prosperity. Such is not the recompense which
Providence has deemed worthy of suffering merit; and it is a dangerous and fatal
doctrine to teach young persons, the most common readers of
romance, that rectitude of conduct and of principle are either naturally allied with,
or adequately rewarded by, the gratification of our passions, or attainment of our
wishes. In a word, if a virtuous and self-denied character is dismissed with temporal
wealth, greatness, rank, or the indulgence of such a rashly formed or ill assorted
passion as that of Rebecca for Ivanhoe, the reader will be apt to say, verily Virtue has
had its reward. But a glance on the great picture of life will show, that the duties of
self-denial, and the sacrifice of passion to principle, are seldom thus remunerated;
and that the internal consciousness of their high-minded discharge of duty, produces on
their own reflections a more adequate recompense, in the form of that peace which the
world cannot give or take away.”
The introduction of the charming Jewess and her father originated, I
find, in a conversation that Scott held with his friend
Skene during the severest season of his bodily
sufferings in the early part of this year. “Mr
Skene,” says that gentleman’s wife, “sitting by his
bedside, and trying to amuse him as well as he could in the intervals of pain, happened
to get on the subject of the Jews, as he had observed them when he spent some time in
Germany in his youth. Their situation had naturally made a strong impression; for in
those days they retained their own dress and manners entire, and were treated with
considerable austerity by their Christian neighbours, being still locked up at night in
their own quarter by great gates; and Mr Skene, partly in
seriousness, but partly from the mere wish to turn his mind at the moment upon
something that might occupy and divert it, suggested that a group of Jews would be an
interesting feature if he could contrive to bring them into his next novel.”
Upon the appearance of Ivanhoe, he reminded Mr Skene of
this conversation, and said, “You will find this book owes not a little to your
German reminiscences.” Mrs Skene adds:
“Dining with us one day, not long before Ivanhoe was begun,
something that was mentioned led him to describe the sudden death of an advocate of his
acquaintance, a Mr Elphinstone, which occurred in the Outer-house soon
after he was called to the bar. It was, he said, no wonder, that it had left a vivid
impression on his mind, for it was the first sudden death he ever witnessed; and he now
related it so as to make us all feel as if we had the scene passing before our eyes. In the
death of the Templar in Ivanhoe, I recognised the very picture I
believe I may safely say, the very words.”*
By the way, before Ivanhoe made its appearance, I had myself been formally admitted to the
author’s secret; but had he favoured me with no such confidence, it would have been
impossible for me to doubt that I had been present some months before at the conversation
which suggested, and indeed supplied all the materials of, one of its most amusing
chapters. I allude to that in which our Saxon terms for animals in the field, and our
Norman equivalents for them as they appear on the table, and so on, are explained and
commented on. All this Scott owed to the after-dinner
talk one day in Castle-street of his old friend Mr William
Clerk, who, among other elegant pursuits, has cultivated the science of
philology very deeply.
I cannot conclude this chapter without observing that the publication
of Ivanhoe marks the most brilliant epoch
in Scott’s history as the literary favourite of
his contemporaries. With the novel which he next put forth, the immediate sale of these
works began gradually to decline;
* See Waverley Novels, vol. xvii. p. 379.
and though even when that had reached its lowest declension, it was
still far above the most ambitious dreams of any other novelist, yet the publishers were
afraid the announcement of any thing like a falling-off might cast a clamp over the spirits
of the author. He was allowed to remain, for several years, under the impression that
whatever novel he threw off commanded at once the old triumphant sale of ten or twelve
thousand, and was afterwards, when included in the collective edition, to be circulated in
that shape also as widely as Waverley or
Ivanhoe. In my opinion, it would have been very unwise in the
booksellers to give Scott any unfavourable tidings upon such subjects
after the commencement of the malady which proved fatal to him,—for that from the first
shook his mind; but I think they took a false measure of the man when they hesitated to
tell him exactly how the matter stood, throughout 1820 and the three or four following
years, when his intellect was as vigorous as it ever had been, and his heart as courageous;
and I regret their scruples (among other reasons), because the years now mentioned were the
most costly ones in his life; and for every twelvemonths in which any man allows himself,
or is encouraged by others, to proceed in a course of unwise expenditure, it becomes
proportionably more difficult, as well as painful for him to pull up, when the mistake is
at length detected or recognised.
CHAPTER XI. THE VISIONARY—THE PEEL OF
DARNICK—SCOTT’S SATURDAY EXCURSIONS TO ABBOTSFORD—A SUNDAY
THERE IN FEBRUARY—CONSTABLE—JOHN
BALLANTYNE—THOMAS PURDIE, ETC.—PRINCE
GUSTAVUS VASA—PROCLAMATION OF KING GEORGE
IV.—PUBLICATION OF THE MONASTERY— 1820.
In the course of December, 1819, and January, 1820, Scott drew up three essays, under the title of “The Visionary,” upon certain popular
doctrines or delusions, the spread of which at this time filled with alarm, not only Tories
like him, but many persons who had been distinguished through life for their adherence to
political liberalism. These papers appeared successively in James Ballantyne’sEdinburgh Weekly Journal, and their parentage being obvious, they excited much
attention in Scotland. Scott collected them into a pamphlet, which had
also a large circulation; and I remember his showing very particular satisfaction when he
observed a mason reading it to his comrades, as they sat at their luncheon, by a new house
on Leith Walk. During January, however, his thoughts continued to be chiefly occupied with
the details of the proposed corps of Foresters; of which, I believe, it was at last
settled, as far as depended on the other gentlemen concerned in it, that he should be the
Major. He wrote and spoke on this subject with undiminished zeal, until the whole fell to
the ground in consequence of the Government’s ultimately
declining to take on itself any part of the expense; a refusal which must have been fatal
to any such project when the Duke of Buccleuch was a
minor. He felt the disappointment keenly; but, in the mean time, the hearty alacrity with
which his neighbours of all classes gave in their adhesion, had afforded him much pleasure,
and, as regarded his own immediate dependants, served to rivet the bonds of affection and
confidence, which were to the end maintained between him and them. Darnick had been
especially ardent in the cause, and he thenceforth considered its volunteers as persons
whose individual fortunes closely concerned him. I could fill many a page with the letters
which he wrote at subsequent periods, with the view of promoting the success of these
spirited young fellows in their various departments of industry: they were proud of their
patron, as may be supposed, and he was highly gratified, as well as amused, when he learned
that,—while the rest of the world were talking of “The Great
Unknown,”—his usual sobriquet among these
villagers was “the Duke of Darnick.” Already his
possessions almost encircled this picturesque and thriving hamlet; and there were few
things on which he had more strongly fixed his fancy than acquiring a sort of symbol of
seigniory there, by becoming the purchaser of a certain then ruinous tower that
predominated, with a few coeval trees, over the farm-houses and cottages of his ducal
vassals. A letter, previously quoted, contains an allusion to this Peelhouse of Darnick;
which is moreover exactly described in the novel which he had now in hand—the Monastery. The interest
Scott seemed to take in the Peel awakened, however, the pride of
its hereditary proprietor: and when that worthy person, who had made some money by trade in
Edinburgh, resolved on fitting it up for the
evening retreat of his own life, his Grace of Darnick was too happy
to wave his pretensions.
This was a winter of uncommon severity in Scotland; and the snow lay so
deep and so long as to interrupt very seriously all Scott’s country operations. I find, in his letters to Laidlaw, various paragraphs expressing the concern he took
in the hardships which his poor neighbours must be suffering. Thus, on the 19th of January,
he says,
“Dear Willie,
“I write by the post that you may receive the
enclosed, or rather subjoined, cheque for L.60, in perfect safety. This
dreadful morning will probably stop Mercer.* It makes me
shiver in the midst of superfluous comforts, to think of the distress of
others. L.10 of the L.60 I wish you to distribute among our poorer neighbours,
so as may best aid them. I mean not only the actually indigent, but those who
are, in our phrase, ill off. I am sure Dr Scott— will
assist you with his advice in this labour of love. I think part of the
wood-money,‡ too, should be given among the Abbotstown folks if the storm
keeps them off work, as is like.
Yours truly, Walter Scott.
“Deep, deep snow lying here. How do the goodwife
and bairns? The little bodies will be half buried in snow drift.”
* The weekly Darnick carrier.
† Dr Scott of Darnlee.—See ante, p. 260. I regret to observe in the newspapers, as this
page is passing through the press, the death of this very amiable, modest, and
intelligent friend of Sir Walter Scott’s.
‡ Some money expected from the sale of larches.
And again, on the 25th, he writes thus:—
“Dear Willie,
“I have yours with the news of the inundation,
which, it seems, has done no damage. I hope Mai will be taken care of. He should have a
bed in the kitchen, and always be called in doors after it is dark, for all the
kind are savage at night. Please cause Swanston to knock him up a box, and fill it with straw from
time to time. I enclose a cheque for L.50 to pay accounts, &c. Do not let
the poor bodies want for a L.5, or even a L.10, more or less.
‘We’ll get a blessing wi’ the lave, And never miss’t.’* “Yours, W. S.”
In the course of this month, through the kindness of Mr Croker, Scott
received from the late Earl Bathurst, then Colonial
Secretary of State, the offer of an appointment in the civil service of the East India
Company for his second son: and this seemed at the
time too good a thing not to be gratefully accepted; though the apparently increasing
prosperity of his fortunes induced him, a few years afterwards, to indulge his parental
feelings by throwing it up. He thus alludes to this matter in a letter to his good old
friend at Jedburgh.
To Robert Shortreed, Esq. Sheriff Substitute of Roxburghshire,
Jedburgh.
“Edinburgh, 19th Jan. 1820, “My Dear Sir,
“I heartily congratulate you on getting the
appointment for your son William in a
manner so very pleasant to your feelings, and which is, like all Whyt-
* Burns—Lines to a Mouse.
bank does, considerate,
friendly, and generous.* I am not aware that I have any friends at Calcutta,
but if you think letters to Sir John
Malcolm and Lieut.-Colonel
Russell would serve my young friend, he shall have my best
commendations to them.
“It is very odd that almost the same thing has
happened to me; for about a week ago, I was surprised by a letter, saying, that
an unknown friend (who since proves to be Lord
Bathurst, whom I never saw or spoke with) would give my second
son a writer’s situation for India. Charles is two years too young for this appointment; but I do
not think I am at liberty to decline an offer so advantageous, if it can be so
arranged that, by exchange or otherwise, it can be kept open for him. Ever
yours faithfully,
Walter Scott.”
About the middle of February—it having been ere that time arranged that
I should marry his eldest daughter in the course of the spring,—I accompanied him and part
of his family on one of those flying visits to Abbotsford, with which he often indulged
himself on a Saturday during term. Upon such occasions, Scott appeared at the usual hour in Court, but wearing, instead of the
official suit of black, his country morning dress, green jacket and so forth, under the
clerk’s gown; a license of which many gentlemen of the long robe had been accustomed
to avail themselves in the days of his youth—it being then considered as the authentic
badge that they were lairds as well as lawyers—but which, to use the dialect of the place,
had fallen into desuetude
* “An India appointment, with the name blank, which the
late Mr Pringle of Whytbank sent
unsolicited, believing it might be found useful to a family where there were
seven sons to provide for.”—Note,
byMr A.
Shortrede.
before I knew the Parliament House. He was, I think, one of the two
or three, or, at most, the half dozen, who still adhered to this privilege of their order;
and it has now, in all likelihood, become quite obsolete, like the ancient custom, a part
of the same system, for all Scotch barristers to appear without gowns or wigs, and in
coloured clothes, when upon circuit. At noon, when the Court broke up, Peter Mathieson was sure to be in attendance in the
Parliament Close, and five minutes after, the gown had been tossed off, and
Scott, rubbing his hands for glee, was under weigh for Tweedside.
On this occasion, he was, of course, in mourning; but I hare thought it worth while to
preserve the circumstance of his usual Saturday’s costume. As we proceeded, he talked
without reserve of the novel of the
Monastery, of which he had the first volume with him: and mentioned, what he had
probably forgotten when he wrote the Introduction of 1830, that a good deal of that volume
had been composed before he concluded Ivanhoe. “It was a relief,” he said, “to interlay
the scenery most familiar to me with the strange world for which I had to draw so much
on imagination.”
Next morning there appeared at breakfast John Ballantyne, who had at this time a shooting or hunting-box a few miles
off in the vale of the Leader, and with him Mr
Constable, his guest; and it being a fine clear day, as soon as Scott had read the Church service and one of Jeremy Taylor’s sermons, we all sallied out, before
noon, on a perambulation of his upland territories; Maida and
the rest of the favourites accompanying our march. At starting we were joined by the
constant henchman, Tom Purdie—and I may save myself
the trouble of any attempt to describe his appearance, for his master has given us an
inimitably true one in introducing a certain personage of his Redgauntlet:—“He was, perhaps, sixty years old; yet his brow was not
much furrowed, and his jet black hair was only grizzled, not whitened, by the advance
of age. All his motions spoke strength unabated; and, though rather undersized, he had
very broad shoulders, was square made, thin-flanked, and apparently combined in his
frame muscular strength and activity; the last somewhat impaired, perhaps, by years,
but the first remaining in full vigour. A hard and harsh countenance; eyes far sunk
under projecting eyebrows, which were grizzled like his hair; a wide mouth, furnished
from ear to ear with a range of unimpaired teeth of uncommon whiteness, and a size and
breadth which might have become the jaws of an ogre, completed this delightful
portrait.” Equip this figure in Scott’s cast-off
green jacket, white hat, and drab trousers; and imagine that years of kind treatment,
comfort, and the honest consequence of a confidential grieve, had softened away much of the
hardness and harshness originally impressed on the visage by anxious penury and the
sinister habits of a black-fisher;—and the Tom
Purdie of 1820 stands before us.
We were all delighted to see how completely Scott had recovered his bodily vigour, and none more so than Constable, who, as he puffed and panted after him up one
ravine and down another, often stopped to wipe his forehead, and remarked that “it
was not every author who should lead him such a dance.” But Purdie’s face shone with rapture as he observed how
severely the swag-bellied bookseller’s activity was tasked.
Scott exclaiming exultingly, though perhaps for the tenth time,
“This will be a glorious spring for our trees,
Tom!”—“You may say that. Sheriff,”
quoth Tom,—and then lingering a moment for
Constable—“My certy,” he added, scratching his
head, “and I think it will be a grand season for our buiks too.” But indeed Tom
always talked of our buiks as if they had been as regular products
of the soil as our aits and our birks. Having
threaded, first the Hexilcleugh and then the Rhymer’s Glen, we arrived at Huntly
Burn, where the hospitality of the kind Weird-Sisters, as
Scott called the Miss Fergusons, reanimated
our exhausted Bibliopoles, and gave them courage to extend their walk a little further down
the same famous brook. Here there was a small cottage in a very sequestered situation, by
making some little additions to which Scott thought it might be
converted into a suitable summer residence for his daughter and future son-in-law. The
details of that plan were soon settled—it was agreed on all hands that a sweeter scene of
seclusion could not be fancied. He repeated some verses of Rogers’ “Wish,” which paint the spot: “Mine be a cot beside the hill— A bee-hive’s hum shall soothe my ear; A willowy brook that turns a mill, With many a fall shall linger near:” &c. But when he came to the Stanza— “And Lucy at her
wheel shall sing, In russet-gown and apron blue,” he departed from the text, adding— “But if Bluestockings here you bring, The Great Unknown
won’t dine with you.”
Johnny Ballantyne, a projector to the core, was
particularly zealous about this embryo establishment. Foreseeing that he should have had
walking enough ere he reached Huntly Burn, his dapper little Newmarket groom had been
ordered to fetch Old Mortality thither, and now, mounted on his
fine hunter, he capered about us, looking pallid and emaciated as a ghost, but as gay and cheerful as ever, and would fain have been
permitted to ride over hedge and ditch to mark out the proper line of the future avenue.
Scott admonished him that the country people, if
they saw him at such work, would take the whole party for heathens; and clapping spurs to
his horse, he left us. “The deil’s in the body,” quoth Tom Purdie, “he’ll be ower every yett atween this and Turnagain, though it be the Lord’s
day. I wadna wonder if he were to be ceeted before the
Session.” “Be sure, Tam,” cries
Constable, “that ye egg on the
Dominie to blaw up his father—I would na
grudge a hundred miles o’ gait to see the ne’er-do-weel on the stool, and
neither, I’ll be sworn, would the Sheriff.”—“Na,
na,” quoth the Sheriff—“we’ll let sleeping dogs be,
Tam.”
As we walked homeward, Scott, being a
little fatigued, laid his left hand on Tom’s
shoulder and leaned heavily for support, chatting to his “Sunday poney,” as he
called the affectionate fellow, just as freely as with the rest of the party, and
Tom put in his word shrewdly and manfully, and grinned and grunted
whenever the joke chanced to be within his apprehension. It was easy to see that his heart
swelled within him from the moment that the Sheriff got his collar in his gripe.
There arose a little dispute between them about what tree or trees
ought to be cut down in a hedgerow that we passed, and Scott seemed somewhat ruffled with finding that some previous hints of his
on that head had not been attended to. When we got into motion again, his hand was on
Constable’s shoulder and Tom dropped a pace or two to the rear, until we approached
a gate, when he jumped forward and opened it. “Give us a pinch of your snuff,
Tom,” quoth the
Sheriff—Tom’s mull was produced, and the hand resumed its
position. I was much diverted with Tom’s behaviour when we at
length reached Abbotsford. There were some garden chairs on the green
in front of the cottage porch. Scott sat down on one of them to enjoy
the view of his new tower as it gleamed in the sunset, and Constable
and I did the like. Mr Purdie remained lounging near us for a few
minutes, and then asked the Sheriff “to speak a word.” They withdrew together
into the garden—and Scott presently rejoined us with a particularly
comical expression of face. As soon as Tom was out of sight, he
said—“Will ye guess what he has been saying, now?—Well, this is a great
satisfaction! Tom assures me that he has thought the matter over,
and will take my advice about the thinning of that clump behind
Captain Ferguson’s.”
I must not forget that, whoever might be at Abbotsford, Tom always appeared at his master’s elbow on Sunday,
when dinner was over, and drank long life to the Laird and the Lady and all the good
company, in a quaigh of whisky, or a tumbler of wine, according to his fancy. I believe
Scott has somewhere expressed in. print his
satisfaction that, among all the changes of our manners, the ancient freedom of personal
intercourse may still be indulged between a master and an out-of-doors’ servant; but in truth he kept by the old fashion even with
domestic servants, to an extent which I have hardly seen practised by any other gentleman.
He conversed with his coachman if he sat by him, as he often did, on the box with his
footman, if he happened to be in the rumble; and when there was any very young lad in the
household, he held it a point of duty to see that his employments were so arranged as to
leave time for advancing his education, made him bring his copybook once a-week to the
library, and examined him as to all that he was doing. Indeed he did not confine this
humanity to his own people. Any steady servant of a friend of his was soon considered as a sort of friend too,
and was sure to have a kind little colloquy to himself at coming and going. With all this,
Scott was a very rigid enforcer of discipline—contrived to make it
thoroughly understood by all about him, that they must do their part by him as he did his
by them; and the result was happy. I never knew any man so well served as he was—so
carefully, so respectfully, and so silently; and I cannot help doubting if, in any
department of human operations, real kindness ever compromised real dignity.
In a letter, already quoted, there occurs some mention of the Prince Gustavus Vasa, who was spending this winter in
Edinburgh, and his Royal Highness’s accomplished attendant, the Baron
Polier. I met them frequently in Castle Street, and remember as especially
interesting the first evening that they dined there. The only portrait in
Scott’s Edinburgh dining room was one of Charles XII. of Sweden, and he was struck, as indeed every
one must have been, with the remarkable resemblance which the exiled Prince’s air and
features presented to the hero of his race. Young Gustavus, on his
part, hung with keen and melancholy enthusiasm on Scott’s
anecdotes of the expedition of Charles Edward
Stewart. The Prince, accompanied by Scott and myself,
witnessed the ceremonial of the proclamation of King George
IV. on the 2d of February at the Cross of Edinburgh, from a window over
Mr Constable’s shop in the High Street;
and on that occasion also the air of sadness, that mixed in his features with eager
curiosity, was very affecting. Scott explained all the
details to him, not without many lamentations over the barbarity of the Auld Reekie
bailies, who had removed the beautiful Gothic Cross itself, for the sake of widening the
thoroughfare. The weather was fine, the sun shone bright; and the antique tabards of the heralds, the trumpet notes of God save the King, and the hearty cheerings of the
immense uncovered multitude that filled the noble old street, produced altogether a scene
of great splendour and solemnity. The Royal Exile surveyed it with a flushed cheek and a
watery eye, and Scott, observing his emotion, withdrew with me to
another window, whispering “poor lad! poor lad! God help him.” Later in
the season the Prince spent a few days at Abbotsford; but I have said enough to explain
some allusions in the following letter to Lord Montagu,
in which Scott also adverts to several public events of January and
February, 1820—the assassination of the Duke of
Berri—the death and funeral of King George
III.—the general election which ensued the royal demise—and its more unhappy
consequence, the re-agitation of the old disagreement between George
IV. and his wife, who, as soon as she
learned his accession to the throne, announced her resolution of returning to England from
the Continent (where she had been leading for some years a wandering life), and asserting
her rights as Queen. The Tory gentleman in whose canvass of the Selkirk boroughs
Scott was now earnestly concerned, was his worthy friend,
Mr Henry Monteith of Carstairs, who ultimately
carried the election.
To the Lord Montagu, &c. &c., Dillon Park,
Windsor.
“Edinburgh, 22d February, 1820. “My dear Lord,
“I have nothing to say, except that Selkirk has
declared decidedly for Monteith, and
that his calling and election seem to be sure. Roxburghshire is right and
tight. Harden will not stir for
Berwickshire. In short, within my sphere of observation, there is nothing which
need make you regret your personal absence; and I hope my dear young namesake and chief will not find his influence abated while he
is unable to head it himself. It is but little I can do, but it shall always be
done with a good will and merits no thanks, for I owe much more to his
father’s memory than ever I can pay a tittle of. I often think what he
would have said or wished, and, within my limited sphere, that will always be a
rule to me while I have the means of advancing in any respect the interest of
his son—certainly if any thing could increase this desire, it would be the
banner being at present in your Lordship’s hand. I can do little but look
out a-head, but that is always something. When I look back on the house of
Buccleuch, as I once knew it, it is a sad retrospect.
But we must look forward, and hope for the young blossom of so goodly a tree. I
think your Lordship judged quite right in carrying Walter
in his place to the funeral.* He will long remember it, and may survive many
occasions of the same kind, to all human appearance. Here is a horrid business
of the Duke de Berri. It was first told me
yesterday by Count Itterburg (i. e.Prince Gustavus of Sweden, son of the
ex-King), who comes to see me very often. No fairy tale could match the
extravagance of such a tale being told to a private Scotch gentleman by such a
narrator, his own grandfather having perished in the same manner. But our age
has been one of complete revolution, baffling all argument and expectation. As
to the King; and Queen, or to use the abbreviation of an old Jacobite of my
acquaintance, who, not loving to hear them so called at full length, and yet
desirous to have the newspapers read to him, commanded these words always to be
pronounced as the letters K. and Q.—I say then, as to the K. and the Q. I
venture to think, that which-
* The funeral of George
III. at Windsor: the young Duke
of Buccleuch was at this time at Eton.
ever strikes the first blow will lose the battle. The
sound, well-judging, and well-principled body of the people will be much
shocked at the stirring such a hateful and disgraceful question. If the K.
urges it unprovoked, the public feeling will put him in the wrong; if he lets
her alone, her own imprudence, and that of her hot-headed adviser Harry Brougham, will push on the discussion; and,
take a fool’s word for it, as Sancho
says, the country will never bear her coming back, foul with the various kinds
of infamy she has been stained with, to force herself into the throne. On the
whole, it is a discussion most devoutly to be deprecated by those who wish well
to the Royal family.
“Now for a very different subject. I have a report
that there is found on the farm of Melsington, in a bog, the limb of a bronze
figure, full size, with a spur on the heel. This has been reported to Mr Riddell, as Commissioner, and to me as
Antiquary in chief, on the estate. I wish your lordship would permit it to be
sent provisionally to Abbotsford, and also allow me, if it shall seem really
curious, to make search for the rest of the statue. Clarkson* has sent me a curious account of it; and that a Roman
statue, for such it seems, of that size should be found in so wild a place, has
something very irritating to the curiosity. I do not of course desire to have
any thing more than the opportunity of examining the relique. It may be the
foundation of a set of bronzes, if stout Lord
Walter should turn to virtu.
“Always my dear Lord, most truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
The novel of the
Monastery was published, by Messrs
* Ebenezer Clarkson,
Esq., a surgeon of distinguished skill at Selkirk, and through life a
trusty friend and crony of the Sheriff’s.
Longman and Co., in the beginning of March. It
appeared not in the post 8vo form of Ivanhoe, but in 3 vols. 12mo, like the earlier works of the series. In fact, a
few sheets of the Monastery had been printed before Scott agreed to let Ivanhoe have
“By the Author of Waverley” on its title-page; and the different
shapes of the two books belonged to the abortive scheme of passing off “Mr Laurence Templeton” as a hitherto unheard of
candidate for literary success.
CHAPTER XII. SCOTT REVISITS LONDON—HIS PORTRAIT BY LAWRENCE,
AND BUST BY CHANTREY—ANECDOTES BY ALLAN
CUNNINGHAM—LETTERS TO MRS
SCOTT—LAIDLAW, ETC.—HIS BARONETCY GAZETTED—MARRIAGE OF
HIS DAUGHTER SOPHIA—LETTER TO “THE BARON OF
GALASHIELS”—VISIT OF PRINCE GUSTAVUS VASA AT ABBOTSFORD—TENDERS
OF HONORARY DEGREES FROM OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE—LETTER TO MR THOMAS
SCOTT. 1820.
At the rising of his Court on the 12th of March, Scott proceeded to London, for the purpose of receiving his
baronetcy, which he had been prevented from doing in the spring of the preceding year by
his own illness, and again at Christmas by accumulated family afflictions. On his arrival
in town, his son the Cornet met him; and they both
established themselves at Miss Dumergue’s.
One of his first visiters was Sir Thomas
Lawrence, who informed him that the King
had resolved to adorn the great gallery, then in progress at Windsor Castle, with portraits
by his hand of his Majesty’s most distinguished contemporaries; all the reigning
monarchs of Europe, and their chief ministers and generals had already sat for this
purpose; on the same walls the King desired to see exhibited those of his own subjects who
had attained the highest honours of literature and science—and it was his pleasure that
this series should commence with Walter Scott. The
portrait was of course begun immediately, and the head was finished before
Scott left town.
Sir Thomas has caught and fixed with admirable skill one of the
loftiest expressions of Scott’s countenance at the proudest
period of his life: to the perfect truth of the representation every one who ever surprised
him in the act of composition at his desk, will bear witness. The expression, however, was
one with which many who had seen the man often, were not familiar; and it was extremely
unfortunate that Sir Thomas filled in the figure from a separate
sketch after he had quitted London. When I first saw the head I thought nothing could be
better; but there was an evident change for the worse when the picture appeared in its
finished state—for the rest of the person had been done on a different scale, and this
neglect of proportion takes considerably from the majestic effect which the head itself,
and especially the mighty pile of forehead, had in nature. I hope one day to see a good
engraving of the head alone, as I first saw it floating on a dark sea of canvass.
Lawrence told me, several years afterwards, that, in
his opinion, the two greatest men he had painted were the Duke of
Wellington and Sir Walter Scott;
“and it was odd,” said he, “that they both chose usually
the same hour for sitting—seven in the morning. They were both as patient sitters as I
ever had. Scott, however, was, in my case at least, a very
difficult subject. I had selected what struck me as his noblest look; but when he was
in the chair before me, he talked away on all sorts of subjects in his usual style, so
that it cost me great pains to bring him back to solemnity, when I had to attend to any
thing beyond the outline of a subordinate feature. I soon found that the surest recipe
was to say something that would lead him to recite a bit of poetry. I used to
introduce, by hook or by crook, a few lines of Campbell or Byron—he was sure to
take up the passage where I left it, or cap it by something
better—and then when he was, as Dryden says of
one of his heroes ‘Made up of three parts fire—so full of Heaven It sparkled at his eyes’— then was my time and I made the best use I could of it. The hardest
day’s-work I had with him was once when ******†
accompanied him to my painting room. ****** was in particularly
gay spirits, and nothing would serve him but keeping both artist and sitter in a
perpetual state of merriment by anecdote upon anecdote about poor Sheridan. The anecdotes were mostly in themselves
black enough,—but the style of the conteur
was irresistibly quaint and comical. When Scott came next, he said
he was ashamed of himself for laughing so much as he listened to them; ‘for
truly,’ quoth he, ‘if the tithe was fact,
****** might have said to Sherry—as
Lord Braxfield once said to an eloquent
culprit at the bar—‘Ye’re a vera clever chiel’, man, but ye wad
be nane the waur o’ a hanging.’”
It was also during this visit to London that Scott sat to Mr (now Sir Francis) Chantrey for that bust which alone
preserves for posterity the cast of expression most fondly remembered by all who ever
mingled in his domestic circle. Chantrey’s request that
Scott would sit to him was communicated through
Mr Allan Cunningham, then (as now) employed as
Clerk of the Works in our great Sculptor’s establishment. Mr
Cunningham, in his early days, when gaining his bread as a stone-mason in
Nithsdale, made a pilgrimage on foot into Edinburgh, for the sole purpose of seeing the
author of Marmion as he passed along the
street. He was now in possession of a celebrity of his own, and had mentioned to his patron
his purpose of calling on Scott to thank him for some kind message he
had received, through a common friend, on
† A distinguished Whig friend.
the subject of those “Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway
Song,” which first made his poetical talents known to the public.
Chantrey embraced this opportunity of conveying to
Scott his own long-cherished ambition of modelling his head; and
Scott at once assented to the flattering proposal. “It
was about nine in the morning,” says Mr Cunningham,
“that I sent in my card to him at Miss
Dumergue’s in Piccadilly—it had not been gone a minute when I
heard a quick heavy step coming, and in he came, holding out both hands, as was his
custom, and saying, as he pressed mine—‘Allan Cunningham,
I am glad to see you.’” “I said something”
(continues Mr C.) “about the pleasure I felt in touching the
hand that had charmed me so much. He moved his hand, and with one of his comic smiles,
said, ‘Ay—and a big brown hand it is.’ I was a little abashed at
first: Scott saw it and soon put me at my ease; he had the power,
I had almost called it the art, but art it was not, of winning one’s heart and
restoring one’s confidence beyond any man I ever met.” Then ensued a
little conversation, in which Scott complimented
Allan on his ballads, and urged him, to try some work of more
consequence, quoting Burns’s words,
“for dear auld Scotland’s sake;” but being engaged to
breakfast in a distant part of the town, he presently dismissed his visiter, promising to
appear next day at an early hour, and submit himself to Mr
Chantrey’s inspection.
Chantrey’s purpose had been the same as
Lawrence’s—to seize a poetical phasis of
Scott’s countenance; and he proceeded to model
the head as looking upwards, gravely and solemnly. The talk that passed, mean time, had
equally amused and gratified both, and fortunately, at parting,
Chantrey requested that Scott would come and
breakfast with him next morning before they recommenced operations in the studio.
Scott ac-cepted the invitation, and when he
arrived again in Ecclestone street, found two or three acquaintances assembled to meet
him,—among others, his old friend Richard Heber. The
breakfast was, as any party in Sir Francis Chantrey’s house is
sure to be, a gay and joyous one, and not having seen Heber in
particular for several years, Scott’s spirits were unusually
excited by the presence of an intimate associate of his youthful days. I transcribe what
follows from Mr Cunningham’s Memorandum:—
“Heber made many enquiries
about old friends in Edinburgh, and old books and old houses, and reminded the other of
their early socialities. ‘Ay,’ said Mr
Scott, ‘I remember we once dined out together, and sat so late that
when we came away the night and day were so neatly balanced, that we resolved to walk
about till sunrise. The moon was not down, however, and we took advantage of her
ladyship’s lantern and climbed to the top of Arthur’s Seat; when we came
down we had a rare appetite for breakfast.’—‘I remember it
well,’ said Heber; ‘Edinburgh was a wild place in
those days,—it abounded in clubs—convivial clubs.’—‘Yes,’
replied Mr Scott, ‘and abounds still; but the conversation is
calmer, and there are no such sallies now as might be heard in other times. One club, I
remember, was infested with two Kemps, father and son: when the old
man had done speaking, the young one began, and before he grew weary, the father was
refreshed and took up the song. John Clerk, during a pause, was called
on for a stave; he immediately struck up in a psalm-singing tone, and electrified the club
with a verse which sticks like a burr to my memory ‘Now, God Almighty judge James Kemp, And likewise his son John, And hang them over Hell in hemp, And burn them in brimstone.’—
“In the midst of the mirth which this specimen of psalmody
raised, John (commonly called Jack) Fuller, the member for
Surrey, and standing jester of the House of Commons, came in. Heber, who was well acquainted with the free and
joyous character of that worthy, began to lead him out by relating some festive
anecdotes: Fuller growled approbation, and indulged us with some
of his odd sallies; things which, he assured us, ‘were damned good, and true
too, which was better.’ Mr Scott, who
was standing when Fuller came in, eyed him at first with a look
grave and considerate; but as the stream of conversation flowed, his keen eye twinkled
brighter and brighter; his stature increased, for he drew himself up, and seemed to
take the measure of the hoary joker, body and soul. An hour or two of social chat had
meanwhile induced Mr Chantrey to alter his views
as to the bust, and when Mr Scott left us, he said to me
privately, ‘this will never do—I shall never be able to please myself with a
perfectly serene expression. I must try his conversational look, take him when
about to break out into some sly funny old story.’ As
Chantrey said this, he took a string, cut off the head of the
bust, put it into its present position, touched the eyes and the mouth slightly, and
wrought such a transformation upon it, that when Scott came to his
third sitting, he smiled, and said, ‘Ay, ye’re mair like yoursel
now!—Why, Mr Chantrey, no witch of old ever performed such
cantrips with clay as this.’”
These sittings were seven in number; but when Scott revisited London, a year afterwards, he gave Chantrey several more, the bust being by that time in
marble. Allan Cunningham, when he called to bid him
farewell, as he was about to leave town on the present occasion, found him in court dress,
preparing to kiss hands at the Levee, on being gazetted as Baronet. “He seemed any thing but at his ease,” says
Cunningham, “in that strange attire; he was like one in
armour—the stiff cut of the coat—the large shining buttons and buckles—the lace
ruffles—the queue—the sword—and the cocked hat, formed a picture at which I could not
forbear smiling. He surveyed himself in the glass for a moment and burst into a hearty
laugh. ‘O Allan,’ he said, ‘O
Allan, what creatures we must make of ourselves in
obedience to Madam Etiquette. ‘See’st thou not, I say, what a
deformed thief this Fashion is?—how giddily he turns about all the hotbloods
between fourteen and five-and-thirty?’’”*
Scott’s baronetcy was conferred on him, not in
consequence of any Ministerial suggestion, but by the King personally, and of his own unsolicited motion; and when the Poet
kissed his hand, he said to him “I shall always reflect with pleasure on
Sir Walter Scott’s having been the first creation of my
reign.”
The Gazette announcing
his new dignity was dated March 30, and published on the 2d April, 1820; and the Baronet,
as soon afterwards as he could get away from Lawrence, set out on his return to the North; for he had such respect for
the ancient prejudice (a classical as well as a Scottish one) against marrying in May, that
he was anxious to have the ceremony in which his daughter was concerned over before that unlucky month should commence. It
is needless to say, that during this stay in London he had again experienced, in its
fullest measure, the enthusiasm of all ranks of his acquaintance; and I shall now
transcribe a few paragraphs from domestic letters, which will show, among other things, how
glad he was when the hour came that restored him to his ordinary course of life.
“I have got a delightful plan for the addition at
Abb——, which, I think, will make it quite complete, and furnish me with a
handsome library, and you with a drawingroom and better bedroom, with good
bedrooms for company, &c. It will cost me a little hard work to meet the
expense, but I have been a good while idle. I hope to leave this town early
next week, and shall hasten back with great delight to my own household gods.
“I hope this will find you from under Dr Ross’s charge. I expect to see you
quite in beauty when I come down, for I assure you I have been coaxed by very
pretty ladies here, and look for merry faces at home. My picture comes on, and
will be a grand thing, but the sitting is a great bore. Chantrey’s bust is one of the finest
things he ever did. It is quite the fashion to go to see it—there’s for
you. Yours, my dearest love, with the most sincere affection,
Walter Scott.”
To the Same.
“March 27, Piccadilly. “My dear Charlotte,
“I have the pleasure to say that Lord Sidmouth has promised to dismiss me in all
my honours by the 30th, so that I can easily be with you by the end of April;
and you and Sophia may easily select the
28th, 29th, or 30th, for the ceremony. I have been much feted here, as usual,
and had a very quiet dinner at Mr
Arbuthnot’s yesterday with the Duke of Wellington, where Walter heard the great Lord in all his glory talk of war and
Waterloo. Here is a hellish—yes, literally a hellish
bustle. My head turns round with it. The whole mob of the Middlesex blackguards
pass through Piccadilly twice a day, and almost drive me mad with their noise
and vociferation.* Pray do, my dear Charlotte, write soon. You know those at a distance are always
anxious to hear from home. I beg you to say what would give you pleasure that I
could bring from this place, and whether you want any thing from Mrs
Arthur for yourself, Sophia, or Anne; also what would please little Charles. You know you may stretch a point on
this occasion. Richardson says your
honours will be Gazetted on Saturday; certainly very soon, as the King, I
believe, has signed the warrant. When, or how I shall see him, is not
determined, but I suppose I shall have to go to Brighton. My best love attends
the girls, little Charles, and all the quadrupeds.
“I conclude that the marriage will take place in
Castle Street, and want to know where they go, &c. All this you will have
to settle without my wise head; but I shall be terribly critical so see you do
all right. I am always, dearest Charlotte,
most affectionately yours,
Walter Scott.”
(“For the Lady
Scott of Abbotsford—to be.”)
To Mr James Ballantyne, Printer, St John Street,
Edinburgh.
“28th March, 96, Piccadilly. “Dear James,
“I am much obliged by your attentive letter.
Unquestionably Longman and Co. sell
their books at subscription price, because they have the first of the market,
and only one-third of the books; so that, as they say with us,* let them
‘care that come ahint.’
* The general election was going on.
This I knew and foresaw, and the
ragings of the booksellers, considerably aggravated by the displeasure of
Constable and his house, are
ridiculous enough; and as to their injuring the work, if it have a principle of
locomotion in it, they cannot stop it—if it has not, they cannot make it move.
I care not a bent twopence about their quarrels; only I say now, as I always
said, that Constable’s management is best, both for
himself and the author; and, had we not been controlled by the narrowness of
discount, I would put nothing past him. I agree with the public in thinking the
work not very interesting; but it was written with as much care as the
others—that is, with no care at all; and, ‘If it is na weil bobbit we’ll bobb it again.’
“On these points I am Atlas. I cannot write much in this bustle of engagements, with
Sir Francis’s mob hollowing
under the windows. I find that even this light composition demands a certain
degree of silence, and I might as well live in a cotton-mill. Lord Sidmouth tells me I will obtain leave to
quit London by the 30th, which will be delightful news, for I find I cannot
bear late hours and great society so well as formerly; and yet it is a fine
thing to hear politics talked of by Ministers of State, and war discussed by
the Duke of Wellington.
“My occasions here will require that John or you send me two notes payable at
Coutts’ for L.300 each, at two
and three months’ date. I will write to Constable for one at L.350, which will settle my affairs here
which, with fees and other matters, come, as you may think, pretty heavy. Let
the bills be drawn payable at Coutts’, and sent
without delay. I will receive them safe if sent under Mr Freeling’s cover. Mention
particularly what you are doing, for now is your time to push miscellaneous
work. Pray take great notice of inaccuracies in the
Novels. They are very very many—some mine, I dare say—but all such as you may
and ought to correct. If you would call on William
Erskine (who is your well-wisher, and a little mortified he
never sees you), he would point out some of them.
“Do you ever see Lockhart? You should consult him on every doubt where you would
refer to me if present. Yours very truly.
W. S.
“You say nothing of John, yet I am anxious about him.”
To Mr Laidlaw, Kaeside, Melrose.
“London, April 2, 1820. “Dear Willie,
“I had the great pleasure of your letter, which
carries me back to my own braes, which I love so dearly, out of this place of
bustle and politics. When I can see my Master—and thank him for many acts of favour—I think I will bid
adieu to London for ever; for neither the hours nor the society suit me so well
as a few years since. There is too much necessity for exertion, too much
brilliancy and excitation from morning till night.
“I am glad the sheep are away, though at a loss. I
should think the weather rather too dry for planting, judging by what we have
here. Do not let Tom go on sticking in
plants to no purpose better put in firs in a rainy week in August. Give my
service to him. I expect to be at Edinburgh in the end of this month, and to
get a week at Abbotsford before the Session sits down. I think you are right to
be in no hurry to let Broomielees. There seems no complaint of wanting money
here just now, so I hope things will come round.—Ever yours, truly,
Walter Scott.”
To Miss Scott, Castle Street, Edinburgh.
“London, April 3, 1820. “Dear Sophia,
“I have no letter from any one at home excepting
Lockhart, and he only says you are
all well; and I trust it is so. I have seen most of my old friends, who are a
little the worse for the wear, like myself. A five years’ march down the
wrong side of the hill tells more than ten on the right side. Our good friends
here are kind as kind can be, and no frumps. They lecture the Cornet a little, which he takes with
becoming deference and good humour. There is a certain veil of Flanders lace
floating in the wind for a certain occasion, from a certain godmother, but that is more than a dead
secret.
“We had a very merry day yesterday at Lord Melville’s, where we found Lord Huntly* and other friends, and had a bumper
to the new Baronet, whose name was Gazetted that evening. Lady Huntly plays Scotch tunes like a Highland
angel. She ran a set of variations on ‘Kenmure’s
on and awa’,’ which I told her were enough to raise a
whole country-side. I never in my life heard such fire thrown into that sort of
music. I am now laying anchors to windward, as John
Ferguson says, to get Walter’s leave extended. We saw the D. of York, who was very civil, but wants
altogether the courtesy of the King. I have
had a very gracious message from the King. He is expected up very soon, so I
don’t go to Brighton, which is so far good. I fear his health is not
strong. Mean while all goes forward for the Coronation. The expense of the
robes for the peers may amount to L.400 a-piece. All the ermine is bought up at
the most extravagant prices. I hear so much of it, that I really think, like
Beau Tibbs, I shall
* The late Duke of Gordon.
be tempted to come up and see it, if possible. Indeed, I
don’t see why I should not stay here, as I seem to be forgotten at home.
The people here are like to smother me with kindness, so why should I be in a
great hurry to leave them?
“I write, wishing to know what I could bring
Anne and you and mamma down that
would be acceptable; and I shall be much obliged to you to put me up to that
matter. To little Charles also I
promised something, and I wish to know what he would like. I hope he pays
attention to Mr Thompson, to whom
remember my best compliments. I hope to get something for him soon.
“To-day I go to spend my Sabbath quietly with
Joanna Baillie and John Richardson, at Hampstead. The long
Cornet goes with me. I have kept him
amongst the seniors—nevertheless he seems pretty well amused. He is certainly
one of the best-conditioned lads I ever saw, in point of temper.
“I understand you and Anne have gone through the ceremony of confirmation. Pray,
write immediately, and let me know how you are all going on, and what you would
like to have, all of you. You know how much I would like to please you. Yours,
most affectionately,
Walter Scott.”
While Scott remained in London, the
Professorship of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh became vacant by the death
of Dr Thomas Brown; and among others who proposed
themselves as candidates to fill it was the author of the Isle of Palms. He was opposed in the Town Council
(who are the patrons of most of the Edinburgh chairs), on various pretences, but solely, in
fact, on party grounds, certain humorous political pieces having much exacerbated the Whigs
of the North against him; and I therefore wrote to Scott, requesting
him to animate the Tory Ministers in his
behalf. Sir Walter did so, and Mr
Wilson’s canvass was successful. The answer to my communication was in
these terms:
To J. G. Lockhart, Esq. Great King Street,
Edinburgh.
“London, 30th March, 1820. “Dear Lockhart,
“I have yours of the Sunday morning, which has been
terribly long of coming. There needed no apology for mentioning any thing in
which I could be of service to Wilson;
and, so far as good words and good wishes here can do, I think he will be
successful; but the battle must be fought in Edinburgh. You are aware that the
only point of exception to Wilson may be, that, with the
fire of genius, he has possessed some of its eccentricities; but, did he ever
approach to those of Henry Brougham, who is
the god of Whiggish idolatry? If the high and rare qualities with which he is
invested are to be thrown aside as useless, because they may be clouded by a
few grains of dust which he can blow aside at pleasure, it is less a punishment
on Mr Wilson than on the country. I have little doubt he
would consider success in this weighty matter as a pledge for binding down his
acute and powerful mind to more regular labour than circumstances have hitherto
required of him; for indeed, without doing so, the appointment could in no
point of view answer his purpose. He must stretch to the oar for his own credit
as well as that of his friends; and if he does so there can be no doubt that
his efforts will be doubly blessed, in reference both to himself and to public
utility. He must make every friend he can amongst the council. Palladio Johnstone should not be omitted. If
my wife canvasses him, she may do some good.*
* Mr Robert
Johnston, a grocer on a large scale on the North
“You must, of course, recommend to Wilson great temper in his canvass—for wrath
will do no good. After all, he must leave off sack, purge, and live cleanly as
a gentleman ought to do; otherwise people will compare his present ambition to
that of Sir Terry O’Fag when he
wished to become a judge. ‘Our pleasant follies are made the whips to
scourge us,’ as Lear says;
for otherwise what could possibly stand in the way of his nomination? I trust
it will take place, and give him the consistence and steadiness which are all
he wants to make him the first man of the age.
“I am very angry with Castle Street—Not a soul has
written me, save yourself, since I came to London. Yours very truly,
Walter Scott.”
Sir Walter, accompanied by the Cornet, reached Edinburgh late in April, and on the 29th
of that month he gave me the hand of his daughter Sophia. The wedding, more
Scotico, took place in the evening; and, adhering on all such occasions to
ancient modes of observance with the same punctiliousness which he mentions as
distinguishing his worthy father, he gave a jolly
supper afterwards to all the friends and connexions of the young couple.
His excursions to Tweedside during Term-time were, with very rare
exceptions, of the sort which I have described in the preceding chapter; but he departed
from
Bridge of Edinburgh, and long one of the
leading Bailies, was about this time the prominent patron of some architectural
novelties in Auld Reekie, which had found no favour with Scott;—hence his prænomen of Palladio—which he owed, I believe, to a song
in Blackwood’s Magazine. The good
Bailie had been at the High School with Sir
Walter, and their friendly intercourse was never interrupted but by
death.
his rule about this time, in
honour of the Swedish Prince, who had expressed a
wish to see Abbotsford before leaving Scotland, and assembled a number of his friends and
neighbours to meet his Royal Highness. Of the invitations which he distributed on this
occasion I insert one specimen—that addressed to Mr Scott of
Gala.
“To the Baron of Galashiels “The Knight of Abbotsford sends greeting.
“Trusty and well beloved—Whereas Gustavus, Prince Royal of Sweden, proposeth to
honour our poor house of Abbotsford with his presence on Thursday next, and to
repose himself there for certain days, we do heartily pray you, out of the love
and kindness which is and shall abide betwixt us, to be aiding to us at this
conjuncture, and to repair to Abbotsford with your lady, either upon Thursday
or Friday, as may best suit your convenience and pleasure, looking for no
denial at your hands. Which loving countenance we will, with all thankfulness,
return to you at your mansion of Gala. The hour of appearance being five
o’clock, we request you to be then and there present, as you love the
honour of the name; and so advance banners in the name of God and St
Andrew.
Walter Scott.” Given at Edinburgh, 20th May, 1820.”
The visit of Count Itterburg is
alluded to in this letter to the Cornet, who had now
rejoined his regiment in Ireland. It appears that on reaching headquarters he had found a
charger hors de combat.
To Walter Scott, Esq., 18th Hussars, Cork.
“Castle Street, May 31, 1820. “Dear Walter,
“I enclose the cheque for the allowance; pray take
care to get good notes in exchange. You had better speak to the gentleman whom
Lord Shannon introduced you to, for,
when banks take a-breaking, it seldom stops with the first who go. I am very
sorry for your loss. You must be economical for a while, and bring yourself
round again, for at this moment I cannot so well assist as I will do by and by.
So do not buy any thing but what you need.
“I was at Abbotsford for three days last week, to
receive Count Itterburg, who seemed very
happy while with us, and was much affected when he took his leave. I am sorry
for him—his situation is a very particular one, and his feelings appear to be
of the kindest order. When he took leave of me, he presented me with a
beautiful seal, with all our new blazonries cut on a fine amethyst; and what I
thought the prettiest part, on one side of the setting is cut my name, on the
other the Prince’s—Gustaf. He
is to travel through Ireland, and will probably be at Cork. You will, of
course, ask the Count and Baron to mess, and offer all civilities in your
power, in which, I dare say, Colonel
Murray will readily join. They intend to enquire after you.
“I have bought the land adjoining to the Burnfoot
cottage, so that we now march with the Duke of
Buccleuch all the way round that course. It cost me L.2300—but
there is a great deal of valuable fir planting, which you may remember; fine
roosting for the black game. Still I think it is L.200 too dear, but Mr Laidlaw thinks it can be made worth the
money, and it rounds the property off very handsomely. You cannot but remember
the ground; it lies under the
Eildon, east of the Chargelaw.
“Mamma, Anne,
and Charles are all well. Sophia has been complaining of a return of her
old sprain. I told her Lockhart would
return her on our hands as not being sound wind and limb.
“I beg you to look at your French, and have it much
at heart that you should study German. Believe me, always affectionately yours,
Walter Scott.”
In May, 1820, Scott received from
both the English Universities the highest compliment which it was in their power to offer
him. The Vice-Chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge communicated to him, in the same week,
their request that he would attend at the approaching Commemorations, and accept the
honorary degree of Doctor in Civil Law. It was impossible for him to leave Scotland again
that season; and on various subsequent renewals of the same flattering proposition from
either body, he was prevented, by similar circumstances, from availing himself of their
distinguished kindness.
In the course of a few months Scott’s family arrangements had undergone, as we have seen,
considerable alteration. Meanwhile he continued anxious to be allowed to adopt, as it were,
the only son of his brother Thomas; and the letter, in consequence of which that
hopeful youth was at last committed to his charge, contains so much matter likely to
interest parents and guardians, that, though long, I cannot curtail it.
To Thomas Scott, Esq., Paymaster 70th Regiment.
“Abbotsford, 23d July, 1820. “My dear Tom,
“Your letter of May, this day received, made me truly happy, being the first I have received from you
since our dear mother’s death, and the consequent breaches which fate has
made in our family. My own health continues quite firm, at no greater sacrifice
than bidding adieu to our old and faithful friend John
Barleycorn, whose life-blood has become a little too heavy for
my stomach. I wrote to you from London concerning the very handsome manner in
which the King behaved to me in conferring
my petit titre, and also of Sophia’s intended marriage, which took
place in the end of April, as we intended. I got Walter’s leave prolonged, that he might be present, and I
assure you that, when he attended at the ceremony in full regimentals, you have
scarce seen a handsomer young man. He is about six feet and an inch, and
perfectly well made. Lockhart seems to
be every thing I could wish, and as they have enough to live easily upon for
the present, and good expectations for the future, life opens well with them.
They are to spend their vacations in a nice little cottage, in a glen belonging
to this property, with a rivulet in front, and a grove of trees on the east
side to keep away the cold wind. It is about two miles distant from this house,
and a very pleasant walk reaches to it through my plantations, which now occupy
several hundred acres. Thus there will be space enough betwixt the old man of
letters and the young one. Charles’s destination to India is adjourned till he
reaches the proper age—it seems he cannot hold a writership until he is sixteen
years old, and then is admitted to study for two years at Hertford College.
“After my own sons, my most earnest and anxious wish
will be, of course, for yours,—and with this view I have pondered well what you
say on the subject of your Walter; and
whatever line of life you may design him for, it is scarce possible but that I
can be of considerable use
to him. Before fixing, however, on a point so very important, I would have you
consult the nature of the boy himself. I do not mean by this that you should
ask his opinion, because at so early an age a well bred up child naturally
takes up what is suggested to him by his parents; but I think you should
consider, with as much impartiality as a parent can, his temper, disposition,
and qualities of mind and body. It is not enough that you think there is an
opening for him in one profession rather than another,—for it were better to
sacrifice the fairest prospects of that kind than to put a boy into a line of
life for which he is not calculated. If my nephew is steady, cautious, fond of
a sedentary life and quiet pursuits, and at the same time a proficient in
arithmetic, and with a disposition towards the prosecution of its highest
branches, he cannot follow a better line than that of an accountant. It is
highly respectable—and is one in which, with attention and skill, aided by such
opportunities as I may be able to procure for him, he must ultimately succeed.
I say ultimately, because the harvest is small and the labourers numerous in
this as in other branches of our legal practice; and whoever is to dedicate
himself to them, must look for a long and laborious tract of attention ere he
reaches the reward of his labours. If I live, however, I will do all I can for
him, and see him put under a proper person, taking his ‘prentice fee,
&c., upon myself. But if, which may possibly be the case, the lad has a
decided turn for active life and adventure, is high-spirited, and impatient of
long and dry labour, with some of those feelings not unlikely to result from
having lived all his life in a camp or a barrack, do not deceive yourself, my
dear brother—you will never make him an accountant; you will never be able to
convert such a sword into a pruning-hook, merely because you think a
pruning-hook the better thing of the two. In this
supposed case your authority and my recommendation might put him into an
accountant’s office; but it would be just to waste the earlier years of
his life in idleness, with all the temptations to dissipation which idleness
gives way to; and what sort of a place a writing chamber is you cannot but
remember. So years might wear away, and at last the youth starts off from his
profession, and becomes an adventurer too late in life, and with the
disadvantage, perhaps, of offended friends and advanced age standing in the way
of his future prospects.
“This is what I have judged fittest in my own
family, for Walter would have gone to
the bar had I liked, but I was sensible (with no small reluctance did I admit
the conviction) that I should only spoil an excellent soldier to make a poor
and undistinguished gownsman. On the same principle I shall send Charles to India, not, God knows, with my
will, for there is little chance of my living to see him return; but merely
that, judging by his disposition, I think the voyage of his life might be
otherwise lost in shallows. He has excellent parts, but they are better
calculated for intercourse with the world than for hard and patient study.
Having thus sent one son abroad from my family, and being about to send off the
other in due time, you will not, I am sure, think that I can mean disregard to
your parental feelings in stating what I can do for your Walter. Should his temper and character
incline for active life, I think I can promise to get him a cadetship in the
East India Company’s service; so soon as he has had the necessary
education, I will be at the expense of his equipment and passage-money; and
when he reaches India, there he is completely provided, secure of a competence
if he lives, and with great chance of a fortune if he thrives. I am aware this
would be a hard pull at Mrs
Scott’s feelings and yours; but recollect your fortune is
small, and the demands on it numerous,
and pagodas and rupees are no bad things. I can get Walter
the first introductions, and if he behaves himself as becomes your son, and my
nephew, I have friends enough in India, and of the highest class, to ensure his
success, even his rapid success—always supposing my recommendations to be
seconded by his own conduct. If, therefore, the youth has any thing of your own
spirit, for God’s sake do not condemn him to a drudgery which he will
never submit to and remember, to sacrifice his fortune to your fondness will be
sadly mistaken affection. As matters stand, unhappily you must be separated;
and considering the advantages of India, the mere circumstance of distance is
completely counterbalanced. Health is what will naturally occur to
Mrs Scott; but the climate of India is now well
understood, and those who attend to ordinary precaution live as healthy as in
Britain. And so I have said my say. Most heartily will I do my best in any way
you may ultimately decide for; and as the decision really ought to turn on the
boy’s temper and disposition, you must be a better judge by far than any
one else. But if he should resemble his father and uncle in certain indolent
habits, I fear he will make a better subject for an animating life of
enterprise than for the technical labour of an accountant’s desk. There
is no occasion, fortunately, for forming any hasty resolution. When you send
him here I will do all that is in my power to stand in the place of a father to
him, and you may fully rely on my care and tenderness. If he should ultimately
stay at Edinburgh, as both my own boys leave me, I am sure I shall have great
pleasure in having the nearest in blood after them with me. Pray send him as
soon as you can, for at his age, and under imperfect opportunities of
education, he must have a good deal to make up. I wish I
could be of the same use to you which I am sure I can be to your son.
“Of public news I have little to send. The papers
will tell you the issue of the Radical row for the present. The yeomanry
behaved most gallantly. There is in Edinburgh a squadron as fine as ours was,
all young men, and zealous soldiers. They made the western campaign with the
greatest spirit, and had some hard and fatiguing duty, long night-marches,
surprises of the enemy, and so forth, but no fight, for the whole Radical plot
went to the devil when it came to gun and sword. Scarce any blood was shed,
except in a trifling skirmish at Bonnymuir, near Carron. The rebels were behind
a wall, and fired on ten hussars and as many yeomen—the latter under command of
a son of James Davidson, W.S. The
cavalry cleared the wall, and made them prisoners to a man. The commission of
Oyer and Terminer is now busy trying them and others. The Edinburgh young men
showed great spirit; all took arms, and my daughters say (I was in London at
the time), that not a feasible-looking beau was to be had for love or money.
Several were like old Beardie; they
would not shave their moustaches till the Radicals were put down, and returned
with most awful whiskers. Lockhart is
one of the cavalry, and a very good troop. It is high to hear these young
fellows talk of the Raid of Airdrie, the trot of Kilmarnock, and so on, like so
many moss-troopers. The Queen is making
an awful bustle, and though by all accounts her conduct has been most abandoned
and beastly, she has got the whole mob for her partisans, who call her injured
innocence, and what not. She has courage enough to dare the worst, and a most
decided desire to be revenged of him, which, by the way, can scarce be wondered
at. If she had as many followers of high as of low degree (in proportion), and funds to equip them, I
should not be surprised to see her fat bottom in a pair of buckskins, and at
the head of an army—God mend all. The things said of her are beyond all usual
profligacy. Nobody of any fashion visits her. I think myself monstrously well
clear of London and its intrigues, when I look round my green fields, and
recollect I have little to do, but to ——‘make my grass mow, And my apple tree grow.’
“I beg my kind love to Mrs Huxley. I have a very acceptable letter from her, and I
trust to retain the place she promises me in her remembrance. Sophia will be happy to hear from uncle
Tom, when Uncle
Tom has so much leisure. My best compliments attend your wife
and daughters, not forgetting Major
Huxley and Walter. My
dear Tom, it will be a happy moment when circumstances
shall permit us a meeting on this side Jordan, as Tabitha says, to talk over old stories, and lay new plans. So
many things have fallen out which I had set my heart upon strongly, that I
trust this may happen amongst others. Believe me, yours very affectionately,
Walter Scott.”
END OF VOLUME FOURTH.EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND CO., PAUL’S WORK.
MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. VOLUME THE FIFTH. MDCCCXXXVII. ROBERT CADELL, EDINBURGH. JOHN MURRAY AND WHITTAKER AND CO., LONDON. CONTENTS OF VOLUME FIFTH. PAGE CHAPTER I. Autumn at Abbotsford—Scott’s Hospitality—Visit of
Sir Humphry Davy—Henry Mackenzie—Dr
Wollaston and William Stewart Rose—Coursing on Newark
Hill—Salmon-fishing—The Festival at Boldside—The Abbotsford Hunt—The Kirn, &c.— 1820, 1 CHAPTER II. Publication of the Abbot—The Blair-Adam
Club—Kelso—Waltonhall, &c.—Ballantyne’s Novelist’s
Library—Acquittal of Queen Caroline—Service of the
Duke of Buccleuch—Scott elected President of
the Royal Society of Edinburgh—The Celtic Society—Letters to Lord
Montagu—Cornet Scott—Charles
Scott—Allan Cunningham, &c.—Kenilworth published— 1820-1821, 19 CHAPTER III. Visit to London Project of the Royal Society of Literature—Affairs of the 18th
Hussars—Marriage of Captain Adam Ferguson—Letters to Lord
Sidmouth—Lord Montagu—Allan
Cunningham—Mrs Lockhart—and Cornet
Scott— 1821, 50 PAGE CHAPTER IV. Illness and Death of John Ballantyne—Extract from his
Pocketbook—Letters from Blair-Adam—Castle-Campbell—Sir Samuel
Shepherd—“Bailie Mackay,”
&c.—Coronation of George IV.—Correspondence with James
Hogg—and Lord Sidmouth—Letter on the
Coronation—Anecdotes—Allan Cunningham’s Memoranda—Completion
of Chantrey’s Bust— 1821, 74 CHAPTER V. Publication of Mr Adolphus’s Letters on the
Authorship of Waverley— 1821, 103 CHAPTER VI. New Buildings at Abbotsford—Chiefswood—William
Erskine—Letter to Countess Purgstall—Progress of the Pirate—Private Letters in the Reign of James
I.—Commencement of the Fortunes of Nigel—Second Sale
of Copyrights—Contract for “Four Works of Fiction”—Enormous Profits of the
Novelist, and Extravagant Projects of Constable—The
Pirate published—Lord Byron’sCain, dedicated to Scott—Affair of the
Beacon Newspaper—Franck’sNorthern Memoirs—And Notes of Lord Fountainhall,
published— 1821, 122 CHAPTER VII. William Erskine promoted to the Bench—Joanna
Baillie’s Miscellany—Halidon Hill and Macduff’s Cross—Letters to
Lord Montagu—Last Portrait by
Raeburn—Constable’s Letter on the
Appearance of the Fortunes of Nigel—Halidon
Hill published— 1822, 156 CHAPTER VIII. Repairs of Melrose Abbey—Letters to Lord Montagu and
Miss Edgeworth—King George IV. visits
Scotland—Celtic Mania—Mr Crabbe in Castle Street—Death of
Lord Kinnedder—Departure of the King—Letters from Mr
Peel and Mr Croker— 1822, 178 CHAPTER IX. Mons Meg—Jacobite Peerages—Invitation from the Galashiels Poet—Progress of
Abbotsford House—Letters to Joanna Baillie—Terry—Lord
Montagu, &c.—Completion and Publication of Peveril of
the Peak— 1822-1823, 220 CHAPTER X. Quentin Durward in progress—Letters to
Constable—and Dr Dibdin—the Author of Waverley and the Roxburghe Club—the Bannatyne Club
Founded—Scott Chairman of the Edinburgh Oil Gas Company,
&c.—Mechanical Devices at Abbotsford—Gasometer—Air-bell, &c. &c.—The Bellenden
Windows— 1823, 253 CHAPTER XI. Quentin Durward published—Transactions with
Constable—Dialogues on Superstition proposed—Article on Romance
Written—St Ronan’s Well begun—“Melrose in
July”—Abbotsford Visited by Miss Edgeworth—And by Mr
Adolphus—His Memoranda—Excursion to Allanton—Anecdotes—Letters to
Miss Baillie, Miss Edgeworth, Mr
Terry, &c.—Publication of St Ronan’s
Well— 1823, 279 CHAPTER XII. Publication of Redgauntlet—Death of Lord
Byron—Library and Museum—“The Wallace
Chair”—House-painting, &c.—Anecdotes—Letters to
Constable—Miss
Edgeworth—Terry—Miss
Baillie—Lord Montagu—Mr
Southey—Charles Scott, &c.—Speech at the Opening of
the Edinburgh Academy—Death and Epitaph of Maida—Fires in
Edinburgh— 1824, 319 CHAPTER XIII. Tales of the Crusaders begun—A Christmas at Abbotsford, in
Extracts from the MS. Journal of Captain Basil Hall, R. N.—Dec. 29,
1824—Jan. 10, 1825— 374
MEMOIRSOF THELIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.CHAPTER I. AUTUMN AT ABBOTSFORD—SCOTT’S HOSPITALITY—VISIT OF
SIR HUMPHRY DAVY—HENRY MACKENZIE—DR
WOLLASTON AND WILLIAM STEWART ROSE—COURSING ON NEWARK
HILL—SALMON-FISHING—THE FESTIVAL AT BOLDSIDE—THE ABBOTSFORD HUNT—THE KIRN, ETC. 1820.
About the middle of August (1820), my wife and I went to
Abbotsford; and we remained there for several weeks, during which I became familiarized to
Sir Walter Scott’s mode of existence in the
country. It was necessary to observe it, day after day, for a considerable period, before
one could believe that such was, during nearly half the year, the routine of life with the
most productive author of his age. The humblest person who stayed merely for a short visit,
must have departed with the impression, that what he witnessed was an occasional variety;
that Scott’s courtesy prompted him to break in upon his habits
when he had a stranger to amuse; but that it was physically impossible,
that the man who was writing the Waverley
romances at the rate of nearly twelve volumes in the year, could continue, week
after week, and month after month, to devote all but a hardly perceptible fraction of his
mornings to out of doors’ occupations, and the whole of his evenings to the
entertainment of a constantly varying circle of guests.
The hospitality of his afternoons must alone have been enough to exhaust
the energies of almost any man; for his visiters did not mean, like those of country houses
in general, to enjoy the landlord’s good cheer and amuse each other; but the far
greater proportion arrived from a distance, for the sole sake of the Poet and Novelist
himself, whose person they had never before seen, and whose voice they might never again
have any opportunity of hearing. No other villa in Europe. was ever resorted to from the
same motives, and to any thing like the same extent, except Ferney; and Voltaire never dreamt of being visible to his hunters, except for a brief space of the day; few of them even dined
with him, and none of them seem to have slept under his roof.
Scott’s establishment, on the contrary, resembled in every
particular that of the affluent idler, who, because he has inherited, or would fain
transmit, political influence in some province, keeps open house receives as many as he has
room for, and sees their apartments occupied, as soon as they vacate them, by another troop
of the same description. Even on gentlemen guiltless of inkshed, the exercise of
hospitality upon this sort of scale is found to impose a heavy tax; few of them, nowadays,
think of maintaining it for any large portion of the year: very few indeed below the
highest rank of the nobility in whose case there is usually a staff of led-captains,
led-chaplains, servile dandies, and semi-professional talkers and jokers from London, to take the chief part of the
burden. Now, Scott had often in his mouth the pithy verses— “Conversation is but carving,— Give no more to every guest, Than he’s able to digest; Give him always of the prime, And but a little at a time; Carve to all but just enough, Let them neither starve nor stuff; And that you may have your due,Let your neighbours carve for you:”— and he, in his own familiar circle always, and in other circles where it was possible,
furnished a happy exemplification of these rules and regulations of the Dean of St Patrick’s. But the same sense and
benevolence which dictated adhesion to them among his old friends and acquaintance,
rendered it necessary to break them, when he was receiving strangers of the class I have
described above at Abbotsford: he felt that their coming was the best homage they could pay
to his celebrity, and that it would have been as uncourteous in him not to give them their
fill of his talk, as it would be in your every-day lord of manors to make his casual guests
welcome indeed to his venison, but keep his grouse-shooting for his immediate allies and
dependants.
Every now and then he received some stranger who was not indisposed to
take his part in the carving; and how good-humouredly he surrendered the lion’s share
to any one that seemed to covet it—with what perfect placidity he submitted to be bored
even by bores of the first water, must have excited the admiration of many besides the
daily observers of his proceedings. I have heard a spruce Senior Wrangler lecture him for
half an evening on the niceties of the Greek epigram; I have heard the
poorest of all parliamentary blunderers try to detail to him the pros and cons of what he called the Truck System; and in either case the same bland eye watched the lips of the
tormentor. But, with such ludicrous exceptions, Scott
was the one object of the Abbotsford pilgrims; and evening followed evening only to show
him exerting, for their amusement, more of animal spirits, to say nothing of intellectual
vigour, than would have been considered by any other man in the company as sufficient for
the whole expenditure of a week’s existence. Yet this was not the chief marvel; he
talked of things that interested himself, because he knew that by doing so he should give
most pleasure to his guests; but how vast was the range of subjects on which he could talk
with unaffected zeal; and with what admirable delicacy of instinctive politeness did he
select his topic according to the peculiar history, study, pursuits or social habits of the
stranger! How beautifully he varied his style of letter-writing, according to the character
and situation of his multifarious correspondents, the reader has already been enabled to
judge; but to carry the same system into practice at sight—to manage
utter strangers, of many and widely different classes, in the same fashion, and with the
same effect—called for a quickness of observation and fertility of resource such as no
description can convey the slightest notion of to those who never witnessed the thing for
themselves. And all this was done without approach to the unmanly trickery of what is
called catching the tone of the person one converses with.
Scott took the subject on which he thought such a man or woman
would like best to hear him speak—but not to handle it in their way, or in any way but what
was completely, and most simply his own;—not to flatter them by embellishing, with the
illustration of his genius, the views and
opinions which they were supposed to entertain, but to let his genius play out its own
variations, for his own delight and theirs, as freely and easily, and with as endless a
multiplicity of delicious novelties, as ever the magic of Beethoven or Mozart could fling over
the few primitive notes of a village air.
It is the custom in some, perhaps in many country houses, to keep a
register of the guests, and I have often regretted that nothing of the sort was ever
attempted at Abbotsford. It would have been a curious record—especially if so contrived—(as
I have seen done)—that the names of each day should, by their arrangement on the page,
indicate the exact order in which the company sat at dinner. It would hardly, I believe, be
too much to affirm, that Sir Walter Scott entertained,
under his roof, in the course of the seven or eight brilliant seasons when his prosperity
was at its height, as many persons of distinction in rank, in politics, in art, in
literature, and in science, as the most princely nobleman of his age ever did in the like
space of time. I turned over, since I wrote the preceding sentence, Mr Lodge’scompendium of the British Peerage, and on summing up
the titles which suggested to myself some reminiscence of this kind,
I found them nearly as one out of six.—I fancy it is not beyond the mark to add, that of
the eminent foreigners who visited our island within this period, a moiety crossed the
Channel mainly in consequence of the interest with which his writings had invested
Scotland—and that the hope of beholding the man under his own roof was the crowning motive
with half that moiety. As for countrymen of his own, like him ennobled, in the higher sense
of that word, by the display of their intellectual energies, if any one such contemporary
can be pointed out as having crossed the Tweed, and yet not spent a day at Abbotsford, I be
surprised.
It is needless to add, that Sir Walter
was familiarly known, long before the days I am speaking of, to almost all the nobility and
higher gentry of Scotland; and consequently, that there seldom wanted a fair proportion of
them to assist him in doing the honours of his country. It is still more superfluous to say
so respecting the heads of his own profession at Edinburgh: Sibi
et amicis—Abbotsford was their villa whenever they pleased to resort
to it, and few of them were ever absent from it long. He lived meanwhile in a constant
interchange of easy visits with the gentlemen’s families of Teviotdale and the
Forest; so that, mixed up with his superfine admirers of the Mayfair breed, his staring
worshippers from foreign parts, and his quick-witted coevals of the Parliament-House—there
was found generally some hearty homespun laird, with his dame—the young laird—a bashful
bumpkin, perhaps, whose ideas did not soar beyond his gun and pointer—or perhaps a little
pseudo-dandy, for whom the Kelso race-course and the Jedburgh ball were “Life,”
and “the World;” and not forgetting a brace of “Miss Rawbones,” in whom, as their mamma prognosticated, some of
Sir Walter’s young Waverleys or Osbaldistones might
peradventure discover a Flora MacIvor or a Die Vernon. To complete the olla
podrida, we must remember that no old acquaintance, or family
connexions, however remote their actual station or style of manners from his own, were
forgotten or lost sight of. He had some, even near relations who, except when they visited
him, rarely, if ever, found admittance to what the haughty dialect of the upper world is
pleased to designate exclusively as society. These were welcome
guests, let who might be under that roof; and it was the same with many a worthy citizen of
Edinburgh, habitually moving in the obscurest of circles, who had been in the same class
withScott at the High School, or his fellow-apprentice when he was proud of earning
threepence a-page by the use of his pen. To dwell on nothing else, it was surely a
beautiful perfection of real universal humanity and politeness, that could enable this
great and good man to blend guests so multifarious in one group, and contrive to make them
all equally happy with him, with themselves, and with each other.
I remember saying to William Allan
one morning as the whole party mustered before the porch after breakfast, “a
faithful sketch of what you at this moment see would be more interesting a hundred
years hence, than the grandest so-called historical picture that you will ever exhibit
in Somerset-House;” and my friend agreed with me so cordially, that I often
wondered afterwards he had not attempted to realize the suggestion. The subject ought,
however, to have been treated conjointly by him (or Wilkie) and Edwin Landseer. It was a
clear, bright, September morning, with a sharpness in the air that doubled the animating
influence of the sunshine, and all was in readiness for a grand coursing match on Newark
Hill. The only guest who had chalked out other sport for himself was the stanchest of
anglers, Mr Rose; but he, too, was there on his shelty, armed with his salmon-rod and landing-net, and attended by
his humorous squire Hinves, and Charlie
Purdie, a brother of Tom, in those
days the most celebrated fisherman of the district. This little group of Waltonians, bound for Lord
Somerville’s preserve, remained lounging about to witness the start of
the main cavalcade. Sir Walter, mounted on Sibyl, was marshalling the order of procession with a huge
hunting-whip; and among a dozen frolicsome youths and maidens, who seemed disposed to laugh
at all discipline, appeared, each on horseback, each as eager as the youngest sportsman in
the troop, Sir Humphry Davy, Dr Wollaston, and the patriarch of Scottish
belles-lettres, Henry Mac-kenzie. The Man of
Feeling, however, was persuaded with some difficulty to resign his steed for
the present to his faithful negro follower, and to join Lady
Scott in the sociable, until we should reach the ground of our battue. Laidlaw, on a long-tailed wiry Highlander, yclept Hoddin
Grey, which carried him nimbly and stoutly, although his feet almost touched the
ground as he sat, was the adjutant. But the most picturesque figure was the illustrious
inventor of the safety-lamp. He had come for his favourite sport of angling, and had been
practising it successfully with Rose, his travelling companion, for
two or three days preceding this, but he had not prepared for coursing fields, or had left
Charlie Purdie’s troop for Sir
Walter’s on a sudden thought, and his fisherman’s costume—a
brown hat with flexible brims, surrounded with line upon line of catgut, and innumerable
fly-hooks—jack-boots worthy of a Dutch smuggler, and a fustian surtout dabbled with the
blood of salmon, made a fine contrast with the smart jackets, white-cord breeches, and well
polished jockey-boots of the less distinguished cavaliers about him. Dr
Wollaston was in black, and with his noble serene dignity of countenance,
might have passed for a sporting archbishop. Mr Mackenzie, at this
time in the 76th year of his age, with a white hat turned up with green, green spectacles,
green jacket, and long brown leathern gaiters buttoned upon his nether anatomy, wore a
dog-whistle round his neck, and had all over the air of as resolute a devotee as the
gay captain of Huntly Burn. Tom
Purdie and his subalterns had preceded us by a few hours with all the
greyhounds that could be collected at Abbotsford, Darnick, and Melrose; but the giant Maida had remained as his master’s orderly, and now
gambolled about Sibyl Grey, barking for mere joy like a spaniel
puppy.
The order of march had been all settled, and the sociable was just getting under weigh, when the Lady Anne broke from the line,
screaming with laughter, and exclaimed, “Papa, papa, I knew you could never think
of going without your pet.” Scott looked
round, and I rather think there was a blush as well as a smile upon his face, when he
perceived a little black pig frisking about his pony, and evidently a self-elected addition
to the party of the day. He tried to look stern, and cracked his whip at the creature, but
was in a moment obliged to join in the general cheers. Poor piggy soon found a strap round
its neck, and was dragged into the background:—Scott, watching the
retreat, repeated with mock pathos the first verse of an old pastoral song— “What will I do gin my hoggie* die? My joy, my pride, my hoggie! My only beast, I had nae mae, And wow! but I was vogie!” —the cheers were redoubled and the squadron moved on.
This pig had taken, nobody could tell how, a most sentimental attachment
to Scott, and was constantly urging its pretensions to
be admitted a regular member of his tail along with the greyhounds and terriers; but,
indeed, I remember him suffering another summer under the same sort of pertinacity on the
part of an affectionate hen. I leave the explanation for philosophers—but such were the
facts. I have too much respect for the vulgarly calumniated donkey to name him in the same
category of pets with the pig and the hen; but a year or two af-
* Hog signifies in the Scotch dialect a
young sheep that has never been shorn. Hence, no doubt, the name of the Poet of Ettrick derived from a long line of
shepherds. Mr Charles Lamb, however, in one
of his sonnets, suggests this pretty origin of his
“Family Name:”—
“Perhaps some shepherd on Lincolnian plains, In manners guileless as his own sweet flocks, Received it first amid the merry mocks, And arch allusions of his fellow swains.” ter this time, my wife used to drive a couple of these animals in a
little garden chair, and whenever her father appeared at the door of our cottage, we were
sure to see Hannah More and Lady Morgan (as Anne Scott had
wickedly christened them) trotting from their pasture to lay their noses over the paling,
and, as Washington Irving says of the old
whitehaired hedger with the Parisian snuff-box, “to have a pleasant crack
wi’ the laird.”
But to return to our chasse. On
reaching Newark Castle, we found Lady Scott, her
eldest daughter, and the venerable Mackenzie, all busily engaged in unpacking a basket that
had been placed in their carriage, and arranging the luncheon it contained upon the mossy
rocks overhanging the bed of the Yarrow. When such of the company as chose had partaken of
this refection, the Man of Feeling resumed his pony, and all ascended
the mountain, duly marshalled at proper distances, so as to beat in a broad line over the
heather, Sir Walter directing the movement from the
right wing—towards Blackandro. Davy, next to whom I
chanced to be riding, laid his whip about the fern like an experienced hand, but cracked
many a joke, too, upon his own jackboots, and surveying the long eager battalion of
bush-rangers, exclaimed “Good heavens! is it thus that I visit the scenery of the
Lay of the Last Minstrel?” He
then kept muttering to himself, as his glowing eye (the finest and brightest that I ever
saw) ran over the landscape, some of those beautiful lines from the Conclusion of the Lay— ——“But still, When summer smiled on sweet Bowhill, And July’s eve, with balmy breath, Waved the blue-bells on Newark heath, When throstles sung in Hareheadshaw, And corn was green on Carterhaugh, And flourished, broad, Blackandro’s oak, The aged harper’s soul awoke,” &c. Mackenzie, spectacled though he was, saw the first sitting hare, gave
the word to slip the dogs, and spurred after them like a boy. All the seniors, indeed, did
well as long as the course was upwards, but when puss took down the declivity, they halted
and breathed themselves upon the knoll—cheering gaily, however, the young people, who
dashed at full speed past and below them. Coursing on such a mountain is not like the same
sport over a set of fine English pastures. There were gulfs to be avoided, and bogs enough
to be threaded—many a stiff nag stuck fast—many a bold rider measured his length among the
peat-hags—and another stranger to the ground besides Davy plunged
neck-deep into a treacherous well-head, which, till they were floundering in it, had borne
all the appearance of a piece of delicate green turf. When Sir Humphry
emerged from his involuntary bath, his habiliments garnished with mud, slime, and mangled
water-cresses, Sir Walter received him with a triumphant encore! But
the philosopher had his revenge, for joining soon afterwards in a brisk gallop,
Scott put Sibyl Grey to a leap beyond
her prowess, and lay humbled in the ditch, while Davy, who was better
mounted, cleared it and him at a bound. Happily there was little damage done—but no one was
sorry that the sociable had been detained at the foot of the hill.
I have seen Sir Humphry in many
places, and in company of many different descriptions; but never to such advantage as at
Abbotsford. His host and he delighted in each other, and the modesty of their mutual
admiration was a memorable spectacle. Davy was by nature a poet—and
Scott, though any thing but a philosopher in the modern sense of
that term, might, I think it very likely, have pursued the study of physical science with
zeal and success, had he happened to fall in with such an instructor as Sir
Humphry would have been to him, in his early life. Each
strove to make the other talk—and they did so in turn more charmingly than I ever heard
either on any other occasion whatsoever. Scott in his romantic
narratives touched a deeper chord of feeling than usual, when he had such a listener as
Davy: and Davy, when induced to open his
views upon any question of scientific interest in Scott’s
presence, did so with a degree of clear energetic eloquence, and with a flow of imagery and
illustration, of which neither his habitual tone of tabletalk (least of all in London), nor
any of his prose writings (except, indeed, the posthumous Consolations of Travel) could suggest an adequate
notion. I say his prose writings—for who that has read his sublime quatrains on the
doctrine of Spinoza can doubt that he might have
united, if he had pleased, in some great didactic poem, the vigorous ratiocination of
Dryden and the moral majesty of Wordsworth? I remember William
Laidlaw whispering to me, one night, when their “rapt talk” had
kept the circle round the fire until long after the usual bedtime of
Abbotsford—“Gude preserve us! this is a very superior occasion! Eh,
sirs!” he added, cocking his eye like a bird, “I wonder if Shakspeare and Bacon ever met to screw ilk other up?”
Since I have touched on the subject of Sir
Walter’s autumnal diversions in these his later years, I may as well
notice here two annual festivals, when sport was made his pretext for assembling his rural
neighbours about him—days eagerly anticipated, and fondly remembered by many. One was a
solemn bout of salmon-fishing for the neighbouring gentry and their families, instituted
originally, I believe, by Lord Somerville, but now, in
his absence, conducted and presided over by the Sheriff. Charles
Purdie, already mentioned, had charge (partly as lessee) of the salmon
fisheries for three or four miles of the Tweed, including all the water attached to the lands of Abbotsford, Gala, and Allwyn; and this
festival had been established with a view, besides other considerations, of recompensing
him for the attention he always bestowed on any of the lairds or their visiters that chose
to fish, either from the banks or the boat, within his jurisdiction. His selection of the
day, and other precautions, generally secured an abundance of sport for the great
anniversary; and then the whole party assembled to regale on the newly caught prey, boiled,
grilled, and roasted in every variety of preparation, beneath a grand old ash, adjoining
Charlie’s cottage at Boldside, on the northern margin of the
Tweed, about a mile above Abbotsford. This banquet took place earlier in the day or later,
according to circumstances; but it often lasted till the harvest moon shone on the lovely
scene and its revellers. These formed groups that would have done no discredit to Watteau—and a still better hand has painted the background
in the Introduction to the
Monastery:—“On the opposite bank of the Tweed might be seen the remains of
ancient enclosures, surrounded by sycamores and ash-trees of considerable size. These had
once formed the crofts or arable ground of a village, now reduced to a single hut, the
abode of a fisherman, who also manages a ferry. The cottages, even the church which once
existed there, have sunk into vestiges hardly to be traced without visiting the spot, the
inhabitants having gradually withdrawn to the more prosperous town of Galashiels, which has
risen into consideration, within two miles of their neighbourhood. Superstitious eld,
however, has tenanted the deserted grove with aerial beings, to supply the want of the
mortal tenants who have deserted it. The ruined and abandoned churchyard of Boldside has
been long believed to be haunted by the Fairies, and the deep broad current of the Tweed,
wheeling in moonlight round the foot of the steep bank, with the number
of trees originally planted for shelter round the fields of the cottagers, but now
presenting the effect of scattered and detached groves, fill up the idea which one would
form in imagination for a scene that Oberon and
Queen Mab might love to revel in. There are
evenings when the spectator might believe, with Father
Chaucer, that the ——‘Queen of Faery, With harp, and pipe, and symphony, Were dwelling in the place.’”——
Sometimes the evening closed with a “burning of the water;”
and then the Sheriff, though now not so agile as when he
practised that rough sport in the early times of Ashestiel, was sure to be one of the party
in the boat, held a torch, or perhaps took the helm, and seemed to enjoy the whole thing as
heartily as the youngest of his company— “’Tis blithe along the midnight tide, With stalwart arm the boat to guide— On high the dazzling blaze to rear, And heedful plunge the barbed spear; Rock, wood, and scaur, emerging bright, Fling on the stream their ruddy light, And from the bank our band appears Like Genii armed with fiery spears.”
The other “superior occasion” came later in the season; the
28th of October, the birthday of Sir Walter’s eldest
son, was, I think, that usually selected for the
Abbotsford Hunt. This was a coursing-field on a large scale, including, with as
many of the young gentry as pleased to attend, all Scott’s personal favourites among the yeomen and farmers of the
surrounding country. The Sheriff always took the field, but latterly devolved the command
upon his good friend Mr John Usher, the ex-laird of
Toftfield; and he could not have had a more skilful or a better-humoured lieutenant. The
hunt took place either on the moors above the
Cauld-Shiels Loch, or over some of the hills on the estate of Gala, and we had commonly,
ere we returned, hares enough to supply the wife of every farmer that attended with soup
for a week following. The whole then dined at Abbotsford, the Sheriff in the chair,
Adam Ferguson croupier, and Dominie Thomson, of course, chaplain.
George, by the way, was himself an eager partaker in the
preliminary sport; and now he would favour us with a grace, in Burns’s phrase, “as long as my arm,” beginning
with thanks to the Almighty, who had given man dominion over the fowls of the air, and the
beasts of the field, and expatiating on this text with so luculent a commentary, that
Scott, who had been fumbling with his spoon long before he reached
his Amen, could not help exclaiming as he sat down, “Well done, Mr
George, I think we’ve had every thing but the view
holla!” The company, whose onset had been thus deferred, were seldom, I think,
under thirty in number, and sometimes they exceeded forty. The feast was such as suited the
occasion—a baron of beef, roasted, at the foot of the table, a salted round at the head,
while tureens of hare-soup, hotchpotch, and cockeyleekie extended down the centre, and such
light articles as geese, turkeys, entire sucking pigs, a singed sheep’s head, and the
unfailing haggis, were set forth by way of side-dishes. Blackcock and moorfowl, bushels of
snipe, black puddings, white puddings, and
pyramids of pancakes, formed the second course. Ale was the favourite beverage during
dinner, but there was plenty of port and sherry for those whose stomachs they suited. The
quaighs of Glenlivet were filled brimful, and tossed off as if they held water. The wine
decanters made a few rounds of the table, but the hints for hot punch and toddy soon became
clamorous. Two or three bowls were introduced, and placed under the supervision of experienced manufacturers—one of these being usually the Ettrick Shepherd,—and then the business of the evening
commenced in good earnest. The faces shone and glowed like those at Camacho’s wedding: the chairman told his richest
stories of old rural life, Lowland or Highland; Ferguson and humbler
heroes fought their peninsular battles o’er again; the stalwart Dandie Dinmonts lugged out their last winter’s
snow-storm, the parish scandal, perhaps, or the dexterous bargain of the Northumberland
tryste; and every man was knocked down for the song that he sung best, or took most
pleasure in singing. Sheriff-substitute Shortreed (a
cheerful hearty little man, with a sparkling eye and a most infectious laugh) gave us Dick o’ the Cow, or, Now Liddesdale has ridden a raid; a
weatherbeaten, stiff-bearded veteran, Captain Ormistoun, as he was
called (though I doubt if his rank was recognised at the Horse Guards), had the primitive
pastoral of Cowden-knowes in sweet
perfection; Hogg produced The
Women folk, or, The Kye comes
hame, and, in spite of many grinding notes, contrived to make every
body delighted, whether with the fun or the pathos of his ballad; the Melrose doctor sang
in spirited style some of Moore’s
masterpieces; a couple of retired sailors joined in Bould Admiral Duncan upon the high sea;—and the gallant croupier
crowned the last bowl with Ale good ale, thou art my
darling! Imagine some smart Parisian savant—some dreamy pedant of Halle or Heidelberg—a brace of stray
young lords from Oxford or Cambridge, or perhaps their prim college tutors, planted here
and there amidst these rustic wassailers—this being their first vision of the author of
Marmion and Ivanhoe, and he appearing as heartily at home in the scene
as if he had been a veritable Dandie himself—his face radiant, his laugh gay as childhood, his
chorus always ready. And so it pro-ceeded
until some worthy, who had fifteen or twenty miles to ride home, began to insinuate that
his wife and bairns would be getting sorely anxious about the fords, and the Dumpies and
Hoddins were at last heard neighing at the gate, and it was voted that the hour had come
for dock an dorrach—the stirrup-cup—to wit, a
bumper all round of the unmitigated mountain dew. How they all contrived to get home in
safety Heaven only knows—but I never heard of any serious accident except upon one
occasion, when James Hogg made a bet at starting that he would leap
over his wall-eyed poney as she stood, and broke his nose in this experiment of
“o’ervaulting ambition.” One comely goodwife, far off among the hills,
amused Sir Walter by telling him, the next time he passed her
homestead after one of these jolly doings, what her husband’s first words were when
he alighted at his own door—“Ailie, my woman, I’m ready
for my bed—and oh, lass (he gallantly added), I wish I could sleep for a towmont, for
there’s only ae thing in this warld worth living for, and that’s the Abbotsford
hunt!”
It may well be supposed that the President of the Boldside Festival and
the Abbotsford Hunt, did not omit the good old custom of the Kirn.
Every November before quitting the country for Edinburgh, he gave a harvest-home, on the
most approved model of former days, to all the peasantry on his estate, their friends and
kindred, and as many poor neighbours besides as his barn could hold. Here old and young
danced from sunset to sunrise, John of Skye’s
bagpipe being relieved at intervals by the violin of some “Wandering
Willie;”—and the laird and all his family were present during the early part of the
evening, he and his wife to distribute the contents of the first tub of whisky-punch, and
his young people to take their due share in the endless reels and
hornpipes of the earthen floor. As Mr Morritt has
said of him as he appeared at Laird Nippey’s kirn of earlier days, “to
witness the cordiality of his reception might have unbent a misanthrope.” He
had his private joke for every old wife or “gausie carle,” his arch compliment
for the ear of every bonny lass, and his hand and his blessing for the head of every little
Eppie Daidle from Abbotstown
or Broomylees.
“The notable paradox,” he says in one of the most
charming of his essays, “that the residence of a proprietor upon his estate is of
as little consequence as the bodily presence of a stockholder upon Exchange, has, we
believe, been renounced. At least, as in the case of the Duchess of
Suffolk’s relationship to her own child, the vulgar continue to be
of opinion that there is some difference in favour of the next hamlet and village, and
even of the vicinage in general, when the squire spends his rents at the manor-house,
instead of cutting a figure in France or Italy. A celebrated politician used to say he
would willingly bring in one bill to make poaching felony, another to encourage the
breed of foxes, and a third to revive the decayed amusements of cock-fighting and
bull-baiting—that he would make, in short, any sacrifice to the humours and prejudices
of the country gentlemen, in their most extravagant form, provided only he could
prevail upon them to ‘dwell in their own houses’ be the patrons of their
own tenantry, and the fathers of their own children.’”*
* Essay on Landscape
Gardening, Miscellaneous
Prose Works, vol. xxi., p. 77.
CHAPTER II. PUBLICATION OF THE ABBOT—THE BLAIR-ADAM CLUB—KELSO—WALTONHALL,
ETC.—BALLANTYNE’S NOVELIST’S LIBRARY—ACQUITTAL OF QUEEN CAROLINE—SERVICE OF THE
DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH—SCOTT ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH—THE CELTIC
SOCIETY—LETTERS TO LORD MONTAGU—CORNET SCOTT—CHARLES SCOTT—ALLAN CUNNINGHAM,
ETC.—KENILWORTH PUBLISHED. 1820-1821.
In the September of 1820, Longman, in conjunction with Constable, published The
Abbot—the continuation, to a certain extent, of The Monastery, of which I barely mentioned the
appearance under the preceding March. I had nothing of any consequence to add to the
information which the subsequent Introduction affords us respecting the composition and
fate of the former of these novels. It was considered as a failure—the first of the series
on which any such sentence was pronounced; nor have I much to allege in favour of the White Lady of Avenel, generally criticised as the primary blot, or
of Sir Percy Shafton, who was loudly, though not quite
so generally, condemned. In either case, considered separately, he seems to have erred from
dwelling (in the German taste) on materials that might have done very well for a rapid
sketch. The phantom with whom we have leisure to become familiar is sure to fail—even the
witch of Endor is contented with a momentary appearance and five
syllables of the shade she evokes. And we may say the same of any
grotesque absurdity in human manners; Scott might have
considered with advantage how lightly and briefly Shakspeare introduces his Euphuism—though actually
the prevalent humour of the hour when he was writing. But perhaps these errors might have
attracted little notice, had the novelist been successful in finding some reconciling
medium capable of giving consistence and harmony to his naturally incongruous materials.
“These,” said one of his ablest
critics, “are joined but they refuse to blend: Nothing can be more
poetical in conception, and sometimes in language, than the fiction of the White Maid
of Avenel; but when this ethereal personage, who rides on the cloud which ‘for
Araby is bound’ who is ‘Something between heaven and hell, Something that neither stood nor fell’— whose existence is linked by an awful and mysterious destiny to the fortunes of a
decaying family; when such a being as this descends to clownish pranks, and promotes a
frivolous jest about a tailor’s bodkin, the course of our sympathies is rudely
arrested, and we feel as if the author had put upon us the old-fashioned pleasantry of
selling a bargain.”*
The beautiful natural scenery, and the sterling Scotch characters and
manners introduced in the Monastery are,
however, sufficient to redeem even these mistakes; and, indeed, I am inclined to believe
that it will ultimately occupy a securer place than some romances enjoying hitherto a far
higher reputation, in which he makes no use of Scottish materials.
Sir Walter himself thought well of The Abbot when he had finished it.
When he sent me a complete copy, I found on a slip of paper at the beginning of volume
* Adolphus’sLetters to Heber, p. 13.
first, these two lines from Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress— “Up he rose in a funk, lapped a toothful of brandy, And to it again!—any odds upon
Sandy!”— and whatever ground he had been supposed to lose in the Monastery, part at least of it was regained by this
tale, and especially by its most graceful and pathetic portraiture of Mary Stuart. “The Castle of Lochleven,”
says the Chief-Commissioner Adam, “is seen
at every turn from the northern side of Blair-Adam. This castle, renowned and
attractive above all the others in my neighbourhood, became an object of much increased
attention, and a theme of constant conversation, after the author of
Waverley had, by his inimitable power of delineating character—by his
creative poetic fancy in representing scenes of varied interest—and by the splendour of
his romantic descriptions, infused a more diversified and a deeper tone of feeling into
the history of Queen Mary’s captivity and escape.”
I have introduced this quotation from a little book privately printed for the amiable
Judge’s own family and familiar friends, because Sir
Walter owned to myself at the time, that the idea of The Abbot had arisen in his mind
during a visit to Blair-Adam. In the pages of the tale itself, indeed, the beautiful
localities of that estate are distinctly mentioned, with an allusion to the virtues and
manners that adorn its mansion, such as must have been intended to satisfy the possessor
(if he could have had any doubts on the subject) as to the authorship of those novels.
The Right Honourable William Adam
(who must pardon my mentioning him here as the only man I ever knew that rivalled Sir Walter Scott in uniform graciousness of bonhammie and gentleness of humour)—was ap-pointed, in 1815,
to the Presidency of the Court for Jury Trial in Civil Cases, then instituted in Scotland,
and he thenceforth spent a great part of his time at his paternal seat in Kinross-shire.
Here, about midsummer 1816, he received a visit from his near relation William Clerk, Adam
Ferguson, his hereditary friend and especial favourite, and their lifelong
intimate, Scott. They remained with him for two or three days, in the
course of which they were all so much delighted with their host, and he with them, that it
was resolved to reassemble the party, with a few additions, at the same season of every
following year. This was the origin of the Blair-Adam Club, the regular members of which
were in number nine; viz., the four already named—the Chief Commissioner’s son,
Admiral Sir Charles Adam—his son-in-law, the late
Mr Anstruther Thomson of Charleton, in
Fifeshire—Mr Thomas Thomson, the Deputy
Register of Scotland—his brother, the Rev. John
Thomson, minister of Duddingston, who, though a most diligent and
affectionate parish-priest, has found leisure to make himself one of the first masters of
the British School of Landscape Painting—and the Right Hon. Sir
Samuel Shepherd, who, after filling with high distinction the office of
Attorney-General in England, became Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer in Scotland,
shortly after the third anniversary of this brotherhood, into which he was immediately
welcomed with unanimous cordiality. They usually contrived to meet on a Friday; spent the
Saturday in a ride to some scene of historical interest within an easy distance; enjoyed a
quiet Sunday at home—“duly attending divine worship at the Kirk of Cleish (not
Cleishbotham)”—gave Monday morning to another Antiquarian excursion, and
returned to Edinburgh in time for the Courts of Tuesday. From 1816 to 1831 inclusive, Sir Walter was
a constant attendant at these meetings. He visited in this way Castle Campbell, Magus Moor,
Falkland, Dunfermline, St Andrews, and many other scenes of ancient celebrity; to one of
those trips we must ascribe his dramatic sketch of Macduff’s
Cross—and to that of the dog-days of 1819, we owe the weightier obligation of
The Abbot.
I expect an easy forgiveness for introducing from the liber rarissimus of Blair-Adam the page that belongs
to that particular meeting which, though less numerous than usual, is recorded as having
been “most pleasing and delightful.”
“There were,” writes the President, “only
five of us; the Chief Baron, Sir Walter, Mr
Clerk, Charles Adam, and myself.
The weather was sultry, almost beyond bearing. We did not stir beyond the bounds of the
pleasure-ground, indeed not far from the vicinity of the house; wandering from one
shady place to another; lolling upon the grass, or sitting upon prostrate trees, not
yet carried away by the purchaser. Our conversation was constant, though tranquil; and
what might be expected from Mr Clerk, who is a superior converser,
and whose mind is stored with knowledge; and from Sir Walter
Scott, who has let the public know what his powers are. Our talk was of all
sorts (except of beeves). Besides a display of their historic knowledge, at once
extensive and correct, they touched frequently on the pleasing reminiscences of their
early days. Shepherd and I could not go back to those periods; but
we could trace our own intimacy and constant friendship for more than forty years back,
when in 1783 we began our professional pursuits on the Circuit. So that if
Scott could describe, with inconceivable humour, their doings
at Mr Murray’s of Simprim, when emerging
from boyhood; when he, and Murray, and
Clerk, and Adam
Ferguson acted plays in the schoolroom (Simprim
making the dominie bear his part)—when Ferguson was prompter,
orchestra, and audience—and as Scott said, representing the whole
pit, kicked up an ‘O. P.’ row by anticipation; and many other such
recollections Shepherd and I could tell of our Circuit fooleries,
as old Fielding (the son of the great novelist)
called them—of the Circuit songs which Will Fielding made and
sung,—and of the grave Sir William Grant (then a
briefless barrister), ycleped by Fielding the Chevalier
Grant, bearing his part in those fooleries, enjoying all our pranks with
great zest, and who talked of them with delight to his dying day. When the conversation
took a graver tone, and turned upon literary subjects, the Chief-Baron took a great
share in it; for notwithstanding his infirmity of deafness, he is a most pleasing and
agreeable converser, and readily picks up what is passing; and having a classical mind,
and classical information, gives a pleasing, gentlemanly, and well-informed tone to
general conversation.—Before I bring these recollections of our social and cheerful
doings to a close, let me observe, that there was a characteristic feature attending
them, which it would be injustice to the individuals who composed our parties not to
mention. The whole set of us were addicted to take a full share of conversation, and to
discuss every subject that occurred with sufficient keenness. The topics were
multifarious, and the opinions of course various; but during the whole time of our
intercourse, for so many years, four days at a time, and always together, except when
we were asleep, there never was the least tendency on any occasion to any unruly
debate, nor to any thing that deviated from the pure delight of social
intercourse.”
The Chief-Commissioner adds the
following particulars in his appendix:—“Our return from Blair-Adam (after the
first meeting of the Club) was very early on a Tuesday morning, that we might reach the
Courts by nine o’clock. An occurrence took place near the Hawe’s Inn, which
left little doubt upon my mind that Sir Walter Scott
was the author of Waverley, of Guy Mannering, and of the Antiquary, his only novels then
published. The morning was prodigiously fine, and the sea as smooth as glass.
Sir Walter and I were standing on the beach, enjoying the
prospect; the other gentlemen, were not come from the boat. The porpoises were rising
in great numbers, when Sir Walter said to me, ‘Look at
them, how they are showing themselves; what fine fellows they are! I have the
greatest respect for them: I would as soon kill a man as a phoca.’ I
could not conceive that the same idea could occur to two men respecting this animal,
and set down that it could only be Sir Walter Scott who made the
phoca have the better of the battle with the Antiquary’s nephew, Captain M’Intyre.
“Soon after, another occurrence quite confirmed me as to the
authorship of the novels. On that visit to Blair-Adam, in course of conversation, I
mentioned an anecdote about Wilkie, the author of
the Epigoniad, who was but a formal
poet, but whose conversation was most amusing, and full of fancy. Having heard much of him
in my family, where he had been very intimate, I went, when quite a lad, to St Andrews,
where he was a Professor, for the purpose of visiting him. I had scarcely let him know who
I was, when he said, ‘Mr William, were you ever in this place
before?’ I said no. ‘Then, sir, you must go and look at
Regulus’ Tower,—no doubt you will have something of an eye of an architect about
you;—walk up to it at an angle, ad-vance and recede until you get to
see it at its proper distance, and come back and tell me whether you ever saw any thing
so beautiful in building: till I saw that tower, and studied it, I thought the beauty
of architecture had consisted in curly-wurlies, but now I find it consists in symmetry
and proportion.’ In the following winter Rob Roy was published, and there I read, that the Cathedral
of Glasgow was ‘a respectable Gothic structure, without any curly-wurlies.’
“But what confirmed, and was certainly meant to disclose to me the
author (and that in a very elegant manner), was the mention of the Kiery
Craigs— picturesque piece of scenery in the grounds of Blair-Adam—as being in the
vicinity of Kelty Bridge, the howf of Auchtermuchty, the Kinross
carrier.
“It was only an intimate friend of the family, in the habit of
coming to Blair-Adam, who could know any thing of the Kiery Craigs, or its name; and both
the scenery and the name had attractions for Sir Walter.
“At our first meeting after the publication of the ‘Abbot,’ when the party was assembled on
the top of the rock, the Chief-Baron Shepherd,
looking Sir Walter full in the face, and stamping his
staff on the ground, said, ‘Now, Sir Walter, I think we be upon
the top of the Kiery Craggs.’ Sir Walter
preserved profound silence; but there was a conscious looking down, and a considerable
elongation of his upper lip.”
Since I have obtained permission to quote from this private volume, I may
as well mention that I was partly moved to ask that favour, by the author’s own
confession, that his “Blair-Adam, from
1733 to 1834,” originated in a suggestion of Scott’s. “It was,” says the Judge, “on a
fine Sunday, lying on the grassy summit of Bennarty, above its craggy brow, that
Sir Walter said, looking first at the flat expanse of
Kinross-shire (on the south side of the Ochils), and then at the space which Blair-Adam
fills between the hill of Drumglow (the highest of the Cleish hills), and the valley of
Lochore—‘What an extraordinary thing it is, that here to the north so
little appears to have been done, when there are so many proprietors to work upon
it; and to the south, here is a district of country entirely made by the efforts of
one family, in three generations, and one of them amongst us in the full enjoyment
of what has been done by his two predecessors and himself? Blair-Adam, as I have
always heard, had a wild, uncomely, and unhospitable appearance, before its
improvements were begun. It would be most curious to record in writing its original
state, and trace its gradual progress to its present
condition.’” Upon this suggestion, enforced by the approbation of the
other members present, the President of the Blair-Adam Club commenced arranging the
materials for what constitutes a most instructive as well as entertaining history of the
Agricultural and Arboricultural progress of his domains, in the course of a hundred years,
under his grandfather, his father (the celebrated
architect), and himself. And Sir Walter had only suggested to his
friend of Kinross-shire what he was resolved to put into practice with regard to his own
improvements on Tweed-side; for he begun at precisely the same period to keep a regular
Journal of all his rural transactions, under the title of “Sylva Abbotsfordiensis.”
For reasons, as we have seen, connected with the affairs of the
Ballantynes, Messrs Longman
published the first edition of The
Monastery; and similar circumstances induced Sir
Walter to associate this house with that of Constable in the succeeding novel. Constable disliked
its title, and would fain have had the Nunnery instead: but Scott stuck to his Abbot. The bookseller grumbled a little, but was soothed by the author’s
reception of his request that Queen Elizabeth might
be brought into the field in his next romance, as a companion to the Mary Stuart of the
Abbot. Scott would not indeed indulge him with the choice
of the particular period of Elizabeth’s reign, indicated in the
proposed title of The Armada; but expressed his willingness to take
up his own old favourite, the legend of Meikle’sballad. He wished to call the novel, like the ballad, Cumnor-hall, but in further deference to Constable’s
wishes, substituted “Kenilworth.” John Ballantyne objected
to this title, and told Constable the result would be
“something worthy of the kennel;” but Constable
had all reason to be satisfied with the child of his christening. His partner, Mr Cadell, says “his vanity boiled over so much
at this time, on having his suggestion gone into, that when in his high moods he used
to stalk up and down his room, and exclaim, ‘By G——, I am all but the author
of the Waverley
Novels!’” Constable’s
bibliographical knowledge, however, it is but fair to say, was really of most essential
service to Scott upon many of these occasions; and his letter (now
before me) proposing the subject of The Armada, furnished the
Novelist with such a catalogue of materials for the illustration of the period as may,
probably enough, have called forth some very energetic expression of thankfulness.
Scott’s kindness secured for John Ballantyne the usual interest in the profits of Kenilworth, the last of his great works in which this
friend was to have any concern. I have already mentioned the obvious drooping of his health
and strength; and a document to be introduced presently, will show that
John himself had occasional glimpses, at least, of his danger,
before the close of 1819. Nevertheless, his spirits
continued, at the time of which I am now treating, to be in general as high as ever; nay,
it was now, after his maladies had taken a very serious shape, and it was hardly possible
to look on him without anticipating a speedy termination of his career, that the gay,
hopeful spirit of the shattered and trembling invalid led him to plunge into a new stream
of costly indulgence. It was an amiable point in his character that he had always retained
a tender fondness for his native place. He had now taken up the ambition of rivalling his
illustrious friend, in some sort, by providing himself with a summer retirement amidst the
scenery of his boyhood; and it need not be doubted, at the same time, that in erecting a
villa at Kelso, he anticipated and calculated on substantial advantages from its vicinity
to Abbotsford.
One fine day of this autumn, I accompanied Sir
Walter to inspect the progress of this edifice, which was to have the title
of Walton Hall. John had purchased two or three
old houses of two stories in height, with knotched gables, and thatched roofs, near the end
of the long, original street of Kelso, and not far from the gateway of the Duke of Roxburghe’s magnificent park, with their small
gardens and paddocks running down to the margin of the Tweed. He had already fitted up
convenient bachelor’s lodgings in one of the primitive tenements, and converted the
others into a goodly range of stabling, and was now watching the completion of his new
corps de logis behind, which included a
handsome entrance-hall, or saloon, destined to have old Piscator’s bust, on a stand,
in the centre, and to be embellished all round with emblems of his sport. Behind this were
spacious rooms overlooking the little pleasance which was to be laid out somewhat in the
Italian style, with ornamental steps, a fountain, and jet d’eau, and a broad terrace hanging over
the river, and commanding an extensive view of perhaps the most beautiful landscape in
Scotland. In these new dominions John received us with pride and
hilarity; and we then walked with him over this pretty town, lounged away an hour among the
ruins of the Abbey, and closed our perambulation with the Garden, where
Scott had spent some of the happiest of his early summers, and
where he pointed out with sorrowful eyes the site of the Platanus, under which he first
read Percy’s Reliques. Returning
to John’s villa, we dined gaily, al
fresco, by the side of his fountain; and after not a few bumpers to
the prosperity of Walton Hall, he mounted Old Mortality, and
escorted us for several miles on our ride homewards. It was this day that, overflowing with
kindly zeal, Scott revived one of the long-forgotten projects of their
early connexion in business, and offered his services as editor of a Novelist’s
Library, to be printed and published for the sole benefit of his host. The offer was
eagerly embraced, and when two or three mornings afterwards John
returned Sir Walter’s visit, he had put into his hands the MS.
of that admirable life of Fielding, which was
followed at brief intervals, as the arrangements of the projected work required, by others
of Smollett, Richardson, Defoe, Sterne, Johnson,
Goldsmith, Le
Sage, Horace Walpole, Cumberland, Mrs
Radcliffe, Charles Johnstone,
Clara Reeve, Charlotte Smith, and Robert Bage. The
publication of the first volume of “Ballantyne’s Novelist’s Library” did not take place, however,
until February 1821; and the series was closed soon after the proprietor’s death in
the ensuing summer. In spite of the charming prefaces in which Scott
combines all the graces of his easy narrative with a perpetual stream of deep and gentle
wisdom in commenting on the tempers and fortunes of his best predecessors in novel
literature, and also
with expositions of his own critical views, which prove how profoundly he had investigated
the principles and practice of those masters before he struck out a new path for himself—in
spite of these delightful and valuable essays, the publication was not prosperous.
Constable, after
Ballantyne’s death, would willingly have resumed the scheme.
But Scott had by that time convinced himself that it was in vain to
expect much success for a collection so bulky and miscellaneous, and which must of
necessity include a large proportion of matter, condemned by the purity, whether real or
affected, of modern taste. He could hardly have failed to perceive, on reflection, that his
own novels, already constituting an extensive library of fiction, in which no purist could
pretend to discover danger for the morals of youth, had in fact superseded the works of
less strait-laced days in the only permanently and solidly profitable market for books of
this order. He at all events declined Constable’s proposition
for renewing and extending this attempt. What he did was done gratuitously for
John Ballantyne’s sake; and I have dwelt on it thus long,
because, as the reader will perceive by and by, it was so done during (with one exception)
the very busiest period of Scott’s literary life.
Shortly before Scott wrote the
following letters, he had placed his second son (at this time in his fifteenth year) under
the care of the Reverend John Williams, who had been
my intimate friend and companion at Oxford, with a view of preparing him for that
University. Mr Williams was then Vicar of Lampeter, in Cardiganshire,
and the high satisfaction with which his care of Charles
Scott inspired Sir Walter, induced several other Scotch
gentlemen of distinction by and by to send their sons also to his Welsh parsonage; the
result of which northern connexions was important to the fortunes of one of the most accurate and extensive scholars, and most skilful teachers of
the present time.
To Walter Scott, Esq., 18th Hussars, Cork.
“Edinburgh, 14th November, 1820. “My dear Walter,
“I send you a cheque on Coutts for your quarter’s allowance. I hope you manage
your cash like a person of discretion—above all, avoid the card tables of
ancient dowagers. Always remember that my fortune, however much my efforts may
increase it, and although I am improving it for your benefit, not for any that
can accrue in my own time,—yet never can be more than a decent independence,
and therefore will make a poor figure unless managed with good sense,
moderation, and prudence—which are habits easily acquired in youth, while
habitual extravagance is a fault very difficult to be afterwards corrected.
“We came to town yesterday, and bade adieu to
Abbotsford for the season. Fife,* to mamma’s
great surprise and scandal, chose to stay at Abbotsford with Mai, and plainly denied to follow the carriage—so our
canine establishment in Castle Street is reduced to little Ury.† We spent two days at Arniston, on the road, and on
coming here, found Sophia as nicely and
orderly settled in her house as if she had been a married woman these five
years. I believe she is very happy—perhaps unusually so, for her wishes are
moderate, and all seem anxious to please her. She is preparing in due time for
the arrival of a little stranger, who will make you an uncle and me (God help
me!) a grandpapa.
“The Round Towers you mention are very curious, and
seem to have been built, as the Irish hackney-
* Finette—a spaniel of Lady
Scott’s.
† Urisk—a small terrier of the long silky-haired
Kintail breed.
coachman said of the Martello one at the
Black Rock, ‘to puzzle posterity.’ There are two of them in
Scotland—both excellent pieces of architecture; one at Brechin, built quite
close to the old church, so as to appear united with it, but in fact it is
quite detached from the church, and sways from it in a high wind, when it
vibrates like a lighthouse. The other is at Abernethy in Perthshire—said to
have been the capital city of the Picts. I am glad to see you observe objects
of interest and curiosity, because otherwise a man may travel over the universe
without acquiring any more knowledge than his horse does.
“We had our hunt and our jollification after it on
last Wednesday. It went off in great style, although I felt a little sorry at
having neither Charles nor you in the
field. By the way, Charles seems most admirably settled. I
had a most sensible letter on the subject from Mr
Williams, who appears to have taken great pains, and to have
formed a very just conception both of his merits and foibles. When I have an
opportunity, I will hand you his letter; for it will entertain you, it is so
correct a picture of Monsieur Charles.
“Dominie
Thomson has gone to a Mrs Dennistoun, of
Colgrain, to drill her youngsters. I am afraid he will find a change; but I
hope to have a nook open to him by and by—as a sort of retreat or harbour on
his lee. Adieu, my dear always believe me your affectionate father,
Walter Scott.”
To Mr Charles Scott, care of the Rev. John
Williams, Lampeter.
“Edinburgh, 14th Nov. 1820. “My dear boy Charles,
“Your letters made us all very happy, and I trust you
are now comfortably settled and plying your task hard. Mr Williams will probably ground you more perfectly in the grammar of the classical languages than
has hitherto been done, and this you will at first find but dry work. But there
are many indispensable reasons why you must bestow the utmost attention upon
it. A perfect knowledge of the classical languages has been fixed upon, and not
without good reason, as the mark of a well-educated young man; and though
people may have scrambled into distinction without it, it is always with the
greatest difficulty, just like climbing over a wall, instead of giving your
ticket at the door. Perhaps you may think another proof of a youth’s
talents might have been adopted; but what good will arise from your thinking
so, if the general practice of society has fixed on this particular branch of
knowledge as the criterion? Wheat or barley were as good grain, I suppose, as
sesamum; but it was only to sesamum that the talisman gave way, and the rock opened; and it is
equally certain that, if you are not a well-founded grammatical scholar in
Greek and Latin, you will in vain present other qualifications to distinction.
Besides, the study of grammar, from its very asperities, is calculated to teach
youth that patient labour which is necessary to the useful exertion of the
understanding upon every other branch of knowledge; and your great deficiency
is want of steadiness and of resolute application to the dry as well as the
interesting parts of your learning. But exerting yourself, as I have no doubt
you will do, under the direction of so learned a man, and so excellent a
teacher as Mr Williams, and being without the temptations
to idleness which occurred at home, I have every reason to believe that, to
your natural quickness you will presently add such a habit of application and steadiness, as will make you a respected
member of society, perhaps a distinguished one. It is very probable that the
whole success of your future life may depend on the manner in which you employ the next
two years; and I am therefore most anxious you should fully avail
yourself of the opportunities now afforded you.
“You must not be too much disconcerted with the
apparent dryness of your immediate studies. Language is the great mark by which
man is distinguished from the beasts, and a strict acquaintance with the manner
in which it is composed, becomes, as you follow it a little way, one of the
most curious and interesting exercises of the intellect.
“We had our grand hunt on Wednesday last, a fine day,
and plenty of sport. We hunted all over Huntly wood, and so on to Halidon and
Prieston—saw twelve hares, and killed six, having very hard runs, and turning
three packs of grouse completely. In absence of Walter and you, Stenhouse the horse-couper
led the field, and rode as if he had been a piece of his horse, sweltering like
a wild-drake all through Marriage-Moss at a motion betwixt swimming and riding.
One unlucky accident befell. Queen Mab, who was
bestrode by Captain Adam, lifted up her
heels against Mr Craig of Galashiels,*
whose leg she greeted with a thump like a pistol-shot, while by the same
movement she very nearly sent the noble Captain over her ears. Mr
Craig was helped from horse, but would not permit his boot to be
drawn off, protesting he would faint if he saw the bone of his leg sticking
through the stocking. Some thought he was reluctant to exhibit his legs in
their primitive and unclothed simplicity, in respect they have an unhappy
resemblance to a pair of tongs. As for the Captain, he declared that if the
accident had happened in action, the surgeon and
drum-boys would have had off, not his boot
* Mr George
Craig, factor to the laird of Gala, and manager of a
little branch bank at Galashiels. This worthy man was one of the
regular members of the Abbotsford hunt.
only, but his leg to boot, before he
could have uttered a remonstrance. At length Gala and I prevailed to have the
boot drawn, and to my great joy I found the damage was not serious, though the
pain must have been severe.
“On Saturday we left Abbotsford, and dined and spent
Sunday at Arniston, where we had many enquiries after you from Robert Dundas, who was so kind to you last
year.
“I must conclude for the present, requesting your
earnest pursuit of such branches of study as Mr
Williams recommends. In a short time, as you begin to comprehend
the subjects you are learning, you will find the path turn smoother, and that
which at present seems wrapped up in an inextricable labyrinth of thorns and
briers, will at once become easy and attractive.—Always, dear Charlie, your affectionate father,
W. S.”
On the same day Scott wrote as follows to the manly and amiable author of
“Sir Marmaduke
Maxwell,” who had shortly before sent the MS. of that romantic drama to
Abbotsford for his inspection:
To Mr Allan Cunningham; care of F.
Chantrey, Esq. R.A., London.
“Edinburgh, 14th November, 1820. “My dear Allan,
“I have been meditating a long letter to you for many
weeks past; but company, and rural business, and rural sports, are very
unfavourable to writing letters. I have now a double reason for writing, for I
have to thank you for sending me in safety a beautiful specimen of our English
Michael’s talents in the cast
of my venerable friend Mr Watt: it is a
most striking resemblance, with all that living character which we are apt to
think life itself alone can exhibit. I hope Mr
Chantrey does not permit his distinguished skill either to remain unexercised, or to be
lavished exclusively on subjects of little interest. I would like to see him
engaged on some subject of importance completely adapted to the purpose of his
chisel, and demanding its highest powers. Pray remember me to him most kindly.
“I have perused twice your curious and interesting
manuscript. Many
parts of the poetry are eminently beautiful, though I fear the great length of
the piece, and some obscurity of the plot, would render it unfit for dramatic
representation. There is also a fine tone of supernatural impulse spread over
the whole action, which I think a common audience would not be likely to adopt
or comprehend—though I own that to me it has a very powerful effect. Speaking
of dramatic composition in general, I think it is almost essential (though the
rule be most difficult in practice) that the plot, or business of the piece,
should advance with every line that is spoken. The fact is, the drama is
addressed chiefly to the eyes, and as much as can be, by any possibility,
represented on the stage, should neither be told or described. Of the
miscellaneous part of a large audience, many do not understand, nay, many
cannot hear, either narrative or description, but are solely intent upon the
action exhibited. It is, I conceive, for this reason that very bad plays,
written by performers themselves, often contrive to get through, and not
without applause; while others, immeasurably superior in point of poetical
merit, fail, merely because the author is not sufficiently possessed of the
trick of the scene, or enough aware of the importance of a maxim pronounced by
no less a performer than Punch himself (at
least he was the last authority from whom I heard it)—Push
on, keep moving!—Now, in your very ingenious dramatic effort, the
interest not only stands still, but sometimes retrogrades. It con-tains, notwithstanding, many passages of eminent beauty,
many specimens of most interesting dialogue; and, on the whole, if it is not
fitted for the modern stage, I am not sure that its very imperfections do not
render it more fit for the closet, for we certainly do not always read with the
greatest pleasure those plays which act best.
“If, however, you should at any time wish to become a
candidate for dramatic laurels, I would advise you, in the first place, to
consult some professional person of judgment and taste. I should regard friend
Terry as an excellent Mentor, and I
believe he would concur with me in recommending that at least one-third of the
drama be retrenched, that the plot should be rendered simpler, and the motives
more obvious; and I think the powerful language and many of the situations
might then have their full effect upon the audience. I am uncertain if I have
made myself sufficiently understood; but I would say, for example, that it is
ill explained by what means Comyn and his gang, who
land as shipwrecked men, become at once possessed of the old lord’s
domains, merely by killing and taking possession. I am aware of what you mean,
namely, that being attached to the then rulers, he is supported in his
ill-acquired power by their authority. But this is imperfectly brought out, and
escaped me at the first reading. The superstitious motives, also, which induced
the shepherds to delay their vengeance, are not likely to be intelligible to
the generality of the hearers. It would seem more probable that the young Baron
should have led his faithful vassals to avenge the death of his parents; and it
has escaped me what prevents him from taking this direct and natural course.
Besides it is, I believe, a rule (and it seems a good one) that one single
interest, to which every other is subordinate, should occupy the whole
play,—each separate object having just the effect of a mill-dam, sluicing off a certain portion of the
sympathy, which should move on with increasing force and rapidity to the
catastrophe. Now, in your work, there are several divided points of
interest—there is the murder of the old Baron—the escape of his wife—that of
his son—the loss of his bride—the villanous artifices of Comyn to possess himself of her person, and,
finally, the fall of Comyn, and
acceleration of the vengeance due to his crimes. I am sure your own excellent
sense, which I admire as much as I do your genius, will give me credit for my
frankness in these matters; I only know, that I do not know many persons on
whose performances I would venture to offer so much criticism.
“I will return the manuscript under Mr Freeling’s Post-Office cover, and I
hope it will reach you safe.—Adieu, my leal and esteemed friend—yours truly,
Walter Scott.”
Shortly afterwards Mr Cunningham,
thanking his critic, said he had not yet received back his MS.; but that he hoped the delay
had been occasioned by Sir Walter’s communication
of it to some friend of theatrical experience. He also mentioned his having undertaken a
collection of “The Songs of
Scotland,” with notes. The answer was in these terms:—
To Mr Allan Cunningham.
“My dear Allan,
“It was as you supposed.—I detained your manuscript to
read it over with Terry. The plot
appears to Terry as to me ill-combined, which is a great
defect in a drama, though less perceptible in the closet than on the stage.
Still if the mind can be kept upon one unbroken course of interest, the effect
even in perusal is more gra-tifying. I have always
considered this as the great secret in dramatic poetry, and conceive it one of
the most difficult exercises of the invention possible to conduct a story
through five acts, developing it gradually in every scene, so as to keep up the
attention, yet never till the very conclusion permitting the nature of the
catastrophe to become visible,—and all the while to accompany this by the
necessary delineation of character and beauty of language. I am glad, however,
that you mean to preserve in some permanent form your very curious drama,
which, if not altogether fitted for the stage, cannot be read without very much
and very deep interest.
“I am glad you are about Scottish song. No man—not
Robert Burns himself—has contributed
more beautiful effusions to enrich it. Here and there I would pluck a flower
from your Posy to give what remains an effect of greater simplicity, but
luxuriance can only be the fault of genius, and many of your songs are, I
think, unmatched. I would instance—“It’s hame
and it’s hame,” which my daughter Mrs Lockhart sings with such uncommon effect.
You cannot do any thing either in the way of original composition, or
collection, or criticism, that will not be highly acceptable to all who are
worth pleasing in the Scottish public—and I pray you to proceed with it.
“Remember me kindly to Chantrey. I am happy my effigy is to go with that of Wordsworth*, for (differing from him in very
many points of taste) I do not know a man more to be venerated for uprightness
of heart and loftiness of genius. Why he will sometimes choose to crawl upon
all fours, when God has given him so noble a countenance to lift to heaven, I
am as little able to ac-
* Mr Cunningham
had told Scott that Chantrey’s bust of Wordsworth (another of his noblest
works) was also to be produced at the Royal Academy’s Exhibition
for 1821.
count for as for his quarrelling (as you
tell me) with the wrinkles which time and meditation have stamped his brow
withal.
“I am obliged to conclude hastily, having long letters
to write—God wot upon very different subjects. I pray my kind respects to
Mrs Chantrey.—Believe me, dear
Allan, very truly yours, &c.,
Walter Scott.”
The following letter touches on the dropping of the Bill which had been
introduced by Government for the purpose of degrading the consort of George the Fourth; the riotous rejoicings of the Edinburgh mob
on that occasion; and Scott’s acquiescence in the
request of the guardians of the young Duke of
Buccleuch, that he should act as chancellor of the jury about to serve his grace
heir (as the law phrase goes) to the Scottish estates of his family.
To the Lord Montagu, &c. &c.
“Edinburgh, 30th November, 1820. “My dear Lord,
“I had your letter some time since, and have now to
congratulate you on your two months’ spell of labour-in-vain duty being
at length at an end. The old sign of the Labour-in-vain Tavern was a fellow
attempting to scrub a black-a-moor white; but the present difficulty seems to
lie in showing that one is black. Truly, I congratulate the country on the
issue; for, since the days of Queen
Dollalolla* and the Rumti-iddity chorus
in Tom* Queen. “What though I now am
half-seas o’er, I scorn to baulk this bout; Of stiff rack-punch fetch bowls a score, ’Fore George,
I’ll see them out! Chorus.— Rumti-iddity, row, row, row, If we’d a good sup, we’d take it
now.” Fielding’sTom
Thumb. Thumb, never was there so jolly a representative of
royalty. A good ballad might be made by way of parody on Gay’sJonathan
Wild,— Her Majesty’s trial has set us at ease, And every wife round me may kiss if she please. We had the Marquis of Bute and
Francis Jeffrey very brilliant in
George Street, and I think one grocer besides. I was hard threatened by letter,
but I caused my servant to say in the quarter where I thought the threatening
came from, that I should suffer my windows to be broken like a Christian, but
if any thing else was attempted, I should become as great a heathen as the Dey
of Algiers. We were passed over, but many houses were terribly Cossaqué, as was the phrase in Paris
1814 and 1815. The next night, being, like true Scotsmen, wise behind the hand,
the bailies had a sufficient force sufficiently arranged, and put down every
attempt to riot. If the same precautions had been taken before, the town would
have been saved some disgrace, and the loss of at least L.1000 worth of
property. Hay Donaldson* is getting
stout again, and up to the throat in business; there is no getting a word out
of him that does not smell of parchment and special service. He asked me, as it
is to be a mere law service, to act as chancellor on the Duke’s inquest, which honourable office I
will of course undertake with great willingness, and discharge, I mean the
hospitable part of it, to the best of my power. I think you are right to avoid
a more extended service, as L.1000 certainly would not clear the expense, as
you would have to dine at least four counties, and as sweetly sing, with
Duke Wharton on Chevy Chase,
* This gentleman, Scott’s friend and confidential solicitor, had
obtained, (I believe) on his recommendation, the legal management of
the Buccleuch affairs in Scotland.
Pity it were So much good wine to spill, As these bold freeholders would drink, Before they had their fill. I hope we shall all live to see our young baron take his own chair, and
feast the land in his own way. Ever your Lordship’s most truly faithful
Walter Scott.
“P.S.—In the illumination row, young
Romilly was knocked down and robbed by the mob, just while
he was in the act of declaiming on the impropriety of having constables and
volunteers to interfere with the harmless mirth of the people.”
To Mr Charles Scott, care of the Rev. John
Williams, Lampeter.
“Edinburgh, 19th Dec. 1820. “My dear Charles,
“We begin to be afraid that, in improving your head,
you have lost the use of your fingers, or got so deep into the Greek and Latin
grammar, that you have forgotten how to express yourself in your own language.
To ease our anxious minds in these important doubts, we beg you will write as
soon as possible, and give us a full account of your proceedings, as I do not
approve of long intervals of silence, or think that you need to stand very
rigorously upon the exchange of letters, especially as mine are so much the
longest.
“I rely upon it that you are now working hard in the
classical mine, getting out the rubbish as fast as you can, and preparing
yourself to collect the ore. I cannot too much impress upon your mind that
labour is the condition which God has imposed on us in every station of life—there is nothing worth having that can be had
without it, from the bread which the peasant wins with the sweat of his brow,
to the sports by which the rich man must get rid of his ennui. The only
difference betwixt them is, that the poor man labours to get a dinner to his
appetite, the rich man to get an appetite to his dinner. As for knowledge, it
can no more be planted in the human mind without labour, than a field of wheat
can be produced without the previous use of the plough. There is indeed this
great difference, that chance or circumstances may so cause it that another
shall reap what the farmer sows; but no man can be deprived, whether by
accident or misfortune, of the fruits of his own studies, and the liberal and
extended acquisitions of knowledge which he makes are all for his own use.
Labour, my dear boy, therefore, and improve the time. In youth our steps are
light, and our minds are ductile, and knowledge is easily laid up. But if we
neglect our spring, our summers will be useless and contemptible, our harvest
will be chaff, and the winter of our old age unrespected and desolate.
“It is now Christmas-tide, and it comes sadly round to
me as reminding me of your excellent grandmother, who was taken from us last
year at this time. Do you, my dear Charles, pay attention to the wishes of your parents while they
are with you, that you may have no self-reproach when you think of them at a
future period.
“You hear the Welsh spoken much about you, and if you
can pick it up without interfering with more important labours, it will be
worth while. I suppose you can easily get a grammar and dictionary. It is, you
know, the language spoken by the Britons before the invasion of the
Anglo-Saxons, who brought in the principal ingredients of our present language,
called from thence English. It was afterwards, however, much mingled with Norman French, the
language of William the Conqueror and his
followers; so if you can pick up a little of the Cambro-British speech, it will
qualify you hereafter to be a good philologist, should your genius turn towards
languages. Pray, have you yet learned who Howel
Dha was?—Glendower you
are well acquainted with by reading Shakspeare. The wild mysterious barbaric grandeur with which he
has invested that chieftain has often struck me as very fine. I wish we had
some more of him.
“We are all well here, and I hope to get to Abbotsford
for a few days—they cannot be many—in the ensuing vacation, when I trust to see
the planting has got well forward. All are well here, and Mr Cadell* is come back, and gives a pleasant
account of your journey. Let me hear from you very soon, and tell me if you
expect any skating, and whether there is any ice in
Wales. I presume there will be a merry Christmas, and beg my best wishes on the
subject to Mr Williams, his sister and
family. The Lockharts dine with us, and
the Scotts of Harden, James Scott†
with his pipes, and I hope Captain Adam.
We will remember your health in a glass of claret just about six o’clock
at night; so that you will know exactly (allowing for variation of time) what
we are doing at the same moment.
“But I think I have written quite enough to a young
Welshman, who has forgot all his Scots kith, kin, and allies. Mamma and
Anne send many loves. Walter came like a shadow, and so
departed—after about ten days’ stay. The effect was quite dramatic, for
the door
* Mr Robert
Cadell, of the house of Constable, had this year conveyed Charles Scott from Abbotsford to
Lampeter.
† Sir
Walter’s cousin, a son of his uncle Thomas. See ante, vol. i., p. 74.
was flung open as we were about to go down to dinner, and
Turner announced Captain Scott:
We could not conceive who was meant, when in walked Walter
as large as life. He is positively a new edition of the Irish giant. I beg my
kind respects to Mr Williams. At his
leisure I should be happy to have a line from him.—I am, my dear little boy,
always your affectionate father,
Walter Scott.”
The next letter contains a brief allusion to an affair, which in the life
of any other man of letters would have deserved to be considered as of some consequence.
The late Sir James Hall of Dunglass resigned, in
November, 1820, the Presidency of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; and the Fellows, though
they had on all former occasions selected a man of science to fill that post, paid
Sir Walter the compliment of unanimously requesting
him to be Sir James’s successor in it. He felt and expressed a
natural hesitation about accepting this honour—which at first sight seemed like invading
the proper department of another order of scholars. But when it was urged upon him that the
Society is really a double one—embracing a section for literature as well as one of
science,—and that it was only due to the former to let it occasionally supply the chief of
the whole body, Scott acquiesced in the flattering proposal; and his
gentle skill was found effective, so long as he held the Chair, in maintaining and
strengthening the tone of good feeling and good manners which can alone render the meetings
of such a Society either agreeable or useful. The new President himself soon began to take
a lively interest in many of their discussions—those at least which pointed to any
discovery of practical use;—and he, by and by, added some eminent men of science, with whom
his acquaintance had hitherto been slight, to the list of his most valued friends:—I may mention in
particular Dr, now Sir David, Brewster.
Sir Walter also alludes to an institution of a far
different description,—that called “The Celtic Society of Edinburgh;” a club
established mainly for the patronage of ancient Highland manners and customs, especially
the use of “the Garb of Old Gaul”—though part of their funds have always
been applied to the really important object of extending education in the wilder districts
of the north. At their annual meetings Scott was, as may be supposed,
a regular attendant. He appeared, as in duty bound, in the costume of the Fraternity, and
was usually followed by “John of Skye,”
in a still more complete, or rather incomplete, style of equipment.
To the Lord Montagu, &c. &c. &c., Ditton
Park.
“Edinburgh, 17th January, 1821. “My dear Lord,
“We had a tight day of it on Monday last, both dry and
wet. The dry part was as dry as may be, consisting in rehearsing the whole
lands of the Buccleuch estate for five mortal hours, although Donaldson had kindly selected a clerk whose
tongue went over baronies, lordships, and regalities at as high a rate of top
speed as ever Eclipse displayed in clearing the
course at Newmarket. The evening went off very well considering that while
looking forward with the natural feelings of hope and expectation on behalf of
our young friend, most of us who were present could not help casting looks of
sad remembrance on the days we had seen. However, we did very well, and I kept
the chair till eleven, when we had coffee, and departed, “no very fou,
but gaily yet.” Besides the law gentlemen and immediate agents of
the family, I picked up on my own account Tom Ogilvie,* Sir
Harry Hay Macdougal, Harden
and his son, Gala, and Captain John
Ferguson, whom I asked as from myself, stating that the party
was to be quite private. I suppose there was no harm in this, and it helped us
well on. I believe your nephew and my young chief enters life with as favourable auspices as could well
attend him, for to few youths can attach so many good wishes, and none can look
back to more estimable examples both in his father and grandfather. I think he
will succeed to the warm and social affections of his relatives, which, if they
sometimes occasion pain to those who possess them, contain also the purest
sources of happiness as well as of virtue.
“Our late Pitt
meeting amounted to about 800, a most tremendous multitude. I had charge of a
separate room, containing a detachment of about 250, and gained a headach of
two days, by roaring to them for five or six hours almost incessantly. The
Foxites had also a very numerous meeting, 500 at least, but sad scamps. We had
a most formidable band of young men, almost all born gentlemen and zealous
proselytes. We shall now begin to look anxiously to London for news. I suppose
they will go by the ears in the House of Commons; but I trust Ministers will
have a great majority. If not they should go out, and let the others make the
best of it with their acquitted Queen,
who will be a ticklish card in their hand, for she is by nature intrigante more ways than one. The loss of
Canning is a serious disadvantage.
Many of our friends have good talents and good taste; but I think he alone has
that higher order of parts which we call genius. I wish he had had more
prudence to guide it. He has been a most unlucky poli-
* The late Thomas Elliott
Ogilvie, Esq. of Chesters, in Roxburghshire—one of
Sir Walter’s chief friends
among his country neighbours.
tician. Adieu. Best love to all at
Ditton, and great respect withal. My best compliments attend my young chief,
now seated, to use an Oriental phrase, upon the Musnud. I am almost knocked up with public meetings,
for the triple Hecate was a joke to my
plurality of offices this week. On Friday I had my Pittite stewardship; on
Monday my chancellorship; yesterday my presidentship of the Royal Society, for
I had a meeting of that learned body at my house last night, where mulled wine
and punch were manufactured and consumed according to the latest philosophical
discoveries. Besides all this, I have before my eyes the terrors of a certain
Highland Association, who dine bonneted and kilted in
the old fashion (all save myself, of course), and armed to the teeth. This is
rather severe service; but men who wear broad-swords, dirks, and pistols, are
not to be neglected in these days; and the Gael are very loyal lads, so it is
as well to keep up an influence with them. Once more, my dear Lord, farewell,
and believe always most truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
In the course of the riotous week commemorated in the preceding letter,
appeared Kenilworth, in 3 vols. post
8vo, like Ivanhoe, which form was adhered
to with all the subsequent novels of the series. Kenilworth was
one of the most successful of them all at the time of publication; and it continues, and, I
doubt not, will ever continue, to be placed in the very highest rank of prose fiction. The
rich variety of character, and scenery, and incident in this novel, has never indeed been
surpassed; nor, with the one exception of the Bride
of Lammermoor, has Scott bequeathed us a
deeper and more affecting tragedy than that of Amy
Robsart.
CHAPTER III. VISIT TO LONDON—PROJECT OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE—AFFAIRS OF THE 18TH
HUSSARS—MARRIAGE OF CAPTAIN ADAM FERGUSON—LETTERS TO LORD
SIDMOUTH—LORD MONTAGU—ALLAN
CUNNINGHAM—MRS LOCKHART—AND CORNET
SCOTT. 1821.
Before the end of January, 1821, Scott went to London, at the request of the other Clerks of Session, that
he might watch over the progress of an Act of Parliament, designed to relieve them from a
considerable part of their drudgery, in attesting recorded deeds by signature; and his stay
was prolonged until near the beginning of the Summer term of his Court. His letters while
in London are chiefly to his own family, and on strictly domestic topics; but I shall
extract a few of them, chiefly (for reasons which I have already sufficiently intimated)
those addressed to his son the Cornet. I need not trespass on the reader’s attention
by any attempt to explain in detail the matters to which these letters refer. It will be
seen that Sir Walter had heard with deep concern, some rumours of
irregularity in the interior of the 18th Hussars; and that the consequent interference of
the then Commander of the forces in Ireland, the late Sir David
Baird, had been received in any thing but a spirit of humility. The reports
that reached Scott proved to have been grossly exaggerated: but I
presume there had been some relaxation of
discipline in the regiment, and Sir Walter was by no means sorry to
learn, in, the course of the spring, first, that his son had been detached on a small
separate service; then that the corps was to be sent to India, in which case he would have
a fair pretext for removing him into another regiment; and, finally, that the Duke of York had resolved on reducing the 18th. Cornet Scott—(who had never himself been suspected of
sharing in any of the indiscretions which led to this step)—then travelled for some time in
Germany, with a view to his improvement in the science of his profession. He afterwards
spent a brief period, for the same purpose, in the Royal Military College of Sandhurst; and
ere long he obtained a commission as lieutenant in the 15th, or King’s Hussars—a
regiment which has uniformly, I believe, been ranked among the most distinguished in the
service and in which his father lived to see him Major.
It will also be seen, that during this visit to London, Sir Walter was released from considerable anxiety on account
of his daughter Sophia, whom he had left in a weak
state of health at Edinburgh, by the intelligence of her safe accouchement of a
boy,—John Hugh Lockhart, the “Hugh
Littlejohn” of the Tales of a
Grandfather. The approaching marriage of Captain, now Sir Adam Ferguson, to which some jocular allusions occur,
may be classed with these objects of family interest; and that event was the source of
unmixed satisfaction to Scott, as it did not interrupt his enjoyment
of his old friend’s society in the country; for the Captain, though he then pitched a
tent for himself, did so at a very short distance from Huntly Burn. I believe the ensuing
extracts will need no further commentary.
To Mrs Lockhart, Great King Street, Edinburgh.
“Ditton Park, Feb. 18, 1821. “My dearest Sophia,
“I received as much pleasure, and was relieved from as
much anxiety, as ever I felt in my life, by Lockhart’s kind note, which acquainted me with the happy
period that has been put to your suffering, and, as I hope and trust, to the
complaints which occasioned it. You are now, my dearest girl, beginning a new
course of pleasures, anxieties, and duties, and the best I can wish for you is,
that your little boy may prove the same
dutiful and affectionate child which you have always been to me, and that God
may give him a sound and healthy mind, with a good constitution of body—the
greatest blessings which this earth can bestow. Pray be extremely careful of
yourself for some time. Young women are apt to injure their health by thinking
themselves well too soon. I beg you to be cautious in this respect.
“The news of the young stranger’s arrival was
most joyfully received here, and his health and yours toasted in a bumper.
Lady Anne is quite well, and
Isabella also; and Lady Charlotte,
who has rejoined them, is a most beautiful creature indeed. This place is all
light and splendour, compared to London, where I was forced to use candles till
ten o’clock at least. I have a gay time of it. To-morrow I return to
town, and dine with old Sotheby; on
Tuesday, with the Duke of Wellington;
Wednesday with Croker, and so on. Love
to L., the Captain, and the Violet, and
give your bantling a kiss extraordinary for Grandpapa. I hope Mungo* approves of the child, for that is a serious
point. There are no clogs in the hotel where I lodge, but a tolerably
* Mungo was a
favourite Newfoundland dog.
conversible cat, who eats a mess of
cream with me in the morning. The little chief and his brother have come over
from Eton to see me, so I must break off. I am, my dear love, most
affectionately yours,
Walter Scott.”
To Walter Scott, Esq., Poriobetto Barracks,
Dublin.
“I have just received your letter. I send you a
draught for L.50, which you must make go as far as you can.
“There is what I have no doubt is a very idle report
here, of your paying rather marked attention to one young lady in particular. I
beg you would do nothing that can justify such a rumour, as it would excite my
highest displeasure should you either entangle
yourself or any other person. I am, and have always been, quite frank with you,
and beg you will be equally so with me. One should, in justice to the young
women they live with, be very cautious not to give the least countenance to
such rumours. They are not easily avoided, but are always highly prejudicial to
the parties concerned; and what begins in folly ends in serious
misery—avis au lecteur.
Believe me, dear Cornet, your affectionate
father, Walter Scott.
“P.S.—I wish you could pick me up the Irish lilt
of a tune to ‘Patrick Fleming.’ The
song begins—
‘Patrick Fleming was a
gallant soldier, He carried his musket over his shoulder. When I cock my pistol, when I draw my raper, I make them stand in awe of me, for I am a taker. Falala,’ &c.
“From another verse in the same song, it seems the
hero was in such a predicament as your own.
‘If you be Peter Fleming,
as I suppose you be, sir, We are three pedlars walking on so free, sir. We are three pedlars a-walking on to Dublin, With nothing in our pockets to pay for our lodging. Falala,’ &c.”
To Walter Scott, Esq., 18th Hussars, Cappoquin.
“London, 17th March, 1821. “My dear Commandant of Cappoquin,
“Wishing you joy of your new government, these are to
inform you that I am still in London. The late aspersion on your regiment
induced me to protract my stay here, with a view to see the Duke of York on your behalf, which I did yesterday.
H. R. Highness expressed himself most obligingly disposed, and promised to
consider what could best be done to forward your military education. I told him
frankly, that in giving you to the King’s service I had done all that was
in my power to show our attachment to his Majesty and the country which had
been so kind to me, and that it was my utmost ambition that you should render
yourself capable of serving them both well. He said he would give the affair
his particular consideration, and see whether he could put you on the
establishment at Sandhurst, without any violent infringement on the rules; and
hinted that he would make an exception to the rule of seniority of standing and
priority of application in your favour when an opportunity occurs.
“From H. R. H’s. very kind expressions I have
little doubt you will have more than justice done you in the patronage
necessary to facilitate your course through life; but it must be by your own
exertions, my dearest boy, that you must
render yourself qualified to avail yourself of the opportunities which you may
have offered to you. Work therefore as hard as you can, and do not be
discontented for want of assistance of masters, &c., because the knowledge
which we acquire by our own unaided efforts, is much more tenaciously retained
by the memory, while the exertion necessary to gain it strengthens the
understanding. At the same time, I would enquire whether there may not be some
catholic priest, or protestant clergyman, or scholar of any description, who,
for love or money, would give you a little assistance occasionally. Such
persons are to be found almost every where; not professed teachers, but capable
of smoothing the road to a willing student. Let me earnestly recommend in your
reading to keep fast to particular hours, and suffer no one thing to encroach
on the other.
“Charles’s last letter was uncommonly steady, and prepared
me for one from Mr Williams, in which he
expresses satisfaction with his attention, and with his progress in learning,
in a much stronger degree than formerly. This is truly comfortable, and may
relieve me from the necessity of sending the poor boy to India.
“All in Edinburgh are quite well, and no fears exist
saving those of little Catherine* for the baby, lest the
fairies take it away before the christening. I will send some books to you from
hence, if I can find means to transmit them. I should like you to read with
care the campaigns of Buonaparte, which
have been written in French with much science.†
“I hope, indeed I am sure, I need not remind you to be
very attentive to your duty. You have but a small
* Mrs
Lockhart’s maid.
† This letter was followed by a copy of
General Jomini’s
celebrated work.
charge, but it is a charge, and rashness or carelessness
may lead to discredit in the commandant of Cappoquin, as well as in a
field-marshal. In the exercise of your duty, be tender of the lower classes;
and as you are strong be merciful. In this you will do your master good
service, for show me the manners of the man, and I will judge those of the
master.
“In your present situation it may be interesting to
you to know that the bill for Catholic Emancipation will pass the Commons
without doubt, and very probably the Peers also, unless the Spiritual Lords
make a great rally. No body here cares much about it, and if it does not pass
this year, it will the next without doubt.
“Among other improvements, I wish you would amend your
hand. It is a deplorable scratch, and far the worst of the family. Charles writes a firm good hand in comparison.
“You may address your next to Abbotsford, where I long
to be, being heartily tired of fine company and fine living, from dukes and
duchesses, down to turbot and plovers’ eggs. It is very well for a while,
but to be kept at it makes one feel like a poodle dog compelled to stand for
ever on his hind legs. Most affectionately yours,
Walter Scott.”
During this visit to London, Sir Walter
appears to have been consulted by several persons in authority as to the project of a
Society of Literature, for which the King’s patronage had been solicited, and which
was established soon afterwards—though on a scale less extensive than had been proposed at
the outset. He expressed his views on this subject in writing at considerable length to his
friend the Hon. John Villiers (now Earl of
Clarendon); but of that letter, described to me as a most admirable one, I have as yet failed to recover a copy. I
have little doubt, that both the letter in question and the following, addressed, soon
after his arrival at Abbotsford, to the then Secretary of State
for the Home Department, were placed in the hands of the King; but it seems probable, that whatever his Majesty may
have thought of Scott’s representations, he considered himself
as already, in some measure, pledged to countenance the projected academy.
To the Right Hon. the Lord Viscount Sidmouth, &c. &c. &c.,
Whitehall.
“Abbotsford, April 20, 1821. “My dear Lord,
“Owing to my retreat to this place, I was only
honoured with your Lordship’s letter yesterday. Whatever use can be made
of my letter to stop the very ill contrived project to which it relates, will
answer the purpose for which it was written. I do not well remember the terms
in which my remonstrance to Mr Villiers was
couched, for it was positively written betwixt sleeping and waking; but your
Lordship will best judge how far the contents may be proper for his Majesty’s eye; and if the sentiments
appear a little in dishabille, there is the true apology that they were never
intended to go to Court. From more than twenty years’ intercourse with
the literary world, during which I have been more or less acquainted with every
distinguished writer of my day, and, at the same time, an accurate student of
the habits and tastes of the reading public, I am enabled to say, with a
feeling next to certainty, that the plan can only end in something very
unpleasant. At all events, his Majesty should get out of it; it is nonsense to
say or suppose that any steps have been taken which, in such a matter, can or
ought to be considered as irrevocable. The fact is, that
nobody knows as yet how far the matter has gone beyond the projet of some
well-meaning but misjudging persons, and the whole thing is asleep and
forgotten so far as the public is concerned. The Spanish proverb says,
‘God help me from my friends, and I will keep myself from my
enemies;’ and there is much sense in it, for the zeal of
misjudging adherents often contrives, as in the present case, to turn to matter
of reproach the noblest feelings on the part of a sovereign.
“Let men of letters fight their own way with the
public, and let his Majesty, according as his own excellent taste and
liberality dictate, honour with his patronage, expressed in the manner fitted
to their studies and habits, those who are able to distinguish themselves, and
alleviate by his bounty the distresses of such as, with acknowledged merit, may
yet have been unfortunate in procuring independence. The immediate and direct
favour of the Sovereign is worth the patronage of ten thousand societies. But
your Lordship knows how to set all this in a better light than I can, and I
would not wish the cause of letters in better hands.
“I am now in a scene changed as completely as possible
from those in which I had the great pleasure of meeting your Lordship lately,
riding through the moors on a pony, instead of traversing the streets in a
carriage, and drinking whisky-toddy with mine honest neighbours, instead of
Champagne and Burgundy. I have gained, however, in point of exact political
information; for I find we know upon Tweedside with much greater accuracy what
is done and intended in the Cabinet than ever I could learn when living with
the Ministers five days in the week. Mine honest Teviotdale friends, whom I
left in a high Queen-fever, are now
beginning to be somewhat ashamed of themselves, and to make as great advances towards retracting
their opinion as they are ever known to do, which amounts to this:
‘God judge me, Sir W——, the King’s no been so dooms far
wrong after a’ in yon Queen’s job like;’ which, being
interpreted, signifies, ‘We will fight for the King to the
death.’ I do not know how it was in other places; but I never saw so
sudden and violent a delusion possess the minds of men in my life, even those
of sensible, steady, well-intentioned fellows, that would fight knee-deep
against the Radicals. It is well over, thank God.
“My best compliments attend the ladies. I ever am, my
dear Lord, your truly obliged and faithful humble servant,
Walter Scott.”
I have thought it right to insert the preceding letter, because it
indicates with sufficient distinctness what Scott’s opinions always were as to a subject on which, from his
experience and position, he must have reflected very seriously. In how far the results of
the establishment of the Royal Society of Literature have tended to confirm or to weaken
the weight of his authority on these matters, I do not presume to have formed any judgment.
He received, about the same time, a volume of poetry, by Allan
Cunningham, which included the drama of Sir Marmaduke Maxwell; and I am happy to quote
his letter of acknowledgment to that high-spirited and independent author in the same page
with the foregoing monition to the dispensers of patronage.
To Mr Allan Cunningham, Ecclestone Street, Pimlico.
“Abbotsford, 27th April. “Dear Allan,
“Accept my kind thanks for your little modest volume, received two
days since. I was acquainted with most of the pieces, and
yet I perused them all with renewed pleasure, and especially my old friend
Sir Marmaduke with his new face, and by
assistance of an April sun, which is at length, after many a rough blast,
beginning to smile on us. The drama has, in my conception, more poetical
conception and poetical expression in it than most of our modern compositions.
Perhaps, indeed, it occasionally sins even in the richness of poetical
expression; for the language of passion, though bold and figurative, is brief
and concise at the same time. But what would, in acting, be a more serious
objection, is the complicated nature of the plot, which is very obscure. I hope
you will make another dramatic attempt; and, in that case, I would strongly
recommend that you should previously make a model or skeleton of your
incidents, dividing them regularly into scenes and acts, so as to insure the
dependence of one circumstance upon another, and the simplicity and union of
your whole story. The common class of readers, and more especially of
spectators, are thick-sculled enough, and can hardly comprehend what they see
and hear, unless they are hemmed in, and guided to the sense at every turn.
“The unities of time and place have always appeared to
me fopperies, as far as they require close observance of the French rules.
Still, the nearer you can come to them, it is always, no doubt, the better,
because your action will be more probable. But the unity of action—I mean that
continuity which unites every scene with the other, and makes the catastrophe
the natural and probable result of all that has gone before—seems to me a
critical rule which cannot safely be dispensed with. Without such a regular
deduction of incident men’s attention becomes distracted, and the most
beautiful language, if at all listened to, creates no interest, and is out of
place. I would give, as an example, the sud-denly entertained, and as suddenly
abandoned, jealousy of Sir Marmaduke, p. 85, as a useless excrescence in the
action of the drama.
“I am very much unaccustomed to offer criticism, and
when I do so, it is because I believe in my soul that I am endeavouring to
pluck away the weeds which hide flowers well worthy of cultivation. In your
case the richness of your language, and fertility of your imagination, are the
snares against which I would warn you. If the one had been poor, and the other
costive, I would never have made remarks which could never do good, while they
only gave pain. Did you ever read Savage’s beautiful poem of the Wanderer? If not, do so, and you will
see the fault which, I think, attaches to Lord Maxwell—a want of distinct
precision and intelligibility about the story, which counteracts, especially
with ordinary readers, the effect of beautiful and forcible diction, poetical
imagery, and animated description.
“All this freedom you will excuse, I know, on the part
of one who has the truest respect for the manly independence of character which
rests for its support on honest industry, instead of indulging the foolish
fastidiousness formerly supposed to be essential to the poetical temperament,
and which has induced some men of real talents to become coxcombs—some to
become sots—some to plunge themselves into want—others into the equal miseries
of dependence, merely because, forsooth, they were men of genius, and wise
above the ordinary and, I say, the manly duties of human life. ‘I’d rather be a kitten, and cry,
Mew!’ than write the best poetry in the world on condition of laying aside
common sense in the ordinary transactions and business of the world; and,
therefore, dear Allan, I wish much the better to the muse whom you meet by the fireside in your
hours of leisure when you have played your part manfully through a day of
labour. I should like to see her making those hours also a little profitable.
Perhaps something of the dramatic romance, if you could hit on a good subject,
and combine the scenes well, might answer. A beautiful thing with appropriate
music, scenes, &c. might be woven out of the Mermaid of Galloway.
“When there is any chance of Mr Chantrey coming this way, I hope you will
let me know; and if you come with him, so much the better. I like him as much
for his manners as for his genius. ‘He is a man without a clagg; His heart is frank without a flaw.’
“This is a horrible long letter for so vile a
correspondent as I am. Once more, my best thanks for the little volume, and
believe me yours truly,
Walter Scott.”
I now return to Sir Walter’s correspondence with the Cornet at
Cappoquin.
To Walter Scott, Esq., 18th Hussars.
“Abbotsford, April 21, 1821. “My Dear Walter,
“. . . . A democrat in any situation is but a silly
sort of fellow, but a democratical soldier is worse than an ordinary traitor by
ten thousand degrees, as he forgets his military honour, and is faithless to
the master whose bread he eats. Three distinguished heroes of this class have
arisen in my time, Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, Colonel
Despard, and Captain
Thistlewood, and, with the contempt and abhorrence of all men,
they died the death of infamy
and guilt. If a man of honour is unhappy enough to entertain opinions
inconsistent with the service in which he finds himself, it is his duty at once
to resign his commission; in acting otherwise he disgraces himself for ever. .
. . . . . . The reports are very strange, also, with respect to the private
conduct of certain officers. . . . . Gentlemen maintain their characters even
in following their most licentious pleasures, otherwise they resemble the very
scavengers in the streets. . . . . . . . I had written you a long letter on
other subjects, but these circumstances have altered my plans, as well as given
me great uneasiness on account of the effects which the society you have been
keeping may have had on your principles, both political and moral. Be very
frank with me on this subject. I have a title to expect perfect sincerity,
having always treated you with openness on my part.
“Pray write immediately, and at length.—I remain your
affectionate father,
Walter Scott.”
To the Same.
“Abbotsford, April 28, 1821. “Dear Walter,
“. . . . The great point in the meanwhile is to
acquire such preliminary information as may render you qualified to profit by
Sandhurst when you get thither. Amongst my acquaintance the men of greatest
information have been those who seemed but indifferently situated for the
acquisition of it, but who exerted themselves in proportion to the infrequency
of their opportunities.
“The noble Captain
Ferguson was married on Monday last. I was present at the
bridal, and I assure you the like hath not been seen since the days of
Lesmahago. Like his
prototype, the Captain advanced in a jaunty military step, with a kind of leer
on his face that seemed to quiz the whole affair. You should write to your
brother sportsman and soldier, and wish the veteran joy of his entrance into
the band of Benedicts. Odd enough that I should christen a grandchild and
attend the wedding of a contemporary within two days of each other. I have sent
John of Skye, with Tom, and all the rabblement which they can
collect, to play the pipes, shout, and fire guns below the Captain’s
windows this morning; and I am just going over to hover about on my pony, and
witness their reception. The happy pair returned to Huntly Burn on Saturday;
but yesterday being Sunday, we permitted them to enjoy their pillows in quiet.
This morning they must not expect to get off so well. Pray write soon, and give
me the history of your still-huntings, &c.—Ever yours affectionately,
W. Scott.”
To Charles Scott, Esq., care of the Rev.
Mr Williams, Lampeter.
“Abbotsford, 9th May, 1821. “My dear Charles,
“I am glad to find, by your letter, just received,
that you are reading Tacitus with some
relish. His style is rather quaint and enigmatical, which makes it difficult to
the student; but then his pages are filled with such admirable apothegms and
maxims of political wisdom, as infer the deepest knowledge of human nature; and
it is particularly necessary that any one who may have views as a public
speaker should be master of his works, as there is neither ancient or modern
who affords such a selection of admirable quotations. You should exercise
yourself frequently in trying to make translations of the passages which most
strike you, trying to invest
the sense of Tacitus in as good English as you can. This
will answer the double purpose of making yourself familiar with the Latin
author, and giving you the command of your own language, which no person will
ever have who does not study English composition in early life . . . . . . . .
. . I conclude somewhat abruptly, having trees to cut, and saucy Tom watching me like a Calmuck with the axe in
his hand.—Yours affectionately,
W. Scott.”
To Walter Scott, Esq. 18th Hussars, Cappoquin.
“Abbotsford, 10th May, 1821. “Dear Walter,
“I wrote yesterday, but I am induced immediately to
answer your letter, because I think you expect from it an effect upon my mind
rather different from what it produces. A man may be violent and outrageous in
his liquor, but wine seldom makes a gentleman a blackguard, or instigates a
loyal man to utter sedition. Wine unveils the passions and throws away
restraint, but it does not create habits or opinions which did not previously
exist in the mind. Besides, what sort of defence is this of intemperance? I
suppose if a private commits riot, or is disobedient in his cups, his officers
do not admit whisky to be an excuse. I have seen enough of that sort of society
where habitual indulgence drowned at last every distinction between what is
worthy and unworthy, and I have seen young men with the fairest prospects turn
out degraded miserable outcasts before their life was half spent, merely from
soaking and sotting, and the bad habits these naturally lead to. You tell me
* * * and * * * frequent good
society and are well received in it, and I am very glad to hear this is the
case. But such stories as these will soon occasion their seclusion from the
best company. There may remain, indeed, a large enough
circle, where ladies, who are either desirous to fill their rooms or to marry
their daughters, will continue to receive any young man in a showy uniform,
however irregular in private life; but if these cannot be called bad company, they are certainly any thing but very good, and the facility of access makes the entrée of little consequence.
“I mentioned in my last that you were to continue in
the 18th until the regiment went to India, and that I trusted you would get the
step within the twelve months that the corps yet remains in Europe, which will
make your exchange easier. But it is of far more importance that you learn to
command yourself than that you should be raised higher in commanding others. It
gives me pain to write to you in terms of censure, but my
duty must be done, else I cannot expect you to do yours. All here are well and send love. I am your affectionate
father,
Walter Scott.”
To the Same.
“Edinburgh, 15th May, 1821. “Dear Walter,
“I have your letter of May 6th, to which it is
unnecessary to reply very particularly. I would only insinuate to you that the
lawyers and gossips of Edinburgh, whom your military politeness handsomely
classes together in writing to a lawyer, know and care as little about the 18th
as they do about the 19th, 20th, or 21st, or any other regimental number which
does not happen for the time to be at Piershill, or in the Castle. Do not fall
into the error and pedantry of young military men, who, living much together,
are apt to think themselves and their actions the subject of much talk and
rumour among the public at large. I will transcribe Fielding’s account of such a person, whom he met with on his
voyage to Lisbon, which will give two or three hours’ excellent amusement
when you choose to peruse it:
‘In his conversation it is true there
was something military enough, as it consisted chiefly of oaths, and of the
great actions and wise sayings of Jack,
Will, and Tom of ours, a phrase eternally in his mouth, and he seemed to
conclude that it conveyed to all the officers such a degree of public notoriety
and importance that it entitled him, like the head of a profession, or a first
minister, to be the subject of conversation amongst those who had not the least
personal acquaintance with him.’
Avoid this silly narrowness of mind, my
dear boy, which only makes men be looked on in the world with ridicule and
contempt. Lawyer and gossip as I may be, I suppose you will allow I have seen
something of life in most of its varieties; as much at least as if I had been,
like you, eighteen months in a cavalry regiment, or, like Beau Jackson, in Roderick Random, had cruized for half-a-year in the chops of
the Channel. Now, I have never remarked any one, be he soldier, or divine, or
lawyer, that was exclusively attached to the narrow habits of his own
profession, but what such person became a great twaddle in good society,
besides what is of much more importance, becoming narrow-minded and ignorant of
all general information.
“That this letter may not be unacceptable in all its
parts, I enclose your allowance without stopping any thing for the hackney.
Take notice, however, my dear Walter,
that this is to last you till midsummer. We came from Abbotsford yesterday, and
left all well, excepting that Mr Laidlaw
lost his youngest child, an infant, very unexpectedly. We found Sophia, Lockhart, and their child in good health, and all send love.—I
remain your affectionate father,
Walter Scott.”
To Walter Scott, Esq. 18th Hussars.
“Edinburgh, 26th May, 1821. “My dear Walter,
“I see you are of the mind of the irritable prophet
Jonah, who persisted in maintaining ‘he did
well to be angry,’ even when disputing with Omnipotence. I am
aware that Sir David is considered as a
severe and ill-tempered man; and I remember a story that, when report came to
Europe that Tippoo’s prisoners (of
whom Baird was one) were chained together two and two, his
mother said, ‘God pity the poor lad that’s chained to our Davie.’ But
though it may be very true that he may have acted towards you with caprice and
severity, yet you are always to remember, 1st, That in becoming a soldier you
have subjected yourself to the caprice and severity of superior officers, and
have no comfort except in contemplating the prospect of commanding others in
your turn. In the meanwhile, you have in most cases no remedy so useful as
patience and submission. But, 2dly, As you seem disposed to admit that you
yourselves have been partly to blame, I submit to you, that in turning the
magnifying end of the telescope on Sir D’s. faults,
and the diminishing one on your own, you take the least useful mode of
considering the matter. By studying his errors, you can
acquire no knowledge that will be useful to you till you become
Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, whereas, by reflecting on your
own, Cornet Scott and his
companions may reap some immediate moral advantage. Your fine of a dozen of
claret, upon any one who shall introduce females into your mess in future,
reminds me of the rule of a country club, that whoever ‘behaved
ungenteel,’ should be fined in a pot of porter. Seriously, I think there
was bad taste in the style of the forfeiture.
“I am well pleased with your map, which is very
business-like. There was a great battle fought between the English and native
Irish near the Blackwater, in which the former were defeated, and Bagenal the Knight-Marshal killed. Is there
any remembrance of this upon the spot? There is a clergyman in Lismore,
Mr John Graham* originally, that is
by descent, a borderer. He lately sent me a manuscript which I intend to
publish, and I wrote to him enclosing a cheque on Coutts. I wish you could ascertain if he received my letter
safe. You can call on him with my compliments. You need only say I was desirous
to know if he had received a letter from me lately. The manuscript was written
by a certain Mr Gwynne, a Welsh loyalist
in the great Civil War, and afterwards an officer in the guards of Charles II. This will be an object for a ride to
you.
“I presided last night at the dinner of the Celtic
Society, ‘all plaided and plumed in their tartan array,’ and
such jumping, skipping, and screaming you never saw. Chief Baron Shepherd dined with us, and was
very much pleased with the extreme enthusiasm of the Gael when liberated from
the thraldom of breeches. You were voted a member by acclamation, which will
cost me a tartan dress for your long limbs when you come here. If the King
takes Scotland in coming or going to Ireland (as has been talked of), I expect
to get you leave to come over.—I remain your affectionate father,
Walter Scott.
“P. S.—I beg you will not take it into your wise
noddle that I will act either hastily or unadvisedly in
* This Mr
Graham is known as the author of a “History of the Siege of
Londonderry,” “Annals of Ireland,” and
various political tracts. Sir Walter
Scott published Gwynne’s memoirs, with a
preface, &c., in 1822.
your matters. I have been
more successful in life than most people, and know well how much success
depends, first upon desert, and then on knowledge of the carte de pays”
The following letter begins with an allusion to a visit which Captain Ferguson, his bride, and his youngest sister,
Miss Margaret Ferguson, had been paying at
Ditton Park:—
To the Lord Montagu, &c. &c.
“Edinburgh, 21st May, 1821. “My dear Lord,
“I was much diverted with the account of Adam and Eve’s visit to Ditton, which,
with its surrounding moat, might make no bad emblem of Eden, but for the
absence of snakes and fiends. He is a very singular fellow; for, with all his
humour and knowledge of the world, he by nature is a remarkably shy and modest
man, and more afraid of the possibility of intrusion than would occur to any
one who only sees him in the full stream of society. His sister Margaret is extremely like him in the turn of
thought and of humour, and he has two others who are as great curiosities in
their way. The eldest is a complete old maid, with all the gravity and shyness
of the character, but not a grain of its bad humour or spleen; on the contrary,
she is one of the kindest and most motherly creatures in the world. The second,
Mary, was in her day a very pretty
girl; but her person became deformed, and she has the sharpness of features
with which that circumstance is sometimes attended. She rises very early in the
morning, and roams over all my wild land in the neighbourhood, wearing the most
complicated pile of handkerchiefs of different colours on her head, and a stick
double her own height in her
hand, attended by two dogs, whose powers of yelping are truly terrific. With
such garb and accompaniments, she has very nearly established the character in
the neighbourhood of being something no canny—and the
urchins of Melrose and Darnick are frightened from gathering hazle-nuts and
cutting wands in my cleugh, by the fear of meeting the daft
lady. With all this quizzicality, I do not believe there ever existed
a family with so much mutual affection and such an overflow of benevolence to
all around them, from men and women down to hedge-sparrows and lame ass-colts,
more than one of which they have taken under their direct and special
protection.
“I am sorry there should be occasion for caution in
the case of little Duke Walter, but it is
most lucky that the necessity is early and closely attended to. How many actual
valetudinarians have outlived all their robust contemporaries, and attained the
utmost verge of human life, without ever having enjoyed what is usually called
high health. This is taking the very worst view of the case, and supposing the
constitution habitually delicate. But how often has the strongest and best
confirmed health succeeded to a delicate childhood—and such, I trust, will be
the Duke’s case. I cannot help thinking that this temporary recess from
Eton may be made subservient to Walter’s improvement
in general literature, and particularly in historical knowledge. The habit of
reading useful, and, at the same time, entertaining books of history, is often
acquired during the retirement which delicate health in convalescence imposes
on us. I remember we touched on this point at Ditton; and I think again, that
though classical learning be the Shibboleth by which we
judge, generally speaking, of the proficiency of the youthful scholar, yet,
when this has been too exclusively and pedantically
impressed on his mind as the one thing needful, he very often finds he has
entirely a new course of study to commence just at the time when life is
opening all its busy or gay scenes before him, and when study of any kind
becomes irksome.
“For this species of instruction I do not so much
approve of tasks and set hours for serious reading, as of the plan of
endeavouring to give a taste for history to the youths themselves, and
suffering them to gratify it in their own way, and at their own time. For this
reason I would not be very scrupulous what books they began with, or whether
they began at the middle or end. The knowledge which we acquire of free will
and by spontaneous exertion, is like food eaten with appetite—it digests well,
and benefits the system ten times more than the double cramming of an alderman.
If a boy’s attention can be drawn in conversation to any interesting
point of history, and the book is pointed out to him where he will find the
particulars conveyed in a lively manner, he reads the passage with so much
pleasure that he very naturally recurs to the book at the first unoccupied
moment to try if he cannot pick more amusement out of it; and when once a lad
gets the spirit of information, he goes on himself with little trouble but that
of selecting for him the best and most agreeable books. I think
Walter has naturally some turn for history and
historical anecdote, and would be disposed to read as much as could be wished
in that most useful line of knowledge;—for in the eminent situation he is
destined to by his birth, acquaintance with the history and institutions of his
country, and her relative position with respect to others, is a sine qua non to
his discharging its duties with propriety. All this is extremely like prosing,
so I will harp on that string no longer.
“Kind compliments to all at Ditton; you say nothing
of your own rheumatism. I am here for the session, unless the wind should blow
me south to see the coronation, and I think 800 miles rather a long journey to
see a show.
I am always, my dear Lord, Yours, very affectionately, Walter Scott.”
CHAPTER IV. ILLNESS AND DEATH OF JOHN BALLANTYNE—EXTRACT FROM HIS
POCKETBOOK—LETTERS FROM BLAIR-ADAM—CASTLE-CAMPBELL—SIR SAMUEL
SHEPHERD—“BAILIE MACKAY,”
&c.—CORONATION OF GEORGE IV.—CORRESPONDENCE WITH JAMES
HOGG AND LORD SIDMOUTH—LETTER ON THE
CORONATION—ANECDOTES—ALLAN CUNNINGHAM’S MEMORANDA—COMPLETION
OF CHANTREY’S BUST— 1821.
On the 4th of June, Scott
being then on one of his short Sessional visits to Abbotsford, received the painful
intelligence that his friend John Ballantyne’s
maladies had begun to assume an aspect of serious and even immediate danger. The elder brother made the communication in these terms:
To Sir Walter Scott, Bart, of Abbotsford,
Melrose.
“Edinburgh, Sunday, 3d June, 1821. “Dear Sir,
“I have this morning had a most heart-breaking letter
from poor John, from which the following
is an extract. You will judge how it has affected me, who, with all his
peculiarities of temper, love him very much. He says—
‘A spitting of blood has commenced, and you may
guess the situation into which I am plunged. We are all accustomed to
consider death as certainly inevitable; but his obvious approach is
assuredly the most detestable and abhorrent feeling to which human
nature can be subject.’
“This is truly doleful. There is something in it more
absolutely bitter to my heart than what I have otherwise suffered. I look back
to my mother’s peaceful rest, and to my infant’s blessedness—if
life be not the extinguishable worthless spark which I cannot think it—but
here, cut off in the very middle of life, with good means and strong powers of
enjoying it, and nothing but reluctance and repining at the close—I say the
truth when I say that I would joyfully part with my right arm, to avert the
approaching result. Pardon this, dear sir; my heart and soul are heavy within
me.
With the deepest respect and gratitude, J. B.”
At the date of this letter, the invalid was in Roxburghshire; but he came
to Edinburgh a day or two afterwards, and died there on the 16th of the same month. I
accompanied Sir Walter when one of their last interviews
took place, and John’s death-bed was a thing
not to be forgotten. We sat by him for perhaps an hour, and I think half that space was
occupied with his predictions of a speedy end, and details of his last will, which he had
just been executing, and which lay on his coverlid; the other half being given, five
minutes or so at a time, to questions and remarks, which intimated that the hope of life
was still flickering before him—nay, that his interest in all its concerns remained eager.
The proof-sheets of a volume of his Novelist’s Library lay also by his pillow; and he passed from them to his
will, and then back to them, as by jerks and starts the unwonted veil of gloom closed upon
his imagination, or was withdrawn again. He had, as he said, left his great friend and
patron L.2000 towards the completion of the new Library at
Abbotsford—and the spirit of the auctioneer virtuoso flashed up as he began to describe
what would, he thought, be the best style and arrangement of the book-shelves. He was
interrupted by an agony of asthma, which left him with hardly any signs of life; and
ultimately he did expire in a fit of the same kind. Scott was visibly
and profoundly shaken by this scene and its sequel. As we stood together a few days
afterwards, while they were smoothing the turf over John’s
remains in the Canongate Churchyard, the heavens, which had been dark and slaty, cleared up
suddenly, and the midsummer sun shone forth in his strength. Scott,
ever awake to the “skiey influences,” cast his eye along the overhanging
line of the Calton Hill, with its gleaming walls and towers, and then turning to the grave
again, “I feel,” he whispered in my ear, “I feel as if there
would be less sunshine for me from this day forth.”
As we walked homewards, Scott told me,
among other favourable traits of his friend, one little story which
I must not omit. He remarked one day to a poor student of divinity attending his auction,
that he looked as if he were in bad health. The young man assented with a sigh.
“Come,” said Ballantyne,
“I think I ken the secret of a sort of draft that would relieve you
particularly,” he added, handing him a cheque for L.5 or
L.10—“particularly, my dear, if taken upon an empty stomach.”
John died in his elder brother’s house in St
John Street; a circumstance which it gives me pleasure to record, as it confirms the
impression of their affectionate feelings towards each other at this time, which the reader
must have derived from James’s letter to
Scott last quoted. Their confidence and cordiality
had undergone considerable interruption in the latter part of
John’s life; but the close was in all respects fraternal.
A year and half before John’s
exit, namely, on the last day of 1819, he
happened to lay his hand on an old pocketbook, which roused his reflections, and he filled
two or three of its pages with a brief summary of the most active part of his life, which I
think it due to his character, as well as Sir Walter
Scott’s, to transcribe in this place.
“31st Dec. 1819. In moving a bed from the
fire-place to-day up stairs, I found an old memorandum-book, which enables me
to trace the following recollections of this day, the
last of the year.
“1801. A shopkeeper in Kelso; at this
period my difficulties had not begun in business; was well, happy, and 27 years
old; new then in a connexion which afterwards gave me great pain, but can never
be forgotten.
“1802. 28 old: In Kelso as before—could
scarcely be happier—hunted, shot, kept ********’s
company, and neglected business, the fruits whereof I soon found.
“1803. 29: Still fortunate, and happy
from same cause. James in Edinburgh
thriving as a printer. When I was ennuied at home, visited him. Business
neglected every way.
“1804. 30: Material change; getting into
difficulties; all wrong, and changes in every way approaching.
“1805. 31: All consummated; health
miserable all summer, and * * * designated in an erased
mem., the scoundrel. I yet recollect the cause—can I
ever forget it? My furniture, goods, &c. sold at Kelso, previous to my
going to Edinburgh to become my brother’s clerk; whither I did go, for
which God be praised eternally, on Friday, 3d January, 1806, on L.200 a-year.
My effects at Kelso, with labour, paid my debts, and left me pennyless.
“From this period till 1808. 34: I
continued in this situation—then the scheme of a bookselling concern in Hanover
Street was adopted, which I was to manage; it was L.300 a-year, and one-fourth
of the profits besides.
“1809. 35: Already the business in
Hanover Street getting into difficulty, from our ignorance of its nature, and
most extravagant and foolish advances from its funds to the printing concern. I
ought to have resisted this, but I was thoughtless, although not young, or
rather reckless, and lived on as long as I could make ends meet.
“1810. 36: Bills increasing—the
destructive system of accommodations adopted.
“1811. 37: Bills increased to a most
fearful degree. Sir Wm. Forbes and Co.
shut their account. No bank would discount with us, and every thing leading to
irretrievable failure.
“1812. 38: The first partner stepped in, at a crisis so tremendous, that it
yet shakes my soul to think of it. By the most consummate wisdom, and
resolution, and unheard-of exertions, he put things in a train that finally (so
early as 1817) paid even himself (who ultimately became the sole creditor of
the house) in full, with a balance of a thousand pounds.
“1813. 39: In business as a literary
auctioneer in Prince’s Street; from which period to the present I have
got gradually forward, both in that line and as third of a partner of the works
of the Author of Waverley, so that I am now,
at 45, worth about (I owe L.2000) L.5000, with, however, alas! many changes—my
strong constitution much broken; my father and mother dead, and James estranged—the chief enjoyment and glory
of my life being the possession of the friendship and confidence of the
greatest of men.”
In communicating John’s death
to the Cornet, Sir Walter says, “I have had a
very great loss in poor John Ballantyne, who is gone, after a long
illness. He persisted to the very last in endeavouring to take exercise, in which he
was often imprudent, and was up and dressed the very morning before his death. In his
will the grateful creature has left me a legacy of L.2000, life-rented, however, by his
wife; and the rest of his little fortune goes betwixt his two brothers. I shall miss
him very much, both in business, and as an easy and lively companion, who was eternally
active and obliging in whatever I had to do.”
I am sorry to take leave of John
Ballantyne with the remark, that his last will was a document of the same
class with too many of his states and calendars. So far from having L.2000 to bequeath to Sir
Walter, he died as he had lived, ignorant of the situation of his affairs,
and deep in debt.
The two following letters, written at Blair-Adam, where the Club were, as
usual, assembled for the dog-days, have been selected from among several which Scott at this time addressed to his friends in the South, with
the view of promoting Mr Mackay’s success in
his debut on the London boards as Bailie Jarvie.
“To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead.
“The immediate motive of my writing to you, my dearest
friend, is to make Mrs Agnes and you
aware that a Scots performer, called Mackay, is going up to London to play Bailie Nicol Jarvie for a single night at Covent Garden, and to
beg you of all dear loves to go and see him; for, taking him in that single
character, I am not sure I ever saw any thing in my life possessing so much
truth and comic effect at the same time: he is completely the personage of the
drama, the purse-proud consequential magistrate, humane and irritable in the
same moment, and the true Scotsman in every turn of thought and action: his
variety of feelings towards Rob Roy, whom
he likes, and fears, and despises, and admires, and pities all at once, is
exceedingly well expressed. In short, I never saw a part better sustained,
certainly; I pray you to collect a party of Scotch friends to see it. I have
written to Sotheby to the same purpose,
but I doubt whether the exhibition will prove as satisfactory to those who do
not know the original from which the resemblance is taken. I observe the
English demand (as is natural), broad caricature in the depicting of national
peculiarities: they did so as to the Irish till Jack Johnstone taught them better, and at first I should fear
Mackay’s reality will seem less ludicrous than
Liston’s humorous
extravagances. So let it not be said that a dramatic genius of Scotland wanted
the countenance and protection of Joanna
Baillie: the Doctor and Mrs Baillie will
be much diverted if they go also, but somebody said to me that they were out of
town. The man, I am told, is perfectly respectable in his life and habits, and
consequently deserves encouragement every way. There is a great difference
betwixt his bailie and all his other performances: one would think the part
made for him, and him for the part—and yet I may do the poor fellow injustice,
and what we here consider as a falling off may arise from our identifying
Mackay so completely with the worthy Glasgow
magistrate, that recollections of Nicol
Jarvie intrude upon us at every corner, and mar the
personification of any other part which he may represent for the time.
“I am here for a couple of days with our Chief
Commissioner, late Willie Adam, and we
had yesterday a delightful stroll to Castle Campbell, the Rumbling Brig,
Cauldron Linns, &c: the scenes are most romantic, and I know not by what
fatality it has been, that living within a step of them, I never visited any of
them before. We had Sir Samuel Shepherd
with us, a most delightful person, but with too much English fidgetiness about
him for crags and precipices,—perpetually afraid that rocks would give way
under his weight which had over-brow’d the torrent for ages, and that
good well-rooted trees, moored so as to resist ten thousand tempests, would
fall because he grasped one of their branches: he must certainly be a firm
believer in the simile of the lover of your native land, who complains— ‘I leant my back unto an aik, I thought it was a trusty tree, But first it bow’d and then it brake,’ &c. &c.
&c. Certes these Southrons lack much the habits of the wood and wilderness,
for here is a man of taste and genius, a fine scholar and a most interesting
companion, haunted with fears that would be entertained by no shop-keeper from the Luckenbooths
or the Saut Market. A sort of Cockneyism of one kind or
another pervades their men of professional habits, whereas every Scotchman,
with very few exceptions, holds country exercises of all kinds to be part of
his nature, and is ready to become a traveller or even a soldier on the
slightest possible notice. The habits of the moorfowl shooting, salmon-fishing,
and so forth, may keep this much up among the gentry, a name which our pride
and pedigree extend so much wider than in England; and it is worth notice that
these amusements being cheap and tolerably easy come at by all the petty
dunnywassels, have a more general influence on the national character than
fox-hunting, which is confined to those who can mount and keep a horse worth at
least 100 guineas. But still this hardly explains the general and wide
difference betwixt the countries in this particular. Happen how it will, the
advantage is much in favour of Scotland: it is true that it contributes to
prevent our producing such very accomplished lawyers, divines, or artisans* as
when the whole mind is bent with undivided attention upon attaining one branch
of knowledge,—but it gives a strong and muscular character to the people in
general, and saves men from all sorts of causeless fears and flutterings of the
heart, which give quite as much misery as if there were real cause for en-
* The great engineer, James
Watt of Birmingham in whose talk Scott took much delight—told him, that though hundreds
probably of his northern countrymen had sought employment at his
establishment, he never could get one of them to become a first rate
artisan. “Many of them,” said he, “were too
good for that, and rose to be valuable clerks and book-keepers; but
those incapable of this sort of advancement had always the same
insuperable aversion to toiling so long at any one point of
mechanism as to gain the highest wages among the
workmen.” I have no doubt Sir Walter was
thinking of Mr Watt’s remark when he wrote
the sentence in the text.
tertaining apprehension. This is not furiously to the
purpose of my letter, which, after recommending Monsieur Mackay, was to tell you that we are all well and
happy. Sophia is getting stout and
pretty, and is one of the wisest and most important little mammas that can be
seen any where. Her bower is bigged in gude green wood,
and we went last Saturday in a body to enjoy it, and to consult about
furniture, and we have got the road stopt which led up the hill, so it is now
quite solitary, and approached through a grove of trees, actual well grown
trees, not Lilliputian forests like those of Abbotsford. The season is
dreadfully backward. Our ashes and oaks are not yet in leaf, and will not be, I
think, in any thing like full foliage this year, such is the rigour of the east
winds. Always, my dear and much respected friend, most affectionately yours,
W. Scott. Blair-Adam, 11 June, 1821, In full sight of Lochleven.
“P. S.—Pray read, or have read to you by Mrs Agnes, the Annals of the Parish. Mr Galt wrote the worst tragedies ever
seen, and has now written a most excellent novel, if it can be called
so.”
To the Lord Montagu, &c. &c. London.
“Blair-Adam, June 11, 1821. “My dear Lord,
“There is a man
going up from Edinburgh to play one night at Covent Garden, whom, as having the
very unusual power of presenting on the stage a complete Scotsman, I am very
desirous you should see. He plays Bailie Nicol
Jarvie in Rob
Roy, but with a degree of national truth and understanding, which makes
the part equal to any thing I have ever seen on the stage, and I have seen all
the best come-dians for these
forty years. I wish much, if you continue in town till he comes up, that you
would get into some private box and take a look of him. Sincerely, it is a real
treat—the English will not enjoy it, for it is not broad enough, or
sufficiently caricatured for their apprehensions, but to a Scotsman it is
inimitable, and you have the Glasgow Bailie before you, with all his bustling
conceit and importance, his real benevolence, and his irritable habits. He will
want in London a fellow who, in the character of the Highland turnkey, held the
back-hand to him admirably well. I know how difficult it is for folks of
condition to get to the theatre, but this is worth an exertion, and, besides,
the poor man (who I understand is very respectable in private life) will be, to
use an admirable simile (by which one of your father’s farmers persuaded
the Duke to go to hear his son, a probationer in divinity, preach his first
sermon in the town of Ayr), like a cow in a fremd
loaning, and glad of Scots countenance.
“I am glad the Duke’s cold is better—his stomach will not be put to
those trials which ours underwent in our youth, when deep drinking was the
fashion. I hope he will always be aware, however, that his is not a strong one.
“Campbell’sLives of the Admirals is an admirable
book, and I would advise your Lordship e’en to redeem your pledge to the
Duke on some rainy day. You do not run
the risk from the perusal which my poor mother apprehended. She always alleged
it sent her eldest son to the navy, and did not see with indifference any of
her younger olive branches engaged with Campbell except
myself, who stood in no danger of the cockpit or quarterdeck. I would not swear
for Lord John though. Your
Lordship’s tutor was just such a well-meaning person as mine, who used to
take from me old Lindsay of Pits-cottie, and set me down to get by heart Rollin’s infernal list of the Shepherd
Kings, whose hard names could have done no good to any one on earth, unless he
had wished to raise the devil, and lacked language to conjure with.—Always, my
dear Lord, most truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
The coronation of George IV.,
preparations for which were (as has been seen) in active progress by March, 1820, had been
deferred, in consequence of the unhappy affair of the Queen’s Trial. The 19th of July, 1821, was now announced for this
solemnity, and Sir Walter resolved to be among the
spectators. It occurred to him that if the Ettrick
Shepherd were to accompany him, and produce some memorial of the scene
likely to catch the popular ear in Scotland, good service might thus be done to the cause
of loyalty; but this was not his only consideration. Hogg had married
a handsome and most estimable young woman, a good
deal above his own original rank in life, the year before; and expecting with her a dowry
of L.1000, he had forthwith revived the grand ambition of an earlier day, and become a
candidate for an extensive farm on the Buccleuch estate, at a short
distance from Altrive Lake. Various friends, supposing his worldly circumstances to be much
improved, had supported his application, and Lord
Montagu had received it in a manner for which the Shepherd’s letters
to Scott express much gratitude. Misfortune pursued the Shepherd—the
unforeseen bankruptcy of his wife’s father interrupted the stocking of the sheep
walk; and the arable part of the new possession was sadly mismanaged by himself.
Scott hoped that a visit to London, and a coronation poem, or
pamphlet, might end in some pension or post that would relieve these difficulties, and he
wrote to Hogg, urging him to come to Edinburgh, and embark with him for the great city. Not doubting that this
proposal would be eagerly accepted, he, when writing to Lord
Sidmouth, to ask a place for himself in the Hall and Abbey of Westminster,
mentioned that Hogg was to be his companion, and begged suitable
accommodation for him also. Lord Sidmouth, being overwhelmed with
business connected with the approaching pageant, answered by the pen of the Under-Secretary
of State, Mr Hobhouse, that Sir
Walter’s wishes, both as to himself and the Shepherd, should be
gratified, provided they would both dine with him the day after the coronation, in Richmond
park, “where,” says the letter before me, “his Lordship will
invite the Duke of York and a few other Jacobites to
meet you.” All this being made known to the tenant of Mount-Benger, he wrote
to Scott, as he says, ‘with the tear in his eye,’
to signify, that if he went to London, he must miss attending the great annual Border fair,
held on St Boswell’s Green, in Roxburghshire, on the 18th of every July; and that his
absence from that meeting so soon after entering upon business as a store-farmer, would be
considered by his new compeers as highly imprudent and discreditable. “In
short,” James concludes, “the thing is
impossible. But as there is no man in his Majesty’s dominions admires his great
talents for government, and the energy and dignity of his administration so much as I
do, I will write something at home, and endeavour to give it you before you
start.” The Shepherd probably expected that these pretty compliments would reach
the royal ear; but however that may have been, his own Muse turned a deaf ear to him—at
least I never heard of any thing that he wrote on this occasion.
Scott embarked without him, on board a new steamship
called the City of Edinburgh, which, as he
suggested to the master, ought rather to have been christened the New Reekie. This vessel was that described and lauded in the
following letter:—
To the Lord Montagu, &c. &c.
“Edinburgh, July 1, 1821. “My dear Lord,
“I write just now to thank you for your letter. I have
been on board the steam-ship, and am so delighted with it, that I think I shall
put myself aboard for the coronation. It runs at nine knots an hour
(me ipso teste), against wind
and tide, with a deck as long as a frigate’s to walk upon, and to sleep
on also, if you like, as I have always preferred a cloak and a mattrass to
these crowded cabins. This reconciles the speed and certainty of the mail-coach
with the ease and convenience of being on ship-board. So I really think I will
run up to see the grandee show and run down again. I scorn to mention economy,
though the expense is not one-fifth, and that is something in hard times,
especially to me, who to choose, would always rather travel in a public
conveyance, than with my domestic’s good company in a po-chay.
“But now comes the news of news. I have been
instigating the great Caledonian Boar, James
Hogg, to undertake a similar trip—with the view of turning an
honest penny, to help out his stocking, by writing some sort of
Shepherd’s Letters, or the like, to put the honest Scots bodies up to
this whole affair. I am trying with Lord
Sidmouth to get him a place among the newspaper gentry to see
the ceremony. It is seriously worth while to get such a popular view of the
whole, as he will probably hit off.
“I have another view for this poor fellow. You have
heard of the Royal Literary Society, and how they propose to distribute solid
pudding, alias pensions, to men of genius. It is, I think, a very problematical
matter, whether it will do the good which is intended; but if they do mean to
select worthy objects of encouragement, I really know nobody that has a better
or an equal claim to poor Hogg. Our
friend Villiers takes a great charge of
this matter, and good-naturedly forgave my stating to him a number of
objections to the first concoction, which was to have been something resembling
the French Academy. It has now been much modified. Perhaps there may be some
means fallen upon, with your Lordship’s assistance, of placing
Hogg under Mr Villiers’
view. I would have done so myself, but only, I have battled the point against
the whole establishment so keenly, that it would be too bad to bring forward a
protegé of my own to take the advantage of it. They intended at one time
to give pensions of about L.100 a-year to thirty persons. I know not where they
could find half-a-dozen with such pretensions as the Shepherd’s.
“There will be risk of his being lost in London, or
kidnapped by some of those ladies who open literary menageries for the
reception of lions. I should like to see him at a rout of blue-stockings. I
intend to recommend him to the protection of John
Murray the bookseller; and I hope he will come equipped with
plaid, kent, and colley.*
“I wish to heaven Lord
Melville would either keep the Admiralty, or in Hogg’s phrase— ——‘O I would eagerly press him The keys of the east to require,’—
* Kent is the shepherd’s
staff—Colley his dog. Scott alludes to the old song of the Lea Rig—
“Nae herds wi’ kent and colley there,”
&c. for truly the Board of Control is the Corn Chest for
Scotland, where we poor gentry must send our younger sons, as we send our black
cattle to the south.
Ever most truly yours, Walter Scott.”
From London, on the day after the coronation, Sir
Walter addressed a letter, descriptive of the ceremonial, to his friend
James Ballantyne, who published it in his newspaper. It has been since reprinted but
not in any collection of Scott’s own writings; and I therefore
insert it here. It will probably possess considerable interest for the student of English
history and manners in future times; for the coronation of George
the Fourth’s successor was conducted on a vastly inferior scale of
splendour and expense and the precedent of curtailment in any such matters is now seldom
neglected.
To the Editor of the Edinburgh Weekly
Journal.
“London, July 20th, 1821. “Sir,
“I refer you to the daily papers for the details of
the great National Solemnity which we witnessed yesterday, and will hold my
promise absolved by sending a few general remarks upon what I saw, with
surprise amounting to astonishment, and which I shall never forget. It is,
indeed, impossible to conceive a ceremony more august and imposing in all its
parts, and more calculated to make the deepest impression both on the eye and
on the feelings. The most minute attention must have been bestowed to arrange
all the subordinate parts in harmony with the rest; so that, amongst so much
antiquated ceremonial, imposing singular dresses, duties, and characters upon persons accustomed to
move in the ordinary routine of society, nothing occurred either awkward or
ludicrous which could mar the general effect of the solemnity. Considering that
it is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous, I own I consider it as
surprising that the whole ceremonial of the day should have passed away without
the slightest circumstance which could derange the general tone of solemn
feeling which was suited to the occasion.
“You must have heard a full account of the only
disagreeable event of the day. I mean the attempt of the misguided lady, who has lately furnished so
many topics of discussion, to intrude herself upon a ceremonial, where, not
being in her proper place, to be present in any other must have been voluntary
degradation. That matter is a fire of straw which has now burnt to the very
embers, and those who try to blow it into life again, will only blacken their
hands and noses, like mischievous children dabbling among the ashes of a
bonfire. It seems singular, that being determined to be present at all hazards,
this unfortunate personage should not have procured a Peer’s ticket,
which, I presume, would have insured her admittance. I willingly pass to
pleasanter matters.
“The effect of the scene in the Abbey was beyond
measure magnificent. Imagine long galleries stretched among the aisles of that
venerable and august pile—those which rise above the altar pealing back their
echoes to a full and magnificent choir of music—those which occupied the sides
filled even to crowding with all that Britain has of beautiful and
distinguished, and the cross-gallery most appropriately occupied by the
Westminster schoolboys, in their white surplices, many of whom might on that
day receive impressions never to be lost during the rest of
their lives. Imagine this, I say, and then add the spectacle upon the floor—the
altar surrounded by the Fathers of the Church—the King encircled by the
Nobility of the land and the Counsellors of his throne, and by warriors,
wearing the honoured marks of distinction bought by many a glorious danger—add
to this the rich spectacle of the aisles crowded with waving plumage, and
coronets, and caps of honour, and the sun, which brightened and saddened as if
on purpose, now beaming in full lustre on the rich and varied assemblage, and
now darting a solitary ray, which catched, as it passed, the glittering folds
of a banner, or the edge of a group of battle-axes or partizans, and then
rested full on some fair form, ‘the Cynosure of neighbouring
eyes,’ whose circlet of diamonds glistened under its influence.
Imagine all this, and then tell me if I have made my journey of four hundred
miles to little purpose. I do not love your cui
bono men, and therefore I will not be pleased if you ask
me in the damping tone of sullen philosophy, what good all this has done the
spectators? If we restrict life to its real animal wants and necessities, we
shall indeed be satisfied with ‘food, clothes, and fire;’
but Divine Providence, who widened our sources of enjoyment beyond those of the
animal creation, never meant that we should bound our wishes within such narrow
limits; and I shrewdly suspect that those non est
tanti gentlefolks only depreciate the natural and
unaffected pleasure which men like me receive from sights of splendour and
sounds of harmony, either because they would seem wiser than their simple
neighbours at the expense of being less happy, or because the mere pleasure of
the sight and sound is connected with associations of a deeper kind, to which
they are unwilling to yield themselves.
“Leaving these gentlemen to enjoy their own wisdom,
I still more pity those, if
there be any, who (being unable to detect a peg on which to hang a laugh) sneer
coldly at this solemn festival, and are rather disposed to dwell on the expense
which attends it, than on the generous feelings which it ought to awaken. The
expense, so far as it is national, has gone directly and instantly to the
encouragement of the British manufacturer and mechanic; and so far as it is
personal to the persons of rank attendant upon the Coronation, it operates as a
tax upon wealth and consideration for the benefit of poverty and industry; a
tax willingly paid by the one class, and not the less acceptable to the other,
because it adds a happy holiday to the monotony of a life of labour.
“But there were better things to reward my pilgrimage
than the mere pleasures of the eye and ear; for it was impossible, without the
deepest veneration, to behold the voluntary and solemn interchange of vows
betwixt the King and his assembled People, whilst he, on the one hand, called
God Almighty to witness his resolution to maintain their laws and privileges,
whilst they called, at the same moment, on the Divine Being, to bear witness
that they accepted him for their liege Sovereign, and pledged to him their love
and their duty. I cannot describe to you the effect produced by the solemn, yet
strange mixture of the words of Scripture, with the shouts and acclamations of
the assembled multitude, as they answered to the voice of the Prelate who
demanded of them whether they acknowledged as their Monarch the Prince who
claimed the sovereignty in their presence. It was peculiarly delightful to see
the King receive from the royal brethren, but in particular from the Duke of York, the fraternal kiss in which they
acknowledged their sovereign. There was an honest tenderness, an affectionate
and sincere reverence in the embrace interchanged betwixt
the Duke of York and his Majesty that approached almost to
a caress, and impressed all present with the electrical conviction, that the
nearest to the throne in blood was the nearest also in affection. I never heard
plaudits given more from the heart than those that were thundered upon the
royal brethren when they were thus pressed to each other’s bosoms,—it was
an emotion of natural kindness, which, bursting out amidst ceremonial grandeur,
found an answer in every British bosom. The King seemed much affected at this
and one or two other parts of the ceremonial, even so much so, as to excite
some alarm among those who saw him as nearly as I did. He completely recovered
himself, however, and bore (generally speaking) the fatigue of the day very
well. I learn from one near his person, that he roused himself with great
energy, even when most oppressed with heat and fatigue, when any of the more
interesting parts of the ceremony were to be performed, or when any thing-
occurred which excited his personal and immediate attention. When presiding at
the banquet amid the long line of his Nobles, he looked ‘every inch a
King;’ and nothing could exceed the grace with which he accepted
and returned the various acts of homage rendered to him in the course of that
long day.
“It was also a very gratifying spectacle to those who
think like me, to behold the Duke of
Devonshire and most of the distinguished Whig nobility assembled
round the throne on this occasion; giving an open testimony that the
differences of political opinions are only skin-deep wounds, which assume at
times an angry appearance, but have no real effect on the wholesome
constitution of the country.
“If you ask me to distinguish who bore him best, and
appeared most to sustain the character we annex to the assistants in such a solemnity, I have no
hesitation to name Lord Londonderry, who,
in the magnificent robes of the Garter, with the cap and high plume of the
order, walked alone, and by his fine face, and majestic person, formed an
adequate representative of the order of Edward
III., the costume of which was worn by his Lordship only. The
Duke of Wellington, with all his
laurels, moved and looked deserving the baton, which was never grasped by so
worthy a hand. The Marquis of Anglesea
showed the most exquisite grace in managing his horse, notwithstanding the want
of his limb, which he left at Waterloo. I never saw so fine a bridle-hand in my
life, and I am rather a judge of ‘noble horsemanship.’ Lord Howard’s horse was worse bitted than
those of the two former noblemen, but not so much so as to derange the ceremony
of retiring back out of the Hall.
“The Champion was performed (as of right) by young
Dymocke, a fine-looking youth, but
bearing, perhaps, a little too much the appearance of a maiden-knight to be the
challenger of the world in a King’s behalf. He threw down his gauntlet,
however, with becoming manhood, and showed as much horsemanship as the crowd of
knights and squires around him would permit to be exhibited. His armour was in
good taste, but his shield was out of all propriety, being a round rondache, or Highland target, a defensive weapon, which
it would have been impossible to use on horseback, instead of being a
three-corner’d, or heater-shield, which in time of
the tilt was suspended round the neck. Pardon this antiquarian scruple, which,
you may believe, occurred to few but myself. On the whole, this striking part
of the exhibition somewhat disappointed me, for I would have had the Champion
less embarrassed by his assistants, and at liberty to put his horse on the grandpas. And yet the young Lord of Scrivelsbaye looked and
behaved extremely well.
“Returning to the subject of costume, I could not but
admire what I had previously been disposed much to criticise,—I mean the fancy
dress of the Privy-Councillors, which was of white and blue satin, with
trunk-hose and mantles, after the fashion of Queen
Elizabeth’s time. Separately, so gay a garb had an odd
effect on the persons of elderly or ill-made men; but when the whole was thrown
into one general body, all these discrepancies disappeared, and you no more
observed the particular manner or appearance of an individual than you do that
of a soldier in the battalion which marches past you. The whole was so
completely harmonized in actual colouring, as well as in association with the
general mass of gay and gorgeous and antique dress which floated before the
eye, that it was next to impossible to attend to the effect of individual
figures. Yet a Scotsman will detect a Scotsman amongst the most crowded
assemblage, and I must say that the Lord
Justice-Clerk of Scotland showed to as great advantage in his
robes of Privy-Councillor as any by whom that splendid dress was worn on this
great occasion. The common Court-dress, used by the Privy-Councillors at the
last coronation, must have had a poor effect in comparison of the present,
which formed a gradation in the scale of gorgeous ornament, from the unwieldy
splendour of the heralds, who glowed like huge masses of cloth of gold and
silver, to the more chastened robes and ermine of the Peers. I must not forget
the effect produced by the Peers placing their coronets on their heads, which
was really august.
“The box assigned to the foreign Ambassadors
presented a most brilliant effect, and was perfectly in a blaze with diamonds. When the sunshine lighted
on Prince Esterhazy, in particular, he
glimmered like a galaxy. I cannot learn positively if he had on that renowned
coat which has visited all the courts of Europe save ours, and is said to be
worth L.100,000, or some such trifle, and which costs the Prince L.100 or two
every time he puts it on, as he is sure to lose pearls to that amount. This was
a hussar dress, but splendid in the last degree, perhaps too fine for good
taste, at least it would have appeared so any where else. Beside the Prince sat
a good-humoured lass, who seemed all eyes and ears (his daughter-in-law I
believe), who wore as many diamonds as if they had been Bristol stones. An
honest Persian was also a remarkable figure, from the dogged and imperturbable
gravity with which he looked on the whole scene, without ever moving a limb or
a muscle during the space of four hours. Like Sir
Wilful Witwoud, I cannot find that your Persian is orthodox; for
if he scorned every thing else, there was a Mahometan paradise extended on his
right hand along the seats which were occupied by the Peeresses and their
daughters, which the Prophet himself might have looked on with emotion. I have
seldom seen so many elegant and beautiful girls as sat mingled among the noble
matronage of the land; and the waving plumage of feathers, which made the
universal head-dress, had the most appropriate effect in setting off their
charms.
“I must not omit that the foreigners, who are apt to
consider us as a nation en frac, and
without the usual ceremonials of dress and distinction, were utterly astonished
and delighted to see the revival of feudal dresses and feudal grandeur when the
occasion demanded it, and that in a degree of splendour which they averred they
had never seen paralleled in Europe.
“The duties of service at the Banquet, and of
attend-ance in general, was performed by pages drest
very elegantly in Henri Quatre coats of scarlet, with gold lace, blue sashes,
white silk hose, and white rosettes. There were also marshal’s-men for
keeping order, who wore a similar dress, but of blue, and having white sashes.
Both departments were filled up almost entirely by young gentlemen, many of
them of the very first condition, who took these menial characters to gain
admission to the show. When I saw many of my young acquaintance thus attending
upon their fathers and kinsmen, the Peers, Knights, and so forth, I could not
help thinking of Crabbe’s lines,
with a little alteration:— ’Twas schooling pride to see the menial wait, Smile on his father and receive his plate. It must be owned, however, that they proved but indifferent valets, and
were very apt, like the clown in the pantomime, to eat the cheer they should
have handed to their masters, and to play other tours de page, which reminded me of the caution of our
proverb ‘not to man yourself with your kin.’ The Peers, for
example, had only a cold collation, while the Aldermen of London feasted on
venison and turtle; and similar errors necessarily befell others in the
confusion of the evening. But these slight mistakes, which indeed were not
known till afterwards, had not the slightest effect on the general grandeur of
the scene.
“I did not see the procession between the Abbey and
Hall. In the morning a few voices called, Queen, Queen,
as Lord Londonderry passed, and even when
the Sovereign appeared. But these were only signals for the loud and reiterated
acclamations in which these tones of discontent were completely drowned. In the
return, no one dissonant voice intimated the least dissent from the shouts of
gratulation which poured from every quarter; and certainly never Monarch received a more
general welcome from his assembled subjects.
“You will have from others full accounts of the
variety of entertainments provided for John
Bull in the Parks, the River, in the Theatres, and elsewhere.
Nothing was to be seen or heard but sounds of pleasure and festivity; and
whoever saw the scene at any one spot, was convinced that the whole population
was assembled there, while others found a similar concourse of revellers in
every different point. It is computed that about five
hundred thousand people shared in the Festival in one way or another;
and you may imagine the excellent disposition by which the people were
animated, when I tell you, that, excepting a few windows broken by a small
body-guard of ragamuffins, who were in immediate attendance on the Great Lady in the morning, not the slightest
political violence occurred to disturb the general harmony—and that the
assembled populace seemed to be universally actuated by the spirit of the day,
loyalty, namely, and good humour. Nothing occurred to damp those happy
dispositions; the weather was most propitious, and the arrangements so perfect,
that no accident of any kind is reported as having taken place.—And so
concluded the coronation of George
IV., whom God long preserve.
Those who witnessed it have seen a scene calculated to raise the country in
their opinion, and to throw into the shade all scenes of similar magnificence,
from the Field of the Cloth of Gold down to the present day.
I remain, your obedient servant, An Eyewitness.”
At the close of this brilliant scene, Scott received a mark of homage to his genius which delighted him not less
than Laird Nippy’s reverence for the Sheriff’s Knoll, and the Birmingham
cutler’s dear acquisition of his signature on a visiting ticket. Missing his
carriage, he had to return home on foot from Westminster, after the banquet—that is to say,
between two and three o’clock in the morning;—when he and a young gentleman his
companion found themselves locked in the crowd, somewhere near Whitehall, and the bustle
and tumult were such that his friend was afraid some accident might happen to the lame
limb. A space for the dignitaries was kept clear at that point by the Scots Greys.
Sir Walter addressed a Serjeant of this celebrated regiment,
begging to be allowed to pass by him into the open ground in the middle of the street. The
man answered shortly that his orders were strict that the thing was impossible. While he
was endeavouring to persuade the Serjeant to relent, some new wave of turbulence approached
from behind, and his young companion exclaimed in a loud voice, “take care,
Sir Walter Scott, take care!” The stalwart dragoon,
on hearing the name, said, “What! Sir Walter Scott? He shall
get through anyhow!” He then addressed the soldiers near him “make
room, men, for Sir Walter Scott, our illustrious
countryman!” The men answered, “Sir Walter
Scott!—God bless him!”—and he was in a moment within the guarded
line of safety.
I shall now take another extract from the memoranda, with which I have
been favoured by my friend Allan Cunningham. After
the particulars formerly quoted about Scott’s
sitting to Chantrey in the spring of 1820, he proceeds as follows:—
“I saw Sir Walter again, when
he attended the coronation, in 1821. In the meantime his bust had been wrought in
marble, and the sculptor desired to take the advantage of his visit to communicate such
touches of expression or lineament as the new material rendered necessary. This was
done with a happiness of eye and hand almost magical: for five hours did the poet sit,
or stand, or walk, while Chantrey’s chisel
was passed again and again over the marble, adding something at every touch.
“‘Well, Allan,’ he said, when he saw me at this last sitting,
‘were you at the coronation? it was a splendid sight.’
‘No, Sir Walter,’ I
answered,—‘places were dear and ill to get: I am told it was a magnificent
scene: but having seen the procession of King
Crispin at Dumfries, I was satisfied.’ I said this with a
smile; Scott took it as I meant it, and laughed heartily. ‘That’s not a
bit better than Hogg,’ he said.
‘He stood balancing the matter whether to go to the coronation or the fair
of Saint Boswell—and the fair carried it.’
“During this conversation, Mr
Bolton the engineer came in. Something like a cold acknowledgment passed
between the poet and him. On his passing into an inner room, Scott said, ‘I am afraid Mr Bolton has
not forgot a little passage that once took place between us. We met in a public
company, and in reply to the remark of some one, he said, “that’s
like the old saying,—in every corner of the world you will find a Scot, a rat,
and a Newcastle grindstone.” This touched my Scotch spirit, and I
said, “Mr Bolton, you ought to have added, and a Birmingham button.” There was a laugh at
this, and Mr Bolton replied, “we make something
better in Birmingham than buttons—we make steam-engines,
sir.”’
“‘I like Bolton,’ thus continued Sir
Walter, ‘he is a brave man, and who can dislike the brave?—He
showed this on a remarkable occasion. He had engaged to coin for some foreign
prince a large quantity of gold. This was found out by some desperadoes, who
resolved to rob the premises, and as a preliminary step tried
to bribe the porter. The porter was an honest fellow, he told
Bolton that he was offered a hundred pounds to be blind
and deaf next night. Take the money, was the answer, and I shall protect the place.
Midnight came—the gates opened as if by magic, the interior doors, secured with
patent locks, opened as of their own accord, and three men with dark lanterns
entered and went straight to the gold. Bolton had prepared
some flax steeped in turpentine—he dropt fire upon it, a sudden light filled all
the place, and with his assistants he rushed forward on the robbers,—the leader saw
in a moment he was betrayed, turned on the porter, and shooting him dead, burst
through all obstruction, and with an ingot of gold in his hand, scaled the wall and
escaped.’
“‘That is quite a romance in robbing,’ I
said, and I had nearly said more, for the cavern scene and death of Meg Merrilees rose in my mind,—perhaps the mind of
Sir Walter was taking the direction of the
Solway too, for he said, ‘How long have you been from Nithsdale?’
‘A dozen years.’ ‘Then you will remember it well. I was
a visiter there in my youth; my brother was at Closeburn school, and there I found
Creehope Linn, a scene ever present to my fancy. It is at once fearful and
beautiful. The stream jumps down from the moorlands, saws its way into the
free-stone rock of a hundred feet deep, and, in escaping to the plain, performs a
thousand vagaries. In one part it has actually shaped out a little chapel, the
peasants call it the Sutors’ Chair. There are sculptures on the sides of the
linn too, not such as Mr Chantrey casts, but
etchings scraped in with a knife perhaps, or a harrow-tooth.—Did you ever
hear,’ said Sir Walter, ‘of Patrick
Maxwell, who, taken prisoner by the king’s troops, escaped
from them on his way to Edinburgh, by flinging himself into that dreadful linn on Moffat water, called
the Douglasses Beef-tub?’ ‘Frequently,’ I answered;
‘the country abounds with anecdotes of those days; the popular feeling
sympathizes with the poor Jacobites, and has recorded its sentiments in many a tale
and many a verse.’ ‘The Ettrick
Shepherd has collected not a few of those things,’ said
Scott, ‘and I suppose many snatches of song may yet
be found.’ C. ‘I have gathered many such things myself,
Sir Walter, and as I still propose to make a collection of
all Scottish songs of poetic merit, I shall work up many of my stray verses and
curious anecdotes in the notes.’ S. ‘I am glad that you are
about such a thing; any help which I can give you, you may command; ask me any
questions, no matter how many, I shall answer them if I can. Don’t be timid
in your selection; our ancestors fought boldly, spoke boldly, and sang boldly too.
I can help you to an old characteristic ditty not yet in print:
‘There dwalt a man into the wast, And O gin he was cruel, For on his bridal night at e’en He gat up and grat for gruel. They brought to him a gude sheep’s head, A bason, and a towel, Gar take thae whim-whams far frae me, I winna want my gruel.’
“C. I never heard that verse before; the hero seems related to
the bridegroom of Nithsdale— ‘The bridegroom grat as the sun gade down, The bridegroom grat as the sun gade down, To ony man I’ll gie a hunder marks sae free, This night that will bed wi’ a bride for me.’
“S. ‘A cowardly loon enough. I know of many crumbs and
fragments of verse which will be useful to your work; the Border was once peopled
with poets, for every one that could fight could make ballads,
some of them of great power and pathos. Some such people as the minstrels were
living less than a century ago.’ C. ‘I knew a man, the last of a
race of district tale-tellers, who used to boast of the golden days of his youth,
and say, that the world, with all its knowledge, was grown sixpence a day worse for
him.’ S. ‘How was that? how did he make his living? by telling
tales, or singing ballads?’ C. ‘By both: he had a devout tale
for the old, and a merry song for the young; he was a sort of beggar.’ S.
‘Out upon thee, Allan, dost thou
call that begging? Why, man, we make our bread by story-telling, and honest bread
it is.’”
I ought not to close this extract, without observing that Sir F. Chantrey presented the original bust, of which
Mr Cunningham speaks, to Sir
Walter himself; by whose remotest descendants it will undoubtedly be held in
additional honour on that account. The poet had the further gratification of learning that
three copies were executed in marble before the original quitted the studio: One for
Windsor Castle—a second for Apsley House—and a third for the friendly sculptor’s own
private collection. The legitimate casts of this bust have since
been multiplied beyond perhaps any example what ever. Mr Cunningham
remembers not fewer than fifteen hundred of them (price four guineas each) being ordered
for exportation—chiefly to the United States of America—within
one year. Of the myriads, or rather millions, of inferior copies manufactured and
distributed by unauthorized persons, it would be in vain to attempt any calculation.
CHAPTER V. PUBLICATION OF MR ADOLPHUS’S LETTERS ON THE
AUTHORSHIP OF WAVERLEY. 1821.
DuringScott’s
visit to London, in July, 1821, there appeared a work which was read with eager curiosity
and delight by the public with much private diversion besides by his friends—and which he
himself must have gone through with a very odd mixture of emotions. I allude to the volume
entitled “Letters to Richard Heber,
Esq., containing critical remarks on the series of novels beginning with Waverley, and
an attempt to ascertain their author;” which was soon known to have been
penned by Mr John Leicester Adolphus, a
distinguished alumnus of the University then represented in Parliament by Sir
Walter’s early friend Heber.
Previously to the publication of these Letters, the opinion that Scott
was the author of Waverley had indeed
become well settled in the English, to say nothing of the Scottish mind; a great variety of
circumstances, external as well as internal, had by degrees co-operated to its general
establishment: yet there were not wanting persons who still dissented, or at least affected
to dissent from it. It was reserved for the enthusiastic industry, and admirable ingenuity
of this juvenile academic, to set the question at rest, by an accumulation of critical
evidence which no sophistry could evade, and yet produced in a style
of such high-bred delicacy, that it was impossible for the hitherto ‘veiled
prophet’ to take the slightest offence with the hand that had for ever
abolished his disguise. The only sceptical scruple that survived this exposition, was
extinguished in due time by Scott’s avowal of the sole and
unassisted authorship of his novels; and now Mr Adolphus’s
Letters have shared the fate of other elaborate arguments, the thesis of which has ceased
to be controverted. Hereafter, I am persuaded, his volume will be revived for its own sake;
but, in the meantime, regarding it merely as forming, by its original effect, an epoch in
Scott’s history, I think it my duty to mark my sense of its importance in that point
of view, by transcribing the writer’s own summary of its
CONTENTS.
“Letter
I.—Introduction—General reasons for believing the novels to have been written by the
author of Marmion.
“Letter II.—Resemblance
between the novelist and poet in their tastes, studies, and habits of life, as
illustrated by their works—Both Scotchmen—Habitual residents in
Edinburgh—Poets—Antiquaries—German and Spanish scholars—Equal in classical
attainments—Deeply read in British history—Lawyers—Fond of field sports—Of
dogs—Acquainted with most manly exercises—Lovers of military subjects—The novelist
apparently not a soldier.
“Letter III.—The novelist
is, like the poet, a man of good society—His stories never betray forgetfulness of
honourable principles, or ignorance of good manners—Spirited pictures of gentlemanly
character—Colonel Mannering—Judicious treatment
of elevated historical personages—The novelist quotes and praises most contemporary
poets, except the author of Marmion—Instances in which the poet has appeared to slight
his own unacknowledged, but afterwards avowed productions.
“Letter IV.—Comparison of
the works themselves—All distinguished by good morals and good sense—The latter
particularly shown in the management of character—Prose style—its general
features—Plainness and facility—Grave banter—Manner of telling a short story—Negligence—Scotticisms—Great
propriety and correctness occasionally, and sometimes unusual sweetness.
“Letter V.—Dialogue in
the novels and poems—Neat colloquial turns in the former, such as cannot be expected in
romantic poetry—Happy adaptation of dialogue to character, whether merely natural, or
artificially modified, as by profession, local habits, &c.—Faults of dialogue, as
connected with character of speakers—Quaintness of language and thought—Bookish air in
conversation Historical personages alluding to their own celebrated acts and
sayings—Unsuccessful attempts at broad vulgarity—Beauties of composition peculiar to
the dialogue—Terseness and spirit—These qualities well displayed in quarrels; but not
in scenes of polished raillery—Eloquence.
“Letter VI.—The poetry of
the author of Marmion generally
characterised—His habits of composition and turn of mind, as a poet, compared with
those of the novelist—Their descriptions simply conceived and composed, without
abstruse and far-fetched circumstances or refined comments—Great advantage derived by
both from accidental combinations of images, and the association of objects in the mind
with persons, events, &c.—Distinctness and liveliness of effect in narrative and
description—Narrative usually picturesque or dramatic, or both—Distinctness, &c. of
effect, produced in various ways—Striking pictures of individuals—Their persons, dress,
&c.—Descriptions sometimes too obviously picturesque—Subjects for painters—Effects
of light frequently noticed and finely described—Both writers excel in grand and
complicated scenes—Among detached and occasional ornaments, the similes particularly
noticed—Their frequency and beauty—Similes and metaphors sometimes quaint and pursued
too far.
“Letter VII.—Stories of
the two writers compared—These are generally connected with true history, and have
their scene laid in a real place—Local peculiarities diligently attended to—Instances
in which the novelist and poet have celebrated the same places they frequently
describe—these as seen by a traveller (the hero, or some other principal personage) for
the first time—Dramatic mode of relating story—Soliloquies Some scenes degenerate into
melodrame—Lyrical pieces introduced sometimes too theatrically—Comparative unimportance
of heroes—Various causes of this fault—Heroes rejected by ladies, and marrying others
whom they had before slighted—Personal struggle between a civilized and a barbarous
hero—Characters resembling each other—Female por-traits in
general—Fathers and daughters—Characters in Paul’s Letters—Wycliffe and
Risingham—Glossin and Hatteraick—Other
characters compared.—Long periods of time abruptly passed over—Surprises, unexpected
discoveries, &c.—These sometimes too forced and artificial—Frequent recourse to the
marvellous—Dreams well described—Living persons mistaken for spectres—Deaths of
Burley, Risingham, and Rashleigh.
“Letter VIII.—Comparison
of particular passages—Descriptions—Miscellaneous thoughts—Instances, in which the two
writers have resorted to the same sources of information, and borrowed the same
incidents, &c.—Same authors quoted by both—the poet, like the novelist, fond of
mentioning his contemporaries, whether as private friends or as men publicly
distinguished—Author of Marmion never
notices the Author of Waverley (see
Letter III.)—Both delight in frequently introducing an antiquated or fantastic
dialect—Peculiarities of expression common to both writers—Conclusion.”
I wish I had space for extracting copious specimens of the felicity with
which Mr Adolphus works out these various points of
his problem. As it is I must be contented with a narrow selection—and I shall take two or
three of the passages which seem to me to connect themselves most naturally with the main
purpose of my own compilation.
“A thorough knowledge and statesmanlike
understanding of the domestic history and politics of Britain at various and distant
periods; a familiar acquaintance with the manners and prevailing spirit of former
generations, and with the characters and habits of their most distinguished men, are of
themselves no cheap or common attainments; and it is rare indeed to find them united
with a strong original genius, and great brilliancy of imagination. We know, however,
that the towering poet of Flodden-field is also the diligent editor of Swift and Dryden, of Lord Somers’s Tracts, and of Sir Ralph Sadler’s State Papers; that in
these and other parts of his literary career he has necessarily plunged deep into the
study of British history, biography, and antiquities, and that the talent and activity
which he brought to these researches have been warmly seconded by the zeal and
liberality of those who possessed the amplest and rarest sources of information.
‘The muse found him,’ as he himself said long ago, ‘engaged in
the pursuit of historical and traditional antiquities, and the excursions which he
has made in her company have been of a nature which increases his attachment to his
original study.’ Are we then to suppose, that another writer has combined
the same powers of fancy with the same spirit of investigation, the same perseverance,
and the same good fortune? and shall we not rather believe, that the labour employed in
the illustration of Dryden has helped to
fertilize the invention which produced Montrose and Old
Mortality? . . . . .
“However it may militate against the supposition of
his being a poet, I cannot suppress my opinion, that our novelist is a ‘man of
law.’ He deals out the peculiar terms and phrases of that science (as practised
in Scotland) with a freedom and confidence beyond the reach of any uninitiated person.
If ever, in the progress of his narrative, a legal topic presents itself (which very
frequently happens), he neither declines the subject, nor timidly slurs it over, but
enters as largely and formally into all its technicalities, as if the case were
actually ‘before the fifteen.’ The manners, humours, and professional bavardage of lawyers are sketched with all the ease and
familiarity which result from habitual observation. In fact, the subject of law, which
is a stumbling-block to others, is to the present writer a spot of repose; upon this
theme he lounges and gossips, he is discinctus et
soleatus, and, at times, almost forgets that when an author
finds himself at home and perfectly at ease, he is in great danger of falling
asleep.—If, then, my inferences are correct, the unknown writer who was just now proved
to be an excellent poet, must also be pronounced a follower of the law: the combination
is so unusual, at least on this side of the Tweed, that, as Juvenal says on a different occasion— —————————‘bimembriHoc monstrum puero, vel mirandis sub aratroPiscibus inventis, et fœtæ comparo
mulæ.’ Nature has indeed presented us with one such prodigy in the author of Marmion; and it is probable, that in the
author of Waverley, we only see the
same specimen under a different aspect; for, however sportive the goddess may be, she
has too much wit and invention to wear out a frolic by many repetitions. . . . . .
“A striking characteristic of both writers is their
ardent love of rural sports, and all manly and robust exercises. But the importance
given to the canine race in these works ought to be noted as a
characteristic feature by itself. I have seen some drawings by a Swiss Artist, who was
called the Raphael of cats; and either of the
writers before us might, by a similar phrase, be called the Wilkie of dogs. Is it necessary to justify such a compliment by
examples? Call Yarrow, or Lufra,
or poor Fangs, Colonel
Mannering’sPlato, Henry Morton’sElphin, or Hobbie
Elliot’sKilbuck, or Wolf of Avenel Castle: see Fitz-James’s hounds returning
from the pursuit of the lost stag— ‘Back limped with slow and crippled pace The sulky leaders of the chase’ or swimming after the boat which carries their Master— ‘With heads erect and whimpering cry The hounds behind their passage ply.’ See Captain Clutterbuck’s dog quizzing him
when he missed a bird, or the scene of ‘mutual explanation and
remonstrance’ between ‘the venerable patriarchs old Pepper and
Mustard,’ and Henry Bertram’s
rough terrier Wasp. If these instances are not sufficient,
turn to the English blood-hound assailing the young Buccleuch— ‘And hark! and hark! the deep-mouthed bark Comes nigher still and nigher; Bursts on the path a dark blood-hound, His tawny muzzle tracked the ground, And his red eye shot fire. Soon as the wildered child saw he, He flew at him right furiouslie. . . . . I ween you would have seen with joy The bearing of the gallant boy. . . . . So fierce he struck, the dog, afraid, At cautious distance hoarsely bayed, But still in act to spring.’ Or Lord Ronald’s deer-hounds, in the haunted
forest of Glenfinlas— ‘Within an hour return’d each hound; In rush’d the rousers of the deer; They howl’d in melancholy sound, Then closely couch beside the seer. . . . . Sudden the hounds erect their ears, And sudden cease their moaning howl; Close press’d to Moy, they mark their fears By shivering limbs, and stifled growl. Untouch’d the harp began to ring, As softly, slowly, oped the door,’ &c. Or look at Cedric the Saxon, in his antique hall,
attended by his greyhounds and slowhounds, and the terriers which ‘waited with
impatience the arrival of the supper; but with the sagacious knowledge of
physiognomy peculiar to their race, forbore to intrude upon the moody silence of
their master.’ To complete the picture, ‘One grisly old wolf-dog
alone, with the liberty of an indulged favourite, had planted himself close by the
chair of state, and occasionally ventured to solicit notice by putting his large
hairy head upon his master’s knee, or pushing his nose into his hand. Even he
was repelled by the stern command, “Down, Balder,
down! I am not in the humour for foolery.”’
“Another animated sketch occurs in the way of
simile.—‘The interview between Ratcliffe and Sharpitlaw had an
aspect different from all these. They sate for five minutes silent, on opposite
sides of a small table, and looked fixedly at each other, with a sharp, knowing,
and alert cast of countenance, not unmingled with an inclination to laugh, and
resembled, more than any thing else, two dogs, who, preparing for a game at romps,
are seen to couch down, and remain in that posture for a little time, watching each
other’s movements, and waiting which shall begin the game.’
“Let me point out a still more amusing study of
canine life: While the Antiquary was in full declamation, Juno, who held him in awe, according to the remarkable instinct by which
dogs instantly discover those who like or dislike them, had peeped several times into
the room, and, encountering nothing very forbidding in his aspect, had at length
presumed to introduce her full person, and finally, becoming bold by impunity, she
actually ate up Mr Oldbuck’s toast, as,
looking first at one, then at another of his audience, he repeated with
self-complacence, “Weave the warp, and weave the woof,” “You remember the passage in the Fatal Sisters, which, by the way, is not so fine as in the original—But,
hey-day! my toast has vanished! I see which way—Ah, thou type of womankind, no wonder
they take offence at thy generic appellation!” (So saying, he shook his fist at
Juno, who scoured out of the parlour.)’
“In short, throughout these works, wherever it is
possible for a dog to contribute in any way to the effect of a scene, we find there the
very dog that was required, in his proper place and attitude. In Branksome Hall, when
the feast was over, ‘The stag-hounds, weary with the chase, Lay stretched upon the rushy floor, And urged, in dreams, the forest race From Teviot-stone to Eskdale-moor.’ The gentle Margaret, when she steals secretly from
the castle, ‘Pats the shaggy blood-hound As he rouses him up from his lair.’ When Waverley visits the Baron of Bradwardine, in his concealment at Janet Gellatley’s, Ban and Buscar play their parts in every point with perfect
discretion; and in the joyous company that assembles at Little Veolan, on the
Baron’s enlargement, these honest animals are found ‘stuffed to the
throat with food, in the liberality of Macwheeble’s joy,’ and ‘snoring on the
floor.’ In the perilous adventure of Henry
Bertram, at Portanferry gaol, the action would lose half its interest,
without the by-play of little Wasp. At the funeral ceremony
of Duncraggan (in the Lady of the Lake), a
principal mourner is ——‘Stumah, who, the bier beside, His master’s corpse with wonder eyed; Poor Stumah! whom his least halloo Could send like lightning o’er the dew.’ Ellen Douglas smiled (or did not smile) ——‘to see the stately drake, Lead forth his fleet upon the lake, While her vexed spaniel from the beach, Bayed at the prize beyond his reach.’
“I will close this growing catalogue of examples
with one of the most elegant descriptions that ever sprang from a poet’s
fancy:
‘Delightful praise! like summer rose, That brighter in the dew-drop glows, The bashful maiden’s cheek appeared, For Douglas spoke, and Malcolm heard. The flush of shame-faced joy to hide, The hounds, the hawk, her cares divide; The loved caresses of the maid The dogs with crouch and whimper paid; And, at her whistle, on her hand, The falcon took his favourite stand, Closed his dark wing, relaxed his eye, Nor, though unhooded, sought to fly.’ * * * * *
“Their passion for martial subjects, and their
success in treating them, form a conspicuous point of resemblance between the novelist
and poet. No writer has appeared in our age (and few have ever existed) who could vie
with the author of Marmion in
describing battles and marches, and all the terrible grandeur of war, except the author
of Waverley. Nor is there any man of
original genius and powerful inventive talent as conversant with the military
character, and as well schooled in tactics as the author of Waverley, except the author of Marmion. Both seem
to exult in camps, and to warm at the approach of a soldier. In every warlike scene
that awes and agitates, or dazzles and inspires, the poet triumphs; but where any
effect is to be produced by dwelling on the minutiæ of military habits and
discipline, or exhibiting the blended hues of individual humour and professional
peculiarity, as they present themselves in the mess-room or the guard-room, every
advantage is on the side of the novelist. I might illustrate this position by tracing
all the gradations of character marked out in the novels, from the Baron of Bradwardine to Tom
Halliday: but the examples are too well known to require enumeration,
and too generally admired to stand in need of panegyric. Both writers, then, must have
bestowed a greater attention on military subjects, and have mixed more frequently in
the society of soldiers, than is usual with persons not educated to the profession of
arms.
“It may be asked why we should take for granted
that the writer of these novels is not himself a member of the military profession? The
conjecture is a little improbable if we have been right in concluding that the
minuteness and multiplicity of our author’s legal details are the fruit of his
own study and practice; although the same person may certainly, at different periods of
life, put on the helmet and the wig, the gorget and the band; attend courts and lie in
trenches; head a charge and lead a cause. I cannot help suspecting, however (it is with
the greatest diffidence I venture the remark), that in those warlike recitals which so
strongly interest the great body of readers, an army critic would discover several
particulars that savour more of the amateur than of the practised campaigner. It is not
from any technical improprieties (if such exist) that I derive this observation, but,
on the contrary, from a too great minuteness and over-curious diligence, at times
perceptible in the military details; which, amidst a seeming fluency and familiarity,
betray, I think, here and there, the lurking vestiges of labour and contrivance, like
the marks of pickaxes in an artificial grotto. The accounts of
operations in the field, if not more circumstantial than a professional author would
have made them, are occasionally circumstantial on points which such an author would
have thought it idle to dwell upon. A writer who derived his knowledge of war from
experience would, no doubt, like the Author of Waverley, delight in shaping out imaginary
manoeuvres, or in filling up the traditional outline of those martial enterprises and
conflicts, which have found a place in history; perhaps, too, he would dwell on these
parts of his narrative a little longer than was strictly necessary; but in describing
(for example) the advance of a party of soldiers, threatened by an ambuscade, he would
scarcely think it worth while to relate at large that the captain ‘re-formed
his line of march, commanded his soldiers to unsling their firelocks and fix their
bayonets, and formed an advanced and rear-guard, each consisting of a
non-commissioned officer and two privates, who received strict orders to keep an
alert look-out:’ or that when the enemy appeared, ‘he ordered
the rear-guard to join the centre, and both to close up to the advance, doubling
his files, so as to occupy with his column the whole practicable part of the
road,’ &c. Again, in representing a defeated corps retiring and
pressed by the enemy, he would probably never think of recording (as our novelist does
in his incomparable narrative of the engagement at Drumclog) that the commanding
officer gave such directions as these—‘Let Allan form the regiment, and do you two retreat up the hill in two
bodies, each halting alternately as the other falls back. I’ll keep the
rogues in check with the rear-guard, making a stand and facing from time to
time.’ I do not offer these observations for the purpose of depreciating
a series of military pictures, which have never been surpassed in richness, animation,
and distinctness; I will own, too, that such details as I have pointed out are the
fittest that could be selected for the generality of novel-readers; I merely contend
that a writer practically acquainted with war would either have passed over these
circumstances as too common to require particular mention, or if he had thought it
necessary to enlarge upon these, would have dwelt with proportionate minuteness on
incidents of a less ordinary kind, which the recollections of a soldier would have
readily supplied, and his imagination would have rested on with complacency. He would,
in short, have left as little undone for the military, as the present author has for
the legal part of his narratives. But the most ingenious writer, who attempts to
discourse with technical familiarity on arts or pur-suits with which he is not habitually conversant,
will too surely fall into a superfluous particularity on common and trivial points,
proportioned to his deficiency in those nicer details which imply practical
knowledge.” . . . . . . .
‘The prince of darkness is a gentleman.’†
“Another point of resemblance between the Author of
Waverley and him of Flodden Field
is, that both are unquestionably men of good society. Of the anonymous writer I infer
this from his works; of the poet it is unnecessary to deduce such a character from his
writings, because they are not anonymous. I am the more inclined to dwell upon this
merit in the novelist, on account of its rarity; for among the whole multitude of
authors, well or ill educated, who devote themselves to poetry or to narrative or
dramatic fiction, how few there are who give any proof in their works, of the refined
taste, the instinctive sense of propriety, the clear spirit of honour, nay, of the
familiar acquaintance with conventional forms of good-breeding, which are essential to
the character of a gentleman! Even of the small number who, in a certain degree possess
these qualifications, how rarely do we find one who can so conduct his fable, and so
order his dialogue throughout, that nothing shall be found either repugnant to
honourable feelings or inconsistent with polished manners! How constantly, even in the
best works of fiction, are we disgusted with such offences against all generous
principle, as the reading of letters by those for whom they were not intended; taking
advantage of accidents to overhear private conversation; revealing what in honour
should have remained secret; plotting against men as enemies, and at the same time
making use of their services; dishonest, practices on the passions or sensibilities of
women by their admirers; falsehoods, not always indirect; and an endless variety of low
artifices, which appear to be thought quite legitimate if carried on through
subordinate agents. And all these knaveries are assigned to characters which the reader
is expected to honour with his sympathy, or at least to receive into favour before the
story concludes.
“The sins against propriety in manners are as
frequent and as glaring. I do not speak of the hoyden vivacity, harlot tenderness, and
dancing-school affability, with which vulgar novel-writers always deck out their
countesses and principessas, chevaliers, dukes,
† King Lear, Act III. Sc. 4.
and marquises; but it would be easy to produce, from authors of a
better class, abundant instances of bookish and laborious pleasantry, of pert and
insipid gossip or mere slang, the wrecks, perhaps, of an obsolete fashionable dialect,
set down as the brilliant conversation of a witty and elegant society: incredible
outrages on the common decorum of life, represented as traits of eccentric humour;
familiar raillery pushed to downright rudeness; affectation or ill-breeding
over-coloured so as to become insupportable insolence; extravagant rants on the most
delicate topics indulged in before all the world; expressions freely interchanged
between gentlemen, which, by the customs of that class, are neither used nor tolerated;
and quarrels carried on most bombastically and abusively, even to mortal defiance,
without a thought bestowed upon the numbers, sex, nerves, or discretion of the
bystanders.
“You will perceive that in recapitulating the
offences of other writers, I have pronounced an indirect eulogium on the Author of
Waverley. No man, I think, has a
clearer view of what is just and honourable in principle and conduct, or possesses in a
higher degree that elegant taste, and that chivalrous generosity of feeling, which,
united with exact judgment, give an author the power of comprehending and expressing,
not merely the right and fit, but the graceful and exalted in human action. As an
illustration of these remarks, a somewhat homely one perhaps, let me call to your
recollection the incident, so wild and extravagant in itself, of Sir Piercie Shafton’s elopement with the
miller’s daughter. In the address and feeling with which the author has displayed
the high-minded delicacy of Queen
Elizabeth’s courtier to the unguarded village nymph, in his brief
reflections arising out of this part of the narrative, and indeed in his whole
conception and management of the adventure, I do not know whether the moralist or the
gentleman is most to be admired: it is impossible to praise too warmly either the sound
taste, or the virtuous sentiment which have imparted so much grace and interest to such
a hazardous episode.
“It may, I think, be generally affirmed, on a
review of all the six-and-thirty volumes, in which this author has related the
adventures of some twenty or more heroes and heroines (without counting second-rate
personages), that there is not an unhandsome action or degrading sentiment recorded of
any person who is recommended to the full esteem of the reader. To be blameless on this
head is one of the strongest proofs a writer can give of honourable principles
implanted by education and refreshed by good society.
“The correctness in morals is scarcely more
remarkable than the refinement and propriety in manners, by which these novels are
distinguished. Where the character of a gentleman is introduced, we generally find it
supported without affectation or constraint, and often with so much truth, animation,
and dignity, that we forget ourselves into a longing to behold and converse with the
accomplished creature of imagination. It is true that the volatile and elegant man of
wit and pleasure, and the gracefully fantastic petite-maitresse, are a species of
character scarcely ever attempted, and even the few sketches we meet with in this style
are not worthy of so great a master. But the aristocratic country gentleman, the
ancient lady of quality, the gallant cavalier, the punctilious young soldier, and the
jocund veteran, whose high mind is mellowed, not subdued by years, are drawn with
matchless vigour, grace, and refinement. There is, in all these creations, a spirit of
gentility, not merely of that negative kind which avoids giving offence, but of a
strong, commanding, and pervading quality, blending unimpaired with the richest humour
and wildest eccentricity, and communicating an interest and an air of originality to
characters which, without it, would be wearisome and insipid, or would fade into
commonplace. In Waverley, for example,
if it were not for this powerful charm, the severe but warm-hearted Major Melville and the generous Colonel Talbot would become mere ordinary machines for carrying on the
plot, and Sir Everard, the hero of an episode that
might be coveted by Mackenzie, would encounter
the frowns of every impatient reader, for unprofitably retarding the story at its first
outset.
“But without dwelling on minor instances, I will
refer you at once to the character of Colonel
Mannering, as one of the most striking representations I am acquainted
with, of a gentleman in feelings and in manners, in habits, taste, predilections; nay,
if the expression may be ventured, a gentleman even in prejudices, passions, and
caprices. Had it been less than all I have described; had any refinement, any nicety of
touch been wanting, the whole portrait must have been coarse, common, and repulsive,
hardly distinguishable from the moody father and domineering chieftain of every
hackneyed romance-writer. But it was no vulgar hand that drew the lineaments of
Colonel Mannering: no ordinary mind could have
conceived that exquisite combination of sternness and sensibility, injurious
haughtiness and chivalrous courtesy; the promptitude, decision, and imperious spirit of
a military disciplin-arian; the romantic caprices of an untameable
enthusiast; generosity impatient of limit or impediment; pride scourged but not subdued
by remorse; and a cherished philosophical severity, maintaining ineffectual conflicts
with native tenderness and constitutional irritability. Supposing that it had entered
into the thoughts of an inferior writer to describe a temper of mind at once impetuous,
kind, arrogant, affectionate, stern, sensitive, deliberate, fanciful; supposing even
that he had had the skill to combine these different qualities harmoniously and
naturally, yet how could he have attained the Shaksperian felicity of those delicate
and unambitious touches, by which this author shapes and chisels out individual
character from general nature, and imparts a distinct personality to the creature of
his invention? Such are (for example) the slight tinge of superstition, contracted by
the romantic young Astrologer in his adventure at Ellangowan, not wholly effaced in
maturer life, and extending itself by contagion to the mind of his daughter,”
&c. &c.
—It would have gratified Mr
Adolphus could he have known when he penned these pages a circumstance which
the reperusal of them brings to my memory. When Guy Mannering was first published, the Ettrick
Shepherd said to Professor Wilson,
“I have done wi’ doubts now. Colonel
Mannering is just Walter Scott,
painted by himself.” This was repeated to James
Ballantyne, and he again mentioned it to Scott who
smiled in approbation of the Shepherd’s shrewdness, and often afterwards, when the
printer expressed an opinion in which he could not concur, would cut him short
with—“James—James you’ll find
that Colonel Mannering has laid down the law on this
point.”—I resume my extract—
“All the productions I am acquainted with, both of
the poet and of the prose writer, recommend themselves by a native piety and goodness,
not generally predominant in modern works of imagination; and which, where they do
appear, are too often disfigured by eccentricity, pretension, or bad taste. In the
works before us there is a constant tendency to promote the desire of excellence in ourselves, and the
love of it in our neighbours, by making us think honourably of our general nature.
Whatever kindly or charitable affection, whatever principle of manly and honest
ambition exists within us, is roused and stimulated by the perusal of these writings;
our passions are won to the cause of justice, purity, and self-denial; and the old,
indissoluble ties that bind us to country, kindred, and birth-place, appear to
strengthen as we read, and brace themselves more firmly about the heart and
imagination. Both writers, although peculiarly happy in their conception of all
chivalrous and romantic excellencies, are still more distinguished by their deep and
true feeling and expressive delineation of the graces and virtues proper to domestic
life. The gallant, elevated, and punctilious character which a Frenchman contemplates
in speaking of ‘un honnête homme,’ is singularly
combined, in these authors, with the genial, homely good qualities that win from a
Caledonian the exclamation of ‘honest man!’ But the crown of their merits,
as virtuous and moral writers, is the manly and exemplary spirit with which, upon all
seasonable occasions, they pay honour and homage to religion, ascribing to it its just
pre-eminence among the causes of human happiness, and dwelling on it as the only
certain source of pure and elevated thoughts, and upright, benevolent, and magnanimous
actions.
“This then is common to the books of both writers;
that they furnish a direct and distinguished contrast to the atrabilious gloom of some
modern works of genius, and the wanton, but not artless levity of others. They yield a
memorable, I trust an immortal accession to the evidences of a truth not always
fashionable in literature, that the mind of man may put forth all its bold luxuriance
of original thought, strong feeling, and vivid imagination, without being loosed from
any sacred and social bond, or pruned of any legitimate affection; and that the Muse is
indeed a ‘heavenly goddess,’ and not a graceless, lawless runagate, ‘άϕρήτωρ,
άϑέμιστος,
άνέστιος’—
“Good sense, the sure foundation of excellence in
all the arts, is another leading characteristic of these productions. Assuming the
author of Waverley and the author of
Marmion to be the same person, it
would be difficult in our times to find a second equally free from affectation,
prejudice, and every other distortion or depravity of judgment, whether arising from
ignorance, weakness, or corruption of morals. It is astonishing that so volumi-nous and successful a writer should so seldom be betrayed into any
of those ‘fantastic tricks’ which, in such a man, make ‘the angels
weep,’ and (è converso) the
critics laugh. He adopts no fashionable cant, colloquial, philosophical, or literary;
he takes no delight in being unintelligible; he does not amuse himself by throwing out
those fine sentimental and metaphysical threads which float upon the air, and tease and
tickle the passengers, but present no palpable substance to their grasp; he aims at no
beauties that ‘scorn the eye of vulgar light;’ he is no dealer in
paradoxes; no affecter of new doctrines in taste or morals; he has no eccentric
sympathies or antipathies; no maudlin philanthropy, or impertinent cynicism; no
non-descript hobby-horse; and with all his matchless energy and originality of mind, he
is content to admire popular books, and enjoy popular pleasures; to cherish those
opinions which experience has sanctioned; to reverence those institutions which
antiquity has hallowed; and to enjoy, admire, cherish, and reverence all these with the
same plainness, simplicity, and sincerity as our ancestors did of old.
* * * * * * *
“I cannot help dwelling for a moment on the great
similarity of manner apparent in the female portraits of the two writers. The pictures
of their heroines are executed with a peculiar fineness, delicacy, and minuteness of
touch, and with a care at times almost amounting to timidity, so that they generally
appear more highly finished, but less boldly and strikingly thrown out, than the
figures with which they are surrounded. Their elegance and purity are always admirable,
and are happily combined, in most instances, with unaffected ease and natural spirit.
Strong practical sense is their most prevailing characteristic, unaccompanied by any
repulsive air of selfishness, pedantry, or unfeminine harshness. Few writers have ever
evinced, in so strong a degree as the authors of Marmion and Waverley, that manly regard, and dignified but enthusiastic devotion, which
may be expressed by the term loyalty to the fair sex, the honourable attribute of
chivalrous and romantic ages. If they touch on the faults of womankind, their satire is
playful, not contemptuous; and their acquaintance with female manners, graces, and
foibles is apparently drawn, not from libertine experience, but from the guileless
familiarity of domestic life.
“Of all human ties and connexions there is none so
frequently brought in view, or adorned with so many touches of the most affecting
eloquence by both these writers, as the pure and tender relation
of father and daughter. Douglas and Ellen in the Lady
of the Lake will immediately occur to you as a distinguished example. Their
mutual affection and solicitude; their pride in each other’s excellencies; the
parent’s regret of the obscurity to which fate has doomed his child; and the
daughter’s self-devotion to her father’s welfare and safety, constitute the
highest interest of the poem, and that which is most uniformly sustained; nor does this
or any other romance of the same author contain a finer stroke of passion than the
overboiling of Douglas’s wrath, when, mixed
as a stranger with the crowd at Stirling, he sees his daughter’s favourite Lufra chastised by the royal huntsman.
“In Rokeby the filial attachment and duteous anxieties of Matilda form the leading feature of her character, and
the chief source of her distresses. The intercourse between King Arthur and his daughter Gyneth, in The Bridal of
Triermain, is neither long, nor altogether amicable; but the monarch’s
feelings on first beholding that beautiful ‘slip of wilderness,’ and
his manner of receiving her before the queen and court, are too forcibly and naturally
described to be omitted in this enumeration.
“Of all the novels, there are at most but two or
three in which a fond father and affectionate daughter may not be pointed out among the
principal characters, and in which the main interest of many scenes does not arise out
of that paternal and filial relation. What a beautiful display of natural feeling,
under every turn of circumstances that can render the situations of child and parent
agonizing or delightful, runs through the history of David
Deans and his two daughters! How affecting is the tale of Leicester’s unhappy Countess, after we have seen
her forsaken father consuming away with moody sorrow in his joyless manor-house! How
exquisite are the grouping and contrast of Isaac,
the kind but sordid Jew, and his heroic Rebecca, of
the buckram Baron of Bradwardine and the sensitive
Rose, the reserved but ardent Mannering, and the flighty coquette Julia! In the
Antiquary, and Bride of
Lammermoor, anxiety is raised to the most painful height by the spectacle of
father and daughter exposed together to imminent and frightful peril. The heroines in
Rob Roy and the Black Dwarf are duteous and devoted daughters, the one
of an unfortunate, the other of an unworthy parent. In the whole story of Kenilworth there is nothing that more
strongly indicates a master-hand than the paternal carefulness and apprehensions of the
churl Foster; and among the most striking scenes in
A Legend of Montrose, is that in
which Sir Duncan Campbell is attracted by an obscure
yearning of the heart toward his unknown child, the supposed orphan of Darnlinvarach.”
It would be impossible for one to follow out Mr Adolphus in his most ingenious tracings of petty coincidences in
thought, and, above all, in expression, between the poet of Marmion and the novelist of Waverley. His apology for the minuteness of his detail in
that part of his work, is, however, too graceful to be omitted: “It cannot, I
think, appear frivolous or irrelevant, in the enquiry we are pursuing, to dwell on
these minute coincidences. Unimportant indeed they are if looked upon as subjects of
direct criticism; but considered with reference to our present purpose, they resemble
those light substances which, floating on the trackless sea, discover the true setting
of some mighty current: they are the buoyant driftwood which betrays the hidden
communication of two great poetic oceans.”
I conclude with re-quoting a fragment from one of the quaint tracts of
Sir Thomas Urquhart. The following is the
epigraph of Mr Adolphus’s 5th Letter:—
“O with how great liveliness did he represent the
conditions of all manner of men! From the overweening monarch to the peevish swaine,
through all intermediate degrees of the superficial courtier or proud warrior,
dissembled churchman, doting old man, cozening lawyer, lying traveler, covetous
merchant, rude seaman, pedantick scolar, the amorous shepheard, envious artisan,
vain-glorious master and tricky servant;——He had all the jeers, squibs, flouts, buls,
quips, taunts, whims, jests, clinches, gybes, mokes, jerks, with all the several kinds
of equivocations and other sophistical captions, that could properly be adapted to the
person by whose representation he intended to inveagle the company into a fit of
mirth!”
I have it not in my power to produce the letter in which Scott conveyed to Heber
his opinion of this work. I know, however, that it ended with a request that he should present Mr
Adolphus with his thanks for the handsome terms in which his poetical
efforts had been spoken of throughout, and request him, in the name of the author of Marmion, not to
revisit Scotland without reserving a day for Abbotsford; and the Eidolon of the author of Waverley was made, a few months afterwards, to speak as
follows in the Introduction to the Fortunes of
Nigel: “These letters to the member for the University of Oxford show
the wit, genius, and delicacy of the author, which I heartily wish to see engaged on a
subject of more importance; and show, besides, that the preservation of my character of
incognito has engaged early talent in the discussion of a
curious question of evidence. But a cause, however ingeniously pleaded, is not
therefore gained. You may remember the neatly-wrought chain of circumstantial evidence,
so artificially brought forward to prove Sir Philip
Francis’s title to the Letters of
Junius, seemed at first irrefragable; yet the influence of the reasoning has
passed away, and Junius, in the general opinion,
is as much unknown as ever. But on this subject I will not be soothed or provoked into
saying one word more. To say who I am not, would be one step towards saying who I am;
and as I desire not, any more than a certain Justice of Peace mentioned by Shenstone, the noise or report such things make in the
world, I shall continue to be silent on a subject which, in my opinion, is very
undeserving the noise that has been made about it, and still more unworthy of the
serious employment of such ingenuity as has been displayed by the young
letter-writer.”*
* See Waverley Novels, vol. xxvi., p, xxxiv.
CHAP. VI. NEW BUILDINGS AT ABBOTSFORD—CHIEFSWOOD—WILLIAM
ERSKINE—LETTER TO COUNTESS PURGSTALL—PROGRESS OF THE PIRATE—PRIVATE LETTERS IN THE REIGN OF JAMES
I.—COMMENCEMENT OF THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL—SECOND
SALE OF COPYRIGHTS—CONTRACT FOR “FOUR WORKS OF FICTION”—ENORMOUS PROFITS OF THE
NOVELIST, AND EXTRAVAGANT PROJECTS OF CONSTABLE—THE
PIRATE PUBLISHED—LORD BYRON’SCAIN, DEDICATED TO SCOTT—AFFAIR OF THE
BEACON NEWSPAPER—FRANCK’SNORTHERN MEMOIRS—AND NOTES OF LORD FOUNTAINHALL,
PUBLISHED. 1821.
WhenSir Walter returned
from London, he brought with him Mr Blore’s
detailed plans for the completion of Abbotsford; the wall and gateway of the court in
front; and the beautiful open screen-work of stone connecting the house with the garden;
this last having been originally devised by himself, and constituting certainly the most
graceful feature about the edifice. The foundations towards the river were forthwith laid,
and some little progress was made during the autumn; but he was very reluctant to authorize
the demolition of the rustic porch of the old cottage, with its luxuriant overgrowth of
roses and jessamines; kept it standing for months after his workpeople complained of the
obstruction—and indeed could not make up his mind to sign the death-warrant of this
favourite bower until winter had robbed it of its
beauties. He then made an excursion from Edinburgh, on purpose to be present at its
downfall—saved as many of the creepers as seemed likely to survive removal, and planted
them with his own hands, about a somewhat similar porch, erected expressly for their
reception, at his daughter Sophia’s little
cottage of Chiefswood.
There my wife and I spent this summer and autumn of 1821—the first of
several seasons, which will ever dwell on my memory as the happiest of my life. We were
near enough Abbotsford to partake as often as we liked of its brilliant and constantly
varying society; yet could do so without being exposed to the worry and exhaustion of
spirit which the daily reception of new comers entailed upon all the family, except
Sir Walter himself. But, in truth, even he was not
always proof against the annoyances connected with such a style of open-house-keeping. Even
his temper sunk sometimes under the solemn applauses of learned dulness, the vapid raptures
of painted and periwigged dowagers, the horse-leech avidity with which underbred foreigners
urged their questions, and the pompous simpers of condescending magnates. When sore beset
at home in this way, he would every now and then discover that he had some very particular
business to attend to on an outlying part of his estate, and craving the indulgence of his
guests overnight, appear at the cabin in the glen before its inhabitants were astir in the
morning. The clatter of Sibyl Grey’s hoofs, the yelping of
Mustard and Spice, and his own
joyous shout of reveillée under our windows, were the signal
that he had burst his toils and meant for that day to “take his ease in his
inn.” On descending, he was to be found seated with all his dogs and ours
about him, under a spreading ash that overshadowed half the bank between the cottage and
the brook, pointing the edge of his woodman’s axe for himself,
and listening to Tom Purdie’s lecture touching
the plantation that most needed thinning. After breakfast, he would take possession of a
dressingroom up stairs, and write a chapter of The Pirate; and then, having made up and despatched his
packet for Mr Ballantyne, away to join
Purdie wherever the foresters were at work—and sometimes to labour
among them as strenuously as John Swanston
himself—until it was time either to rejoin his own party at Abbotsford or the quiet circle
of the cottage. When his guests were few and friendly, he often made them come over and
meet him at Chiefswood in a body towards evening; and surely he never appeared to more
amiable advantage than when helping his young people with their little arrangements upon
such occasions. He was ready with all sorts of devices to supply the wants of a narrow
establishment; he used to delight particularly in sinking the wine in a well under the brae ere he went out, and hawling up the basket just before dinner
was announced—this primitive process being, he said, what he had always practised when a
young housekeeper, and in his opinion far superior in its results to any application of
ice; and, in the same spirit, whenever the weather was sufficiently genial, he voted for
dining out of doors altogether, which at once got rid of the inconvenience of very small
rooms, and made it natural and easy for the gentlemen to help the ladies, so that the
paucity of servants went for nothing. Mr Rose used to
amuse himself with likening the scene and the party to the closing act of one of those
little French dramas where “Monsieur le Comte,” and “Madame la
Comtesse” appear feasting at a village bridal under the trees; but in truth, our
“M. le Comte” was only trying to live over again for a few simple hours his own
old life of Lasswade.
When circumstances permitted, he usually spent one evening at least in the
week at our little cottage; and almost as frequently he did the like with the Fergusons, to whose table he could bring chance visiters,
when he pleased, with equal freedom as to his daughter’s. Indeed it seemed to be much
a matter of chance, any fine day when there had been no alarming invasion of the Southron,
whether the three families (which, in fact, made but one) should dine at Abbotsford, at
Huntly Burn, or at Chiefswood; and at none of them was the party considered quite complete,
unless it included also Mr Laidlaw. Death has laid a
heavy hand upon that circle—as happy a circle I believe as ever met. Bright eyes now closed
in dust, gay voices for ever silenced, seem to haunt me as I write. With three exceptions,
they are all gone. Even since the last of these volumes was finished, she whom I may now
sadly record as, next to Sir Walter himself, the chief
ornament and delight of all those simple meetings—she to whose love I owed my own place in
them—Scott’s eldest daughter, the one of all his children who in countenance, mind, and
manners, most resembled himself, and who indeed was as like him in all things as a gentle
innocent woman can ever be to a great man deeply tried and skilled in the struggles and
perplexities of active life—she, too, is no more. And in the very hour that saw her laid in
her grave, the only other female survivor, her dearest friend Margaret Ferguson, breathed her last also.—But enough—and more than I
intended—I must resume the story of Abbotsford.
During several weeks of that delightful summer, Scott had under his roof Mr William
Erskine and two of his daughters; this being, I believe, their first visit
to Tweedside since the death of Mrs Erskine in
September 1819. He had probably made a point of having his friend with
him at this particular time, because he was desirous of having the benefit of his advice
and corrections from day to day as he advanced in the composition of the Pirate—with the localities of which romance the Sheriff
of Orkney and Zetland was of course thoroughly familiar. At all events, the constant and
eager delight with which Erskine watched the progress of the tale has
left a deep impression on my memory; and indeed I heard so many of its chapters first read
from the MS. by him, that I can never open the book now without thinking I hear his voice.
Sir Walter used to give him at breakfast the pages he had written
that morning; and very commonly, while he was again at work in his study,
Erskine would walk over to Chiefswood, that he might have the
pleasure of reading them aloud to my wife and me under our favourite tree, before the
packet had to be sealed up for the printer, or rather for the transcriber in Edinburgh. I
cannot paint the delight and the pride with which he acquitted himself on such occasions.
The little artifice of his manner was merely superficial, and was wholly forgotten as
tender affection and admiration, fresh as the impulses of childhood, glistened in his eye,
and trembled in his voice.
This reminds me that I have not yet attempted any sketch of the person and
manners of Scott’s most intimate friend. Their
case was no contradiction to the old saying, that the most attached comrades are often very
unlike each other in character and temperament. The mere physical contrast was as strong as
could well be, and this is not unworthy of notice here; for Erskine was, I think, the only man in whose society
Scott took great pleasure, during the more vigorous part of his
life, that had neither constitution nor inclination for any of the rough bodily exercises
in which he himself delighted. The
Counsellor (as Scott always called him) was a little man of feeble
make, who seemed unhappy when his pony got beyond a foot-pace, and had never, I should
suppose, addicted himself to any out-of-doors sport whatever. He would, I fancy, have as
soon thought of slaying his own mutton as of handling a fowling-piece: he used to shudder
when he saw a party equipped for coursing, as if murder were in the wind; but the cool
meditative angler was in his eyes the abomination of abominations. His small elegant
features, hectic cheek, and soft hazel eyes were the index of the quick sensitive gentle
spirit within. He had the warm heart of a woman, her generous enthusiasm, and some of her
weaknesses. A beautiful landscape, or a fine strain of music would send the tears rolling
down his cheek; and though capable, I have no doubt, of exhibiting, had his duty called him
to do so, the highest spirit of a hero or a martyr, he had very little command over his
nerves amidst circumstances such as men of ordinary mould (to say nothing of iron fabrics
like Scott’s) regard with indifference. He would dismount to
lead his horse down what his friend hardly perceived to be a descent at all; grew pale at a
precipice; and, unlike the White Lady of Avenel, would
go a long way round for a bridge.
Erskine had as yet been rather unfortunate in his
professional career, and thought a sheriffship by no means the kind of advancement due to
his merits, and which his connexions might naturally have secured for him. These
circumstances had at the time when I first observed him tinged his demeanour; he had come
to intermingle a certain wayward snappishness now and then with his forensic exhibitions,
and in private seemed inclined (though altogether incapable of abandoning the Tory party)
to say bitter things of people in high places; but with these
exceptions, never was benevolence towards all the human race more lively and overflowing
than his evidently was, even when he considered himself as one who had reason to complain
of his luck in the world. Now, however, these little asperities had disappeared; one great
real grief had cast its shadow over him, and submissive to the chastisement of heaven, he
had no longer any thoughts for the petty misusage of mankind. Scott’s apprehension was, that his ambition was extinguished with his
resentment; and he was now using every endeavour, in connexion with their common friend the
Lord Advocate Rae, to procure for
Erskine that long-coveted seat on the bench, about which the
subdued widower himself had ceased to occupy his mind. By and by these views were realized
to Scott’s high satisfaction, and for a brief season with the
happiest effect on Erskine’s own spirits; but I shall not
anticipate the sequel.
Meanwhile he shrunk from the collisions of general society in Edinburgh,
and lived almost exclusively in his own little circle of intimates. His conversation,
though somewhat precise and finical on the first impression, was rich in knowledge. His
literary ambition, active and aspiring at the outset, had long before this time merged in
his profound veneration for Scott; but he still read a
great deal, and did so as much I believe with a view to assisting
Scott by hints and suggestions, as for his own amusement. He had
much of his friend’s tact in extracting the picturesque from old, and, generally
speaking, dull books; and in bringing out his stores he often showed a great deal of quaint
humour and sly wit.
Scott, on his side, respected, trusted, and loved him,
much as an affectionate husband does the wife who gave him her heart in youth, and thinks
his thoughts rather than her own in the evening of life; he soothed, cheered, and sustained Erskine habitually; I do not believe a more entire and perfect confidence
ever subsisted than theirs was and always had been in each other; and to one who had duly
observed the creeping jealousies of human nature, it might perhaps seem doubtful on which
side the balance of real nobility of heart and character, as displayed in their connexion
at the time of which I am speaking, ought to be cast.
Among the common friends of their young days, of whom they both delighted
to speak—and always spoke with warm and equal affection—was the sister of their friend Cranstoun,
the confidant of Scott’s first unfortunate
love, whom neither had now seen for a period of
more than twenty years. This lady had undergone domestic afflictions more than sufficient
to have crushed almost any spirit but her own. Her husband, the Count
Purgstall, had died some years before this time, leaving her an only son, a
youth of the most amiable disposition, and possessing abilities which, had he lived to
develope them, must have secured for him a high station in the annals of genius. This hope
of her eyes, the last heir of an illustrious lineage, followed his father to the tomb in
the nineteenth year of his age. The desolate Countess was urged by her family in Scotland
to return, after this bereavement, to her native country; but she had vowed to her son on
his deathbed that one day her dust should be mingled with his; and no argument could induce
her to depart from the resolution of remaining in solitary Styria. By her desire, a valued
friend of the house of Purgstall, who had been born and bred up on their estates, the
celebrated Orientalist, Joseph von Hammer, compiled
a little memoir of “The Two Last Counts of
Purgstall,” which he put forth, in January 1821, under the title of
“Denkmahl,” or
Monument; and of this work the Countess sent a copy to Sir Walter
(with whom her correspondence had been during several years
suspended), by the hands of her eldest brother, Mr Henry
Cranstoun, who had been visiting her in Styria, and who at this time
occupied a villa within a few miles of Abbotsford. Scott’s
letter of acknowledgment never reached her; and indeed I doubt if it was ever despatched.
He appears to have meditated a set of consolatory verses for its conclusion, and the muse
not answering his call at the moment, I suspect he had allowed the sheet, which I now
transcribe, to fall aside and be lost sight of among his multifarious masses of MS.
To the Countess Purgstall, &c. &c.
“My Dear and much valued Friend,
“You cannot imagine how much I was interested and
affected by receiving your token of your kind recollection, after the interval
of so many years. Your brother Henry
breakfasted with me yesterday, and gave me the letter and the book, which served me as a
matter of much melancholy reflection for many hours.
“Hardly any thing makes the mind recoil so much upon
itself, as the being suddenly and strongly recalled to times long past, and
that by the voice of one whom we have so much loved and respected. Do not think
I have ever forgotten you, or the many happy days I passed in Frederick Street,
in society which fate has separated so far, and for so many years.
“The little volume was particularly acceptable to me,
as it acquainted me with many circumstances, of which distance and imperfect
communication had left me either entirely ignorant, or had transmitted only
inaccurate information.
“Alas! my dear friend, what can the utmost efforts of
friendship offer you, beyond the sympathy which, however sincere, must sound
like an empty compliment
in the ear of affliction. God knows with what willingness I would undertake
anything which might afford you the melancholy consolation of knowing how much
your old and early friend interests himself in the sad event which has so
deeply wounded your peace of mind. The verses, therefore, which conclude this
letter, must not be weighed according to their intrinsic value, for the more
inadequate they are to express the feelings they would fain convey, the more
they show the author’s anxious wish to do what may be grateful to you.
“In truth, I have long given up poetry. I have had my
day with the public; and being no great believer in poetical immortality, I was
very well pleased to rise a winner, without continuing the game, till I was
beggared of any credit I had acquired. Besides, I felt the prudence of giving
way before the more forcible and powerful genius of Byron. If I were either greedy, or jealous of poetical fame—and
both are strangers to my nature—I might comfort myself with the thought, that I
would hesitate to strip myself to the contest so fearlessly as
Byron does; or to command the wonder and terror of the
public, by exhibiting, in my own person, the sublime attitude of the dying
gladiator. But with the old frankness of twenty years since, I will fairly own,
that this same delicacy of mine may arise more from conscious want of vigour
and inferiority, than from a delicate dislike to the nature of the conflict. At
any rate, there is a time for every thing, and without swearing oaths to it, I
think my time for poetry has gone by.
“My health suffered horridly last year, I think from
over labour and excitation; and though it is now apparently restored to its
usual tone, yet during the long and painful disorder (spasms in the stomach),
and the frightful process of cure, by a prolonged use of
calomel, I learned that my frame was made of flesh, and not of iron, a
conviction which I will long keep in remembrance, and avoid any occupation, so
laborious and agitating, as poetry must be, to be worth any thing.
“In this humour, I often think of passing a few weeks
on the continent—a summer vacation if I can—and of course my attraction to
Gratz would be very strong. I fear this is the only chance of our meeting in
this world, we, who once saw each other daily! For I understand from George and Henry, that there is little chance of your coming here. And
when I look around me, and consider how many changes you will see in feature,
form, and fashion, amongst all you knew and loved; and how much, no sudden
squall, or violent tempest, but the slow and gradual progress of life’s
long voyage, has severed all the gallant fellowships whom you left spreading
their sails to the morning breeze, I really am not sure that you would have
much pleasure.
“The gay and wild romance of life is over with all of
us. The real, dull, and stern history of humanity has made a far greater
progress over our heads; and age, dark and unlovely, has laid his crutch over
the stoutest fellow’s shoulders. One thing your old society may boast,
that they have all run their course with honour, and almost all with
distinction; and the brother suppers of Frederick Street have certainly made a
very considerable figure in the world, as was to be expected, from her talents
under whose auspices they were assembled.
“One of the most pleasant sights which you would see
in Scotland, as it now stands, would be your brother George in possession of the most beautiful and
romantic place in
Clydesdale—Corehouse. I have promised often to go out with him, and assist him
with my deep experience as a planter and landscape gardener. I promise you my
oaks will outlast my laurels; and I pique myself more upon my compositions for
manure than on any other compositions whatsoever to which I was ever accessary.
But so much does business of one sort or other engage us both, that we never
have been able to fix a time which suited us both; and with the utmost wish to
make out the party, perhaps we never may.
“This is a melancholy letter, but it is chiefly so
from the sad tone of yours—who have had such real disasters to lament while
mine is only the humorous sadness, which a retrospect on human life is sure to
produce on the most prosperous. For my own course of life, I have only to be
ashamed of its prosperity, and afraid of its termination; for I have little
reason, arguing on the doctrine of chances, to hope that the same good fortune
will attend me for ever. I have had an affectionate and promising family, many
friends, few unfriends, and I think, no enemies—and more of fame and fortune
than mere literature ever procured for a man before.
“I dwell among my own people, and have many whose
happiness is dependent on me, and which I study to the best of my power. I
trust my temper, which you know is by nature good and easy, has not been
spoiled by flattery or prosperity; and therefore I have escaped entirely that
irritability of disposition which I think is planted, like the slave in the
poet’s chariot, to prevent his enjoying his triumph.
“Should things, therefore, change with me—and in
these times, or indeed in any times, such change is to be apprehended—I trust I
shall be able to surrender these adventitious advantages, as I would my upper
dress, as something extremely comfortable, but which I
can make shift to do without.”* . . . .
As I may have no occasion hereafter to allude to the early friend with
whose sorrows Scott thus sympathized amidst the meridian
splendours of his own worldly career, I may take this opportunity of mentioning, that
Captain Basil Hall’s conjecture of her
having been the original of Diana Vernon, appeared to
myself from the first chimerical; and that I have since heard those who knew her best in
the days of her intercourse with Sir Walter, express the same opinion
in the most decided manner. But to return.
While the Pirate was
advancing under Mr Erskine’s eye, Scott had even more than the usual allowance of minor literary
operations on hand. He edited a reprint of a curious old book, called, ‘Franck’s Northern Memoir, and the
Contemplative Angler;’ and he also prepared for the press a volume
published soon after, under the title of ‘Chronological Notes on Scottish Affairs, 1680 to 1701, from the Diary of Lord
Fountainhall.’ The professional writings of that celebrated old lawyer,
had been much in his hands from his early years, on account of the incidental light which
they throw on the events of a most memorable period in Scottish history: and he seems to
have contemplated some more considerable selection from his remains, but to have dropped
these intentions, on being given to understand that they might interfere with those of
Lord Fountainhall’s accomplished
representative, the present
* In communicating this letter to my friend Captain Hall, when he was engaged in his Account of a Visit to Madame de
Purgstall during the last months of her life, I suggested to him, in
consequence of an expression about Scott’s
health, that it must have been written in 1820. The date of the
“Denkmahl,” to which it refers, is, however, sufficient evidence that I
ought to have said 1821.
Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Baronet. It is, however, to
be regretted, that Sir Thomas’s promise of a Life of his eminent
ancestor has not yet been redeemed.
In August appeared the volume of the Novelist’s Library, containing Scott’sLife of Smollett; and it being now ascertained that
John Ballantyne had died a debtor, the editor
offered to proceed with this series of prefaces, on the footing that the whole profits of
the work should go to his widow. Mr Constable, whose
health was now beginning to break, had gone southwards in quest of more genial air, and was
at Hastings when he heard of this proposition. He immediately wrote to me, entreating me to
represent to Sir Walter that the undertaking, having been coldly
received at first, was unlikely to grow in favour if continued on the same plan—that in his
opinion the bulk of the volumes, and the small type of their text, had been unwisely chosen
for a work of mere entertainment, and could only be suitable for one of reference; that
Ballantyne’s Novelist’s Library, therefore, ought
to be stopped at once, and another in a lighter shape, to range with the late collected
edition of the first series of the Waverley
Romances, announced with his own name as publisher, and
Scott’s as editor. He proposed at the same time to commence
the issue of a Select Library of English Poetry, with prefaces and a few notes by the same
hand; and calculating that each of these collections should extend to twenty-five volumes,
and that the publication of both might be concluded within two years—“the writing
of the prefaces, &c. forming perhaps an occasional relief from more important
labours”!—the bookseller offered to pay their editor in all the sum of
L.6000: a small portion of which sum, as he hinted, would undoubtedly be more than
Mrs John Ballantyne could ever hope to derive
from the prosecution of her husband’s last publishing adventure.
Various causes combined to prevent the realization of these magnificent projects.
Scott now, as at the beginning of his career of speculation, had
views about what a collection of English Poetry should be, in which even
Constable could not, on consideration, be made to concur; and I
have already explained the coldness with which he regarded further attempts upon our Elder
Novelists. The Ballantyne Library crept on to the tenth volume,
and was then dropt abruptly; and the double negotiation with Constable
was never renewed.
Lady Louisa Stuart had not, I fancy, read Scott’s Lives of the Novelists until, some years after
this time, they were collected into two little piratical duodecimos by a Parisian
bookseller; and on her then expressing her admiration of them, together with her
astonishment that the speculation, of which they formed a part, should have attracted
little notice of any sort, he answered as follows:—“I am delighted they afford any
entertainment, for they are rather flimsily written, being done merely to oblige a
friend: they were yoked to a great, ill-conditioned, lubberly, double-columned book,
which they were as useful to tug along as a set of fleas would be to draw a mail-coach.
It is very difficult to answer your ladyship’s curious question concerning change
of taste; but whether in young or old, it takes place insensibly without the parties
being aware of it. A grand-aunt of my own, Mrs Keith of
Ravelstone, who was a person of some condition, being a daughter of
Sir John Swinton of Swinton—lived with
unabated vigour of intellect to a very advanced age. She was very fond of reading, and
enjoyed it to the last of her long life. One day she asked me, when we happened to be
alone together, whether I had ever seen Mrs
Behn’s novels?—I confessed the charge.—Whether I could get her a
sight of them?—I said, with some hesitation, I believed I
could; but that I did not think she would like either the manners, or the language,
which approached too near that of Charles
II.’s time to be quite proper reading.
‘Nevertheless,’ said the good old lady, ‘I remember them
being so much admired, and being so much interested in them myself, that I wish to
look at them again.’ To hear was to obey. So I sent Mrs Aphra
Behn, curiously sealed up, with ‘private and
confidential’ on the packet, to my gay old grand-aunt. The next time I saw
her afterwards, she gave me back Aphra, properly wrapped up, with
nearly these words:—‘Take back your bonny Mrs Behn; and,
if you will take my advice, put her in the fire, for I found it impossible to get
through the very first novel. But is it not,’ she said, ‘a very
odd thing that I, an old woman of eighty and upwards, sitting alone, feel myself
ashamed to read a book which, sixty years ago, I have heard read aloud for the
amusement of large circles, consisting of the first and most creditable society in
London.’ This, of course, was owing to the gradual improvement of the
national taste and delicacy. The change that brings into and throws out of fashion
particular styles of composition, is something of the same kind. It does not signify
what the greater or less merit of the book is:—the reader, as Tony Lumpkin says, must be in a concatenation accordingly—the fashion,
or the general taste, must have prepared him to be pleased, or put him on his guard
against it. It is much like dress. If Clarissa should appear before a modern party in her lace ruffles and
head-dress, or Lovelace in his wig, however
genteelly powdered, I am afraid they would make no conquests; the fashion which makes
conquests of us in other respects is very powerful in literary composition, and adds to
the effect of some works, while in others it forms their sole merit.”
Among other miscellaneous work of this autumn, Scott amused some leisure hours with writing a series of “Private
Letters,” supposed to have been discovered in the repositories of a Noble English
Family, and giving a picture of manners in town and country during the early part of the
reign of James I. These letters were printed as fast as he penned them, in a handsome
quarto form, and he furnished the margin with a running commentary of notes, drawn up in
the character of a disappointed chaplain, a keen Whig, or rather Radical, overflowing on
all occasions with spleen against Monarchy and Aristocracy. When the printing had reached
the 72d page, however, he was told candidly by Erskine, by James Ballantyne, and
also by myself, that, however clever his imitation of the epistolary style of the period in
question, he was throwing away in these letters the materials of as good a romance as he
had ever penned; and a few days afterwards he said to me patting Sibyl’s neck till she danced under him—“You were all quite right:
if the letters had passed for genuine they would have found favour only with a few musty
antiquaries, and if the joke were detected, there was not story enough to carry it off. I
shall burn the sheets, and give you Bonny King Jamie and
all his tail in the old shape, as soon as I can get Captain
Goffe within view of the gallows.”
Such was the origin of the “Fortunes of Nigel.” As one set of the uncompleted
Letters has been preserved, I shall here insert a specimen of them, in which the reader
will easily recognise the germ of more than one scene of the novel.
“Jenkin Harman to the Lord ——.
“My Lord,
“Towching this new mishappe of Sir Thomas, whereof your Lordshippe makes querie
of me, I wolde hartilie that I could, truth and my bounden
dutie alweys firste satisfied, make suche answer as were fullie plesaunte to me
to write, or unto your Lordshippe to reade. But what remedy? young men will
have stirring bloodes; and the courtier-like gallants of the time will be
gamesome and dangerous, as they have bene in dayes past. I think your
Lordshippe is so wise, as to caste one eye backe to your own more juvenile
time, whilest you looke forward with the other upon this mischaunce, which,
upon my lyfe, will be founde to be no otherwise harmful to Sir Thomas than as it shews him an hastie Hotspur
of the day, suddenlie checking at whatsoever may seem to smirche his honour. As
I am a trew man, and your Lordship’s poore kinsman and bounden servant, I
think ther lives not a gentleman more trew to his friende than Sir Thomas; and although ye be but brothers
uterine, yet so dearly doth he holde your favour, that his father, were the
gode knight alyve, should not have more swaye with him than shalle your
Lordship; and, also, it is no kindly part to sow discord betwene brethrene;
for, as the holy Psalmist saythe, ‘Ecce quam
bonum et ijnam jucundum habitare fratres,’ &c.
And moreover, it nedes not to tell your Lordshippe that Sir Thomas is suddene in his anger; and it was
but on Wednesday last that he said to me, with moche distemperature, Master Jenkin, I be tolde that ye meddle and make
betwene me and my Lorde my brother; wherfore, take this for feyr warninge, that
when I shall fynde you so dooying, I will incontinent put my dager to the hike
in you: and this was spoken with all ernestness of visage and actioun, grasping
of his poinard’s handle, as one who wolde presentlie make his words good.
Surely, my Lord, it is not fair carriage towarde your pore kinsman if anie out
of your house make such reports of me, and of that which I have written to you
in sympleness of herte, and in obedience to your commandemente, which is my law
on this matter. Truely, my Lord, I wolde this was well looked to, otherweys my
rewarde for trew service might be to handsell with my herte’s blode the
steel of a Milan poignado. Natheless, I will precede with my mater, fal back
fal edge, trustyng all utterly in the singleness of my integretie, and in your
Lordshippe’s discretioun.
“My Lorde, the braule which hath befallen
chaunced this waye, and not otherwise. It hap’d that one Raines, the master of the ordinarie where his
honour Sir Thomas eteth well nie dailie
(when he is not in attendance at courte, wherein he is perchance more slacke
than were wise), shoulde assemble some of the beste who haunte his house,
havyng diet ther for money. The purpose, as shewn forthe, was to tast a new
piece of choice wyne, and ther Sir Thomas must nedes be, or the purpos holdes
not, and the Alicant becometh Bastard. Wel, my Lord, dice ther wer and music,
lustie helthes and dizzie braines, some saye fair ladyes also, of which I know
nought, save that suche cockatrices hatch wher such cockes of the game do
haunt. Alweys ther was revel and wassail enow and to spare. Now it channced,
that whilst one Button, of
Graie’s-Inn, an Essex man, held the dice, Sir
Thomas fillethe a fulle carouse to the helth of the fair
Ladie Elizabeth. Trulie, my Lord, I
cannot blame his devotioun to so fair a saint, though I may wish the chapel for
his adoration had been better chosen, and the companie more suitable;
sed respice finem. The pledge
being given, and alle men on foote, aye, and some on knee, to drink the same,
young Philip Darcy, a near kinsman of my
Lorde’s, or so callyng himself, takes on him to check at the helthe,
askyng Sir Thomas if he were willinge to
drink the same in a Venetian glasse? the mening of whiche hard sentence your
Lordshippe shal esilie construe. Whereupon Sir
Thomas, your Lordsliippe’s brother, somewhat shrewishly
demanded whether that were his game or his ernest; to which demaunde the uther
answers recklessly as he that wolde not be brow-beaten, that Sir Thomas might take it for game or ernest as
him listed. Whereupon your Lordshippe’s brother, throwing down withal the
woodcocke’s bill, with which, as the fashioun goes, he was picking his
teeth, answered redily, he cared not that for his game or ernest, for that
neither were worth a bean. A small matter this to make such a storie, for
presentlie young Darcie up with the
wine-pot in which they had assaid the freshe hogshede, and heveth it at
Sir Thomas, which vessel missing of the
mark it was aym’d at, encountreth the hede of Master Button, when the outside of the flaggon did that which
peradventure the inside had accomplish’d somewhat later in the evening,
and stretcheth him on the flore; and then the crie arose, and you might see
twenty swords oute at once, and none rightly knowing wherfor. And the groomes
and valets, who waited in the street and in the kitchen, and who, as seldom
failes, had been as besy with the beer as their masters with the wine,
presentlie fell at odds, and betoke themselves to their weapones; so ther was
bouncing of bucklers, and bandying of blades instede of clattering of quart
pottles, and chiming of harpis and fiddles. At length comes the wache, and, as
oft happens in the like affraies, alle men join ageynst them, and they are
beten bak: An honest man, David Booth,
constable of the night, and a chandler by trade, is sorely hurt. The crie rises
of Prentices, prentices, Clubs, clubs, for word went that the court-gallants
and the Graie’s-Inn men had murther’d a citizen; all
menne take the street, and the whole ward is uppe, none well knowing why.
Menewhile our gallants had the lucke and sense to disperse their company, some
getting them into the Temples the gates wherof were presentlie shut to prevent
pursuite I warrant, and some taking boat as they might; water thus saving whom
wyne hath endaunger’d. The Alderman of the ward, worthy Master Danvelt, with Master Deputy, and others of
repute, bestow’d themselves not a litel to compose the tumult, and so al
past over for the evening.
“My Lord, this is the hole of the mater,
so far as my earnest and anxious serch had therein, as well for the sake of my
blode-relation to your honourable house, as frome affectioun to my kinsman
Sir Thomas, and especiallie in humble
obedience to your regarded commandes. As for other offence given by Sir Thomas, whereof idle bruites are current, as
that he should have call’d Master
Darcie a codshead or an woodcocke, I can lerne of no such
termes, nor anie nere to them, only that when he said he cared not for his game
or ernest, he flung down the woodcock’s bill, to which it may be there
was sticking a part of the head, though myinformant saithe otherwise; and he
stode so close by Sir Thomas, that he herde
the quart-pot whissel as it flew betwixt there too hedes. Of damage done among
the better sort, there is not muche; some cuts and thrusts ther wer, that had
their sequents in blood and woundes, but none dedlie. Of the rascal sort, one
fellowe is kill’d, and sundrie hurt. Hob
Hilton, your brother’s grome, for life a maymed man,
having a slash over the right hande, for faulte of a gauntlet.—Marry he has
been a brave knave and a sturdie: and if it pleses your goode Lordshippe, I
fynd he wolde gladlie be prefer’d, when tym is fitting, to the office of
bedle. He hath a burlie frame, and scare-babe visage; he shall do wel enoughe
in such charge, though lackyng the use of four fingers.* The hurtyng of the
constabel is a worse mater; as also the anger that is between the courtiers and
Graie’s-Inn men; so that yf close hede be not given, I doubt me we shall
here of more Gesta Graiorum. Thei
will not be persuaded but that the quarrel betwixt Sir
Thomas and young Darcie was
simulate; and that Master Dutton’s
hurte wes wilful; whereas, on my lyfe, it will not be founde so.
* “The death of the rascal sort is mentioned as
he would have commemorated that of a dog; and his readiest plan of
providing for a profligate menial, is to place him in superintendence
of the unhappy poor, over whom his fierce looks, and rough demeanour
are to supply the means of authority, which his arm can no longer
enforce by actual violence!”
“The counseyl hath taen the matter up,
and I here H. M. spoke many things gravely and solidly, and as one who taketh
to hert such unhappie chaunces, both against brauling and drinking. Sir Thomas, with others, hath put in plegge to be
forthcoming; and so strictly taken up wes the unhappie mater of the Scots
Lord,* that if Booth shulde die, which God
forefend, there might be a fereful reckoning: For one cityzen sayeth, I trust
falslie, he saw Sir Thomas draw back his
hand, having in it a drawn sword, just as the constabel felle. It seems but too
constant, that thei were within but short space of ech other when this unhappy
chaunce befel. My Lord, it is not for me to saie what course your Lordshippe
should steer in this storm, onlie that the Lord Chansellour’s gode worde
wil, as resen is, do yeman’s service. Schulde it come to fine or
imprisonment, as is to be fered, why should not your Lordshippe cast the weyght
into the balance for that restraint which goode Sir Thomas
must nedes bear himself, rather than for such penalty as must nedes pinche the
purses of his frendes. Your Lordship always knoweth best; but surely the yonge
knyght hath but litel reson to expect that you shulde further engage yourself
in such bondes as might be necessary to bring this fine into the Chequer.
Nether have wise men helde it unfit that heated bloode be coold by
sequestration for a space from temptation. There is dout, moreover, whether he
may not hold himself bounden, according to the forme of faythe which such
gallants and stirring spirits profess, to have further meeting with Master Philip Darcie, or this same Button, or with bothe, on this rare dependance of
an woodcocke’s hede, and a quart-pot; certeynly, methoughte, the last tym
we met, and when he bare himself towards me, as I have premonish’d your
Lordshippe, that he was fitter for quiet residence under safe keeping, than for
a free walk amongst peceful men.
“And thus, my Lord, ye have the whole mater before
you; trew ye shall find it,—my dutie demands it,—unpleasing, I cannot amende
it: But I truste neither more evil in esse nor in posse, than I have set forth
as above. From one, who is ever your Lordshippe’s most bounden to
command, &c.—J. H.”
I think it must have been about the middle of October that he dropped the
scheme of this fictitious correspondence. I well remember the morning that he began
* “Perhaps the case of Lord
Sanquhar. His Lordship had the misfortune to be hanged, for
causing a poor fencing-master to be assassinated, which seems the unhappy
matter alluded to.”
the Fortunes of Nigel. The day being
destined for Newark Hill, I went over to Abbotsford before breakfast, and found Mr Terry (who had been staying there for some time)
walking about with his friend’s master-mason, of whose proceedings he took a fatherly
charge, as he might well do, since the plan of the building had been in a considerable
measure the work of his own taste. While Terry and I were chatting,
Scott came out, bareheaded, with a bunch of MS. in
his hand, and said, “Well, lads, I’ve laid the keel of a new lugger this
morning—here it is—be off to the water-side, and let me hear how you like
it.” Terry took the papers, and walking up and down by the
river, read to me the first chapter of Nigel. He expressed great
delight with the animated opening, and especially with the contrast between its thorough
stir of London life, and a chapter about Norna of the
Fitful-Head, in the third volume of the Pirate, which had been given to him in a similar manner the morning before.
I could see that (according to the Sheriff’s phrase) he smelt roast
meat; here there was every prospect of a fine field for the art of Terryfication. The actor, when our host met us returning from the
haugh, did not fail to express his opinion that the new novel would be of this quality.
Sir Walter, as he took the MS. from his hand, eyed him with a gay
smile, in which genuine benevolence mingled with mock exultation, and then throwing himself
into an attitude of comical dignity, he rolled out in the tones of John Kemble, one of the loftiest bursts of Ben Jonson’sMammon—
“Come on, sir. Now you set your foot on shore In Novo orbe ————————Pertinax, my Surly,*
* The fun of this application of “my Surly”
will not escape any one who remembers the kind and good-humoured Terry’s power of
Again I say to thee aloud, Be rich, This day thou shalt have ingots,”—
This was another period of “refreshing the machine.” Early in
November, I find Sir Walter writing thus to Constable’s partner, Mr
Cadell: “I want two books, Malcolm’sLondon Redivivus, or some such name, and Derham’sArtificial Clockmaker.” [The reader of Nigel will understand these requests.] “All good
luck to you, commercially and otherwise. I am grown a shabby letter-writer, for my eyes
are not so young as they were, and I grudge every thing that does not go to
press.” Such a feeling must often have been present with him; yet I can find no
period when he grudged writing a letter that might by possibility be of use to any of his
family or friends; and I must quote one of the many which about this very time reached his
second son.
To Mr Charles Scott, care of the Rev. Mr
Williams, Lampeter.
“21st Nov. 1821. “My dear Charles,
“I had the pleasure of your letter two days since,
being the first symptom of your being alive and well which I have had directly
since you left Abbotsford. I beg you will be more frequent in your
communications, which must always be desirable when you are at such a distance.
I am very glad to hear you are attending closely to make up lost time. Sport is
a good thing both for health and pastime; but you must never allow it to
interfere with serious study. You have, my dear boy, your own fortune to make,
with better assistance of every kind than I had when the world first opened on
assuming a peculiarly saturnine
aspect. This queer grimness of look was invaluable to the comedian in
several of his best parts; and in private he often called it up when
his heart was most cheerful.
me; and I assure you that
had I not given some attention to learning (I have often regretted that, from
want of opportunity, indifferent health, and some indolence, I did not do all I
might have done), my own situation, and the advantages which I may be able to
procure for you, would have been very much bounded. Consider, therefore, study
as the principal object. Many men have read and written their way to
independence and fame; but no man ever gained it by exclusive attention to
exercises or to pleasures of any sort. You do not say any thing of your friend
Mr Surtees,* who I hope is well. We
all remember him with much affection, and should be sorry to think we were
forgotten.
“Our Abbotsford hunt went off extremely well. We
killed seven hares, I think, and our dogs behaved very well. A large party
dined, and we sat down about twenty-five at table. Every gentleman present sung
a song, tant bien que mal,
excepting Walter, Lockhart, and I myself. I believe I should add
the melancholy Jaques, Mr Waugh, who, on this occasion, however, was
not melancholy.† In short, we had a very merry and social party.
“There is, I think, no news here. The hedger,
Captain Davidson,‡ has had a bad accident, and
injured
* Mr Villiers
Surtees, a school-fellow of Charles Scott’s at Lampeter, had spent the
vacation of this year at Abbotsford, He is now one of the Supreme
Judges at the Mauritius.
† Mr
Waugh was a retired West Indian, of very dolorous
aspect, who had settled at Melrose, built a large house there,
surrounded it and his garden with a huge wall, and seldom emerged from
his own precincts except upon the grand occasion of the Abbotsford
Hunt. The villagers called him “the Melancholy Man”—and
considered him as already “dreein’ his dole for doings
amang the poor niggers.”
‡ This hedger had got the title of Captain, in
memory of his gallantry at some row.
his leg much by the fall of a large stone. I am very
anxious about him as a faithful and honest servant. Every one else at
Abbotsford, horses and dogs included, are in great preservation.
“You ask me about reading history. You are quite right
to read Clarendon—his style is a little
long-winded; but, on the other hand, his characters may match those of the
ancient historians, and one thinks they would know the very men if you were to
meet them in society. Few English writers have the same precision, either in
describing the actors in great scenes, or the deeds which they performed. He
was, you are aware, himself deeply engaged in the scenes which he depicts, and
therefore colours them with the individual feeling, and sometimes, doubtless,
with the partiality of a partisan. Yet I think he is, on the whole, a fair
writer; for though he always endeavours to excuse King
Charles, yet he points out his mistakes and errors, which
certainly were neither few nor of slight consequence. Some of his history
regards the country in which you are now a resident; and you will find that
much of the fate of that Great Civil War turned on the successful resistance
made by the city of Gloucester, and the relief of that place by the Earl of Essex, by means of the trained bands of
London, a sort of force resembling our local militia or volunteers. They are
the subject of ridicule in all the plays and poems of the time; yet the sort of
practice of arms which they had acquired enabled them to withstand the charge
of Prince Rupert and his gallant cavalry,
who were then foiled for the first time. Read, my dear Charles, read, and read that which is useful.
Man only differs from birds and beasts, because he has the means of availing
himself of the knowledge acquired by his predecessors. The swallow builds the
same nest which its father and mother built; and the sparrow does not improve by the experience of
its parents. The son of the learned pig, if it had one, would be a mere brute,
fit only to make bacon of. It is not so with the human race. Our ancestors
lodged in caves and wigwams, where we construct palaces for the rich, and
comfortable dwellings for the poor; and why is this—but because our eye is
enabled to look back upon the past, to improve upon our ancestors’
improvements, and to avoid their errors? This can only be done by studying
history, and comparing it with passing events. God has given you a strong
memory and the power of understanding that which you give your mind to with
attention but all the advantage to be derived from these qualities must depend
on your own determination to avail yourself of them, and improve them to the
uttermost. That you should do so will be the greatest satisfaction I can
receive in my advanced life, and when my thoughts must be entirely turned on
the success of my children. Write to me more frequently, and mention your
studies particularly, and I will on my side be a good correspondent.
“I beg my compliments to Mr and Mrs Williams; I
have left no room to sign myself your affectionate father,
W. S.”
To return to business and Messrs Constable. Sir Walter concluded before
he went to town in November another negotiation of importance with this house. They agreed
to give for the remaining copyright of the four novels published between December 1819 and
January 1821 to wit,—Ivanhoe, the Monastery, the Abbot, and Kenilworth—the sum of five thousand guineas. The stipulation about not
revealing the author’s name, under a penalty of L.2000, was repeated. By these four
novels, the fruits of scarcely more than twelve months’ labour,
he had already cleared at least L.10,000 before this bargain was completed. They, like
their predecessors, were now issued in a collective shape, under the title of “Historical Romances, by the Author of
Waverley.”
I cannot pretend to guess what the actual state of Scott’s pecuniary affairs was at the time when John Ballantyne’s death relieved them from one great
source of complication and difficulty. But I have said enough to satisfy every reader, that
when he began the second, and far the larger division of his building at Abbotsford, he
must have contemplated the utmost sum it could cost him as a mere trifle in relation to the
resources at his command. He must have reckoned on clearing L.30,000 at least in the course
of a couple of years by the novels written within such a period. The publisher of his
Tales, who best knew how they were produced, and what they brought of gross profit, and who
must have had the strongest interest in keeping the author’s name untarnished by any
risk or reputation of failure, would willingly, as we have seen, have given him L.6000 more
within a space of two years for works of a less serious sort, likely to be despatched at
leisure hours, without at all interfering with the main manufacture. But alas!—even this
was not all. Messrs Constable had such faith in the
prospective fertility of his imagination, that they were by this time quite ready to sign
bargains and grant bills for novels and romances to be produced hereafter, but of which the
subjects and the names were alike unknown to them and to the man from whose pen they were
to proceed. A forgotten satirist well says, “The active principle within Works on some brains the effect of gin;” but in his case, every external influence combined to stir the flame, and swell the
intoxication of restless exuberant energy. His allies knew, indeed, what he did not, that the sale of his novels was rather
less than it had been in the days of Ivanhoe; and hints had sometimes been dropped to him that it might be well to
try the effects of a pause. But he always thought—and James
Ballantyne had decidedly the same opinion—that his best things were those
which he threw off the most easily and swiftly; and it was no wonder that his booksellers,
seeing how immeasurably even his worst excelled in popularity, as in merit, any other
person’s best, should have shrunk from the experiment of a decisive damper. On the
contrary, they might be excused for from time to time flattering themselves that if the
books sold at a less rate, this might be counterpoised by still greater rapidity of
production. They could not make up their minds to cast the peerless vessel adrift; and, in
short, after every little whisper of prudential misgiving, echoed the unfailing burden of
Ballantyne’s song to push on, hoisting more and more sail as
the wind lulled.
He was as eager to do as they could be to suggest—and this I well knew at
the time. I had, however, no notion, until all his correspondence lay before me, of the
extent to which he had permitted himself thus early to build on the chances of life,
health, and continued popularity. Before the Fortunes of Nigel issued from the press, Scott had exchanged instruments, and received his bookseller’s bills,
for no less than four “works of fiction”—not one of them otherwise described in
the deeds of agreement—to be produced in unbroken succession, each of them to fill at least
three volumes, but with proper saving clauses as to increase of copy-money, in case any of
them should run to four. And within two years all this anticipation had been wiped off by
Peveril of the Peak, Quentin Durward, St Ronan’s Well, and Redgauntlet; and the new castle was by that time complete, and overflowing with
all its splendour; but by that time the end also was approaching!
The splendid Romance of the
Pirate was published in the beginning of December, 1821; and the wild freshness
of its atmosphere, the beautiful contrast of Minna and
Brenda, and the exquisitely drawn character of
Captain Cleveland, found the reception which they
deserved. The work was analyzed with
remarkable care in the Quarterly Review by a
critic second to few, either in the manly heartiness of his sympathy with the felicities of
genius, or in the honest acuteness of his censure in cases of negligence and confusion.
This was the second of a series of articles in that Journal, conceived and executed in a
tone widely different from those given by Mr Gifford
himself to Waverley, Guy Mannering, and the Antiquary. I fancy the old gentleman had become
convinced that he had made a grievous mistake in this matter, before he acquiesced in
Scott’s proposal about “quartering the child” in
January 1816; and if he was fortunate in finding a contributor able and willing to treat
the rest of Father Jedediah’s progeny with
excellent skill, and in a spirit more accordant with the just and general sentiments of the
public, we must also recognise a pleasing and honourable trait of character in the
frankness with which the recluse and often despotic editor now resigned the pen to
Mr Senior.
On the 13th December Sir Walter
received a copy of Cain, as yet unpublished, from Lord
Byron’s bookseller, who had been instructed to ask whether he had any
objection to having the “Mystery” dedicated to him. He replied in these words:—
To John Murray, Esq., Albemarle Street, London.
“Edinburgh, 17th December, 1821. “My dear Sir,
“I accept with feelings of great obligation the
flattering proposal of Lord Byron to prefix
my name to the very grand and
tremendous drama of Cain. I may be
partial to it, and you will allow I have cause; but I do not know that his Muse
has ever taken so lofty a flight amid her former soarings. He has certainly
matched Milton on his own ground. Some
part of the language is bold, and may shock one class of readers, whose tone
will be adopted by others out of affectation or envy. But then they must
condemn the Paradise Lost,
if they have a mind to be consistent. The fiend-like reasoning and bold
blasphemy of the fiend and of his pupil, lead exactly to the point which was to
be expected the commission of the first murder, and the ruin and despair of the
perpetrator.
“I do not see how any one can accuse the author
himself of Manicheism. The devil takes the language of that sect, doubtless;
because, not being able to deny the existence of the Good Principle, he
endeavours to exalt himself—the Evil Principle—to a seeming equality with the
Good; but such arguments, in the mouth of such a being, can only be used to
deceive and to betray. Lord Byron might have
made this more evident, by placing in the mouth of Adam, or of some good and protecting spirit, the reasons which
render the existence of moral evil consistent with the general benevolence of
the Deity. The great key to the mystery is, perhaps, the imperfection of our
own faculties, which see and feel strongly the partial evils which press upon
us, but know too little of the general system of the universe, to be aware how
the existence of these is to be reconciled with the benevolence of the great
Creator.—Ever yours truly,
Walter Scott.”
In some preceding narratives of Sir Walter Scott’s Life,
I find the principal feature for 1821 to be an affair of which I have
as yet said nothing; and which, notwithstanding the examples I have before me, I must be
excused for treating on a scale commensurate with his real share and interest therein. I
allude to an unfortunate newspaper, by name The Beacon, which began to be published in Edinburgh in
January 1821, and was abruptly discontinued in the August of the same year. It originated
in the alarm with which the Edinburgh Tories contemplated the progress of Radical doctrines
during the agitation of the Queen’s business in
1820—and the want of any adequate counteraction on the part of the Ministerial newspapers
in the north. James Ballantyne had on that occasion
swerved from his banner—and by so doing given not a little offence to
Scott. He approved, therefore, of the project of a new Weekly
Journal, to be conducted by some steadier hand; and when it was proposed to raise the
requisite capital for the speculation by private subscription, expressed his willingness to
contribute whatever sum should be named by other gentlemen of his standing. This was
accepted of course; but every part of the advice with which the only man in the whole
conclave that understood a jot about such things coupled his tender of alliance, was
departed from in practice. No experienced and responsible editor of the sort he pointed out
as indispensable was secured; the violence of disaffected spleen was encountered by a vein
of satire which seemed more fierce than frolicsome; the Law Officers of the Crown, whom he
had most strenuously cautioned against any participation in the concern, were rash enough
to commit themselves in it; the subscribers, like true Scotchmen, in place of paying down
their money and thinking no more of that part of the matter, chose to put their names to a
bond of security on which the sum total was to be advanced by bankers, and thus by their
own over-caution as to a few pounds laid the
foundation for a long train of humiliating distresses and disgraces; and finally, when the
rude drollery of the young hot-bloods to whom they had entrusted the editorship of their
paper produced its natural consequences, and the ferment of Whig indignation began to boil
over upon the dignified patrons of what was denounced as a systematic scheme of calumny and
defamation—these seniors shrunk from the dilemma as rashly as they had plunged into it, and
instead of compelling the juvenile allies to adopt a more prudent course, and gradually
give the journal a tone worthy of open approbation, they, at the first blush of personal
difficulty, left their instruments in the lurch, and, without even consulting
Scott, ordered the Beacon to be
extinguished at an hour’s notice.
A more pitiable mass of blunder and imbecility was never heaped together
than the whole of this affair exhibited; and from a very early period Scott was so disgusted with it that he never even saw the
newspaper, of which Whigs and Radicals believed, or affected to believe, that the conduct
and management were in some degree at least under his dictation. The results were
lamentable: the Beacon was made the subject of
Parliamentary discussion, from which the then heads of Scotch Toryism did not escape in any
very consolatory plight; but above all, the Beacon bequeathed its
rancour and rashness, though not its ability, to a Glasgow Paper of similar form and
pretensions, entitled The Sentinel. By that
organ the personal quarrels of the Beacon were taken up and
pursued with relentless industry; and finally, the Glasgow editors disagreeing, some moment
of angry confusion betrayed a box of MSS., by which the late Sir Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck was revealed as the writer of certain
truculent enough pasquinades. A leading Edinburgh
Whig, who had been pilloried in one or more of these,
challenged Boswell—and the Baronet fell in as miserable a quarrel as
ever cost the blood of a high-spirited gentleman.
This tragedy occurred in the early part of 1822; and soon afterwards
followed those debates on the whole business in the House of Commons, for which, if any
reader feels curiosity about them, I refer him to the Parliamentary Histories of the time.
A single extract from one of Scott’s letters to a
member of the then Government in London will be sufficient for my purpose; and abundantly
confirm what I have said as to his personal part in the affairs of the Beacon.
To J. W. Croker, Esq., Admiralty.
“My dear Croker,
“. . . . I had the fate of Cassandra in the Beacon matter from beginning to end. I endeavoured in vain to
impress on them the necessity of having an editor who was really up to the
business, and could mix spirit with discretion—one of those “gentlemen of
the press,” who understand the exact lengths to which they can go in
their vocation. Then I wished them in place of that Bond, to have each thrown down his hundred pounds, and never enquired
more about it—and lastly, I exclaimed against the Crown Counsel being at all concerned. In the two first
remonstrances I was not listened to—in the last I thought myself successful,
and it was not till long afterwards that I heard they had actually subscribed
the Bond. Then the hasty renunciation of the thing, as if we had been doing
something very atrocious, put me mad altogether. The younger brethren too,
allege that they are put into the front of the fight, and deserted on the first
pinch; and on my word I cannot say the accusation is altogether false, though I
have been doing my best to mediate betwixt the par-ties, and keep the peace if possible. The fact is, it
is a blasted business, and will continue long to have bad consequences.—Yours
in all love and kindness,
Walter Scott.”
CHAPTER VII. WILLIAM ERSKINE PROMOTED TO THE BENCH—JOANNA
BAILLIE’S MISCELLANY—HALIDON HILL AND MACDUFF’S CROSS—LETTERS TO
LORD MONTAGU—LAST PORTRAIT BY
RAEBURN—CONSTABLE’S LETTER ON THE
APPEARANCE OF THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL—HALIDON
HILL PUBLISHED. 1822.
In January 1822 Sir Walter
had the great satisfaction of seeing Erskine at
length promoted to a seat on the Bench of the Court of Session, by the title of
Lord Kinnedder; and his pleasure was enhanced doubtless by the
reflection that his friend owed this elevation very much, if not mainly, to his own
unwearied exertions on his behalf. This happy event occurred just about the time when
Joanna Baillie was distressed by hearing of the
sudden and total ruin of an old friend of hers, a Scotch gentleman long distinguished in
the commerce of the city of London; and she thought of collecting among her literary
acquaintance such contributions as might, with some gleanings of her own portfolios, fill
up a volume of poetical miscellanies, to be published, by subscription, for the benefit of
the merchant’s family. In requesting Sir Walter to write
something for this purpose, she also asked him to communicate the scheme, in her name, to
various common friends in the North—among others, to the new Judge.
Scott’s answer was—
To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead.
“Edinburgh, Feb. 10, 1822. “My Dear Friend,
“No one has so good a title as you to command me in
all my strength, and in all my weakness. I do not believe I have a single scrap
of unpublished poetry, for I was never a willing composer of occasional pieces,
and when I have been guilty of such effusions, it was to answer the purpose of
some publisher of songs, or the like immediate demand. The consequence is, that
all these trifles have been long before the public, and whatever I add to your
collection must have the grace of novelty, in case it should have no other. I
do not know what should make it rather a melancholy task for me nowadays to sit
down to versify—I did not use to think it so—but I have ceased, I know not why,
to find pleasure in it, and yet I do not think I have lost any of the faculties
I ever possessed for the task; but I was never fond of my own poetry, and am
now much out of conceit with it. All this another person less candid in
construction than yourself would interpret into a hint to send a good dose of
praise—but you know we have agreed long ago to be above ordinances, like
Cromwell’s saints. When I go
to the country upon the 12th of March, I will try what the water-side can do
for me, for there is no inspiration in causeways and kennels, or even the Court
of Session. You have the victory over me now, for I remember laughing at you
for saying you could only write your beautiful lyrics upon a fine warm day. But
what is this something to be? I wish you would give me a subject, for that
would cut off half my difficulties.
“I am delighted with the prospect of seeing Miss Edgeworth, and making her personal
acquaintance. I expect her to be just what you describe, a being totally void
of affectation, and who, like one other lady of my
acquaintance, carries her literary reputation as freely and easily as the
milk-maid in my country does the leglen, which she
carries on her head, and walks as gracefully with it as a duchess. Some of the
fair sex, and some of the foul sex, too, carry their renown in London fashion
on a yoke and a pair of pitchers. The consequence is, that besides poking
frightfully, they are hitting every one on the shins with their buckets. Now
this is all nonsense, too fantastic to be written to any body but a person of
good sense. By the way, did you know Miss
Austen, authoress of some novels which have a great deal of
nature in them? nature in ordinary and middle life, to be sure, but valuable
from its strong resemblance and correct drawing. I wonder which way she carried
her pail?*
“I did indeed rejoice at Erskine’s promotion. There is a degree of melancholy
attending the later stage of a barrister’s profession, which, though no
one cares for sentimentalities attendant on a man of fifty or thereabout, in a
rusty black bombazine gown, are not the less cruelly felt; their business
sooner or later fails, for younger men will work cheaper, and longer, and
harder—besides
* When the late collection of Sir Walter Scott’sProse
Miscellanies was preparing, the publisher of the Quarterly Review led me into a mistake, which I may as well
take this opportunity of apologizing for. Glancing hastily over his
private records, he included in his list of Sir
Walter’s contributions to his journal an article on
Miss Austen’s novels;
and as the opinions which the article expresses on their merits and
defects harmonized with the usual tone of
Scott’s conversation, I saw no reason to
doubt that he had drawn it up, although the style might have been
considerably doctored by Mr
Gifford. I have since learned that the reviewal was in
fact written by Dr Whateley,—now
Archbishop of Dublin. Miss Austen’s novels,
especially Emma and
Northanger
Abbey, were great favourites with
Scott, and he often read chapters of them to his
evening circle.
that the cases are few, comparatively,
in which senior counsel are engaged, and it is not etiquette to ask any one in
that advanced age to take the whole burden of a cause. Insensibly, without
decay of talent, and without losing the public esteem, there is a gradual decay
of employment, which almost no man ever practised thirty years without
experiencing; and thus the honours and dignities of the Bench, so hardly
earned, and themselves leading but to toils of another kind, are peculiarly
desirable. Erskine would have sat there ten years ago, but
for wretched intrigues. He has a very poetical and elegant mind, but I do not
know of any poetry of his writing, except some additional stanzas to Collins’ode on Scottish superstitions,
long since published in the Border
Minstrelsy. I doubt it would not be consistent with his high office
to write poetry now, but you may add his name with Mrs
Scott’s (Heaven forgive me! I should have said
Lady Scott’s) and mine to the subscription-list.
I will not promise to get you more, for people always look as if you were
asking the guinea for yourself—there John
Bull has the better of Sawney; to be sure he has more guineas to bestow, but we retain
our reluctance to part with hard cash, though profuse enough in our
hospitality. I have seen a laird, after giving us more champagne and claret
than we cared to drink, look pale at the idea of paying a crown in charity.
“I am seriously tempted, though it would be sending
coals to Newcastle with a vengeance, not to mention salt to Dysart, and all
other superfluous importations—I am, I say, strangely tempted to write for your
Protegés a dramatic scene on an incident which happened at the battle of
Halidon Hill (I think). It was to me a nursery-tale, often told by Mrs Margaret Swinton, sister of my maternal grandmother; a fine old lady of high
blood, and of as high a mind, who was lineally descended from one of the actors. The anecdote was briefly thus. The
family of Swinton is very ancient, and was once very
powerful, and at the period of this battle the knight of Swinton was gigantic
in stature, unequalled in strength, and a sage and experienced leader to boot.
In one of those quarrels which divided the kingdom of Scotland in every corner,
he had slain his neighbour, the head of the Gordon family,
and an inveterate feud had ensued; for it seems that powerful as the
Gordons always were, the Swintons
could then bide a bang with them. Well, the battle of Halidon began, and the
Scottish army, unskilfully disposed on the side of a hill where no arrow fell
in vain, was dreadfully galled by the archery of the English, as usual; upon
which Swinton approached the Scottish General, requesting
command of a body of cavalry, and pledging his honour that he would, if so
supported, charge and disperse the English archers—one of the manœuvres by
which Bruce gained the battle of
Bannockburn. This was refused, out of stupidity or sullenness, by the General,
on which Swinton expressed his determination to charge at
the head of his own followers, though totally inadequate for the purpose. The
young Gordon heard the proposal, son of him whom
Swinton had slain, and with one of those irregular
bursts of generosity and feeling which redeem the dark ages from the character
of utter barbarism, he threw himself from his horse, and kneeled down before
Swinton.—‘I have not yet been
knighted,’ he said, ‘and never can I take the honour from
the hand of a truer, more loyal, more valiant leader, than he who slew my
father: grant me,’ he said, ‘the boon I ask, and I unite
my forces to yours, that we may live and die together.’ His
feudal enemy became instantly his godfather in chivalry, and his ally in
battle. Swinton knighted the young
Gordon, and they rushed down at the head of their united retainers, dispersed the
archery, and would have turned the battle, had they been supported. At length
they both fell, and all who followed them were cut off, and it was remarked,
that while the fight lasted, the old giant guarded the young man’s life
more than his own, and the same was indicated by the manner in which his body
lay stretched over that of Gordon. Now, do not laugh at my
Berwickshire burr, which I assure you is literally and lineally handed down to
me by my grandmother, from this fine old Goliah. Tell me,
if I can clamper up the story into a sort of single scene, will it answer your
purpose? I would rather try my hand in blank verse than rhyme.
“The story, with many others of the same kind, is
consecrated to me by the remembrance of the narrator, with her brown silk gown,
and triple ruffles, and her benevolent face, which was always beside our beds
when there were childish complaints among us. Poor Aunt Margaret had a most shocking fate, being murdered by a
favourite maid-servant in a fit of insanity, when I was about ten years old;
the catastrophe was much owing to the scrupulous delicacy and high courage of
my poor relation, who would not have the assistance of men called in for
exposing the unhappy wretch her servant. I think you will not ask for a letter
from me in a hurry again, but, as I have no chance of seeing you for a long
time, I must be contented with writing. My kindest respects attend Mrs Agnes, your kind brother and family, and the Richardsons, little and big, short and tall;
and believe me most truly yours,
W. Scott.
“P.S.—Sophia is come up to her Sunday dinner, and begs to send a
thousand remembrances, with the important intelligence that her baby
actually says ma-ma, and bow wow, when he sees the
dog. Moreover, he is christened John
Hugh; and I intend to plant two little knolls at their
cottage, to be called Mount Saint John, and Hugomont. The Papa also sends
his respects.”
About this time Cornet Scott, being
for a short period in Edinburgh, sat to William
Allan for that admirable portrait which now hangs (being the only picture in
the room) over the mantelpiece of the Great Library at Abbotsford. Sir Walter, in extolling this performance to Lord
Montagu, happened to mention that an engraving was about to appear from
Mr Allan’s “Death of Archbishop
Sharp,” and requested his lordship to subscribe for a copy of it.
Lord Montagu read his letter hurriedly, and thought the
forthcoming engraving was of the Cornet and his charger. He signified that he would very
gladly have that; but took occasion to remind Sir
Walter, that the Buccleuch family had not forgot his
old promise to sit to Raeburn himself for a
portrait, to be hung up at Bowhill. Scott’s letter of explanation includes his
opinion of Horace Walpole’s posthumous
“Memoirs.”
To the Lord Montagu.
“Abbotsford, 15th March, 1822. “My dear Lord,
“It is close firing to reply to your kind letter so
soon, but I had led your Lordship into two mistakes, from writing my former
letter in a hurry; and therefore to try whether I cannot contradict the old
proverb of ‘two blacks not making a white,’ I write this in a hurry
to mend former blunders.
“In the first place, I never dreamed of asking you to
subscribe to a print of my son—it will be time for him to be copperplated, as Joseph Gillon
used to call it, when he
is major-general. I only meant to ask you to take a print of the Murder of Archbishop Sharp, and to mention historically
that the same artist, who made a capital
picture of that event, had painted for me a very good portrait of my son. I
suppose I may apply your Lordship’s kind permission to the work for which
I did mean to require your patronage; and for a Scottish subject of interest by
a Scottish artist of high promise, I will presume to reckon also on the
patronage of my young chief. I had no idea of sitting for my own picture; and I
think it will be as well to let Duke
Walter, when he feels his own ground in the world, take his own
taste in the way of adorning his house. Two or three years will make him an
adequate judge on such a subject, and if they will not make me more beautiful,
they have every chance of making me more picturesque. The distinction was ably
drawn in the case of parsons’ horses, by Sydney Smith, in one of his lectures:—‘The
rector’s horse is beautiful—the curate’s is
picturesque.’ If the portrait had been begun, that were another
matter; as it is, the Duke, when he is two or three years older, shall command
my picture, as the original, à vendre et à
pendre—an admirable expression of devotion, which I
picked up from a curious letter of Lord
Lovat’s, which I found the other day. I am greatly afraid
the said original will by and by be fit only for the last branch of the
dilemma.
“Have you read Lord
Orford’sHistory of his own Time—it is acid and lively, but serves, I think,
to show how little those, who live in public business, and of course in
constant agitation and intrigue, know about the real and deep progress of
opinions and events. The Memoirs of our Scots Sir George
Mackenzie are of the same class—both immersed in little
political detail, and the struggling skirmish of party, seem to have lost sight
of the great progressive movements of human affairs. They
put me somewhat in mind of a miller, who is so busy with the clatter of his own
wheels, grindstones, and machinery, and so much employed in regulating his own
artificial mill-dam, that he is incapable of noticing the gradual swell of the
river from which he derives his little stream, until it comes down in such
force as to carry his whole manufactory away before it. It is comical, too,
that Lord Orford should have delayed trusting the public
with his reminiscences, until so many years had destroyed all our interest in
the Parliamentary and Court intrigues which he tells with so much vivacity. It
is like a man who should brick up a hogshead of cyder, to be drunk half a
century afterwards, when it could contain little but acidity and vapidity.
“I am here, thank God, for two months. I have
acquired, as I trust, a good gardener,*
warranted by Macdonald of Dalkeith. So the seeds, which
your Lordship is so kind as to promise me, will be managed like a tansy. The
greatest advance of age which I have yet found is liking a cat, an animal I detested, and becoming fond of a garden, an art
which I despised—but I suppose the indulgent mother Nature has pets and
hobby-horses suited to her children at all ages. Ever, my dear Lord, most truly
yours,
Walter Scott.”
Acquiescing in the propriety of what Sir
Walter had thus said respecting the proposed portrait for Bowhill, Lord Montagu requested him to sit without delay for a smaller
picture on his own behalf; and the result was that half-length now at Ditton, which
possesses a peculiar value and interest as being the very last work of
* Mr Bogie. This
respectable person is now seneschal of Scott’s deserted castle.
Raeburn’s pencil. The poet’s answer to
Lord Montagu’s request was as follows:
To the Lord Montagu.
“Abbotsford, 27th March, 1822. “My dear Lord,
“I should be very unworthy of so great a proof of your
regard, did I not immediately assure you of the pleasure with which I will
contribute the head you wish to the halls of Ditton. I know no place where the
substance has been so happy, and, therefore, the shadow may be so far well
placed. I will not suffer this important affair to languish so far as I am
concerned, but will arrange with Raeburn
when I return to Edinburgh in May. Allan
is not in the ordinary habit of doing portraits, and as he is really a rising
historical painter, I should be sorry to see him seduced into the lucrative
branch which carries off most artists of that description. If he goes on as he
has begun, the young Duke may one day
patronise the Scottish Arts, so far as to order a picture of the
“Releasing” of Kinmont
Willie* from him. I agree entirely with your Lordship’s
idea of leaving the young chief to have the grace of forming his own ideas on
many points, contenting yourself with giving him such principles as may enable
him to judge rightly. I believe more youths of high expectation have bolted
from the course, merely because well-meaning friends had taken too much care to
rope it in, than from any other reason whatever.
There is in youth a feeling of independence, a desire, in short, of being their
own master, and enjoying their own free agency, which is
* See, in the Border Minstrelsy (vol. ii. p. 32),
the capital old ballad on this dashing exploit of “the Bold Buccleuch” of Queen Elizabeth’s time.
not always attended to by guardians and parents, and hence
the best laid schemes fail in execution from being a little too prominently
brought forward. I trust that Walter, with the good sense
which he seems to possess, will never lose that most amiable characteristic of
his father’s family, the love and affection which all the members of it
have, for two generations, borne to each other, and which has made them
patterns as well as blessings to the country they lived in. I have few happier
days to look forward to, and yet, like all happiness which comes to grey-headed
men, it will have a touch of sorrow in it, than that in which he shall assume
his high situation with the resolution which I am sure he will have to be a
good friend to the country in which he has so large a stake, and to the
multitudes which must depend upon him for protection, countenance, and bread.
Selfish feelings are so much the fashion among fashionable men—it is accounted
so completely absurd to do any thing which is not to contribute more or less
directly to the immediate personal eclat or personal enjoyment of the
party—that young men lose sight of real power and real importance, the
foundation of which must be laid, even selfishly considered, in contributing to
the general welfare,—like those who have thrown their bread on the waters,
expecting, and surely receiving, after many days, its return in gratitude,
attachment, and support of every kind. The memory of the most splendid
entertainment passes away with the season, but the money and pains bestowed
upon a large estate not only contribute to its improvement, but root the
bestower in the hearts of hundreds over hundreds; should these become needful
he is sure to exercise a correspondent influence. I cannot look forward to
these as settled times. In the retrenchments proposed, Government agree to
diminish their own influence, and while
they contribute a comparative trifle to the relief of the public burdens, are
making new discontents among those who, for interest’s sake at least,
were their natural adherents. In this they are acting weakly, and trying to
soothe the insatiate appetite of innovation, by throwing down their outworks,
as if that which renders attack more secure and easy would diminish the courage
of the assailants. Last year the manufacturing classes were rising—this year
the agricultural interest is discontented, and whatever temporary relief either
class receives will indeed render them quiet for the moment, but not erase from
their minds the rooted belief that the government and constitution of this
country are in fault for their embarrassments. Well, I cannot help it, and
therefore will not think about it, for that at least I can help. ‘Time and the hour run through the roughest day.’
“We have had dreadful tempests here of wind and rain,
and for a variety a little snow. I assure you it is as uncommon to see a hill
with snow on its top these two last seasons as to see a beau on the better side
of thirty with powder in his hair. I built an ice-house last year and could get
no ice to fill it—this year I took the opportunity of even poor twenty-four
hours and packed it full of hard-rammed snow but lo, ye the snow is now
in meditatione fugæ, and
I wish I may have enough to cool a decanter when you come to Abbotsford, as I
trust your Lordship will be likely to be here next autumn. It is worth while to
come, were it but to see what a romance of a house I am making, which is
neither to be castle nor abbey (God forbid!) but an old Scottish manor-house. I
believe Atkinson is in despair with my
whims, for he cries out yes—yes—yes—in a tone which exactly signifies no—no—no—by
no manner of means. Believe me always, my dear Lord, most gratefully
yours,
Walter Scott.”
At the commencement of this spring, then, Scott found his new edifice in rapid progress; and letters on that subject
to and from Terry, occupy, during many subsequent
months, a very large share in his correspondence. Before the end of the vacation, however,
he had finished the MS. of his Nigel. Nor
had he lost sight of his promise to Joanna Baillie.
He produced, and that, as I well remember, in the course of two rainy mornings, the
dramatic sketch of Halidon Hill; but on
concluding it, he found that he had given it an extent quite incompatible with his
friend’s arrangements for her charitable pic-nic. He therefore cast about for another
subject likely to be embraced in smaller compass; and the Blair-Adam meeting of the next
June supplied him with one in Macduff’s
Cross. Meantime, on hearing a whisper about Halidon
Hill, Messrs Constable, without seeing
the MS., forthwith tendered L.1000 for the copyright—the same sum that had appeared almost
irrationally munificent when offered in 1807 for the embryo Marmion. It was accepted, and a letter from
Constable himself, about to be introduced, will show how well the
head of the firm was pleased with this wild bargain. At the moment when his head was giddy
with the popular applauses of the new-launched Nigel—and although
he had been informed that Peveril of the Peak was already on the stocks—he suggested that a
little pinnace, of the Halidon class, might easily be rigged out once a-quarter, by way of
diversion, and thus add another L.4000 per annum to the L.10 or L.15,000, on which all parties counted
as the sure yearly profit of three-deckers in
fore.
Before I quote Constable’s
effusion, however, I must recall to the reader’s recollection some very gratifying,
but I am sure perfectly sincere, laudation of him in his professional capacity, which the
Author of the Fortunes of Nigel had put
into the mouth of his Captain Clutterbuck in the
humorous Epistle Introductory to that Novel. After alluding, in affectionate terms, to the
recent death of John Ballantyne, the Captain adds,
“To this great deprivation has been added, I trust for a time only, the loss
of another bibliopolical friend, whose vigorous intellect, and liberal ideas, have not
only rendered his native country the mart of her own literature, but established there
a court of letters, which must command respect, even from those most inclined to
dissent from many of its canons. The effect of these changes operated in a great
measure by the strong sense and sagacious calculations of an individual, who knew how
to avail himself, to an unhoped for extent, of the various kinds of talent which his
country produced, will probably appear more clearly to the generation which shall
follow the present. I entered the shop at the Cross to enquire after the health of my
worthy friend, and learned with satisfaction that his residence in the south had abated
the rigour of the symptoms of his disorder.”
It appears that Nigel was
published on the 30th of May 1822; and next day Constable writes as follows, from his temporary residence near London:
To Sir Walter Scott, Bart., Castle Street,
Edinburgh.
“Castlebeare Park, 31st May, 1822. “Dear Sir Walter,
“I have received the highest gratification from the
perusal of a certain new work.
I may indeed say new work, for it is entirely so, and
will, if that be possible, eclipse in popularity all that has gone before it.
“The author will be blamed for one thing, however
unreasonably, and that is, for concluding the story without giving his readers
a little more of it. We are a set of ungrateful mortals. For one thing at least
I trust I am never to be found so, for I must ever most duly appreciate the
kind things intended to be applied to me in the Introductory Epistle to this
work. I learn with astonishment, but not less delight, that the press is at
work again; the title, which has been handed to me, is quite excellent.
“I am now so well as to find it compatible to pay my
respects to some of my old haunts in the metropolis, where I go occasionally. I
was in town yesterday, and so keenly were the people devouring my friend
Jingling
Geordie, that I actually saw them reading it in the streets as
they passed along. I assure you there is no exaggeration in this. A new novel
from the author of Waverley puts aside, in
other words puts down for the time, every other literary performance. The Smack Ocean, by which the new work was shipped, arrived
at the wharf on Sunday; the bales were got out by one on
Monday morning, and before half-past ten o’clock 7000 copies had been
dispersed from 90, Cheapside.* I sent my secretary on purpose to witness the
activity with which such things are conducted, and to bring me the account,
gratifying certainly, which I now give you.
“I went yesterday to the shop of a curious
person—Mr Swaby, in Warden-street—to
look at an old portrait which my son, when lately here, mentioned to me. It is,
I think, a portrait of James the
Fourth, and if not
* Constable’s London agents, Messrs Hurst, Robinson, and Co., had then their premises in
Cheapside.
an original, is
doubtless a picture as early as his reign. Our friend Mr Thomson has seen it and is of the same
opinion; but I purpose that you should be called upon to decide this nice
point, and I have ordered it to be forwarded to you, trusting that erelong I
may see it in, the Armoury at Abbotsford.
“I found at the same place two large elbow chairs,
elaborately carved, in boxwood—with figures, foliage, &c. perfectly entire.
Mr Swaby, from whom I purchased
them, assured me they came from the Borghese Palace at Rome; he possessed
originally ten such chairs, and had sold six of them to the Duke of Rutland, for Belvoir Castle, where they
will be appropriate furniture; the two which I have obtained would, I think,
not be less so in the Library of Abbotsford.
“I have been so fortunate as to secure a still more
curious article—a slab of mosaic pavement, quite entire and large enough to
make an outer hearth-stone, which I also destine for Abbotsford. It occurred to
me that these three articles might prove suitable to your taste, and under that
impression I am now induced to take the liberty of requesting you to accept
them as a small but sincere pledge of grateful feeling. Our literary connexion
is too important to make it necessary for your publishers to trouble you about
the pounds, shillings, and pence of such things; and I therefore trust you will
receive them on the footing I have thus taken the liberty to name. I have been
on the outlook for antique carvings, and if I knew the purposes for which you
would want such, I might probably be able to send you some.
“I was truly happy to hear of ‘Halidon Hill,’ and of the
satisfactory arrangements made for its publication. I wish I had the power of
prevailing with you to give us a similar production every three months; and
that our ancient enemies on this side the Border might not
have too much their own way, perhaps your next dramatic sketch might be
Bannockburn.* It would be presumptuous in me to point out subjects, but you
know my craving to be great, and I cannot resist mentioning here that I should
like to see a Battle of Hastings—a Cressy—a Bosworth Field—and many more.
“Sir Thomas
Lawrence was so kind as invite me to see his pictures,—what an
admirable portrait he has commenced of you!—he has altogether hit a happy and
interesting expression. I do not know whether you have heard that there is an
exhibition at Leeds this year. I had an application for the use of Raeburn’s picture, which is now there;
and it stands No. 1 in the catalogue, of which I inclose you a copy.
“You will receive with this a copy of the ‘Poetry, original and
selected.’ I have, I fear, overshot the mark by including the
poetry of the Pirate, a liberty
for which I must hope to be forgiven. The publication of the volume will be
delayed ten days, in case you should do me the favour to suggest any alteration
in the advertisement, or other change.—I have the honour to be, dear Sir Walter, your faithful humble servant,
Archibald Constable.”
The last paragraph of this letter alludes to a little volume, into which
Constable had collected the songs, mottoes, and
other scraps of verse scattered over Scott’s Novels, from Waverley to the
Pirate. It had a considerable run; and had it appeared sooner, might have saved
Mr Adolphus the trouble of writing an essay to
prove that the Author of Waverley, whoever he might be,
was a Poet.
Constable, during his residence in England at this
time, was in the habit of writing every week or two to Sir
* Had Mr Constable quite
forgotten the Lord of the Isles?
Walter, and his letters now before me are all of the
same complexion as the preceding specimen. The ardent bookseller’s brain seems to
have been well-nigh unsettled at this period; and I have often thought that the foxglove
which he then swallowed (his complaint being a threatening of water in the chest) might
have had a share in the extravagant excitement of his mind. Occasionally, however, he
enters on details as to which, or at least as to Sir Walter’s
share in them, there could not have been any mistake; and these were, it must be owned, of
a nature well calculated to nourish and sustain, in the author’s fancy a degree of
almost mad exhilaration, near akin to his publisher’s own predominant mood. In a
letter of the ensuing month, for example, after returning to the progress of Peveril of the Peak, under 10,000 copies of
which (or nearly that number) Ballantyne’s
presses were now groaning, and glancing gaily to the prospect of their being kept regularly
employed to the same extent until three other novels, as yet unchristened, had followed
Peveril, he adds a summary of what was then, had just been,
or was about to be, the amount of occupation furnished to the same office by reprints of
older works of the same pen;—“a summary,” he exclaims, “to
which I venture to say there will be no rival in our day!” And well might
Constable say so; for the result is, that James
Ballantyne and Co. had just executed, or were on the eve of executing, by
his order—
“A new edition of Sir W.
Scott’s Poetical Works, in 10 vols. (miniature),5000 copies.“Novels and Tales, 12 vols. ditto,5000 —“Historical Romances, 6 vols. ditto,5000 —“Poetry from Waverley,
&c. 1 vol. 12mo,5000 —“Paper required,7772 reams. “Volumes produced from
Ballantyne’s press, 145,000!”
To which we may safely add from 30,000 to 40,000 volumes more as the
immediate produce of the author’s daily industry within the space of twelve months.
The scale of these operations was, without question, enough to turn any bookseller’s
wits; Constable’s, in its soberest hours, was as inflammable a
head-piece as ever sat on the shoulders of a poet; and his ambition, in truth, had been
moving pari passu, during several of these last
stirring and turmoiling years, with that of his poet. He, too, as I ought to have mentioned
ere now, had, like a true Scotchman, concentred his dreams on the hope of bequeathing to
his heir the name and dignity of a lord of acres. He, too, had considerably before this
time purchased a landed estate in his native county of Fife; he, too, I doubt not, had,
while Abbotsford was rising, ‘his own rural castle in
petto; and alas! for “Archibald Constable of
Balniel” also, and his overweening intoxication of worldly success, Fortune had
already begun to prepare a stern rebuke.
Nigel was, I need not say, considered as
ranking in the first class of Scott’s romances. Indeed, as a historical portraiture,
his of James I. stands forth preeminent, and almost
alone; nor, perhaps, in reperusing these novels deliberately as a series, does any one of
them leave so complete an impression as the picture of an age. It is, in fact, the best
commentary on the old English drama—hardly a single picturesque point of manners touched by
Ben Jonson and his contemporaries but has been
dovetailed into this story, and all so easily and naturally, as to form the most striking
contrast to the historical romances of authors who cram, as the schoolboys phrase it, and
then set to work oppressed and bewildered with their crude and undigested burden.
The novel was followed in June by the dramatic sketch of Halidon Hill; but that had far inferior
success. I shall say a word on it
presently, in connexion with another piece of the same order.
A few weeks before this time Cornet
Scott had sailed for Germany, and, it seems, in the midst of rough weather
his immediate destination being Berlin, where his father’s valued friend Sir George Rose was then Ambassador from the Court of St
James:—
For Walter Scott, Esq., care of His Excellency
Sir George Rose, &c. &c., Berlin.
“My dear Walter,
“Your letters came both together this morning, and
relieved me from a disagreeable state of anxiety about you, for the winds have
been tremendous since you sailed; and no news arriving from the Continent,
owing to their sticking in the west, I was really very uneasy. Luckily mamma
did not take any alarm. I have no news to send you save what are agreeable. We
are well here, and going on in the old fashion. Last night Mathews the comedian was with us, and made
himself very entertaining. About a week ago the Comptesse Nial, a lady in the service of Princess Louisa of Prussia, came to dine here
with the Lord Chief Commissioner and
family, and seemed to take a great interest in what she heard and saw of our
Scottish fashions. She was so good as to offer me letters for you to the
Princess Louisa; General
Gneissenau, who was Adjutant-General of Blucher’s army, and formed the plan of
almost all the veteran’s campaigns; and to the Baroness de la Motte Fouquè, who is
distinguished in the world of letters, as well as her husband the Baron, the
author of many very pleasing works of fiction, particularly the beautiful tale
of Undine, and the travels of Theodulph. If you find an
opportunity to say to the Baroness how much I have been interested by her
writings and Mons. de la Motte
Fouquè’s, you will say no more than the truth, and it will be civil, for folks like to know that
they are known and respected beyond the limits of their own country.
“Having the advantage of good introductions to
foreigners of distinction, I hope you will not follow the established English
fashion of herding with your countrymen, and neglecting the opportunity of
extending your acquaintance with the language and society. There is, I own, a
great temptation to this in a strange country; but it is destruction of all the
purposes for which the expense and trouble of foreign travel are incurred.
Labour particularly at the German, as the French can be acquired elsewhere; but
I should rather say, work hard at both. It is not, I think, likely, though it
is possible, that you may fall into company with some of the Têtes échauffées, who are
now so common in Germany—men that would pull down the whole political system in
order to rebuild it on a better model: a proposal about as wild as that of a
man who should propose to change the bridle of a furious horse, and commence
his labours by slipping the headstall in the midst of a heath. Prudence, as
well as principle and my earnest desire, will induce you to avoid this class of
politicians, who, I know, are always on the alert to kidnap young men.
“I account Sir George
Rose’s being at Berlin the most fortunate circumstance
which could have befallen you, as you will always have a friend whom you can
consult in case of need. Do not omit immediately arranging your time so as to
secure as much as possible for your studies and exercises. For the last I
recommend fencing and riding in the academy; for though a good horseman, it is
right you should keep up the habit, and many of the German schools are
excellent. I think, however, Sir George Rose says that of
Berlin is but indifferent; and he is a good judge of the art. I pray you not to lose time in dawdling; for,
betwixt Edinburgh, London, and the passage, much of the time which our plan
destined for your studies has been consumed, and your return into the active
service of your profession is proportionally delayed; so lose no time. I cannot
say but what I am very happy that you are not engaged in the inglorious, yet
dangerous and harassing, warfare of Ireland at present. Your old friend
Paddy is now stark mad, and doing much
mischief. Sixteen of the Peelers have, I see by this morning’s papers,
been besieged in their quarters by the mob, four killed, and the rest obliged
to surrender after they had fired the house in which they were quartered. The
officers write that the service is more harassing than on the Peninsula, and it
would appear a considerable part of the country is literally in possession of
the insurgents. You are just as well learning Teütsche
sprechen. I am glad to see you are writing a firm and good hand. Your
last from Hamburgh was distinctly written, and well composed. Pray write all
your remarks, and pay some little attention to the style, which, without being
stiff or pedantic, should always be accurate.
“The Lockharts are well; but baby has a cough, which
keeps Sophia anxious: they cannot say
whether it be the hooping-cough or no. Mamma, Anne, and little
Walter* send kind love. The little
fellow studies hard, and will, I hope, be a credit to the name he bears. If you
do not take care, he may be a General before you. Always, my dear Walter, most affectionately yours,
Walter Scott.
“P.S.—The Germans are a people of form. You will
take care to learn the proper etiquette about delivering the enclosed
letters.”
* Walter, the son of Mr Thomas Scott, was at this time domiciled with his
uncle’s family.
CHAPTER VIII. REPAIRS OF MELROSE ABBEY—LETTERS TO LORD MONTAGU AND
MISS EDGEWORTH—KING GEORGE IV. VISITS
SCOTLAND—CELTIC MANIA—MR CRABBE IN CASTLE STREET—DEATH OF
LORD KINNEDDER—DEPARTURE OF THE KING—LETTERS FROM MR
PEEL AND MR CROKER. 1822.
During April, May, and June of this year, Scott’s thoughts were much occupied with a plan for
securing Melrose Abbey against the progress of decay, which had been making itself manifest
to an alarming extent, and to which he had often before directed the attention of the
Buccleuch family. Even in writing to persons who had never seen
Melrose, he could not help touching on this business—for he wrote, as he spoke, out of the
fulness of the heart. The young Duke readily concurred
with his guardians in allowing the poet to direct such repairs as might seem to him
adequate; and the result was extremely satisfactory to all the habitual worshippers of
these classical ruins.
I return to the copious and candid correspondence from which it has been
throughout my object to extract and combine the scattered fragments of an autobiography.
To Miss Edgeworth, Edgeworthstown.
“Abbotsford, 24th April, 1822. “My dear Miss Edgeworth,
“I am extremely sorry indeed that you cannot fulfil
your kind intentions to be at Abbotsford this year. It is a great disappointment, and I am grieved to think
it should have arisen from the loss of a valued relation. That is the worst
part of life when its earlier path is trod. If my limbs get stiff, my walks are
made shorter, and my rides slower.—If my eyes fail me, I can use glasses and a
large print.—If I get a little deaf, I comfort myself that, except in a few
instances, I shall be no great loser by missing one full half of what is
spoken; but I feel the loneliness of age when my companions and friends are
taken from me. The sudden death of both the Boswells, and the bloody end of the
last, have given me great pain.* You have never got half the
praise Vivian ought to have procured you. The reason is, that the
class from which the excellent portrait was drawn, feel the resemblance too
painfully to thank the author for it; and I do not believe the common readers
understand it in the least. I who, thank God, am neither great man nor
politician, have lived enough among them to recognise the truth and nature of
the painting, and am no way implicated in the satire. I begin to think that of
the three kingdoms the English alone are
* James
Boswell of the Temple, editor of the last Variorum
Shakspeare, &c., a man of considerable learning and
admirable social qualities, died suddenly, in the prime of life, about
a fortnight before his brother Sir
Alexander. Scott was
warmly attached to them both, and the fall of the Baronet might well
give him a severe shock, for he had dined in Castle Street only two or
three days before it occurred, and the merriest tones of his voice were
still ringing in his friend’s ears when he received the fatal
intelligence. That evening was, I think, the gayest I ever spent in
Castle Street; and though Charles
Mathews was present, and in his best force, poor
Boswell’s songs, jokes, and anecdotes,
had exhibited no symptom of eclipse. It turned out that he had joined
the party whom he thus delighted, immediately after completing the last
arrangements for his duel. It may be worth while to add, that several
circumstances of his death are exactly reproduced in the duel scene of
St Ronan’s
Well.
qualified to mix in politics safely and without fatal
results; the fierce and hasty resentments of the Irish, and the sullen,
long-enduring, revengeful temper of my countrymen, make such agitations have a
much wider and more dreadful effect amongst them. Well, we will forget what we
cannot help, and pray that we may lose no more friends till we find, as I hope
and am sure we shall do, friends in each other. I had arranged to stay at least
a month after the 12th of May, in hopes of detaining you at Abbotsford, and I
will not let you off under a month or two the next year. I shall have my house
completed, my library replaced, my armoury new furbished, my piper new clothed,
and the time shall be July. I trust I may have the same family about me, and
perhaps my two sons. Walter is at Berlin
studying the great art of war—and entertaining a most military conviction that
all the disturbances of Ireland are exclusively owing to his last regiment, the
18th hussars, having been imprudently reduced. Little Charles is striving to become a good scholar
and fit for Oxford. Both have a chance of being at home in autumn 1823. I know
nothing I should wish you to see which has any particular chance of becoming
invisible in the course of fourteen months, excepting my old bloodhound, poor
fellow, on whom age now sits so heavily, that he cannot follow me far from the
house. I wished you to see him very much—he is of that noble breed which
Ireland, as well as Scotland, once possessed, and which is now almost extinct
in both countries. I have sometimes thought of the final cause of dogs having
such short lives, and I am quite satisfied it is in compassion to the human
race; for if we suffer so much in losing a dog after an acquaintance of ten or
twelve years, what would it be if they were to live double that time?
“I don’t propose being in London this year—I do
not like it—there is such a
riding and driving—so much to see—so much to say—not to mention plover’s
eggs and champagne—that I always feel too much excited in London, though it is
good to rub off the rust too, sometimes, and brings you up abreast with the
world as it goes——But I must break off, being summoned to a conclave to examine
how the progress of decay, which at present threatens to destroy the ruins of
Melrose, can yet be arrested. The Duke of
Buccleuch, though but a boy, is very desirous to have something
done, and his guardians have acquiesced in a wish so reasonable and creditable
to the little chief. I only hope they will be liberal, for a trifle will do no
good, or rather, I think, any partial tampering is likely to do harm. But the
Duke has an immense estate, and I hope they will remember, that though a
moderate sum may keep up this national monument, yet his whole income could not
replace it should it fall.—Yours, dear Miss
Edgeworth, with true respect and regard,
Walter Scott.”
To the Lord Montagu, &c.
“Abbotsford, 29th April, 1822. “My dear Lord,
“The state of the east window is peculiarly
precarious, and it may soon give way if not assisted. There would not only be
dishonour in that, as Trinculo says when he
lost his bottle in the pool, but an infinite loss. Messrs
Smallwood and Smith concur, there
will be no difficulty in erecting a scaffolding strong enough to support the
weight of an interior arch or beam, as we call it, of
wood, so as to admit the exterior two rows of the stone-arch to be lifted and
replaced, stone by stone, and made as sure as ever they were. The other ribs
should then be pointed both above and beneath, every
fissure closed, every tree and shrub eradicated, and the whole arch covered
with Roman cement, or, what would be greatly better, with lead. This operation
relates to the vault over the window. Smallwood thinks
that the window itself, that is, the shafted columns, should be secured by
renewing the cross-irons which formerly combined them together laterally, and
the holes of which still remain; and, indeed, considering how it has kept its
ground in its present defenceless state, I think it amounts to a certainty that
the restoration of so many points
d’appui will secure it against any tempest whatsoever,
especially when the vaulted roof is preserved from the present risk of falling
down on it.
“There is one way in which the expense would be
greatly lessened, and the appearance of the building in the highest degree
improved, but it depends on a proviso. Provided then
that the whole eastern window, with the vault above it, were repaired and made,
as Law says, sartum atque tectum,
there could be no objection to taking down the modern roof with the clumsy
buttresses on the northern side.* Indeed I do not see how the roofs continuing
could in any respect protect the window, though it may be very doubtful whether
the west gable should be pulled down, which would expose the east window to a
thorough draft of air, a circumstance which the original builder did not
contemplate, and against which, therefore, he made no provision. The taking
down this roof and the beastly buttresses would expose a noble range of columns
on each side.—Ever, my dear Lord, yours ever truly,
W. S.”
* Sometime after the disciples of John
Knox had done their savage pleasure upon Melrose Abbey, the western part
of the chancel was repaired in a most clumsy style to serve as a parish kirk.
To the Same.
“Abbotsford, 15th May, 1822. “My dear Lord,
“I am quite delighted with the commencement of the
Melrose repairs, and hope to report progress before I leave the country, though
that must be on Monday next. Please God, I will be on the roof of the old Abbey
myself when the scaffolding is up. When I was a boy I could climb like a
wild-cat; and entire affection to the work on hand must on this occasion
counterbalance the disadvantages of increased weight and stiffened limbs. The
east and south windows certainly claim the preference in any repairs suggested;
the side aisles are also in a very bad way, but cannot in this summer weather
be the worse of delay. It is the rain that finds its way betwixt the
arch-stones in winter, and is there arrested by the frost, which ruins ancient
buildings when exposed to wet. Ice occupies more space than water unfrozen, and
thus, when formed, operates as so many wedges inserted between the stones of
the arch, which, of course, are dislocated by this interposition, and in
process of time the equilibrium of the arch is destroyed—Q. E. D. There spoke
the President of the R. S. E. The removal of the old roof would not be attended
with a penny of expense, nay, might be a saving were it thought proper to
replace the flags which now cover it upon the side aisles, where they certainly
originally lay. The ruble stones would do much more than pay the labourers. But
though this be the case, and though the beauty of the ruin would be greatly
increased, still I should first like to be well assured that the east window
was not thereby deprived of shelter. It is to be seriously weighed that the
architect who has shown so much skill, would not fail to modify the strength of
the different parts of his building to the violence which
they were to sustain; and as it never entered into his pious pate, that the
east window was to be exposed to a thorough blast from west to east, it is
possible he may not have constructed it of strength sufficient to withstand its
fury, and therefore I say caution, caution.
“We are not like to suffer on this occasion the
mortification incurred by my old friend and kinsman Mr Keith of Ravelstone, a most excellent man, but the most
irresolute in the world, more especially when the question was unloosing his
purse strings. Conceiving himself to represent the great Earls-Marischal, and
being certainly possessed of their castle and domains, he bethought him of the
family vault, a curious Gothic building in the churchyard of Dunnotar: L.10 it
was reported would do the job—my good friend proffered L.5—it would not do. Two
years after he offered the full sum. A report was sent that the breaches were
now so much increased that L.20 would scarce serve. Mr
Keith humm’d and ha’d for three years more; then
offered L.20. The wind and rain had not waited his decision—less than L.50
would not now serve. A year afterwards he sent a cheque for the L.50, which was
returned by post, with the pleasing intelligence that the
Earl-Marischal’s aisle had fallen the preceding week. Your
Lordship’s prompt decision has probably saved Melrose Abbey from the same
fate. I protest I often thought I was looking on it for the last time.
“I do not know how I could write in such a slovenly
way as to lead your Lordship to think that I could recommend planting even the
fertile soil of Bowden-moor in the month of April or May. Except evergreens, I
would never transplant a tree betwixt March and Martinmas. Indeed I hold by the
old proverb plant a tree before Candlemas, and command
it to grow—plant it after
Candlemas, and you must entreat it. I only spoke of this
as a thing which you might look at when your Lordship came here; and so your
ideas exactly meet mine.
“I think I can read Lady
Montagu’s dream, or your Lordship’s, or my own, or
our common vision, without a Daniel coming to judgment,
for I bethink me my promise related to some Botany Bay seeds, &c., sent me
in gratitude by an honest gentleman who had once run some risk of being himself
pendulous on a tree in this country. If they come to any thing pretty, we shall
be too proud to have some of the produce at Ditton.
“Your hailstones have visited us—mingled, in Scripture
phrase, with coals of fire. My uncle,
now ninety-three years complete, lives in the house of Monklaw, where the
offices were set on fire by the lightning. The old gentleman was on foot, and
as active with his orders and directions as if he had been but forty-five. They
wished to get him off, but he answered, ‘Na, na, lads, I have faced
mony a fire in my time, and I winna turn my back on this ane.’
Was not this a good cut of an old Borderer?—Ever your Lordship’s faithful
W. Scott.”
In the next of these letters Sir Walter
refers to the sudden death of the excellent Primate of Ireland, the Honourable William Stuart, brother to his and Lord Montagu’s dear friend Lady Louisa. His Grace appears to have been cut off in consequence of an
over-dose of laudanum being accidentally administered to him.
To the Same.
“Edinburgh, 24th May, 1822.
“I do devoutly grieve for poor Lady Louisa. With a mind
and indeed a bodily frame which suffers so peculiarly as hers under domestic
affliction, I think she has had a larger share of it than any person almost in
my acquaintance. Perhaps, in her case, celibacy, by extending the affections of
so kind a heart through the remoter range of relationship, has rendered her
more liable to such inroads upon her happiness. I remember several accidents
similar to that of the Archbishop of
Armagh. Henderson’s
(the player) was one. His wife, who administered the fatal draught, was the
only person who remained ignorant of the cause of his death. One of the
Duke’s farmers, some years since, showed extraordinary resolution in the
same situation. His father had given him a quantity of laudanum instead of some
other medicine. The mistake was instantly discovered; but the young man had
sufficient energy and force of mind to combat the operation of the drug. While
all around him were stupid with fear, he rose, saddled his horse, and rode to
Selkirk (six or seven miles); thus saving the time that the doctor must have
taken in coming to him. It is very curious that his agony of mind was able to
suspend the operation of the drug until he had alighted, when it instantly
began to operate. He recovered perfectly.
“Much obliged by the communication of the symbols
adopted by the lady patronesses at the ball for the Scottish Corporation. Some
seem very apocryphal. I have somewhere two lists of the badges of the Highland
clans, which do not quite correspond with each other. I suppose they sometimes
shifted their symbols. In general [it] was a rule to have an evergreen; and I
have heard that the downfall of the Stuarts was supposed
to be omened by their having chosen the oak for their badge of distinction. I
have always heard that of the Scotts was the heath-flower,
and that they were some-times
called Heather-tops from that circumstance. There is a
rhyme in Satchells or elsewhere, which
runs thus:— “If heather-bells we’re corn of the best, Buccleuch-mill would have a noble grist.” In the Highlands I used sometimes to put heath in my hat, and was always
welcomed as a kinsman by the Macdonalds, whose badge is
freugh, or heather. By the way, Glengarry has had an affair with a cow, in
which, rumour says, he has not come off quite so triumphantly as Guy of Warwick in an incident of the same nature.
Lord pity them that should mention Tom
Thumb.—Yours ever,
W. S.”
In the following he touches, among other things, on a strange book,
called, “Cranbourne
Chase,” the performance of a clergyman mad upon sport, which had been sent to
him by his friend William Rose;—the anniversary of
the battle of Waterloo, as celebrated by him and his rural allies at Melrose;—a fire which
had devastated the New Forest, in the neighbourhood of Lord
Montagu’s seat of Beaulieu Abbey;—and the annual visit to Blair-Adam,
which suggested the subject of another dramatic sketch, that of “Macduff’s Cross.”
To the Same.
“Edinburgh, June 23, 1822.
“I am glad your Lordship likes Cranbourne Chase: if you had not, I
should have been mortified in my self-conceit, for I thought you were exactly
the person to relish it. If you bind it, pray insert at the beginning or end
two or three leaves of blank paper, that I may insert some excellent anecdotes
of the learned author, which I got from good authority. His debût in the sporting line was shooting an old cat, for which
crime his father made him do penance upon bread and
water for three months in a garret, where he amused himself with hunting rats
upon a new principle. Is not this being game to the back-bone?
“I expect to be at Abbotsford for two days about the
18th, that I may hold a little jollification with the inhabitants of Melrose
and neighbourhood, who always have a gaudeamus, like honest men, on the
anniversary of Waterloo. I shall then see what is doing at the Abbey. I am very
tenaciously disposed to think, that when the expense of scaffolding, &c. is
incurred, it would be very desirable to complete the thing by covering the arch
with lead, which will secure it for 500 years. I doubt compositions standing
our evil climate; and then the old story of vegetation taking place among the
stones comes round again, and twenty years put it in as much danger as before.
To be sure the lead will not look so picturesque as cement, but then the
preservation will be complete and effectual.
“The fire in Bewly forest reminds me of a pine wood in
Strathspey taking fire, which threatened the most destructive consequences to
the extensive forests of the Laird of Grant. He sent the fiery cross (there peculiarly appropriate, and the last time, it is
said, that it was used) through Glen-Urquhart and all its dependencies, and
assembled 500 Highlanders with axes, who could only stop the conflagration by
cutting a gap of 500 yards in width betwixt the burning wood and the rest of
the forest. This occurred about 1770, and must have been a most tremendous
scene.
“Adam Ferguson
and I spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday last in scouring the country with the
Chief Baron and Chief Commissioner in search of old castles,
crosses, and so forth; and the pleasant weather rendered the excursion
delightful. The beasts of Reformers have left only the bottom-stone or socket of
Macduff’s Cross, on which is supposed to have been recorded the bounty of
King Malcom Canmore to the unborn Thane
of Fife. It was a comfort, however, to have seen any thing of it at all. As to
your being in Bond Street, I can only say I pity you with all my heart. Castle
Street is bad enough, even with the privilege of a hop-step-and-jump to
Abbotsford, by way of shoemakers’ holiday.
“I shall be delighted to hear that Lady Charlotte’s bridal has taken place;*
and as doubtless she destines a pair of gloves to one of her oldest friends and
well-wishers, I hope her Ladyship will not allow the awful prospect before her
to put out of her recollection that I have the largest pair of hands almost in
Scotland (now that Hugh Warrender is
gone), and that if there be seven-leagued gloves, as once there were
seven-leagued boots, they will be most ‘germain to the matter.’ My
respectful compliments to the bride-elect and her sisters, to Lady Montagu, and your own young ladies. I have
scarce room to add that I always am your Lordship’s very faithful
Walter Scott.”
On the 12th of July, Sir Walter, as
usual, left Edinburgh, but he was recalled within a week, by the business to which the
following note refers—
To D. Terry, Esq., London.
“Edinburgh, 31st July, 1822. “My dear Terry,
“I have not a moment to think my own thoughts, or mind
my own matters: would you were here, for we are in a famous perplexity: the
motto on the St Andrew’s
* Lady Charlotte
Scott, sister to the present Duke of Buccleuch, was married about this time to her
cousin Lord Stopford, now Earl of
Courtown.
Cross, to be presented to the King, is
‘Righ Albainn gu
brath,’ that is, ‘Long Life to the
King of Scotland.’ ‘Righ gu
brath’ would make a good motto for a
button—‘the King for ever.’ I wish to have Montrose’s sword down with the speed of
light, as I have promised to let my cousin, the Knight-Marshal, have it on this occasion. Pray send
it down by the mail-coach: I can add no more, for the whole of this work has
devolved on my shoulders. If Montrose’s sword is not
quite finished send it nevertheless.* Yours entirely,
W. Scott.”
We have him here in the hot bustle of preparation for King George the Fourth’s reception in Scotland, where
his Majesty spent a fortnight in the ensuing August, as he had a similar period in Ireland
the year before, immediately after his coronation. Before this time no Prince of the House
of Hanover was known to have touched the soil of Scotland, except one, whose name had ever
been held there in universal detestation—the cruel conqueror of Culloden,—‘the butcher Cumberland.’ Now that the very last
dream of Jacobitism had expired with the Cardinal of
York, there could be little doubt that all the northern Tories, of whatever
shade of sentiment, would concur to give their lawful Sovereign a greeting of warm and
devoted respect; but the feelings of the Liberals towards George IV.
personally had been unfavourably tinctured, in consequence of several incidents in his
history—above all—(speaking of the mass of population addicted to that political creed)—the
unhappy dissensions and scandals which had termi-
* There is in the armoury at Abbotsford a sword presented by
Charles I. to the great Marquis of Montrose with Prince Henry’s arms and cypher on one side of the blade, and
his own on the other. Sir Walter had sent it to
Terry for a new sheath, &c.
nated, as it were but yesterday, in
the trial of his Queen. The recent asperities of the
political press on both sides, and some even fatal results to which these had led, must
also be taken into account. On the whole it was, in the opinion of cool observers, a very
doubtful experiment, which the new, but not young King, had resolved on trying. That he had
been moved to do so in a very great measure, both directly and indirectly, by Scott, there can be no question; and I believe it will now be
granted by all who can recall the particulars as they occurred, that his Majesty mainly
owed to Scott’s personal influence, authority, and zeal, the
more than full realization of the highest hopes he could have indulged on the occasion of
this northern progress.
Whether all the arrangements which Sir
Walter dictated or enforced, were conceived in the most accurate taste, is a
different question. It appeared to be very generally thought, when the first programmes
were issued, that the Highlanders, their kilts, and their bagpipes, were to occupy a great
deal too much space in every scene of public ceremony connected with the King’s
reception. With all respect and admiration for the noble and generous qualities which our
countrymen of the Highland clans have so often exhibited, it was difficult to forget that
they had always constituted a small, and almost always an unimportant part of the Scottish
population; and when one reflected how miserably their numbers had of late years been
reduced in consequence of the selfish and hard-hearted policy of their landlords, it almost
seemed as if there was a cruel mockery in giving so much prominence to their pretensions.
But there could be no question that they were picturesque—and their enthusiasm was too
sincere not to be catching; so that by and by even the coolest-headed Sassenach felt his
heart, like John of Argyle’s, “warm to
the tartan;” and high and low were in the humour, not
only to applaud, but each, according to his station, to take a share in what might really
be described as a sort of grand terryfication of the Holyrood
chapters in Waverley; George IV., anno
ætatis 60, being well contented to enact “Prince Charlie,” with the Great
Unknown himself for his Baron
Bradwardine, “ad exeuendas vel
detrahendas caligas domini regis post battalliam.”
But Sir Walter had as many parts to
play as ever tasked the Protean genius of his friend Mathews; and he played them all with as much cordial energy as animated the
exertions of any Henchman or Piper in the company. His severest duties, however, were those
of stage-manager, and under these I sincerely believe any other human being’s temper
and patience would very soon have given way. The local magistrates, bewildered and
perplexed with the rush of novelty, threw themselves on him for advice and direction about
the merest trifles; and he had to arrange every thing, from the ordering of a procession to
the cut of a button and the embroidering of a cross. Ere the greenroom in Castle Street had
dismissed provosts, and bailies, and deacon-conveners of the trades of Edinburgh, it was
sure to be besieged by swelling chieftains, who could not agree on the relative positions
their clans had occupied at Bannockburn, which they considered as constituting the
authentic precedent for determining their own places, each at the head of his little
theatrical tail, in the line of the King’s escort between the
Pier of Leith and the Canongate. It required all Scott’s
unwearied good-humour, and imperturbable power of face, to hear in becoming gravity the
sputtering controversies of such fiery rivals, each regarding himself as a true potentate,
the representative of Princes as ancient as Bourbon; and no man could
have coaxed them into decent
co-operation, except him whom all the Highlanders, from the haughtiest MacIvor to the slyest Callum-Beg, agreed in looking up to as the great restored and blazoner of
their traditionary glories. He had, however, in all this most delicate part of his
administration an admirable assistant in one who had also, by the direction of his literary
talents, acquired no mean share of authority among the Celts—namely, the late General David Stewart of Garth, author of the “History of the Highland
Regiments.” On Garth (seamed all over with the scars of
Egypt and Spain) devolved the Toy-Captainship of the Celtic Club,
already alluded to as an association of young civilians enthusiastic for the promotion of
the philabeg—and he drilled and conducted that motley array in such style, that they
formed, perhaps, the most splendid feature in the whole of this plaided panorama. But he,
too, had a potential voice in the conclave of rival chieftains,—and, with the able backing
of this honoured veteran, Scott succeeded finally in assuaging all
their heats, and reducing their conflicting pretensions to terms of truce, at least, and
compromise. A ballad (now included in his works), wherein these magnates were most adroitly
flattered, was widely circulated among them and their followers, and was understood to have
had a considerable share of the merit in this peacemaking; but the constant hospitality of
his table was a not less efficient organ of influence. A friend coming in upon him as a
detachment of Duniewassails were enjoying, for the first time, his “Cogie now the King’s Come,”
in his breakfast parlour, could not help whispering in his ear—“You are just your own
Lindesay in Marmion—still thy verse hath
charms;”—and, indeed, almost the whole of the description thus referred to
might have been applied to him when arranging the etiquettes of this
ceremonial; for, among other persons in place and dignity who leaned to him for support on
every question, was his friend and kinsman, the late worthy Sir
Alexander Keith, Knight-Marischal of Scotland; and—
“Heralds and pursuivants by name Bute, Islay, Marchmont, Rothesay came, Attendant on a king-at-arms, Whose hand the armorial truncheon held, That feudal strife had often quelled, When wildest its alarms. He was a man of middle age, In aspect manly, grave, and sage, As on King’s errand come; But in the glances of his eye, A penetrating, keen, and sly Expression found its home . . . . . . . . Still is thy name in high account, And still thy verse hath charms; Sir David Lindesay of the
Mount, Lord Lyon King-at-arms.”
About noon of the 14th of August, the royal yacht and the attendant
vessels of war cast anchor in the Roads of Leith; but although Scott’s ballad-prologue had entreated the clergy to “warstle
for a sunny day,” the weather was so unpropitious that it was found necessary
to defer the landing until the 15th. In the midst of the rain, however, Sir
Walter rowed off to the Royal George; and, says the
newspaper of the day,—
“When his arrival alongside the yacht was announced
to the King, ‘What!’ exclaimed
his Majesty, ‘Sir Walter Scott! The man in
Scotland I most wish to see! Let him come up.’ This distinguished Baronet
then ascended the ship, and was presented to the King on the quarter-deck, where, after
an appropriate speech in name of the ladies of Edinburgh, he presented his Majesty with
a St Andrew’s Cross, in silver, which his fair subjects had provided for him.*
The King, with evident marks of satisfaction, made a
* This was the cross inscribed “Righ Albainn gu
brath,” about which Scott
wrote to Terry on the 31st July.
gracious reply to Sir
Walter, received the gift in the most kind and condescending manner, and
promised to wear it in public, in token of acknowledgment to the fair
donors.”
To this record let me add, that, on receiving the poet on the
quarter-deck, his Majesty called for a bottle of
Highland whisky, and having drunk his health in this national liquor, desired a glass to be
filled for him. Sir Walter, after draining his own
bumper, made a request that the King would condescend to bestow on him. the glass out of
which his Majesty had just drunk his health; and this being granted, the precious vessel
was immediately wrapped up and carefully deposited in what he conceived to be the safest
part of his dress. So he returned with it to Castle Street;—but to say nothing at this
moment of graver distractions—on reaching his house he found a guest established there of a
sort rather different from the usual visiters of the time. The poet Crabbe, to whom he had been introduced when last in London
by Mr Murray of Albemarle Street, after repeatedly
promising to follow up the acquaintance by an excursion to the north, had at last arrived
in the midst of these tumultuous preparations for the royal advent. Notwithstanding all
such impediments, he found his quarters ready for him, and Scott
entering, wet and hurried, embraced the venerable man with brotherly affection. The royal
gift was forgotten—the ample skirt of the coat within which it had been packed, and which
he had hitherto held cautiously in front of his person, slipped back to its more usual
position—he sat down beside Crabbe, and the glass was crushed to
atoms. His scream and gesture made his wife conclude that he had sat down on a pair of
scissors, or the like; but very little harm had been done except the breaking of the glass,
of which alone he had been thinking. This was a damage not to be repaired: as for the
scratch that accompanied it, its scar was of no great consequence, as
even when mounting the “cat-dath, or
battle-garment” of the Celtic Club, he adhered, like his hero Waverley, to the trews.
By six o’clock next morning, Sir
Walter, arrayed in the “Garb of old Gaul” (which he had
of the Campbell tartan, in memory of one of his great grandmothers),
was attending a muster of these gallant Celts in the Queen Street Gardens, where he had the
honour of presenting them with a set of colours, and delivered a suitable exhortation,
crowded with their rapturous applause. Some members of the Club, all of course in their
full costume, were invited to breakfast with him. He had previously retired for a little to
his library, and when he entered the parlour, Mr
Crabbe, dressed in the highest style of professional neatness and decorum,
with buckles in his shoes, and whatever was then considered as befitting an English
clergyman of his years and station, was standing in the midst of half-a-dozen stalwart
Highlanders, exchanging elaborate civilities with them, in what was at least meant to be
French. He had come into the room shortly before, without having been warned about such
company, and hearing the party conversing together in an unknown tongue, the polite old man
had adopted, in his first salutation, what he considered as the universal language. Some of
the Celts, on their part, took him for some foreign abbé or bishop, and were doing
their best to explain to him that they were not the wild savages for which, from the
startled glance he had thrown on their hirsute proportions, there seemed but too much
reason to suspect he had taken them; others, more perspicacious, gave into the thing for
the joke’s sake; and there was high fun when Scott dissolved the
charm of their stammering, by grasping Crabbe with one hand, and the
nearest of these figures with the other, and
greeted the whole group with the same hearty good-morning.
Perhaps no Englishman of these recent days ever arrived in Scotland with
a scantier stock of information about the country and the people than (judging, from all
that he said, and more expressively looked) this illustrious poet had brought with him in
August 1822. It seemed as if he had never for one moment conceived that the same island, in
which his peaceful parsonage stood, contained actually a race of men, and gentlemen too,
owning no affinity with Englishmen, either in blood or in speech, and still proud in
wearing, whenever opportunity served, a national dress of their own, bearing considerably
more resemblance to an American Indian’s than to that of an old-fashioned rector from
the Vale of Belvoir. His eyes were opened wide—but they were never opened in vain; and he
soon began, if not to comprehend the machinery which his host had called into motion on
this occasion, to sympathize at least very warmly and amiably with all the enthusiasm that
animated the novel spectacle before him.
I regret that, having been on duty with a troop of yeomanry cavalry on
the 15th of August, I lost the opportunity of witnessing Mr
Crabbe’s demeanour when this magnificent scene was first fully
revealed upon him. The whole aspect of the city and its vicinity was, in truth, as new to
the inhabitants as it could have been even to the Rector of Muston:—every height and
precipice occupied by military of the regular army, or by detachments of these more
picturesque irregulars from beyond the Grampians—lines of tents, flags, and artillery
circling Arthur’s Seat, Salisbury Crags, and the Calton Hill—and the old black
Castle, and its rock, wreathed in the smoke of repeated salvoes, while a huge banner-royal,
such as had not waved there since 1745, floated and flapped over
all;—every street, square, garden, or open space below paved with solid masses of silent
expectants, except only where glittering lines of helmets marked the avenue guarded for the
approaching procession. All captiousness of criticism sunk into nothing before the grandeur
of this vision; and it was the same, or nearly so, on every subsequent day when the
King chose to take part in the devised ceremonial. I
forget where Sir Walter’s place was on the 15th;
but on one or other of these occasions I remember him seated in an open carriage, in the
Highland dress, armed and accoutred as heroically as Garth himself, (who accompanied him), and evidently in a most bardish state
of excitement, while honest Peter Mathieson managed
as best he might four steeds of a fierier sort than he had usually in his keeping—though
perhaps, after all, he might be less puzzled with them than with the cocked-hat and regular
London Jehu’s flaxen wig which he, for the first and last time, displayed during
“the royal fortnight.”
The first procession from Leith to Holyrood was marshalled in strict
adherence, it must be admitted, to the poetical programme— “Lord! how the pibrochs groan and yell! Macdonnell’s ta’en the field himsel’, Macleod comes branking o’er the fell— Carle, now the King’s come!” But I must transcribe the newspaper record in its details, because no one could well
believe, unless he had a specimen of these before him, the extent to which the Waverley and Rob Royanimus was allowed to
pervade the whole of this affair.
“Three Trumpeters MidLothian Yeomanry Cavalry. Squadron Mid-Lothian Yeomanry. Two Highland Pipers.Captain Campbell, and Tail of Breadalbane. Squadron Scots Greys. Two Highland Pipers.Colonel Stewart of Garthand Celtic Club.Sir Evan M’Gregormounted on horseback, and Tail of M’Gregor. Herald mounted. Marischal trumpets mounted. A Marischal groom on foot. Three Marischal grooms abreast. Two Grooms. Six Marischal Esquires mounted, three abreast. Two Grooms. Henchman. Groom. Knight Marischal mounted, with his baton of office. Henchman. Groom. Marischal rear-guard of Highlanders. Sheriff mounted. Sheriff officers. Deputy Lieutenants in green coats, mounted. Two Pipers.General Graham Stirling, and Tail. Barons of Exchequer. Lord Clerk Register. Lords of Justiciary and Session, in carriages. Marquis of Lothian, Lord Lieutenant, mounted. Two Heralds, mounted. Glengarrymounted, and grooms.Young Glengarryand two supporters—Tail. Four Herald Trumpeters. White Rod, mounted, and equerries. Lord Lyon Depute, mounted, and grooms. Earl of Errol, Lord High Constable, mounted. Two Heralds, mounted. Squadron Scots Greys. Royal Carriage and Six, in which were, the Marquis of Graham, Vice-Chamberlain; Lord G. Beresford, Comptroller of the Household; Lord C. Bentinck, Treasurer of the House- hold; Sir R. H. Vivian, Equerry to the King; and two others of his Majesty’s suite. Ten Royal Footmen, two and two. Sixteen Yeomen, two and two. Archers. “THE KING, attended by the Duke of Dorset, Master of the Horse, and the Marquis of Winchester, Groom of the Stole. Archers. Sir Thomas Bradford and Staff. Squadron Scots Greys, Three Clans of Highlanders and banners. Two Squadrons of Mid-Lothian Yeomanry. Grenadiers of 77th regiment. Two Squadrons Third dragoon Guards. Band, and Scots Greys.”
It is, I believe, of the dinner of this 15th August in Castle Street,
that Crabbe penned the following brief record in his
Journal:—“Whilst it is fresh in my memory, I should describe the day which I
have just passed, but I do not believe an accurate description to be possible. What
avails it to say, for instance, that there met at the sumptuous dinner, in all the
costume of the Highlanders, the great chief himself, and officers of his company. This
expresses not the singularity of appearance and manners—the peculiarities of men all
gentlemen, but remote from our society—leaders of clans—joyous company. Then we had
Sir Walter Scott’s national songs and
ballads, exhibiting all the feelings of clanship. I thought it an honour that Glengarry even took notice of me, for there were
those, and gentlemen too, who considered themselves honoured by following in his train.
There were also Lord Errol, and the Macleod, and the Fraser, and the Gordon, and the
Ferguson;* and I conversed at dinner with
Lady
* Sir Walter’s
friend, the Captain of Huntleyburn, did
not, as far as I remember, sport the Highland dress on this occasion, but no
doubt his singing of certain Jacobite songs, &c. contributed to
Glengarry, and did almost believe myself a
harper, or bard, rather for harp I cannot strike; and Sir Walter
was the life and soul of the whole. It was a splendid festivity, and I felt I know not
how much younger.”—Life ofCrabbe, p. 273.
The King took up his residence, during
his stay in his northern dominions, at Dalkeith Palace, a noble seat of the
Buccleuch family, within six miles of Edinburgh: and here his
dinner-party almost daily included Sir Walter Scott,
who, however, appeared to have derived more deep-felt gratification from his
Majesty’s kind and paternal attention to his juvenile host (the Duke of Buccleuch was at that time only in his sixteenth
year), than from all the flattering condescension he lavished on himself. From Dalkeith the
King repaired io Holyroodhouse two
make Crabbe set him down for the chief of a clan. Sir Adam, however, is a Highlander by descent,
though the name, MacErries, has been,
for two or three generations, translated into Ferguson; and
even his reverend and philosophical father
had, on at least one remarkable occasion, exhibited the warmth of his Celtic blood
in perfection. In his essay on the Life of
John Home, Scott
says:—“Dr Adam Ferguson went as chaplain to
the Black Watch, or 42d Highland regiment, when that corps was first sent to
the Continent. As the regiment advanced to the battle of Fontenoy, the
commanding officer, Sir Robert Monro,
was astonished to see the chaplain at the head of the column, with a broadsword
drawn in his hand. He desired him to go to the rear with the surgeons, a
proposal which Adam Ferguson spurned. Sir
Robert at length told him that his commission did not entitle
him to be present in the post which he had assumed.—‘D—n my
commission,’ said the warlike chaplain, throwing it towards his colonel.
It may easily be supposed that the matter was only remembered as a good jest;
but the future historian of Rome shared the honours and dangers of that
dreadful day, where, according to the account of the French themselves,
‘the Highland furies rushed in upon them with more violence than ever did
a sea driven by a tempest.’”—Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol.
XIX. p. 331.
or three times, for the purposes of a levee or drawingroom. One Sunday
he attended divine service in the Cathedral of St Giles’, when the decorum and
silence preserved by the multitudes in the streets, struck him as a most remarkable
contrast to the rapturous excitement of his reception on week days; and the scene was not
less noticeable in the eyes of Crabbe, who says, in his
Journal,—“The silence of Edinburgh on the Sunday is in itself
devout.” Another very splendid day was that of a procession from Holyrood to the
Castle, whereof the whole ceremonial had obviously been arranged under
Scott’s auspices, for the purpose of calling up, as exactly
as might be, the time-hallowed observance of “the Riding of the Parliament.”
Mr Peel (then Secretary of State for the Home
Department) was desirous of witnessing this procession privately, instead of taking a place
in it, and he walked up the High Street accordingly, in company with
Scott, some time before the royal cavalcade was to get into
motion. The Poet was as little desirous of attracting notice as the Secretary, but he was
soon recognised—and his companion, recently revisiting Scotland, expressed his lively
remembrance of the enthusiastic veneration with which Scott’s
person was then greeted by all classes of his countrymen. When proposing Sir
Walter’s memory at a public dinner given to him in Glasgow, in
December 1836, Sir Robert Peel said “I had the honour of
accompanying his late Majesty as his Secretary of State, when he paid a visit to
Edinburgh. I suppose there are many of you here who were present on that occasion, at
that memorable scene, when the days of ancient chivalry were recalled—when every
man’s friendship seemed to be confirmed—when men met for the first time, who had
always looked to each other with distrust, and resolved in the presence of their
Sovereign to forget their hereditary feuds and
animosities. In the beautiful language of Dryden,— ‘Men met each other with erected look— The steps were higher that they took; Friends to congratulate their friends would haste, And long inveterate foes saluted as they pass’d.’
“Sir Walter Scott took an
active lead in these ceremonies. On the day on which his
Majesty was to pass from Holyroodhouse, he proposed to me to accompany
him up the High Street, to see whether the arrangements were completed. I said to him,
‘You are trying a dangerous experiment—you will never get through in
privacy.’ He said, ‘They are entirely absorbed in
loyalty.’ But I was the better prophet; he was recognised from the one
extremity of the street to the other, and never did I see such an instance of national
devotion expressed.”
The King at his first levee diverted
many, and delighted Scott, by appearing in the full
Highland garb,—the same brilliant Steuart Tartans, so called, in
which certainly no Steuart, except Prince Charles, had ever before presented himself in the saloons of
Holyrood. His Majesty’s Celtic toilette had been carefully watched and assisted by
the gallant Laird of Garth, who was not a little
proud of the result of his dexterous manipulations of the royal plaid, and pronounced the
King “a vera pretty man.” And he did look a most stately and imposing
person in that beautiful dress—but his satisfaction therein was cruelly disturbed, when he
discovered, towering and blazing among and above the genuine Glengarries and Macleods and
MacGregors, a figure even more portly than his
own, equipped, from a sudden impulse of loyal ardour, in an equally complete set of the
self-same conspicuous Steuart tartans:— “He caught Sir William Curtis in a
kilt— While throng’d the chiefs of every Highland clan To hail their brother, Vich Ian Alderman.”*
In truth, this portentous apparition cast an air of ridicule and
caricature over the whole of Sir Walter’s
Celtified pageantry. A sharp little bailie from Aberdeen, who had previously made
acquaintance with the worthy Guildhall Baronet, and tasted the turtle-soup of his
voluptuous yacht, tortured him, as he sailed down the long gallery of Holyrood, by
suggesting that, after all, his costume was not quite perfect. Sir William, who had been rigged out, as the auctioneers’
advertisements say, “regardless of expense,” exclaimed that he must be
mistaken—begged he would explain his criticism—and as he spoke threw a glance of admiration
on a skene dhu (black knife), which, like a true
“warrior and hunter of deer,” he wore stuck into one of his garters.
“Oo ay—oo ay,” quoth the Aberdonian; “the knife’s
a’ right, mon,—but faar’s your speen?”—(where’s your
spoon?) Such was Scott’s story, but whether he “gave it
a cocked-hat and walking-cane,” in the hope of restoring the King’s
good-humour, so grievously shaken by this heroical dappel-ganger, it
is not very necessary to enquire.
As in Hamlet, there
was to be a play within the play; and, by his Majesty’s desire, Mr Murray’s company performed, in his presence, the
drama of Rob Roy. Mr. James Ballantyne’s newspaper chronicle says:—
“In the pit and galleries the audience were so closely
wedged together, that it would have been found difficult to introduce between any two, even
the point of a sabre. It was astonishing to observe the patience, and even the good-nature
with which the audience bore the extreme pressure. No one, indeed, could hope to better his
situation by any effort; but the joy which was felt seemed com-
* Byron’sAge of
Bronze.
pletely to have absorbed every feeling of uneasiness.
The boxes were filled with the rank, wealth, and beauty of Scotland. In this dazzling
galaxy were observed the gallant Sir David Baird,
Colonel Stewart of Garth, Glengarry, the Lord
Provost, and Sir Walter Scott; each of
whom, as he entered, was greeted with loud acclamations.
“At ten minutes past eight, the shouts of the
multitude announced the approach of the King, which was
confirmed by an outrider, who galloped up with the intelligence. The universal feeling of
breathless suspense which at this moment pervaded the audience, cannot be described, and
will never be forgotten. Our gracious King now stood before his assembled subjects. The
momentary pause of death-like stillness which preceded the King’s appearance, gave a
deep tone of enthusiasm to the shout—the prolonged and heartfelt shout, which for more than
a minute rent the house. The waving of handkerchiefs, of the plumed bonnet, and the tartan
scarf, added much to the impressive gladness of the scene which, at this instant, met the
eye of the Chief of Chiefs. His Majesty, with his wonted affability, repeatedly bowed to
the audience, while the kindly smile which beamed from his manly countenance expressed to
this favoured portion of his loving subjects the regard with which he viewed them.
“The play was Rob Roy, which his Majesty, in the best taste, had
been pleased to command, out of compliment, doubtless, to the country. During the whole
performance, the King paid the greatest attention to the business of the stage, and laughed
very heartily at some of the more odd incidents, such as the precipitate retreat of
Mr Owen beneath the bed-clothes—the contest in
which the Bailie displays his prowess with the het poker—and the
Bailie’s loss of an essential part of his wardrobe. His Majesty seemed fully to
comprehend and to relish very much the good-natured wit and innocent sarcasms of the
Glasgow magistrate. He laughed outright when this most humorous of functionaries said to
Frank Osbaldiston, who was toying with Matty,—‘Nane o’ your Lon’on
tricks;’ when he mentioned the distinguishing appellatives of Old and Young Nick, which the citizens had bestowed upon his father
and himself; when he testified his distrust of Major
Galbraith, who ‘has mair brandy than brains,’ and of the
Highlanders, of whom he says, ‘they may quarrel amang themselves now and then, and
gie ane anither a stab wi’ a dirk or a slash wi’ a claymore; but, tak my
word on’t, they’re ay sure to join in the lang run against a’ wha hae
purses in their pockets and breeks on their
hinder-ends;’ and when he said to the boy who returned him his hat and wig,
‘that’s a braw callant! ye’ll be a man before your mither
yet.’”
On the 24th of August the Magistrates of Edinburgh entertained their
Sovereign with a sumptuous banquet in the Parliament-House; and upon that occasion also
Sir Walter Scott filled a prominent station, having
been invited to preside over one of the tables. But the most striking homage (though
apparently an unconscious one) that his genius received during this festive period, was,
when his Majesty, after proposing the health of his
hosts the Magistrates and Corporation of the northern capital, rose and said there was one
toast more, and but one, in which he must request the assembly to join him, “I
shall simply give you,” said he, “The Chieftains
and Clans of Scotland—and prosperity to the Land of Cakes.” So
completely had this hallucination taken possession, that nobody seems to have been startled
at the time by language which thus distinctly conveyed his Majesty’s impression that
the marking and crowning glory of Scotland consisted in the Highland clans and their
chieftains.
Scott’s early associations, and the prime labours
and honours of his life had been so deeply connected with the Highlands, that it was no
wonder he should have taught himself to look on their clans and chiefs with almost as much
affection and respect as if he had had more than a scantling of their blood in his veins.
But it was necessary to be an eye-witness of this royal visit, in order to comprehend the
extent to which he had allowed his imagination to get the mastery over him as to all these
matters; and perhaps it was necessary to understand him thoroughly on such points, in his
personal relations, feelings, and demeanour, before one could follow his genius to
advan-tage in some of its most favoured
and delightful walks of exertion. The strongest impression, however, which the whole affair
left on my mind was, that I had never till then formed any just notion of his capacity for
practical dealing and rule among men. I do not think he had much in common with the
statesmen and diplomatists of his own age and country; but I am mistaken if
Scott could not have played in other days either the Cecil or the Gondomar;
and I believe no man, after long and intimate knowledge of any other great poet, has ever
ventured to say, that he could have conceived the possibility of any such parts being
adequately filled on the active stage of the world, by a person in whom the powers of fancy
and imagination had such predominant sway, as to make him in fact live three or four lives
habitually in place of one. I have known other literary men of energy perhaps as restless
as his; but all such have been entitled to the designation of busy-bodies—busy almost exclusively about trifles, and above all, supremely and
constantly conscious of their own remarkable activity, and rejoicing and glorying in it.
Whereas Scott, neither in literary labour nor in continual contact
with the affairs of the world, ever did seem aware that he was making any very
extraordinary exertion. The machine, thus gigantic in its impetus, moved so easily that the
master had no perception of the obstructions it overcame—in fact, no measure for its power.
Compared to him all the rest of the poet species that I have chanced
to observe nearly—with but one glorious exception—have seemed to me to do little more than
sleep through their lives—and at best to fill the sum with dreams; and I am persuaded that,
taking all ages and countries together, the rare examples of indefatigable energy, in union
with serene self-possession of mind and character, such as
Scott’s, must be sought for in the roll
of great sovereigns, or great captains, rather than in that of literary genius.
In the case of such renowned practical masters, it has been usual to
account for their apparent calmness amidst the stirring troubles of the world, by imputing
to them callousness of the affections. Perhaps injustice has been done by the supposition;
but at all events, hardly could any one extend it to the case of the placid man of the
imaginative order;—a great depicter of man and nature, especially, would seem to be,
ex vi termini, a profound sympathizer
with the passions of his brethren, with the weaknesses as well as with the strength of
humanity. Such assuredly was Scott. His heart was as
“ramm’d with life” (to use a phrase of Ben Jonson’s) as his brain; and I never saw him
tried in a tenderer point than he was during the full whirl of splendour and gaiety that
seemed to make every brain but his dizzy in the Edinburgh of August 1822.
Few things had ever given him so much pleasure as William Erskine’s promotion to the Bench. It seemed
to have restored his dearest friend to content and cheerfulness, and thus to have doubled
his own sources of enjoyment. But Erskine’s constitution had
been shaken before he attained this dignity; and the anxious delicacy of his conscience
rendered its duties oppressive and overwhelming. In a feeble state of body, and with a
sensitive mind stretched and strained, a silly calumny, set a-foot by some envious gossip,
was sufficient literally to chase him out of life. On his return to Edinburgh about the
20th of July, Scott found him in visible danger; he did
whatever friendship could do to comfort and stimulate him; but all was in vain.
Lord Kinnedder survived his elevation hardly half a year—and who
that observed Scott’s public doings during the three or four
weeks I have been describing, could have suspected that he was daily and nightly the watcher of a deathbed, or the
consoler of orphans; striving all the while against “True earnest sorrows, rooted miseries, Anguish in grain, vexations ripe and blown?” I am not aware that I ever saw him in such a state of dejection as he was when I
accompanied him and his friend Mr Thomas Thomson
from Edinburgh to Queensferry, in attendance upon Lord
Kinnedder’s funeral. Yet that was one of the noisiest days of the
royal festival, and he had to plunge into some scene of high gaiety the moment after he
returned. As we halted in Castle Street, Mr
Crabbe’s mild, thoughtful face appeared at the window, and Scott said,
on leaving me,—“Now for what our old friend there puts down as the crowning curse of
his poor player in the Borough— ‘To hide in rant the heart-ache of the night.’”
The very few letters that Sir Walter
addressed to friends at a distance during the King’s stay in Scotland, are chiefly
occupied with the calumny which proved fatal to Erskine,—the pains which his friends took, at his request, to sift it to
the bottom,—their conviction that he had been charged with an improper liaison, without even a shadow of justice,—and their ineffectual efforts to
soothe his morbid sensibility. In one of these letters Scott
says,—“The legend would have done honour to the invention of the devil
himself, especially the object (at least the effect) being to torture to death one of
the most soft-hearted and sensitive of God’s creatures. I think it was in his
nature to like female society in general better than that of men; he had also what
might have given some slight shadow to these foul suspicions, an air of being
particular in his attentions to women, a sort of Philandering which I used to laugh at
him about. The result of a close investigation having been
completely satisfactory, one would have thought the business at an end—but the shaft
had hit the mark. At first, while these matters were going on, I got him to hold up his
head pretty well; he dined with me, went to the play with my wife—got court dresses for
his daughters, whom Lady Scott was to present, and
behaved, in my presence at least, like a man, feeling indeed painfully, but bearing up
as an innocent man ought to do. Unhappily I could only see him by snatches—the whole
business of the reception was suddenly thrown on my hands, and with such a general
abandonment, I may say, on all sides, that to work from morning till night was too
little time to make the necessary arrangements. In the mean-time, poor
Erskine’s nerves became weaker and weaker; he was by
nature extremely sensitive, easily moved to smiles or tears, and deeply affected by all
those circumstances in society to which men of the world become hardened; as, for
example, formal introductions to people of rank, and so forth; he was unhappily haunted
by the idea that his character, assailed as it had been, was degraded in the eyes of
the public, and no argument could remove this delusion. At length fever and delirium
came on; he was bled repeatedly and very copiously, a necessary treatment perhaps, but
which completely exhausted his weak frame. On the morning of Tuesday, the day of the
King’s arrival, he waked from his sleep, ordered his window to be opened that he
might see the sun once more, and was a dead man immediately after. And so died a man
whose head and heart were alike honourable to his kind, and died merely because he
could not endure the slightest stain on his reputation.—The present is a scene of great
bustle and interest, but though I must act my part, I am not,
thank God, obliged at this moment to write about it.”
In another letter, of nearly the same date, Scott says—“It would be rather difficult for any one who has never
lived much among my good country-people, to comprehend that an idle story of a
love-intrigue, a story alike base and baseless, should be the death of an innocent man
of high character, high station, and well advanced in years. It struck into poor
Erskine’s heart and soul, however,
quite as cruelly as any similar calumny ever affected a modest woman—he withered and
sunk. There is no need that I should say peace be with him! If ever a pure spirit
quitted this vale of tears it was William Erskine’s. I must
turn to and see what can be done about getting some pension for his
daughters.”
The following letter to his son Walter, now a lieutenant in the 15th Hussars, but not yet returned from his
German travels, was written a few days later:—
“My dearest Walter,
“This town has been a scene of such giddy tumult since
the King’s coming, and for a fortnight
before, that I have scarce had an instant to myself. For a long time every
thing was thrown on my hand, and even now, looking back, and thinking how many
difficulties I had to reconcile, objections to answer, prejudices to smoothe
away, and purses to open, I am astonished that I did not fever in the midst of
it. All, however, has gone off most happily; and the Edinburgh populace have
behaved themselves like so many princes. In the day when he went in state from
the Abbey to the Castle with the Regalia borne before him, the street was lined
with the various trades and professions, all arranged under their own deacons
and office-bearers, with white wands in their hands, and with their banners,
and so forth; as they were all in their Sunday’s
clothes, you positively saw nothing like mob, and their behaviour, which was
most steady and respectful towards the King, without either jostling or
crowding, had a most singular effect. They shouted with great emphasis, but
without any running or roaring, each standing as still in his place as if the
honour of Scotland had depended on the propriety of his behaviour. This made
the scene quite new to all who had witnessed the Irish reception. The Celtic
Society, “all plaided and plumed in their tartan array,”
mounted guard over the regalia while in the Abbey with great military order and
steadiness. They were exceedingly nobly dressed and armed. There were two or
three hundred Highlanders besides, brought down by their own Chiefs, and armed
cap-à-pie. They were all put under my immediate
command by their various chiefs, as they would not have liked to have received
orders from each other—so I acted as Adjutant-General, and had scores of them
parading in Castle Street every day, with piob agus
brattach, namely, pipe and banner. The whole went off
excellently well. Nobody was so gallant as the Knight-Marischal, who came out with a full retinue of Esquires
and Yeomen,—Walter and Charles were his pages. The Archers acted as
gentlemen-pensioners, and kept guard in the interior of the palace. Mamma, Sophia, and Anne were
presented, and went through the scene with suitable resignation and decorum. In
short, I leave the girls to tell you all about balls, plays, sermons, and other
varieties of this gay period. Tomorrow or next day the King sets off; and I
also take my departure, being willing to see Canning before he goes off for India, if, indeed, they are
insane enough to part with a man of his power in the House of Commons at this
eventful crisis.
“You have heard of poor Lord Londonderry (Castlereagh’s) death by his own hand, in a
fit of insanity. This explains a story he once told me of having seen a ghost,
and which I thought was a very extraordinary narrative from the lips of a man
of so much sense and steadiness of nerve. But no doubt he had been subject to
aberrations of mind, which often create such phantoms.
“I have had a most severe personal loss in my
excellent friend Lord Kinnedder, whose
promotion lately rejoiced us so much. I leave you to judge what pain this must
have given me, happening as it did in the midst of a confusion from which it
was impossible for me to withdraw myself. . . . . . . . .
“All our usual occupations have been broken in upon by
this most royal row. Whether Abbotsford is in progress or not I scarcely know;
in short, I cannot say that I have thought my own thoughts, or wrought my own
work for at least a month past. The same hurry must make me conclude abruptly
Ever yours, most affectionately,
Walter Scott.”
The ghost story to which the foregoing letter alludes, was
this:—Lord Castlereagh, when commanding, in early
life, a militia regiment in Ireland, was stationed one night in a large desolate
country-house, and his bed was at one end of a long dilapidated room, while at the other
extremity a great fire of wood and turf had been prepared within a huge gaping
old-fashioned chimney. Waking in the middle of the night, he lay watching from his pillow
the gradual darkening of the embers on the hearth, when suddenly they blazed up, and a
naked child stepped from among them upon the floor. The figure advanced slowly towards Lord
Cas-tlereagh, rising in stature at every step, until on coming
within two or three paces of his bed, it had assumed the appearance of a ghastly giant,
pale as death, with a bleeding wound on the brow, and eyes glaring with rage and despair.
Lord Castlereagh leaped from his bed, and confronted the figure in
an attitude of defiance. It retreated before him, diminishing as it withdrew, in the same
manner that it had previously shot up and expanded; he followed it pace by pace, until the
original childlike form disappeared among the embers. He then went back to his bed, and was
disturbed no more. This story Lord Castlereagh told with perfect
gravity at one of his wife’s supper parties in Paris in 1815, when Scott was among the hearers. I had often heard him repeat
it—before the fatal catastrophe of August 1822 afforded the solution in the text—when he
merely mentioned it as a singularly vivid dream, the product probably of a feverish night
following upon a military debauch,—but affording a striking indication of the courageous
temper, which proved true to itself even amidst the terrors of fancy.
Circumstances did not permit Sir
Walter to fulfil his intention of being present at the public dinner given
in Liverpool, on the 30th August, to Mr Canning, who
on that occasion delivered one of the most noble of all his orations, and soon afterwards,
instead of proceeding, as had been arranged, to take on him the supreme government of
British India, was called to fill the place in the Cabinet which Lord Londonderry’s calamitous death had left vacant. The King’s stay in Scotland was protracted until the 29th of
August. He then embarked from the Earl of
Hopetoun’s magnificent seat on the Firth of Forth, and Sir
Walter had the gratification of seeing his Majesty, in the moment of
departure, confer the honour of knighthood on two of his friends—both of whom, I believe, owed some obligation in this
matter to his good offices—namely, Captain Adam
Ferguson, deputy-keeper of the Regalia, and Henry Raeburn, R.A., properly selected as the representative of the fine
arts in Scotland. This amiable man and excellent artist, however, did not long survive the
receipt of his title. Sir Henry died on the 8th of July, 1823 the last
work of his pencil having been, as already mentioned, a portrait of
Scott.
On the eve of the King’s departure he received the following
communication:—
To Sir Walter Scott, Bart., &c. &c., Castle
Street.
“Edinburgh, August 28, 1822. “My dear Sir,
“The King has
commanded me to acquaint you, that he cannot bid adieu to Scotland without
conveying to you individually his warm personal acknowledgments for the deep
interest you have taken in every ceremony and arrangement connected with his
Majesty’s visit, and for your ample contributions to their complete
success.
“His Majesty well knows how many difficulties have
been smoothed, and how much has been effected by your unremitting activity, by
your knowledge of your countrymen, and by the just estimation in which they
hold you.
“The King wishes to make you the channel of conveying
to the Highland chiefs and their followers, who have given to the varied scene
which we have witnessed so peculiar and romantic a character, his particular
thanks for their attendance, and his warm approbation of their uniform
deportment. He does justice to the ardent spirit of loyalty by which they are
animated, and is convinced that he could offer no recompense for their services
so gratifying to them as the assurance, which I now
convey, of the esteem and approbation of their Sovereign.
“I have the honour to-be, my dear Sir, with great
truth, most truly and faithfully yours,
Robert Peel.”
Sir Walter forwarded copies of Mr Peel’s paragraph touching the Highlanders to such
heads of clans as had been of late in his counsels, and he received very grateful letters
in return from Macleod, Glengarry, Sir Evan MacGregor, and
several others of the order, on their return to the hills as also from the Countess (now
Duchess-Countess) of Sutherland, whose son, Lord Francis, had, as she playfully expressed it, “been
out” as her representative at the head of the most numerous and best appointed of all
the kilted detachments. Glengarry was so delighted with what the
Secretary of State had said, that the paragraph in question soon found its way to the
newspapers; and then there appeared, in some Whig journal, a sarcastic commentary upon it,
insinuating that, however highly the King might now choose to eulogize the poet and his
Celtic allies, his Majesty had been considerably annoyed
with much of their arrangements and proceedings, and that a visible coolness had, in fact,
been manifested towards Sir Walter during the King’s stay in the
north. As this idle piece of malice has been revived in some formal biographies of recent
date, I may as well dispose of it for ever, by extracting the following notes, which passed
in the course of the next month between Scott and the Secretary of the Admiralty, whose official duty, I
presume, it was to be in waiting at Ramsgate when the King disembarked from his yacht.—The
“Dean Cannon” to whom these notes
allude, was a clerical humorist, Dean of a fictitious order, who sat to Mr Theodore Hooke for the jolly “Rector of
Fuddle-cum-Pipes” in his novel of “Maxwell.”
To J. W. Croker, Esq., M.P., Admiralty, London.
“Abbotsford, Thursday. “My dear Croker,
“What have you been doing this fifty years? We had a
jolly day or two with your Dean Cannon
at Edinburgh. He promised me a call if he returned through the Borders; but, I
suppose, passed in the midst of the royal turmoil, or, perhaps, got tired of
sheep’s-head and haggis in the pass of Killiekrankie. He was wrong if he
did; for even Win Jenkins herself
discovered that where there were heads there must be bodies; and my forest
haunch of mutton is noway to be sneezed at.—Ever yours,
Walter Scott.”
To Sir Walter Scott, Bart., Abbotsford.
“Admiralty, Sept. 29, 1822. “My dear Scott,
“I wish it were ‘fifty
years since’ you had heard of me, as, perhaps, I should find myself by
and by celebrated, like the Baron of
Bradwardine and some other friends of ‘sixty years
since.’
“I have not seen our Dean since his Scotch tour. I am sorry he was with you in such
a period of bustle, as I should have liked to hear his sober observations on
the usual style of Edinburgh society.
“I had the honour of receiving his Majesty on his return, when he, after the
first three words, began most graciously to tell me ‘all about our
friend Scott.’ Some silly or
malicious person, his Majesty said, had reported that there had been some
coolness between you, but, he added, that it was utterly false, and that he
was, in every respect, highly pleased and gratified, and, he said, grate-ful for
the devoted attention you had paid him; and he celebrated very warmly the
success that had attended all your arrangements.
“Peel has sung
your praises to the same tune; and I have been flattered to find that both the
King and Peel thought me so much your friend that they, as
it were, reported to me the merit of ‘my friend Scott.’—Yours ever,
J. W. Croker.”
If Sir Walter lost something in not
seeing more of Dean Cannon—who, among other social
merits, sang the Ballads of Robin Hood with delightful skill and effect—there was a great
deal better cause for regret in the unpropitious time selected for Mr Crabbe’s visit to Scotland. In the glittering and
tumultuous assemblages of that season, the elder bard was (to use one of his friend’s
favourite similitudes) very like a cow in a fremd loaning; and
though Scott could never have been seen in colours more likely to
excite admiration, Crabbe had hardly any opportunity of observing him
in the everyday loveableness of his converse. Sir Walter’s
enthusiastic excitement about the kilts and the processions, seemed at first utterly
incomprehensible to him; but by degrees he caught not a little of the spirit of the time,
and even indited a set of stanzas, which have perhaps no other merit than that of
reflecting it. He also perceived and appreciated Scott’s
dexterous management of prejudices and pretensions. He exclaims, in his
Journal,—“What a keen discriminating man is my friend!” But I shall
ever regret that Crabbe did not see him at Abbotsford among his books,
his trees, and his own good simple peasants. They had, I believe, but one quiet walk
together, and it was to the ruins of St Anthony’s Chapel and Muschat’s Cairn,
which the deep impression made on
Crabbe by the Heart of
MidLothian had given him an earnest wish to see. I accompanied them, and the
hour so spent, in the course of which the fine old man gave us some most touching anecdotes
of his early struggles, was a truly delightful contrast to the bustle and worry of
miscellaneous society which consumed so many of his few hours in Scotland.
Scott’s family were more fortunate than himself in this
respect. They had from infancy been taught to reverence Crabbe’s
genius, and they now saw enough of him to make them think of him ever afterwards with
tender affection.
CHAP. IX. MONS MEG—JACOBITE PEERAGES—INVITATION FROM THE GALASH1ELS POET—PROGRESS OF
ABBOTSFORD HOUSE—LETTERS TO JOANNA
BAILLIE—TERRY—LORD MONTAGU,
ETC.—COMPLETION AND PUBLICATION OF PEVERIL OF THE PEAK. 1822—1823.
ThoughMr Crabbe
found it necessary to leave Scotland without seeing Abbotsford, this was not the case with
many less celebrated friends from the south, who had flocked to Edinburgh at the time of
the Royal Festival. Sir Walter’s house was, in his
own phrase, “like a cried fair,” during several weeks after the
King’s departure; and as his masons were then in the highest activity upon the
addition to the building, the bustle and tumult within doors and without was really
perplexing. We shall find him confessing that the excitement of the Edinburgh scenes had
thrown him into a fever, and that he never needed repose more. He certainly never had less
of it.
Nor was an unusual influx of English pilgrims the only legacy of
“the glorious days” of August. A considerable number of persons who
had borne a part in the ceremonies of the King’s
reception fancied that their exertions had entitled them to some substantial mark of royal
approbation; and post after post brought long-winded despatches from these clamorous
enthusiasts, to him who, of all Scotchmen, was supposed
to enjoy, as to matters of this description, the readiest access to the fountain of honour.
To how many of these applications he accorded more than a civil answer I cannot tell; but I
find that the Duke of York was too good a Jacobite not to
grant favourable consideration to his request, that one or two poor half-pay officers who
had distinguished themselves in the van of the Celts, might be, as
opportunity offered, replaced in Highland regiments, and so reinvested with the
untheatrical “Garb of Old Gaul.”
Sir Walter had also a petition of his own. This related
to a certain gigantic piece of ordnance, celebrated in the history of the Scottish Jameses
under the title of Mons Meg, and not forgotten in Drummond’s Macaronics— ——Sicuti Mons Megga crackasset,—— which had been removed from Edinburgh Castle to the Tower of London, after the
campaign of 1745. When Scott next saw the King, after he had displayed his person on the chief bastion
of the old fortress, he lamented the absence of Mons Meg on that occasion in language which
his Majesty could not resist. There ensued a correspondence with the official guardians of
Meg—among others, with the Duke of Wellington, then
Master-General of the Ordnance, and though circumstances deferred her restoration, it was
never lost sight of, and took place finally when the Duke was Prime Minister, which I
presume smoothed petty obstacles, in 1828.
But the serious petition was one in which Sir
Walter expressed feelings in which I believe every class of his
fellow-countrymen were disposed to concur with him very cordially—and certainly none more
so than the generous King himself. The object which the
poet had at heart was the restoration of the Scottish peer-ages
forfeited in consequence of the insurrections of 1715 and 1745; and the honourable
families, in whose favour this liberal measure was soon afterwards adopted, appear to have
vied with each other in the expression of their gratefulness for his exertions on their
behalf. The following paper seems to be his sketch of the grounds on which the
representatives of the forfeited Peers ought to approach the Ministry; and the view of
their ease thus suggested, was, it will be allowed, dexterously selected, and persuasively
enforced.
“Hints Respecting an Application for a Reversal of the Attainders in 1715
and 1745.
“Sept. 1822.
“A good many years ago Mr
Erskine of Mar, and other representatives of those noble persons
who were attainted for their accession to the Rebellions of 1715 and 1745, drew
up a humble petition to the King, praying
that his Majesty, taking into his royal consideration the long time which had
since elapsed, and the services and loyalty of the posterity of the attainted
Peers, would be graciously pleased to recommend to Parliament an Act for
reversing all attainders passed against those who were engaged in 1715 and
1745, so as to place their descendants in the same situation, as to rank, which
they would have held, had such attainders never taken place. This petition, it
is believed, was proposed about the time that an Act was passed for restoring
the forfeited estates, still in possession of the Crown; and it was imagined
that this gracious act afforded a better opportunity for requesting a reversal
of the attainders than had hitherto occurred, especially as it was supposed that the late Lord Melville, the great adviser of the one
measure, was equally friendly to the other. The petition in question, however,
it is believed, never was presented to the King—it having been understood that
the Chancellor, Lord Thurlow, was hostile
to it, and that, therefore, it would be more prudent not to press it then. It
is thought by some, that looking to his
Majesty’s late paternal and most gracious visit to his
ancient kingdom of Scotland, in which he seemed anxious to revive and encourage
all the proud recollections of its former renown, and to cherish all
associations connected with the events of the olden times, as by the display of
the Regalia, by the most distinguished attention to the Royal Archers, and by
other similar observances, a fit time has now arrived for most humbly
soliciting the royal attention to the state of those individuals, who, but for
the conscientious, though mistaken loyalty of their ancestors, would now have
been in the enjoyment of ancient and illustrious honours.
“Two objections might, perhaps, occur; but it is hoped
that a short statement may be sufficient to remove them. It may be thought,
that if the attainders of 1715 and 1745 were reversed, it would be unjust not
to reverse all attainders which had ever passed in any period of the English
history—a measure which might give birth to such a multiplicity of claims for
ancient English Peerages, forfeited at different times, as might affect
seriously the House of Lords, so as both to render that assembly improperly
numerous, and to lower the precedency of many Peers who now sit there. To this
it is submitted, as a sufficient answer, that there is no occasion for
reversing any attainders previous to the accession of the present royal family,
and that the proposed Act might be founded on a gracious declaration of the
King, expressive simply of his wish to have all attainders reversed, for offences against
his own royal house of Hanover. This limitation would at
once give ample room for the display of the greatest magnanimity on the part of
the King, and avoid the bad consequences indicated in the objection; for, with
the exception of Lords Derwentwater and
Widdrington, who joined in the
Rebellion of 1715, the only Peers who ever joined in any insurrection against
the Hanover family were Peers of Scotland, who, by their restoration, in so far
as the families are not extinct, could not add to the number of the House of
Lords, but would only occasion a small addition to the number of those already
entitled to vote at the election of the Sixteen Representative Peers. And it
seems plain, that in such a limitation, there would be no more injustice than
might have been alleged against the Act by which the forfeited estates, still
in the hands of Government, were restored; while no compensation was given for
such estates as had been already sold by Government. The same argument might
have been stated, with equal force, against the late reversal of the attainder
of Lord Edward Fitzgerald; it might have
been asked, with what sort of justice can you reverse this attainder, and
refuse to reverse all attainders that ever took place either in England or
Ireland? But no such objection was made, and the recommendation of the King to
Parliament was received almost with acclamation. And now that the family of
Lord E. Fitzgerald have been restored to the rights
which he had forfeited, the petition in the present case will, it is hoped,
naturally strike his Majesty with greater force, when he is pleased to
recollect that his lordship’s attainder took place on account of
accession to a rebellion, of which the object was to introduce a foreign force
into Ireland, to overturn the Constitution, and to produce universal misery;
while the elder attainders now
in question were the results of rebellions, undertaken from views of
conscientious, though mistaken loyalty in many individuals, who were much
attached to their country, and to those principles of hereditary succession to
the Throne in which they had been educated, and which, in almost every
instance, ought to be held sacred.
“A second objection, perhaps, might be raised, on the
ground that the reversal of the attainders in question would imply a censure
against the conduct of that Government by which they were passed, and
consequently an approval, in some measure, of those persons who were so
attainted. But it might as well be said that the reversal of Lord E. Fitzgerald’s attainder implied a
censure on the Parliament of Ireland, and on the King, by whom that act had
been passed; or that the restoration of an officer to the rank from which he
had been dismissed by the sentence of a court-martial, approved of by the King,
would imply a censure on that court, or on that King. Such implication might,
at all events, be completely guarded against by the preamble of the proposed
Act—which might condemn the Rebellion in strong terms—but reverse the
attainders, from the magnanimous wish of the King to obliterate the memory of
all former discord, so far as his own house had been the object of attack, and
from a just sense of the meritorious conduct and undoubted loyalty of the
descendants of those unfortunate, though criminal individuals. And it is humbly
submitted, that as there is no longer any Pretender to his Majesty’s
Crown, and as all classes of his subjects now regard him as both de jure and de facto the only
true representative of our ancient race of Princes—now is the time for such an
act of royal magnanimity, and of Parliamentary munificence, by which the honour
of so many noble houses would be fully restored; while, at
the same time, the station of the representatives of certain other noble
houses, who have assumed titles, their right to which is, under the present
law, much more than doubtful, would be fully confirmed, and placed beyond the
reach of objection.”
In Scott’s collection of
miscellaneous MSS. the article that stands next to this draft of “Hints,” is
one that I must indulge myself with placing in similar juxtaposition here. I have already
said something of his friendly relations with the people of the only manufacturing village
in his neighbourhood. Among other circumstances highly grateful to them was his regular
attendance on the day when their Deacon and Convener for the year entered on his
office—which solemnity occurred early in October. On the approach of these occasions he
usually received an invitation in verse, penned by a worthy weaver named Thomson, but known and honoured all over Teviotdale as
“the Galashiels Poet.” At the first of these
celebrations that ensued the forthcoming of Rob
Roy, this bard delighted his compeers, and not less their guest, by chanting a
clever parody on the excellent song of “Donald Caird,” i. e. Tinker, the chorus being—in
place of Scott’s “Dinna let the Sherra ken Donald Caird’s come again;”— “Think ye does the Sherra kenRob Mac
Gregor’scome
again:” and that was thenceforth a standing ditty on the day of the Deacon. The
Sheriff’s presence at the installation of 1822 was requested by the following
epistle:—
To Sir Walter Scott, Bart., Abbotsford. “Murray’s Inn, Galashiels, 1st Oct. 1822. “This year we rather ’gin to falter If an epistle we should send ye. Say some, ‘Ye only plague Sir Walter, He canna ilka year attend ye: Last year, nae doubt, he condescended, Just to be quit o’ your palaver; But he could ne’er ha’e apprehended That ilka year ye’d ask the favour. He’s dined but lately wi’ the King, And round him there is sic a splendour, He winna stoop to such a thing, For a’ the reasons ye can render: Content yourselves wi’ John o’
Skye; Your impudence deserves a wiper: Ye’ll never rest till he grow shy, And e’en refuse to send his piper.’ “These reasons a’ may be withstood, Wi’ nae pretensions for a talker;— Ye mauna lightly Deacon Wood, But dine wi’ him like Deacon Walker. Your fav’rite dish is not forgot: Imprimis for your bill of fare, We’ll put a sheep’s-head i’ the pot,— Ye’se get the cantle for your share: And we’ve the best o’ “Mountain dew,” Was gather’d whare ye mauna list, In spite o’ a’ the gauger crew, By Scotland’s ‘children o’ the mist.’ Last year your presence made us canty, For which we hae ye yet to thank; This year, in faith, we canna want ye, Ye’re absence wad mak sic a blank. As a’ our neibors are our friends, The company is not selected; But for to mak ye some amends, There’s not a social soul neglected. “We wish you luck o’ your new biggin’; There’s no the like o’t on the Tweed; Ye’ll no mistak it by its riggin’,—* It is an oddity indeed. To Lady Scott our kind respect— To her and to Miss Ann our thanks; We hope this year they’ll no neglect Again to smile upon our ranks. Upon our other kind regards At present we will no be treating, For some discourse we maun hae spared To raise the friendly crack at meeting. So ye maun come, if ye can win Gie’s nae excuse, like common gentry;— If we suspect, as sure’s a gun, On Abbotsford we’ll place a sentry.”
It was a pleasant thing to see the annual procession of these weavers of
Galashiels—or (for they were proud enough to adopt the name) of Ganders-cleuch—as they advanced from their village with John of Skye at their head, and the banners of their craft
all displayed, to meet Sir Walter and his family at the
ford, and escort them in splendour to the scene of the great festivity. And well pleased
was he to “share the triumph and partake the gale” of Deacon
Wood or Deacon Walker—and a proud man was Laureate Thomson when his health was proposed by the
“brother bard” of Abbotsford. At this Galashiels festival the Ettrick Shepherd also was a regular attendant. He used to
come down the night before, and accompany Sir Walter in the only
carriage that graced the march; and many of Hogg’s best
* The old song says,—
“This is no mine ain house, I ken by the riggin o’t, &c.”—See
Collection. ballads were produced for the first time amidst the
cheers of the men of Ganders-cleuch. Meeting Poet Thomson not long
since in a different part of the country, he ran up to me, with the tears in his eyes, and
exclaimed, “Eh, sir, it does me good to see you—for it puts me in mind of the
grand days in our town, when Scott and Hogg
were in their glory—and we were a’ leal Tories!” Galashiels is now a
nest of Radicalism—but I doubt if it be a happier place than in the times of
Deacon Wood and Deacon Walker.
In the following letters we have, as many readers may think, rather too
much of the “new biggin” and “the riggin o’t”
but I cannot consent to curtail such curiously characteristic records of the days when
Scott was finishing Peveril of the Peak, and projecting his inimitable
portraitures of Louis XI. and Charles of Burgundy.
To Daniel Terry, Esq,, London.
“Abbotsford, October 5, 1822. “My dear Terry,
“I have been ‘a vixen and a
griffin,’ as Mrs Jenkins says,
for many days in plain truth, very much out of heart. I know you will
sympathize particularly with me on the loss of our excellent friend W. Erskine, who fell a victim to a hellishly
false story which was widely circulated concerning him, or rather I should say
to the sensibility of his own nature, which could not endure even the shadow of
reproach—like the ermine, which is said to pine to death if its fur is soiled.
And now Hay Donaldson* has followed him,
an excellent man, who long
* Mr Hay
Donaldson drew up an affecting sketch of his friend
Lord Kinnedder’s Life
and Character, to which Scott made
some additions, and which was printed, but not, I think, for public
circulation. He died shortly afterwards, on the 30th of September,
1822.
managed my family affairs with the greatest accuracy and
kindness. The last three or four years have swept away more than half the
friends with whom I lived in habits of great intimacy—the poor Duke, Jocund
Johnnie, Lord Somerville,
the Boswells, and now this new deprivation. So it must be with us “When ance life’s day draws near the gloamin,”*—
and yet we proceed with our plantations and plans as if any tree but the
sad cypress would accompany us to the grave, where our friends have gone before
us. It is the way of the world, however, and must be so, otherwise life would
be spent in unavailing mourning for those whom we have lost. It is better to
enjoy the society of those who remain to us. I am heartily glad, my dear
Terry, that you have carried through
your engagement so triumphantly, and that your professional talents are at
length so far appreciated as to place you in the first rank in point of
emolument as in point of reputation. Your talents, too, are of a kind that will
wear well, and health permitting, hold out to you a
long course of honourable exertion; you should begin to make a little nest-egg
as soon as you can; the first little hoard which a man can make of his earnings
is the foundation-stone of comfort and independence—so says one who has found
it difficult to practise the lesson he offers you. We are getting on here in
the old style. The new castle is now roofing, and looks superb; in fact a
little too good for the estate, but we must work the harder to make the land
suitable. The library is a superb room, but after all I fear the shelves ought
not to be less than ten or twelve feet high; I had quite decided for nine feet,
but on an exacter measurement this will not accommodate fully the books I
* Burns.
have now in hand, and leaves no room
for future purchases. Pray is there not a tolerable book on upholstery—I mean
plans for tables, chairs, commodes, and such like? If so, I would be much
obliged to you to get me a copy, and send it under Freeling’s cover. When you can pick up a few odd books
for me, especially dramatic, you will do me a great kindness, and I will remit
the blunt immediately. I wish to know what the Montrose sword cost, that I may send the gratility. I must look about for a mirror for the drawing-room, large
enough to look well between the windows. Beneath, I mean to place the antique
mosaic slab which Constable has given
me, about four feet and a half in length. I am puzzled about framing it.
Another anxious subject with me is fitting up the little oratory—I have three
thick planks of West Indian cedar, which, exchanged with black oak, would, I
think, make a fine thing. I wish you had seen the King’s visit here; it was very grand; in fact, in moral
grandeur it was beyond any thing I ever witnessed, for the hearts of the
poorest as well as the greatest were completely merged in the business.
William Murray behaved excellently,
and was most useful. I worked like a horse, and had almost paid dear for it,
for it was only a sudden and violent eruption that saved me from a dangerous
illness. I believe it was distress of mind, suppressed as much as I could, and
mingling with the fatigue: certainly I was miserably ill, and am now only got
quite better. I wish to know how Mrs
Terry, and you, and my little Walter are; also little Miss. I hope, if I live so long, I may
be of use to the former; little misses are not so easily accommodated.—Pray
remember me to Mrs Terry. Write to me soon, and believe
me, always most truly yours,
“I wrote you a full account of the King’s visit, which went off à merveille. I suffered a good deal
in consequence of excessive fatigue and constant anxiety, but was much relieved
by a very inconvenient and nasty eruption which physicians call the prickly heat. Ross
says if it had not broke out I would have had a bad fever—in the mean-time,
though the complaint has gone off, my arms and legs are spotted like a
leopard’s. The King has expressed himself most graciously to me, both at
leaving Edinburgh and since he returned. I know from sure authority he has
scarce ever ceased to speak about the Scotch and the fine taste and spirit of
their reception.
“Some small accompts of yours have come in. This is
wrong—you ought never to leave a country without clearing every penny of debt;
and you have no apology for doing so, as you are never refused what I can
afford. When you can get a troop I shall expect you to maintain yourself
without further recourse on me, except in the case of extraordinary accident,
so that, without pinching yourself, you must learn to keep all your expenses
within your income; it is a lesson which if not learned in youth lays up much
bitter regret for age.
“I am pleased with your account of Dresden, and could
have wished you had gone on to Töplitz, Leipsic, &c. At Töplitz
Buonaparte had his fatal check, losing
Vandamme, and about 10,000 men, who
had pressed too unwarily on the allies after raising the siege of Dresden.
These are marked events in your profession, and when you are on the ground you
ought to compare the scene of action
with such accounts as you can get of the motives and motions of the contending
powers.
“We are all quite well here; my new house is quite
finished as to masonry, and we are now getting on the roof just in time to face
the bad weather. Charles is well at last
writing—the Lockharts speak for
themselves. Game is very plenty, and two or three pair of pheasants are among
the young wood at Abbotslee. I have given strict orders there shall be no
shooting of any kind on that side of the hill. Our house has been a little
disturbed by a false report that puss had eat up the favourite robin-redbreast
who comes every morning to sing for crumbs after breakfast, but the
reappearance of Robin exculpates old Hinzie. On your
birthday this week you become major!—God send you the
wit and reflection necessary to conduct yourself as a man; from henceforward,
my province will be to advise rather than to command.—Well, we shall have a
little jollification, and drink your health on becoming legally major, which, I
suppose, you think a much less matter than were you to
become so in the military term.
“Mamma is quite
well, and with Ann and Cousin Walter join in compliments and
love.—Always affectionately yours,
Walter Scott.”
In the next letter to Terry,
Scott refers to the death of an amiable friend of
his, Mr James Wedderburne, Solicitor-General for
Scotland, which occurred on the 7th November; and we have an indication that Peveril of the Peak had reached the fourth
volume, in his announcement of the subject for Quentin Durward.
To D. Terry, Esq. London.
“Abbotsford, Nov. 10th, 1822. “My dear Terry,
“I got all the plans safe, and they are delightful.
The library ceiling will be superb, and we have plenty of ornaments for it
without repeating one of those in the eating-room. The plan of shelves is also
excellent, and will, I think, for a long time suffice my collection. The
brasses for the shelves I like—but not the price: the notched ones, after all,
do very well. I have had three grand hawls since I last wrote to you. The
pulpit, repentance-stool, King’s seat, and God knows how much of carved
wainscot, from the kirk of Dunfermline,* enough to coat the hall to the height
of seven feet:—supposing it boarded above, for hanging guns, old portraits,
intermixed with armour, &c.—it will be a superb entrance-gallery: this is
hawl the first. Hawl second is twenty-four pieces of the most splendid Chinese
paper, twelve feet high by four wide, a present from my cousin Hugh Scott,† enough to finish the
drawing-room and two bed-rooms. Hawl third is a quantity of what is called
Jamaica cedar-wood, enough for fitting up both the drawing-room and the
library, including the presses, shelves, &c.: the wood is finely pencilled
and most beautiful, something like the colour of gingerbread; it costs very
little more than oak, works much easier, and is never touched by vermin of any
kind. I sent Mr Atkinson a specimen, but
it was from the plain end of the plank: the interior is finely waved and
variegated. Your kind and unremitting exertions in our favour will soon plenish
the drawing-
* For this hawlSir Walter was indebted to the
Magistrates of Dunfermline.
† Captain Hugh
Scott, of the East India Company’s Naval Service
(now of Draycote House, near Derby), second son to the late Laird of Raeburn.
room. Thus we at present stand. We have
a fine old English cabinet, with china, &c.—and two superb elbow-chairs,
the gift of Constable, carved most
magnificently, with groups of children, fruit, and flowers, in the Italian
taste: they came from Rome, and are much admired. It seems to me that the
mirror you mention, being framed in carved box, would answer admirably well
with the chairs, which are of the same material. The mirror should, I presume,
be placed over the drawing-room chimney-piece; and opposite to it I mean to put
an antique table of mosaic marbles, to support Chantrey’s bust. A good sofa would be desirable, and so
would the tapestry-screen, if really fresh and beautiful; but as much of our
furniture will be a little antiquated, one would not run too much into that
taste in so small an apartment. For the library I have the old oak chairs now
in the little armoury, eight in number, and we might add one or two pair of the
ebony chairs you mention. I should think this enough, for many seats in such a
room must impede access to the books; and I don’t mean the library to be
on ordinary occasions a public room. Perhaps the tapestry-screen would suit
better here than in the drawing-room. I have one library table here, and shall
have another made for atlases and prints. For the hall I have four chairs of
black oak. In other matters we can make it out well enough. In fact, it is my
object rather to keep under my new accommodations at first, both to avoid
immediate outlay, and that I may leave room for pretty things which may occur
hereafter. I would to Heaven I could take a cruize with you through the
brokers, which would be the pleasantest affair possible, only I am afraid I
should make a losing voyage of it. Mr Atkinson has missed
a little my idea of the oratory, fitting it up entirely as a bookcase, whereas
I should like to have had recesses for curiosities—for the Bruce’s skull*—for a crucifix, &c.
&c.—in short, a little cabinet instead of a book-closet. Four sides of
books would be perfectly sufficient; the other four, so far as not occupied by
door or window, should be arranged tastefully for antiquities, &c., like
the inside of an antique cabinet, with drawers, and shottles, and funny little
arches. The oak screen dropped as from the clouds: it is most acceptable; I
might have guessed there was only one kind friend so ready to supply hay to my
hobby-horse. You have my views in these matters and your own taste; and I will
send the needful when you apprise me of the amount
total. Where things are not quite satisfactory, it is better to wait a while on
every account, for the amusement is over when one has room for nothing more.
The house is completely roofed, &c., and looks worthy of Mrs Terry’s painting. I never saw any
thing handsomer than the grouping of towers, chimneys, &c. upon the roof,
when seen at a proper distance.
“Once more, let me wish you joy of your professional
success. I can judge, by a thousand minute items, of the advance you make with
the public, just as I can of the gradual progress of my trees, because I am
interested in both events. You may say, like Burke, you were not ‘coaxed and dandled into
eminence,’ but have fought your way gallantly, shown your
passport at every barrier, and been always a step in advance, without a single
retrograde movement. Every one wishes to advance rapidly, but when the desired
position is gained, it is far more easily maintained by him whose ascent has
been gradual, and whose favour is founded not on the unreasonable expectations
entertained from one or two seasons, but from an habitual experience of the
power of pleasing
* A cast of the skull of King
Robert the Bruce, made when his tomb was discovered
during some repairs of Dunfermline Abbey, in 1819.
during several years. You say not a
word of poor Wattles. I hope little Miss
has not put his nose out of joint entirely.
“I have not been very well—a whoreson thickness of
blood, and a depression of spirits arising from the loss of friends (to whom I
am now to add poor Wedderburne), have
annoyed me much; and Peveril
will, I fear, smell of the apoplexy. I propose a good rally, however, and hope
it will be a powerful effect. My idea is, entre
nous, a Scotch archer in the French King’s guard,
temporeLouis XI., the most picturesque of all
times.—Always yours very faithfully,
Walter Scott.”
This letter contains the first allusion to the species of malady that
ultimately proved fatal to Sir Walter Scott. He, as far
as I know, never mentioned to any one of his family the symptoms which he here speaks of;
but long before any serious apoplectic seizure occurred, it had been suspected by myself,
and by others of his friends, that he had sustained slight attacks of that nature, and
concealed them.
The depression of spirits of which he complains, could not, however, have
hung over him long; at least it by no means interrupted any of his usual occupations. A
grievous interruption had indeed been occasioned by the royal visit, its preparations, and
its legacy of visitants and correspondence; but he now laboured to make up his lee-way, and
Peveril of the Peak was completed, and some progress had also
been achieved with the first volume of Quentin
Durward, before the year reached its close. Nor had he ceased to contemplate
future labour, and continued popularity, with the same firmness and hopefulness as ever. He
had, in the course of October, completed his contract, and received Constable’s bills, for another
unnamed “work of fiction;” and this was the last such work in which the great
bookseller of Edinburgh was destined to have any concern. The engagement was in fact that
redeemed three years afterwards by Woodstock.
Sir Walter was, as may be supposed, stimulated in all
these matters by the music of the hammer and saw at Abbotsford. Witness this letter,
written during the Christmas recess—
To Daniel Terry, Esq., London.
“Abbotsford, January 9th, 1823. “Dear Terry,
“It is close firing to answer letters the day they
come to hand, but I am afraid of losing opportunities, as in the case of the
mirror, not to be retrieved. I am first to report progress, for your
consideration and Mr Atkinson’s,
of what I have been doing here. Every thing about the house has gone
à rien mieux, and the
shell is completely finished; all the upper story and garrets, as well as the
basement, have had their first coat of plaster, being first properly fenced
from the exterior air. The only things which we now greatly need are the
designs for the ceilings of the hall and drawing-room, as the smiths and
plasterers are impatient for their working plans, the want of which rather
stops them. I have taken actual, real, and corporal possession of my
sitting-room, which has been fitted with a temporary floor, door, and
window—the oratory, and the door into the library, being bricked up
ad interim. This was a stop
of necessity, as my books began to suffer in Peter’s garret, so they were brought up to the said room,
and are all ranged in their old shelves and presses, so as to be completely
comeatable. They have been now there a fortnight without the least appearance
of damp, so dry do the brick facings
make the wall; and as we keep good fires in the place (which, by the by, vents
like all Mr Atkinson’s chimneys, in a superior
style), I intend they shall remain there till they are transferred to the
Library, so that this room will be fitted up last of all. I shall be then able
to judge of a point on which I have at present some doubt—namely, the capacity
of my library to accommodate my books. Should it appear limited (I mean making
allowance for future additions) I can perhaps, by Mr
Atkinson’s assistance, fit up this private room with a
gallery, which might enter by carrying the stair up the oratory, and renouncing
the idea of fitting it up. The cedar, I assure you, is quite beautiful. I have
had it sawn out into planks, and every one who looks at it agrees it will be
more beautiful than oak. Indeed, what I have seen of it put to that use, bears
no comparison unless with such heart of oak as Bullock employed, and that you know is veneered. I do not go on
the cry in this, but practical knowledge, for Mr
Waugh, my neighbour, a West Indian planter (but himself bred a
joiner), has finished the prettiest apartment with it that I ever saw. I should
be apt to prefer the brass notches, were the difference only what you mention,
namely, L.20; but I cannot make out how that should be, unless by supposing the
joiners’ wages much higher than with us. But indeed, in such a library as
mine, when the books are once catalogued, I could perhaps in many instances
make fixed shelves answer the turn, by adopting a proper arrangement from the
beginning. I give up the Roslin drop in the oratory—indeed I have long seen it
would not do. I think the termination of it may be employed as the central part
of Mr Atkinson’s beautiful plan for the recess in
the library; by the by, the whole of that ceiling, with the heads we have got,
will be the prettiest thing ever seen in these parts.
“The plan preferred for the door between the
entrance-hall and ante-room, was that which was marked B. To make this plain, I
reinclose A and C—which mode of explaining myself puts me in mind of the
evidence of an Irish officer—‘We met three rebels, one we shot, hanged
another, the third we flogged and made a guide
of.’—‘Which of the three did you flog and make a guide
of?’—‘Him whom we neither shot nor hanged.’
Understand, therefore, that the plan not returned is that fixed upon. I think
there is nothing left to say about the house excepting the chimney-pieces. I
have selected for the hall chimney-piece one of the cloister arches of Melrose,
of which I enclose an accurate drawing. I can get it finished here very
beautifully, at days’ wages, in our dark red freestone. The chimneys of
drawing-room, library, and my own room, with grates conforming, will be got
much better in London than any where else; by the by, for the hall I have got
an old massive chimney-grate which belonged to the old persecutor Bishop Sharp, who was murdered on Magus Muir.
All our grates must be contrived to use wood as well as coal, with what are
called half-dogs.
“I am completely Lady
Wishfort as to the escritoire. In fact, my determination would
very much depend on the possibility of showing it to advantage; for if it be
such as is set up against a wall, like what is called, par excellence, a writing-desk, you know
we have no space in the library that is not occupied by book-presses. If, on
the contrary, it stands quite free, why, I do not know—I must e’en leave
it to you to decide between taste and prudence. The silk damask, I fancy, we
must have for the drawing-room curtains; those in the library we shall have of
superfine crimson cloth from Galashiels, made of mine own wool. I should like
the silk to be sent down in the bales, as I wish these curtains to be made up on a simple useful pattern, without
that paltry trash of drapery, &c. &c. I would take the armoury curtains
for my pattern, and set my own tailor, Robin Goodfellow,
to make them up; and I think I may save on the charge of such an upholsterer as
my friend Mr Trotter much of the difference in the value
of materials. The chairs will be most welcome. Packing is a most important
article, and I must be indebted to your continued goodness for putting that
into proper hands. The mirror, for instance—O Lord, sir!
“Another and most important service would be to
procure me, from any person whom Mr
Atkinson may recommend, the execution of the enclosed commission
for fruit-trees. We dare not trust Edinburgh; for though the trade never makes
a pause in furnishing you with the most rare plants, insomuch that an old
friend of mine, the original Jonathan
Oldbuck, having asked one of them to supply him with a dozen of
anchovies, he answered ‘he had plenty of them, but, being a delicate
plant, they were still in the hothouse’ yet, when the said plants
come to bear fruit, the owner may adopt the classical line— ‘Miratur novas frondes et non sua poma.’ My new gardener is a particularly clever fellow in his way, and thinks the
enclosed kinds like to answer best. Our new garden-wall will be up in spring,
time enough to have the plants set. By the way, has Mr
Atkinson seen the way of heating hot-houses, &c., adapted by
Mr Somebody at Glasgow, who has got a patent? It is by a new application of
steam, which is poured into a vaulted roof, made completely air-tight, except
where it communicates with an iron box, so to speak, a receptacle of the heated
air. This vaulted recess is filled with bricks, stones, or such like
substances, capable of receiving and retaining an extreme
degree of heat from the steam with which they are surrounded. The steam itself
is condensed and carried off; but the air, which for many hours continues to
arise from these heated bricks, ascends into the iron receptacle, and is let
off by ventilators into the space to be heated in such quantities as may be
desired. The excellence of this plan is not only the saving of fuel, but also
and particularly the certainty that the air cannot be overheated, for the
temperature at hottest does not exceed 95 degrees—nor overchilled, for it
continues to retain, and of course to transmit, the same degree of heated air,
or but with little variation, for ten or twelve hours, so as to render the
process of forcing much more certain and simple than it has been from any means
hitherto devised. I dare say that this is a very lame explanation, but I will
get a perfect one for Mr Atkinson if he wishes it. The
Botanical Garden at Glasgow has adopted the plan, and they are now changing
that of Edinburgh for the same purpose. I have not heard whether it has been
applied to houses; but, from the principle, I should conceive it practicable.
“Peveril has been stopped ten days, having been driven back to Leith
Roads by stress of weather. I have not a copy here, but will write to Ballantyne to send you one forthwith. I am
sick of thinking of it myself. We hear of you often, and always of your
advancing favour with the public. It is one of many cases in which the dearly
beloved public has come round to my decided opinion, after seeming to waver for
a time. Washington Irving’s
success is another instance of the same. Little
Walter will, I hope, turn out all we can wish him; and Mrs Terry’s health, I would fain hope,
will be completely re-established. The steam-boats make a jaunt to Scotland
comparatively so speedy and easy, that I hope you will sometimes cast both of
yourselves this way. Abbotsford, I am sure, will please you, when you see all your dreams realized, so
far as concerns elevation, &c.
“John Thomson,
Duddingstone, has given me his most splendid picture, painted, he says, on
purpose for me a true Scottish scene. It seems to me that many of our painters
shun the sublime of our country, by labouring to introduce trees where
doubtless by search they might be found, but where most certainly they make no
conspicuous part of the landscape, being like some little folks who fill up a
company, and put you to the proof before you own to have seen them. Now this is
Fast Castle, famous both in history and legend, situated near St Abb’s
Head, which you most certainly must have seen, as you have cruized along the
coast of Berwickshire. The view looks from the land down on the ragged ruins, a
black sky and a foaming ocean beyond them. There is more imagination in the
picture than in any I have seen of a long time a sort of Salvator Rosa’s doings.—Revenons à nos moutons. I find that
the plans for the window-shutters of the entrance-hall are much wanted. My
wainscot will not be altogether seven feet—about six. Higher it cannot be,
because of the pattern of the Dunfermline part; and lower I would not have it,
because the armour, &c. must be suspended beyond the reach of busy and rude
fingers, to which a hall is exposed. You understand I mean to keep lighter,
smaller, and more ornate objects of curiosity in the present little room, and
have only the massive and large specimens, with my fine collection of horns,
&c., in the hall. Above the wainscot, I propose the wall to be planked and
covered with cartridge paper, and then properly painted in wainscot, to match
the arrangement beneath.
“I have now, as your own Dogberry says, bestowed all my tediousness upon you;—yet I have
still a question of yours to answer on a certain
bookseller’s part. Unquestionably I know many interesting works of the
kind he mentions which might be translated from the German:—almost all those of
Musæus, of which Beddoes made two volumes, and which are
admirably written; many of La Motte
Fouque; several from the collection bearing the assumed name of
Beit Weber. But there is a point more essential to
their success with the British public than even the selection. There is in the
German mode of narration, an affectation of deep metaphysical reflection and
protracted description and discussion, which the English do not easily
tolerate; and whoever translates their narratives with effect should be master
of the taste and spirit of both nations. For instance, I lately saw a
translation of ‘Sintram und seine
Gefahrten,’ or Sintram and his Comrades, the story in the world
which, if the plot were insinuated into the boxes, as
Bayes says, would be most striking,
translated into such English as was far more difficult to me than the original
German. I do not know where an interpreter such as I point to could be found;
but a literal jog-trotter, such as translated the
passages from Goëthe annexed to the
beautiful engravings, which you sent me,* would never make a profitable job.
The bibliopole must lay his account to seek out a man of fancy, and pay him
well. I suppose my friend Cohen†
is above superintending such a work, otherwise he is the man to make something
of it. Perhaps he might be induced to take it in hand for the love of the task.
All who are here—namely, my lovely lady and the Lady Anne—salute you and Mrs
Terry with the most sincere good wishes.—Faithfully yours,
W. Scott.
* I presume this alludes to the English edition of
Retsch’s Outlines from
Faust.
† Mr Cohen is now Sir Francis Palgrave, K.H.
“P.S. Direct to Edinburgh, where I shall be on the
14th. Perhaps the slightest sketch of the escritoire might enable me to
decide. If I could swop my own, which cost me L.30, it might diminish my
prudential scruples. Poor little Johnnie would have offered the prime cost at once. Your
letter shall go to James Ballantyne.
I think I have something new likely to be actually dramatical. I will send
it you presently; but, on your life, show it no one, for certain reasons.
The very name is kept secret, and, strange to tell, it will be printed
without one.”
The precaution mentioned in this P.S. was really adopted in the printing
of Quentin Durward. It had been suggested
by a recent alarm about one of Ballantyne’s
workmen playing foul, and transmitting proof-sheets of Peveril while at press to some American pirate.
Peveril of the Peak appeared, then, in
January, 1823. Its reception was somewhat colder than that of its three immediate
predecessors. The post-haste rapidity of the Novelist’s execution was put to a severe
trial, from his adoption of so wide a canvass as was presented by a period of twenty busy
years, and filled by so very large and multifarious an assemblage of persons, not a few of
them, as it were, struggling for prominence. Fenella
was an unfortunate conception; what is good in it is not original, and the rest
extravagantly absurd and incredible. Even worse was that condescension to the practice of
vulgar romancers, in his treatment of the trial scenes—scenes usually the very citadels of
his strength—which outraged every feeling of probability with those who had studied the
terrible tragedies of the Popish Plot, in the authentic records of, perhaps, the most disgraceful epoch in our history. The story is clumsy and
perplexed; the catastrophe (another signal exception to his rules) foreseen from the
beginning, and yet most inartificially brought about. All this is true; and yet might not
criticisms of the same sort be applied to half the masterpieces of Shakspeare? And did any dramatist—to say nothing of any
other novelist—ever produce, in spite of all the surrounding bewilderment of the fable,
characters more powerfully conceived, or, on the whole, more happily portrayed, than those
(I name but a few) of Christian, Bridgenorth, Buckingham,
and Chiffinch—sketches more vivid than those of
Young Derby, Colonel
Blood, and the keeper of Newgate? The severest censor of this novel was
Mr Senior; yet he was just as well as severe. He
could not dismiss the work without admitting that Peveril,
“though entitled to no precedency,” was, on the whole, “not
inferior to his brethren, taken as a class;” and upon that class he
introduced a general eulogy, which I
shall gratify my readers by extracting:*
“It had become a trite remark, long before there was
the reason for it which now exists, that the Waverley novels are, even from their mere
popularity, the most striking literary phenomena of the age. And that popularity,
unequalled as it is in its extent, is perhaps more extraordinary in its permanence. It has
resisted the tendency of the public, and perhaps of ourselves, much as we struggle against
it, to think every subsequent work of the same author inferior to its predecessors, if it
be not manifestly superior. It has resisted the satiety which might have been predicted as
the necessary consequence of the frequent repetition of similar characters and situations.
Above all, it has withstood pessimum genus inimicorum
laudantes. And, in spite of acute enemies, and clumsy friends, and
* I the rather quote this criticism, as it was published in the
London Review a journal which
stopped at the second or third Number, and must therefore have had a very narrow
circulation.
bungling imitators, each successive novel
succeeds in obtaining a fortnight of attention as deep and as exclusive as was bestowed
upon the ‘Bride of Lammermoor,’
or the ‘Heart of Mid-Lothian.’ We
have heard this popularity accounted for in many various ways. It has been attributed to
the picturesque reality of Sir Walter Scott’s
descriptions, to the truth and individuality of his characters, to the depth of his pathos
and the gaiety of his humour, to the purity and candour of his morality, and to the clear,
flexible, and lively, yet unaffected style, which is so delightful a vehicle of his more
substantial merits.
“But we do not think that these qualities, even taken
together, sufficiently account for such an effect as has been produced. In almost all of
them, he has had equals—in some, perhaps, superiors—and though we know of no writer of any
age or any nation who has united all these excellences in so high a degree, their
deficiencies have been balanced by strength, in what are our author’s weakest points,
interest and probability in the fable, and clearness of narration.
“We are inclined to suggest as the additional cause of
his success, the manner in which his works unite the most irreconcilable forms, and the
most opposite materials. He exhibits, sometimes in succession, and sometimes intermingled,
tragedy and the romance, comedy and the novel. Great events, exalted personages, and awful
superstitions have, in general, been the exclusive province of the two former. But the
dignity which has been supposed to belong to those styles of writing, has in general
excluded the representation of the everyday occurrences and familiar emotions, which,
though parts of great events, and incident to great people, are not characteristic of
either. And as human nature is principally conversant in such occurrences and emotions, it
has in general been inadequately or falsely represented in tragedy and romance;
inadequately by good writers, and falsely by bad—the former omitting whatever could not be
made splendid and majestic, the latter exaggerating what they found really great, and
attempting to give importance to what is base and trivial, and sacrificing reason and
probability to render freebooters dignified, and make familiar friends converse in heroics.
Homer and Euripides are the only exceptions among the ancients; and no modern
tragedian, except Shakspeare, has ventured to make a
king’s son, ‘remember that poor creature, small-beer.’ Human
nature, therefore, fell into the hands of comedians and novelists; but they seem either to
have thought that there was something in the feelings and sufferings of ordinary mortality
incon-sistent with those who are made of the porcelain clay of the
earth; or not to have formed sufficiently general conceptions, to venture beyond the limits
of their own experience. Their characters, therefore, are copied from the originals with
whom the writer, and therefore the reader, is familiar: they are placed in situations which
derive no interest from their novelty; and the usual catastrophe is an event which every
reader has experienced or expected.
“We may compare tragedy to a martyrdom by one of the
old masters; which, whatever be its merit, represents persons, emotions, and events so
remote from the experience of the spectator, that he feels the grounds of his approbation
and blame to be in a great measure conjectural. The romance, such as we generally have seen
it, resembles a Gothic window-piece, where monarchs and bishops exhibit the symbols of
their dignity, and saints hold out their palm branches, and grotesque monsters in blue and
gold pursue one another through the intricacies of a never-ending scroll, splendid in
colouring, but childish in composition, and imitating nothing in nature but a mass of
drapery and jewels thrown over the commonest outlines of the human figure. The works of the
comedian and novelist, in their least interesting forms, are Dutch paintings and
caricatures: in their best, they are like Wilkie’s earlier pictures, accurate imitations of pleasing, but
familiar objects—admirable as works of art, but addressed rather to the judgment than to
the imagination.
“Our author’s principal agents are the mighty of
the earth, often mixed, in his earlier works, with beings of more than earthly attributes.
He paints the passions which arm sect against sect, party against party, and nation against
nation. He relates, either episodically or as the main object of his narrative, the success
or failure of those attempts which permanently affect the happiness of states; conspiracies
and rebellions, civil war and religious persecution, the overthrow of dynasties and changes
of belief— ‘There saw I how the secret felon wrought, And treason labouring in the traitor’s thought; On the other side there stood destruction bare, Unpunish’d rapine, and a waste of war; Contest, with sharpen’d knives in cloysters drawn, And all with blood bespread the holy lawn.’
“So far he has nothing in common with the novelist or
the comedian. But he writes for times when the veil of high life is rent or torn away—when
all men are disposed to scrutinize, and competent to judge—when they
look through and through kings and statesmen, and see that they are and act as mere men. He
has, therefore, treated those lofty subjects with a minuteness of detail, and an unsparing
imitation of human nature, in its foibles as well as its energies, which few writers,
excepting the three whom we have mentioned, have had the boldness and the philosophy to
employ in the representation of exalted characters and national events. ‘His story
requires preachers and kings, but he thinks only on men;’ and well aware that
independence and flattery must heighten every peculiarity, he has drawn in a royal
personage the most laughable picture that perhaps ever was exhibited of human folly and
inconsistency. By his intermixture of public and private events, he has shown how they act
and re-act on one another; how results which appear, to him who views them from the
distance of history, to depend on causes of slow and irresistible operation, are produced,
or prevented, or modified, by the passions, the prejudices, the interests, and often the
caprice of individuals; and on the other hand, how essential national tranquillity is to
individual happiness—what family discord and treachery, what cruelty, what meanness, what
insolence, what rapacity, what insecurity—in short, what vice and misery of every kind must
be witnessed and felt by those who have drawn the unhappy lot of existence in times of
civil war and revolution.
“We have no doubt that his constant introduction of
legal proceedings (a subject as carefully avoided by his predecessors) materially assists
the plausibility of his narratives. In peaceful times, the law is the lever which sets in
motion a great part of our actions, and regulates and controls them all. And if, in times
of civil disturbance, its regular and beneficial operation be interrupted (and indeed such
an interruption is the criterion, and the great mischief of civil disturbance), yet the
forms of law are never in more constant use. Men who would not rob or murder, will
sequestrate and condemn. The advantage, the gratification of avarice or hatred, is enjoyed
by all the responsibility is divided; since those who framed the iniquitous law have not to
execute it, and those who give effect to it did not create it. The recurrence, therefore,
in our author’s works, of this mainspring of human affairs, has a double effect. If
the story were true, we should expect to meet with it; supposing it fictitious, we should
expect it to be absent.
“An example will illustrate much of what we have
tediously, and we fear obscurely, attempted to explain. We will take one from Waverley. The principal scenes are laid in a
royal palace, on a field of battle, where the kingdom is the stake, and at the head-quarters of a victorious army. The actors are, an exiled prince,
reclaiming the sceptre of his ancestors, and the armed nobility and gentry of his kingdom.
So far we are in the lofty regions of romance. And in any other hands than those of
Sir Walter Scott, the language and conduct of these
great people would have been as dignified as their situations. We should have heard nothing
of the hero in his new costume ‘majoring afore the muckle pier-glass’—of
his arrest by the host of the Candlestick—of his examination by the well-powdered Major Melville—or his fears of being informed against by
Mrs Nosebag. The Baron would not have claimed to draw off the princely caligæ. Fergus would not have been influenced, in bringing his sister to the camp,
by the credit to be obtained through her beauty and accomplishments. We should not have
been told of the staff-appointment refused by Waverley,
or of the motives which caused him first to march with the
M’Ivors, and afterwards with the Baron. In short, we should
have had a uniform and imposing representation of a splendid scene, but calculated to leave
false recollections with the uninstructed, and none at all with the judicious reader. But
when we study the history of the rebellion in Waverley, we feel
convinced that, though the details presented to us never existed, yet they must resemble
what really happened; and that while the leading persons and events are as remote from
those of ordinary life as the inventions of Scuderi,
the picture of human nature is as faithful as could have been given by Fielding or Le
Sage.”
I fear the reader will hardly pardon me for bringing him down abruptly
from this fine criticism to a little joke of the Parliament-House. Among its lounging young
barristers of those days, Sir Walter Scott, in the
intervals of his duty as clerk, often came forth and mingled much in the style of his own
coeval Mountain. Indeed the pleasure he seemed to take in the
society of his professional juniors, was one of the most remarkable, and certainly not the
least agreeable features of his character at this period of his consummate honour and
celebrity; but I should rather have said, perhaps, of young people generally, male or
female, law or lay, gentle or simple. I used to think it was near of kin to another feature
in him, his love of a bright light.
It was always, I suspect, against the grain with him, when he did not even work at his desk
with the sun full upon him. However, one morning soon after Peveril came out, one of our most famous wags (now famous
for better things), namely, Mr Patrick Robertson,
commonly called by the endearing Scottish diminutive
“Peter,” observed that tall conical white head
advancing above the crowd towards the fire-place, where the usual roar of fun was going on
among the briefless, and said, “Hush, boys, here comes old Peveril, I see the Peak.” A laugh ensued, and the Great
Unknown, as he withdrew from the circle after a few minutes’ gossip,
insisted that I should tell him what our joke upon his advent had been. When enlightened,
being by that time half way across “the babbling hall,” towards his own
Division, he looked round with a sly grin, and said, between his
teeth, “Ay, ay, my man, as weel Peveril o’ the
Peak ony day as Peter o’ the
Painch” (paunch)—which being transmitted to the brethren of the stove school, of course delighted all of them, except their
portly Coryphæus. But Peter’s application stuck; to his dying day,
Scott was in the Outer House Peveril
of the Peak, or Old
Peveril—and, by and by, like a good Cavalier, he took to the
designation kindly. He was well aware that his own family and younger friends constantly
talked of him under this sobriquet. Many a little note have I had
from him (and so probably has Peter also),
reproving, or perhaps encouraging, Tory mischief, and signed, “Thine, Perevil.”—Specimens enough will occur by
and by—but I may as well transcribe one here, doggrel though it be. Calling at my house one
forenoon, he had detected me in writing some nonsense for Blackwood’sNoctes Ambrosianæ; and after he went home, finding an apology from some
friend who had been expected to dine with a Whiggish party that day in
Castle Street, he despatched this billet:—
To J. G. Lockhart, Esq. Northumberland Street. “Irrecoverable sinner, Work what Whigs you please till dinner, But be here exact at six, Smooth as oil with mine to mix. (Sophy may step up to tea, Our table has no room for she). Come (your gum within your cheek) And help sweet Peveril of the
Peak.”
CHAPTER X. QUENTIN DURWARD IN PROGRESS—LETTERS TO
CONSTABLE—AND DR DIBDIN—THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY AND THE ROXBURGHE CLUB—THE BANNATYNE CLUB
FOUNDED—SCOTT CHAIRMAN OF THE EDINBURGH OIL GAS COMPANY,
ETC.—MECHANICAL DEVICES AT ABBOTSFORD—GASOMETER—AIR-BELL, ETC., ETC.—THE BELLENDEN WINDOWS.
1823.
It was, perhaps, some inward misgiving towards the completion of
Peveril, that determined Scott to break new ground in his next novel; and as he had
before awakened a fresh interest by venturing on English scenery and history, try the still
bolder experiment of a continental excursion. However this may have been, he was encouraged
and strengthened by the return of his friend, Mr
Skene, about this time, from a tour in France; in the course of which he had
kept an accurate and lively journal, and executed a vast variety of clever drawings,
representing landscapes and ancient buildings, such as would have been most sure to
interest Scott had he been the companion of his wanderings.
Mr Skene’s MS. collections were placed at his disposal, and
he took from one of their chapters the substance of the original
Introduction to Quentin Durward. Yet still
his difficulties in this new undertaking were frequent, and of a sort to which he had
hitherto been a stranger. I remember observing him many times in the Advocates’
Library poring over maps and gazetteers with care and anxiety; and the
following is one of many similar notes which his bookseller and printer received during the
progress of the novel:—
“It is a vile place this village of Plessis les Tours
that can baffle both you and me. It is a place famous in history; and,
moreover, is, as your Gazetteer assures us, a village of 1000 inhabitants, yet
I have not found it in any map, provincial or general, which I have consulted.
I think something must be found in Malte
Brun’s Geographical Works. I have also suggested to
Mr Cadell that Wraxall’sHistory of France, or his Travels,
may probably help us. In the mean time I am getting on; and instead of
description holding the place of sense, I must try to make such sense as I can
find hold the place of description.
“I know Hawkwood’s story;* he was originally, I believe, a tailor
in London, and became a noted leader of Condottieri in Italy.
“I shall be obliged to Mr
David† to get from the
* Hawkwood
from whose adventures Constable
had thought the author of Quentin Durward might take some hints—began life as
apprentice to a London tailor. But, as Fuller says, “he soon turned his needle into a
sword, and his thimble into a shield,” and raised himself
to knighthood in the service of Edward
III. After accumulating great wealth and fame in the
predatory wars of Italy, he died in 1393, at Florence, where his
funeral was celebrated with magnificence amidst the general
lamentations of the people.—See “The Honourable
Prentice, or the Life and Death of Sir John
Hawkwood,” &c. London: 4to. 1615.
† Mr David
Constable, eldest son of the great bookseller, had been
called to the bar at Edinburgh.
Advocates’ Library, and send
me, the large copy of Philip de
Commines, in 4to. I returned it, intending to bring mine from
Abbotsford, but left it in my hurry; and the author is the very key to my
period.—Yours ever,
Walter Scott.”
He was much amused with a mark of French admiration which reached him
(opportunely enough) about the same time—one of the few such that his novels seem to have
brought him prior to the publication of Quentin
Durward. I regret that I cannot produce the letter to which he alludes in the
next of these notes; but I have by no means forgotten the excellent flavour of the
Champagne which soon afterwards arrived at Abbotsford, in a quantity greatly more liberal
than had been stipulated for.
“I send you a letter which will amuse you. It is a
funny Frenchman who wants me to accept some Champagne for a set of my works. I
have written, in answer, that as my works cost me nothing I could not think of
putting a value on them, but that I should apply to you. Send him by the
mediation of Hurst & Robinson a set of my children and god-children
(poems and novels), and if he found, on seeing them, that they were worth a
dozen flasks of Champagne, he might address the case to
Hurst and Robinson, and they
would clear it at the custom-house and send it down.
“Pray return the enclosed as a sort of
curiosity.—Yours, &c.
Walter Scott.”
A compliment not less flattering than this French-man’s tender of Champagne was paid to Scott
within a few weeks of the appearance of Peveril. In the epistle introductory of that novel, Captain Clutterbuck amuses Dr Jonas
Dryasdust with an account of a recent visit from their common parent
“the Author of Waverley,” whose outward man, as it was
in those days, is humorously caricatured, with a suggestion that he had probably sat to
Geoffrey Crayon for his “Stout Gentleman of No. II.;” and who
is made to apologize for the heartiness with which he pays his duty to the viands set
before him, by alleging that he was in training for the approaching anniversary of the
Roxburghe Club, whose gastronomical zeal had always been on a scale worthy of their
bibliomaniacal renown. “He was preparing himself,” said the gracious and
portly Eidolon, “to hob-nob with the lords of the
literary treasures of Althorpe and Hodnet in Madeira negus, brewed by the classical
Dibdin”—[why negus?]—“to share those profound debates which stamp
accurately on each ‘small volume, dark with tarnished gold,’ its collar,
not of S.S., but of R.R.—to toast the immortal memory of Caxton, Valdarfer, Pynson, and the other fathers of that great art which
has made all and each of us what we are.” This drollery in fact alluded, not
to the Roxburghe Club, but to an institution of the same class which was just at this time
springing into life, under Sir Walter’s own auspices, in
Edinburgh—the Bannatyne Club, of which he was the founder and first president. The heroes
of the Roxburghe, however, were not to penetrate the mystification of Captain Clutterbuck’s report, and from their jovial and
erudite board, when they next congregated around its “generous flasks of Burgundy,
each flanked by an uncut fifteener”—(so I think their reverend chronicler has
somewhere de-picted the apparatus) the following
despatch was forwarded
To Sir Walter Scott, Bart., Edinburgh.
“Feb. 22, 1823. “My dear Sir,
“The death of Sir M. M.
Sykes, Bart, having occasioned a vacancy in our Roxburghe Club, I am desired to request that you
will have the goodness to make that fact known to the Author of Waverley, who, from
the Proheme to Peveril of the Peak, seems disposed
to become one of the members thereof; and I am further desired to express the
wishes of the said Club that the said Author may succeed to the said Baronet. I am ever
most sincerely yours,
T. F. Dibdin, V.P.”
Sir Walter’s answers to this, and to a subsequent
letter of the Vice-President, announcing his formal election, were as follows:
To the Rev. Thomas Frognall Dibdin, &c. &c.
Kensington.
“Edin. Feb. 25, 1823. “My dear Sir,
“I was duly favoured with your letter, which proves
one point against the unknown Author of
Waverley; namely, that he is certainly a Scotsman, since no
other nation pretends to the advantage of second sight. Be he who or where he
may, he must certainly feel the very high honour which has selected him,
nominis umbra, to a situation
so worthy of envy.
“As his personal appearance in the fraternity is not
like to be a speedy event, one may presume he may be desirous of offering some
token of his gratitude in the shape of a reprint, or such-like kickshaw, and
for this purpose you had better send me the statutes of
your learned body, which I will engage to send him in safety.
“It will follow as a characteristic circumstance,
that the table of the Roxburghe, like that of King
Arthur, will have a vacant chair, like that of Banquo at Macbeth’s banquet. But if this author, who ‘hath
fernseed and walketh invisible,’ should not appear to claim it
before I come to London (should I ever be there again), with permission of the
Club, I, who have something of adventure in me, although a knight like
Sir Andrew Aguecheek, ‘dubbed
with unhacked rapier, and on carpet consideration,’ would, rather
than lose the chance of a dinner with the Roxburghe Club, take upon me the
adventure of the siege perilous, and reap some amends
for perils and scandals into which the invisible champion has drawn me, by
being his locum tenens on so
distinguished an occasion.
“It will be not uninteresting to you to know, that a
fraternity is about to be established here something on the plan of the
Roxburghe Club; but, having Scottish antiquities chiefly in view, it is to be
called the Bannatyne Club, from the celebrated antiquary, George Bannatyne, who compiled by far the
greatest record of old Scottish poetry. The first meeting is to be held on
Thursday, when the health of the Roxburghe Club will be drunk.—I am always, my
dear sir, your most faithful humble servant,
Walter Scott.”
To the Same.
“Abbotsford, May 1, 1823. “My dear Sir,
“I am duly honoured with your very interesting and
flattering communication. Our Highlanders have a proverbial saying, founded on the traditional
renown of Fingal’s dog; ‘If
it is not Bran,’ they say,
‘it is Bran’s brother.’
Now, this is always taken as a compliment of the first class, whether applied
to an actual cur, or parabolically to a biped: and, upon the same principle, it
is with no small pride and gratification that I hear the Roxburghe Club have
been so very flatteringly disposed to accept me as a locum tenens for the unknown author whom they have made
the child of their adoption. As sponsor, I will play my part until the real
Simon Pure make his appearance.
“Besides, I hope the devil does not owe me such a
shame. Mad Tom tells us, that ‘the
Prince of Darkness is a gentleman;’ and this mysterious personage
will, I hope, partake as much of his honourable feelings as of his
invisibility, and, retaining his incognito, permit me to enjoy, in his stead,
an honour which I value more than I do that which has been bestowed on me by
the credit of having written any of his novels.
“I regret deeply I cannot soon avail myself of my new
privileges; but courts, which I am under the necessity of attending officially,
sit down in a few days, and, hei
mihi! do not arise for vacation until July. But I hope to be
in town next spring; and certainly I have one strong additional reason, for a
London journey, furnished by the pleasure of meeting the Roxburghe Club. Make
my most respectful compliments to the members at their next merry-meeting; and
express, in the warmest manner, my sense of obligation.—I am always, my dear
sir, very much your most obedient servant,
Walter Scott.”
In his way of taking both the Frenchman’s civilities and those of
the Roxburghers, we see evident symptoms that the mask had begun to be
worn rather carelessly. He would not have written this last letter, I fancy, previous to
the publication of Mr Adolphus’sEssays on the Authorship of Waverley.
Sir Walter, it may be worth mentioning, was also about
this time elected a member of “The Club”—that famous
one established by Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds, at the Turk’s Head, but which has now for a long series of
years held its meetings at the Thatched House, in St James’s Street. Moreover, he had
been chosen, on the death of the antiquary Lysons,
Professor of Ancient History to the Royal Academy—a chair originally founded at
Dr Johnson’s suggestion, “in order that Goldy might have a right to be
at their dinners,” and in which Goldsmith has had
several illustrious successors besides Sir Walter. I believe he was
present at more than one of the festivals of each of these fraternities. A particular
dinner of the Royal Academy, at all events, is recorded with some picturesque details in
his essay on the life of his friend John Kemble, who
sat next to him upon that occasion.
The Bannatyne Club was a child of his own, and from first to last he took
a most fatherly concern in all its proceedings. His practical sense dictated a direction of
their funds widely different from what had been adopted by the Roxburghe. Their Club Books already constitute a very curious and valuable library of
Scottish history and antiquities: their example has been followed with not inferior success
by the Maitland Club of Glasgow—which was soon afterwards instituted on a similar model,
and of which also Sir Walter was a zealous associate;
and since his death a third Club of this class, founded at Edinburgh in his honour, and
styled The Abbotsford Club, has taken a still wider range—not
confining their printing to works connected with
Scotland, but admitting all materials that can throw light on the ancient history or
literature of any country, any where described or discussed by the Author of
Waverley.
At the meetings of the Bannatyne he regularly presided from 1823 to 1831;
and in the chair on their anniversary dinners, surrounded by some of his oldest and dearest
friends—Thomas Thomson (the Vice-President),
John Clerk (Lord Eldin), the Chief Commissioner Adam, the Chief Baron Shepherd, Lord Jeffrey,
Mr Constable—and let me not forget his kind,
intelligent, and industrious ally, Mr David Laing,
bookseller, the Secretary of the Club—he from this time forward was the unfailing source
and centre of all sorts of merriment “within the limits of becoming
mirth.” Of the origin and early progress of their institution, the reader has a
full account in his reviewal of Pitcairn’sAncient Criminal Trials of Scotland, the most important
work as yet edited for the Bannatyne press;* and the last edition of his Poems includes his excellent song composed for their first dinner—that of
March 9, 1823—and then sung by James Ballantyne, and
heartily chorused by all the aforesaid dignitaries:— “Assist me, ye friends of old books and old wine, To sing in the praises of Sage
Bannatyne, Who left such a treasure of old Scottish lore, As enables each age to print one volume more. One volume more, my friends—one volume more, We’ll ransack old Banny for one
volume more.”—&c.
On the morning after that first Bannatyne Club dinner, Scott sent such of the Waverley MSS. as he had in Castle
Street to Mr Constable, with this note:—
* See Miscellaneous
Prose Works, vol. xxi., p. 199.
Edinburgh, 10th March, 1823. “Dear Constable,
“You, who have so richly endowed my little
collection, cannot refuse me the pleasure of adding to yours. I beg your
acceptance of a parcel of MSS., which I know your partialities will give more
value to than they deserve; and only annex the condition, that they shall be
scrupulously concealed during the author’s life, and only made
forthcoming when it may be necessary to assert his right to be accounted the
writer of these novels.
“I enclose a note to Mr
Guthrie Wright, who will deliver to you some others of those
MSS. which were in poor Lord
Kinnedder’s possession; and a few more now at Abbotsford,
which I can send in a day or two, will, I think, nearly complete the whole,
though there may be some leaves missing.
“I hope you are not the worse of our very merry party
yesterday.—Ever yours truly,
Walter Scott.”
Various passages in Scott’s
correspondence have recalled to my recollection the wonder with which the friends best
acquainted with the extent of his usual engagements observed, about this period, his
readiness in mixing himself up with the business of associations far different from the
Bannatyne Club. I cannot doubt that his conduct as President of the Royal Society, and as
manager of the preparations for the King’s visit, had a main influence in this
matter. In both of these capacities he had been thrown into contact with many of the most
eminent of his fellow-citizens, who had previously seen little of him personally—including
several, and those of especial consequence, who had been accustomed to flavour all their
notions of him with some-thing of the
gall of local partisanship in politics. The inimitable mixture of sagacity, discretion, and
gentleness which characterised all his intercourse with mankind, was soon appreciated by
the gentlemen to whom I allude; for not a few of them had had abundant opportunities of
observing and lamenting the ease with which ill humours are engendered, to the disturbance
of all really useful discussion, wherever social equals assemble in conclave, without
having some official preses, uniting the weight of strong and quick intellect, with the
calmness and moderation of a brave spirit, and the conciliating grace of habitual courtesy.
No man was ever more admirably qualified to contend with the difficulties of such a
situation. Presumption, dogmatism, and arrogance shrunk from the overawing contrast of his
modest greatness: the poison of every little passion was shamed and neutralized beneath the
charitable dignity of his penetration: and jealousy, fretfulness, and spleen felt
themselves transmuted in the placid atmosphere of good sense, good humour, and good
manners. And whoever might be apt to plead off on the score of harassing and engrossing
personal duty of any sort, Scott had always leisure as well as temper
at command, when invited to take part in any business connected with any rational hope of
public advantage. These things opened, like the discovery of some new and precious element
of wealth, upon certain eager spirits who considered the Royal Society as the great local
parent and minister of practical inventions and mechanical improvements; and they found it
no hard matter to inspire their genial chief with a warm sympathy in not a few of their
then predominant speculations. He was invited, for example, to place himself at the head of
a new company for improving the manufacture of oil gas, and in the spring of this year
began to officiate regularly in that capacity. Other associations of a
like kind called for his countenance, and received it. The fame of his ready zeal and happy
demeanour grew and spread; and from this time, until bodily infirmities disabled him,
Sir Walter occupied, as the most usual, acceptable, and
successful, chairman of public meetings of almost every conceivable sort, apart from
politics, a very prominent place among the active citizens of his native town. Any foreign
student of statistics who should have happened to peruse the files of an Edinburgh
newspaper for the period to which I allude, would, I think, have concluded that there must
be at least two Sir Walter Scotts in the place—one the miraculously fertile author whose
works occupied two-thirds of its literary advertisements and critical columns—another some
retired magistrate or senator of easy fortune and indefatigable philanthropy, who devoted
the rather oppressive leisure of an honoured old age to the promotion of patriotic
ameliorations, the watchful guardian of charities, and the ardent patronage of educational
institutions.
The reader will perceive in the correspondence to which I must return,
hints about various little matters connected with Scott’s own advancing edifice on Tweedside, in which he may trace the
President of the Royal Society, and the Chairman of the Gas Company.
Thus, on the 14th of February, he recurs to the plan of heating
interiors by steam and proceeds with other topics of a similar class:—
To D. Terry, Esq., London.
“Dear Terry,
“I will not fail to send Mr Atkinson, so soon as I can get it, a full account of
Mr Holdsworth of Glasgow’s improved use of
steam, which is in great acceptation. Being now necessarily sometimes with men
of science, I hear a great deal of
these matters; and, like Don Diego
Snapshorto with respect to Greek, though I do not understand
them, I like the sound of them. I have got a capital stove (proved and
exercised by Mr Robison,* who is such a
mechanical genius as his father, the
celebrated professor,) for the lower part of the house, with a communication
for ventilating in the summer. Moreover, I have got for one or two of the rooms
a new sort of bell, which I think would divert you. There is neither wire nor
crank of any kind; the whole consisting of a tube of tin, such as is used for
gas, having at one extremity a cylinder of wider dimensions, and in the other a
piece of light wood. The larger cylinder—suppose an inch and a half in
diameter—terminates in the apartment, and, ornamented as you please, is the
handle, as it were, of the bell. By pressing a piston down into this upper and
wider cylinder, the air through the tube, to a distance of a hundred feet if
necessary, is suddenly compressed, which compression throws out the light piece
of wood, which strikes the bell. The power of compression is exactly like that
of the Bramah patent—the acting element being air instead of water. The bell
may act as a telegraph by sinking once, twice, thrice, or so forth. The great
advantage, however, is, that it never can go out of order—needs no cranks, or
pullies, or wires—and can be contorted into any sort of twining or turning,
which convenience of communication may require, being simply an air-tight tube.
It might be used to communicate with the stable, and I think of something of
that kind with the porter’s lodge with the gardener’s house. I have
a model now in the room
* Mr John
Robison, son of the author of “Elements of Mechanical
Philosophy,” &c. is now Secretary of the Royal Society
of Edinburgh.
with me. The only thing I have not explained is, that a
small spring raises the piston B when pressed down. I wish you would show this
to Mr Atkinson: if he has not seen it, he will be
delighted. I have it tried on a tube of fifty feet, and it never fails, indeed
cannot. It may be called the ne plus ultra of bell-ringing—the pea-gun
principle, as one may say. As the bell is stationary, it might be necessary
(were more than one used) that a little medallion should be suspended in such a
manner as to be put in vibration, so as to show the servant which bell has been
struck.—I think we have spoke of wellnigh all the commodities wanted at
Conundrum Castle worth mentioning. Still there are the carpets.
“I have no idea my present labours will be dramatic
in situation: as to character, that of Louis
XI., the sagacious, perfidious, superstitious, jocular, and
politic tyrant, would be, for a historical chronicle, containing his life and death, one of the most powerful ever
brought on the stage.—Yours truly,
W. Scott.”
A few weeks later, he says to the same correspondent—“I must
not omit to tell you that my gas establishment is in great splendour, and working, now
that the expense of the apparatus is in a great measure paid, very easily and very
cheaply. In point of economy, however, it is not so effective; for the facility of
procuring it encourages to a great profusion of light: but then a gallon of the basest
train oil, which is used for preference, makes a hundred feet of gas, and treble that
quantity lights the house in the state of an illumination for the expense of about 3s.
6d. In our new mansion we should have been ruined with spermaceti oil and wax-candles,
yet had not one-tenth part of the light. Besides, we are entirely freed from the great plague
of cleaning lamps, &c. There is no smell whatever, unless a valve is left open, and
the gas escapes unconsumed, in which case the scent occasions its being instantly
discovered. About twice a-week the gas is made by an ordinary labourer, under
occasional inspection of the gardener. It takes about five hours to fill the reservoir
gasometer. I never saw an invention more completely satisfactory in the
results.”
I cannot say that Sir Walter’s
“century of inventions” at Abbotsford turned out very happily. His
new philosophical ne plus ultra of bells was
found in the sequel a poor succedaneum for the old-fashioned mechanism of the simple wire;
and his application of gaslight to the interior of a dwelling-house was in fact attended
with so many inconveniences, that erelong all his family heartily wished it had never been
thought of. Moreover, Sir Walter had deceived himself as to the
expense of such an apparatus when maintained for the uses of a single domestic
establishment. He easily made out that his gas per
se cost him less than the wax, oil, and tallow requisite to produce an
equal quantity of light would have done; but though he admitted that no such quantity of
artificial light was necessary either for comfort or splendour, nor would ever have been
dreamt of had its supply been to come from the chandler’s store, “the state
of an illumination” was almost constantly kept up. Above all, he seems to
have, by some trickery of the imagination, got rid in his estimate of all memory of the
very considerable sum expended on the original fabric and furnishing of his gasometer, and
lining wall upon wall with so many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of feet of delicate pipe
work,—and, in like manner, to have counted for nothing the fact that he had a workman of
superior cha-racter employed during no slender portion of every year in
the manufacture. He himself, as has been mentioned before, delighted at all times in a
strong light, and was not liable to much annoyance from the delicacy of his olfactory
nerves. To the extremes of heat and cold, too, he was nearly indifferent. But the blaze and
glow, and occasional odour of gas, when spread over every part of a private house, will
ever constitute a serious annoyance for the majority of men—still more so of women—and in a
country place where skilful repair, in case of accident, cannot be immediately procured,
the result is often a misery. The effect of the new apparatus in the dining-room at
Abbotsford was at first superb. In sitting down to table, in Autumn, no one observed that
in each of three chandeliers (one of them being of very great dimensions) there lurked a
little tiny bead of red light. Dinner passed off, and the sun went down, and suddenly, at
the turning of a screw, the room was filled with a gush of splendour worthy of the palace
of Aladdin; but, as in the case of Aladdin, the old lamp would have been better in the upshot.
Jewelry sparkled, but cheeks and lips looked cold and wan in this fierce illumination; and
the eye was wearied, and the brow ached, if the sitting was at all protracted, I confess,
however, that my chief enmity to the whole affair arises from my conviction that
Sir Walter’s own health was damaged, in his latter years, in
consequence of his habitually working at night under the intense and burning glare of a
broad star of gas, which hung, as it were, in the air, immediately over his writing table.
These philosophical novelties were combined with curiously heterogeneous
features of decoration.—e.g.—
To the Lord Montagu, &c. Dillon Park,
Windsor.
“Edinburgh, February 20, 1823. “My dear Lord,
“I want a little sketch of your Lordship’s
arms, on the following account. You are to know that I have a sort of
entrance-gallery, in which I intend to hang up my old armour, at least the
heavier parts of it, with sundry skins, horns, and such like affairs. That the
two windows may be in unison, I intend to sport a little painted glass, and as
I think heraldry is always better than any other subject, I intend that the
upper compartment of each window shall have the shield, supporters, &c. of
one of the existing dignitaries of the clan of Scott; and,
of course, the Duke’s arms and your
Lordship’s will occupy two such posts of distinction. The corresponding
two will be Harden’s and Thirlestane’s,* the only families now left
who have a right to be regarded as chieftains; and the lower compartments of
each window will contain eight shields (without accompaniments), of good
gentlemen of the name, of whom I can still muster sixteen bearing separate
coats of arms. There is a little conceit in all this, but I have long got
beyond the terror of ‘Lord, what will all the people say! Mr Mayor, Mr Mayor?’ and, like an obstinate old-fashioned Scotchman, I buckle my belt my ain
gate, and so I will have my Bellenden† windows.—Ever yours faithfully,
Walter Scott.”
* Lord Napier has his peerage, as
well as the corresponding surname, from a female ancestor; in the male blood he is
Scott, Baronet of Thirlestane—and indeed some antiquaries of
no mean authority consider him as now the male representative of
Buccleuch. I need not remind the reader that both
Harden and Thirlestane make a great
figure in the Lay of the Last Minstrel.
† Bellenden was the old war-cry of
Buccleuch.
The following letter, addressed to the same nobleman at his seat in the
New Forest, opens with a rather noticeable paragraph. He is anxious that the guardian of
Buccleuch should not omit the opportunity of adding
another farm in Dumfriesshire, to an estate which already covered the best part of three or
four counties!
To the Lord Montagu, &c. &c. Beaulieu Abbey,
Hants.
“June 18th, 1823. “My dear Lord,
“Your kind letter reached me just when, with my usual
meddling humour, I was about to poke your Lordship on the subject of the farm
near Drumlanrig. I see officially that the upset price is reduced. Now, surely
you will not let it slip you: the other lots have all gone higher than
valuation, so, therefore, it is to be supposed the estimation cannot be very
much out of the way, and surely, as running absolutely into sight of that fine
castle, it should be the Duke’s at
all events. Think of a vile four-cornered house, with plantations laid out
after the fashion of scollops (as the women call them) and pocket
handkerchiefs, cutting and disfiguring the side of the hill, in constant view.
The small property has a tendency to fall into the great one, as the small drop
of water, as it runs down the pane of a carriage-window, always joins the
larger. But this may not happen till we are all dead and gone; and NOW are
three important letters of the alphabet, mighty slippery, and apt to escape the
grasp.
“I was much interested by your Lordship’s
account of Beaulieu; I have seen it from the water, and admired it very much,
but I remember being told an evil genius haunted it in the shape of a low
fever, to which the inhabitants were said to be subject. The woods were the
most noble I ever saw. The disappearance of the ancient monastic remains may be accounted
for on the same principle as elsewhere—a desire of the grantees of the Crown to
secularize the appearance of the property, and remove at least the external
evidence that it had ever been dedicated to religious uses—pretty much on the
principle on which the light-fingered gentry melt plate so soon as it comes
into their possession, and give the original metal a form which renders it more
difficult to re-assume it—this is a most unsavoury simile. The various
mutations in religion, and consequently in property of this kind, recommended
such policy. Your Lordship cannot but remember the Earl of Pembroke, in Edward the
Sixth’s time, expelling the nuns from Wilton—then in
Queen Mary’s re-inducting them
into their nunnery, himself meeting the abbess, barefooted and in sackcloth, in
penance for his sacrilege and finally, again turning the said abbess and her
vassals adrift in the days of good Queen
Bess, with the wholesome admonition—‘Go spin, you
jades, go spin.’ Something like the system of demolition which
probably went on during these uncertain times was practised by what was called
in France La Bande Noire, who bought chateaux and abbeys, and pulling them
down, sold the materials for what they would bring—which was sometimes
sufficient to help well towards payment of the land, when the assignats were at
an immense depreciation.
“I should like dearly to have your Lordship’s
advice about what I am now doing here, knowing you to be one of those ‘Who in trim gardens take their
pleasure.’ I am shutting my house in with a court-yard, the interior of which is to
be laid out around the drive in flower-plots and shrubbery, besides a trellised
walk. This I intend to connect with my gardens, and
obtain, if possible, some thing (parvum componere
magnis), like the comfort of Ditton, so preferable to
the tame and poor waste of grass and gravel by which modern houses are
surrounded. I trust to see you all here in autumn.—Ever yours, faithfully,
W. Scott.”
In answering the foregoing letter, Lord
Montagu mentioned to Scott the
satisfaction he had recently had in placing his nephew the Duke of
Buccleuch under the care of Mr
Blakeney, an accomplished gentleman and old friend, who had been his own
fellow-student at Cambridge. He also rallied the poet a little on his yearning for acres;
and hinted that that craving is apt to draw inconveniently even on a ducal revenue.
Scott says in reply
To the Lord Montagu, &c. &c.
“My dear Lord,
“I am delighted that you have got such a tutor for
Walter as entirely satisfies a person
so well acquainted with mankind as your Lordship; and I am not afraid that a
friend of yours should be imbued with any of very dangerous qualities, which
are sometimes found in the instructors placed around our noble youths. Betwixt
a narrow-minded pedantry, which naturally disgusts a young man, and the far
more formidable vices of flattery, assentation, and self-seeking of all kinds,
there are very few of the class of men who are likely to adopt the situation of
tutor, that one is not afraid to trust near the person of a boy of rank and
fortune. I think it is an argument of your friend’s good sense and
judgment, that he thinks the knowledge of domestic history essential to his
pupil. It is in fact the accomplishment which, of all others, comes most home to the business
and breast of a public man—and the Duke of Buccleuch can
never be regarded as a private one. Besides, it has, in a singular degree, the
tendency to ripen men’s judgment upon the wild political speculations now
current. Any one who will read Clarendon
with attention and patience, may regard veluti in
specula the form and pressure of our own times, if you
will just place the fanaticism of atheism and irreligion instead of that of
enthusiasm, and combine it with the fierce thirst after innovation proper to
both ages. Men of very high rank are, I have noticed, in youth peculiarly
accessible to the temptations held out to their inexperience by the ingenious
arguers upon speculative politics. There is popularity to be obtained by
listening to these lecturers—there is also an idea of generosity, and
independence, and public spirit, in affecting to hold cheap the privileges
which are peculiarly their own—and there may spring in some minds the idea (a
very vain one) that the turret would seem higher, and more distinguished, if
some parts of the building that overtop it were pulled down. I have no doubt
Mr Blakeney is aware of all this,
and will take his own time and manner in leading our young friend to draw from
history, in his own way, inferences which may apply to his own times. I will
consider anxiously what your Lordship mentions about a course of Scottish
study. We are still but very indifferently provided with Scotch histories of a
general description.* Lord Hailes’
Annals are the
foundation-stone, and an excellent book, though dryly written.
* See some remarks on the Scottish historians in
Sir Walter’sreviewal of the first and
second volumes of Mr P. F.
Tytler’s elaborate work—a work which he had meant to
criticize throughout in similar detail, for he considered it as a very
important one in itself, and had, moreover, a warm regard for the
author—the son of his
Pinkerton, in two very unreadable
quartos, which yet abound in information, takes up the thread where
Hailes drops it—and then you have Robertson, down to the Union of the crowns.
But I would beware of task-work, which Pinkerton at least
must always be, and I would relieve him every now and then by looking at the
pages of old Pitscottie, where events
are told with so much naïveté, and even
humour, and such individuality as it were, that it places the actors and scenes
before the reader. The whole history of James
V. and Queen Mary may be
read to great advantage in the elegant Latin of Lesly, Bishop of Ross, and, collated with the account which his
opponent, Buchanan, in language still
more classical, gives of the same eventful reigns. Laing is but a bad guide through the seventeenth century, yet I
hardly know where a combined account of these events is to be had, so far as
Scotland is concerned, and still less where we could recommend to the young
Duke an account of Scottish jurisprudence that is not too technical. All this I
will be happy to talk over with your Lordship, for that our young friend should
possess this information in a general way is essential to his own comfort and
the welfare of many.
“About the land I have no doubt your Lordship is
quite right, but I have something of what is called the yeard
hunger.* I dare say you will get the other lots à bon marche, when you wish to have
them; and, to be sure, a ducal dignity is a monstrous beast for devouring ready
early friend Lord Woodhouselee. His own Tales of a
Grandfather have, however unambitiously undertaken, supplied
a more just and clear guide of Scottish history to the general reader,
than any one could have pointed out at the time when this letter was
addressed to Lord Montagu.
* Earth~hunger.
cash. I do not fear, on the
part of Duke Walter, those ills which might
arise to many from a very great command of ready money, which sometimes makes a
young man, like a horse too full of spirits, make too much play at starting,
and flag afterwards. I think improvident expenditure will not be his fault,
though I have no doubt he will have the generous temper of his father and
grandfather, with more means to indulge an expense which has others for its
object more than mere personal gratification. This I venture to foretell, and
hope to see the accomplishment of my prophecy; few things could give me more
pleasure.
“My court-yard rises, but masons, of all men but
lovers, love the most to linger ere they depart. Two men are now tapping upon
the summit of my gate as gently as if they were laying the foundation-stone of
a Methodist meeting-house, and one plumber ‘sits, sparrow-like,
companionless,’ upon the top of a turret which should have been
finished a month since. I must go, and, as Judge
Jefferies used to express it, give them a lick with the rough
side of my tongue, which will relieve your Lordship sooner than might otherwise
have been.
“Melrose is looking excellently well. I begin to
think taking off the old roof would have hurt it, at least externally, by
diminishing its effect on the eye. The lowering the roofs of the aisles has had
a most excellent effect. Sir Adam is
well, and his circle augmented by his Indian brother, Major Ferguson, who has much of the family
manners an excellent importation, of course, to Tweedside Ever yours truly,
W. Scott.”
In April of this year, Sir Walter
heard of the death of his dear brother Thomas Scott,
whose son had been for two years domesticated with him at Abbotsford,
and the rest of that family were soon afterwards his guests for a considerable time. Among
other visitants of the same season were Miss
Edgeworth and her sisters, Harriet
and Sophia. After spending a few weeks in Edinburgh,
and making a tour into the Highlands, they gave a fortnight to Abbotsford; and thenceforth
the correspondence between Scott and the most distinguished of
contemporary novelists, was of that confiding and affectionate character which we have seen
largely exemplified in his intercourse with Joanna
Baillie. His first impressions of his new friend are given in this letter to
Mr Terry.
To D. Terry, Esq., London.
“Castle Street, June 18, 1823. “My marbles! my marbles! O what must now be done? My drawing-room is finish’d off, but marbles there are none. My marbles! my marbles! I fancied them so fine, The marbles of Lord Elgin were but
a joke to mine.*
“In fact we are all on tip-toe now for the marbles
and the chimney-grates, which being had and obtained, we will be less clamorous
about other matters. I have very little news to send you: Miss Edgeworth is at present the great lioness
of Edinburgh, and a very nice lioness; she is full of fun and spirit; a little
slight figure, very active in her motions, very good-humoured, and full of
enthusiasm. Your descriptions of the chiffonieres made my mouth water: but
Abbotsford has cost rather too much for one year, with the absolutely necessary
expenses, and I like to leave something to succeeding years, when we may be
better able to afford to get our matters made tasty. Besides, the painting of
the house should
* Sir Walter is
parodying the Spanish Ballad “My ear-rings! my ear-rings are
dropt into the well,” &c.
be executed before much curious furniture
be put in; next spring, perhaps, we may go prowling together through the
brokers’ purlieus. I enclose you a plan of my own for a gallery round my
own room, which is to combine that advantage with a private staircase at the
same time, leaving me possession of my oratory; this will be for next year but
I should like to take Mr
Atkinson’s sentiments about it. Somebody told me, I trust
inaccurately, that he had not been well. I have not heard of him for some time,
and I owe him (besides much kindness which can only be paid with gratitude) the
suitable compensation for his very friendly labours in my behalf. I wish you
would poke him a little, with all delicacy, on this subject. We are richer than
when Abbotsford first began, and have engrossed a great deal of his most
valuable time. I think you will understand the plan perfectly. A private
staircase comes down from my dressing-room, and opens upon a book gallery; the
landing-place forms the top of the oratory, leaving that cabinet seven feet
high; then there is a staircase in the closet which corresponds with the
oratory, which you attain by walking round the gallery. This staircase might be
made to hang on the door and pull out when it is opened, which is the way
abroad with an escalier derobé.*
I might either put shelves under the gallery, or place some of my cabinets
there, or partly both.—Kind compliments to Mrs
Terry, in which all join.
“Yours most truly, W. Scott.
“P.S The quantity of horns that I have for the
hall would furnish the whole world of cuckoldom; arrived
* Sir Walter
had in his mind a favourite cabinet of Napoleon’s at the Elysée Bourbon, where there are a gallery and
concealed staircase such as he here describes.
this instant a new cargo of them, Lord knows from
whence. I opened the box, thinking it might be the damask, and found it
full of sylvan spoils. Has an old-fashioned consulting desk ever met your
eye in your rambles? I mean one of those which have four faces, each
forming an inclined plane, like a writing-desk, and made to turn round as
well as to rise, and be depressed by a strong iron screw in the centre,
something like a one-clawed table; they are old-fashioned, but choicely
convenient, as you can keep three or four books, folios if you like, open
for reference. If you have not seen one, I can get one made to a model in
the Advocates’ library. Some sort of contrivances there are too for
displaying prints, all which would be convenient in so large a room, but
can be got in time.”
CHAPTER XI. QUENTIN DURWARD PUBLISHED—TRANSACTIONS WITH
CONSTABLE—DIALOGUES ON SUPERSTITION PROPOSED—ARTICLE ON ROMANCE
WRITTEN—ST RONAN’S WELL BEGUN—“MELROSE IN
JULY”—ABBOTSFORD VISITED BY MISS EDGEWORTH—AND BY MR
ADOLPHUS—HIS MEMORANDA—EXCURSION TO ALLANTON—ANECDOTES—LETTERS TO
MISS BAILLIE, MISS EDGEWORTH, MR
TERRY, &c.—PUBLICATION OF ST RONAN’S
WELL. 1823.
A day or two after the date of the preceding
letter, Quentin Durward was published; and
surpassing as its popularity was eventually, Constable, who was in London at the time, wrote in cold terms of its
immediate reception.
Very shortly before the bookseller left Edinburgh for that trip, he had
concluded another bargain (his last of the sort) for the purchase of Waverley copyrights—acquiring the author’s
property in the Pirate, Nigel, Peveril, and also Quentin
Durward, out and out, at the price of five thousand guineas. He had thus paid
for the copyright of novels (over and above the half profits of the early separate
editions) the sum of L.22,500; and his advances upon “works of fiction” still
in embryo, amounted at this moment to L.10,000 more. He began, in short, and the wonder is
that he began so late, to suspect that the process of creation was moving too rapidly. The
publication of different sets of the novels in a collective form may probably have had a
share in opening his eyes to the fact, that the voluminousness of an
author is any thing but favourable to the rapid diffusion of his works as library books—the
great object with any publisher who aspires at founding a solid fortune. But he merely
intimated on this occasion that he thought the pecuniary transactions between Scott and himself had gone to such an extent that, considering
the usual chances of life and health, he must decline contracting for any more novels until
those for which his house had already advanced monies (or at least bills) should have been written.
Scott himself appears to have admitted for a moment the
suspicion that he had been overdoing in the field of romance; and opened to Constable the scheme of a work on popular superstitions,
in the form of dialogue, for which he had long possessed ample materials in his thorough
mastery of perhaps the most curious library of diablerie that ever
man collected. But before Constable had leisure to consider this
proposal in all its bearings, Quentin
Durward, from being, as Scott expressed it, frost-bit, had emerged into most fervid and flourishing life. In
fact, the sensation which this novel, on its first appearance, created in Paris, was
extremely similar to that which attended the original Waverley in Edinburgh, and Ivanhoe afterwards in London. For the first time
Scott had ventured on foreign ground, and the French public, long
wearied of the pompous tragedians and feeble romancers, who had alone striven to bring out
the ancient history and manners of their country in popular forms, were seized with a fever
of delight when Louis XI. and Charles the Bold started into life again at the beck of the Northern
Magician. Germany had been fully awake to his merits years before, but the public there
also felt their sympathies appealed to with hitherto unmatched strength and effect. The
infection of admiration ran far and wide on the
Continent, and soon re-acted most potently upon Britain. Discussing the various fortunes of
these novels a few years after, Mr Senior says—
“Almost all the characters in his other novels are
drawn from British history or from British domestic life. That they should delight
nations differing so much from ourselves and from one another in habits and in literary
taste, who cannot appreciate the imitation of our existing manners, or join in our
historical associations; that the head of ‘Le Sieur
Valtere Skote’ should be pointed out by a Hungarian tradesman as
the portrait of ‘l’homme le plus célébre en
l’Europe;’ that his works should employ the translators and
printers of Leipsic and Paris, and even relieve the ennui of a Rothenturn quarantine on
the extreme borders of European civilisation, is, as Dr
Walsh* has well observed, the strongest proof that their details are
founded on deep knowledge of the human character, and of the general feelings
recognised by all. But Quentin Durward
has the additional advantage of scenery and characters possessing European interest. It
presents to the inhabitants of the Netherlands and of France, the most advanced of the
continental nations, a picture of the manners of their ancestors, incomparably more
vivid and more detailed than is to be found in any other narrative, either fictitious
or real: and that picture is dignified by the introduction of persons whose influence
has not even yet ceased to operate.
“Perhaps at no time did the future state of Europe
depend more on the conduct of two individuals than when the crown of France and the
coronet of Burgundy descended on Louis XI. and
Charles the Bold. The change from real to nominal
sovereignty, which has since been the fate of the empire of Germany, was then impending
over the kingdom of France. And if that throne had been filled, at this critical
period, by a monarch with less courage, less prudence, or more scrupulous than
Louis, there seems every reason to suppose that the great
feudatories would have secured their independence, and the greater part of that country
might now be divided into many petty principalities, some Catholic, and some
Protestant, principally intent on excluding each other’s commodities, and
preventing the mutual ruin which would have been predicted as the necessary consequence
of a free trade between Gascony and Languedoc.
“On the other hand, if the race of excellent
sovereigns who
* See Walsh’sJourney to Constantinople.
governed Burgundy for a hundred and twenty years had been
continued—or, indeed, if Duke Philip had been
followed by almost any other person than his brutal son, the rich and extensive
countries, which under his reign constituted the most powerful state in Europe, must
soon have been formed into an independent monarchy—a monarchy far greater and better
consolidated than the artificial kingdom lately built up out of their fragments, and
kept together rather by the pressure of surrounding Europe than by any internal
principles of cohesion.* From the times of Louis XI.
until now, France has been the master-spring in European politics, and Flanders merely
an arena for combat. The imagination is bewildered by an attempt to speculate on the
course which human affairs might have taken if the commencement of the fifteenth
century had found the Low Countries, Burgundy, and Artois one great kingdom, and
Normandy, Brittany, Provence, and the other fiefs of the French crown, independent
principalities.
“In addition to their historical interest,
Sir Walter had the good fortune to find in
Charles and Louis characters as well contrasted as if they had been invented for
the purposes of fiction. Both were indeed utterly selfish, but there the resemblance
ends. The duke’s ruling principle was vanity, and vanity of the least
intellectual kind. His first object was the fame of a conqueror, or rather of a
soldier, for in his battles he seems to have aimed more at showing courage and personal
strength than the calmness and combination of a general. His other great source of
delight was the exhibition of his wealth and splendour,—in the pomp of his dress and
his retinue. In these ignoble pursuits he seems to have been utterly indifferent to the
sufferings he inflicted on others, and to the risks he himself encountered; and
ultimately threw away his life, his army, and the prosperity of his country, in a war
undertaken without any object, for he was attacking those who were anxious to be his
auxiliaries, and persevered in, after success was impossible, merely to postpone the
humiliation of a retreat.
“Louis’s object was power; and he seems to
have enjoyed the rare felicity of being unaffected by vanity. He had both intrepidity
and conduct in battle—far more of the latter indeed than his ferocious rival; but no
desire to display these qualities led him into war, if his objects could be otherwise
obtained. He fought those only
* This criticism was published (in the London
Review) long before the Revolt of
Brussels, in 1830, divided Belgium from Holland.
whom he could not bribe or deceive. The same
indifference to mere opinion entitled him to Commines’ praise as “eminently wise in
adversity.” When it was not expedient to resist, he could retreat, concede,
and apologize, without more apparent humiliation than the king in chess when he moves
out of check. He was rapacious, because wealth is a source of power, and because he had
no sympathy with those whom he impoverished; but he did not, like his rival, waste his
treasures on himself, or on his favourites—he employed them either in the support of
his own real force, or in keeping in his pay the ministers and favourites of other
sovereigns, and sometimes the sovereigns themselves. His only personal expense was in
providing for the welfare of his soul, which he conciliated with his unscrupulous
ambition, by allowing the saints his intercessors a portion of his spoils. Our
author’s picture of his superstition may appear at first sight overcharged, but
the imaginary prayer ascribed to him is scarcely a caricature of his real address to
Notre Dame de Clery, which we copy in Brantome’s antiquated spelling—
“‘Ah, ma bonne Dame, ma petite
Maistresse, ma grande ame, en qui j’ay eu tousjours mon reconfort. Je te prie
de supplier Dieu pour moy, et estre mon advocate envers luy, qu’il me
pardonne la mort de mon frere que j’ay fait empoisonner par ce meschant
Abbé de S. Jean. Je m’en confesse a toi, comme a ma bonne patronne et
maistresse. Mais aussi, qu’eusse-je sceu faire? Il ne me faisoit que troubler
mon royaume. Fay moy doncques pardonner, ma bonne Dame; et je
sçay ce queje te donneray.’
“Sir Walter has
made good use of these excellent materials. His Louis and his Charles are perfectly
faithful copies, with all the spirit and consistency which even he could have given to
creations of his own. The narrative, too, is flowing and connected: each event depends
on that which preceded it, without any of the episodes, recapitulations, and sudden
changes of scene, which in many of his works weaken the interest, and distract the
attention of the reader.”
The result of Quentin
Durward, as regards the contemporary literature of France, and thence of Italy
and the Continent generally, would open a field for ample digression. As concerns Scott himself, the rays of foreign enthusiasm speedily thawed
the frost of Constable’s unwonted
misgiving’s; the Dialogues on Superstition, if he ever
began them, were very soon dropped, and the Novelist resumed his pen. He had not sunk under
the short-lived frown—for he wrote to Ballantyne, on first ascertaining that a damp was thrown on his usual
manufacture, “The mouse who only trusts to one poor hole, Can never be a mouse of any soul;” and, while his publisher yet remained irresolute as to the plan of Dialogues, threw
off, with unabated energy, his excellent Essay on Romance, for
the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica;
and I cannot but consider it as another display of his high self-reliance, that, though he
well knew to what influence Quentin owed its ultimate success in
the British market, he, the instant he found himself encouraged to take up the trade of
story-telling again, sprang back to Scotland—nay, voluntarily encountered new difficulties,
by selecting the comparatively tame, and unpicturesque realities of modern manners in his
native province.
A conversation, which much interested me at the time, had, I fancy, some
share at least in this determination. As he, Laidlaw, and myself were lounging on our ponies, one fine calm afternoon, along
the brow of the Eildon hill where it overhangs Melrose, he mentioned to us gaily the row, as he called it, that was going on in Paris about Quentin Durward, and said, “I
can’t but think that I could make better play still with something
German.” Laidlaw grumbled at this, and said, like a true
Scotchman, “Na, na, sir—take my word for it, you are always best, like Helen MacGregor, when your foot is on your native heath;
and I have often thought that if you were to write a novel, and lay the scene here in the very year you were writing it, you would exceed
yourself.”—“Hame’s hame,” quoth Scott, smiling, “be it ever sae hamely. There’s
something in what you say, Willie. What suppose I were to take Captain Clutterbuck for a hero, and never let the story
step a yard beyond the village below us yonder?”—“The very thing I
want,” says Laidlaw; “stick to Melrose in July
1823.”—“Well, upon my word,” he answered, “the
field would be quite wide enough—and what for no?”
(This pet phrase of Meg Dods was a Laidlawism.) Some fun followed about the different real persons in the village
that might be introduced with comical effect; but as Laidlaw and I
talked and laughed over our worthy neighbours, his air became graver and graver; and he at
length said, “Ay, ay, if one could look into the heart of that little cluster of
cottages, no fear but you would find materials enow for tragedy as well as comedy. I
undertake to say there is some real romance at this moment going on down there, that,
if it could have justice done to it, would be well worth all the fiction that was ever
spun out of human brains.” He then told us a tale of dark domestic guilt
which had recently come under his notice as Sheriff, and of which the scene was not
Melrose, but a smaller hamlet on the other side of the Tweed, full in our view; but the
details were not of a kind to be dwelt upon;—any thing more dreadful was never conceived by
Crabbe, and he told it so as to produce on us
who listened all the effect of another Hall of Justice. It could
never have entered into his head to elaborate such a tale; but both
Laidlaw and I used to think that this talk suggested St Ronan’s Well—though my good friend
was by no means disposed to accept that as payment in full of his demand, and from time to
time afterwards would give the Sheriff a little poking about “Melrose in July.”
Before Sir Walter settled to the new
novel, he received Joanna Baillie’s
long-promised Collection of Poetical
Miscellanies, in which appeared his own dramatic sketch of
Macduff’s Cross. When Halidon Hill first came forth, there were not
wanting reviewers who hailed it in a style of rapture, such as might have been expected had
it been a Macbeth. But this folly soon
sunk; and I only mention it as an instance of the extent to which reputation bewilders and
confounds even persons who have good brains enough when they find it convenient to exercise
them. The second attempt of the class produced no sensation whatever at the time; and both
would have been long since forgotten, but that they came from
Scott’s pen. They both contain some fine passages—Halidon Hill has, indeed, several grand ones. But, on the whole,
they always seemed to me most egregiously unworthy of Sir Walter; and,
now that we have before us his admirable letters on dramatic composition to Allan Cunningham, it appears doubly hard to account for
the rashness with which he committed himself in even such slender attempts on a species of
composition, of which, in his cool hour, he so fully appreciated the difficult demands.
Nevertheless, I am very far from agreeing with those critics who have gravely talked of
Halidon Hill, and Macduff’s
Cross, and the still more unfortunate Doom
of Devorgoil, as proving that Sir Walter could not have
succeeded in the drama, either serious or comic. It would be as fair to conclude, from the
abortive fragment of the Vampyre, that
Lord Byron could not have written a good novel or
romance in prose. Scott threw off these things currente calamo; he never gave himself time to
consider beforehand what could be made of their materials, nor bestowed a moment on
correcting them after he had covered the allotted quantity of paper with blank verse; and
neither when they were new, nor ever after, did he seem to attach the slightest importance
to them.
Miss Baillie’svolume contained several poems by Mrs Hemans,—some jeux
d’esprit by the late Miss Catherine
Fanshawe, a woman of rare wit and genius, in whose society Scott greatly delighted,—and, inter
alia, Mr William Howison’s
early ballad of Polydore, which had been
originally published, under Scott’s auspices, in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1810.
To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead.
“Edinburgh, July 11, 1823.
“Your kind letter, my dear friend, heaps coals of
fire on my head, for I should have written to you, in common gratitude, long
since; but I waited till I should read through the Miscellany with some attention, which
as I have not yet done, I can scarce say much to the purpose, so far as that is
concerned. My own production sate in the porch like an evil thing, and scared
me from proceeding farther than to hurry through your compositions, with which
I was delighted, and two or three others. In my own case, I have almost a
nervous reluctance to look back on any recent poetical performance of my own. I
may almost say with Macbeth,— “I am afraid to think what I have done. Look on’t again I dare not.” But the best of the matter is, that your purpose has been so
satisfactorily answered and great reason have you to be proud of your influence
with the poem-buyers as well as the poem-makers. By the by, you know your
request first set me a hammering on an old tale of the
Swintons, from whom, by the mother’s side, I am
descended, and the tinkering work I made of it warmed the heart of a cousin* in
the East Indies, a descendant of the renowned Sir Allan,
who has sent his kindred poet by this fleet not a butt of sack, but a pipe of
most parti-
* George
Swinton, Esq. (now of Swinton) was at this time
Secretary to the Council in Bengal.
cular Madeira. You and Mrs
Agnes shall have a glass of it when you come to Abbotsford, for
I always consider your last only a payment to account—you did not stay half the
time you promised. I am going out there on Friday, and shall see all my family
re-united around me for the first time these many years. They make a very good
figure as ‘honest men and bonny lasses.’ I read Miss Fanshawe’s pieces, which are quite
beautiful. Mrs Hemans is somewhat too
poetical for my taste—too many flowers I mean, and too little fruit—but that
may be the cynical criticism of an elderly gentleman; for it is certain that
when I was young, I read verses of every kind with infinitely more indulgence,
because with more pleasure than I can now do the more shame for me now to
refuse the complaisance which I have had so often to solicit. I am hastening to
think prose a better thing than verse, and if you have any hopes to convince me
to the contrary, it must be by writing and publishing another volume of plays
as fast as possible. I think they would be most favourably received; and beg,
like Burns, to ——“tell you of mine and Scotland’s drouth, Your servant’s humble ——” A young friend of mine, Lord Francis
Gower, has made a very fair attempt to translate Goethe’s untranslatable play of Faust, or Faustus.
He has given also a version of Schiller’s very fine poem on Casting the Bell, which I
think equals Mr Sotheby’s—nay,
privately (for tell it not in Epping Forest, whisper it not in Hampstead),
rather outdoes our excellent friend, I have not compared them minutely,
however. As for Mr Howison, such is the
worldly name of Polydore, I
never saw such a change in my life upon a young man. It may be fourteen years,
or thereabouts, since he introduced himself to me, by send-ing me some most excellent verses for a youth of sixteen
years old. I asked him to Ashestiel, and he came—a thin hectic youth, with an
eye of dark fire, a cheek that coloured on the slightest emotion, and a mind
fraught with feeling of the tender and the beautiful, and eager for poetical
fame—otherwise, of so little acquaintance with the world and the world’s
ways, that a sucking-turkey might have been his tutor. I was rather a bear-like
nurse for such a lamb-like charge. We could hardly indeed associate together,
for I was then eternally restless, and he as sedentary. He could neither fish,
shoot, or course—he could not bear the inside of a carriage with the ladies,
for it made him sick, nor the outside with my boys, for it made him giddy. He
could not walk, for it fatigued him, nor ride, for he fell off. I did all I
could to make him happy, and it was not till he had caught two colds and one
sprain, besides risking his life in the Tweed, that I gave up all attempts to
convert him to the things of this world. Our acquaintance after this
languished, and at last fell asleep, till one day last year I met at Lockhart’s a thin consumptive-looking
man, bent double with study, and whose eyes seemed to have been extinguished
almost by poring over the midnight lamp, though protected by immense green
spectacles. I then found that my poet had turned metaphysician, and that these
spectacles were to assist him in gazing into the millstone of moral philosophy.
He looked at least twice as old as he really is, and has since published a
book, very small in size, but, from its extreme abstracted doctrines, more
difficult to comprehend than any I ever opened in my life.* I will take
* “An
Essay on the Sentiments of Attraction, Adaptation, and
Variety. To which are added, A Key to the Mythology of the
An-
care he has one of my copies of the Miscellany. If he gets
into the right line, he will do something remarkable yet.
“We saw, you will readily suppose, a great deal of
Miss Edgeworth, and two very nice
girls, her younger sisters. It is scarcely possible to say more of this very
remarkable person than that she not only completely answered, but exceeded the
expectations which I had formed. I am particularly pleased with the naïveté and good-humoured ardour of mind which
she unites with such formidable powers of acute observation. In external
appearance, she is quite the fairy of our nursery-tale, the Whippity Stourie, if you remember such a sprite,
who came flying through the window to work all sorts of marvels. I will never
believe but what she has a wand in her pocket, and pulls it out to conjure a
little before she begins to those very striking pictures of manners. I am
grieved to say, that, since they left Edinburgh on a tour to the Highlands,
they have been detained at Forres by an erysipelas breaking out on
Miss Edgeworth’s face. They have been twelve
days there, and are now returning southwards, as a letter from Harriet informs me. I hope soon to have them
at Abbotsford, where we will take good care of them, and the invalid in
particular. What would I give to have you and Mrs
Agnes to meet them, and what canty cracks we would set up about
the days of langsyne! The increasing powers of steam, which, like you, I look
on half-proud, half-sad, half-angry, and half-pleased, in doing so much for the
commercial world, promise something also for the sociable; and, like Prince Houssein’s tapestry, will, I think,
one day waft friends together in the course of a few hours, and, for aught we
may be able to tell, bring
cients; and Europe’s Likeness
to the Human Spirit. By William Howison.” Edinburgh; 1822.
Hampstead and Abbotsford
within the distance of,—‘Will you dine with us quietly to-morrow?’
I wish I could advance this happy abridgment of time and space, so as to make
it serve my present wishes.
“Abbotsford, July 18. ——
“I have, for the first time these several years,
my whole family united around me, excepting Lockhart, who is with his yeomanry, but joins us to-morrow.
Walter is returned a fine steady
soldier-like young man from his abode on the Continent, and little
Charles, with his friend
Surtees, has come from Wales, so
that we draw together from distant quarters. When you add Sophia’s baby, I assure you my wife
and I look very patriarchal. The misfortune is, all this must be soon over,
for Walter is admitted one of the higher class of
students in the Military College, and must join against the 1st of August.
I have some chance, I think, when he has had a year’s study, of
getting him upon the staff in the Ionian islands, which I should greatly
prefer to his lounging about villages in horse-quarters; he has a strong
mathematical turn, which promises to be of service in his profession;
little Charles is getting steadily on with his
learning—but to what use he is to turn it I scarce know yet.—I am very
sorry indeed that the doctor is
complaining—he whose life has been one course of administering help and
comfort to others, should not, one would think, suffer himself; but such
are the terms on which we hold our gifts—however valuable to others, they
are sometimes less available to ourselves. I sincerely hope this will find
him better, and Mrs Baillie easier
in proportion. When I was subject a little to sore throats, I cured myself
of that tendency by spunging my throat, breast, and shoulders every morning
with the coldest water I could get; but this is rather
a horse remedy, though I still keep up the practice. All here, that is,
wives, maidens, and bachelors bluff, not forgetting little John Hugh, or, as he is popularly styled,
Hugh Littlejohn, send loving remembrances to you
and Mrs Agnes. Ever, dear Mrs Joanna, most truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
The next month—August 1823—was one of the happiest in Scott’s life. Never did I see a brighter day at
Abbotsford than that on which Miss Edgeworth first
arrived there—never can I forget her look and accent when she was received by him at his
archway and exclaimed, “Everything about you is exactly what one ought to have had
wit enough to dream!” The weather was beautiful, and the edifice, and its
appurtenances, were all but complete; and day after day, so long as she could remain, her
host had always some new plan of gaiety. One day there was fishing on the Cauldshiels Loch,
and a dinner on the heathy bank. Another, the whole party feasted by Thomas the Rymer’s waterfall in the glen—and the
stone on which Maria that day sat was ever afterwards called Edgeworth’s stone. A third day we had to go further a-field.
He must needs show her, not Newark only, but all the upper scenery of the Yarrow, where
“fair hangs the apple frae the rock,”—and the baskets were unpacked
about sunset, beside the ruined Chapel overlooking St Mary’s Loch—and he had
scrambled to gather bluebells and heath-flowers, with which all the young ladies must twine
their hair, and they sang and he recited until it was time to go home beneath the softest
of harvest moons. Thus a fortnight was passed—and the vision closed; for Miss
Edgeworth never saw Abbotsford again during his
life; and I am very sure she could never bear to look upon it now that the spirit is fled.
Another honoured and welcome guest of the same month was Mr J. L. Adolphus—the author of the Letters to Heber; and I am enabled to enrich these
pages with some reminiscences of that visit—the first of several he paid to
Abbotsford—which this gentleman has been so kind as to set down for my use, and I am sure
for the gratification of all my readers. After modestly recounting the circumstances which
led to his invitation to Abbotsford, my friendly contributor says:—
“With great pleasure and curiosity, but with
something like awe, I first saw this celebrated house emerge from below the
plantation which screened it from the Selkirk and Melrose road. Antique as it
was in design, it had not yet had time to take any tint from the weather, and
its whole complication of towers, turrets, galleries, cornices, and quaintly
ornamented mouldings looked fresh from the chisel, except where the walls were
enriched with some really ancient carving or inscription. As I approached the
house, there was a busy sound of masons’ tools; the shrubbery before the
windows was strewed with the works of the carpenter and stonecutter, and with
grotesque antiquities, for which a place was yet to be found; on one side were
the beginnings of a fruit and flower garden; on another, but more distant, a
slope bristling with young firs and larches; near the door murmured an
unfinished fountain.
“I had seen Sir Walter
Scott, but never met him in society, before this visit. He
received me with all his well-known cordiality and simplicity of manner. The
circumstances under which I presented myself were peculiar, as the only cause
of my being under his roof was one which could not without awkwardness be
alluded to, while a strict reserve existed on the subject
of the Waverley novels.
This, however, did not create any embarrassment; and he entered into
conversation as if any thing that might have been said with reference to the
origin of our acquaintance had been said an hour before. I have since been
present at his first reception of many visitors; and upon such occasions, as
indeed upon every other, I never saw a man who, in his intercourse with all
persons, was so perfect a master of courtesy. His manners were so plain and
natural, and his kindness took such immediate possession of the feelings, that
this excellence in him might for a while pass almost unobserved. I cannot pay a
higher testimony to it than by owning that I first fully appreciated it from
his behaviour to others. His air and aspect, at the moment of a first
introduction, were placid, modest, and, for his time of life, venerable.
Occasionally, where he stood a little on ceremony, he threw into his address a
deferential tone, which had in it something of old-fashioned politeness, and
became him extremely well.
“A point of hospitality in which Sir Walter Scott never failed, whatever might be
the pretensions of the guest, was to do the honours of conversation. When a
stranger arrived, he seemed to consider it as much a duty to offer him the
resources of his mind as those of his table; taking care, however, by his
choice of subjects, to give the visiter an opportunity of making his own
stores, if he had them, available. I have frequently observed this—with
admiration both of his powers and of his discriminating kindness. To me, at the
time of my first visit, he addressed himself often as to a member of his own
profession; and indeed he seemed always to have a real pleasure in citing from
his own experience as an advocate and a law officer. The first book he
recommended to me for an hour’s occupation in his library, was an old Scotch
pamphlet of the trial of Philip
Stanfield (published also in the English State Trials); a dismal
and mysterious story of murder, connected slightly with the politics of the
time of James II., and having in it a taste
of the marvellous.*
“It would, I think, be extremely difficult to give a
just idea of his general conversation to any one who had not known him.
Considering his great personal and literary popularity, and the wide circle of
society in which he had lived, it is perhaps remarkable that so few of his
sayings, real or imputed, are in circulation. But he did not affect sayings;
the points and sententious turns, which are so easily caught up and
transmitted, were not natural to him: ‘though he occasionally expressed a
thought very pithily and neatly. For example, he once described the Duke of Wellington’s style of debating as
‘slicing the argument into two or three parts, and helping himself
to the best.’ But the great charm of his ‘table-talk’
was in the sweetness and abandon with which it
flowed,—always, however, guided by good sense and taste; the warm and unstudied
eloquence with which he expressed rather sentiments than opinions; and the
liveliness and force with which he narrated and described: and all that he
spoke derived so much of its effect from indefinable felicities of manner,
look, and tone—and sometimes from the choice of apparently insignificant
words—that a moderately faithful transcript of his sentences would be but a
faint image of his conversation.
“At the time of my first and second visits to
Abbots-
* See the case of Philip
Stanfield’s alleged parricide, and Sir Walter Scott’s remarks
thereupon, in his edition of “Lord Fountainhall’s Chronological
Notes on Scottish Affairs,” pp. 233-36; and compare an
extract from one of his early note-books, given ante, vol. i. p. 261.
ford, in 1823 and 1824, his health was less broken, and his
spirits more youthful and buoyant, than when I afterwards saw him, in the years
from 1827 to 1831. Not only was he inexhaustible in anecdote, but he still
loved to exert the talent of dramatizing, and in some measure representing in
his own person the incidents he told of, or the situations, he imagined. I
recollect, for instance, his sketching in this manner (it was, I think, apropos to some zoological discussion with Mr William Stewart Rose) a sailor trying to
persuade a monkey to speak, and vowing, with all kinds of whimsical oaths, that
he would not tell of him.* On the evening of my first arrival, he took me to
see his ‘wild man,’ as he called him, the celebrated Tom Purdie, who was in an outhouse, unpacking
some Indian idols, weapons, and carved work, just arrived from England. The
better to exhibit Tom, his master played a most amusing
scene of wonder, impatience, curiosity, and fear lest any thing should be
broken or the candle fall into the loose hay of the packages, but all this with
great submission to the better judgment of the factotum, who went on gravely
breaking up and unpapering after his own manner, as if he had been sorting some
toys for a restless child. Another specimen of his talent for representation,
which struck me forcibly about the same time, was his telling the story
(related in his Letters on
Demonology) of a dying man who, in a state of delirium, while his
nurse was absent, left his room, appeared at a club of which he was president,
and was taken for his own ghost. In relating this not very likely story, he
described with his deep and lingering tones, and with gestures and looks suited
to each part of the
* Mr Rose was
at this time meditating his entertaining little jeu
d’esprit, entitled “Anecdotes of Monkeys.”
action, the sick man,
deadly pale and with vacant eyes, walking into the club-room; the silence and
consternation of the club; the supposed spectre moving to the head of the
table; giving a ghastly salutation to the company; raising a glass towards his
lips; stiffly turning his head from side to side, as if pledging the several
members; his departure, just at midnight; and the breathless conference of the
club, as they recovered themselves from this strange visit. St Ronan’s Well was published soon after
the telling of this story, and I have no doubt that Sir
Walter had it in his mind in writing one of the last scenes of
that novel.
“He read a play admirably well, distinguishing the
speeches by change of tone and manner, without naming the characters. I had the
pleasure of hearing him recite, shortly before it was published, his own
spirited ballad of ‘Bonny Dundee;’ and
never did I listen to more ‘eloquent music.’ This was in one of the
last years of his life, but the lines Away, to the hills, to the caves, to the rocks! Ere I own a usurper, I’ll couch with the fox!’ could not, in his most vigorous days, have been intonated with more fire
and energy.
“In conversation he sometimes added very strikingly
to the ludicrous or pathetic effect of an expression by dwelling on a syllable;
holding the note, as it would have been called in
music. Thus I recollect his telling, with an extremely droll emphasis, that
once, when a boy, he was ‘cuffed’ by his
aunt for singing, ‘There’s nae repentance in my heart, The fiddle’s in my arms!’*
* These lines are from the old ballad, “Macpherson’s Lament,”—the groundwork of
Burns’s glorious
“Macpherson’s
Farewell.”—See Scott’s Miscellaneous Prose
Works, vol. xvii., p. 259.
“No one who has seen him can forget the surprising
power of change which his countenance showed when awakened from a state of
composure. In 1823, when I first knew him, the hair upon his forehead was quite
grey, but his face, which was healthy and sanguine, and the hair about it,
which had still a strong reddish tinge, contrasted rather than harmonized with
the sleek, silvery locks above; a contrast which might seem rather suited to a
jovial and humorous, than to a pathetic expression. But his features were
equally capable of both. The form and hue of his eyes (for the benefit of
minute physiognomists it should be noted, that the pupils contained some small
specks of brown) were wonderfully calculated for showing great varieties of
emotion. Their mournful aspect was extremely earnest and affecting; and, when
he told some dismal and mysterious story, they had a doubtful, melancholy,
exploring look, which appealed irresistibly to the hearer’s imagination.
Occasionally, when he spoke of something very audacious or eccentric, they
would dilate and light up with a tragic-comic, harebrained expression, quite
peculiar to himself; one might see in it a whole chapter of Cœur-de-lion and the Clerk of Copmanhurst. Never, perhaps, did a man
go through all the gradations of laughter with such complete enjoyment, and a
countenance so radiant. The first dawn of a humorous thought would show itself
sometimes, as he sat silent, by an involuntary lengthening of the upper lip,
followed by a shy sidelong glance at his neighbours, indescribably whimsical,
and seeming to ask from their looks whether the spark of drollery should be
suppressed or allowed to blaze out. In the full tide of mirth he did indeed
‘laugh the heart’s laugh,’ like Walpole, but it was not boisterous and
overpowering, nor did it check the course of his words; he could go on telling or descanting,
while his lungs did ‘crow like chanticleer,’ his syllables,
in the struggle, growing more emphatic, his accent more strongly Scotch, and
his voice plaintive with excess of merriment.
“The habits of life at Abbotsford, when I first saw
it, ran in the same easy, rational, and pleasant course which I believe they
always afterwards took; though the family was at this time rather straitened in
its arrangements, as some of the principal rooms were not finished. After
breakfast Sir Walter took his short interval
of study in the light and elegant little room afterwards called Miss Scott’s. That which he occupied
when Abbotsford was complete, though more convenient in some material respects,
seemed to me the least cheerful* and least private in the house. It had,
however, a recommendation which, perhaps, he was very sensible of, that, as he
sat at his writing-table, he could look out at his young trees. About one
o’clock he walked or rode, generally with some of his visiters. At this
period he used to be a good deal on horseback, and a pleasant sight it was to
see the gallant old gentleman, in his seal-skin cap and short green jacket,
lounging along a field-side on his mare, Sibyl Grey,
and pausing now and then to talk, with a serio-comic look, to a labouring man
or woman, and rejoice them with some quaint saying in broad Scotch. The dinner
hour was early; the sitting after dinner was hospitably but not immoderately
prolonged; and the whole family party (for such it always seemed, even if there
were several visiters) then met again for a short evening, which was passed in
conversation and music. I once heard Sir Walter say, that
he believed there was a ‘pair’ of cards (such was his antiquated
expression)
* It is, however, the only sitting-room in the house
that looks southward.
somewhere in the house—but probably there is no tradition
of their having ever been used. The drawing-room and library (unfurnished at
the time of my first visit) opened into each other, and formed a beautiful
evening apartment. By every one who has visited at Abbotsford they must be
associated with some of the most delightful recollections of his life.
Sir Walter listened to the music of his
daughters, which was all congenial to his own taste, with a never-failing
enthusiasm. He followed the fine old songs which Mrs Lockhart sang to her harp with his mind, eyes, and lips,
almost as if joining in an act of religion. To other musical performances he
was a dutiful, and often a pleased listener, but I believe he cared little for
mere music; the notes failed to charm him if they were not connected with good
words, or immediately associated with some history or strong sentiment, upon
which his imagination could fasten. A similar observation might, I should
conceive, apply to his feeling of other arts. I do not remember any picture or
print at Abbotsford which was remarkable merely as a work of colour or design.
All, I think, either represented historical, romantic, or poetical subjects, or
related to persons, places, or circumstances in which he took an interest. Even
in architecture his taste had the same bias; almost every stone of his house
bore an allusion or suggested a sentiment.
“It seemed at first a little strange, in a scene
where so many things brought to mind the Waverley novels, to hear no direct
mention of them or even allusion to their existence. But as forbearance on this
head was a rule on which a complete tacit understanding subsisted, there was no
embarrassment or appearance of mystery on the subject. Once or twice I have
heard a casual reference made, in Sir
Walter’s presence, to some topic in the novels; no
surprise or appearance of displeasure followed, but the conversation, so far as it tended
that way, died a natural death. It has, I believe, happened that he himself has
been caught unawares on the forbidden ground; I have heard it told by a very
acute observer, not now living, that on his coming once to Abbotsford, after
the publication of the Pirate,
Sir Walter asked him, ‘Well, and how is our
friend Kemble? glorious
John!’ and then, recollecting, of
course, that he was talking Claude Halcro,
he checked himself, and could not for some moments recover from the false step.
Had a man been ever so prone to indiscretion on such subjects, it would have
been unpardonable to betray it towards Sir Walter Scott,
who (beside all his other claims to respect and affection) was himself
cautious, even to nicety, of hazarding an enquiry or remark which might appear
to be an intrusion upon the affairs of those with whom he conversed. It may be
observed, too, that the publications of the day were by no means the staple of
conversation at Abbotsford, though they had their turn; and with respect to his
own works Sir Walter did not often talk even of those
which were avowed. If he ever indulged in any thing like egotism, he loved
better to speak of what he had done and seen than of what he had written.
“After all, there is perhaps hardly a secret in the
world which has not its safety-valve. Though Sir
Walter abstained strictly from any mention of the Waverley novels, he did
not scruple to talk, and that with great zest, of the plays which had been
founded upon some of them, and the characters, as there represented. Soon after
our first meeting, he described to me, with his usual dramatic power, the
deathbed scene of ‘the original Dandie
Dinmont;’* of course referring, ostensibly at
least, to the opera of Guy Mannering. He dwelt with
* See Note to Guy Mannering, Waverley
Novels, vol. iv., p. 242.
extreme delight upon Mackay’s performances of the Bailie and Dominie Sampson,
and appeared to taste them with all the fresh and disinterested enjoyment of a
common spectator. I do not know a more interesting circumstance in the history
of the Waverley novels than the pleasure which their
illustrious author thus received, as it were at the rebound, from those
creations of his own mind which had so largely increased the enjoyments of all
the civilized world.
“In one instance only did he, in my presence, say or
do any thing which seemed to have an intentional reference to the novels
themselves, while they were yet unacknowledged. On the last day of my visit in
1823, I rode out with Sir Walter and his
friend Mr Rose, who was then his guest
and frequent companion in these short rambles. Sir Walter
led us a little way down the left bank of the Tweed, and then into the moors by
a track called the Girth Road, along which, he told us, the pilgrims from that
side of the river used to come to Melrose. We traced upward, at a distance, the
course of the little stream called the Elland, Sir Walter,
as his habit was, pausing now and then to point out any thing in the prospect
that was either remarkable in itself, or associated with any interesting
recollection. I remember, in particular, his showing us, on a distant eminence,
a dreary lone house, called the Hawk’s Nest, in which a young man,
returning from a fair with money, had been murdered in the night and buried
under the floor, where his remains were found after the death or departure of
the inmates; the fact was simple enough in itself, but, related in his manner,
it was just such a story as should have been told by a poet on a lonely heath.
When we had ridden a little time on the moors, he said to me rather pointedly,
‘I am going to show you something that I think will interest
you;’ and presently, in a wild corner of the hills, he halted us
at a place where stood three
small ancient towers, or castellated houses, in ruins, at short distances from
each other. It was plain, upon the slightest consideration of the topography,
that one (perhaps any one) of these was the tower of Glendearg, where so many
romantic and marvellous adventures happen in The Monastery. While we looked at this
forlorn group, I said to Sir Walter that they were what
Burns called
‘ghaist-alluring edifices.’ ‘Yes,’ he
answered, carelessly, ‘I dare say there are many stories about
them.’ As we returned, by a different route, he made me dismount
and take a footpath through a part of Lord
Somerville’s grounds, where the Elland runs through a
beautiful little valley, the stream winding between level borders of the
brightest greensward, which narrow or widen as the steep sides of the glen
advance or recede. The place is called the Fairy Dean, and it required no
cicerone to tell that the glen was that in which Father Eustace, in The Monastery, is
intercepted by the White Lady of
Avenel.”
Every friend of Sir Walter’s
must admire particularly Mr Adolphus’s truly
exquisite description of his laugh; but, indeed, every word of these memoranda is precious,
and I shall by and by give the rest of them under the proper date.
In September, the Highland Society of Scotland, at the request of the
late Sir Henry Stewart of Allanton, sent a
deputation to his seat in Lanarkshire, to examine and report upon his famous improvements
in the art of transplanting trees. Sir Walter was one of
the committee appointed for this business, and he took a lively interest in it; as witness
the Essay on Landscape Gardening,*
which, whatever may be the fate of Sir Henry Stewart’s own
writings, will transmit his name to pos-
* Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. xxi., pp.
77-151.
terity. Scott made several Allantonian experiments
at Abbotsford; but found reason in the sequel to abate somewhat of the enthusiasm which his
Essay expresses as to the system. The question, after all, comes to
pounds, shillings, and pence—and, whether Sir Henry’s accounts
had or had not been accurately kept, the thing turned out greatly more expensive on
Tweedside than he had found it represented in Clydesdale.
I accompanied Sir Walter on this
little expedition, in the course of which we paid several other visits, and explored not a
few ancient castles in the upper regions of the Tweed and the Clyde. Even while the weather
was most unpropitious, nothing could induce him to remain in the carriage when we
approached any ruined or celebrated edifice. If he had never seen it before, his curiosity
was like that of an eager stripling;—if he had examined it fifty times, he must renew his
familiarity, and gratify the tenderness of youthful reminiscences. While on the road his
conversation never flagged—story suggested story, and ballad came upon ballad in endless
succession. But what struck me most was the apparently omnivorous grasp of his memory. That
he should recollect every stanza of any ancient ditty of chivalry or romance that had once
excited his imagination, could no longer surprise me; but it seemed as if he remembered
every thing without exception, so it were in any thing like the shape of verse, that he had
ever read. For example, the morning after we left Allanton, we went across the country to
breakfast with his friend Cranstoun (Lord
Corehouse), who accompanied us in the same carriage; and his lordship
happening to repeat a phrase, remarkable only for its absurdity, from a Magazine poem of
the very silliest feebleness, which they had laughed at when at College together,
Scott immediately began at the beginning, and gave it us to the end, with apparently no more
effort than if he himself had composed it the day before. I could after this easily believe
a story often told by Hogg, to the effect that,
lamenting in Scott’s presence his having lost his only copy of a
long ballad composed by him in his early days, and of which he then could recall merely the
subject, and one or two fragments, Sir Walter forthwith said, with a
smile, “Take your pencil, Jemmy, and I’ll dictate your
ballad to you, word for word;” which was done accordingly.
As this was among the first times that I ever travelled for a few days
in company with Scott, I may as well add the surprise
with which his literary diligence, when away from home and his books, could not fail to be
observed. Wherever we slept, whether in a noble mansion or in the shabbiest of country
inns, and whether the work was done after retiring at night or before an early start in the
morning, he very rarely mounted the carriage again without having a
packet of the well-known aspect ready sealed, and corded, and addressed to his printer in
Edinburgh. I used to suspect that he had adopted in his latter years the plan of writing
every thing on paper of the quarto form, in place of the folio which he at an earlier
period used, chiefly because in this way, whatever he was writing, and wherever he wrote,
he might seem to casual observers to be merely engaged upon a common letter; and the
rapidity of his execution, taken with the shape of his sheet, has probably deceived
hundreds; but when he had finished his two or three letters, St Ronan’s Well, or whatever was in hand, had made a
chapter in advance.
The following was his first letter to Miss
Edgeworth after her return to Ireland. Her youngest sister Sophia (a beautiful creature now gone, like most of the
pleasant party then assembled) had particularly pleased him by her
singing of a fragment of an Irish ditty, the heroine of which was a sad damsel in a petticoat of red—the chorus, I think, something like “Shool, shool, ochone—ochone! Thinking on the days that are long enough agone;” and he had, as we shall see, been busying himself among his ballad collections, to see
if he could recover any more of the words than the young lady had given him.
To Miss Edgeworth, Edgeworths’town.
“Abbotsford, 22d Sept. 1823. “My dear Miss Edgeworth,
“Miss Harriet
had the goodness to give me an account of your safe arrival in the Green Isle,
of which I was, sooth to say, extremely glad; for I had my own private
apprehensions that your very disagreeable disorder might return while you were
among strangers, and in our rugged climate. I now conclude you are settled
quietly at home, and looking back on recollections of mountains, and valleys,
and pipes, and clans, and cousins, and masons, and carpenters, and puppy-dogs,
and all the confusion of Abbotsford, as one does on the recollections of a
dream. We shall not easily forget the vision of having seen you and our two
young friends, and your kind indulgence for all our humours, sober and
fantastic, rough or smooth. Mamma writes to make her own acknowledgments for
your very kind attention about the cobweb stockings, which reached us under the
omnipotent frank of Croker, who, like a
true Irish heart, never scruples stretching his powers a little to serve a
friend.
“We are all here much as you left us, only in
possession of our drawing-room, and glorious with our gas-lights, which as yet
have only involved us once in total darkness—once in a temporary eclipse. In
both cases the remedy was easy and the cause obvious; and if the gas has no greater
objections than I have yet seen or can anticipate, it is soon like to put wax
and mutton-suet entirely out of fashion. I have recovered, by great accident,
another verse or two of Miss
Sophia’s beautiful Irish air; it is only curious as
hinting at the cause of the poor damsel of the red petticoat’s deep
dolour:—
‘I went to the mill, but the miller was gone, I sate me down and cried ochone, To think on the days that are past and gone, Of Dickie Macphalion that’s
slain. Shool, shool, &c. ‘I sold my rock, I sold my reel, And sae hae I my spinning-wheel, And all to buy a cap of steel, For Dickie Macphalion that’s
slain. Shool, shool,’ &c. &c.
“But who was Dickie
Macphalion for whom this lament was composed? Who was the
Pharaoh for whom the Pyramid was raised? The questions are equally dubious and
equally important, but as the one, we may reasonably suppose, was a King of
Egypt, so I think we may guess the other to have been a Captain of Rapparees,
since the ladies, God bless them, honour with the deepest of their lamentation
gallants who live wildly, die bravely, and scorn to survive until they become
old and not worth weeping for. So much for Dickie
Macphalion, who, I dare say, was in his day “a proper
young man.”*
* As clever Tom Clinch, while the
rabble was bawling, Rode stately through Holborn to die in his calling, He stopt at the George for a bottle of sack, And promised to pay for it when he came back. His waistcoat, and stockings, and breeches were white; His cap had a new cherry ribbon to tie’t. The maids to the doors and the balconies ran, And said, ‘Lack-a-day! he’s a proper young
man!’” Swift.
“We have had Sir Humphrey
Davy here for a day or two—very pleasant and instructive, and
Will Rose for a month—that is, coming
and going. Lockhart has been pleading at
the circuit for a clansman of mine, who, having sustained an affront from two
men on the road home from Earlstown fair, nobly waylaid and murdered them both
single-handed. He also cut off their noses, which was carrying the matter
rather too far, and so the jury thought—so my namesake must strap for it, as
many of The Rough Clan have done before him. After this
Lockhart and I went to Sir
Henry Stewart’s, to examine his process of transplanting
trees. He exercises wonderful power certainly over the vegetable world, and has
made his trees dance about as merrily as ever did Orpheus; but he has put me out of conceit with my profession of
a landscape-gardener, now I see so few drains are necessary for a stock in
trade. I wish Miss Harriet would dream
no more ominous visions about Spicie.* The poor
thing has been very ill of that fatal disorder proper to the canine race,
called, par excellence, the Distemper. I have prescribed for her, as who should
say thus you would doctor a dog, and I hope to bring her through, as she is a
very affectionate little creature, and of a fine race. She has still an odd
wheezing, however, which makes me rather doubtful of success. The Lockharts are
both well, and at present our lodgers, together with John Hugh, or, as he calls himself,
Donichue, which sounds like one of your old Irish
kings. They all join in every thing kind and affectionate to you and the young
ladies, and best compliments to your brother.
* Spice, one of the Pepper
and Mustard terriers. Scott varied
the names, unlike his Dandie
Dinmont, but still, as he phrased it, “stuck to
the cruets.” At one time he had a Pepper, a Mustard, a Spice, a Ginger, a Catchup, and a Soy—all descendants of the real
Charlie’s-hope patriarchs.
Believe me ever, dear
Miss Edgeworth, yours, with the
greatest truth and respect,
Walter Scott.”
The following letter was addressed to Joanna
Baillie on the death of her brother,
the celebrated physician:
To Miss Joanna Baillie.
“Abbotsford, 3d October, 1823. “My dearest Friend,
“Your very kind letter reached me just while I was
deliberating how to address you on the painful, most painful subject, to which it refers, and considering
how I could best intrude my own sympathy amidst your domestic affliction. The
token you have given of your friendship, by thinking of me at such a moment, I
will always regard as a most precious, though melancholy proof of its
sincerity. We have, indeed, to mourn such a man, as, since medicine was first
esteemed an useful and honoured science, has rarely occurred to grace its
annals, and who will be lamented so long as any one lives, who has experienced
the advantage of his professional skill, and the affectionate kindness by which
it was accompanied. My neighbour and kinsman, John
Scott of Gala, who was attended by our excellent friend during a
very dangerous illness, is mingling his sorrow with mine, as one who laments
almost a second father; and when in this remote corner there are two who join
in such a sincere tribute to his memory, what must be the sorrows within his
more immediate sphere of exertion! I do, indeed, sincerely pity the family and
friends who have lost such a head, and that at the very time when they might,
in the course of nature, have looked to enjoy his society for many years, and
even more closely and intimately than during the preceding period of his life, when his domestic intercourse was so much
broken in upon by his professional duties. It is not for us, in this limited
state of observation and comprehension, to enquire why the lives most useful to
society, and most dear to friendship, seem to be of a shorter date than those
which are useless, or perhaps worse than useless;—but the certainty that in
another and succeeding state of things these apparent difficulties will be
balanced and explained, is the best, if not the only cure for unavailing
sorrow, and this your well-balanced and powerful mind knows better how to
apply, than I how to teach the doctrine.
“We were made in some degree aware of the extremely
precarious state of our late dear friend’s health, by letters which young
Surtees had from his friends in
Gloucestershire, during a residence of a few weeks with us, and which mentioned
the melancholy subject in a very hopeless manner, and with all the interest
which it was calculated to excite. Poor dear Mrs
Baillie is infinitely to be pitied, but you are a family of
love; and though one breach has been made among you, will only extend your arms
towards each other the more, to hide, though you cannot fill up the gap which
has taken place. The same consolation remains for Mrs Agnes and yourself, my dear friend; and I have no doubt,
that in the affection of Dr
Baillie’s family, and their success in life, you will find
those pleasing ties which connect the passing generation with that which is
rising to succeed it upon the stage.
“Sophia is in
the way of enlarging her family—an event to which I look forward with a mixture
of anxiety and hope. One baby, not very strong, though lively and clever, is a
frail chance upon which to stake happiness; at the same time, God knows there
have been too many instances of late of the original curse having descended on young mothers with fatal
emphasis; but we will hope the best. In the mean-time her spirits are good, and
her health equally so. I know that even at this moment these details will not
be disagreeable to you, so strangely are life and death, sorrow and pleasure,
blended together in the tapestry of human life.
“I answer your letter before I have seen Sophia; but I know well how deeply she is
interested in your grief. My wife and Anne send their kindest and most sympathetic regards. Walter is at the Royal Military College to
study the higher branches of his profession, and Charles has returned to Wales.
“My affectionate respects attend Mrs Baillie and Mrs Agnes, and I ever am, my dear friend, respectfully and
affectionately, yours,
Walter Scott.”
To D. Terry, Esq., London.
“Abbotsford, October 29, 1823. “My dear Terry,
“Our correspondence has been flagging for some time,
yet I have much to thank you for, and perhaps something to apologize for. We
did not open Mr Baldock’s commode,
because, in honest truth, this place has cost me a great deal within these two
years, and I was loth to add a superfluity, however elegant, to the heavy
expense already necessarily incurred. Lady
Scott, the party most interested in the drawing-room, thinks
mirrors, when they cast up, better things and more necessary. We have received
the drawing-room grate—very handsome indeed—from Bower,
but not those for the library or my room, nor are they immediately wanted.
Nothing have we heard of the best bed and its accompaniments, but there is no
hurry for this neither. We are in possession of the bedroom story, garrets, and
a part of the under or sunk story—basement, the learned
call it; but the library advances slowly. The extreme wetness of the season has
prevented the floor from being laid, nor dare we now venture it till spring,
when shifting and arranging the books will be ‘a pleasing pain and
toil with a gain.’ The front of the house is now enclosed by a
court-yard wall, with flankers of 100 feet, and a handsome gateway. The
interior of the court is to be occupied by a large gravel drive for carriages,
the rest with flowers, shrubs, and a few trees: the inside of the court-yard
wall is adorned with large carved medallions from the old Cross of Edinburgh,
and Roman or colonial heads in bas relief from the ancient station of Petreia,
now called Old Penrith. A walk runs along it, which I intend to cover with
creepers as a trellissed arbour: the court-yard is separated from the garden by
a very handsome colonnade, the arches filled up with cast-iron, and the cornice
carved with flowers, after the fashion of the running cornice on the cloisters
at Melrose: the masons here cut so cheap that it really tempts one. All this is
in a great measure finished, and by throwing the garden into a subordinate
state, as a sort of plaisance, it has
totally removed the awkward appearance of its being so near the house. On the
contrary, it seems a natural and handsome accompaniment to the old-looking
mansion. Some people of very considerable taste have been here, who have given
our doings much applause, particularly Dr Russel, a
beautiful draughtsman, and no granter of propositions. The interior of the hall
is finished with scutcheons, sixteen of which, running along the centre, I
intend to paint with my own quarterings, so far as I know them, for I am as yet
uncertain of two on my mother’s side; but fourteen are no bad quartering
to be quite real, and the others may be covered with a cloud, since I have no
ambition to be a canon of Strasburg,
for which sixteen are necessary; I may light on these, however. The scutcheons
on the cornice I propose to charge with the blazonry of all the Border clans,
eighteen in number, and so many of the great families, not clans, as will
occupy the others. The windows are to be painted with the different bearings of
different families of the clan of Scott, which, with their
quarterings and impalings, will make a pretty display. The arranging all these
arms, &c., have filled up what Robinson
Crusoe calls the rainy season, for such this last may on the
whole be called. I shall be greatly obliged to you to let me know what debts I
owe in London, that I may remit accordingly: best to pay for one’s piping
in time, and before we are familiar with our purchases. You mentioned having
some theatrical works for me; do not fail to let me know the amount. Have you
seen Dr Meyrick’s account of the
Ancient Armour? it is a book beautifully got up, and of much antiquarian
information.
“Having said so much for my house, I add for my
family, that those who are here are quite well, but Lady Scott a little troubled with asthma. Ballantyne will send you my last affair now in
progress: it is within, or may be easily compressed into, dramatic time;
whether it is otherwise qualified for the stage, I cannot guess.—I am, my dear
Terry, truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
The novel to which Sir Walter thus
alludes was published about the middle of December, and in its English reception there was
another falling off, which of course somewhat dispirited the bookseller for the moment.
Scotch readers in general dissented stoutly from this judgment, alleging (as they might
well do), that Meg Dods deserved a place by the side of
Monk-barns, Bailie Jarvie, and
Captain Dalgetty; that no one, who had lived in the
author’s own country, could hesitate to recognise vivid and happy portraitures in
Touchwood, MacTurk, and the recluse minister of St Ronan’s; that the
descriptions of natural scenery might rank with any he had given; and, finally, that the
whole character of Clara Mowbray, but especially its
developement in the third volume, formed an original creation, destined to be classed by
posterity with the highest efforts of tragic romance. Some Edinburgh critics, however—(both
talkers and writers)—received with considerable grudgings certain sarcastic sketches of the
would be fine life of the watering-place sketches which their Southron brethren had kindly
suggested might be drawn from Northern
observation, but could never appear better than fantastic caricatures to any person who had
visited even a third-rate English resort of the same nominal class. There is no doubt that
the author dashed off these minor personages with, in the painter’s phrase, a rich brush; but I must confess my belief that they have far more
truth about them than his countrymen seemed at the time willing to allow; and if any of my
readers, whether Scotch or English, has ever happened to spend a few months, not in either
an English or a Scotch watering-place of the present day, but among such miscellaneous
assemblages of British nondescripts and outcasts,—including often persons of higher birth
than any of the beau monde of St Ronan’s
Well, as now infest many towns of France and Switzerland, he will, I am satisfied, be
inclined to admit that, while the Continent was shut, as it was in the days of
Sir Walter’s youthful wanderings, a trip to such a
sequestered place as Gilsland, or Moffat, or Innerleithen—(almost as inaccessible to London
duns and bailiffs as the Isle of Man was then, or as Boulogne and Dieppe are now)—may have supplied the future
novelist’s note-book with authentic materials even for such worthies as Sir Bingo and Lady Binks,
Dr Quackleben, and Mr
Winterblossom. It should, moreover, be borne in mind that, during our
insular blockade, northern watering-places were not alone favoured by the resort of
questionable characters from the south. The comparative cheapness of living, and especially
of education, procured for Sir Walter’s “own romantic
town” a constant succession of such visitants, so long as they could have no access
to the tables d’hôte and
dancing-masters of the Continent. When I first mingled in the society of Edinburgh, it
abounded with English, broken in character and in fortune, who found a mere title (even a
baronet’s one) of consequence enough to obtain for them, from the proverbially
cautious Scotch, a degree of attention to which they had long been unaccustomed among those
who had chanced to observe the progress of their personal histories; and I heard many name,
when the novel was new, a booby of some rank, in whom they recognised a sufficiently
accurate prototype for Sir Bingo.
Sir Walter had shown a remarkable degree of goodnature
in the completion of this novel. When the end came in view, James Ballantyne suddenly took vast alarm about a particular feature in the
history of the heroine. In the original conception, and in the book as actually written and
printed, Miss Mowbray’s mock marriage had not
halted at the profaned ceremony of the church; and the delicate printer shrunk from the
idea of obtruding on the fastidious public the possibility of any personal contamination
having been incurred by a high-born damsel of the nineteenth century.
Scott was at first inclined to dismiss his friend’s scruples
as briefly as he had done those of Blackwood in the
case of the Black Dwarf:—“You would
never have quar-relled with it,” he said, “had
the thing happened to a girl in gingham. The silk petticoat can make little
difference.” James reclaimed with double energy, and
called Constable to the rescue;—and after some
pause, the author very reluctantly consented to cancel and rewrite about twenty-four pages,
which was enough to obliterate, to a certain extent, the dreaded scandal—and in a similar
degree, as he always persisted, to perplex and weaken the course of his narrative, and the
dark effect of its catastrophe.
Whoever might take offence with different parts of the book, it was
rapturously hailed by the inhabitants of Innerleithen, who immediately identified the most
striking of its localities with those of their own pretty village and its picturesque
neighbourhood, and foresaw in this celebration a chance of restoring the popularity of
their long neglected Well—the same to which, as the reader of the
first of these volumes may have noticed, Sir Walter
Scott had occasionally escorted his mother and sister in the days of
boyhood. The notables of the little town voted by acclamation that the old name of
Innerleithen should be, as far as possible, dropped thenceforth, and that of St
Ronan’s adopted. Nor were they mistaken in their auguries. An unheard-of influx of
water-bibbers forthwith crowned their hopes; and spruce hottles and
huge staring lodging-houses soon arose to disturb wofully every association that had
induced Sir Walter to make Innerleithen the scene of a romance. Nor
were they who profited by these invasions of the genius
loci at all sparing in their demonstrations of gratitude. The
traveller reads on the corner of every new erection there, “Abbotsford Place,”
“Waverley Row,” “The Marmion Hotel,” or some inscription of the
like coinage.
Among other consequences of the revived fame of the place, a yearly festival was instituted for the
celebration of “The St Ronan’s Border Games.” A club of “Bowmen of
the Border,” arrayed in doublets of Lincoln green, with broad blue bonnets, and
having the Ettrick Shepherd for Captain, assumed the
principal management of this exhibition; and Sir Walter
was well pleased to be enrolled among them, and during several years was a regular
attendant, both on the Meadow, where (besides archery) leaping, racing, wrestling,
stone-heaving, and hammer-throwing, went on opposite to the noble old Castle of Traquair,
and at the subsequent banquet, where Hogg, in full costume, always
presided as master of the ceremonies. In fact, a gayer spectacle than that of the St Ronan’s Games, in those days, could not well have been
desired. The Shepherd, even when on the verge of threescore, exerted himself lustily in the
field, and seldom failed to carry off some of the prizes, to the astonishment of his
vanquished juniors; and the bon-vivants of Edinburgh mustered strong
among the gentry and yeomanry of Tweeddale to see him afterwards in his glory, filling the
president’s chair with eminent success, and commonly supported on this which was, in
fact, the grandest evening of his year by Sir Walter Scott, Professor Wilson, Sir Adam
Ferguson, and “Peter
Robertson.”
In Edinburgh, at least, the play founded, after the usual fashion, on
St Ronan’s Well, had success very
far beyond the expectations of the novelist, whatever may have been those of the
dramatizer. After witnessing the first representation, Scott wrote thus to Terry—“We had a new piece t’other night from St Ronan’s, which, though I should have supposed it ill
adapted for the stage, succeeded wonderfully—chiefly by Murray’s acting of the Old Nabob. Mackay also made an excellent Meg
Dods, and kept his gestures and his action more
within the verge of female decorum than I thought possible.”
A broad piece of drollery, in the shape of an epilogue, delivered in character by Mackay when he first took a benefit as Meg Dods, is included in the last edition of Scott’s Poetical Works;* but
though it caused great merriment at the time in Edinburgh, the allusions are so exclusively
local and temporary, that I fear no commentary could ever make it intelligible elsewhere.
* See edition 1834, vol. xi. p. 369.
CHAPTER XII. PUBLICATION OF REDGAUNTLET—DEATH OF LORD
BYRON—LIBRARY AND MUSEUM—“THE WALLACE CHAIR”—HOUSE-PAINTING,
ETC.—ANECDOTES—LETTERS TO CONSTABLE—MISS
EDGEWORTH—TERRY—MISS
BAILLIE—LORD MONTAGU—MR
SOUTHEY—CHARLES SCOTT, ETC.—SPEECH AT THE OPENING OF
THE EDINBURGH ACADEMY—DEATH AND EPITAPH OF MAIDA—FIRES IN
EDINBURGH 1824.
Immediately on the conclusion of St Ronan’s Well, Sir
Walter began the novel of Redgauntlet;—but it had made considerable progress at
press before Constable and Ballantyne could persuade him to substitute that title for
Herries. The book was published in June 1824, and was received
at the time somewhat coldly, though it has since, I believe, found more justice. The
reintroduction of the adventurous hero of 1745, in the dulness and dimness of advancing
age, and fortunes hopelessly blighted—and the presenting him—with whose romantic
portraiture at an earlier period historical truth had been so admirably blended—as the
moving principle of events, not only entirely, but notoriously imaginary—this was a rash
experiment, and could not fail to suggest many disagreeable and disadvantageous
comparisons; yet, had there been no Waverley, I am persuaded the fallen and faded Ascanius of Redgauntlet would have been
universally pronounced a masterpiece. About the secondary personages there could be little
ground for controversy. What novel or drama has surpassed the
grotesquely ludicrous, dashed with the profound pathos, of Peter
Peebles—the most tragic of farces?—or the still sadder merriment of that
human shipwreck, Nantie Ewart?—or Wandering Willie and his Tale?—the wildest and most rueful of
dreams told by such a person, and in such a dialect! Of the young correspondents Darsie Latimer and Allan
Fairford, and the Quakers of Mount Sharon, and indeed of numberless minor
features in Redgauntlet, no one who has read the first volume of
these memoirs will expect me to speak at length here. With posterity assuredly this novel
will yield in interest to none of the series—for it contains perhaps more of the
author’s personal experiences than any other of them, or even than all the rest put
together.
This year, mirabile dictu!
produced but one novel; and it is not impossible that the author had taken deeply into his
mind, though he would not immediately act upon them, certain hints
about the danger of “overcropping,” which have been alluded to as dropping from
his publishers in 1823. He had, however, a labour of some weight to go through in preparing
for the press a Second Edition of his voluminous Swift. The additions to this reprint were numerous, and he corrected his notes,
and the Life of the Dean throughout, with considerable care. He also threw off several
reviews and other petty miscellanies—among which last occurs his memorable tribute to the memory of Lord Byron, written for Ballantyne’s newspaper immediately after the news of
the catastrophe at Missolonghi reached Abbotsford.*
The arrangement of his library and museum was, however, the main care of
the summer months of this year; and his woods were now in such a state of progress that his
most usual exercise out of doors was thinning
* See Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. iv. p. 343.
them. He was an expert as well as powerful
wielder of the axe, and competed with his ablest subalterns as to the paucity of blows by
which a tree could be brought down. The wood rang ever and anon with laughter while he
shared their labours; and if he had taken, as he every now and then did, a whole day with
them, they were sure to be invited home to Abbotsford to sup gaily at Tom Purdie’s. One of Sir
Walter’s Transatlantic admirers, by the way, sent him a complete
assortment of the tools employed in clearing the Backwoods, and both he and
Tom made strenuous efforts to attain some dexterity in using them;
but neither succeeded. The American axe, in particular, having a longer shaft than ours,
and a much smaller and narrower cutting- piece, was, in Tom’s
opinion, only fit for paring a kebbuck (i. e.
a cheese of skimmed milk). The old-fashioned large and broad axe was soon resumed; and the
belt that bore it had accommodation also for a chissel, a hammer, and a small saw. Among
all the numberless portraits, why was there not one representing the “Belted
Knight,” accoutred with these appurtenances of his forest-craft, jogging over the
heather on a breezy morning, with Thomas Purdie at his stirrup, and
Maida stalking in advance?
Notwithstanding the numberless letters to Terry about his upholstery, the far greater part of it was manufactured at
home. The most of the articles from London were only models for the use of two or three
neat-handed carpenters whom he had discovered in the villages near him: and he watched and
directed their operations as carefully as a George
Bullock could have done, and the results were such as even
Bullock might have admired. The great table in the library, for
example (a most complex and beautiful one), was done entirely in the
room where it now stands, by Joseph Shillinglaw of Darnick—the Sheriff
planning and studying every turn as zealously as ever an old lady pondered the developement
of an embroidered cushion. The hangings and curtains, too, were chiefly the work of a
little hunchbacked tailor, byname William
Goodfellow—(save at Abbotsford, where he answered to Robin)—who occupied a cottage on Scott’s farm of the Broomielees—one of the race that
creep from homestead to homestead, welcomed wherever they appear by housewife and
handmaiden, the great gossips and newsmen of the parish, in Scottish nomenclature cardooers. Proudly and earnestly did all these vassals toil in his
service; and I think it was one of them that, when some stranger asked a question about his
personal demeanour, answered in these simple words “Sir
Walter speaks to every man as if they were blood-relations.”
Not long after he had completed his work at Abbotsford, little
Goodfellow fell sick, and as his cabin was near Chiefswood, I had
many opportunities of observing the Sheriff’s kind attention to him in his
affliction. I can never forget, in particular, the evening on which the poor tailor died.
When Scott entered the hovel he found every thing silent, and inferred
from the looks of the good women in attendance that their patient had fallen asleep, and
that they feared his sleep was the final one. He murmured some syllables of kind regret;—at
the sound of his voice the dying tailor unclosed his eyes, and eagerly and wistfully sat
up, clasping his hands with an expression of rapturous gratefulness and devotion, that, in
the midst of deformity, disease, pain, and wretchedness, was at once beautiful and sublime.
He cried with a loud voice “the Lord bless and reward you,” and expired
with the effort.
In the painting of his interior, too, Sir
Walter personally directed every thing. He abominated the commonplace
daubing of walls, panels, doors, and window-boards with coats of white, blue, or grey, and
thought that sparklings and edgings of gilding only made their baldness and poverty more
noticeable. He desired to have about him, wherever he could manage it, rich, though not
gaudy, hangings, or substantial, old-fashioned wainscot-work, with no ornament but that of
carving; and where the wood was to be painted at all, it was done in strict imitation of
oak or cedar. Except in the drawing-room, which he abandoned to Lady Scott’s taste, all the roofs were in appearance of antique
carved oak, relieved by coats of arms duly blazoned at the intersections of beams, and
resting on cornices, to the eye of the same material, but really composed of casts in
plaster of Paris after the foliage, the flowers, the grotesque monsters and dwarfs, and
sometimes the beautiful heads of nuns and confessors, on which he had doated from infancy
among the cloisters of Melrose and Roslin. In the painting of these things, also, he had
instruments who considered it as a labour of love. The master-limner, in particular, had a
devoted attachment to his person; and this was not wonderful, for he, in fact, owed a
prosperous fortune to Scott’s kind and sagacious counsel,
tendered at the very outset of his career. A printer’s apprentice attracted notice by
his attempts with the pencil, and Sir Walter was called upon, after
often admiring his skill in representing dogs and horses and the like, to assist him with
his advice, as ambition had been stirred, and the youth would fain give himself to the
regular training of an artist. Scott took him into his room, and
conversed with him at some length. He explained the difficulties and
perils, the almost certain distresses, the few and narrow chances of this aspiring walk. He
described the hundreds of ardent spirits that pine out their lives in solitary garrets,
lamenting over the rash eagerness with which they had obeyed the suggestions of young
ambition, and chosen a career in which success of any sort is rare, and no success but the
highest is worth attaining. “You have talents and energy,” said he,
“but who can say whether you have genius? These boyish drawings can never be relied
on as proofs of that. If you feel within you such a glow of
ambition, that you would rather run a hundred chances of obscurity and penury than miss one of being a Wilkie,—make
up your mind, and take the bold plunge; but if your object is merely to raise yourself to a
station of worldly comfort and independence,—if you would fain look forward with tolerable
assurance to the prospect of being a respectable citizen, with your own snug roof over your
head, and the happy faces of a wife and children about you,—pause and reflect well. It
appears to me that there is little demand for fine works of the pencil in this country. Not
a few artists, who have even obtained high and merited reputation, find employment scarce,
and starve under their laurels. I think profit in Britain is, with very rare exceptions,
annexed to departments of obvious and direct utility, in which the mass of the people are
concerned; and it has often struck me, that some clever fellow might make a good hit if, in
place of enrolling himself among the future Raphaels
and Vandykes of the Royal Academy, he should
resolutely set himself to introducing something of a more elegant style of
house-painting.” The young man thus addressed (Mr D. R.
Hay) was modest and wise enough to accept the advice with thankfulness, and to act upon it with patience and steadiness.
After a few years he had qualified himself to take charge of all this delicate limning and
blazoning at Abbotsford. He is now, I understand, at the head of a great and flourishing
establishment in Edinburgh; and a treatise on the science of colour, which has proceeded
from his pen, is talked of as reflecting high credit on his taste and understanding. Nor
should I omit what seems a particularly honourable trait in Mr Hay:—he
is said to be one of the most liberal patrons of native art now in existence; in fact, to
possess an unrivalled collection of the works of contemporary Scottish painters.
Mean-time the progress of Abbotsford stimulated largely both friends and
strangers to contribute articles of curiosity towards its final adornment. I have already
alluded with regret to the non-completion of the Poet’s own catalogue of his literary
and antiquarian rarities, begun under the title of “Reliquiæ
Trottcosianæ,” and mentioned Mr
Train, the affectionate supervisor of excise, as the most unwearied and
bountiful of all the contributors to the Museum. Now, he would fain
have his part in the substantial “plenishing” also; and
I transcribe, as a specimen of his zeal, the account which I have received from himself of
the preparation and transmission of one piece of furniture, to which his friend allotted a
distinguished place, for it was one of the two chairs that ultimately stood in his own
sanctum sanctorum. In those days
Mr Train’s official residence was at Kirkintilloch, in
Stirlingshire; and he says, in his Memoranda,—
“Rarbiston, or, as it is now called, Robroyston, where the
valiant Wallace was betrayed by Monteith of
Ruskie, is only a few miles distant from Kirkintilloch. The walls of the house where
the first scene of that disgraceful tragedy was acted were
standing, on my arrival in that quarter. The roof was entirely gone; but I observed
that some butts of the rafters, built into the wall, were still remaining. As the ruin
was about being taken down to make way for the ploughshare, I easily succeeded in
purchasing these old stumps from the farmer upon whose ground it stood. When taken out
of the building, these pieces of wood were seemingly so much decayed as to be fit only
for fuel; but after planing off about an inch from the surface, I found that the
remainder of the wood was as hard as a bone, and susceptible of a fine polish. I then
resolved upon having a chair of the most antique description made out of these wasted
blocks as a memorial of our most patriotic hero, with a feeling somewhat similar to
theirs who remember their Saviour in the crucifix.
“In the execution of this undertaking workmen of various
denominations were employed. It was modelled from an old chair in the Palace of
Hamilton, and is nearly covered with carved work, representing rocks, heather, and
thistles, emblematic of Scotland, and indented with brass, representing the Harp of the
North, surrounded with laurels, and supported by targets, claymores, Lochaber axes, war
horns, &c. The seat is covered with silk velvet, beneath which is a drawer,
containing a book bound in the most primitive form in Robroyston Wood, with large
clasps. In this book are detailed at length some of the particulars here briefly
alluded to, with the affirmations of several persons to whose care the chair was
entrusted in the course of making.
“On the (inside) back of the chair is a brass plate, bearing the
following inscription:—
“THIS CHAIR,MADE OF THE ONLY REMAINING WOODOF THE HOUSE AT ROBROYSTON,IN WHICH THEMATCHLESS SIR WILLIAM WALLACE‘WAS DONE TO DEATH BY FELON HAND FORGUARDING WELL HIS FATHERS’ LAND,’IS MOST RESPECTFULLY PRESENTED TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, AS A SMALL TOKEN OF GRATITUDE,BY HIS DEVOTED SERVANT,JOSEPH TRAIN.
“Exaggerated reports of this chair spread over the adjacent
country with a fiery-cross-like speed, and raised public curiosity to such a height,
that persons in their own carriages came many miles to see it. I happened to be in a
distant part of my district at the time; but I dare say many persons in Kirkintilloch
yet remember how triumphantly the symbolic chair was borne from my lodgings to the bank
of the Great Canal, to be there shipped for Abbotsford, in the midst of the town-band
playing—‘Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace
bled,’ and surrounded by thousands, who made the welkin resound with
bursts of national enthusiasm, justifying the couplet of Pope— ‘All this may be, the people’s voice is odd; The Scots will fight for Wallace as for
God.’”—
Such arrivals as that of “the Wallace Chair” were frequent
throughout 1824. It was a happy, and therefore it need hardly be added an ineventful
year—his last year of undisturbed prosperity. The little incidents that diversified his
domestic interior, and the zeal which he always kept up for all the concerns of his
friends, together with a few indications of his opinions on subjects of liter-ary and political interest, will be found in his correspondence, which
will hardly require any editorial explanations. Within, I think, the same week in January,
arrived a copy of Montfauçon’s
Antiquities, in fifteen volumes folio, richly bound in scarlet, the gift of King George IV., and a set of the Variorum Classics, in about
a hundred volumes octavo, from Mr Constable.
Sir Walter says—
To Archibald Constable, Esq.
“Abbotsford, 6th January, 1824. “My dear Sir,
“Yesterday I had the great pleasure of placing in my
provisional library the most splendid present, as I in sincerity believe, which
ever an author received from a bookseller. In the shape of these inimitable Variorums, who knows what new ideas the Classics may
suggest? for I am determined to shake off the rust which years have contracted,
and to read at least some of the most capital of the ancients before I die.
Believe me, my dear and old friend, I set a more especial value on this work as
coming from you, and as being a pledge that the long and confidential
intercourse betwixt us has been agreeable and advantageous to both.—Yours
truly,
Walter Scott.”
Miss Edgeworth had written to him to enquire about
the health of his eldest daughter, and told him some anecdotes of an American dame, whose
head had been turned by the Waverley
Novels, and who had, among other demonstrations of enthusiasm, called her farm
in Massachussetts, Charlie’s Hope. This lady had, it seems,
corresponded with Mrs Grant of Laggan, herself for a
time one of the “Authors of Waverley,” and Mrs Grant, in
disclaiming such honours, had spoken of the real source in terms of such perfect assurance, that the
honest American almost fancied she must have heard Scott
confess; yet still she was in doubts and tribulations, and unhappy till she could hear
more. The theory prevalent in her own neighbourhood was, it seems, that the authorship was
a joint-stock business—Sir Walter being one of the partners, and the
other an unfortunate lunatic, of whose papers he had got possession during a lucid
interval. Scott answers thus:—
To Miss Edgeworth, Edgeworths’town, Ireland.
“Parliament House, 3d Feb., 1824. “My dear Miss Edgeworth,
“I answer your kind letter immediately, because I am
sure your sisters and you will interest yourselves in Sophia’s state of health. My news are
not of the best— ‘Yet not so ill, but may be well reported.’ On Saturday, 31st January, she had a daughter, but the poor little
stranger left us on the Monday following; and though
Sophia is very patient in her temper, yet her recovery
is naturally retarded, and I am sorry to say she has been attacked in her weak
state by those spasms which seem a hereditary disorder in my family,—slightly,
however, in comparison of the former occasion; and for the last two days she
has been so much recovered as to take a grain or two of calomel, which is
specific in the complaint. I have no doubt now, humanly speaking, that her
recovery will proceed favourably. I saw her for a quarter of an hour yesterday,
which was the first permanent visit I have been permitted to make her. So you
may conceive we have been anxious enough, living, as is our clannish fashion,
very much for, and with each other.
“Your American friend, the good-wife of
Charlie’s Hope, seems disposed, as we say,
‘to sin her mercies.’ She quarrels with books that amuse
her, because she does not know the author; and she gives up chicken-pie for the
opposite reason, that she knows too much about the birds’ pedigree. On
the last point I share her prejudices, and never could eat the flesh of any
creature I had known while alive. I had once a noble yoke of oxen, which, with
the usual agricultural gratitude, we killed for the table; they said it was the
finest beef in the four counties, but I could never taste Gog and Magog, whom I used to admire in
the plough. Moreover, when I was an officer of yeomanry, and used to dress my
own charger, I formed an acquaintance with a flock of white turkeys, by
throwing them a handful of oats now and then when I came from the stable:—I saw
their numbers diminish with real pain, and never attempted to eat any of them
without being sick. And yet I have as much of the rugged and
tough about me as is necessary to carry me through all sorts of duty
without much sentimental compunction.
“As to the ingenious system of double authorship,
which the Americans have devised for the Waverley novels, I think it in one
point of view extremely likely; since the unhappy man, whom they have thought
fit to bring on the carpet, has been shut up in a madhouse for many years; and
it seems probable that no brain but a madman’s could have invented so
much stuff, and no leisure but that of a prisoner could have afforded time to
write it all. But, if this poor man be the author of these works, I can assure
your kind friend that I neither could, would, nor durst have the slightest
communication with him on that or any other subject. In fact, I have never
heard of him twice for these twenty years or more. As for honest Mrs Grant, I cannot conceive why the deuce I
should have selected her for a mother-confessor; if it had been yourself or Joanna, there might have been some
probability in the report; but good Mrs Grant is so very
cerulean, and surrounded by so many fetch-and-carry mistresses and missesses,
and the maintainer of such an unmerciful correspondence, that though I would do
her any kindness in my power, yet I should be afraid to be very intimate with a
woman whose tongue and pen are rather overpowering. She is an excellent person
notwithstanding. Pray, make my respects to your correspondent, and tell her I
am very sorry I cannot tell her who the author of Waverley
is; but I hope she will do me the justice not to ascribe any dishonourable
transactions to me, either in that matter or any other, until she hears that
they are likely to correspond with any part of my known character which, having
been now a lion of good reputation on my own deserts for twenty years and
upwards, ought to be indifferently well known in Scotland. She seems to be a
very amiable person; and though I shall never see Charlie’s Hope, or eat
her chicken-pies, I am sure I wish health to wait on the one, and good
digestion on the other. They are funny people the Americans; I saw a paper in
which they said my father was a tailor. If he had been an honest tailor I should not have been ashamed of the circumstance; but
he was what may be thought as great a phenomenon, for he was an honest lawyer,
a cadet of a good family, whose predecessors only dealt in pinking and slashing
doublets, not in making them.
“Here is a long letter, and all about trash, but what
can you expect? Judges are mumbling and grumbling above me—lawyers are
squabbling and babbling around me, The minutes I give to my letter are stolen
from Themis. I hope to get to Abbotsford very soon, though only for two or
three days, until 12th March, when we go there for some time. Mrs Spicie seems to be recovering from her asthmatics, which makes a
curious case, providing the recovery be completed. Walter came down at Christmas, and speedily assembled three
more terriers. One day the whole got off after a hare, and made me remember the
basket beagles that Lord Morton used to
keep in my youth; for the whole pack opened like hounds, and would have stuck
to the chase till they had killed the hare, which would have been like being
pricked to death with pins, if we had not licked them off so soon as we could
for laughing. This is a dull joke on paper; but imagine the presumption of so
many long-backed, short-legged creatures pursuing an animal so very fleet. You
will allow it is something ridiculous. I am sure Count
O’Halloran would have laughed, and Colonel Heathcock would have been scandalized.*
Lady S. sends her best and kindest
remembrances, in which she is joined by Anne and Sophia (poor
body). My fair friends, Harriet and
Sophia, have a large interest in this
greeting, and Lockhart throws himself in
with tidings that Sophia continues to mend.—Always, my
dear Miss E., most faithfully yours,
Walter Scott.”
This is the answer to a request concerning some MS. tragedy, by the late
Mrs Hemans, which seems to have been damned at one of the London theatres, and then to have
been tried over again (I know not with what result) at Edinburgh:
To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead.
“Edinburgh, February 9, 1824. “My dear Miss Baillie,
“To hear is to obey, and the enclosed line will show
that the Siddonses are agreeable to act Mrs
Hemans’s
* See “The Absentee,” in Miss Edgeworth’sTales of Fashionable
Life.
drama. When you tell the
tale say nothing about me, for on no earthly consideration would I like it to
be known that I interfered in theatrical matters; it brings such a torrent of
applications which it is impossible to grant, and often very painful to refuse.
Every body thinks they can write blank verse—and a word of
yours to Mrs Siddons, &c. &c. I had one
rogue (to be sure he went mad afterwards, poor fellow) who came to bully me in
my own house, until he had almost made the mist of twenty years, as Ossian says, roll backwards from my spirit, in
which case he might have come by an excellent good beating. I have great
pleasure, however, in serving Mrs Hemans, both on account
of her own merit, and because of your patronage. I trust the piece will
succeed; but there is no promising, for Saunders is meanly jealous of being thought less critical than
John Bull, and may, perhaps, despise to
be pleased with what was less fortunate in London. I wish Mrs
H. had been on the spot to make any alterations, &c. which
the players are always demanding. I will read the drama over more carefully
than I have yet done, and tell you if any thing occurs. I need hardly apologize
for being late in letting you hear all this—for the terror of the cramp
attacking poor Sophia in her weak state
kept us very feverish; but thank God it did little more than menace her, and
the symptoms having now given way, her husband talks of going to town, in which
case I intend to take Sophia to Abbotsford, and ‘Till she be fat as a Norroway seal, I’ll feed her on bannocks of barleymeal.’
“Betwixt indolence of her own, and Lockhart’s extreme anxiety and
indulgence, she has foregone the custom of her exercise, to which, please God,
we will bring her back by degrees. Little Charles is come down, just entered at
Brazen Nose, where, however, he does not go to reside till October. We must see
that he fills up the space between to good advantage; he had always quickness
enough to learn, and seems now really to have caught the ——‘fever of renown, Sprung from the strong contagion of the gown.’
“I am sorry for Mr
Crabbe’s complaint, under which he suffered, I recollect,
when he was here in 1822. Did you ever make out how he liked his Scottish
tour?—he is not, you know, very outspoken, and I was
often afraid that he was a little tired by the bustle around him. At another
time I would have made a point of attending more to his comforts—but what was
to be done amid piping, and drumming, and pageants, and provosts, and bailies,
and wild Highlandmen by the score? The time would have been more propitious to
a younger poet. The fertility you mention is wonderful, but surely he must
correct a great deal to bring his verses into the terse and pointed state in
which he gives them to the public. To come back to Mrs Hemans. I am afraid that I cannot flatter myself with much
interest that can avail her. I go so little out, and mix so seldom either with
the gay or the literary world here, that I am reduced, like Gil Blas, much to the company of my brother
clerks and men of business, a seclusion which I cannot say I regret greatly;
but any thing within my power shall not be left undone. I hope you will make my
apology to Mrs Hemans for the delay which has taken place;
if any thing should occur essential to be known to the authoress, I will write
immediately.
“Always yours, my dear friend, Walter Scott.”
In the next letter Scott mentions an
application from Mr James Montgomery for some contribution to a
miscellaneous volume compiled by that ever benevolent poet for the benefit of the little
chimney-sweeps.
To Miss Baillie, Hampstead.
“Edinburgh, Feb. 12, 1824. “My dearest Friend,
“I hasten to answer your kind enquiries about
Sophia. You would learn from my last
that she was in a fair way of recovery, and I am happy to say she continues so
well that we have no longer any apprehensions on her account. She will soon get
into her sitting-room again, and of course have good rest at night, and gather
strength gradually. I have been telling her that her face, which was last week
the size of a sixpence, has, in three or four days attained the diameter of a
shilling, and will soon attain its natural and most extensive circumference of
half-a-crown. If we live till 12th of next month we shall all go to Abbotsford,
and between the black doctor and the red nurse (pony and cow, videlicet) I
trust she will be soon well again. As for little Johnnie I have no serious apprehensions, being quite of your
mind that his knowingness is only a proof that he is much with grown-up people;
the child is active enough, and I hope will do well—yet an only child is like a
blot at backgammon, and fate is apt to hit it. I am particularly entertained
with your answer to Montgomery, because
it happened to be precisely the same with mine; he applied to me for a sonnet
or an elegy, instead of which I sent him an account of a manner of constructing
chimneys so as scarcely to contract soot; and 2dly, of a very simple and
effectual machine for sweeping away what soot does adhere. In all the new part
of Abbotsford I have lined the chimney-vents with a succession of cones made of
the same stuff with common flower-pots, about one and a
half inch thick, and eighteen inches or two feet high, placed one above
another, and the vent built round them, so that the smoke passing up these
round earthen tubes, finds neither corner nor roughness on which to deposit the
soot, and in fact there is very little collected. What sweeping is required is
most easily performed by a brush like what housemaids call a pope’s head, the handle of which consists of a succession of
pipes, one slipping on the top of another like the joints of a fishing-rod, so
that the maid first sweeps the lower part of the vent, then adds another pipe
and sweeps a little higher, and so on. I have found this quite effectual, but
the lining of the chimneys makes the accumulations of soot very trifling in
comparison with the common case. Montgomery thanked me,
but I think he would rather have had a sonnet; which puts me in mind of
Mr Puff’s intended comedy of The
Reformed Housebreaker, in which he was to put burglary in so ridiculous a point
of view, that bolts and bars were likely to become useless by the end of the
season. Verily I have no idea of writing verse on a grave subject of utility,
any more than of going to church in a cinque pace. Lottery tickets and Japan
blacking may indeed be exceptions to the general rule. I am quite delighted at
us two cool Scots answering in exactly the same manner, but I am afraid your
sooty men (who are still in regular discharge of
their duty) and my pope’s head and lined vents
will not suit the committee, who seem more anxious for poetry than for common
sense. For my part, when I write on such subjects, I intend it shall be a grand
historico-philosophico poem upon oil-gas, having been made president of the
Oil-gas Company of this city; the whale fishery might be introduced, and
something pretty said about palm oil, which we think is apt to be popular among
our lawyers. I am very sorry for poor Richardson, so much
attached to his wife, and suffering so much in her suffering. I hope Tom Campbell gets on pretty well, and wish he
would do something to sustain his deserved reputation. I wrote with Mrs Siddons’s consent to give Mrs Hemans’stragedy a trial. I hope that her
expectations are not very high, for I do not think our ordinary theatrical
audience is either more judicious or less fastidious than those of England.
They care little about poetry on the stage—it is situation, passion, and
rapidity of action, which seem to be the principal requisites for ensuring the
success of a modern drama; but I trust, by dint of a special jury, the piece
may have a decent success—certainly I should not hope for much more. I must see
they bring it out before 12th March, if possible, as we go to the country that
day. I have not seen Mrs Siddons and her brother William Murray since their obliging answer,
for one of my colleagues is laid up with gout, and this gives me long seats in
the Court, of which you have reaped the fruits in this long epistle from the
Clerk’s table, done amid the bustle of pleaders, attorneys, and so forth.
I will get a frank, however, if possible, for the matter is assuredly not worth
a shilling postage. My kindest remembrances attend Mrs Baillie and Mrs
Agnes.—Always yours, with sincere respect and affection,
Walter Scott.”
To D. Terry, Esq., London.
“Abbotsford, Feb. 18, 1824. “My dear Terry,
“Your very kind letter reached me here, so that I was
enabled to send you immediately an accurate sketch of the windows and
chimney-sides of the drawing-room to measurement. I should like the mirrors
handsome and the frames plain; the colour of the hangings is green, with rich
Chinese figures. On the side of the window I intend to
have exactly beneath the glass a plain white side-table of the purest marble,
on which to place Chantrey’s bust.
A truncated pillar of the same marble will be its support; and I think that
besides the mirror above there will be a plate of mirror below the table; these
memoranda will enable Baldock to say at
what price these points can be handsomely accomplished. I have not yet spoken
about the marble table; perhaps they may be all got in London. I shall be
willing to give a handsome but not an extravagant price. I am much obliged to
Mr Baldock for his confidence about the screen. But
what says Poor Richard?* ‘Those
who want money when they come to buy, are apt to want money when they come
to pay.’ Again Poor Dick
observes, ‘That in many you find the true gentleman’s fate, Ere his house is complete he has sold his estate.’ So we will adjourn consideration of the screen till other times; let us
first have the needful got and paid for. The stuff for the windows in the
drawing-room is the crimson damask silk we bought last year. I enclose a scrap
of it that the fringe may be made to match. I propose they should be hung with
large handsome brass rings upon a brass cylinder, and I believe it would be
best to have these articles from London—I mean the rings and cylinders; but I
dislike much complication in the mode of drawing them separate, as it is
eternally going wrong; those which divide in the middle, drawing back on each
side like the curtains of an old-fashioned bed, and when drawn back are secured
by a loop and tassel are, I think, the handsomest, and can easily be made on
the spot; the fringe should be silk, of course. I think the curtains of the
library, considering the purpose of the
* See the works of Dr Franklin.
room, require no fringe at all. We
have, I believe, settled that they shall not be drawn in a line across the
recess, as in the drawing-room, but shall circle along the inside of the
windows. I refer myself to Mr Atkinson
about the fringe, but I think a little mixture of gold would look handsome with
the crimson silk. As for the library a yellow fringe, if any. I send a draught
of the windows enclosed; the architraves are not yet up in the library, but
they are accurately computed from the drawings of my kind friend Mr
Atkinson. There is plenty of time to think about these matters,
for of course the rooms must be painted before they are put up. I saw the
presses yesterday; they are very handsome, and remind me of the awful job of
arranging my books. About July Abbotsford will, I think, be finished, when I
shall, like the old Duke of Queensberry who
built Drumlanrig, fold up the accounts in a sealed parcel, with a label bidding
‘the deil pike out the een of any of my successors that shall open
it.’ I beg kind love to Mrs
Terry, Walter the Great,
and Missy; delicious weather here, and birds singing St Valentine’s
matins as if it were April.—Yours ever,
Walter Scott.”
“P.S.—Pride will have a fall—I have a whelp of
one of Dandle Dinmont’s Pepper
and Mustard terriers, which no sooner began to follow me into the house
than Ourisque fell foul. The Liddisdale devil
cocked its nose, and went up to the scratch like a tigress, downed Ourie, and served her out completely—since which
Ourie has been so low that it seems going
into an atrophy, and Ginger takes all manner of
precedence, as the best place by the fire, and so on, to Lady Scott’s great discomfiture.—Single
letters by post: double to Croker
with a card enclosed, asking a frank to me.”
About this time Miss Edgeworth
announced the approaching marriage of her sister Sophia to Mr Fox.
To Miss Edgeworth, Edgeworths’town.
“Edinburgh, February 24, 1824, “My dear Miss Edgeworth,
“I do not delay a moment to send my warmest and best
congratulations upon the very happy event which is about to take place in your
family, and to assure that you do me but common justice in supposing that I
take the warmest interest in whatever concerns my young friend. All Abbotsford
to an acre of Poyais* that she will make an excellent wife; and most truly
happy am I to think that she has such an admirable prospect of matrimonial
happiness, although at the expense of thwarting the maxim, and showing that ‘The course of true love sometimes may
run smooth.’ It will make a pretty vista, as I hope and trust, for you, my good friend,
to look forwards with an increase of interest to futurity. Lady Scott, Ann, and Sophia send
their sincere and hearty congratulations upon this joyful occasion. I hope to
hear her sing the petticoat of red some day in her own house. I should be apt
to pity you a little amid all your happiness, if you had not my friend
Miss Harriet, besides other young
companions whose merits are only known to me by report, to prevent your feeling
so much as you would otherwise the blank which this event must occasion in your
domestic society. Sophia, I hope, will be soon able to
make her own gratulations; she is recovering very well, and overjoyed to hear
such good news from your quar-
* One of the bubbles of this bubble period, was a
scheme of colonization at Poyais.
ter. I have been on a short
trip to Abbotsford, to set painters to work to complete what Slender would call, ‘Mine own great
chamber;’ and on my return I was quite delighted to see the
change on my daughter. Little John Hugh
is likewise much better, but will require nursing and care for some years at
least. Yet I have often known such hothouse plants bear the open air as well as
those that were reared on the open moor.
“I am not at all surprised at what you say of the
Yankees. They are a people possessed of very considerable energy, quickened and
brought into eager action by an honourable love of their country and pride in
their institutions; but they are as yet rude in their ideas of social
intercourse, and totally ignorant, speaking generally, of all the art of
good-breeding, which consists chiefly in a postponement of one’s own
petty wishes or comforts to those of others. By rude questions and
observations, an absolute disrespect to other people’s feelings, and a
ready indulgence of their own, they make one feverish in their company, though
perhaps you may be ashamed to confess the reason. But this will wear off, and
is already wearing away. Men, when they have once got benches, will soon fall
into the use of cushions. They are advancing in the lists of our literature,
and they will not be long deficient in the petite
morale, especially as they have, like ourselves, the
rage for travelling. I have seen a new work, the Pilot, by the author of the Spy and Pioneer. The hero is the celebrated
Paul Jones, whom I well remember
advancing above the island of Inchkeith with three small vessels to lay Leith
under contribution. I remember my mother being alarmed with the drum, which she
had heard all her life at eight o’clock, conceiving it to be the pirates
who had landed. I never saw such a change as betwixt that time, 1779, in the
military state of a city. Then Edin-burgh had scarce three
companies of men under arms; and latterly she furnished 5000, with complete
appointments, of cavalry, artillery, and infantry—enough to have eaten
Paul Jones and his whole equipage. Nay, the very
square in which my father’s house stands could even then have furnished a
body of armed men sufficient to have headed back as large a party as he could
well have landed. However, the novel is a very clever one, and the sea-scenes
and characters in particular are admirably drawn; and I advise you to read it
as soon as possible. I have little news to send from Abbotsford; Spice is much better, though still asthmatic; she is
extremely active, and in high spirits, though the most miserable, thin,
long-backed creature I ever saw. She is extremely like the shadow of a dog on
the wall; such a sketch as a child makes in its first attempts at drawing a
monster—with a large head, four feet, and a most portentous longitude of back.
There was great propriety in Miss
Harriet’s dream after all, for if ever a dog needed six
legs, poor Spice certainly requires a pair of
additional supporters. She is now following me a little, though the duty of
body-guard has devolved for the present on a cousin of hers, a fierce game
devil, that goes at every thing, and has cowed Ourisque’s courage in a most extraordinary degree, to
Lady Scott’s great vexation. Here
is a tale of dogs, and dreams, and former days, but the only pleasure in
writing is to write whatever comes readiest to the pen. My wife and Anne send kindest compliments of
congratulation, as also Charles, who has
come down to spend four or five months with us; he is just entered at
Brazennose—on fire to be a scholar of classical renown, and studying (I hope
the humour will last) like a very dragon.—Always, my dear Miss Edgeworth, with best love to the bride
and to dear Harriet, very much yours,
Walter Scott.”
To Daniel Terry, Esq., London.
“Abbotsford, March 13, 1824. “My dear Terry,
“We are now arrived here, and in great bustle with
painters, which obliges me to press you about the mirrors. If we cannot have
them soon, there is now an excellent assortment at
Trotter’s, where I can be supplied, for I will
hardly again endure to have the house turned upside down by upholsterers—and
wish the whole business ended, and the house rid of that sort of cattle once
for all. I am only ambitious to have one fine mirror over the chimney-piece; a
smaller one will do for the other side of the room. Lady Scott has seen some Bannockburn carpets, which will answer
very well, unless there are any bespoken. They are putting up my presses, which
look very handsome. In the drawing-room the cedar doors and windows, being well
varnished, assume a most rich and beautiful appearance. The Chinese paper in
the drawing-room is most beautiful, saving the two ugly blanks left for these
mirrors of d——n, which I dare say you curse as heartily as I do. I wish you
could secure a parcel of old caricatures, which can be bought cheap, for the
purpose of papering two cabinets de
l’eau. John
Ballantyne used to make great hawls in this way. The Tory side
of the question would of course be most acceptable; but I don’t care
about this, so the prints have some spirit. Excuse this hasty and pressing
letter; if you saw the plight we are in you would pity and forgive. At
Baldock, as I have had at you. My
mother whips me, and I whip the top. Best compliments to Mrs Terry.—Believe me always yours,
Walter Scott.”
To Archibald Constable, Esq., Polton House,
Lasswade.
“Since I received your letter I have been on the
look-out for a companion for you, and have now the pleasure to send one bred at
Abbotsford of a famous race. His name has hitherto been Cribb, but you may change it if you please. I will undertake for
his doing execution upon the rats, which Polton was well stocked with when I
knew it some seventeen or eighteen years ago. You must take some trouble to
attach Mr Cribb, otherwise he will form low
connexions in the kitchen, which are not easily broken off. The best and most
effectual way is to feed him yourself for a few days.
“I congratulate you heartily, my good old friend, on
your look-forward to domestic walks and a companion of this sort; and I have no
doubt your health will gradually be confirmed by it. I will take an early
opportunity to see you when we return to Edinburgh. I like the banks of the
Esk, which to me are full of many remembrances, among which those relating to
poor Leyden must come home to you as
well as to me. I am ranging in my improvements painting my baronial hall with
all the scutcheons of the Border clans, and many similar devices. For the
roof-tree I tried to blazon my own quarterings, and succeeded easily with eight
on my father’s side; but on my mother’s side I stuck fast at the
mother of my great-great-grandfather. The ancestor himself was John
Rutherford of Grundisnock, which is an appanage of the Hunthill
estate, and he was married to Isabel Ker of Bloodylaws. I
think I have heard that either this John of Grundisnock or
his father was one of the nine sons of the celebrated Cock of
Hunthill, who seems to have had a reasonable brood of chickens.
Do you know any thing of the pedigree of the Hunt-hills? The Earl of Teviot was of a
younger branch, Rutherford of Quarrelholes, but of the
same family. If I could find out these Rutherfords, and
who they married, I could complete my tree, which is otherwise correct; but if
not, I will paint clouds on these three shields, with the motto Vixerunt fortes ante. These things are
trifles when correct, but very absurd and contemptible if otherwise. Edgerstane cannot help me; he only knows that
my grandfather was a cousin of his—and you know he represents Hunthill. My poor
mother has often told me about it, but it was to regardless ears. Would to God
I had old Mrs Kedie of Leith, who screeded off all the
alliances between the Andersons of Ettrick House and the
Andersons of Ettrick Hall, though
Michael was the name of every second man, and, to
complete the mess, they intermarried with each other.—Yours truly,
Walter Scott.”
A bad accident in a fox-chase occurred at this time to Sir Walter’s dear friend Mr
Scott of Gala. The ice-house at Abbotsford was the only one in the
neighbourhood that had been filled during the preceding winter, and to Tom Purdie’s care in that particular Mr
Scott’s numerous friends owed the preservation of his valuable life.
To the Lord Montagu, &c., Ditton Park.
“Edinburgh, 14th April, 1824. “My dear Lord,
“You might justly think me most unmerciful, were you
to consider this letter as a provoke requiring an answer. It comes partly to
thank you twenty times for your long and most kind letter, and partly, which I
think not unnecessary, to tell you that Gala may now, I trust, be considered as quite out of danger. He
has swam for his life though, and barely saved it. It is
for the credit of the clan to state that he had no dishonour as a horseman by
his fall. He had alighted to put his saddle to rights, and the horse, full of
corn and little work, went off with him before he got into his seat, and went
headlong down a sort of precipice. He fell at least fifteen feet without
stopping, and no one that saw the accident could hope he should be taken up a
living man. Yet, after losing a quart of blood, he walked home on foot, and no
dangerous symptoms appeared till five or six days after, when they came with a
vengeance. He continues to use the ice with wonderful effect, though it seems a
violent remedy.
“How fate besets us in our sports and in our most
quiet domestic moments! Your lordship’s story of the lamp makes one
shudder, and I think it wonderful that Lady
Montagu felt no more bad effects from the mere terror of such an
accident; but the gentlest characters have often most real firmness. I once saw
something of the kind upon a very large scale. You may have seen at Somerset
House an immense bronze chandelier with several hundred burners, weighing three
or four tons at least. On the day previous to the public exhibition of the
paintings, the Royal Academicians are in use, as your Lordship knows, to give
an immensely large dinner-party to people of distinction, supposed to be
patrons of the art, to literary men, to amateurs in general, and the Lord knows
whom besides. I happened to be there the first time this ponderous mass of
bronze was suspended. It had been cast for his
Majesty, then Prince Regent, and he not much liking it—I am
surprised he did not, as it is very ugly indeed—had bestowed it on the Royal
Academicians. Beneath it was placed, as at Ditton, a large round table, or
rather a tier of tables, rising above each other like the shelves of a
dumb-waiter, and furnished with as many glasses, tumblers, decanters, and so forth, as might have set up an entire
glass shop—the numbers of the company, upwards of 150 persons, requiring such a
supply. Old West presided, and was
supported by Jockey of Norfolk on the one
side, and one of the royal Dukes on the other. We had just drunk a preliminary
toast or two, when the Lord preserve us! a noise was heard like that which
precedes an earthquake, the links of the massive chain, by which this beastly
lump of bronze was suspended, began to give way, and the mass descending slowly
for several inches encountered the table beneath, which was positively
annihilated by the pressure, the whole glass-ware being at once destroyed. What
was very odd, the chain, after this manifestation of weakness, continued to
hold fast; the skilful inspected it and declared it would yield no farther—and
we, I think to the credit of our courage, remained quiet and continued our
sitting. Had it really given way, as the architecture of Somerset House has
been in general esteemed unsubstantial, it must have broke the floor like a
bombshell, and carried us all down to the cellars of that great national
edifice. Your Lordship’s letter placed the whole scene in my
recollection. A fine paragraph we should have made.*
“I think your Lordship will be much pleased with the
fine plantation on Bowden Moor. I have found an excellent legend for the spot.
It is close by the grave of an unhappy being, called Wattie Waeman (whether the last
appellative was really his name, or has been given him from his melancholy
fate, is uncertain), who being all for love and a little for stealing, hung
himself there seventy or eighty years since (quere, where did he find a tree?) at once to revenge
himself of his mistress
* This story is also told in Scott’sEssay on the Life of Kemble. See
his Miscellaneous Prose
Works, vol. xx. pp. 195-7.
and to save the gallows a labour. Now, as the place of his
grave and of his suicide is just on the verge where the Duke’s land meets
with mine and Kippilaw’s—(you are aware that where three lairds’
lands meet is always a charmed spot) the spirit of Wattie
Waeman wanders sadly over the adjacent moors, to the great
terror of all wandering wights who have occasion to pass from Melrose to
Bowden. I begin to think which of his namesakes this omen concerns, for I take
Walter Kerr of Kippilaw to be out of the question. I
never heard of a Duke actually dying for love, though the Duke in the Twelfth Night be in an
alarming way. On the other hand, Sir John Græme
of the West Countrie, who died for cruel Barbara
Allan, is a case in point against the Knight. Thus, in extreme
cases, your Duke loses his head, whereas your Knight or Esquire is apt to
retain it upon a neck a little more elongated than usual. I will pursue the
discussion no further, as the cards appear to turn against me. The people begin
to call the plantation Waeman’s Wood—rather a good name.
“It is quite impossible your Lordship should be
satisfied with the outside view of my castle, for I reckon upon the honour of
receiving your whole party, quot quot
adestis, as usual, in the interior. We have plenty of room
for a considerable number of friends at bed as well as board. Do not be alarmed
by the report of the gas, which was quite true, but reflects no dishonour on
that mode of illumination. I had calculated that fifteen hundred cubic feet of
gas would tire out some five-and-twenty or thirty pair of feet of Scotch
dancers, but it lasted only till six in the morning, and then, as a brave
soldier does on his post, went out when burned out. Had I kept the man sitting
up for an hour or two to make the gas as fast as consumed, I should have
spoiled a good story.
“My hall is in the course of having all the heavy
parts of my armorial collection bestowed upon it, and really, though fanciful,
looks very well, and I am as busy as a bee, disposing suits of armour,
battle-axes, broadswords, and all the knick-nacks I have been breaking my shins
over in every corner of the house for these seven years past, in laudable order
and to the best advantage.
“If Mr
Blakeney be the able person that fame reports him, he will have
as great a duty to perform as his ancestor at Stirling Castle;* for to keep so
young a person as my chief, in his
particular situation, from the inroads of follies, and worse than follies,
requires as much attention and firmness as to keep Highland claymores and
French engineers out of a fortified place. But there is an admirable garrison
in the fortress, kind and generous feelings, and a strong sense of honour and
duty which Duke Walter has by descent from his father and
grandfather. God send him life and health, and I trust he will reward your
Lordship’s paternal care, and fulfil my hopes. They are not of the
lowest, but such as must be entertained by an old and attached friend of the
family who has known him from infancy. My friend Lord John wants the extreme responsibility of his
brother’s situation, and may afford to sow a few more wild oats, but I
trust he will not make the crop a large one. Lord * *
* and his tutor have just left us for the south, after spending
three or four days with us. They could not have done worse than sending the
young Viscount to Edinburgh, for though he is really an unaffected natural
young man, yet it was absurd to expect that he should study hard when he had
six invi-
* General
Blakeney, grandfather to Lord
M.’s friend, was governor of Stirling Castle in
1745.
tations for every hour of every evening. I am more and more
convinced of the excellence of the English monastic institutions of Cambridge
and Oxford. They cannot do all that may be expected, but there is at least the
exclusion of many temptations to dissipation of mind; whereas with us,
supposing a young man to have any pretensions to keep good society—and, to say
truth, we are not very nice in investigating them—he is almost pulled to pieces
by speculating mammas and flirting misses. If a man is poor, plain, and
indifferently connected, he may have excellent opportunities of study at
Edinburgh; otherwise he should beware of it.
“Lady Anne is
very naughty not to take care of herself, and I am not sorry she has been a little ill, that it may be a warning. I wish to hear
your Lordship’s self is at Bath. I hate unformed complaints. A doctor is
like Ajax—give him light and he may make
battle with a disease; but, no disparagement to the Esculapian art, they are
bad guessers. My kindest compliments, I had almost said love, attend Lady Isabella. We are threatened with a cruel
deprivation in the loss of our friend Sir
Adam, the first of men. A dog of a banker has bought his house for an investment of capital, and I
fear he must trudge. Had I still had the Highland
piper* in my service, who would not have refused me such a
favour, I would have had him dirked to a certainty—I mean this cursed banker.
As it is, I must think of some means of poisoning his hot rolls and butter, or
setting his house on fire, by way of revenge. It is a real affliction. I am
happy to hear of Lady Margaret’s
good looks. I was one of her earliest acquaintance, and at least half her
godfather, for I took the vows on me for somebody or other who, I dare say, has
never thought
* John of Skye
had left Abbotsford—but he soon returned.
half so often of her as I
have done. And so I have written out my paper and, I fear, your
Lordship’s patience. My respectful compliments attend Lady Montagu and the young ladies of
Ditton.—Always most truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
The estate of Gattonside was purchased about this time by Mr George Bainbridge of Liverpool—and Sir Adam and Lady
Ferguson, to Scott’s great regret,
went a year or two afterwards to another part of Scotland. The “cursed banker,”
however, had only to be known to be liked and esteemed. Mr Bainbridge
had, among other merits, great skill in sports—especially in that which he has illustrated
by the excellent manual entitled “The
Fly-fisher’s Guide;” and Gattonside-house speedily resumed its
friendly relations with Abbotsford.
The next letter was in answer to one in which Lord Montagu had communicated his difficulties about fixing to which of the
English Universities he should send the young Duke of
Buccleuch.
To the Lord Montagu, &c. &c.
“Edinburgh, 15th June, 1824. “My dear Lord,
“I was much interested by your Lordship’s last
letter. For some certain reasons I rather prefer Oxford to Cambridge, chiefly
because the last great University was infected long ago with liberalism in
politics, and at present shows some symptoms of a very different heresy, which
is yet sometimes blended with the first—I mean enthusiasm in religion—not that
sincere zeal for religion, in which mortals cannot be too fervid, but the far
more doubtful enthusiasm which makes religion a motive and a pretext for
particular lines of thinking in politics and in temporal
affairs. This is a spirit which, while it has abandoned the lower classes,
where perhaps it did some good, for it is a guard
against gross and scandalous vice—has transferred itself to the upper classes,
where, I think, it can do little but evil—disuniting families, setting children
in opposition to parents, and teaching, as I think, a new way of going to the
Devil for God’s sake. On the other hand, this is a species of doctrine
not likely to carry off our young friend; and I am sure Mr Blakeney’s good sense will equally
guard him against political mistakes, for I should think my friend Professor Smyth’s historical course of
lectures likely to be somewhat Whiggish, though I dare say not improperly so.
Upon the whole, I think the reasons your Lordship’s letter contains in
favour of Cambridge are decisive, although I may have a private wish in favour
of Christ Church, which I dare say will rear its head once more under the
new Dean. The neighbourhood of
Newmarket is certainly in some sort a snare for so young persons as attend
college at Cambridge: but, alas! where is it that there be not snares of one
kind or other? Parents, and those who have the more delicate task of standing
in the room of parents, must weigh objections and advantages, and without
expecting to find any that are without risk, must be content to choose those
where the chances seem most favourable. The turf is no doubt a very forceful
temptation, especially to a youth of high rank and fortune. There is something
very flattering in winning, when good fortune depends so much on shrewdness of
observation, and, as it is called, knowingness; the very sight is of an
agitating character; and perhaps there are few things more fascinating to young
men, whose large fortune excludes the ordinary causes of solicitude, than the
pleasures and risks of the race course; and though, when indulged to excess, it leads to very evil
consequences, yet, if the Duke hereafter should like to have a stud of racers,
he might very harmlessly amuse himself in that way, provided he did not suffer
it to take too eager possession of his mind, or to engross his time. Certainly
one would rather he had not the turn at all, but I am far more afraid of
sedentary games of chance, for wasting time and fortune, than I am of any
active out-of-door’s sport whatsoever.
“Old Paradise did not number a neighbourhood among
its pleasures; but Gattonside has that advantage, and great will be the regret
of the said neighbours, if Sir Adam and
Lady Eve are turned out. I parted
with them at Blair-Adam on this day—for, taking a fit of what waiting-maids
call the clevers, I started at six this morning, and got
here to breakfast. As it blew hard all night, there was a great swell on the
ferry, so that I came through ‘Like Chieftain to the Highlands bound, Crying, boatman, “do not
tarry—”’* or rather, ‘Like Clerk unto the Session bound.’
“I could have borne a worse toss, and even a little
danger, since the wind brought rain, which is so much wanted. One set of
insects is eating the larch—another the spruce. Many of the latter will not, I
think, recover the stripping they are receiving. Crops are looking well, except
the hay, which is not looking at all. The sheep are eating roasted grass, but
will not be the worse mutton, as I hope soon to prove to your Lordship at
Abbotsford.—I am, always, my dear Lord,
Yours faithful to command, Walter Scott.
* Campbell’s “Lord Ullin’s Daughter.”
“P.S.—I am here, according to the old saying,
bird-alane; for my son Charles is
fishing at Lochleven, and my wife and daughter (happy persons!) are at
Abbotsford. I took the opportunity to spend two days at Tyninghame.
Lord Haddington complains of want
of memory, while his conversation is as witty as a comedy, and his anecdote
as correct as a parish register.
“I will be a suitor for a few acorns this year,
if they ripen well at Ditton, or your other forests. Those I had before
from you (raised in the nursery, not planted out) are now fine oak
plants.”
Among Scott’s visiters of the
next month, first in Edinburgh, and afterwards on Tweedside, were the late amiable and
venerable Dr Hughes, one of the Canons-residentiary
of St Paul’s, and his warm-hearted lady. The
latter had been numbered among his friends from an early period of life, and a more
zealously affectionate friend he never possessed. On her way to Scotland she had halted at
Keswick to visit Mr Southey, whom also she had long
known well, and corresponded with frequently. Hence the following letters.
To Robert Southey, Esq., Keswick, Cumberland.
“My dear Southey,
“Do you remember Richardson’s metaphor of two bashful lovers running
opposite to each other in parallel lines, without the least chance of union,
until some good-natured body gives a shove to the one, and a shove to the
other, and so leads them to form a junction? Two lazy correspondents may, I
think, form an equally apt subject for the simile, for here have you and I been
silent for I know not how many years, for no other reason than the uncertainty
which wrote last, or, which was in duty bound to write first. And here comes
my clever, active, bustling
friend, Mrs Hughes, and tells me that
you regret a silence which I have not the least power of accounting for, except
upon the general belief that I wrote you a long epistle after your kind present
of the Lay of the Laureate, and
that I have once every week proposed to write you a still longer, till shame of
my own indolence confirmed me in my evil habits of procrastination—when here
comes good Mrs Hughes, gives me a shake by the collar, and
assures me, that you are in pretty nearly the same case with myself—and, as a
very slight external impulse will sometimes drive us into action when a long
succession of internal resolutions have been made and broke, I take my pen to
assure my dear Southey, that I love him
as well as if our correspondence had been weekly or daily. The years which have
gone by have found me dallying with the time, and you improving it as usual—I
tossing my ball and driving my hoop, a greyheaded schoolboy, and you plying
your task unremittingly for the instruction of our own and future ages. Yet I
have not been wholly idle or useless—witness five hundred acres of moor and
moss, now converted into hopeful woodland of various sizes, to the great
refreshment, even already, of the eyes of the pilgrims who still journey to
Melrose. I wish you could take a step over the Border this season with
Mrs Southey, and let us have the
pleasure of showing you what I have been doing. I twice intended an invasion of
this sort upon your solitude at Keswick, one in spring 1821, and then again in
the summer of the same year when the coronation took place. But the convenience
of going to London by the steam-packet, which carries you on whether you wake
or sleep, is so much preferable to a long land journey, that I took it on both
occasions. The extreme rapidity of communication, which
places an inhabitant of Edinburgh in the metropolis sooner than a letter can
reach it by the post, is like to be attended with a mass of most important
consequences, some, or rather most of them good, but some also which are not to
be viewed without apprehension. It must make the public feeling and sentiment
of London, whatever that may chance to be, much more readily and emphatically
influential upon the rest of the kingdom, and I am by no means sure that it
will be on the whole desirable that the whole country should be as subject to
be moved by its example as the inhabitants of its suburbs. Admitting the
metropolis to be the heart of the system, it is no sign of health when the
blood flows too rapidly through the system at every pulsation. Formerly in
Edinburgh and other towns the impulse received from any strong popular feeling
in London was comparatively slow and gradual, and had to contend with opposite
feelings and prejudices of a national or provincial character; the matter
underwent a reconsideration, and the cry which was raised in the great mart of
halloo and humbug was not instantly echoed back, as it may be in the present
day and present circumstances, when our opinion, like a small drop of water
brought into immediate contiguity with a bigger, is most likely to be absorbed
in and united with that of the larger mass. However, you and I have outlived so
many real perils, that it is not perhaps wise to dread those that are only
contingent, especially where the cause out of which they arise brings with it
so much absolute and indisputable advantage. What is Wordsworth doing? I was unlucky in being
absent when he crossed the Border. I heartily wish I could induce him to make a
foray this season, and that you and Mrs Southey, and
Miss Wordsworth, my very good and well remembered friend,
could be of the party. Pray think of this, for the distance is nothing to well
resolved minds, and you in particular owe me a visit. I have never quite
forgiven your tour in Scotland without looking in upon my poor premises. Well,
as I have re-appeared like your floating island, which I see the newspapers
aver hath again, after seven years’ soaking, become visible to mortal
ken, it would not be fair in me to make my visit too long a one—so, with
kindest respects to Mrs Southey, in which my wife
sincerely joins, I am always most truly yours,
Walter Scott. “8th July, 1824, Edinburgh. “Address Abbotsford,
Melrose.
“You may have heard that about four years since
I was brought to death’s door by a violent, and at the same time most
obstinate complaint, a sort of spasms in the stomach or diaphragm, which
for a long time defied medicine. It gave way at length to a terrific course
of calomel, such as made the cure almost as bad as the disease. Since that
time, I have recovered even a better portion of health than I generally had
before, and that was excellent. I do not indeed possess the activity of
former days either on foot or horseback, but while I can ride a pony, and
walk five or six miles with pleasure, I have no reason to complain. The
rogue Radicals had nearly set me on horseback again, but I would have had a
good following to help out my own deficiencies, as
all my poor neighbours were willing to fight for Kirk and King.”
Mr Southey’s next letter enclosed a MS. copy
of his Ode on the King’s Northern Progress of 1822. Sir
Walter, in his reply, adverts to the death of Louis
XVIII., which occurred on the 17th of September, 1824—and prophesies the
fate of his successor.
To Robert Southey, Esq., Keswick, Cumberland.
“Bowhill, 26th Sept., 1824. “My dear Southey,
“I did not immediately thank you for your beautiful
poem on the King’s Visit, because I was afraid you might think that I was
trespassing too much on time which is always well employed; but I must not let
the ice settle again on the stream of our correspondence, and therefore, while
I have a quiet morning, I employ part of it to thank you for the kindness you
have done me as a friend, and still more for the honour you have bestowed on my
country. I hope these verses are one day to see the light, and am too much
personally interested not to expect that period with impatience.
“I had a letter from Gifford some time since, by which I perceive with regret he
renounces further management of the Quarterly. I scarce guess what can be done by Murray in that matter, unless he could prevail
on you to take the charge. No work of the kind can make progress (though it may
be kept afloat) under a mere bookselling management. And the difficulty of
getting a person with sufficient independence of spirit, accuracy of judgment,
and extent of knowledge, to exercise the profession of Aristarch, seems very
great. Yet I have been so long out of the London circles that new stars may
have arisen, and set for aught I know, since I was occasionally within the
hemisphere.
“The King of
France’s death, with which one would think I had wondrous
little to do, has produced to me the great disappointment of preventing
Canning’s visit. He had
promised to spend two or three days at Abbotsford on his road to Edinburgh,*
and it is the more pro-
* Mr Canning
spent some part of the summer of 1824 in a visit to the Marquess Wellesley, then Lord Lieutenant
of Ireland; and
oking, as I dare say, after all,
there is no farther occasion for his being at his post than arises from matter
of mere form, since I suppose there is no reason to think that Charles X. will change the line of policy
adopted by his brother. I remember him in Edinburgh about 1794, one of the most
elegant men in address and exterior whom I ever saw. Strange times we have
lived in! I am speaking of Charles X. as a Frenchman of
1661 might have spoken of Charles II. By
the way, did you ever observe how easy it would be for a good historian to run
a parallel betwixt the great Rebellion and the French Revolution, just
substituting the spirit of fanaticism, for that of soi-disant philosophy. But
then how the character of the English would rise whether you considered the
talents and views of the great leaders on either side, or the comparative
moderation and humanity with which they waged their warfare! I sometimes think
an instructive comparative view might be made out, and it would afford a
comfortable augury that the Restoration in either case was followed by many
amendments in the Constitution. I hope Louis
Baboon will not carry the matter so far as to require completing
the parallel by a second Revolution—but it would be very singular if the
devotion of this King to the Catholic priests and forms should occasion such a
catastrophe. Heber has promised to come
down here, and if so, I will perhaps return with him as far as Rokeby, and, if
we can, take Keswick on our way, were it but to see you for an hour. All this,
however, is speculation. I am just sending off my younger son to Oxford. My
eldest is an officer in the 15th hussars, and I believe will soon get that
object
had proposed to return from Dublin
by the way of Scotland. I think there was to have been a public dinner
in his honour at Edinburgh.
of every young officer’s ambition, a troop, which
would be great luck. Believe me, dear Southey, most truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
In October of this year, Sir
Walter’s son Charles began his
residence at Brazen-nose College, Oxford. The adoption of this plan implied finally
dropping the appointment in the civil service of the East India Company, which had been
placed at his disposal by Lord Bathurst in the spring
of 1820; a step, I need not observe, which, were there any doubt on that subject, would
alone be sufficient to prove, to the conviction of the most envious sceptic, that the young
gentleman’s father at this time considered his own worldly fortunes as in a highly
prosperous situation. A writership in India is early independence; in the case of a son of
Scott, so conducting himself as not to discredit the name he
inherited, it could hardly have failed to be early wealth. And Sir
Walter was the last man to deprive his boy of such safe and easy prospects
of worldly advantage, turning him over to the precarious chances of a learned profession in
Great Britain, unless in the confidence that his own resources were so great as to render
ultimate failure in such a career a matter of no primary importance.
The Vicar of Lampeter,
mean-while, had become a candidate for the rectorship of a new classical academy, founded
this year at Edinburgh; and Sir Walter Scott’s
influence was zealously exerted in behalf of his son’s learned and estimable tutor.
Mr Williams was successful in his object; and at the opening of
the institution (1st October) the Poet appeared in Edinburgh to preside over the ceremonial
in which this excellent friend was so
deeply concerned. I transcribe what follows from a report prepared at the time (but never
until now published) by the honorary secretary of the academy, Mr John Russell, W. S.:—
“The Rev.
Sir Henry Moncreiff Wellwood, Bart, (minister of the parish), at
the request of Sir Walter Scott, opened the
business of the meeting, by an eloquent and impressive prayer, in which he
invoked the blessing of the Almighty on the institution.
“Sir Walter
Scott then rose, and observed, that it had been determined by
the directors, that some account should be given on this occasion of the nature
and meaning of the institution. He wished that some one better qualified had
been appointed for this purpose; but as the duty had been imposed upon him, he
should endeavour to discharge it as briefly as possible. In Scotland, and
before such an assembly, it was unnecessary for him to enlarge on the general
advantages of education. It was that which distinguished man from the lower
animals in the creation—which recorded every fact of history, and transmitted
them in perfect order from one generation to another. Our forefathers had shown
their sense of its importance by their conduct; but they could little have
conceived the length to which discoveries in science and literature had gone in
this age; and those now present could as little anticipate to what extent
posterity might carry them. Future ages might probably speak of the knowledge
of the 18th and 19th centuries, as we now do of that of the 15th and 16th. But
let them remember that the progress of knowledge was gradual; and as their
ancestors had been anxious to secure to them the benefits of education, so let
it be said of the present age, that it paved the way for the improvement of the
generations which were to follow. He need not repeat to Scotsmen, that at an
early period the most anxious solicitude had been shown on this subject. While
Scotland was torn with convulsions, and the battle-brand was yet red, our
forefathers had sat down to devise the means of spreading the blessings of
knowledge among their posterity, as the most effectual means of preventing
those dark and bloody times from recurring. We had but lately sheathed a
triumphant sword, and lived now in a period of profound peace; and long, long
might it be before the sword was again unsheathed! This was therefore a proper
time for improving the institutions of the country, and endeavouring to cause
its literature to keep pace with its high martial achievements. In forming an institution like the present, there was
something generous and disinterested. The founders of a library might enjoy the
benefit of reading in that library. The founder of an hospital had had
sometimes the melancholy gratification, in the decline of his fortunes, of
reposing under the roof of the asylum which his charity had erected for others:
but such could not be the case with those who subscribed for this institution.
It was like a torch held out in the hand of a dead man, which imparted light to
others, but to the bearer it gave none. He therefore called on the young to
attend to the instructions that would be addressed to them in this academy,
erected exclusively for their benefit, and not for that of those by whom it had
been founded.
“The establishment of those excellent
institutions, the Parochial Schools, had early induced the moral and orderly
habits which had so much tended to raise the character of our countrymen.
King James, whatever had been his
failings in other respects, had attended to the education of the youth, and had
founded an institution (the High School), which nourished at this moment, the
pride and boast of our City; but, from the great increase of population, its
size was now found inadequate to the duty originally intended. Since its
establishment, the city had increased to six times the extent it then was; and
the great number of subscribers to the present institution, proved the general
feeling that something must be done to relieve the Metropolitan school. It was
true there were many private seminaries, whose teachers were men of great
talent; but schools of that description were not so well calculated to secure
the education of children as an institution like the present. It was plain to
the most common understanding, that one man could not teach four or five
classes of pupils with the same success that one man could teach one class;
that was quite plain. A jealousy had been entertained that the design of the
present institution was to hurt the more ancient seminary. Look at those who
were the leading members of this society; many of them who had received their
education at the High School, whose fathers and grandfathers had been
instructed there, and who also had their children there: they were not capable
of entertaining a thought to the prejudice of that seminary. The effect of the
present institution would only be to relieve the High School of superfluous
scholars, and thereby leave the hands of its teachers more at liberty to
educate those who were left. He trusted he should hear nothing more of such an
unworthy motive. He was sure there would be no petty jealousies—no rivalry
between the two institutions, but the honourable and fair rivalry of scholarship. He was convinced
Palinurus would not slumber at the
helm, while he beheld another vessel striving to gain the port before him.
“In appropriating the funds which had
so liberally been placed at their disposal, the directors had observed the
strictest economy. By the ingenuity of Mr
Burn, the Architect, whose plans for, and superintendence of the
buildings had been a labour of love, it would be observed, that not much had
been lost. If they had not the beauty of lavish ornament, they had at least
taste and proportion to boast of—a more important part of architecture than
high finishing. The directors had a more difficult and delicate duty to perform
than the rearing of stone walls, in choosing the gentlemen who were to carry
into execution their plans; a task important beyond the power of language to
describe, from the number of certificates produced by men of talent who were
willing to abandon their situations in other seminaries, and to venture the
credit of their reputation and prospects in life on this experimental project
of ours—a task so delicate, that the directors were greatly at a loss whom to
choose among seventy or eighty individuals, of almost equal merit, and equally
capable of undertaking the task. The one principle which guided the directors
in their selection was—who were most likely to give satisfaction to them and to
the public? He trusted they had been successful in the performance of this
task. The University of Oxford had given them one of its most learned scholars
(the Rector), in the flower of his age, with fifteen years’ experience as
a teacher, and of whose acquirements, in that gentleman’s presence, he
would not speak in the terms he would employ elsewhere. To him the directors
trusted as the main pillar of the establishment: he was sure also he would be
well supported by the other gentlemen; and that the whole machine would move
easily and smoothly.
“But there was still another selection
of no mean difficulty. In the formation of a new, they must lose some of the
advantages of an ancient and venerable institution. One could not lay his hands
on the head of his son, and say, this is the same bench on which I sat; this is
the voice which first instructed me.—They had to identify their children with a
new institution. But they had something to counterbalance these disadvantages.
If they had not the venerable Gothic temple, the long sounding galleries, and
turreted walls—where every association was favourable to learning—they were
also free from the prejudices peculiar to such seminaries,—the ‘rich
windows which exclude the light, and passages that
lead to nothing.’ Something might be gained from novelty. The
attention of the directors had been particularly turned to
the fact, that while Scotland was, on the whole, the best informed country in
Europe, it had not of late produced many eminent classical scholars. The
observation of Dr Johnson was well
known, that in learning Scotland resembled a besieged city, where every man had
a mouthful, but no man a bellyful. It might be said, in answer to this, that it
was better education should be divided into mouthfuls, than served up at the
banquet of some favoured individuals, while the great mass were left to starve.
But, sturdy Scotsman as he was, he was not more attached to Scotland than to
truth; and it must be admitted that there was some foundation for the
Doctor’s remark. The directors were anxious to wipe off this reproach,
and for this purpose had made every provision in their power. They had made
some additions to the course adopted in the High School, but in no case had
they made any innovation from the mere love of change. It was a part of their
plan to lay a foundation for a thorough knowledge of the Latin tongue, by the
most precise and careful study of its elemental principles. With this they
meant to conjoin the study of Greek, to be begun at an earlier period, and
prosecuted to a greater extent, than hitherto was customary in Scotland. It was
the language of the fathers of history, and of a people whose martial
achievements and noble deeds were the ornament of their pages. At no moment was
the study of that beautiful language so interesting as at present, when the
people among whom it was still in use, were again, as he trusted, about to
emancipate themselves from slavery and barbarism, and take their rank among
free nations. There would also be instruction in Writing and Arithmetic—and a
class for the study of Mathematics, from which the directors hoped great
advantage would accrue to the pupils. There would be another class in this
institution, which was not to be found in any other similar academy—a class for
the study of English Literature. It had been justly remarked, that the study of
classics had sometimes led to the neglect of our own language, and that some
scholars could express themselves better in Latin than in English. To avoid
this error, a teacher was added to the institution, who was to instruct the
boys in the principles of English Composition, and to connect with this a
knowledge of the history of their own country. He would have the youths taught
to venerate the patriots and heroes of our own country, along with those of
Greece and Rome; to know the histories of Wallace and Bruce, as
well as those of Themistocles and of
Cæsar; and that the recollection of
the fields of Flodden and Bannockburn, should not be lost in those of Platasa
and Marathon. The masters would
open their classes every morning with prayer; and a portion of Scripture would
be read by one of the boys every Monday morning, before the commencement of the
week’s labours.
“In conclusion, Sir Walter addressed a few words to his young friends around
him. He observed, that the public could not have given a more interesting mark
of their confidence in the managers of the seminary, than they had done, in
placing under their direction these young persons, characterised by the Roman
matron as her most precious jewels, for every one of whom he was sensible more
than one bosom was at present beating, anxious for their future happiness and
prosperity. He exhorted them to give their whole souls and minds to their
studies, without which it was little that either their teachers or directors
could do. If they were destined for any of the learned professions, he begged
them to remember that a physician without learning was a mere quack; a lawyer
without learning was a pettifogger; and a clergyman without learning was like a
soldier without a sword, who had not the means of enforcing the authority of
his Divine Master. Next to a conscience void of offence towards God and man,
the greatest possession they could have was a well cultivated mind; it was that
alone which distinguished them from the beasts that perish. If they went to
India or other distant quarters of the globe, it would sweeten their path, and
add to their happiness. He trusted that his words, poor as they were, would
sink into their hearts, and remain on their memories, long after they had
forgotten the speaker. He hoped they would remember the words of their reverend
friend, who had just implored the blessing of God upon their studies, for they
were the outpourings of the soul of one not young in years, nor void of
experience; and when they were come to manhood, they might say to their
children, ‘Thus and thus were we taught, and thus and thus we teach you.
By attending to these things we rose to honour and distinction.’ Happy
(said Sir Walter) will it be if you can say, ‘I have
followed that, which I heard. May you do so and live.’”
The Academy, opened under these auspices, throve from the beginning, and
may now be considered as one of the most important among the national establishments of
Scotland; nor have Sir Walter’s anticipations as to the result of honourable rivalry between it and the old High
School been disappointed.
As it happens, I have to place in the same page with Sir Walter’s speech, in honour of classical learning,
the record of a false quantity which his generosity may almost be
said to have made classical. In the course of that same October, died his faithful friend
and servant Maida, the noblest and most celebrated of all his
dogs—might I not safely say of all dogs that ever shared the fellowship of man? His exit
was announced in this letter to the young Oxonian.
To Charles Scott, Esq. Brazen-nose College,
Oxford.
“Abbotsford, 22d October, 1824. “My dear Charles,
“I am glad to hear that you are safely settled at
College, I trust with the intention of making your residence there subservient
to the purposes of steady study, without which it will be only a waste of
expense and of leisure. I believe the matter depends very much on a youth
himself, and therefore I hope to hear that you are strenuously exerting
yourself to hold an honourable situation among the students of your celebrated
university. Your course will not be unmarked, as something is expected from the
son of any literary person; and I sincerely hope in this case those
expectations will be amply gratified.
“I am obliged to Mr
Hughes* for his kind intentions in your favour, as I dare say
that any to whom he introduces you will be acquaintance worth cultivating. I
* John Hughes,
Esq. of Oriel College—son of Sir
Walter’s old friends, Dr and Mrs
Hughes—the same whose “Itinerary of the Rhone,”
&c., is mentioned with high praise in the Introduction to Quentin Durward.
shall be glad to hear that you have
taken up your ground at College, and who are like to compose your set. I hope
you will make your way to the clever fellows and not put up with Doldrums.
Every man soon falls behind that does not aspire to keep up with the foremost
in the race.
“I have little domestic news to tell you. Old Maida died quietly in his straw last week after a good
supper, which, considering his weak state, was rather a deliverance. He is
buried below his monument, on which the following epitaph is engraved—though it
is great audacity to send Teviotdale Latin to Brazen-nose— ‘Maidæ Marmoreâ dormis sub imagine
Maida,Ad januam domini sit tibi terra levis.’
Thus Englished by an eminent hand, ‘Beneath the sculptured form which late you wore, Sleep soundly, Maida, at your
master’s door.’
“Yesterday we had our solemn hunt and killed
fourteen hares, but a dog of Sir
Adam’s broke her leg, and was obliged to be put to death
in the field. Little Johnnie talks the
strangest gibberish I ever heard, by way of repeating his little poems. I wish
the child may ever speak plain. Mamma,
Sophia, Anne, and I send love. Always your affectionate father,
Walter Scott.”
The monument here mentioned was a leaping-on-stone, to which the skill of Scott’s master-mason had given the shape of Maida recumbent. It had stood by the gate of Abbotsford a year or more before
the dog died, and after he was laid under it, his master, dining that evening at
Chiefswood, said, over his glass of toddy and cigar, that he had been bothering his brains
to make an epitaph for his ancient favourite, but could not please
himself. He said it must be in Latin, because Maida seemed made on purpose to close a hexameter—and begged, as I was
fresher off the irons than himself, that I would try to help him. The unfortunate couplet
above printed was what suggested itself at the moment and though his own English version of
it, extemporized next minute, was so much better, on his way home he gave directions to
have it engraved, and engraved it was before many hours had passed. Mr James Ballantyne was the first person that saw it;
believing it to be Scott’s, he admired it, of course and of
course, also, he thought fit to print it soon after (as Sir
Walter’s) in his newspaper—but his memory had played him a trick
before he reached Edinburgh, and as he printed the lines they showed not only their
original blunder, but another of his own creation; he had put jaces for dormis. His
printing the thing at all was unfortunate; for some friend (I believe it was Lord Minto) had pointed out in the interim the false quantity
of januam, and the mason was just about to
rectify that by substituting some legitimate dactyl or spondee, suggested by this critic,
when the newspaper reached Abbotsford. Sir Walter on seeing it said,
“Well, well, since Ballantyne has printed the lines at
all, I shan’t have any corrections made here—I shall write and tell him of his blunder, and let the other stand as it is.” But
mean-time “Sir Walter Scott’s false
quantities” had headed various paragraphs in the newspapers both in Edinburgh and
in London; and, strange to say, even the undoubted double blunder of
Ballantyne’s edition found gallant defenders. A Mr Lionel Berguer, who, I think, had published some poems,
and dedicated them to Scott, was one of these champions: and
Sir Walter himself
had twice pleaded guilty in the newspapers, before the matter was allowed to rest. It is
sufficient to quote the following:
To the Editor of the Morning Post.
Abbotsford, Nov. 12, 1824.
“Sir, As I am a friend to truth, even in trifles, I
cannot consent to shelter myself under the classical mangle which Mr Lionel Berguer
and some unknown friend have chosen to extend, in their charity, over my faults
in prosody. The two lines were written in mere whim, and without the least
intention of their being made public. In the first line, the word jaces is a mistake of the transcriber
(whoever took that trouble); the phrase is dormis, which I believe is good prosody. The error in
the second line, ad januam, certainly
exists, and I bow to the castigation. I must plead the same apology which was
used by the great Dr Johnson, when he misinterpreted a veterinary phrase of
ordinary occurrence—“ignorance—pure ignorance” was the cause
of my blunder. Forty years ago, longs and shorts were little attended to in
Scottish education; and I have, it appears, forgot the little I may then have
learned. I have only to add, that I am far from undervaluing any branch of
scholarship, because I have not the good fortune to possess it, and heartily
wish that those who succeed us may have the benefit of a more accurate
classical education than was common in my earlier days.
“The inscription cannot now be altered; but if it
remains a memorial of my want of learning, it shall not, in addition, convey
any imputation on my candour. I should have been ashamed, at a more stirring
time, to ask admission for this plea of guilty; but at present you may think it worth a place in your paper. Pugna est de paupere regno.—I remain your
obedient servant,
Walter Scott.”
The culprit whose sin had brought this controversy on Sir Walter, was not in his vicinity when it was going on—nor
cognizant of it until he had committed himself; and on the same 12th of November, being the
Poet’s last day at Abbotsford for the long vacation, he indited the following rhymes
which savour of his recent overhauling of Swift and
Sheridan’s doggrel epistles.
To J. G. Lockhart, Esq., Northumberland Street,
Edinburgh.
“Dear John,—I some time
ago wrote to inform his Fat worship of jaces, misprinted for dormis; But that several Southrons assured me the januam, Was a twitch to both ears of Ass Priscian’s cranium. You, perhaps, may observe that one Lionel
Berguer, In defence of our blunder appears a stout arguer: But at length I have settled, I hope, all these clatters, By a rowt in the papers—fine place for such
matters. I have, therefore, to make it for once my command, sir, That my gudeson shall leave the whole thing in my hand, sir, And by no means accomplish what James says you
threaten, Some banter in Blackwood to
claim your dog-Latin. I have various reasons of weight, on my word, sir, For pronouncing a step of this sort were absurd, sir. Firstly, erudite sir, ’twas against your advising I adopted the lines this monstrosity lies in; For you modestly hinted my English translation Would become better far such a dignified station. Second—how, in God’s name, would my bacon be saved, By not having writ what I clearly engraved? On the contrary, I, on the whole, think it better To be whipped as the thief, than his lousy resetter. Thirdly—don’t you perceive that I don’t care a boddle Although fifty false metres were flung at my noddle, For my back is as broad and as hard as Benlomon’s, And I treat as I please both the Greeks and the Romans; Whereas the said heathens might look rather serious At a kick on their drum from the scribe of Valerius. And, fourthly and lastly it is my good pleasure To remain the sole source of that murderous measure. So stet pro ratione
voluntas—be tractile, Invade not, I say, my own dear little dactyl; If you do, you’ll occasion a breach in our intercourse: To-morrow will see me in town for the winter-course, But not at your door, at the usual hour, sir, My own pye-house daughter’s good prog to devour, sir. Ergo—peace, on your duty, your squeamishness throttle, And we’ll soothe Priscian’s spleen
with a canny third bottle. A fig for all dactyls, a fig for all spondees, A fig for all dunces and Dominie Grundys; A fig for dry thrapples, south, north, east, and west, sir, Speates and raxes* ere five for a famishing guest, sir; And as Fatsman† and I have some topics for
haver, he’ll Be invited, I hope, to meet me and Dame
Peveril, Upon whom, to say nothing of Oury and Anne, you a Dog shall be deemed if you fasten your Janua.
“P. S.—Hoc
jocose—but I am nevertheless in literal earnest. You
incur my serious displeasure if you move one inch in this contemptible
rumpus. So adieu till to-morrow.—Yours affectionately,
W. S.”
* There is an excellent story (but too long for quotation) in the
Memorie of the
Somervilles (vol. i. p. 240) about an old Lord of that family, who,
when he wished preparations to be made for high feasting at his Castle of Cowthally,
used to send on a billet inscribed with this laconic phrase, “Speates and raxes”—i. e. spits and ranges. Upon
one occasion, Lady Somerville (being newly married, and not yet
skilled in her husband’s hieroglyphics) read the mandate as spears and jacks, and
sent forth 200 armed horsemen, whose appearance on the moors greatly alarmed
Lord Somerville and his guest, who happened to be no less a
person than King James III.
† Fatsman was one
of Mr James Ballantyne’s many aliases. Another (to which Constable mostly adhered) was “Mr
Basketfill”—an allusion to the celebrated printer Baskerville.
In the course of that November several of the huge antique buildings
which gave its peculiar character to the Old Town of Edinburgh, perished by fire; and no
one, it may be believed, witnessed this demolition with more regret than Sir Walter. He says to Lord
Montagu on the 18th,—
“My dear Lord,
“Since I came here I have witnessed a horrible
calamity. A fire broke out on Monday night in the High Street, raged all night,
and great part of the next day, catching to the steeple of the Tron Church,
which being wood was soon in a blaze, and burned like regular fire-works till
all was consumed. All this while the flames were spreading down to the Cowgate
amongst those closes where the narrowness of the access, and the height of the
houses, rendered the approach of engines almost impossible. On Tuesday night a
second fire broke out in the Parliament Square,
greatly endangering the Courts of Justice, and the Advocates’ more than
princely Library. By great exertions it was prevented approaching this public
building; and Sir William Forbes’
bank also escaped. But all the other houses in the Parliament Square are
totally destroyed; and I can conceive no sight more grand or terrible than to
see these lofty buildings on fire from top to bottom, vomiting out flames like
a volcano from every aperture, and finally crashing down one after another into
an abyss of fire, which resembled nothing but hell; for there were vaults of
wine and spirits which sent up huge jets of flame, whenever they were called
into activity by the fall of these massive fragments. Between the corner of the
Parliament Square and the South Bridge all is destroyed, excepting some new
buildings at the lower extremity; and the devastation has extended down the closes, which I hope will
never be rebuilt on their present, I should say their late form. The general distress is, of course, dreadful.—Ever yours,
W. Scott.”
CHAPTER XIII. TALES OF THE CRUSADERS BEGUN—A CHRISTMAS AT ABBOTSFORD, IN
EXTRACTS FROM THE MS. JOURNAL OF CAPTAIN BASIL HALL, R.N.—DEC. 29,
1824—JAN. 10, 1825.
During the Winter Session of his Court, Sir Walter resumed his usual course of literary exertion, which the
supervision of carpenters, painters, and upholsterers had so long interrupted. The Tales of the Crusaders were begun; but
I defer, for the present, the history of their progress.
Abbotsford was at last finished, and in all its splendour; and at
Christmas, a larger party than the house could ever before have accommodated, were
assembled there. Among the guests was one who kept a copious journal during his stay, and
has kindly furnished me with a copy of it. I shall, therefore, extract such passages as
bear immediately upon Sir Walter Scott himself, who
certainly was never subjected to sharper observation than that of his ingenious friend
Captain Basil Hall.
EXTRACTS FROM CAPTAIN HALL’S JOURNAL.
“Abbotsford, December 29, 1824.
“This morning my brother James and I set out from Edinburgh in the Blucher coach, at
eight o’clock, and although we heard of
snow-storms on the hills, we bowled along without the smallest impediment, and
with a fine bright sun and cheerful green fields around us, with only here and
there a distant streak of snow in some shady ravine. We arrived in good time
and found several other guests at dinner. . . . . . . .
“The public rooms are lighted with oil-gas in a style
of extraordinary splendour. The passages, also, and the bedrooms, are lighted
in a similar manner. The whole establishment is on the same footing—I mean the
attendance and entertainment—all is in good order, and an air of punctuality
and method, without any waste or ostentation, pervades every thing. Every one
seems at his ease; and although I have been in some big houses in my time, and
amongst good folks who studied these sort of points not a little, I don’t
remember to have any where met with things better managed in all respects.
“Had I a hundred pens, each of which at the same time
should separately write down an anecdote, I could not hope to record one half
of those which our host, to use Spenser’s expression, ‘Welled out
alway.’ To write down one or two, or one or two dozen, would serve no
purpose, as they were all appropriate to the moment, and were told with a tone,
gesture, and look suited exactly to the circumstances, but which it is of
course impossible in the least degree to describe.
“Abbotsford, 30th December.
“This morning Major
Stisted, my brother, and I, accompanied Sir Walter Scott on a walk over his grounds, a distance of five
or six miles. He led us through his plantations, which are in all stages of
advancement, and entertained us all the way with an
endless string of anecdotes, more or less characteristic of the scenes we were
passing through. Occasionally he repeated snatches of songs, sometimes a whole
ballad, and at other times he planted his staff in the ground and related some
tale to us, which though not in verse, came like a stream of poetry from his
lips. Thus, about the middle of our walk, we had first to cross, and then to
wind down the banks of the Huntly-burn, the scene of old Thomas the Rymer’s interview with the
Queen of the Fairies. Before entering this little glen, he detained us on the
heath above till he had related the whole of that romantic story, so that by
the time we descended the path, our imaginations were so worked upon by the
wild nature of the fiction, and still more by the animation of the narrator,
that we felt ourselves treading upon classical ground; and though the day was
cold, the path muddy and scarcely passable, owing to the late floods, and the
trees all bare, yet I do not remember ever to have seen any place so
interesting as the skill of this mighty magician had rendered this narrow
ravine, which in any other company would have seemed quite insignificant.
“On reaching an elevated point near a wild mountain
lake, from whence we commanded a view of many different parts of his estate,
and saw the progress of his improvements, I remarked that it must be
interesting to engage in planting. ‘Interesting!’ he cried;
‘You can have no idea of the exquisite delight of a planter—he is
like a painter laying on his colours—at every moment he sees his effects
coming out. There is no art or occupation comparable to this; it is full of
past, present, and future enjoyment. I look back to the time when there was
not a tree here, only bare heath: I look round and see thousands of trees
growing up, all of which, I may say almost each of which, have received my
personal attention. I remember five years ago looking forward, with the
most delighted expectation, to this very hour, and as each year has passed,
the expectation has gone on increasing. I do the same now; I anticipate
what this plantation and that one will presently be, if only taken care of,
and there is not a spot of which I do not watch the progress. Unlike
building, or even painting, or indeed any other kind of pursuit, this has
no end, and is never interrupted, but goes on from day to day, and from
year to year, with a perpetually augmenting interest. Farming I hate; what
have I to do with fattening and killing beasts, or raising corn only to cut
it down, and to wrangle with farmers about prices, and to be constantly at
the mercy of the seasons? There can be no such disappointments or
annoyances in planting trees.’
“It is impossible to touch for an instant on any
theme, but straightway he has an anecdote to fit it. ‘What is the name
of that bright spot,’ I said, ‘on which the sun is
shining just there in the line of
Cowdenknowes?’—‘That,’ said he, ‘is
called Haxel Cleugh. I was long puzzled,’
he added, ‘to find the etymology of this name, and enquired in vain on
every hand to discover something suitable. I could learn nothing more than
that near the Cleugh there was a spot which tradition said had been a
Druidical place of worship. Still this did not help me, and I went on for a
long time tormenting myself to no purpose. At length when I was reading
very early one fine summer’s morning, I accidentally lighted upon a
passage in some German book, which stated that Haxa was the old German term
for a Druidess.* Here, then, the mystery was solved, and I was so enchanted
with the discovery, that I was wild with impatience to
* Hexe is
modern German for witch.
tell it to some one; so away I mounted up stairs to my
wife’s room, where she was lying fast asleep. I was well aware that
she neither knew nor cared one jot about the matter; that did not
signify—tell it I must immediately to some one; so I roused her up, and
although she was very angry at being awakened out of her comfortable doze,
I insisted upon bestowing Haxa, and Haxel Cleugh, and all my beautiful
discovery of the Druid’s temple upon her notwithstanding. Now,
don’t you understand this?’ said he, turning to me
‘Have not you sometimes on board your ship hit upon something
which delighted you, so that you could not rest till you had got hold of
some one down whose throat you might cram it—some stupid dolt of a
lieutenant, or some gaping midshipman, on whom in point of fact it was
totally thrown away?—but still you had the satisfaction of imparting it,
without which half the pleasure is lost.’
“Thus we strolled along, borne as it were on this
strange stream of song and story. Nothing came amiss to him; the most trivial
and commonplace incident, when turned in his hand, acquired a polish and a
clearness of the first water. Over all, too, there was breathed an air of
benignity and good-will to all men, which was no less striking than the
eloquence and point of his narrations. The manner in which he spoke of his
neighbours, and of distant persons of whose conduct he disapproved, was all in
the same spirit. He did not cloak their faults—he spoke out manfully in
contempt of what was wrong; but this was always accompanied by some kindly
observation, some reservation in favour of the good they possessed, some
natural and proper allowance. I say natural, because I should be giving a wrong
impression of the character of his conversation were I to let it be supposed
that these excuses or extenuations were mawkishly uttered, or that he acted a
part, and as a matter of rule said
something in favour even of those he condemned. . . . . . . .
“He is loyal to the back-bone, to use a vulgar
phrase; but with all this there is nothing servile or merely personal in
his loyalty. When the King was coming to Edinburgh, and it was known he was
to pass over Waterloo Bridge, a gentleman suggested to him the fitness of
concealing or erasing the inscription respecting Prince Leopold* on the arch of the bridge, as it was known
there was a coolness between the King and his son-in-law.
‘What!’ said he, ‘shall we insult the
King’s son-in-law, and through him the King himself, by any allusion
to, or notice of, what is so unworthy of all parties? Shall we be ashamed
of our own act, and without any diminution of our respect for those to whom
the compliment was paid, draw back and eat our words because we have heard
of a petty misunderstanding? Shall we undo that which our respect for the
King and his family alone prompted us, right or wrong, to do? No, sir!
sooner than that inscription should be erased, or even covered with flags
or flowers, as you propose, or that any thing, in short, should be done to
show that we were ashamed of our respect for Prince
Leopold, or sought to save the King’s feelings by a
sacrifice of our own dignity, I would with my own hand set the town of
Edinburgh on fire, and destroy it!’ . . . . . .
“In the evening we had a great feast indeed.
Sir Walter asked us if we had ever read
Christabel, and upon
some of us admitting with shame that we had never even seen it, he offered to
read it, and took a chair in the midst of all the party in the library. He read
the
* Prince Leopold
had been present at the opening of this bridge—and the inscription
records that circumstance.
poem from end to end with a wonderful pathos and variety
of expression—in some parts his voice was deep and sonorous, at others loud and
animated, but all most carefully appropriate, and very sweetly modulated. In
his hands, at all events, Christabel justified
Lord Byron’s often-quizzed
character of it—‘a wild and singularly original and beautiful
poem.’
“Sir Walter also
read us, with the utmost delight, or, as it is called, completely con amore, the famous poem on Thomas the Rymer’s adventure with the
Queen of the Fairies; but I am at a loss to say which was the most interesting,
or even I will say poetical—his conversational account of it to us to-day on
the very spot, Huntly-burn, or the highly characteristic ballad which he read
to us in the evening.*
“Interspersed with these various readings were
hundreds of stories, some quaint, some pathetical—some wild and fairylike, and
not a few warlike, especially of the old times, and now and then one of
Wellington and Waterloo; and sometimes
he gave anecdotes of things close to his own doors,—ay, and incidents of this
very day, which we had passed unseen, but which were now kindled into interest
and importance, as if by the touch of a magician’s wand.
“There was also much pleasing singing—many old
ballads, and many pretending to be old ballads, were sung to the harp and
pianoforte. The following is so exquisitely pathetic, that I copied it, after I
went to my room, from the young ladies’ book, and give it a place, though
perhaps it is to be found somewhere in print:— “My love he built me a bonnie bower,” &c.
&c.†
* See this ballad in the Border Minstrelsy, vol. iv.
† See “The Border
Widow’s Lament,” in the Minstrelsy, vol. ii. p. 94.
“Abbotsford, 31st December, 1824.
“The fashion of keeping up old holidays by bonefires
and merriment, is surely decreasing. Or is it that we, the recorders of these
things, are getting older, and take consequently less interest in what no
longer amuses us, so that we may be deceived in supposing the taste of our
juniors to be altered, while in fact it is only our own dispositions and habits
that are changed in complexion? It may be so—still I suspect that the progress
of education, and the new habits of industry, and the more varied and generous
objects which have been opened of late years to all classes, have tended
greatly to banish those idle ceremonies and jovialities which I can just
recollect in my childhood as being of doubtful pleasure, but which our
ancestors describe as being near the summit of their enjoyments. Be this as it
may in the eyes of others, I confess, for my part, that your Christmas and
New-years’ parties seem generally dull. There are several causes for
this: The mere circumstance of being brought together for the express purpose
of being merry, acts in opposition to the design in view; no one is pleased on
compulsion; then it seldom happens that a party is quite well sorted; and a
third reason is, that it will scarcely ever happen that a family circle can be
drawn together on two successive years, without betraying to the eye of
affection some fatal blanks ‘that were not there before.’
“I took notice at supper, as we waited for the
moment that was to give birth to a new year, that there was more than one
‘unquiet drooping of the eye;’ and amidst the
constrained hilarity of the hour, I could trace a faltering in some voices,
which told distinctly enough to an ear that was watching for it, that however
present the smiling cheek and laughing eye might seem to
be, the bleeding heart was far away.*
“It is true enough that it is to ‘moralize
too deeply’ to take things in this way, and to conjure up with an
ingenuity of self-annoyance these blighting images. So it is, and so I acted;
and as my heart was light and unloaded with any care, I
exerted myself to carry through the ponderous evening—ponderous only because it
was one set apart to be light and gay. I danced reels like a wild man, snapped
my fingers, and hallooed with the best of them, flirted with the young ladies
at all hazards—and with the elder ones, of which there was a store, I talked
and laughed finely. As a suite of rooms was open, various little knots were
formed, and nothing would have been nicer had we been left alone, but we must
needs be dancing, singing, playing, jesting, or something or other different
from that which we might be naturally disposed to be doing. Wherever the
Great Unknown went, indeed, there was a
sort of halo of fun and intelligence around him; but his plan of letting all
things bide was not caught up somehow, and we were
shoved about more than enough.
“Supper was over just at midnight, and as the clock
was striking twelve, we all stood up, after drinking a hearty bumper to the old
year, and having joined hands crosswise, each with his right hand seizing his
neighbour’s left, all joined chorus in an appropriate song by Sir Adam Ferguson, a worthy knight, possessed
of infinite drollery. Then followed other toasts of a loyal description, and
then a song, a good red-hot Jacobite song to the
King†—a ditty which, a century ago, might
* The widow and daughters of the poet’s
brother, Mr Thomas Scott, were
of the party.
† “Here’s to the King, boys, Ye ken wha I mean, boys,” &c. &c. See Hogg’sJacobite Relics. have cost the company
their heads, or at least their hands—but now it did no more than draw broad
smiles of affected apprehension, and that roguish sort of look natural when
people are innocently employed in doing what is held to be mischievous, but
harms no one.
“Still, still it was ponderous. Not all the humour
and miraculous vivacity and readiness of our host could save it—long blank
pauses occurred—and then a feeble whisper—but little more, and the roar of a
jolly toast subsided into a hollow calm. I dwell upon all this merely to make
people consider how useless it is to get up such things nowadays—for if
Walter Scott, with all appliances and
means to boot—in his noble house—surrounded by his own choice friends—full of
health and all he can wish, is unable to exempt a Hogmanay party from the
soporific effect proverbially attendant upon manufactured happiness, who else
need venture on the experiment! At about one we broke up, and every one seemed
rejoiced to be allowed to go about at pleasure: while the horses were putting
to, to carry off our numerous company, and shawls were hunting for, people
became bright again, and not being called upon to act any part, fell instantly
into good-humour; and we had more laughing and true hilarity in the last half
hour than in all the evening before. The Author of
Waverley himself seemed to feel the reviving influence of
freedom, and cruized about from group to group, firing in a shot occasionally
to give spirit to what was going on, and then hauling
off to engage with some other to show his stores of old armour—his
numerous old carved oak cabinets, filled with the strangest things—adder-stones
of magical power—fairies’ rings—pearls of price, and amongst the rest a
mourning ring of poor Lord Byron’s,
securely stowed away in one of the inmost drawers!
“On one of those roving expeditions he pushed his
head into the circle of which I happened to make one, and seizing upon some
casual analogy, said, ‘that reminds me of a story of a fair, fair,
lady,’ &c. All became mute and crowded about him, and he
began, in a low, solemn, and very impressive voice, with a sort of mock
earnestness which fixed the attention in a wonderful degree, and gave an air of
truth and importance to what he was telling, as if it were some material fact
which he had to communicate for our serious consideration. ‘There
was,’ said he, ‘a very merry party collected in a town in
France, and amongst all the gay lords and ladies there assembled, there was
none who caused so great a sensation, as a beautiful young lady who danced,
played, and sang in the most exquisite style. There were only two unaccountable
circumstances belonging to her—one was that she never went to church, or
attended family prayers, the other, that she always wore a slender black velvet
band or girdle round her waist. She was often asked about these peculiarities,
but she always evaded the interrogatories, and still by her amiable manners and
beauty won all hearts. One evening, in a dance, her partner saw an opportunity
of pulling the loop of her little black girdle behind; it fell to the ground,
and immediately the lady became pale as a sheet—then gradually shrunk and
shrunk—till at length nothing was to be seen in her place but a small heap of
grey ashes!’ . . . .
“I forgot to mention that in the course of a
conversation about ghosts, fears in the dark, and such matters, Sir Walter mentioned having once arrived at a
country inn, when he was told there was no bed for him. ‘No place to
lie down at all?’ said he. ‘No,’ said the
people of the house—‘None, except a room in which there is a corpse
lying.’ ‘Well,’ said he, ‘did the
person die of any contagious disorder?’ ‘Oh no—not at
all,’ said they.
‘Well, then,’ continued he, ‘let me have the
other bed. So,’ said Sir Walter, ‘I
laid me down, and never had a better night’s sleep in my
life.’
“Abbotsford, January 1, 1825.
“Yesterday being Hogmanay there was a constant
succession of Guisards—i. e. boys
dressed up in fantastic caps, with their shirts over their jackets, and with
wooden swords in their hands. These players acted a sort of scene before us, of
which the hero was one Goloshin, who gets
killed in a ‘battle for love,’ but is presently brought to life
again by a doctor of the party.
“As may be imagined, the taste of our host is to
keep up these old ceremonies. Thus, in the morning, yesterday, I observed
crowds of boys and girls coming to the back door, where each one got a penny
and an oatencake. No less than 70 pennies were thus distributed—and very happy
the little bodies looked, with their well stored bags.
“People accustomed to the planting of trees are well
aware how grateful the rising generations of the forest are to the hand which
thins and prunes them. And it makes one often melancholy to see what a
destructive sort of waste and retardation goes on by the neglect of young
woods—how much beauty is lost—how much wealth is wantonly thrown away, and what
an air of sluttishness is given to scenery which, with a very little trouble,
might have adorned and embellished, not to say enriched many a great estate.
“I never saw this mischievous effect of indolence
more conspicuously made manifest than in a part of the grounds here. Sir Walter’s property on one side is bounded
by a belt of fir trees, say twenty yards across. The ‘march’ runs
directly along the centre of this belt, so that one-half of the trees belong to
his neighbour, the other to him. The moment he came in
possession he set about thinning and pruning the trees, and planting a number
of hardwood shoots under the shelter of the firs. In a very short time the
effect was evident: the trees, heretofore choked up, had run into scraggy
stems, and were sadly stunted in growth; but having now room to breathe and to
take exercise, they have shot up in the course of a few years in a wonderful
manner, and have set out branches on all sides, while their trunks have
gradually lost the walking-stick or hop-pole aspect which they were forced to
assume before, and the beeches and oaks and other recent trees are starting up
vigorously under the genial influence of their owner’s care. Meanwhile
the obstinate, indolent, or ignorant possessor of the other half of the belt
has done nothing to his woods for many years, and the growth is apparently at a
stand in its original ugliness and uselessness. The trees are none of them
above half the height of Sir Walter’s, and few, if any, of half the
diameter. So very remarkable is the difference, that without the most positive
assurances I could not believe it possible that it could have been brought
about by mere care in so short a period as five years. The trees on the one
side are quite without value, either to make fences or to sell as supports to
the coal-pits near Berwick, while Sir Walter already reaps
a great profit from the mere thinning out of his plantations. To obtain such
results, it will be easily understood that much personal attention is
necessary, much method and knowledge of the subject. It happens, however, that
in this very attention he finds his chief pleasure—he is a most exact and
punctual man of business, and has made it his favourite study to acquire a
thorough knowledge of the art.
“His excellent taste in planting has produced a very
important effect. In laying out his plantations, he was guided, partly by a feeling that it
was natural and beautiful to follow the ‘lie of the ground,’ as it
is called, and partly by an idea that by leading his young wood along hollows
and gentle slopes, he would be taking the surest course to give it shelter. But
though he had only the prosperity and picturesqueness of the wood in view, he
has also, he finds, added to the value of the adjoining fields that remain
unplanted. The person who formerly rented one farm came to him and offered to
take the unplanted part again, and to pay the same rent for it as he had paid
originally for the whole, although one-half of it is now a young forest and
effectually enclosed. On Sir Walter’s
expressing his surprise at this, the man said that, both for growing corn and
for the pasture of sheep, the land was infinitely improved in value by the
protection which his rising woods and numerous enclosures afforded.
“This will seem still more remarkable when it is
mentioned that, whenever circumstances permitted, his best land has been
selected for planting trees. ‘I have no patience,’ he
exclaimed, ‘with those people who consider that a tree is not to be
placed except on a soil where nothing else will grow. Why should the
noblest of all vegetables be condemned to the worst soil? After all it is
the most productive policy to give trees every advantage, even in a
pecuniary point of view, as I have just shown you. The immediate return in
cash is not so great indeed as from wheat, but it is eventually as sure, if
matters be properly attended to—and this is all over and above one’s
great and constantly increasing source of enjoyment in the picturesque
beauty which rising woods afford.’
“Abbotsford, January 2, 1825.
“At breakfast to-day we had, as usual, some 150 stories—God knows how they came in, but he is, in the
matter of anecdote, what Hudibras was in
figures of speech—‘his mouth he could not ope but out there flew a
trope’—so with the Great
Unknown, his mouth he cannot open without giving out something
worth hearing—and all so simply, good-naturedly, and naturally! I quite forget
all these stories but one:—‘My cousin Watty
Scott’ (said he) ‘was a midshipman some forty years
ago in a ship at Portsmouth; he and two other companions had gone on shore, and
had overstaid their leave, spent all their money, and run up an immense bill at
a tavern—on the Point the ship made the signal for sailing, but their landlady
said, “No, gentlemen—you shall not escape without paying your
reckoning;”—and she accompanied her words by appropriate actions,
and placed them under the tender keeping of a sufficient party of bailiffs.
They felt that they were in a scrape, and petitioned very hard to be released;
“No, no,” said Mrs
Quickly, “I must be satisfied one way or t’other:
you must be well aware, gentlemen, that you will be totally ruined if you
don’t get on board in time.” They made long faces, and
confessed that it was but too true. “Well,” said she,
“I’ll give you one chance—I am so circumstanced here that I
cannot carry on my business as a single woman, and I must contrive somehow
to have a husband, or at all events I must be able to produce a marriage
certificate; and therefore the only terms on which you shall all three have
leave to go on board to-morrow morning is, that one of you consent to marry
me. I don’t care a d—— which it is, but, by all that’s holy,
one of you I will have, or else you all three go to jail, and your ship
sails without you!” The virago was not to be pacified, and the
poor youths, left to themselves, agreed after a time to draw lots, and it
happened to fall on my cousin. No time was lost, and off they marched to church, and my poor relative
was forthwith spliced. The bride, on returning, gave them a good substantial
dinner and several bottles of wine a piece, and having tumbled them into a
wherry sent them off. The ship sailed, and the young men religiously adhered to
the oath of secrecy they had taken previous to drawing lots. The bride, I
should have said, merely wanted to be married, and was the first to propose an
eternal separation. Some months after, at Jamaica, a file of papers reached the
midshipmen’s berth, and Watty, who was observed to
be looking over them, carelessly, reading an account of a robbery and murder at
Portsmouth, suddenly jumped up, in his ecstasy forgot his obligation of
secrecy, and cried out “Thanks be to God, my wife is
hanged!”
“Mixed up with all this fun, Sir Walter has much admirable good sense, and makes many
valuable reflections, which are apt sometimes to escape notice from the
unpretending manner in which they are introduced. Talking of different
professions to-day, and of the universal complaint of each one being
overstocked, he observed—‘Ay, ay, it is the same in all; we wear our
teeth out in the hard drudgery of the outset, and at length when we do get
bread to eat—we complain that the crust is hard—so that in neither case are
we satisfied.’
“Taking up a book with a pompous dedication to the
King, he read the first paragraph, in which the style was inverted in such a
manner as scarcely to be intelligible, but yet was so oddly turned as to excite
curiosity. ‘Now, this,’ he said, ‘is just like a
man coming into a room bottom foremost in order to excite attention: he
ought to be kicked for his pains.’
“Speaking of books and booksellers, he remarked,
that, considered generally, an author might be satisfied
if he got one-sixth part of the retail price of his book for his share of the
profits;—this seems very moderate—but who should have such means of making a
right calculation on such a point?
“Some conversation arose about stranger tourists,
and I learned that Sir Walter had at length
been very reluctantly obliged to put a stop to the inundation of these people,
by sending an intimation to the inns at Melrose and Selkirk to stop them by a
message, saying it was not convenient to receive company at Abbotsford, unless
their visit had been previously announced and accepted. Before this, the house
used to be literally stormed: no less than sixteen
parties, all uninvited, came in one day—and frequently eight or ten forced
themselves in. So that it became impossible for the family to have a moment to
themselves. The tourists roved about the house, touched and displaced the
armour, and I dare say (though this was not admitted) many and many a set
carried off some trophy with them.
“Just as breakfast was concluded to-day he said,
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I shall read prayers at eleven, when I
expect you all to attend.’ He did not treat the subject as if
ashamed of it, which some do. He did not say ‘those who please may
come, and any one who likes may stay away,’ as I have often
heard. He read the Church of England service, and did it with singular beauty
and impressiveness, varying his voice according to the subject; and as the
first lesson was from a very poetical part of Isaiah, he
kindled up, and read it with a great deal of animation, without, however,
overstepping the solemnity of the occasion.
“We had an amusing instance of his playfulness this
evening. Something introduced the subject of lions. ‘Well,’
said he, ‘I think it amusing enough to be a lion; what think you,
Captain Hall?’
‘Oh,’ I answered, ‘I am always too much flattered by
it—and nothing gratifies me more than being made to wag my tail and roar in
my small way.’ ‘That’s right,’ he said,
turning to the company, ‘nothing is more diverting than being handed
about in that way, and for my part I enjoy it exceedingly; I was once
hunted by a well-known lion-catcher, who I found was also in search of
Miss O’Neill, and it so
chanced that we met together at Highgate, or in that neighbourhood, and we
were carried out to see some grounds, in the course of which both the lion
and the lioness found themselves in a place where there was an iron railing
all round. “Now,” said I, “if you have got a lock thereto
turn upon us, you have us both for ever, and your fortune is made. You have
only to hoist a flag on a pole at the top of the hill and stick up a few
bills, saying that you have just caught those two beautiful animals, and in
an hour’s time you have half the metropolis to see us at a shilling
a-head, and we shall roar in grand style—shall we not, Miss
O’Neill?”’
“He then laughed much at some lions about town, who
disdained being stirred up with a long pole, as every good lion ought to be.
‘You and I, Captain Hall,
know better, and we enjoy ourselves accordingly in our noble beast
capacity—whereas those poor wretches lose all the good things we
get—because, forsooth, they must be loved and admired, and made much of for
their mere human qualities—while we are content with
our pretensions as monsters!’
“Abbotsford, January 3.
“There has been an immense flood in the Tweed
lately, which overflowed its banks, and did a world of mischief, though not
quite so great as that at St Petersburgh. But what is comical, this rise of the
river actually set Abbotsford on fire: at least the offices on the haugh below the house, where the water rose three feet
perpendicular above the floor; and happening to encounter a pile of unslaked
lime in the corner of a cow-house, presently set it in a blaze! There was no
want of water you may be sure—‘too much of water, poor Ophelia’—and no great damage was
done. This flood raised the water considerably more than a foot; exactly three
inches higher than that of 1812, the highest ever known up to that date.
“A neighbouring laird and his son joined our party
yesterday, Mr Henderson of Eildon Hall,
and the proprietor of the well-known hills of that name. His history may amuse
you. He was, long ago, clerk of the Cocket at Leith, an office worth L.50
a-year, and this was his whole substance. It chanced that Mr
Ramsay, the banker, was in want of a clerk, and said to a
friend, ‘Do you know any one who writes a good hand, is honest and
steady, and who never opens his mouth from one year’s end to the
other?’ ‘I know your man exactly,’ said the
other; and Mr H. was accordingly made clerk under
Mr Ramsay, with whom he kept up the necessary
communication by means of a sort of telegraph, as it is alleged, as
Mr R. had a great dislike to speech. In process of
time our hero insinuated himself so completely into the good graces of his
patron, that he got a small share in the bank, then a larger, and so on. It
happened about this time that the man who had taken Craigleith quarry failed
for want of capital; and our friend, the silent clerk of the Cocket, who had
the bank under his lee, bought up the contract, and cleared ten thousand a-year
for nine or ten years by this one job. So that what with the bank, and sundry
other speculations, which all turned out well, he amassed great wealth, and
resolved to turn country gentleman.
“One day in company he was making enquiries about
land, and a gentleman opposite
was so eloquent in praise of Eildon Hall, then in the market, that he was
seized with a desire to be the purchaser. ‘What is the
price?’ asked he. ‘Why,’ said the other,
‘I dare say you may get it for forty thousand pounds.’
‘Indeed!’ said our quarryman, ‘I will give that
with pleasure—and I authorize you to make the offer.’
“Now, the amusing thing about this transaction is,
that the estate in question had been some time advertised for sale for
thirty-seven thousand pounds only; thus our worthy friend of the telegraph gave
three thousand more for the property than was asked, to the great delight and
astonishment of Messrs Todd and
Romanes, the agents for the sale. A fact, by the way,
which goes far to support the Lord Chancellor’s estimate of a
banker’s intellects.
“With all this, our taciturn friend makes
‘a very decent Lord,’ is well esteemed in the
neighbourhood, and, as he has the discretion now to take good advice, he is
likely to do well.
“Sir Adam
Ferguson, who is the most humorous man alive, and delights in
showing up his neighbour, mentioned to him the other day that the Eildon estate
was sadly in want of lime. ‘Eh!’ said the laird, ‘I
am much obliged to you for that hint—I am just ruined for want o’
hints!’
“At this moment there is a project for making a
railway from Berwick to Kelso, as all the world knows; but the Great Unknown and several other gentlemen are
anxious to tail on a branch from Melrose to meet the great one; and as
Mr H., with his long purse and his
willingness to receive hints, is no bad card in the game, he has been brought
up to Abbotsford for a week: his taciturnity has long ago fled, and he is now
one of the most loquacious Borderers going. Torwoodlee, too, and his son the Skipper, came to breakfast to-day, in
order that the whole party might have a consultation before going to the
railroad meeting at Melrose. I should suspect that when the Author of
Waverley sets his shoulders to any wheel, it must be in a
devilish deep slough if it be not lifted out.
“As my brother James was obliged to return to Edinburgh, and I thought that I
had staid long enough, we set out from Abbotsford after luncheon, very
reluctantly, for the party had grown upon our esteem very much, and had lately
been augmented by the arrival from England of Mr
Lockhart, whom I wished to get acquainted with, and of Captain Scott, the poet’s eldest son.
The family urged me very much to stay, and I could only get away by making a
promise to return for their little dance on Friday evening; so that it is not
impossible this journal may have some additions made to it in the same
strain.”
“Abbotsford, 7th January, 1825.
“To-day my sister Fanny and I
came here. In the evening there was a dance in honour of Sir Walter Scott’s eldest son, who had
recently come from Sandhurst College, after having passed through some military
examinations with great credit.
“We had a great clan of Scotts.
There were no less than nine Scotts of Harden and ten of
other families. There were others besides from the neighbourhood—at least
half-a-dozen Fergusons, with the jolly Sir Adam at their head—Lady Ferguson, her niece Miss Jobson, the pretty heiress of
Lochore—&c. &c. &c. . . . . . . .
“The evening passed very merrily, with much spirited
dancing; and the supper was extremely cheerful and quite superior to that of
Hogmanay.”
“Abbotsford, 8th January.
“It is wonderful how many people a house can be made
to hold upon occasions such as this; and when, in the course of the morning,
the neighbours came to stream off to their respective homes, one stared, like
the man in the Arabian Nights who uncorked the genie, thinking how the deuce
they ever got in. There were a few who stayed a while to saunter about the
dressed grounds, under the guidance of Sir
Walter; but by one or two o’clock my sister and I found
ourselves the only guests left, and on the Great Unknown
proposing a walk to a point in his plantations called Turn-again, we gladly
accepted his offer and set out.
“I have never seen him in better spirits, and we
accompanied him for several hours with great delight. I observed that on this
occasion the tone of his innumerable anecdotes was somewhat different from what
it had been when James and I and some
other gentlemen formed his companions. There was then an occasional roughness
in the point and matter of the stories; but no trace of this to-day. He was no
less humorous, however, and varied than before;—always appropriate, too—in
harmony with the occasion, as it were—never lugging in stories by the head and
shoulders. It is very difficult, I may say impossible, to give a correct
conception of this by mere description. So much consists in the manner and the
actual tone and wording of what is said; so much, also, which cannot be
imparted, in the surrounding circumstances—the state of the weather—the look of
the country—the sound of the wind in the trees close at hand—the view of the
distant hills: all these and a thousand other things produce an effect on the
minds of those present which suits them for the reception of the conversation
at the moment, and prevents any transfer of the senti-ments
produced thereby to any one differently circumstanced.
“On reaching the brow of the hill on the eastern
side of one of his plantations, we came in sight of Melrose Abbey, on which
there was a partial gleam of sunshine lighting up an angle of the ruins.
Straightway we had an anecdote of Tom
Purdie, his gamekeeper and factotum. Tom
has been many years with Sir Walter, and
being constantly in such company, has insensibly picked up some of the taste
and feeling of a higher order. ‘When I came here first,’
said Tom to the factor’s wife, ‘I was
little better than a beast, and knew nae mair than a cow what was pretty
and what was ugly. I was cuif enough to think that the bonniest thing in a
country-side was a corn field enclosed in four stane dykes; but now I ken
the difference. Look this way Mrs
Laidlaw, and I’ll show you what the gentlefolks likes.
See ye there now the sun glinting on Melrose Abbey? It’s no aw
bright, nor its no aw shadows neither, but just a bit screed o’ light
here and a bit daud o’ dark yonder like, and that’s what they
ca’ picturesque; and, indeed, it maun be confessed it is unco bonnie
to look at!’
“Sir Walter
wished to have a road made through a straight belt of trees which had been
planted before he purchased the property, but being obliged to return to
Edinburgh, he entrusted it to Tom
Purdie, his ‘right-hand man.’
‘Tom,’ said he, ‘you
must not make this walk straight—neither must it be crooked.’
‘Diel, Sir! than what maun it be like?’
‘Why,’ said his master, ‘don’t you
remember when you were a shepherd, Tom, the way in
which you dandered hame of an even? You never walked straight to your
house, nor did you go much about; now make me just such a walk as you used
to take yourself.’ Accordingly, ‘Tom’s walk’ is a standing proof of the skill and taste of the ci-devant
shepherd, as well as of the happy power which his master possesses, in trifles
as well as in great affairs, of imparting his ideas to those he wishes to
influence. . . . . . .
“In the course of our walk he entertained us much by
an account of the origin of the beautiful song of ‘Auld Robin Gray.’ ‘It was written (he said) by
Lady Anne Lindsay, now Lady Anne Bernard. She happened to be at a house where she
met Miss Suff Johnstone, a well-known person, who
played the air, and accompanied it by words of no great delicacy, whatever
their antiquity might be; and Lady Anne lamenting that
no better words should belong to such a melody, immediately set to work and
composed this very pathetic story. Truth, I am sorry to say, obliges me to
add that it was a fiction. Robin Gray was her
father’s gardener, and the idea of the young lover going to sea,
which would have been quite out of character here amongst the shepherds,
was natural enough where she was then residing, on the coast of Fife. It
was long unknown,’ he added, ‘who the author was; and
indeed there was a clergyman on the coast whose conscience was so large
that he took the burden of this matter upon himself, and pleaded guilty to
the authorship. About two years ago I wrote to Lady
Anne to know the truth—and she wrote back to say she was
certainly the author, but wondered how I could have guessed it, as there
was no person alive to whom she had told it. When I mentioned having heard
it long ago from a common friend who was dead, she then recollected me, and
wrote one of the kindest letters I ever received, saying she had till now
not the smallest idea that I was the little lame boy
she had known so many years before.’
“I give this anecdote partly from its own interest,
and partly for the sake of introducing the unconcerned
allusion to his own lameness which I have heard him mention repeatedly, in the
same sort of way, without seemingly caring about it. Once speaking of the old
city wall of Edinburgh (which, by the way, he says was built during the panic
caused by the disastrous battle of Flodden Field)—he said it used to be a great
ploy in his youth to climb the said wall.
‘I used often to do it,’ he observed,
‘notwithstanding my bad foot, which made it no very easy
job.’
“On coming to a broad path in the middle of the
woods, we took notice of a finger-post, on which was written ‘The Rod to Selkirk.’ We made some remark about
Tom’s orthography, upon which
he laughed, and said that that finger-post had gained him great popularity in
the neighbourhood. ‘I cannot say,’ he remarked,
‘that I had any such view when I ordered it to be put up. The
public road, it is true, is not far off, and this leads through the very
centre of my grounds, but I never could bring myself to make that a reason
for excluding any person who finds it agreeable or advantageous to take
over the hill if he likes. But although my practice in this respect had
always been well-known, the actual admission of it, the avowed
establishment of it as a sort of right, by sticking up the finger-post, was
received as a kind of boon, and I got a world of credit for a thing which
had certainly not any popularity for its object. Nevertheless,’
he continued, ‘I have no scruple in saying that what I did deserved
the good people’s acknowledgment; and I seriously disapprove of those
proprietors who act on a different principle in these matters. Nothing on
earth would induce me to put up boards threatening prosecution, or
cautioning one’s fellow-creatures to beware of man-traps and
spring-guns. I hold that all such things are not only in the highest degree
offensive and hurtful to the
feelings of people whom it is every way important to conciliate, but that
they are also quite inefficient—and I will venture to say, that not one of
my young trees has ever been cut, nor a fence trodden down, or any kind of
damage done in consequence of the free access which all the world has to my
place. Round the house, of course, there is a set of walks set apart and
kept private for the ladies—but over all the rest of my land any one may
rove as he likes. I please myself with the reflection that many people of
taste may be indulging their fancies in these grounds, and I often
recollect how much of Burns’s
inspiration was probably due to his having near him the woods of
Ballochmyle to ramble through at his will when he was a ragged
callant.’
“He told us of the different periods at which he had
planted his grounds. ‘I bought this property bit by bit,’ he
said, ‘as accident threw the means of purchase into my hands; I could
not lay it all out in a consistent plan, for when I first came here I
merely bought a few acres and built a cottage, as a kind of occasional
retreat from the bustle of Edinburgh. By degrees I got another and another
farm, till all you now see came to me. If things go on improving at the
rate they do in the matter of travelling, I dare say I shall be able to
live here all the year round, and come out every day from the Court. At
present I pass about seven months of the year at Abbotsford, but if the
projected railway is established, and we have steam-coaches upon it running
at twenty miles an hour, it will be merely good exercise to go in to
breakfast and come back to dinner.’
“In a hilly country such as this one is more
dependent upon the taste of one’s neighbours than where the surface is
flat, for the inequalities bring into view many distant points which one must
constantly be wishing to see turned to advantage. Thus it is of consequence to
be on such friendly terms with the neighbourhood,
especially the proprietors on the opposite side of the river, that they may
take one’s comfort and pleasure into consideration when they come to
plant, or otherwise to embellish their ground. Sir
Walter pointed out several different plantations which had been
made expressly with a view to the improvement of the prospect from Abbotsford.
The owner of one of these estates came over to him one day to point out the
line which he had traced with a plough, as the limit of a new plantation, and
asked Sir Walter how he liked it, or if he wished any
alteration to be made. The Author of Waverley thanked him
for his attention, and the two gentlemen climbed the hill above Abbotsford to
take the matter into consideration. It was soon seen that, without extending
the projected plantation, or diminishing its beauty with reference to the
estate on which it was made, a new line might be drawn which would double its
apparent magnitude, and greatly enhance the beauty of its form, as seen from
Abbotsford. The gentleman was delighted to have an opportunity of obliging the
Great well-known Unknown, and cantered back to change the line. The young trees
are already giving sufficient evidence of the good taste of the proposer of the
change, and, it may be said also, of his good sense and his good-nature, for,
unless he possessed both in an eminent degree, all his gigantic talents would
be insufficient to bring round about him the ready hearts and hands of all
within his reach. Scott of Gala, for
instance, has, out of pure kindness, planted, for a space of several miles, the
whole of the opposite bank of the Tweed, and with great pains improved all the
lines of his father’s planting, solely to please his neighbour, and
without any benefit to his own place. His worthy friend, also, of Eildon Hall, he told us to-day, had kindly
undertaken, in the same spirit, to plant the base of these two beautiful hills, which, without
diminishing their grandeur, will greatly add to their picturesque effect, and,
in fact, increase the bold magnificence of their summits.
“‘I make not a rule to be on intimate
terms,’ he told us, ‘with all my neighbours—that would
be an idle thing to do. Some are good—some not so good, and it would be
foolish and ineffectual to treat all with the same cordiality; but to live
in harmony with all is quite easy, and surely very pleasant. Some of them
may be rough and gruff at first, but all men, if
kindly used, come about at last, and by going on gently, and never being
eager or noisy about what I want, and letting things glide on leisurely, I
always find in the end that the object is gained on which I have set my
heart, either by exchange or purchase, or by some sort of compromise by
which both parties are obliged, and good-will begot if it did not exist
before—strengthened if it did exist’—
“‘There, see,’ he continued,
‘that farm there, at the foot of the hill, is occupied by a
respectable enough tenant of mine; I told him I had a great desire for him
to try the effect of lime on his land. He said he doubted its success, and
could not venture to risk so much money as it would cost.
‘Well,’ said I, ‘fair enough; but as I wish to have the
experiment tried, you shall have the lime for the mere carting; you may
send to the place where it is to be bought, and at the term-day you shall
strike off the whole value of the lime from the rent due to me.’ When
the day came, my friend the farmer came with his whole rent, which he laid
down on the table before me without deduction. “How’s this, my
man, you are to deduct for the lime, you know.” “Why, Sir Walter,” replied he, “my
conscience will not let me impose on you so far—the lime you recommended me
to try, and which but for your suggestion I never would have tried, has produced more than would have purchased the lime
half-a-dozen times over, and I cannot think of making a
deduction.”’
“In this way, by a constant quiet interchange of
good offices, he extends his great influence amongst all classes, high and low;
and while in the morning, at breakfast-time, he gets a letter from the
Duke of Wellington, along with some
rare Spanish manuscripts taken at Vittoria*—at mid-day he is gossiping with a
farmer’s wife, or pruning his young trees cheek by jowl with Tam Purdie—at dinner he is keeping the table
merry, over his admirable good cheer, with ten hundred good stories, or
discussing railroads, blackfaced sheep, and other improvements with Torwoodlee—in the evening he is setting the
young folks to dance, or reading some fine old ballad from Percy’s Reliques, or some
blackletter tome of Border lore, or giving snatches of beautiful songs, or
relating anecdotes of chivalry—and ever and anon coming down to modern home
life with some good honest practical remark which sinks irresistibly into the
minds of his audience,—and all with such ease and unaffected simplicity as
never, perhaps, was seen before in any man so gifted—so qualified to take the
loftiest, proudest line at the head of the literature, the taste, the
imagination of the whole world! Who can doubt that, after such a day as I have
glanced at, his slumbers must be peaceful, and that remorse is a stranger to
his bosom, and that all his renown, all his wealth, and the love of such
‘troops of friends,’ are trebly gratifying to him, and
substantial, from their being purchased at no cost but that of truth and
nature.
“Alas for poor Lord
Byron, of whom he told us an
* About this time the Duke sent Scott some
curious documents about the proposed duel between Charles V. and Francis I.
anecdote to-day, by
which it appeared that his immense fame as an author was altogether
insufficient to harden him against the darts of calumny or malevolence levelled
at his private life. He quoted, with the bitterest despair, to Scott the strong expression of Shakspeare, Our pleasant vices are but whips to scourge us;* And added, ‘I would to God that I could have your peace of mind,
Mr Scott; I would give all I have, all my fame,
every thing, to be able to speak on this subject’ (that of
domestic happiness) ‘as you do!’
“Sir Walter
describes Lord Byron as being a man of real
goodness of heart, and the kindest and best feelings, miserably thrown away by
his foolish contempt of public opinion. Instead of being warned or checked by
public opposition, it roused him to go on in a worse strain, as if he said,
‘Ay, you don’t like it—well, you shall have something worse
for your pains.’ Thus his Lordship, poor fellow, by taking the
wrong view, went on from bad to worse, and at every struggle with the public
sunk deeper and deeper in their esteem, while he himself became more and more
sensitive about their disapprobation. ‘Many, many a pleasant hour I
have spent with him,’ Sir Walter added,
‘and I never met a man with nobler feelings, or one who, had he
not unfortunately taken the wrong course, might have done more to make
himself beloved and respected. A man of eminence in any line, and perhaps a
man of great literary eminence especially, is exposed to a thousand eyes
which men, not so celebrated, are safe from—and in consequence, right
conduct is much more essential to his happiness than to those who are less
watched; and I may add, that only by such conduct can the permanence of his
real influence over * ‘The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to scourge us.’—King Lear. any class be secured. I could not persuade
Byron to see it in this light—the more’s the
pity, for he has had no justice done him.’
“Some one talked of the pains taken to provide the
poor with receipts for making good dishes out of their ordinary messes.
‘I dislike all such interference,’ he
said,—‘all your domiciliary, kind, impertinent visits—they are all
pretty much felt like insults, and do no manner of good; let people go on
in their own way, in God’s name. How would you like to have a
nobleman coming to you to teach you how to dish up your beefsteak into a
French kickshaw? And who is there so miserably put to his ways and means
that will endure to have another coming to teach him how to economize and
keep his accounts? Let the poor alone in their domestic habits, I pray you;
protect them and treat them kindly, of course, and trust them; but let them
enjoy in quiet their dish of porridge, and their potatoes and herrings, or
whatever it may be—but for any sake don’t torment them with your
fashionable soups. And take care,’ he added, ‘not to
give them any thing gratis; except when they are under the gripe of
immediate misery—what they
think misery—consider it as a sin to do any thing that can tend to make
them lose the precious feelings of independence. For my part, I very, very
rarely give any thing away. Now, for instance, this pile of branches which
has been thinned out this morning, is placed here for sale for the poor
people’s fires, and I am perfectly certain they are more grateful to
me for selling it at the price I do (which, you may be sure, is no great
matter), than if I were to give them ten times the quantity for nothing.
Every shilling collected in this and other similar manners, goes to a fund
which pays the doctor for his attendance on them when they are sick; and
this is my notion of charity.’
“I shall have given a false impression of this great
man’s character to those who do not know him, if I have left an
impression that he is all goodness and forbearance—that there is no acid in his
character; for I have heard him several times as sharp as need be when there
was occasion. To-day, for instance, when a recent trial, in which a beautiful
actress was concerned, happened to be brought into discussion, he gave his
opinion of all the parties with great force and spirit; and when the
lady’s father’s name was mentioned as having connived at his
daughter’s disgrace, he exclaimed, ‘Well, I do not know what I
would not give to have one good kick at that infernal rascal—I would give
it to him,’ said he, drawing his chair back a foot from the
table, ‘I would give it to him in such style as should send the
vagabond out of that window as far as the Tweed. Only, God forgive
me,’ added he, smiling at his own unwonted impetuosity, and drawing
his chair forward quietly to the table, ‘only it would be too good a
death for the villain; and besides,’ said he, his goodhumoured
manner returning as he spoke, ‘it would be a sad pollution to our
bonny Tweed to have the drowning of such a thoroughbred miscreant as could
sell his daughter’s honour!’
“It is interesting to see how all ranks agree to
respect our hero, and to treat him with respect at once, and with kindness and
familiarity. On high days and holidays a large blue ensign, such as is worn by
ships of war, is displayed at a flag-staff, rising from a round tower built for
the purpose at one angle of his garden. The history of this flag is as
follows:—
“The ‘Old Shipping Smack Company’ of
Leith, some time ago launched one of the finest vessels they had ever sailed,
and called her ‘The Walter Scott,’ in honour of their countryman. In return for this compliment
he made the Captain a present of a set of flags; which flags you may be sure
the noble commander was not shy of displaying to all the world. Now, it so
happens that there is a strict order, forbidding all vessels, except
King’s ships, to hoist any other flag than a red ensign, so that when our
gallant smack-skipper chanced to fall in with one of his Majesty’s
cruizers, he was ordered peremptorily to pull down his blue colours. This was
so sore a humiliation, that he refused to obey, and conceiving that he could
out-sail the frigate, crowded all sail, and tried to make off with his ensign
still flying at his mast-head. The ship-of-war, however, was not to be so
satisfied, and hinted as much by dropping a cannon-shot across his fore-foot.
Down came the blue ensign, which was accordingly made prize of, and transmitted
forthwith to the Lords of the Admiralty, as is usual in such cases of
contumely. Their Lordships, in merry mood, and perhaps even in the plenitude of
their power, feeling the respect which was due to genius, sent the flag to
Abbotsford, and wrote an official letter to Sir
Walter, stating the case, and requesting him to have the
goodness to give orders to his cruizers in future not to hoist colours
appropriated exclusively to the ships of his Majesty. The transaction was
creditable to all parties, and he, instead of taking offence,* as a blockhead
in his place would have done, immediately sent for his masons, and built him a
tower on which to erect his flag—and the first occasion on which it was
displayed was the late return of his eldest son from England. . . . . . .
* I do not understand how any man could have taken
offence under these circumstances. The First Lord of the Admiralty,
Lord Melville, and the Secretary,
Mr Croker, were both intimate
friends of Sir Walter’s and all
that passed was of course matter of pleasantry.
“I have caught the fever of story-telling from
contact with this Prince of all Story-tellers! During the riots for the
immaculate Queen lately deceased, a
report went abroad, it seems, that Abbotsford had been attacked by a mob, its
windows broken, and the interior ransacked. ‘Ay, ay,’ said
one of the neighbouring country people, to whom the story was told,
‘so there was a great slaughter of people?’
‘Na, na,’ said his informant, ‘there was
naebody killed.’—‘Weel, then,’ said the other,
‘depend upon it, it’s aw a lee—if Abbotsford is taken by
storm, and the Shirra in it, ye’ll hae afterwards to tak account
o’ the killed and wounded, I’se warrant ye!’”
“Abbotsford, January 9.
“We saw nothing of the chief till luncheon-time,
between one and two, and then only for a few minutes. He had gone out to
breakfast, and on his return seemed busy with writing. At dinner he was in
great force, and pleasant it was to observe the difference which his powers of
conversation undergo by the change from a large to a small party. On Friday
when we sat down twenty to dinner, it cost him an effort apparently to keep the
ball up at table; but next day, when the company was reduced to his own family,
with only two strangers (Fanny and I), he appeared
delighted to be at home, and expanded with surprising animation, and poured
forth his stores of knowledge and fun on all hands. I have never seen any
person on more delightful terms with his family than he is. The best proof of
this is the ease and confidence with which they all treat him, amounting quite
to familiarity. Even the youngest of his nephews and nieces can joke with him,
and seem at all times perfectly at ease in his presence—his coming into the
room only increases the laugh, and never checks it—he either joins in what is going on, or passes. No one notices him any more
than if he were one of themselves. These are things which cannot be got up—no
skill can put people at their ease where the disposition does not sincerely
co-operate.
“Very probably he has so correct a knowledge of
human character in all its varieties that he may assist by art in giving effect
to this naturally kind bent of his disposition, and this he may do without
ceasing to be perfectly natural. For instance, he never sits at any particular
place at table—but takes his chance, and never goes, as a matter of course, to
the top or to the bottom.* Perhaps this and other similar things are
accidental, and done without reflection; but at all events, whether designed or
not, their effect is to put every one as much at his ease as if a being of a
superior order were not present.
“I know no one who takes more delight in the stories
of others than he does, or who seems less desirous of occupying the ears of the
company. It is true that no one topic can be touched upon, but straightway
there flows out a current of appropriate story—and let the anecdote which any
one else tells be ever so humorous, its only effect is to elicit from him
another, or rather a dozen others, still more in point. Yet, as I am trying to
describe this singular man to others who have not seen him, I should be leaving
a wrong impression of his style in this respect, were I to omit mentioning that
there is nothing in the least like triumph on these occasions, or any apparent
wish to excel the last speaker—the new key is struck, as it were, and instantly
the instrument discourses most eloquent music—but the thing is done as
* This seems refining. Sir
Walter, like any other gentleman of his standing, might
be expected to devolve the labour of carving on one of his sons.
if he could
not help it; and how often is his story suggested by the obvious desire to get
the man that has been speaking out of a scrape, either with some of the
hearers, or perhaps with his own conscience. ‘Are you a
sportsman?’ he asked me to-day. I said I was not—that I had begun too
late in life, and that I did not find shooting in particular at all amusing.
‘Well, neither do I,’ he observed; ‘time has
been when I did shoot a good deal, but somehow I never very much liked it.
I was never quite at ease when I had knocked down my black-cock, and going
to pick him up, he cast back his dying eye with a look of reproach. I
don’t affect to be more squeamish than my neighbours,—but I am not
ashamed to say, that no practice ever reconciled me fully to the cruelty of
the affair. At all events, now that I can do as I like without fear of
ridicule, I take more pleasure in seeing the birds fly past me unharmed. I
don’t carry this nicety, however, beyond my own person—as Walter there will take good occasion to
testify to-morrow.’
“Apparently fearing that he had become a little too
sentimental, he speedily diverted our thoughts by telling us of a friend of
his, Mr Hastings Sands, who went out to
shoot for the first time, and after firing away for a whole morning without any
success, at length brought down a bird close to the house, and ran up to catch
his pheasant, as he supposed—but which, to his horror, he found was a pet
parrot, belonging to one of the young ladies. It was flapping its painted
plumage, now all dripping with blood and ejaculating quickly, Pretty Poll!
pretty Poll! as it expired at the feet of the luckless sportsman—who, between
shame and regret, swore that, as it was his first experiment in shooting, it
should be his last; and on the spot broke his gun all to pieces, and could
never afterwards bear to hear a shot fired.
“But I am forgetting what I hinted at as a very
characteristic turn of his good-nature. I had mentioned among other reasons why
I was not very fond of shooting, that when I missed I was mortified at my want
of skill, and that when I saw the bird lying dead at my feet it recalled to my
mind a boyish piece of cruelty which I had been guilty of some five-and-twenty
or thirty years ago, the recollection of which has been a source of frequent
and bitter remorse. It is almost too bad to relate—suffice it that the nest was
robbed, the young ones drowned before the mother’s eyes, and then she was
killed. ‘You take it too deeply now,’ he said, ‘and
yet an early circumstance of that kind properly reflected upon is
calculated to have the best effect on our character throughout life. I
too,’ he continued, ‘have my story of boyish cruelty,
which has often given me the bitterest remorse in my after life; but which
I think has carried with it its useful lesson in practice. I saw a dog
coming towards me, when I was a boy about the age you describe yourself to
have been when you murdered the ox-eye family. What devil tempted me I know
not, but I took up a large stone, threw it, and hit the dog. Nevertheless,
it had still strength to crawl up to me, and lick my feet kindly, though
its leg was broken—it was a poor bitch big with pup.’
“From parrots we got to corbies, or ravens, and he told us with infinite humour a story of a
certain tame bird of this description, whose constant delight was to do
mischief, and to plague all mankind and beastkind. ‘A
stranger’ (he said) ‘called one day with a very surly dog,
whose habit it was to snarl and bite at every animal save man; and he was
consequently the terror and hatred of his own fraternity, and of the whole race
of cats, sheep, poultry, and so on. “Maitre Corbeau” seemed to discover the
character of the stranger, and from the moment of his arrival determined to
play him a trick. I watched him all the while, as I saw clearly that he had a
month’s mind for some mischief. He first
hopped up familiarly to Cato, as if to say,
“How d’ye do?” Cato snapped and
growled like a bear. Corbie retired with a flutter, saying, “God bless
me, what’s the matter? I had no idea, my good sir, that I was offending
you—I scarcely saw you, I was looking for a worm.” By and by he made
another studied sort of approach and when Cato
growled he drew off, with an air as if he said, “What the devil is the
matter with you? I’m not meddling with you—let me alone.” Presently the dog became less and less
suspicious of Mr Corbie, and composed himself on the sunny gravel-walk in a
fine sleep. Corbie watched his moment, and hopped and hopped quietly till close
up, and then leaping on Cato’s back, flapped
his wings violently, gave one or two severe dabs with his bill, and then flew
up to the edge of the cornice over the gateway, and laughed and screamed with
joy at the impotent fury of the dog—a human being could not have laughed more
naturally—and no man that ever existed could have enjoyed a mischievous joke
more completely than our friend Corbie.’ . . . . .
“10th January, 1825.
“The party at Abbotsford breaks up this morning, to
the sorrow, I believe, of every member of it. The loadstar of our attraction,
accompanied by his sister-in-law, Mrs Thomas
Scott, and her family, set off for Lord
Dalhousie’s—and all the others, except Lady Scott and her daughter, who are to follow in
a day or two, are streaming off in different directions. Sir Walter seemed as unwilling to leave the
country, and return to the bustle of the city, as any schoolboy could have been
to go back to his lessons after the holidays. No man
perhaps enjoys the country more than he does, and he is said to return to it
always with the liveliest relish. It may be asked, if this be so, why he does
not give up the town altogether? He might do so, and keep his Sheriffship; but
his Clerkship is a thing of more consequence, and that he must lose; and what
is far more important still, his constant transactions with the booksellers
could never be carried on with convenience, were he permanently settled at a
distance from them and their marts. His great purchases of land, his extensive
plantations, the crowd of company which he entertains, and the splendid house
he has just completed, are all severe pulls on his income—an income, it must be
recollected, which is produced not from any fund, but by dint of labour, and
from time to time. He is too prudent and sagacious a man not to live within his
means; but as yet he cannot have laid by much, and he will have to write a good
deal more before he can safely live where he pleases, and as he pleases.
“It becomes a curious question to know when it is
that he actually writes these wonderful works which have fixed the attention of
the world. Those who live with him, and see him always the idlest man of the
company, are at a loss to discover when it is that he finds the means to
compose his books. My attention was of course directed this way, and I confess
I see no great difficulty about the matter. Even in the country here, where he
comes professedly to be idle, I took notice that we never saw him till near ten
o’clock in the morning, and, besides this, there were always some odd
hours in the day in which he was not to be seen.
“We are apt to wonder at the prodigious quantity
which he writes, and to imagine the labour must be commensurate. But, in point
of fact, the quantity of mere writing is not very
great. It certainly is immense if the quality be taken into view; but if the
mere amount of handwriting be considered it is by no means large. Any clerk in
an office would transcribe one of the Waverley Novels, from beginning to end,
in a week or ten days—say a fortnight. It is well known, or at least generally,
and I have reason to believe truly admitted, that Sir
Walter composes his works just as fast as he can write—that the
manual labour is all that it costs him, for his thoughts flow spontaneously. He
never corrects the press, or if he does so at all, it is very slightly—and in
general his works come before the public just as they are written. Now, such
being the case, I really have no difficulty in supposing that a couple of hours
every day before breakfast may be quite sufficient for all the MS. of Waverley Novels produced in the busiest year since the
commencement of the series.
“Since writing the above I have taken the trouble to
make a computation, which I think fair to give, whichever way it may be thought
to make in the argument.
“In each page of Kenilworth there are, upon an average, 864
letters: in each page of this Journal 777 letters. Now I find that in ten days
I have written 120 pages, which would make about 108 pages of Kenilworth; and as there are 320 pages in a volume, it
would, at my rate of writing this Journal, cost about 29½ days for each
volume, or say three months for the composition of the whole of that work. No
mortal in Abbotsford-house ever learned that I kept a Journal. I was in company
all day and all the evening till a late hour apparently the least occupied of
the party; and I will venture to say not absent from the drawing-room one
quarter of the time that the Unknown was. I
was always down to breakfast before any one else, and often three quarters of
an hour before the Author of Kenilworth—always among the very last to go to bed—in short, I would have set the
acutest observer at defiance to have discovered when I wrote this Journal—and
yet it is written, honestly and fairly, day by day. I don’t say it has
cost me much labour; but it is surely not too much to suppose that its
composition has cost me, an unpractised writer, as much study as Kenilworth has cost the glorious Unknown. I have not
had the motive of L.5500 to spur me on for my set of volumes; but if I had had
such a bribe, in addition to the feelings of good-will for those at home, for
whose sole perusal I write this; and if I had had in view, over and above, the
literary glory of contributing to the happiness of two-thirds of the globe, do
you think I would not have written ten times as much, and yet no one should
have been able to discover when it was that I had put pen to paper?
“All this assumes Sir Walter
Scott to be the man. If at a distance
there still exist any doubt on the question, there seems to be no longer any in
Edinburgh. The whole tenor of Sir Walter’s behaviour
on the occasion shows him to be the writer; and the single argument of a man of
his candour and literary taste never speaking of, or praising works such as
these, would alone be sufficient. It would be totally irreconcilable with every
part of his character to suppose that he would for an instant take the credit
of another’s work—and this silence is equivalent
to the claim.
“It may then be settled that he is certainly the
author—but some may ask, why then does he affect any mystery about it? This is
easily answered—it saves him completely from a world of flattery and trouble,
which he sincerely detests. He never reads the criticisms on his books: this I
know from the most unquestionable authority. ‘Praise,’ he
says, ‘gives him no pleasure—and censure annoys him.’ He is
fully satisfied to accept the intense
avidity with which his novels are read—the enormous and continued sale of his
works, as a sufficient commendation of them; and I can perfectly understand how
the complete exemption from all idle flattery addressed to himself personally
is a great blessing. Be it remembered that this favour would be bummed into his
ears by every stupid wretch whom he met with, as well as by the polite and
learned—he would be literally worried to death by praise, since not a blockhead
would ever let him pass. As it is, he enjoys all the reputation he would have
if his name were on the title-page, perhaps more; he enjoys all the profit and
he escapes all worry about the matter. There is, no doubt, some little
bookselling trick in it too; but this is fair enough; his works are perhaps
more talked of, and consequently more sold than if the author were avowed—but
the real cause of the mystery undoubtedly is his love of quiet, which he can
thus indulge without the loss of one grain of literary fame, or advantage of
any description.
“To conclude—Sir Walter
Scott really seems as great as a man as he is as an author; for
he is altogether untouched by the applause of the whole civilized world. He is
still as simple in his manners, as modest, unassuming, kind, and considerate in
his behaviour to all persons, as he was when the world were unaware of his
enormous powers. If any man can be said to have a right to be presumptuous in
consequence of possessing acknowledged talents far above those of his company,
he is this man. But what sagacity and intimate knowledge of human nature does
it not display, when a man thus gifted, and thus entitled as it were to assume
a higher level, un-dazzled by such unanimous praise, has steadiness of head
enough not to be made giddy, and clearness enough of moral vision to discover
that, so far from lessening the admiration which it is
admitted he might claim if he pleased, he augments it infinitely by seeming to
wave that right altogether! How wisely he acts by mixing familiarly with all
men, drawing them in crowds around him, placing them at their ease within a
near view of his excellence, and taking his chance of being more correctly
seen, more thoroughly known, and having his merits more heartily acknowledged,
than if, with a hundred times even his abilities, he were to trumpet them,
forth to the world, and to frighten off spectators to a distance by the brazen
sound!
“It is, no doubt, in a great measure, to this
facility of access, and engaging manner, that his immense popularity is due;
but I should hold it very unfair to suppose that he proceeds upon any such
calculation. It is far mote reasonable to conclude that Providence, in giving
him such astonishing powers of pleasing others, should also have gifted him
with a heart to understand and value the delight of being beloved as well as
wondered at and admired; and we may suppose that he now enjoys a higher
pleasure from seeing the happiness which he has given birth to both abroad in
the world, and at home by his own fire-side, than any which his readers are
conscious of. If a man does act well, it is an idle criticism to investigate
the motive with any view of taking exception to that. Those motives which
induce to good results, must, in the long run, be good also. A man may be
wicked, and yet on a special occasion act virtuously, with a view to deceive
and gain under false colours some advantage which his own flag denies him; but
this will not do to go on with. Thus it signifies nothing to say that Sir Walter Scott, knowing the envious nature of
the world, and the pleasure it has in decrying high merit, and picking holes in
the reputation of great men, deports himself as he does, in order to avoid the cavils
of his inferiors. Where we find the success so great as in this case, we are
quite safe in saying that it is not by rule and compass that the object is
gained, but by genuine sentiment and right-mindedness—by the influence of those
feelings which prompt men to take pleasure in good and kindly offices—by that
judgment which sees through the mists of prejudice and error, finds some merit
in every man, and makes allowances for the faults and weaknesses of all;—above
all, by that admirable self-command which scarcely allows any unfavourable
opinion to pass the lips,—the fruit of which is, that by concealing even from
himself, as it were, every unkindly emotion, he ceases to feel it. His
principle is, by every means, to banish from his mind all angry feelings of
every description, and thus to exempt himself both from the pain of
disappointment in disputes where he should fail, and from the pain of causing
ill-will in cases where he might succeed. In this way he keeps on good terms
with all his neighbours, without exception, and when others are disputing about
boundaries and all the family of contiguous wrangling, he manages to be the
universal friend. Instead of quarrelling with his eminent brother authors,
whether poets or novelists (as so many others have done, and now do, to their
mutual discomfort and shame), he is in friendly and thoroughly unenvious
correspondence with them all. So far from any spark of jealousy being allowed
to spring up, his delight is to discover and to foster, and make the most of
genius wherever it exists. But the great trial is every-day life, and among
every-day people: his house is filled with company all the year round, with
persons of all ranks—from the highest down to the lowest class that is received
at all in society; he is affable alike to them all, makes no effort at display
on any occasion, is always gay and friendly, and puts every one at his ease;
I consider all else as a trifle compared with the
entire simplicity of his manners, and the total apparent unconsciousness of the
distinction which is his due. This, indeed, cannot possibly be assumed, but
must be the result of the most entire modesty of heart, if I may use such an
expression, the purest and most genuine kindness of disposition, which forbids
his drawing any comparison to the disadvantage of others. He has been for many
years the object of most acute and vigilant observation, and as far as my own
opportunities have gone, I must agree with the general report—namely, that on
no occasion has he ever betrayed the smallest symptom of vanity or affectation,
or insinuated a thought bordering on presumption, or even on a consciousness of
his own superiority in any respect whatsoever. Some of his oldest and most
intimate friends assert, that he has even of late years become more simple and
kindly than ever; that this attention to those about him, and absence of all
apparent concern about himself go on, if possible, increasing with his fame and
fortune. Surely if Sir Walter Scott be not a happy man,
which he seems truly to be, he deserves to be so!”
Thus terminates Captain
Hall’s Abbotsford Journal; and with his flourish of trumpets I must
drop the curtain on a scene and period of unclouded prosperity and splendour. The muffled
drum is in prospect.
END OF VOLUME FIFTH.EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND CO., PAUL’S WORK.
MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. VOLUME THE SIXTH. MDCCCXXXVII. ROBERT CADELL, EDINBURGH. JOHN MURRAY AND WHITTAKER AND CO., LONDON. NOTICE.
The Editor of these Memoirs regrets to say that he has found it
impossible to complete them in six volumes, as originally intended and announced. The
publication has, from unfortunate circumstances, been extended over a much greater space of
time than he had calculated; and every succeeding month has brought him some considerable
accession of materials. It is hoped that the seventh and last volume may appear in the
course of February next.
J. G. L.London, Dec. 10, 1837. CONTENTS OF VOLUME SIXTH. CHAPTER I. PAGE Marriage of Lieutenant Walter Scott—Letter to
Lady Davy—Project of Constable’s
Miscellany—Terry and the Adelphi Theatre Publication of the
Tales of the Crusaders—Preparations for the Life of Buonaparte—Letters to Mr Terry,
Mrs Walter Scott, &c.— 1825, 1 CHAPTER II. Excursion to Ireland—Reception in Dublin—Wicklow—Edgeworthstown—Killarney—Cork
Castle Blarney, &c.—Letters from Moore and
Canning—Llangollen—Elleray—Storrs—Lowther 1825, 39 CHAPTER III. Life of Napoleon in Progress—Visits of Mr
Moore, Mrs Coutts, &c.—Commercial Mania and
Impending Difficulties of 1825, 87 CHAPTER IV. Sir Walter’s Diary begun Nov. 20, 1825—Sketches of Various
Friends—William Clerk—Charles Kirkpatrick
Sharpe—Lord Abercromby—The First Earl of
Minto—Lord Byron—Henry
Mackenzie—Chief Baron
Shepherd—Solicitor-General Hope—Thomas
Moore—Charles Mathews—Count
Davidoff, &c. &c.—Society of Edinburgh—Religious Opinions and
Feelings—Various Alarms about the House of Hurst,
Robinson, and Co.—“Storm Blows Over”—and Song of Bonny Dundee written at Christmas, 1825, 122 PAGE CHAPTER V. Constable in London—Extract from James
Ballantyne’s Memorandum—Scott’s Diary
resumed—Progress of Woodstock—Review of Pepys’
Diary—Skene—Scrope—Mathews,
&c.—Commercial Alarms Renewed at Intervals—Catastrophe of the Three Houses of
Hurst and Robinson,
Constable, and Ballantyne—January and
February, 1826, 174 CHAPTER VI. Extract from James Ballantyne’s Memoranda—Anecdote
from Mr Skene—Letters of January and February, 1826, to J.
G. Lockhart—Mr Morritt—And Lady
Davy—Result of the Embarrassments of Constable,
Hurst, and Ballantyne—Resolution of
Sir Walter Scott—Malachi Malagrowther,
213 CHAPTER VII. Diary resumed—Anecdote of Culloden—Letter from
Mackintosh—Exhibition of Pictures—Modern Painters—Habits of
Composition—Glengarry—Advocates’ Library—Negotiations with Creditors—First Letter of Malachi Malagrowther—Chronique
de Jacques de Lalain—Progress of Woodstock and Buonaparte—Novels by Galt—Miss
Austen—And Lady Morgan—Second and Third Epistles of Malachi—Departure from Castle Street—February and
March, 1826, 227 CHAPTER VIII. Domestic Afflictions—Correspondence with Sir Robert
Dundas and Mr Croker on the subject of Malachi Malagrowther, 265 CHAPTER IX. Diary resumed—Abbotsford in Solitude—Death of Sir A.
Don—Review of the Life of Kemble, &c.—Conclusion
of Woodstock—Death of Lady Scott—Chronicles of the Canongate begun— April—May, 1826, 275 CHAPTER X. Woodstock—Reception of the Novel—Mrs
Brown’s Lodgings—Extracts from a Diary of Captain Basil
Hall—Buonaparte resumed, and Chronicles of the Canongate begun—Uniform Labour during Summer and
Autumn—Extracts from Sir Walter’s Journal— June October, 1826, 308 CHAPTER XI. Journey to London and Paris—Scott’s
Diary—Rokeby—Burleigh—Imitators of the Waverley Novels—Southey’s
Peninsular War—Royal Lodge at Windsor—George IV.—Adelphi
Theatre—Montreuil, &c.—Rue de Tivoli—Pozzo di Borgo—Lord
Granville—Marshals Macdonald and
Marmont—Gallois—W. R.
Spencer—Princess Galitzin—Charles
X.—Duchess of Angouleme, &c.—Enthusiastic Reception
in Paris—Dover Cliff—Theodore Hooke—Lydia
White—Duke of
Wellington—Peel—Canning—Croker,
&c. &c.—Duke of York—Madame
D’Arblay—State of Politics—Oxford—Cheltenham—Abbotsford—Walker Street,
Edinburgh— October December, 1826, 352 ERRATA. P. 76, line 19, for Lady E. Buller, read Butler. P. 159, line 6 from bottom, for so will be, read so ’twill be. P. 160, line 6, for ruins, read rims. P. 169, note, forWoodstock, readLife of Napoleon. P. 207, note, dele French. P. 291, line 7, for “impeticoat the
gratuity,” read (as in most editions of
Shakspeare) “impeticos the gratillity.” P. 371, line 1, for cet, read ce. P. 393, line 5 from bottom, for present, read preceding.
MEMOIRSOF THELIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.CHAPTER I. MARRIAGE OF LIEUTENANT WALTER SCOTT—LETTER TO
LADY DAVY—PROJECT OF CONSTABLE’S
MISCELLANY—TERRY AND THE ADELPHI THEATRE—PUBLICATION OF THE
TALES OF THE CRUSADERS—PREPARATIONS FOR THE LIFE OF BUONAPARTE—LETTERS TO MR TERRY,
MRS WALTER SCOTT, &c.— 1825.
With all his acuteness Captain Basil
Hall does not seem to have caught any suspicion of the real purpose and
meaning of the ball for which he was invited back to Abbotsford on the 9th of January,
1825. That evening was one of the very proudest and happiest in Scott’s brilliant existence. Its festivities were held in honour of a
young lady, whom the Captain names cursorily
among the guests as “the pretty heiress of Lochore.” It was known to not
a few of the party, and I should have supposed it might have been surmised by the rest,
that those halls were displayed for the first time in all their splendour, on an occasion
not less interesting to the Poet than the conclusion of a treaty of marriage between the
heir of his name and fortunes, and the amiable niece of his friends, Sir Adam and Lady
Fer-guson. It was the first regular ball given at
Abbotsford, and the last. Nay, though twelve years have elapsed, I believe nobody has ever
danced under that roof since then. I myself never again saw the whole range of apartments
thrown open for the reception of company except once on the day of Sir Walter
Scott’s funeral.
The lady’s fortune was a
handsome one, and her guardians exerted the powers with which they were invested, by
requiring that the marriage-contract should settle Abbotsford (with reservation of
Sir Walter’s own liferent) upon the affianced
parties, in the same manner as Lochore. To this condition he gave a ready assent, and the
moment he had signed the deed, he exclaimed, “I have now parted with my lands with
more pleasure than I ever derived from the acquisition or possession of them; and if I
be spared for ten years, I think I may promise to settle as much more again upon these
young folks.” It was well for himself and his children that his auguries,
which failed so miserably as to the matter of worldly wealth, were destined to no
disappointment as respected considerations of a higher description. I transcribe one of the
letters by which he communicated the happy event to the wide circle of friends, who were
sure to sympathize in his feelings of paternal satisfaction.
To the Lady Davy, Grosvenor Street, London.
“Edinburgh, 24th January, 1825. “My dear Lady Davy,
“As I know the kind interest which you take in your
very sincere friend and Scotch cousin, I think you will like to hear that my
eldest hope, who, not many years ago, was too bashful to accept your offered
salute, and procured me the happiness of a kiss on his account, beside that
which I always claim on my own, has, as he has grown older, learned a little better how such favours are to be
estimated. In a word, Walter, then an
awkward boy, has now turned out a smart young fellow, with good manners, and a
fine figure, if a father may judge, standing well with the Horse-Guards, and
much master of the scientific part of his profession, retaining at the same
time much of the simple honesty of his original character, though now
travelled, and acquainted with courts and camps. Some one of these good
qualities, I know not which, or whether it were the united force of the whole,
and particularly his proficiency in the attack of strong places, has acquired
him the affection and hand of a very sweet and pretty Mrs Anne Page, who is here as yet known by the name of
Miss Jobson of Lochore, which she
exchanges next week for that of Mrs Scott of Abbotsford.
It would seem some old flirtation betwixt Walter and her
had hung on both their minds, for at the conclusion of a Christmas party we
learned the pretty heiress had determined to sing the old tune of— ‘Mount and go—mount and make you ready, Mount and go, and be a soldier’s lady.’ Though her fortune be considerable, the favours of the public will enable
me to make such settlements as her friends think very adequate. The only
impediment has been the poor mother (a Highland lady of great worth and
integrity), who could not brook parting with the sole object of her care and
attention, to resign her to the vicissitudes of a military life, while I
necessarily refused to let my son sink into a mere fox-hunting,
muir-fowl-shooting squire. She has at length been obliged to acquiesce rather
than consent—her friends and counsellors being clear-sighted enough to see that
her daughter’s happiness could scarce be promoted by compelling the girl to break off a mutual attachment, and a match with a
young lieutenant of hussars, sure of having a troop very soon, with a good
estate in reversion, and as handsome a fellow as ever put his foot in a
stirrup. So they succeeded in bringing matters to a bearing, although old Papa
has practised the ‘profane and unprofitable art of
poem-making’—and the youngster wears a pair of formidable mustachios.
They are to be quiet at Abbotsford for a few days, and then they go to town to
make their necessary purchases of carriage, and so forth; they are to be at my
old friend, Miss ’s, and will
scarcely see any one; but as I think you will like to call on my dear little
Jane, I am sure she will see you, and I know you will
be kind and indulgent to her. Here is a long letter when I only meant a line. I
think they will be in London about the end of February, or beginning of March,
and go from thence to Ireland, Walter’s leave of
absence being short. My kindest compliments to Sir
Humphry, and pray acquaint him of this change in our family,
which opens to me another vista in the dark distance of futurity, which, unless
the lady had what Sir Hugh Evans calls good gifts, could scarce otherwise have happened during
my lifetime—at least without either imprudence on
Walter’s part, or restrictions of habits of
hospitality and comfort on my own.—Always, dear Lady
Davy, your affectionate and respectful friend and cousin,
Walter Scott.”
The marriage took place at Edinburgh on the 3d day of February, and when
the young couple left Abbotsford two or three weeks afterwards, Sir
Walter promised to visit them at their regimental quarters in Ireland in the
course of the summer. Before he fulfilled that purpose he had the additional pleasure of
seeing his son gazetted as Captain in the King’s
Hussars—a step for which Sir Walter advanced the large sum of L.3500.
Some other incidents will be gathered from his letters to his son and daughter-in-law—of
which, however, I give such copious extracts chiefly for the illustration they afford of
his truly paternal tenderness for the young lady who had just been admitted into his
family—and which she, from the first hour of their connexion to the last, repaid by a
filial love and devotedness that formed one of the sweetest drops in his cup of life.
To Mrs Walter Scott, Dublin.
“Abbotsford, March 20, 1825. “My dearest Child,
“I had the great pleasure of receiving your kind and
attentive letter from London a few days later than I ought to have done,
because it was lying here while I was absent on a little excursion, of which I
have to give a most interesting account. Believe me, my love, I am very grateful for the time you bestow on me, and
that you cannot give so great happiness to any one as to me by saying you are
well and happy. My daughters, who deserve all the affection a father can
bestow, are both near me, and in safe guardianship, the one under the charge of
a most affectionate husband, and the other under the eye of her parents. For my
sons, I have taught them, and what was more difficult, I have taught myself the
philosophy, that for their own sake and their necessary advancement in life,
their absences from my house must be long, and their visits short; and as they
are both, I hope, able to conduct themselves wisely and honourably, I have
learned to be contented to hope the best, without making myself or them uneasy
by fruitless anxiety. But for you, my dear Jane, who have come among us with such
generous and confiding affection, my stoicism must excuse
me if I am more anxious than becomes either a philosopher or a hackneyed man of
the world, who uses in common cases to take that world as it goes. I cannot
help worrying myself with the question, whether the object of such constant and
affectionate care may not feel less happy than I could wish her in scenes which
must be so new, and under privations which must be felt by you the more that
your earlier life has been an entire stranger to them. I know Walter’s care and affection will soften
and avert these as much as possible, and if there be any thing in the power of
old papa to assist him in the matter, you will make him most happy by tasking
that power to the utmost. I wrote to him yesterday that he might proceed in
bargain for the troop, and send me the terms that I might provide the needful,
as mercantile folks call it, in time and place suitable. The rank of Captain
gives, I am aware, a degree of consideration which is worth paying for; and
what is still more, my little Jane, as a Captain’s
lady, takes better accommodation every way than is given to a
subaltern’s. So we must get the troop by all means, coute qui coute.
“Now I will plague you with no more business; but
give you an account of myself in the manner of Mr
Jonathan Oldbuck, if ever you heard of such a person. You must
suppose that you are busy with your work, and that I am telling you some long
story or other, and that you now and then look round and say eh, as you do when you are startled by a question or an assertion—it
is not quite eh neither, but just a little quiet
interjection, which shows you are attending. You see what a close observer papa
is of his child.
“Well then, when, as I calculate (as a Yankee would
say), you were tossing on the waves of the Irish Channel, I was also tossing on
the Vadum Scotticum of Ptolemy, on my return from the celebrated
Urbs Orrea of Tacitus. ‘Eh,’ says Jane; ‘Lord, Walter, what can the old gentleman
mean?’—‘Weiss nichts
davon,’ says the hussar, taking his cigar from under
his moustaches (no, I beg pardon, he does not take out the cigar, because, from
the last advices, he has used none in his London journey). He says weiss nichts, however, which is, in
Italian, No so—in French, Je
nen scais rien—in broad Scotch, I
neither ken nor care—Well you ask Mr
Edgeworth, or the chaplain of the regiment, or the first scholar
you come by—that is to say, you don’t attempt to pronounce the
hieroglyphical word, but you fold down the letter just at the place, show the
talismanic Urbs Orrea and no more,
and ask him in which corner of the earth Sir
Walter can have been wandering? So, after a moment’s
recollection, he tells you that the great Roman general, Agricola, was strangely put to his trumps at the
Urbs Orrea during his
campaign in Caledonia, and that the ninth legion was surprised there by the
British and nearly destroyed; then he gets a county history and a
Tacitus, and Sir Robert
Sibbald’s Tracts, and begins to fish about, and finds at
length that the Urbs Orrea is
situated in the kingdom of Fife*—that it is now called Lochore—that it belonged
to the Lochores—the De Vallences—the
Wardlaws—the Malcolms—and Lord
knows whom in succession and then, in a sheet wet from the press, he finds it
is now the property of a pretty and accomplished young lady, who, in an
unthrift generosity, has given it with a much more valuable present, namely,
her own self—to a lieutenant of hussars. So there
the scholar shuts his book, and observes that as there are many cairns and
tumuli and other memo-
* According to the general creed (out of the
“Kingdom of Fife,” that is to say)—Mr Oldbuck was quite wrong as to the identification of
this prætorium.
rials upon the scene of action, he wonders whether
Sir Walter had not the curiosity to open some of them.
‘Now heaven forbid,’ says Jane;
‘I think the old knight has stock enough for boring one with his
old Border ballads and battles, without raising the bones of men who have
slept 1000 years quietly on my own estate to assist him.’ Then I
can keep silence no longer, but speak in my own proper person. ‘Pray
do you not bore me, Mrs Jane, and have not I a right
to retaliate?’—‘Eh,’ says the
Lady of Lochore, ‘how is it possible I should bore you, and so many
hundred miles between us?’—‘That’s the very
reason,’ says the Laird of Abbotsford, ‘for if you were
near me the thing would be impossible—but being, as you say, at so many
hundred miles distant, I am always thinking about you, and asking myself an
hundred questions which I cannot answer; for instance, I cannot go about my
little improvements without teasing myself with thinking whether
Jane would like the green-house larger or less—and
whether Jane would like such line of walk, or such
another—and whether that stile is not too high for
Jane to step over.’
‘Dear papa,’ says
Jane, ‘your own style is really too high for
my comprehension.’
“Well then, I am the most indulgent papa in the
world, and so you see I have turned over a new leaf. The plain sense of all
this rambling stuff, which escapes from my pen as it would from my tongue, is
that I have visited for a day, with Isaac
Bayley,* your dominions of Lochore, and was excellently
entertained and as happy as I could be, where every thing was putting me in
mind that she was absent whom I could most have wished present. It felt,
somehow, like an intrusion; and as if it was not quite right that I should be
in Jane’s house,
* A cousin of the young lady, and the legal manager of
her affairs.
while
Jane herself was amongst strangers; this is the sort
of false colouring which imagination gives to events and circumstances. Well,
but I was much pleased with all I saw, and particularly with the high order
Mr Bayley has put every thing into; and I climbed
Bennarty like a wild goat, and scrambled through the old crags like a wild-cat,
and pranced through your pastures like a wild-buck (fat enough to be in season
though), and squattered through your drains like a wild-duck, and had nearly
lost myself in your morasses like the ninth legion, and visited the old castle,
which is not a stupit place, and
in short, wandered from Dan to Beersheba, and tired myself as effectually in
your dominions as I did you in mine upon a certain walk to the Rhymer’s
Glen. I had the offer of your pony, but the weather being too cold, I preferred
walking; a cheerful little old gentleman, Mr Burrell, and
Mr Gray the clergyman, dined with
us, and your health was not forgotten. On my retreat (Border fashion) I brought
away your pony and the little chaise, believing that both will be better under
Peter Mathieson’s charge than
at Lochore, in case of its being let to strangers. Don’t you think
Jane’s pony will be taken care of?
“The day we arrived the weather was gloomy and rainy,
the climate sorrowful for your absence I suppose; the next, a fine sunny frost;
the third, when I came off, so checkered with hail showers as to prevent a
visit I had meditated to two very interesting persons in the neighbourhood.
‘The Chief Commissioner and
Charles Adam, I
suppose?’—‘Not a bit, guess again.’ O, Mr Beaton of
Contal, or Mr Sym of
Blair?’—‘Not a bit, guess again.’—‘I won’t guess
any more.’—Well then, it was two honest gentlemen hewn in stone—some of
the old knights of Lochore, who were described to me as lying under your
gallery in the kirk; but as I had no reason to expect a
warm reception from them, I put off my visit till some more genial season.
“This puts me in mind of Warwick unvisited, and of my
stupidity in not letting you know that the church is as well worth seeing as
the castle, and you might have seen that, notwithstanding the badness of the
morning. All the tombs of the mighty Beauchamps and
Nevilles are to be seen there, in the most magnificent
style of Gothic display, and in high preservation. However, this will be for
another day, and you must comfort yourself that life has something still to
show.
“I trust you will soon find yourself at
Edgeworthstown, where I know you will be received with open arms, for Miss Edgeworth’s kindness is equal to
her distinguished talents.
“I am glad you like my old acquaintance, Mathews. Some day I will make him show his
talent for your amusement in private; for I know him well. It is very odd, he
is often subject to fits of deep melancholy.
“This is a letter of formidable length, but our
bargain is, long or short, just as the humour chances to be, and you are never
to mend a pen or think upon a sentence, but write whatever comes readiest. My
love to Walter. I am rather anxious to
know if he has got his horses well over, and whether all his luggage has come
safe. I am glad you have got a carriage to your mind; it is the best economy to
get a good one at once. Above all, I shall be anxious to hear how you like the
society of the ladies of the 15th. I know my Jane’s quiet prudence and good sense will save her from
the risk of making sudden intimacies, and induce her to consider for a little
while which of her new companions may suit her best; in the mean-while being
civil to all.
“You see that I make no apology for writing silly
letters; and why should you think that I can think yours stupid? There is not a stupit bit about them, nor any word, or so much as a comma, that is
not interesting to me. Lady Scott and
Anne send their kindest love to you,
and grateful compliments to Mrs
Edgeworth, Miss Edgeworth,
our friend Miss Harriet, and all the
family at Edgeworthstown. Buona notte, amata
bene. Goodnight, darling, and take good care of
yourself. I always remain your affectionate father,
Walter Scott.
“P.S.—They say a man’s fortune depends on
a wife’s pleasure. I do not know how that may be; but I believe a
lady’s comfort depends much on her fille-de-chambre, and therefore beg to know how
Rebecca discharges her office.”
To Mrs Walter Scott, Edgeworthstown, Ireland.
“Abbotsford, March 23, 1825. “My dearest Jane,
“I am afraid you will think me a merciless
correspondent, assailing you with so close a fire of letters; but having a
frank, I thought it as well to send you an epistle, though it can contain
nothing more of interest excepting that we are all well. I can, however, add
more particularly than formerly, that I learn from Mrs
Bayley that Mrs
Jobson’s health is not only good, but her spirits are
remarkably so, so as to give the greatest pleasure to all friends. I can see, I
think, a very good reason for this; for, after the pain of the first separation
from so dear an object, and after having brought her mind to believe that your
present situation presented to you a fair chance for happiness, I can easily
suppose that her maternal anxiety is greatly relieved from fears and
apprehensions which formerly distressed her. Nothing can be more kind and more
handsome than the way in which Mrs
Jobson speaks of Walter,
which I mention, because it gives me sincere pleasure, and will, I am sure,
afford the same to you, or rather much more.
“My troops here are sadly diminished. I have only
Anne to parade for her morning walk,
and to domineer over for going in thin slippers and silk stockings through
dirty paths, and in lace veils through bushes and thorn brakes. I think
Jane sometimes came in for a share
of the lecture on these occasions. So I walk my solitary round—generally
speaking—look after my labourers, and hear them regularly enquire, ‘If I
have heard from the ‘Captain and his Leddy?’ I wish I could answer
them—yes; but have no reason to be impatient. This
is the 23d, and I suppose Walter will be
at Cork this evening to join the 15th, and that you are safe at Edgeworthstown
to spend your first short term of widowhood. I hope the necessary hospitality
to his mess will not occasion his dissipating too much; for, to be a very
strong young man, I know no one with whom what is called hard living agrees so
ill. A happy change in the manners of the times fortunately renders such abuse
of the good creature, wine, much less frequent and less fashionable than it was
in my days and Sir Adam’s.
Drinking is not now the vice of the times, whatever vices and follies they may
have adopted in its stead.
“I had proceeded thus far in my valuable
communication, when, lo! I was alarmed by the entrance of that terrific animal
a two-legged boar—one of the largest size and most tremendous powers. By the
way, I learned, from no less an authority than George Canning, what my own experience has since made good,
that an efficient bore must always have something respectable about him,
otherwise no one would permit him to exercise his occupation. He must be, for
example, a very rich man (which, perhaps, gives the greatest privilege of
all)—or he must be a man
of rank and condition too important to be treated sans ceremonie—or a man of learning (often a dreadful
bore)—or of talents undoubted, or of high pretensions to wisdom and
experience—or a great traveller;—in short, he must have some tangible privilege
to sanction his profession. Without something of this kind, one would treat a
bore as you do a vagrant mendicant, and send him off to the workhouse if he
presumed to annoy you. But when properly qualified, the bore is more like a
beggar with a badge and pass from his parish, which entitles him to disturb you
with his importunity whether you will or no. Now, my bore is a complete
gentleman and an old friend, but, unhappily for those who know him, master of
all Joe Miller’s stories of
sailors and Irishmen, and full of quotations from the classics as hackneyed as
the post-horses of Melrose. There was no remedy; I must either stand his shot
within doors or turn out with him for a long walk, and, for the sake of
elbow-room, I preferred the last. Imagine an old gentleman, who has been
handsome, and has still that sort of pretension which leads him to wear tight
pantaloons and a smart half-boot, neatly adapted to show off his leg; suppose
him as upright and straight as a poker, if the poker’s head had been, by
some accident, bent to one side; add to this, that he is a dogged Whig;
consider that I was writing to Jane, and
desired not to be interrupted by much more entertaining society—Well, I was had, however—fairly caught—and out we sallied, to make
the best we could of each other. I felt a sort of necessity to ask him to
dinner; but the invitation, like Macbeth’samen, stuck in my
throat. For the first he got the lead, and kept it; but opportunities occur to
an able general, if he knows how to make use of them. In an evil hour for him,
and a happy one for me, he started the topic of our intended railroad; there I was a match for him, having
had, on Tuesday last, a meeting with Harden, the two Torwoodlees,
and the engineer on this subject, so that I had at my finger-end every cut, every lift, every degree of elevation or
depression, every pass in the country, and every possible means of crossing
them. So I kept the whip-hand of him completely, and never permitted him to get
off the railway again to his own ground. In short, so thoroughly did I bore my
bore, that he sickened and gave in, taking a short leave of me. Seeing him in
full retreat, I then ventured to make the civil offer of
a dinner. But the railroad had been breakfast, luncheon, dinner, and supper to
boot—he hastily excused himself, and left me at a double-quick time, sick of
railroads, I dare say, for six months to come. But I must not forget that I am
perhaps abusing the privilege I have to bore you, being that of your
affectionate papa.
“How nicely we could manage without the said
railroad, now the great hobby of our Teviotdale lairds, if we could by any
process of conjuration waft to Abbotsford some of the coal and lime from
Lochore—though, if I were to wish for such impossibilities, I would rather
desire Prince Houssein’s tapestry in
the Arabian Nights to bring Walter and
Jane to us now and then, than I
would wish for ‘Fife and all the lands about
it.’*
“By the by, Jane, after all, though she looks so demure, is a very sly
girl, and keeps her accomplishments to herself. You would not talk with me
about planting and laying out ground; and yet, from what you had been doing at
Lochore, I see what a pretty turn you have for these matters. I wish you were
here to advise me about the little pond which we passed, where, if you
remember, there is a new cottage built. I intend to
* A song of Dr Blacklock’s.
plant it with aquatic trees, willows,
alders, poplars, and so forth—and put trouts and perches into the water—and
have a preserve of wild-ducks on the pond, with Canadian geese and some other
water-fowl. I am to get some eggs from Lord
Traquair of a curious species of half-reclaimed wild-ducks,
which abound near his solitary old chateau, and no where else in Scotland that
I know of; and I can get the Canadian geese, curious painted animals, that look
as if they had flown out of a figured Chinese paper, from Mr Murray of Broughton. The foolish folks,
when I was absent, chose to improve on my plan by making an island in the pond,
which is exactly the size and shape of a Stilton cheese. It will be useful,
however, for the fowl to breed in.
“Mamma drove out
your pony and carriage to-day. She was (twenty years ago), the best lady-whip in Edinburgh, and was delighted to find that
she retained her dexterity. I hope she will continue to exercise the rein and
whip now and then, as her health is much improved by moderate exercise.
“Adieu, my dear Jane. Mamma and Anne join in the kindest love and best wishes.
I please myself with the idea that I shall have heard you are well and happy
long before this reaches you.—Believe me always your affectionate father,
Walter Scott.
“I hope you will take my good example, and write
without caring or thinking either what you have got to say, or in what
words you say it.”
To Walter Scott, Esq., &c. &c. Barracks,
Cork.
“Abbotsford, 4th April, 1825. “My dear Children,
“I received your joint composition without a date,
but which circumstances enabled me to fix it as
written upon the 24th or 25th March. I am very sorry on Jane’s account for the unpleasant
necessity of night journeys, and the inconvenience of bad quarters. I almost
wish you had stuck by your original plan of leaving Jane
at Edgeworthstown. As for you, Mr
Walter, I do not grudge your being obliged to pay a little deference
to the wig and gown. Cedant arma
togæ is a lesson well taught at an assize. But although
you, thanks to the discipline of the most excellent of fathers, have been
taught not to feel greatly the inconvenience of night journeys or bad lodgings,
yet, my poor Jane, who has not had these advantages, must,
I fear, feel very uncomfortable; and I hope you will lay your plans so that she
shall be exposed to them as little as possible. I like old songs, and I like to
hear Jane sing them; but I would not like that she had
cause to sing, ‘Oh but I’m weary with wandering, Oh. but my fortunes are bad; It sets not a gentle young lady To follow a sodger lad.’ But against the recurrence of these inconveniences I am sure
Walter will provide as well as he can. I hope you have
delivered your introduction to Mrs Scott
(of Harden’s) friend in the neighbourhood of Cork. Good introductions
should never be neglected, though numerous ones are rather a bore. A
lady’s society, especially when entering on life, should be, as they are
said to choose their liquor, little but good; and Mrs
Scott being really a woman of fashion, a character not quite so
frequent in reality as aspired to—and being, besides, such an old friend of
yours, is likely to introduce you to valuable and creditable society.
“We had a visit from Lockhart yesterday. He rode out on Saturday with a friend, and
they dined here,
remained Sunday, and left us this morning early. I feel obliged to him for
going immediately to Mrs Jobson’s
when the explosion took place so near her in my friend Colin Mackenzie’s premises.* She had
experienced no inconvenience but the immediate fright, for the shock was
tremendous—and was rather proud of the substantial capacity of the house, which
had not a pane broken, when many of the adjoining tenements scarce had one
left.
“We have had our share of casualties. Sibyl came down with me, but without any injury; but
Tom Purdie being sent on some
business by Mr Laidlaw, she fell with
him, and rolled over him, and bruised him very much. This is rather too bad, so
I shall be on the pavé for a
pony, my neck being rather precious.
“Touching Colonel
Thwackwell,† of whom I know nothing but the name, which
would bespeak him a strict disciplinarian, I suppose you are now arrived at
that time of life you can take your ground from your observation, without being
influenced by the sort of cabal which often exists in our army, especially in
the corps where the officers are men of fortunes or expectations, against a
commanding officer. The execution of their duty is not always popular with young men, who may like the dress and show of a
regimental officer; and it often happens that a little pettishness on the one
side begets a little repulsiveness of manner on the other, so that it becomes
the question how the one shall command, and the other obey, in the way most
disagreeable to the other, without a tangible infringement of rules. This
* This alludes to an explosion of gas in Shandwick
Place, Edinburgh.
† Sir Walter had misread, or chose to miswrite,
the name of his son’s new commandant, Lieutenant-Colonel Thackwell.
is the shame of our army, and in a greater degree that of
our navy. A humble and reflecting man keeps as much aloof as possible from such
feuds. You have seen the world more than when you joined the 18th.
“The Catholic question seems likely to be carried at
last. I hope, though I doubt it a little, that Ireland will be the quieter, and
the people more happy. I suspect, however, that it is laying a plaster to the
foot while the head aches, and that the fault is in the landholders’
extreme exactions, not in the disabilities of the Catholics, or any more remote
cause.
“My dear Jane,
pray take care of yourself, and write me soon how you are and what you are
doing. I hope it will contain a more pleasant account of your travels than the
last. Mamma and Anne send best loves. I hope my various letters have all come
to your hand, and am, my dear children, always your affectionate father,
Walter Scott.”
To Walter Scott, Esq., Lieutenant, 15th Hussars,
Barracks, Dublin.
“Abbotsford, 27th April, 1825. “My dear Walter,
“I received to-day your interesting communication,
and have written to Edinburgh to remit the price of this troop as soon as
possible. I can make this out without troubling Mr
Bayley; but it will pare my nails short for the summer, and I
fear prevent my paying your carriage, as I had intended.
“Nicol is
certainly going to sell Faldonside.* The Nabal asks L.40,000,—at least L.5000
too much. Yet in the present low rate of money, and general thirst for land,
there is no saying but he may get a fool to offer
* See ante, Vol.
iv. p. 303.
him his price, or near it. I should like
to know your views about this matter, as it is more your concern than mine,
since you will, I hope, have a much longer date of it. I think I could work it
all off during my life, and also improve the estate highly; but then it is
always a heavy burden, and I would not like to undertake it, unless I was sure
that Jane and you desired such an
augmentation of territory. I do not mean to do any thing hasty, but, as an
opportunity may cast up suddenly, I should like to know your mind.
“I conclude, this being 27th April, that you are all
snugly settled in Dublin. I am a little afraid of the gaieties for Jane, and hope she will be gay moderately that
she may be gay long. The frequent habit of late hours is always detrimental to
health, and sometimes has consequences which last for life. Avis au lecteur; of course I do not expect
you to shut yourselves up at your period of life. Your course of gaiety at Cork
reminds me of Jack Johnstone’s
song—
‘Then we’ll visit the Callaghans, Brallaghans, Nowlans, and Dowlans likewise, And bother them all with the beauty Which streams from my Judy’s
(or Jeanie’s) black eyes.’
“We have better accounts of little Johnnie of late—his cough is over for the
present, and the learned cannot settle whether it has been the hooping-cough or
no. Sophia talks of taking him to
Germiston. Lockhart comes here for the
Circuit, and I expect him to-morrow.
“Sir Adam and
Lady Ferguson bring most excellent
accounts of Mrs Jobson’s good
health and spirits. Sir Henry Jardine
(he writes himself no less now) hath had the dignity of knighthood inflicted on
him. Mamma and Anne join in kind love. I expect a long letter from Jane one of these days soon; she writes too
well not to write with ease to herself, and therefore I am
resolved her talent shall not be idle, if a little jogging can prevail on her
to exercise it.
“You have never said a word of your horses, nor how
you have come on with your domestics, those necessary plagues of our life. Two
or three days since, that cub of Sir
Adam’s chose to amuse himself with flinging crackers about
the hall here when we were at dinner. I think I gave him a proper jobation.
“Here is the first wet day we have had—very welcome,
as the earth required it much, and the season was backward. I can hear Bogie
whistling for joy.
“Your affectionate father, Walter Scott.”
In May 1825, Sir Walter’s friend
Terry, and his able brother comedian, Mr Frederick Yates, entered on a negotiation, which
terminated, in July, in their becoming joint lessees and managers of the Adelphi Theatre,
London. Terry requested Scott and Ballantyne to assist him on this occasion by some advance
of money, or if that should be inconvenient, by the use of their credit. They were both
very anxious to serve him, but Sir Walter had a poor opinion of
speculations in theatrical property, and, moreover, entertained suspicions, too well
justified by the result, that Terry was not much qualified for
conducting the pecuniary part of such a business. Ultimately
Ballantyne, who shared these scruples, became
Terry’s security for a considerable sum (I think L.500), and
Sir Walter pledged his credit in like manner to the extent of
L.1250. He had, in the sequel, to pay off both this sum and that for which
Ballantyne had engaged.
Several letters were interchanged before Terry received the support he had requested from his Scotch friends; and I must extract two of Sir Walter’s. The first is, in my opinion, when
considered with reference to the time at which it was written, and the then near though
unforeseen result of the writer’s own commercial speculations, as remarkable a
document as was ever penned. It is, moreover, full of shrewd and curious suggestions
touching theatrical affairs in general—from the highest to the lowest. The second is, at
least, a specimen of friendly caution and delicate advice most inimitably characteristic of
Scott.
To Daniel Terry, Esq., London.
“Edinburgh, May 5th, 1825. “My Dear Terry,
“I received your long confidential letter; and as the
matter is in every respect important, I have given it my anxious consideration.
The plot is a good plot, and the friends, though I know them only by your
report, are, I doubt not, good friends, and full of expectation. There are,
however, two particulars unfavourable to all theatrical speculations, and of
which you are probably better aware than I am. The first is, that every scheme
depending on public caprice must be irregular in its returns. I remember
John Kemble, complaining to me of
Harry Siddons’ anxious and
hypochondriac fears about his Edinburgh concern, said, ‘He does not
consider that no theatre whatever can be considered as a regular source of
income, but must be viewed as a lottery, at one time strikingly successful,
at another a total failure.’ Now this affects your scheme in two
ways. First, you can hardly expect, I fear, your returns to be so regular every
season, even though your calculation be just as to the recent average. And,
secondly, you must secure some fund, either of money or credit, to meet those
blanks and bad seasons which must occasionally occur. The
best business is ruined when it becomes pinched for money, and gets into the
circle of discounting bills, and buying necessary articles at high prices and
of inferior quality, for the sake of long credit. I own your plan would have
appeared to me more solid, though less splendid, if Mr Jones, or any other monied man, had retained one-half or
one-third of the adventure; for every speculation requires a certain command of
money, and cannot be conducted with any plausibility upon credit alone. It is
easy to make it feasible on paper, but the times of payment arrive to a
certainty. Those of supply are less certain, and cannot be made to meet the
demands with the same accuracy. A month’s difference between demand and
receipt makes loss of credit; loss of credit is in such a case ruin. I would
advise you and Mr Yates to consider
this, and sacrifice some view of profit to obtain stability by the assistance
of some monied man—a class of whom many are in your great city just gaping for
such an opportunity to lay out cash to advantage. This difficulty, the want of
solid cash, is an obstacle to all attempts whatsoever; but there is something,
it would seem, peculiarly difficult in managing a theatre. All who practise the
fine arts in any department are, from the very temperament necessary to
success, more irritable, jealous, and capricious than other men made up of
heavier elements; but the jealousy among players is signally active, because
their very persons are brought into direct comparison, and from the crown of
the head to the sole of the foot they are pitted by the public in express
rivalry against each other. Besides, greatly as the profession has risen in
character of late years, theatrical talent must still be found frequently
allied with imperfect general education, low habits, and sometimes the follies
and vices which arise out of them. All this makes, I should think, a theatre very difficult to manage,
and liable to sudden checks when your cattle jibb or do
not work kindly. I think you have much of the talent to manage this; and bating
a little indolence, which you can always conquer when you have a mind and a
motive, I know no one whose taste, temper, and good sense make him more likely
to gain and secure the necessary influence over the performers. But
il faut de l’
argent—you must be careful in your situation, that a check shall
not throw you on the breakers, and for this there is no remedy but a handsome
provision of the blunt. This is the second particular, I think, unfavourable to
undertakings of a theatrical description, and against which I would wish to see
you guarded by a more ample fund than your plan involves.
“You have of course ascertained from the books of the
theatre that the returns of receipts are correct; but I see no provision made
for wear and tear of stock, expense of getting up new pieces, &c. which, in
such an undertaking, must be considerable. Perhaps it is included in the charge
of L.36 per night; but if not, it seems to me that it will materially alter
your calculations for the worse, for you are naturally disposed to be liberal
in such expenses, and the public will expect it. Without baits the fish cannot
be caught. I do not state these particulars from any wish to avoid assisting
you in this undertaking; much the contrary. If I saw the prospect of your
getting fairly on the wing, nothing could give me more pleasure than to assist
to the extent of my means, and I shall only, in that case, regret that they are
at present more limited than I could wish by circumstances which I will
presently tell you. But I should not like to see you take flight, like the
ingenious mechanist in Rasselas only to flutter a few yards, and fall into the lake. This
would be a most heart-breaking business, and would hang
like a millstone about your neck for all your life. Capital and talent will do
excellent things together; but depend on it, talent without capital will no
more carry on an extensive and progressive undertaking of this nature than a
race-horse will draw a Newcastle waggon. Now, I cannot at present assist you
with ready money, which is the great object in your undertaking. This year has
been, owing to many reasons, the heaviest of my expenditure, and the least
fruitful of profit, because various anxieties attending Walter’s marriage, and feasting, &c.
after it, have kept me from my usual lucrative labours. It has no doubt been a
most advantageous concern, for he has got an amiable girl, whom he loves, and
who is warmly attached to him, with a very considerable fortune. But I have had
to find cash for the purchase of a troop for him about L.3500; item, the bride’s jewels, and so forth, becoming
her situation and fortune, L.500: item, for a remount to
him on joining his regiment, equipage for quarters, carriage, and other things,
that they may enter life with a free income, L.1000 at least. Moreover, I am a
sharer to the extent of L.1500 on a railroad, which will bring coals and lime
here at half price, and double the rent of the arable part of my property, but
is dead outlay in the mean-time; and I have shares in the oil-gas, and other
promising concerns, not having resisted the mania of the day, though I have
yielded to it but soberly; also, I have the dregs of Abbotsford House to pay
for and all besides my usual considerable expenditure; so I must look for some
months to be put to every corner of my saddle. I could not let my son marry her
like a beggar; but, in the mean-time, I am like my namesake in the days of the
crusades—Walter the Penniless.
“Every one grumbles at his own profession, but here
is the devil of a calling for you, where a man pays L.3000 for an annuity of L.400 a-year and less
renounces his free will in almost every respect;—must rise at five every
morning to see horses curried—dare not sleep out of a particular town without
the leave of a cross Colonel, who is often disposed to refuse it merely because
he has the power to do so; and, last of all, may be sent to the most unhealthy
climates to die of the rot, or be shot like a black-cock. There is a per
contra, to be sure—fine clothes and fame; but the first must be paid for, and
the other is not come by by one out of the hundred. I shall be anxious to know
what you are able to do. Your ready is the devil— ‘The thing may to-morrow be all in your power, But the money, gadzooks, must be paid in an hour.’ If you were once set a-rolling, time would come round with me, and then I
should be able to help you a little more than at present. Mean-while, I am
willing to help you with my credit by becoming one of your guarantees to the
extent of L.1250.
“But what I am most anxious about is to know how you
raise the L.5000 cash; if by bills and discounts, I beg to say I must decline
having to do with the business at all; for besides the immense expense of
renewals, that mode of raising money is always liable to some sudden check,
which throws you on your back at once, and I should then have hurt myself and
deprived myself of the means of helping you some other way. If you can get such
a sum in loan for a term of years certain, that would do well. Still better, I
think, could you get a monied partner in the concern to pay the sum down, and
hold some L.2000 more ready for current expenses. I wish to know whether in the
L.36 for nightly expenses you include your own salary, within which you would
probably think it prudent to restrain your own expenses, at least for a year or
two; for, believing as I do, that your calculation of L.70
per night (five per cent on the outlay) is rather sanguine, I would like to
know that your own and Mr Yates’s
expenses were provided for, so as to leave the receipts, whatever they may be,
free to answer the burdens. If they do so, you will have great reason to be
contented. I need not add that Theodore
Hook’s assistance will be impayable. On the whole, my apprehension is for want of
money in the outset. Should you either start with marked success, or have
friends sufficient to carry on at some disadvantage for a season or two, I
should have little fear; but great attention and regularity will be necessary.
You are no great accountant yourself, any more than I am, but I trust
Mr Yates is. All rests with prudence and management.
Murray is making a fortune for his
sister and family on the very bargain which Siddons, poor fellow, could not have sustained for two years
longer. If I have seemed more cautious in this matter than you might expect
from my sincere regard for you, it is because caution is as necessary for you
as myself; and I assure you I think as deeply on your account as on my own. I
beg kind compliments to Mrs Terry, and
inclose a lock of my gray hair, which Jane desired me to send you for some brooch or clasp at
Hamlet’s.—Ever yours, very truly,
Walter Scott.”
To the Same.
“My dear Terry,
“You have long ere this heard from honest James that he accedes to your proposal of
becoming one of your sureties. I did not think it right in the first instance
either to encourage or deter him from taking this step, but sent him the whole
correspondence upon the subject, that he might judge for himself, and I fancy
he con-cluded that his own risk of
loss was not by any means in proportion to your fair prospect of advantage.
“There is an idea among some of your acquaintance,
which I partly acquiesce in, that you are in general somewhat of a
procrastinator. I believe I have noticed the same thing myself; but then I
consider it the habit of one accustomed to alternations of severe exertion and
great indolence; and I have no doubt that it will give place to the necessity
of following out a regular, stated, and daily business—where every hour brings
its own peculiar duties, and you feel yourself like the mail-coach compelled to
be in to time. I know such routine always cures me of
the habit of indolence, which, on other occasions, I give way to as much as any
man. This objection to the success which all agree is in your own power, I have
heard coupled with another, which is also founded on close observation of your
character, and connected with an excellent point of it; it is, that you will be
too desirous to do things perfectly well—to consider the petite economie necessary to a very
extensive undertaking. This, however, is easily guarded against. I remember
Mrs John Kemble telling me how much
she had saved by degrading some unfortunate figurantes into paper veils and
ruffles. I think it was a round sum, and without going such lengths, I fear
severer economy than one would like to practise is essential to making a
theatre profitable. Now, I have mentioned the only two personal circumstances
which induce envy to lift her voice against your prospects. I think it right
you should know them, for there is something to be considered in both
particulars; I would not mention them till the affair was finished, because I
would not have you think I was sheltering myself under such apologies. That the
perils rising out of them are not formidable in my eyes, I have sufficiently
shown; and I think it right to mention them now. I know I
need not apologize for my frankness, nor will you regard it either as an undue
exercise of the privilege of an adviser, or an abuse of the circumstances in
which this matter has placed us.—Yours ever, with best love to Mrs Terry and Watt,
W. Scott.”
While this business of Terry’s was under consideration, Scott asked me to go out with him one Saturday to Abbotsford, to meet
Constable and James
Ballantyne, who were to be there for a quiet consultation on some projects
of great importance. I had shortly before assisted at a minor conclave held at
Constable’s villa of Polton, and was not surprised that
Sir Walter should have considered his publisher’s new plans
worthy of very ample deliberation. He now opened them in more fulness of detail, and
explained his views in a manner that might well excite admiration, not unmixed with alarm.
Constable was meditating nothing less than a total revolution in
the art and traffic of bookselling; and the exulting and blazing fancy with which he
expanded and embellished his visions of success, hitherto undreamt of in the philosophy of
the trade, might almost have induced serious suspicions of his sanity, but for the curious
accumulation of pregnant facts on which he rested his justification, and the dexterous
sagacity with which he uncoiled his practical inferences. He startled us at the outset by
saying, “Literary genius may, or may not, have done its best; but printing and
bookselling, as instruments for enlightening and entertaining mankind, and, of course,
for making money, are as yet in mere infancy. Yes, the trade are in their
cradle.” Scott eyed the florid bookseller’s beaming
countenance, and the solemn stare with which the equally portly printer was listening, and
pushing round the bottles with a hearty
chuckle, bade me “Give our twa sonsie babbies a drap mother’s
milk.” Constable sucked in fresh inspiration, and proceeded
to say that, wild as we might think him, his new plans had been suggested by, and were in
fact mainly grounded upon, a sufficiently prosaic authority—namely, the annual schedule of
assessed taxes, a copy of which interesting document he drew from his pocket, and
substituted for his D’Oyley. It was copiously diversified,
“text and margent,” by figures and calculations in his own handwriting, which I
for one should have regarded with less reverence, had I known at the time this “great
arithmetician’s” rooted aversion and contempt for all examination of his own
balance-sheet. His lecture on these columns and ciphers was, however, as profound as
ingenious. He had taken vast pains to fill in the numbers of persons who might fairly be
supposed to pay the taxes for each separate article of luxury; and his conclusion was, that
the immense majority of British families, endowed with liberal fortunes, had never yet
conceived the remotest idea that their domestic arrangements were incomplete, unless they
expended some considerable sum annually upon the purchase of books.
“Take,” said he, “this one absurd and contemptible item of the
tax on hair-powder; the use of it is almost entirely gone out of fashion. Bating a few
parsons’ and lawyers’ wigs, it may be said that hair-powder is confined to
the flunkeys, and indeed to the livery servants of great and splendid houses
exclusively; nay, in many even of these, it is already quite laid aside. Nevertheless,
for each head that is thus vilified in Great Britain, a guinea is paid yearly to the
Exchequer; and the taxes in that schedule are an army, compared to the purchasers of
even the best and most popular of books.” He went on in the same vein about
armorial bearings, hunters, racers, and four-wheeled carriages; and
having demonstrated that hundreds of thousands in this magnificent country held, as
necessary to their personal comfort and the maintenance of decent station, articles upon
articles of costly elegance, of which their forefathers never dreamt, said that on the
whole, however usual it was to talk of the extended scale of literary transactions in
modern days, our self-love never deceived us more grossly than when we fancied our notions
as to the matter of books had advanced in at all a corresponding proportion. “On
the contrary,” cried Constable, “I am satisfied
that the demand for Shakspeare’s plays,
contemptible as we hold it to have been, in the time of Elizabeth and James, was more
creditable to the classes who really indulged in any sort of elegance then, than the
sale of Childe Harold or Waverley, triumphantly as people talk,
is to the alleged expansion of taste and intelligence in this nineteenth
century.” Scott helped him on by interposing, that at that
moment he had a rich valley crowded with handsome houses under his view, and yet much
doubted whether any laird within ten miles spent ten pounds per annum on the literature of
the day—which he, of course, distinguished from its periodical press.
“No,” said Constable, “there is no market
among them that’s worth one’s thinking about. They are contented with a
review or a magazine, or at best with a paltry subscription to some circulating library
forty miles off. But if I live for half-a-dozen years, I’ll make it as impossible
that there should not be a good library in every decent house in Britain as that the
shepherd’s ingle-nook should want the saut poke. Ay, and
what’s that?” he continued, warming and puffing, “Why should
the ingle-nook itself want a shelf for the novels?” “I see your
drift, my man,” says Sir Walter,
“you’re for being like Billy Pitt in Gilray’s print—you want to get into the salt-box
yourself.” “Yes,” he responded (using a favourite
adjuration) “I have hitherto been thinking only of the wax lights, but before
I’m a twelvemonth older I shall have my hand upon the tallow.”
“Troth,” says Scott, “you are indeed
likely to be ‘The grand Napoleon of the
realms of print’” “If you outlive
me,” says Constable, with a regal smile, “I
bespeak that line for my tomb-stone; but, in the mean-time, may I presume to ask you to
be my right-hand man when I open my campaign of Marengo? I have now settled my outline
of operations—a three shilling or half-crown volume every month, which must and shall
sell, not by thousands or tens of thousands, but by hundreds of thousands—ay, by
millions! Twelve volumes in the year, a halfpenny of profit upon every copy of which
will make me richer than the possession of all the copyrights of all the quartos that
ever were, or will be, hot-pressed! Twelve volumes, so good that millions must wish to
have them, and so cheap that every butcher’s callant may have them, if he pleases
to let me tax him sixpence a-week!”
Many a previous consultation, and many a solitary meditation too,
prompted Scott’s answer. “Your
plan,” said he “cannot fail, provided the books be really good, but you
must not start until you have not only leading columns, but depth upon depth of reserve
in thorough order. I am willing to do my part in this grand enterprise. Often, of late,
have I felt that the vein of fiction was nearly worked out; often, as you all know,
have I been thinking seriously of turning my hand to history. I am of opinion that
historical writing has no more been adapted to the demands of the increased circles
among which literature does already find its way, than you allege as to the shape and
price of books in general. What say you to taking the field with a
Life of the otherNapoleon?”
The reader does not need to be told that the series of cheap volumes,
subsequently issued under the title of “Constable’s
Miscellany,” was the scheme on which this great bookseller was brooding.
Before he left Abbotsford it was arranged that the first number of this collection should
consist of one half of Waverley; the
second, of the first section of a “Life of
Napoleon Buonaparte by the author of Waverley;” that this Life should be
comprised in four of these numbers; and that, until the whole series of his novels should
have been issued, a volume every second month, in this new and uncostly form, he should
keep the Ballantyne press going with a series of
historical works, to be issued on the alternate months. Such were, as far as Scott was concerned, the first outlines of a daring plan never
destined to be carried into execution on the gigantic scale, or with the grand appliances
which the projector contemplated, but destined, nevertheless, to lead the way in one of the
greatest revolutions that literary history will ever have to record—a revolution not the
less sure to be completed, though as yet, after the lapse of twelve years, we see only its
beginnings.
Some circumstances in the progress of the Tales of the Crusaders, begun some months before,
and now on the eve of publication, must have been uppermost in Scott’s mind when he met Constable’s proposals on this occasion with so much alacrity. The
story of The
Betrothed—(to which he was mainly prompted by the lively and instructing
conversation on Welsh history and antiquities of his friend Archdeacon Williams)—found no favour as it advanced with James Ballantyne; and so heavily did the critical
printer’s candid remonstrances weigh on the author, that he at length lost heart
about the matter altogether, and
determined to cancel it for ever. The tale, however, all but a chapter or two, had been
printed off, and both publisher and printer paused about committing such a mass to the
flames. The sheets were hung up mean-while in Messrs
Ballantyne’s warehouse, and Scott, roused by the
spur of disappointment, began another story—The
Talisman—in which James hailed better omens. His
satisfaction went on increasing as the MS. flowed in upon him; and he at last pronounced
The Talisman such a masterpiece, that The
Betrothed might venture abroad under its wing. Sir Walter
was now reluctant on that subject, and said he would rather write two more new novels than
the few pages necessary to complete his unfortunate Betrothed.
But while he hesitated, the German newspapers announced “a new
romance by the author of Waverley” as about to issue from the press of
Leipsig. There was some ground for suspecting that a set of the suspended sheets might have
been purloined and sold to a pirate, and this consideration put an end to his scruples. And
when the German did publish the fabrication entitled Walladmor, it could no longer
be doubtful that some reader of Scott’s sheets had communicated
at least the fact that he was breaking ground in Wales.
Early in June, then, the Tales of the Crusaders were put forth; and, as Mr
Ballantyne had predicted, the brightness of the Talisman dazzled the eyes of the million as to the
defects of the twin-story. Few of these publications had a more enthusiastic greeting; and
Scott’s literary plans were, as the reader
will see reason to infer, considerably modified in consequence of the new burst of applause
which attended the brilliant procession of his Saladin
and Cœur de Lion.
To return for a moment to our merry conclave at Abbotsford. Constable’s vast chapter of embryo schemes was discussed more leisurely on the following Monday morning, when we
drove to the crags of Smailholm and the Abbey of Dryburgh, both poet and publisher talking
over the past and the future course of their lives, and agreeing, as far as I could
penetrate, that the years to come were likely to be more prosperous than any they had as
yet seen. In the evening, too, this being his friend’s first visit since the mansion
had been completed, Scott (though there were no ladies
and few servants) had the hall and library lighted up, that he might show him every thing
to the most sparkling advantage. With what serenity did he walk about those splendid
apartments, handling books, expounding armour and pictures, and rejoicing in the Babylon
which he had built!
If the reader has not recently looked into the original Introduction to
the Tales of the Crusaders, it will
amuse him to trace in that little extravanza Sir
Walter’s own embellishment of these colloquies with Constable and Ballantyne. The title is, “Minutes of Sederunt of
the Shareholders designing to form a Joint-Stock Company, united for the purpose of
Writing and Publishing the Class of Works called the Waverley Novels, held in the Waterloo Tavern,
Regent Bridge, Edinburgh, on the 1st of June, 1825.” The notion of casting
a preface into this form could hardly have occurred in any other year; the humorist had not
far to seek for his “palpable hit.” The “Gentlemen and others
interested in the celebrated publications called the Waverley Novels,” had
all participated in the general delusions which presented so broad a mark; and their own
proper “bubbles” were at the biggest—in other words, near enough the bursting.
As regards Sir Walter himself, it is
not possible now to recall the jocularities of this essay without wonder and sadness. His
own share in speculations, remote from
literature, was not indeed a very heavy one; but how remarkable that a passage like the
following should have dropped from his pen, who was just about to see the apparently
earth-built pillars of his worldly fortune shattered in ruin, merely because, not contented
with being the first author of his age, he had chosen also to be his own printer and his
own bookseller!
“In the patriarchal period,” we read,
“a man is his own weaver, tailor, butcher, shoemaker, and so forth; and, in
the age of Stock-companies, as the present may be called, an individual may be said, in
one sense, to exercise the same plurality of trades. In fact, a man who has dipt
largely into these speculations, may combine his own expenditure with the improvement
of his own income, just like the ingenious hydraulic machine, which, by its very waste,
raises its own supplies of water. Such a person buys his bread from his own Baking
Company, his milk and cheese from his own Dairy Company, takes off a new coat for the
benefit of his own Clothing Company, illuminates his house to advance his own Gas
Establishment, and drinks an additional bottle of wine for the benefit of the General
Wine Importation Company, of which he is himself a member. Every act, which would
otherwise be one of mere extravagance, is, to such a person, seasoned with the
odor lucri, and reconciled to
prudence. Even if the price of the article consumed be extravagant, and the quality
indifferent, the person, who is in a manner his own customer, is only imposed upon for
his own benefit. Nay, if the Joint-stock Company of Undertakers shall unite with the
Medical Faculty, as proposed by the late facetious Doctor G——, under the firm of Death
and the Doctor, the shareholder might contrive to secure to his heirs a handsome slice
of his own death-bed and funeral expenses.”
Since I have quoted this Introduction, I may as well give also the
passage in which the “Eidolon Chairman” is made to announce the new
direction his exertions were about to take, in furtherance of the grand
“Joint-stock Adventure” for which Constable had been soliciting his alliance. The paternal shadow thus
addresses his mutinous offspring Cleishbotham,
Oldbuck, Clutterbuck, Dryasdust, and the rest:—
“It signifies nothing speaking—I will no longer
avail myself of such weak ministers as you—I will discard you—I will unbeget you, as
Sir Anthony Absolute says—I will leave you and
your whole hacked stock in trade—your caverns and your castles—your modern antiques,
and your antiquated moderns—your confusion of times, manners, and circumstances—your
properties, as player-folk say of scenery and dresses—the whole of your exhausted
expedients, to the fools who choose to deal with them. I will vindicate my own fame
with my own right hand, without appealing to such halting assistants, ‘Whom I have used for sport, rather than
need.’ —I will lay my foundations better than on quicksands—I will rear my structure of
better materials than painted cards; in a word, I will write History!” . . . . . . . .
“As the confusion began to abate, more than one
member of the meeting was seen to touch his forehead significantly, while Captain Clutterbuck humm’d,‘Be by your friends advised,Too rash, too hasty, dad,Maugre your bolts and wise head,The world will think you mad.’
“The world, and you, gentlemen, may think what you
please,” said the Chairman, elevating his voice; “but I intend to write
the most wonderful book which the world ever read—a book in which every incident shall be
incredible, yet strictly true—a work recalling recollections with which the ears of this
generation once tingled, and which shall be read by our children with an admiration
approaching to incredulity. Such shall be the Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, by the Author of
Waverley!”*
Sir Walter begun, without delay, what was meant to be a
very short preliminary sketch of the French Revolution, prior to the appearance of his hero
upon the scene of action. This, he thought, might be done almost currente calamo; for his personal recollection of all the great
events as they occurred was vivid, and he had not failed to peruse every book of any
considerable importance on these subjects as it issued from the press. He apprehended the
necessity, on the other hand, of
* See Waverley Novels, Vol. xxxvii. p. 38.
Introd.
more laborious study in the way of reading than he had
for many years had occasion for, before he could enter with advantage upon Buonaparte’s military career; and Constable accordingly set about collecting a new library
of printed materials, which continued from day to day pouring in upon him, till his little
parlour in Castle Street looked more like an auctioneer’s premises than an
author’s. The first waggon delivered itself of about a hundred huge folios of the
Moniteur; and London, Paris, Amsterdam,
and Brussels were all laid under contribution to meet the bold demands of his magnificent
purveyor; while he himself and his confidential friends embraced every possible means of
securing the use of written documents at home and abroad. The rapid accumulation of books
and MSS. was at once flattering and alarming; and one of his notes to me, about the middle
of June, had these rhymes by way of postscript:
“When with Poetry dealing Room enough in a shieling: Neither cabin nor hovel Too small for a novel; Though my back I should rub On Diogenes’ tub, How my fancy could prance In a dance of romance! But my house I must swap With some Brobdignag chap, Ere I grapple, God bless me! with Emperor
Nap.”
In the mean-time he advanced with his Introduction; and, catching fire
as the theme expanded before him, had so soon several chapters in his desk, without having
travelled over half the ground assigned for them, that Constable saw it would be in vain to hope for the completion of the work
within four tiny duodecimos. They resolved that it should be published, in the first
instance, as a separate book, in four volumes of the same size with
the Tales of the Crusaders, but with
more pages and more letter-press to each page. Scarcely had this been settled before it
became obvious, that four such volumes, however closely printed, would never suffice; and
the number was week after week extended with corresponding alterations as to the rate of
the author’s payment. Mr Constable still considered the
appearance of the second edition of the Life of
Napoleon in his Miscellany as the great point on which the fortunes of that
undertaking were to turn; and its commencement was in consequence adjourned; which,
however, must have been the case at any rate, as he found, on enquiry, that the stock on
hand of the already various editions of the Waverley Novels was much greater than he had calculated; and therefore some
interval must be allowed to elapse before, with fairness to the retail trade, he could
throw that long series of volumes into any cheaper form,
CHAPTER II. EXCURSION TO IRELAND—RECEPTION IN
DUBLIN—WICKLOW—EDGEWORTHSTOWN—KILLARNEY—CORK—CASTLE BLARNEY, &c.—LETTERS FROM
MOORE AND
CANNING—LLANGOLLEN—ELLERAY—STORRS—LOWTHER— 1825.
Before the Court of Session rose in July, Sir Walter had made considerable progress in his Sketch of the
French Revolution; but it was agreed that he should make his promised excursion to Ireland
before any MS. went to the printers. He had seen no more of the sister island than Dunluce
and the Giant’s Causeway, of which we have his impressions in the Lighthouse Diary of
1814; his curiosity about the scenery and the people was lively; and besides the great
object of seeing his son and daughter-in-law under their own roof, and the scarcely
inferior pleasure of another meeting with Miss
Edgeworth, he looked forward to renewing his acquaintance with several
accomplished persons, who had been serviceable to him in his labours upon Swift. But, illustriously as Ireland has contributed to
the English Library, he had always been accustomed to hear that almost no books were now
published there, and fewer sold than in any other country calling itself civilized; and he
had naturally concluded that apathy and indifference prevailed as to literature itself, and
of course as to literary men. He had not, therefore, formed the remotest anticipation of
the kind of reception which awaited him in Dublin, and indeed
throughout the island wherever he traversed it.
On the day after he despatched the following letter, he had the
satisfaction of seeing his son gazetted as Captain.
To Walter Scott, Esq., 15th Hussars, 10,
Stephen’s Green, Dublin.
“Edinburgh, 16th June, 1825. “My dear Walter,
“I shall wait with some impatience for this
night’s Gazette. I have written to Coutts to pay the
money so soon as you are in possession.
“On Saturday 11th, I went to Blair-Adam, and had a
delicious stroll among the woods. The roe-deer are lying as thick there as in
the Highlands, and, I daresay, they must be equally so at Lochore: so you will
have some of the high game. They are endeavouring to destroy them, which they
find very difficult. It is a pity they do so much mischief to the woods, for
otherwise they are the most beautiful objects in nature; and were they at
Abbotsford, I could not I think have the heart to make war on them. Two little
fawns came into the room at tea-time and drank cream. They had the most
beautiful dark eyes and little dark muzzles, and were scarce so big as
Miss Ferguson’s Italian
greyhound. The Chief Commissioner offered
them to me, but to keep them tame would have been impossible on account of the
dogs, and to turn them loose would have been wilfully entailing risk on the
plantations which have cost me so much money and trouble. There was then a talk
of fattening them for the kitchen, a proposal which would have driven mamma distracted.
“We spent Monday on a visit to Lochore, and in
planning the road which is so much wanted. The Chief
Commissioner is an excellent manager, and has under-taken to treat with Mr
Wemyss of East Blair, through a part of whose property the line
lies, but just at a corner, and where it will be as convenient for his property
as Lochore.
“I am glad Jane looks after her own affairs. It is very irksome to be
sure; but then one must do it, or be eaten up by their servants, like Actæon by his hounds. Talking of hounds, I
have got a second Maida, but he is not yet arrived.
Nimrod is his name.
“I keep my purpose as expressed in my last. I might,
perhaps, persuade mamma to come, but she is
unhappy in steam-boats, bad beds, and all the other inconveniences of
travelling. Sir Adam and Lady Ferguson, as I hear, are thinking of
stirring towards you. I hope they will allow our visit to be over in the first
instance, as it would overtax Jane and
you—otherwise I should like to see the merry knight in Ireland, where I suppose
he would prove Ipsis Hybernis
Hybernior, more Irish than the natives.
“I have given Charles his choice between France and Ireland, and shall have
his answer in two or three days. Will he be de
trop if we can pack him up in the little barouche?
“Your commentary on Sir
D. Dundas’s confused hash of regulations, which, for the
matter of principle, might be shortened to a dozen, puts me in mind of old
Sir William Erskine’s speech
to him, when all was in utter confusion at the retreat from before Dunkirk, and
Sir William came down to protect the rear. In passing
Sir David, the tough old veteran exclaimed,
‘Davie, ye donnert idiot, where’s a’ your peevioys (pivots) the day?’
“As to your early hours, no man ought to be in bed at
seven in summer time. I never am; your four o’clock is rather
premature.—Yours, with kindest remembrances to Jane,
Walter Scott.
“P. S.—Yours just received, dateless as was your
former. I suppose it is a family fault. What I have written will show that
the cash, matters are bang-up. A comparison of the dates will show there
has been no voluntary delay on my part; indeed, what motive could I have
for leaving money without interest in the hands of a London banker? But we
are corresponding at a triangle, when you write to me and I to London. I
will write to Jane to scold her for
her ladylike fears about our reception; to find you happy will be the
principal part of my welcome; for the rest, a slice of plain meat of any
kind—a cigar—and a little potheen, are worth turtle
and burgundy to my taste. As for poor dear
stupid ——, there is only one answer, which the clown in one
of Shakspeare’s plays says
will be a fitting reply to all questions—Oh Lord,
sir!!!”
It did not suit either Lady Scott or
her eldest daughter to be of the Irish expedition;
Anne Scott and myself accompanied Sir Walter. We left Edinburgh on the 8th of July in a light
open carriage, and after spending a few days among our friends in Lanarkshire, we embarked
at Glasgow in a steamer for Belfast. Sir Walter kept no
diary during this excursion, and the bustle and tumult throughout were such that he found
time to write but very few letters. From my own to the ladies left at home, I could easily
draw up a pretty exact journal of our proceedings; but I shall content myself with noting a
few particulars more immediately connected with the person of
Scott—for I am very sensible, on looking over what I set down at the
moment, that there was hardly opportunity even for him to draw any conclusions of serious
value on the structure and ordinary habits of society in Ireland, to say nothing of the
vexed questions of politics and administration; and such features of natural beauty and historical interest as
came under his view have been painted over and over again by native writers, with whom
hasty observers should not be ambitious of competing.
The steam-boat, besides a crowd of passengers of all possible classes,
was lumbered with a cargo offensive enough to the eye and the nostrils, but still more
disagreeable from the anticipations and reflections it could not fail to suggest. Hardly
had our carriage been lashed on the deck before it disappeared from our view amidst
mountainous packages of old clothes; the cast-off raiment of the Scotch beggars was on its
way to a land where beggary is the staple of life. The captain assured us that he had
navigated nearly forty years between the West of Scotland and the sister island, and that
his freights from the Clyde were very commonly of this description; pigs and potatoes being
the usual return. Sir Walter rather irritated a military
passenger (a stout old Highlander), by asking whether it had never occurred to him that the
beautiful checkery of the clan tartans might have originated in a pious wish on the part of
the Scottish Gael to imitate the tatters of the parent race. After soothing the veteran
into good-humour, by some anecdotes of the Celtic splendours of August, 1822, he remarked
that if the Scotch Highlanders were really descended in the main from the Irish blood, it
seemed to him the most curious and difficult problem in the world to account for the
startling contrasts in so many points of their character, temper, and demeanour; and
entered into some disquisition on this subject, which I am sorry I cannot repeat in detail.
The sum of his opinion was that, while courage and generous enthusiasm of spirit, kindness
of heart, and great strength and purity of domestic affection, characterised them equally,
the destruction, in the course of endless feuds, and wars, and rebellions, of the native aristocracy of Ireland, had robbed that people of most of the
elements of internal civilisation; and avowed his belief that had the Highlanders been
deprived, under similar circumstances, of their own chiefs, they would have sunk, from the
natural poverty of their regions, into depths of barbarity not exampled even in the history
of Ireland. The old soldier (who had taken an early opportunity of intimating his own near
relationship to the chief of his sept) nodded assent, and strutted from our part of the
deck with the dignity of a MacTurk.—“But
then,” Sir Walter continued (watching the
Colonel’s retreat)—“but then comes the queerest point of all. How is it that
our solemn, proud, dignified Celt, with a soul so alive to what is elevating and even
elegant in poetry and feeling, is so supereminently dull as respects all the lighter
play of fancy? The Highlander never understands wit or humour—Paddy, despite all his misery and privations, overflows with both. I
suppose he is the gayest fellow in the world, except the only worse-used one still, the
West India nigger. This is their make-up—but it is to me the saddest feature in the
whole story.”
A voyage down the Firth of Clyde is enough to make any body happy:
nowhere can the Home Tourist, at all events, behold, in the course of one day, such a
succession and variety of beautiful, romantic, and majestic scenery: on one hand dark
mountains and castellated shores—on the other, rich groves and pastures, interspersed with
elegant villas and thriving towns, the bright estuary between alive with shipping, and
diversified with islands.
It may be supposed how delightful such a voyage was in a fine day of
July, with Scott, always as full of glee on any trip as
a schoolboy; crammed with all the traditions and legends of every place we passed; and too
happy to pour them out for the entertainment of
his companions on deck. After dinner, too, he was the charm of the table. A worthy old
Bailie of Glasgow, Mr Robert Tennent, sat by him, and shared fully in
the general pleasure; though his particular source of interest and satisfaction was, that
he had got into such close quarters with a live Sheriff and Clerk of Session, and this gave
him the opportunity of discussing sundry knotty points of police law, as to which our
steerage passengers might perhaps have been more curious than most of those admitted to the
symposium of the cabin. Sir Walter, however, was as ready for the
rogueries of the Broomielaw, as for the misty antiquities of Balclutha, or the discomfiture
of the Norsemen at Large, or Bruce’s adventures in
Arran. I remember how Mr Tennent chuckled when he, towards the
conclusion of our first bowl of punch, said he was not surprised to find himself gathering
much instruction from the Bailie’s conversation on his favourite topics, since the
most eminent and useful of the police magistrates of London (Colquhoun) had served his apprenticeship in the Town Chamber of Glasgow.
The Bailie insisted for a second bowl, and volunteered to be the manufacturer;
“for,” quoth he (with a sly wink), “I am reckoned a fair hand,
though not equal to my father, the deacon.”
Scott smiled in acquiescence, and, the ladies having by this time
withdrawn, said he was glad to find the celebrated beverage of the city of St Mungo had not
fallen into desuetude. The Bailie extolled the liquor he was brewing, and quoted Sir John Sinclair’sCode of Health and Longevity for the case of a gentleman
well known to himself, who lived till ninety, and had been drunk upon it every night for
half-a-century. But Bailie Tennent was a devout elder of the kirk, and
did not tell his story without one or two groans that his doctrine
should have such an example to plead. Sir Walter said he could only
hope that manners were mended in other respects since the days when a popular minister of
the last age (one Mr Thorn), renowned for satirical humour, as well as
for highflying zeal, had demolished all his own chances of a Glasgow benefice by preaching
before the Town-Council from this text in Hosea:
“Ephraim’s drink is sour, and he hath committed
whoredom continually.” The Bailie’s brow darkened (like Nicol Jarvie’s when they misca’d Rab); he groaned deeper than
before, and said he feared “Tham o’ Govan was at heart
a ne’erdoweel.” He, however, refilled our glasses as he spoke; and
Scott, as he tasted his, said, “Weel, weel, Bailie,
Ephraim was not so far wrong as to the matter of
drink.” A gay little Irish Squireen (a keener Protestant even than our
“merchant and magistrate”) did not seem to have discovered the Great Unknown
until about this time, and now began to take a principal share in the conversation. To the
bowl of Ephraim he had from the first done all justice. He broke at
once into the heart of the debateable land; and after a few fierce tirades against Popery,
asked the Highland Colonel, who had replaced the Master of the steamer at the head of the
table, to give the glorious memory. The prudent Colonel affected not
to hear until this hint had been thrice repeated, watching carefully meanwhile the
demeanour of a sufficiently mixed company. The general pushing in of glasses, and perhaps
some freemasonry symptoms besides—(for we understood that he had often served in
Ireland)—had satisfied him that all was right, and he rose and announced the Protestant
Shibboleth with a voice that made the lockers and rafters ring again. Bailie
Tennent rose with grim alacrity to join in the cheers; and then our Squireen
proposed, in his own person, what, he said, always ought to be the second toast among good men and true. This was nothing
else than the heroic memory, which, from our friend’s
preliminary speech, we understood to be the memory of Oliver Cromwell. Sir Walter
winced more shrewdly than his Bailie had done about Ephraim’s
transgressions, but swallowed his punch, and stood up, glass in hand, like the rest, though
an unfortunate fit of coughing prevented his taking part in their huzzas. This feature of
Irish loyalism was new to the untravelled Scotch of the party. On a little reflection,
however, we thought it not so unnatural. Our little Squireen boasted of being himself
descended from a sergeant in Cromwell’s army; and he added that
“the best in Ireland” had similar pedigrees to be proud of. He took
care, however, to inform us that his own great ancestor was a real jontleman all over, and behaved as such; “for,” said he,
“when Oliver gave him his order for the lands, he went to
the widow, and tould her he would neither turn out her nor the best-looking of her
daughters; so get the best dinner you can, old lady,” quoth he, “and
parade the whole lot of them, and I’ll pick.” Which was done, it seems,
accordingly; and probably no conquest ever wanted plenty of such alleviations.
Something in this story suggested to Scott an incident, recorded in some old book of Memoirs, of a French
envoy’s reception in the tower of some Irish chieftain, during one of the rebellions
against Queen Elizabeth; and he narrated it, to the
infinite delight of the Protestant Squireen. This comforter of the rebels was a bishop, and
his union of civil and religious dignity secured for him all possible respect and
attention. The chief (I think the name was O’Donoghue) welcomed
him warmly: He was clad in a yellow mantle—(“to wit, a dirty blanket,”
interposes the Squireen)—but this he dropt in the interior, and sat
upon it mother-naked in the midst of his family and guests by the fire. The potheen
circulated, and was approved by the bishop. When the hour of retiring for the night
approached, the hospitable Milesian desired him to look round and select any of his
daughters he liked for a bedfellow. The bishop did as he was invited, and the young lady
went up stairs, to be dealt with probably by Monseigneur’s valet as Peregrine Pickle’s beggar-girl was by Tom Pipes. By and by the bishop followed, and next minute his
allotted partner tumbled into the partiarchal circle below in an agony of tears, while the
great man was heard pesting vociferously in his chamber above.
“It turned out,” said Sir Walter,
“that the most prominent object on his reverence’s toilette had been a
pot of singularly precious pomatum, recently presented to him by the Pope. This the
poor girl was desired by the French attendant, as he withdrew, to make use of in
completing the adornment of her person; but an interpreter had been wanting. She took
it for butter, and the bannock which she had plastered, both sides over, with this
precious unguent, was half-devoured before the ambassador honoured her bower with his
presence. Dandyism had prevailed over gallantry, and Princess
O’Donoghue was kicked down Stairs.”
When we got upon deck again after our carousal, we found it raining
heavily, and the lady passengers in great misery; which state of things continued till we
were within sight of Belfast. We got there about nine in the morning, and I find it set
down that we paid four guineas for the conveyance of the carriage, and a guinea apiece for
ourselves; in 1837 I understand the charge for passengers is not more than half-a-crown
a-head in the cabin, and sixpence in the steerage—so rapidly has steam-navigation extended
in the space of twelve years. Sir Walter told us he well remembered being on board of
the first steamer that ever was launched in Britain, in 1812. For some time, that one
awkward machine went back and forward between Glasgow and Greenock, and it would have
looked like a cock-boat beside any one of the hundreds of magnificent steamships that now
cover the Firth of Clyde. It is also written in my pocket-book, that the little Orange
Squireen was particularly kind and serviceable at our landing—knocking about the swarm of
porters that invaded the vessel on anchoring, in a style quite new to us, with slang
equally Irish—e.g. “Your fingers are all thumbs, I see—put
that (portmanteau) in your teeth, you grampus,” &c. &c.
The following is part of the first letter I wrote to my wife from
Dublin:—“Belfast is a thriving bustling place, surrounded with smart villas,
and built much like a second-rate English town; yet there we saw the use of the
imported rags forthwith. One man, apparently happy and gay returning to his work (a
mason seemingly), from breakfast, with pipe in mouth, had a coat of which I don’t
believe any three inches together were of the same colour or the same stuff—red, black,
yellow, green—cloth, velveteen, corduroy, fustian—the complete image of a tattered
coverlid originally made on purpose of particularly small patches—no shirt, and almost
no breeches;—yet this is the best part of Ireland, and the best population. What shall
we see in the South?
“Erin deserves undoubtedly the style of Green
Erin. We passed through high and low country, rich and poor, but none that was
not greener than Scotland ever saw. The husbandry to the north seemed rather careless
than bad—I should say slovenly, for every thing is cultivated,
and the crops are fine, though the appearance is quite spoiled
by the bad, or oftener the no fences; and, above all, to
unaccustomed eyes, by the human wretchedness every where visible even there. Your papa
says, however, that he sees all over the North marks of an improving country; that the
new houses are all greatly better than the old, &c. He is no doubt right as to the
towns, and even villages on the highway, but I can’t imagine the newest huts of
the peasantry to have been preceded by worse even in the days of
Malachi with the collar of gold. They are of clay without
chimneys, and without any opening for light, except the door and the smoke-hole in the
roof. When there is a window, it seldom has even one pane of glass, and I take it the
aperture is only a summer luxury, to be closed up with the ready trowel whenever the
winter comes. The filth, darkness, and squalor of these dens and their inhabitants, are
beyond imagination, even to us who have traversed so often the wildest of our own
Highland glens; yet your father swears he has not yet seen one face decidedly careworn
and unhappy; on the contrary, an universal good-humour and merriment, and, to us, every
sort of civility from the poor people; as yet few beggars. An old man at Dunleer having
got some pence from Anne while the carriage
stopt, an older woman came forward to sell gooseberries, and we declining these, she
added that we might as well give her an alms too then, for she was an old struggler. Anne thought she said smuggler, and dreamt of potheen, but she meant that she had done her best to
resist the ‘sea of troubles;’ whereas her neighbour, the professed
mendicant, had yielded to the stream too easily. The
Unknown says he shall recollect the word, which deserves to be
classical. We slept at Dundalk, a poor little town by the shore, but with a magnificent Justice-hall and jail—a public building
superior, I think, to any in Edinburgh, in the midst of a place despicably dirty and
miserable.”
When we halted at Drogheda, a retired officer of dragoons, discovering
that the party was Sir Walter’s, sent in his card,
with a polite offer to attend him over the field of the battle of the Boyne, about two
miles off, which of course was accepted;—Sir Walter rejoicing the
veteran’s heart by his vigorous recitation of the famous ballad (The Crossing of the Water), as we proceeded to the
ground, and the eager and intelligent curiosity with which he received his explanations of
it.
On Thursday the 14th we reached Dublin in time for dinner, and found
young Walter and his bride established in one of
those large and noble houses in St Stephen’s Green (the most extensive square in
Europe), the founders of which little dreamt that they should ever be let at an easy rate
as garrison lodgings. Never can I forget the fond joy and pride with which Sir Walter looked round him, as he sat for the first time at
his son’s table. I could not but recall Pindar’s lines, in which, wishing to paint the gentlest rapture of
felicity, he describes an old man with a foaming wine-cup in his hand at his child’s
wedding-feast.
That very evening arrived a deputation from the Royal Society of Dublin,
inviting Sir Walter to a public dinner; and next morning
he found on his breakfast-table a letter from the Provost of Trinity College (Dr Kyle, now Bishop of Cork), announcing that the
University desired to pay him the very high compliment of a degree of Doctor of Laws by diploma. The Archbishop of Dublin (the celebrated Dr Magee), though surrounded with severe domestic
afflictions at the time, was among the earliest of his visitors; another was the
Attorney-General (now Lord Chancellor Plunkett); a
third was the Commander of the Forces, Sir George Murray; and a fourth the Chief Remembrancer of Exchequer (the
Right Honourable Anthony Blake), who was the
bearer of a message from the Marquis Wellesley, then
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, offering all sorts of facilities, and inviting him to dine next
day at his Excellency’s country residence, Malahide Castle. It would be endless to
enumerate the distinguished persons who, morning after morning, crowded his levee in St
Stephen’s Green. The courts of law were not then sitting, and most of the judges were
out of town; but all the other great functionaries, and the leading noblemen and gentlemen
of the city and its neighbourhood, of whatever sect or party, hastened to tender every
conceivable homage and hospitality. But all this was less surprising to the companions of
his journey (though, to say truth, we had, no more than himself, counted on such eager
enthusiasm among any class of Irish society), than the demonstrations of respect which,
after the first day or two, awaited him, wherever he moved, at the hands of the less
elevated orders of the Dublin population. If his carriage was recognised at the door of any
public establishment, the street was sure to be crowded before he came out again, so as to
make his departure as slow as a procession. When he entered a street, the watchword was
passed down both sides like lightning, and the shopkeepers and their wives stood bowing and
curtseying all the way down; while the mob and boys huzza’d as at the chariot-wheels
of a conqueror. I had certainly been most thoroughly unprepared for finding the common
people of Dublin so alive to the claims of any non-military greatness. Sir Robert Peel says, that Sir
Walter’s reception on the High Street of Edinburgh, in August, 1822,
was the first thing that gave him a notion of “the electric shock of a nation’s gratitude.” I
doubt if even that scene surpassed what I myself witnessed when he returned down Dame
Street, after inspecting the Castle of Dublin. Bailie Tennent, who had
been in the crowd on that occasion, called afterwards in Stephen’s Green to show
Sir Walter some promised Return about his Glasgow Police, and
observed to me, as he withdrew, that “yon was owre like
worshipping the creature.”
I may as well, perhaps, extract from a letter of the 16th, the
contemporary note of one day’s operations. “Sir
Humphry Davy is here on his way to fish in Connemara—he breakfasted at
Walter’s this morning; also Hartstonge, who was to show us the lions of St Patrick’s. Peveril was surprised to find the exterior of the cathedral so
rudely worked, coarse, and almost shapeless—but the interior is imposing, and even grand.
There are some curious old monuments of the Cork family, &c., but one thinks of nothing
but Swift there—the whole cathedral is merely his
tomb. Your papa hung long over the famous inscription,* which is in gilt letters upon black
marble; and seemed vexed there was not a ladder at hand that he might have got nearer the
bust (apparently a very fine one), by Roubilliac,
which is placed over it. This was given by the piety of his printer, Faulkener. According to this, Swift
had a prodigious double chin; and Peveril remarked that the severity
of the whole countenance is much increased by the absence of the wig, which, in the prints,
conceals the height and gloom of the brow, the uncommon massiveness and breadth of the
temple-bones, and the Herculean style in which the head fits in to the neck
* The terrible inscription is “Hic depositum
est corpus Jonathan Swift, S.T.P.
&c., ubi sæva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare
nequit.”
behind. Stella’s epitaph
is on the adjoining pillar—close by. Sir Walter seemed not to have
thought of it before (or to have forgotten, if he had), but to judge merely from the
wording that Swift himself wrote it. She is described as
‘Mrs Hester Johnson, better known to the world by the
name of Stella, under which she is celebrated in the writings of
Dr Jonathan Swift, Dean of this cathedral.’
‘This,’ said Sir Walter, ‘the Dean
might say—any one else would have said more.’ She died in 1727,
Swift in 1745. Just by the entrance to the transept, is his tablet
in honour of the servant who behaved so well about the secret of the Drapier’s letters. We then saw St
Sepulchre’s Library, a monastic looking place, very like one of the smaller college
libraries in Oxford. Here they have the folio Clarendon, with Swift’s marginal remarks, mostly in
pencil, but still quite legible. ‘Very savage as usual upon us poor Scots every
where,’ quoth the Unknown. We then went into the Deanery (the one
Swift inhabited has been pulled down), and had a most courteous
and elegant reception from the Dean, the Honourable Dr
Ponsonby. He gave us a capital luncheon—the original full-length picture of
the Dean over the sideboard. The print in the Edinburgh edition
is very good—but the complexion is in the picture—black, robust, sanguine—a heavy-lidded,
stern blue eye. It was interesting to see how completely the genius loci has kept his ground. Various little relics reverently
hoarded as they should be. They said his memory was as fresh as ever among the common
people about—they still sing his ballads, and had heard with great delight that
Sir Walter wrote a grand book all about the
great Dane. The ‘Jolly lads of St Patrick’s, St Kevin’s, Donore,’ mustered strong and Stentorian at our exit. They would, like their great-grandfathers and mothers, have torn the
Unknown to pieces, had he taken the other tack, and ‘Insulted us all by insulting the Dean.’
“We next saw the Bank—late Parliament House—the Dublin
Society’s Museum, where papa was enchanted with a perfect skeleton of the
gigantic moose-deer, the horns fourteen feet from tip to tip, and high in
proportion—and a long train of other fine places and queer things, all as per
road-book. Every where throughout this busy day—fine folks within doors and rabble
without—a terrible rushing and crushing to see the Baronet; Lord Wellington could not have excited a better rumpus. But the theatre
in the evening completed the thing. I never heard such a row. The players might as well
have had no tongues. Beatrice (Miss Foote) twice left the stage; and at last
Benedick (Abbot, who is the manager) came forward, cunning dog, and asked what
was the cause of the tempest. A thousand voices shouted, Sir Walter Scott; and the worthy lion being thus
bearded and poked, rose, after an hour’s torture, and said, with such a kindness
and grace of tone and manner, these words:—‘I am sure the
Irish people—(a roar)—I am sure this respectable audience will not suppose that a
stranger can be insensible to the kindness of their reception of him; and if I have
been too long in saying this, I trust it will be attributed to the right cause—my
unwillingness to take to myself honours so distinguished, and which I could not and
cannot but feel to be unmerited.’ I think these are the very words. The noise
continued a perfect cataract and thunder of roaring; but he would take no hints about
going to the stage-box, and the evening closed decently enough. The
See Scott’s Swift (Edit. 1814), Vol. x. p. 537.
theatre is very handsome—the dresses and scenery capital —the
actors and actresses seemed (but, to be sure, this was scarcely a fair specimen) about
as bad as in the days of Croker’sFamiliar Epistles.”
On Monday the 18th, to give another extract: “Young Mr Maturin breakfasted, and Sir Walter asked a great deal about his late father and
the present situation of the family, and promised to go and see the widow. When the
young gentleman was gone, Hartstonge told us
that Maturin used to compose with a wafer pasted
on his forehead, which was the signal that if any of his family entered the sanctum they must not speak to him. ‘He was never bred in
a writer’s chaumer,’ quoth
Peveril. Sir Walter observed that it
seemed to be a piece of Protestantism in Dublin to drop the saintly titles of the
Catholic Church: they call St Patrick’s, Patrick’s; and St Stephen’s
Green has been Orangeized into Stephen’s. He said you might trace the Puritans in
the plain Powles (for St Paul’s) of the old English
comedians. We then went to the Bank, where the Governor and Directors had begged him to
let themselves show him every thing in proper style; and he was
forced to say, as he came out, ‘These people treated me as if I was a Prince
of the Blood.’ I do believe that, just at this time, the Duke of York might be treated as well—better he could not
be. From this to the College hard by. The Provost received Sir W.
in a splendid drawing-room, and then carried him through the libraries, halls, &c.
amidst a crowd of eager students. He received his diploma in due form, and there
followed a superb dejeuner in the Provostry.
Neither Oxford nor Cambridge could have done the whole thing in better style. Made
acquaintance with Dr Brinkley, Astronomer Royal,
and Dr Macdonnell, Professor of Greek, and all
the rest of the leading Professors, who vied with each other in respect and devotion to the Unknown.—19th. I forgot to
say that there is one true paragraph in the papers. One of the
College librarians yesterday told Sir W., fishingly, ‘I
have been so busy that I have not yet read your
Redgauntlet.’ He answered, very meekly, ‘I have not happened to
fall in with such a work, Doctor.’”
From Dublin we made an excursion of some days into the county Wicklow,
halting for a night at the villa of the Surgeon-General, Mr
Crampton, who struck Sir Walter as being
more like Sir Humphry Davy than any man he had met,
not in person only, but in the liveliness and range of his talk, and who kindly did the
honours of Lough Breagh and the Dargle; and then for two or three at Old Connaught,
Lord Plunkett’s seat near Bray. Here there
was a large and brilliant party assembled; and from hence, under the guidance of the
Attorney-General and his amiable family, we perambulated to all possible advantage the
classical resorts of the Devil’s Glyn, Rosanna, Kilruddery, and Glendalough, with its
seven churches, and St Kevin’s Bed—the scene of the fate of
Cathleen, celebrated in Moore’s ballad— “By that lake whose gloomy shore Skylark never warbles o’er,” &c. “It is,” says my letter, “a hole in the sheer surface of
the rock, in which two or three people might sit. The difficulty of getting into this
place has been exaggerated, as also the danger, for it would only be falling thirty or
forty feet into very deep water. Yet I never was more pained than when your papa, in
spite of all remonstrances, would make his way to it, crawling along the precipice. He
succeeded and got in—the first lame man that ever tried it. After he was gone,
Mr Plunkett told the female guide he was a poet.
Cathleen treated this with indignation,
as a quiz of Mr Attorney’s. ‘Poet!’
said she, ‘the devil a bit of him but an honourable gentleman: he gave me
half-a-crown.’”
On the 1st of August we proceeded from Dublin to Edgeworthstown, the
party being now reinforced by Captain and Mrs Scott, and also by the delightful addition of the
Surgeon-General, who had long been an intimate
friend of the Edgeworth family, and equally gratified both the novelists by breaking the
toils of his great practice to witness their meeting on his native soil. A happy meeting it
was: we remained there for several days, making excursions to Loch Oel and other scenes of
interest in Longford and the adjoining counties; the gentry every where exerting themselves
with true Irish zeal to signalize their affectionate pride in their illustrious
countrywoman, and their appreciation of her guest; while her brother, Mr Lovell Edgeworth, had his classical mansion filled
every evening with a succession of distinguished friends, the elite
of Ireland. Here, above all, we had the opportunity of seeing in what universal respect and
comfort a gentleman’s family may live in that country, and in far from its most
favoured district, provided only they live there habitually, and do their duty as the
friends and guardians of those among whom Providence has appointed their proper place. Here
we found neither mud hovels nor naked peasantry, but snug cottages and smiling faces all
about. Here there was a very large school in the village, of which masters and pupils were
in a nearly equal proportion Protestants and Roman Catholics, the Protestant squire himself
making it a regular part of his daily business to visit the scene of their operations, and
strengthen authority and enforce discipline by his personal superintendence. Here, too, we
pleased ourselves with recognising some
of the sweetest features in Goldsmith’s
picture of “Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain;” and, in particular, we had “the playful children just let loose from
school” in perfection. Mr Edgeworth’s paternal
heart delighted in letting them make a playground of his lawn; and every evening after
dinner we saw leap-frog going on with the highest spirit within fifty yards of the
drawing-room windows, while fathers and mothers, and their aged parents also, were grouped
about among the trees watching the sport. It is a curious enough coincidence that
Oliver Goldsmith and Maria
Edgeworth should both have derived their early love and knowledge of Irish
character and manners from the same identical district. He received part of his education
at this very school of Edgeworthstown; and Pallasmore (the locus cui nomen est Pallas of Johnson’s epitaph), the little hamlet where the author of the Vicar of Wakefield first saw the light, is
still, as it was in his time, the property of the Edgeworths.
It may well be imagined with what lively interest Sir Walter surveyed the scenery with which so many of the
proudest recollections of Ireland must ever be associated, and how curiously he studied the
rural manners it presented to him, in the hope (not disappointed) of being able to trace
some of his friend’s bright creations to their first hints and germs. On the delight
with which he contemplated her position in the midst of her own large and happy domestic
circle I need say still less. The reader is aware by this time how deeply he condemned and
pitied the conduct and fate of those who, gifted with pre-eminent talents for the
instruction and entertainment of their species at large, fancy themselves entitled to
neglect those every-day duties and charities of life, from the mere
shadowing of which in imaginary pictures the genius of poetry and romance has always reaped
its highest and purest, perhaps its only true and immortal honours. In Maria he hailed a sister spirit; one who, at the summit of
literary fame, took the same modest, just, and, let me add, Christian view of the relative importance of the feelings, the obligations, and
the hopes in which we are all equally partakers, and those talents and accomplishments
which may seem, to vain and shortsighted eyes, sufficient to constitute their possessors
into an order and species apart from the rest of their kind. Such fantastic conceits found
no shelter with either of these powerful minds. I was then a young man, and I cannot forget
how much I was struck at the time by some words that fell from one of them, when, in the
course of a walk in the park at Edgeworthstown, I happened to use some phrase which
conveyed (though not perhaps meant to do so) the impression that I suspected Poets and
Novelists of being a good deal accustomed to look at life and the world only as materials
for art. A soft and pensive shade came over Scott’s face as he
said—“I fear you have some very young ideas in your head: are you not too apt
to measure things by some reference to literature—to disbelieve that any body can be
worth much care who has no knowledge of that sort of thing, or taste for it? God help
us! what a poor world this would be if that were the true doctrine! I have read books
enough, and observed and conversed with enough of eminent and splendidly cultivated
minds, too, in my time; but, I assure you, I have heard higher sentiments from the lips
of poor uneducated men and women, when exerting the spirit of severe yet gentle heroism
under difficulties and afflictions, or speaking their simple thoughts as to
circumstances in the lot of friends and neighbours, than I ever yet met with out of the pages of the Bible.
We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have
taught ourselves to consider every thing as moonshine, compared with the education of
the heart.” Maria did not listen to this without some
water in her eyes—her tears are always ready when any generous string is touched (for, as
Pope says, “the finest minds, like the
finest metals, dissolve the easiest”); but she brushed them gaily aside, and
said, “You see how it is—Dean Swift said he
had written his books, in order that people might learn to treat him like a great lord.
Sir Walter writes his, in order that he may be able to treat
his people as a great lord ought to do.”
Lest I should forget to mention it, I put down here a rebuke which,
later in his life, Sir Walter once gave in my hearing to
his daughter Anne. She happened to say of something,
I forget what, that she could not abide it—it was vulgar.
“My love,” said her father, “you speak like a very young lady;
do you know, after all, the meaning of this word vulgar? ’Tis
only common; nothing that is common, except wickedness, can deserve
to be spoken of in a tone of contempt; and when you have lived to my years, you will be
disposed to agree with me in thanking God that nothing really worth having or caring about
in this world is uncommon.”
At Edgeworthstown he received the following letter from Mr Canning:—
To Sir Walter Scott, Bart. &c. &c.
“Combe Wood, July 24, 1825. “My dear Sir,
“A pretty severe indisposition has prevented me from
sooner acknowledging your kind letter; and now I fear that I shall not be able
to accomplish my visit to Scotland this year. Although I
shall be, for the last fortnight of August, at no great distance from the
Borders, my time is so limited that I cannot reckon upon getting farther.
“I rejoice to see that my countrymen (for, though I
was accidentally born in London, I consider myself an Irishman) have so well
known the value of the honour which you are paying to them.
“By the way, if you landed at Liverpool on your
return, could you find a better road to the north than through the Lake
country? You would find me (from about the 10th of August) and Charles Ellis* at my friend Mr Bolton’s, on the Banks of Windermere,
where I can promise you as kind, though not so noisy a welcome, as that which
you have just experienced; and where our friend the Professor (who is Admiral of the Lake) would fit out all his
flotilla, and fire as many of his guns as are not painted ones, in honour of
your arrival.—Yours, my dear sir, very sincerely,
Geo. Canning.”
This invitation was not to be resisted; and the following letter
announced a change of the original route to Mr
Morritt.
“To John B. S. Morritt, Esq., Rokeby Park, Greta Bridge.
“Edgeworthstown, Aug. 3, 1825.
“Your kind letter, my dear Morritt, finds me sweltering under the hottest
weather I ever experienced, for the sake of seeing sights—of itself, you know,
the most feverish occupation in the world. Luckily we are free of Dublin, and
there is nothing around us but green fields and fine trees, ‘barring the
high-roads,’ which
* Now Lord
Seaford.
make those who tread on them the most
complete pie-poudreux ever seen; that
is, if the old definition of pie-poudres be authentic, and if not, you may seek another
dusty simile for yourself it cannot exceed the reality. I have with me
Lockhart and Anne, Walter and his cara
sposa, for all whom the hospitality of Edgeworthstown has
found ample space and verge enough. Indeed it is impossible to conceive
the extent of this virtue in all classes; I don’t think even our Scottish
hospitality can match that of Ireland. Every thing seems to give way to the
desire to accommodate a stranger; and I really believe the story of the Irish
harper, who condemned his harp to the flames for want of fire-wood to cook a
guest’s supper. Their personal kindness to me has been so great, that
were it not from the chilling recollection that novelty is easily substituted
for merit, I should think, like the booby in Steele’splay, that I had been kept back, and that
there was something more about me than I had ever been led to suspect. As I am
L.L.D. of Trinity College, and am qualified as a Catholic seer, by having
mounted up into the bed of Saint Kevin, at the celebrated seven churches of
Glendalough, I am entitled to prescribe, ex
cathedrâ, for all the diseases of Ireland, as being
free both of the Catholic and Protestant parties. But the truth is, that
Pat, while the doctors were consulting,
has been gradually and securely recovering of himself. He is very loath to
admit this indeed; there being a strain of hypochondria in his complaints,
which will not permit him to believe he’s getting better. Nay, he gets
even angry when a physician, more blunt than polite, continues to assure him
that he is better than he supposes himself, and that much of his present
distress consists, partly of the recollection of former indisposition, partly
of the severe practice of modern empirics.
“In sober sadness, to talk of the misery of Ireland
at this time, is to speak of the illness of a malade
imaginaire. Well she is not, but she is rapidly becoming
so. There are all the outward and visible tokens of convalescence. Every thing
is mending; the houses that arise are better a hundred-fold than the cabins
which are falling; the peasants of the younger class are dressed a great deal
better than with the rags which clothe the persons of the more ancient Teagues,
which realize the wardrobe of Jenny Sutton,
of whom Morris sweetly sings, ‘One single pin at night let loose. The robes which veiled her beauty.’ I am sure I have seen with apprehension a single button perform the same
feat, and when this mad scare-crow hath girded up his loins to run hastily by
the side of the chaise, I have feared it would give way, and that there, as
King Lear’s fool says, we should
be all shamed. But this, which seems once to have generally been the attire of
the fair of the Green Isle, probably since the time of King Malachi and the collar of gold, is now fast disappearing,
and the habit of the more youthful Pats and Patesses is decent and comely. Here they all look well coloured, and well fed, and well
contented. And as I see in most places great exertions making to reclaim bogs
upon a large scale, and generally to improve ground, I must needs hold that
they are in constant employment.
“With all this there is much that remains to be
amended, and which time and increase of capital only can amend. The price of
labour is far too low, and this naturally reduces the labouring poor beyond
their just level in society. The behaviour of the gentry in general to the
labourers is systematically harsh, and this arrogance is received with a
servile deference which argues any thing excepting affection. This, however, is also in the
course of amending. I have heard a great deal of the far-famed Catholic
Question from both sides, and I think I see its bearings better than I did; but
these are for your ear when we meet—as meet we shall—if no accident prevent it.
I return via Holyhead, as I wish to show Anne something of England, and you may believe
that we shall take Rokeby in our way. To-morrow I go to Killarney, which will
occupy most part of the week. About Saturday I shall be back at Dublin to take
leave of friends; and then for England, ho! I will, avoiding London, seek a
pleasant route to Rokeby. Fate will only allow us to rest there for a day or
two, because I have some desire to see Canning, who is to be on the Lakes about that time.
Et finis. My leave will be
exhausted. Anne and Lockhart send kindest compliments to you and the ladies. I am
truly rejoiced that Mrs John Morritt is
better. Indeed, I had learned that agreeable intelligence from Lady Louisa Stuart. I found Walter and his wife living happily and
rationally, affectionately and prudently. There is great good sense and
quietness about all Jane’s
domestic arrangements, and she plays the leaguer’s lady very prettily.—I
will write again when I reach Britain, and remain ever yours,
Walter Scott.”
Miss Edgeworth, her sister Harriet, and her brother William, were easily persuaded to join our party for the rest of our Irish
travels. We had lingered a week at Edgeworthstown, and were now anxious to make the best of
our way towards the Lakes of Killarney; but posting was not to be very rapidly accomplished
in those regions by so large a company as had now collected—and we were more agreeably
delayed by the hospitalities of Miss
Edgeworth’s old friends, and several of Sir
Walter’s new ones, at various mansions on our line of route—of which I
must note especially Judge Moore’s, at
Lamberton, near Maryborough, because Sir Walter pronounced its
beneficence to be even beyond the usual Irish scale; for, on reaching our next halting
place, which was an indifferent country inn, we discovered that we need be in no alarm as
to our dinner at all events, the judge’s people having privately packed up in one of
the carriages, ere we started in the morning, a pickled salmon, a most lordly venison
pasty, and half-a-dozen bottles of Champagne. But most of these houses seemed, like the
judge’s, to have been constructed on the principle of the Peri Banou’s tent. They seemed all to have room not only for the lion
and lionesses, and their respective tails, but for all in the neighbourhood who could be
held worthy to inspect them at feeding-time.
It was a succession of festive gaiety wherever we halted; and in the
course of our movements we saw many castles, churches, and ruins of all sorts—with more
than enough of mountain, wood, lake, and river, to have made any similar progress in any
other part of Europe, truly delightful in all respects. But those of the party to whom the
South of Ireland was new, had almost continually before them spectacles of abject misery,
which robbed these things of more than half their charm. Sir
Walter, indeed, with the habitual hopefulness of his temper, persisted that
what he saw even in Kerry was better than what books had taught him to expect; and insured,
therefore, that improvement, however slow, was going on. But, ever and anon, as we moved
deeper into the country, there was a melancholy in his countenance, and, despite himself,
in the tone of his voice, which I for one could not mistake. The constant pass-ings and repassings of bands of mounted
policemen, armed to the teeth, and having quite the air of highly disciplined soldiers on
sharp service;—the rueful squalid poverty that crawled by every wayside, and blocked up
every village where we had to change horses, with exhibitions of human suffering and
degradation, such as it had never entered into our heads to conceive; and, above all, the
contrast between these naked clamorous beggars, who seemed to spring out of the ground at
every turn like swarms of vermin, and the boundless luxury and merriment surrounding the
thinly scattered magnates who condescended to inhabit their ancestral seats, would have
been sufficient to poison those landscapes, had Nature dressed them out in the verdure of
Arcadia, and art embellished them with all the temples and palaces of Old Rome and Athens.
It is painful enough even to remember such things; but twelve years can have had but a
trifling change in the appearance of a country which, so richly endowed by Providence with
every element of wealth and happiness, could, at so advanced a period of European
civilisation, sicken the heart of the stranger by such wide-spread manifestations of the
wanton and reckless profligacy of human mismanagement, the withering curse of feuds and
factions, and the tyrannous selfishness of absenteeism; and I fear it is not likely that
any contemporary critic will venture to call my melancholy picture overcharged. A few
blessed exceptions—such an aspect of ease and decency for example, as we met every where on
the vast domain of the Duke of Devonshire—served only
to make the sad reality of the rule more flagrant and appalling. Taking his bedroom candle,
one night in a village on the Duke’s estate, Sir Walter summed
up the strain of his discourse by a line of Shakspeare’s— “Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge.”
There was, however, abundance of ludicrous incidents to break this
gloom; and no traveller ever tasted either the humours or the blunders of Paddy more heartily than did Sir
Walter. I find recorded in one letter a very merry morning at Limerick,
where, amidst the ringing of all the bells, in honour of the advent, there was ushered in a
brother-poet, who must needs pay his personal respects to the author of Marmion. He was a scarecrow figure attired much in the
fashion of the strugglers—by name O’Kelly; and he had produced on the spur of the occasion this modest
parody of Dryden’s famous epigram: “Three poets, of three different nations born, The United Kingdom in this age adorn; Byron of England, Scott of Scotia’s blood, And Erin’s pride O’Kelly,
great and good.” Sir Walter’s five shillings were at once forthcoming; and the
bard, in order that Miss Edgeworth might display
equal generosity, pointed out, in a little volume of his works (for which, moreover, we had
all to subscribe), this pregnant couplet: “Scott, Morgan, Edgeworth,
Byron, prop of Greece, Are characters whose fame not soon will cease.”
We were still more amused (though there was real misery in the case)
with what befel on our approach to a certain pretty seat, in a different county, where
there was a collection of pictures and curiosities, not usually shown to travellers. A
gentleman, whom we had met in Dublin, had been accompanying us part of the day’s
journey, and volunteered, being acquainted with the owner, to procure us easy admission. At
the entrance of the domain, to which we proceeded under his wing, we were startled by the
dolorous apparition of two undertaker’s men, in voluminous black scarfs, though there was little or nothing of black about the
rest of their habiliments, who sat upon the highway before the gate, with a whisky-bottle
on a deal-table between them. They informed us that the master of the house had died the
day before, and that they were to keep watch and ward in this style until the funeral,
inviting all Christian passengers to drink a glass to his repose. Our Cicerone left his
card for the widow having previously, no doubt, written on it the names of his two lions.
Shortly after we regained our post-house, he received a polite answer from the lady. To the
best of my memory, it was in these terms:—
“Mrs —— presents her kind compliments to Mr ——, and much
regrets that she cannot show the pictures to-day, as Major —— died yesterday evening by
apoplexy; which Mrs —— the more regrets, as it will prevent her having the honour to
see Sir Walter Scott and Miss Edgeworth.”
Sir Walter said it reminded him of a woman in Fife, who,
summing up the misfortunes of a black year in her history, said—“Let me see, sirs;
first, we lost our wee callant—and then Jenny—and then the gudeman
himsel died—and then the coo died too, poor hizzey; but, to be
sure, her hide brought me fifteen shillings.”
At one county gentleman’s table where we dined, though two grand
full-length daubs of William and Mary adorned the walls of the room, there was a mixed
company—about as many Catholics as Protestants, all apparently on cordial terms, and
pledging each other lustily in bumpers of capital claret. About an hour after dinner,
however, punch was called for; tumblers and jugs of hot water appeared, and with them two
magnums of whisky, the one bearing on its label King’s,
the other Queen’s. We did not at first understand these
inscriptions; but it was explained, sottovoce, that the King’s had paid the duty, the
Queen’s was of contraband origin; and, in the choice of the liquors, we detected a
new shibboleth of party. The jolly Protestants to a man stuck to the King’s
bottle—the equally radiant Papists paid their duty to the Queen’s.
Since I have alluded at all to the then grand dispute, I may mention,
that, after our tour was concluded, we considered with some wonder that, having partaken
liberally of Catholic hospitality, and encountered almost every other class of society, we
had not sat at meat with one specimen of the Romish priesthood; whereas, even at Popish
tables, we had met dignitaries of the Established Church. This circumstance we set down at
the time as amounting pretty nearly to a proof that there were few gentlemen in that order;
but we afterwards were willing to suspect that a prejudice of their own had been the source
of it. The only incivility, which Sir Walter Scott
ultimately discovered himself to have encountered—(for his friends did not allow him to
hear of it at the time)—in the course of his Irish peregrination, was the refusal of a
Roman Catholic gentleman, named O’Connell, who kept staghounds
near Killarney, to allow of a hunt on the upper lake, the day he visited that beautiful
scenery. This he did, as we were told, because he considered it as a notorious fact, that
Sir Walter Scott was an enemy to the Roman Catholic claims for
admission to seats in Parliament. He was entirely mistaken, however; for, though no man
disapproved of Romanism as a system of faith and practice more sincerely than Sir
Walter always did, he had long before this period formed the opinion, that
no good could come of farther resistance to the claim in question. He on all occasions
expressed manfully his belief, that the best thing for Ireland would have been never to relax the strictly political
enactments of the penal laws, however harsh these might appear. Had they been kept in
vigour for another half century, it was his conviction that Popery would have been all but
extinguished in Ireland. But he thought that, after admitting Romanists to the elective
franchise, it was a vain notion that they could be permanently or advantageously debarred
from using that franchise in favour of those of their own persuasion. The greater part of
the charming society into which he fell while in Ireland, entertained views and sentiments
very likely to confirm these impressions; and it struck me that considerable pains were
taken to enforce them. It was felt, probably, that the crisis of decision drew near; and
there might be a natural anxiety to secure the suffrage of the great writer of the time.
The polished amenity of the Lord-Lieutenant set off his
commanding range of thought and dexterous exposition of facts to the most captivating
advantage. “The Marquis’s talk,” says Scott,
in a letter of the following year, “gave me the notion of the kind of
statesmanship that one might have expected in a Roman emperor, accustomed to keep the
whole world in his view, and to divide his hours between ministers like Mæsenas and wits like Horace.” The acute logic and brilliant eloquence of Lord Plunkett he ever afterwards talked of with high
admiration; nor had he, he said, encountered in society any combination of qualities more
remarkable than the deep sagacity and the broad rich humour of Mr Blake. In Plunkett, Blake, and
Crampton, he considered himself as having gained
three real friends by this expedition; and I think I may venture to say, that the feeling
on their side was warmly reciprocal.
If he had been made aware at the time of the dis-courtesy of the Romish staghunter at Killarney, he might have been consoled by a letter
which reached him that same week from a less bigoted member of the same church—the great
poet of Ireland—whom he had never chanced to meet in society but once, and that at an early
period of life, shortly after the first publication of the Lay of the Last Minstrel.
To Sir Walter Scott, Bart. &c. &c.
“Sloperton Cottage, Devizes, July 24, 1825. “My dear Sir Walter,
“I wish most heartily that I had been in my own green
land to welcome you. It delights me, however, to see (what I could not have
doubted) that the warm hearts of my countrymen have shown that they know how to
value you. How I envy those who will have the glory of showing you and
Killarney to each other! No two of nature’s productions, I will say, were ever more worthy of meeting. If the
Kenmares should be your Ciceroni, pray tell them what
I say of their Paradise, with my best regards and greetings. I received your
kind message, through Newton,* last
year, that ‘if I did not come and see you, before you died, you would
appear to me afterwards.’ Be assured that, as I am all for living
apparitions, I shall take care and have the start of you, and would have done
it this very year, I rather think, only for your Irish movements.
“Present my best regards to your son-in-law, and believe me, my dear Sir Walter (though we have met, I am sorry to say,
but once in our lives),
“Yours, cordially and sincerely, Thomas Moore.”
* The late amiable and elegant artist, Gilbert Stewart Newton, R. A., had spent part of the autumn of 1824 at
Chiefswood.
Scott’s answer was—
To Thomas Moore, Esq.
“August 5, Somerton, near Templeton (I think). “My dear Sir,
“If any thing could have added to the pleasure I must
necessarily feel at the warm reception which the Irish nation have honoured me
with, or if any thing could abate my own sense that I am no ways worth the coil
that has been made about me, it must be the assurance that you partake and
approve of the feelings of your kind-hearted country-folks.
“In Ireland I have met with every thing that was
kind, and have seen much which is never to be forgotten. What I have seen has,
in general, given me great pleasure; for it appears to me that the adverse
circumstances which have so long withered the prosperity of this rich and
powerful country are losing their force, and that a gradual but steady spirit
of progressive improvement is effectually, though tacitly, counteracting their
bad effects. The next twenty-five years will probably be the most important in
their results that Ireland ever knew. So prophesies a sharp-sighted Sennachie
from the land of mist and snow, aware that, though his opinion may be
unfounded, he cannot please your ear better than by presaging the prosperity of
Ireland.
“And so, to descend from such high matters, I hope
you will consider me as having left my card for you by this visit, although I
have not been happy enough to find you at home. You are bound by the ordinary
forms of society to return the call, and come to see Scotland. Bring wife and
bairns. We have plenty of room, and plenty of oatmeal, and, entre nous, a bottle or two of good
claret, to which I think you have as little objection as I
have. We will talk of poor Byron, who was
dear to us both, and regret that such a rose should have fallen from the
chaplet of his country so untimely. I very often think of him almost with
tears. Surely you, who have the means, should do something for his literary
life at least. You might easily avoid tearing open old wounds. Then, returning
to our proposed meeting, you know folks call me a Jacobite, and you a Jacobin;
so it is quite clear that we agree to a T. Having uttered this vile pun, which
is only pardonable because the subject of politics deserves no better, it is
high time to conclude.
“I return through England, yet, I am afraid, with
little chance of seeing you, which I should wish to do were it but for half an
hour. I have come thus far on my way to Killarney, where Hallam is lying with a broken leg. So much for
middle-aged gentlemen climbing precipices. I, who have been regularly inducted
into the bed of St Kevin at the Seven Churches, trust I shall bear charmed
limbs upon this occasion.—I am very much, dear sir, your obliged and faithful
Walter Scott.”
Having crossed the hills from Killarney to Cork, where a repetition of
the Dublin reception—corporation honours, deputations of the literary and scientific
societies, and so forth—awaited him, he gave a couple of days to the hospitality of this
flourishing town, and the beautiful scenery of the Shannon; not forgetting an excursion to
the groves of Blarney, among whose shades we had a right mirthful pic-nic. Sir Walter scrambled up to the top of the castle, and kissed,
with due faith and devotion, the famous Blarney stone, one salute of
which is said to emancipate the pilgrim from all future visitations of mauvaise honte: “The stone this is, whoever kisses, He never misses to grow eloquent— ’Tis he may clamber to a lady’s chamber, Or be a member of Parliament.” But the shamefacedness of our young female friends was not exposed to an inspection of
the works of art, celebrated by the poetical Dean of
Cork as the prime ornaments of the Lady
Jefferies’s “station”— “The statues growing that noble place in, Of heathen goddesses most rare Homer, Venus, and Nebuchadnezzar, All standing naked in the open air.” These had disappeared, and the castle and all its appurtenances were in a state of
woful dilapidation and neglect.
From Cork we proceeded to Dublin by Fermoy, Lismore, Cashel, Kilkenny,
and Holycross—at all of which places we were bountifully entertained, and assiduously
ciceroned—to our old quarters in St Stephen’s green; and after a morning or two spent
in taking leave of many kind faces that he was never to see again, Sir Walter and his original fellow-travellers started for Holyhead on the
18th of August. Our progress through North Wales produced nothing worth recording, except
perhaps the feeling of delight which every thing in the aspect of the common people, their
dress, their houses, their gardens, and their husbandry, could not fail to call up in
persons who had just been seeing Ireland for the first time; and a short visit (which was,
indeed, the only one he made) to the far-famed “ladies” of Llangollen. They had
received some hint that Sir Walter meant to pass their way; and on
stopping at the inn, he received an invitation so pressing to add one more to the long list
of the illustrious visitors of their retreat, that it was impossible
for him not to comply. We had read histories and descriptions enough of these romantic
spinsters, and were prepared to be well amused; but the reality surpassed all expectation.
An extract from a gossipping letter of the following week will perhaps
be sufficient for Llangollen.
“Elleray, August 24.
* * * “We slept on Wednesday evening at Capel Carig,
which Sir W. supposes to mean the Chapel of
the Crags; a pretty little inn in a most picturesque situation certainly, and
as to the matter of toasted cheese, quite exquisite. Next day we advanced
through, I verily believe, the most perfect gem of a country eye ever saw,
having almost all the wildness of Highland backgrounds, and all the loveliness
of rich English landscape nearer us, and streams like the purest and most
babbling of our own. At Llangollen your papa was waylaid by the celebrated
‘Ladies’—viz. Lady Eleanor
Butler and the Honourable Miss
Ponsonby, who having been one or both crossed in love, foreswore
all dreams of matrimony in the heyday of youth, beauty, and fashion, and
selected this charming spot for the repose of their now time-honoured
virginity. It was many a day, however, before they could get implicit credit
for being the innocent friends they really were, among the people of the
neighbourhood; for their elopement from Ireland had been performed under
suspicious circumstances; and as Lady Eleanor arrived here
in her natural aspect of a pretty girl, while Miss
Ponsonby had condescended to accompany her in the garb of a
smart footman in buckskin breeches, years and years elapsed ere full justice
was done to the character of their romance. We proceeded up the hill, and found
every thing about them and their habitation odd and ex-travagant beyond report. Imagine two women, one
apparently 70, the other 65, dressed in heavy blue riding habits, enormous
shoes, and men’s hats, with their petticoats so tucked up, that at the
first glance of them, fussing and tottering about their porch in the agony of
expectation, we took them for a couple of hazy or crazy old sailors. On nearer
inspection they both wear a world of brooches, rings, &c., and
Lady Eleanor positively orders several stars and
crosses, and a red ribbon, exactly like a K.C.B. To crown all, they have crop
heads, shaggy, rough, bushy, and as white as snow, the one with age alone, the
other assisted by a sprinkling of powder. The elder lady is almost blind, and
every way much decayed; the other, the ci-devant groom, in
good preservation. But who could paint the prints, the dogs, the cats, the
miniatures, the cram of cabinets, clocks, glass-cases, books, bijouterie,
dragon-china, nodding mandarins, and whirligigs of every shape and hue—the
whole house outside and in (for we must see every thing to the dressing
closets), covered with carved oak, very rich and fine
some of it—and the illustrated copies of Sir W.’s
poems, and the joking simpering compliments about Waverley, and the anxiety to know who MacIvor really was, and the absolute devouring of the poor
Unknown, who had to carry off, besides all the rest, one small bit of literal
butter dug up in a Milesian stone jar lately from
the bottom of some Irish bog. Great romance, i. e.
absurd innocence of character, one must have looked for; but it was confounding
to find this mixed up with such eager curiosity, and enormous knowledge of the
tattle and scandal of the world they had so long left. Their tables were piled
with newspapers from every corner of the kingdom, and they seemed to have the
deaths and marriages of the antipodes at their fingers’ ends. Their
albums and autographs, from Louis XVIII. and George IV., down to magazine poets and quack-doctors, are a
museum. I shall never see the spirit of blue-stockingism again in such perfect
incarnation. Peveril won’t get over their final
kissing match for a week. Yet it is too bad to laugh at these good old girls;
they have long been the guardian angels of the village, and are worshipped by
man, woman, and child about them.”
This letter was written on the banks of Windermere, where we were
received with the warmth of old friendship by Mr
Wilson, and one whose grace and
gentle goodness could have found no lovelier or fitter home than Elleray, except where she
is now.
Mr Bolton’s seat, to which Canning had invited Scott, is situated a couple of miles lower down on the same Lake; and
thither Mr Wilson conducted him next day. A large
company had been assembled there in honour of the Minister—it included already Mr Wordsworth and Mr
Southey. It has not, I suppose, often happened to a plain English merchant,
wholly the architect of his own fortunes, to entertain at one time a party embracing so
many illustrious names. He was proud of his guests; they respected him, and honoured and
loved each other; and it would have been difficult to say which star in the constellation
shone with the brightest or the softest light. There was “high discourse,”
intermingled with as gay flashings of courtly wit as ever Canning
displayed; and a plentiful allowance, on all sides, of those airy transient pleasantries,
in which the fancy of poets, however wise and grave, delights to run riot when they are
sure not to be misunderstood. There were beautiful and accomplished women to adorn and
enjoy this circle. The weather was as Elysian as the scenery. There were brilliant
cavalcades through the woods in the morn-ings,
and delicious boatings on the Lake by moonlight; and the last day “the Admiral of the
Lake” presided over one of the most splendid regattas that ever enlivened Windermere.
Perhaps there were not fewer than fifty barges following in the Professor’s radiant
procession, when it paused at the point of Storrs to admit into the place of honour the
vessel that carried kind and happy Mr Bolton and his guests. The three
bards of the Lakes led the cheers that hailed Scott and
Canning; and music and sunshine, flags, streamers, and gay
dresses, the merry hum of voices, and the rapid splashing of innumerable oars, made up a
dazzling mixture of sensations as the flotilla wound its way among the richly-foliaged
islands, and along bays and promontories peopled with enthusiastic spectators.
On at last quitting the festive circle of Storrs, we visited the family
of the late Bishop Watson at Calgarth, and Mr Wordsworth at his charming retreat of Mount Rydal. He
accompanied us to Keswick, where we saw Mr Southey
re-established in his unrivalled library. Mr Wordsworth and his
daughter then turned with us, and passing over
Kirkstone to Ulswater, conducted us first to his friend Mr
Marshall’s elegant villa, near Lyulph’s Tower, and on the next
day to the noble castle of his lifelong friend and patron Lord
Lonsdale. The Earl and Countess had their halls filled with another splendid
circle of distinguished persons, who, like them, lavished all possible attentions and
demonstrations of respect upon Sir Walter. He remained a
couple of days, and perambulated, under Wordsworth’s guidance,
the superb terraces and groves of the “fair domain,” which that poet has
connected with the noblest monument of his genius. But the temptations of Storrs and
Lowther had cost more time than had been calculated upon, and the promised visit to Rokeby
was unwillingly abandoned. Sir
Walter reached Abbotsford again on the first of September, and said truly
that “his tour had been one ovation.”
I add two letters on the subject of this Irish expedition:
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq., Rokeby Park, Greta
Bridge.
“Abbotsford, Sept. 2, 1825.
“Your letter, my dear Morritt, gave me most sincere pleasure on your account, and
also on my own, as it reconciled me to myself for my stupidity in misdirecting
my letters to Charlotte and you from Wales.
I was sincerely vexed when I found out my bevue, but am
now well pleased that it happened, since we might otherwise have arrived at
Rokeby at a time when we must necessarily have been a little in the way. I wish
you joy most sincerely of your nephew’s settling in life, in a manner so agreeably to
your wishes and views. Bella gerant
alii—he will have seen enough of the world abroad to qualify
him fully to estimate and discharge the duties of an English country-gentleman;
and with your example before him, and your advice to resort to, he cannot, with
the talents he possesses, fail to fill honourably that most honourable and
important rank in society. You will, probably, in due time, think of Parliament
for him, where there is a fine sphere for young men of talents at present, all
the old political post-horses being, as Sir
Pertinax says, dry-foundered.
“I was extremely sorry to find Canning at Windermere looking poorly; but, in
a ride, the old man seemed to come alive again. I fear he works himself too
hard, under the great error of trying to do too much with his own hand, and to
see every thing with his own eyes, whereas the greatest general and the first
statesman must, in many cases, be content to use the eyes and fingers of others, and hold themselves
contented with the exercise of the greatest care in the choice of implements.
His is a valuable life to us just now. I passed a couple of days at Lowther, to
make up in some degree to Anne for her
disappointment in not getting to Rokeby. I was seduced there by Lady Frederick Bentinck, whom I had long known
as a very agreeable person, and who was very kind to Anne.
This wore out my proposed leisure; and from Lowther we reached Abbotsford in
one day, and now doth the old bore feed in the old frank.* I had the great
pleasure of leaving Walter and his
little wife well, happy, and, as they seem perfectly to understand each other,
likely to continue so. His ardour for military affairs continues unabated, and
his great scene of activity is the fifteen acres—so the
Irish denominate the exercising ground, consisting of about fifty acres, in the
Phœnix Park, which induced an attorney, writing a challenge to a brother
of the trade, to name, as a place of meeting, the fifteen
acres, adding, with professional accuracy, ‘be they more or
less.’ Here, about 3000 men, the garrison of Dublin, are to be seen
exercising, ever and anon, in order that Pat may be aware how some 2400 muskets, assisted by the
discharge of twenty field-pieces, and the tramp of 500 or 600 horse, sound, in
comparison to the thunder of Mr
O’Connell.
“All this travelling and wooing is like to prevent
our meeting this season. I hope to make up for it the next. Lady Scott, Anne, and Sophia join
Lockhart and me in best wishes to
the happy two who are to be soon one. My best respects attend the Miss
Morritts, and I ever am, most truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
* 2nd King Henry IV., Act II. Sc. 3.
To Miss Joanna Baillie, Hampstead.
“Abbotsford, October 12, 1825.
“It did not require your kind letter of undeserved
remembrance, my dear friend, to remind me that I had been guilty of very
criminal negligence in our epistolary correspondence. How this has come to pass
I really do not know; but it arises out of any source but that of ingratitude
to my friends, or thoughtless forgetfulness of my duty to them. On the
contrary, I think always most of them to whom I do owe letters, for when my
conscience is satisfied on that subject, their perturbed spirits remain at
rest, or at least do not haunt me as the injured spirits do the surviving
murderers.
“I well intended to have written from Ireland, but,
alas! Hell, as some stern old divine says, is paved with good intentions. There
was such a whirl of visiting, and hiking, and boating, and wondering, and
shouting, and laughing, and carousing; so much to be seen and so little time to
see it; so much to be heard and only two ears to listen to twenty voices, that,
upon the whole, I grew desperate, and gave up all thoughts of doing what was
right and proper upon post-days—and so all my epistolary good intentions are
gone to Macadamize, I suppose, ‘the burning marle’ of the
infernal regions. I have not the pen of our friend, Maria Edgeworth, who writes all the while she laughs, talks,
eats, and drinks, and I believe, though I do not pretend to be so far in the
secret, all the time she sleeps too. She has good luck in having a pen which
walks at once so unweariedly and so well. I do not, however, quite like her
last book on Education,
considered as a general work. She should have limited the title to Education in
Natural Philosophy, or some such term, for there is no great use in teaching
children in general to roof
houses or build bridges, which, after all, a carpenter or a mason does a great
deal better at 2s. 6d. per day. In a waste country, like some parts of America,
it may do very well, or perhaps for a sailor or a traveller, certainly for a
civil engineer. But in the ordinary professions of the better-informed orders I
have always observed, that a small taste for mechanics tends to encouraging a
sort of trifling self-conceit, founded on knowing that which is not worth being
known by one who has other matters to employ his mind on, and, in short, forms
a trumpery gimcrack kind of a character who is a mechanic among gentlemen, and
most probably a gentleman among mechanics. You must understand I mean only to
challenge the system as making mechanics too much and too general a subject of
education, and converting scholars into makers of toys. Men like Watt, or whose genius tends strongly to invent
and execute those wonderful combinations which extend in such an incalculable
degree the human force and command over the physical world, do not come within
ordinary rules; but your ordinary Harry
should be kept to his grammar, and your Lucy of most common occurrence will be best employed on her
sampler, instead of wasting wood, and cutting their fingers, which I am
convinced they did, though their historian says nothing of it.
“Well, but I did not mean to say any thing about
Harry and Lucy, whose dialogues are very interesting after all, but about
Ireland, which I could prophesy for as well as if I were Thomas the Rhymer. Her natural gifts are so
great, that, despite all the disadvantages which have hitherto retarded her
progress, she will, I believe, be queen of the trefoil of kingdoms. I never saw
a richer country, or, to speak my mind, a finer people; the worst of them is
the bitter and envenomed dislike which they have to each other. Their factions
have been so long envenomed, and they have such narrow
ground to do their battle in, that they are like people fighting with daggers
in a hogshead. This, however, is getting better, for as the government
temporizes between the parties, and does not throw, as formerly, its whole
weight into the Protestant scale, there is more appearance of things settling
into concord and good order. The Protestants of the old school, the determined
Orangemen, are a very fine race, but dangerous for the quiet of a country; they
reminded me of the Spaniard in Mexico, and seemed still to walk among the
Catholics with all the pride of the conquerors of the Boyne and the captors of
Limerick. Their own belief is completely fixed, that there are enough of men in
Down and Antrim to conquer all Ireland again; and when one considers the
habitual authority they have exercised, their energetic and military character,
and the singular way in which they are banded and united together, they may be
right enough for what I know, for they have all one mind and one way of
pursuing it. But the Catholic is holding up his head now in a different way
from what they did in former days, though still with a touch of the savage
about them. It is, after all, a helpless sort of superstition, which with its
saints’ days, and the influence of its ignorant bigoted priesthood,
destroys ambition and industrious exertion. It is rare to see the Catholic rise
above the line he is born in. The Protestant part of the country is as highly
improved as many parts of England. Education is much more frequent in Ireland
than in England. In Kerry, one of the wildest counties, you find peasants who
speak Latin. It is not the art of reading, however, but the use which is made
of it, that is to be considered. It is much to be wished that the priests
themselves were better educated, but the College at Maynooth has been a
failure. The students, all men
of the lower orders, are educated there in all the bigotry of the Catholic
religion, unmitigated by any of the knowledge of the world which they used to
acquire in France, Italy, or Spain, from which they returned very often highly
accomplished and companionable men. I do not believe either party care a bit
for what is called Emancipation, only that the Catholics desire it because the
Protestants are not willing they should have it, and the Protestants desire to
withhold it, because the want of it mortifies the Catholic. The best-informed
Catholics said it had no interest for the common people, whose distresses had
nothing to do with political Emancipation, but that they, the higher order,
were interested in it as a point of honour, the withholding of which prevented
their throwing their strength into the hands of Government. On the whole, I
think Government have given the Catholics so much, that withholding this is
just giving them something to grumble about, without its operating to diminish,
in a single instance, the extent of Popery.—Then we had beautiful lakes,
‘those vast inland seas,’ as Spenser terms them, and hills which they call mountains, and
dargles and dingles, and most superb ruins of castles and abbeys, and live nuns
in strict retreat, not permitted to speak, but who read their breviaries with
one eye, and looked at their visiters with the other. Then we had Miss Edgeworth, and the kind-natured clever
Harriet, who moved, and thought, and
acted for every body’s comfort rather than her own; we had Lockhart to say clever things, and Walter, with his whiskers, to overawe
obstinate postilions and impudent beggars—and Jane to bless herself that the folks had neither houses,
clothes, nor furniture—and Anne to make
fun from morning to night— ‘And merry folks were we.’
“John
Richardson has been looking at a wild domain within five miles
of us, and left us in the earnest determination to buy it, having caught a
basket of trouts in the space of two hours in the stream he is to call his own.
It is a good purchase I think: he has promised to see me again and carry you up
a bottle of whisky, which, if you will but take enough of, will operate as a
peace-offering should, and make you forget all my epistolary failures. I beg
kind respects to dear Mrs Agnes and to
Mrs Baillie. Lady Scott and Anne send
best respects.—I have but room to say that I am always yours,
Walter Scott.”
CHAPTER III. LIFE OF NAPOLEON IN PROGRESS—VISITS OF MR
MOORE, MRS COOTTS, ETC.—COMMERCIAL MANIA AND IMPENDING
DIFFICULTIES OF 1825.
Without an hour’s delay Sir
Walter resumed his usual habits of life at Abbotsford—the musing ramble
among his own glens, the breezy ride over the moors, the merry spell at the woodman’s
axe, or the festive chase of Newark, Fernilee, Hangingshaw, or Deloraine; the quiet
old-fashioned contentment of the little domestic circle, alternating with the brilliant
phantasmagoria of admiring, and sometimes admired, strangers—or the hoisting of the
telegraph flag that called laird and bonnet-laird to the burning of the water, or the
wassail of the hall. The hours of the closet alone had found a change. The preparation for
the Life of Napoleon was a course of such
hard reading as had not been called for while “the great magician,” in the full
sunshine of ease, amused himself, and delighted the world, by unrolling, fold after fold,
his endlessly varied panorama of romance. That miracle had to all appearance cost him no
effort. Unmoved and serene among the multiplicities of worldly business, and the invasions
of half Europe and America, he had gone on tranquilly enjoying rather than exerting his
genius, in the production of those masterpieces which have peopled all
our fire-sides with inexpensive friends, and rendered the solitary supremacy of Shakspeare, as an all-comprehensive and genial painter of
man, no longer a proverb.
He had, while this was the occupation of his few desk-hours, read only
for his diversion. How much he read even then, his correspondence may have afforded some
notion. Those who observed him the most constantly were never able to understand how he
contrived to keep himself so thoroughly up to the stream of contemporary literature of
almost all sorts, French and German, as well as English. That a rapid glance might tell him
more than another man could gather by a week’s poring, may easily be guessed; but the
grand secret was his perpetual practice of his own grand maxim never to
be doing nothing. He had no ‘unconsidered trifles’ of time. Every
moment was turned to account; and thus he had leisure for every thing except, indeed, the
newspapers, which consume so many precious hours nowadays with most men, and of which,
during the period of my acquaintance with him, he certainly read less than any other man I
ever knew that had any habit of reading at all. I should also except, speaking generally,
the Reviews and Magazines of the time. Of these he saw few, and of the few he read little.
He had now to apply himself doggedly to the mastering of a huge
accumulation of historical materials. He read, and noted, and indexed with the pertinacity
of some pale compiler in the British Museum; but rose from such employment, not radiant and
buoyant, as after he had been feasting himself among the teeming harvests of Fancy, but
with an aching brow, and eyes on which the dimness of years had begun to plant some specks,
before they were subjected again to that straining over small print and difficult
manuscript which had, no doubt, been
familiar to them in the early time, when (in Shortreed’s phrase) “he was making himself.” It
was a pleasant sight when one happened to take a passing peep into his den, to see the
white head erect, and the smile of conscious inspiration on his lips, while the pen, held
boldly and at a commanding distance, glanced steadily and gaily along a fast-blackening
page of “The Talisman.” It now
often made me sorry to catch a glimpse of him, stooping and poring with his spectacles,
amidst piles of authorities, a little note-book ready in the left hand, that had always
used to be at liberty for patting Maida. To observe this was the
more painful, because I had at that time to consult him about some literary proposals, the
closing with which would render it necessary for me to abandon my profession and residence
in Edinburgh, and with them the hope of being able to relieve him of some part of the minor
labours in which he was now involved; an assistance on which he had counted when he
undertook this historical task. There were then about me, indeed, cares and anxieties of
various sorts that might have thrown a shade even over a brighter vision of his interior.
For the circumstance that finally determined me, and reconciled him as to the proposed
alteration in my views of life, was the failing health of an infant equally dear to us
both. It was, in a word, the opinion of our medical friends, that the short-lived child of many and high hopes, whose name will go down to
posterity with one of Sir Walter’s most precious
works, could hardly survive another
northern winter; and we all flattered ourselves with the anticipation that my removal to
London at the close of 1825 might pave the way for a happy resumption of the cottage at
Chiefswood in the ensuing summer. Dis aliter
visum.
During the latter months of 1825, while the matter to which I have alluded was yet undecided, I had to make two hurried journeys to London, by
which I lost the opportunity of witnessing Sir
Walter’s reception of several eminent persons with whom he then formed
or ratified a friendship; among others the late admirable Master of the Rolls, Lord Gifford, and his Lady who spent some days at Abbotsford, and detected nothing of the less
agreeable features in its existence, which I have been dwelling upon; Dr Philpotts, now Bishop of Exeter; and also the brother
bard, who had expressed his regret at not being present “when Scott and
Killarney were introduced to each other.” No more welcome announcement
ever reached Scott than Mr
Moore’s of his purpose to make out, that same season, his long
meditated expedition to Scotland; and the characteristic opening and close of the reply
will not, I hope, be thrown away upon my reader, any more than they were on the
warm-hearted minstrel of Erin.
To Thomas Moore, Esq., Sloperton Cottage,
Devizes.
“Few things could give me more pleasure than your
realizing the prospect your letter holds out to me. We are at Abbotsford
fixtures till 10th November, when my official duty, for I am ‘slave to
an hour and vassal to a bell,’ calls me to Edinburgh. I hope you
will give me as much of your time as you can—no one will value it more highly.
“You keep the great north road till you come to the
last stage in England, Cornhill, and then take up the Tweed to Kelso. If I knew
what day you would be at Kelso, I would come down, and do the honours of
Tweedside, by bringing you here, and showing you any thing that is remarkable by the way; but
though I could start at a moment’s warning, I should scarce, I fear, have
time to receive a note from Newcastle soon enough to admit of my reaching you
at Kelso. Drop me a line, however, at all events; and, in coming from Kelso to
Melrose and Abbotsford, be sure to keep the southern side of the Tweed, both
because it is far the pleasantest route, and because I will come a few miles to
take the chance of meeting you. You do not mention whether you have any
fellow-travellers. We have plenty of accommodation for any part of your family,
or any friend, who may be with you.—Yours, in great joy and expectation,
Walter Scott.”
Mr Moore arrived accordingly—and he remained several
days. Though not, I believe, a regular journalizer, he kept a brief diary during his Scotch
tour, and he has kindly allowed me the use of it. He fortunately found Sir Walter in an interval of repose—no one with him at
Abbotsford, but Lady and Miss Scott and no company at dinner except the Fergusons and Laidlaw. The two poets
had thus the opportunity of a great deal of quiet conversation; and from the hour they met,
they seem to have treated each other with a full confidence, the record of which, however
touchingly honourable to both, could hardly be made public in
extenso while one of them survives. The first day they were alone
after dinner, and the talk turned chiefly on the recent death of Byron—from which Scott passed unaffectedly to his own
literary history. Mr Moore listened with great interest to details,
now no longer new, about the early days of ballad-hunting, Mat
Lewis, the Minstrelsy,
and the Poems; and “at last,” says he, “to my no small
surprise, as well as pleasure, he mentioned the novels, without
any reserve, as his own. He gave me an account of the original progress of those
extraordinary works, the hints supplied for them, the conjectures and mystification to
which they had given rise, &c. &c.:” he concluded with saying,
“they have been a mine of wealth to me—but I find I fail in them now—I can no
longer make them so good as at first.” This frankness was met as it should
have been by the brother poet; and when he entered Scott’s room
next morning, “he laid his hand,” says Mr Moore,
“with a sort of cordial earnestness on my breast, and said—Now, my dear Moore, we are friends for life.”
They sallied out for a walk through the plantations, and among other things, the commonness
of the poetic talent in these days was alluded to. “Hardly a Magazine is now
published,” said Moore, “that does not contain
verses, which some thirty years ago would have made a reputation.”
Scott turned with his look of shrewd humour, as if chuckling over
his own success, and said, “Ecod, we were in the luck of it to come before these
fellows;” but he added, playfully flourishing his stick as he spoke,
“we have, like Bobadil, taught them to
beat us with our own weapons.” “In complete novelty,” says
Moore, “he seemed to think lay the only chance for a man
ambitious of high literary reputation in these days.”
Mr Moore was not less pleased than Washington Irving had been nine years before with
Scott’s good friend at Kaeside. He
says:—“Our walk was to the cottage of Mr
Laidlaw, his bailiff, a gentleman who had been reduced beneath his due
level in life, and of whom Scott spoke with the most cordial respect. His intention
was, he said, to ask him to come down and dine with us:—the cottage homely, but the man
himself, with his broad Scotch dialect, showing all the quiet self-possession of good
breeding and good sense.”
At Melrose, writes Mr Moore,
“With the assistance of the sexton, a shrewd, sturdy-mannered original, he
explained to me all the parts of the ruin; after which we were shown up to a room in
the sexton’s house, filled with casts done by himself, from the ornaments, heads,
&c. of the abbey. Seeing a large niche empty, Scott said, ‘Johnny, I’ll give you
a Virgin and Child to put in that place.’ Never did I see a happier face
than Johnny’s at this news—it was all over smiles.
‘But, Johnny,’ continued Scott, as we went down
stairs, ‘I’m afraid, if there should be another anti-popish rising,
you’ll have your house pulled about your ears.’ When we had got
into the carriage, I said, ‘You have made that man most truly
happy.’ ‘Ecod, then,’ he replied, ‘there are two
of us pleased, for I was very much puzzled to know what to do with that Virgin and
Child; and mamma particularly’ (meaning Lady
Scott) ‘will be delighted to get rid of it.’ A less
natural man would have allowed me to remain under the impression that he had really
done a very generous thing.”
They called the same morning at Huntly Burn:—“I could not help
thinking” (says Moore), “during this
homely visit, how astonished some of those French friends of mine would be, among whom
the name of Sir Walter Scott is encircled only with
high and romantic associations, to see the quiet, neighbourly manner in which he took
his seat beside these good old maids, and the familiar ease with which they treated him
in return. No common squire indeed, with but half an idea in his head, could have
fallen into the gossip of a humdrum country-visit with more unassumed
simplicity.”
Mr Moore would have been likely to make the same
sort of observation, had he accompanied Sir Walter into
any other house in the valley; but he could not be expected to appreciate oft-hand the very
uncommon intellectual merits of “those old maids” of
Huntly Burn—who had enjoyed the inestimable advantage of living from youth to age in the
atmosphere of genius, learning, good sense, and high principle.
He was of course delighted at the dinner which followed, when Scott had collected his neighbours to enjoy his guest, with
the wit and humour of Sir Adam Ferguson, his
picturesque stories of the Peninsula, and his inimitable singing of the old Jacobite
ditties. “Nothing,” he writes, “could be more hearty and radiant
than Scott’s enjoyment of them, though his attempts to join in
the chorus showed certainly far more of will than of power. He confessed that he hardly
knew high from low in music. I told him that Lord Byron,
in the same manner, knew nothing of music as an art, but still had a strong feeling of it,
and that I had more than once seen the tears come into his eyes as he listened. ‘I
dare say,’ said Scott, ‘that
Byron’s feeling and mine about music might be pretty
much the same.’ I was much struck by his description of a scene he had once
with Lady (the divorced Lady ——) upon her eldest boy, who had been
born before her marriage with Lord ——, asking her why he himself was not Lord —— (the
second title). ‘Do you hear that?’ she exclaimed wildly to
Scott; and then rushing to the pianoforte, played, in a sort of
frenzy, some hurried airs, as if to drive away the dark thoughts then in her mind. It
struck me that he spoke of this lady as if there had been something more than mere
friendship between them. He described her as beautiful and full of character.
“In reference to his own ignorance of musical matters,
Scott mentioned that he had been once employed
as counsel upon a case where a purchaser of a fiddle had been imposed upon as to its
value. He found it necessary,
accordingly, to prepare himself by reading all about fiddles and fiddlers that he could
find in the Encyclopædia, &c.; and having
got the names of Straduarius, Amati, and such
like, glibly upon his tongue, he got swimmingly through his cause. Not long after this,
dining at ——, he found himself left alone after dinner with the Duke, who had but two
subjects he could talk upon—hunting and music. Having exhausted hunting,
Scott thought he would bring forward his lately acquired
learning in fiddles, upon which his Grace became quite animated, and immediately
whispered some orders to the butler, in consequence of which there soon entered into
the room about half a dozen tall footmen, each bearing a fiddle-case; and
Scott now found his musical knowledge brought to no less
trying a test than that of telling, by the tone of each fiddle, as the Duke played it,
by what artist it had been made. ‘By guessing and management,’ he
said, ‘I got on pretty well till we were, to my great relief, summoned to
coffee.’”
In handing to me the pages from which I have taken these scraps,
Mr Moore says,—“I parted from Scott with the feeling that all the world might admire him in
his works, but that those only could learn to love him as he deserved who had seen him at
Abbotsford. I give you carte blanche to say what
you please of my sense of his cordial kindness and gentleness; perhaps a not very dignified
phrase would express my feeling better than any fine one—it was that he was a thorough good fellow.” What Scott thought
of Moore the reader shall see presently.
The author of Lallah
Rookh’s Kelso chaise was followed before many days by a more formidable
equipage. The much talked-of lady who began life as Miss Harriet
Mellon, a comic actress in a provincial troop, and died Duchess of St Albans, was then making a tour in Scot-land as Mrs Coutts, the enormously wealthy widow
of the first English banker of his time. No person of such consequence could, in those
days, have thought a Scotch progress complete, unless it included a reception at
Abbotsford; but Mrs Coutts had been previously acquainted with
Sir Walter, who, indeed, had some remote connexion
with her late husband’s family, through the Stuarts of Allanbank, I believe, or
perhaps the Swintons of Swinton. He had visited her occasionally in London during Mr Coutts’s life, and was very willing to do the
honours of Teviotdale in return. But although she was considerate enough not to come on him
with all her retinue, leaving four of the seven carriages with which she travelled at
Edinburgh, the appearance of only three coaches, each drawn by four horses, was rather
trying for poor Lady Scott. They contained Mrs
Coutts, her future lord the Duke of St
Albans, one of his Grace’s sisters—a dame
de compagnie (vulgarly styled a Toady)—a brace of physicians—for it
had been considered that one doctor might himself be disabled in the course of an
expedition so adventurous—and, besides other menials of every grade, two bedchamber women
for Mrs Coutts’s own person; she requiring to have this article
also in duplicate, because, in her widowed condition, she was fearful of ghosts and there
must be one Abigail for the service of the toilette, a second to keep watch by night. With
a little puzzling and cramming, all this train found accommodation; but it so happened that
there were already in the house several ladies, Scotch and English, of high birth and rank,
who felt by no means disposed to assist their host and hostess in making Mrs
Coutts’s visit agreeable to her. They had heard a great deal, and they
saw something, of the ostentation almost inseparable from wealth so vast as had come into
her keeping. They were on the outlook for absurdity
and merriment; and I need not observe how effectually women of fashion can contrive to
mortify, without doing or saying any thing that shall expose them to the charge of actual
incivility.
Sir Walter, during dinner, did every thing in his power
to counteract this influence of the evil eye, and something to overawe it; but the spirit
of mischief had been fairly stirred, and it was easy to see that Mrs Coutts followed these noble dames to the drawing-room in by no means
that complacent mood which was customarily sustained, doubtless, by every blandishment of
obsequious flattery, in this mistress of millions. He cut the gentlemen’s sederunt
short, and soon after joining the ladies, managed to withdraw the youngest, and gayest, and
cleverest, who was also the highest in rank (a lovely Marchioness), into his armorial-hall
adjoining. “I said to her” (he told me), “I want to speak a
word with you about Mrs Coutts. We have known each other a good
while, and I know you won’t take any thing I can say in ill part. It is, I hear,
not uncommon among the fine ladies in London to be very well pleased to accept
invitations, and even sometimes to hunt after them, to Mrs
Coutts’s grand balls and fêtes, and then, if they meet her in any
private circle, to practise on her the delicate manœuvre
called tipping the cold shoulder. This you agree with me is
shabby; but it is nothing new either to you or to me that fine people will do
shabbinesses for which beggars might blush, if they once stoop so low as to poke for
tickets. I am sure you would not for the world do such a thing; but you must permit me
to take the great liberty of saying, that I think the style you have all received my
guest Mrs Coutts in, this evening, is, to a certain extent, a sin
of the same order. You were all told a couple of days ago that I had accepted her
visit, and that she would arrive to-day to stay three nights. Now
if any of you had not been disposed to be of my party at the same time with her, there
was plenty of time for you to have gone away before she came; and as none of you moved,
and it was impossible to fancy that any of you would remain out of mere curiosity, I
thought I had a perfect right to calculate on your having made up your minds to help me
out with her.” The beautiful Peeress answered, “I thank you,
Sir Walter—you have done me the great honour to speak as if I
had been your daughter, and depend upon it you shall be obeyed with heart and
good-will.” One by one, the other exclusives were seen engaged in a little
têtte-à-tête with her ladyship. Sir
Walter was soon satisfied that things had been put into a right train; the
Marchioness was requested to sing a particular song, because he thought it would please
Mrs Coutts. “Nothing could gratify her more than to
please Mrs Coutts.” Mrs
Coutts’s brow smoothed, and in the course of half-an-hour she was as
happy and easy as ever she was in her life, rattling away at comical anecdotes of her early
theatrical years, and joining in the chorus of Sir
Adam’sLaird of
Cockpen. She stayed out her three days*—saw, accompanied by all the circle,
Melrose, Dryburgh, and Yarrow—and left Abbotsford delighted with her host, and, to all
appearance, with his other guests.
It may be said (for the most benevolent of men had in his lifetime, and
still has, some maligners) that he was so anxious about Mrs
Coutts’s comfort, because he worshipped wealth. I dare not deny that
he set more of his affections, during great part of his life, upon worldly things, wealth
among others, than might have become such an intellect. One may conceive a sober
* Sir Walter often quoted the
maxim of an old lady in one of Miss
Ferrier’s novels—that a visit should never exceed three days,
“the rest day—the drest day—and
the prest day.”
grandeur of mind, not incompatible with
genius as rich as even his, but infinitely more admirable than any genius, incapable of
brooding upon any of the pomps and vanities of this life—or caring about money at all,
beyond what is necessary for the easy sustenance of nature. But we must, in judging the
most powerful of minds, take into account the influences to which they were exposed in the
plastic period; and where imagination is visibly the predominant faculty, allowance must be
made very largely indeed. Scott’s autobiographical
fragment, and the anecdotes annexed to it, have been printed in vain, if they have not
conveyed the notion of such a training of the mind, fancy, and character, as could hardly
fail to suggest dreams and aspirations very likely, were temptation presented, to take the
shape of active external ambition to prompt a keen pursuit of those resources, without
which visions of worldly splendour cannot be realized. But I think the subsequent
narrative, with the correspondence embodied in it, must also have satisfied every candid
reader that his appetite for wealth was, after all, essentially a vivid yearning for the
means of large beneficence. As to his being capable of the silliness—to say nothing of the
meanness—of allowing any part of his feelings or demeanour towards others to be affected by
their mere possession of wealth, I cannot consider such a suggestion as worthy of much
remark. He had a kindness towards Mrs Coutts, because he knew that,
vain and pompous as her displays of equipage and attendance might be, she mainly valued
wealth, like himself, as the instrument of doing good. Even of her apparently most
fantastic indulgences he remembered, as Pope did when
ridiculing the “lavish cost and little skill” of his Timon, “Yet hence the poor are clothed, the hungry fed;”— but he interfered, to prevent her being made uncomfortable in his
house, neither more nor less than he would have done, had she come there in her original
character of a comic actress, and been treated with coldness as such by his Marchionesses
and Countesses.
Since I have been led to touch on what many always considered as the
weak part of his character—his over respect for worldly things in general,—I must say one
word as to the matter of rank, which undoubtedly had infinitely more effect on him than
money. In the first place, he was all along courted by the great world—not it by him; and,
secondly, pleased as he was with its attentions, he derived infinitely greater pleasure
from the trusting and hearty affection of his old equals, and the inferiors whose welfare
he so unweariedly promoted. But, thirdly, he made acute discriminations among the many
different orders of claimants who jostle each other for pre-eminence in the curiously
complicated system of modern British society. His imagination had been constantly exercised
in recalling and embellishing whatever features of the past it was possible to connect with
any pleasing ideas, and a historical name was a charm that literally stirred his blood. But
not so a mere title. He reverenced the Duke of Buccleuch—but it was
not as a Duke, but as the head of his clan, the representative of the old knights of
Branxholm. In the Duke of Hamilton he saw not the premier peer of
Scotland, but the lineal heir of the heroic old Douglasses; and he had profounder respect
for the chief of a Highland Clan, without any title whatever, and with an ill paid rental
of two or three thousand a-year, than for the haughtiest magnate in a blue ribbon, whose
name did not call up any grand historical reminiscence. I remember once when he had some
young Englishmen of high fashion in his house, there arrived a Scotch gentleman of no distinguished appearance, whom he received
with a sort of eagerness and empressement of
reverential courtesy that struck the strangers as quite out of the common. His name was
that of a Scotch Earl, however, and no doubt he was that nobleman’s son.
“Well,” said one of the Southrons to me,—“I had never heard
that the Earl of —— was one of your very greatest lords in this country; even a second
son of his, booby though he be, seems to be of wonderful consideration.” The
young English lord heard with some surprise, that the visiter in question was a poor
lieutenant on half-pay, heir to a tower about as crazy as Don
Quixote’s, and noways related (at least according to English notions
of relationship) to the Earl of ——. “What, then,” he cried,
“What canSir
Walter mean?” “Why,” said I, “his
meaning is very clear. This gentleman is the male representative (which the Earl of may
possibly be in the female line) of a knight who is celebrated by our old poet Blind Harry, as having signalized himself by the side of
Sir William Wallace, and from whom every
Scotchman that bears the name of —— has at least the ambition of being supposed to
descend.”—Sir Walter’s own title came unsought;
and that he accepted it, not in the foolish fancy that such a title, or any title, could
increase his own personal consequence, but because he thought it fair to embrace the
opportunity of securing a certain external distinction to his heirs at Abbotsford, was
proved pretty clearly by his subsequently declining the greatly higher, but intransmissible
rank of a Privy-Councillor. At the same time, I dare say his ear liked the knightly sound;
and undoubtedly he was much pleased with the pleasure his wife took, and gaily acknowledged
she took, in being My Lady.
The circumstances of the King’s visit in 1822, and others already noted, leave no doubt that imagination enlarged and
glorified for him many objects to which it is very difficult for ordinary men in our
generation to attach much importance; and perhaps he was more apt to attach importance to
such things, during the prosperous course of his own fortunes, than even a liberal
consideration of circumstances can altogether excuse. To myself it seems to have been so;
yet I do not think the severe critics on this part of his story have kept quite
sufficiently in mind how easy it is for us all to undervalue any species of temptation to
which we have not happened to be exposed. I am aware, too, that there are examples of men
of genius, situated to a certain extent like him, who have resisted and repelled the
fascinations against which he was not entirely proof; but I have sometimes thought that
they did so at the expense of parts of their character nearer the marrow of humanity than
those which his weakness in this way tended to endamage; that they mingled, in short, in
their virtuous self-denial, some grains of sacrifice at the shrine of a cold, unsocial,
even sulky species of self-conceit. But this digression has already turned out much longer
than I intended.
Mrs Coutts and her three coaches astonished Abbotsford
but a few days after I returned to Chiefswood from one of my rapid journeys to London.
While in the metropolis on that occasion, I had heard a great deal more than I understood
about the commercial excitement of the time. For several years preceding 1825 the plethora
of gold on the one hand, and the wildness of impatient poverty on the other, had been
uniting their stimulants upon the blood and brain of the most curious of all concretes,
individual or national, “John Bull;” nor
had sober “Sister Peg” escaped the
infection of disorders which appear to recur, at pretty regular periods, in the sanguine constitution of her
brother. They who had accumulated great masses of wealth, dissatisfied with the usual rates
of interest under a conscientious government really protective of property, had embarked in
the most perilous and fantastic schemes for piling visionary Pelions upon the real Ossa of
their moneybags; and unscrupulous dreamers, who had all to gain and nothing to lose, found
it easy to borrow, from cash-encumbered neighbours, the means of pushing adventures of
their own devising, more extravagant than had been heard of since the days of the South Sea
and Mississippi bubbles. Even persons who had extensive and flourishing businesses in their
hands, partook the general rage of infatuation. He whose own shop, counting-house, or
warehouse, had been sufficient to raise him to a decent and safely-increasing opulence, and
was more than sufficient to occupy all his attention, drank in the vain delusion that he
was wasting his time and energy on things unworthy of a masculine ambition, and embarked
the resources necessary for the purposes of his lawful calling, in speculations worthy of
the land-surveyors of El Dorado. It was whispered that the trade (so
called, par excellence) had been bitten with this fever; and persons
of any foresight who knew (as I did not at that time know) the infinitely curious links by
which booksellers, and printers, and paper-makers (and therefore authors), are bound
together, high and low, town and country, for good and for evil, already began to prophesy
that, whenever the general crash, which must come ere long, should arrive, its effects
would be felt far and wide among all classes connected with the productions of the press.
When it was rumoured that this great bookseller, or printer, had become a principal holder
of South American mining shares—that another was the leading director of a railway
company—a third of a gas company —while a fourth house had risked
about L.100,000 in a cast upon the most capricious of all agricultural products, hops—it was no wonder that bankers should begin to calculate
balances, and pause upon discounts.
Among other hints to the tune of periculosæ plenum opus aleæ which reached my ear, were
some concerning a splendid bookselling establishment in London, with which I knew the
Edinburgh house of Constable to be closely connected
in business. Little suspecting the extent to which any mischance of Messrs Hurst and Robinson
must involve Sir Walter’s own responsibilities, I
transmitted to him the rumours in question as I received them. Before I could have his
answer, a legal friend of mine, well known to Scott also, told me that
people were talking doubtfully about Constable’s own stability.
I thought it probable that if Constable fell into any pecuniary
embarrassments, Scott might suffer the inconvenience of losing the
copy-money of his last novel. Nothing more serious occurred to me. But I thought it my duty
to tell him this whisper also; and heard from him, almost by return of post, that, shake
who might in London, his friend in Edinburgh was “rooted, as well as branched,
like the oak.” Knowing his almost painfully accurate habits of business as to
matters of trivial moment, I doubted not that he had ample grounds for being quite easy as
to any concerns of his own with his publisher; and though I turned northwards with anxiety
enough, none of the burden had reference to that subject.
A few days, however, after my arrival at Chiefswood, I received a letter
from the legal friend already alluded to—(Mr William
Wright, the eminent barrister of Lincoln’s Inn,—who, by the way, was
also on habits of great personal familiarity with Constable, and liked the Czar exceedingly)—which
renewed my apprehensions, or rather,
for the first time, gave me any suspicion that there really might be something
“rotten in the state of Muscovy.” Mr Wright informed me
that it was reported in London that Constable’s London banker
had thrown up his book. This letter reached me about five o’clock, as I was sitting
down to dinner; and, about an hour afterwards, I rode over to Abbotsford, to communicate
its contents. I found Sir Walter alone over his glass of
whisky and water and cigar—at this time, whenever there was no company, “his custom
always in the afternoon.” I gave him Mr Wright’s letter to
read. He did so, and returning it, said, quite with his usual tranquil good-humour of look
and voice, “I am much obliged to you for coming over, but you may rely upon it
Wright has been hoaxed. I promise you, were the Crafty’s book thrown up, there
would be a pretty decent scramble among the bankers for the keeping of it. There may
have been some little dispute or misunderstanding, which malice and envy have
exaggerated in this absurd style; but I shan’t allow such nonsense to disturb my
siesta. Don’t you see,” he added, lighting
another cigar, “that Wright could not have heard of such a
transaction the very day it happened? And can you doubt, that if
Constable had been informed of it yesterday, this day’s
post must have brought me intelligence direct from him?” I ventured to
suggest that this last point did not seem to me clear; that Constable
might not, perhaps, in such a case, be in so great a hurry with his intelligence.
“Ah!” said he, “the Crafty and James Ballantyne have been so much connected in business, that Fatsman
would be sure to hear of any thing so important; and I like the notion of his hearing
it, and not sending me one of his malagrugrous billets-doux. He
could as soon keep his eyebrows in their place if you told him there was a fire in his
nursery.”
Seeing how coolly he treated my news, I went home relieved and
gratified. Next morning, as I was rising, behold Peter
Mathieson at my door, his horses evidently off a journey, and the Sheriff
rubbing his eyes as if the halt had shaken him out of a sound sleep. I made what haste I
could to descend, and found him by the side of the brook, looking somewhat worn, but with a
serene and satisfied countenance, busied already in helping his little grandson to feed a
fleet of ducklings. “You are surprised,” he said, “to see me
here. The truth is, I was more taken aback with Wright’s epistle than I cared to let on;
and so, as soon as you left me, I ordered the carriage to the door, and never stopped
till I got to Polton, where I found Constable
putting on his nightcap. I staid an hour with him, and I have now the pleasure to tell
you that all is right. There was not a word of truth in the story. He is fast as Ben
Lomond; and as Mamma and Anne did not know what my errand was, I thought it as well to come and
breakfast here, and set Sophia and you at your
ease before I went home again.”
We had a merry breakfast, and he chatted gaily afterwards as I escorted
him through his woods, leaning on my shoulder all the way, which he seldom as yet did,
except with Tom Purdie, unless when he was in a more
than commonly happy and affectionate mood. But I confess the impression this incident left
on my mind was not a pleasant one. It was then that I first began to harbour a suspicion,
that if any thing should befall Constable, Sir Walter would suffer a heavier loss than the nonpayment of
some one novel. The night journey revealed serious alarm. My wife suggested, as we talked
things over, that his alarm had been, not on his own account, but Ballantyne’s, who, in case evil came on the great
employer of his types, might possibly lose a
year’s profit on them, which neither she nor I doubted must amount to a large sum—any
more than that a misfortune of Ballantyne’s would grieve her
father as much as one personal to himself. His warm regard for his printer could be no
secret; we well knew that James was his confidential critic—his
trusted and trustworthy friend from boyhood. Nor was I ignorant that
Scott had a share in the property of
Ballantyne’sEdinburgh Weekly Journal. I hinted, under the year 1820, that a dispute arose
about the line to be adopted by that paper in the matter of the Queen’s trial, and that Scott employed his
authority towards overruling the Editor’s disposition to espouse the anti-ministerial
side of that unhappy question. He urged every argument in his power, and in vain; for
James had a just sense of his own responsibility as editor, and
conscientiously differing from Sir Walter’s opinion, insisted,
with honourable firmness, on maintaining his own until he should be denuded of his office.
I happened to be present at one of their conversations on this subject, and in the course
of it Scott used language which distinctly implied that he spoke not
merely as a friend, but as a joint-proprietor of the Journal. Nor did it seem at all
strange that this should be so. But that Sir Walter was and had all
along been James’s partner in the great printing concern,
neither I, nor, I believe, any member of his family, had entertained the slightest
suspicion prior to the coming calamities which were now “casting their shadows
before.”
It is proper to add here that the story about the banker’s
throwing up the book was, as subsequent revelations attested, groundless. Sir Walter’s first guess as to its origin proved
correct.
A few days afterwards, Mr Murray
of Albemarle Street sent me a transcript of Lord
Byron’s Ravenna Diary, with permission for my
neighbour also to read it if he pleased. Sir Walter read
those extraordinary pages with the liveliest interest, and filled several of the blank
leaves and margins with illustrative annotations and anecdotes, some of which have lately
been made public, as the rest will doubtless be hereafter. In perusing what
Byron had jotted down from day to day in the intervals of regular
composition, it very naturally occurred to Sir Walter that the noble
poet had done well to avoid troubling himself by any adoption or affectation of plan or
orde— giving an opinion, a reflection, a reminiscence, serious or comic, or the incidents
of the passing hour, just as the spirit moved him,—and seeing what a mass of curious
things, such as “aftertimes would not willingly let die,” had been thus
rescued from oblivion at a very slight cost of exertion,—he resolved to attempt keeping
thenceforth a somewhat similar record. A thick quarto volume, bound in vellum, with a lock
and key, was forthwith procured; and Sir Walter began the journal, from which I shall begin, in the
next chapter, to draw copiously. The occupation of a few stray minutes in his dressing-room
at getting up in the morning, or after he had retired for the night, was found a pleasant
variety for him. He also kept the book by him when in his study, and often had recourse to
it when any thing puzzled him and called for a halt in the prosecution of what he
considered (though posterity will hardly do so) a more important task. It was extremely
fortunate that he took up this scheme exactly at the time when he settled seriously to the
history of Buonaparte’s personal career. The
sort of preparation which every chapter of that book now called for has been already
alluded to; and—although, when he had fairly read himself up to any one great cycle of
transactions, his old spirit roused itself in full energy, and he traced the record with as rapid and glowing a
pencil as he had ever wielded—there were minutes enough, and hours, and perhaps days, of
weariness, depression, and languor, when (unless this silent confidant had been at hand)
even he perhaps might have made no use of his writing-desk.
Even the new resource of journalizing, however, was not sufficient. He
soon convinced himself that it would facilitate, not impede, his progress with Napoleon, to have a work of imagination in
hand also. The success of the Tales of the
Crusaders had been very high; and Constable, well aware that it had been his custom of old to carry on two
romances at the same time, was now too happy to encourage him in beginning Woodstock, to be taken up whenever the
historical MS. should be in advance of the press.
Of the progress both of the Novel and the History, the Journal will afford us fuller and clearer
details than I have been able to produce as to any of his preceding works; but before I
open that sealed book, I believe it will be satisfactory to the reader that I should
present (as briefly as I can) my own view of the melancholy change in Sir Walter’s worldly fortunes, to which almost every
page of the Diary, during several sad and toilsome years, contains some allusion. So doing,
I shall avoid (in some measure at least) the necessity of interrupting, by awkward
explanations, the easy tenor of perhaps the most candid Diary that ever man penned.
The early history of Scott’s
connexion with the Ballantynes has been already given in abundant
detail; and I have felt it my duty not to shrink, at whatever pain to my own feelings or
those of others, from setting down, plainly and distinctly, my own impressions of the
character, manners, and conduct of those two very dissimilar brothers. I find, without
surprise, that my representations of them have not proved
satisfactory to their surviving relations. That I cannot help—though I sincerely regret,
having been compelled, in justice to Scott, to become the instrument
for opening old wounds in kind bosoms, animated, I doubt not, like my own, by veneration
for his memory, and respected by me for combining that feeling with a tender concern for
names so intimately connected with his throughout long years of mutual confidence. But I
have been entirely mistaken if those to whom I allude, or any others of my readers, have
interpreted any expressions of mine as designed to cast the slightest imputation on the
moral rectitude of the elder Ballantyne. No
suspicion of that nature ever crossed my mind. I believe James to have
been, from first to last, a perfectly upright man; that his principles were of a lofty
stamp—his feelings pure even to simplicity. His brother John had many amiable as well as amusing qualities, and I am far from
wishing to charge even him with any deep or deliberate malversation. Sir
Walter’s own epithet of “my little picaroon”
indicates all that I desired to imply on that score. But John was,
from mere giddiness of head and temper, incapable of conducting any serious business
advantageously, either for himself or for others; nor dare I hesitate to express my
conviction that, from failings of a different sort, honest James was
hardly a better manager than the picaroon.
He had received the education, not of a printer but of a solicitor; and
he never, to his dying day, had the remotest knowledge or feeling of what the most
important business of a master-printer consists in. He had a fine taste for the effect of
types—no establishment turned out more beautiful specimens of the art than his; but he
appears never to have understood that types need watching as well as setting. If the page
looked handsome he was satisfied. He had been
instructed that on every L.50 paid in his men’s wages, the master-printer is entitled
to an equal sum of gross profit; and beyond this rule of thumb
calculation, no experience could bring him to penetrate his mystery.
In a word, James never comprehended that in the
greatest and most regularly employed manufactory of this kind (or indeed of any kind), the
profits are likely to be entirely swallowed up, unless the acting master keeps up a most
wakeful scrutiny, from week to week, and from day to day, as to the machinery and the
materials. So far was he from doing this, that during several of the busiest and most
important years of his connexion with the establishment in the Canongate, he seldom crossed
its doors. He sat in his own elbow-chair, in a comfortable library, situated in a different
street—not certainly an idle man—quite the reverse, though naturally indolent—but the most
negligent and inefficient of master-printers.
He was busy, indeed; and inestimably serviceable to Scott was his labour; but it consisted simply and solely in
the correction and revisal of proof-sheets. It is most true, that Sir Walter’s hurried and careless method of composition rendered it
absolutely necessary that whatever he wrote should be subjected to far more than the usual
amount of inspection required at the hands of the printer; and it is equally so, that it
would have been extremely difficult to find another man willing and able to bestow such
time and care on his proof-sheets as they uniformly received from James. But this was, in fact, not the proper occupation of
the man who was at the head of the establishment—who had undertaken the pecuniary
management of the concern. In every other great printing-house that I have known any thing
about, there are intelligent and well-educated men, called, technically, readers, who devote themselves to this species of labour,
and who are, I fear, seldom paid in proportion to its importance. Dr Goldsmith, in his early life, was such a reader in the printing-house of Richardson; but the author of Clarissa did not disdain to look after the presses and types himself, or he
would never have accumulated the fortune that enabled him to be the liberal employer of readers like Goldsmith. I quoted, in a
preceding volume,* a letter of Scott’s, written when
John Ballantyne and Co.’s bookselling house was breaking up,
in which he says, “One or other of you will need to be constantly in the
printing-office henceforth: it is the sheet-anchor.” This was ten years after
that establishment began. Thenceforth James, in compliance with this
injunction, occupied, during many hours of every day, a small cabinet on the premises in
the Canongate; but whoever visited him there, found him at the same eternal business, that
of a literator, not that of a printer. He was either editing his newspaper—and he
considered that matter as fondly and proudly as Mr Pott
in Pickwick does his Gazette of
Eatanswill—or correcting proof-sheets, or writing critical notes and letters to the
Author of Waverley. Shakspeare, Addison, Johnson, and Burke,
were at his elbow; but not the ledger. We may thus understand poor
John’s complaint, in what I may call his dying memorandum,
of the “large sums abstracted from the bookselling house for the use of the
printing-office.Ӡ Yet that bookselling house was from the first a
hopeless one; whereas, under accurate superintendence, the other ought to have produced the
partners a dividend of from L.2000 to L.3000 a-year, at the very least.
On the other hand, the necessity of providing some
* See ante, vol. iii. p.
61.
† See ante, vol. v.
p. 77.
remedy for this radical disorder, must very
soon have forced itself upon the conviction of all concerned, had not John Ballantyne (who had served a brief apprenticeship in
a London banking-house) introduced his fatal enlightenment on the subject of facilitating
discounts, and raising cash by means of accommodation-bills. Hence the perplexed states and calendars—the wildernesses and
labyrinths of ciphers, through which no eye but that of a professed accountant could have
detected any clue; hence the accumulation of bills and counter-bills drawn by both
bookselling and printing house, and gradually so mixed up with other obligations, that
John Ballantyne died in utter ignorance of the condition of their
affairs. The pecuniary detail of those affairs then devolved upon
James; and I fancy it will be only too apparent that he never made
even one serious effort to master the formidable balances of figures thus committed to his
sole trust—but in which his all was not all that was involved.
I need not recapitulate the history of the connexion between these
Ballantyne firms and that of Constable. It was traced as accurately as my means permitted in the
preceding volumes, with an eye to the catastrophe. I am willing to believe that kindly
feelings had no small share in inducing Constable to uphold the credit
of John Ballantyne and Company, in their several
successive struggles to avoid the exposure of bankruptcy. He was, with pitiable foibles
enough, and grievous faults, and I fear even some black stains of vice in his character, a
man of warm, and therefore I hardly doubt, of sympathizing temperament. Vain to excess,
proud at the same time, haughty, arrogant, presumptuous, despotic—he had still perhaps a
heart. Persons who knew him longer and better than I did, assure me of their conviction
that, in spite of many direct professional hinderances and thwartings, the offspring (as
he viewed mat-ters) partly of Tory
jealousy, and partly of poetical caprice—he had, even at an early period of his life,
formed a genuine affection for Scott’s person, as
well as a most profound veneration for his genius. I think it very possible that he began
his assistance of the Ballantyne companies mainly under this generous
influence—and I also believe that he had, in different ways, a friendly leaning in favour
of both James and John
themselves. But when he, in his overweening self-sufficiency, thought it involved no mighty
hazard to indulge his better feelings, as well as his lordly vanity, in shielding these
friends from commercial dishonour, he had estimated but loosely the demands of the career
of speculation on which he was himself entering. And by and by when, advancing by one
mighty plunge after another in that vast field, he felt in his own person the threatenings
of more signal ruin than could have befallen them, this “Napoleon of the
press”—still as of old buoyed up as to the ultimate result of his grand
operations, by the most fulsome flatteries of imagination—appears to have tossed aside very
summarily all scruples about the extent to which he might be entitled to tax their
sustaining credit in requital. The Ballantynes, if they had
comprehended all the bearings of the case, were not the men to consider grudgingly demands
of this nature, founded on service so important; and who can doubt that
Scott viewed them from a chivalrous altitude? It is easy to see
that the moment the obligations became reciprocal, there arose extreme peril of their
coming to be hopelessly complicated. It is equally clear that he ought to have applied on
these affairs, as their complication thickened, the acumen which he exerted, and rather
prided himself in exerting, on smaller points of worldly business, to the utmost. That he
did not, I must always regard as the enigma of his personal history; but various incidents
in that history, which I have already
narrated, prove incontestably that he had never done so; and I am unable to account for
this having been the case, except on the supposition that his confidence in the resources
of Constable and the prudence of James Ballantyne
was so entire, that he willingly absolved himself from all duty of active and
thorough-going superinspection.
It is the extent to which the confusion had gone that constitutes the
great puzzle. I have been told that John Ballantyne,
in his hey-day, might be heard whistling on his clerk, John
Stevenson (True Jock), from the sanctum behind the shop, with, “Jock, you lubber, fetch ben a sheaf
o’ stamps.” Such things might well enough be believed of that
harebrained creature; but how sober, solemn James
could have made up his mind, as he must have done, to follow much the same wild course
whenever any pinch occurred, is to me, I must own, incomprehensible. The books, of course,
were kept at the printing-house; and Scott, no doubt,
had it in his power to examine them as often as he liked to go there for that purpose. But
did he ever descend the Canongate once on such an errand? I
certainly much question it. I think it very likely that he now and then cast a rapid glance
over the details of a week’s or a month’s operations; but no man who has
followed him throughout can dream that he ever grappled with the sum total. During several
years it was almost daily my custom to walk home with Sir Walter from
the Parliament-House, calling at James’s on our way. For the
most part I used to amuse myself with a newspaper or proof-sheet in the outer room, while
they were closeted in the little cabinet at the corner; and merry were the tones that
reached my ear while they remained in colloquy. If I were called in, it was because
James, in his ecstasy, must have another to enjoy the dialogue
that his friend was improvising—between Meg
Dods and Captain Mac-Turk for example,
or Peter Peebles and his counsel.
How shrewdly Scott lectures Terry in May 1825: “The best business is ruined
when it becomes pinched for money, and gets into the circle of discounting
bills.” “It is easy to make it feasible on paper, but the times of
payment arrive to a certainty.” “I should not like to see you take flight like the ingenious mechanist in Rasselas, only to flutter a few
yards, and fall into the lake; this would be a heart-breaking business.”
“You must be careful that a check shall not throw you on the breakers, and for
this there is no remedy but a handsome provision of the
blunt” &c. &c. Who can read these words and consider that, at
the very hour when they fell from Scott’s pen, he was meditating
a new purchase of land to the extent of L.40,000—and that nevertheless the
“certainty of the arrival of times of payment for discounted bills”
was within a few months of being realized to his own ruin; who can read such words, under
such a date, and not sigh the only comment, sic vos non
vobis?
The reader may perhaps remember a page in a former volume, where I
described Scott as riding with Johnny Ballantyne and myself round the deserted halls of
the ancient family of Riddell, and remarking how much it increased the
wonder of their ruin that the late Baronet had “kept day-book and ledger as
regularly as any cheesemonger in the Grassmarket” It
is, nevertheless, true that Sir Walter kept from first to last as
accurate an account of his own personal expenditure as Sir John Riddell could have done of his extravagant outlay
on agricultural experiments. The instructions he gave his son when first joining the 18th
Hussars about the best method of keeping accounts, were copied from his own practice. I could, I believe, place before my reader the
sum-total of sixpences that it had cost him to ride through-turnpike gates during a period
of thirty years. This was, of course, an early habit mechanically adhered to: but how
strange that the man who could persist, however mechanically, in noting down every shilling
that he actually drew from his purse, should have allowed others to pledge his credit, year
after year, upon sheafs of accommodation paper, “the time for paying which up must
certainly come,” without keeping any efficient watch on their
proceedings—without knowing any one Christmas, for how many thousands or rather tens of
thousands he was responsible as a printer in the Canongate!
This is sufficiently astonishing—and had this been all, the result must
sooner or later have been sufficiently uncomfortable; but still, in the absence of a
circumstance which Sir Walter, however vigilant, could
hardly have been expected to anticipate as within the range of possibility, he would have
been in no danger of a “check that must throw him on the breakers”—of
finding himself, after his flutterings over The Happy Valley, “in the
lake.” He could never have foreseen a step which Constable took in the frenzied excitement of his day of pecuniary alarm.
Owing to the original habitual irregularities of John
Ballantyne, it had been adopted as the regular plan between that person and
Constable, that, whenever the latter signed a bill for the purpose
of the other’s raising money among the bankers, there should, in case of his
neglecting to take that bill up before it fell due, be deposited a counter-bill, signed by
Ballantyne, on which Constable might, if need
were, raise a sum equivalent to that for which he had pledged his credit. I am told that
this is an usual enough course of procedure among speculative merchants; and it may be so. But mark the issue. The plan went on under James’s management, just as
John had begun it. Under his management also, such was the
incredible looseness of it, the counter-bills, meant only for being
sent into the market in the event of the primary bills being
threatened with dishonour—these instruments of safeguard for Constable
against contingent danger were allowed to lie unenquired about in
Constable’s desk, until they had swelled to a truly
monstrous “sheaf of stamps.” Constable’s hour of
distress darkened about him, and he rushed with these to the money-changers. They were
nearly all flung into circulation in the course of this maddening period of panic. And by
this one circumstance it came to pass, that, supposing Ballantyne and
Co. to have, at the day of reckoning, obligations against them, in consequence of bill
transactions with Constable, to the extent of L.25,000, they were
legally responsible for L.50,000.
It is not my business to attempt any detailed history of the House of
Constable. The sanguine man had, almost at the
outset of his career, been “lifted off his feet,” in Burns’s phrase, by the sudden and unparalleled
success of the Edinburgh Review. Scott’s poetry and Scott’s
novels followed; and had he confined himself to those three great and triumphant
undertakings, he must have died in possession of a princely fortune. But his
“appetite grew with what it fed on,” and a long series of less
meritorious publications, pushed on, one after the other, in the craziest rapidity,
swallowed up the gains which, however vast, he never counted, and therefore always
exaggerated to himself. He had with the only person who might have been supposed capable of
controlling him in his later years, the authority of age and a quasi-parental relationship
to sustain the natural influence of great and commanding talents; his proud tempera-ment and his glowing imagination played into
each other’s hands; and he scared suspicion, or trampled remonstrance, whenever
(which probably was seldom) he failed to infuse the fervour of his own self-confidence. But
even his gross imprudence in the management of his own great business would not have been
enough to involve him in absolute ruin: had the matter halted there, and had he,
suspending, as he meant to do, all minor operations, concentred his energies, in alliance
with Scott, upon the new and dazzling adventure of the Cheap
Miscellany, I have no doubt the damage of early misreckonings would soon have been
altogether obliterated. But what he had been to the Ballantynes,
certain other still more audacious “Sheafmen” had been to him. The house of
Hurst, Robinson, and Co. had long been his London agents and correspondents; and
he had carried on with them the same traffic in bills and counter-bills that the Canongate
Company did with him—and upon a still larger scale. They had done what he did not—or at
least did not to any very culpable extent: they had carried their adventures out of the
line of their own business. It was they, for example, that must needs be embarking such
vast sums in a speculation on hops! When ruin threatened them, they availed themselves of
Constable’s credit without stint or limit—while he, feeling
darkly that the net was around him, struggled and splashed for relief, no matter who might
suffer, so he escaped! And Sir Walter Scott, sorely as he suffered,
was too painfully conscious of the “strong tricks” he had allowed his
own imagination to play, not to make merciful allowance for all the apparently monstrous
things that I have now been narrating of Constable; though an offence
lay behind which even his charity could not forgive. Of that I need not as yet speak. I
have done all that seems to me necessary for enabling the reader to
apprehend the nature and extent of the pecuniary difficulties in which
Scott was about to be involved, when he commenced his Diary of
1825.
For the rest, his friends, and above all posterity, are not left to
consider his fate without consoling reflections. They who knew and loved him, must ever
remember that the real nobility of his character could not have exhibited itself to the
world at large, had he not been exposed in his later years to the ordeal of adversity. And
others as well as they may feel assured, that had not that adversity been preceded by the
perpetual spur of pecuniary demands, he who began life with such quick appetites for all
its ordinary enjoyments, would never have devoted himself to the rearing of that gigantic
monument of genius, labour, and power, which his works now constitute. The imagination
which has bequeathed so much to delight and humanize mankind, would have developed few of
its miraculous resources, except in the embellishment of his own personal existence. The
enchanted spring might have sunk into earth with the rod that bade it gush, and left us no
living waters. We cannot understand, but we may nevertheless respect even the strangest
caprices of the marvellous combination of faculties to which our debt is so weighty. We
should try to picture to ourselves what the actual intellectual life must have been of the
author of such a series of romances. We should ask ourselves whether, filling and
discharging so soberly and gracefully as he did the common functions of social man, it was
not, nevertheless, impossible but that he must have passed most of his life in other worlds
than ours; and we ought hardly to think it a grievous circumstance that their bright
visions should have left a dazzle sometimes on the eyes which he so gently re-opened upon
our prosaic realities. He had, on the whole, a command over the powers of his mind—I mean that he could control and direct
his thoughts and reflections with a readiness, firmness, and easy security of sway—beyond
what I find it possible to trace in any other artist’s
recorded character and history; but he could not habitually fling them into the region of
dreams throughout a long series of years, and yet be expected to find a corresponding
satisfaction in bending them to the less agreeable considerations which the circumstances
of any human being’s practical lot in this world must present in abundance. The
training to which he accustomed himself could not leave him as he was when he began. He
must pay the penalty, as well as reap the glory of this lifelong abstraction of reverie,
this self-abandonment of Fairyland.
This was for him the last year of many things; among others, of Sibyl Grey and the Abbotsford Hunt. Towards
the close of a hard run on his neighbour Mr Scott of
Gala’s ground, he adventured to leap the
Catrail—that venerable relic of the days of “Reged wide And fair Strath-Clyde,” of which the reader may remember many notices in his early letters to George Ellis. He was severely bruised and shattered; and
never afterwards recovered the feeling of confidence without which there can be no pleasure
in horsemanship. He often talked of this accident with a somewhat superstitious
mournfulness.
CHAPTER IV. SIR WALTER’S DIARY BEGUN NOV. 20, 1825—SKETCHES OF VARIOUS
FRIENDS—WILLIAM CLERK—CHARLES KIRKPATRICK
SHARPE—LORD ABERCROMBIE—THE FIRST EARL OF
MINTO—LORD BYRON—HENRY
MACKENZIE—CHIEF BARON
SHEPHERD—SOLICITOR-GENERAL HOPE—THOMAS
MOORE—CHARLES MATHEWS—COUNT
DAVIDOFF, ETC. ETC.—SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH—RELIGIOUS OPINIONS AND
FEELINGS—VARIOUS ALARMS ABOUT THE HOUSE OF HURST,
ROBINSON, AND CO.—“STORM BLOWS OVER”—AND SONG OF BONNY DUNDEE WRITTEN AT CHRISTMAS, 1825.
TheJournal,
on which we are about to enter, has on the title-page, “Sir Walter Scott of
Abbotsford, Bart., his Gurnal;”—and this foot-note to Gurnal, “A hard word, so spelt on the authority of Miss Sophia Scott, now Mrs
Lockhart.” This is a little joke, alluding to a note-book kept by his
eldest girl during one of the Highland expeditions of earlier days, in which he was
accompanied by his wife and children. The motto is,— “As I walked by myself, I talked to myself, And thus myself said to me.—Old
Song.” These lines are quoted also in his reviewal of Pepys’s
Diary. That book was published just before he left Edinburgh in July. It was, I
believe, the only one he took with him to Ireland; and I never observed him more delighted with any book whatsoever. He
had ever afterwards many of its queer turns and phrases on his lips.
The reader cannot expect that any chapter in a Diary of this sort should
be printed in extenso within a few years of the
writer’s death. The editor has, for reasons which need not be explained, found it
necessary to omit some passages altogether—to abridge others—and very frequently to
substitute asterisks or arbitrary initials for names. But wherever omissions or alterations
have been made, these were dictated by regard for the feelings of living persons; and, if
any passages which have been retained should prove offensive to such feelings, there is no
apology to be offered, but that the editor found they could not be struck out, without
losing some statement of fact, opinion, or sentiment, which it seemed impossible to
sacrifice without injustice to Sir Walter Scott’s
character and history.
DIARY.
“Edinburgh—November 20,
1825.—I have all my life regretted that I did not
keep a regular Journal. I have myself lost recollection of much that was
interesting; and I have deprived my family of some curious information by not
carrying this resolution into effect. I have bethought me, on seeing lately
some volumes of Byron’s notes, that he
probably had hit upon the right way of keeping such a memorandum-book, by
throwing out all pretence to regularity and order, and marking down events just
as they occurred to recollection. I will try this plan; and behold I have a
handsome locked volume, such as might serve for a lady’s Album.
Nota bene, John Lockhart, and Anne, and I are to raise a Society for
the Suppression of Albums. It is a most troublesome shape of mendicity. Sir,
your autograph—a line of poetry—or a prose sentence!—Among all the sprawling
sonnets, and blotted trumpery that dishonours these miscellanies, a man must
have a good stomach that can swallow this botheration as a compliment.
“I was in Ireland last summer, and had a most
delightful tour.—There is much less of exaggeration about the Irish than might
have been suspected. Their poverty is not exaggerated; it is on the extreme
verge of human misery; their cottages would scarce serve for pig-sties, even in
Scotland—and their rags seem the very refuse of a rag-shop, and are disposed on
their bodies with such ingenious variety of wretchedness that you would think
nothing but some sort of perverted taste could have assembled so many shreds
together. You are constantly fearful that some knot or loop will give, and
place the individual before you in all the primitive simplicity of Paradise.
Then for their food, they have only potatoes, and too few of them. Yet the men
look stout and healthy, the women buxom, and well-coloured.
“Dined with us, being Sunday, Will. Clerk and C.
Sharpe. William Clerk is the second son of
the celebrated author of ‘Naval Tactics.’ I have known him intimately since our college
days; and to my thinking, never met a man of greater powers, or more complete
information on all desirable subjects. In youth he had strongly the Edinburgh
pruritus disputandi; but
habits of society have greatly mellowed it, and though still anxious to gain
your suffrage to his views, he endeavours rather to conciliate your opinion
than conquer it by force. Still there is enough of tenacity of sentiment to
prevent, in London society, where all must go slack and easy, W.
C. from rising to the very top of the tree as a conversation
man; who must not only
wind the thread of his argument gracefully, but also know when to let go. But I
like the Scotch taste better; there is more matter, more information, above
all, more spirit in it. Clerk will, I am afraid, leave the
world little more than the report of his powers. He is too indolent to finish
any considerable work. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe is
another very remarkable man. He was bred for a clergyman, but never took
orders. He has infinite wit and a great turn for antiquarian lore, as the
publications of Kirkton,
&c., bear witness. His drawings are the most fanciful and droll
imaginable—a mixture between Hogarth and
some of those foreign masters who painted temptations of St
Anthony, and such grotesque subjects. As a poet he has not a
very strong touch. Strange that his finger-ends can describe so well what he
cannot bring out clearly and firmly in words. If he were to make drawing a
resource, it might raise him a large income. But though a lover of antiquities,
and, therefore, of expensive trifles, C. K. S. is too
aristocratic to use his art to assist his purse. He is a very complete
genealogist, and has made many detections in Douglas and other books on pedigree,
which our nobles would do well to suppress if they had an opportunity. Strange
that a man should be curious after scandal of centuries old! Not but
Charles loves it fresh and fresh also, for being very
much a fashionable man, he is always master of the reigning report, and he
tells the anecdote with such gusto that there is no helping sympathizing with
him—a peculiarity of voice adding not a little to the general effect. My idea
is, that C. K. S., with his oddities, tastes, satire, and
high aristocratic feelings, resembles Horace
Walpole—perhaps in his person also, in a general way.—See
Miss Aikin’sAnecdotes for a
description of the author of the Castle of Otranto.—No other company at dinner except my cheer-ful and good-humoured friend Macdonald,* so called in fondness. One
bottle of champagne, with the ladies’ assistance, two of claret.—I
observe that both these great connoisseurs were very nearly, if not quite
agreed, that there are no absolutely undoubted originals
of Queen Mary. But how, then, should we
be so very distinctly informed as to her features? What has become of all the
originals which suggested these innumerable copies? Surely
Mary must have been as unfortunate in this as in other
particulars of her life.
“November 21, 1825.—I am
enamoured of my journal. I wish the zeal may but last. Once more of Ireland. I
said their poverty was not exaggerated—neither is their wit—nor their
good-humour—nor their whimsical absurdity—nor their courage. Wit.—I gave a fellow a shilling on some occasion when sixpence was
the fee. ‘Remember you owe me sixpence, Pat.’ ‘May your honour live till I pay
you.’ There was courtesy as well as art in this, and all the
clothes on Pat’s back would have been
dearly bought by the sum in question.
“Good-humour.—There is
perpetual kindness in the Irish cabin—butter-milk, potatoes—a stool is offered,
or a stone is rolled that your honour may sit down and be out of the smoke, and
those who beg every where else seem desirous to exercise free hospitality in
their own houses. Their natural disposition is turned to gaiety and happiness;
while a Scotchman is thinking about the term-day, or, if easy on that subject,
about hell in the next world—while an Englishman is making a little hell in the
present, because his muffin is not well roasted—Pat’s mind is always turned to fun and ridicule. They are
terribly excitable, to be sure, and will murder you on
* Miss
Macdonald Buchanan of Drummakill.
slight suspicion, and find
out next day that it was all a mistake, and that it was not yourself they meant
to kill at all, at all.
“Absurdity.—They were widening
the road near Lord Claremont’s seat
as we passed. A number of cars were drawn up together at a particular point,
where we also halted, as we understood they were blowing a rock, and the shot
was expected presently to go off. After waiting two minutes or so, a fellow
called out something, and our carriage as a planet, and the cars for
satellites, started all forward at once, the Irishmen whooping and the horses
galloping. Unable to learn the meaning of this, I was only left to suppose that
they had delayed firing the intended shot till we should
pass, and that we were passing quickly to make the delay as short as possible.
No such thing. By dint of making great haste, we got within ten yards of the
rock just when the blast took place, throwing dust and gravel on our carriage,
and had our postilion brought us a little nearer (it was not for want of
hallooing and flogging that he did not), we should have had a still more
serious share of the explosion. The explanation I received from the drivers
was, that they had been told by the overseer that as the mine had been so long in going off, he dared
say we would have time to pass it—so we just waited long enough to make the
danger imminent. I have only to add, that two or three people got behind the
carriage, just for nothing but to see how our honours got past.
“Went to the Oil Gas Committee this morning, of which
concern I am President, or Chairman. This brings me into company with a body of
active, business-beings, money-making citizens of Edinburgh, chiefly Whigs, by
the way, whose sentiments and proceedings amuse me. The stock is rather low in
the market.
“Dined with Sir Robert
Dundas, where we met Lord and Lady
Melville. My little nieces (ex officio) gave us some pretty music. I
do not know and cannot utter a note of music; and complicated harmonies seem to
me a babble of confused though pleasing sounds. Yet simple melodies, especially
if connected with words and ideas, have as much effect on me as on most people.
But then I hate to hear a young person sing without feeling and expression
suited to the song. I cannot bear a voice that has no more life in it than a
piano-forte or a bugle-horn. There is about all the fine arts a something of
soul and spirit, which, like the vital principle in man, defies the research of
the most critical anatomist. You feel where it is not, yet you cannot describe
what it is you want. Sir Joshua, or some
other great painter, was looking at a picture on which much pains had been
bestowed ‘Why, yes,’ he said, in a hesitating manner,
‘it is very clever—very well done—can’t find fault; but it wants
something; it wants—it wants—d—n me—it wants that’—throwing his hand over his head, and snapping his fingers.
Tom Moore’s is the most
exquisite warbling I ever heard. Next to him, David
Macculloch for Scotch songs. The last, when a boy at Dumfries,
was much admired by Burns, who used to
get him to try over the words which he composed to new melodies. He is brother
to Macculloch of Ardwell.
“November 22.—Moore.—I saw Moore (for the first time, I may say) this season. We had
indeed met in public twenty years ago. There is a manly frankness, with perfect
ease and good-breeding, about him which is delightful. Not the least touch of
the poet or the pedant. A little—very little man. Less, I think, than Lewis, and somewhat like him in person; God
knows, not in conversation, for Matt, though a clever
fellow, was a bore of the first description. Moreover, he looked always like a schoolboy. Now
Moore has none of this insignificance. His countenance
is plain, but the expression so very animated, especially in speaking or
singing, that it is far more interesting than the finest features could have
rendered it.
“I was aware that Byron had often spoken, both in private society and in his
Journal, of Moore and myself, in the
same breath, and with the same sort of regard; so I was curious to see what
there could be in common betwixt us, Moore having lived so
much in the gay world, I in the country, and with people of business, and
sometimes with politicians; Moore a scholar, I none; he a
musician and artist, I without knowledge of a note; he a democrat, I an
aristocrat—with many other points of difference; besides his being an Irishman,
I a Scotchman, and both tolerably national. Yet there is a point of
resemblance, and a strong one. We are both good-humoured fellows, who rather
seek to enjoy what is going forward than to maintain our dignity as Lions; and
we have both seen the world too widely and too well not to contemn in our souls
the imaginary consequence of literary people, who walk with their noses in the
air, and remind me always of the fellow whom Johnson met in an alehouse, and who called himself ‘the great Twalmly—inventor of the
flood-gate iron for smoothing linen.’ He also enjoys the
Mot pour rire, and so do I.
It was a pity that nothing save the total destruction of
Byron’sMemoirs would satisfy his executors. But there
was a reason—Premat Nox alta. It
would be a delightful addition to life, if T. M. had a
cottage within two miles of one. We went to the theatre together, and the house
being luckily a good one, received T. M. with rapture. I
could have hugged them, for it paid back the debt of the kind reception I met
with in Ireland.
“Here is matter for a May morning, but much fitter
for a November one. The general distress in the city
has affected H. and R., Constable’s great agents. Should they go, it is not likely that Constable can stand,
and such an event would lead to great distress and perplexity on the part of
J. B. and myself. Thank God I have
enough to pay more than 20s. in the pound, taking matters at the very worst.
But much inconvenience must be the consequence. I had a lesson in 1814 which
should have done good; but success and abundance erased it from my mind. But
this is no time for journalizing or moralizing either. Necessity is like a
sour-faced cookmaid, and I a turn-spit she has flogged, ere now, till he
mounted his wheel. If Woodstock can be out by 25th January it will do much, and it is
possible. Could not write to purpose for thick coming fancies. ‘My spinning-wheel is auld and stiff, The rock o’t winna stand, sir; To keep the temper-pin in tiff, Employs aft my hand, sir.’
“Went to dine at the Lord Justice-Clerk’s, as I thought by invitation, but it
was for Tuesday se’ennight. Returned very well pleased, not being exactly
in the humour for company, and had a beef-steak. My appetite is surely,
excepting as to quantity, that of a farmer, for, eating moderately of any
thing, my epicurean pleasure is in the most simple diet. Wine I seldom taste
when alone, and use instead a little spirits and water. I have of late
diminished the quantity, for fear of a weakness inductive to a diabetes—a
disease which broke up my father’s health, though one of the most
temperate men who ever lived. I smoke a couple of cigars instead, which
operates equally as a sedative— ‘Just to drive the cold winter away, And drown the fatigues of the day.’ I smoked a good deal about twenty years ago when at Ashestiel; but coming down one morning
to the parlour, I found, as the room was small and confined, that the smell was
unpleasant, and laid aside the use of the Nicotian weed
for many years; but was again led to use it by the example of my son, a hussar officer, and my son-in-law, an Oxford student. I could lay it
aside to-morrow; I laugh at the dominion of custom in this and many things. ‘We make the giants first, and then—do
not kill them.’
“November 23.—On comparing
notes with Moore, I was confirmed in one
or two points which I had always laid down in considering poor Byron. One was, that like Rousseau he was apt to be very suspicious, and
a plain downright steadiness of manner was the true mode to maintain his good
opinion. Will Rose told me that once,
while sitting with Byron, he fixed insensibly his eyes on
his feet, one of which, it must be remembered, was deformed. Looking up
suddenly, he saw Byron regarding him with a look of
concentrated and deep displeasure, which wore off when he observed no
consciousness or embarrassment in the countenance of Rose.
Murray afterwards explained this, by
telling Rose that Lord Byron was very
jealous of having this personal imperfection noticed or attended to. In another
point, Moore confirmed my previous opinion, namely, that
Byron loved mischief-making.
Moore had written to him, cautioning him against the
project of establishing the paper called the Liberal, in communion with men on whom he said the
world had set its mark. Byron showed this to the parties.
Shelley wrote a modest and rather
affecting expostulation to Moore. These two peculiarities
of extreme suspicion and love of mischief are both shades of the malady which
certainly tinctured some part of the character of this mighty genius; and without some tendency towards which, genius perhaps
cannot exist to great extent. The wheels of a machine to play rapidly must not
fit with the utmost exactness, else the attrition diminishes the impetus.
“Another of Byron’s peculiarities was the love of mystifying, which,
indeed, may be referred to that of mischief. There was no knowing how much or
how little to believe of his narratives. Instance: William Bankes expostulating with him upon a dedication which
he had written in extravagant terms of praise to Cam Hobhouse, Byron told him that
Cam had bored him about this dedication till he had
said, ‘Well, it shall be so, provided you will write it
yourself;’ and affirmed that Hobhouse did write
the high-coloured dedication accordingly. I mentioned this to Murray, having the report from Will Rose, to whom Bankes
had mentioned it. Murray, in reply, assured me that the
dedication was written by Lord Byron himself, and showed
it me in his own hand. I wrote to Rose to mention the
thing to Bankes, as it might have made mischief had the
story got into the circle. Byron was disposed to think all
men of imagination were addicted to mix fiction (or poetry) in their prose. He
used to say he dared believe the celebrated courtezan of Venice, about whom
Rousseau makes so piquante a story,
was, if one could see her, a draggle-tailed wench enough. I believe that he
embellished his own amours considerably, and that he was, in many respects,
le fanfaron de vices qu’il
n’avoit pas. He loved to be thought woful,
mysterious, and gloomy, and sometimes hinted at strange causes. I believe the
whole to have been the creation and sport of a wild and powerful fancy. In the
same manner he crammed people, as it is termed, about
duels and the like, which never existed, or were much exaggerated.
“What I liked about Byron, besides his boundless genius, was his generosity of spirit as well as
purse, and his utter contempt of all the affectations of literature, from the
school-magisterial style to the lackadaisical. His example has formed a sort of
upper house of poetry; but ‘There will be many peers Ere such another Byron.’
“ * * * Talking of Abbotsford, it begins to be
haunted by too much company of every kind, but especially foreigners. I do not
like them. I hate fine waistcoats, and breast-pins upon dirty shirts. I detest
the impudence that pays a stranger compliments, and harangues about an
author’s works in his own house, which is surely ill-breeding. Moreover,
they are seldom long of making it evident that they know nothing about what
they are talking of, excepting having seen the Lady of the Lake at the opera.
“Dined at St Catherine’s* with the Lord Advocate, Lord
Melville, Lord
Justice-Clerk, Sir Archibald
Campbell of Succoth, all class companions, and acquainted well
for more than forty years. All excepting Lord J. C. were at Fraser’s class, High-School.
Boyle joined us at college. There are, besides,
Sir Adam Ferguson, Colin Mackenzie, James Hope, Dr James
Buchan, Claud Russell,
and perhaps two or three more of and about the same period but ‘Apparent rari nantes in gurgite
vasto.’
“November 24th.—Talking of strangers, London held, some four or five years since,
one of those animals who are lions at first, but by transmutation of two
seasons become in regular course bores—Ugo Foscolo by name, a haunter of Murray’s shop and of literary par-
* St Catherine’s, the seat of Sir William Rae, Bart., then Lord
Advocate, is about three miles from Edinburgh.
ties. Ugly as a baboon, and intolerably conceited, he
spluttered, blustered, and disputed, without even knowing the principles upon
which men of sense render a reason, and screamed all the while like a pig with
a knife in his throat. Another such animalaccio is a brute of a Marquis de * * *, who lately inflicted two
days on us at Abbotsford. These gentry never know what to make of themselves in
the forenoon, but sit tormenting the women to play at proverbs and such trash.
“Foreigner of a different
caste. There was lately at Abbotsford, and is here for education just
now, a young Count Davidoff, with his
tutor, Mr Collyer. He is nephew of the famous Orlows. It
is quite surprising how much sense and sound thinking this youth has at the
early age of sixteen, without the least self-conceit or forwardness. On the
contrary, he seems kind, modest, and ingenuous. To questions which I asked
about the state of Russia he answered with the precision and accuracy of twice
his years. I should be sorry the saying were verified in him— ‘So wise so young, they say, do ne’er live
long.’* I saw also at Abbotsford two Frenchmen whom I liked, friends of Miss Dumergue. One, called Le Noir, is the author of a tragedy which he
had the grace never to quote, and which I, though poked by some malicious
persons, had not the grace even to hint at. They were
disposed at first to be complimentary, but I convinced them it was not the
custom here, and they took it well, and were agreeable.
“A little bilious this morning, for the first time
these six months. It cannot be the London matters which stick on my stomach,
for that is mending, and may have good effects on myself and others.
* King Richard III. Act III, Scene 1.
“Dined with Robert
Cockburn. Company, Lord
Melville and family; Sir
John and Lady Hope;
Lord and Lady R. Kerr, and so forth. Combination of colliers general,
and coals up to double price; the men will not work although, or rather because they can make from
thirty to forty shillings per week. Lord R. Kerr told us
he had a letter from Lord Forbes (son of
Earl Granard, Ireland), that he was
asleep in his house at Castle Forbes, when awakened by a sense of suffocation
which deprived him of the power of stirring a limb, yet left him the
consciousness that the house was on fire. At this moment, and while his
apartment was in flames, his large dog jumped on the bed, seized his shirt, and
dragged him to the stair-case, where the fresh air restored his powers of
existence and of escape. This is very different from most cases of preservation
of life by the canine race, when the animal generally jumps into the water, in
which element he has force and skill. That of fire is as hostile to him as to
mankind.
“November 25.—Read Jeffrey’s neat and well-intended address to the mechanics
upon their combinations. Will it do good? Umph. It takes only the hand of a
Lilliputian to light a fire, but would require the diuretic powers of Gulliver to extinguish it. The Whigs will live
and die in the heresy that the world is ruled by little pamphlets and speeches,
and that if you can sufficiently demonstrate that a line of conduct is most
consistent with men’s interest, you have therefore and thereby
demonstrated that they will at length, after a few speeches on the subject,
adopt it of course. In this case we should have no need of laws or churches,
for I am sure there is no difficulty in proving that moral, regular, and steady
habits conduce to men’s best interest, and that
vice is not sin merely but folly. But of these men each has passions and
prejudices, the gratification of which he prefers, not only to the general
weal, but to that of himself as an individual. Under the action of these
wayward impulses a man drinks to-day though he is sure of starving to-morrow.
He murders to-morrow, though he is sure to be hanged on Wednesday; and people
are so slow to believe that which makes against their own predominant passions,
that mechanics will combine to raise the price for one week, though they
destroy the manufacture for ever. The best remedy seems to be the probable
supply of labourers from other trades. Jeffrey proposes
each mechanic shall learn some other trade than his own, and so have two
strings to his bow. He does not consider the length of a double apprenticeship.
To make a man a good weaver and a good tailor would require as much time as the
patriarch served for his two wives. Each mechanic has, indeed, a second trade,
for he can dig and do rustic work. Perhaps the best reason for breaking up the
association will prove to be the expenditure of the money which they have been
simple enough to levy from the industrious for the support of the idle. How
much provision for the sick and the aged, the widow and the orphan, has been
expended in the attempt to get wages which the manufacturer cannot afford them,
at any possible chance of selling his commodity!
N.B. Within eight weeks after recording
this graceful act of submission, I found I was unable to keep a carriage at
all.
“I had a bad fall last night coming home. There were
unfinished houses at the east end of Atholl Crescent, and as I was on foot, I
crossed the street to avoid the materials which lay about; but, deceived by the
moonlight, I slipped ankle-deep into a sea of mud (honest earth and water,
thank God), and fell on my hands. Never was there such a representative of
Wall in Pyramus and
Thisbe—I was absolutely rough-cast. Luckily Lady S. had retired when I came home; so I enjoyed my tub of
water without either remonstrance or condolences. Cockburn’s hospitality will get the benefit and renown of
my downfall, and yet has no claim to it. In future, though, I must take my
coach at night—a control on one’s freedom, but it must be submitted to. I
found a letter from Cadell, giving a
cheering account of things in London. Their correspondent is getting into his
strength. Three days ago I would have been contented to buy this consola, as Judy says,* dearer than
by a dozen falls in the mud.
“Mrs Coutts,
with the Duke of St Albans and Lady Charlotte Beauclerk, called to take leave
of us. When at Abbotsford, his suit throve but coldly. She made me, I believe,
her confidant in sincerity. She had refused him twice, and decidedly: he was
merely on the footing of friendship. I urged it was akin to love. She allowed
she might marry the Duke, only she had at present not the least intention that
way. Is this frank admission more favourable for the Duke than an absolute
protestation against the possibility of such a marriage? I think not. It is the
fashion to attend Mrs Coutts’s parties, and to abuse
her. I have always found her a kind, friendly woman, without either affectation
or insolence in the display of her wealth; most willing to do good, if the
means be shown to her. She can be very enter-
* This alludes to a strange old woman, keeper of a
public-house among the Wicklow mountains, who, among a world of
oddities, cut short every word ending in tion,
by the omission of the termination. Consola for
consolation—bothera for botheration, &c.
&c. Lord Plunkett had taken
care to parade Judy and all her peculiarities.
taining, too, as she speaks without scruple of her stage
life. So much wealth can hardly be enjoyed without some ostentation. But what
then? If the Duke marries her, he ensures an immense fortune: if she marries
him, she has the first rank. If he marries a woman older than himself by twenty
years, she marries a man younger in wit by twenty degrees. I do not think he
will dilapidate her fortune—he seems good and gentle: I do not think that she
will abuse his softness—of disposition, shall I say, or of head? The disparity
of ages concerns no one but themselves; so they have my consent to marry, if
they can get each other’s. Just as this is written, enter my
Lord of St Albans and Lady
Charlotte, to beg I would recommend a book of sermons to
Mrs Coutts. Much obliged for her good opinion:
recommended Logan’s—one poet
should always speak for another. The mission, I suppose, was a little display
on the part of good Mrs Coutts of authority over her high
aristocratic suitor. I did not suspect her of turning devotee, and retract my consent as given above, unless she remains
‘burly, brisk, and jolly.’ Dined quiet with wife and
daughter. Robert Cadell looked in in the
evening on business.
“I here register my purpose to practise economics. I
have little temptation to do otherwise. Abbotsford is all that I can make it,
and too large for the property; so I resolve—
“No more building;
“No purchases of land, till times are quite safe;
“No buying books or expensive trifles—I mean to any
extent; and
“Clearing off encumbrances, with the returns of this
year’s labour;
“Which resolutions, with health and my habits of
industry, will make me ‘sleep in spite of thunder.’
“After all, it is hard that the vagabond
stock-jobbing Jews should, for their own purposes, make such a shake of credit
as now exists in London, and menace the credit of men trading on sure funds
like Hurst and Robinson. It is just like a set of
pickpockets, who raise a mob, in which honest folks are knocked down and
plundered, that they may pillage safely in the midst of the confusion they have
excited.
I was obliged to give this up in
consequence of my own misfortunes.
“November 26.—The Court met
late, and sat till one; detained from that hour till
four o’clock, being engaged in the perplexed affairs of Mr James Stewart of Brugh. This young
gentleman is heir to a property of better than L.1000 a-year in Orkney. His
mother married very young, and was wife, mother, and widow, in the course of
the first year. Being unfortunately under the direction of a careless agent,
she was unlucky enough to embarrass her affairs. I was asked to accept the
situation of one of the son’s curators; and trust to clear out his
affairs and hers—at least I will not fail for want of application. I have lent
her L.300 on a second (and therefore doubtful) security over her house in
Newington, bought for L.1000, and on which L.600 is already secured. I have no
connexion with the family except that of compassion, and may not be rewarded
even by thanks when the young man comes of age. I have known my father often so
treated by those whom he had laboured to serve. But if we do not run some
hazard in our attempts to do good, where is the merit of them? So I will bring
through my Orkney laird if I can. Dined at home quiet with Lady S. and Anne.
“November 28.—People make me
the oddest requests. It is not unusual for an Oxonian or
Cantab, who has outrun his allowance, and of whom I know nothing, to apply to
me for the loan of L.20, L.50, or L.100. A captain of the Danish naval service
writes to me, that being in distress for a sum of money by which he might
transport himself to Columbia to offer his services in assisting to free that
province, he had dreamed I generously made him a present of it. I can tell him
his dream by contraries. I begin to find, like Joseph
Surface, that too good a character is inconvenient. I
don’t know what I have done to gain so much credit for generosity, but I
suspect I owe it to being supposed, as Puff
says, one of ‘those whom Heaven has blessed with affluence.’
Not too much of that neither, my dear petitioners, though I may thank myself
that your ideas are not correct.
“Dined at Melville Castle, whither I went through a
snow-storm, I was glad to find myself once more in a place connected with many
happy days. Met Sir R. Dundas and my old
friend George, now Lord Abercromby, with
his lady and a beautiful girl his daughter. He is what he always was, the
best-humoured man living; and our meetings, now more rare than formerly, are
seasoned with many a recollection of old frolics and old friends.—I am
entertained to see him just the same he has always been, never yielding up his
own opinion in fact, and yet in words acquiescing in all that could be said
against it. George was always like a willow—he never
offered resistance to the breath of argument, but never moved from his rooted
opinion, blow as it listed.—Exaggeration might make these peculiarities highly
dramatic: Conceive a man who always seems to be acquiescing in your sentiments,
yet never changes his own, and this with a sort of bonhommie which shows there is not a particle of deceit intended. He
is only desirous to spare you the trouble of contradiction.
“November 29.—Dined at
Justice-Clerk’s—the President—Captain Smollett of Bonhill,—our new Commander-in-Chief,
Hon. Sir Robert O’Callaghan,
brother to Earl of Lismore, a fine
soldierlike man, with orders and badges;—also his younger brother, an agreeable man, whom I met at Lowther Castle
this season. He composes his own music and sings his own poetry—has much
humour, enhanced by a strong touch of national dialect, which is always a rich
sauce to an Irishman’s good things. Dandyish, but not offensively; and
seems to have a warm feeling for the credit of his country—rather inconsistent
with the trifling and selfish quietude of a mere man of society.
“November 30.—I am come to
the time when ‘those that look out of the windows shall be
darkened.’ I must now wear spectacles constantly in reading and
writing, though till this winter I have made a shift by using only their
occasional assistance. Although my health cannot be better, I feel my lameness
becomes sometimes painful, and often inconvenient. Walking on the pavement or
causeway gives me trouble, and I am glad when I have accomplished my return on
foot from the Parliament House to Castle Street, though I can (taking a
competent time, as old Braxie said on another occasion) walk five or six
miles in the country with pleasure. Well, such things must come, and be
received with cheerful submission. My early lameness considered, it was
impossible for a man to have been stronger or more active than I have been, and
that for twenty or thirty years. Seams will slit, and elbows will out, quoth
the tailor; and as I was fifty-four 15th August last, my mental vestments are
none of the newest. Then Walter,
Charles, and Lockhart are as active and handsome young
fellows as you can see; and while they enjoy strength and
activity I can hardly be said to want it. I have perhaps all my life set an
undue value on these gifts. Yet it does appear to me that high and independent
feelings are naturally, though not uniformly or inseparably, connected with
bodily advantages. Strong men are usually good-humoured, and active men often
display the same elasticity of mind as of body. These superiorities, indeed,
are often misused. But, even for these things, God shall call us to judgment.
“Some months since, I joined with other literary
folks in subscribing a petition for a pension to Mrs Grant of Laggan, which we thought was a tribute merited by
her as an authoress; and, in my opinion, much more by the firmness and
elasticity of mind with which she had borne a succession of great domestic
calamities. Unhappily there was only about L.100 open on the pension list, and
this the ministers assigned in equal portions to Mrs G——
and a distressed lady, grand-daughter of a forfeited Scottish nobleman.
Mrs G. ——, proud as a Highlandwoman, vain as a
poetess, and absurd as a blue-stocking, has taken this partition in
malam partem, and written to
Lord Melville about her merits, and
that her friends do not consider her claims as being fairly canvassed, with
something like a demand that her petition be submitted to the King. This is not
the way to make her plack a bawbee, and Lord M., a little miffed in turn, sends the whole correspondence to me to know whether
Mrs G—— will accept the L.50 or not. Now, hating to
deal with ladies when they are in an unreasonable humour, I have got the
good-humoured Man of Feeling to find out
the lady’s mind, and I take on myself the task of making her peace with
Lord M. There is no great doubt how it will end, for
your scornful dog will always
eat your dirty pudding. After all, the poor lady is greatly to be pitied;—her
sole remaining daughter deep and far gone in a decline.
“Dined with my cousin, Robert Rutherford, being the first invitation since my uncle’s death, and our cousin
Lieutenant-Colonel Russell* of
Ashestiel, with his sister Anne—the
former newly returned from India a fine gallant fellow, and distinguished as a
cavalry officer. He came over land from India and has observed a good deal.
Knight Marischal not well, so unable to attend the convocation of kith and kin.
“December 1st.—Colonel Russell told me
that the European Government had discovered an ingenious mode of diminishing
the number of burnings of widows. It seems the Shaster positively enjoins that
the pile shall be so constructed that, if the victim should repent even at the
moment when it is set on fire, she may still have the means of saving herself.
The Brahmins soon found it was necessary to assist the resolution of the
sufferers, by means of a little pit into which they contrive to let the poor
widow sink, so as to prevent her reaping any benefit from a late repentance.
But the Government has brought them back to the regard of this law, and only
permit the burning to go on when the pile is constructed with full opportunity
of a locus penitentiæ. Yet the
widow is so degraded if she dare to survive, that the number of burnings is
still great. The quantity of female children destroyed by the Rajapout tribes,
Colonel R. describes as very great indeed. They are
strangled by the mother. The principle is the aristocratic pride of these high
castes, who breed up no more daughters than they can reasonably hope to find
* Now Major-General Sir James Russell, K.C.B.
matches for in their own rank. Singular how artificial
systems of feeling can be made to overcome that love of offspring which seems
instinctive in the females, not of the human race only, but of the lower
animals. This is the reverse of our system of increasing game by shooting the
old cock birds. It is a system would aid Malthus rarely.
“I think this journal will suit me well; if I can
wax myself into an idea that it is purely voluntary, it may go on—nulla dies sine lineâ. But never a
being hated task-work as I hate it, from my infancy upwards, and yet I have
done a great deal in my day. It is not that I am idle in my nature neither. But
propose to me to do one thing, and it is inconceivable the desire I have to do
something else—not that it is more easy or more pleasant, but just because it
is escaping from an imposed task. I cannot trace this love of contradiction to
any distinct source, but it has haunted me all my life. I could almost suppose
it was mechanical, and that the imposition of a piece of duty-labour operated
on me like the mace of a bad billiard-player, which gives an impulse to the
ball indeed, but sends it off at a tangent different from the course designed.
Now, if I expend such eccentric movements on this journal, it will be turning a
wretched propensity to some tolerable account. If I had thus employed the hours
and half hours which I have whiled away in putting off something that must
needs be done at last, my conscience! I should have had a journal with a
witness. Sophia and Lockhart came to Edinburgh to-day and dined
with us, meeting Hector Macdonald
Buchanan, his Lady, and Missie, James Skene and
his Lady, Lockhart’s friend Cay, &c. They are lucky to be able to
assemble so many real friends, whose good wishes I am sure will follow them in
their new undertaking.
“December 2.—Rather a blank
day for the Gurnal. Sophia dined with us alone, Lockhart being gone to the west to bid farewell to his
father and brothers. Evening spent
in talking with Sophia on their future prospects. God
bless her, poor girl, she never gave me a moment’s reason to complain of
her. But, O my God, that poor delicate child, so clever, so animated, yet holding by this earth with
so fearfully slight a tenure. Never out of his mother’s thoughts, almost
never out of his father’s arms when he has but a single moment to give to
any thing. Deus providebit.
“December 3.—T. S. called last night to excuse himself from
dining with Lockhart’s friends
to-day. I really fear he is near an actual stand-still. He has been extremely
improvident. When I first knew him he had an excellent estate, and now he is
deprived, I fear, of the whole reversion of the price, and this from no vice or
extreme, except a wasteful mode of buying pictures and other costly trifles at
high prices, and selling them again for nothing, besides extravagant
housekeeping and profuse hospitality. An excellent disposition, with a
considerable fund of acquired knowledge, would have rendered him an agreeable
companion, had he not affected singularity, and rendered himself accordingly
singularly affected. He was very near being a poet, but a miss is as good as a
mile. I knew him first, many years ago, when he was desirous of my
acquaintance, but he was too poetical for me, or I was not poetical enough for
him, so that we continued only ordinary acquaintance, with good-will on either
side, which T. S. really deserves, as a more friendly
generous creature never lived. Lockhart hopes to get
something done for him, being sincerely attached to him, but says he has no
hopes till he is utterly ruined. That point I fear is not
far distant, but what Lockhart can do for him then I cannot guess. His last effort failed, owing to a
curious reason. T. S. had made some translations, which he
does extremely well, for give him ideas, and he never wants choice of good
words, and Lockhart had got Constable to offer some sort of terms for them. T.
S. has always, though possessing a beautiful power of
handwriting, had some whim or other about imitating that of some other person,
and has written for months in the imitation of one or other of his friends. At
present he has renounced this amusement, and chooses to write with a brush upon
large cartridge paper, somewhat in the Chinese fashion, so when his work, which
was only to extend to one or two volumes, arrived on the shoulders of two
porters, in immense bales, our jolly bibliopole backed out of the treaty, and
would have nothing more to do with T. S. He is a creature
that is, or would be thought, of imagination all compact, and is
influenced by strange whims. But he is a kind, harmless, friendly soul, and I
fear has been cruelly plundered of money, which he now wants sadly.
“Dined with Lockhart’s friends, about fifty in number, who gave him a
parting entertainment. John Hope,
Solicitor-General, in the chair, and Robert
Dundas, croupier. The company most highly respectable, and any
man might be proud of such an indication of the interest they take in his
progress in life. Tory principles rather too violently upheld by some speakers.
I came home about ten; the party sat late.
“December 5th.—This morning Lockhart and
Sophia left us early, and without
leave-taking; when I rose at eight o’clock, they were gone. This was very right. I hate red eyes and blowing of noses.
Agere et pati Romanum est. Of
all schools commend me to the
Stoics. We cannot indeed overcome our affections, nor ought we if we could, but
we may repress them within due bounds, and avoid coaxing them to make fools of
those who should be their masters. I have lost some of the comforts to which I
chiefly looked for enjoyment. Well, I must make the more of such as remain—God
bless them. And so ‘I will unto my holy work again,’* which
at present is the description of that worshipful triumvirate, Danton, Robespierre, and Marat.
“I cannot conceive what possesses me, over every
person besides, to mislay papers. I received a letter Saturday at e’en, inclosing a bill for L.750; no deaf nuts. Well, I read it, and note the contents;
and this day, as if it had been a wind bill in the literal sense of the words,
I search every where, and lose three hours of my morning—turn over all my
confusion in the writing-desk—break open one or two letters, lest I should have
enclosed the sweet and quickly convertible document in them,—send for a joiner,
and disorganize my scrutoire, lest it should have fallen aside by mistake. I
find it at last—the place where is of little consequence; but this trick must
be amended.
“Dined at the Royal Society Club, where, as usual,
was a pleasant meeting from twenty to twenty-five. It is a very good
institution; we pay two guineas only for six dinners in the year, present or
absent. Dine at five, or rather half-past five, at the Royal Hotel, where we
have an excellent dinner, with soups, fish, &c., and all in good order;
port and sherry till half-past seven, then coffee, and we go to the Society.
This preface of a good dinner, to be paid for whether you partake or not,
brings out many a philosopher who might not other have attended. Harry Mackenzie, now in his eighty-second or
third year, read part of an Essay on Dreams.
* King Richard
III. Act III. Sc. 7.
Supped at Dr
Russell’s usual party, which shall serve for one while.
“December 6th.—A rare thing this literature, or love of fame or notoriety which
accompanies it. Here is Mr Henry
Mackenzie on the very brink of human dissolution, as actively
anxious about it as if the curtain must not soon be closed on that and every
thing else.* He calls me his literary confessor; and I am sure I am glad to
return the kindnesses which he showed me long since in George Square. No man is
less known from his writings; you would suppose a retired, modest, somewhat
affected man, with a white handkerchief, and a sigh ready for every sentiment.
No such thing; H. M. is alert as a contracting
tailor’s needle in every sort of business—a politician and a
sportsman—shoots and fishes in a sort even to this day—and is the life of
company with anecdotes and fun. Sometimes his daughter tells me he is in low
spirits at home, but really I never see any thing of it in society.
“There is a maxim almost universal in Scotland,
which I should like much to see controlled. Every youth, of every temper and
almost every description of character, is sent either to study for the bar, or
to a writer’s office as an apprentice. The Scottish seem to conceive
Themis the most powerful of goddesses.
Is a lad stupid, the law will sharpen him;—is he mercurial, the law will make
him sedate;—has he an estate, he may get a sheriffdom;—is he poor, the richest
lawyers have emerged from poverty;—is he a Tory, he may become a
depute-advocate;—is he a Whig, he may with far better hope expect to become, in
reputation at least,
* Mr
Mackenzie had been consulting Sir Walter about collecting his own juvenile poetry.
that rising counsel Mr ——, when
in fact he only rises at tavern dinners. Upon some such wild views, advocates
and writers multiply till there is no life for them, and men give up the chase,
hopeless and exhausted, and go into the army at five-and-twenty, instead of
eighteen, with a turn for expense perhaps—almost certainly for profligacy, and
with a heart embittered against the loving parents or friends who compelled
them to lose six or seven years in dusting the rails of the stair with their
black gowns, or scribbling nonsense for twopence a page all day, and laying out
twice their earnings at night in whisky-punch. Here is T. L. now. Four or five years ago, from
certain indications, I assured his friends he would never be a writer.
Good-natured lad, too, when Bacchus is out
of the question; but at other times so pugnacious, that it was wished he could
only be properly placed where fighting was to be a part of his duty, regulated
by time and place, and paid for accordingly. Well, time and instruction have
been thrown away, and now, after fighting two regular boxing-matches and a duel
with pistols in the course of one week, he tells them roundly he will be no writer, which common-sense might have told them before.
He has now perhaps acquired habits of insubordination, unfitting him for the
army, where he might have been tamed at an earlier period. He is too old for
the navy, and so he must go to India, a guinea-pig on board a China-man, with
what hope or view it is melancholy to guess. His elder brother did all man
could to get his friends to consent to his going into the army in time. The lad
has good-humour, courage, and most gentlemanlike feelings, but he is incurably
dissipated I fear; so goes to die in a foreign land. Thank God, I let Walter take his own way; and I trust he will
be a useful, honoured soldier, being, for his time, high
in the service; whereas at home he would probably have been a wine-bibbing,
moor-fowl shooting, fox-hunting Fife squire—living at Lochore without either
aim or end—and well if he were no worse. Dined at home with Lady S. and Anne. Wrote in the evening.
“December 7th.—Teind day—at home of course. Wrote answers to one or two letters
which have been lying on my desk like snakes, hissing at me for my
dilatoriness. Received a letter from Sir W.
Knighton, mentioning that the King acquiesced in my proposal that Constable’s Miscellany should be dedicated to him.
Enjoined, however, not to make this public, till the draft of dedication shall
be approved. This letter tarried so long, I thought some one had insinuated the
proposal was infra dig. I don’t
think so. The purpose is to bring all the standard works, both in sciences and
the liberal arts, within the reach of the lower classes, and enable them thus
to use with advantage the education which is given them at every hand. To make
boys learn to read, and then place no good books within their reach, is to give
men an appetite, and leave nothing in the pantry save unwholesome and poisonous
food, which, depend upon it, they will eat rather than starve. Sir
William, it seems, has been in Germany.
“Mighty dark this morning: it is past ten, and I am
using my lamp. The vast number of houses built beneath us to the north
certainly renders our street darker during the days in which frost or haze
prevents the smoke from rising. After all, it may be my older eyes. I remember
two years ago, when Lord Hermand began
to fail somewhat in his limbs, he observed that Lord Succoth came to Court at a more early hour than usual,
whereas it was he himself who
took longer time to walk the usual distance betwixt his house and the
Parliament Square. I suspect old gentlemen often make these mistakes.
“Dined quiet with Lady
S—— and Anne.
Anne is practising Scots songs, which I take as a kind
compliment to my own taste, as hers leads her chiefly to foreign music. I think
the good girl sees that I want and must miss her sister’s peculiar talent
in singing the airs of our native country, which, imperfect as my musical ear
is, make, and always have made the most pleasing impression on me. And so if
she puts a constraint on herself for my sake, I can only say, in requital, God
bless her.
“I have much to comfort me in the present aspect of
my family. My eldest son, independent in fortune, united to an affectionate
wife—and of good hopes in his profession;—my second, with a good deal of
talent, and in the way, I trust, of cultivating it to good purpose. Anne, an honest, downright, good Scots lass,
in whom I could only wish to correct a spirit of satire; and Lockhart is Lockhart, to
whom I can most willingly confide the happiness of the daughter who chose him,
and whom he has chosen. But my dear wife, the partner of early cares and
successes is, I fear, frail in health—though I trust and pray she may see me
out. Indeed, if this troublesome complaint goes on—it bodes no long existence.
My brother was affected with the same
weakness, which, before he was fifty, brought on mortal symptoms. The poor
Major had been rather a free liver. But my father, the most abstemious of men,
save when the duties of hospitality required him to be very moderately free
with his bottle, and that was very seldom, had the same weakness of the powers
of retention which now annoys me, and he, I think, was not above seventy when
cut off. Square the odds, and good-night Sir
Walter about sixty.—I care not, if I leave my name unstained,
and my family properly settled—Sat est
vixisse.
“December 8.—Talking of the
vixisse, it may not be
impertinent to notice that Knox, a young
poet of considerable talent, died here a week or two since. His father was a
respectable yeoman, and he himself, succeeding to good farms under the
Duke of Buccleuch, became too soon his
own master, and plunged into dissipation and ruin. His talent then showed
itself in a fine strain of pensive poetry, called, I think, ‘The Lonely Hearth,’
‘far superior to that of Michael
Bruce, whose consumption, by the way, has
been the life of his verses. But poetry, nay good
poetry, is a drug in the present day. I am a wretched patron—I cannot go about
with a subscription-paper, like a pocket-pistol, and draw unawares on some
honest country-gentleman, who has as much alarm as if I had used the phrase
‘stand and deliver,’ and parts with his money with a
grimace, indicating some suspicion that the crown-piece thus levied goes
ultimately into the collector’s own pocket. This I see daily done; and I
have seen such collectors, when they have exhausted papa and mamma, continue
their trade among the misses, and conjure out of their pockets their little
funds which should carry them to a play or an assembly. It is well people will
go through this—it does some good, I suppose, and they have great merit who can
sacrifice their pride so far as to attempt it in this way. For my part I am a
bad promoter of subscriptions; but I wished to do what I could for this lad,
whose talent I really admired; and I am not addicted to
* William Knox
died 12th November. He had published “Songs of Israel, 1824;”
“A Visit to
Dublin, 1824;” “The Harp of Zion, 1825,”
&c.; besides the “Lonely Hearth.” His publisher (Mr Anderson, junior, of Edinburgh)
remembers that Sir Walter
occasionally wrote to Knox, and sent him money;
L.10 at a time.
admire heaven-born poets, or
poetry that is reckoned very good considering. I had
him, Knox, at Abbotsford, about ten years ago, but found
him unfit for that sort of society. I tried to help him, but there were
temptations he could never resist. He scrambled on writing for the booksellers
and magazines, and living like the Otways, and Savages, and
Chattertons of former days, though I
do not know that he was in extreme want. His connexion with me terminated in
begging a subscription, or a guinea, now and then. His last works were
spiritual hymns, and which he wrote very well. In his own line of society he
was said to exhibit infinite humour; but all his works are grave and pensive, a
style, perhaps, like Master Stephen’s
melancholy, affected for the nonce.
“Mrs Grant
intimates that she will take her pudding—her pension, I mean (see 30th
November), and is contrite, as Henry
Mackenzie vouches. I am glad the stout old girl is not
foreclosed, faith. Cabbing a pension in these times is like hunting a pig with
a soap’d tail, monstrous apt to slip through your fingers,
“December 9.—Yesterday I read
and wrote the whole day and evening. To-day I shall not be so happy. Having
Gas-Light Company to attend at two, I must be brief in journalizing.
“The gay world has been kept in hot water lately by
the impudent publication of the celebrated Harriet
Wilson—who, punk from earliest possibility, I suppose, has lived
with half the gay world at hack and manger, and now obliges such as will not
pay hush-money with a history of whatever she knows or can invent about them.
She must have been assisted in the style, spelling, and diction, though the
attempt at wit is very poor, that at pathos sickening. But there is some good
retailing of conversations, in which the style of the
speakers, so far as known to me, is exactly imitated, and some things told, as
said by individuals of each other, which will sound unpleasantly in each
other’s ears. I admire the address of Lord
A——, himself very sorrily handled from time to time. Some one
asked him if H. W. had been pretty correct on the whole.
‘Why, faith,’ he replied, ‘I believe
so’—when, raising his eyes, he saw Q——
D——, whom the little jilt had treated atrociously—‘what
concerns the present company always excepted, you know,’ added
Lord A——, with infinite presence of mind. As he was in
pari casu with Q.
D., no more could be said. After all, H. W.
beats Con Philips, Anne Bellamy, and all former demireps, out and
out. I think I supped once in her company, more than twenty years since, at
Mat Lewis’s in Argyle Street,
where the company, as the Duke says to Lucio, chanced to be ‘fairer than honest.’*
She was far from beautiful, if it be the same chiffonne, but a smart saucy girl, with good eyes and
dark hair, and the manners of a wild schoolboy. I am glad this accidental
meeting has escaped her memory—or, perhaps, is not accurately recorded in
mine—for, being a sort of French falconer, who hawk at all they see, I might
have had a distinction which I am far from desiring.
“Dined at Sir John
Hay’s—a large party. In the morning a meeting of Oil Gas
Committee. The concern hangs a little; ‘It may do weel, for ought it’s done yet, But only—it’s no just begun yet.’†
“December 10.—A stormy and
rainy day. Walk it from the Court through the rain. I don’t dislike this.
Egad, I rather like it; for no man that ever stepped on
* Measure for Measure, Act IV., Scene
3.
† Burns’sDedication to Gavin Hamilton.
heather has less dread than I
of the catch cold; and I seem to regain, in buffeting with the wind, a little
of the high spirit with which, in younger days, I used to enjoy a Tam-o’-Shanter ride through
darkness, wind, and rain, the boughs groaning and cracking over my head, the
good horse free to the road and impatient for home, and feeling the weather as
little as I did. ‘The storm around might roar and rustle, We did na mind the storm a whistle.’
“Answered two letters—one answer to a schoolboy, who
writes himself Captain of Giggleswick School (a most imposing title),
entreating the youngster not to commence editor of a magazine to be entitled
the Yorkshire Muffin, I think, at seventeen years
old—second, to a soldier of the 79th, showing why I cannot oblige him by
getting his discharge, and exhorting him rather to bear with the wickedness and
profanity of the service, than take the very precarious step of desertion. This
is the old receipt of Durandarte—Patience, cousin, and shuffle the cards; and I suppose
the correspondents will think I have been too busy in offering my counsel where
I was asked for assistance.
“A third rogue writes to tell me—rather of the
latest, if the matter was of consequence—that he approves of the first three
volumes of the Heart of
Mid-Lothian, but totally condemns the fourth. Doubtless he thinks
his opinion worth the sevenpence sterling which his letter costs. However, an
author should be reasonably well pleased when three-fourths of his work are
acceptable to the reader. The knave demands of me, in a postscript, to get back
the sword of Sir William Wallace from
England, where it was carried from Dumbarton Castle. I am not Master-General of
the Ordnance, that I know. It was wrong, however, to take away that and Mons
Meg. If I go to London this spring, I will renew my
negotiation with the Great Duke for
recovery of Mons Meg.
“There is nothing more awful than to attempt to cast
a glance among the clouds and mists which hide the broken extremity of the.
celebrated bridge of Mirza.* Yet, when
every day brings us nigher that termination, one would almost think our views
should become clearer. Alas! it is not so: there is a curtain to be withdrawn,
a veil to be rent, before we shall see things as they really are. There are
few, I trust, who disbelieve the existence of a God; nay, I doubt if at all
times, and in all moods, any single individual ever adopted that hideous creed,
though some have professed it. With the belief of a Deity, that of the
immortality of the soul and of the state of future rewards and punishments is
indissolubly linked. More we are not to know; but neither are we prohibited
from all attempts, however vain, to pierce the solemn sacred gloom. The
expressions used in Scripture are doubtless metaphorical, for penal fires and
heavenly melody are only applicable to beings endowed with corporeal senses;
and at least till the period of the resurrection, the spirits of men, whether
entering into the perfection of the just, or committed to the regions of
punishment, are not connected with bodies. Neither is it to be supposed that
the glorified bodies which shall arise in the last day will be capable of the
same gross indulgences with which ours are now solaced. That the idea of
Mahomet’s paradise is
inconsistent with the purity of our heavenly religion will be readily granted;
and see Mark xii. 25. Harmony is obviously chosen as the least corporeal of all
gratifications of the sense, and as the type of love, unity, and a state of
peace and perfect happiness. But they have a poor
* Spectator, No. 159.
idea of the Deity, and the
rewards which are destined for the just made perfect, who can only adopt the
literal sense of an eternal concert—a never-ending birth-day ode. I rather
suppose this should be understood as some commission from the Highest, some
duty to discharge with the applause of a satisfied conscience. That the Deity,
who himself must be supposed to feel love and affection for the beings he has
called into existence, should delegate a portion of those powers, I for one
cannot conceive altogether so wrong a conjecture. We would then find reality in
Milton’s sublime machinery of
the guardian saints or genii of kingdoms. Nay, we would approach to the
Catholic idea of the employment of saints, though without approaching the
absurdity of saint-worship, which degrades their religion. There would be, we
must suppose, in these employments difficulties to overcome, and exertions to
be made, for all which the celestial beings employed would have certain
appropriate powers. I cannot help owning that a life of active benevolence is
more consistent with my ideas than an eternity of music. But it is all
speculation, and it is impossible to guess what we shall do, unless we could
ascertain the equally difficult previous question, what we are to be. But there
is a God, and a just God—a judgment and a future life—and all who own so much
let them act according to the faith that is in them. I would not of course
limit the range of my genii to this confined earth. There is the universe with
all its endless extent of worlds.
“Company at home—Sir
Adam Ferguson and his Lady; Colonel and Miss
Russell; Count Davidoff, and
Mr Collyer. By the by, I observe that all men whose
names are obviously derived from some mechanical trade, endeavour to disguise
and antiquate, as it were, their names, by spelling them after some quaint
manner or other. Thus we have
Collyer, Smythe,
Tailleure; as much as to say, my ancestor was indeed a
mechanic, but it was a world of time ago, when the word was spelled very unlike
the modern usage.—Then we had young
Whitebank and Will Allan
the artist, a very agreeable, simple-mannered, and pleasant man.
“December 11.—A touch of the
morbus eruditorum, to which I
am as little subject as most folks, and have it less now than when young. It is
a tremor of the head, the pulsation of which becomes painfully sensible—a
disposition to causeless alarm—much lassitude—and decay of vigour and activity
of intellect. The reins feel weary and painful, and the mind is apt to receive
and encourage gloomy apprehensions. Fighting with this fiend is not always the
best way to conquer him. I have found exercise and the open air better than
reasoning. But such weather as is now without doors does not encourage
la petite guerre, so we must
give him battle in form, by letting both mind and body know that, supposing one
the House of Commons and the other the House of Peers, my will is sovereign
over both. There is a fine description of this species of mental weakness in
the fine play of Beaumont and Fletcher, called the Lover’s
Progress, where the man, warned that his death is approaching,
works himself into an agony of fear, and calls for assistance, though there is
no apparent danger. The apparition of the innkeeper’s ghost, in the same
play, hovers between the ludicrous and the terrible; and to me the touches of
the former quality which it contains, seem to augment the effect of the
latter—they seem to give reality to the supernatural, as being a circumstance
with which an inventor would hardly have garnished his story.
“December 12.—Hogg came to breakfast this morning, and
brought for his companion the Galashiels bard, David Thomson,* as to a meeting of huz
Tividale poets. The honest grunter opines with a delightful naïveté that Muir’s verses are far owre
sweet—answered by Thomson that
Moore’s ear or notes, I forget which, were
finely strung. ‘They are far owre finely strung,’ replied he
of the Forest, ‘for mine are just right.’ It reminded me of
Queen Bess, when questioning
Melville sharply and closely whether
Mary was taller than her, and
extracting an answer in the affirmative, she replied, ‘Then your Queen
is too tall, for I am just the proper height.’
“Was engaged the whole day with Sheriff Court
processes. There is something sickening in seeing poor devils drawn into great
expenses about trifles by interested attorneys. But too cheap access to
litigation has its evils on the other hand, for the proneness of the lower
class to gratify spite and revenge in this way would be a dreadful evil were
they able to endure the expense. Very few cases come before the Sheriff Court
of Selkirkshire that ought to come any where. Wretched wranglings about a few
pounds, begun in spleen, and carried on from obstinacy, and at length, from
fear of the conclusion to the banquet pf ill-humour, ‘D—n—n of
expenses.’† I try to check it as well as I can; ‘but so
’twill be when I am gone.’
“December 12.—Dined at home,
and spent the evening in writing—Anne
and Lady Scott at the theatre to see
Mathews—a very clever man my friend
Mathews; but it is tiresome to be funny for a whole
evening, so I was content and stupid at home.
* See ante, vol. v. p. 226.
† Burns’sAddress to the Unco
Guid.
“An odd optical delusion has amused me these two
last nights. I have been of late, for the first time, condemned to the constant
use of spectacles. Now, when I have laid them aside to step into a room dimly
lighted, out of the strong light which I use for writing, I have seen, or
seemed to see, through the rims of the same spectacles which I have left behind
me. At first the impression was so lively that I put my hands to my eyes,
believing I had the actual spectacles on at the moment. But what I saw was only
the eidolon or image of said useful servants. This fortifies some of Dr Hibbert’s positions about spectral
appearances.
“December 13.—Letter from
Lady Stafford kind and friendly after
the wont of Banzu-Mohr-ar-chat.* This is wrong spelled I know. Her countenance
is something for Sophia, whose company
should be, as ladies are said to choose their liquor—little and good. To be
acquainted with persons of mere ton
is a nuisance and a scrape—to be known to persons of real fashion and fortune
is in London a very great advantage. In London second-rate fashion is like
false jewels.
“Went to the yearly court of the Edinburgh Assurance
Company, to which I am one of those graceful and useless appendages, called
Directors Extraordinary—an extraordinary director I should prove had they
elected me an ordinary one. There were there moneyers and great oneyers,†
men of metal—counters and discounters—sharp, grim, prudential faces—eyes weak
with ciphering
* Banamhorar-Chat, i. e. the
Great Lady of the Cat, is the Gaelic title of the
Countess-Duchess of Sutherland. The County of
Sutherland itself is in that dialect Cattey, and
in the English name of the neighbouring one, Caithness, we have another trace of the early settlement of
the Clan Chattan; whose chiefs hear the
cognizance of a Wild Cat.
† See 1st King Henry
IV. Act II. Scene 1.
by lamp-light—men who say to
gold Be thou paper, and to paper Be thou turned into fine gold. Many a
bustling, sharp-faced, keen-eyed writer too—some perhaps speculating with their
clients’ property. My reverend seigniors had expected a motion for
printing their contract, which I, as a piece of light artillery, was brought
down and got into battery to oppose. I should certainly have done this on the
general ground, that while each person could at any time obtain sight of the
contract at a call on the directors or managers, it would be absurd to print it
for the use of the company—and that exposing it to the eyes of the world at
large was in all respects unnecessary, and might teach novel companies to avail
themselves of our rules and calculations—if false, for the purpose of exposing
our errors—if correct, for the purpose of improving their own schemes on our
model. But my eloquence was not required, no one renewing the motion under
question; so off I came, my ears still ringing with the sounds of thousands and
tens of thousands, and my eyes dazzled with the golden gleam offered by so many
capitalists.
“Walked home with the Solicitor*—decidedly the most hopeful young man of his time;
high connexions, great talent, spirited ambition, a ready elocution, with a
good voice and dignified manners, prompt and steady courage, vigilant and
constant assiduity, popularity with the young men, and the good opinion of the
old, will, if I mistake not, carry him as high as any man who has arisen here
since the days of old Hal Dundas.† He
is hot though, and rather hasty: this should be amended. They who would play at
single-stick must bear
* John Hope,
Esq. (now Dean of the Faculty of Advocates) was at this
time Solicitor-General for Scotland.
† Henry Dundas, the
first Viscount Melville, first
appeared in Parliament as Lord Advocate of Scotland.
with pleasure a rap over the knuckles. Dined quietly with
Lady Scott and Anne.
“December 14.—Affairs very
bad again in the money-market in London. It must come here, and I have far too
many engagements not to feel it. To end the matter at once, I intend to borrow
L.10,000, with which my son’s marriage-contract allows me to charge my
estate. This will enable us to dispense in a great measure with bank
assistance, and sleep in spite of thunder. I do not know why it is—this
business makes me a little bilious, or rather the want of exercise during the
Session, and this late change of the weather to too much heat. But the sun and
moon shall dance on the green ere carelessness or hope of gain, or facility of
getting cash, shall make me go too deep again, were it but for the disquiet of
the thing.
“December 15.—Dined at home
with family. I am determined not to stand mine host to all Scotland and England
as I have done. This shall be a saving, as it must be a borrowing year. We
heard from Sophia; they are got safe to
town; but as Johnnie had a little bag of
meal with him, to make his porridge on the road, the whole inn-yard assembled
to see the operation. Junor, his maid, was of opinion that
England was an ‘awfu’ country to make parritch in.’
God bless the poor baby, and restore his perfect health!
“December 16.—T. S. and his friend Robert Wilson came—the former at four, as
usual—the latter at three, as appointed. Robert Wilson
frankly said that T. S.’s case was quite desperate,
that he was insolvent, and that any attempt to save him at present would be
just so much cash thrown away. God knows, at this moment I have none to throw away uselessly. For poor
S., there was a melancholy mixture of pathos and
affectation in his statement, which really affected me; while it told me that
it would be useless to help him to money on such very empty plans. I
endeavoured to persuade him to make a virtue of necessity, resign all to his
creditors, and begin the world on a new leaf. I offered him Chiefswood for a
temporary retirement. Lady Scott thinks I
was wrong, and nobody could less desire such a neighbour, all his affectations
being caviare to me. But then the wife and children!
Went again to the Solicitor on a wrong
night, being asked for to-morrow. Lady Scott undertakes to
keep my engagements recorded in future. ‘Sed quis custodiet
ipsam custodem?’
“December 17.—Dined with the
Solicitor—Lord Chief-Baron—Sir William
Boothby, nephew of old Sir
Brook, the dandy poet, &c. Annoyed with anxious
presentiments, which the night’s post must dispel or confirm.
“December 18.—Poor T. S. called again yesterday. Through his
incoherent, miserable tale, I could see that he had exhausted each access to
credit, and yet fondly imagines that, bereft of all his accustomed indulgences,
he can work with a literary zeal unknown to his happier days. I hope he may
labour enough to gain the mere support of his family. For myself, if things go
badly in London, the magic wand of the Unknown will be shivered in his grasp.
He must then, faith, be termed the Too-well-known. The feast of fancy will be
over with the feeling of independence. He shall no longer have the delight of
waking in the morning with bright ideas in his mind, hasten to commit them to
paper, and count them monthly, as the means of planting such scaurs, and purchasing such wastes; replacing dreams of fiction
by other prospective visions of walks by ‘Fountain heads, and pathless groves; Places which pale passion loves.’ This cannot be; but I may work substantial husbandry, i.
e. write history, and such concerns. They will not be received with
the same enthusiasm; at least I much doubt, the general knowledge that an
author must write for his bread, at least for improving his pittance, degrades
him and his productions in the public eye. He falls into the second-rate rank
of estimation: ‘While the harness sore galls, and the spurs his side goad, The high-mettled racer’s a hack on the road.’ It is a bitter thought; but if tears start at it, let them flow. My heart
clings to the place I have created. There is scarce a tree on it that does not
owe its being to me.
“What a life mine has been!—half educated, almost
wholly neglected, or left to myself; stuffing my head with most nonsensical
trash, and undervalued by most of my companions for a time; getting forward,
and held a bold and clever fellow, contrary to the opinion of all who thought
me a mere dreamer; broken-hearted for
two years; my heart handsomely pieced again; but the crack will remain till my
dying day. Rich and poor four or five times; once on the verge of ruin, yet
opened a new source of wealth almost overflowing. Now to be broken in my pitch
of pride, and nearly winged (unless good news should come), because London
chooses to be in an uproar, and in the tumult of bulls and bears, a poor
inoffensive lion like myself is pushed to the wall. But what is to be the end
of it? God knows; and so ends the catechism.
“Nobody in the end can lose a penny by me—that is
one comfort. Men will think pride has had a fall. Let them indulge their own pride in thinking
that my fall will make them higher, or seem so at least. I have the
satisfaction to recollect that my prosperity has been of advantage to many, and
to hope that some at least will forgive my transient wealth on account of the
innocence of my intentions, and my real wish to do good to the poor. Sad
hearts, too, at Darnick, and in the cottages of Abbotsford. I have half
resolved never to see the place again. How could I tread my hall with such a
diminished crest? How live a poor indebted man, where I was once the
wealthy—the honoured? I was to have gone there on Saturday in joy and
prosperity to receive my friends. My dogs will wait for me in vain. It is
foolish—but the thoughts of parting from these dumb creatures have moved me
more than any of the painful reflections I have put down. Poor things, I must
get them kind masters! There may be yet those who, loving me, may love my dog,
because it has been mine. I must end these gloomy forebodings, or I shall lose
the tone of mind with which men should meet distress. I feel my dogs’
feet on my knees. I hear them whining and seeking me every where. This is
nonsense, but it is what they would do could they know how things may be. An
odd thought strikes me—When I die, will the journal of these days be taken out
of the ebony cabinet at Abbotsford, and read with wonder, that the well-seeming
Baronet should ever have experienced the risk of such a hitch? Or will it be
found in some obscure lodging-house, where the decayed son of Chivalry had hung
up his scutcheon, and where one or two old friends will look grave and whisper
to each other, ‘Poor gentleman’—‘a well-meaning
man’—‘nobody’s enemy but his own’—‘thought his
parts would never wear out’—‘family poorly left’—‘pity
he took that foolish title.’ Who can answer this question?
“Poor Will
Laidlaw—poor Tom
Purdie—such news will wring your hearts, and many a poor fellow
besides to whom my prosperity was daily bread.
“Ballantyne
behaves like himself, and sinks the prospect of his own ruin in contemplating
mine. I tried to enrich him indeed, and now all, all is in the balance. He will
have the Journal still, that is
a comfort, for sure they cannot find a better editor. They—alas, who will they be—the unbekannten obern* who may have to dispose
of my all as they will? Some hard-eyed banker—some of these men of millions
whom I described.
“I have endeavoured to give vent to thoughts
naturally so painful, by writing these notes—partly to keep them at bay by
busying myself with the history of the French Convention. I thank God I can do
both with reasonable composure. I wonder how Anne will bear such an affliction. She is passionate, but
stout-hearted and courageous in important matters, though irritable in trifles.
I am glad Lockhart and his wife are
gone. Why? I cannot tell—but I am pleased to be left to
my own regrets, without being melted by condolences, though of the most sincere
and affectionate kind.
“Oddly enough, it happened mine honest friend
Hector Macdonald came in before
dinner, to ask a copy of my seal of arms, with a sly kindliness of intimation
that it was for some agreeable purpose. Half-past eight.
I closed this book under the impression of impending ruin. I open it an hour
after (thanks be to God) with the strong hope that matters will be got over
safely and honourably, in a mercantile sense. Cadell came at eight to communicate a letter from Hurst and Robinson, intimating that they had stood the storm.
“I shall always think the better of Cadell for this—
* Unbekannten obern—unknown rulers.
not merely because his feet are
beautiful on the mountains who brings good tidings, but because he showed
feeling—deep feeling, poor fellow. He, who I thought had no more than his
numeration-table, and who, if he had had his whole counting-house full of
sensibility, had yet his wife and children to bestow it upon—I will not forget
this, if all keeps right. I love the virtues of rough-and-round men—the
others’ are apt to escape in salt rheum, sal-volatile, and a white
pocket-handkerchief.
“December 19.—Ballantyne here before breakfast. He looks on
last night’s news with confidence. Constable came in and sat an hour. The old gentleman is firm as
a rock. He talks of going to London next week. But I must go to work.
“December 20.—Dined at
Lord Chief-Baron’s. Lord Justice-Clerk; Lord-President; Captain
Scarlett, a gentlemanlike young man, the son of the great
Counsellor,* and a friend of my son
Walter; Lady Charlotte Hope and other womankind; R. Dundas of Arniston, and his pleasant and
good-humoured little wife, whose quick, intelligent look pleases me more,
though her face be plain, than a hundred mechanical beauties. I like
Ch. Ba. Shepherd very much—as much, I think, as any
man I have learned to know of late years. There is a neatness and precision, a
closeness and truth in the tone of his conversation, which shows what a lawyer
he must have been. Perfect good-humour and naïveté of manner, with a little warmth of temper on
suitable occasions. His great deafness alone prevented him from being Lord
Chief-Justice. I never
* Mr Scarlett,
now Lord Abinger.
saw a man so patient under such a malady. He loves
society, and converses excellently; yet is often obliged, in a mixed company
particularly, to lay aside his trumpet, retire into himself, and withdraw from
the talk. He does this with an expression of patience in his countenance which
touches one much. Constable’s
license for the Dedication is come, which will make him happy.*
“December 21st.—Dined with James
Ballantyne, and met R.
Cadell, and my old friend Mathews, the comedian, with his son, now grown up a clever lad, who makes songs in the style of
James Smith or Colman, and sings them with spirit. There have
been odd associations attending my two last meetings with
Mathews. The last time I saw him before yesterday
evening he dined with me in company with poor Sir
Alexander Boswell, who was killed within a week.† I never
saw Sir Alexander more. The time before was in 1815, when
John Scott of Gala and I were
returning from France, and passed through London, when we brought
Mathews down as far as Leamington. Poor Byron lunched, or rather made an early dinner with
us at Long’s, and a most brilliant day we had of it. I never saw
Byron so full of fun, frolic, wit, and whim: he was as
playful as a kitten. Well, I never saw him again.‡ So this man of mirth,
with his merry meetings, has brought me no luck. I like better that
* The Dedication of Constable’s Miscellany was
penned by Sir Walter:—“To his Majesty King George IV., the most
generous Patron even of the most humble attempts towards the advantage
of his subjects: This Miscellany, designed
to extend useful knowledge and elegant literature, by placing works of
standard merit within the attainment of every class of Readers, is most
humbly inscribed by His Majesty’s
dutiful and devoted subject—Archibald Constable.”
† See ante vol. v. pp.
153-t.
‡ See ante, vol. iii.
pp. 335-9, 373.
he should throw in his talent
of mimicry and humour into the present current tone of the company, than that
he should be required to give this, that, and t’other bit selected from his public recitations. They are good
certainly—excellent; but then you must laugh, and that is always severe to me.
When I do laugh in sincerity, the joke must be or seem unpremeditated. I could
not help thinking, in the midst of the glee, what gloom had lately been over
the minds of three of the company. What a strange scene if the surge of
conversation could suddenly ebb like the tide, and show us the state of
people’s real minds! ‘No eyes the rocks discover Which lurk beneath the deep.’ Life could not be endured were it seen in reality. Things keep mending in
London.
“December 22.—I wrote six of
my close pages yesterday, which is about twenty-four pages in print. What is
more, I think it comes off twangingly. The story is so very interesting in
itself, that there is no fear of the book answering.* Superficial it must be,
but I do not care for the charge. Better a superficial book which brings well
and strikingly together the known and acknowledged facts, than a dull boring
narrative, pausing to see farther into a mill-stone at every moment than the
nature of the mill-stone admits. Nothing is so tiresome as walking through some
beautiful scene with a minute philosopher, a botanist,
or pebble-gatherer, who is eternally calling your attention from the grand
features of the natural picture to look at grasses and chucky-stones. Yet in
their way, they give useful information;
* Life of Napoleon.
and so does the minute historian. Gad, I think that will
look well in the preface. My bile is quite gone; I really believe it arose from
mere anxiety. What a wonderful connexion between the mind and body!
“The air of Bonnie Dundee running in my head today, I wrote a few
verses to it before dinner, taking the key-note from the story of Clavers leaving the Scottish Convention of
Estates in 1688-9.* I wonder if they are good. Ah, poor Will Erskine! thou couldst and wouldst have
told me. I must consult J. B., who is as
honest as was W. E. But then, though he has good taste
too, there is a little of Big Bow-wow about it.
Can’t say what made me take a frisk so uncommon of late years as to write
verses of free-will. I suppose the same impulse which makes birds sing when the
storm has blown over.
“Dined at Lord
Minto’s. There were Lord and Lady Ruthven,
William Clerk, and Thomas Thomson, a right choice party. There
was also my very old friend Mrs Brydone,
the relict of the traveller, and
daughter of Principal Robertson, and
really worthy of such a connexion—Lady
Minto, who is also peculiarly agreeable and her sister,
Mrs Admiral Adam, in the evening.
“December 23.—Lord Minto’s father, the first Earl, was a man among a thousand. I knew
him very, very intimately in the beginning of the century, and, which was very
agreeable, was much at his house on very easy terms. He loved the Muses, and
worshipped them in secret, and used to read some of his poetry, which was but
middling. With the mildest manners, he was very tenacious of his opinions,
although he changed them twice in the crises of politics. He was the early
friend
* See Scott’s Poetical Works,
vol. xii. pp. 194-7.
of Fox, and made a figure towards the end of the
American war, or during the struggles betwixt Fox and
Pitt. Then came the Revolution, and
he joined the Anti-Gallican party so keenly, that he declared against Addington’s peace with France, and was for
a time, I believe, a Wyndhamite. He was reconciled to the Whigs on the
Fox and Grenville
coalition; but I have heard that Fox, contrary to his
wont, retained such personal feelings as made him object to Sir
Gilbert Elliot’s having a seat in the Cabinet; so he was
sent Governor-General to India.—a better thing, I take it, for his fortune. He
died shortly after his return,* on his way down to his native country. He was a
most pleasing and amiable man. I was very sorry for his death, though I do not
know how we should have met, for a contested election in Roxburghshire had
placed some coldness betwixt the present Lord and me. I was certainly anxious
for Sir Alexander Don, both as friend of
my most kind friend Charles Duke of
Buccleuch, and on political accounts; and those thwartings are
what men in public life do not like to endure. After a cessation of friendship
for some years, we have now come about again. We never had the slightest
personal dispute or disagreement. But politics are the blowpipe beneath whose
influence the best cemented friendships diffuse; and ours, after all, was only
a very familiar acquaintance.
“It is very odd that the common people about Minto
and the neighbourhood will not believe at this hour that the first Earl is dead. They think he had done
something in India which he could not answer for—that the house was rebuilt on
a scale unusually large to give him a suite of secret apartments, and that he
often walks
* Gilbert,
Earl of Minto, died in June, 1814.
about the woods and crags of Minto at night, with a white
nightcap, and long white beard. The circumstance of his having died on the road
down to Scotland is the sole foundation of this absurd legend, which shows how
willing the public are to gull themselves when they can find no one else to
take the trouble. I have seen people who could read, write, and cipher, shrug
their shoulders and look mysterious when this subject was mentioned. One very
absurd addition was made on occasion of a great ball at Minto House, which it
was said was given to draw all people away from the grounds, that the concealed
Earl might have leisure for his exercise. This was on the principle in the
German play,* where, to hide their conspiracy, the associates join in a chorus
song.
“We dined at home; Mr
Davidoff and his tutor kept an engagement with us to dinner
notwithstanding the death of the Emperor
Alexander. They went to the play with the womankind; I staid at
home to write.
“December 24.—Wrote to
Walter and Jane, and gave the former an account of how
things had been in the money market. Constable has a new scheme of publishing the works of the Author of Waverley in a
superior style, at L.1, 1s. volume. He says he will answer for making L.20,000
of this, and liberally offered me any share of the profits. I have no great
claim to any, as I have only to contribute the notes, which are light work; yet
a few thousands coming in will be a good thing—besides the Printing Office.
Constable, though valetudinary, and cross with his
partner, is certainly as good a
pilot in these rough seas as ever man
* See Canning’s “German play,” in the Anti-jacobin.
put faith in. His rally has
put me in mind of the old song— ‘The tailor raise and shook his duds, He gar’d the bills flee aff in
cluds, And they that staid gat fearfu’ thuds— The tailor proved a man, O.’
“We are for Abbotsford to-day, with a light heart.
“December 25, Abbotsford.—Arrived here last night at seven. Our halls
are silent compared to last year, but let us be thankful—Barbarus has segetes? Nullum numen abest, si sit
prudentia. There shall be no lack of wisdom. But
come—il faut cultiver notre
jardin.* Let us see, I shall write out the Bonnets of Bonnie Dundee. I will sketch a preface to
La Rochejacquelin for Constable’s Miscellany, and try about a
specimen of notes for the Waverley novels. Together with letters and
by-business, it will be a good day’s work. ‘I make a vow, And keep it true.’ I will accept no invitation for dinner, save one to Newton-Don, and
Mertoun to-morrow, instead of Christmas-Day. On this day of general devotion I
have a particular call for gratitude!!”
* See Candide.
CHAPTER V. CONSTABLE IN LONDON—EXTRACT FROM JAMES
BALLANTYNE’S MEMORANDUM—SCOTT’S DIARY
RESUMED—PROGRESS OF WOODSTOCK—REVIEW OF PEPYS’
DIARY—SKENE—SCROPE—MATHEWS,
&c.—COMMERCIAL ALARMS RENEWED AT INTERVALS—CATASTROPHE OF THE THREE HOUSES OF
HURST AND ROBINSON,
CONSTABLE, AND BALLANTYNE—JANUARY AND
FEBRUARY, 1826.
It was not till nearly three weeks after Sir Walter penned the last-quoted paragraph of his Diary, that Mr Constable made his appearance in London. I saw him
immediately. Having deferred his journey imprudently, he had performed it very rapidly; and
this exertion, with mental excitement, had brought on a sharp access of gout, which
confined him for a couple of days to his hotel in the Adelphi—reluctantem draconem. A more impatient spirit never boiled in a
feverish frame. It was then that I, for the first time, saw full swing given to the
tyrannical temper of the Czar. He looked, spoke, and gesticulated like some hoary despot,
accustomed to nothing but the complete indulgence of every wish and whim, against whose
sovereign authority his most trusted satraps and tributaries had suddenly revolted—open
rebellion, in twenty provinces—confusion in the capital—treason in the palace. I will not
repeat his haughty ravings of scorn and wrath. I listened to these with wonder and
commiseration; nor were such feelings mitigated when, having exhausted his violence of vituperation against many
persons of whom I had never before heard him speak but as able and trusted friends, he
cooled down sufficiently to answer my question as to the practical business on which the
note announcing his arrival in town had signified his urgent desire to take my advice.
Constable told me that he had already seen one of the Hurst and Robinson
firm, and that the storm which had seemed to be “blown over” had, he was
satisfied, only been lulled for a moment to burst out in redoubled fury. If they went,
however, he must follow. He had determined to support them through the coming gale as he
had done through the last; and he had the means to do so effectually, provided
Sir Walter Scott would stand by him heartily and boldly.
The first and most obvious step was to make large sales of copyrights;
and it was not surprising that Constable should have
formed most extravagant notions of the marketable value of the property of this nature in
his possession. Every bookseller is very apt to do so. A manuscript is submitted to him; he
inspects it with coldness and suspicion; with hesitation offers a sum for it; obtains it,
and sends it to be printed. He has hardly courage to look at the sheets as they are thrown
off; but the book is at last laid on his counter, and he from that moment regards it with
an eye of parental fondness. It is his; he considers it in that light quite as much as does
the author, and is likely to be at least as sorely provoked by any thing in the shape of
hostile criticism. If this be the usual working of self-love or self-interest in such
cases, what wonder that the man*
* On seeing the passage in the text, Mr Constable’s surviving partner writes as follows: “No better illustration of this
buoyant idea of the value of literary property is to be found than in the now
well ascertained fact of Constable
himself, in 1811, over-estimating
who had at his disposal (to say nothing of innumerable minor
properties) the copyrights of the Encyclopæedia
Britannica, with its Supplement, a moiety of the Edinburgh Review, nearly all Scott’s Poetry, the Waverley Novels, and the advancing Life of Napoleon—who had made, besides, sundry contracts for novels by
Scott, as yet unwritten—and who seriously viewed his plan of the
new Miscellany as in itself the sure foundation of a gigantic fortune—what wonder that the
sanguine Constable should have laid to his soul the flattering unction
that he had only to display such resources in some quarter totally above the momentary
pressure of the trade, and command an advance of capital adequate to
relieve him and all his allies from these unfortunate difficulties about a few paltry
“sheafs” of stamped paper? To be brief, he requested me to accompany him, as
soon as he could get into his carriage, to the Bank of England, and support him (as a
confidential friend of the Author of Waverley)
in his application for a loan of from L.100,000 to L.200,000 on the security of the
copyrights in his possession. It is needless to say that, without distinct instructions
from Sir Walter, I could not take upon me to interfere in such a
business as this. Constable, when I refused, became livid with rage.
After a long silence, he stamped on the ground, and swore that he could and would do alone.
I left him in stern indignation.
There was another scene of the same kind a day or two afterwards, when
his object was to get me to back his application to Sir
Walter to borrow L.20,000 in Edinburgh, and transmit it to him in London. I
promised nothing but to acquaint Scott immediately with
his partner, Mr
Hunter, out of the concern at the Cross to
the tune of some L.10,000 or L.12,000—a blow from which the firm never recovered.
R. C.”
his request, and him with
Scott’s answer. Sir Walter had, ere the
message reached him, been made aware that his advances had already been continued in the
absence of all ground for rational hope.
It is no business of mine to detail Constable’s subsequent proceedings on this his last visit to London.
Every where he found distrust. The metropolitan bankers had enough on their hands at a time
when, as Mr Huskisson afterwards confessed in
Parliament, the Bank of England itself had been on the verge of a stoppage, without
embarrassing themselves with new securities of the uncertain and precarious nature of
literary property. The great bookselling houses were all either labouring themselves, or
watching with fear and trembling the daily aggravated symptoms of distress among their
friends and connexions. Constable lingered on, fluctuating between
wild hope and savage despair, until, I seriously believe, he at last hovered on the brink
of insanity. When he returned to Edinburgh, it was to confront creditors whom he knew he
could not pay.
Before that day came, I had necessarily been informed of the nature of
Scott’s connexion with commercial
speculations; but I had not been prepared for the amount to which Constable’s ruin must involve him, until the final
blow was struck.
I believe I have now said enough by way of preface to Sir Walter’s Diary from Christmas 1825, to the latter
part of January 1826, when my darkest anticipations were more than realized. But before I
return to this Diary, it may be well to transcribe the very short passage of James Ballantyne’s deathbed memorandum which refers
to this painful period. Mr Ballantyne says, in that most candid
paper:—
“I need not here enlarge upon the unfortunate facility which, at
the period of universal confidence and in-dulgence, our and other
houses received from the banks. Suffice it to say that all our appearances of
prosperity, as well as those of Constable, and
Hurst and Robinson, were merely shadows, and that from the moment the bankers
exhibited symptoms of doubt, it might have been easy to discover what must be the
ultimate result. During weeks, and even months, however, our house was kept in a state
of very painful suspense. The other two, I have no doubt, saw the coming events more
clearly. I must here say, that it was one of Sir
Walter’s weaknesses to shrink too much from looking evil in the
face, and that he was apt to carry a great deal too far—‘sufficient for the
day is the evil thereof.’ I do not think it was more than three weeks
before the catastrophe that he became fully convinced it was impending—if indeed his
feelings ever reached the length of conviction at all. Thus, at the last, his fortitude
was very severely tried indeed.”
DIARY.
“Abbotsford, December 26,
1825.—My God! what poor creatures we are! After all my fair proposals
yesterday, I was seized with a most violent pain in the right kidney and parts
adjacent, which forced me instantly to go to bed and send for Clarkson.* He came, enquired, and pronounced
the complaint to be gravel augmented by bile. I was in great agony till about
two o’clock, but awoke with the pain gone. I got up, had a fire in my
dressing-closet, and had Dalgliesh to
shave me two trifles, which I only mention, because they are contrary to my
hardy and independent personal habits. But
* James Clarkson,
Esq., Surgeon, Melrose. son to Scott’s old friend
Dr Clarkson of Selkirk.
although a man cannot be a hero
to his valet, his valet in sickness becomes of great use to him. I cannot
expect that the first will be the last visit of this cruel complaint; but shall
we receive good at the hand of God, and not receive evil?
“December 27th.—Slept twelve hours at a stretch, being much exhausted. Totally
without pain to day, but uncomfortable from the effects of calomel, which, with
me at least, is like the assistance of an auxiliary army, just one degree more
tolerable than the enemy it chases away. Calomel contemplations are not worth
recording. I wrote an introduction and a few notes to the Memoirs of Madame La Rochejacquelin,* being all that I
was equal to. Sir Adam Ferguson came
over and tried to marry my verses to the tune of Bonnie
Dundee. They seem well adapted to each other. Dined with Lady S—— and Anne. Worked at Pepys in the evening, with the purpose of review for
Quarterly.† Notwithstanding the depressing effects of the calomel, I feel
the pleasure of being alone and uninterrupted. Few men, leading a quiet life,
and without any strong or highly varied change of circumstances, have seen more
variety of society than I—few have enjoyed it more, or been bored, as it is called, less by the company of tiresome people. I
have rarely, if ever, found any one, out of whom I could not extract amusement
or edification; and were I obliged to account for hints afforded on such
occasions, I should make an ample deduction from my narrative powers. Still,
however, from the earliest time I can remember, I preferred the pleasure of
being alone to wishing for visiters, and have often taken
* See Constable’s Miscellany, vol. v.
† See the Quarterly Review for January 1826, or
Scott’s
Miscellaneous Prose, vol. xx.
a bannock and a bit of cheese to the wood or hill, to
avoid dining with company. As I grew from boyhood to manhood I saw this would
not do; and that to gain a place in men’s esteem I must mix and bustle
with them. Pride, and an exaltation of spirits often supplied the real pleasure
which others seem to feel in society; yet mine certainly upon many occasions
was real. Still, if the question was, eternal company, without the power of
retiring within yourself, or solitary confinement for life, I should say,
‘Turnkey, Lock the cell!’ My life, though not without its fits of
waking and strong exertion, has been a sort of dream, spent in ‘Chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy.’ I have worn a wishing-cap, the power of which has been to divert present
griefs by a touch of the wand of imagination, and gild over the future by
prospects more fair than can be realized. Somewhere it is said that this
castle-building—this wielding of the unreal trowel, is fatal to exertions in
actual life. I cannot tell, I have not found it so. I cannot, indeed, say like
Madame Genlis, that in the imaginary
scenes in which I have acted a part I ever prepared myself for any thing which
actually befell me; but I have certainly fashioned out much that made the
present hour pass pleasantly away, and much that has enabled me to contribute
to the amusement of the public. Since I was five years old I cannot remember
the time when I had not some ideal part to play for my own solitary amusement.
“December 28.—Somehow I think
the attack on Christmas-Day has been of a critical kind; and having gone off so
well, may be productive rather of health than continued indisposition. If one
is to get a renewal of health in his fifty-fourth year, he must look to pay fine for it. Last night
George Thomson came to see how I
was, poor fellow. He has talent, is well informed, and has an excellent heart;
but there is great eccentricity about him. I wish to God I saw him provided in
a country kirk. That, with a rational wife, would, I think, bring him to a
steady temper; at present he is between the tyning and the winning. If I could
get him to set to any hard study, he would do something clever.
“How to make a critic.—A sly
rogue, sheltering himself under the generic name of Mr
Campbell, requested of me, through the penny-post, the loan of
L.50 for two years, having an impulse, as he said, to make this demand. As I
felt no corresponding impulse, I begged to decline a demand which might have
been as reasonably made by any Campbell on earth; and
another impulse has determined the man of fifty pounds to send me anonymous
abuse of my works, and temper, and selfish disposition. The severity of the
joke lies in 14d. for postage, to avoid which, his next epistle shall go back
to the clerks of the Post-Office, as not for Sir W— S—. How the severe rogue
would be disappointed, if he knew I never looked at more than the first and
last lines of his satirical effusion! When I first saw that a literary
profession was to be my fate, I endeavoured by all efforts of stoicism to
divest myself of that irritable degree of sensibility or, to speak plainly, of
vanity which makes the poetical race miserable and ridiculous. The anxiety of a
poet for praise and for compliments I have always endeavoured to keep down.
“December 29.—Base feelings
this same calomel gives one—mean, poor, and abject—a wretch, as Will Rose says. ‘Fie fie on silly coward man, That he should be the slave o’t.’ *
Then it makes one “wofully dogged and snappish,” as
Dr Rutt the Quaker says in his Gurnal.—Must go to Woodstock, yet am vexed by that humour of
contradiction which makes me incline to do any thing else in preference.
Commenced preface for the new edition of my Novels. The City of Cork send my
freedom in a silver box.
“December 31.—Took a good
sharp walk the first time since my illness, and found myself the better in
health and spirits. Being Hogmanay, there dined with us Colonel Russell and his sisters, Sir Adam Ferguson and Lady, Colonel
Ferguson, with Mary and
Margaret: an auld-world party, who
made themselves happy in the auld fashion. I felt so tired about eleven that I
was forced to steal to bed.
“January 1, 1826.—A year has
passed, another has commenced. These divisions of time influence our feelings
as they recur. Yet there is nothing in it; for every day in the year closes a
twelvemonth as well as the 31st December. The latter is only the solemn pause,
as when a guide, showing a wild and mountainous road, calls on a party to look
back at the scenes which they have just passed. To me this new year opens
sadly. There are these troublesome pecuniary difficulties, which, however, I
think this week should end. There is the absence of all my children, Anne excepted, from our little family
festival. There is, besides, that ugly report of the 15th Hussars going to
India. Walter, I suppose, will have some
step in view, and will go, and I fear Jane will not dissuade
* Burns.
him. A hard frosty day—cold,
but dry and pleasant under foot. Walked into the plantations with
Anne and Anne
Russell. A thought strikes me, alluding to this period of the
year. People say that the whole human frame in all its parts and divisions is
gradually in the act of decaying and renewing. What a curious time-piece it
would be that could indicate to us the moment this gradual and insensible
change had so completely taken place, that no atom was left of the original
person who had existed at a certain period, but there existed in his stead
another person having the same thewes and sinews; the same face and lineaments;
the same consciousness; a new ship built on an old plank; a pair of
transmigrated stockings like those of Sir John
Cutler, all green, without one thread of the original black silk
left! Singular to be at once another and the same!
“January 2.—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 those cold sinkings of the heart.
All men, I suppose, do so 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
Fergusonsen
masse.
“January 3.—Promises a fair
day, and I think the progress of my labours will afford me a little exercise.
Walked with Colonel
Russell from eleven till two, the first good day’s
exercise I have had since coming here. We went through all the Terrace, the
Roman Planting,* over by the Stiel and Haxellcleuch, and so by the
Rhymer’s Glen to Chiefswood, which gave my heart a twinge, so
disconsolate it seemed. Yet all is for the best. When I returned, signed a bond
for L.10,000, which will disencumber me of all pressing claims;† when I
get forwards Woodstock and
Nap. there will be
L.12,000 and upwards, and I hope to add L.3000 against this time next year, or
the devil must hold the dice. J. B.
writes me seriously on the carelessness of my style. I did not think I had been
more careless than usual; but I daresay he is right. I will be more cautious.
“January 4.—Despatched the
deed executed yesterday. Mr and
Mrs Skene, my excellent friends,
came to us from Edinburgh. Skene, distinguished for his
attainments as a draughtsman and for his highly gentlemanlike feelings and
character, is Laird of Rubislaw, near Aberdeen. Having had an elder brother,
his education was somewhat neglected in early life, against which disadvantage
he made a most gallant fight, exerting himself much to obtain those
accomplishments which he has since possessed. Admirable in all exercises, there
entered a good deal of the cavalier into his early character. Of late he has
given himself much to the study of antiquities. His wife, a most excellent
* This plantation now covers the remains of an old
Roman road from the Great Camp on the Eildon hills (the Trimontium of the annalists) to the ford below
Scott’s house.
† When settling his estate on his eldest son,
Sir Walter had retained the
power of burdening it with L.10,000 for behoof of his younger children:
he now raised the sum for the assistance of the struggling firms.
person, was tenderly fond of
Sophia. They bring so much
old-fashioned kindness and good-humour with them, besides the recollections of
other times, that they must be always welcome guests. Letter from Mr Scrope,* announcing a visit.
January 5.—Got the desired accommodation which will put
J. B. quite straight, but am a
little anxious still about Constable. He
has immense stock, to be sure, and most valuable, but he may have sacrifices to
make to convert a large proportion of it into ready money. The accounts from
London are most disastrous. Many wealthy persons totally ruined, and many, many
more have been obliged to purchase their safety at a price they will feel all
their lives. I do not hear things have been so bad in Edinburgh; and
J. B.’s business has been transacted by the
banks with liberality.
“Colonel
Russell told us last night that the last of the Moguls, a
descendant of Kubla-Khan, though having no more power than
his effigies at the back of a set of playing-cards, refused to meet Lord Hastings, because the Governor-General would
not agree to remain standing in his presence. Pretty well for the blood of
Timur in these degenerate days!
“Much alarmed. I had walked till twelve with
Skene and Russell, and then sat down to my work. To my
horror and surprise I could neither write nor spell, but put down one word for
another, and wrote nonsense. I was much overpowered at the same time, and could
* William Scrope,
Esq. of Lincolnshire—the representative of the Lords
Scrope of Bolton (to whose peerage he is, I
believe, entitled), was at this period much in Scotland, being a
zealous angler and deerstalker. He had a lease of Lord Somerville’s pavilion
opposite Melrose, and lived on terms of affectionate intimacy with
Sir Walter Scott. There occurs in a subsequent
entry an allusion to Mr Scrope’s eminence as
an amateur artist.
not conceive the reason. I fell asleep, however, in my
chair, and slept for two hours. On my waking my head was clearer, and I began
to recollect that last night I had taken the anodyne left for the purpose by
Clarkson, and, being disturbed in
the course of the night, I had not slept it off. Obliged to give up writing
to-day—read Pepys instead.
“January 6.—This seems to be
a feeding storm, coming on by little and little. Wrought all day, and dined
quiet. My disorder is wearing off, and the quiet society of the
Skenes suits my present humour. I really thought I was
in for some very bad illness. Curious expression of an Indian-born boy just
come from Bengal, a son of my cousin George
Swinton. The child saw a hare run across the fields, and
exclaimed, ‘See, there is a little tiger!’
“January 7.—Sunday.—Knight, a young
artist, son of the performer, came to do
a picture of me at the request of Terry.
This is very far from being agreeable, as I submitted to that state of
constraint last year to Newton, at
request of Lockhart; to Leslie, at request of my American friend;* to Wilkie, for his picture of the King’s
arrival at Holyrood House; and some one besides. I am as tired of the operation
as old Maida, who had been so often sketched that he
got up and walked off with signs of loathing whenever he saw an artist unfurl
his paper and handle his brushes. But this young man is civil and modest; and I
have agreed he shall be in the room while I work, and take the best likeness he
can, without compelling me into the fixed attitude and yawning fatigues of an
actual sitting. I think, if he has
* Sir Walter
omits the name of his friend, Mr
Ticknor of Boston, who possesses Mr Leslie’s portrait.
talent, he may do more my way
than in the customary mode; at least I can’t have the hang-dog look which
the unfortunate Theseus has who is doomed
to sit for what seems an eternity.*
“I wrought till two o’clock—indeed till I was
almost nervous with correcting and scribbling. I then walked, or rather was
dragged through the snow by Tom Purdie,
while Skene accompanied. What a blessing
there is in a fellow like Tom, whom no familiarity can
spoil, whom you may scold and praise and joke with, knowing the quality of the
man is unalterable in his love and reverence to his master. Use an ordinary
servant in the same way, and he will be your master in a month. We should thank
God for the snow as well as summer flowers. This brushing exercise has put all
my nerves into tone again, which were really jarred with fatigue until my very
back-bone seemed breaking. This comes of trying to do too much. J. B.’s news are as good as
possible.—Prudence, prudence, and all will do excellently.
January 8.—Frost and snow still. Write to excuse myself
from attending the funeral of my aunt Mrs
Curle, which takes place to-morrow at Kelso. She was a woman of
the old Sandy-Knowe breed, with the strong sense, high principle, and
indifferent temper which belonged to my father’s family. She lived with
great credit on a moderate income, and I believe gave away a great deal of
it.†
† In a letter of this date, to his sister-in-law,
Mrs Thomas Scott, Sir Walter
says—“Poor aunt Curle
died like a Roman, or rather like one of the Sandy-Knowe bairns, the
most stoical race I ever knew. She turned every one out of the room,
and drew her last breath alone. So did my uncle Captain Robert Scott, and several
others of that family.”
“January 9.—Mathews the comedian and his son come to spend
a day at Abbotsford.—Mr Scrope also
comes out.
“January 10.—Bodily health,
the mainspring of the microcosm, seems quite restored. No more flushing or
nervous fits, but the sound mind in the sound body. What poor things does a
fever-fit or an overflowing of bile make of the master of creation. The snow
begins to fall thick this morning— ‘The loud did say, As how he wished they would go away.’ To have our friends shut up here would be rather too much of a good
thing.—The day cleared up and was very pleasant. Had a good walk and looked at
the curling. Mr Mathews made himself
very amusing in the evening. He has the good-nature to show his accomplishments
without pressing and without the appearance of feeling pain. On the contrary, I
dare say he enjoys the pleasure he communicates.
“January 11.—I got
proof-sheets, in which it seems I have repeated a whole passage of history
which had been told before. James is in
an awful stew, and I cannot blame him; but then he should consider the hyoscyamus which I was taking, and the anxious
botheration about the money-market. However, as Chaucer says— ‘There is na workeman That can bothe worken wel and hastilie, This must be done at leasure parfaitly.’
“January 12.—Mathews last night gave us a very perfect
imitation of old Cumberland, who carried
the poetic jealousy and irritability farther than any man I ever saw. He was a
great flatterer, too, the old rogue. Will Erskine used to admire him. I think he
wanted originality. A very high-bred man in point of manners in society. Upon
the whole, the days pass pleasantly enough—work till one or two, then an hour
or two hours’ walk in the snow, then lighter work, or reading. Late
dinner, and singing, or chat, in the evening. Mathews has
really all the will, as well as the talent, to be amusing. He confirms my idea
of ventriloquism (which is an absurd word), as being merely the art of
imitating sounds at a greater or less distance, assisted by some little points
of trick to influence the imagination of the audience—the vulgar idea of a
peculiar organization (beyond fineness of ear and of utterance) is nonsense.
“January 13.—Our party are
about to disperse ‘Like youthful steers unyoked, east, north, and south.’
I am not sorry, being one of those whom too much mirth always inclines to
sadness. The missing so many of my own family, together with the serious
inconveniencies to which I have been exposed, give me at present a desire to be
alone. The Skenes return to Edinburgh,
so does Mr. Scrope—item, the little artist;
Mathews to Newcastle; his son to Liverpool. So exeunt omnes.
“Mathews
assures me that Sheridan was generally
very dull in society, and sate sullen and silent, swallowing glass after glass,
rather a hinderance than a help. But there was a time when he broke out with a
resumption of what had been going on, done with great force, and generally
attacking some person in the company, or some opinion which he had expressed. I
never saw Sheridan but in large parties. He had a
Bardolph countenance, with heavy
features, but his eye possessed the most distinguished brilliancy.
Mathews says it is very simple in Tom Moore to admire how
Sheridan came by the means of
paying the price of Drury-Lane Theatre, when all the world knows he never paid
it at all; and that Lacy, who sold it,
was reduced to want by his breach of faith.
“January 14.—An odd
mysterious letter from Constable, who
has gone post to London. It strikes me to be that sort of letter which I have
seen men write when they are desirous that their disagreeable intelligence
should be rather apprehended than expressed. I thought he had been in London a
fortnight ago, disposing of property to meet this exigence, and so I think he
should. Well, I must have patience. But these terrors and frights are truly
annoying. Luckily the funny people are gone, and I shall not have the task of
grinning when I am serious enough.
“A letter from J.
B., mentioning Constable’s journey, but without expressing much
apprehension. He knows C. well, and saw him before his
departure, and makes no doubt of his being able easily to extricate whatever
may be entangled. I will not therefore make myself uneasy. I can help doing so
surely, if I will. At least, I have given up cigars since the year began, and
have now no wish to return to the habit, as it is called. I see no reason why
one should not, with God’s assistance, shun noxious thoughts, which
foretell evil and cannot remedy it.
“January 15.—Like yesterday,
a hard frost. Thermometer at 10; water in my dressing-room frozen to flint; yet
I had a fine walk yesterday, the sun dancing delightfully on “grim
Nature’s visage hoar.”* Were it not the plague of being
dragged along by another person, I should like such weather as well as summer,
but having Tom
* Burns’sVision.
Purdie to do this office reconciles me
to it. I cannot cleik with John, as
old Mrs Mure used to say. I mean, that an ordinary menial
servant thus hooked to your side reminds me of the twin bodies mentioned by
Pitscottie, being two trunks on the
same waist and legs. One died before the other, and remained a dead burden on
the back of its companion. Such is the close union with a person whom you
cannot well converse with, and whose presence is yet indispensable to your
getting on. An actual companion, whether humble or your equal, is still worse.
But Tom Purdie is just the thing, kneaded up between the
friend and servant, as well as Uncle
Toby’s bowling=green between sand and clay. You are
certain he is proud as well as patient under his burden, and you are under no
more constraint than with a pony. I must ride him to-day if the weather holds
up. Mean-time, I will correct that curious fellow Pepys’ Diary. I mean the article I have made of it for the
Quarterly.
“Edinburgh, January 16.—Came
through cold roads to as cold news. Hurst and Robinson have
suffered a bill to come back upon Constable, which I suppose infers the ruin of both houses. We
shall soon see. Dined with the Skenes.
“January 17.—James Ballantyne this morning, good honest
fellow, with a visage as black as the crook. He hopes no salvation; has indeed
taken measures to stop. It is hard, after having fought such a battle. Have
apologized for not attending the Royal Society Club, who have a gaudeamus on this day, and seemed to count
much on my being the preses. My old acquaintance, Miss Elizabeth Clerk, sister of Willie, died suddenly. I cannot choose but wish it had been
Sir W. S., and yet the feeling is unmanly. I have
Anne, my wife, and Charles to look after. I felt rather sneaking as I came
home from the Parliament-House—felt as if I were liable monstrari digito in no very pleasant way.
But this must be borne cum
cæteris; and, thank God, however uncomfortable, I do
not feel despondent. I have seen Cadell,
Ballantyne, and Hogarth; all advise me to execute a trust of my property for
payment of my obligations; so does John
Gibson,* and so I resolve to do. My wife and daughter are
gloomy, but yet patient.
“January 18.—He that sleeps
too long in the morning, let him borrow the pillow of a debtor. So says the
Spaniard, and so say I. I had of course an indifferent night of it. I wish
these two days were over; but the worst is over. The Bank of Scotland has
behaved very well; expressing a resolution to serve Constable’s house and me to the uttermost; but as no one
can say to what extent Hurst and
Robinson’s failure may go,
borrowing would but linger it out.
“January 19.—During yesterday
I received formal visits from my friends Skene and Colin
Mackenzie (who, I am glad to see, looks well), with every offer
of service. The Royal Bank also sent Sir John
Hope and Sir Henry
Jardine to offer to comply with my wishes. The Advocate came on the same errand. But I gave all
the same answer—that my intention was to put the whole into the hands of a
trustee, and to be contented with the event, and that all I had to ask was time
to do so, and to extricate my affairs. I was assured of every accommodation
* Mr John
Gibson, junior, W.S.,—Mr
James Jollie, W.S.,—and Mr
Alexander Monypenny, W.S., were the three gentlemen who
ultimately agreed to take charge, as trustees, of Sir Walter Scott’s affairs; and
certainly no gentlemen ever acquitted themselves of such an office in a
manner more honourable to themselves or more satisfactory to a client
and his creditors.
in this way. From all quarters I
have had the same kindness.—Letters from Constable and Robinson
have arrived. The last persist in saying they will pay all and every body. They
say, moreover, in a postscript, that had Constable been in
town ten days sooner, all would have been well. I feel quite composed and
determined to labour. There is no remedy. I guess (as
Mathews makes his Yankees say) that
we shall not be troubled with visiters, and I calculate
that I will not go out at all; so what can I do better than labour? Even
yesterday I went about making notes on Waverley, according to
Constable’s plan. It will do good one day.
To-day, when I lock this volume, I go to Woodstock. Heigho!—Knight came to stare at me to complete his
portrait. He must have read a tragic page comparative to what he saw at
Abbotsford.—We dined of course at home, and before and after dinner I finished
about twenty printed pages of Woodstock, but to what
effect others must judge. A painful scene after dinner, and another after
supper, endeavouring to convince these poor dear creatures that they must not
look for miracles, but consider the misfortune as certain, and only to be
lessened by patience and labour.
“January 20.—Indifferent
night—very bilious, which may be want of exercise. Mais, pourtant, cullivons notre jardin. The public
favour is my only lottery. I have long enjoyed the foremost prize, and
something in my breast tells me my evil genius will not overwhelm me if I stand
by myself. Why should I not? I have no enemies—many attached friends. The
popular ascendency which I have maintained is of the kind which is rather
improved by frequent appearances. In fact, critics may
say what they will, but ‘hain your reputation,
and tyne* your reputation,’ is a true
proverb.
“Sir William
Forbes† called, the same kind, honest, friend as ever,
with all offers of assistance, &c. &c. &c. All anxious to serve me,
and careless about their own risk of loss. And these are the cold, hard,
money-making men whose questions and control I apprehended. Lord Chief Commissioner Adam also came to see
me, and the meeting, though pleasing, was melancholy. It was the first time we
had met since the break up of his hopes in the death of
his eldest son on his return from India,
where he was Chief in Council and highly esteemed,‡ The Commissioner is
not a very early friend of mine, for I scarce knew him till his settlement in
Scotland with his present office. But I have since lived much with him, and
taken kindly to him as one of the most pleasant, kind-hearted, benevolent men I
have ever known. It is high treason among the Tories to express regard for him,
or respect for the Jury Court in which he presides. I was against that
experiment as much as any one. But it is an experiment, and the establishment
(which the fools will not perceive) is the only thing which I see likely to
give some prospects of ambition to our bar, which has been otherwise so much
diminished. As for the Chief Commissioner, I dare say he does what all other
people of consequence do in elections and so forth. But he is the personal
friend of
* To hain any thing is,
Anglice, to deal very carefully, penuriously about it—tyne, to lose. Scott often
used to say, “hain a pen and tyne a pen;” which is nearer
the proverb alluded to.
† The late Sir
William Forbes, Bart., succeeded his father (the
biographer of Beattie) as chief of the head private banking-house in
Edinburgh. Scott’s amiable friend died 24th October, 1828.
‡ John Adam,
Esq. died on shipboard, on his passage homewards from
Calcutta, 4th June, 1825.
the King, and the decided enemy
of whatever strikes at the constitutional rights of the Monarch; besides I love
him for the various changes which he has endured through life, and which have
been so great as to make him entitled to be regarded in one point of view as
the most fortunate—in the other, the most unfortunate man in the world. He has
gained and lost two fortunes by the same good luck and the same rash
confidence, of which one raised, and the other now threatens, my peculium. And his quiet, honourable, and
generous submission under circumstances more painful than mine,—for the loss of
world’s wealth was to him aggravated by the death of his youngest and
darling son in the West Indies, furnished me at the time and now with a noble
example. So Tory and Whig may go be d——d together, as names that have disturbed
old Scotland, and torn asunder the most kindly feelings since the first day
they were invented. Yes, d—n them, they are spells to rouse all our angry
passions, and I dare say, notwithstanding the opinion of my private and calm
moments, I will open on the cry again so soon as something occurs to claim my
words. Even yet, God knows, I would fight in honourable contest with word or
blow for my political opinions; but I cannot permit that strife to mix its
waters with my daily meal, those waters of bitterness which poison all mutual
love and confidence betwixt the well-disposed on either side, and prevent them,
if need were, from making mutual concessions and balancing the constitution
against the ultras of both parties. The good man seems something broken by
these afflictions.
“January 21.—Susannah in Tristram Shandy thinks death is best met
in bed. I am sure trouble and vexation are not. The watches of the night press
wearily when disturbed by fruitless regrets and disagreeable anticipations. But
let it pass.
‘Well, Goodman Time, or blunt, or keen, Move thou quick, or take thy leisure, Longest day will have its e’en, Weariest life but treads a measure.’
I have seen Cadell,
who is very much downcast for the risk of their copy-rights being thrown away
by a hasty sale. I suggested that if they went very cheap, some means might be
fallen on to purchase them in. I fear the split betwixt Constable and Cadell will
render impossible what might otherwise be hopeful enough. It is the Italian
race-horses, I think, which, instead of riders, have spurs tied to their sides,
so as to prick them into a constant gallop. Cadell tells
me their gross profit was sometimes L.10,000 a-year, but much swallowed up with
expenses, and his partner’s draughts which came to L.4000 yearly. What
there is to show for this, God knows. Constable’s
apparent expenses were very much within bounds.
“Colin
Mackenzie entered, and with his usual kindness engages to use
his influence to recommend some moderate proceeding to Constable’s creditors, such as may
permit him to go on and turn that species of property to account which no man
alive can manage so well as he.
“Followed Mr
Gibson with a most melancholy tale. Things are much worse with
Constable than I apprehended. Naked
we entered the world, and naked we leave it—blessed be the name of the Lord!
“January 22.—I feel neither
dishonoured nor broken down by the bad—now really bad news I have received. I
have walked my last on the domains I have planted—sate the last time in the
halls I have built. But death would have taken them from me if misfortune had
spared them. My poor people whom I loved so well!—There is just another die to
turn up against me in this run of ill-luck; i. e.—If I
should break my magic wand in the fall from this elephant, and lose my
popularity with my fortune. Then Woodstock and Bony
may both go to the paper-maker, and I may take to smoking cigars and drinking
grog, or turn devotee, and intoxicate the brain another way. In prospect of
absolute ruin, I wonder if they would let me leave the Court of Session. I
would like methinks to go abroad, ‘And lay my bones far from the Tweed.’ But I find my eyes moistening, and that will not do. I will not yield
without a fight for it. It is odd, when I set myself to work doggedly, as
Dr Johnson would say, I am exactly
the same man that I ever was—neither low-spirited nor distrait. In prosperous times I have sometimes felt my fancy and
powers of language flag, but adversity is to me at least a tonic and bracer;
the fountain is awakened from its inmost recesses, as if the spirit of
affliction had troubled it in his passage.
“Poor Mr Pole
the harper sent to ofter me L.500 or L.600, probably his all.* There is much
good in the world, after all. But I will involve no friend, either rich or
poor. My own right hand shall do it—else will I be done
in the slang language, and undone in common parlance.
“I am glad that, beyond my own family, who are,
excepting Lady S., young and able to bear
sorrow, of which this is the first taste to some of them, most of the hearts
are past aching which would have once been inconsolable on this occasion. I do
not mean that many will not seriously regret, and some perhaps lament my
misfortunes. But my dear mother, my almost sister,
* Mr Pole had
long attended Sir Walter
Scott’s daughters as teacher of the harp. To the
end, Scott always spoke of his conduct on this occasion as the most
affecting circumstance that accompanied his disasters.
Christy Rutherford, poor Will Erskine; those would have been mourners
indeed.
“Well—exertion—exertion. O, Invention, rouse
thyself! May man be kind! May God be propitious! The worst is, I never quite
know when I am right or wrong; and Ballantyne, who does know in some degree, will fear to tell me.
Lockhart would be worth gold just
now, but he too might be too diffident to speak broad out. All my hope is in
the continued indulgence of the public. I have a funeral-letter to the burial
of the Chevalier Yelin, a foreigner of
learning and talent, who has died at the Royal Hotel. He wished to be
introduced to me, and was to have read a paper before the Royal Society when
this introduction was to have taken place. I was not at the Society that
evening, and the poor gentleman was taken ill at the meeting and unable to
proceed. He went to his bed and never rose again; and now his funeral will be
the first public place I shall appear at. He dead, and I ruined. This is what
you call a meeting.
“January 23.—Slept ill, not
having been abroad these eight days—splendida
bilis. Then a dead sleep in the morning, and when the
awakening comes, a strong feeling how well I could dispense with it for once
and for ever. This passes away, however, as better and more dutiful thoughts
arise in my mind. I know not if my imagination has flagged; probably it has;
but at least my powers of labour have not diminished during the last melancholy
week. On Monday and Tuesday my exertions were suspended. Since Wednesday
inclusive I have written thirty-eight of my close manuscript pages, of which
seventy make a volume of the usual Novel size.
“Wrote till twelve a.m.,
finishing half of what I call a good day’s work—ten pages of print or rather twelve. Then walked in
the Prince’s Street pleasure-grounds with good Samaritan James Skene, the only one among my numerous
friends who can properly be termed amicus curarum
mearum, others being too busy or too gay, and several
being estranged by habit.
“The walks have been conducted on the whole with
much taste, though Skene has undergone
much criticism, the usual reward of public exertions, on account of his plans.
It is singular to walk close beneath the grim old castle, and think what scenes
it must have seen, and how many generations of threescore and ten have risen
and past away. It is a place to cure one of too much sensation over earthly
subjects of mutation. My wife and girl’s tongues are chatting in a lively
manner in the drawing-room. It does me good to hear them.
“January 24.—Constable came yesterday and saw me for half
an hour. He seemed irritable, but kept his temper under command. Was a little
shocked when I intimated that I was disposed to regard the present works in
progress as my own. I think I saw two things:—1. That he is desirous to return
into the management of his own affairs without Cadell, if he can. 2. That he relies on my connexion as the way
of helping him out of the slough. Indeed he said he was ruined utterly without
my countenance. I certainly will befriend him if I can, but
Constable without Cadell is like
getting the clock without the pendulum: the one having the ingenuity, the other
the caution of the business. I will see my way before making any bargain, and I
will help them, I am sure, if I can, without endangering my last cast for
freedom. Worked out my task yesterday.—My kind friend Mrs Coutts has got the cadetship for Pringle Shortreed, in which I was peculiarly
interested.
“I went to the Court for the first time to-day, and,
like the man with the large nose, thought every body was thinking of me and my
mishaps. Many were, undoubtedly; and all rather regrettingly, some obviously
affected. It is singular to see the difference of men’s manner whilst
they strive to be kind or civil in their way of addressing me. Some smiled as
they wished me good day, as if to say, ‘Think nothing about it, my lad;
it is quite out of our thoughts.’ Others greeted me with the affected
gravity which one sees and despises at a funeral. The best-bred,—all, I
believe, meaning equally well—just shook hands and went on.—A foolish puff in
the papers, calling on men and gods to assist a popular author, who having
choused the public of many thousands, had not the sense to keep wealth when he
had it.—If I am hard pressed, and measures used against me, I must use all
means of legal defence, and subscribe myself bankrupt in a petition for
sequestration. It is the course one should, at any rate, have advised a client
to take. But for this I would, in a Court of Honour, deserve to lose my spurs.
No, if they permit me, I will be their vassal for life, and dig in the mine of
my imagination to find diamonds (or what may sell for such) to make good my
engagements, not to enrich myself. And this from no reluctance to be called the
Insolvent, which I probably am, but because I will not put out of the power of
my creditors the resources, mental or literary, which yet remain to me. Went to
the funeral of Chevalier Yelin, the
literary foreigner mentioned on 22d. How many and how various are the ways of
affliction. Here is this poor man dying at a distance from home, his proud
heart broken, his wife and family anxiously expecting letters, and doomed only
to learn they have lost a husband and father for ever. He lies buried on the
Calton Hill, near learned and
scientific dust—the graves of David Hume
and John Playfair being side by side.
“January 25.—Anne is ill this morning. May God help us! If
it should prove serious, as I have known it in such cases, where am I to find
courage or comfort? A thought has struck me—Can we do nothing for creditors
with the goblin drama, called the Fortunes of Devorgoil? Could it not be added to Woodstock as a fourth volume? Terry refused a gift of it, but he was quite
and entirely wrong; it is not good, but it may be made so. Poor Will Erskine liked it much.
“January 26.—Spoke to
J. B. last night about Devorgoil, who does not seem to
relish the proposal, alleging the comparative failure of Halidon Hill. Ay, says Self-Conceit, but he
has not read it—and when he does, it is the sort of wild fanciful work betwixt
heaven and earth, which men of solid parts do not estimate. Pepys thought Shakspeare’sMidsummer-Night’s Dream the most
silly play he had ever seen, and Pepys was probably
judging on the same grounds with J. B., though
presumptuous enough to form conclusions against a very different work from any
of mine. How if I send it to Lockhart by
and by?
“Gibson comes
with a joyful face, announcing all the creditors had unanimously agreed to a
private trust. This is handsome and confidential, and must warm my best efforts
to get them out of the scrape. I will not doubt—to doubt is to lose. Sir William Forbes took the chair, and
behaved, as he has ever done, with the generosity of ancient faith and early
friendship. That House is more deeply concerned than most. In what scenes have
Sir William and I not borne share together—desperate
and almost bloody affrays, rivalries, deep drinking
matches, and finally, with the kindest feelings on both sides, somewhat
separated by his retiring much within the bosom of his family, and I moving
little beyond mine. It is fated our planets should cross, though, and that at
the periods most interesting for me. Down—down—a hundred thoughts.
“I hope to sleep better to-night. If I do not I
shall get ill, and then I cannot keep my engagements. Is it not odd? I can
command my eyes to be awake when toil and weariness sit on my eyelids, but to
draw the curtain of oblivion is beyond my power. I remember some of the wild
Buccaneers, in their impiety, succeeded pretty well by shutting hatches and
burning brimstone and assafœtida to make a tolerable imitation of hell—but the pirates’ heaven was a wretched affair. It is one of the worst things about
this system of ours, that it is a hundred times more easy to inflict pain than
to create pleasure.
“January 17th.—Slept better
and less bilious, owing doubtless to the fatigue of the preceding night, and
the more comfortable news. Wrote to Laidlaw, directing him to make all preparations for reduction.
The Celtic Society present me with the most splendid broadsword I ever saw; a
beautiful piece of art, and a most noble weapon. Honourable Mr Steuart (second son of the Earl of Moray), General Graham Stirling, and MacDougal, attended as a committee to present it. This was very
kind of my friends the Celts, with whom I have had so many merry meetings. It
will be a rare legacy to Walter—for
myself, good lack! it is like Lady Dowager
Don’s prize in a lottery of hardware; she—a venerable lady
who always wore a haunch-hoop, silk negligé, and triple ruffles at the
elbow—having the luck to gain a pair of silver spurs and a whip to correspond.
“January 28th.—These last
four or five days I have wrought little; to-day I set on the steam and ply my
paddles.
“January 29.—The proofs came
so thick in yesterday that much was not done. But I began to be hard at work
to-day. I must not gurnalize much.
“Mr Jollie,
who is to be my trustee, in conjunction with Gibson, came to see me; a pleasant and good-humoured man, and
has high reputation as a man of business. I told him, and I will keep my word,
that he would at least have no trouble by my interfering and thwarting their
management, which is not the unfrequent case of trusters and trustees.
“Constable’s business seems unintelligible. No man thought
the house worth less than L.150,000. Constable told me,
when he was making his will, that he was worth L.80,000. Great profits on
almost all the adventures. No bad speculations yet neither stock nor debt to
show. Constable might have eaten up his share; but
Cadell was very frugal. No doubt
trading almost entirely on accommodation is dreadfully expensive.
“January 30.—I laboured
fairly yesterday. The stream rose fast—if clearly, is another question; but
there is bulk for it, at least—about thirty printed pages. ‘And now again, boys, to the oar.’
“January 31.—There being
nothing in the roll this morning, I stay at home from the Court, and add
another day’s perfect labour to Woodstock, which is worth five days of
snatched intervals, when the current of thought and invention is broken in
upon, and the mind, shaken and diverted from its purpose by a succession of
petty interruptions. I have now no pecuniary provisions to embarrass me, and I
think, now the shock of the discovery is past and over, I
am much better off on the whole. I feel as if I had shaken off from my
shoulders a great mass of garments, rich indeed, but always more a burden than
a comfort. I shall be free of an hundred petty public duties imposed on me as a
man of consideration—of the expense of a great hospitality—and what is better,
of the great waste of time connected with it. I have known in my day all kinds
of society, and can pretty well estimate how much or how little one loses by
retiring from all but that which is very intimate. I sleep and eat, and work as
I was wont; and if I could see those about me as indifferent to the loss of
rank as I am, I should be completely happy. As it is, Time must salve that
sore, and to Time I trust it.
“Since the 14th of this month no guest has broken
bread in my house, save G. H. Gordon*
one morning at breakfast. This happened never before since I had a house of my
own. But I have played Abou Hassan long
enough; and if the Caliph comes I would turn him back again.
“February 1—A most generous
letter (though not more so than I expected) from Walter and Jane,
offering to interpose with their fortune, &c. God Almighty forbid! that
were too unnatural in me to accept, though dutiful and affectionate in them to
offer. They talk of India still. With my damaged fortune I cannot help them to
remain by exchange, and so forth. God send what is for the best. Attended the
Court, and saw J. B. and Cadell as I returned. Both very gloomy. Came
home to work, &c., about two.
“Feb. 2.—An odd visit this
morning from Miss ——
* Mr Gordon
(of whom more in the sequel) was at this time Scott’s amanuensis: he copied, that is to say,
the MS. for press.
of ——, whose law-suit with a Methodist
parson of the name of ——, made some noise. The worthy divine had
in the basest manner interfered to prevent this lady’s marriage by two
anonymous letters, in which he contrived to refer the lover, to whom they were
addressed, for farther corroboration to himself. The
whole imposition makes the subject of a little pamphlet. The lady ventured for
redress into the thicket of English law—lost one suit—gained another, with
L.300 damages, and was ruined. The appearance and person of Miss —— are
prepossessing. She is about thirty years old, a brunette, with regular and
pleasing features, marked with melancholy—an enthusiast in literature, and
probably in religion. She had been at Abbotsford to see me, and made her way to
me here, in the vain hope that she could get her story worked up into a novel;
and certainly the thing is capable of interesting situations. It throws a
curious light upon the aristocratic or rather hieratic influence exercised by
the Methodist preachers within the connexion, as it is called. Admirable food
this would be for the Quarterly,
or any other reviewers, who might desire to feed fat their grudge against these
sectarians. But there are two reasons against such a publication. First, it
could do the poor sufferer no good. 2dly, It might hurt the Methodistic
connexion very much, which I for one would not like to injure. They have their
faults, and are peculiarly liable to those of hypocrisy, and spiritual
ambition, and priestcraft. On the other hand, they do infinite good, carrying
religion into classes in society where it would scarce be found to penetrate,
did it rely merely upon proof of its doctrines, upon calm reason, and upon
rational argument. The Methodists add a powerful appeal to the feelings and
passions; and though I believe this is often exaggerated into absolute
enthusiasm, yet I consider upon the whole they do much to
keep alive a sense of religion, and the practice of morality necessarily
connected with it. It is much to the discredit of the Methodist clergy, that
when this calumniator was actually convicted of guilt morally worse than many
men are hanged for, they only degraded him from the first to the second class of their preachers.
If they believed him innocent, they did too much—if guilty, far too little.
“February 3.—This is the
first time since my troubles that I felt at awaking— ‘I had drunken deep Of all the blessedness of sleep.’ I made not the slightest pause, nor dreamed a single dream, nor even
changed my side. This is a blessing to be grateful for. There is to be a
meeting of the creditors to-day, but I care not for the issue. If they drag me
into the Court, obtorto collo,
instead of going into this scheme of arrangement, they will do themselves a
great injury, and perhaps eventually do me good, though it would give me much
pain. James Ballantyne is severely critical on what he
calls imitations of Mrs Radcliffe in
Woodstock. Many will
think with him—yet I am of opinion he is quite wrong, or as friend J.
F.* says vrong. In the first place, am I
to look on the mere fact of another author having treated a subject happily, as
a bird looks on a potato-bogle which scares it away from a field, otherwise as
free to its depredations as any where else? In 2d place, I have taken a wide
difference; my object is not to excite fear of supernatural things in my
reader, but to show the effect of such fear upon the agents in the story—
* I believe J. F. stands for
James Ferrier, Esq.—one of
Sir Walter’s brethren of
the Clerk’s table—the father of his esteemed and admired friend
the authoress of “Marriage,” “The Inheritance,”
&c.
one a man of sense and firmness—one
a man unhinged by remorse—one a stupid unenquiring clown—one a learned and
worthy, but superstitious divine. In 3d place, the book turns on this hinge,
and cannot want it. But I will try to insinuate the refutation of Aldiboronti’s exception into the
prefatory matter.—From the 19th January to the 2d February inclusive, is
exactly fifteen days, during which time, with the intervention of some
days’ idleness, to let imagination brood on the task a little, I have
written a volume. I think, for a bet, I could have done it in ten days. Then I
must have had no Court of Session to take me up hours every morning, and
dissipate my attention and powers of working for the rest of the day. A volume,
at cheapest, is worth L.1000. This is working at the rate of L.24,000 a-year;
but then we must not bake buns faster than people have appetite to eat them.
They are not essential to the market like potatoes.
“John Gibson
came to tell me in the evening that a meeting to-day had approved of the
proposed trust. I know not why, but the news gives me little concern. I heard
it as a party indifferent. I remember hearing that Mandrin* testified some horror when he found himself bound
alive on the wheel, and saw the executioner approach with a bar of iron to
break his limbs. After the second and third blow, he fell a-laughing, and being
asked the reason by his confessor, said he laughed at his own folly, which had
anticipated increased agony at every blow, when it was obvious that the first must have
* “Authentic Memoirs of the
remarkable Life and surprising Exploits of Mandrin, Captain-General
of the French Smugglers, who for the space of nine months
resolutely stood in defiance of the whole French Army of
France, &c. 8vo. Lond. 1755.” Abbotsford Library.—See Gentleman’s Magazine, vol.
xxv.—Note, Waverley
Novels, vol. xxxvii. p. 434.
jarred and confounded the system of the nerves so much as
to render the succeeding blows of little consequence. I suppose it is so with
the moral feeling; at least I could not bring myself to be anxious whether
these matters were settled one way or other.
“February 4.—Wrote to
Mr Laidlaw to come to town upon
Monday, and see the trustees. To farm or not to farm, that is the question.
With our careless habits, it were best, I think, to risk as little as possible.
Lady Scott will not exceed with ready
money in her hand; but calculating on the produce of a farm is different, and
neither she nor I are capable of that minute economy. Two cows should be all we
should keep. But I find Lady S. inclines much for the
four. If she had her youthful activity, and could manage things, it would be
well, and would amuse her. But I fear it is too late for work.
“Wrote only two pages (of manuscript) and a half
to-day. As the boatswain said, one can’t dance always nouther. But, were we sure of the quality of the stuff, what
opportunities for labour does this same system of retreat afford us! I am
convinced that in three years I could do more than in the last ten, but for the
mine being, I fear, exhausted. Give me my popularity (an
awful postulate!), and all my present difficulties shall be a joke in
four years; and it is not lost yet, at least.
“February 5.—Rose after a
sound sleep, and here am I without bile or any thing to perturb my inward man.
It is just about three weeks since so great a change took place in my relations
in society, and already I am indifferent to it. But I have been always told my
feelings of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, enjoyment and privation, are
much colder than those of other people.
‘I think the Romans call it stoicism.’
“Missie was
in the drawing-room, and overheard William
Clerk and me laughing excessively at some foolery or other in
the back-room, to her no small surprise, which she did not keep to herself. But
do people suppose that he was less sorry for his poor sister or I for my lost
fortune? If I have a very strong passion in the world, it is pride, and that never hinged upon world’s gear, which was
always with me—Light come, light go.
“February 6.—Letters received
yesterday from Lord Montagu, John Morritt, and Mrs Hughes, kind and dear friends all, with solicitous
enquiries. But it is very tiresome to tell my story over again, and I really
hope I have few more friends intimate enough to ask me for it. I dread
letter-writing, and envy the old hermit of Prague, who never saw pen or ink.
What then? one must write; it is a part of the law we live on. Talking of
writing, I finished my six pages, neat and handsome, yesterday. N.B. At night I
fell asleep, and the oil dropped from the lamp upon my manuscript. Will this
extreme unction make it go smoothly down with the public? ‘Thus idly we profane the sacred time By silly prose, light jest, and lighter rhyme.’ I have a song to write, too, and I am not thinking of it. I trust it will
come upon me at once a sort of catch it should be.* I walked out, feeling a
little overwrought.
“February 7.—My old friend
Sir Peter Murray called to offer his
own assistance, Lord
Justice-Clerk’s, and Abercromby’s, to negotiate for me a seat upon the Bench
[of the Court of Session] instead of my sheriffdom and
* See “Glee for King
Charles,” Waverley Novels, vol. xl. p.
40.
clerkship. I explained to him the use which I could make
of my pen was not, I thought, consistent with that situation; and that,
besides, I had neglected the law too long to permit me to think of it: but this
was kindly and honourably done. I can see people think me much worse off than I
think myself. They may be right; but I will not be beat till I have tried a
rally, and a bold one.
“February 8.—Slept ill, and
rather bilious in the morning. Many of the Bench now are my juniors. I will not
seek ex eleemosynâ a place
which, had I turned my studies that way, I might have aspired to long ago
ex meritis. My pen should do
much better for me than the odd L.1000 a-year. If it fails, I will lean on what
they leave me. Another chance might be, if it fails, in the patronage which
might, after a year or two, place me in Exchequer. But I do not count on this
unless, indeed, the Duke of Buccleuch, when
he comes of age, should choose to make play. Got to my work again, and wrote
easier than the two last days.
“Mr Laidlaw
came in from Abbotsford, and dined with us. We spent the evening in laying down
plans for the farm, and deciding whom we should keep and whom dismiss among the
people. This we did on the true negro-driving principle of self-interest—the
only principle I know which never swerves from its
objects. We chose all the active, young, and powerful men, turning old age and
infirmity adrift. I cannot help this, for a guinea cannot do the work of five;
but I will contrive to make it easier to the sufferers.
“February 9.—A stormy
morning, lowering and blustering like our fortunes. Mea virtute me involuo. But I must say to the muse of
fiction as the Earl of Pembroke said to the ejected nuns of
Wilton:—‘Go spin, you jades, go spin!’ Perhaps she has
no tow on her rock. When I was at Kilkenny last year we
went to see a nunnery, but could not converse with the sisters because they
were in strict retreat. I was delighted with the
red-nosed Padre, who showed us the place with a sort of proud, unctuous
humiliation, and apparent dereliction of the world, that had to me the air of a
complete Tartuffe; a strong, sanguine,
square-shouldered son of the Church, whom a Protestant would be apt to warrant
against any sufferings he was like to sustain by privation. My purpose,
however, just now was to talk of the strict retreat, which did not prevent the
nuns from walking in their little garden, peeping at us, and allowing us to
peep at them. Well, now we are in strict retreat; and if we had been so last year, instead of
gallivanting to Ireland, this affair might not have befallen—if literary labour
could have prevented it. But who could have suspected Constable’s timbers to have been rotten
from the beginning?
“Visited the Exhibition on my way home from the
Court. The new rooms are most splendid, and several good pictures. The
Institution has subsisted but five years, and it is astonishing how much
superior the worst of the present collection are to the teaboard-looking things
which first appeared. John Thomson, of
Duddingstone, has far the finest picture in the Exhibition, of a large
size—subject Dunluce, a ruinous castle of the Antrim
family, near the Giant’s Causeway, with one of those terrible seas and
skies which only Thomson can paint. Found Scrope there, improving a picture of his own,
an Italian scene in Calabria. He is, I think, one of the very best amateur
painters I ever saw—Sir George Beaumont
scarcely excepted.
“I would not write to-day after I came home. I will not say could not, for it is not true; but I was
lazy; felt the desire far niente,
which is the sign of one’s mind being at ease. I read The English in Italy which is a clever book.
Byron used to kick and frisk more
contemptuously against the literary gravity and slang than any one I ever knew
who had climbed so high. Then, it is true, I never knew any one climb so
high—and before you despise the eminence, carrying people along with you as
convinced that you are not playing the fox and the grapes, you must be at the
top. Moore told me some delightful
stories of him. * * * * * *† He wrote from impulse, never from effort;
and therefore I have always reckoned Burns and Byron the most genuine poetical
geniuses of my time, and half a century before me. We have many men of high
poetical talent, but none, I think, of that ever-gushing and perennial fountain
of natural waters.
“Mr Laidlaw
dined with us. Says Mr Gibson told him
he would dispose of my affairs, were it any but Sir W.
S. No doubt, so should I. I am wellnigh doing so at any rate.
But fortuna juvante! much may be
achieved. At worst, the prospect is not very discouraging to one who wants
little. Methinks I have been like Burns’s poor labourer, ‘So constantly in Ruin’s sight, The view o’t gives me little fright.—”
† Here follow several anecdotes, since published
in Moore’sLife of Byron.
CHAPTER VI. EXTRACT FROM JAMES BALLANTYNE’S MEMORANDA—ANECDOTE
FROM MR SKENE—LETTERS OF JANUARY AND FEBRUARY, 1826, TO J.
G. LOCKHART—MR MORRITT—AND LADY
DAVY—RESULT OF THE EMBARRASSMENTS OF CONSTABLE,
HURST, AND BALLANTYNE—RESOLUTION OF
SIR WALTER SCOTT—MALACHI
MALAGROWTHER.
I interrupt, for a moment, Sir Walter’s Diary, to introduce a few collateral
illustrations of the period embraced in the foregoing chapter. When he returned to
Edinburgh from Abbotsford on Monday the 16th of January, he found (as we have seen) that
Hurst & Co. had dishonoured a bill of
Constable’s; and then proceeded, according
to engagement, to dine at Mr Skene of
Rubislaw’s. Mr Skene assures me that he appeared that evening
quite in his usual spirits, conversing on whatever topic was started as easily and gaily as
if there had been no impending calamity; but at parting, he whispered,
“Skene, I have something to speak to you about; be so
good as to look in on me as you go to the Parliament-House to-morrow.” When
Skene called in Castle Street, about half-past nine o’clock
next morning, he found Scott writing in his study. He rose, and said,
“My friend, give me a shake of your hand—mine is that of a beggar.”
He then told him that Ballantyne had just been with
him, and that his ruin was certain and complete; explaining, briefly, the nature of his connexion with the three houses, whose downfall must that morning
be made public. He added, “Don’t fancy I am going to stay at home to brood
idly on what can’t be helped. I was at work upon Woodstock when you came in, and I shall take up the
pen the moment I get back from Court. I mean to dine with you again on Sunday, and hope
then to report progress to some purpose.” When Sunday came, he reported
accordingly, that, in spite of all the numberless interruptions of meetings and conferences
with his partner, the Constables, and men of business—to say nothing
of his distressing anxieties on account of his wife and daughter—he had written a chapter
of his novel every intervening day.
The reader may be curious to see what account James Ballantyne’s memorandum gives of that dark announcement on the
morning of Tuesday the 17th. It is as follows: “On the evening of the 16th, I
received from Mr Cadell a distinct message putting
me in possession of the truth. I called immediately in Castle Street, but found Sir Walter had gained an unconscious respite by being engaged
out at dinner. It was between eight and nine next morning that I made the final
communication. No doubt he was greatly stunned—but, upon the whole, he bore it with
wonderful fortitude. He then asked, ‘Well, what is the actual step we must first
take—I suppose we must do something?’ I reminded him that two or three
thousand pounds were due that day, so that we had only to do what we must do—refuse
payment—to bring the disclosure sufficiently before the world. He took leave of me with
these striking words, ‘Well, James, depend upon that, I will
never forsake you.’”
After the ample details of Scott’s Diary, it would be idle to quote here many of his private
letters in January 1826; but I must give two of those addressed to myself, one written at Abbotsford on the 15th, the
day before he started for Edinburgh to receive the fatal intelligence—the other on the
20th. It will be seen that I had been so very unwise as to intermingle with the account of
one of my painful interviews with Constable, an
expression of surprise at the nature of Sir Walter’s commercial
engagements which had then for the first time been explained to me; and every reader will,
I am sure, appreciate the gentleness of the reply, however unsatisfactory he may consider
it as regards the main fact in question.
To J. G. Lockhart, Esq. 25, Pall-Mall, London.
“Abbotsford, January 15, 1826. “My dear Lockhart,
“I have both your packets. I have been quite well
since my attack, only for some time very downhearted with the calomel and
another nasty stuff they call hyoscyamus—and to say truth, the silence of my
own household, which used to be merry at this season.
“I enclose the article on Pepys. It is totally uncorrected, so I wish of
course much to see it in proof if possible, as it must be dreadfully
inaccurate; the opiate was busy with my brain when the beginning was written,
and as James Ballantyne complains
wofully, so will your printer, I doubt. The subject is like a good sirloin,
which requires only to be basted with its own drippings. I had little trouble
of research or reference; perhaps I have made it too long, or introduced too
many extracts—if so, use the pruning-knife, hedgebill, or axe, ad libitum. You know I don’t care a
curse about what I write or what becomes of it.
“To-morrow, snow permitting, we go into Edinburgh;
mean-time ye can expect no news from this place. I saw
poor Chiefswood the other day. Cock-a-pistol* sends his
humble remembrances. Commend me a thousand times to the magnanimous Johnnie. I live in hopes he will not greatly
miss Marion and the red cow. Don’t let him forget
poor ha-papa. Farewell, my dear Lockhart: never trouble yourself about writing to me, for I suspect
you have enough of that upon hand.
“Pardon my sending you such an unwashed, uncombed
thing as the enclosed. I really can’t see now to read my own hand, so bad
have my eyes or my fingers or both become.—Always yours affectionately,
Walter Scott.”
To the Same.
“Edinburgh, January 20, 1826. “My dear Lockhart,
“I have your kind letter. Whenever I heard that
Constable had made a cessio fori, I thought it became me to
make public how far I was concerned in these matters, and to offer my fortune
so far as it was prestable, and the completion of my literary engagements—(the
better thing almost of the two) to make good all claims upon Ballantyne and Co.; and even supposing that
neither Hurst and Co. nor
Constable and Co. ever pay a penny they owe me, my old
age will be far from destitute—even if my right hand should lose its cunning.
This is the very worst that can befall me; but I have
little doubt that, with ordinary management, the affairs of those houses will
turn out favourably. It is needless to add that I will not engage myself, as
Constable desires, for L.20,000 more—or L.2000—or
L.200. I have
* A gardener, by name James
Scott, who lived at a place called popularly
Cock-a-pistol, because the battle of Melrose (A.D. 1526) began there.
advanced enough already
to pay other people’s debts, and must now pay my own. If our friend
C. had set out a fortnight earlier, nothing of all
this would have happened; but he let the hour of distress precede the hour of
provision, and he and others must pay for it. Yet don’t hint this to him,
poor fellow—it is an infirmity of nature.
“I have made my matters public, and have had splendid
offers of assistance, all which I have declined, for I would rather bear my own
burden than subject myself to obligation. There is but one way in such cases.
“It is easy, no doubt, for any friend to blame me for
entering into connexion with commercial matters at all. But, I wish to know
what I could have done better; excluded from the bar, and then from all profits
for six years, by my colleague’s prolonged life. Literature was not in
those days what poor Constable has made
it; and, with my little capital, I was too glad to make commercially the means
of supporting my family. I got but L.600 for the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and it was a price that
made men’s hair stand on end—L.1000 for Marmion. I have been far from suffering by
James Ballantyne. I owe it to him to
say, that his difficulties, as well as his advantages, are owing to me. I
trusted too much to Constable’s assurances of his
own and his correspondents’ stability, but yet I believe he was only
sanguine. The upshot is just what Hurst
and Co. and Constable may be able to pay me; if 15s. in
the pound, I shall not complain of my loss, for I have gained many thousands in
my day. But while I live I shall regret the downfall of
Constable’s house, for never did there exist so
intelligent and so liberal an establishment. They went too far when money was
plenty, that is certain; yet if every author in Britain had taxed himself half
a year’s income, he should have kept up the house which first broke in upon the monopoly of the London trade, and
made letters what they now are.
“I have had visits from all the monied people,
offering their purses—and those who are creditors, sending their managers and
treasurers to assure me of their joining in and adopting any measures I may
propose. I am glad of this for their sake, and for my own—for although I shall
not desire to steer, yet I am the only person that can cann, as Lieutenant Hatchway
says, to any good purpose. A very odd anonymous offer I had of L.30,000,* which
I rejected, as I did every other. Unless I die, I shall beat up against this
foul weather. A penny I will not borrow from any one. Since my creditors are
content to be patient, I have the means of righting them perfectly, and the
confidence to employ them. I would have given a good deal to have avoided the
coup d’ eclat; but that
having taken place, I would not give sixpence for any other results. I fear you
will think I am writing in the heat of excited resistance to bad fortune. My
dear Lockhart, I am as calm and
temperate as you ever saw me, and working at Woodstock like a very tiger. I am grieved
for Lady Scott and Anne, who cannot conceive adversity can have
the better of them, even for a moment. If it teaches a little of the frugality
which I never had the heart to enforce when money was plenty, and it seemed
cruel to interrupt the enjoyment of it in the way they liked best it will be
well.
“Kindest love to Sophia, and tell her to study the song† and keep her
spirits up. Tyne heart, tyne all; and it is making more of money than it is
worth to grieve about it. Kiss Johnnie
for me. How glad I am fortune carried you to London before these reverses
happened, as they would have embittered parting, and made it
* Sir Walter
never knew the name of this munificent person,
† “Up with the
bonnets of Bonnie Dundee.”
resemble the boat leaving the
sinking ship.—Yours, dear Lockhart,
affectionately,
Walter Scott.”
From Sir Walter’s letters of the
same period, to friends out of his own family, I select the following:
To J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. &c. Marine Terrace,
Brighton.
“Edinburgh, 6th February, 1826. “My dear Morritt,
“It is very true I have been, and am in danger, of a
pecuniary loss, and probably a very large one, which, in the uncertainty, I
look at as to the full extent, being the manly way of calculating such matters,
since one may be better, but can hardly be worse. I can’t say I feel
overjoyed at losing a large sum of hard-earned money in a most unexpected
manner, for all men, considered Constable’s people secure as the Bank; yet, as I have
obtained an arrangement of payment convenient for every body concerned, and
easy for myself, I cannot say that I care much about the matter. Some
economical restrictions I will make; and it happened oddly that they were such
as Lady Scott and myself had almost
determined upon without this compulsion. Abbotsford will henceforth be our only
establishment; and during the time I must be in town, I will take my bed at the
Albyn Club. We shall also break off the rather excessive hospitality to which
we were exposed, and no longer stand host and hostess to all that do pilgrimage
to Melrose. Then I give up an expensive farm, which I always hated, and turn
all my odds and ends into cash. I do not reckon much on my literary exertions—I
mean in proportion to former success—because popular taste may fluctuate. But
with a moderate degree of the favour which I have always had, my time my own,
and my mind unplagued about other things, I may boldly
promise myself soon to get the better of this blow.
“In these circumstances, I should be unjust and
ungrateful to ask or accept the pity of my friends. I for one, do not see there
is much occasion for making moan about it. My womankind will be the greater
sufferers,—yet even they look cheerily forward; and, for myself, the blowing
off my hat in a stormy day has given me more uneasiness.
“I envy your Brighton party, and your fine weather.
When I was at Abbotsford the mercury was down at six or seven in the morning
more than once. I am hammering away at a bit of a story from the old affair of
the diablerie at Woodstock in the Long Parliament times.
I don’t like it much. I am obliged to hamper my fanatics greatly too much
to make them effective; but I make the sacrifice on principle; so, perhaps, I
shall deserve good success in other parts of the work. You will be surprised
when I tell you that I have written a volume in exactly fifteen days. To be
sure, I permitted no interruptions. But then I took exercise, and for ten days
of the fifteen attended the Court of Session from two to four hours every day.
This is nothing, however, to writing Ivanhoe when I had the actual cramp in my stomach; but I have no
idea of these things preventing a man from doing what he has a mind. My love to
all the party at Brighton—fireside party I had almost said, but you scorn my
words—seaside party then be it. Lady Scott
and Anne join in kindest love. I must
close my letter, for one of the consequences of our misfortunes is, that we
dine every day at half-past four o’clock; which premature hour arises, I
suppose, from sorrow being hungry as well as thirsty. One most laughable part
of our tragic comedy was, that every friend in the world came formally, just as
they do here when a relation
dies, thinking that the eclipse of les beaux yeux de
ma cassette was perhaps a loss as deserving of
consolation.
“We heard an unpleasant report that your nephew was ill. I am glad to see from your
letter it is only the lady, and in the right way; and I hope, Scottice loquens, she will be worse before
she is better. This mistake is something like the Irish blunder in Faulkner’s Journal, “For
his Grace the Duchess of
Devonshire was safely delivered—read her
Grace the Duke of Devonshire, &c.”—Always yours,
affectionately,
Walter Scott.
“P.S. Will you do me a favour? Set fire to the
Chinese stables; and if it embrace the whole of the Pavilion, it will rid
me of a great eye-sore.”
To Lady Davy, 26, Park Street, London.
“6th February, 1826. “My dear Lady Davy,
“A very few minutes since, I received your kind
letter, and answer it in all frankness, and, in Iago’s words, ‘I am hurt,
ma’am, but not killed’—nor even kilt. I have made so much
by literature, that, even should this loss fall in its whole extent, and we now
make preparations for the worst, it will not break, and has not broken my
sleep. If I have good luck, I may be as rich again as ever; if not, I shall
have still far more than many of the most deserving people in Britain—soldiers,
sailors, statesmen, or men of literature.
“I am much obliged to you for your kindness to
Sophia, who has tact, and great
truth of character, I believe. She will wish to take her company, as the
scandal said ladies liked their wine, little and good; and I need not say I
shall be greatly obliged by your conti-nued notice of one
you have known now for a long time. I am, between ourselves, afraid of the
little boy; he is terribly delicate
in constitution, and so twined about the parents’ hearts, that——But it is
needless croaking; what is written on our foreheads at our birth shall be
accomplished. So far I am a good Moslem.
“Lockhart is,
I think, in his own line, and therefore I do not regret his absence, though, in
our present arrangement, as my wife and Anne propose to remain all the year round at Abbotsford, I
shall be solitary enough in my lodgings. But I always loved being a bear and
sucking my paws in solitude, better than being a lion and ramping for the
amusement of others; and as I propose to slam the door in the face of all and
sundry for these three years to come, and neither eat nor give to eat, I shall
come forth bearish enough, should I live, to make another avatar. Seriously, I
intend to receive nobody, old and intimate friends excepted, at Abbotsford this
season, for it cost me much more in time than otherwise.
“I beg my kindest compliments to Sir Humphry, and tell him Ill Luck, that
direful chemist, never put into his crucible a more indissoluble piece of stuff
than your affectionate cousin and sincere well-wisher,
Walter Scott.”
I offer no cold comments on the strength of character which Sir Walter Scott exhibited in the crisis of his calamities.
But for the revelations of his Diary it would never have been known to his most intimate
friends, or even to his own affectionate children, what struggles it cost him to reach the
lofty serenity of mind which was reflected in all his outward conduct and demeanour.
As yet, however, he had hardly prepared himself for the extent to which Constable’s debts exceeded his assets. The obligations of that house
amounted, on a final reckoning, to L.256,000; those of Hurst and Robinson to somewhere
about L.300,000. The former paid, ultimately, only 2s. 9d. in the pound; the latter about
1s. 3d.
The firm of James Ballantyne and
Co. might have allowed itself to be declared bankrupt, and obtained a speedy discharge, as
the bookselling concerns did, for all its obligations; but that Sir
Walter Scott was a partner. Had he chosen to act in the manner commonly
adopted by commercial insolvents, the matter would have been settled in a very short time.
The creditors of Ballantyne and Co.—(whose claims, including sheafs of
bills of all descriptions, amounted to L.117,000)—would have brought into the market
whatever property, literary or otherwise, he at the hour of failure possessed; they would
have had a right to his life-rent of Abbotsford, among other things—and to his reversionary
interest in the estate, in case either his eldest son or his daughter-in-law should die
without leaving issue, and thus void the provisions of their marriage-contract. All this
being brought into the market, the result would have been a dividend very far superior to
what the creditors of Constable and Hurst
received; and in return, the partners in the printing firm would have been left at liberty
to reap for themselves the profits of their future exertions. Things were, however,
complicated in consequence of the transfer of Abbotsford in January, 1825. At first, some
creditors seem to have had serious thoughts of contesting the validity of that transaction;
but a little reflection and examination satisfied them that nothing could be gained by such
an attempt. But, on the other hand, Sir Walter felt that he had done
wrong in placing any part of his property beyond the reach of his
creditors, by entering into that marriage-contract, without a previous most deliberate
examination into the state of his responsibilities. He must have felt in this manner,
though I have no sort of doubt, that the result of such an examination in January 1825, if
accompanied by an instant calling in of all counter-bills, would have been to leave him at
perfect liberty to do all that be did upon that occasion. However that may have been, and
whatever may have been his delicacy respecting this point, he regarded the embarrassment of
his commercial firm, on the whole, with the feelings not of a merchant but of a gentleman.
He thought that by devoting the rest of his life to the service of his creditors, he could,
in the upshot, pay the last farthing he owed them. They (with one or two paltry exceptions)
applauded his honourable intentions and resolutions, and partook, to a large extent, in the
self-reliance of their debtor. Nor had they miscalculated as to their interest. Nor had
Sir Walter calculated wrongly. He paid the penalty of health and
life, but he saved his honour and his self-respect: “The glory dies not, and the grief is past.”
As soon as Parliament met, the recent convulsion in the commercial world
became the subject of some very remarkable debates in the Lower House; and the Ministers,
tracing it mainly to the rash facility of bankers in yielding credit to speculators,
proposed to strike at the root of the evil by taking from private banks the privilege of
circulating their own notes as money, and limiting even the Bank of England to the issue of
notes of L.5 value and upwards. The Government designed that this regulation should apply
to Scotland as well as England; and the northern public received the announcement with
almost universal reprobation. The Scotch
banks apprehended a most serious curtailment of their profits; and the merchants and
traders of every class were well disposed to back them in opposing the Ministerial
innovation. Scott, ever sensitively jealous as to the
interference of English statesmen with the internal affairs of his native kingdom, took the
matter up with as much zeal as he could have displayed against the Union had he lived in
the days of Queen Anne. His national feelings may have
been somewhat stimulated, perhaps, by his deep sense of gratitude for the generous
forbearance which several Edinburgh banking-houses had just been exhibiting towards
himself; and I think it need not be doubted, moreover, that the splendida bilis which, as the Diary shows, his own misfortunes had
engendered, demanded some escape-valve. Hence the three Letters of Malachi Malagrowther, which appeared first in
the Edinburgh Weekly Journal, and were
afterwards collected into a pamphlet by the late Mr
Blackwood, who, on that occasion, for the first time, had justice done to
his personal character by “the Black Hussar of Literature.”
These diatribes produced in Scotland a sensation not, perhaps, inferior
to that of the Drapier’s letters
in Ireland; a greater one, certainly, than any political tract had excited in the British
public at large since the appearance of Burke’sReflections on the French Revolution. They were answered most elaborately and
acutely in the London Courier (then the
semi-official organ of Lord Liverpool’s
Government) by Sir Walter’s friend, the Secretary
of the Admiralty, Mr Croker, who, perhaps, hazarded,
in the heat of his composition, a few personal allusions that might as well have been
spared, and which might have tempted a less good-natured antagonist to a fiery rejoinder.
Meeting, however, followed meeting, and petition on petition came up with thousands of signatures; and the Ministers erelong found that the opposition,
of which Malachi had led the van, was, in spite of all
their own speeches and Mr Croker’s essays, too strong and too
rapidly strengthening, to be safely encountered. The Scotch part of the measure was dropt;
and Scott, having carried his practical object, was not at all
disposed to persist in a controversy which, if farther pursued, could scarcely, as he
foresaw, fail to interrupt the kindly feelings that Croker and he had
for many years entertained for each other, and also to aggravate and prolong,
unnecessarily, the resentment with which several of his friends in the Cabinet had regarded
his unlooked-for appearance as a hostile agitator.
I believe, with these hints, the reader is sufficiently prepared for
resuming Sir Walter’s Diary.
CHAPTER VII. DIARY RESUMED—ANECDOTE OF CULLODEN—LETTER FROM
MACKINTOSH—EXHIBITION OF PICTURES—MODERN PAINTERS—HABITS OF
COMPOSITION—GLENGARRY—ADVOCATES’ LIBRARY—NEGOTIATIONS WITH
CREDITORS—FIRST LETTER OF MALACHI MALAGROWTHER—CHRONIQUE DE JACQUES PE LALAIN—PROGRESS OF WOODSTOCK AND BUONAPARTE—NOVELS BY
GALT—MISS AUSTEN—AND LADY
MORGAN—SECOND AND THIRD EPISTLES OF
MALACHI—DEPARTURE FROM CASTLE STREET—FEBRUARY AND MARCH, 1826.
DIARY.
“Edinburgh, February 10—Went through, for a new day, the task of buttoning,
which seems to me somehow to fill up more of my morning than usual—not,
certainly, that such is the case, but that my mind attends to the process,
having so little left to hope or fear. The half hour between waking and rising
has all my life proved propitious to any task which was exercising my
invention. When I got over any knotty difficulty in a story, or have had in
former times to fill up a passage in a poem, it was always when I first opened
my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me. This is so much the case, that
I am in the habit of relying upon it, and saying to myself, when I am at a
loss, ‘Never mind, we shall have it at seven o’clock to-morrow
morning.’ If I have forgot a circumstance, or a name, or a copy of
verses, it is the same thing. I think the first hour of the morning is also
favourable to the bodily strength. Among other feats,
when I was a young man, I was able at times to lift a smith’s anvil with
one hand, by what is called the horn—that projecting
piece of iron on which things are beaten to turn them round. But I could only
do this before breakfast. It required my full strength, undiminished by the
least exertion, and those who choose to try will find the feat no easy one.
This morning I had some new ideas respecting Woodstock, which will make the story better.
The devil of a difficulty is, that one puzzles the skein in order to excite
curiosity, and then cannot disentangle it for the satisfaction of the prying
fiend they have raised. I have a prettily expressed letter of condolence from
Sir James Mackintosh.* Yesterday I
had an anecdote
* This letter is so honourable to the writer, as
well as to Sir Walter, that I am
tempted to insert it in a note:
To Sir W. Scott, Bart.
Edinburgh.
“Cadogan Place, Feb. 7, 1826. “My dear Sir,
“Having been sailing on
Windermere when Lord
Gifford past the Lakes, and almost constantly
confined since my return to town, I did not hear till two
days ago of your very kind message, which, if I had
received it in the north, I should probably have answered
in person. I do not know that I should now have troubled
you with written thanks for what is so natural to you as an
act of courtesy and hospitality, if I were not in hopes
that you might consider it as excuse enough for an
indulgence of inclination which might otherwise bethought
intrusive.
“No man living has given pleasure
to so many persons as you have done, and you must be
assured that great multitudes who never saw you, in every
quarter of the world, will regret the slightest disturbance
of your convenience. But, as I have observed that the
express declaration of one individual sometimes makes more
impression than the strongest assurance of the sentiments
of multitudes, I venture to say that I most sincerely
lament that any untoward circumstances should, even for a
time, interrupt the indulgence of your taste and your
liberal enjoyments. I am sorry that Scotland
from old Sir James Stewart Denham,* which is worth writing down. His
uncle, Lord Elcho, was, as is well
known, engaged in the affair of 1745. He was dissatisfied with the conduct of
matters from beginning to end. But after the loft wing of the Highlanders was
repulsed and broken at Culloden, Elcho rode up to the
Chevalier and told him all was
lost, and that nothing remained except to charge at the head of two thousand
men, who were still unbroken, and either turn the fate of the day or die sword
in hand, as became his pretensions. The Che-
should, for a moment,
lose the very peculiar distinction of having the honours of
the country done to visiters by the person at the head of
our literature. Above all, I am sorry that a fortune earned
by genius and expended so generously, should be for the
shortest time shaken by the general calamities.
“Those dispositions of yours
which most quicken the fellow-feelings of others will best
console you. I have heard with delight that your composure
and cheerfulness have already comforted those who are most
affectionately interested in you. What I heard of your
happy temper in this way reminded me of Warburton’s fine
character of Bayle—‘He had a soul superior to the
attacks of fortune, and a heart practised to the best
philosophy.’ You have expended your fortune too well
not to be consoled for a temporary suspension of its
produce; you have your genius, your fame, and, what is
better than either, your kind and cheerful nature.
“I trust so much to your
good-natured indulgence, that I hope, you will pardon me
for joining my sincere but very humble voice to the
admiration and sympathy of Europe I am, my dear Sir, yours
most truly,
J.
Macintosh.”
* General Sir James
Stewart Denham of Coltness, Bart., Colonel of the Scots
Greys. His father, the
celebrated political economist, took part in the Rebellion of 1745, and
was long afterwards an exile. The reader is no doubt acquainted with
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Letters, addressed to him and his
wife Lady Frances. The present venerable Sir James had, I think,
attained the rank of captain in a foreign service before his
father’s attainder was reversed; yet he has lived to become the
senior general officer in the British army.
valier gave him some evasive answer, and, turning his
horse’s head, rode off the field. Lord Elcho called
after him (I write his very words), ‘There you go for a damned
cowardly Italian,’ and never would see him again, though he lost
his property and remained an exile in the cause. Lord
Elcho left two copies of his memoirs, one with Sir
James Stewart’s family, one with Lord Wemyss. This is better evidence than the
romance of Chevalier Johnstone; and I
have little doubt it is true. Yet it is no proof of the Prince’s
cowardice, though it shows him to have been no John
of Gaunt. Princes are constantly surrounded with people who hold
up their own life and safety to
them as by far the most important stake in any contest; and this is a doctrine
in which conviction is easily received. Such an eminent person finds every
body’s advice, save here and there that of a desperate
Elcho, recommend obedience to the natural instinct of
self-preservation, which very often men of inferior situations find it
difficult to combat, when all the world are crying to them to get on and be
damned, instead of encouraging them to run away. At Prestonpans the Chevalier
offered to lead the van, and he was with the second line, which, during that
brief affair, followed the first very close.
Johnstone’s own account, carefully read, brings
him within a pistol-shot of the first line. At the same time Charles
Edward had not a head or heart for great things, notwithstanding
his daring adventure; and the Irish officers, by whom he was guided, were poor
creatures. Lord George Murray was the
soul of the undertaking.*
* “Had Prince
Charles slept during the whole of the
expedition,” says the Chevalier
Johnstone, “and allowed Lord George Murray to act
for him according to his own judgment, there is every reason
“February 11.—Court sat till
half-past one. A man, calling himself * * * * of
* * * * *, writes to me, expressing sympathy for my
misfortunes, and offering me half the profits of what, if I understand him
right, is a patent medicine, to which I suppose he expects me to stand
trumpeter. He endeavours to get over my objections to accepting his liberality
(supposing me to entertain them) by assuring me his conduct is founded on
‘a sage selfishness!’ This is
diverting enough. I suppose the Commissioners of Police will next send me a
letter of condolence, begging my acceptance of a broom, a shovel, and a
scavenger’s great-coat, and assuring me that they had appointed me to all
the emoluments of a well-frequented crossing. It would be doing more than they
have done of late for the cleanliness of the streets, which, witness my shoes,
are in a piteous pickle. I thanked the selfish sage with due decorum—for what
purpose can anger serve? I remember once before, a mad woman, from about
Alnwick, by name * * * *, baited me with
letters and plans first for charity for herself or some protegé—I gave my guinea—then she wanted to have half the
profits of a novel which I was to publish under my name and auspices. She sent
me the manuscript, and a moving tale it was, for some of the scenes lay in the
Cabinet à l’eau. I
declined the partnership. Lastly, my fair correspondent insisted I was a lover
of speculation, and would be much profited by going shares in a patent medicine
which she had invented for the benefit of little babes. I dreaded to have any
thing to do with such a Herod-like affair, and begged to
decline the honour of her correspondence in future. I should have thought the
thing a quiz but that the novel was real
for supposing he would have found the crown of Great Britain on his
head when he awoke.”—Memoirs of the
Rebellion of 1745, &c. London, 1810. 4to. p.
140.
and substantial. Sir Alexander
Don called, and we had a good laugh together.
“February 12.—Having ended the
second volume or Woodstock
last night, I had to begin the third this morning. Now I have not the slightest
idea how the story is to be wound up to a catastrophe. I am just in the same
case as I used to be when I lost myself in former days in some country to which
I was a stranger. I always pushed for the pleasantest route, and either found
or made it the nearest. It is the same in writing. I never could lay down a
plan—or, having laid it down, I never could adhere to it; the action of
composition always extended some passages, and abridged or omitted others; and
personages were rendered important or insignificant, not according to their
agency in the original conception of the piece, but according to the success,
or otherwise, with which I was able to bring them out. I only tried to make
that which I was actually writing diverting and interesting, leaving the rest
to fate. I have been often amused with the critics distinguishing some passages
as particularly laboured, when the pen passed over the whole as fast as it
could move, and the eye never again saw them, except in proof. Verse I write
twice, and sometimes three times over. This hab nab at a
venture is a perilous style, I grant, but I cannot help it. When I
strain my mind to ideas which are purely imaginative—for argument is a
different thing—it seems to me that the sun leaves the landscape—that I think
away the whole vivacity of my original conception, and that the results are
cold, tame, and spiritless. It is the difference between a written oration and
one bursting from the unpremeditated exertions of the speaker, which have
always something the air of enthusiasm and inspiration. I would not have young authors
imitate my carelessness, however.
“Read a few pages of Will
D’Avenant, who was fond of having it supposed that
Shakspeare intrigued with his
mother. I think the pretension can only be treated as Phaeton was, according to Fielding’sfarce— ‘Besides, by all the village boys I’m shamed, You, the sun’s son, you rascal you be damn’d.’
Egad I’ll put that into Woodstock. It might come well from the old admirer of
Shakspeare. Then Fielding’s
lines were not written. What then? it is an anachronism for some sly rogue to
detect. Besides, it is easy to swear they were written, and that
Fielding adopted them from tradition.*
“February 13.—The Institution
for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts opens to-day, with a handsome
entertainment in the Exhibition-room, as at Somerset House. It strikes me that
the direction given by amateurs and professors to their protegés and pupils, who aspire to be artists, is upon a
pedantic and false principle. All the fine arts have it for their highest and
most legitimate end and purpose, to affect the human passions, or smooth and
alleviate, for a time, the near unquiet feelings of the mind—to excite wonder,
or terror, or pleasure, or emotion of some kind or other. It often happens
that, in the very rise and origin of these arts, as in the instance of
Homer, the principal object is obtained
in a degree not equalled by any successor. But there is a degree of execution
which, in more refined times, the poet or musician begins to study, which gives
a value of its own to their productions of a different
* See the couplet, and the apology, in Woodstock—Waverley Novels, vol. xl. p. 134.
kind from the rude strength of their predecessors. Poetry
becomes complicated in its rules—music learned in its cadences and
harmonies—rhetoric subtle in its periods. There is more given to the labour of
executing—less attained by the effect produced. Still the nobler and popular
end of these arts is not forgotten; and if we have some productions too
learned, too récherchés for
public feeling, we have, every now and then, music that electrifies a whole
assembly, eloquence which shakes the forum, and poetry which carries men up to
the third heaven. But in painting it is different; it is all become a mystery,
the secret of which is lodged in a few connoisseurs, whose object is not to
praise the works of such painters as produce effect on mankind at large, but to
class them according to their proficiency in the inferior rules of the art,
which, though most necessary to be taught and learned, should yet only be
considered as the Gradus ad
Parnassum, the steps by which the higher and ultimate object of
a great popular effect is to be attained. They have all embraced the very style
of criticism which induced Michael
Angelo to call some Pope a poor creature, when, turning his
attention from the general effect of a noble statue, his Holiness began to
criticize the hem of the robe. This seems to me the cause of the decay of this
delightful art, especially in history, its noblest branch. As I speak to
myself, I may say that a painting should, to be excellent, have something to
say to the mind of a man, like myself, well educated, and susceptible of those
feelings which any thing strongly recalling natural emotion is likely to
inspire. But how seldom do I see any thing that moves me much! Wilkie, the far more than Teniers of Scotland, certainly gave many new
ideas. So does Will Allan, though
overwhelmed with their remarks about colouring and grouping, against which they
are not willing to place his general
and original merits. Landseer’s
dogs were the most magnificent things I ever saw—leaping, and bounding, and
grinning on the canvass. Leslie has
great powers; and the scenes from Moliere by Newton are
excellent. Yet painting wants a regenerator—some one who will sweep the cobwebs
out of his head before he takes the pallet, as Chantrey has done in the sister art. At present we are painting
pictures from the ancients, as authors in the days of Louis Quatorze wrote epic poems according to the recipe of
Dacier and Co. The poor reader or
spectator has no remedy; the compositions are secundum artem; and if he does not like them, he is no
judge, that’s all.
“February 14.—I had a call
from Glengarry yesterday, as kind and
friendly as usual.* This gentleman is a kind of Quixote in our age, having retained, in their full extent, the
whole feelings of clanship and chieftainship, elsewhere so long abandoned. He
seems to have lived a century too late, and to exist, in a state of complete
law and order, like a Glengarry of old, whose will was law
to his sept. Warm-hearted, generous, friendly; he is beloved by those who know
him, and his efforts are unceasing to show kindness to those of his clan who
are disposed fully to admit his pretensions. To dispute them is to incur his
resentment, which has sometimes broken out in acts of violence which have
brought him into collision with the law. To me he is a treasure, as being full
of information as to the history of his own clan and the manners and customs of
the Highlanders in general. Strong, active, and muscular, he follows the chase
of the deer for days and nights together, sleeping in his plaid
* The late Colonel
Ranaldson Macdonell of Glengarry. He died in January,
1828.
when darkness overtakes him. The number of his singular
exploits would fill a volume; for, as his pretensions are high, and not always
willingly yielded to, he is every now and then giving rise to some rumour. He
is, on many of these occasions, as much sinned against as sinning; for men,
knowing his temper, sometimes provoke him, conscious that Glengarry, from his
character for violence, will always be put in the wrong by the public. I have
seen him behave in a very manly manner when thus tempted. He has of late
prosecuted a quarrel, ridiculous enough in the present day, to have himself
admitted and recognised as Chief of the whole Clan Ranald,
or surname of Macdonald. The truth seems to be, that the
present Clanranald is not descended from a legitimate
chieftain of the tribe; for, having accomplished a revolution in the 16th
century, they adopted a Tanist, or Captain, that is, a Chief not in the direct
line of succession—namely, a certain Ian Moidart, or
John of Moidart, who took the title of Captain of
Clanranald, with all the powers of Chief, and even
Glengarry’s ancestor recognised them as chiefs
de facto if not de jure. The
fact is, that this elective power was, in cases of insanity, imbecility, or the
like, exercised by the Celtic tribes; and though Ian
Moidart was no chief by birth, yet by election he became so, and
transmitted his power to his descendants, as would King William III., if he had had any. So it is absurd to set up
the jus sanguinis now, which
Glengarry’s ancestors did not, or could not make
good, when it was a right worth combating for. I wrought out my full task
yesterday.
“Saw Cadell as
I returned from the Court. He seemed dejected, and gloomy about the extent of
stock of novels, &c. on hand. He infected me with his want of spirits, and
I almost wish my wife had not asked Mr
Scrope and Charles K.
Sharpe for this day. But the former
sent such loads of game that Lady
Scott’s gratitude became ungovernable. I have not seen a
creature at dinner since the direful 17th of January, except my own family and
Mr Laidlaw. The love of solitude
increases by indulgence; I hope it will not diverge into misanthropy. It does
not mend the matter that this is the first day that a ticket for sale is on my
house, poor No. 39. One gets accustomed even to stone walls, and the place
suited me very well. All our furniture too is to go—a hundred little articles
that seemed to me connected with all the happier years of my life. It is a
sorry business. But sursum corda.
“My two friends came as expected, also Missie, and staid till half-past ten. Promised
Sharpe the set of Piranesi’s views in the dining-parlour.
They belonged to my uncle, so I do not like to sell them.
“February 15—Yesterday I did
not write a line of Woodstock. Partly, I was a little out of spirits, though that would not
have hindered. Partly, I wanted to wait for some new ideas—a sort of collecting
of straw to make bricks of. Partly, I was a little too far beyond the press. I
cannot pull well in long traces, when the draught is too far behind me. I love
to have the press thumping, clattering, and banging in my rear; it creates the
necessity which almost always makes me work best. Needs must when the devil
drives—and drive he does even according to the letter. I must work to-day,
however.—Attended a meeting of the Faculty about our new library. I spoke
saying that I hoped we would now at length act upon a general plan, and look
forward to commencing upon such a scale as might secure us at least for a
century against the petty and partial management, which we have hitherto
thought sufficient, of fitting up one room after another. Discon-nected and distant, these have been costing large sums of
money from time to time, all now thrown away. We are now to have space enough
for a very large range of buildings, which we may execute in a simple taste,
leaving Government to ornament them if they shall think proper—otherwise to be
plain, modest, and handsome, and capable of being executed by degrees, and in
such portions as convenience may admit of. Poor James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, came to advise with me about
his affairs,—he is sinking under the times; having no assistance to give him,
my advice I fear will be of little service. I am sorry for him if that would
help him, especially as, by his own account, a couple of hundred pounds would
carry him on.
“February
16.—‘Misfortune’s gowling bark’* comes louder and
louder. By assigning my whole property to trustees for behoof of creditors,
with two works in progress and nigh publication, and with all my future
literary labours, I conceived I was bringing into the field a large fund of
payment, which could not exist without my exertions, and that thus far I was
entitled to a corresponding degree of indulgence. I therefore supposed, on
selling this house, and various other property, and on receiving the price of
Woodstock and Napoleon, that they would give
me leisure to make other exertions, and be content with the rents of
Abbotsford, without attempting a sale. This would have been the more
reasonable, as the very printing of these works must amount to a large sum, of
which they will touch the profits. In the course of this delay I supposed I was
to have the chance of getting some insight both into Constable’s affairs and those of
Hurst and Robinson. Nay, employing these houses, under
pre-
* Burns’sDedication to
Gavin Hamilton.
cautions, to sell the works, the
publishers’ profit would have come in to pay part of their debt. But
Gibson last night came in after
dinner, and gave me to understand that the Bank of Scotland see this in a
different point of view, and consider my contribution of the produce of past,
present, and future labours, as compensated in full by
their accepting of the trust-deed, instead of pursuing the mode of
sequestration, and placing me in the Gazette. They therefore expect the
trustees to commence a lawsuit to reduce the marriage settlement, which settles
the estate upon Walter; thus loading me
with a most expensive suit, and I suppose selling library and whatever else
they can lay hold on.
“Now this seems unequal measure, and would besides
of itself totally destroy any power of fancy, of genius, if it deserves the
name, which may remain to me. A man cannot write in the House of Correction;
and this species of peine forte et
dure which is threatened, would render it impossible for one
to help himself or others. So I told Gibson I had my mind made up as far back as the 24th of
January, not to suffer myself to be harder pressed than law would press me. If
this great commercial company, through whose hands I have directed so many
thousands, think they are right in taking every advantage and giving none, it
must be my care to see that they take none but what the law gives them. If they
take the sword of the law, I must lay hold of the shield. If they are
determined to consider me as an irretrievable bankrupt, they have no title to
object to my settling upon the usual terms which the Statute requires. They
probably are of opinion, that I will be ashamed to do this by applying publicly
for a sequestration. Now, my feelings are different. I am ashamed to owe debts
I cannot pay; but I am not ashamed of being classed with those to whose rank I
belong. The disgrace is in being an actual bankrupt,
not in being made a legal one. I had like to have been too hasty in this
matter. I must have a clear understanding that I am to be benefited or indulged
in some way, if I bring in two such funds as those works in progress, worth
certainly from L.10,000 to L.15,000.
“February 17.—Slept sound,
for nature repays herself for the vexation the mind sometimes gives her. This
morning put interlocutor on several Sheriff-Court processes from Selkirkshire.
Gibson came to-night to say that he
had spoken at full length with Alexander
Monypenny, proposed as trustee on the part of the Bank of
Scotland, and found him decidedly in favour of the most moderate measures, and
taking burden on himself that the Bank would proceed with such lenity as might
enable me to have some time and opportunity to clear these affairs out. I
repose trust in Mr M. entirely. His father, Colonel Monypenny, was my early friend, kind
and hospitable to me when I was a mere boy. He had much of old General Withers about him, as expressed in
Pope’s epitaph * ‘——A worth in youth approved, A soft humanity in age beloved!’ His son David, and a younger
brother, Frank, a soldier, who perished by drowning on a
boating party from Gibraltar, were my schoolfellows; and with the survivor, now
Lord Pitmilly, I have always kept up a friendly
intercourse. Of this gentleman, on whom my fortunes are to depend, I know
little. He was Colin Mackenzie’s
partner in business while my friend pursued it, and he speaks highly of him:
that’s a great deal. He is secretary to the Pitt Club, and we have had
all our lives the habit idem sentire de
republica: that’s much too. Lastly, he is a man of perfect honour
and reputation; and I have nothing to ask which such a man would not either
grant or convince me was unreasonable. I have, to be sure, something of a
constitutional and hereditary obstinacy; but it is in me a dormant quality.
Convince my understanding, and I am perfectly docile; stir my passions by
coldness or affronts, and the devil would not drive me from my purpose. Let me
record, I have striven against this besetting sin. When I was a boy, and on
foot expeditions, as we had many, no creature could be so indifferent which way
our course was directed, and I acquiesced in what any one proposed; but if I
was once driven to make a choice, and felt piqued in honour to maintain my
proposition, I have broken off from the whole party, rather than yield to any
one. Time has sobered this pertinacity of mind; but it still exists, and I must
be on my guard against it. It is the same with me in politics. In general I
care very little about the matter, and from year’s end to year’s
end have scarce a thought connected with them, except to laugh at the fools,
who think to make themselves great men out of little by swaggering in the rear
of a party. But either actually important events, or such as seemed so by their
close neighbourhood to me, have always hurried me off my feet, and made me, as
I have sometimes regretted, more forward and more violent than those who had a
regular jog-trot way of busying themselves in public matters. Good luck; for
had I lived in troublesome times, and chanced to be on the unhappy side, I had
been hanged to a certainty. What I have always remarked has been, that many who
have hallooed me on at public meetings, and so forth, have quietly left me to
the odium which a man known to the public always has more than his own share
of; while, on the other hand, they were easily successful in pressing before
me, who never pressed forward at all, when there was any
distribution of public favours or the like. I am horribly tempted to interfere
in this business of altering the system of banks in Scotland; and yet I know
that if I can attract any notice, I will offend my English friends, without
propitiating our doom in Scotland. I will think of it till to-morrow. It is
making myself of too much importance, after all.
“February 18.—I set about
Malachi Malagrowther’s
Letter on the late disposition to change every thing in Scotland to
an English model, but without resolving about the publication. They do treat us
very provokingly. ‘O Land of Cakes! said the Northern bard, Though all the world betrays thee, One faithful pen thy rights shall guard, One faithful harp shall praise thee.’*
“February 19.—Finished my
letter (Malachi Malagrowther)
this morning, and sent it to James B.,
who is to call with the result this forenoon. I am not very anxious to get on
with Woodstock. I want to see
what Constable’s people mean to do
when they have their trustee. For an unfinished work they must treat with the
author. It is the old story of the varnish spread over the picture, which
nothing but the artist’s own hand could remove. A finished work might be
seized under some legal pretence.
“Being troubled with thick-coming fancies, and a
slight palpitation of the heart, I have been reading the Chronicle of the Good Knight Messire Jacques de
Lalain curious, but dull, from the constant repetition of the same
species of combats in the same style and
* A parody on Moore’sMinstrel Boy.
phrase. It is like washing
bushels of sand for a grain of gold. It passes the time, however, especially in
that listless mood when your mind is half on your book, half on something else.
You catch something to arrest the attention every now and then, and what you
miss is not worth going back upon; idle man’s studies, in short. Still
things occur to one. Something might be made of a tale of chivalry,—taken from
the Passage of Arms, which Jacques de
Lalain maintained for the first day of every month for a
twelvemonth.* The first mention perhaps of red-hot balls appears in the siege
of Oudenarde by the Citizens of Ghent—Chronique, p.
293. This would be light summer work.
“J. B. came
and sat an hour. I led him to talk of Woodstock; and, to say truth, his
approbation did me much good. I am aware it may, nay,
must be partial; yet is he Tom Tell-truth, and totally unable to disguise his real
feelings. I think I make no habit of feeding on praise, and despise those whom
I see greedy for it, as much as I should an under-bred fellow who, after eating
a cherry-tart, proceeded to lick the plate. But when one is flagging, a little
praise (if it can be had genuine and unadulterated by flattery, which is as
difficult to come by as the genuine mountain-dew) is a cordial after all. So
now—vamos corazon—let us
atone for the loss of the morning.
“February 20.—Yesterday,
though late in beginning, I nearly finished my task, which is six of my close
pages, about thirty pages of print, a full and uninterrupted day’s work.
To-day I have already written four, and with some confidence. Thus does
flattery or praise oil the wheels. It is but two o’clock. Skene was here remonstrating against my taking
apartments at the
* This hint was taken up in Count Robert of Paris.
Albyn Club, and recommending that I should rather stay
with them. I told him that was altogether impossible. I hoped to visit them
often, but for taking a permanent residence, I was altogether the country
mouse, and voted for ‘——A hollow tree, A crust of bread and liberty.’ The chain of friendship, however bright, does not stand the attrition of
constant close contact.
“February 21.—Corrected the
proofs of Malachi this morning;
it may fall dead, and there will be a squib lost; it may chance to light on
some ingredients of national feeling and set folk’s beards in a blaze—and
so much the better if it does. I mean better for Scotland—not a whit for me.
Attended the hearing in Parliament-House till near four o’clock, so I
shall do little to-night for I am tired and sleepy. One person talking for a
long time, whether in pulpit or at the bar, or any where else, unless the
interest be great, and the eloquence of the highest character, sets me to
sleep. I impudently lean my head on my hand in the Court and take my nap
without shame. The Lords may keep awake and mind their own affairs.
Quod supra nos nihil ad nos.
These clerks’ stools are certainly as easy seats as are in Scotland,
those of the Barons of Exchequer always excepted.
“February 22.—Ballantyne breakfasted, and is to negotiate
about Malachi with Blackwood. It reads not amiss; and if I can
get a few guineas for it, I shall not be ashamed to take them; for, paying
Lady Scott, I have just left between L.3
and L.4 for any necessary occasion, and my salary does not become due until
20th March, and the expense of removing, &c., is to be provided for: ‘But shall we go mourn for that, my dear?’ The mere scarcity of money (so
that actual wants are provided) is not poverty—it is the bitter draught to owe
money which we cannot pay. Laboured fairly at Woodstock to-day, but principally in
revising and adding to Malachi, of which an edition as a pamphlet
is anxiously desired. I have lugged in my old friend Cardrona*—I hope it will not be thought
unkindly. The Banks are anxious to have it published. They were lately
exercising lenity towards me, and if I can benefit them, it will be an instance
of the ‘King’s errand lying in the cadger’s
gate.’
“February 23.—Corrected two
sheets of Woodstock this
morning. These are not the days of idleness. The fact is, that the not seeing
company gives me a command of my time which I possessed at no other period in
my life, at least since I knew how to make some use of my leisure. There is a
great pleasure in sitting down to write with the consciousness that nothing
will occur during the day to break the spell. Detained in the Court till past
three, and came home just in time to escape a terrible squall. I am a good deal
jaded, and will not work till after dinner. There is a sort of drowsy
vacillation of mind attends fatigue with me. I can command my pen as the
school-copy recommends, but cannot equally command my thoughts, and often write
one word for another. Read a little volume called the Omen very well written deep and powerful
language.†
* The late Mr Williamson of
Cardrona, in Peebleshire, was a strange humorist, of whom
Sir Walter told many stories. The
allusion here is to the anecdote of the Leetle Anderson in the first of
Malachi’s
Epistles. See Scott’sProse
Miscellanies, vol. xxi., p. 289.
† The
Omen, by Mr Galt, had just
been published.—See Miscellaneous Prose, vol. xviii., p. 333.
“February 24.—Went down to
printing-office after the Court, and corrected Malachi. J.
B. reproaches me with having taken much more pains in this
temporary pamphlet than on works which have a greater interest on my fortunes.
I have certainly bestowed enough of revision and correction. But the cases are
different. In a novel or poem, I run the course alone—here I am taking up the
cudgels, and may expect a drubbing in return. Besides, I do feel that this is
public matter in which the country is deeply interested; and, therefore, is far
more important than any thing referring to my fame or fortune alone. The
pamphlet will soon be out—mean-time Malachi prospers
and excites much attention. The banks have bespoke 500 copies. The country is
taking the alarm; and, I think, the Ministers will not dare to press the
measure. I should rejoice to see the old red lion ramp a little, and the
thistle again claim its nemo me
impune. I do believe Scotsmen will show themselves unanimous
at last, where their cash is concerned. They shall not want backing. I incline
to cry with Biron in Love’s Labour’s Lost, ‘More Atés, more Atés, stir them on.’ I suppose all imaginative people feel more or less of excitation from a
scene of insurrection or tumult, or of general expression of national feeling.
When I was a lad, poor Davie Douglas*
used to accuse me of being cupidus novarum
rerum, and say that I loved the stimulus of a broil. It
might be so then, and even still. ‘Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.’ Whimsical enough, that when I was trying to animate Scotland against the
currency bill, John Gibson brought me
the deed of trust, assigning my whole estate, to be
* Lord
Reston. See ante, vol. i., p. 28.
subscribed by me; so that I am
turning patriot, and taking charge of the affairs of the country, on the very
day I proclaim myself incapable of managing my own. What of that? Who would
think of their own trumpery debts, when they are taking the support of the
whole system of Scottish banking on their shoulders? Odd enough too on this
day, for the first time since the awful 17th January, we entertain a party at
dinner Lady Anna Maria Elliot, W. Clerk, John A.
Murray, and Thomas
Thomson as if we gave a dinner on account of my cessio fori.
“February 25.—Our party
yesterday went off very gaily; much laugh and fun, and I think I enjoyed it
more from the rarity of the event—I mean from having seen society at home so
seldom of late. My head aches slightly though; yet we were but a bottle of
Champagne, one of Port, one of old Sherry, and two of Claret, among four
gentlemen and three ladies. I have been led, from this incident, to think of
taking chambers near Clerk, in Rose Court. Methinks the retired situation
should suit me well. Then a man and woman would be my whole establishment. My
superfluous furniture might serve, and I could ask a friend or two to dinner,
as I have been accustomed to do. I shall look at the place to-day. I must set
now to a second epistle of
Malachi to the Athenians. If I can but get the sulky Scottish spirit
set up, the devil won’t turn them.
‘Cock up your beaver, and cock it fu’ sprush; We’ll over the Border, and give them a brush; There’s somebody there we’ll teach better behaviour; Hey, Johnnie, lad, cock up your beaver.’
“February 26.—Spent the
morning and till dinner on Malachi’s second epistle. It is difficult to steer be-twixt the natural impulse of one’s national feelings
setting in one direction, and the prudent regard to the interests of the empire
and its internal peace and quiet, recommending less vehement expression. I will
endeavour to keep sight of both. But were my own interest alone concerned, d——n
me but I would give it them hot! Had some valuable communications from
Colin Mackenzie, which will supply
my plentiful lack of facts.
“Received an anonymous satire in doggrel, which,
having read the first verse and last, I committed to the flames. Peter Murray of Simprim called, and sat
half-an-hour—an old friend, and who, from the peculiarity, and originality of
his genius, is one of the most entertaining companions I have ever known. But I
must finish Malachi.
“February 27.—Malachi is getting on; I must finish him to-night. I
dare say some of my London friends will be displeased—Canning perhaps, for he is engoué of Huskisson. Can’t help it. The place I looked at
won’t do; but I must really get some lodging, for, reason or none,
Dalgliesh will not leave me, and
cries and makes a scene. Now, if I staid alone in a little set of chambers, he
would serve greatly for my accommodation. There are some places of the kind in
the New Buildings; but they are distant from the Court, and I cannot walk well
on the pavement. It is odd enough, that just when I had made a resolution to
use my coach frequently, I ceased to keep one.
“February 28.—Completed Malachi to-day. It is more
serious than the first, and in some places perhaps
* Dalgliesh
was Sir Walter’s butler. He
said he cared not how much his wages were reduced—but go he would not.
too peppery. Never mind; if you
would have a horse kick, make a crupper out of a whin-cow;* and I trust to see
Scotland kick and fling to some purpose. Woodstock lies back for this. But
quid non pro patria?
“March 1.—Malachi is in the Edinburgh Journal to-day, and reads like the work of an
uncompromising right-forward Scot of the old school. Some of the cautious and
pluckless instigators will be afraid of their confederate; for if a man of some
energy and openness of character happens to be on the same side with these
jobbers, they stand as much in awe of his vehemence as did the inexperienced
conjurer who invoked a fiend whom he could not manage. Came home in a heavy
shower with the Solicitor. I tried him on
the question, but found him reserved. The future Lord Advocate must be
cautious; but I can tell my good friend John Hope, that if
he acts the part of a firm and resolute Scottish patriot, both his own country
and England will respect him the more. Ah! Hal
Dundas, there was no truckling in thy day!
“Looked out a quantity of things, to go to
Abbotsford; for we are flitting, if you please. It is with a sense of pain that
I leave behind a parcel of trumpery prints and little ornaments, once the pride
of Lady S——’s heart, but which she
sees consigned with indifference to the chance of an auction. Things that have
had their day of importance with me I cannot forget, though the merest trifles.
But I am glad that she, with bad health, and enough to vex her, has not the
same useless mode of associating recollections with this unpleasant business.
The best part of it is the necessity of leaving behind, viz. getting rid of, a
set of most wretched daubs of landscapes, in great gilded frames, of which I
* Whin-cow—Anglice, a bush of furze.
have often been heartily ashamed. The history of them was
curious. An amateur artist (a lady) happened to fall into misfortunes, upon
which her landscapes, the character of which had been buoyed up far beyond
their proper level, sank now beneath it, and it was low enough. One most
amiable and accomplished old lady continued to encourage her pencil, and to
order pictures after pictures, which she sent in presents to her friends. I
suppose I have eight or ten of them, which I could not avoid accepting. There
will be plenty of laughing when they come to be sold. It would be a good joke
enough to cause it to be circulated that they were performances of my own in
early youth, and looked on and bought up as curiosities. Do you know why you
have written all this down, Sir W.? You want
to put off writing Woodstock,
just as easily done as these memoranda, but which it happens your duty and your
prudence recommend, and therefore you are loth to begin.
‘Heigho, I can’t say no; But this piece of task-work off I can stave, O, For Malachi’s
posting into an octavo; To correct the proof-sheets only this night I have, O, So Conscience you’ve gotten as good as you gave, O. But to-morrow a new day we’ll better behave, O So I lay down the pen, and your pardon I crave, O.’
“March 2.—I have a letter
from Colin Mackenzie, approving Malachi, ‘Cold men may
say it is too strong; but from the true men of Scotland you are sure of the
warmest gratitude.’ I never have yet found, nor do I expect it on
this occasion, that ill-will dies in debt, or what is called gratitude
distresses herself by frequent payments. The one is like a ward-holding, and
pays its reddendo in hard blows. The other a blanch-tenure, and is discharged for payment of a red rose, or a
peppercorn. He that takes the forlorn hope in an attack, is often deserted by
them that should support him, and who generally throw the blame of their own
cowardice upon his rashness. We shall see this end in the same way. But I
foresaw it from the beginning. The bankers will be persuaded that it is a squib
which may burn their own fingers, and will curse the poor pyrotechnist that
compounded it—if they do, they be d——d. Slept indifferently, and dreamed of
Napoleon’s last moments, of
which I was reading a medical
account last night, by Dr
Arnott. Horrible death—a cancer on the pylorus. I would have
given something to have lain still this morning and made up for lost time. But
desidiæ valedixi. If you
once turn on your side after the hour at which you ought to rise, it is all
over. Bolt up at once. Bad night last—the next is sure to be better.
‘When the drum beats, make ready; When the fife plays, march away— To the roll-call, to the roll-call, to the roll-call, Before the break of day.’
“Dined with Chief
Commissioner: Admiral
Adam, W. Clerk, Thomson, and I. The excellent old man was
cheerful at intervals—at times sad, as was natural. A good blunder, he told us,
occurred in the Annandale case, which was a
question partly of domicile. It was proved, that leaving Lochwood, the Earl had
given up his kain and carriages;*
this an English counsel contended was the best of all possible proofs that the
noble Earl designed an absolute change of residence, since he laid aside his
walking-stick and his coach.
First epistle of Malachi
out of print already.
* Kain, in Scotch law, means
payment in kind—Carriages, in
the same phraseology, stands for services in driving with horse and cart.
“March 3.—Could not get the
last sheets of Malachi, Second
Epistle, so they must go out to the world uncorrected—a great loss, for the
last touches are always most effectual; and I expect misprints in the
additional matter. We were especially obliged to have it out this morning, that
it may operate as a gentle preparative for the meeting of inhabitants at two
o’clock. Vogue la galere—we
shall see if Scotsmen have any pluck left. If not, they may kill the next
Percy themselves. It is ridiculous enough for me, in a
state of insolvency for the present, to be battling about gold and paper
currency—it is something like the humorous touch in Hogarth’sDistressed Poet,
where the poor starveling of the Muses is engaged, when in the abyss of
poverty, in writing an Essay on Payment of the National Debt; and his wall is
adorned with a plan of the mines of Peru. Nevertheless, even these fugitive
attempts, from the success which they have had, and the noise they are making,
serve to show the truth of the old proverb— ‘When house and land are gone and spent, Then learning is most excellent.’ On the whole, I am glad of this bruilzie, as far as I am concerned; people
will not dare talk of me as an object of pity—no more
‘poor-manning.’ Who asks how many punds Scots the old champion had
in his pocket when ‘He set a bugle to his mouth, And blew so loud and shrill, The trees in greenwood shook thereat, Sae loud rang every hill?’ This sounds conceited enough, yet is not far from truth.
“The meeting was very numerous, 500 or 600 at least,
and unanimous, saving one Mr Howden, who having been all
his life, as I am told, in bitter opposition to Ministers, proposed on the present occasion that the
whole contested measure should be trusted to their wisdom. I suppose he chose
the opportunity of placing his own opinion in opposition, single opposition
too, to one of a large assembly. The speaking was very moderate. Report had
said that Jeffrey, J. A. Murray, and other sages of the
economical school, were to unbuckle their mails, and give us their opinions.
But no such great guns appeared. If they had, having the multitude on my side,
I would have tried to break a lance with them. A few short, but well expressed
resolutions, were adopted unanimously. These were proposed by Lord Rollo, and seconded by Sir James Fergusson, Bart. I was named one of
a committee to encourage all sorts of opposition to the measure. So I have
already broken through two good and wise resolutions—one, that I would not
write on political controversy; another, that I would not be named in public
committees. If my good resolves go this way, like snaw off a
dyke—the Lord help me!
“March 4.—Last night I had a
letter from Lockhart, who, speaking of
Malachi, says,
‘The Ministers are sore beyond imagination at present; and some of
them, I hear, have felt this new whip on the raw to some
purpose.’ I conclude he means Canning is offended. I can’t help it, as I said
before—fiat justitia, mat
cœlum. No cause in which I had the slightest personal
interest should have made me use my pen against them, blunt and pointed as it
may be. But as they are about to throw this country into distress and danger,
by a measure of useless and uncalled for experiment, they must hear the opinion
of the Scotsman, to whom it is of no other consequence than as a general
measure affecting the country at large—and more they shall hear. I had determined to lay down the
pen. But now they shall have another of Malachi,
beginning with buffoonery, and ending as seriously as I can write it. It is
like a frenzy that they will agitate the upper and middling classes of society,
so very friendly to them, with unnecessary and hazardous projects. ‘Oh, thus it was they loved them dear, And sought how to requite ’em, And having no friends left but they, They did resolve to fight them.’ The country is very high just now. England may carry the measure if she
will, doubtless. But what will be the consequence of the distress ensuing. God
only can foretell. Lockhart, moreover, enquires about my
affairs anxiously, and asks what he is to say about them; says ‘he has
enquiries every day; kind, most kind all, and among the most interested and
anxious, Sir William Knighton, who
told me the King was quite melancholy
all the evening he heard of it.’ This I can well believe, for the
King, educated as a prince, has nevertheless as true and kind a heart as any
subject in his dominions. He goes on—‘I do think they would give you a
Baron’s gown as soon as possible,’ &c. I have written
to him in answer, showing I have enough to carry me on, and can dedicate my
literary efforts to clear my land. The preferment would suit me well, and the
late Duke of Buccleuch gave me his interest
for it. I daresay the young Duke would do the same, for the invaried love I
have borne his house; and by and by he will have a voice potential. But there
is Sir William Rae, whose prevailing claim
I would never place my own in opposition to, even were it possible, by a
tour de force, such as
L. points at, to set it aside. Mean-time, I am
building a barrier betwixt me and promotion.
“In the mean-while, now I am not pulled about for
money, &c., methinks I am
happier without my wealth than with it. Every thing is paid. I have no one
anxious to make up a sum, and pushing for his account to be paid. Since 17th
January I have not laid out a guinea, out of my own hand, save two or three in
charity, and six shillings for a pocket-book. But the cash with which I set out
having run short for family expenses, I drew on Blackwood, through Ballantyne, which was honoured, for L.25, to account of Malachi’s Letters, of which
another edition of 1000 is ordered, and gave it to Lady
Scott, because our removal will require that in hand. On the
20th my quarter comes in, and though I have something to pay out of it, I shall
be on velvet for expense and regular I will be. Methinks all trifling objects
of expenditure seem to grow light in my eyes. That I may regain independence I
must be saving. But ambition awakes as love of indulgence dies and is mortified
within me. ‘Dark Cuthullin will be
renowned or dead.’
“March 5.—Something of toddy
and cigar in that last quotation, I think. Yet I only smoked two, and liquified
with one glass of spirits and water. I have sworn I will not blot out what I
have once written here.
“March 6.—Finished third
Malachi, which I
don’t much like. It respects the difficulty of finding gold to replace
the paper circulation. Now this should have been considered first. The
admitting that the measure may be imposed, is yielding up the question, and
Malachi is like a commandant who should begin to
fire from interior defences before his outworks were carried. If Ballantyne be of my own opinion I will
suppress it. We are all in a bustle shifting things to Abbotsford. It is odd,
but I don’t feel the impatience for the country which I have usually
experienced.
“March 7.—Detained in the
Court till three by a hearing. Then to the committee
appointed at the meeting on Friday, to look after the small note business. A
pack of old faineants, incapable of managing such a
business, and who will lose the day from mere coldness of heart. There are
about a thousand names at the petition. They have added no designations—a great
blunder; for testimonia sunt ponderanda non
numeranda should never be lost sight of. They are
disconcerted and helpless; just as in the business of the King’s visit,
when every body threw the weight on me. In another time so disgusted was I with
seeing them sitting in ineffectual helplessness, spitting on the hot iron that
lay before them, and touching it with a timid finger, as if afraid of being
scalded, that I might have dashed in and taken up the hammer, summoned the
deacons and other heads of public bodies, and by consulting them have carried
them with me. But I cannot waste my time, health, and spirits, in fighting
thankless battles. I left them in a quarter of an hour, and presage, unless the
country make an alarm, the cause is lost. The philosophical reviewers manage
their affairs better—hold off avoid committing themselves, but throw their
vis inertiæ into the
opposite scale, and neutralize feelings which they cannot combat. To force them
to fight on disadvantageous ground is our policy. But we have more sneakers
after ministerial favour than men who love their country, and who, upon a
liberal scale, would serve their party. For to force the Whigs to avow an
unpopular doctrine in popular assemblies, or to wrench the government of such
bodies from them, would be a coup de
maître. But they are alike destitute of manly
resolution and sound policy. D—n the whole nest of them! I have corrected the
last of Malachi, and let the
thing take its chance. I have made just enemies enough, and indisposed enough
of friends.
“March 8.—At the Court,
though a teind day. A foolish thing happened while the Court were engaged with
the teinds. I amused myself with writing on a sheet of paper, notes on
Frederick Maitland’saccount of the capture of
Buonaparte; and I have lost these
notes—shuffled in perhaps among my own papers, or those of the teind clerks.
What a curious document to be found in a process of valuation. Being jaded and
sleepy, I took up Le Duc de Guise on
Naples. I think this, with the old Memoirs on the same subject which
I have at Abbotsford, would enable me to make a pretty essay for the Quarterly. We must take up Woodstock now in good earnest.
Mr Cowan, a good and able man, is
chosen trustee in Constable’s
affairs, with full power. From what I hear, the poor man
Constable is not sensible of the nature of his own
situation; for myself, I have succeeded in putting the matter perfectly out of
my mind since I cannot help it, and have arrived at a
flocci-pauci-nihili-pili-fication of misery, and I thank whoever invented that
long word. They are removing our wine, &c. to the carts, and you will judge
if our flitting is not making a noise in the world, or in the street at least.
“March 9.—I foresaw justly, ‘When first I set this dangerous stone a-rolling, ’Twould full upon myself.’ Sir Robert Dundas to-day put into my
hands a letter of between twenty and forty pages, in angry and bitter
reprobation of Malachi, full of
general averments, and very untenable arguments, all written at me by name, but
of which I am to have no copy, and which is to be circulated to other special
friends, to whom it may be necessary to ‘give the sign to
hate.’ I got it at two o’clock, and
returned it with an answer four hours afterwards, in which I have studied not
to be tempted into either sarcastic or harsh expressions. A quarrel it is,
however, in all the forms, between my old friend and myself, and his
Lordship’s reprimand is to be read out in order to all our friends. They
all know what I have said is true, but that will be nothing to the purpose if
they are desired to consider it as false. Nobody at least can plague me for
interest with Lord Melville as they used to
do. By the way, from the tone of his letter, I think his Lordship will give up
the measure, and I shall be the peace-offering. All wilt agree to condemn me as
too warm—too rash—and yet rejoice in privileges which
they would not have been able to save but for a little rousing of spirit, which
will not perhaps fall asleep again.—A gentleman called on the part of a
Captain Rutherford, to make enquiry about the
Lord Rutherfords. Not being very cleever, as John Fraser used to say, at these
pedigree matters, referred him to my cousin Robert
Rutherford. Very odd—when there is a vacant, or dormant title in
a Scottish family or name, every body, and all connected with the clan,
conceive they have quodam modo a
right to it. Not being engrossed by any individual, it communicates part of its
lustre to every individual in the tribe, as if it remained in common stock for
that purpose.
“March 10.—I am not made
entirely on the same mould of passions like other people. Many men would deeply
regret a breach with so old a friend as Lord
Melville, and many men would be in despair at losing the good
graces of a Minister of State for Scotland, and all pretty views about what
might be done for myself and my sons, especially Charles. But I think my good Lord doth ill to be angry, like
the patriarch of old, and I have,
in my odd sans souciance character, a
good handful of meal from the grist of the Jolly Miller, who ‘Once Dwelled on the river Dee; I care for nobody, no not I, Since nobody cares for me.’
“Sandie
Young* came in at breakfast-time with a Monsieur Brocque
of Montpelier. Saw Sir Robert
Dundas at Court. He is to send my letter to Lord Melville. Colin
Mackenzie concurs in thinking Lord M. quite
wrong. He must cool in the skin he het in.
“On coming home from the Court a good deal fatigued,
I took a nap in my easy-chair, then packed my books, and committed the refuse
to Jock Stevenson— ‘Left not a limb on which a Dane could triumph.’ Gave Mr Gibson my father’s
cabinet, which suits a man of business well. Gave Jock
Stevenson the picture of my favourite dog Camp, mentioned in one of the introductions to Marmion, and a little crow-quill drawing of
Melrose Abbey by Nelson, whom I used to
call the Admiral, poor fellow. He had some ingenuity, and was in a moderate way
a good penman and draughtsman. He left his situation of amanuensis to go into
Lord Home’s militia regiment, but
his dissipation got the better of a strong constitution, and he fell into bad
habits and poverty, and died, I believe, in the Hospital at Liverpool.—Strange
enough that Henry Weber, who acted
afterwards as my amanuensis for many years, had also a melancholy fate
ultimately. He was a man of very superior attainments, an excellent linguist
and geographer, and a remarkable antiquary. He published a collection of ancient Romances, superior,
I think, to the elaborate Ritson. He
also published an edition of
* Alexander Young,
Esq. of Harburn—a steady Whig of the old school, and a
steady and highly esteemed friend of Sir
Walter’s.
Beaumont and Fletcher,
but too carelessly done to be reputable. He was a violent Jacobin, which he
thought he disguised from me, while I, who cared not a fig about the poor young
man’s politics, used to amuse myself with teazing him. He was an
excellent and affectiqnate creature, but unhappily was afflicted with partial
insanity, especially if he used strong liquors, to which, like others with that
unhappy tendency, he was occasionally addicted. In 1814 he became quite insane,
and, at the risk of my life, I had to disarm him of a pair of loaded pistols,
which I did by exerting the sort of authority which, I believe, gives an
effectual control in such cases.* My patronage in this way has not been lucky
to the parties protected. I hope poor George Huntly
Gordon will escape the influence of the evil star. He has no
vice, poor fellow, but his total deafness makes him helpless.
“March 11.—This day the Court
rose after a long and laborious sederunt. I employed the remainder of the day
in completing a set of notes on Captain
Maitland’s manuscript narrative of the reception of Napoleon
Buonaparte on board the Bellerophon. It had been previously in the hands of my
friend Basil Hall, who had made many
excellent corrections in point of style; but he had been hypercritical in
wishing (in so important a matter, where every thing depends on accuracy) this
expression to be altered for delicacy’s sake,—that to be corrected, for
fear of giving offence—and that other to be abridged, for fear of being
tedious. The plain sailor’s narrative for me, written on the spot, and
bearing in its minuteness the evidence of its veracity. Lord Elgin sent me, some time since, a curious
account of his imprisonment in France, and the attempts which were made to draw
him into some intrigue which might authorize
* See ante,
vol. iii. p. 109.
treating him with rigour.* He
called to-day and communicated some curious circumstances, on the authority of
Fouché, Denon, and others, respecting Buonaparte and the Empress Maria Louisa, whom Lord Elgin had
conversed with on the subject in Italy. His conduct towards her was something
like that of Ethwald to Elburga, in Joanna
Baillie’s fine tragedy, making her postpone her high rank
by birth to the authority which he had acquired by his talents.
“March 12.—Resumed Woodstock, and wrote my task of
six pages. I cannot gurnalize, however, having wrought my eyes nearly out.
“March 13.—Wrote to the end
of a chapter, and knowing no more than the man in the moon what comes next, I
will put down a few of Lord Elgin’s
remembrances, and something may occur to me in the meanwhile. * * * * *
“I have hinted in these notes that I am not entirely
free from a sort of gloomy fits, with a fluttering of the heart and depression
of spirits, just as if I knew not what was going to befall me. I can sometimes
resist this successfully, but it is better to evade than to combat it. The
hang-dog spirit may have originated in the confusion and chucking about of our
old furniture, the stripping of walls of pictures, and rooms of ornaments; the
leaving of a house we have so long called our home, is altogether melancholy
enough. I am glad Lady S. does not mind it,
and yet I wonder, too. She insists on my remaining till Wednesday, not knowing
what I suffer. Mean-while, to make my recusant spirit do penance, I have set to
work to clear away papers and
* See Life of Buonaparte—Miscellaneous Prose
Works, vol. xi. pp. 346-351.
pack them for my journey. What a strange medley of
thoughts such a task produces. There lie letters which made the heart throb
when received, now lifeless and uninteresting—as are perhaps their writers.
Riddles which have been read—schemes which time has destroyed or brought to
maturity—memorials of friendships and enmities which are now alike faded. Thus
does the ring of Saturn consume itself. To-day annihilates yesterday, as the
old tyrant swallowed his children, and the snake its tail. But I must say to my
Journal as poor Byron did to Moore—‘D—n it,
Tom, don’t be poetical.’
“March 14.—J. B. called this morning to take leave, and
receive directions about proofs, &c. Talks of the uproar about Malachi; but I am tired of Malachi—the humour is off, and I have said what I
wanted to say, and put the people of Scotland on their guard, as well as
Ministers, if they like to be warned. They are gradually destroying what
remains of nationality, and making the country tabula rasa for doctrines of bold innovation. Their
loosening and grinding down all those peculiarities which distinguished us as
Scotsmen will throw the country into a state in which it will be universally
turned to democracy, and instead of canny Saunders, they will have a very dangerous North British
neighbourhood. Some lawyer expressed to Lord
Elibank an opinion, that at the Union the English law should
have been extended all over Scotland. ‘I cannot say how that might
have answered our purpose,’ said Lord
Patrick, who was never nonsuited for want of an answer,
‘but it would scarce have suited yours,
since by this time the Aberdeen Advocates* would
have possessed themselves of all the business in Westminster
Hall.’
* The Attorneys of the town of Aberdeen are styled
Advocates. This valuable privilege is said to have been bestowed at an
early period by some (sportive) monarch.
“What a detestable feeling this fluttering of the
heart is! I know it is nothing organic, and that it is entirely nervous; but
the sickening effects of it are dispiriting to a degree. Is it the body brings
it on the mind, or the mind that inflicts upon the body? I cannot tell; but it
is a severe price to pay for the Fata Morgana with which
Fancy sometimes amuses men of warm imaginations. As to body and mind, I fancy I
might as well enquire whether the fiddle or fiddlestick makes the tune. In
youth this complaint used to throw me into involuntary passions of causeless
tears. But I will drive it away in the country by exercise. I wish I had been a
mechanic: a turning-lathe or a chest of tools would have been a God-send; for
thought makes the access of melancholy rather worse than better. I have it
seldom, thank God, and, I believe, lightly, in comparison of others.
“It was the fiddle, after all, was out of order—not
the fiddlestick; the body, not the mind. I walked out; met Mrs Skene, who took a round with me in
Prince’s Street. Bade Constable
and Cadell farewell, and had a brisk
walk home, which enables me to face the desolation here with more spirit. News
from Sophia. She has had the luck to get
an anti-druggist in a Dr Gooch, who
prescribes care for Johnnie instead of
drugs, and a little home-brewed ale instead of wine; and, like a liberal
physician, supplies the medicine he prescribes. As for myself, since I had
scarce stirred to take exercise for four or five days, no wonder I had the
mulligrubs. It is an awful sensation though, and would have made an enthusiast
of me, had I indulged my imagination on devotional subjects. I have been always
careful to place my mind in the most tranquil posture which it can assume
during my private exercises of devotion.
“I have amused myself occasionally very pleasantly
during the last few days by reading over Lady
Morgan’s novel of O’Donnel, which has some striking and beautiful passages of
situation and description, and in the comic part is very rich and entertaining.
I do not remember being so much pleased with it at first. There is a want of
story, always fatal to a book the first reading—and it is well if it gets a
chance of a second. Alas, poor novel! Also read again, and for the third time
at least, Miss Austen’s very
finely written novel of Pride and
Prejudice. That young lady had a talent for describing the
involvements, and feelings, and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the
most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any
now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things
and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the
sentiment, is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early!
“March 15.—This morning I
leave No. 39, Castle Street, for the last time. ‘The cabin was
convenient,’ and habit had made it agreeable to me. I never
reckoned upon a change in this particular so long as I held an office in the
Court of Session. In all my former changes of residence it was from good to
better; this is retrograding. I leave this house for sale, and I cease to be an
Edinburgh citizen, in the sense of being a proprietor, which my father and I
have been for sixty years at least. So farewell, poor 39, and may you never
harbour worse people than those who now leave you. Not to desert the Lares all
at once, Lady S. and Anne remain till Sunday. As for me, I go, as
aforesaid, this morning. ‘Ha til mi
tulidh’!—”*
* We return no more.
CHAPTER VIII. DOMESTIC AFFLICTIONS—CORRESPONDENCE WITH SIR ROBERT
DUNDAS AND MR CROKER ON THE SUBJECT OF MALACHI MALAGROWTHER.
Sir Walter’s Diary
begins to be clouded with a darker species of distress than mere loss of wealth could bring
to his spirit. His darling grandson is sinking apace at Brighton. The misfortunes against
which his manhood struggled with stern energy were encountered by his affectionate wife
under the disadvantages of enfeebled health; and it seems but too evident that mental pain
and mortification had a great share in hurrying her ailments to a fatal end.
Nevertheless, all his afflictions do not seem to have interrupted for
more than a day or two his usual course of labour. With rare exceptions he appears, all
through this trying period, to have finished his daily task thirty printed pages of Woodstock, until that novel was completed;
or, if he paused in it, he gave a similar space of time to some minor production; such as
his paper on Galt’sOmen for
Blackwood’s Magazine—or his very valuable one on the Life of Kemble for the Quarterly Review. And hardly had Woodstock been finished before he began the Chronicles of the Canongate. He also corresponded much
as usual (notwithstanding all he says about indolence on that score)
with his absent friends; and I need scarcely add that his duties as Sheriff claimed many
hours every week. The picture of resolution and industry which this portion of his Journal
presents is certainly as remarkable as the boldest imagination could have conceived.
Before I open the Diary again, however, I may as well place in what an
ingenious contemporary novelist calls an “Inter-Chapter” three letters
connected with the affair of Malachi
Malagrowther. The first was addressed to the late Sir Robert Dundas (his colleague at the Clerk’s Table), on receiving
through him the assurance that Lord Melville, however
strong in his dissent from Malachi’s views on the
Currency Question, had not allowed that matter to interrupt his affectionate regard for the
author. The others will speak for themselves.
To Sir Robert Dundas of Dunira, Bart., Heriot Row,
Edinburgh.
“My dear Sir Robert,
“I had your letter to-day, and am much interested and
affected by its contents. Whatever Lord
Melville’s sentiments had been towards me, I could never
have lost remembrance of the very early friend with whom I carried my satchel
to school, and whose regard I had always considered as one of the happiest
circumstances of my life. I remain of the same opinion respecting the Letters which have occasioned so
much more notice than they would have deserved, had there not been a very
general feeling in this country, and among Lord
Melville’s best friends too, authorizing some public
remonstrances of the kind from some one like myself, who had nothing to win or
to lose—or rather who hazarded losing a great deal in the good opinion of friends whom he was accustomed
not to value only, but to reverence. As to my friend Croker, an adventurer like myself, I would
throw my hat into the ring for love, and give him a bellyful. But I do not feel
there is any call on me to do so, as I could not do it without entering into
particulars, which I have avoided. If I had said, which I might have done,
that, in a recent case, a gentleman, holding an office under the Great Seal of
Scotland, was referred to the English Crown Counsel—who gave their opinion—on
which opinion the Secretary was prepared to act—that he was forcibly to be
pushed from his situation, because he was, from age and malady, not adequate to
its duties; and that by a process of English law, the very name of which was
unknown to us, I would I think have made a strong case. But I care not to enter
into statements to the public, the indirect consequence of which might be
painful to some of our friends. I only venture to hope on that subject, that,
suffering Malachi to go as a misrepresenter, or
calumniator, or what they will, some attention may be paid that such grounds
for calumny and misrepresentation shall not exist in future—I am contented to
be the scape-goat. I remember the late Lord
Melville defending, in a manner that defied refutation, the
Scots laws against sedition, and I have lived to see these repealed, by what
our friend Baron Hume calls ‘a
bill for the better encouragement of sedition and treason.’ It
will last my day probably; at least I shall be too old to be shot, and have
only the honourable chance of being hanged for incivisme. The whole burgher class of Scotland are
gradually preparing for radical reform—I mean the middling and respectable
classes; and when a burgh reform comes, which perhaps cannot long be delayed,
Ministers will not return a member for Scotland from the towns. The gentry will
abide longer by sound principles; for they are needy, and
desire advancement for their sons, and appointments, and so on. But this is a
very hollow dependence, and those who sincerely hold ancient opinions are
waxing old.
“Differing so much as we do on this head, and holding
my own opinion as I would do a point of religious faith, I am sure I ought to
feel the more indebted to Lord
Melville’s kindness and generosity for suffering our
difference to be no breach in our ancient friendship. I shall always feel his
sentiments in this respect as the deepest obligation I owe him; for, perhaps,
there are some passages in Malachi’s epistles that I ought to have moderated. But I
desired to make a strong impression, and speak out, not on the Currency
Question alone, but on the treatment of Scotland generally, the opinion which,
I venture to say, has been long entertained by Lord
Melville’s best friends, though who that had any thing to
hope or fear would have hesitated to state it? So much for my Scottish
feelings—prejudices, if you will; but which were born, and will die with me.
For those I entertain towards Lord Melville personally, I
can only say that I have lost much in my life; but the esteem of an old friend
is that I should regret the most; and I repeat I feel most sensibly the
generosity and kindness so much belonging to his nature, which can forgive that
which has probably been most offensive to him. People may say I have been rash
and inconsiderate; they cannot say I have been either selfish or malevolent—I
have shunned all the sort of popularity attending the discussion; nay, have
refused to distribute the obnoxious letters in a popular form, though urged
from various quarters.
“Adieu, God bless you, my dear Sir Robert. You may send the whole or any part
of this letter if you think proper; I should not wish him to think that I was
sulky about the continuance
of his friendship. I am yours most truly,
Walter Scott.”
To Sir Walter Scott, Bart. [Private and confidential.]
“Admiralty, March 16, 1826. “My dear Scott,
“I have seen Lord
Melville’s and your letters to Sir R. Dundas, and the tone of both of them makes me feel very
anxious to say a confidential word or two to you on the subject. I am not going
to meddle with the politics, which are bad enough in printed letters, but to
endeavour, in the cordiality of a sincere private friendship, to satisfy you
that these differences on speculative points of public policy do not, in this
region, and ought not in yours, to cause any diminution of private intercourse
and regard. Lord Melville certainly felt that his administration of Scottish affairs was sweepingly
attacked, and the rest of the Government were astonished to see the one-pound
note question made a kind of war-cry which might excite serious practical
consequences, and, no doubt, these feelings were expressed pretty strongly, but
it was in the spirit of et tu, Brute! The regard,
the admiration, the love, which we all bear towards you, made the stroke so
much more painful to those who thought it directed at them, but that feeling
was local and temporary; by local I mean that the pain was felt on the spot
where the blow was given—and I hope and believe it was so temporary as to be
already forgotten. I can venture to assure you that it did not at all interfere
with the deep sympathy with which we all heard of the losses you had sustained,
nor would it, I firmly believe, have caused a moment’s hesitation in
doing any thing which might be useful or agreeable to you
if such an opportunity had occurred. However Lord Melville
may have expressed his soreness on what, it must be admitted, was an attack on
him, as being for the last twenty years the minister for Scotland, there is not
a man in the world who would be more glad to have an opportunity of giving you
any mark of his regard; and from the moment we heard of the inconvenience you
suffered, even down to this hour, I do not believe he has had another feeling
towards you privately, than that which you might have expected from his general
good-nature and his particular friendship for you.
“As to myself (if I may
venture to name myself to you), I am so ignorant of Scottish affairs and so
remote from Scottish interest, that you will easily believe that I felt no
personal discomposure from Mr
Malagrowther. What little I know of Scotland you have taught me, and my chief feeling on this subject was wonder that so clever a fellow as M.
M. could entertain opinions so different from those which I
fancied that I had learned from you; but this has nothing to do with our private feelings. If I differed from M.
M. as widely as I do from Mr
M’Culloch, that need not affect my private feelings towards Sir Walter
Scott nor his towards me. He may feel the matter very warmly as
a Scotchman; I can only have a very general, and therefore proportionably faint
interest in the subject; but in either case you and I are not, like Sir Archy and Sir
Callaghan, to quarrel about Sir
Archy’s great grandmother; but I find that I am dwelling
too long on so insignificant a part of the subject as myself. I took up my pen
with the intention of satisfying you as to the feelings of more important
persons, and I shall now quit the topic altogether, with a single remark, that
this letter is strictly confidential, that even Lord
Melville knows nothing of it, and à plus forte raison, no-body else.—Believe me to be, my dear
Scott, most sincerely and affectionately yours,
J. W. Croker.”
To J. W. Croker, Esq., M.P., &c. &c.
Admiralty.
“Abbotsford, 19th March, 1826. “My dear Croker,
“I received your very kind letter with the feelings
it was calculated to excite, those of great affection mixed with pain, which,
indeed, I had already felt and anticipated before taking the step which I knew
you must all feel as awkward, coming from one who has been honoured with so
much personal regard. I need not, I am sure, say, that I acted from nothing but
an honest desire of serving this country. Depend upon it, that if a succession
of violent and experimental changes are made from session to session, with
bills to amend bills, where no want of legislation had been at all felt,
Scotland will, within ten or twenty years, perhaps much sooner, read a more
fearful commentary on poor Malachi’s Epistles than any statesman residing out of the
country, and stranger to the habits and feelings which are entertained here,
can possibly anticipate. My head may be low—I hope it will—before the time
comes. But Scotland, completely liberalized, as she is in a fair way of being,
will be the most dangerous neighbour to England that she has had since 1639.
There is yet time to make a stand, for there is yet a great deal of good and
genuine feeling left in the country. But if you unscotch
us, you will find us damned mischievous Englishmen. The restless and yet
laborious and constantly watchful character of the people, their desire for
speculation in politics or any thing else, only restrained by some proud
feelings about their own country, now become antiquated, and which late
measures will tend much to destroy, will make them, under
a wrong direction, the most formidable revolutionists who ever took the field
of innovation. The late Lord Melville knew
them well, and managed them accordingly. Our friend, the present Lord Melville, with the same sagacity, has not
the same advantages. His high office has kept him much in the south;—and when
he comes down here, it is to mingle with persons who have almost all something
to hope or ask for at his hands.
“But I shall say no more on this subject so far as
politics are concerned, only you will remember the story of the shield, which
was on one side gold, and on the other silver, and which two knights fought
about till they were mutually mortally wounded, each avowing the metal to be
that which he himself witnessed. You see the shield on the golden, I, God
knows, not on the silver side—but in a black, gloomy, and most ominous aspect.
“With respect to your own share in the controversy,
it promised me so great an honour that I laboured under a strong temptation to
throw my hat into the ring, tie my colours to the ropes, cry, Hollo there, Saint Andrew for Scotland! and try
what a good cause might do for a bad, at least an inferior, combatant. But then
I must have brought forward my facts; and, as these must have compromised
friends individually concerned, I felt myself obliged, with regret for
forfeiting some honour, rather to abstain from the contest. Besides, my dear
Croker, I must say, that you sported
too many and too direct personal allusions to myself, not to authorize and even
demand some retaliation dans le meme
genre; and however good-humouredly men begin this sort of
‘sharp encounter of their wits,’ their temper gets the
better of them at last. When I was a cudgel-player, a sport at which I was once
an ugly customer, we used to bar rapping over the knuckles, because it always
ended in breaking heads; the matter may be remedied by baskets in a set-to with oak saplings,
but I know no such defence in the rapier and poinard game of wit. So I thought
it best not to endanger the loss of an old friend for a bad jest, and sit
quietly down with your odd hits, and the discredit which I must count on here
for not repaying them, or trying to do so.
“As for my affairs, which you allude to so kindly, I
can safely say, that no oak ever quitted its withered leaves more easily than I
have done what might be considered as great wealth. I wish to God it were as
easy for me to endure impending misfortunes of a very different kind. You may
have heard that Lockhart’s only
child is very ill, and the delicate
habits of the unfortunate boy have ended in a disease of the spine, which is a
hopeless calamity, and in my daughter’s present situation, may have consequences on
her health terrible for me to anticipate. To add to this, though it needs no
addition—for the poor child’s voice is day and night in my ear—I have,
from a consultation of physicians, a most melancholy account of my wife’s health, the faithful companion of
rough and smooth, weal and wo, for so many years. So if you compare me to
Brutus in the harsher points of his
character, you must also allow me some of his stoical fortitude ‘no man
bears sorrow better.’
“I cannot give you a more absolute assurance of the
uninterrupted regard with which I must always think of you, and the confidence
I repose in your expressions of cordiality, than by entering on details, which
one reluctantly mentions, except to those who are sure to participate in them.
“As for Malachi, I am like poor Jean
Gordon, the prototype of Meg
Merrilees, who was ducked to death at Carlisle for being a
Jacobite, and till she was smothered outright, cried out every time she got her
head above water, Charlieyet. But I have said my
say, and have no wish to give my friends a grain more
offence than is consistent with the discharge of my own feelings, which, I
think, would have choked me if I had not got my breath out. I had better,
perhaps, have saved it to cool my porridge; I have only the prospect of being a
sort of Highland Cassandra. But even
Cassandra tired of her predictions, I
suppose, when she had cried herself hoarse, and disturbed all her friends by
howling in their ears what they were not willing to listen to.
“And so God bless you—and believe, though
circumstances have greatly diminished the chance of our meeting, I have the
same warm sense of your kindness as its uniform tendency has well deserved.
Yours affectionately,
Walter Scott.”
CHAPTER IX. DIARY RESUMED—ABBOTSFORD IN SOLITUDE—DEATH OF SIR A.
DON—REVIEW OF THE LIFE OF KEMBLE, &c.—CONCLUSION
OF WOODSTOCK—DEATH OF LADY SCOTT—CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE BEGUN—APRIL—MAY, 1826.
DIARY.
“Abbotsford, March 15, 9 at night.—The naturally
unpleasant feelings which influenced me in my ejectment, for such it is
virtually, readily evaporated in the course of the journey, though I had no
pleasanter companions than Mrs Mackay the housekeeper and
one of the maids; and I have a shyness of disposition, which looks like pride,
but is not, which makes me awkward in speaking to my household domestics. With
an out-of-doors’ labourer or an old woman gathering sticks I can crack
for ever. I was welcomed here on my arrival by the tumult great of men and
dogs, all happy to see me. One of my old labourers killed by the fall of a
stone working at Gattonside Bridge. Old Will Straiton, my
man of wisdom and proverbs, also dead. He was entertaining from his importance
and self-conceit, but really a sensible old man. When he heard of my
misfortunes, he went to bed, and said he would not rise again, and kept his
word. He was very infirm when I last saw him. Tom
Purdie in great glory, being released from all farm duty, and
destined to attend the woods and be my special assistant.
“March 17.—Sent off a packet
to J. B.; only three pages copy—so must
work hard for a day or two. I wish I could wind up my bottom handsomely (an odd
but accredited phrase); the conclusion will not be luminous; we must try to
make it dashing. Have a good deal to do between hands in sorting up—hourly
arrival of books. I need not have exulted so soon in having attained ease and
quiet. I am robbed of both with a vengeance. A letter from Lockhart. My worst augury is verified; the
medical people think poor Johnnie is
losing strength; he is gone with his mother to Brighton. The bitterness of this
probably impending calamity is extreme. The child was almost too good for this
world; beautiful in features; and though spoiled by every one, having one of
the sweetest tempers as well as the quickest intellect I ever saw; a sense of
humour quite extraordinary in a child, and, owing to the general notice which
was taken of him, a great deal more information than suited his hours. He was
born in the eighth month, and such children are never strong—seldom long-lived.
I look on this side and that, and see nothing but protracted misery, a crippled
frame, and decayed constitution, occupying the attention of his parents for
years, and dying at the end of that period, when their hearts were turned on
him; or the poor child may die before Sophia’s confinement, and that may again be a dangerous
and bad affair; or she may, by increase of attention to him, injure her own
health. In short, to trace into how many branches such a misery may flow is
impossible. The poor dear love had so often a slow fever, that when it pressed
its little lips to mine, I always foreboded to my own heart what all I fear are
now aware of.
“March 18.—Slept
indifferently, and under the
influence of Queen Mab, seldom auspicious
to me. Dreamed of reading the tale of the Prince of the
Black Marble Islands to little Johnnie, extended on a paralytic chair, and yet telling all his
pretty stories about Ha-Papa, as he calls me, and Chiefswood—and waked to think
I should see the little darling no more, or see him as a thing that had better
never have existed. Oh misery, misery, that the best I can wish for him is
early death, with all the wretchedness to his parents that is likely to ensue!
I had intended to have staid at home to-day; but Tom more wisely had resolved that I should walk, and hung about
the window with his axe and my own in his hand till I turned out with him, and
helped to cut some fine paling.
“March 19.—Lady S., the faithful and true companion of my
fortunes, good and bad, for so many years, has, but with difficulty, been
prevailed on to see Dr Abercrombie, and
his opinion is far from favourable. Her asthmatic complaints are fast
terminating in hydropsy, as I have long suspected; yet the announcement of the
truth is overwhelming. They are to stay a little longer in town, to try the
effects of a new medicine. On Wednesday they propose to return hither—a new
affliction, where there was enough before; yet her constitution is so good,
that if she will be guided by advice, things may be yet ameliorated. God grant
it! for really these misfortunes come too close upon each other.
“March 20.—Despatched proofs
and copy this morning; and Swanston the
carpenter coming in, I made a sort of busy idle day of it with altering and
hanging pictures and prints, to find room for those which came from Edinburgh,
and by dint of being on foot from ten to near five, put
all things into apple-pie order. What strange beings we are! The serious duties
I have on hand cannot divert my mind from the most melancholy thoughts; and yet
the talking of these workmen, and the trifling occupation which they give me,
serves to dissipate my attention. The truth is, I fancy that a body under the
impulse of violent motion cannot be stopped or forced back, but may indirectly
be urged into a different channel. In the evening I read and sent off my
sheriff-court processes.
“March 21.—Perused an attack
upon myself, done with as much ability as truth, by no less a man than
Joseph Hume, the night-work man of
the House of Commons, who lives upon petty abuses, and is a very useful man by
so doing. He has had the kindness to say that I am interested in keeping up the
taxes; I wish I had any thing else to do with them than to pay them. But he is
an ass, and not worth a man’s thinking about. Joseph
Hume indeed!—I say Joseph Hum,—and could
add a Swiftian rhyme, but forbear. Busy in unpacking and repacking. I wrote
five pages of Woodstock,
which work begins ‘To appropinque an end.’
“March 23.—Lady Scott arrived yesterday to dinner. She was
better than I expected, but Anne, poor
soul, looked very poorly, and had been much worried with the fatigue and
discomfort of the last week. Lady S. takes the digitalis, and, as she thinks, with advantage, though
the medicine makes her very sick. Yet on the whole, things are better than my
gloomy apprehensions had anticipated. Took a brushing walk, but not till I had
done a good task.
“March 24.—Sent off copy,
proofs, &c., to J. B.; clamorous for
a motto. It is foolish to encourage people to expect such decoraments. It is
like being in the habit of showing feats of strength, which you gain little
praise by accomplishing, while some shame occurs in failure.
“March 26.—Here is a
disagreeable morning, snowing and hailing, with gleams of bright sunshine
between, and all the ground white, and all the air frozen. I don’t like
this jumbling of weather. It is ungenial, and gives chilblains. Besides, with
its whiteness, and its coldness, and its discomfort, it resembles that most
disagreeable of all things, a vain, cold, empty, beautiful woman, who has
neither mind nor heart, but only features like a doll. I do not know what is so
like this disagreeable day, when the sun is so bright, and yet so
uninfluential, that ‘One may gaze upon its beams, Till he is starved with cold.’ No matter, it will serve as well as another day to finish Woodstock. Walked right to the
lake, and coquetted with this disagreeable weather, whereby I catch chilblains
in my fingers, and cold in my head. Fed the swans. Finished Woodstock however, cum tota
sequela of title-page, introduction, &c., and so, as
Dame Fortune says in Quevedo, ‘Go wheel, and may the devil drive thee.’
“March 27.—Another bright
cold day. I answered two modest requests from widow ladies. One, whom I had
already assisted in some law business, on the footing of her having visited my
mother, requested me to write to Mr Peel,
saying, on her authority, that her second son, a youth of infinite merit and
accomplish-ment, was fit for any situation in a public
office, and that I requested he might be provided accordingly. Another widowed
dame, whose claim is having read Marmion and the Lady of the
Lake, besides a promise to read all my other works—Gad, it is a rash
engagement!—demands that I shall either pay L.200 to get her cub into some
place or other, or settle him in a seminary of education. Really this is very
much after the fashion of the husbandman of Miguel
Turra’s requests of Sancho when Governor. ‘Have you any thing else to ask,
honest man?’ quoth Sancho.
But what are the demands of an honest man to those of an honest woman, and she
a widow to boot? I do believe your destitute widow, especially if she hath a
charge of children, and one or two fit for patronage, is one of the most
impudent animals living. Went to Galashiels, and settled the dispute about
Sandie’s Wall.
“March 28.—We have now been
in solitude for some time, myself nearly totally so, excepting at meals. One is
tempted to ask himself, knocking at the door of his own heart, Do you love this
extreme loneliness? I can answer conscientiously, I do.
The love of solitude was with me a passion of early youth; when in my teens, I
used to fly from company to indulge in visions and airy castles of my own, the
disposal of ideal wealth, and the exercise of imaginary power. This feeling
prevailed even till I was eighteen, when love and ambition awakening with other
passions, threw me more into society, from which I have, however, at times
withdrawn myself, and have been always even glad to do so. I have risen from a
feast satiated; and unless it be one or two persons of very strong intellect,
or whose spirits and good-humour amuse me, I wish neither to see the high, the
low, nor the middling class of society. This is a feeling without the least tinge of
misanthropy, which I always consider as a kind of blasphemy of a shocking
description. If God bears with the very worst of us, we may surely endure each
other. If thrown into society, I always have, and always will endeavour to
bring pleasure with me, at least to show willingness to please. But for all
this ‘I had rather live alone,’ and I wish my appointment,
so convenient otherwise, did not require my going to Edinburgh. But this must
be, and in my little lodging I shall be lonely enough. Reading at intervals a
novel called Granby, one of
the class that aspire to describe the actual current of society, whose colours
are so evanescent that it is difficult to fix them on the canvass. It is well
written, but over-laboured—too much attempt to put the reader exactly up to the
thoughts and sentiments of the parties. The women do this better; Edgeworth, Ferrier, Austen, have
all given portraits of real society, far superior to any thing man, vain man,
has produced of the like nature.
“March 29.—Worked in the
morning. Walked from one till half-past four. A fine flashy disagreeable day,
snow-clouds sweeping past among sunshine, driving down the valley, and
whitening the country behind them. Mr
Gibson came suddenly in after dinner. Brought very indifferent
news from Constable’s house. It is
not now hoped that they will pay above three or four shillings in the pound.
Robinson supposed not to be much
better. Mr G. goes to London immediately, to sell Woodstock. This work may fail
perhaps, though better than some of its predecessors. If so, we must try some
new manner. I think I could catch the dogs yet. A beautiful and perfect lunar
rainbow to-night.
“April 1.—Ex uno die disce omnes.—Rose at seven or
sooner, studied and wrote till breakfast, with
Anne, about a quarter before ten.
Lady Scott seldom able to rise till
twelve or one. Then I write or study again till one. At that hour to-day I
drove to Huntly-Burn, and walked home by one of the hundred and one pleasing
paths which I have made through the woods I have planted—now chatting with
Tom Purdie, who carries my plaid and
speaks when he pleases, telling long stories of hits and misses in shooting
twenty years back—sometimes chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy—and
sometimes attending to the humours of two curious little terriers of the
Dandie Dinmont breed, together with a
noble wolf-hound puppy which Glengarry
has given me to replace Maida. This brings me down
to the very moment I do tell—the rest is prophetic. I shall feel drowsy when
this book is locked, and perhaps sleep until Dalgliesh brings the dinner summons. Then I shall have a chat
with Lady S. and Anne; some broth or soup, a slice of plain meat and man’s
chief business, in Dr Johnson’s
estimation, is briefly despatched. Half an hour with my family, and half an
hour’s coquetting with a cigar, a tumbler of weak whisky and water, and a
novel perhaps, lead on to tea, which sometimes consumes another half hour of
chat; then write and read in my own room till ten o’clock at night; a
little bread, and then a glass of porter, and to bed: and this, very rarely
varied by a visit from some one, is the tenor of my daily life—and a very
pleasant one indeed, were it not for apprehensions about Lady
S. and poor Johnnie Hugh.
The former will, I think, do well; for the latter—I fear—I fear—
“April 2.—I am in a wayward
humour this morning. I received yesterday the last proof-sheets of Woodstock, and I ought to
correct them. Now, this ought sounds as like as possible
to must, and must I cannot abide.
I would go to Prester John’s country of free good-will,
sooner than I would must it to Edinburgh. Yet this is all folly, and silly
folly too; and so must shall be for once obeyed after I have thus written myself out of my aversion to
its peremptory sound.—Corrected the said proofs till twelve o’clock—when
I think I will treat resolution, not to a dram, as the fellow said after he had
passed the gin-shop, but to a walk, the rather that my eyesight is somewhat
uncertain and wavering.
“April 3.—I have the
extraordinary and gratifying news that Woodstock is sold for L.8228; all ready
money—a matchless sale for less than three months’ work.* If Napoleon does as well, or near
it, it will put the trust affairs in high flourish. Four or five years of
leisure and industry would, with such success, amply replace my losses. I have
a curious fancy; I will go set two or three acorns, and judge by their success
in growing whether I shall succeed in clearing my way or not. I have a little
toothach keeps me from working much to-day, besides I sent off, per Blucher,
copy for Napoleon, as well as the d——d proofs. A
blank forenoon!—But how could I help it, Madam Duty? I was not lazy; on my soul
I was not. I did not cry for half holiday for the sale of Woodstock. But in came Colonel
Ferguson with Mrs Stewart of Blackhill, or
hall, or some thing, and I must show her the garden, pictures, &c. This
lasts till one; and just as they are at their lunch, and about to go off, guard
is relieved by the Laird and Lady Harden, and Miss
Eliza Scott—and my dear Chief, whom I love very much, proving a
little obsidional or so, remains till three. That same crown, composed of
* The reader will understand that, the Novel being
sold for the behoof of James
Ballantyne and Company’s creditors, this sum
includes the cost of printing the first edition, as well as paper.
the grass which grew on the walls of besieged places,
should be offered to visiters who stay above an hour in any eident*
person’s house. Wrote letters this evening.
“April 4.—Wrote two pages in
the morning. Then went to Ashestiel with Colonel
Ferguson. Found my cousin Russell settled kindly to his gardening, &c. He seems to
have brought home with him the enviable talent of being interested and happy in
his own place. Ashestiel looks waste I think at this time of the year, but is a
beautiful place in summer, where I passed some happy years. Did I ever pass
unhappy years any where? None that I remember, save those at the High School,
which I thoroughly detested on account of the confinement. I disliked serving
in my father’s office, too, from the same hatred to restraint. In other
respects, I have had unhappy days, unhappy weeks—even, on one or two occasions,
unhappy months; but Fortune’s finger has never been able to play a dirge
on me for a quarter of a year together. I am sorry to see the Peel-wood and
other natural coppice decaying and abridged about Ashestiel— ‘The horrid plough has razed the green, Where once my children play’d; The axe has fell’d the hawthorn screen, The schoolboy’s summer shade.’†
“There was a very romantic pasturage, called the
Cow-park, which I was particularly attached to, from its wild and sequestered
character. Having been part of an old wood which had been cut down, it was full
of copse—hazel, and oak, and all sorts of young trees, irregularly scattered
over fine pasturage, and affording a hundred intricacies so delicious to the
eye and the ima-
* Eident, i. e. eagerly
diligent.
† These lines are slightly altered from
Logan.
gination. But some misjudging
friend had cut down and cleared away without mercy, and divided the varied and
sylvan scene (which was divided by a little rivulet) into the two most formal
things in the world—a thriving plantation, many-angled,
as usual—and a park laid down in grass, wanting,
therefore, the rich graminivorous variety which Nature gives her carpet, and
showing instead a braid of six days’ growth—lean and hungry growth too—of
rye-grass and clover. As for the rill, it stagnates in a deep square ditch,
which silences its prattle, and restrains its meanders with a witness. The
original scene was, of course, imprinted still deeper on Russell’s mind than mine, and I was glad
to see he was intensely sorry for the change.
“April 5.—Rose late in the
morning to give the cold and toothach time to make themselves scarce, which
they have obligingly done. Yesterday every tooth on the right side of my head
was absolutely waltzing. I would have drawn by the half-dozen, but country
dentists are not to be lippened* to. To-day all is quietness, but a little
stiffness and swelling in the jaw. Worked a fair task; dined, and read
Clapperton’sjourney and Denman’s into Bornou. Very entertaining,
and less botheration about mineralogy, botany, and so forth, than usual. Pity
Africa picks off so many brave men, however. Work again in the evening.
“April 6.—Wrote in the
morning. Went at one to Huntly-Burn, where I had the great pleasure to hear,
through a letter from Sir Adam, that
Sophia was in health, and Johnnie gaining strength. It is a fine
exchange from deep and aching uncertainty on so interesting a subject to the
little spitfire feeling of ‘well,
* Lippened—i.
e. relied upon.
but they might have taken the trouble to write;’
but so wretched a correspondent as myself has not much to say, so I will but
grumble sufficiently to maintain the patriarchal dignity. I returned in time to
work, and to have a shoal of things from J.
B. Among others, a letter from an Irish lady, who, for the
beaux yeux which I shall
never look upon, desires I may forthwith send her all the Waverley Novels, which she assures me
will be an era in her life. She may find out some other
epocha.
“April 7.—Made out my
morning’s task at one drove to Chiefswood, and walked home by the
Rhymer’s Glen, Mar’s Lee, and Haxell-Cleugh. Took me three hours.
The heath gets somewhat heavier for me every year—but never mind, I like it
altogether as well as the day I could tread it best. The plantations are
getting all into green leaf, especially the larches, if theirs may be called
leaves, which are only a sort of hair. As I returned, there was, in the
phraseology of that most precise of prigs in a white collarless coat and
chapeau bras, Mister Commissary ******, ‘a rather
dense inspissation of rain.’ Diel care. ‘Lord, who would live turmoiled in the Court, And may enjoy such quiet walks as these?’ * Yet misfortune comes our way too. Poor Laidlaw lost a fine prattling child of five years old
yesterday. It is odd enough—John, the Kentish Esquire, has
just made the ejaculation which I adopted in the last page, when he kills
Cade, and posts away up to Court to
get the price set upon his head. Here is a letter come from Lockhart, full of Court news, and all sorts of
news. He erroneously supposes that I think of applying to Ministers about
Charles. I would not make such an
* 2d King Henry
VI. Act. IV. Scene 10.
application for millions; I think
if I were to ask patronage it would not be through them, for some time at
least, and I might have better access.*
“April 8.—We expect a raid of folks to visit us this morning, whom we must
have dined before our misfortunes. Save time, wine, and
money these misfortunes—and so far are convenient things. Besides, there is a
dignity about them when they come only like the gout in its mildest shape, to
authorize diet and retirement, the night-gown and the velvet shoe; when the one
comes to chalk-stones, and you go to prison through the other, it is the devil.
Or compare the effects of Sieur Gout and absolute poverty upon the stomach—the
necessity of a bottle of laudanum in the one case, the want of a morsel of meat
in the other. Laidlaw’s infant
which died on Wednesday is buried to-day. The people coming to visit prevent my
going, and I am glad of it. I hate funerals—always did. There is such a mixture
of mummery with real grief—the actual mourner perhaps heart-broken, and all the
rest making solemn faces, and whispering observations on the weather and public
news, and here and there a greedy fellow enjoying the cake and wine. To me it
is a farce of most tragical mirth, and I am not sorry (like Provost Coulter†) but glad that I shall
not see my own. This is a most unfilial tendency of mine, for my father
absolutely loved a funeral; and as he was a man of a fine presence, and looked
the mourner well, he was asked to every interment of distinction. He seemed to
preserve the list of a whole bead-roll of cousins, merely for the pleasure of
being at their funerals, which he was often asked to superintend, and I suspect
had sometimes
* In a letter of the same day he says—“My
interest, as you might have known, lies Windsor-way.”
† See ante, vol. ii. p.
269.
to pay for. He carried me with him as often as he could
to these mortuary ceremonies; but feeling I was not, like him, either useful or
ornamental, I escaped as often as I could. I saw the poor child’s funeral
from a distance. Ah, that Distance! What a magician for
conjuring up scenes of joy or sorrow, smoothing all asperities, reconciling all
incongruities, veiling all absurdities, softening every coarseness, doubling
every effect by the influence of the imagination. A Scottish wedding should be
seen at a distance—the gay band of dancers just distinguished amid the elderly
group of the spectators—the glass held high, and the distant cheers as it is
swallowed, should be only a sketch, not a finished Dutch picture, when it
becomes brutal and boorish. Scotch psalmody, too, should be heard from a
distance. The grunt and the snivel, and the whine and the scream, should all be
blended in that deep and distant sound, which, rising and falling like the
Eolian harp, may have some title to be called the praise of one’s Maker.
Even so the distant funeral—the few mourners on horseback, with their plaids
wrapped around them—the father heading the procession as they enter the river,
and pointing out the ford by which his darling is to be carried on the last
long road—none of the subordinate figures in discord with the general tone of
the incident—but seeming just accessions, and no more—this is affecting.
“April 12.—I have finished my
task this morning at half-past eleven—easily and early
and, I think, not amiss. I hope J. B.
will make some great points of admiration!!!—otherwise I shall be disappointed.
If this work answers—if it but answers, it must set us
on our legs; I am sure worse trumpery of mine has had a great run. I remember
with what great difficulty I was brought to think myself something better than
common, and now I will not in mere
faintness of heart give up good hopes.
“April 13.—On my return from
my walk yesterday I learnt with great concern the death of my old friend,
Sir Alexander Don. He cannot have been
above six or seven-and-forty. Without being much together, we had, considering
our different habits, lived in much friendship, and I sincerely regret his
death. His habits were those of a gay man, much connected with the turf; but he
possessed strong natural parts, and in particular few men could speak better in
public when he chose. He had tact, with power of sarcasm, and that
indescribable something which marks the gentleman. His manners in society were
extremely pleasing, and as he had a taste for literature and the fine arts,
there were few more agreeable companions, besides being a highly-spirited,
steady, and honourable man. His indolence prevented his turning these good
parts towards acquiring the distinction he might have attained. He was among
the detenus whom Buonaparte’s iniquitous commands confined
so long in France; and coming into possession of a large estate in right of his
mother, the heiress of the
Glencairn family, he had the means of being very
expensive, and probably then acquired those gay habits which rendered him
averse to serious business. Being our member for Roxburghshire, his death will
make a stir amongst us. I prophesy Hardenwill be here, to talk about
starting his son Henry.—Accordingly the
Laird and Lady called. I exhorted him to write instantly. There can be no
objection to Henry Scott for birth, fortune, or political
principles; and I do not see where we could get a better representative.
“April 15.—Received last
night letters from Sir John Scott Douglas, and Sir William Elliot of Stobbs, both canvassing
for the county. Young Harry’s the lad
for me. Poor Don died of a disease in the
heart; the body was opened, which was very right. Odd enough, too, to have a
man, probably a friend two days before, slashing at one’s heart as it
were a bullock’s. I had a letter yesterday from John Gibson. The House of Longman and Co. guarantee the sale of Woodstock. Also I made up what
was due of my task both for 13th and 14th. So hey for a Swiftianism—
I loll in my chair, And around me I stare, With a critical air, Like a calf at a fair; And, say I, Mrs Duty, Good morrow to your beauty, I kiss your sweet shoe-tie, And hope I can suit ye.
“Fair words butter no parsnips, says Duty;
don’t keep talking, then, but go to your work again. Here is a
day’s task before you the siege of Toulon. Call you that a task? d—me,
I’ll write it as fast as Boney
carried it on.
“April 16.—I am now far
a-head with Nap. Lady Scott seems to make no way. A sad prospect!
In the evening a despatch from Lord
Melville, written with all the familiarity of former times. I am
very glad of it.
“Jedburgh, April 17.—Came
over to Jedburgh this morning, to breakfast with my good old friend Mr Shortreed, and had my usual warm reception.
Lord Gillies held the Circuit Court,
and there was no criminal trial for any offence whatever. I have attended these
circuits with tolerable regularity since 1792, and though there is seldom much of importance to be
done, yet I never remember before the Porteous roll being quite blank. The
judge was presented with a pair of white gloves, in consideration of its being
a maiden circuit.
“Received L.100 from John Lockhart, for review of Pepys; but this is by far too much—L.50 is plenty. Still
‘I must impeticoat the gratuity’*
for the present. Wrote a great many letters. Dined with the Judge, where I met
the disappointed candidate, Sir J. S.
D., who took my excuse like a gentleman.
“April 18.—This morning I go
down to Kelso to poor Don’s funeral.
It is, I suppose, forty years since I saw him first. I was staying at Sydenham,
a lad of fourteen, or by’r Lady some sixteen; and he, a boy of six or
seven, was brought to visit me on a pony, a groom holding the leading rein—and
now I, an old grey man, am going to lay him in his grave. Sad work. The very
road I go, is a road of grave recollections.
“Abbotsford, April
19.—Returned last night from the house of death and mourning to my own, now the
habitation of sickness and anxious apprehension. The result cannot yet be
judged. Two melancholy things last night. I left my pallet in our family
apartment, to make way for a female attendant, and removed to a dressing-room
adjoining, when to return, or whether ever, God only can tell. Also my servant
cut my hair, which used to be poor Charlotte’s personal task. I hope she will not observe
it. The funeral yesterday was very mournful; about fifty persons present, and
all seemed affected. The domestics in particular were very much so. Sir Alexander was a kind, though an exact
master. It was
* Twelfth
Night, Act II. Sc. 3.
melancholy to see those apartments, where I have so often
seen him play the graceful and kind landlord, filled with those who were to
carry him to his long home. There was very little talk of the election, at
least till the funeral was over.
“April 20.—Another death;
Thomas Riddell, younger of Camiston,
serjeant-major of the Edinburgh Troop in the sunny days of our yeomanry, and a
very good fellow.—The day was so tempting that I went out with Tom Purdie to cut some trees, the rather that
my task was very well advanced. He led me into the wood, as the blind King of
Bohemia was led by his four knights into the thick of the battle at Agincourt
or Cressy, and then, like the old king, ‘I struck good strokes more
than one,’ which is manly exercise.
“April 24.—Good news from
Brighton. Sophia is confined, and both
she and her baby are doing well, and the child’s name is announced to be
Walter, a favourite name in our
family, and I trust of no bad omen. Yet it is no charm for life. Of my
father’s family, I was the second Walter, if not the
third. I am glad the name came my way, for it was borne by my father,
great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather; also by the grandsire of that
last named venerable person, who was the first
laird of Raeburn. Hurst
and Robinson, the Yorkshire tykes, have
failed, after all their swaggering. But if Woodstock and Napoleon take with the public I shall care
little about their insolvency; and if they do not, I don’t think their
solvency would have lasted long. Constable is sorely broken down. ‘Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart That’s sorry yet for thee.’ His conduct has not been what I deserved at his hand, but I believe that, walking blindfold himself, he
misled me without malice prepense. It
is best to think so at least, until the contrary be demonstrated. To nourish
angry passions against a man whom I really liked, would be to lay a blister on
my own heart.
“April 27.—This is one of
those abominable April mornings which deserve the name of Sans Cullotides, as being cold, beggarly, coarse, savage, and
intrusive. The earth lies an inch deep with snow, to the confusion of the
worshippers of Flora. It is as imprudent to attach yourself to flowers in
Scotland as to a caged bird; the cat, sooner or later, snaps up the one, and
these Sans Cullotides annihilate the other. It was but
yesterday I was admiring the glorious flourish of the pears and apricots, and
now hath come the ‘killing frost.’ But let it freeze without, we
are comfortable within. Lady Scott continues
better, and, we may hope, has got the turn of her disease.
“April 28.—Beautiful morning,
but ice as thick as pasteboard, too surely showing that the night has made good
yesterday’s threat. Dalgliesh,
with his most melancholy face, conveys the most doleful tidings from Bogie. But
servants are fond of the woful, it gives such consequence to the person who
communicates bad news. Wrote two letters, and read till twelve, and now for a
stout walk among the plantations till four.—Found Lady
Scott obviously better, I think, than I had left her in the
morning. In walking I am like a spavined horse, and heat as I get on. The
flourishing plantations around me are a great argument for me to labour hard.
‘Barbarus has segetes?’ I will
write my finger-ends off first.
“April 29.—I was always
afraid, privately, that Woodstock would not stand the
test. In that case my fate would have been that of the unfortunate minstrel and
trumpeter Maclean at the battle of Sheriffmuir ‘Through misfortune he happened to fa’, man, But saving his neck His trumpet did break, And came off without music at a’, man.’”
J. B. corroborated my doubts by his
raven-like croaking and criticizing; but the good fellow writes me this morning
that he is written down an ass, and that the approbation is unanimous. It is
but Edinburgh, to be sure; but Edinburgh has always been a harder critic than
London. It is a great mercy, and gives encouragement for future exertion.
Having written two leaves this morning, I think I will turn out to my walk,
though two hours earlier than usual. Egad, I could not persuade myself that it
was such bad Balaam,† after all.
“May 2.—Yesterday was a
splendid May-day today seems inclined to be soft, as we
call it; but tant mieux. Yesterday
had a twang of frost in it. I must get to work and finish Boaden’sLife of Kemble, and Kelly’sReminiscences, for the Quarterly.‡—I wrote and
read for three hours, and then walked, the day being soft and delightful; but,
alas, all my walks are lonely from the absence of my poor companion. She does
not suffer, thank God, but strength must fail at last. Since Sunday there has
been a gradual change—very gradual—but,
* Hogg’sJacobite
Relics, vol. ii. p. 5.
† Balaam is the cant
name in a newspaper office for Asinine paragraphs, about monstrous
productions of nature and the like, kept standing in type to be used
whenever the real news of the day leave an awkward space that must be
filled up somehow.
‡ See Miscellaneous Prose
Works, vol. xx. pp. 152-244.
alas, to the worse. My hopes are
almost gone. But I am determined to stand this grief as I have done others.
“May 4.—On visiting Lady Scott’s sick-room this morning I found
her suffering, and I doubt if she knew me. Yet, after breakfast, she seemed
serene and composed. The worst is, she will not speak out about the symptoms
under which she labours. Sad, sad work; I am under the most melancholy
apprehension, for what constitution can hold out under these continued and
wasting attacks. My niece, Anne Scott, a
prudent, sensible, and kind young woman, arrived to-day, having come down to
assist us in our distress from so far as Cheltenham. This is a great
consolation. Henry Scott carries the county
without opposition.
“May 6.—The same scene of
hopeless (almost) and unavailing anxiety. Still welcoming me with a smile, and
asserting she is better. I fear the disease is too deeply entwined with the
principles of life. Still labouring at this Review, without heart or spirits to finish
it. I am a tolerable Stoic, but preach to myself in vain. ‘Are these things then necessities? Then let us meet them like necessities.’*
“May 7.—Hammered on at the
Review till my backbone
ached. But I believe it was a nervous affection, for a walk cured it. Sir Adam and the Colonel dined here. So I spent the evening as pleasantly as I
well could, considering I am so soon to go like a stranger to the town of which
I have been so long a citizen, and leave my wife lingering, without prospect of
recovery, under the charge of two poor girls. Talia
cogit dura necessitas.
* 2l King Henry
VI., Act III. Scene 1.
“May 8.—I went over to the
election at Jedburgh. There was a numerous meeting; the Whigs, who did not
bring ten men to the meeting, of course took the whole matter under their
patronage, which was much of a piece with the Blue Bottle drawing the carriage.
To see the difference of modern times! We had a good dinner, and excellent
wine; and I had ordered my carriage at half-past seven, almost ashamed to start
so soon. Every body dispersed at so early an hour, however, that when Henry had left the chair, there was no carriage
for me, and Peter proved his accuracy by
showing me it was but a quarter past seven. In the days that I remember they
would have kept it up till day-light; nor do I think poor Don would have left the chair before midnight.
Well, there is a medium. Without being a veteran Vice, a grey Iniquity, like
Falstaff, I think an occasional
jolly-bout, if not carried to excess, improved society; men were put into good
humour; when the good wine did its good office, the jest, the song, the speech,
had double effect; men were happy for the night, and better friends ever after,
because they had been so.
“May 11.—
Der Abschied’s tag est da, Schwer liegt es auf den herzen—schwer.’*
“Charlotte was
unable to take leave of me, being in a sound sleep, after a very indifferent
night. Perhaps it was as well. Emotion might have hurt her; and nothing I could
have expressed would have been worth the risk. I have foreseen, for two years
and more, that this menaced event could not be far distant. I have seen
plainly,
* This is the opening couplet of a German
trooper’s song, alluded to, ante—vol. i.
p. 294. The literal translation is The day of departure is come, Heavy lies it on the hearts heavy.
within the last two months, that
recovery was hopeless. And yet to part with the companion of twenty-nine years
when so very ill—that I did not, could not foresee. It withers my heart to
think of it, and to recollect that I can hardly hope again to seek confidence
and counsel from that ear to which all might be safely confided. But in her
present lethargic state, what would my attendance have availed—and Anne has promised close and constant
intelligence. I must dine with James
Ballantyne to-day en
famille. I cannot help it; but would rather be at home and
alone. However, I can go out too. I will not yield to the barren sense of
hopelessness which struggles to invade me.
“Edinburgh—Mrs Brown’s
lodgings, North St David Street—May 12.—I passed a pleasant day with
kind J. B., which was a great relief
from the black dog, which would have worried me at home. He was quite alone.
“Well, here I am in Arden. And I may say with
Touchstone, ‘When I was at
home I was in a better place;’* I must, when there is occasion,
draw to my own Bailie Nicol Jarvie’s
consolation ‘One cannot carry the comforts of the Saut-Market about
with one.’ Were I at ease in mind, I think the body is very well
cared for. Only one other lodger in the house, a Mr
Shandy—a clergyman; and, despite his name, said to be a quiet one.
“May 13.—The projected
measure against the Scottish bank-notes has been abandoned. Malachi might clap his wings upon this, but,
alas! domestic anxiety has cut his comb. I think very lightly in general of
praise; it costs men nothing, and is usually only lip-salve. Some praise,
however, and from some people, does at once de-
* As You Like
it, Act I. Scene 4.
light and strengthen the mind; and I insert in this place
the quotation with which Ld. C. Baron
Shepherd concluded a letter concerning me to the Chief
Commissioner:—“Magna etiam illa
laus, et admirabilis videri solet, tulisse casus sapienter
adversos, non fractum esse fortuna, retinuisse in rebus asperis
dignitatem.”* I record these words, not as
meriting the high praise they imply, but to remind me that such an opinion
being partially entertained of me by a man of a character so eminent, it
becomes me to make my conduct approach as much as possible to the standard at
which he rates it. As I must pay some cash in London, I have borrowed from
Mr Alexander Ballantyne the sum of
L.500. If God should call me before next November, when my note falls due, I
request my son Walter will, in reverence
to my memory, see that Mr Alexander Ballantyne does not
suffer for having obliged me in a sort of exigency—e cannot afford it, and God
has given my son the means to repay him.
“May 14.—A fair good morrow
to you Mr Sun, who are shining so brightly on these dull walls. Methinks you
look as if you were looking as bright on the banks of the Tweed; but look where
you will, Sir Sun, you look upon sorrow and suffering. Hogg was here yesterday in danger, from having
obtained an accommodation of L.100 from James
Ballantyne, which he is now obliged to repay. I am unable to
help the poor fellow, being obliged to borrow myself. But I long ago
remonstrated against the transaction at all, and gave him L.50 out of my pocket
to avoid granting the accommodation, but it did no good.
“May 15.—Received the
melancholy intelligence that all is over at Abbotsford.
* Cicero, de Orat. ii. 346.
“Abbotsford, May 16.—She died
at nine in the morning, after being very ill for two days easy at last. I
arrived here late last night. Anne is
worn out, and has had hysterics, which returned on my arrival. Her broken
accents were like those of a child, the language as well as the tones broken,
but in the most gentle voice of submission. ‘Poor mamma—never return
again—gone for ever a better place.’ Then, when she came to
herself, she spoke with sense, freedom, and strength of mind, till her weakness
returned. It would have been inexpressibly moving to me as a stranger—what was
it then to the father and the husband? For myself, I scarce know how I feel,
sometimes as firm as the Bass Rock, sometimes as weak as the water that breaks
on it. I am as alert at thinking and deciding as I ever was in my life. Yet,
when I contrast what this place now is, with what it has been not long since, I
think my heart will break. Lonely, aged, deprived of my family—all but poor
Anne; an impoverished, an embarrassed man, deprived of
the sharer of my thoughts and counsels, who could always talk down my sense of
the calamitous apprehensions which break the heart that must bear them
alone.—Even her foibles were of service to me, by giving me things to think of
beyond my weary self-reflections.
“I have seen her. The figure I beheld is, and is not
my Charlotte—my thirty years’
companion. There is the same symmetry of form, though those limbs are rigid
which were once so gracefully elastic—but that yellow masque, with pinched
features, which seems to mock life rather than emulate it, can it be the face
that was once so full of lively expression? I will not look on it again.
Anne thinks her little changed,
because the latest idea she had formed of her mother is as she appeared under
circumstances of extreme pain. Mine go back to a period
of comparative ease. If I write long in this way, I shall write down my
resolution, which I should rather write up, if I could. I wonder how I shall do
with the large portion of thoughts which were hers for thirty years. I suspect
they will be hers yet for a long time at least. But I will not blaze cambric
and crape in the public eye, like a disconsolate widower, that most affected of
all characters.
“May 17.—Last night Anne, after conversing with apparent ease,
dropped suddenly down as she rose from the supper-table, and lay six or seven
minutes, as if dead. Clarkson, however,
has no fear of these affections.
“May 18.—Another day, and a
bright one to the external world, again opens on us; the air soft, and the
flowers smiling, and the leaves glittering. They cannot refresh her to whom
mild weather was a natural enjoyment. Cerements of lead and of wood already
hold her; cold earth must have her soon. But it is not my Charlotte, it is not the bride of my youth, the
mother of my children, that will be laid among the ruins of Dryburgh, which we
have so often visited in gaiety and pastime. No, no. She is sentient and
conscious of my emotions somewhere—somehow; where we
cannot tell; how we cannot tell; yet would I not at this
moment renounce the mysterious yet certain hope that I shall see her in a
better world, for all that this world can give me. The necessity of this
separation, that necessity which rendered it even a relief, that and patience
must be my comfort. I do not experience those paroxysms of grief which others
do on the same occasion. I can exert myself, and speak even cheerfully with the
poor girls. But alone, or if any thing touches me, the choking sensation. I
have been to her room; there was
no voice in it—no stirring; the pressure of the coffin was visible on the bed,
but it had been removed elsewhere; all was neat, as she loved it, but all was
calm—calm as death. I remembered the last sight of her; she raised herself in
bed, and tried to turn her eyes after me, and said, with a sort of smile,
‘You all have such melancholy faces.’ These were the
last words I ever heard her utter, and I hurried away, for she did not seem
quite conscious of what she said—when I returned, immediately departing, she
was in a deep sleep. It is deeper now. This was but seven days since.
“They are arranging the chamber of death; that which
was long the apartment of connubial happiness, and of whose arrangements
(better than in richer houses) she was so proud. They are treading fast and
thick. For weeks you could have heard a foot-fall. Oh, my God!
“May 19.—Anne, poor love, is ill with her exertions and
agitation—cannot walk—and is still hysterical, though less so. I ordered
flesh-brush and tepid bath, which I think will bring her about. We speak freely
of her whom we have lost, and mix her name with our ordinary conversation. This
is the rule of nature. All primitive people speak of their dead, and I think
virtuously and wisely. The idea of blotting the names of those who are gone out
of the language and familiar discourse of those to whom they were dearest, is
one of the rules of ultra-civilisation which, in so many instances, strangle
natural feeling by way of avoiding a painful sensation. The Highlanders speak
of their dead children as freely as of their living members; how poor
Colin or Robert would have acted
in such or such a situation. It is a generous and manly tone of feeling; and, so far as it may be adopted without affectation or
contradicting the general habits of society, I reckon on observing it.
“May 20.—To-night, I trust,
will bring Charles or Lockhart, or both; at least I must hear from
them. A letter from Violet Lockhart gave
us the painful intelligence that she had not mentioned to Sophia the dangerous state in which her mother
was. Most kindly meant, but certainly not so well judged. I have always thought
that truth, even when painful, is a great duty on such occasions, and it is
seldom that concealment is justifiable. Sophia’s baby was christened on Sunday 14th May, at
Brighton, by the name of Walter Scott. May God give him
life and health to wear it with credit to himself and those belonging to him.
Melancholy to think that the next morning after this ceremony deprived him of
so near a relation!
“May 21.—Our sad preparations
for to-morrow continue. A letter from Lockhart; doubtful if Sophia’s health will let him be here. If things permit he
comes to-night. From Charles not a word;
but I think I may expect him. I wish to-morrow were over; not that I fear it,
for my nerves are pretty good, but it will be a day of many recollections.
“May 22.—Charles arrived last night, much affected, of
course. Anne had a return of her
fainting-fits on seeing him, and again upon seeing Mr Ramsay,* the gentleman who performs the service. I heard him
do so with the utmost propriety for my late friend, Lady
* The Rev. E.
B. Ramsay, A.M. Oxon. of the Scottish Episcopal Communion,
St John’s Chapel, Edinburgh.
Alvanley,* the arrangement of whose funeral
devolved upon me. How little I could guess when, where, and with respect to
whom I should next hear those solemn words. Well, I am not apt to shrink from
that which is my duty, merely because it is painful; but I wish this day over.
A kind of cloud of stupidity hangs about me, as if all were unreal that men
seem to be doing and talking about——
“May 23.—About an hour before
the mournful ceremony of yesterday, Walter arrived, having travelled express from Ireland on
receiving the news. He was much affected, poor fellow, and no wonder. Poor
Charlotte nursed him, and perhaps for
that reason she was over partial to him. The whole scene floats as a sort of
dream before me—the beautiful day, the grey ruins covered and hidden among
clouds of foliage and flourish, where the grave, even in the lap of beauty, lay
lurking and gaped for its prey. Then the grave looks, the hasty important
bustle of men with spades and mattocks the train of carriages—the coffin
containing the creature that was so long the dearest on earth to me, and whom I
was to consign to the very spot which in pleasure-parties we so frequently
visited. It seems still as if this could not be really so. But it is so—and
duty to God and to my children must teach me patience. Poor Anne has had longer fits since our arrival
from Dryburgh than before, but yesterday was the crisis. She desired to hear
prayers read by Mr Ramsay, who performed
the duty in the most solemn manner. But her strength could not carry it
through. She fainted before the service was concluded.
“May 24.—Slept wretchedly, or
rather waked wretch-
* Lady Alvanley
died at Edinburgh, 17th January, 1825—and was buried in the chapel of
Holyrood.
edly all night, and was very sick and bilious in
consequence, and scarce able to hold up my head with pain. A walk, however,
with my sons did me a deal of good; indeed their society is the greatest
support the world can afford me. Their ideas of every thing are so just and
honourable, kind towards their sisters, and affectionate to me, that I must be
grateful to God for sparing them to me, and continue to battle with the world
for their sakes, if not for my own.
“May 25.—I had sound sleep
to-night, and waked with little or nothing of the strange dreamy feeling, which
had made me for some days feel like one bewildered in a country where mist or
snow has disguised those features of the landscape which are best known to him.
This evening Walter left us, being
anxious to return to his wife as well as to his regiment.
“May 26.—A rough morning
makes me think of St George’s Channel, which Walter must cross to-night or to-morrow to get to Athlone. The
wind is almost due east, however, and the Channel at the narrowest point
between Port-Patrick and Donaghadee. His absence is a great blank in our
circle, especially I think to his sister Anne, to whom he shows invariably much kindness. But indeed
they do so without exception, each towards the other; and in weal or wo, have
shown themselves a family of love. I will go to town on Monday and resume my
labours. Being now of a grave nature, they cannot go against the general temper
of my feelings, and in other respects the exertion, as far as I am concerned,
will do me good; besides, I must re-establish my fortune for the sake of the
children, and of my own character. I have not leisure to indulge the disabling
and discouraging thoughts that press on me. Were an enemy coming upon my house, would I not do
my best to fight, although oppressed in spirits, and shall a similar
despondency prevent me from mental exertion? It shall not, by Heaven! This day
and to-morrow I give to the currency of the ideas which have of late occupied
my mind, and with Monday they shall be mingled at least with other thoughts and
cares.—Last night Charles and I walked
late on the terrace at Kæside, when the clouds seemed accumulating in the
wildest masses both on the Eildon Hills and other mountains in the distance.
This rough morning reads the riddle. Dull, drooping, cheerless, has this day
been. I cared not to carrying my own gloom to the girls, and so sate in my own
room, dawdling with old papers, which awakened as many stings as if they had
been the nest of fifty scorpions. Then the solitude seemed so absolute—my poor
Charlotte would have been in the room
half-a-score of times to see if the fire burned, and to ask a hundred kind
questions. Well, that is over and if it cannot be forgotten, must be remembered
with patience.
“May 27.—A sleepless night.
It is true, I should be up and be doing, and a sleepless night sometimes
furnishes good ideas. Alas! I have no companion now with whom I can communicate
to relieve the loneliness of these watches of the night. But I must not fail
myself and my family—and the necessity of exertion becomes apparent. I must try
a hors d’œuvre, something
that can go on between the necessary intervals of Nap. Mrs Murray
Keith’sTale
of the Deserter, with her interview with the lad’s mother, may
be made most affecting, but will hardly endure much expansion.* The framework
may be a Highland tour, under the guardianship
* The Highland
Widow. Waverley Novels, vol. xli.
of the sort of postilion whom Mrs M.
K. described to me—a species of conducteur who regulated the motions of his company,
made their halts, and was their Cicerone.
“May 28.—I wrote a few pages
yesterday, and then walked. I believe the description of the old Scottish lady
may do, but the change has been unceasingly rung upon Scottish subjects of
late, and it strikes me that the introductory matter may be considered as an
imitation of Washington Irving—yet not
so neither. In short, I will go on. To-day make a dozen of close pages ready,
and take J. B.’s advice. I intend
the work as an olla podrida, into which any odds and
ends of narrative or description may be thrown. I wrote easily. I think the
exertion has done me good. I slept sound last night, and at waking, as is usual
with me, I found I had some clear views and thoughts upon the subject of this
trifling work. I wonder if others find so strongly as I do the truth of the
Latin proverb, Aurora musis amica.
“Edinburgh, May 30.—Returned
to town last night with Charles. This
morning resume ordinary habits of rising early, working in the morning, and
attending the Court. All will come easily round. But it is at first as if men
looked strange on me, and bite their lip when they wring my hand, and indicated
suppressed feelings. It is natural this should be—undoubtedly it has been so
with me. Yet it is strange to find one’s self resemble a cloud, which
darkens gaiety wherever it interposes its chilling shade. Will it be better
when, left to my own feelings, I see the whole world pipe and dance around me?
I think it will. Their sympathy intrudes on my private affliction. I finished
correcting the proofs for the Quarterly; it is but a flimsy article, but then the circumstances
were most untoward.—This has been a
melancholy day—most melancholy. I am afraid poor Charles
found me weeping. I do not know what other folks feel, but with me the
hysterical passion that impels tears is a terrible violence—a sort of
throttling sensation—then succeeded by a state of dreaming stupidity, in which
I ask if my poor Charlotte can actually be
dead. I think I feel my loss more than at the first blow. Poor
Charles wishes to come back to study here when his
term ends at Oxford. I can see the motive.
“May 31.—The melancholy
horrors of yesterday must not return. To encourage that dreamy state of
incapacity is to resign all authority over the mind, and I have been used to
say— ‘My mind to me a kingdom is.’ I am rightful monarch; and, God to aid, I will not be dethroned by any
rebellious passion that may rear its standard against me. Such are morning
thoughts, strong as carle-hemp—says Burns— ‘Come, firm Resolve, take thou the van, Thou stalk of carle-hemp in man.’ Charles went by the steam-boat this
morning at six. We parted last night mournfully on both sides. Poor boy, this
is his first serious sorrow. Wrote this morning a Memorial on the Claim, which
Constable’s people prefer as
to the copyrights of Woodstock and Napoleon. My argument amounts to this, that being no longer
accountable as publishers, they cannot claim the character of such, or assert
any right arising out of the contracts entered into while they held that
capacity.—I also finished a few trifling memoranda on a book called the Omen, at Blackwood’s request.”*
* See Blackwood’s Magazine, July 1826, or Scott’s Miscellaneous Prose
Works, vol. xviii. p. 333.
CHAPTER X. WOODSTOCK—RECEPTION OF THE NOVEL—MRS
BROWN’S LODGINGS—EXTRACT FROM A DIARY OF CAPTAIN BASIL
HALL—BUONAPARTE RESUMED, AND CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE BEGUN—UNIFORM LABOUR DURING SUMMER AND
AUTUMN—EXTRACTS FROM SIR WALTER’S JOURNAL—JUNE—OCTOBER, 1826.
The price received for Woodstock shows what eager competition had been called
forth among the booksellers when, after the lapse of several years, Constable’s monopoly of Sir
Walter’s novels was abolished by their common calamity. The interest
excited, not only in Scotland and England, but all over civilized Europe, by the news of
Scott’s misfortunes, must also have had its influence in
quickening this commercial rivalry. The reader need hardly be told, that the first meeting
of James Ballantyne and Company’s creditors
witnessed the transformation, a month before darkly prophesied, of the
“Great Unknown” into the “Too-well-known.”
Even for those who had long ceased to entertain any doubt as to the main source at least of
the Waverley romances, there would
have been something stirring in the first confession of the author; but it in fact included
the avowal, that he had stood alone in the work of creation; and when the mighty claim came
in the same breath with the announcement of personal ruin, the effect on the community of
Edinburgh was electrical. It is, in my opinion, not the least striking feature in the
foregoing Diary, that it contains no allusion (save the omi-nous one of 18th December) to this long withheld revelation. He notes
his painful anticipation of returning to the Parliament-House—monstrari digito—as an insolvent. It does not seem even to have
occurred to him, that when he appeared there the morning after his creditors had heard his
confession, there could not be many men in the place but must gaze on his familiar features
with a mixture of curiosity, admiration, and sympathy, of which a hero in the moment of
victory might have been proud—which might have swelled the heart of a martyr as he was
bound to the stake. The universal feeling was, I believe, much what the late amiable and
accomplished Earl of Dudley expressed to Mr Morritt when these news reached them at Brighton.
“Scott ruined!” said he, “the author of Waverley ruined! Good God, let every man to whom he has given months of
delight give him a sixpence, and he will rise to-morrow morning richer than Rothschild!”
It is no wonder that the book, which it was known he had been writing
during this crisis of distress, should have been expected with solicitude. Shall we find
him, asked thousands, to have been master truly of his genius in the moment of this ordeal?
Shall we trace any thing of his own experiences in the construction of his imaginary
personages and events?
I know not how others interpreted various passages in Woodstock, but there were not a few that carried deep
meaning for such of Scott’s own friends as were
acquainted with, not his pecuniary misfortune alone, but the drooping health of his wife,
and the consolation afforded him by the dutiful devotion of his daughter Anne, in whose character and demeanour a change had
occurred exactly similar to that painted in poor Alice
Lee: “A light joyous air, with something of a humorous expression,
which seemed to be looking for amusement, had vanished before the
touch of affliction, and a calm melancholy supplied its place, which seemed on the
watch to administer comfort to others.” In several mottoes, and other scraps of verse, the curious reader will find similar traces
of the facts and feelings recorded in the author’s Diary.
As to the novel itself, though none can pretend to class it in the very
highest rank of his works, since we feel throughout the effects of the great fundamental
error, likened by a contemporary critic to that of the writer who should lay his scene at
Rome immediately after the battle of Philippi, and introduce Brutus as the survivor in that conflict, and Cicero as his companion in victory; yet even this censor is forced to allow
that Woodstock displays certain
excellences, not exemplified in all the author’s fictions, and which attest, more
remarkably than any others could have done, the complete self-possession of the mind when
composing it. Its great merit, Mr Senior thinks, is
that it combines an extraordinary variety of incident with perfect unity
of action! For the rest, after condemning, in my view far too broadly, the old
Shakspearian Cavalier Sir Henry Lee, he says—
“The Cromwell
and Charles II. are inaccurate as portraits, but, as
imaginary characters, they are admirable. Charles is
perhaps somewhat too stiff, and Cromwell too
sentimental; but these impressions never struck us till our office forced us to pervert the
work from its proper end, and to read for the purpose of criticism instead of enjoyment. We
are not sure, however, that we do not prefer Tomkins to
either of them; his cunning, profligacy, hypocrisy, and enthusiasm are combined into a
character as spirited as it is original. Wildrake, Rochecliffe, Desborough,
Holdenough, and Bletson are composed of fewer materials, and therefore exhibit less power
in the author; but they are natural and forcible, particularly Holdenough. There are few subjects which Sir
Walter seems more to delight in painting than the meliorating influence of
religious feelings on an imperfect temper, even though somewhat alloyed by superstition and
enthusiasm.—Woodstock is a picture full of false costume and
incorrect design, but splendidly grouped and coloured;
and we envy those whose imperfect knowledge of the real events has enabled them to enjoy
its beauties without being offended by its inaccuracies.”
There is one character of considerable importance which the reviewer
does not allude to. If he had happened to have the slightest tincture of his author’s
fondness for dogs, he would not have failed to say something of the elaborate and
affectionate portraiture of old Maida, under the name of Bevis.
The success of this novel was great: large as the price was, its
publishers had no reason to repent their bargain; and of course the rapid receipt of such a
sum as L.8000, the product of hardly three months’ labour, highly gratified the body
of creditors, whose debtor had devoted to them whatever labour his health should henceforth
permit him to perform. We have seen that he very soon began another work of fiction; and it
will appear that he from the first designed the “Chronicles of the Canongate” to be published by
Mr Robert Cadell. That gentleman’s
connexion with Constable was, from circumstances of
which the reader may have traced various little indications, not likely to be renewed after
the catastrophe of their old copartnership. They were now endeavouring to establish
themselves in separate businesses; and each was, of course, eager to secure the countenance
of Sir Walter. He did not hesitate a moment. He
conceived that Constable had acted in such a manner by him, especially
in urging him to borrow large sums of money for his support after all chance of recovery
was over, that he had more than forfeited all claims on his confidence; and Mr
Cadell’s frank conduct in warning Ballantyne and him against Constable’s last mad
proposal about a guarantee for L.20,000, had produced a strong impression in his favour.
Sir Walter’s Diary has given us some pleasing
glimpses of the kind of feeling displayed by Ballantyne towards him, and by him towards Ballantyne,
during these dark months. In justice to both, I shall here insert one of the notes
addressed by Scott, while Woodstock was at press, to his critical typographer. It has reference to a
request, that the success of Malachi
Malagrowther might be followed up by a set of essays on Irish Absenteeism in the
Edinburgh Weekly Journal; the
editorship of which paper, with the literary management of the printing-house, had been
continued to Mr Ballantyne, upon a moderate salary, by his
creditors’ trustees. I may observe that when the general superintendence of the
printing-house came into the hands of regular men of business, it was found
(notwithstanding the loss of Constable’s great
employment) a lucrative one: the creditors, after paying James his
salary, cleared in one year L.1200 from the concern, which had for many before been a
source of nothing but perplexity to its founders. No hints of mutual complaint or
recrimination ever dropt from either of the fallen partners. The printer, like
Scott, submitted without a murmur of that sort, or indeed of any
sort, to his reverses: he withdrew to a very small house in a sequestered suburban
situation, and altered all his domestic habits and arrangements with decision and
fortitude. Here he received many communications such as the following:—
To Mr James Ballantyne.
“North St David Street. “Dear James,
“I cannot see to read my manuscript in the way you
propose—I would give a thousand pounds I could; but, like the officer of the
Customs, when the Board desired him
to read a coquet of his own,—I am coquet-writer, not
coquet-reader—and you must be thankful that. I can
perform even that part of the duty.
“We must in some sort, stand or fall together; and I
do not wish you to think that I am forgetting your interest in my own—though I
sincerely believe the former is what you least think of. But I am afraid I must
decline the political task you invite me to. It would cost me a
fortnight’s hard work to do any thing to purpose, for I have no
information on the subject whatever. In short, as the Earl of
Essex said on a certain occasion, ‘Frankly, it may not
be.’ I hope next winter will afford me an opportunity to do
something, which, as Falstaff says,
‘may do you good.’
Ever yours, W. S.”
The date of this note (North St David’s Street) reminds me of a
passage in Captain Basil Hall’s Diary. He
called at Mrs Brown’s lodging-house one morning—and on his
return home wrote as follows:—
“A hundred and fifty years hence, when his works have become
old classical authorities, it may interest some fervent lover of his writings to know
what this great genius was about on Saturday the 10th of June, 1826 five months after
the total ruin of his pecuniary fortunes, and twenty-six days after the death of his
wife.
“In the days of his good luck he used to live at No. 39 in
North Castle Street, in a house befitting a rich baronet; but on reaching the door, I
found the plate on it covered with rust (so soon is glory obscured), the windows
shuttered up, dusty, and comfortless; and from the side of one projected a board, with
this inscription, “To Sell;” the stairs were unwashed, and not a foot-mark told of the ancient hospitality which reigned within. In all
nations with which I am acquainted the fashionable world move westward, in imitation,
perhaps, of the great tide of civilisation; and, vice versa, those persons who decline
in fortune, which is mostly equivalent to declining in fashion, shape their course
eastward. Accordingly, by an involuntary impulse, I turned my head that way, and
enquiring at the clubs in Prince’s Street, learned that he now resided in St
David Street, No. 6.
“I was rather glad to recognise my old friend the Abbotsford
butler, who answered the door—the saying
about heroes and valets-de-chambre comes to one’s recollection on such occasions,
and nothing, we may be sure, is more likely to be satisfactory to a man whose fortune
is reduced than the stanch adherence of a mere servant, whose wages must be altered for
the worse. At the top of the stair we saw a small tray, with a single plate and glasses
for one solitary person’s dinner. Some few months ago Sir
Walter was surrounded by his family, and wherever he moved, his
headquarters were the focus of fashion. Travellers from all nations crowded round, and,
like the recorded honours of Lord Chatham,
‘thickened over him.’ Lady and Miss Scott were his constant companions; the Lockharts were his neighbours both in town and in
Roxburghshire; his eldest son was his frequent guest; and in short, what with his own
family and the clouds of tourists, who, like so many hordes of Cossacks, pressed upon
him, there was not, perhaps, out of a palace, any man so attended, I had almost said
overpowered, by company. His wife is now dead—is son-in-law and favourite daughter gone
to London, and his grandchild, I fear, just staggering, poor little fellow, on the edge
of the grave, which, perhaps, is the securest refuge for him—his eldest son is married,
and at a distance, and report speaks of no probability of the title
descending; in short, all are dispersed, and the tourists, those
“curiosos impertinentes,” drive past Abbotsford
gate, and curse their folly in having delayed for a year too late their long projected
jaunt to the north. Mean-while not to mince the matter, the great man had, somehow or
other, managed to involve himself with printers, publishers, bankers, gas-makers,
wool-staplers, and all the fraternity of speculators, accommodation-bill manufacturers,
land-jobbers, and so on, till, at a season of distrust in money matters, the hour of
reckoning came, like a thief in the night; and as our friend, like the unthrifty
virgins, had no oil in his lamp, all his affairs went to wreck and ruin, and landed
him, after the gale was over, in the predicament of Robinson
Crusoe, with little more than a shirt to his back. But like that able
navigator, he is not cast away upon a barren rock. The tide has ebbed, indeed, and left
him on the beach, but the hull of his fortunes is above water still, and it will go
hard, indeed, with him if he does not shape a raft that shall bring to shore much of
the cargo that an ordinary mind would leave in despair, to be swept away by the next
change of the moon. The distinction between man and the rest of the living creation,
certainly, is in nothing more remarkable, than in the power which he possesses over
them, of turning to varied account the means with which the world is stocked. But it
has always struck me, that there is a far greater distinction between man and man than
between many men and most other animals; and it is from a familiarity with the
practical operation of this marvellous difference that I venture to predict, that our
Crusoe will cultivate his own island, and build himself a bark
in which, in process of time, he will sail back to his friends and fortune in greater
triumph than if he had never been driven amongst the breakers.
“Sir Walter Scott, then,
was sitting at a writing-desk covered with papers, and on the top was a pile of bound
volumes of the Moniteur,—one, which he was
leaning over as my brother and I entered, was open on a chair, and two others were
lying on the floor. As he rose to receive us he closed the volume which he had been
extracting from, and came forward to shake hands. He was, of course, in deep mourning,
with weepers and the other trappings of woe, but his countenance, though certainly a
little woe-begonish, was not cast into any very deep furrows. His tone and manner were
as friendly as heretofore, and when he saw that we had no intention of making any
attempt at sympathy or moanification, but spoke to him as of old, he gradually
contracted the length of his countenance, and allowed the corners of his mouth to curl
almost imperceptibly upwards, and a renewed lustre came into his eye, if not exactly
indicative of cheerfulness, at all events of well-regulated, patient, Christian
resignation. My meaning will be misunderstood if it be imagined from this picture that
I suspected any hypocrisy, or an affectation of grief in the first instance. I have no
doubt, indeed, that he feels, and most acutely, the bereavements which have come upon
him; but we may very fairly suppose, that among the many visiters he must have, there
may be some who cannot understand that it is proper, decent, or even possible to hide
those finer emotions deep in the heart.—He immediately began conversing in his usual
style—the chief topic being Captain Denham (whom
I had recently seen in London), and his book of African Travels, which Sir Walter had
evidently read with much attention. * * * After sitting a quarter of an hour, we came
away, well pleased to see our friend quite unbroken in spirit and though bowed down a
little by the blast, and here and there a branch the less, as sturdy in the trunk as ever, and very possibly all
the better—for the discipline better, I mean, for the public, inasmuch as he has now a
vast additional stimulus for exertion—and one which all the world must admit to be
thoroughly noble and generous.”
A week before this visit took place, Sir
Walter had sufficiently mastered himself to resume his literary tasks; and
he thenceforth worked with determined resolution on the Life of Napoleon, interlaying a day or two of the Chronicles of the Canongate, whenever he
had got before the press with his historical MS., or felt the want of the only repose he
ever cared for—a change of labour. In resuming his own Diary, I shall make extracts rather
less largely than before, because many entries merely reflect the life of painful exertion
to which he had now submitted himself, without giving us any interesting glimpses either of
his feelings or opinions. I hope I have kept enough to satisfy all proper curiosity on
these last points.
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY—JUNE, 1826.
“Edinburgh, June 4.—I wrote a
good task yesterday, and to-day a great one, scarce stirring from the desk. I
am not sure that it is right to work so hard; but a man must take himself, as
well as other people, when in the humour. I doubt if men of method, who can lay
aside or take up the pen just at the hours appointed, will ever be better than
poor creatures. Lady Louisa Stuart used
to tell me of Mr Hoole, the translator
of Tasso and Ariosto, and in that capacity a noble transmuter of gold into
lead, that he was a clerk in the India-House, with long ruffles and a
snuff-coloured suit of clothes, who occasionally visited
her father, John Earl of Bute. She sometimes
conversed with him, and was amused to find that he did exactly so many couplets
day by day, neither more nor less; and habit had made it light to him, however
heavy it might seem to the reader. Well, but if I lay down the pen, as the pain
in my breast hints that I should, what am I to do? If I think, why I shall
weep—and that’s nonsense; and I have no friend now—none—to relieve my
tediousness for half-an-hour of the gloaming. Let me be grateful—I have good
news from Abbotsford.
“June 7.—Again a day of hard
work—busy at half-past-eight. I went to the Dean of
Faculty’s to a consultation about Constable,* and sat with said Dean and
Mr J. S. More and J. Gibson. I find they have as high hope of
success as lawyers ought to express; and I think I know how our profession
speak when sincere; but I cannot interest myself deeply in it. When I had come
home from such a business, I used to carry the news to poor Charlotte, who dressed her face in sadness or
mirth as she saw the news affect me; this hangs lightly about me. I had almost
forgot the appointment, if J. G. had not sent me a card; I
passed a piper in the street as I went to the Dean’s, and could not help
giving him a shilling to play Pibroch a
Donuil Dhu for luck’s sake; what a child I am!
“June 8.—Bilious and headach
this morning. A dog howl’d all night and left me little sleep,—poor cur!
I dare say he had his distresses, as I have mine. I was obliged to make
Dalgliesh shut the windows when he
appeared at half-past six, as usual, and did not rise till
* This alludes to the claim advanced by the
creditors of Constable and Co.
to the copyright of Woodstock and the Life of Napoleon.
nine. I have often deserved a
headach in my younger days without having one, and Nature is, I suppose, paying
off old scores. Ay, but then the want of the affectionate care that used to be
ready, with lowered voice and stealthy pace, to smoothe the pillow and offer
condolence and assistance,—gone—gone for ever—ever—ever. Well, there is another
world, and we’ll meet free from the mortal sorrows and frailties which
beset us here; amen, so be it. Let me change the topic with hand and head, and
the heart must follow. I finished four pages to-day, headach, laziness and all.
June 9.—Corrected a stubborn proof this morning. These
battles have been the death of many a man—I think they will be mine. Well, but
it clears to windward; so we will fag on. Slept well last night. By the way,
how intolerably selfish this Journal makes me seem—so much attention to
one’s naturals and non-naturals? Lord
Mackenzie* called, and we had much chat about parish business.
The late regulations for preparing cases in the Outer-House do not work well.
One effect of running causes faster through the Courts below is, that they go
by scores to appeal, and Lord Gifford has
hitherto decided them with such judgment, and so much rapidity, as to give
great satisfaction. The consequence will in time be, that the Scottish Supreme
Court will be in effect situated in London. Then down fall, as national objects
of respect and veneration, the Scottish Bench, the Scottish Bar, the Scottish
Law herself, and—and——‘Here is an end of an auld
sang.’† Were I as I have been, I would fight knee-deep in blood
ere it came to that. I shall always be proud
* The eldest son of the
Man of Feeling.
— Speech of Lord Chancellor Seafield on the
ratification of the Scotch Union. See Miscellaneous Prose
Works, vol. xxv. p. 93.
of Malachi as having headed back the Southron, or helped to do so in
one instance at least.
“June 11.—Bad dreams. Woke,
thinking my old and inseparable friend
beside me; and it was only when I was fully awake that I could persuade myself
that she was dark, low, and distant, and that my bed was widowed. I believe the
phenomena of dreaming are in a great measure occasioned by the double touch which takes place when one hand is crossed
in sleep upon another. Each gives and receives the impression of touch to and
from the other, and this complicated sensation our sleeping fancy ascribes to
the agency of another being, when it is in fact produced by our own limbs
rolling on each other. Well, here goes—incumbite
remis.
“June 12.—Finished volume
third of Napoleon. I resumed
it on the 1st of June, the earliest period that I could bend my mind to it
after my great loss. Since that time I have lived, to be sure, the life of a
hermit, except attending the Court five days in the week for about three hours
on an average. Except at that time I have been reading or writing on the
subject of Boney, and have finished last
night, and sent to printer this morning the last sheet of fifty-two written
since 1st June. It is an awful screed; but grief makes me a housekeeper, and to
labour is my only resource.
“June 14.—To-day I began with
a page and a half before breakfast. This is always the best way. You stand like
a child going to be bathed, shivering and shaking till the first pitcherful is
flung about your ears, and then are as blythe as a water-wagtail. I am just
come home from Court; and now, my friend Nap, have at you with a downright blow! Methinks I would fain
make peace with my conscience
by doing six pages tonight. Bought a little bit of Gruyere cheese, instead of
our dame’s choke-dog concern. When did I ever purchase any thing for my
own eating? But I will say no more of that. And now to the bread-mill—
“June 16.—Yesterday safe in
the Court till nearly four. I had, of course, only time for my task. I fear I
shall have little more to-day, for I have accepted to dine at Hector’s. I got, yesterday, a present of
two engravings from Sir Henry
Raeburn’s portrait of me, which (poor fellow!) was the
last he ever painted, and certainly not the worst.* I had the pleasure to give
one to young Davidoff for his uncle, the
celebrated Black Captain of the campaign
of 1812. Curious that he should be interested in getting the resemblance of a
person whose mode of attaining some distinction has been very different. But I
am sensible, that if there be any thing good about my poetry or prose either,
it is a hurried frankness of composition which pleases soldiers, sailors, and
young people of bold and active disposition. I have been no signer in shades no
writer of ‘Songs and sonnets and rustical roundelays, Framed on fancies, and whistled on reeds.’
“Abbotsford, Saturday, June
17.—Left Edinburgh to-day, after Parliament-House. My two girls met me at
Torsonce, which was a pleasant surprise, and we returned in the sociable all
together. Found every thing right and well at Abbotsford under the new regime.
I again took possession of the family bedroom and my widowed couch. This was a
sore trial, but it was necessary not to blink such a resolution. Indeed, I do
not like
See ante, vol.
v. p. 164.
to have it thought that there is any way in which I can
be beaten.*
“June 19.—This morning wrote
till half twelve—good day’s work—at Canongate Chronicles. Methinks I can make
this answer. Then drove to Huntly-Burn, and called at Chiefswood. Walked home.
The country crying for rain; yet, on the whole, the weather delicious, dry, and
warm, with a fine air of wind. The young woods are rising in a kind of
profusion I never saw elsewhere. Let me once clear off these encumbrances, and
they shall wave broader and deeper yet.
“June 21.—For a party of
pleasure I have attended to business well. Twenty pages of Croftangry, five printed pages each, attest my
diligence, and I have had a delightful variation by the company of the two
Annes. Regulated my little expenses here.
“Edinburgh, June
22.—Returned to my Patmos. Heard good news from Lockhart. Wife well, and
John Hugh better. He mentions poor
Southey testifying much interest for
me, even to tears. It is odd—am I so hardhearted a man? I could not have wept
for him, though in distress I would have gone any length to serve him. I
sometimes think I do not deserve people’s good opinion, for certainly my
feelings are rather guided by reflection than impulse. But every body has his
own mode of expressing interest, and mine is stoical even in bitterest grief. I
hope I am not the worse for wanting the tender-
* This entry reminds me of Hannah More’s account of
Mrs Garrick’s conduct
after her husband’s funeral. “She told
me,” says Mrs More,
“that she prayed with great composure, then went and
kissed the dear bed, and got into it with a sad
pleasure.”—See Memoirs of Mrs More, vol. i. p.
135.
ness that I see others possess, and
which is so amiable. I think it does not cool my wish to be of use when I can.
But the truth is, I am better at enduring or acting, than at consoling. From
childhood’s earliest hour, my heart rebelled against the influence of
external circumstances in myself and others—non est
tanti! To-day, I was detained in the Court from
half-past ten till near four, yet I finished and sent off a packet to Cadell, which will finish one third of the
Chronicles, vol. 1st.
Henry Scott came in while I was at
dinner, and sat while I eat my beef-steak. A gourmand would think me much at a
loss, coming back to my ploughman’s meal of boiled beef and Scotch broth,
from the rather récherché
table at Abbotsford, but I have no philosophy in my carelessness on that score.
It is natural, though I am no ascetic, as my father was.
“June 23.—I received to-day
L.10 from Blackwood for the article on The
Omen. Time was I would not have taken these small tithes of
mint and cummin, but scornful dogs will eat dirty puddings, and I, with many
depending on me, must do the best I can with my time; God help me.
“Blair-Adam, June 24.—Left
Edinburgh yesterday after the Court, and came over here with the Lord Chief Baron and William Clerk, to spend as usual a day or two
at the Chief-Commissioner’s. His
Lordship’s family misfortunes and my own make our holiday this year of a
more quiet description than usual, and a sensible degree of melancholy hangs on
the re-union of our party. It was wise, however, not to omit it, for to slacken
your hold on life in any agreeable point of connexion, is the sooner to reduce
yourself to the indifference and passive vegetation of old age.
“June 25.—Another melting
day; we have lounged away the morning creeping about the place, sitting a great
deal, and walking as little as might be on account of the heat. Blair-Adam has
been successively in possession of three generations of persons attached to and
skilled in the art of embellishment, and may be fairly taken as a place where
art and taste have done a great deal to improve nature. A long ridge of varied
ground sloping to the foot of Benarty, and which originally was of a bare mossy
boggy character, has been clothed by the son, father, and grandfather; while
the undulations and hollows, which seventy or eighty years since must have
looked only like wrinkles in the black morasses, being now drained and limed,
are skirted with deep woods, particularly of spruce, which thrives wonderfully,
and covered with excellent grass. We drove in the droskie, and walked in the
evening.
“June 26.—Another day of
unmitigated heat; thermometer 82; must be higher in Edinburgh, where I return
to-night, when the decline of the sun makes travelling practicable. It will be
well for my works to be there—not quite so well for me; there is a difference
between the clever nice arrangement of Blair-Adam and Mrs
Brown’s accommodations, though he who is ensured against
worse has no right to complain of them. But the studious neatness of poor
Charlotte has perhaps made me
fastidious. She loved to see things clean, even to Oriental scrupulosity. So
oddly do our deep recollections of other kinds correspond with the most petty
occurrences of our life. Lord Chief
Baron told us a story of the ruling passion strong in death. A
Mr * * *, a Master in Chancery, was on his deathbed—a
very wealthy man. Some occasion of great urgency occurred in which it was
necessary to make an affidavit, and the attorney, missing one or two other Masters whom he
enquired after, ventured to ask if Mr * * * would be able
to receive the deposition. The proposal seemed to give him momentary strength;
his clerk was sent for, and the oath taken in due form. The Master was lifted
up in bed, and with difficulty subscribed the paper; as he sank down again, he
made a signal to his
clerk—‘Wallace.’—‘Sir?’—‘Your
ear—lower—lower. Have you got the half-crown?’ He was dead before morning.
“Edinburgh, June
27.—Returned to Edinburgh late last night, and had a most sweltering night of
it. This day also cruel hot. However, I made a task, or nearly so, and read a
good deal about the Egyptian expedition. I have also corrected proofs, and
prepared for a groat start, by filling myself with facts and ideas.
“June 29.—I walked out for an hour last night, and
made one or two calls the evening was delightful— ‘Day its sultry fires had wasted, Calm and cool the moonbeam rose, Even a captive’s bosom tasted Half oblivion of his woes.’ I wonder often how Tom Campbell,
with so much real genius, has not maintained a greater figure in the public eye
than he has done of late. The Magazine* seems to have paralyzed him. The author, not only of the
Pleasures of Hope,
but of Hohenlinden,
Lochiel, &c.,
should have been at the very top of the tree. Somehow he wants audacity, fears
the public, and what is worse, fears the shadow of his own reputation. He is a
great corrector too, which succeeds as ill in composition as in education. Many
a clever boy is flogged into a
* Mr Campbell
was then Editor of the New Monthly
Magazine, but he soon gave it up.
dunce, and many an original composition corrected into
mediocrity. Tom ought to have done a great deal more. His
youthful promise was great. John Leyden
introduced me to him. They afterwards quarrelled. When I repeated Hohenlinden to Leyden, he said,
‘Dash it, man, tell the fellow that I hate him, but, dash him, he
has written the finest verses that have been published these fifty
years.’ I did mine errand as faithfully as one of Homer’s messengers, and had for answer,
‘Tell Leyden that I detest him, but I know
the value of his critical approbation.’ This feud was therefore
in the way of being taken up. ‘When Leyden comes
back from India,’ said Tom Campbell,
‘what cannibals he will have eaten, and what tigers he will have
torn to pieces!’
“Gave a poor poetess L.1. Gibson writes me that L.2300 is offered for
the poor house; it is worth L.300 more, but I will not oppose my own opinion
and convenience to good and well-meant counsel: so farewell, poor No. 39. What
a portion of my life has been spent there! It has sheltered me from the prime
of life to its decline; and now I must bid good-by to it. I have bid good-by to
my poor wife, so long its courteous and kind mistress. And I need not care
about the empty rooms; yet it gives me a turn. Never mind; all in the
day’s work.
“June 30.—Here is another
dreadful warm day, fit for nobody but the flies. I was detained in Court till
four; dreadfully close, and obliged to drink water for refreshment, which
formerly I used to scorn, even in the moors, with a burning August sun, the
heat of exercise, and a hundred springs gushing around me. Corrected proofs,
&c. on my return.
“Abbotsford, July 2.—I
worked a little this morning, then had a long and warm walk. Captain and Mrs
Hamilton, from Chiefswood, the present inhabitants of Lockhart’s cottage, dined with us, which
made the evening pleasant. He is a fine soldierly-looking man*—his wife a sweet
good-humoured little woman. Since we were to lose the
Lockharts, we could scarce have had more agreeable
neighbours.
“Edinburgh, July 6.—Returned
last night, and suffered, as usual, from the incursions of the black horse.
Mr B—— C—— writes to condole with
me. I think our acquaintance scarce warranted this; but it is well meant, and
modestly done. I cannot conceive the idea of forcing myself on strangers in
distress, and I have half a mind to turn sharp round on some of my consolers.
“July 8.—Wrote a good task
this morning. I may be mistaken; but I do think the tale of Elspat M’Tavish† in my
bettermost manner—but J. B. roars for
chivalry. He does not quite understand that every thing may be overdone in this
world, or sufficiently estimate the necessity of novelty. The Highlanders have
been off the field now for some time. Returning from the Court, looked into a
fine show of wild beasts, and saw Nero the great
lion, whom they had the brutal cruelty to bait with bull-dogs, against whom the
noble creature disdained to exert his strength. He was lying like a prince in a
large cage, where you might be admitted if you wish. I had a month’s
mind—but was afraid of the newspapers. I could be afraid of nothing else, for
never did a creature
* Thomas Hamilton,
Esq.—the author of Cyril Thornton—Men and Manners in America—Annals of the Peninsular
Campaigns, &c. &c.
† The Highland Widow.
seem more gentle and yet majestic. I longed to caress
him. Wallace, the other Lion, born in Scotland,
seemed much less trustworthy. He handled the dogs as his namesake did the
southron.
“July 10.—Dined with
John Swintonen famille: He told me an odd
circumstance. Coming from Berwickshire in the mail-coach, he met with a
passenger who seemed more like a military man than any thing else. They talked
on all sorts of subjects, at length on politics. Malachi’s letters were mentioned, when
the stranger observed they were much more seditious than some expressions for
which he had three or four years ago been nearly sent to Botany Bay. And
perceiving John Swinton’s surprise at this avowal,
he added, I am Kinloch of Kinloch. This
gentleman had got engaged in the Radical business (the only real gentleman by
the way who did), and harangued the weavers of Dundee with such emphasis, that
he would have been tried and sent to Botany Bay, had he not fled abroad. He was
outlawed, and only restored to his estates on a composition with Government. It
seems to have escaped Mr Kinloch, that the man who places
a lighted coal in the middle of combustibles and upon the floor, acts a little
differently from him who places the same quantity of burning fuel in a fire
grate.
“July 13.—Dined yesterday
with Lord Abercromby at a party he gave to
Lord Melville and some old friends, who
formed the Contemporary Club. Lord M. and I met with
considerable feeling on both sides, and all our feuds were forgotten and
forgiven; I conclude so at least, because one or two people, whom I know to be
sharp observers of the weather-glass on occasion of such squalls, have been
earnest with me to meet him at parties —which I am well assured they would not have been
(had I been Horace come to life again) were
they not sure the breeze was over. For myself, I am happy that our usual state
of friendship should be restored, though I could not have come down proud stomach to make advances, which is, among friends,
always the duty of the richer and more powerful of the two. To-day I leave
Mrs Brown’s lodgings. I have done a monstrous
sight of work here notwithstanding the indolence of this last week, which must
and shall be amended.
‘So good-by, Mrs Brown, I am going out of town, Over dale, over down, Where bugs bite not, Where lodgers fight not, Where below you chairmen drink not, Where beside you gutters stink not; But all is fresh, and clear, and gay, And merry lambkins sport and play; And they toss with rakes uncommonly short hay, Which looks as if it had been sown only the other day, And where oats are at twenty-five shillings a-boll, they say, But all’s one for that, since I must and will away.
“July 14.—Abbotsford. Any body would think, from the fal-de-ral conclusion of
my journal of yesterday, that I left town in a very gay humour—cujus contrarium verum est. But nature has
given me a kind of buoyancy, I know not what to call it, that mingled even with
my deepest afflictions and most gloomy hours. I have a secret pride—I fancy it
will be so most truly termed, which impels me to mix with my distresses strange
snatches of mirth ‘which have no mirth in them.’
“July 16.—Sleepy, stupid,
indolent—finished arranging the books, and after that was totally
useless—unless it can be called study that I slumbered for three or four hours over a variorum edition of the Gill’s Hill
tragedy.* Admirable escape for low spirits—for, not to mention the brutality of
so extraordinary a murder, it led John Bull
into one of his most uncommon fits of gambols, until at last he became so
maudlin as to weep for the pitiless assassin, Thurtell, and treasure up the leaves and twigs of the hedge and
shrubs in the fatal garden as valuable relics, nay, thronged the minor theatres
to see the roan horse and yellow gig in which his victim was transported from
one house to the other. I have not stept over the threshold to-day, so very
stupid have I been.
“July 17.—Desidiæ tandem valedixi.—Our time is
like our money. When we change a guinea, the shillings escape as things of
small account; when we break a day by idleness in the morning, the rest of the
hours lose their importance in our eye. I set stoutly about seven this morning
to Boney— And long ere dinner time, I have Full eight close pages wrote; What, Duty, hast thou now to crave? Well done Sir Walter
Scott!
“July 21.—To Mertoun.
Lord and Lady
Minto and several other guests were there, besides their own
large family. So my lodging was a little room which I had not occupied since I
was a bachelor, but often before in my frequent intercourse with this kind and
* The murder of Weare by Thurtell and Co. at Gill’s-Hill, in
Hertfordshire. Sir Walter collected
printed trials with great assiduity, and took care always to have the
contemporary ballads and prints bound up with them. He admired
particularly this verse of Mr
Hook’s broadside— “They cut his throat from ear to ear, His brains they battered in; His name was Mr
William Weare, He dwelt in Lyon’s Inn.”
hospitable family. Feeling myself
returned to that celibacy which renders many accommodations indifferent which
but lately were indispensable, my imagination drew a melancholy contrast
between the young man entering the world on fire for fame, and busied in
imagining means of coming by it, and the aged widower, blazé on the point of literary
reputation, deprived of the social comforts of a married state, and looking
back to regret instead of looking forward to hope. This brought bad sleep and
unpleasing dreams. But if I cannot hope to be what I have been, I will not, if
I can help it, suffer vain repining to make me worse than I may be. We left
Mertoun after breakfast, and the two Annes and I visited
Lady Raeburn at Lessudden. My aunt
is now in her ninetieth year so clean, so nice, so well arranged in every
respect, that it makes old age lovely. She talks both of late and former events
with perfect possession of her faculties, and has only failed in her limbs. A
great deal of kind feeling has survived, in spite of the frost of years. Home
to dinner and worked all the afternoon among the Moniteurs to little purpose, for my principal
acquisition was a headach.
“July 24.—At dinner-time to-day came Dr Jamieson* of the Scottish Dictionary, an excellent good
man, and full of auld Scottish cracks, which amuse me well enough, but are caviare to the young people.
“July 26.—This day went to
Selkirk, to hold a court. The Doctor chose to go with me. Action and
reaction—Scots proverb—‘The unrest (i.e.
pendulum) of a clock gangs aye as far the ae gait as the
t’other.’
* The venerable lexicographer often had lodgings near Abbotsford in the
angling season, being still very fond of that sport.
“July 27.—Up and at it this
morning, and finished four pages. An unpleasant letter from London, as if I
might be troubled by some of the creditors there, if I should go up to get
materials for Nap. I have no
wish to go—none at all. I would even like to put off my visit, so far as
John Lockhart and my daughter are concerned, and see them when the
meeting could be more pleasant. But then, having an offer to see the
correspondence from St Helena, I can make no doubt that I ought to go. However,
if it is to infer any danger to my personal freedom, English wind shall not
blow on me. It is monstrous hard to prevent me doing what is certainly the best
for all parties.
“July 28.—I am wellnigh
choked with the sulphurous heat of the weather—and my hand is as nervous as a
paralytic’s. Read through and corrected Saint Ronan’s Well. I am no judge, but I
think the language of this piece rather good. Then I must allow the fashionable
portraits are not the true thing. I am too much out of the way. The story is
horribly contorted and unnatural, and the catastrophe is melancholy, which
should always be avoided. No matter, I have corrected it for the press.*
Walter’s account of his
various quarters per last despatch. Query if original.
‘Loughrin is a blackguard place, To Gort I give my curse; Athlone itself is bad enough, But Ballinrobe is worse.” I cannot tell which is the worst, They’re all so very bad, But of all towns I ever saw, Bad luck to Kinnegad.’
* This Novel, was passing through the press in 8vo,
12mo, and 18mo, to complete collective editions in these sizes.
“August 1.—Yesterday evening
I took to arranging old plays, and scrambled through two. One, called Michaelmas Term, full of
traits of manners; and another a sort of bouncing tragedy, called the Hector of Germany, or the Palsgrave.
The last, worthless in the extreme, is like many of the plays in the beginning
of the 17th century, written to a good tune. The dramatic poets of that time
seem to have possessed as joint-stock a highly poetical and abstract tone of
language, so that the worst of them remind you of the very best. The audience
must have had a much stronger sense of poetry in those days than in ours, since
language was received and applauded at the Fortune or the Red Bull, which could
not now be understood by any general audience in Great Britain. Now to work.
“August 2.—I finished before
dinner five leaves, and I would crow a little about it, but here comes Duty
like an old housekeeper to an idle chambermaid. Hear her very words.
“Duty. Oh! you crow, do you?
Pray, can you deny that your sitting so quiet at work was owing to its raining
heavily all the forenoon, and indeed till dinner-time, so that nothing would
have stirred out that could help it save a duck or a goose? I trow, if it had
been a fine day, by noon there would have been aching of the head, throbbing,
shaking, and so forth, to make an apology for going out.
“Egomet Ipse. And whose head
ever throbbed to go out when it rained, Mrs Duty?
“Duty. Answer not to me with
a fool-born jest, as your friend Erskine
used to say to you when you escaped from his good advice under the fire of some
silly pun. You smoke a cigar after dinner, and I never check you—drink tea,
too, which is loss of time; and then, in-stead of writing
me one other page, or correcting those you have written out, you rollock into
the woods till you have not a dry thread about you; and here you sit writing
down my words in your foolish journal instead of minding my advice.
“Ego. Why, Mrs Duty, I would
as gladly be friends with you as Crabbe’s tradesman fellow with his conscience;* but you
should have some consideration with human frailty.
“Duty. Reckon not on that.
But, however, good night for the present. I would recommend to you to think no
thoughts in which I am not mingled—to read no books in which I have no
concern—to write three sheets of botheration all the six days of the week
per diem, and on the seventh
to send them to the printer. Thus advising, I heartily bid you farewell.
“Ego. Farewell, madam (exitDuty)———and be d—d
to ye for an unreasonable bitch! ‘The devil must be in this greedy
gled!’ as the Earl of Angus said to his
hawk; ‘will she never be satisfied?’†
“August 3.—Wrote half a task
in the morning. From eleven till half-past eight in Selkirk taking
precognitions about a row, and came home famished and
tired. Now, Mrs Duty, do you think there is no other Duty of the family but
yourself? Or can the Sheriff-depute neglect his Duty, that the author may mind
his? The thing cannot be; the people of Selkirk must
have justice as well as the people of England books. So the two Duties may go
pull caps about it. My conscience is clear.
* See Crabbe’s Tale of “The Struggles of Conscience.”
† See Tales of a Grandfather, Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol.
xiii. p. 72.
“August 6.—Wrote to-day a
very good day’s work. Walked to Chiefswood, and saw old Mrs Tytler, a friend when life was young. Her
husband, Lord Woodhouselee, was a kind,
amiable, and accomplished man; and when we lived at Lasswade Cottage, soon
after my marriage, we saw a great deal of the family, who were very kind to us
as newly entered on the world. How many early stories did the old lady’s
presence recall. She might almost be my mother; yet there we sat, like two
people of another generation, talking of things and people the rest knew
nothing of. When a certain period of life is over, the difference of years,
even when considerable, becomes of much less consequence.
“August 10.—Rose early, and
wrote hard till two, when I went with Anne to Minto. I must not let her quite forego the custom of
good society. We found the Scotts of
Harden, &c., and had a very pleasant party. I like Lady M. particularly, but missed my facetious and
lively friend, Lady Anna Maria. It is
the fashion of some silly women and silly men to abuse her as a bluestocking.
If to have good sense and good-humour, mixed with a strong power of observing,
and an equally strong one of expressing—if of this the result must be blue, she shall be as blue as they will. Such cant is
the refuge of fools who fear those who can turn them into ridicule: it is a
common trick to revenge supposed raillery with good substantial calumny. Slept
at Minto.
“August 11.—I was up as
usual, and wrote about two leaves, meaning to finish my task at home; but found
my Sheriff-substitute here on my return,
which took up the evening. But I shall finish the volume in less than a month after beginning
it. The same exer-tion would bring the book out at
Martinmas, but December is a better time.
“August 14.—Finished Vol.
IV. yesterday evening—Deo gratias.
This morning I was seized with a fit of the clevers and finished my task by
twelve o’clock, and hope to add something in the evening. I was guilty,
however, of some waywardness, for I began Vol. V. of Boney instead of carrying on the Canongate as I proposed. The
reason, however, was that I might not forget the information I had acquired
about the treaty of Amiens.
“August 16.—Walter and Jane arrived last night. God be praised for restoring to me my
dear children in good health, which has made me happier than any thing that has
happened these several months. If we had Lockhart and Sophia
there would be a meeting of the beings dearest to me in life. Walked to —— ——,
where I find a certain lady on a visit—so youthy, so beautiful, so strong in
voice—with sense and learning—above all, so fond of good conversation, that, in
compassion to my eyes, ears, and understanding, off I bolted in the middle of a
tremendous shower of rain, and rather chose to be wet to the skin than to be
bethumped with words at that rate. In the evening we had music from the girls,
and the voice of the harp and viol were heard in my halls once more, which have
been so long deprived of mirth. It is with a mixed sensation I hear these
sounds. I look on my children and am happy; and yet every now and then a pang
shoots across my heart.
“August 19.—This morning
wrote none excepting extracts, &c., being under the necessity of reading
and collating a great deal, which lasted till one o’clock or thereabouts, when Dr and Mrs
Brewster and their young people came to spend a day of happiness
at the Lake. We were met there by Captain and Mrs
Hamilton, and a full party. Since the days of
Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia, these days of appointed
sport and happiness have seldom answered; but we came off indifferently well.
We did not indeed catch much fish; but we lounged about in a delightful day,
eat and drank—and the children, who are very fine infantry, were clamorously
enjoying themselves. We sounded the loch in two or three different places—the
deepest may be sixty feet. I was accustomed to think it much more, but your
deepest pools, like your deepest politicians and philosophers, often turn out
more shallow than was expected.
“August 23, Bittock’s-bridge.—Set off early with Walter, Charles, and ladies, in the sociable, to make a trip to
Drumlanrig. We breakfasted at Mr
Boyd’s, Broadmeadows, and were received with Yarrow
hospitality. From thence climbed the Yarrow, and skirted Saint Mary’s
Lake, and ascended the Birkhill path, under the moist and misty influence of
the genius loci. Never mind, my
companions were merry and I cheerful. When old people can be with the young
without fatiguing them or themselves, their tempers derive the same benefits
which some fantastic physicians of old supposed accrued to their constitutions
from the breath of the young and healthy. You have not cannot again have their
gaiety or pleasure in seeing sights, but still it reflects itself upon you, and
you are cheered and comforted. Our luncheon eaten in the herd’s cottage;
but the poor woman saddened me unawares, by asking for poor Charlotte, whom she had often seen there with me.
She put me in mind that I had come twice over those hills and bogs with a
wheel-carriage, before the road, now an excellent one,
was made. I knew it was true, but, on my soul, looking where we must have gone,
I could hardly believe I had been such a fool. For riding, pass if you will;
but to put one’s neck in such a venture with a wheel-carriage was too
silly.
“Drumlanrig, August 24.—What
visions does not this magnificent old house bring back to me! The exterior is
much improved since I first knew it. It was then in the state of dilapidation
to which it had been abandoned by the celebrated old
Q——, and was indeed scarce wind and water tight. Then the whole
wood had been felled, and the outraged castle stood in the midst of waste and
desolation, excepting a few scattered old stumps, not judged worth the cutting.
Now, the whole has been, ten or twelve years since, completely replanted, and
the scattered seniors look as graceful as fathers surrounded by their children.
The face of this immense estate has been scarcely less wonderfully changed. The
scrambling tenants, who held a precarious tenure of lease under the
Duke of Queensberry, at the risk (as actually took
place) of losing their possession at his death, have given room to skilful men,
working their farms regularly, and enjoying comfortable houses, at a rent which
is enough to forbid idleness, but not to overpower industry.
“August 25.—The Duke has grown up into a graceful and apparently
strong young man, and received us most kindly. I think he will be well
qualified to sustain his difficult and important task. The heart is excellent,
so are the talents, good sense and knowledge of the world, picked up at one of
the great English schools (and it is one of their most important results), will
prevent him from being deceived; and with perfect good-nature, he has a natural
sense of his own situation which
will keep him from associating with unworthy companions. God bless him! his
father and I loved each other well, and
his beautiful mother had as much of the
angel as is permitted to walk this earth. I see the balcony from which they
welcomed poor Charlotte and me, long ere the
ascent was surmounted, streaming out their white handkerchiefs from the
battlements. There were four merry people that day—now
one sad individual is all that remains. Singula
præduntur anni. I had a long walk to-day through
the new plantations, the Duchess’s Walk by the Nith, &c. (formed by
Prior’s ‘Kitty young and gay’); fell in with
the ladies, but their donkies outwalked me—a flock of sheep afterwards
outwalked me, and I began to think, on my conscience, that a snail put in
training might soon outwalk me. I must lay the old salve to the old sore, and
be thankful for being able to walk at all. Nothing was written to-day, my
writing-desk having been forgot at Parkgate, but Tom Crichton fetched it up to-day, so something more or less
may be done to-morrow morning and now to dress.
“Bittock’s-bridge,
August 26.—We took our departure from the friendly halls of Drumlanrig
this morning, after breakfast. I trust this young nobleman will be ‘A hedge about his friends, A hackle to his foes.’ I would have him not quite so soft-natured as his grandfather, whose
kindness sometimes mastered his excellent understanding. His father had a
temper which better jumped with my humour. Enough of ill-nature to keep your
good-nature from being abused, is no bad ingredient in their disposition who
have favours to bestow.
“In coming from Parkgate here I intended to
accomplish a purpose which I have for some years entertained, of visiting Lochwood, the ancient seat of the
Johnstones, of which King
James said, when he visited it, that the man who built it must
have been a thief in his heart. It rained heavily, however, which prevented my
making this excursion, and indeed I rather over-walked myself yesterday, and
have occasion for rest. ‘So sit down, Robin, and rest thee.’
“Abbotsford, August
27.—To-day we journeyed through the hills and amongst the storms; the weather
rather bullying than bad. We viewed the Grey Mare’s Tail, and I still
felt confident in crawling along the ghastly bank, by which you approach the
fall. I will certainly get some road of application to Mr Hope Johnstone to pray him to make the place
accessible. We got home before half-past four, having travelled forty miles.
“Blair-Adam, August 28.—Set
off with Walter and Jane at seven o’clock, and reached this
place in the middle of dinner-time. By some of my not unusual blunders we had
come a day before we were expected. Luckily, in this ceremonious generation,
there are still houses where such blunders only cause a little raillery, and
Blair-Adam is one of them. My excellent friend is in high health and spirits, to which the presence of
Sir Frederick adds not a little. His
lady is here—a beautiful woman, whose
countenance realizes all the poetic dreams of Byron. There is certainly something of full maturity of beauty
which seems framed to be adoring and adored, and it is to be found in the full
dark eye, luxuriant tresses, and rich complexion of Greece, and not among
‘the pale unripened beauties of the north.’ What sort of
a mind this exquisite casket may contain, is not so easily known. She is anxious to please, and
willing to be pleased, and, with her striking beauty, cannot fail to succeed.
“August 29.—Besides
Mrs and Admiral Adam, Mrs Loch, and Miss Adam, I
find here Mr Impey, son of that
Sir Elijah celebrated in Indian
history. He has himself been in India, but has, with a great deal of sense and
observation, much better address than always falls to the share of the Eastern
adventurer. The art of quiet, easy, entertaining conversation is, I think,
chiefly known in England. In Scotland we are pedantic and wrangle, or we run
away with the harrows on some topic we chance to be discursive upon. In Ireland
they have too much vivacity, and are too desirous to make a show, to preserve
the golden mean. They are the Gascons of Britain. George Ellis was the first converser I ever knew; his patience
and good-breeding made me often ashamed of myself going off at score upon some
favourite topic. Richard Sharp is so
celebrated for this peculiar gift as to be generally called Conversation Sharp. The worst of this talent is, that it seems to
lack sincerity. You never know what are the real sentiments of a good
converser, or at least it is very difficult to discover in what extent he
entertains them. His politeness is inconsistent with energy. For forming a good
converser, good taste and extensive information and accomplishment are the
principal requisites, to which must be added an easy and elegant delivery, and
a well-toned voice. I think the higher order of genius is not favourable to
this talent.
“Thorough decided downfall of rain. Nothing for it
but patience and proof-sheets.
“August 30.—The weather
scarce permitted us more license than yesterday, yet we went down to Lochore,
and Walter and I perambulated the
property, and dis-cussed the necessity of a new road from
the south-west, also that of planting some willows along the ditches in the low
grounds. Returned to Blair-Adam to dinner.
“Abbotsford, August 31.—Left
Blair at seven in the morning. Transacted business with Cadell and Ballantyne. Arrived here at eight o’clock at night.
“September 6.—Walter being to return to Ireland for three
weeks, set off to-day, and has taken Charles with him. I fear this is but a wild plan, but the
prospect seemed to make them so happy, that I could not find in my heart to say
‘No.’ So away they went this morning to be as happy as they can.
Youth is a fine carver and gilder. I had a letter from Jem Ballantyne, plague on him! full of
remonstrance deep and solemn, upon the carelessness of Buonaparte. The rogue is right, too. But, as
to correcting my style, to the ‘Jemmy jemmy linkum feedle’ tune of what is called fine writing, I’ll be d——d if I do. Drew L.12
in favour of Charles for his Irish jaunt; same time
exhorted him to make himself as expensive to Walter, in the way of eating and drinking, as he could.
“September 8.—Sir Frederick Adam deeply regrets the present
Greek war, as prematurely undertaken before knowledge and rational education
had extended themselves sufficiently. The neighbourhood of the Ionian Islands
was fast producing civilisation; and as knowledge is power, it is clear that
example and opportunities of education must soon have given them an immense
superiority over the Turk. This premature war has thrown all back into a state
of barbarism. It was, I cannot doubt, precipitated by the agents of Russia.
Sir Frederick spoke most highly of Byron, the soundness of his views, the respect in which he was
held—his just ideas of the Grecian cause and character, and the practical and
rational wishes he formed for them. Singular that a man whose conduct in his
own personal affairs had been any thing but practical should be thus able to
stand by the helm of a sinking state! Sir Frederick thinks
he might have done much for them if he had lived. The rantipole friends of
liberty, who go about freeing nations with the same success which Don Quixote had in redressing wrongs, have, of
course, blundered every thing which they touched. Task bang-up.
“September 12.—I begin to
fear Nap. will swell to seven
volumes. I had a long letter from James
B., threatening me with eight; but that is impossible. The event
of his becoming Emperor is the central point of his history. Now I have just
attained it, and it is the centre of the third volume. Two volumes and a half
may be necessary to complete the whole.—As I slept for a few minutes in my
chair, to which I am more addicted than I could wish, I heard, as I thought, my
poor wife call me by the familiar name of fondness which she gave me. My
recollections on waking were melancholy enough. These be ‘The airy tongues that syllabic men’s names.’ All, I believe, have some natural desire to consider these unusual
impressions as bodements of good or evil to come. But alas! this is a prejudice
of our own conceit. They are the empty echoes of what is past, not the
foreboding voice of things to come.
“September 13.—Wrote my task
in the morning, and thereafter had a letter from that sage Privy-counsellor ——. He proposes to me that I
shall propose to the —— of ——, and offers
his own right honourable inter-vention to bring so
beautiful a business to bear. I am struck dumb—absolutely mute and
speechless—and how to prevent him making me farther a fool is not easy, for he
has left me no time to assure him of the absurdity of what he proposes; and if
he should ever hint at such a piece of d—d impertinence, what must the lady
think of my conceit or of my feelings! I will write to his present quarters,
however, that he may, if possible, have warning not to continue this
absurdity.*
“September 14.—I should not
have forgotten, among the memorabilia of yesterday, that
two young Frenchmen made their way to our sublime presence, in guerdon of a
laudatory copy of French verses sent up the evening before, by way of
‘Open Sesamum,’ I suppose. I have not read them, nor shall I. No
man that ever wrote a line despised the pap of praise so heartily as I do.
There is nothing I scorn more, except those who think the ordinary sort of
praise or censure is matter of the least consequence. People have almost always
some private view of distinguishing themselves, or of gratifying their
animosity—some point, in short, to carry, with which you have no relation—when
they take the trouble to praise you. In general, it is their purpose to get the
person praised to puff away in return. To me their rank praises no more make
amends for their bad poetry than tainted butter would pass off stale fish.
“September 17.—Rather
surprised with a letter from
* Lady Scott had
not been quite four months dead, and the entry of the preceding day
shows how extremely ill-timed was this communication, from a gentleman
with whom Sir Walter had never
had any intimacy. This was not the only proposition of the kind that
reached him during his widowhood. In the present case there was very
high rank and an ample fortune.
Lord Melville, informing me he and
Mr Peel had put me into the
Commission for enquiring into the condition of the Colleges in Scotland. I know
little on the subject, but I dare say as much as some of the official persons
who are inserted of course. The want of efficient men is the reason alleged. I
must of course do my best, though I have little hope of being useful, and the
time it will occupy is half ruinous to me, to whom time is every thing.
Besides, I suppose the honour is partly meant as an act of grace for Malachi.
“Jedburgh, September
19.—Circuit. Went to poor Mr
Shortreed’s and regretted bitterly the distress of the
family, though they endeavoured to bear it bravely and to make my reception as
comfortable and cheerful as possible. My old friend R. S.
gave me a ring found in a grave at the Abbey, to be kept in memory of his
son. I will certainly preserve it
with especial care.*
“Many trifles at circuit, chiefly owing to the
cheap whisky, as they were almost all riots. One case of an assault on a deaf
and dumb woman. She was herself the chief evidence; but being totally without
education, and having, from her situation, very imperfect notions of a Deity
and a future state, no oath could be administered. Mr Kinniburgh, teacher of the deaf and dumb, was sworn
interpreter, together with another person her neighbour, who knew the
accidental or conventional signs which the poor thing had invented for herself,
as Mr K. was supposed to understand the more general or
natural signs common to people in such a situation. He went through the task
with much address, and it was wonderful to see them make themselves
Mr Thomas Shortreed, a young
gentleman of elegant taste and attainments, devotedly attached to Sir
Walter, and much beloved in return, had recently died.
intelligible to each other by mere pantomime. Still I did
not consider such evidence as much to be trusted to on a criminal case. Several
previous interviews had been necessary between the interpreter and the witness,
and this is very much like getting up a story. Some of the signs, brief in
themselves, of which Mr K. gave long interpretations, put
me in mind of Lord Burleigh in the Critic. ‘Did he
mean all this by a shake of the head?’ ‘Yes, if he shook
his head as I taught him.’ The man was found not guilty.
Mr K. told us of a pupil of his whom he restored, as
it may be said, to humanity, and who told him that his ideas of another world
were that some great person in the skies lighted up the sun in the morning as
he saw his mother light a fire, and the stars in the evening as she kindled a
lamp. He said the witness had ideas of truth and falsehood, which was, I
believe, true; and that she had an idea of punishment in a future state, which
I doubt. He confessed she could not give any guess at its duration, whether
temporary or eternal. Dined of course with Lord
Mackenzie the Judge.
“September 20.—Waked after a
restless night, in which I dreamed of poor Tom
Shortreed. Breakfasted with the Rev.
Dr Somerville. This venerable gentleman is one of the oldest of
the literary brotherhood,—I suppose about eighty-seven,* and except a little
deafness, quite entire. Living all his life in good society as a gentleman
born—and having, besides, professional calls to make among the poor—he must
know, of course, much that is curious concerning the momentous changes which
have
* The Rev. Dr Thomas
Sommerville, minister of Jedburgh, author of the
“History of Great
Britain during the reign of Queen Anne,” and other
works, died 14th May, 1830, in the 90th year of his age, and 64th of
his ministry.
passed under his eyes. He
talked of them accordingly, and has written something on the subject, but has
scarce the force necessary to seize on the most striking points. The bowl that
rolls easiest along the green goes farthest, and has least clay sticking to it.
I have often noticed that a kindly, placid good-humour is the companion of
longevity, and, I suspect, frequently the leading cause of it. Quick, keen,
sharp observation, with the power of contrast and illustration, disturbs this
easy current of thought. My good friend, the venerable Doctor, will not, I
think, die of that disease.
“September 23.—Wrought in
the morning, but only at reading and proofs. That cursed battle of Jena is like
to cost me more time than it did Buonaparte to gain it. I met Colonel Ferguson about one, to see his dogs run. It is a sport
I have loved well, but now, I know not why, I find it little interesting. To be
sure I used to gallop, and that I cannot now do. We had good sport, however,
and killed five hares. I felt excited during the chase, but the feeling was but
momentary. My mind was immediately turned to other remembrances, and to
pondering upon the change which had taken place in my own feelings. The day was
positively heavenly, and the wild hill-side, with our little coursing party,
was beautiful to look at. Yet I felt like a man come from the dead looking with
indifference on that which interested him while living. We dined at
Huntly-Burn. Kind and comfortable as usual.
“September 24.—I made a
rally to-day and wrote four pages or nearly. Never stirred abroad the whole
day, but was made happy after dinner by the return of Charles, full of his Irish jaunt, and happy as
young men are with the change of scene. To-morrow I must go to Melville Castle. I wonder what I can do or say about these
Universities. One thing occurs—the distribution of bursaries only ex meritis. That is, I would have the
presentations continue in the present patrons, but exact that those presented
should be qualified by success in their literary attainments and distinction
acquired at school to hold those scholarships. This seems to be following out
the idea of the founders, who, doubtless, intended the furthering of good
literature. To give education to dull mediocrity is a flinging of the
children’s bread to dogs—it is sharping a hatchet on a razor-strop, which
renders the strop useless, and does no good to the hatchet. Well, something we
will do.
“Melville Castle, September
25.—Found Lord and Lady M. in great distress. Their son Robert is taken ill at a Russian town about 350 miles from
Moscow—dangerously ill. The distance increases the extreme distress of the
parents, who, however, bore it like themselves. I was glad to spend a day upon
the old terms with such old friends, and believe my being with them, even in
this moment of painful suspense, as it did not diminish the kindness of my
reception, might rather tend to divert them from the cruel subject. Dr Nicoll, Principal of St Andrews, dined—a
very gentlemanlike sensible man. We spoke of the visitation, of granting
degrees, of public examinations, of abolishing the election of professors by
the Senatus Academicus (a most pregnant source of jobs), and much beside—but
all desultory. I go back to Abbotsford to-morrow morning.
“Abbotsford, September 29.—A
sort of zeal of working has seized me, which I must avail myself of. No
dejection of mind, and no tremor of nerves, for which God be humbly thanked. My
spirits are neither low nor
high—grave, I think, and quiet—a complete twilight of the mind. I wrote five
pages, nearly a double task, yet wandered for three hours, axe in hand,
superintending the thinning of the home planting. That does good too. I feel it
give steadiness to my mind. Women, it is said, go mad much seldomer than men. I
fancy, if this be true, it is in some degree owing to the little manual works
in which they are constantly employed, which regulate in some degree the
current of ideas, as the pendulum regulates the motion of the time-piece. I do
not know if this is sense or nonsense, but I am sensible that if I were in
solitary confinement, without either the power of taking exercise or employing
myself in study, six months would make me a madman or an idiot.
“October 3.—I wrote my task
as usual, but, strange to tell, there is a want of paper. I expect some to-day.
In the mean-time, to avoid all quarrel with Dame Duty, I cut up some other
leaves into the usual statutory size. They say of a fowl that if you draw a
chalk line on a table, and lay chick-a-diddle down with his bill upon it, the
poor thing will imagine himself opposed by an insurmountable barrier, which he
will not attempt to cross. Such like are one-half of the obstacles which serve
to interrupt our best resolves, and such is my pretended want of paper. It is
like Sterne’s want of sous, when he went to relieve the Pauvre Honteux.
“October 5.—I was thinking
this morning that my time glided away in a singularly monotonous manner, like
one of those dark grey days which neither promise sunshine nor threaten rain;
too melancholy for enjoyment, too tranquil for repining. But this day has
brought a change which somewhat shakes my philo-sophy. I
find, by a letter from J. Gibson, that I
may go to London without danger, and if I may, I in
a manner must, to examine the papers in the Secretary of
State’s office about Buonaparte when
at St Helena. The opportunity having been offered must be accepted, and yet I
had much rather stay at home. Even the prospect of seeing Sophia and Lockhart must be mingled with pain, yet this is foolish too.
Lady Hamilton* writes me that
Pozzo di Borgo, the Russian Minister
at Paris, is willing to communicate to me some particulars of
Buonaparte’s early life. Query might I not go on
there? In for a penny, in for a pound. I intend to take Anne with me, and the pleasure will be great
to her, who deserves much at my hand.
“October 9.—A gracious
letter from Messrs Abud and Son, bill-brokers, &c.;
assure my trustees that they will institute no legal proceedings against me for
four or five weeks. And so I am permitted to spend my money and my time to
improve the means of paying them their debts, for that is the only use of this
journey. They are Jews; I suppose the devil baits for Jews with a pork griskin.
Were I not to exert myself, I wonder where their money is to come from.
“October 10.—I must prepare
for going to London, and perhaps to Paris. I have great unwillingness to set
out on this journey; I almost think it ominous; but ‘They that look to freits, my master dear, Their freits will follow them.’ I am down-hearted about leaving all my things, after I
* Now Lady Jane Hamilton
Dalrymple—the eldest daughter of the illustrious
Admiral Lord Duncan. Her
Ladyship’s kindness procured several valuable communications to
the author of the Life of
Buonaparte.
was quietly settled; it is a
kind of disrooting that recalls a thousand painful ideas of former happier
journeys. And to be at the mercy of these fellows—God help—but rather God
bless—man must help himself.
“October 11.—We are
ingenious self-tormentors. This journey annoys me more than any thing of the
kind in my life. My wife’s figure seems to stand before me, and her voice
is in my ears—‘Scott, do not go.’ It half
frightens me. Strange throbbing at my heart, and a disposition to be very sick.
It is just the effect of so many feelings which had been lulled asleep by the
uniformity of my life, but which awaken on any new subject of agitation. Poor,
poor Charlotte!! I cannot daub it farther. I
get incapable of arranging my papers too. I will go out for half an hour. God
relieve me!”
CHAPTER XI. JOURNEY TO LONDON AND PARIS—SCOTT’S
DIARY—ROKEBY—BURLEIGH—IMITATORS OF THE WAVERLEY
NOVELS—SOUTHEY’S PENINSULAR WAR—ROYAL LODGE AT
WINDSOR—GEORGE IV.—ADELPHI
THEATRE—TERRY—CROFTON CROKER—THOMAS
PRINGLE—ALLAN
CUNNINGHAM—MOORE—ROGERS—LAWRENCE,
&c.—CALAIS—MONTREUIL, &c—RUE DE TIVOLI—POZZO DI
BORGO—LORD GRANVILLE—MARSHALS
MACDONALD AND
MARMONT—GALLOIS—W. R.
SPENCER—PRINCESS GALITZIN—CHARLES
X.—DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME, &c.—ENTHUSIASTIC RECEPTION
IN PARIS—DOVER CLIFF—THEODORE HOOKE—LYDIA
WHITE—DUKE OF
WELLINGTON—PEEL—CANNING—CROKER,
&c. &c.—DUKE OF YORK—MADAME D’ARBLAY—STATE OF
POLITICS—OXFORD—CHELTENHAM—ABBOTSFORD—WALKER STREET, EDINBURGH—OCTOBER—DECEMBER, 1826.
On the 12th of October, Sir
Walter left Abbotsford for London, where he had been promised access to the
papers in the Government offices; and thence he proceeded to Paris, in the hope of
gathering from various eminent persons authentic views and anecdotes concerning the career
of Napoleon. His Diary shows that he was successful in
obtaining many valuable materials for the completion of his historical work; and reflects,
with sufficient distinctness, the very brilliant reception he, on this occasion,
experienced both in London and Paris. The range of his society is strikingly (and
unconsciously) exemplified in the record of one day, when we find him breakfasting at the Royal Lodge in Windsor Park, and supping
on oysters and porter in “honest Dan
Terry’s house, like a squirrel’s cage,” above the
Adelphi Theatre, in the Strand. There can be no doubt that this expedition was in many ways
serviceable to his Life of Napoleon; and I
think as little, that it was chiefly so by renerving his spirits. The deep and respectful
sympathy with which his misfortunes, and gallant behaviour under them, had been regarded by
all classes of men at home and abroad, was brought home to his perception in a way not to
be mistaken. He was cheered and gratified, and returned to Scotland, with renewed hope and
courage, for the prosecution of his marvellous course of industry.
EXTRACTS FROM DIARY.
“Rokeby Park, October 13.—We
left Carlisle before seven, and, visiting Appleby Castle by the way (a most
interesting and curious place), we got to Morritt’s about half-past four, where we had as warm a
welcome as one of the warmest hearts in the world could give an old friend. It
was great pleasure to me to see Morritt happy in the
middle of his family circle, undisturbed, as heretofore, by the sickness of any
one dear to him. I may note that I found much pleasure in my companion’s conversation, as well as in
her mode of managing all her little concerns on the road. I am apt to judge of
character by good-humour and alacrity in these petty concerns. I think the
inconveniences of a journey seem greater to me than formerly; while, on the
other hand, the pleasures it affords are rather less. The ascent of Stainmore
seemed duller and longer than usual, and, on the other hand, Bowes, which used
to strike me as a distinguished feature, seemed an ill-formed mass of rub-bish, a great deal lower in height than I had supposed;
yet I have seen it twenty times at least. On the other hand, what I lose in my
own personal feelings I gain in those of my companion, who shows an intelligent
curiosity and interest in what she sees. I enjoy, therefore, reflectively,
veluti in speculo, the sort
of pleasure to which I am now less accessible.—Saw in
Morritt’s possession the original miniature of
Milton, by Cooper—a valuable thing indeed. The
countenance is handsome and dignified, with a strong expression of genius.*
“Grantham, October 15.—Old
England is no changeling. It is long since I travelled this road, having come
up to town chiefly by sea of late years. One race of red-nosed innkeepers are
gone, and their widows, eldest sons, or head-waiters exercise hospitality in
their room with the same bustle and importance. But other things seem,
externally at least, much the same. The land is better ploughed; straight
ridges every where adopted in place of the old circumflex of twenty years ago.
Three horses, however, or even four, are still often seen in a plough yoked one
before the other. Ill habits do not go out at once.
“Biggleswade, October
16.—Visited Burleigh this morning; the first time I ever saw that grand place,
where there are so many objects of interest and curiosity. The house is
magnificent, in the style of James I.’s
reign, and consequently in mixed Gothic. Of paintings I know nothing; so shall
attempt to say nothing. But whether to connoisseurs, or to an ignorant admirer
like
* This precious miniature, executed by Cooper for Milton’s favourite daughter, was long in the
possession of Sir Joshua
Reynolds, and bequeathed by him to the poet Mason, who was an intimate friend of
Mr Morritt’s father.
myself, the Salvator Mundi, by
Carlo Dolci, must seem worth a
king’s ransom. Lady Exeter, who was
at home, had the goodness or curiosity to wish to see us. She is a beauty after
my own heart; a great deal of liveliness in the face; an absence alike of form
and of affected ease, and really courteous after a genuine and ladylike
fashion.
“25, Pall-Mall, October
17.—Here am I in this capital once more, after an April-weather meeting with my
daughter and Lockhart. Too much grief in our first meeting
to be joyful; too much pleasure to be distressing; a giddy sensation between
the painful and the pleasurable. I will call another subject.
“I read with interest, during my journey, Sir John Chiverton and
Brambletye
House—novels, in what I may surely claim as the style ‘Which I was born to introduce— Refined it first, and show’d its use.’*
They are both clever books—one in imitation of the days of chivalry—the
other (by Horace Smith, one of the
authors of Rejected
Addresses) dated in the time of the Civil Wars, and introducing
historical characters.
“I believe, were I to publish the Canongate Chronicles without my name
(nomme de guerre, I mean),
the event might be a corollary to the fable of the peasant who made the real
pig squeak against the imitator, when the sapient audience killed the poor
grunter as if inferior to the biped in his own language. The peasant could,
indeed, confute the long-eared multitude by showing piggy; but were I to fail
as a knight with a white and maiden shield, and then vindicate my claim to
attention by putting ‘By the Author of Waverley’ in the title, my
good friend Publicum would defend itself by stating I had tilted so ill, that my course had not the least
resemblance to former doings, when indisputably I bore away the garland.
Therefore I am firmly and resolutely determined to tilt under my own
cognizance. The hazard, indeed, remains of being beaten. But there is a
prejudice (not an undue one neither) in favour of the original patentee; and
Joe Manton’s name has borne
out many a sorry gun-barrel. More of this to-morrow.
Expense of journey, L.41 0 0Anne, pocket-money,5 0 0Servants on journey,20 0 Cash in purse (silver not reckoned),2 0 0—————L.50 0 0
This is like to be an expensive trip; but if I can sell an early copy
to a French translator, it should bring me home. Thank God, little Dohnnie Hoo, as he calls himself, is looking
well, though the poor dear child is kept always in a prostrate posture.
“October 18.—I take up again
my remarks on imitators. I am sure I mean the gentlemen no wrong by calling
them so, and heartily wish they had followed a better model. But it serves to
show me veluti in speculo my own
errors, or, if you will, those of the style. One advantage, I think, I still
have over all of them. They may do their fooling with better grace; but I, like
Sir Andrew Aguecheek, do it more
natural. They have to read old books, and consult antiquarian collections, to
get their knowledge; I write because I have long since read such works, and
possess, thanks to a strong memory, the information which they have to seek
for. This leads to a dragging-in historical details by head and shoulders, so
that the interest of the main piece is lost in minute descriptions of events
which do not affect its
progress. Perhaps I have sinned in this way myself; indeed, I am but too
conscious of having considered the plot only as what Bayes calls the means of bringing in fine things; so that, in
respect to the descriptions, it resembled the string of the showman’s
box, which he pulls to exhibit, in succession, Kings, Queens, the Battle of
Waterloo, Buonaparte at St Helena,
Newmarket Races, and White-headed Bob
floored by Jemmy from Town. All this I may
have done, but I have repented of it; and in my better efforts, while I
conducted my story through the agency of historical personages, and by
connecting it with historical incidents, I have endeavoured to weave them
pretty closely together, and in future I will study this more. Must not let the
back-ground eclipse the principal figures—the frame overpower the picture.
“Another thing in my favour is, that my
contemporaries steal too openly. Mr
Smith has inserted in Brambletye House whole pages from
De Foe’s ‘Fire and Plague of London.’ ‘Steal! fob! a fico for the phrase— Convey, the wise it call!’ When I convey an incident or so, I am at as much
pains to avoid detection as if the offence could be indicted at the Old Bailey.
But leaving this, hard pressed as I am by these imitators, who must put the
thing out of fashion at last, I consider, like a fox at his shifts, whether
there be a way to dodge them—some new device to throw them off, and have a mile
or two of free ground while I have legs and wind left to use it. There is one
way to give novelty; to depend for success on the interest of a well-contrived
story. But, wo’s me! that requires thought, consideration—the writing out
a regular plan or plot—above all, the adhering to one—which I never can do, for
the ideas rise as I write, and bear such a
disproportioned extent to that which each occupied at the first concoction,
that (cocksnowns!) I shall never be able to take the trouble; and yet to make
the world stare, and gain a new march ahead of them all! Well, something we
still will do. ‘Liberty’s in every blow; Let us do or die!’ Poor Rob Burns! to tack thy fine
strains of sublime patriotism! Better Tristram
Shandy’s vein. Hand me my cap and bells there. So now, I
am equipped. I open my raree-show with ‘Ma’am, will you walk in, and fal de ral diddle? And, sir, will you stalk in, and fal de ral diddle? And, miss, will you pop in, and fal de ral diddle? And, master, pray hop in, and fal de ral diddle.’ Query—How long is it since I heard that strain of dulcet mood, and where
or how came I to pick it up? It is not mine, ‘though by your smiling
you seem to say so.’ Here is a proper morning’s work! But I
am childish with seeing them all well and happy here; and as I can neither
whistle nor sing, I must let the giddy humour run to waste on paper.
“Sallied forth in the morning; bought a hat. Met Sir
William Knighton,* from whose
discourse I guess that Malachi
has done me no prejudice in a certain quarter; with more indications of the
times, which I need not set down. Sallied again after breakfast, and visited
the Piccadilly ladies. Saw also the
Duchess of Buckingham, and Lady Charlotte Bury, with a most beautiful
little girl. Owen Rees breakfasted, and
agreed I should have what the Frenchman has offered for the advantage of
* Sir William
was Private Secretary to King George
IV. Sir Walter made
his acquaintance in August, 1822, and ever afterwards they corresponded
with each other—sometimes very confidentially.
translating Napoleon, which will help my expenses to town
and down again.
“October 19.—I rose at my
usual time, but could not write; so read Southey’sHistory of the Peninsular War. It is
very good, indeed—honest English principle in every line; but there are many
prejudices, and there is a tendency to augment a work already too long by
saying all that can be said of the history of ancient times appertaining to
every place mentioned. What care we whether Saragossa be derived from
Cæsaria Augusta? Could he have proved it to be Numantium, there would have
been a concatenation accordingly.*
“Breakfasted at Sam
Rogers’s with Sir Thomas
Lawrence; Luttrel, the
great London wit; Richard Sharp, &c.
One of them made merry with some part of Rose’sAriosto; proposed that the Italian should be printed on the other
side, for the sake of assisting the indolent reader to understand the English;
and complained of his using more than once the phrase of a lady having
‘voided her saddle,’ which would certainly sound
extraordinary at Apothecaries’ Hall. Well, well,
Rose carries a dirk too. The morning was too dark for
Westminster Abbey, which we had projected.
“I then went to Downing Street, and am put by
Mr Wilmot Horton into the hands of a
confidential clerk, Mr Smith, who promises access to every
thing. Then saw Croker, who gave me a
bundle of documents. Sir George Cockburn
promises his despatches and journal. In short, I have ample prospect of
materials. Dined with Mrs Coutts.
Tragi-comic distress of my good
* It is amusing to compare this criticism with
Sir Walter’s own anxiety
to identify his daughter-in-law’s place, Lochore, with the Urbs Orrea of the
Roman writers. See the first chapter of this volume, p. 7.
friend on the marriage of her presumptive heir with a daughter of Lucien
Buonaparte.
“October 20.—Commanded down
to pass a day at Windsor. This is very kind of his
Majesty.—At breakfast, Crofton
Croker, author of the Irish Fairy Tales—little as a dwarf, keen-eyed as a hawk, and of
easy, prepossessing manners. Something like Tom
Moore. Here were also Terry, Allan Cunningham,
Newton, others. Now I must go to
work.—Went down to Windsor, or rather to the Lodge in the Forest, which, though
ridiculed by connoisseurs, seems to be no bad specimen of a royal retirement,
and is delightfully situated. A kind of cottage, too large perhaps for the
style, but yet so managed, that in the walks you only see parts of it at once,
and these well composed and grouping with the immense trees. His Majesty
received me with the same mixture of kindness and courtesy which has always
distinguished his conduct towards me. There was no company besides the royal
retinue—Lady Conyngham—her daughter and
two or three other ladies. After we left table, there was excellent music by
the yal band, who lay ambushed in a green-house adjoining the apartment. The
King made me sit beside him, and talk a great deal—too much perhaps—for he has
the art of raising one’s spirits, and making you forget the retenue which is prudent every where,
especially at court. But he converses himself with so much ease and elegance,
that you lose thoughts of the prince in admiring the well-bred and accomplished
gentleman. He is in many respects the model of a British monarch—has little
inclination to try experiments on government otherwise than through his
Ministers—sincerely, I believe, desires the good of his subjects—is kind
towards the distressed, and moves and speaks ‘every inch a
king.’ I am
sure such a man is fitter for us than one who would long to head armies, or be
perpetually intermeddling with la grande
politique. A sort of reserve, which creeps on him daily,
and prevents his going to places of public resort, is a disadvantage, and
prevents his being so generally popular as is earnestly to be desired. This, I
think, was much increased by the behaviour of the rabble in the brutal insanity
of the Queen’s trial, when
John Bull, meaning the best in the
world, made such a beastly figure.
“October ’21.—Walked
in the morning with Sir William
Knighton, and had much confidential chat, not fit to be here set
down, in case of accidents. He undertook most kindly to recommend Charles, when he has taken his degree, to be
attached to some of the diplomatic missions, which I think is best for the lad,
after all. After breakfast went to Windsor Castle, and examined the
improvements going on there under Mr
Wyattville, who appears to possess a great deal of taste and
feeling for Gothic architecture. The old apartments, splendid enough in extent
and proportion, are paltry in finishing. Instead of being lined with heart of
oak, the palace of the British King is hung with paper, painted wainscot
colour. There are some fine paintings, and some droll ones: Among the last are
those of divers princes of the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, of which
Queen Charlotte was descended. They
are ill-coloured, orang-outang-looking figures, with black eyes and hook-noses,
in old-fashioned uniforms. Returned to a hasty dinner in Pall-Mall, and then
hurried away to see honest Dan
Terry’s theatre, called the Adelphi, where we saw the Pilot, from an American
novel of that name. It is extremely popular, the dramatist having seized on the
whole story, and turned the odious and ridiculous parts,
assigned by the original author to the British, against the Yankees themselves.
There is a quiet effrontery in this, that is of a rare and peculiar character.
The Americans were so much displeased, that they attempted a row—which rendered
the piece doubly attractive to the seamen at Wapping, who came up and crowded
the house night after night, to support the honour of the British flag. After
all, one must deprecate whatever keeps up ill-will betwixt America and the
mother country; and we in particular should avoid awakening painful
recollections. Our high situation enables us to contemn petty insults, and to
make advances towards cordiality. I was, however, glad to see
Dan’s theatre as full seemingly as it could
hold. The heat was dreadful, and Anne so
unwell that she was obliged to be carried into
Terry’s house, a curious dwelling no larger than
a squirrel’s cage, which he has contrived to squeeze out of the vacant
space of the theatre, and which is accessible by a most complicated combination
of staircases and small passages. There we had rare good porter and oysters
after the play, and found Anne much better.
“October 22.—This morning
Mr Wilmot Horton, Under Secretary of
State, breakfasted. He is full of some new plan of relieving the
poor’s-rates, by encouraging emigration. But John Bull will think this savours of Botany-Bay. The attempt to
look the poor’s-rates in the face is certainly meritorious. Laboured in
writing and marking extracts to be copied, from breakfast to dinner with the
exception of an hour spent in telling Johnnie the history of his name-sake, Gilpin. Tom Moore and
Sir Thomas Lawrence came in the
evening, which made a pleasant soirée. Smoked my French—Egad it is time to air some
of my vocabulary. It is, I find, cursedly musty.
“October 23.—Sam Rogers and Moore breakfasted here, and we were very merry fellows.
Moore seemed disposed to go to France with us. I
foresee I shall be embarrassed with more communications than can use or trust
to, coloured as they must be by the passions of those who make them. Thus I
have a statement from the Duchess
d’Escars, to which the Buonapartists would, I dare say,
give no credit. If Talleyrand, for
example, could be communicative, he must have ten thousand reasons for
perverting the truth, and yet a person receiving: a direct communication from
him would be almost barred from disputing it. ‘Sing, tantarara, rogues all.’
“We dined at the Residentiary-house with good
Dr Hughes—Allan Cunningham, Sir Thomas Lawrence, and young Mr
Hughes. Thomas Pringle*
is returned from the Cape. He might have done well there, could he have scoured
his brains of politics, but he must needs publish a Whig journal at the Cape of
Good Hope!! He is a worthy creature, but conceited withal—hinc illæ lachrymæ. He brought
me some antlers and a skin, in addition to others he had sent to Abbotsford
four years since.
* Mr Pringle was
a Roxburghshire farmer’s son (lame in both legs) who, in youth,
attracted Sir Walter’s notice by
his poem called, “Scenes of Teviotdale.” He was for a time Editor of Blackwood’s Magazine, but
the publisher and he had different politics, quarrelled, and parted.
Sir Walter then gave Pringle
strong recommendations to the late Lord Charles
Somerset, Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, in which colony
he settled, and for some years throve under the Governor’s
protection; but the newspaper alluded to in the text ruined his prospects
at the Cape—he returned to England—became Secretary to an anti-slavery
association—published a charming little volume entitled “African
Sketches,”—and died, I fear in very distressed circumstances,
in December 1834. He was a man of amiable feelings and elegant genius. The
reader may see a fuller account of him in the Quarterly Review for December 1835.
“October 24.—Laboured in the
morning. At breakfast, Dr Holland, and
Cohen, whom they now call Palgrave, a mutation of names which confused my recollections.
Item, Moore. I worked at the Colonial Office pretty hard.
Dined with Mr Wilmot Horton, and his
beautiful wife, the original of the
‘She
walks in beauty,’ &c. of poor Byron. N.B. The conversation is seldom excellent
among official people. So many topics are what Otaheitians call taboo. We hunted down a pun or too, which were turned
out, like the stag at the Epping Hunt, for the pursuit of all and sundry. Came
home early, and was in bed by eleven.
“October 25.—Kind Mr
Wilson* and his wife at breakfast; also Sir Thomas Lawrence. Locker† came in afterwards, and made a
proposal to me to give up his intended life of George III.
in my favour on cause shown. I declined the proposal, not being of opinion that
my genius lies that way, and not relishing hunting in couples. Afterwards went
to the Colonial Office, and had Robert
Hay’s assistance in my enquiries—then to the French
Ambassador’s for my passports. Picked up Sotheby, who endeavoured to saddle me for a review of his polyglott Virgil. I fear I
shall scarce convince him that I know nothing of the Latin lingo. Sir R. H. Inglis, Richard Sharp, and other friends called. We dine at Miss Dumergue’s, and spend a part of our
soirée at Lydia White’s. To-morrow, ‘For France, for France, for it is more than need.’
“Calais, October 26.—Up at
five, and in the packet
* William Wilson,
Esq. of Wandsworth Common, formerly of Wilsontown, in
Lanarkshire.
† E. H. Locker,
Esq. then Secretary, now one of the Commissioners, of
Greenwich Hospital an old and dear friend of Scott’s.
by six. A fine
passage—save at the conclusion, while we lay on and off the harbour of Calais.
But the tossing made no impression on my companion or me; we ate and drank like
dragoons the whole way, and were able to manage a good supper and best part of
a bottle of Chablis, at the classic Dessein’s, who
received us with much courtesy.
“October 27.—Custom-house,
&c. detained us till near ten o’clock, so we had time to walk on the
Boulevards, and to see the fortifications, which must be very strong, all the
country round being flat and marshy. Lost, as all know, by the bloody papist
bitch (one must be vernacular when on French ground) Queen Mary, of red-hot memory. I would rather she had burned a
score more of bishops. If she had kept it, her sister Bess would sooner have parted with her virginity.
Charles I. had no temptation to part
with it—it might, indeed, have been shuffled out of our hands during the Civil
Wars, but Noll would have as soon let
Monsieur draw one of his grinders—then Charles
II. would hardly have dared to sell such an old possession, as
he did Dunkirk; and after that the French had little chance till the
Revolution. Even then, I think, we could have held a place that could be
supplied from our own element the sea. Cui
bono? None, I think, but to plague the rogues. We dined
at Cormont, and being stopped by Mr
Canning having taken up all the post-horses, could only reach
Montreuil that night. I should have liked to have seen some more of this place,
which is fortified; and as it stands on an elevated and rocky site, must
present some fine points. But as we came in late, and left early, I can only
bear witness to good treatment, good supper, good vin de
Barsac, and excellent beds.
“October 28.—Breakfasted at
Abbeville, and saw a very handsome Gothic church, and reached Grandvilliers at
night. The house is but second-rate, though lauded by several English
travellers for the moderation of its charges, as was recorded in a book
presented to us by the landlady. There is no great patriotism in publishing
that a traveller thinks the bills moderate—it serves usually as an intimation
to mine host or hostess that John Bull will
bear a little more squeezing. I gave my attestation, too, however, for the
charges of the good lady resembled those elsewhere; and her anxiety to please
was extreme. Folks must be harder hearted than I am to resist the empressement, which may, indeed, be venal,
yet has in its expression a touch of cordiality.
“Paris, October
29.—Breakfasted at Beauvais, and saw its magnificent cathedral—unfinished it
has been left, and unfinished it will remain, of course,—the fashion of
cathedral’s being passed away. But even what exists is inimitable, the
choir particularly, and the grand front. Beauvais is called the Pucelle, yet, so far as I can see, she wears no stays—I
mean, has no fortifications. On we run, however. Vogue la galère; et voila nous à Paris, Hotel de
Windsor (Rue Rivoli), where we are well lodged. France,
so far as I can see, which is very little, has not undergone many changes. The
image of war has, indeed, passed away, and we no longer see troops crossing the
country in every direction—villages either ruined or hastily
fortified—inhabitants sheltered in the woods and caves to escape the rapacity
of the soldiers,—all this has passed away. The inns, too, much amended. There
is no occasion for that rascally practice of making a bargain—or combien-ing your landlady, before you unharness your
horses, which formerly was matter of neces-sity. The general taste of the English seems to
regulate the travelling—naturally enough, as the hotels, of which there are two
or three in each town, chiefly subsist by them. We did not see one French
equipage on the road; the natives seem to travel entirely in the diligence, and
doubtless à bon marché; the
road was thronged with English. But in her great features France is the same as
ever. An oppressive air of solitude seems to hover over these rich and extended
plains, while we are sensible, that whatever is the nature of the desolation,
it cannot be sterility. The towns are small, and have a poor appearance, and
more frequently exhibit signs of decayed splendour than of increasing
prosperity. The chateau, the abode of the gentleman, and the villa, the retreat
of the thriving negotiant,—are rarely
seen till you come to Beaumont. At this place, which well deserves its name of
the fair mount, the prospect improves greatly, and country-seats are seen in
abundance; also woods, sometimes deep and extensive, at other times scattered
in groves and single trees. Amidst these the oak seldom or never is found;
England, lady of the ocean, seems to claim it exclusively as her own. Neither
are there any quantity of firs. Poplars in abundance give a formal air to the
landscape. The forests chiefly consist of beeches, with some birches, and the
roads are bordered by elms cruelly cropped and pollarded and switched. The
demand for fire-wood occasions these mutilations. If I could waft by a wish the
thinnings of Abbotsford here, it would make a little fortune of itself. But
then to switch and mutilate my trees!—not for a thousand francs. Ay, but sour
grapes, quoth the fox.
“October 30.—Finding
ourselves snugly settled in our Hotel, we determined to remain here at fifteen
francs per day. We are in the midst of what can be seen.
This morning wet and surly. Sallied, however, by the assistance of a hired
coach, and left cards for Count Pozzodi
Borgo, Lord Granville, our
ambassador, and M. Gallois, author of
the History of Venice. Found no one at home, not even the old pirate Galignani, at whose den I ventured to call.
Showed my companion the Louvre (which was closed unluckily), the fronts of the
palace, with its courts, and all that splendid quarter which the fame of Paris
rests upon in security. We can never do the like in Britain. Royal magnificence
can only be displayed by despotic power. In England, were the most splendid
street or public building to be erected, the matter must be discussed in
Parliament, or perhaps some sturdy cobbler holds out, and refuses to part with
his stall, and the whole plan is disconcerted. Long may such impediments exist!
But then we should conform to circumstances, and assume in our public works a
certain sober simplicity of character, which should point out that they were
dictated by utility rather than show. The affectation of an expensive style
only places us at a disadvantageous contrast with other nations, and our
substitution of plaster for freestone resembles the mean ambition which
displays Bristol stones in default of diamonds.
“We went in the evening to the Comedie Francaise;
Rosamonde the piece. It is the composition of a young man
with a promising name—Emile de
Bonnechose; the story that of Fair
Rosamond. There were some good situations, and the actors in the
French taste seemed to me admirable, particularly Mademoiselle Bourgoin. It would be absurd to criticise what I
only half understood; but the piece was well received, and produced a very
strong effect. Two or three ladies were carried out in hysterics; one next to
our box was fright-fully ill. A
Monsieur à belles moustaches—the
husband, I trust, though it is likely they were en
partie fine—was extremely and affectionately assiduous.
She was well worthy of the trouble, being very pretty indeed; the face
beautiful, even amidst the involuntary convulsions. The afterpiece was Femme Juge et
Partie, with which I was less amused than I had expected,
because I found I understood the language less than I did ten or eleven years
since. Well, well, I am past the age of mending.
“Some of our friends in London had pretended that
at Paris I might stand some chance of being encountered by the same sort of
tumultuary reception which I met in Ireland; but for this I see no ground. It
is a point on which I am totally indifferent. As a literary man I cannot affect
to despise public applause; as a private gentleman, I have always been
embarrassed and displeased with popular clamours, even when in my favour. I
know very well the breath of which such shouts are composed, and am sensible
those who applaud me to-day would be as ready to toss me to-morrow; and I would
not have them think that I put such a value on their favour as would make me
for an instant fear their displeasure. Now all this disclamation is sincere,
and yet it sounds affected. It puts me in mind of an old woman, who, when
Carlisle was taken by the Highlanders in 1745, chose to be particularly
apprehensive of personal violence, and shut herself up in a closet, in order
that she might escape ravishment. But no one came to disturb her solitude, and
she began to be sensible that poor Donald
was looking out for victuals, or seeking some small plunder, without bestowing
a thought on the fair sex; by and by she popped her head out of her place of
refuge with the pretty question, ‘Good folks, can you tell when the
ravishing is going to begin?’ I am sure I shall neither hide
myself to avoid applause, which probably no one will
think of conferring, nor have the meanness to do any thing which can indicate
any desire of ravishment. I have seen, when the late Lord Erskine entered the Edinburgh theatre, papers distributed
in the boxes to mendicate a round of applause—the natural reward of a poor
player.
“October 31.—At breakfast
visited by M. Gallois, an elderly
Frenchman (always the most agreeable class), full of information, courteous,
and communicative. He had seen nearly, and remarked deeply, and spoke frankly,
though with due caution. He went with us to the Museum, where I think the Hall
of Sculpture continues to be a fine thing—that of Pictures but tolerable, when
we reflect upon 1815. A number of great French daubs (comparatively), by
David and Gerard, cover the walls once occupied by the
Italian chefs-d’œuvre.
Fiat justitia, ruat
cœlum. We then visited Notre Dame and the Palace of
Justice. The latter is accounted the oldest building in Paris, being the work
of St Louis. It is, however, in the interior,
adapted to the taste of Louis XIV. We drove
over the Pont Neuf, and visited the fine quays, which was all we could make out
to-day, as I was afraid to fatigue Anne.
When we returned home, I found Count Pozzo di
Borgo waiting for me, a personable man, inclined to be rather
corpulent handsome features, with all the Corsican fire in his eyes. He was
quite kind and communicative. Lord
Granville had also called, and sent his Secretary to invite us
to dinner to-morrow. In the evening at the Odeon, where we saw Ivanhoe. It was superbly got up,
the Norman soldiers wearing pointed helmets and what resembled much hauberks of
mail, which looked very well. The number of the attendants, and the skill with
which they were moved and grouped on the stage, were well worthy of notice. It
was an opera, and, of course,
the story sadly mangled, and the dialogue, in great part, nonsense. Yet it was
strange to hear any thing like the words which I (then in an agony of pain with
spasms in my stomach) dictated to William
Laidlaw at Abbotsford now recited in a foreign tongue, and for
the amusement of a strange people. I little thought to have survived the
completing of this novel.
“November 1.—I suppose the ravishing is going to
begin, for we have had the Dames des Halles, with a bouquet like a maypole, and
a speech full of honey and oil, which cost me ten francs; also a small
worshipper, who would not leave his name, but came seulement pour avoir le plaisir, la felicité,
&c. &c. All this jargon I answer with corresponding blarney of my own, for have I not licked the black stone of that
ancient castle? As to French, I speak it as it comes, and like Doeg in Absalom and Achitophel— ‘——dash on through thick and thin, Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in.’ We went this morning with M.
Gallois to the Church of St Genevieve, and thence to the College
Henri IV., where I saw once more my old friend Chevalier. He was unwell, swathed in a turban of nightcaps and
a multiplicity of robes de chambre;
but he had all the heart and vivacity of former times. I was truly glad to see
the kind old man. We were unlucky in our day for sights, this being a high
festival—All Souls’ Day. We were not allowed to scale the steeple of St
Genevieve, neither could we see the animals at the Jardin des Plantes, who,
though they have no souls, it is supposed, and no interest, of course, in the
devotions of the day, observe it in strict retreat, like the nuns of Kilkenny.
I met, however, one lioness walking at large in the
Jardin, and was introduced. This was Madame de
Souza. the authoress of some well-known French romances of a
very classical character, I am told, for I have never read them. She must have
been beautiful, and is still well-looked. She is the mother of the handsome
Count de Flahault, and had a very
well-looking daughter with her, besides a son or two. She was very agreeable.
We are to meet again! The day becoming decidedly rainy, we returned along the
Boulevards by the Bridge of Austerlitz, but the weather spoiled the fine show.
“We dined at the Ambassador, Lord Granville’s. He inhabits the same
splendid house which Lord Castlereagh had
in 1815, namely, Numero 30, Rue de Fauxbourg St Honore. It once belonged to
Pauline Borghese, and, if its walls
could speak, they might tell us mighty curious stories. Without their having
any tongue, they speak to my feelings ‘with most miraculous
organ.’ In these halls I had often seen and conversed familiarly with
many of the great and powerful, who won the world by their swords, and divided
it by their counsel. There I saw very much of poor Lord
Castlereagh a man of sense, presence of mind, and fortitude,
which carried him through many an affair of critical moment, when finer talents
would have stuck in the mire. He had been, I think, indifferently educated, and
his mode of speaking being far from logical or correct, he was sometimes in
danger of becoming almost ridiculous, in despite of his lofty presence, which
had all the grace of the Seymours, and his determined
courage. But then he was always up to the occasion, and upon important matters
was an orator to convince, if not to delight his hearers. He is gone, and my
friend ******** also, whose kindness
this town so strongly recalls. It
is remarkable they were the only persons of sense and credibility who both
attested supernatural appearances on their own evidence, and both died in the
same melancholy manner. I shall always tremble when any friend of mine becomes
visionary. I have seen in these rooms the Emperor
Alexander, Platoff,
Schwartzenberg, old Blucher, Fouché, and many a marshal whose truncheon had guided
armies—all now at peace, without subjects, without dominion, and where their
past life, perhaps, seems but the recollection of a feverish dream. What a
group would this band have made in the gloomy regions described in the Odyssey! But to lesser things.
We were most kindly received by Lord and Lady
Granville, and met many friends, some of them having been guests
at Abbotsford; among these were Lords Ashley and Morpeth—there
were also Charles Ellis (Lord
Seaford now), cum plurimis
aliis. Anne saw for
the first time an entertainment à la mode de.
France, where the gentlemen left the parlour with the
ladies. In diplomatic houses it is a good way of preventing political
discussion, which John Bull is always apt
to introduce with the second bottle. We left early, and came home at ten, much
pleased with Lord and Lady Granville’s kindness,
though it was to be expected, as our recommendation came from Windsor.
“November 2.—Another gloomy
day—a pize upon it!—and we have settled to go to St Cloud, and dine, if
possible, with the Drummonds at Auteuil. Besides, I expect
poor Spencer* to breakfast. There is
another thought which depresses me. Well—but let us jot
* The late Honourable William Robert Spencer, the best writer of vers de societé in our time,
and one of the most charming of companions, was exactly Sir Walter’s contemporary, and like
him first
down a little politics, as my book has a pretty firm
lock. The Whigs may say what they please, but I think the
Bourbons will stand. M. *
* *, no great Royalist, says that the Duke of Orleans lives on the best terms with the reigning
family, which is wise on his part, for the golden fruit may ripen and fall of
itself, but it would be dangerous to ‘Lend the crowd his arm to shake the tree.’* The army, which was Buonaparte’s strength, is now very much changed by the
gradual influence of time, which has removed many, and made invalids of many
more. The artisans are neutral, and if the King will govern according to the Charte, and, what is still
more, according to the habits of the people, he will sit firm enough, and the
constitution will gradually attain more and more reverence as age gives it
authority, and distinguishes it from those temporary and ephemeral governments,
which seemed only set up to be pulled down. The most dangerous point in the
present state of France is that of religion. It is, no doubt, excellent in the
Bourbons to desire to make France a religious country;
but they begin, I think, at the wrong end. To press the observancy and ritual
of religion on those who are not influenced by its doctrines, is planting the
growing tree with its head downwards. Rites are sanctified by belief; but
belief can never arise out of an enforced observance of ceremonies; it only
makes men detest what is imposed on them by compulsion. Then these Jesuits, who
constitute, emphatically, an imperium in
imperio,
attracted notice by a version of
Burger’sLenore. Like him, too, this remarkable man fell into
pecuniary distress in the disastrous year 1825, and he was now an
involuntary resident in Paris, where he died in October, 1834, ann. ætat 65.
* Dryden’sAbsalom and
Achitophel—Character of Shaftesbury.
labouring first for the benefit of
their own order, and next for that of the Roman See—what is it but the
introduction into France of a foreign influence, whose interest may often run
counter to the general welfare of the kingdom?
“We have enough of ravishment. M.
Meurice writes me that he is ready to hang himself that we did
not find accommodation at his hotel; and Madame
Mirbel came almost on her knees to have permission to take my
portrait. I was cruel; but, seeing her weeping ripe, consented she should come
to-morrow and work while I wrote. A Russian Princess
Galitzin, too, demands to see me, in the heroic vein;
“Elle vouloit traverser les
mers pour aller voir S. W. S.,”* &c.
and offers me a rendezvous at my hotel. This is precious tom-foolery; however,
it is better than being neglected like a fallen sky-rocket, which seemed like
to be my fate last year.
“We went to St Cloud with my old friend
Mr Drummond, now living at a pretty maison de campagne at Auteuil. St Cloud,
besides its unequalled views, is rich in remembrances. I did not fail to visit
the Orangerie, out of which Boney expelled the Council of Five Hun-
* S. W. S. stands very often in this Diary for
Sir Walter
Scott. This is done in sportive allusion to the
following trait of Tom
Purdie:—The morning after the news of
Scott’s baronetcy reached Abbotsford,
Tom was not to be found in any of his usual
haunts: he remained absent the whole day and when he returned at night
the mystery was thus explained. He and the head shepherd (who, by the
by, was also butcher in ordinary), Robert
Hogg (a brother of the Bard
of Ettrick), had been spending the day on the hill
busily employed in prefixing a large S. for Sir to the W. S. which
previously appeared on the backs of the sheep. It was afterwards found
that honest Tom had taken it upon him to order a
mason to carve a similar honourable augmentation on the stones which
marked the line of division between his master’s moor and that of
the Laird of Kippilaw.
dred. I thought I saw the scoundrels jumping the windows,
with the bayonet at their rumps. What a pity the house was not two stories
high! I asked the Swiss some questions on the locale, which he answered with
becoming caution, saying, however, that ‘he was not present at the
time.’ There are also new remembrances. A separate garden, laid
out as a play-ground for the royal children, is called Trocadero, from the
siege of Cadiz. But the Bourbons should not take military
ground—it is firing a pop-gun in answer to a battery of cannon. All within the
house is deranged. Every trace of Nap. or his reign
totally done away, as if traced in sand over which the tide has passed.
Moreau and Pichegru’s portraits hang in the royal
antechamber. The former has a mean physiognomy; the latter has been a strong
and stern-looking man. I looked at him, and thought of his death-struggles. In
the guard-room were the heroes of La Vendeé, Charette with his white bonnet, the two La Roche Jacquelines, l’Escures, in an attitude of prayer,
Stofflet, the gamekeeper, with
others.
“November 3.—Sat to
Mad. Mirbel—Spencer at breakfast. Went out and had a long
interview with Marshal Macdonald, the
purport of which I have put down elsewhere. Visited Princess
Galitzin, and also Cooper, the American novelist. This man, who has shown so much
genius, has a good deal of the manners, or want of manners, peculiar to his
countrymen. He proposed to me a mode of publishing in America, by entering the
book as the property of a citizen. I will think of this. Every little helps, as
the tod says, when, &c. At night, at the Theatre de Madame, where we saw
two petit pieces, Le Marriage de Raison, and Le plus beau jour de Ma
Vie—both excellently played. Afterwards at Lady Granville’s rout, which was as
splendid as any I ever saw—and
I have seen beaucoup dans cet genre.
A great number of ladies of the first rank were present, and if honeyed words
from pretty lips could surfeit, I had enough of them. One can swallow a great
deal of whipped cream, to be sure, and it does not hurt an old stomach.
“November 4.—After ten I
went with Anne to the Tuileries, where
we saw the royal family pass through the Glass Gallery as they went to chapel.
We were very much looked at in our turn, and the King, on passing out, did me the honour to say a few civil
words, which produced a great sensation. Mad. la
Dauphine and Mad. de Berri
curtsied, smiled, and looked extremely gracious; and smiles, bows, and curtsies
rained on us like odours, from all the courtiers and ladies of the train. We
were conducted by an officer of the Royal Gardes du Corps to a convenient place
in the chapel, where we had the pleasure of hearing the mass performed with
excellent music.
“I had a perfect view of the royal family. The
King is the same in age as I knew him
in youth at Holyroodhouse,—debonair and courteous in the highest degree.
Mad. Dauphine resembles very much
the prints of Marie Antoinette, in the
profile especially. She is not, however, beautiful, her features being too
strong, but they announce a great deal of character, and the princess whom
Buonaparte used to call the man of the family. She seemed very attentive to her
devotions. The Duchess of Berri seemed less
immersed in the ceremony, and yawned once or twice. She is a lively-looking
blonde—looks as if she were good-humoured and happy, by no means pretty, and
has a cast with her eyes; splendidly adorned with diamonds, however. After this
gave Mad. Mirbel a sitting, where I
encountered a general officer, her uncle, who was chef de
l’etat major to Buonaparte. He was very
communicative, and seemed an interesting person, by no means over much
prepossessed in favour of his late master, whom he judged impartially, though
with affection. We came home and dined in quiet, having refused all temptations
to go out in the evening; this on Anne’s account as well as my own. It is not quite gospel,
though Solomon says it—The eye can
be tired with seeing, whatever he may allege in the contrary. And then there
are so many compliments. I wish for a little of the old Scotch causticity. I am
something like the bee that sips treacle.
“November 5.—I believe I
must give up my journal till I leave Paris. The French are literally outrageous
in their civilities—bounce in at all hours, and drive one half mad with
compliments. I am ungracious not to be so entirely thankful as I ought to this
kind and merry people. We breakfasted with Mad.
Mirbel, where were the Dukes of Fitz-James
and Duras, &c. &c. goodly company; but all’s
one for that. I made rather an impatient sitter, wishing to talk much more than
was agreeable to Madame. Afterwards we went to the Champs Elysées, where a
balloon was let off, and all sorts of frolics performed for the benefit of the
bons gens de Paris—besides
stuffing them with victuals. I wonder how such a civic festival would go off in
London or Edinburgh, or especially in Dublin. To be sure, they would not
introduce their shilelahs! But, in the classic taste of the French, there were
no such gladiatorial doings. To be sure, they have a natural good-humour and
gaiety which inclines them to be pleased with themselves, and every thing about
them. We dined at the Ambassador’s, where was a large party, Lord Morpeth, the Duke
of Devonshire, and others all very kind. Pozzo di Borgo there, and disposed to be
communicative. A large soirée. Home at eleven. These hours are early,
however.
“November 6.—Cooper came to breakfast, but we were
obsedés partout. Such a
number of Frenchmen bounced in successively and exploded (I mean discharged)
their compliments, that I could hardly find an opportunity to speak a word, or
entertain Mr Cooper at all. After this we sat again for
our portraits. Mad. Mirbel took care not
to have any one to divert my attention, but I contrived to amuse myself with
some masons finishing a façade opposite to me, who placed their stones,
not like Inigo Jones, but in the most
lubberly way in the world, with the help of a large wheel, and the application
of strength of hand. John Smith of
Darnick, and two of his men, would have done more with a block
and pulley than the whole score of them. The French seem far behind in
machinery. We are almost eaten up with kindness, but that will have its end. I
have had to parry several presents of busts, and so forth. The funny thing was
the airs of my little friend. We had a most affectionate parting wet, wet
cheeks on the lady’s side. Pebble-hearted, and shed as few tears as
Crab of doggish memory.*
“Went to Galignani’s, where the brothers, after some palaver,
offered L.105 for the sheets of Napoleon, to be reprinted at Paris in English. I told them I would
think of it. I suppose Treuttel and
Würtz had apprehended something of this kind, for
they write me that they had made a bargain with my publisher (Cadell, I suppose) for the publishing of my
book in all sorts of ways. I must look into this.
“Dined with Marshal
Macdonald† and a splendid
* See the Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II.
Scene 3.
† The Marshal had visited Scotland in 1825—and
the Diarist
party; amongst others, Marshal Marmont—middle size, stout made, dark complexion, and
looks sensible. The French hate him much for his conduct in 1814, but it is
only making him the scape-goat. Also I saw Mons. de
Mole, but especially the Marquis de
Lauriston, who received me most kindly. He is personally like my
cousin Colonel Russell. I learned that
his brother, Louis Law,* my old friend,
was alive, and the father of a large family. I was most kindly treated, and had
my vanity much flattered by the men who had acted such important parts talking
to me in the most frank manner.
“In the evening to Princess
Galitzin, where were a whole covey of Princesses of Russia
arrayed in tartan, with music and singing to boot. The
person in whom I was most interested was Mad. de
Boufflers, upwards of eighty, very polite, very pleasant, and
with all the acquirements of a French court lady of the time of Mad. Sevigné, or of the correspondent rather of Horace Walpole. Cooper was there, so the Scotch and American lions took the
field together. Home, and settled our affairs to depart.
November 7.—Off at seven breakfasted at Beauvais, and
pushed on to Amiens. This being a forced march, we had bad lodgings, wet wood,
uncomfortable
then saw a good deal of him under
the roof of his kinsman, Mr Macdonald
Buchanan.
* Lauriston, the ancient seat of the
Laws, so famous in French history, is very
near Edinburgh, and the estate was in their possession at the time of
the Revolution. Two or three cadets of the family were of the first
emigration, and one of them (M. Louis
Law) was a frequent guest of the poet’s father,
and afterwards corresponded during many years with himself. I am not
sure whether it was M. Louis Law whose French
designation so much amused the people of Edinburgh. One brother of the
Marquis de Lauriston,
however, was styled Le Chevalier de
Mutton-hole—this being the name of a village on
the Scotch property.
supper, damp beds, and an
extravagant charge. I was never colder in my life than when I waked with the
sheets clinging around me like a shroud.
“November 8.—We started at
six in the morning, having no need to be called twice, so heartily was I weary
of my comfortless couch. Breakfasted at Abbeville—then pushed on to Boulogne,
expecting to find the packet ready to start next morning, and so to have had
the advantage of the easterly tide. But, lo ye! the packet was not to sail till
next day. So, after shrugging our shoulders—being the solace à la mode de France—and recruiting
ourselves with a pullet and a bottle of Chablis à la mode d’ Angleterre, we set off for
Calais after supper, and it was betwixt three and four in the morning before we
got to Dessein’s, when the house was full or reported to be so. We could
only get two wretched brick-paved garrets, as cold and moist as those of
Amiens, instead of the comforts which we were received with at our arrival.*
But I was better prepared. Stripped off the sheets, and lay down in my
dressing-gown, and so roughed it out—tant bien que
mal.
“November 9.—At four in the
morning we were called—at six we got on board the packet, where I found a
sensible and conversible man, a very pleasant circumstance. At Dover
Mr Ward came with the lieutenant-governor of the
castle, and wished us to visit that ancient fortress. I regretted much that our
time was short, and the weather did not admit of our seeing views, so we could
only thank the gentlemen in declining their civility. The castle, partly
ruinous, seems to have been very fine. The Cliff, to which Shakspeare gave his im-
* A room in Dessein’s hotel is now inscribed
“Chambre de Walter
Scott”—another has long been marked “Chambre de
Sterne.”
mortal name, is, as all the world knows, a great deal
lower than his description implies. Our Dover friends, justly jealous of the
reputation of their Cliff, impute this diminution of its consequence to its
having fallen in repeatedly since the poet’s time. I think it more likely
that the imagination of Shakspeare, writing perhaps at a
period long after he may have seen the rock, had described it such as he
conceived it to have been. Besides, Shakspeare was born in
a flat country, and Dover Cliff is at least lofty enough to have suggested the
exaggerated features to his fancy. At all events, it has maintained its
reputation better than the Tarpeian Rock no man could leap from it and live.
Left Dover after a hot luncheon about four o’clock, and reached London at
half-past three in the morning. So, adieu to la
belle France, and welcome merry England.
“Pall-Mail, November 10.—Ere
I leave la belle France, however, it
is fit I should express my gratitude for the unwontedly kind reception which I
met with at all hands. It would be an unworthy piece of affectation did I not
allow that I have been pleased—highly pleased—to find a species of literature
intended only for my own country, has met such an extensive and favourable
reception in a foreign land, where there was so much a priori to oppose its
progress. For my work I think I have done a good deal; but, above all, I have
been confirmed strongly in the impressions I had previously formed of the
character of Nap., and may attempt to draw
him with a firmer hand.
“The succession of new people and unusual incidents
has had a favourable effect on my mind, which was becoming rutted like an ill
kept high-way. My thoughts have for some time flowed in another and pleasanter
channel than through the melancholy course into which my solitary and deprived
state had long driven them, and
which gave often pain to be endured without complaint, and without sympathy.
‘For this relief,’ as Marcellus says in Hamlet, ‘much thanks.’
“To-day I visited the public offices, and
prosecuted my researches. Left enquiries for the Duke of
York, who has recovered from a most desperate state. His legs
had been threatened with mortification; but he was saved by a critical
discharge;—also visited the Duke of
Wellington, Lord Melville,
and others, besides the ladies in
Piccadilly. Dined and spent the evening quietly in Pall-Mall.
“November 11.—Croker came to breakfast, and we were soon
after joined by Theodore Hook, alias (on dit)
John Bull—he has got as fat as the
actual monarch of the herd. Lockhart sat
still with us, and we had, as Gil Blas
says, a delicious morning, spent in abusing our neighbours, at which my three
neighbours are no novices any more than I am myself, though (like Puss in Boots, who only caught mice for his
amusement), I am only a chamber counsel in matters of scandal. The fact is, I
have refrained, as much as human frailty will permit, from all satirical
composition. Here is an ample subject for a little black-balling in the case of
Joseph Hume, the great accountant,
who has managed the Greek loan so egregiously. I do not lack personal
provocation (see 13th March last), yet I won’t attack him—at present at
least—but qu’il se garde de
moi: ‘I’m not a king, nor nae sic thing, My word it may not stand; But Joseph
may a buffet bide, Come he beneath my brand.’
“At dinner we had a little blow-out on Sophia’s part. Lord Dudley, Mr Hay, Under
Secretary of State, Sir Thomas Lawrence,
&c. Mistress, as she now calls her-self, Joanna
Baillie, and her sister,
came in the evening. The whole went off pleasantly.
“November 12.—Went to sit to
Sir T. L. to finish the picture for
his Majesty, which every one says is a very fine one. I think so myself; and
wonder how Sir Thomas has made so much out of an old
weather-beaten block. But I believe the hard features of old Dons like myself
are more within the compass of the artist’s skill than the lovely face
and delicate complexion of females. Came home after a heavy shower. I had a
long conversation about * * with
* * * *—all that was whispered is
true a sign how much better our domestics are acquainted with the private
affairs of our neighbours than we are. A dreadful tale of incest and seduction,
and nearly of blood also—horrible beyond expression in its complications and
events—‘And yet the end is not;’—and this man was
amiable, and seemed the soul of honour—laughed, too, and was the soul of
society. It is a mercy our own thoughts are concealed from each other. Oh! if,
at our social table, we could see what passes in each bosom around, we would
seek dens and caverns to shun human society! To see the projector trembling for
his falling speculations; the voluptuary rueing the event of his debauchery;
the miser wearing out his soul for the loss of a guinea—all—all bent upon vain
hopes and vainer regrets—we should not need to go to the hall of the Caliph Vathek to see men’s hearts broiling
under their black veils. Lord keep us from all temptation, for we cannot be our
own shepherd!
“We dined to-day at Lady
Stafford’s at West-hill. Lord
S. looks very poorly, but better than I expected. No company,
excepting Sam Rogers and Mr Thomas
Grenville, a very amiable and accomplished man whom I knew
better about twenty years since. Age has touched him, as it has doubtless
affected me. The great lady received us with the most cordial
kindness, and expressed herself, I am sure sincerely, desirous to be of service
to Sophia.
“November 13.—I consider
Charles’s business as settled
by a private intimation which I had to that effect from Sir W. K., so I need negotiate no farther, but
wait the event. Breakfasted at home, and somebody with us, but the whirl of
visits so great that I have already forgot the party. Lockhart and I dined at an official
person’s, where there was a little too much of that sort of flippant wit,
or rather smartness, which becomes the parochial Joe Miller of boards and offices. You must not be grave,
because it might lead to improper discussions; and to laugh without a joke is a
hard task. Your professed wags are treasures to this species of company.
Gil Blas was right in eschewing the
literary society of his friend Fabricio;
but nevertheless one or two of the mess could greatly have improved the
conversation of his Commis. Went to poor Lydia White’s, and found her extended on
a couch, frightfully swelled, unable to stir, rouged, jesting, and dying. She
has a good heart, and is really a clever creature, but unhappily, or rather
happily, she has set up the whole staff of her rest in keeping literary society
about her. The world has not neglected her. It is not always so bad as it is
called. She can always make up her circle, and generally has some people of
real talent and distinction. She is wealthy, to be sure, and gives petit
dinners, but not in a style to carry the point à force d’ argent. In her case the world is
good-natured, and, perhaps it is more frequently so than is generally supposed.
“November 14.—We breakfasted
at honest Allan
Cunningham’s—honest Allan—a leal and true
Scots-man of the old cast. A man of genius, besides,
who only requires the tact of knowing when and where to stop, to attain the
universal praise which ought to follow it. I look upon the alteration of
‘It’s hame and it’s
hame,’ and ‘A wet sheet and a flowing
sea,’ as among the best songs going. His prose has often
admirable passages, but he is obscure, and overlays his meaning, which will not
do nowadays, when he who runs must read.
“Dined at Croker’s, at Kensington, with his family, the Speaker, and the facetious Theodore Hook.
“We came away rather early, that Anne and I might visit Mrs Arbuthnot to meet the Duke of Wellington. In all my life I never saw
him better. He has a dozen of campaigns in his body—and tough ones.
Anne was delighted with the frank manners of this
unequalled pride of British war, and me he received with all his usual
kindness. He talked away about Buonaparte,
Russia, and France.
“November 15.—I went to the
Colonial Office, where I laboured hard. Dined with the Duke of Wellington. Anne could not look
enough at the vainqeur du vainqeur de la
terre. The party were Mr and Mrs Peel and
Mr and Mrs Arbuthnot, Vesey
Fitzgerald, Banks, and
Croker, with Lady Bathurst and Lady Georgina. One gentleman took much of the conversation, and
gave us, with unnecessary emphasis, and at superfluous length, his opinion of a
late gambling transaction. This spoiled the evening. I am sorry for the
occurrence though, for Lord * * * is
fetlock deep in it, and it looks like a vile bog. This misfortune, with the
foolish incident at * * *, will not be suffered to fall to the ground, but will
be used as a counterpoise to the Greek loan. Peel asked
me, in private, my opinion of three candidates for the Scotch gown, and I gave it him
candidly. We shall see if it has weight. I begin to tire of my gaieties; and
the late hours and constant feasting disagree with me. I wish for a
sheep’s-head and whisky-toddy against all the French cookery and
champagne in the world. Well, I suppose I might have been a Judge of Session by
this time—attained, in short, the grand goal proposed to the ambition of a
Scottish lawyer. It is better, however, as it is, while, at least, I can
maintain my literary reputation.
“November 16.—Breakfasted
with Rogers, with my daughters and
Lockhart. R.
was exceedingly entertaining, in his dry, quiet, sarcastic manner. At eleven to
the Duke of Wellington, who gave me a
bundle of remarks on Buonaparte’s
Russian campaign, written in his carriage during his late mission to St
Petersburgh. It is furiously scrawled, and the Russian names hard to
distinguish, but it shall do me yeoman’s service.
Thence I passed to the Colonial Office, where I concluded my extracts.
Lockhart and I dined with Croker at the Admiralty au grand
couvert. No less than five Cabinet Ministers were
present—Canning, Huskisson, Melville, Peel, and
Wellington, with sub-secretaries by the bushel. The
cheer was excellent, but the presence of too many men of distinguished rank and
power always freezes the conversation. Each lamp shines brightest when placed
by itself; when too close, they neutralize each other.*
“November 17.—Sir John Malcolm at breakfast. Saw the
Duke of York. The change on H. R. H. is
most wonderful. From a big, burly, stout man, with a thick and sometimes an
inarticulate mode of speaking, he has
* In returning from this dinner Sir Walter said, “I have seen
some of these great men at the same table for the
last time.”
sunk into a thin-faced, slender-looking old man, who
seems diminished in his very size. I could hardly believe I saw the same
person, though I was received with his usual kindness. He speaks much more
distinctly than formerly; his complexion is clearer; in short, H. R. H. seems,
on the whole, more healthy after this crisis than when in the stall-fed state,
for such it seemed to be, in which I remember him. God grant it; his life is of
infinite value to the King and country—it is a breakwater behind the throne.
“November 18.—Was introduced
by Rogers to Mad. D’Arblay, the celebrated authoress of Evelina and Cecilia,—an elderly lady,
with no remains of personal beauty, but with a simple and gentle manner, a
pleasing expression of countenance, and apparently quick feelings. She told me
she had wished to see two persons—myself, of course, being one, the other
George Canning. This was really a
compliment to be pleased with—a nice little handsome pat of butter made up by a
neat-handed Phillis of a dairymaid, instead
of the grease, fit only for cart-wheels, which one is dosed with by the pound.
“Mad. D’
Arblay told us that the common story of Dr Burney, her father, having brought home her
own first work, and recommended it to her perusal, was erroneous. Her father
was in the secret of Evelina being printed. But the following circumstances may have
given rise to the story:—Dr Burney was at Streatham soon
after the publication, where he found Mrs
Thrale recovering from her confinement, low at the moment, and
out of spirits. While they were talking together, Johnson, who sat beside in a kind of reverie, suddenly broke
out—‘You should read this new work, madam—you should read Evelina; every one says it is excellent, and they
are right.’ The delighted father obtained a commission from Mrs
Thrale to purchase his daughter’s work, and retired the
happiest of men. Mad. D’Arblay said she was wild
with joy at this decisive evidence of her literary success, and that she could
only give vent to her rapture by dancing and skipping round a mulberry-tree in
the garden. She was very young at this time. I trust I shall see this lady
again.
“Dined at Mr
Peel’s with Lord
Liverpool, Duke of
Wellington, Croker,
&c. The conversation Very good, Peel taking the lead
in his own house, which he will not do elsewhere. * * * Should have been at the
play, but sat too long at Peel’s. So ends my
campaign amongst these magnificoes and potent seigniors, with whom I have
found, as usual, the warmest acceptation.
“November 20.—I ended this
morning my sittings to Lawrence, and am
heartily sorry there should be another picture of me except that which he has
finished. The person is remarkably like, and conveys the idea of the stout
blunt carle that cares for few things and fears nothing. He has represented the
author as in the act of composition, yet has effectually discharged all
affectation, from the manner and attitude. He dined with us at Peel’s yesterday, where, by the way, we
saw the celebrated Chapeau de Paille, which is not a
Chapeau de Paille at all. I also saw this morning the Duke of Wellington and the Duke of
York; the former so communicative, that I regretted extremely
the length of time,* but have agreed on a correspondence with him. Trop d’honneur pour moi. The
Duke of York seems still mending, and spoke of state
affairs as a high Tory. Were his health good, his spirit is as strong as ever.
H. R. H. has a devout horror of the Liberals. Having the Duke
* Sir Walter no
doubt means that he regretted not having seen the Duke at an earlier
period of his historical labours.
of Wellington, the Chancellor, and (perhaps) a still greater person on his side,
he might make a great fight when they split, as split they will. But Canning, Huskisson, and a mitigated party of Liberaux will probably beat
them. Canning’s wit and eloquence are almost
invincible. But then the Church, justly alarmed for their property, which is
plainly struck at, and the bulk of the landed interest, will scarce brook even
a mild infusion of Whiggery into the Administration. Well, time will show.
“We visited our friends Peel, Lord Gwydir,
Mr Arbuthnot, &c. and left our
tickets of adieu. In no instance, during my former visits to London, did I ever
meet with such general attention and respect on all sides.
“Lady Louisa
Stuart dined—also Wright
and Mr and Mrs Christie. Dr and
Mrs Hughes came in the evening; so
ended pleasantly our last night in London.
“Oxford, November 20.—Left
London after a comfortable breakfast, and an adieu to the
Lockhart family. If I had had but comfortable hopes of
their poor, pale, prostrate child, so
clever and so interesting, I should have parted easily on this occasion, but
these misgivings overcloud the prospect. We reached Oxford by six
o’clock, and found Charles and his
friend young Surtees waiting for us,
with a good fire in the chimney, and a good dinner ready to be placed on the
table. We had struggled through a cold, sulky, drizzly day, which deprived of
all charms even the beautiful country near Henley. So we came from cold and
darkness into light, and warmth, and society. N. B.—We
had neither daylight nor moonlight to see the view of Oxford from the Maudlin
bridge, which I used to think one of the most beautiful in the world.
“The expense of travelling has mounted high. I am
too eld to rough it, and scrub it, nor could I have saved fifty pounds by doing so. I have gained,
however, in health and spirits, in a new stock of ideas, new combinations, and
new views. My self-consequence is raised, I hope not unduly, by the many
flattering circumstances attending my reception in the two capitals, and I feel
confident in proportion. In Scotland I shall find time for labour and for
economy.
“Cheltenham, November
21.—Breakfasted with Charles in his
chambers at Brazen-nose, where he had every thing very neat. How pleasant it is
for a father to sit at his child’s board! It is like the aged man
reclining under the shadow of the oak which he has planted. My poor plant has
some storms to undergo, but were this expedition conducive to no more than his
entrance into life under suitable auspices, I should consider the toil and the
expense well bestowed. We then sallied out to see the lions. Remembering the
ecstatic feelings with which I visited Oxford more than twenty-five years
since, I was surprised at the comparative indifference with which I revisited
the same scenes. Reginald Heber, then
composing his Prize Poem,
and imping his wings for a long flight of honourable distinction, is now dead
in a foreign land—Hodgson* and other
able men all entombed. The towers and halls remain, but the voices which fill
them are of modern days. Besides, the eye becomes saturated with sights, as the
full soul loathes the honeycomb. I admired indeed, but my admiration was void
of the enthusiasm which I formerly felt. I remember particularly having felt,
while in the Bodleian, like the Persian magician who visited the enchanted
library in the bowels of the mountain, and willingly suffered himself to be
enclosed in its recesses, while less eager sages retired in
* Dr Frodsham
Hodgson, the late excellent Master of Brazennose
College.
alarm. Now I had some base thoughts concerning luncheon,
which was most munificently supplied by Surtees, at his rooms in University College, with the aid of
the best ale I ever drank in my life, the real wine of Ceres, and worth that of Bacchus. Dr Jenkyns,*
the vice-chancellor, did me the honour to call, but I saw him not. Before three
set out for Cheltenham, a long and uninteresting drive, which we achieved by
nine o’clock. My sister-in-law, Mrs Thomas
Scott, and her daughter, instantly came to the hotel, and seem
in excellent health and spirits.
“Nov. 22.—Breakfasted and
dined with Mrs Scott, and leaving
Cheltenham at seven, pushed on to Worcester to sleep. Nov. 23.—Breakfasted at Birmingham and slept at Macclesfield. As we
came in between ten and eleven, the people of the inn expressed surprise at our
travelling so late, as the general distress of the manufacturers has rendered
many of the lower classes desperately outrageous. Nov.
24.—Breakfasted at Manchester—pressed on—and by dint of exertion reached Kendal
to sleep; thus getting out of the region of the stern, sullen, unwashed
artificers, whom you see lounging sulkily along the streets in Lancashire.
God’s justice is requiting, and will yet farther requite, those who have
blown up this country into a state of unsubstantial opulence, at the expense of
the health and morals of the lower classes.
“Abbotsford, November
26.—Consulting my purse, found my good L.60 diminished to Quarter less Ten. In
purse, L.8. Naturally reflected how much expense has increased since I first
travelled. My uncle’s servant, during the jaunts we made together while I
was a boy, used
* Dr
Richard Jenkyns, Master of Baliol College.
to have his option of a
shilling per diem for board wages, and usually preferred it to having his
charges borne. A servant nowadays to be comfortable on the road should have 4s.
or 4s. 6d. board wages, which before 1790 would have maintained his master. But
if this be pitiful, it is still more so to find the alteration in my own
temper. When young on returning from such a trip as I have just had, my mind
would have loved to dwell on all I had seen that was rich and rare, or have
been placing, perhaps, in order, the various additions with which I had
supplied my stock of information—and now, like a stupid boy blundering over an
arithmetical question half obliterated on his slate, I go stumbling on upon the
audit of pounds, shillings, and pence. Well,—the skirmish has cost me L.200. I
wished for information—and I have had to pay for it.”——
On proceeding to Edinburgh to resume his official duties, Sir Walter established himself in a furnished house in Walker
Street, it being impossible for him to leave his daughter alone in the country, and the
aspect of his affairs being so much ameliorated that he did not think it necessary to carry
the young lady to such a place as Mrs Brown’s lodgings. During
the six ensuing months, however, he led much the same life of toil and seclusion from
company which that of Abbotsford had been during the preceding autumn—very rarely dining
abroad, except with one or two intimate friends, en
famille—still more rarely receiving even a single guest at home; and,
when there was no such interruption, giving his night as well as his morning to the desk.
END OF VOLUME SIXTH.EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND CO., PAUL’S WORK.
MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART. VOLUME THE SEVENTH. MDCCCXXXVIII. ROBERT CADELL, EDINBURGH. JOHN MURRAY AND WHITTAKER AND CO., LONDON.
PREFACE.London, February 10, 1838.
In dismissing the last volume of this Work I have to
apologize for some mistakes, which shall be corrected in the text, should it reach a
second edition. I notice such as have been pointed out to me, but I am afraid very many
more might be detected on a careful revision, and I shall be thankful for any
suggestions on this head.
I find, from the evidence of documents kindly forwarded to me by my
friend, Dr Macfarlane, Principal of the
University of Glasgow, that the cause of the minister, M’Naught, in which Sir Walter
Scott made his first appearance at the bar of the General Assembly of
the Church of Scotland, was heard in May 1793, not 1795.
It appears, that another person alluded to in connexion with his
early practice as a barrister, Mr Knox, killed accidentally in
July, 1795, was not door-keeper to the Faculty of Advocates, but
bar-keeper to the Court of
Session. These situations are not, it seems, held by individuals of exactly the same
rank in society; and a relation of the bar-keeper has favoured me with a conspectus of
his pedigree; which, however, I do not think it necessary to insert here.
I have received a letter from Kelso, complaining sharply of an
extract from Sir Walter’s MSS., in which (vol.
I. p. 119) a lady, known to him in his youth, is described as having been seen by him
afterwards in the situation of governess to a manufacturer’s children in Paisley.
For this mistake, if it was one, I cannot account.
I have been informed of my error in stating (vol. II. p. 2) that
Francis, the eighth Lord Napier, had been a
lord of the bedchamber. I had confounded him, it seems, with the late Earl of Morton, who succeeded him as Commissioner to the
General Assembly. It also has been communicated to me, by more than one correspondent,
that I must have relied too much on my own very early recollections, in mixing
Lord Napier’s name with a little story told in a note on
the same page. It is said by an ancient gentlewoman, to whose accuracy I bow, that the
real hero of that anecdote was another gentleman of the same name.
I regret having introduced (vol. II. p. 11) Mr Archi-bald Park,
brother of the African traveller, as being a
Sheriff’s Officer of Selkirkshire; whereas, at the time when he gave Scott assistance in seizing a criminal, he was the tenant
of an extensive farm on the Buccleuch estate, and had accidentally
been riding with the Sheriff.—I am also sorry to find that the Scotch Judge, who so
unfeelingly condemned an old acquaintance to death (vol. III. p. 342), was not
Lord Braxfield, as stated by me, but a still
more distinguished, or at least, celebrated person, “his yoke-fellow of the
bench.” I can only say that, to the best of my recollection and belief,
Sir Walter always told the story of his early friend,
Braxfield.
Lastly, The Honourable Colonel
Murray, who commanded the 18th hussars in 1821, assures me that the
dissolution of that corps had no connexion whatever with certain trivial irregularities
on which Sir Walter Scott gave advice and admonition
to his son the Cornet (vol. V., ch. 3.) I thought I had sufficiently conveyed my belief
that the rumours which reached Sir Walter, and called forth his
paternal remarks, were grossly exaggerated; but I shall make my statement clearer, in
case of the text being revised.
And now, as no other opportunity may be afforded me, I may as well
say a few words on some of the general criticisms with which these volumes have been
honoured while in the course of publication.
The criticisms have, of course, been contradictory on all points;
but more seem to agree in censuring the length of the book, than as to any other topic
either of blame or commendation. I suggest, in the first place, that if Scott really was a great man, and also a good man, his
life deserves to be given in much detail; and that the object being to bring out the
character, feelings, and manners of the man, this was likely to be effected better by
letting him speak for himself, whereever I could, than by any elaborate process of
distilling and concentrating the pith and essence into a formal continuous
essay;—because on the former plan, the reader is really treated as a judge, who has the
evidence led in his presence, in place of being presented merely with the statement of
the counsel, which he might have both inclination and reason to receive with distrust.
Let it be granted to me, that Scott belonged to the class of
first-rate men, and I may very safely ask—who would be sorry to possess a biography of
any such man of a former time in full and honest detail? If his greatness was a
delusion, I grant that these Memoirs are vastly too copious; but had I not been one of
those who consider it as a real substantial greatness, I should have been very
unwilling to spend time on any record of it whatever.
And yet, even though Scott
should not keep his high place in the estimation of future ages, it must always be
allowed that he held one of the first in that of his own age—not in his own country
alone, but all over the civilized world; that he
mixed largely with the most eminent of his contemporaries, and observed keenly the
events of a critical period—a period of great deeds, and, above all, of great
changes;—and such being the case, I conceive it to be probable that, even supposing his
poetry and novels to be comparatively little read a hundred or two hundred years hence,
the student of history, and especially of manners, would not be sorry to have access to
him “in his habit as he lived.” For my own part, I certainly should
be exceedingly thankful if any one were to dig out of the dust of the Bodleian or the
British Museum a detailed life, however unambitiously compiled, of any clever
accomplished man who had access to the distinguished society of any interesting period
in our annals. Nay, they must have been very lofty philosophers, indeed, who did not
rejoice in the disinterring of Pepys’s Diary—the work of a vain, silly, transparent, coxcomb,
without either solid talents or solid virtues, but still one who had rare opportunities
of observation.
There is, however, one circumstance of very peculiar interest
which, I venture to say, always must attach to Sir Walter
Scott. Let him have been whatever else, he was admitted, by all the
Scotchmen of his time, to be the most faithful portrayer of the national character and
manners of his own country: and he was (as he says of his Croftangry) “a Borderer between two ages”—that in which the
Scotch still preserved the ancient impress of thought,
feeling, demeanour, and dialect, and that when whatever stamped them a separate
distinct people was destined to be obliterated. The amalgamation of the sister
countries on all points has already advanced far, and will soon be completed.
I have also considered it as my duty to keep in view what Sir Walter’s own notions of biography were. He says,
in an early letter to Miss Seward (vol. I. p.
374), “Biography loses all its interest with me, when the shades and lights of
the principal character are not accurately and faithfully detailed. I can no more
sympathize with a mere eulogist than I can with a ranting hero on the stage; and it
unfortunately happens that some of our disrespect is apt, rather unjustly, to be
transferred to the subject of the panegyric in the one case, and to poor Cato in the other.” He has elsewhere smiled over
Queen Elizabeth’s famous admonition to
Zucchero, that she expected him to paint her
without any shadows on the face. Walker
flattered fine ladies, I daresay, as lavishly as Lawrence; but he knew Oliver
Cromwell too well either to omit his wart, or cover it with a
beauty-spot of court plaster. I despise—and Scott himself would
have despised—the notion of painting a great and masculine character unfaithfully—of
leaving out any thing essential to the preservation of the man as he was, which the
limner finds it in his power to represent. There will be at best enough of omissions.
Copy as you may, you can give neither life nor motion. With such sentiments I find it difficult to understand how many biographies are
undertaken at all. It was my comfort and support in undertaking this, that I felt a
perfect conviction from the beginning, that I should best please those to whom
Scott’s memory is dearest, by placing the truth, and the
whole truth, before the reader. And, as far as regards them, I have not been
disappointed.
At the same time, I consider myself bound not to accept all the
praise which the openness of my revelations has brought me from some quarters, while
others have complained of it, and condemned it. A little reflection might have
suggested that the materials for the business part of Sir
Walter’s history could not be exclusively in the keeping of his
executors. Had I been capable of meditating to mock the world, for purposes of my own,
with an unfair and partial statement on that class of matters, I must have known that
this could not be done, without giving such an impression of other dead persons as must
necessarily induce their representatives to open their own cabinets for themselves.
Moreover, I should have thought it might have occurred to any one that
Scott and his associates in business lived and died in the
midst of a keen and closely observant small society; and that even if all their
executors had joined in a cunning attempt to disguise what really occurred, there are
many men still alive in Edinburgh who could have effectually exposed any such juggle.
As for the reclamations which have been put forth on the score that
I have wilfully distorted the character and conduct of other men, for the purpose of
raising Scott at their expense, I have already
expressed my regret that my sense of duty to his memory should have extorted from me
the particulars in question. If the complaining parties can produce documents to
overthrow my statements let them do so. But even then I should be entitled to ask, why
those documents were kept back from me? I can most safely say, that while I have
withheld many passages in Scott’s letters and diaries that
would have pained these gentlemen, I have scrupulously printed every line that bore
favourably on their predecessors. Indeed, I am not aware that I have suppressed any
thing, in the immense mass of MSS. at my disposal, which seemed to me likely to give
unmixed pleasure to any one individual or family with whom Sir Walter
Scott had any kind of connexion. I have been willing to gratify his
friends. I assuredly have not availed myself of his remains for the purpose of
gratifying any grudge or spleen of my own.
J. G. L.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME SEVENTH. PAGE CHAPTER I. Life of Napoleon, and Chronicles of the
Canongate in progress—Reviewals of Mackenzie’s
Edition of Home, and of Hoffman’s
Tales—Rheumatic Attacks—Theatrical Fund Dinner—Avowal of the Sole Authorship of the
Waverley Novels—Letter from Goethe—Deaths of the Duke of
York—Mr Gifford—Sir George
Beaumont, &c.—Mr Canning Minister—Completion of
the Life of Buonaparte—Reminiscences of an
Amanuensis—Goethe’s Remarks on the Work—Its Pecuniary
Results— December, 1826—June, 1827, 1 CHAPTER II. Excursion to St Andrews—Deaths of Lady Diana
Scott—Constable—and
Canning—Extract from Mr Adolphus’s
Memoranda—Affair of General Gourgaud—Letter to Mr
Clerk—Blythswood—Corehouse—Duke
of Wellington’s Visit to Durham—Dinner in the
Castle—Sunderland—Ravensworth—Alnwick—Verses to Sir Cuthbert
Sharp—Affair of Abud and Co.—Publication of the Chronicles of the Canongate, Series First—And of the First
Tales of a Grandfather—Essay on Planting,
&c.—Miscellaneous Prose Works Collected—Sale of the Waverley Copyrights—Dividend to
Creditors— June—December—1827, 45 CHAPTER III. The “Opus Magnum”—“Religious Discourses, by a Layman”—Letters to
George Huntly Gordon—Cadell—and Ballantyne—Heath’s Keepsake,
&c.—Arniston—Dalhousie—Prisons—Dissolution of Yeomanry Cavalry—The Fair Maid of Perth published— January—April, 1828,
97 CHAPTER IV. Journey to London—Charlecote-Hall—Holland-House—Chiswick—Kensington Palace
Richmond
Park—Gill’s-Hill—Boyd—Sotheby—Coleridge—Sir
T. Acland—Bishop Copplestone—Mrs
Arkwright—Lord Sidmouth—Lord
Alvanley—Northcote—Haydon—Chantrey and Cunningham—Anecdotes—Letters to
Mr Terry—Mrs Lockhart—and Sir
Alexander Wood—Death of Sir William Forbes—Reviews
of Hajji Baba in England, and
Davy’sSalmonia—Anne of Geierstein begun—Second Series of the Grandfather’s Tales published— April—December, 1828, 122 CHAPTER V. Visit to Clydesdale—John Greenshields,
Sculptor—Letter to Lord Elgin—The Westport Murders—Execution of
Burke—Letter to Miss
Edgeworth—Ballantyne’s Hypochondria—Roman
Catholic Emancipation carried—Edinburgh Petition, &c.—Deaths of Lord
Buchan—Mr Terry—and Mr
Shortreed—Rev. Edward Irving—Anne of Geierstein published—Issue of the “Opus
Magnum” begun—Its success—Nervous Attack—Hæmorrhages—Reviewals on
Ancient Scottish History, and Pitcairn’s Trials—Third Series of Tales of a
Grandfather, and First Volume of the Scottish History in Lardner’s Cyclopædia published—Death and Epitaph of
Thomas Purdie— 1829, 160 CHAPTER VI. Auchindrane, or the Ayrshire Tragedy—Second Volume of the
History of Scotland—Paralytic Seizure—Letters on Demonology, and Tales on the History of France begun—Poetry,
with Prefaces, published—Reviewal of Southey’sLife of Bunyan—Excursions to Culross and
Prestonpans—Resignation of the Clerkship of Session—Commission on the Stuart
Papers—Offers of a Pension and of the rank of Privy-Counsellor—Declined—Death of
George IV.—General Election—Speech at Jedburgh—Second
Paralytic Attack—Demonology, and French History published—Arrival of King Charles
X. at Holyrood-House—Letter to Lady Louisa Stuart—
1830, 202 CHAPTER VII. Winter at Abbotsford—Parliamentary Reform in Agitation—William
Laidlaw—John Nicolson—Mrs
Street—Fit of Apoplexy in November—Count Robert of
Paris—A Fourth Epistle of Malagrowther written and
suppressed—Unpleasant Discussions with Ballantyne and
Cadell—Novel resumed—Second Dividend to Creditors, and their
Gift of the Library, &c. at Abbotsford—Last Will executed in
Edinburgh—Fortune’s mechanism—Letter on Politics to the Hon. H. F.
Scott—Address for the County of Selkirk written and rejected by the
Freeholders—County Meeting at Jedburgh—Speech on Reform—Scott
insulted—Mr F. Grant’s Portrait— October, 1830—April, 1831, 232 CHAPTER VIII. Apoplectic Paralysis—Miss Ferrier—Dr
Mackintosh Mackay—Scenes at Jedburgh and Selkirk—Castle Dangerous—Excursion to Douglasdale—Church of St Bride’s,
&c.—Turner’s Designs for the Poetry—Last Visits to
Smailholm—Bemerside—Ettrick, &c.—Visit of Captain
Burns—Mr Adolphus—and Mr
Wordsworth—“Yarrow Revisited,” and
Sonnet on the Eildons— April—October, 1831, 277 CHAPTER IX. Rokeby—London—Epitaph on Helen
Walker—Portsmouth—Voyage in the Barham—Graham’s Island—Letter to
Mr Skene—Malta—Notes by Mrs John Davy—
September—December 1831, 312 CHAPTER X. Residence at Naples—Excursions to Paestum, Pompeii, &c.—Last Attempts
in Romance—Sir William Gell’s Memoranda— December, 1831—April, 1832, 340 CHAPTER XI. Death of Goethe—Rome—Memoranda by Sir W.
Gell and Mr Edward Cheney—Journey to Frankfort—The Rhine Steam-Boat—Fatal
Seizure at Nimeguen—Arrival in London—Jermyn Street—Edinburgh—Abbotsford—Death and
Burial— April—September, 1832, 361 CHAPTER XII. Conclusion, 397 APPENDIX. List of Sir Walter Scott’s Publications, 433 Index of Proper Names, 441
MEMOIRSOF THELIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.CHAPTER I.LIFE OF NAPOLEON, AND CHRONICLES OF THE
CANONGATE IN PROGRESS—REVIEWALS OF MACKENZIE’S
EDITION OF HOME, AND OF HOFFMAN’S
TALES—RHEUMATIC ATTACKS—THEATRICAL FUND DINNER—AVOWAL OF THE SOLE AUTHORSHIP OF THE WAVERLEY NOVELS—LETTER FROM GOETHE—DEATHS OF
THE DUKE OF YORK—MR GIFFORD—SIR GEORGE
BEAUMONT,—ETC.—MR CANNING MINISTER—COMPLETION OF THE
LIFE OF BUONAPARTE—REMINISCENCES OF AN
AMANUENSIS—GOETHE’S REMARKS ON THE WORK—ITS PECUNIARY
RESULTS—DECEMBER, 1826—JUNE, 1827.
During the winter of 1826-7, Sir
Walter suffered great pain (enough to have disturbed effectually any other
man’s labours, whether official or literary) from successive attacks of rheumatism,
which seems to have been fixed on him by the wet sheets of one of his French inns; and his
Diary contains, besides, various indications that his constitution was already shaking
under the fatigue to which he had subjected it. Formerly, however
great the quantity of work he put through his hands, his evenings were almost always
reserved for the light reading of an elbow-chair, or the enjoyment of his family and
friends. Now he seemed to grudge every minute that was not spent at the desk. The little
that he read of new books, or for mere amusement, was done by snatches in the course of his
meals; and to walk, when he could walk at all, to the Parliament House, and back again
through the Prince’s Street Gardens, was his only exercise and his only relaxation.
Every ailment, of whatever sort, ended in aggravating his lameness; and, perhaps, the
severest test his philosophy encountered was the feeling of bodily helplessness that from
week to week crept upon him. The winter, to make bad worse, was a very cold and stormy one.
The growing sluggishness of his blood showed itself in chilblains, not only on the feet but
the fingers, and his hand-writing becomes more and more cramped and confused. I shall not
pain the reader by extracting merely medical entries from his Diary; but the following give
characteristic sketches of his temperament and reflections:—
“December 16.—Another bad night. I
remember I used to think a slight illness was a luxurious thing. My pillow was then
softened by the hand of affection, and the little cares put in exercise to soothe the
languor or pain, were more flattering and pleasing than the consequences of the illness
were disagreeable. It was a new scene to be watched and attended, and I used to think
that the malade imaginaire gained something
by his humour. It is different in the latter stages—the old post-chaise gets more
shattered and out of order at every turn; windows will not be pulled up, doors refuse
to open, or being open will not shut
again—which last is rather my case. There is some new subject of complaint every
moment—your sicknesses come thicker and thicker—your comforting and sympathizing
friends fewer and fewer—for why should they sorrow for the course of nature? The
recollection of youth, health, and uninterrupted powers of activity, neither improved
nor enjoyed, is a poor strain of comfort. The best is, the long halt will arrive at
last, and cure all. This was a day of labour, agreeably varied by a pain which rendered
it scarce possible to sit upright. My journal is getting a vile chirurgical aspect. I
begin to be afraid of the odd consequences complaints in the post equitem are said to produce. I shall tire of my journal.
In my better days I had stories to tell; but death has closed the long dark avenue upon
loves and friendships, and I look at them as through the grated door of a burial-place
filled with monuments of those who were once dear to me, with no insincere wish that it
may open for me at no distant period, provided such be the will of God. My pains were
those of the heart, and had something flattering in their character; if in the head, it
was from the blow of a bludgeon gallantly received, and well paid back. I think I shall
not live to the usual verge of human existence; I shall never see the threescore and
ten, and shall be summed up at a discount. No help for it, and no matter either.
“December 18.—Sir Adam Ferguson breakfasted—one of the few old
friends left out of the number of my youthful companions. In youth we have many
companions, few friends perhaps; in age companionship is ended, except rarely, and by
appointment. Old men, by a kind of instinct, seek younger associates, who listen to
their stories, honour their grey hairs while present, and mimic and laugh at them when
their backs are turned. At least that was the way in our day, and
I warrant our chicks of the present brood crow to the same tune. Of all the friends
that I have left here, there is none who has any decided attachment to literature. So
either I must talk on that subject to young people—in other words, turn proser—or I
must turn tea-table talker and converse with ladies. I am too old and too proud for
either character, so I’ll live alone and be contented. Lockhart’s departure for London was a loss to me
in this way.”
He spent a few days at Abbotsford at Christmas, and several weeks during
the spring vacation; but the frequent Saturday excursions were now out of the question if
for no other reason, on account of the quantity of books which he must have by him while
working at his Napoleon. He says on the
30th of December “Wrote hard. Last day of an eventful year; much evil and some
good, but especially the courage to endure what Fortune sends without becoming a pipe
for her fingers.* It is not the last day of the year; but to-morrow being Sunday, we
hold our festival to-day.—The Fergusons came,
and we had the usual appliances of mirth and good cheer. Yet our party, like the
chariot-wheels of Pharoah in the Red Sea, dragged heavily.—It must be allowed that the
regular recurrence of annual festivals among the same individuals has, as life
advances, something in it that is melancholy. We meet like the survivors of some
perilous expedition, wounded and weakened ourselves, and looking through diminished
ranks to think of those who are no more. Or they are like the feasts of the Caribs, in
which they held that the pale and speechless phantoms of the deceased appeared and
mingled with the living. Yet where shall we fly from vain repin-
* Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.
ing?—or why should we give up the
comfort of seeing our friends, because they can no longer be to us, or we to them, what
we once were to each other?
“January 1, 1827.—God make this a happy new year to
the King and country, and to all honest men.
“I went to dine as usual at the kind house of
Huntly-Burn; but the cloud still had its influence. The effect of grief upon
persons who, like myself and Sir Adam,
are highly susceptible of humour, has, I think, been, finely touched by
Wordsworth in the character of the
merry village teacher Matthew, whom
Jeffreyprofanely calls “a half crazy
sentimental person.”* But, with my friend
Jeffrey’s pardon, I think he loves to see
imagination best when it is bitted and managed, and ridden upon the
grand pas. He does not make
allowance for starts and sallies, and bounds, when Pegasus is beautiful to behold, though sometimes perilous to
his rider. Not that I think the amiable bard of Rydale shows judgment in
choosing such subjects as the popular mind cannot sympathize in. It is unwise
and unjust to himself. I do not compare myself, in point of imagination, with
Wordsworth, far from it; for his is naturally
exquisite, and highly cultivated from constant exercise. But I can see as many
castles in the clouds as any man, as many genii in the curling smoke of a
steam-engine, as perfect a Persepolis in the embers of a sea-coal fire. My life
has been spent in such day-dreams. But I cry no roast-meat. There are times a
man should remember what Rousseau used
to say, Tait-toi, Jean Jacques, car on ne
t’entend pas!
“Talking of Wordsworth, he told Anne
a story, the object of which, as she understood it, was to show that Crabbe
* See Edinburgh Review,
No. xxiii., p. 135.
had no imagination. Crabbe, Sir George Beaumont, and
Wordsworth were sitting together in Murray’s room in Albemarle Street.
Sir George, after sealing a letter, blew out the
candle which had enabled him to do so, and exchanging a look with
Wordsworth, began to admire in silence the undulating
thread of smoke which slowly arose from the expiring wick, when
Crabbe put on the extinguisher. Anne laughed at the
instance, and enquired if the taper was wax, and being answered in the
negative, seemed to think that there was no call on Mr
Crabbe to sacrifice his sense of smell to their admiration of
beautiful and evanescent forms. In two other men I should have said
‘Why, it is affectations,’ with Sir Hugh Evans; ‘but Sir George is
the man in the world most void of affectation; and then he is an exquisite
painter, and no doubt saw where the incident would have
succeeded in painting. The error is not in you yourself receiving deep
impressions from slight hints, but in supposing that precisely the same sort of
impression must arise in the mind of men, otherwise of kindred feeling, or that
the common-place folk of the world can derive such inductions at any time or
under any circumstances.
“January 13.—The Fergusons, with my neighbours Mr Scrope and Mr
Bainbridge, eat a haunch of venison from Drummond Castle, and
seemed happy. We had music and a little dancing, and enjoyed in others the
buoyancy of spirit that we no longer possess ourselves. Yet I do not think the
young people of this age so gay as we were. There is a turn for persiflage, a
fear of ridicule among them, which stifles the honest emotions of gaiety and
lightness of spirit; and people, when they
* Merry Wives of Windsor, Act I. Scene
1.
give in the least to the expansion
of their natural feelings, are always kept under by the fear of becoming
ludicrous. To restrain your feelings and check your enthusiasm in the cause
even of pleasure, is now a rule among people of fashion, as much as it used to
be among philosophers.
“Edinburgh, January 15.—Off
we came, and in despite of rheumatism I got through the journey tolerably.
Coming through Galashiels, we met the Laird of
Torwoodlee, who, on hearing how long I had been confined, asked
how I bore it, observing that he had once in his
life—Torwoodlee must be between 60 and 70—been
confined for five days to the house, and was like to hang himself. I regret
God’s free air as much as any man, but I could amuse myself were it in
the Bastile.
“February 19.—Very cold
weather. What says Dean Swift? “When frost and snow come both together, Then sit by the fire and save shoe leather.’ I read and wrote at the bitter account of the French retreat from Moscow,
in 1812, till the little room and coal fire seemed snug by comparison. I felt
cold in its rigour in my childhood and boyhood, but not since. In youth and
middle life I was yet less sensible to it than now—but I remember thinking it
worse than hunger. Uninterrupted to-day, and did eight leaves.*
“March 3.—Very severe
weather, and home covered with snow. White as a frosted plum-cake, by jingo. No
matter; I am not sorry to find I can stand a brush of weather yet. I like to
see Arthur’s Seat and the stern
* One page of his MS. answers to from four to five of
the close-printed pages of the original edition of his Buonaparte.
old Castle with their white watch-cloaks on. But, as
Byron said to Moore, d——n it, Tom,
don’t be poetical. I settled to Boney, and wrote right long and well.
“Abbotsford, March 12.—Away
we set, and came safely to Abbotsford amid all the dulness of a great thaw,
which has set the rivers a streaming in full tide. The wind is high, but for my
part ‘I like this rocking of the
battlements.’* I was received by old Tom and the
dogs with the unsophisticated feelings of good-will. I have been trying to read
a new novel which I had heard praised. It is called Almacks, and the
author has so well succeeded in describing the cold selfish fopperies of the
time, that the copy is almost as dull as the original. I think I shall take up
my bundle of Sheriff-Court processes instead of Almacks, as the more
entertaining avocation of the two.
“March 13.—Before breakfast,
prepared and forwarded the processes to Selkirk. Had a pleasant walk to the
thicket, though my ideas were olla-podrida-ish. I expect this will not be a day
of work but of idleness, for my books are not come. Would to God I could make
it light, thoughtless idleness, such as I used to have when the silly smart
fancies ran in my brain like the bubbles in a glass of champagne,—as brilliant
to my thinking, as intoxicating, as evanescent. But the wine is somewhat on the
lees. Perhaps it was but indifferent cyder after all. Yet I am happy in this
place, where every thing looks friendly, from old Tom to young Nym.† After all,
he has little to complain of who has left so many things that like him.
* Zanga, in “The Revenge.”
† Nimrod—a
stag-hound.
“March 21.—Wrote till twelve, then out upon the
heights, though the day was stormy, and faced the gale bravely. Tom Purdie was not with me. He would have
obliged me to keep the sheltered ground. There is a touch of the old spirit in
me yet, that bids me brave the tempest,—the spirit that, in spite of manifold
infirmities, made me a roaring boy in my youth, a desperate climber, a bold
rider, a deep drinker, and a stout player at single-stick, of all which
valuable qualities there are now but slender remains. I worked hard when I came
in, and finished five pages.
“March 26.—Despatched packets. Colonel and Captain Ferguson arrived to breakfast. I had previously
determined to give myself a day to write letters; and this day will do as well
as another. I cannot keep up with the world without shying a letter now and
then. It is true the greatest happiness I could think of would be to be rid of
the world entirely. Excepting my own family, I have little pleasure in the
world, less business in it, and am heartily careless about all its concerns.
“April 24.—Still deep snow a
foot thick in the court-yard, I dare say. Severe welcome for the poor lambs now
coming into the world. But what signifies whether they die just now, or a
little while after to be united with sallad at luncheon time? It signifies a
good deal too. There is a period, though a short one, when they dance among the
gowans, and seem happy. As for your aged sheep or wether, the sooner they pass
to the Norman side of the vocabulary, the better. They
are like some old dowager ladies and gentlemen of my acquaintance—no one cares
about them till they come to be cut up, and then we see
how the tallow lies on the kidneys and the chine.
“May 13.—A most idle and
dissipated day. I did not rise till half-past eight o’clock. Col. and Capt.
Ferguson came to breakfast. I walked half-way home with them,
then turned back and spent the day, which was delightful, wandering from place
to place in the woods, sometimes reading the new and interesting volumes of
Cyril Thornton, sometimes
‘chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancies’ which
alternated in my mind, idly stirred by the succession of a thousand vague
thoughts and fears, the gay strangely mingled with those of dismal melancholy;
tears which seemed ready to flow unbidden; smiles which approached to those of
insanity; all that wild variety of mood which solitude engenders. I scribbled
some verses, or rather composed them in my memory. The contrast at leaving
Abbotsford to former departures, is of an agitating and violent description.
Assorting papers, and so forth. I never could help admiring the concatenation
between Ahithophel’s setting his house in order and
hanging himself.* The one seems to follow the other as a matter of course. But
what frightens and disgusts me is those fearful letters from those who have
been long dead, to those who linger on their wayfare through the valley of
tears. Those fine lines of Spencer came
into my head— “The shade of youthful hope is there, That lingered long, and latest died; Ambition all dissolved to air, With phantom honours by his side. “What empty shadows glimmer nigh? They once were Friendship, Truth, and Love! Oh die to thought, to Memory die, Since lifeless to my heart ye prove.”†
* 2d Sam. xvii. 23.
† Poems by the late Honourable W. R.
Spencer, London, 1835, 45. See ante,
vol. vi. p. 373, note.
Ay, and can I forget the Author the
frightful moral of his own vision? What is this world?—a dream within a dream
as we grow older—each step is an awakening. The youth awakes, as he thinks,
from childhood—the full-grown man despises the pursuits of youth as
visionary—the old man looks on manhood as a feverish dream. The grave the last
sleep? No; it is the last and final awakening.
“Edinburgh, May 15.—It is
impossible not to compare this return to Edinburgh with others in more happy
times. But we should rather recollect under what distress of mind I took up my
lodgings in Mrs Brown’s last summer. Went to Court
and resumed old habits. Heard the true history of
——* Imagination renders us liable to be the victims of
occasional low spirits. All belonging to this gifted, as it is called, but
often unhappy class, must have felt that but for the dictates of religion, or
the natural recoil of the mind from the idea of dissolution, there have been
times when they would have been willing to throw away life as a child does a
broken toy. I am sure I know one who has often felt so. O God! what are
we?—Lords of nature?—Why a tile drops from a house-top, which an elephant would
not feel more than the fall of a sheet of pasteboard, and there lies his
lordship. Or something of inconceivably minute origin, the pressure of a bone,
or the inflammation of a particle of the brain takes place, and the emblem of
the Deity destroys himself or some one else. We hold our health and our reason
on terms slighter than one would desire, were it in their choice, to hold an
Irish cabin.”
† Sir Walter had this
morning heard of the suicide of a man of warm
imagination, to whom, at an earlier period, he was much attached.
These are melancholy entries. Most of those from which they have been
selected begin with R. for Rheumatism, or RR. for Rheumatism Redoubled, and then mark the
number of leaves sent to James Ballantyne—the
proof-sheets corrected for press—or the calculations on which he reluctantly made up his
mind to extend the Life of Buonaparte from
six to seven, from seven to eight, and finally from eight to nine thick and closely printed
volumes.
During the early months of 1827, however, he executed various minor
tracts also; for the Quarterly Review, an
article on Mackenzie’sLife and
Works of John Home, author of Douglas, which is, in fact, a rich chapter of Scott’s own early reminiscences, and gives many interesting sketches
of the literary society of Scotland in the age of which Mackenzie was
the last honoured relic; and for the Foreign Review,
then newly started under the editorship of Mr R. P.
Gillies, an ingenious and elaborate paper on the writings of the German Novelist
Hoffman. This article, it is proper to observe,
was a benefaction to Mr Gillies, whose pecuniary affairs rendered such
assistance very desirable. Scott’s generosity in
this matter—for it was exactly giving a poor brother author L.100 at the expense of
considerable time and drudgery to himself—I think it necessary to mention; the date of the
exertion requires it of me. But such, in fact, had been in numberless instances his method
of serving literary persons, who had little or no claim on him, except that they were of
that class. I have not conceived it delicate to specify many instances of this kind; but I
am at liberty to state, that when he wrote his first article for the Encyclopedia Supplement, and the Editor of that work, Mr Macvey Napier (a Whig in politics, and with whom he had
hardly any personal acquaintance), brought him
L.100 as his remuneration, Sir Walter said, “Now tell me
frankly, if I don’t take this money, does it go into your pocket or your
publisher’s, for it is impossible for me to accept a penny of it from a literary
brother.” Mr Napier assured him that the arrangements of
the work were such, that the Editor had nothing to do with the fund destined for
contributions:—Scott then pocketed his due, with the observation,
that “he had trees to plant, and no conscience as to the purse of his fat
friend”—to wit, Constable.
At this period, Sir Walter’s
Diary very seldom mentions any thing that could be called a dinner-party. He and his
daughter partook generally once in every week the family meal of Mr and Mrs Skene of
Rubislaw; and they did the like occasionally with a few other old friends, chiefly those of
the Clerks’ table. When an exception occurs, it is easy to see that the scene of
social gaiety was doubly grateful from its rarity. Thus one entry, referring to a party at
Mr J. A. Murray’s (now Lord Advocate for
Scotland), says, “Went to dine with John Murray, where met
his brother (Henderland), Jeffrey, Cockburn, Rutherford, and others
of that file. Very pleasant—capital good cheer and excellent wine—much laugh and fun. I
do not know how it is, but when I am out with a party of my Opposition friends, the day
is often merrier than when with our own set. Is it because they are cleverer?
Jeffrey and Harry Cockburn are to be sure
very extraordinary men; yet it is not owing to that entirely. I believe both parties
meet with the feeling of something like novelty. We have not worn out our jests in
daily contact. There is also a disposition on such occasions to be courteous, and of
course to be pleased.”
Another evening, spent in Rose Court with his old friend, Mr Clerk, seems to have given him especial de-light. He says,—“This being a blank day at the Court, I wrote
hard till dressing time, when I went to Will Clerk’s to
dinner. As a bachelor, and keeping a small establishment, he does not do these things
often, but they are proportionally pleasant when they come round. He had trusted
Sir Adam to bespeak his dinner, who did it
con amore, so we had excellent cheer,
and the wines were various and capital. As I before hinted, it is not every day that
M’Nab mounts on horseback,* and so our
landlord had a little of that solicitude that the party should go off well, which is
very flattering to the guests. We had a very pleasant evening. The Chief Commissioner was there, Admiral Adam, J. A.
Murray, Tom Thomson, &c.
&c.—Sir Adam predominating at the head, and dancing what
he calls his merry-andrada in great style. In short we really laughed, and real
laughter is a thing as rare as real tears. I must say, too, there was a heart, a kindly feeling prevailed over the party. Can London
give such a dinner?—it may, but I never saw one—they are too cold and critical to be
easily pleased.—I hope the Bannatyne Club will be really useful and creditable.
Thomson is superintending a capital edition of Sir James Melville’sMemoirs. It is brave to see how he wags his Scots
tongue, and what a difference there is in the form and firmness of the language,
compared to the mincing English edition in which he has hitherto been alone
known.”
No wonder that it should be a sweet relief from Buonaparte and Blucher to see M’Nab on
horseback, and Sir Adam Ferguson in his
merry-andrada exaltation, and laugh over old Scotch stories with the Chief-Commis-
* That singular personage, the late M’Nab of that ilk, spent his life
almost entirely in a district where a boat was the usual conveyance. I suspect,
however, there is an allusion to some particular anecdote which I have not
recovered.
sioner, and hear Mr Thomas Thomson report progress as to the doings of the
Bannatyne Club. But I apprehend every reader will see that Sir
Walter was misled by his own modesty, when he doubted whether London could
afford symposia of the same sort, He forgets that he had never mixed in the society of
London except in the capacity of a stranger, a rare visiter, the unrivalled literary marvel
of the time, and that every party at which he dined was got up expressly on his account,
and constituted, whoever might be the landlord, on the natural principle of bringing
together as many as the table could hold—to see and hear Sir Walter
Scott. Hence, if he dined with a Minister of State, he was likely to find
himself seated with half the Cabinet—if with a Bishop, half the Bench had been collected.
As a matter of course, every man was anxious to gratify on so rare an occasion as many as
he could of those who, in case they were uninvited, would be likely to reproach him for the
omission. The result was a crowding together of too many rival eminences; and he very
seldom, indeed, witnessed the delightful result so constantly produced in London by the
intermingling of distinguished persons of various classes, full of facts and views new to
each other—and neither chilled nor perplexed by the pernicious and degrading trickery of
lionizing. But, besides, it was unfair to institute any comparison between the society of
comparative strangers and that of old friends dear from boyhood. He could not have his
Clerks and Fergusons both in Edinburgh and in
London. Enough, however, of commentary on a very plain text.
That season was further enlivened by one public dinner, and this,
though very briefly noticed in Scott’s Diary,
occupied a large space in public attention at the time, and, I believe I may add, several
columns in every newspaper printed in Europe. His good friend
William Murray, manager of the Edinburgh
Theatre, invited him to preside at the first festival of a charitable fund then instituted
for the behoof of decayed performers. He agreed, and says in his Journal—“There
are 300 tickets given out. I fear it will be uncomfortable; and whatever the stoics may
say, a bad dinner throws cold water on charity. I have agreed to preside, a situation
in which I have been rather felicitous, not by much superiority of art or wisdom, far
less of eloquence; but by two or three simple rules, which I put down here for the
benefit of my posterity.
“1st, Always hurry the bottle round for five or six rounds,
without prosing yourself or permitting others to prose. A slight filip of wine inclines
people to be pleased, and removes the nervousness which prevents men from
speaking—disposes them; in short, to be amusing and to be amused.
“2d, Push on, keep moving, as Young
Rapid says.* Do not think of saying fine things—nobody cares for them
any more than for fine music, which is often too liberally bestowed on such occasions.
Speak at all ventures, and attempt the mot pour
rire. You will find people satisfied with wonderfully indifferent
jokes, if you can but hit the taste of the company, which depends much on its
character. Even a very high party, primed with all the cold irony and non est tanti feelings or no feelings of
fashionable folks, may be stormed by a jovial, rough, round, and ready preses. Choose
your text with discretion—the sermon may be as you like. Should a drunkard or an ass
break in with any thing out of joint, if you can parry it with a jest, good and well—if
not, do not exert your serious authority, unless it is something very bad. The
authority even of a chair-
* Morton’s comedy of A Cure for the
Heart-Ache.
man ought to be very cautiously
exercised. With patience you will have the support of every one.
“3dly, When you have drunk a few glasses to play the
good-fellow, and banish modesty—(if you are unlucky enough to have such a troublesome
companion)—then beware of the cup too much. Nothing is so ridiculous as a drunken
preses.
“Lastly, always speak short, and Skeoch dock na skiel—cut a tale with a
drink. This is the purpose and intent Of gude Schir Walter’s
testament.”*
This dinner took place on Friday the 23d February. Sir Walter took the chair, being supported by the Earl of Fife, Lord
Meadowbank, Sir John Hope of Pinkie,
Admiral Adam, Robert
Dundas of Arniston, Peter Robertson,
and many other personal friends. Lord Meadowbank had come on short
notice, and was asked abruptly on his arrival to take a toast which had been destined for a
noble person who had not been able to appear. He knew that this was the first public dinner
at which the object of this toast had appeared since his misfortunes, and taking him aside
in the anteroom, asked him whether he would consider it indelicate to hazard a distinct
reference to the parentage of the Waverley
Novels, as to which there had, in point of fact, ceased to be any obscurity from
the hour of Constable’s failure. Sir
Walter smiled, and said, “Do just as you like only don’t say
much about so old a story.”—In the course of the evening the Judge rose
accordingly and said—†
* Sir Walter parodies the
conclusion of King Robert the Bruce’s
“Maxims, or Political Testament.” See Hailes’s Annals, A. D. 1311,—or
Fordun’sScoti-chronicon,—XII. 10.
† By the favour of a friend, who took notes at this dinner, I
am enabled to give a better report of these speeches than that of the contemporary
newspapers.
“I would beg leave to propose a toast—the health
of one of the Patrons, a great and distinguished individual, whose name must always
stand by itself, and which, in an assembly such as this, or in any other assembly of
Scotsmen, must ever be received, I will not say with ordinary feelings of pleasure or
of delight, but with those of rapture and enthusiasm. In doing this I feel that I stand
in a somewhat new situation. Whoever had been called upon to propose the health of my
Hon. Friend some time ago, would have found himself enabled, from the mystery in which
certain matters were involved, to gratify himself and his auditors by allusions sure to
find a responding chord in their own feelings, and to deal in the language, the sincere
language, of panegyric, without intruding on the modesty of the great individual to
whom I refer. But it is no longer possible, consistently with the respect due to my
auditors, to use upon this subject terms either of mystification, or of obscure or
indirect allusion. The clouds have been dispelled—the darkness
visible has been cleared away—and the Great Unknown—the minstrel of our native
land—the mighty magician who has rolled back the current of time, and conjured up
before our living senses the men and the manners of days which have long passed away,
stands revealed to the eyes and the hearts of his affectionate and admiring countrymen.
If I were capable of imagining all that belongs to this mighty subject—were I able to
give utterance to all that as a man, as a Scotsman, and as a friend, I must feel
regarding it, yet knowing, as I well do, that this illustrious individual is not more
distinguished for his towering talents, than for those feelings which render such
allusions ungrateful to himself, however sparingly introduced, I would on that account
still refrain from doing what would otherwise be no less pleasing to myself than to
those who hear me. But this I hope I may be allowed to say—(my auditors would not
pardon me were I to say less)—we owe to him, as a people, a large and heavy debt of
gratitude. He it is who has opened to foreigners the grand and characteristic beauties
of our country. It is to him that we owe that our gallant ancestors and illustrious
patriots—who fought and bled in order to obtain and secure that independence and that
liberty we now enjoy—have obtained a fame no longer confined to the boundaries of a
remote and comparatively obscure country—it is He who has called
down upon their struggles for glory and freedom the admiration of foreign lands. He it
is who has conferred a new reputation on our national character, and bestowed on
Scotland an imperishable name, were it only by her having given birth to himself. I
propose the health of Sir Walter Scott.”
Long before Lord Meadowbank
ceased speaking, the company had got upon chairs and tables, and the storm of applause that
ensued was deafening. When they recovered from the first fever of their raptures, Sir Walter spoke as follows:
“I certainly did not think, in coming here
to-day, that I should have the task of acknowledging, before 300 gentlemen, a secret
which, considering that it was communicated to more than twenty people, has been
remarkably well kept. I am now at the bar of my country, and may be understood to be on
trial before Lord Meadowbank as an offender; and
so quietly did all who were airt and pairt conduct themselves,
that I am sure that, were the panel now to stand on his defence, every impartial jury
would bring in a verdict of Not Proven. I am willing, however,
to plead guilty—nor shall I detain the Court by a long
explanation why my confession has been so long deferred. Perhaps caprice might have a
considerable share in the matter. I have now to say, however, that the merits of these
works, if they had any, and their faults, are all entirely imputable to myself. Like
another Scottish criminal of more consequence, one Macbeth,‘I am afraid to think what I have done;Look on’t again, I dare not,’
“I have thus far unbosomed myself, and I know
that my confession will be reported to the public. I mean, then, seriously to state,
that when I say I am the author, I mean the total and undivided author. With the
exception of quotations, there is not a single word that was not derived from myself,
or suggested in the course of my reading. The wand is now broken, and the book buried.
You will allow me further to say, with Prospero, it
is your breath that has filled my sails, and to crave one single toast in the capacity
of the author of these novels. I would fain dedicate a bumper to the health of one who
has represented several of those characters, of which I had endeavoured to give the
skeleton, with a truth and liveliness for which I may well be grateful. I beg leave to
propose the health of my friend Bailie Nicol
Jarvie—and I am sure, that when the author of Waverley and Rob Roy drinks to
Nicol Jarvie, it will be received with the just
applause to which that gentleman has always been
accustomed, nay, that you will take care that on the present occasion it shall be pro—di—gi—ous!” (Long and vehement applause.)
Mr Mackay,—“My
conscience! My worthy father the deacon could never have believed that his son would hae
sic a compliment paid to him by the Great Unknown!”
Sir Walter Scott.—“The
Small Known now, Mr Bailie,” & &c.
Shortly after resuming his chair, Sir
Walter (I am told) sent a slip of paper to Mr
Robertson, begging him to “confess something too,—why not the
murder of Begbie?” (See ante, Vol. III. p. 53.) But if Peter complied
with the hint, it was long after the senior dignitaries had left the room.
The “sensation” produced by this scene was, in newspaper
phrase, “unprecedented.” Sir Walter’s
Diary merely says—“February 24.—I carried my own instructions
into effect the best I could, and if our jests were not good, our laughter was abundant. I
think I will hardly take the chair again when the company is so miscellaneous; though they
all behaved perfectly well. Meadowbank taxed me with
the novels, and to end that farce at once, I pleaded guilty, so that splore is ended. As to
the collection—it has been much cry and little woo, as the deil said when he shore the sow.
I got away at ten at night. The performers performed very like gentlemen, especially
Will Murray.—March
2.—Clerk walked home with me from the Court. I was scarce able to keep up with him; could
once have done it well enough. Funny thing at the Theatre last night. Among the discourse
in High Life below Stairs, one of the ladies’ ladies asks who wrote Shakspeare. One says ‘Ben Jonson,’ another ‘Finis.’ ‘No,’ said
Will Murray, ‘it is Sir Walter
Scott, he confessed it at a public meeting the other day.’”
The reader may, perhaps, expect that I should endeavour to name the
“upwards of twenty persons” whom Sir Walter
alluded to on this occasion as having been put into
the secret of the Waverley Novels,
previously, and without reference, to the catastrophe of 1826. I am by no means sure that I
can give the complete list: but in addition to the immediate members of the author’s
own family (including his mother and his brother Thomas) there were Constable,
Cadell, the two
Ballantynes, Terry, Laidlaw, Mr Train,
and Mr G. H. Gordon; Charles Duke of Buccleuch, Lady Louisa
Stuart, Lord Montagu, Lord and Lady Polwarth,
Lord Kinnedder, Sir
Adam Ferguson, Mr Morritt, Mr and Mrs Skene,
Mr William Clerk, Mr
Hay Donaldson, Mr John Richardson,
and Mr Thomas Moore.
The entries in Scott’s Diary
on contemporary literature are at this time very few; nor are there many on the public
events of the day, though the period was a very stirring one. He seems, in fact, to have
very rarely seen, even when in town, any newspaper except the Edinburgh Weekly Journal. At his age, it is not wonderful
that when that sheet reached him it for the most part contained the announcement of a death
which interested his feelings; and several of the following passages refer to incidents of
this melancholy class:—
“January 9.—This morning
received the long-expected news of the Duke of
York’s death. I am sorry both on public and private
accounts. His R. H. was, while he occupied the situation of next in succession,
a Break-water behind the throne. I fear his brother of Clarence’s opinions may be different, and that he may
hoist a standard under which men of desperate hopes and evil designs will
rendezvous. I am sorry, too, on my own account. The Duke of
York was uniformly kind to me, and though I never tasked his
friendship, yet I find a powerful friend is gone. His virtues were honour, good sense, integrity; and by exertion of these
qualities, he raised the British army from a very low ebb to be the pride and
dread of Europe. His errors were those of a sanguine and social temper—he could
not resist the temptation of deep play, which was fatally allied with a
disposition to the bottle. This last is incident to his complaint, which vinous
influence soothes for the time, while it insidiously increases it in the end.
“January 17.—I observe in the
papers my old friend Gifford’s
funeral. He was a man of rare attainments and many excellent qualities. His
Juvenal is one of the
best versions ever made of a classical author, and his satire of the Baviad and Mæviad squabashed at one blow a set
of coxcombs, who might have humbugged the world long enough. As a commentator
he was capital, could he but have suppressed his rancours against those who had
preceded him in the task; but a misconstruction or misinterpretation, nay, the
misplacing of a comma was, in Gifford’s eyes, a
crime worthy of the most severe animadversion. The same fault of extreme
severity went through his critical labours, and in general he flagellated with
so little pity, that people lost their sense of the criminal’s guilt in
dislike of the savage pleasure which the executioner seemed to take in
inflicting the punishment. This lack of temper probably arose from indifferent
health, for he was very valetudinary, and realized two verses, wherein he says
Fortune assigned him— ——‘One eye not over good, Two sides that to their cost have stood A ten years’ hectic cough, Aches, stitches, all the various ills That swell the devilish doctor’s bills, And sweep poor mortals off.’ But he might also justly claim, as
his gift, the moral qualities expressed in the next fine stanza— ————————‘A soul That spurns the crowd’s malign control, A firm contempt of wrong; Spirits above affliction’s power, And skill to soothe the lingering hour With no inglorious song.’ He was a little man, dumpled up together, and so ill made as to seem
almost deformed, but with a singular expression of talent in his countenance.
Though so little of an athlete, he nevertheless beat off Dr Wolcott, when that celebrated person, the
most unsparing calumniator of his time, chose to be offended with
Gifford for satirizing him in his turn.
Peter Pindar made a most vehement attack, but
Gifford had the best of the affray,* and remained, I
think, in triumphant possession of the field of action, and of the
assailant’s cane. G. had one singular custom. He
used always to have a duenna of a housekeeper to sit in his study with him while he wrote. This
female companion died when I was in London, and his distress was extreme. I
afterwards heard he got her place supplied. I believe there was no scandal in
all this.
“This is another vile day of darkness and rain, with
a heavy yellow mist that might become Charing Cross—one of the benefits of our
extended city; for that in our atmosphere was unknown till the extent of the
buildings below Queen Street.
“January 28.—Hear of
Miss White’s death. Poor
Lydia! she gave a dinner on the Friday before, and had
written with her own hand invitations for another party.
* See Epistle to Peter Pindar, Gifford’sBaviad and
Mæviad, pp. 181-191, ed. 1812.
Twenty years ago she used to tease me with her youthful
affectations—her dressing like the Queen of Chimney-sweeps on May-day morning,
&c.—and sometimes with letting her wit run wild. But she was a woman of
wit, and had a feeling and kind heart. Poor Lydia! I saw
the Duke of York and her in London, when
Death, it seems, was brandishing his dart over them. ‘The view o’t gave them little
fright.’
“February 10.—I got a present
of Lord Francis Gower’s printed but
unpublished Tale of the Mill. It
is a fine tale of terror in itself, and very happily brought out. He has
certainly a true taste for poetry. I do not know why, but from my childhood I
have seen something fearful, or melancholy at least, about a mill. Whether I
had been frightened at the machinery when very young, of which, I think, I have
some shadowy remembrance—whether I had heard the stories of the Miller of
Thirlestane, and similar molendinar tragedies, I cannot tell; but not even
recollections of the Lass of
Patie’s Mill, or the Miller of Mansfield, or ‘he who
dwelt on the river Dee,’ have ever got over my inclination to
connect gloom with a mill, especially when the sun is setting. So I entered
into the spirit of the terror with which Lord Francis has
invested his haunted spot.
“February
14.—‘Death’s gi’en the art an unco devel.’*
Sir George Beaumont’s dead; by
far the most sensible and pleasing man I ever knew, kind, too, in his nature,
and generous—gentle in society, and of those mild manners which tend to soften
the causticity of the general London tone of persiflage and personal satire. As
an amateur painter, he was of the very highest dis- * “Death’s gi’en the lodge an unco devel, Tam Sampson’s dead.”—Burns.
tinction; and though I know
nothing of the matter, yet I should hold him a perfect critic on painting, for
he always made his criticisms intelligible, and used no slang. I am very
sorry—as much as it is in my nature to be for one whom I could see but seldom.
He was the great friend of Wordsworth,
and understood his poetry, which is a rare thing, for it is more easy to see
his peculiarities than to feel his great merit, or follow his abstract ideas.
“A woman of rather the better class, a
farmer’s wife, was tried a few days ago for poisoning her maid-servant.
There seems to have been little doubt of her guilt, but the motive was
peculiar. The unfortunate girl had an intrigue with her son, which this
Mrs Smith (I think that is the name) was desirous to
conceal, from some ill-advised Puritanic notions, and also for fear of her
husband. She could find no better way of hiding the shame than giving the girl
(with her own knowledge and consent, I believe) potions to cause abortion,
which she afterwards changed for arsenic, as the more effectual silencing
medicine. In the course of the trial one of the jury fell down in an epileptic
fit, and on his recovery was far too much disordered to permit the trial to
proceed. With only fourteen jurymen, it was impossible to go on. The Advocate
says she shall be tried anew, since she has not tholed ane
assize. Sic Paulus ait—et recte
quidem. But, having been half-tried, I think she should have
some benefit of it, as far as saving her life, if convicted on the second
indictment. Lord Advocate declares, however, that she shall be hanged, as
certainly she deserves. Yet it looks something like hanging up a man who has
been recovered by the surgeons, which has always been accounted harsh justice.
“February 20.—At Court, and
waited to see the poi-soiling woman tried. She is clearly
guilty, but as one or two witnesses said the poor wench hinted an intention to
poison herself, the jury gave that bastard verdict, Not proven. I hate that
Caledonian medium quid. One who is
not proved guilty, is innocent in the eyes of law. It was a face to do or die,
or perhaps to do to die. Thin features, which had been handsome, a flashing
eye, an acute and aquiline nose, lips much marked as arguing decision, and I
think, bad temper—they were thin, and habitually compressed, rather turned down
at the corners, as one of a rather melancholy disposition. There was an awful
crowd; but, sitting within the bar, I had the pleasure of seeing much at my
ease; the constables knocking the other folks about, which was of course very
entertaining.
“I have a letter from Baron Von Goethe, which I must have read to me; for though I
know German, I have forgot their written hand. I make it a rule seldom to read,
and never to answer foreign letters from literary folks. It leads to nothing
but the battledore and shuttle-cock intercourse of compliments, as light as
cork and feathers. But Goethe is different, and a
wonderful fellow, the Ariosto at once,
and almost the Voltaire of Germany. Who
could have told me thirty years ago I should correspond and be on something
like an equal footing with the author of the Goetz? Ay, and who could have told me fifty
things else that have befallen me?”
Goethe’s letter (as nearly as the Editor can
render it) runs thus:
To Sir Walter Scott, Bart., Edinburgh.
“Weimar, January 12th, 1827.
“Mr H——, well known to me as a collector of objects of art, has given me a
likeness, I hope authentic and accurate, of the late Lord Byron, and it awakens anew the sorrow which I could not
but feel for the loss of one whom all the world prized, and I in particular:
since how could I fail to be delighted with the many expressions of partiality
for me which his writings contain?
“Mean-time the best consolation for us, the
survivors, is to look around us, and consider, that as the departed is not
alone, but has joined the noble spiritual company of high-hearted men, capable
of love, friendship, and confidence that had left this sphere before him, so we
have still kindred spirits on earth, with whom, though not visible any more
than the blessed shades of past ages, we have a right to feel a brotherlike
connexion which is indeed our richest inheritance.
“And so, as Mr H—— informs me he expects to be soon
in Edinburgh, I thus acquit myself, mine honoured sir, of a duty which I had
long ago felt to be incumbent on me—to acknowledge the lively interest I have
during many years taken in your wonderful pictures of human life. I have not
wanted external stimulants enough to keep my attention awake on this subject,
since not only have translations abounded in the German, but the works are
largely read here in the original, and valued according as different men are
capable of comprehending their spirit and genius.
“Can I remember that such a man in his youth made
himself acquainted with my writings, and even (unless I have been misinformed)
introduced them in part to the knowledge of his own nation, and yet defer any
longer, at my now very advanced years, to express my sense of such an honour?
It becomes me, on the contrary, not to lose the opportunity now offered of
praying for a continuance of your kindly regard, and telling you how much a direct assurance of good-will from your own hand
would gratify my old age.
“With high and grateful respect, I salute you,
J. W. v. Goethe.”
This letter might well delight Scott. His answer to it I have not seen, but Goethe, in writing soon afterwards to his friend Mr Thomas Carlyle (the translator of his Wilhelm Meister), described it as
“cheering and warm-hearted.”
I now insert a few entries from Sir
Walter’s Diary, intermixed with extracts from his letters to myself
and Mr Morritt, which will give the reader
sufficient information as to the completion of his Life of Buonaparte, and also as to his impressions on
hearing of the illness of Lord Liverpool, the
consequent dissolution of his Cabinet, and the formation of a new Ministry under Mr Canning.
Diary—“February 21.—Lord Liverpool is ill of an apoplexy. I am sorry for it. He
will be missed. Who will be got for Premier? If Peel
would consent to be made a peer, he would do; but I doubt his ambition will prefer the
House of Commons. Wrought a good deal.
“April 16.—A day of work and exercise. In
the evening a letter from L. with the wonderful news
that the Ministry has broken up, and apparently for no cause that any one can explain. The
old grudge, I suppose, which has gone on like a crack in the side of a house, enlarging
from day to day, till down goes the whole——”
To J. G. Lockhart, Esq., Wimbledon.
* * * * * “Your letter has given me the vertigo—my
head turns round like a chariot-wheel, and I am on the point of asking ‘Why, how now? Am I Giles, or am I not?’ The Duke of Wellington out?—bad news at home, and worse abroad. Lord Anglesea in his situation? does not much
mend the matter. Duke of Clarence in the
Navy? wild work. Lord Melville, I suppose,
falls of course—perhaps cum totâ
sequelâ, about which sequela, unless Sir W.
Rae and the Solicitor, I
care little. The whole is glamour to one who reads no papers, and has none to
read. I must get one, though, if this work is to go on, for it is quite
bursting in ignorance. Canning is
haughty and prejudiced but, I think, honourable as well as able—nous verrons. I fear Croker will shake, and heartily sorry I should
feel for that.” * * * * *
Diary—“April 25.—I have now got
Bony pegg’d up in the knotty entrails of
Saint Helena, and may make a short pause. So I finished the review of John
Home’s works, which, after all, are poorer than I thought them. Good
blank verse, and stately sentiment, but something luke-warmish, excepting Douglas, which is certainly a
master-piece. Even that does not stand the closet. Its merits are for the stage; and it is
certainly one of the best acting plays going. Perhaps a play to act well should not be too
poetical.
“April 26.—The snow still profusely
distributed, and the surface, as our hair used to be in youth, after we had played at some
active game, half black, half white, all in large patches. I finished the criticism on Home, adding
a string of Jacobite anecdotes, like that which boys put to a kite’s tail. Received a
great cargo of papers from Bernadotte, some curious,
and would have been inestimable two months back, but now my task is almost done. And then
my feelings for poor Count Itterberg, the lineal and
legitimate, make me averse to have much to do with this child of the revolution.”
To J. G. Lockhart, Esq.
April 26.
“The news you send is certainly the most wonderful
of my time, in a party point of view, especially as I can’t but think all
has turned on personal likings and dislikings. I hope they won’t let in
the Whigs at the breach, for I suppose, if Lansdowne come in, he must be admitted with a tail on, and
Lauderdale will have the weight in
Scotland. How our tough Tories may like that, I wot not; but they will do much
to keep the key of the corn-chest within reach. The
Advocate has not used me extremely kindly, but I shall be sorry
if he suffers in this State tempest. For me, I remain, like the Lilliputian poet—‘In amaze—Lost I
gaze’—or rather as some other bard sings ‘So folks beholding at a distance Seven men flung out of a casement, They never stir to their assistance, But just afford them their amazement.’* —You ask why the wheels of Napoleon tarry; not by my fault, I swear; ‘We daily are jogging, While whistling and flogging, While whistling and flogging, The coachman drives on, With a hey hoy, gee up gee ho,’ &c.
&c. &c.
* Crazy
Tales, by John Hall
Stevenson.
To use a more classical simile ‘Wilds immeasurably spread Seem lengthening as I go.’* I have just got some very curious papers from Sweden. I have wrought
myself blind between writing and collating, and, except about three or four
hours for food and exercise, I have not till to-day devauled from my task. . . . . O, Bony, I’ll owe you a
curse, if Hereafter To my vision your tyrannous spectre shall show, But I doubt you’ll be pinned on old
Nick’s reddest rafter, While the vulgar of Tophet howl back from below. . . . I shall, however, displease Ultras such as Croker, on the subject of Bony, who was certainly a great man, though far from a good
man, and still farther from a good king. But the stupidest Roitelet in Europe
has his ambition and selfishness, and where will you find his talents? I own I
think Ultra-writing only disgusts people, unless it is in the way of a
downright invective, and that in history you had much better keep the safe
side, and avoid colouring too highly. After all, I suspect, were
Croker in presence of Bony
to-morrow, he might exclaim, as Captain T. did at one of
the Elba levees, ‘Well, Bony’s a d——d good
fellow after all.’”
To the Same.
“Abbotsford, May 10, 1827.
. . . “To speak seriously of these political
movements, I cannot say that I approve of the dissidents. I understand
Peel had from the King carte blanche for an Anti-Catholic
Administration, and that he could not accept it because there was not strength
enough to form such. What is this but saying in plain
* Goldsmith’sHermit.
words that the Catholics had the country and the
Question? And because they are defeated in a single question, and one which,
were it to entail no farther consequences, is of wonderfully little import,
they have abandoned the King’s service—given up the citadel because an
exterior work was carried, and marched out into Opposition. I can’t think
this was right. They ought either to have made a stand without Canning, or a stand with him; for to abdicate
as they have done was the way to subject the country to all the future
experiments which this Catholic Emancipation may lead those that now carry it
to attempt, and which may prove worse, far worse, than any thing connected with
the Question itself. Thus says the old Scotch Tory. But I for one do not believe it was the question of Emancipation, or any
public question, which carried them out. I believe the predominant motive in
the bosom of every one of them was personal hostility to
Canning, and that with more prudence, less arbitrary
manners, and more attention to the feelings of his colleagues, he would have
stepped nem. con. into the situation
of Prime Minister, for which his eloquence and talent naturally point him out.
They objected to the man more than the statesman, and the Duke of Wellington, more frank than the rest,
almost owns that the quarrel was personal. Now, acting upon that, which was, I
am convinced, the real ground, I cannot think the
dissidents acted well and wisely. It is very possible that they might not have
been able to go on with Canning; but I think they were
bound, as loyal subjects and patriots, to ascertain that continuing in the
Cabinet with him as Premier was impossible, before they took a step which may
change the whole policy, perhaps eventually the whole destiny of the realm, and
lead to the prevalence of those principles which the dis-sidents have uniformly represented as
destructive to the interests of Britain. I think they were bound to have made a
trial before throwing Canning, and alas! both the King and
the country, into the hand of the Whigs. These are the sort of truths more
visible to the lookers-on than to those who play.
“As for Canning, with his immense talent, wit, and eloquence, he
unhappily wants prudence and patience, and in his eager desire to scramble to
the highest point, is not sufficiently select as to his assistants. The
Queen’s affair is an example of
this—Lord Castlereagh’s was
another. In both he threw himself back by an over-eager desire to press
forward, and something of the kind must have been employed now. It cannot be
denied that he has placed himself (perhaps more from compulsion than choice) in
a situation which greatly endangers his character. Still, however, he has that
character to maintain, and unluckily it is all we have to rest upon as things
go. The sons of Zeruiah would be otherwise too many for
us. It is possible, though I doubt it, that the Whigs will be satisfied with
their share of orts and grains,
and content themselves with feeding out of the trough without overturning it.
My feeling, were I in the House of Commons, would lead me to stand up and
declare that I supported Canning so far, and so far only,
as he continued to preserve and maintain the principles which he had hitherto
professed—that my allegiance could not be irredeemably pledged to him, because
his camp was filled with those against whom I had formerly waged battle under
his command—that, however, it should not be mere apprehension of evil that
would make me start off—reserving to myself to do what should be called for
when the crisis arrived. I think if a number of intelligent and able men were
to hold by Canning on these grounds, they might yet enable
him to collect a Tory force around him, sufficient to
check at least, if not on all points to resist the course of innovation. If my
old friend is wise he will wish to organize such a force, for nothing is more
certain than that if the champion of Anti-Jacobinism should stoop to become the
tool of the Whigs, it is not all his brilliancy of talents, eloquence and wit,
which can support him in such a glaring want of consistency. Meliora spero. I do not think
Canning can rely on his Whig confederates, and some
door of reconciliation may open itself as unexpectedly as the present confusion
has arisen.”
Diary “May
11.—The Boar of the Forest called
this morning to converse about trying to get him on the pecuniary list of the
Royal Literary Society. Certainly he deserves it, if genius and necessity can
do so. But I do not belong to the society, nor do I propose to enter it as a
coadjutor. I do not like your royal academies of this kind; they almost always
fall into jobs, and the members are seldom those who do credit to the
literature of a country. It affected, too, to comprehend those men of letters
who are specially attached to the Crown, and though I love and honour my King
as much as any of them can, yet I hold it best, in this free country, to
preserve the exterior of independence, that my loyalty may be the more
impressive, and tell more effectually. Yet I wish sincerely to help poor
Hogg, and have written to Lockhart about it. It may be my own desolate feelings—it may be
the apprehension of evil from this political hocus-pocus; but I have seldom
felt more moody and uncomfortable than while writing these lines. I have
walked, too, but without effect. W.
Laidlaw, whose very ingenious mind is delighted with all
novelties, talked nonsense about the new
government, in which men are to resign principle, I fear, on both sides.
“Parliament House a queer sight. Looked as if people
were singing to each other the noble song of ‘The
sky’s falling chickie diddle.’ Thinks I to myself,
I’ll keep a calm sough. ‘Betwixt both sides I unconcerned stand by— Hurt can I laugh, and harmless need I cry?’
“May 15,—I dined at a great
dinner given by Sir George Clerk to his
electors, the freeholders of Mid-Lothian; a great attendance of Whig and Tory,
huzzaing each other’s toasts. If is a good
peace-maker, but quarter-day is a better. I have a guess the best gamecocks
would call a truce, if a handful or two of oats were scattered among them.
“May 27.—I got ducked in
coming home from the Court. Made a hard day of it. Scarce stirred from one room
to another, but by bed-time finished a handsome handful of copy. I have quoted
Gourgaud’s evidence; I suppose
he will be in a rare passion, and may be addicted to vengeance, like a
long-moustached son of a French bitch as he is. ‘Frenchman, Devil, or Don, Damn him let him come on, He shan’t scare a son of the Island.’*
“May 28.—Another day of
uninterrupted study; two such would finish the work with a murrain. What shall
I have to think of when I lie down at night and awake in the morning? What will
be my plague and my pastime—my curse and my blessing—as ideas come and the
pulse rises, or as they flag and something like a snow-haze covers my whole
imagination?—I have my Highland
* Sir
W.varies a verse of
“The tight little
Island.”
Tales—and then—never mind—sufficient for the day is the
evil thereof.—Letter from John touching
public affairs; don’t half like them, and am afraid we shall have the
Whig alliance turn out like the calling in of the Saxons. I told this to
Jeffrey, who said they would convert
us as the Saxons did the British. I shall die in my Paganism for one. I
don’t like a bone of them as a party. Ugly reports of the King’s
health; God pity this poor country should that be so, but I hope it is a thing
devised by the enemy.
“June 3.—Wrought hard. I
thought I had but a trifle to do, but new things cast up; we get beyond the
Life, however, for I have
killed him to-day. The newspapers are very saucy; the Sun says I have got L.4000 for
suffering a Frenchman to look over my manuscript. Here is a proper fellow for
you! I wonder what he thinks Frenchmen are made of—walking money-bags,
doubtless. ‘Now,’ as Sir Fretful
Plagiary says, ‘another person would be vexed at
this,’ but I care not one brass farthing.
“June 5.—Proofs.
Parliament-House till two. Commenced the character of Buonaparte. To-morrow being a Teind-day, I may hope to get it
finished.
“June 10.—Rose with the odd
consciousness of being free of my daily task. I have heard that the fish-women
go to church of a Sunday with their creels new washed, and a few stones in them
for ballast, just because they cannot walk steadily without their usual load. I
feel something like them, and rather inclined to take up some light task, than
to be altogether idle. I have my proof-sheets, to be sure; but what are these
to a whole day? A good thought came in my head to write Stories for little Johnnie Lockhart, from the History of Scot-land, like those taken
from the History of
England. But I will not write mine quite so simply as Croker has done. I am persuaded both children
and the lower class of readers hate books which are written down to their
capacity, and love those that are composed more for their elders and betters. I
will make, if possible, a book that a child shall understand, yet a man will
feel some temptation to peruse should he chance to take it up. It will require,
however, a simplicity of style not quite my own. The grand and interesting
consists in ideas, not in words. A clever thing of this kind might have a
race.”
To John B. S. Morritt, Esq., Portland Place,
London.
“Edinburgh, June 10, 1327. “My dear Morritt,
“Napoleon has been an absolute millstone about my neck, not
permitting me for many a long day to think my own thoughts, to work my own
work, or to write my own letters—which last clause of prohibition has rendered
me thus long your debtor. I am now finished—valeat
quod valere potest—and as usual not very anxious about
the opinion of the public, as I have never been able to see that such anxiety
has any effect in mollifying the minds of the readers, while it renders that of
the author very uncomfortable—so vogue la
galère.
“How are you, as a moderate pro-Catholic, satisfied
with this strange alliance in the Cabinet? I own I look upon it with doubt at
best, and with apprehensions. At the same time I cannot approve of the late
Ministers leaving the King’s councils in such a hurry. They could hardly
suppose that Canning’s fame,
talent, and firm disposition would be satisfied with less than the condition of
Premier, and such being the case— ‘To fly the boar before the boar pursued, Was to incense the boar to follow them.’* On the other hand, his allying himself so closely and so hastily with the
party against whom he had maintained war from youth to age seems to me, at this
distance, to argue one of two things;—either that the Minister has been
hoodwinked by ambition and anger—that he looks upon the attachment of those
gentlemen to the opinions which he has always opposed as so slight,
unsubstantial, and unreal, that they will not insist upon them, or any of them,
provided they are gratified personally with a certain portion of the benefits
of place and revenue. Now, not being disposed to think over well of the Whigs,
I cannot suppose that a large class of British statesmen, not deficient
certainly in talents, can be willing to renounce all the political maxims and
measures which they have been insisting upon for thirty years, merely to become
placeholders under Canning. The supposition is too
profligate. But then if they come in the same Whigs we have known them, where,
how, or when are they to execute their favourite notions of Reform of
Parliament? and what sort of amendments will they be which are to be brought
forward when the proper time comes? or how is Canning to
conduct himself when the Saxons, whom he has called in for his assistance, draw
out to fight for a share of the power which they have assisted him to obtain?
When such strange and unwonted bedfellows are packed up together, will they not
kick and struggle for the better share of the coverlid and blankets? Perhaps
you will say that I look gloomily on all this, and have forgotten the way of
the world, which sooner or later shows that the principles of statesmen are
regulated by their advance towards; or retreat from
* King Richard
III. Act. III. Sc. 2.
power; and that from men who
are always acting upon the emergencies of the moment, it is in vain to expect
consistency. Perfect consistency, I agree, we cannot look for—it is
inconsistent with humanity. But that gross inconsistency which induces men to
clasp to their bosom the man whom they most hated, and to hold up to admiration
the principles which they have most forcibly opposed, may gain a temporary
triumph, but will never found a strong Ministry or a settled Government. My old
friend Canning, with his talents and oratory, ought not, I
think, to have leagued himself with any party, but might have awaited, well
assured that the general voice must have carried him into full possession of
power. I am sorry he has acted otherwise, and argue no good from it, though
when or how the evil is to come I cannot pretend to say.
“My best compliments wait on your fireside. I
conclude you see Lady Louisa Stuart very
often, which is a happiness to be envied. . . . . .
Ever yours, most kindly, Walter Scott.”
I received, some years ago, from a very modest and intelligent young
man, the late Mr Robert Hogg (a nephew of the
Ettrick Shepherd), employed in 1827 as reader in Ballantyne’s printing-office, a letter for which
this is perhaps the most proper place.
To J. G. Lockhart, Esq.
“Edinburgh, 16th February, 1833. “Sir,
“Having been for a few days employed by Sir Walter Scott, when he was finishing his Life of Buonaparte, to copy
papers connected with that work, and to write
occasionally to his dictation, it may perhaps be in my power to mention some
circumstances relative to Sir Walter’s habits of
composition, which could not fall under the observation of any one except a
person in the same situation with myself, and which are therefore not unlikely
to pass altogether without notice.
“When, at Sir
Walter’s request, I waited upon him to be informed of the
business in which he needed my assistance, after stating it, he asked me if I
was an early riser, and added that it would be no great hardship for me, being
a young man, to attend him the next morning at six o’clock. I was
punctual, and found Sir Walter already busy writing. He
appointed my tasks, and again sat down at his own desk. We continued to write
during the regular work hours till six o’clock in the evening, without
interruption, except to take breakfast and dinner, which were served in the
room beside us, so that no time was lost; we rose from our desks when every
thing was ready, and resumed our labours when the meals were over. I need not
tell you that during these intervals Sir Walter conversed
with me as if I had been on a level of perfect equality with himself.
“I had no notion it was possible for any man to
undergo the fatigue of composition for so long a time at once, and Sir Walter acknowledged he did not usually subject
himself to so much exertion, though it seemed to be only the manual part of the
operation that occasioned him any inconvenience. Once or twice he desired me to
relieve him, and dictated while I wrote with as much rapidity as I was able. I
have performed the same service to several other persons, most of whom walked
up and down the apartment while excogitating what was to be committed to
writing; they sometimes stopt too, and, like those who fail in a leap and
return upon their course to take the advantage of another race, endeavoured to
hit upon something additional by peru-sing over my shoulder what was already set
down,—mending a phrase perhaps, or recasting a sentence, till they should
recover their wind. None of these aids were necessary to Sir
Walter: his thoughts flowed easily and felicitously, without any
difficulty to lay hold of them or to find appropriate language; which was
evident by the absence of all solicitude (miserta
cogitandi) from his countenance. He sat in his chair,
from which he rose now and then, took a volume from the bookcase, consulted it,
and restored it to the shelf—all without intermission in the current of ideas,
which continued to be delivered with no less readiness than if his mind had
been wholly occupied with the words he was uttering. It soon became apparent to
me, however, that he was carrying on two distinct trains of thought, one of
which was already arranged and in the act of being spoken, while at the same
time he was in advance considering what was afterwards to be said. This I
discovered by his sometimes introducing a word which was wholly out of
place—entertained instead of denied, for example,—but which I presently found to belong to the
next sentence, perhaps four or five lines farther on, which he had been
preparing at the very moment that he gave me the words of the one that preceded
it. Extemporaneous orators of course, and no doubt many writers, think as
rapidly as was done by Sir Walter; but the mind is wholly
occupied with what the lips are uttering or the pen is tracing. I do not
remember any other instance in which it could be said that two threads were
kept hold of at once connected with each other indeed, but grasped at different
points. I was, as I have said, two or three days beside Sir
Walter, and had repeated opportunities of observing the same
thing. I am, Sir, respectfully your obliged humble servant,
Robert Hogg.”
The Life of
Buonaparte, then, was at last published about the middle of June 1827. Two years had
elapsed since Scott began it; but, by a careful
comparison of dates, I have arrived at the conclusion that, his expeditions to Ireland and
Paris, and the composition of novels and critical miscellanies being duly allowed for, the
historical task occupied hardly more than twelve months. The book was closely printed; in
fact those nine volumes contain as much letter-press as Waverley, Guy
Mannering, the Antiquary, the
Monastery, and the Legend of Montrose, all put together. If it had been
printed on the original model of those novels, the Life of
Buonaparte would have filled from thirteen to fourteen volumes:—the work of one
twelvemonth—done in the midst of pain, sorrow, and ruin.
The magnitude of the theme, and the copious detail with which it was
treated, appear to have frightened the critics of the time. None of our great Reviews
grappled with the book at all; nor am I so presumptuous as to undertake what they shrunk
from. The general curiosity with which it was expected, and the satisfaction with which
high and candid minds perused it, cannot I believe be better described than in the words of
the author’s most illustrious literary contemporary.
“Walter
Scott,” says Goethe,
“passed his childhood among the stirring scenes of the American War, and was a
youth of seventeen or eighteen when the French Revolution broke out. Now well advanced
in the fifties, having all along been favourably placed for observation, he proposes to
lay before us his views and recollections of the important events through which he has
lived. The richest, the easiest, the most celebrated narrator of the century,
undertakes to write the history of his own time.
“What expectations the announcement of such a
work must have excited in me, will be understood by any one who remembers that I,
twenty years older than Scott, conversed with
Paoli in the twentieth year of my age, and
with Napoleon himself in the sixtieth.
“Through that long series of years, coming more
or less into contact with the great doings of the world, I failed not to think
seriously on what was passing around me, and, after my own fashion, to connect so many
extraordinary mutations into something like arrangement and interdependence.
“What could now be more delightful to me than
leisurely and calmly to sit down and listen to the discourse of such a man, while
clearly, truly, and with all the skill of a great artist, he recalls to me the
incidents on which through life I have meditated, and the influence of which is still
daily in operation?”—Kunst und
Altherthum.
The lofty impartiality with which Scott treats the personal character of Buonaparte was, of course, sure to make all ultra-politicians at home and
abroad condemn his representation; and an equally general and better founded exception was
taken to the lavish imagery of his historical style. He despised the former clamour—to the
latter he bowed submissive. He could not, whatever character he might wish to assume, cease
to be one of the greatest of poets. Metaphorical illustrations, which men born with prose
in their souls hunt for painfully, and find only to murder, were to him the natural and
necessary offspring and playthings of ever-teeming fancy. He could not write a note to his
printer—he could not speak to himself in his Diary—without introducing them. Few will say
that his historical style is, on the whole, excellent; none that it is perfect; but it is
completely unaffected, and therefore excites nothing of the unpleasant feeling with which
we consider the elaborate artifices of a far greater historian—the greatest that our
literature can boast—Gibbon. The rapidity of the
execution infers many inaccuracies as to minor matters of fact; but it is nevertheless true
that no inaccuracy in the smallest degree affecting the character of the book as a fair
record of great events, has to this hour been detected even by the malevolent ingenuity of
Jacobin and Buonapartist pamphleteers. Even the most hostile
examiners were obliged to acknowledge that the gigantic career of their idol had been
traced, in its leading features, with wonderful truth and spirit. No civilian, it was
universally admitted, had ever before described modern battles and campaigns with any
approach to his daring and comprehensive felicity. The public, ever unwilling to concede a
new species of honour to a name already covered with distinction, listened eagerly for a
while to the indignant reclamations of nobodies, whose share in mighty transactions had
been omitted, or slightly misrepresented; but, ere long, all these pompous rectifications
were summed up and found to constitute nothing but a contemptible monument of self-deluding
vanity. The work, devoured at first with breathless delight, had a shade thrown over it for
a time by the pertinacious blustering of these angry Lilliputians; but it has now emerged,
slowly and surely, from the mist of suspicion—and few, whose opinions deserve much
attention, hesitate to avow their conviction that, whoever may be the Polybius of the modern Hannibal, posterity will recognise his Livy in Scott.
Woodstock, as we have seen, placed
upwards of L.8000 in the hands of Sir Walter’s creditors. The Napoleon (first and second editions) produced for them a
sum which it even now startles me to mention—L.18,000. As by the time the historical work
was published, nearly half of the First Series of Chronicles of the Canongate had been written, it is
obvious that the amount to which Scott’s literary
industry, from the close of 1825, to the 10th of June, 1827, had diminished his debt,
cannot be stated at less than L.28,000. Had health been spared him, how soon must he have
freed himself from all his encumbrances!
CHAPTER II. EXCURSION TO ST ANDREWS—DEATHS OF LADY DIANA SCOTT—CONSTABLE—AND CANNING
EXTRACT FROM MR ADOLPHUS’S MEMORANDA—AFFAIR OF GENERAL GOURGAUD—LETTER TO MR
CLERK—BLYTHSWOOD—COREHOUSE—DUKE OF WELLINGTON’S VISIT TO DURHAM—DINNER IN THE
CASTLE—SONDERLAND—RAVENSWORTH—ALNWICK—VERSES TO SIR CUTHBERT SHARP—AFFAIR OF ABUD AND
CO.—PUBLICATION OF THE CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE, SERIES FIRST—AND OF THE FIRST TALES OF
A GRANDFATHER—ESSAY ON PLANTING, &c.—MISCELLANEOUS PROSE WORKS COLLECTED—SALE OF THE
WAVERLEY COPYRIGHTS—DIVIDEND TO CREDITORS—JUNE—DECEMBER—1827.
My wife and I spent the summer of 1827, partly at a sea-bathing
place near Edinburgh, and partly in Roxburghshire; and I shall, in. my account of the
sequel of this year, draw, as it may happen, on Sir
Walter’s Diary, his letters, the memoranda of friendly visiters, or my
own recollections. The arrival of his daughter and her children at Portobello was a source
of constant refreshment to him during June; for every other day he came down and dined
there, and strolled about afterwards on the beach; thus interrupting, beneficially for his
health, and I doubt not for the result of his labours also, the new custom of regular
night-work, or, as he called it, of serving double-tides. When the Court released him, and
he returned to Abbotsford, his family did what they could to keep him
to his ancient evening habits; but nothing was so useful as the presence of his invalid
grandson. The poor child was at this time so far restored as to be able to sit his pony
again; and Sir Walter, who had, as the reader observed, conceived, the
very day he finished Napoleon, the notion
of putting together a series of stories on the history of Scotland, somewhat in the manner
of Mr Croker’s on that of England, rode daily among the woods with his
“Hugh Littlejohn,” and told the
tale, and ascertained that it suited the comprehension of boyhood, before he reduced it to
writing. Sibyl Grey had been dismissed in consequence of the
accident at the Catrail; and he had now stooped his pride to a sober, steady creature, of
very humble blood; dun, with black mane and legs; by name Douce
Davie, alias the Covenanter. This, the last of his
steeds, by the way, had been previously in the possession of a jolly old laird in a
neighbouring county, and acquired a distinguished reputation by its skill in carrying him
home safely when dead drunk. Douce Davie, on such occasions,
accommodated himself to the swerving balance of his rider with such nice discrimination,
that, on the laird’s death, the country people expected a vigorous competition for
the sagacious animal; but the club-companions of the defunct stood off to a man, when it
was understood that the Sheriff coveted the succession.
The Chronicles of the
Canongate proceeded pari passu with
these historical tales; and both works were published before the end of the year. He also
superintended, at the same time, the first collection of his Prose Miscellanies, in six volumes 8vo—several
articles being remodelled and extended to adapt them for a more permanent sort of existence
than had been originally thought of. Moreover, Sir
Walter penned, that autumn,
his beautiful and instructive paper on the Planting of Waste Lands, which is indeed no other than a precious chapter of
his autobiography, for the Quarterly Review.*
What he wrote of new matter between June and December, fills from five to six volumes in
the late uniform edition of his works; but all this was light and easy after the perilous
drudgery of the preceding eighteen months.
The Blair-Adam Club, this year, had their headquarters at Charleton, in
Fife—the seat of the founder’s son-in-law, Mr Anstruther
Thomson; and one of their drives was to the two ancient mansions of Ely and
Balcasky. “The latter,” says Sir
Walter in his Diary, “put me in mind of poor Philip Anstruther, dead and gone many a long year
since. He was a fine, gallant, light-hearted young sailor. I remember the story of his
drawing on his father for some cash, which produced an angry letter from old
Sir Robert, to which Philip replied, that
if he did not know how to write like a gentleman, he did not desire any more of his
correspondence. Balcasky is much dilapidated; but they are restoring the house in the
good old style, with its terraces and yew hedges.”
Another morning was given to St Andrews, which one of the party had
never before visited. “The ruins,” he says, “have been lately
cleared out. They had been chiefly magnificent from their size, not their richness in
ornament.† I did not go up to St Rule’s Tower, as on former occasions; this
is a falling off, for when before did I remain sitting below when there was a steeple
to be ascended? But the rheumatism has begun to change
* See Miscellaneous Prose Works (edition 1836) vol. xxi.
† I believe there is no doubt that the Metropolitan
Cathedral of St Andrews had been the longest in Europe—a
very remarkable fact, when one thinks of the smallness and poverty of the
country. It is stated, with minute calculations, and much exultation, by an old
Scotch writer—Volusenus (i. e.Wilson) in his once celebrated treatise—De Tranquillitate Animi.
that vein for some time past, though I think this is the first
decided sign of acquiescence in my lot. I sat down on a grave-stone, and recollected
the first visit I made to St Andrews, now thirty-four years ago. What changes in my
feelings and my fortunes have since then taken place!—some for the better, many for the
worse. I remembered the name I then carved in
runic characters on the turf beside the castle-gate, and I asked why it should still
agitate my heart. But my friends came down from the tower, and the foolish idea was
chased away.”
On the 22d of July his Diary bears the date of Minto. He then says “We rubbed up some recollections of twenty years
ago, when I was more intimate in the family, till Whig and Tory separated us for a
time. By the way, nobody talks Whig or Tory just now, and the fighting men on each side
go about muzzled and mute, like dogs after a proclamation about canine madness. Am I
sorry for this truce or not Half and half. It is all we have left to stir the blood,
this little political brawling. But better too little of it than too much. Here I have
received news of two deaths at once; Lady Die
Scott, my very old friend, and Archibald
Constable, the bookseller.”—He adds next day—“Yes!
they are both, for very different reasons, subjects of reflection. Lady Diana
Scott, widow of Walter Scott of
Harden, was the last person whom I recollect so much older than myself,
that she kept always at the same distance in point of age, so that she scarce seemed
older to me (relatively) two years ago, when in her ninety-second year, than fifty
years before. She was the daughter (alone remaining) of Pope’sEarl of Marchmont,
and, like her father, had an acute mind, and an eager temper. She was always kind to
me, remarkably so indeed when I was a boy.—Constable’s death
might have been a most important thing to me if it had happened some years ago, and I should then have
lamented it much. He has lived to do me some injury; yet, excepting the last L.5000, I
think most unintentionally. He was a prince of booksellers; his views sharp, powerful,
and liberal; too sanguine, however, and like many bold and successful schemers, never
knowing when to stand or stop, and not always calculating his means to his object with
mercantile accuracy. He was very vain, for which he had some reason, having raised
himself to great commercial eminence, as he might also, with good management, have
attained great wealth. He knew, I think, more of the business of a bookseller, in
planning and executing popular works, than any man of his time. In books themselves he
had much bibliographical information, but none whatever that could be termed literary.
He knew the rare volumes of his library not only by the eye, but by the touch, when
blindfolded. Thomas Thomson saw him make this
experiment, and that it might be complete, placed in his hand an ordinary volume
instead of one of these libri rariores. He
said he had over-estimated his memory; he could not recollect that volume.
Constable was a violent tempered man with those he dared use
freedom with. He was easily overawed by people of consequence; but, as usual, took it
out of those whom poverty made subservient to him. Yet he was generous, and far from
bad-hearted:—in person good-looking, but very corpulent latterly; a large feeder, and
deep drinker, till his health became weak. He died of water in the chest, which the
natural strength of his constitution set long at defiance. I have no great reason to
regret him; yet I do. If he deceived me, he also deceived himself.”
Constable’s spirit had been effectually broken
by his downfall. To stoop from being primus absque
secundo among the Edinburgh booksellers, to be the occupant of an obscure closet of a shop, without capital, without credit, all
his mighty undertakings abandoned or gone into other hands, except indeed his Miscellany,
which he had now no resources for pushing on in the fashion he once contemplated—this
reverse was too much for that proud heart. He no longer opposed a determined mind to the
ailments of the body, and sunk on the 21st of this month, having, as I am told, looked long
ere he took to his bed at least ten years older than he was. He died in his 54th year; but
into that space he had crowded vastly more than the usual average of zeal and energy, of
hilarity and triumph, and perhaps of anxiety and misery.
About this time the rumour became prevalent that Mr Canning’s health was breaking up among toils and
mortifications of another order, and Scott’s Diary
has some striking entries on this painful subject. Meeting Lord
Melville casually at the seat of a common friend towards the end of July, he
says, “I was sorry to see my very old friend, this upright statesman and
honourable gentleman, deprived of his power, and his official income, which the number
of his family must render a matter of importance. He was cheerful, not affectedly so,
and bore his declension like a wise and brave man. Canning said
the office of Premier was his by inheritance; he could not, from constitution, hold it
above two years, and then it would descend to Peel. Such is ambition! Old friends forsaken—old principles
changed—every effort used to give the vessel of the State a new direction, and all to
be Palinurus for two years!”
Of the 10th of August—when the news of Mr
Canning’s death reached Abbotsford—and the day following, are these
entries: “The death of the Premier is announced—late George
Canning—the witty, the accomplished, the ambitious;—he who had toiled thirty years, and
involved himself in the most harassing discussions, to attain this dizzy height; he who had
held it for three months of intrigue and obloquy—and now a heap of dust, and that is all.
He was an early and familiar friend of mine, through my intimacy with George Ellis. No man possessed a gayer and more playful
wit in society; no one, since Pitt’s time, had
more commanding sarcasm in debate; in the House of Commons he was the terror of that
species of orators called the Yelpers. His lash fetched away both skin and flesh, and would
have penetrated the hide of a rhinoceros. In his conduct as a statesman he had a great
fault; he lent himself too willingly to intrigue. Thus he got into his quarrel with
Lord Castlereagh, and lost credit with the country
for want of openness. Thus, too, he got involved with the Queen’s party to such an extent, that it fettered him upon that
miserable occasion, and obliged him to butter Sir Robert
Wilson with dear friend, and gallant general, and so forth. The last
composition with the Whigs was a sacrifice of principle on both sides. I have some reason
to think they counted on getting rid of him in two or three years. To me
Canning was always personally most kind. I saw, with pain, a great
change in his health when I met him at Colonel
Bolton’s, at Storrs, in 1825. In London last year I thought him
looking better. My nerves have for these two or three last days been susceptible of an
acute excitement from the slightest causes; the beauty of the evening, the sighing of the
summer breeze, bring the tears into my eyes not unpleasantly. But I must take exercise, and
case-harden myself. There is no use in encouraging these moods of the mind.
“August 11.—Wrote nearly five pages; then
walked. A visit from Henry Scott;
nothing known as yet about politics. A High Tory Administration would be a great evil at
this time. There are repairs in the structure of our constitution which ought to be made at
this season, and without which the people will not long be silent. A pure Whig
Administration would probably play the devil by attempting a thorough repair. As to a
compound, or melo-dramatic Ministry, the parts out of which such a one could be organized
just now are at a terrible discount in public estimation, nor will they be at par in a
hurry again. The public were generally shocked at the complete lack of principle testified
on the late occasion, and by some who till then had high credit. The Duke of Wellington has risen by his firmness on the one side,
Earl Grey on the other.”
He received, about this time, a third visit from Mr J. L. Adolphus. The second occurred in August 1824, and
since that time they had not met. I transcribe a few paragraphs from my friend’s
memoranda, on which I formerly drew so largely: He says—
“Calamity had borne heavily upon Sir
Walter in the interval; but the painful and anxious feeling with which a
friend is approached for the first time under such circumstances, gave way at once to
the unassumed serenity of his manner. There were some signs of age about him which the
mere lapse of time would scarcely have accounted for; but his spirits were abated only,
not broken; if they had sunk, they had sunk equably and gently. It was a declining, not
a clouded sun. I do not remember, at this period, hearing him make any reference to the
afflictions he had suffered, except once, when, speaking of his Life of Napoleon, he said ‘he knew
that it had some inaccuracies, but he believed it would be found right in all
essential points;’ and then added, in a quiet, but affecting tone,
‘I could have done it better, if I could have written at more leisure, and
with a mind more at ease.’ One morning a party was made to breakfast at
Chiefswood; and any one who on that occasion looked at and heard Sir Walter
Scott, in the midst of his children, and grandchildren, and friends,
must have rejoiced to see that life still yielded him a store of pleasures, and that
his heart was as open to their influence as ever.
“I was much struck by a few words which fell from him on this
subject a short time afterwards. After mentioning an accident which had spoiled the
promised pleasure of a visit to his daughter in London, he then added, ‘I am
like Seged, Lord of Ethiopia, in the Rambler, who said that he would have ten
happy days, and all turned to disappointment. But, however, I have had as much
happiness in my time as most men, and I must not complain now.’ I said
that, whatever had been his share of happiness, no man could have laboured better for
it. He answered, ‘I consider the capacity to labour as part of the happiness I
have enjoyed.’
“Abbotsford was not much altered since 1824. I had then seen
it complete even to the statue of Maida at the door, though
in 1824 old Maida was still alive, and now and then raised a
majestic bark from behind the house. It was one of the little scenes of Abbotsford life
which should have been preserved by a painter, when Sir
Walter strolled out in a sunny morning to caress poor Maida, and condole with him upon being so ‘very
frail;’ the aged hound dragging his gaunt limbs forward, painfully, yet
with some remains of dignity, to meet the hand and catch the deep
affectionate tones of his master.
“The greatest observable difference which the last three years
had made in the outward appearance of Abbotsford, was in the advanced growth of the
plantations. Sir Walter now showed me some rails and
palisades, made of their wood, with more self-complacency than I ever saw him betray on
any other subject. The garden did not appear to interest him so much, and the
‘mavis and merle’ were, upon principle, allowed to use their
discretion as to the fruit. His favourite afternoon exercise was to ramble through his
grounds, conversing with those who accompanied him, and trimming his young trees with a
large knife. Never have I received an invitation more gladly than when he has said,
‘If you like a walk in the plantations, I will bestow my tediousness upon
you after one o’clock.’ His conversation at such times ran in that
natural, easy, desultory course, which accords so well with the irregular movements of
a walk over hill and woodland, and which he has himself described so well in his Epistle to Mr Skene.* I remember with particular pleasure one
of our walks through the romantic little ravine of the Huntly-Burn. Our progress was
leisurely, for the path was somewhat difficult to him. Occasionally he would stop, and,
leaning on his walking-stick and fixing his eyes on those of the hearer, pour forth
some sonorous stanza of an old poem applicable to the scene, or to the last subject of
theconversation. Several times we paused to admire the good taste, as it seemed, with
which his great Highland staghound Nimrod always displayed
himself on those prominent points of the little glen, where his figure, in combination
with the
* See Poetical Works, Vol, VII., p. 182.
scenery, had the most picturesque
effect. Sir Walter accounted for this by observing that the
situations were of that kind which the dog’s instinct would probably draw him to
if looking out for game. In speaking of the Huntly-Burn I used the word
‘brook.’ ‘It is hardly that,’ said he, ‘it is
just a runnel.’ Emerging into a more open country, we saw a road a little
below us, on each side of which were some feathery saplings. ‘I
like,’ he said, ‘that way of giving an eyelash to the
road.’ Independently of the recollections called up by particular objects,
his eye and mind always seemed to dwell with a perfect complacency on his own portion
of the vale of Tweed: he used to say that he did not know a more ‘liveable’
country.
“A substitute for walking, which he always very cheerfully
used, and which at last became his only resource for any distant excursion, was a ride
in a four-wheeled open carriage, holding four persons, but not absolutely limited to
that number on an emergency. Tame as this exercise might be in comparison with riding
on horseback, or with walking under propitious circumstances, yet as he was rolled
along to Melrose, or Bowhill, or Yair, his spirits always freshened; the air, the
sounds, the familiar yet romantic scenes, wakened up all the poetry of his thoughts,
and happy were they who heard it resolve itself into words. At the sight of certain
objects for example, in passing the green foundations of the little chapel of Lindean,
where the body of the ‘Dark Knight of Liddesdale’ was deposited, on its way
to Melrose, it would, I suppose, been impossible for him, unless with a companion
hopelessly unsusceptible or pre-occupied, to forbear some passing comment, some harping
(if the word may be favourably used) on the tradition of the place. This was, perhaps,
what he called ‘bestowing his tedious-ness;’ but if
any one could think these effusions tedious because they often broke forth, such a man
might have objected against the rushing of the Tweed, or the stirring of the trees in
the wind, or any other natural melody, that he had heard the same thing before.
“Some days of my visit were marked by an almost perpetual
confinement to the house; the rain being incessant. But the evenings were as bright and
cheerful as the atmosphere of the days was dreary. Not that the gloomiest morning could
ever be wearisome under a roof where, independently of the resources in society which
the house afforded, the visiter might ransack a library, unique, I suppose, in some of
its collections, and in all its departments interesting and characteristic of the
founder. So many of the volumes were enriched with anecdotes or comments in his own
hand, that to look over his books was in some degree conversing with him. And sometimes
this occupation was pleasantly interrupted by a snatch of actual conversation with
himself, when he entered from his own room, to consult or take away a book. How often
have I heard with pleasure, after a long silence, the uneven step, the point of the
stick striking against the floor, and then seen the poet himself emerge from, his
study, with a face of thought but yet of cheerfulness, followed perhaps by Nimrod, who stretched his limbs and yawned, as if tired out
with some abstruse investigation.
“On one of the rainy days I have alluded to, when walking at
the usual hour became hopeless, Sir Walter asked me
to sit with him while he continued his morning occupation, giving me, for my own
employment, the publications of the Bannatyne Club. His study, as I recollect it, was
strictly a work-room, though an elegant one. It has been fancifully decked out in pictures, but it had, I think, very
few articles of mere ornament. The chief of these was the print of Stothard’sCanterbury
Pilgrims, which hung over the chimney-piece, and, from the place assigned to
it, must have been in great favour, though Sir Walter made the
characteristic criticism upon it, that, if the procession were to move, the young
squire who is prancing in the foreground would in another minute be over his
horse’s head. The shelves were stored with serviceable books; one door opened
into the great library, and a hanging stair within the room itself communicated with
his bedroom. It would have been a good lesson to a desultory student, or even to a
moderately active amanuensis, to see the unintermitted energy with which Sir
Walter Scott applied himself to his work. I conjectured that he was at
this time writing the Tales of a
Grandfather. When we had sat down to our respective employments, the
stillness of the room was unbroken, except by the light rattle of the rain against the
windows, and the dashing trot of Sir Walter’s pen over his
paper; sounds not very unlike each other, and which seemed to vie together in rapidity
and continuance. Sometimes, when he stopped to consult a book, a short dialogue would
take place upon the subjects with which I was occupied; about Mary Queen of Scots, perhaps, or Viscount Dundee; or, again, the silence might be broken
for a moment by some merry outcry in the hall, from one of the little grandchildren,
which would half waken Nimrod, or Bran, or Spice, as they slept at Sir
Walter’s feet, and produce a growl or a stifled bark, not in
anger, but by way of protest. For matters like these, work did not proceed the worse,
nor, as it seemed to me, did Sir Walter feel at all discomposed by
such interruptions as a message, or the entrance of a visiter. One door of his study
opened into the hall, and there did not ap-pear to be any
understanding that he should not be disturbed. At the end of our morning we attempted a
sortie, but had made only a little way in the shrubbery-walks overlooking the Tweed,
when the rain drove us back. The river, swollen and discoloured, swept by majestically,
and the sight drew from Sir Walter his favourite lines— ‘I’ve seen Tweed’s silver streams, glittering in the
sunny beams, Turn drumly and dark, as they roll’d on their way.’ There could not have been a better moment for appreciating the imagery of the last
line. I think it was in this short walk that he mentioned to me, with great
satisfaction, the favourable prospects of his literary industry, and spoke sanguinely
of retrieving his ‘losses with the booksellers.’
“Those who have seen Abbotsford will remember that there is at
the end of the hall, opposite to the entrance of the library, an arched door-way
leading to other rooms. One night some of the party observed that, by an arrangement of
light, easily to be imagined, a luminous space was formed upon the library door, in
which the shadow of a person standing in the opposite archway made a very imposing
appearance, the body of the hall remaining quite dark. Sir
Walter had some time before told his friends of the deception of sight
(mentioned in his Demonology)
which made him for a moment imagine a figure of Lord
Byron standing in the same hall.* The discoverers of the little
phantasmagoria which I have just described, called to him to come and see their ghost.
Whether he thought that raising ghosts at a man’s door was not a comely
amusement, or whether the parody upon a circumstance which had made some impression
upon his own fancy was a little too strong, he certainly did not enter into the
jest.
* See Scott’sLetters on Demonology and Witchcraft, p. 38.
“On the subjects commonly designated as the
‘marvellous,’ his mind was susceptible, and it was delicate. He loved to
handle them in his own manner and at his own season, not to be pressed with them, or
brought to any thing like a test of belief or disbelief respecting them. There is,
perhaps, in most minds, a point more or less advanced, at which incredulity on these
subjects may be found to waver. Sir Walter Scott, as
it seemed to me, never cared to ascertain very precisely where this point lay in his
own mental constitution; still less, I suppose, did he wish the investigation to be
seriously pursued by others. In no instance, however, was his colloquial eloquence more
striking than when he was well launched in some ‘tale of wonder.’ The story
came from him with an equally good grace, whether it was to receive a natural solution,
to be smiled at as merely fantastical, or to take its chance of a serious
reception.”
About the close of August Sir
Walter’s Diary is chiefly occupied with an affair which, as the reader
of the previous chapter is aware, did not come altogether unexpectedly on him. Among the
documents laid before him in the Colonial Office, when he was in London at the close of
1826, were some which represented one of Buonaparte’s attendants at St Helena, General Gourgaud, as having been guilty of gross unfairness, giving the
English Government private information that the Emperor’s complaints of ill-usage
were utterly unfounded, and yet then, and afterwards, aiding and assisting the delusion in
France as to the harshness of Sir Hudson Lowe’s
conduct towards his captive. Sir Walter, when using these remarkable
documents, guessed that Gourgaud might be inclined to fix a personal
quarrel on himself; and there now appeared in the newspapers a
succession of hints that the General was seriously bent on this purpose. He applied, as
“Colonel Grogg” would have done forty
years before, to “The Baronet.”
Diary.—“August 27.—A singular
letter from a lady, requesting me to father a novel of hers. That won’t pass.
Cadell transmits a notice from the French papers
that Gourgaud has gone, or is going, to London; and
the bibliopolist is in a great funk. I lack some part of his instinct. I have done
Gourgaud no wrong. I have written to Will Clerk, who has mettle in him, and will think of my honour, as well as
my safety.”
To William Clerk, Esq., Rose Court, Edinburgh.
“Abbotsford, 27th August, 1827. “My dear Clerk,
“I am about to claim an especial service from you in
the name of our long and intimate friendship. I understand, from a passage in
the French papers, that General Gourgaud
has, or is about to set out for London, to verify the
facts averred concerning him in my history of Napoleon. Now, in case of a personal appeal to me, I
have to say that his confessions to Baron
Sturmer, Count Balmain,
and others at St Helena, confirmed by him in various recorded conversations
with Mr Goulburn, then Under Secretary
of State—were documents of a historical nature which I found with others in the
Colonial Office, and was therefore perfectly entitled to use. If his language
has been misrepresented, he has certainly been very unfortunate; for it has
been misrepresented by four or five different people to whom he said the same
things, true or false he knows best. I also acted with delicacy towards him,
leaving out whatever related to his private quarrels with Bertrand, &c., so that, in fact, he has no reason to
complain of me, since it is ridiculous to suppose I was to suppress historical
evidence, furnished by him voluntarily, because his present sentiments render
it unpleasing for him that those which he formerly entertained should be known.
Still, like a man who finds himself in a scrape, General
Gourgaud may wish to fight himself out of it, and if the quarrel
should be thrust on me—why, I will not baulk him, Jackie. He shall not dishonour the
country through my sides I can assure him. I have, of course, no wish to bring
the thing to such an arbitrement. Now, in this case, I shall have occasion for
a sensible and resolute friend, and I naturally look for him in the companion
of my youth, on whose firmness and sagacity I can with such perfect confidence
rely. If you can do me this office of friendship, will you have the kindness to
let me know where or how we can form a speedy junction, should circumstances
require it.
“After all, the matter may be a Parisian
on dit. But it is best to be
prepared. The passages are in the ninth volume of the book. Pray look at them.
I have an official copy of the principal communication. Of the others I have
abridged extracts. Should he desire to see them, I conceive I cannot refuse to
give him copies, as it is likely they may not admit him to the Colonial Office.
But if he asks any apology or explanation for having made use of his name, it
is my purpose to decline it and stand to consequences. I am aware I could march
off upon the privileges of literature, and so forth, but I have no taste for
that species of retreat; and if a gentleman says to me I have injured him,
however captious the quarrel may be, I certainly do not think, as a man of
honour, I can avoid giving him satisfaction, without doing intolerable injury
to my own feelings, and giving rise to the most malig-nant
animadversions. I need not say that I shall be anxious to hear from you, and
that I always am, dear Clerk,
affectionately yours,
Walter Scott.”
Diary.—“September 4.—William Clerk quite ready and willing to stand my friend
if Gourgaud should come my road. He agrees with me
that there is no reason why he should turn on me, but that if he does, reason or none, it
is best to stand buff to him. It appears to me that what is least forgiven in a man of any
mark or likelihood, is want of that article blackguardly called pluck. All the fine qualities of genius cannot make amends for it. We are told
the genius of poets, especially, is irreconcilable with this species of grenadier
accomplishment. If so, quel chien de genre!
“September 10.—Gourgaud’s wrath has burst forth in a very distant clap of thunder,
in which he accuses me of contriving, with the Ministry, to slander his rag of a
reputation. He be d——d for a fool, to make his case worse by stirring. I shall only revenge
myself by publishing the whole extracts I made from the records of the Colonial Office, in
which he will find enough to make him bite his nails.
“September 17.—Received from James Ballantyne the proofs of my Reply, with some
cautious balaam from mine honest friend, alarmed by a Highland colonel, who had described
Gourgaud as a mauvais
garçon, famous fencer, marksman, and so forth. I wrote, in
answer, which is true, that I hoped all my friends would trust to my acting with proper
caution and advice; but that if I were capable, in a moment of weakness, of doing any thing
short of what my honour demanded, I should die
the death of a poisoned rat in a hole, out of mere sense of my own degradation. God knows,
that, though life is placid enough with me, I do not feel any thing to attach me to it so
strongly as to occasion my avoiding any risk which duty to my character may demand from me.
I set to work with the Tales of a
Grandfather, second volume, and finished four pages.”
To the Editor of the Edinburgh Weekly
Journal.
Abbotsford, Sept. 14, 1827.
“Sir, I observed in the London papers which I
received yesterday, a letter from General
Gourgaud, which I beg you will have the goodness to reprint,
with this communication and the papers accompanying it.
“It appears, that the General is greatly displeased,
because, availing myself of formal official documents, I have represented him,
in my Life of Buonaparte, as
communicating to the British Government and the representatives of others of
the Allied Powers, certain statements in matter, which he seems at present
desirous to deny or disavow, though in what degree, or to what extent, he has
not explicitly stated.
“Upon these grounds, for I can discover no other,
General Gourgaud has been pleased to
charge me, in the most intemperate terms, as the agent of a plot, contrived by
the late British Ministers, to slander and dishonour him. I will not attempt to
imitate the General either in his eloquence or his invective, but confine
myself to the simple fact, that his accusation against me is as void of truth
as it is of plausibility. I undertook, and carried on, the task of writing the
Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, without the least
intercourse with, or encouragement from, the Ministry of
the time, or any person connected with them; nor was it until my task was very
far advanced, that I asked and obtained permission from the Earl Bathurst, then Secretary for the Colonial
Department, to consult such documents as his office afforded, concerning the
residence of Napoleon at St Helena. His
Lordship’s liberality, with that of Mr
Hay, the Under Secretary, permitted me, in the month of October
last, personal access to the official records, when I inspected more than
sixteen quarto volumes of letters, from which I made memoranda or extracts at
my own discretion, unactuated by any feeling excepting the wish to do justice
to all parties.
“The papers relating to General Gourgaud and his communications were not pointed out to
me by any one. They occurred, in the course of my researches, like other pieces
of information, and were of too serious and important a character, verified as
they were, to be omitted in the history. The idea that, dated and authenticated
as they are, they could have been false documents, framed to mislead future
historians, seems as absurd, as it is positively false that they were
fabricated on any understanding with me, who had not at the time of their date
the slightest knowledge of their existence.
“To me, evidence, ex
facie the most unquestionable, bore, that General Gourgaud had attested certain facts of
importance to different persons, at different times and places; and it did not,
I own, occur to me that what he is stated to have made the subject of grave
assertion and attestation, could or ought to be received as matter of doubt,
because it rested only on a verbal communication made before responsible
witnesses, and was not concluded by any formal signature of the party. I have
been accustomed to
consider a gentleman’s word as equally worthy of credit with his
handwriting.
“At the same time, in availing myself of these
documents, I felt it a duty to confine myself entirely to those particulars
which concerned the history of Napoleon,
his person and his situation at St. Helena; omitting all subordinate matters in
which General Gourgaud, in his
communications with our Ministers and others, referred to transactions of a
more private character, personal to himself and other gentlemen residing at St.
Helena. I shall observe the same degree of restraint as far as possible, out of
the sincere respect I entertain for the honour and fidelity of
General Gourgaud’s companions in exile, who
might justly complain of me for reviving the memory of petty altercations; but
out of no deference to General Gourgaud, to whom I owe
none. The line which General Gourgaud has adopted, obliges
me now, in respect to my own character, to lay the full evidence before the
public—subject only to the above restriction—that it may appear how far it
bears out the account given of those transactions in my History of Napoleon. I should have been
equally willing to have communicated my authorities to General
Gourgaud in private, had he made such a request, according to
the ordinary courtesies of society.
“I trust that, upon reference to the Life of Napoleon, I shall be
found to have used the information these documents afforded with becoming
respect to private feelings, and, at the same time, with the courage and
candour due to the truth of history. If I were capable of failing in either
respect, I should despise myself as much, if possible, as I do the resentment
of General Gourgaud. The
historian’s task of exculpation is of course ended, when he has published
authorities of apparent authenticity. If General Gourgaud
shall undertake to prove that the subjoined documents are false and forged, in whole or in part, the burden of the proof will lie
with himself; and something better than the assertion of the party interested
will be necessary to overcome the testimony of Mr
Goulburn and the other evidence.
“There is indeed another course. General Gourgaud
may represent the whole of his communications as a trick played off upon the
English Ministers, in order to induce them to grant his personal liberty. But I
cannot imitate the General’s disregard of common civility so far as to
suppose him capable of a total departure from veracity, when giving evidence
upon his word of honour. In representing the Ex-Emperor’s health as good,
his finances as ample, his means of escape as easy and frequent, while he knew
his condition to be the reverse in every particular, General Gourgaud must have been sensible, that
the deceptive views thus impressed on the British Ministers must have had the
natural effect of adding to the rigours of his patron’s confinement.
Napoleon, it must be recollected,
would receive the visits of no English physician in whom Sir Hudson Lowe seemed to repose confidence,
and he shunned, as much as possible, all intercourse with the British. Whom,
therefore, were Sir Hudson Lowe and the British Ministers
to believe concerning the real state of his health and circumstances, if they
were to refuse credit to his own aide-decamp, an officer of distinction, whom
no one could suppose guilty of slandering his master for the purpose of
obtaining a straight passage to England for himself, instead of being subjected
to the inconvenience of going round by the Cape of Good Hope? And again, when
General Gourgaud, having arrived in London, and the
purpose of his supposed deception being fully attained, continued to represent
Napoleon as feigning poverty whilst in affluence,
affecting illness whilst in health, and possessing ready means of escape whilst
he was com-plaining of
unnecessary restraint—what effect could such statements produce on Lord Bathurst and the other members of the
British Ministry, except a disregard to Napoleon’s
remonstrances, and a rigorous increase of every precaution necessary to prevent
his escape? They had the evidence of one of his most intimate personal
attendants to justify them for acting thus; and their own responsibility to
Britain, and to Europe, for the safe custody of Napoleon,
would have rendered them inexcusable had they acted otherwise.
“It is no concern of mine, however, how the actual
truth of the fact stands. It is sufficient to me to have shown, that I have not
laid to General Gourgaud’s charge
a single expression for which I had not the most indubitable authority. If I
have been guilty of over credulity in attaching more weight to
General Gourgaud’s evidence than it deserves, I
am well taught not to repeat the error, and the world, too, may profit by the
lesson. I am, Sir, your humble servant,
Walter Scott.”
To this letter Gourgaud made a
fiery rejoinder; but Scott declined to prolong the paper
war, simply stating in Ballantyne’s print that
“while leaving the question to the decision of the British public, he should
have as little hesitation in referring it to the French nation, provided the documents
he had produced were allowed to be printed in the French newspapers, from which hitherto they had been excluded.” And he would indeed
have been idle had he said more than this, for his cause had been taken up on the instant
by every English Journal, of whatever politics, and The Times thus summed up its very effective demolition of
his antagonist:—
“Sir Walter
Scott did that which would have occurred to every honest man, whose
fair-dealing had violent imputations cast upon it. He produced
bis authorities, extracted from the Colonial Office. To these General Gourgaud’s present pamphlet professes to
be a reply; but we do conscientiously declare, that with every readiness to acknowledge
and, indeed, with every wish to discover something like a defence of the character of
General Gourgaud, whose good name has alone been implicated
(for that of Sir Walter was abundantly cleared, even had the
official documents which he consulted turned out to be as false as they appear to be
unquestionable), the charge against the General stands precisely where it was before
this ill-judged attempt at refutation was published; and in no one instance can we make
out a satisfactory answer to the plain assertion, that Gourgaud
had in repeated instances either betrayed Buonaparte, or sacrificed the truth. In the General’s reply to
Sir Walter Scott’s statement, there is enough, even to
satiety, of declamation against the English Government under Lord Castlereagh, of subterfuge and equivocation with regard to the
words on record against himself, and of gross abuse and Billingsgate against the
historian who has placarded him; but of direct and successful negative there is not one
syllable. The Aide-de-camp of St Helena shows himself to be nothing better than a cross
between a blusterer and a sophist.”
Sir Walter’s family were, of course, relieved from
considerable anxiety, when the newspapers ceased to give paragraphs about General Gourgaud; and the blowing over of this alarm was
particularly acceptable to his eldest daughter, who
had to turn southwards about the beginning of October. He himself certainly cared little or
nothing about that (or any similar) affair; and if it had any effect at all upon his
spirits, they were pleasurably excited and stimulated. He possessed a pair of pistols taken
from Napoleon’s carriage at Waterloo, and
presented to him, I believe, by the late Honourable Colonel James Stanhope, and he said he
designed to make use of them, in case the controversy should end in a rencounter, and his
friend Clerk should think as well as he did of their
fabric. But this was probably a jest. I may observe that I once saw Sir
Walter shoot at a mark with pistols, and he acquitted himself well; so much so as to excite great admiration in
some young officers whom he had found practising in his barn on a rainy day. With the rifle
he is said by those who knew him in early life to have been a very good shot indeed.
Before Gourgaud fell quite
asleep, Sir Walter made an excursion to Edinburgh to
meet his friends, Mrs MacLean Clephane and Lady Northampton, with whom he had some business to
transact; and they, feeling, as all his intimate friends at this time did, that the
kindliest thing they could do by him was to keep him as long as possible away from his
desk, contrived to seduce him into escorting them as far as Greenock on their way to the
Hebrides. He visited on his return his esteemed kinsman, Mr
Campbell of Blythswood, in whose park he saw, with much interest, the Argyle
Stone, marking the spot where the celebrated Earl was taken prisoner in 1685. He notes in
his Diary, that “the Highland drovers are still apt to break Blythswood’s
fences to see this Stone;” and then records the capital turtle, &c. of
his friend’s entertainment, and some good stories told at table, especially this:
“Prayer of the minister of the Cumbrays, two miserable islands in the mouth of
the Clyde: ‘O Lord, bless and be gracious to the Greater and the Lesser Cumbrays,
and in thy mercy do not forget the adjacent islands of Great Britain and
Ireland.’ This is nos poma natamus with
a vengeance.”
Another halt was at the noble seat of his early friend Cranstoun, by the Falls of the Clyde. He
says:—“Cranstoun and I walked before dinner. I never
saw the Great Fall of Corra Linn from this side before, and I think it the best point
perhaps; at all events, it is not that from which it is usually seen; so Lord
Corehouse has the sight, and escapes the locusts. This is a superb
place. Cranstoun has as much feeling about improvement as other
things. Like all new improvers, he is at more expense than is
necessary, plants too thick, and trenches where trenching is superfluous. But this is
the eagerness of a young artist. Besides the grand lion the Fall of Clyde, he has more
than one lion’s whelp—a fall of a brook in a cleugh called Mill’s Gill must
be superb in rainy weather. The old Castle of Corehouse, too, is much more castle-like
on this than from the other side. My old friend was very happy when I told him the
favourable prospect of my affairs. To be sure, if I come through, it will be wonder to
all, and most to myself.”
On returning from this trip, Scott
found an invitation from Lord and Lady Ravensworth to meet the Duke of
Wellington at their castle near Durham. The Duke was then making a progress
in the north of England, to which additional importance was given by the uncertain state of
political arrangements;—the chance of Lord
Goderich’s being able to maintain himself as Canning’s successor seeming very precarious—and the
opinion that his Grace must soon be called to a higher station than that of Commander of
the Forces, which he had accepted under the new Premier, gaining ground every day.
Sir Walter, who felt for the Great Captain the pure and exalted
devotion that might have been expected from some honoured soldier of his banners, accepted
this invitation, and witnessed a scene of enthusiasm with which its principal object could
hardly have been more gratified than he was.
Diary.—“October 1.—I set about work
for two hours, and finished three pages; then walked for two hours; then home, adjusted
sheriff processes, and cleared the table. I am to set off to-morrow for Ravensworth Castle,
to meet the Duke of Wellington; a great let-off, I
suppose. Yet I would almost rather stay, and see two days more of Lockhart and my daughter, who will be off before my return. Perhaps—— But there is no end to perhaps. We must cut the rope, and let the vessel drive down the tide of destiny.
“October 2.—Set out in the morning at
seven, and reached Kelso by a little past ten with my own horses. Then took the
Wellington coach to carry me to Wellington—smart
that. Nobody inside but an old lady, who proved a toy-woman in Edinburgh; her head
furnished with as substantial ware as her shop, but a good soul, I’se warrant
her. Heard all her debates with her landlord about a new door to the cellar and the
propriety of paying rent on the 15th or 25th of May. Landlords and tenants will have
different opinions on that subject. We dined at Wooler, where an obstreperous horse
retarded us for an hour at least, to the great alarm of my friend the toy-woman. N. B.
She would have made a good feather-bed if the carriage had happened to fall, and her
undermost. The heavy roads had retarded us near an hour more, so that I hesitated to go
to Ravensworth so late; but my goodwoman’s tales of dirty sheets, and certain
recollections of a Newcastle inn, induced me to go on. When I arrived, the family had
just retired. Lord Ravensworth and Mr Liddell came down, however, and both received me as
kindly as possible.
“October 3.—Rose about eight or later.
My morals begin to be corrupted by travel and fine company. Went to Durham with
Lord Ravensworth betwixt one and two. Found the
gentlemen of Durham county and town assembled to receive the Duke of Wellington. I saw several old friends, and with difficulty
suited names to faces, and faces to names. There were Dr
Philpotts, Dr Gilly, and his
wife, and a world of acquaintance,—among others, Sir Thomas
Lawrence; whom I asked to come on to Abbotsford,
but he could not. He is, from habit of coaxing his subjects I suppose, a little too
fair-spoken, otherwise very pleasant. The Duke arrived very late. There were bells, and
cannon, and drums, trumpets, and banners, besides a fine troop of yeomanry. The address
was well expressed, and as well answered by the Duke. The enthusiasm of the ladies and
the gentry was great—the common people more lukewarm. The Duke has lost popularity in
accepting political power. He will be more useful to his country, it may be, than ever,
but will scarce be so gracious in the people’s eyes—and he will not care a curse
for what outward show he has lost. But I must not talk of curses, for we are going to
take our dinner with the Bishop of Durham. We
dined about one hundred and forty or fifty men, a distinguished company for rank and
property. Marshal Beresford, and Sir John,* amongst others—Marquis of Lothian, Lord Feversham,
Marquis Londonderry—and I know not who besides— ‘Lords and Dukes, and noble Princes, All the pride and flower of Spain.’ We dined in the old baronial hall, impressive from its rude antiquity, and
fortunately free from the plaster of former improvement, as I trust it will long be
from the gingerbread taste of modern Gothicizers. The bright moon streaming in through
the old Gothic windows contrasted strangely with the artificial lights within; spears,
banners, and armour were intermixed with the pictures of old bishops, and the whole had
a singular mixture of baronial pomp with the grave and more chastened dignity of
prelacy. The conduct of our reverend entertainer suited the character
* Admiral Sir John
Beresford had some few years before this commanded on the Leith
station when Sir Walter and he saw a great
deal of each other—“and merry men were they.”
remarkably well. Amid the welcome
of a Count Palatine he did not for an instant forget the gravity of the Church
dignitary. All his toasts were gracefully given, and his little speeches well made, and
the more affecting that the failing voice sometimes reminded us that our host laboured
under the infirmities of advanced life. To me personally the Bishop was very
civil.”
In writing to me next day, Sir
Walter says, “The dinner was one of the finest things I ever saw;
it was in the old Castle Hall, untouched, for aught I know, since Anthony Beck feasted Edward
Longshanks on his way to invade Scotland.* The moon streamed through the
high latticed windows as if she had been curious to see what was going on.” I
was also favoured with a letter on the subject from Dr
Philpotts (now Bishop of Exeter), who said, “I wish you had
witnessed this very striking scene. I never saw curiosity and enthusiasm so highly
excited, and I may add, as to a great part of the company, so nearly balanced.
Sometimes I doubted whether the hero or the poet was fixing most attention—the latter,
I need hardly tell you, appeared unconscious that he was regarded differently from the
others about him, until the good Bishop rose and proposed his health.”
Another friend, the Honourable Henry Liddell, enables
me to give the words (“ipsissima
verba”) of Sir Walter in acknowledging this
toast. He says:—“The manner in which Bishop Van
Mildert proceeded on this occasion will never be forgotten by those who
know how to appreciate scholarship without pedantry, and dignity without ostentation.
Sir Walter had been observed throughout the day with
extraordinary interest I should
* The warlike Bishop
Beck accompanied Edward I. in
his Scotch expedition, and if we may believe Blind
Harry, very narrowly missed having the honour to die by the hand
of Wallace in a skirmish on the street
of Glasgow.
rather say enthusiasm.—The Bishop gave his health with peculiar
felicity, remarking that he could reflect upon the labours of a long literary life,
with the consciousness that every thing he had written tended to the practice of
virtue, and to the improvement of the human race. Sir Walter
replied ‘that upon no occasion of his life had he ever returned thanks for the
honour done him in drinking his health, with a stronger sense of obligation to the
proposer of it than on the present—that hereafter he should always reflect with great
pride upon that moment of his existence, when his health had been given in such terms,
by the Bishop of Durham in his own baronial hall, surrounded and supported by the
assembled aristocracy of the two northern counties, and in the
presence of theDuke of
Wellington.’”
The Diary continues—
“Mrs Van Mildert held a
sort of drawing-room after we rose from table, at which a great many ladies attended. After
this we went to the Assembly-rooms, which were crowded with company. Here I saw some very
pretty girls dancing merrily that old-fashioned thing called a country-dance, which Old
England has now thrown aside, as she would do her creed, if there were some foreign
frippery offered instead. We got away after midnight, a large party, and reached
Ravensworth Castle—Duke of Wellington, Lord Londonderry, and about twenty besides about half-past
one. Soda water, and to bed by two.
“October 4.—Slept till nigh
ten—fatigued by our toils of yesterday, and the unwonted late hours. Still too early
for this Castle of Indolence, for I found few of last night’s party yet
appearing. I had an opportunity of some talk with the Duke. He does not consider Foy’s
book as written by himself, but as a thing got up perhaps from notes. Mentioned that
Foy, when in Spain, was, like other French officers, very
desirous of seeing the English papers, through which alone they could collect any idea
of what was going on without their own cantonments, for Napoleon permitted no communication of that kind with France. The Duke
growing tired of this, at length told Baron Tripp, whose services
he chiefly used in communications with the outposts, that he was not to give them the
newspapers. ‘What reason shall I allege for withholding them?’ said
Tripp. ‘None,’ replied the
Duke—‘Let them allege some reason why they want
them.’ Foy was not at a loss to assign a reason. He
said he had considerable sums of money in the English funds, and wanted to see how
stocks fell and rose. The excuse, however, did not go down—I remember Baron
Tripp, a Dutch nobleman, and a dandy of the first water, and yet with an
energy in his dandyism which made it respectable. He drove a gig as far as Dunrobin
Castle, and back again, without a whip. He looked after his own
horse, for he had no servant, and after all his little establishment of clothes and
necessaries, with all the accuracy of a petit
maître. He was one of the best-dressed men possible, and
his horse was in equally fine condition as if he had had a dozen of grooms. I met him
at Lord Somerville’s, and liked him much.
But there was something exaggerated, as appeared from the conclusion of his life.
Baron Tripp shot himself in Italy for no assignable cause.
“What is called great society, of which I have seen a good
deal in my day, is now amusing to me, because from age and indifference I have lost the
habit of considering myself as a part of it, and have only the feelings of looking on
as a spectator of the scene, who can neither play his part well nor ill, instead of
being one of the dramatis personæ; so,
careless what is thought of myself, I have full time to attend to
the motions of others.
“Our party went to-day to Sunderland, when the Duke was brilliantly received by an immense population,
chiefly of seamen. The difficulty of getting into the rooms was dreadful—an ebbing and
flowing of the crowd, which nearly took me off my legs. The entertainment was handsome;
about two hundred dined, and appeared most hearty in the cause which had convened them—some
indeed so much so, that, finding themselves so far on the way to perfect happiness, they
e’en would go on. After the dinner-party broke up, there was a ball, numerously
attended, where there was a prodigious anxiety discovered for shaking of hands. The Duke
had enough of it, and I came in for my share; for, though as jackall to the lion, I got
some part in whatever was going. We got home about half-past two in the morning,
sufficiently tired.”
Some months afterwards, Sir Cuthbert
Sharp, who had been particularly kind and attentive to Scott when at Sunderland, happened, in writing to him on some
matter of business, to say he hoped he had not forgotten his friends in that quarter.
Sir Walter’s answer to Sir Cuthbert
(who had been introduced to him by his old and dear friend Mr
Surtees of Mainsforth) begins thus,—
“Forget thee? No! my worthy fere! Forget blithe mirth and gallant cheer! Death sooner stretch me on my bier! Forget thee? No. “Forget the universal shout When ‘canny Sunderland’ spoke out— A truth which knaves affect to doubt— Forget thee? No. “Forget you? No—though now-a-day I’ve heard your knowing people say, Disown the debt you cannot pay, You’ll find it far the thriftiest way— But I?—O no. ‘Forget your kindness found for all room, In what, though large, seem’d still a small room, Forget my Surtees in a ball-room— Forget you? No. “Forget your sprightly dumpty-diddles, And beauty tripping to the fiddles, Forget my lovely friends the Liddells— Forget you? No.
“So much for oblivion, my dear Sir C., and now,
having dismounted from my Pegasus, who is rather spavined, I charge a-foot,
like an old dragoon as I am,” &c. &c.
“Diary.—October 5—A quiet day at Ravensworth Castle, giggling and making giggle among
the kind and frankhearted young people. The Castle is modern, excepting always two
towers of great antiquity. Lord R. manages his
woods admirably well. In the evening plenty of fine music, with heart as well as voice
and instrument. Much of this was the spontaneous effusions of Mrs Arkwright (a daughter of Stephen Kemble), who has set Hohenlinden, and other pieces of poetry to
music of a highly-gifted character. The Miss Liddells and
Mrs Barrington sang ‘The Campbells are coming,’ in a tone that might have waked the
dead.
“October 6.—Left Ravensworth this morning, and travelled as
far as Whittingham with Marquis of Lothian. Arrived
at Alnwick to dinner, where I was very kindly received. The
Duke of Northumberland is a handsome man, who
will be corpulent if he does not continue to take hard exercise. The Duchess very pretty and lively, but her liveliness is of
that kind which shows at once it is connected with thorough principle, and is not
liable to be influenced by fashionable caprice. The habits of the family are early and
regular; I conceive they may be termed formal and old-fashioned by such visiters as
claim to be the pink of the mode. The Castle is a fine old pile, with various courts
and towers, and the entrance is magnificent. It wants, however, the splendid feature of
a keep. The inside fitting up is an attempt at Gothic, but the taste is meagre and
poor, and done over with too much gilding. It was done half a century ago, when this
kind of taste was ill understood. I found here the Bishop
of Worcester,* &c. &c.
“October 7.—This morning went to church, and heard an
excellent sermon from the Bishop of Worcester;
he has great dignity of manner, and his accent and delivery are forcible. Drove out
with the Duke in a phaeton, and saw part of the
park, which is a fine one lying along the Alne. But it has been ill planted. It was
laid out by the celebrated Brown, who
substituted clumps of birch and Scottish firs for the beautiful oaks and copse which
grow no where so freely as in Northumberland. To complete this the late Duke did not thin, so the wood is in a poor state.
All that the Duke cuts down is so much waste, for the people will not buy it where
coals are so cheap. Had they been oak-coppice, the bark would have fetched its value;
had they been grown oaks, the sea-ports would have found a market. Had they been larch,
the country demands for ruder purposes would have been unanswerable. The
* Dr
Cornwall.
Duke does the best he can to
retrieve his woods, but seems to despond more than a young man ought to do. It is
refreshing to see such a man in his situation give so much of his time and thoughts to
the improvement of his estates, and the welfare of the people. He tells me his people
in Keeldar were all quite wild the first time his father went up to shoot there. The
women had no other dress than a bed-gown and petticoat. The men were savage, and could
hardly be brought to rise from the heath, either from sullenness or fear. They sung a
wild tune, the burden of which was orsina, orsina, orsina. The
females sang, the men danced round, and at a certain point of the tune they drew their
dirks, which they always wore.
“We came by the remains of an old Carmelite Monastery, which
form a very fine object in the park. It was finished by De
Vesci. The gateway of Alnwick Abbey, also a fine specimen, is standing
about a mile distant. The trees are much finer on the left side of the Alne, where they
have been let alone by the capability villain. Visited the enceinte of the Castle, and passed into the dungeon. There is
also an armoury, but damp, and the arms in indifferent order. One odd petard-looking
thing struck me.—Mem. to consult Grose. I had
the honour to sit in Hotspur’s seat, and
to see the Bloody Gap, a place where the external wall must have been breached. The
Duchess gave me a book of etchings of the
antiquities of Alnwick and Wark worth from her own drawings. I had half a mind to stay
to see Warkworth, but Anne is alone. We had
prayers in the evening read by the Archdeacon.”*
On the 8th Sir Walter reached
Abbotsford, and forthwith resumed his Grandfather’s Tales, which he
* Probably Mr
Archdeacon Singleton.
composed throughout with the ease and heartiness reflected in this
entry: “This morning was damp, dripping, and unpleasant; so I even made a work of
necessity, and set to the Tales like a dragon. I murdered Maclellan of
Bomby at the Thrieve Castle; stabbed the Black Douglas
in the town of Stirling; astonished King James before Roxburgh; and
stifled the Earl of Mar in his bath, in the Canongate. A wild world,
my masters, this Scotland of ours must have been. No fear of want of interest; no lassitude
in those days for want of work— ‘For treason, d’ye see, Was to them a dish of tea, And murder bread and butter.’”
Such was his life in autumn 1827. Before I leave the period, I must
note how greatly I admired the manner in which all his dependents appeared to have met the
reverse of his fortunes—a reverse which inferred very considerable alteration in the
circumstances of every one of them. The butler,
instead of being the easy chief of a large establishment, was now doing half the work of
the house, at probably half his former wages. Old
Peter, who had been for five-and-twenty years a dignified coachman, was now
ploughman in ordinary, only putting his horses to the carriage upon high and rare
occasions; and so on with all the rest that remained of the ancient train. And all, to my
view, seemed happier than they had ever done before. Their good conduct had given every one
of them a new elevation in his own mind—and yet their demeanour had gained, in place of
losing, in simple humility of observance. The great loss was that of William Laidlaw, for whom (the estate being all but a
fragment in the hands of the trustees and their agent) there was now no occupation here.
The cottage, which his taste had converted into a
loveable retreat, had found a rent-paying tenant; and he was living a dozen miles off on
the farm of a relation in the Vale of Yarrow. Every week, however, he came down to have a
ramble with Sir Walter over their old haunts—to hear how
the pecuniary atmosphere was darkening or brightening; and to read in every face at
Abbotsford, that it could never be itself again until circumstances should permit his
re-establishment at Kaeside.
All this warm and respectful solicitude must have had a preciously
soothing influence on the mind of Scott, who may be said
to have lived upon love. No man cared less about popular admiration and applause; but for
the least chill on the affection of any near and dear to him he had the sensitiveness of a
maiden. I cannot forget, in particular, how his eyes sparkled when he first pointed out to
me Peter Mathieson guiding the plough on the haugh:
“Egad,” said he, “auld Pepe (this was the children’s name for their good
friend)—auld Pepe’s whistling at his
darg. The honest fellow said, a yoking in a deep field would do baith him and the
blackies good. If things get round with me, easy shall be
Pepe’s cushion.” In general, during that
autumn, I thought Sir Walter enjoyed much his usual spirits; and
often, no doubt, he did so. His Diary shows (what perhaps many of his intimates doubted
during his lifetime) that, in spite of the dignified equanimity which characterised all his
conversation with mankind, he had his full share of the delicate sensibilities, the
mysterious ups and downs, the wayward melancholy, and fantastic sunbeams of the poetical
temperament. It is only with imaginative minds, in truth, that sorrows of the spirit are
enduring. Those he had encountered were veiled from the eye of the world, but they lasted
with his life. What a picture have we in his entry about the Runic letters he had carved in the day of young passion on the turf among the grave-stones
of St Andrews! And again, he wrote neither sonnets, nor elegies, nor monodies, nor even an
epitaph on his wife—but what an epitaph is his Diary throughout the year 1826—ay, and down
to the close!
There is one entry of that Diary for the period we are leaving, which
paints the man in his tenderness, his fortitude, and his happy wisdom:—“September 24.—Worked in the morning as usual, and sent off the
proofs and copy. Something of the black dog still hanging about me; but I will shake
him off. I generally affect good spirits in company of my family, whether I am enjoying
them or not. It is too severe to sadden the harmless mirth of others by suffering your
own causeless melancholy to be seen; and this species of exertion is, like virtue, its
own reward; for the good spirits, which are at first simulated, become at length
real.”
The first series of Chronicles of the Canongate (which title supplanted that of “The Canongate Miscellany, or Traditions of the
Sanctuary”)—was published early in the winter. The contents were,
the Highland Widow, the Two Drovers, and the Surgeon’s Daughter—all in their styles excellent,
except that the Indian part of the last does not well harmonize with the rest; and certain
preliminary chapters which were generally considered as still better than the stories they
introduce. The portraiture of Mrs Murray Keith,
under the name of Mrs Bethune Baliol, and that of
Chrystal Croftangry throughout, appear to me
unsurpassed in Scott’s writings. In the former, I
am assured he has mixed up various features of his own beloved mother; and in the latter,
there can be no doubt that a good deal was taken from nobody but himself. In fact, the
choice of the hero’s residence, the original title of the book, and a world of minor circumstances, were suggested by
the actual condition and prospects of the author’s affairs; for it appears from his
Diary, though I have not thought it necessary to quote those entries, that from time to
time, between December 1826 and November 1827, he had renewed threatenings of severe
treatment from the Jewish brokers, Messrs Abud and
Co.; and, on at least one occasion, he made every preparation for taking shelter in the
Sanctuary of Holyrood-house. Although these people were well aware that at Christmas 1827 a
very large dividend would be paid on the Ballantyne estate, they would not understand that
their interest, and that of all the creditors, lay in allowing Scott
the free use of his time; that by thwarting and harassing him personally, nothing was
likely to be achieved but the throwing up of the trust, and the settlement of the insolvent
house’s affairs on the usual terms of a sequestration; in which case there could be
no doubt that he would, on resigning all his assets, be discharged absolutely, with liberty
to devote his future exertions to his own sole benefit. The Jews would understand nothing,
but that the very unanimity of the other creditors as to the propriety of being gentle with
him, rendered it extremely probable that their harshness might be rewarded by immediate
payment of their whole demand. They fancied that the trustees would clear off any one debt,
rather than disturb the arrangements generally adopted; they fancied that, in case they
laid Sir Walter Scott in prison, there would be some extraordinary
burst of feeling in Edinburgh—that private friends would interfere—in short, that in one
way or another, they should get hold, without farther delay, of their “pound of
flesh.”—Two or three paragraphs from the Diary will be enough as to this
unpleasant subject.
“October 31.—Just as I was merrily
cutting away among my trees, arrives Mr Gibson
with a very melancholy look, and indeed the news he brought was shocking enough. It
seems Mr Abud, the same who formerly was disposed
to disturb me in London, has given positive orders to take out diligence against me for
his debt. This breaks all the measures we had resolved on, and prevents the dividend
from taking place, by which many poor persons will be great sufferers. For me the
alternative will be more painful to my feelings than prejudicial to my interests. To
submit to a sequestration, and allow the creditors to take what they can get, will be
the inevitable consequence. This will cut short my labour by several years, which I
might spend, and spend in vain, in endeavouring to meet their demands. We shall know
more on Saturday, and not sooner. I went to Bowhill with Sir Adam Ferguson to dinner, and maintained as good a countenance in
the midst of my perplexities as a man need desire. It is not bravado; I feel firm and
resolute.
“November 1.—I waked in the night and
lay two hours in feverish meditation. This is a tribute to natural feeling. But the air
of a fine frosty morning gave me some elasticity of spirit. It is strange that about a
week ago I was more dispirited for nothing at all, than I am now for perplexities which
set at defiance my conjectures concerning their issue. I suppose that I, the Chronicler
of the Canongate, will have to take up my residence in the Sanctuary, unless I prefer
the more airy residence of the Calton Jail, or a trip to the Isle of Man. It is to no
purpose being angry with Abud or
Ahab, or whatever name he delights in. He is seeking his own,
and thinks by these harsh measures to render his road to it more speedy.—Sir Adam Ferguson left Bowhill this morning for Dumfriesshire. I returned to
Abbotsford to Anne, and told her this unpleasant
news. She stood it remarkably well, poor body.
“November 2.—I was a little bilious
this night no wonder. Had sundry letters without any power of giving my mind to answer
them—one about Gourgaud with his nonsense. I
shall not trouble my head more on that score. Well, it is a hard knock on the elbow; I
knew I had a life of labour before me, but I was resolved to work steadily; now they
have treated me like a recusant turnspit, and put in a red-hot cinder into the wheel
alongst with me. But of what use is philosophy—and I have always pretended to a little
of a practical character—if it cannot teach us to do or suffer? The day is glorious,
yet I have little will to enjoy it; yet, were a twelvemonth over, I should perhaps
smile at what makes me now very serious. Smile!—No—that can never be. My present
feelings cannot be recollected with cheerfulness; but I may drop a tear of
gratitude.
“November 3.—Slept ill, and lay one
hour longer than usual in the morning. I gained an hour’s quiet by it, that is
much. I feel a little shaken at the result of to-day’s post. I am not able to go
out. My poor workers wonder that I pass them without a word. I can imagine no
alternative but the Sanctuary or the Isle of Man. Both shocking enough. But in
Edinburgh I am always on the scene of action, free from uncertainty, and near my poor
daughter; so I think I shall prefer it, and thus I rest in unrest. But I will not let
this unman me. Our hope, heavenly and earthly, is poorly anchored, if the cable parts
upon the stream. I believe in God, who can change evil into good; and I am confident
that what befalls us is always ultimately for the best.
“November 4.—Put my papers in some
order, and prepared for the journey. It is in the style of the Emperors of Abyssinia,
who proclaim—Cut down the Kantuffa in the four quarters of the world, for I know not
where I am going. Yet, were it not for poor Anne’s doleful looks, I would feel firm as a piece of granite.
Even the poor dogs seem to fawn on me with anxious meaning, as if there were something
going on they could not comprehend. They probably notice the packing of the clothes,
and other symptoms of a journey.
“Set off at twelve, firmly resolved in body and mind. Dined at
Fushie Bridge. Ah! good Mrs Wilson, you know not you are like to
lose an old customer!*
“But when I arrived in Edinburgh at my faithful friend,
Mr Gibson’s—lo! the scene had again
changed, and a new hare is started,” &c. &c.
The “new hare” was this. It transpired in the very nick of
time that a suspicion of usury attached to these Israelites without guile, in a transaction
with Hurst and Robinson, as to one or more of the bills for which the house of Ballantyne had become responsible. This suspicion, upon
investigation, assumed a shape sufficiently tangible to justify
Ballantyne’s trustees in carrying the point before the Court
of Session; but they failed to establish their allegation. The amount was then settled—but
how and in what manner was long unknown to Scott.
Sir William Forbes, whose banking-house was one
of Messrs Ballantyne’s chief creditors, crowned his
* Mrs Wilson, landlady of the inn at
Fushie, one stage from Edinburgh,—an old dame of some humour, with whom Sir Walter always had a friendly colloquy in passing.
I believe the charm was, that she had passed her childhood among the Gipsies of the
Border. But her fiery Radicalism latterly was another source of high merriment.
generous efforts for
Scott’s relief by privately paying the whole of Abud’s demand (nearly L.2000) out of his own
pocket—ranking as an ordinary creditor for the amount; and taking care at the same time
that his old friend should be allowed to believe that the affair had merged quietly in the
general measures of the trustees. In fact it was not until some time after Sir
William’s death, that Sir Walter learned what he
had done on this occasion; and I may as well add here, that he himself died in utter
ignorance of some services of a like sort, which he owed to the secret liberality of three
of his brethren at the Clerks’ table—Hector Macdonald
Buchanan, Colin Mackenzie, and
Sir Robert Dundas.
I ought not to omit that as soon as Sir
Walter’s eldest son heard of the Abud business, he left Ireland for Edinburgh; but before he reached his
father the alarm had blown over.
This vision of the real Canongate has drawn me away from the Chronicles
of Mr Croftangry. The scenery of his patrimonial
inheritance was sketched from that of Carmichael, the ancient and now deserted mansion of
the noble family of Hyndford; but for his strongly Scottish feelings about parting with his
land, and stern efforts to suppress them, the author had not to
go so far a-field. Christie Steele’s brief
character of Croftangry’s ancestry too, appears
to suit well all that we have on record concerning his own more immediate progenitors of
the stubborn race of Raeburn: “They werena ill to the poor folk, sir, and that is
aye something; they were just decent bien bodies. Ony poor creature that had face to
beg got an awmous, and welcome; they that were shamefaced gaed by, and twice as
welcome. But they keepit an honest walk before God and man, the Croftangrys, and as I
said before, if they did little good, they did as little ill. They lifted their rents
and spent them, called in their kain and eat them; gaed to the
kirk of a Sunday; bowed civilly if folk took aff their bannets as they gaed by, and
lookit as black as sin at them that keepit them on.” I hope I shall give no
offence by adding, that many things in the character and manners of Mr Gideon Gray of Middlemas in the Tale of the Surgeon’s Daughter, were considered at
the time by Sir Walter’s neighbours on Tweedside as copied from
Dr Ebenezer Clarkson of Selkirk. “He
was,” says the Chronicler, of “such reputation in the medical world,
that he had been often advised to exchange the village and its meagre circle of
practice for Edinburgh. There is no creature in Scotland that works harder, and is more
poorly requited than the country doctor, unless perhaps it may be his horse. Yet the
horse is, and indeed must be, hardy, active, and indefatigable, in spite of a rough
coat and indifferent condition; and so you will often find in his master, under a blunt
exterior, professional skill and enthusiasm, intelligence, humanity, courage, and
science.” A true picture a portrait from the life of Scott’s
hard-riding, benevolent, and sagacious old friend, “to all the country
dear.”
These Chronicles were not received with exceeding favour at the time;
and Sir Walter was a good deal discouraged. Indeed he
seems to have been with some difficulty persuaded by Cadell and Ballantyne, that it would
not do for him to “lie fallow” as a novelist; and then, when he in compliance
with their entreaties began a Second Canongate Series, they were both disappointed with his
MS., and told him their opinions so plainly, that his good-nature was sharply tried. The
Tales which they disapproved of, were those of “My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror,” and “The Laird’s Jock;” he
consented to lay them aside, and began St Valentine’s Eve, or the Fair Maid
of Perth, which from the first pleased his critics. It was in the brief interval
occasioned by these misgivings and debates, that his ever elastic mind threw off another
charming paper for the Quarterly Review that
on Ornamental Gardening, by way of
sequel to the Essay on Planting Waste
Lands. Another fruit of his leisure was a sketch of the life of George Bannatyne, the collector of ancient Scottish
poetry, for the Club which bears his name.
Diary—“Edinburgh, November
6.—Wrought upon an introduction to the notices which have been recovered of George Bannatyne, author or rather transcriber of the
famous Repository of Scottish Poetry, generally known by the name of the Bannatyne MS. They are very jejune these same notices—a mere
record of matters of business, putting forth and calling in sums of money, and such
like. Yet it is a satisfaction to know that this great benefactor to the literature of
Scotland had a prosperous life, and enjoyed the pleasures of domestic society, and, in
a time peculiarly perilous, lived unmolested and died in quiet.”
He had taken, for that winter, the house No. 6, Shandwick Place, which
he occupied by the month, during the remainder of his servitude as a Clerk of Session. Very
near this house, he was told a few days after he took possession, dwelt the aged mother of his first
love—the lady of the Runic characters—and he
expressed to his friend Mrs Skene a wish that she
should carry him to renew an acquaintance which seems to have been interrupted from the
period of his youthful romance. Mrs Skene complied with his desire,
and she tells me that a very painful scene ensued, adding, “I think it highly
probable that it was on re-turning from this call that he
committed to writing the verses, To
Time, by his early favourite, which you have printed at p. 244 of your
first volume.” I believe Mrs Skene will have no doubt on
that matter when the following entries from his Diary meet her eye:—
“November 7.—Began to settle myself
this morning, after the hurry of mind and even of body which I have lately undergone.—I
went to make a visit, and fairly softened myself, like an old fool, with recalling old
stories, till I was fit for nothing but shedding tears and repeating verses for the
whole night. This is sad work. The very grave gives up its dead, and time rolls back
thirty years to add to my perplexities. I don’t care. I begin to grow
case-hardened, and, like a stag turning at bay, my naturally good temper grows fierce
and dangerous. Yet what a romance to tell,—and told, I fear, it will one day be. And
then my three years of dreaming, and my two years of wakening, will be chronicled,
doubtless. But the dead will feel no pain.
“November 10.—Wrote out my task and
little more. At twelve o’clock I went again to poor Lady —— to talk over old stories. I am not clear that it is a right or
healthful indulgence to be ripping up old sores, but it seems to give her deep-rooted
sorrow words, and that is a mental bloodletting. To me these things are now matter of
calm and solemn recollection, never to be forgotten, yet scarce to be remembered with
pain. We go out to Saint Catherine’s to-day. I am glad of it, for I would not
have these recollections haunt me, and society will put them out of my head.”
Sir Walter has this entry on reading the Gazette of the battle of
Navarino:—“November 14.—We have thumped the Turks very well. But as to the justice of our
interference, I will only suppose some Turkish plenipotentiary, with an immense turban
and long loose trousers, comes to dictate to us the mode in which we should deal with
our refractory liegemen, the Catholics of Ireland. We hesitate to admit his
interference, on which the Moslem runs into Cork Bay, or Bantry Bay, alongside of a
British squadron, and sends a boat to tow on a fire-ship. A vessel fires on the boat
and sinks it. Is there an aggression on the part of those who fired first, or of those
whose manoeuvres occasioned the firing?”
A few days afterwards he received a very agreeable piece of
intelligence. The King had not forgotten his promise
with respect to the poet’s second son; and Lord
Dudley, then Secretary of State for the Foreign Department, was a much
attached friend from early days—(he had been partly educated at Edinburgh under the roof of
Dugald Stewart)—his lordship had therefore been
very well disposed to comply with the royal recommendation. “November 30.—The great pleasure of a letter from Lord
Dudley, informing me that he has received his Majesty’s commands
to put down the name of my son Charles for the
first vacancy that shall occur in the Foreign Office, and at the same time to acquaint
me with his gracious intentions, which were signified in language the most gratifying
to me. This makes me really feel light and happy, and most grateful to the kind and
gracious sovereign who has always shown, I may say, so much friendship towards me.
Would to God the King’s errand might lie in the cadger’s
gait, that I might have some better way of showing my feelings than merely by
a letter of thanks, or this private memorandum of my gratitude. Public affairs look
awkward. The present Ministry are neither Whig nor Tory, and
divested of the support of either of the great parties of the state, stand supported by
the will of the sovereign alone. This is not constitutional, and though it may be a
temporary augmentation of the prince’s personal influence, yet it cannot but
prove hurtful to the Crown upon the whole, by tending to throw that responsibility on
him of which the law has deprived him. I pray to God I may be wrong, but, I think, an
attempt to govern par bascule, by trimming
betwixt the opposite parties, is equally unsafe for the Crown and detrimental to the
country, and cannot do for a long time. That with a neutral Administration this
country, hard ruled at any time, can be long governed, I for one do not believe. God
send the good King, to whom I owe so much, as safe and honourable extrication as the
circumstances render possible.” The dissolution of the Goderich Cabinet confirmed very soon these shrewd guesses;
and Sir Walter anticipated nothing but good from the
Premiership of the Duke of Wellington.
The settlement of Charles Scott
was rapidly followed by more than one fortunate incident in Sir
Walter’s literary and pecuniary history. The first Tales of a Grandfather appeared early in December, and
their reception was more rapturous than that of any one of his works since Ivanhoe. He had solved for the first time the
problem of narrating history, so as at once to excite and gratify the curiosity of youth,
and please and instruct the wisest of mature minds. The popularity of the book has grown
with every year that has since elapsed; it is equally prized in the library, the boudoir,
the schoolroom, and the nursery; it is adopted as the happiest of manuals, not only in
Scotland, but whereever the English tongue is spoken; nay, it is to be seen in the hands of
old and young all over the civilized world, and has, I have little doubt, extended the
know-ledge of Scottish
history in quarters where little or no interest had ever before been awakened as to any
other parts of that subject, except those immediately connected with Mary Stuart and the Chevalier. This success effectually rebuked the trepidation of the
author’s bookseller and printer, and inspired the former with new courage as to a
step which he had for some time been meditating, and which had given rise to many a long
and anxious discussion between him and Sir Walter.
The question as to the property of the Life of Napoleon and Woodstock having now been settled by the arbiter
(Lord Newton) in favour of the author, the
relative affairs of Sir Walter and the creditors of
Constable were so simplified, that the trustee
on that sequestrated estate resolved to bring into the market, with the concurrence of
Ballantyne’s trustees, and without further
delay, a variety of very valuable copyrights. This important sale comprised
Scott’s novels from Waverley to Quentin Durward inclusive, besides a majority of the shares of the Poetical
Works.
Mr Cadell’s family and private friends were
extremely desirous that he should purchase part at least of these copyrights; and Sir Walter’s were not less so that he should seize this
last opportunity of recovering a share in the prime fruits of his genius. The relations by
this time established between him and Cadell were those of strict
confidence and kindness; and both saw well that the property would be comparatively lost,
were it not secured, that thenceforth the whole should be managed as one unbroken concern.
It was in the success of an uniform edition of the Waverley novels, with prefaces and notes by the
author, that both anticipated the means of finally extinguishing the debt of Ballantyne and Co.; and, after some demur, the trustees of
that house’s creditors were wise enough to adopt their views. The result was, that the copyrights exposed to sale for behoof of Constable’s creditors were purchased, one half for
Sir Walter, the other half for Cadell, at the
price of L.8,500—a sum which was considered large at the moment, but which the London
competitors soon afterwards convinced themselves they ought to have outbid.
The Diary says:—“December 17.—Sent off
the new beginning of the Chronicles
to Ballantyne. I hate cancels, they are a double
labour. Mr Cowan, trustee for Constable’s creditors, called in the morning by
appointment, and we talked about the sale of the copyrights of Waverley, &c. It is to be hoped the high upset
price fixed (L.5000) will ‘Fright the fuds Of the pock-puds.’ This speculation may be for good or for evil, but it tends incalculably to
increase the value of such copyrights as remain in my own person; and if a handsome and
cheap edition of the whole, with notes, can be instituted in conformity with Cadell’s plan, it must prove a mine of wealth
for my creditors. It is possible, no doubt, that the works may lose their effect on the
public mind; but this must be risked, and I think the chances are greatly in our
favour. Death (my own, I mean) would improve the property, since an edition with a Life
would sell like wildfire. Perhaps those who read this prophecy may shake their heads
and say, ‘Poor fellow, he little thought how he should see the public interest in
him and his extinguished even during his natural existence.’ It may be so, but I
will hope better. This I know, that no literary speculation ever succeeded with me but
where my own works were concerned; and that, on the other hand, these have rarely
failed.
“December 20.—Anent the copyrights—the
pock-puds were not frightened by our high price. They came on briskly, four or five
bidders abreast, and went on till the lot was knocked down to Cadell at L.8500; a very large sum certainly, yet he
has been offered profit on it already. The activity of the contest serves to show the
value of the property. On the whole I am greatly pleased with the
acquisition.”
Well might the “pockpuddings”—the English booksellers—rue
their timidity on this day; but it was the most lucky one that ever came for Sir Walter Scott’s creditors. A dividend of six
shillings in the pound was paid at this Christmas on their whole claims. The result of
their high-hearted debtor’s exertions, between January 1826 and January 1828, was in
all very nearly L.40,000. No literary biographer, in all likelihood, will ever have such
another fact to record. The creditors unanimously passed a vote of thanks for the
indefatigable industry which had achieved so much for their behoof.
On returning to Abbotsford at Christmas, after completing these
transactions, he says in his Diary:—“My reflections in entering my own gate to-day
were of a very different and more pleasing cast, than those with which I left this
place about six weeks ago. I was then in doubt whether I should fly my country, or
become avowedly bankrupt, and surrender up my library and household furniture, with the
liferent of my estate, to sale. A man of the world will say I had better done so. No
doubt, had I taken this course at once, I might have employed the money I have made
since the insolvency of Constable and Robinson’s houses in compounding my debts. But I
could not have slept sound as I now can, under the comfortable impression of receiving
the thanks of my creditors, and the conscious feeling of
discharging my duty as a man of honour and honesty. I see before me a long, tedious,
and dark path, but it leads to stainless reputation. If I die in the harrows, as is
very likely, I shall die with honour; if I achieve my task, I shall have the thanks of
all concerned, and the approbation of my own conscience. And so, I think, I can fairly
face the return of Christmas-day.”
And again, on the 31st December, he says:—
“Looking back to the conclusion of 1826, I observe that the
last year ended in trouble and sickness, with pressures for the present and gloomy
prospects for the future. The sense of a great privation so lately sustained, together
with the very doubtful and clouded nature of my private affairs, pressed hard upon my
mind. I am now restored in constitution; and though I am still on troubled waters, yet
I am rowing with the tide, and less than the continuation of my exertions of 1827 may,
with God’s blessing, carry me successfully through 1828, when we may gain a more
open sea, if not exactly a safe port. Above all, my children are well. Sophia’s situation excites some natural anxiety;
but it is only the accomplishment of the burden imposed on her sex. Walter is happy in the view of his majority, on which
matter we have favourable hopes from the Horse-Guards. Anne is well and happy. Charles’s entry on life under the highest patronage, and in a
line for which, I hope, he is qualified, is about to take place presently.
“For all these great blessings it becomes me well to be
thankful to God, who, in his good time and good pleasure, sends us good as well as
evil.”
CHAPTER III. THE “OPUS MAGNUM”—“RELIGIOUS DISCOURSES, BY A LAYMAN”—LETTERS TO
GEORGE HUNTLY GORDON—CADELL—AND
BALLANTYNE—HEATH’S KEEPSAKE,
&c.—ARNISTON—DALHOUSIE—PRISONS—DISSOLUTION OF YEOMANRY CAVALRY—THE FAIR MAID OF PERTH PUBLISHED— JANUARY—APRIL, 1828.
With the exception of a few weeks occupied by an excursion to
London, which business of various sorts had rendered necessary, the year 1828 was spent in
the same assiduous labour as 1827. The commercial transaction completed at Christmas
cleared the way for two undertakings, which would of themselves have been enough to supply
desk-work in abundance; and Sir Walter appears to have
scarcely passed a day on which something was not done for them. I allude to Cadell’s plan of a new edition of the Poetry, with
biographical prefaces; and the still more extensive one of an uniform reprint of the
Novels, each to be introduced by an account of the hints on which it had been founded, and
illustrated throughout by historical and antiquarian annotations. On this last, commonly
mentioned in the Diary as the Opus Magnum,
Sir Walter bestowed pains commensurate with its importance;—and in the execution of the
very delicate task which either scheme imposed, he has certainly displayed such a
combination of frankness and modesty as entitles him to a high place
in the short list of graceful autobiographers. True dignity is always simple; and perhaps
true genius, of the highest class at least, is always humble. These operations took up much
time;—yet he laboured hard this year both as a novelist and a historian. He contributed,
moreover, several articles to the Quarterly
Review and the Bannatyne Club library; and to the Journal conducted by Mr
Gillies, an excellent Essay on
Moliere; this last being again a free gift to the Editor.
But the first advertisement of 1828 was of a new order; and the
announcement that the Author of Waverley had Sermons in the press, was received perhaps with as much incredulity in the
clerical world, as could have been excited among them by that of a romance from the
Archbishop of Canterbury. A thin octavo volume, entitled “Religious Discourses by a Layman,” and having
“W. S.” at the foot of a short preface, did, however, issue in the course of
the spring, and from the shop, that all might be in perfect keeping, of Mr Colburn, a bookseller then known almost exclusively as
the standing purveyor of what is called “light reading”—novels of
“fashionable life,” and the like pretty ephemera. I am afraid that the
“Religious Discourses,” too, would, but for the
author’s name, have had a brief existence; but the history of their composition,
besides sufficiently explaining the humility of these tracts in a literary as well as a
theological point of view, will, I hope, gratify most of my readers.
It may perhaps be remembered, that Sir
Walter’s Cicerone over Waterloo, in August 1815, was a certain
Major Pryse Gordon, then on half-pay and
resident at Brussels. The acquaintance, until they met at Sir
Frederick Adam’s table, had been very slight—nor was it ever carried
farther; but the Major was exceedingly attentive during Scott’s
stay, and afterwards took some
pains about collecting little reliques of the battle for Abbotsford. One evening the poet
supped at his house, and there happened to sit next him the host’s eldest son, then a lad of nineteen, whose appearance and
situation much interested him. He had been destined for the Church of Scotland, but as he
grew up a deafness, which had come on him in boyhood, became worse and worse, and at length
his friends feared that it must incapacitate him for the clerical function. He had gone to
spend the vacation with his father, and Sir Frederick Adam,
understanding how he was situated, offered him a temporary appointment as a clerk in the
Commissariat, which he hoped to convert into a permanent one, in case the war continued. At
the time of Scott’s arrival that prospect was wellnigh gone, and
the young man’s infirmity, this embarrassment, and other things to which his own
memorandum makes no allusion, excited the visiter’s sympathy. Though there were
lion-hunters of no small consequence in the party, he directed most of his talk into the
poor clerk’s ear-trumpet; and at parting, begged him not to forget that he had a
friend on Tweedside.
A couple of years elapsed before he heard any thing more of Mr Gordon, who then sent him his father’s little
spolia of Waterloo, and accompanied them
by a letter explaining his situation, and asking advice, in a style which renewed and
increased Scott’s favourable impression. He had
been dismissed from the Commissariat at the general reduction of our establishments, and
was now hesitating whether he had better take up again his views as to the Kirk, or turn
his eyes towards English orders; and in the mean-time he was anxious to find some way of
lightening to his parents, by his own industry, the completion of his professional
education. There ensued a copious correspondence between him and
Scott, who gave him on all points of his case
most paternal advice, and accompanied his counsels with offers of pecuniary assistance, of
which the young man rarely availed himself. At length he resolved on reentering the
Divinity Class at Aberdeen, and in due time was licensed by the Presbytery there as a
Preacher of the Gospel; but though with good connexions, for he was “sprung of
Scotia’s gentler blood,” his deafness operated as a serious bar to his
obtaining the incumbency of a parish. After several years had elapsed, he received a
presentation; but the Provincial Synod pronounced his deafness an insuperable objection,
and the case was referred to the General Assembly. That tribunal heard Mr
Gordon’s cause maintained by all the skill and eloquence of Mr Jeffrey, whose good offices had been secured by
Scott’s intervention, and they overruled the decision of the
Presbytery. But Gordon, in the course of the discussion, gathered the
conviction, that a man almost literally stone-deaf could not discharge some of the highest
duties of a parish priest in a satisfactory manner, and he with honourable firmness
declined to take advantage of the judgment of the Supreme Court. Mean-time he had been
employed, from the failure of John
Ballantyne’s health downwards, as the transcriber of the Waverley MSS.
for the press, in which capacity he displayed every quality that could endear an amanuensis
to an author; and when the disasters of 1826 rendered it unnecessary for
Scott to have his MS. copied, he exerted himself to procure
employment for Gordon in one of the Government offices in London.
Being backed by the kindness of the late Duke of
Gordon, his story found favour with the then Secretary of the Treasury,
Mr Lushington—and Gordon
was named assistant private secretary to that gentleman. The appointment was temporary, but
he so pleased his chief that there was hope of better things by and by.—Such was his situation at Christmas
1827; but that being his first Christmas in London, it was no wonder that he then
discovered himself to have somewhat miscalculated about money matters. In a word, he knew
not whither to look at the moment for extrication, until he bethought him of the following
little incident of his life at Abbotsford.
He was spending the autumn of 1824 there, daily copying the MS. of Redgauntlet, and working at leisure hours
on the Catalogue of the Library, when the family observed him to be labouring under some
extraordinary depression of mind. It was just then that he had at length obtained the
prospect of a Living, and Sir Walter was surprised that
this should not have exhilarated him. Gently sounding the trumpet, however, he discovered
that the agitation of the question about the deafness had shaken his nerves—his scruples
had been roused—his conscience was sensitive,—and he avowed that, though he thought, on the
whole, he ought to go through with the business, he could not command his mind so as to
prepare a couple of sermons which, unless he summarily abandoned his object, must be
produced on a certain day then near at hand before his Presbytery. Sir
Walter reminded him, that his exercises when on trials for the
Probationership had given satisfaction; but nothing he could say was sufficient to re-brace
Mr Gordon’s spirits, and he at length
exclaimed, with tears, that his pen was powerless, that he had made fifty attempts, and saw
nothing but failure and disgrace before him. Scott answered,
“My good young friend, leave this matter to me—do you work away at the
Catalogue, and I’ll write for you a couple of sermons that shall pass muster well
enough at Aberdeen.” Gordon assented with a sigh; and
next morning Sir Walter gave him the MS. of the “Religious Discourses.” On reflection,
Mr Gordon con-sidered it quite impossible to
produce them as his own, and a letter to be quoted immediately will show, that he by and by
had written others for himself in a style creditable to his talents, though, from
circumstances above explained, he never delivered them at Aberdeen. But the “Two Discourses” of 1824 had remained in his hands; and it now
occurred to him that, if Sir Walter would allow him to dispose of
these to some bookseller, they might possibly bring a price that would float him over his
little difficulties of Christmas.
Scott consented; and Gordon got more than he had ventured to expect for his MS. But since this
matter has been introduced, I must indulge myself with a little retrospect, and give a few
specimens of the great author’s correspondence with this amiable dependent. The
series now before me consists of more than forty letters to Mr Gordon.
“Edinburgh, 5th January, 1817.
“* * * I am very sorry your malady continues to
distress you; yet while one’s eyes are spared to look on the wisdom of
former times, we are the less entitled to regret that we hear less of the folly
of the present. The Church always presents a safe and respectable asylum, and
has many mansions. But in fact, the great art of life, so far as I have been
able to observe, consists in fortitude and perseverance. I have rarely seen,
that a man who conscientiously devoted himself to the studies and duties of any profession, and did not omit to take fair and
honourable opportunities of offering himself to notice when such presented
themselves, has not at length got forward. The mischance of those who fall
behind, though flung upon fortune, more frequently arises from want of skill
and perseverance. Life, my young friend, is like a game at cards—our hands are
alternately good or bad, and the whole seems at first glance to depend on mere
chance. But it is not so, for in the long run the skill of the player
predominates over the casualties of the game. Therefore, do not be discouraged
with the prospect before you, but ply your studies hard, and qualify yourself
to receive fortune when she comes your way. I shall have pleasure at any time
in hearing from you, and more especially in seeing you.”
“24th July, 1818.
“* * * I send you the Travels of
Thiodolf* Perhaps you might do well to give a glance over
Tytler’sPrinciples of Translation, ere
you gird up your loins to the undertaking. If the gods have made you poetical,
you should imitate, rather than attempt a literal translation of, the verses
interspersed; and, in general, I think both the prose and verse might be
improved by compression. If you find the versification a difficult or
unpleasant task, I must translate for you such parts of the poetry as may be
absolutely necessary for carrying on the story, which will cost an old hack
like me very little trouble. I would have you, however, by all means try
yourself.” * * *
“14th October, 1818.
“ * * * I am greatly at a loss what could possibly
make you think you had given me the slightest offence. If that very erroneous
idea arose from my silence and short letters, I must plead both business and
laziness,
* A novel by the Baron de la Motte Fouqué.
which makes me an indifferent correspondent; but I
thought I had explained in my last that which it was needful that you should
know. * * *
“I have said nothing on the delicate confidence you
have reposed in me. I have not forgotten that I have been young, and must
therefore be sincerely interested in those feelings which the best men
entertain with most warmth. At the same time, my experience makes me alike an
enemy to premature marriage and to distant engagements. The first adds to our
individual cares the responsibility for the beloved and helpless pledges of our
affection, and the last are liable to the most cruel disappointments. But, my
good young friend, if you have settled your affections upon a worthy object, I
can only hope that your progress in life will be such as to make you look
forward with prudence to a speedy union.” *
* *
“12th June, 1820.
“ * * * I am very sorry for your
illness, and your unpleasant and uncertain situation, for which, unfortunately,
I can give no better consolation than in the worn-out and wearying-out word,
patience. What you mention of your private feelings on an interesting subject,
is indeed distressing; but assure yourself that scarce one person out of twenty
marries his first love, and scarce one out of twenty of the remainder has cause
to rejoice at having done so. What we love, in those early days is generally
rather a fanciful creation of our own than a reality. We build statues of snow,
and weep when they melt.” * *
“12th April, 1825. “My dear Mr Gordon,
“I would have made some additions to your sermon
with great pleasure, but it is with even more than great pleasure that I assure
you it needs none. It is a most respectable discourse, with good divinity in
it, which is always the marrow and bones of a Concio
ad clerum, and you may pronounce it, meo periculo, without the least danger of
failure or of unpleasant comparisons. I am not fond of Mr Irving’s species of eloquence,
consisting of outré flourishes
and extravagant metaphors. The eloquence of the pulpit should be of a chaste
and dignified character; earnest, but not high-flown and ecstatic, and
consisting as much in close reasoning as in elegant expression. It occurs to me
as a good topic for more than one discourse, the manner in which the heresies
of the earlier Christian church are treated in the Acts and the Epistles. It is
remarkable, that while the arguments by which they are combated are distinct,
clear, and powerful, the inspired writers have not judged it proper to go
beyond general expressions, respecting the particular heresies which they
combated. If you look closely, there is much reason in this. * * * In general,
I would say, that on entering on the clerical profession, were it my case, I
should be anxious to take much pains with my sermons, and the studies on which
they must be founded. Nothing rewards itself so completely as exercise, whether
of the body or mind. We sleep sound, and our waking hours are happy, because
they are employed; and a little sense of toil is necessary to the enjoyment of
leisure, even when earned by study and sanctioned by the discharge of duty. I
think most clergymen diminish their own respectability by falling into indolent
habits, and what players call walking through their part. You, who have to beat up
against an infirmity, and it may be against some unreasonable prejudices,
arising from that infirmity, should determine to do the thing not only well,
but better than others.” * * *
To G. Huntly Gordon, Esq. Treasury, London.
“28th December, 1827. “Dear Gordon,
“As I have no money to spare at present, I find it
necessary to make a sacrifice of my own scruples, to relieve you from serious
difficulties. The enclosed will entitle you to deal with any respectable
bookseller. You must tell the history in your own way as shortly as possible.
All that is necessary to say is, that the discourses were written to oblige a
young friend. It is understood my name is not to be put on the title-page, or
blazed at full length in the preface. You may trust that to the newspapers.
“Pray, do not think of returning any thanks about
this; it is enough that I know it is likely to serve your purpose. But use the
funds arising from this unexpected source with prudence, for such fountains do
not spring up at every place of the desert.—I am, in haste, ever yours most
truly,
Walter Scott.”
The reader will, I believe, forgive this retrospect; and be pleased to
know that the publication of the sermons answered the purpose intended. Mr Gordon now occupies a permanent and respectable
situation in her Majesty’s Stationary Office; and he concludes his com-munication to me with expressing his
feeling that his prosperity “is all clearly traceable to the kindness of Sir Walter Scott.”
In a letter to me about this affair of the Discourses, Sir
Walter says, “Poor Gordon has
got my leave to make a kirk and a mill of my Sermons—heaven save the mark! Help him, if you can, to the water of Pactolus and
a swapping thirlage.” The only entries in the Diary, which relate to the business,
are the following: “Dec. 28.—Huntly
Gordon writes me in despair about L.180 of debt which he has incurred.
He wishes to publish two sermons which I wrote for him when he was taking orders; and
he would get little money for them without my name. People may exclaim against the
undesired and unwelcome zeal of him who stretched his hands to help the ark over, with
the best intentions, and cry sacrilege. And yet they will do me gross injustice, for I
would, if called upon, die a martyr for the Christian religion, so completely is (in my
poor opinion) its divine origin proved by its beneficial effects on the state of
society. Were we but to name the abolition of slavery and polygamy, how much has, in
these two words, been granted to mankind in the lessons of our Saviour. January 10, 1828.—Huntly Gordon has
disposed of the two sermons to the bookseller, Colburn, for L.250; well sold I think, and to go forth immediately. The
man is a puffing quack; but though I would rather the thing had not gone there, and far
rather that it had gone nowhere, yet hang it, if it makes the poor lad easy, what needs
I fret about it. After all, there would be little grace in doing a kind thing, if you
did not suffer pain or inconvenience upon the score.”
The next literary entry is this:—“Mr Charles Heath, the engraver, invites me to take charge of a yearly
publication called the Keepsake, of which
the plates are beyond comparison beautiful, but the letter-press
indifferent enough. He proposes L.800 a-year if I would become editor, and L.400 if I
would contribute from seventy to one hundred pages. I declined both, but told him I
might give him some trifling thing or other. To become the stipendiary editor of a
New-Year’s-Gift Book is not to be thought of, nor could I agree to work
regularly, for any quantity of supply, at such a publication. Even the pecuniary view
is not flattering, though Mr Heath meant it should be so. One
hundred of his close printed pages, for which he offers L.400, are nearly equal to one
volume of a novel. Each novel of three volumes brings L.4000, and I remain proprietor
of the mine after the first ore is scooped out.” The result of this
negotiation with Mr Heath was, that he received, for L.500, the
liberty of printing in his Keepsake the long forgotten juvenile
drama of the House of Aspen, with My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror, and two other
little tales, which had been omitted, at Ballantyne’s entreaty, from the second Chronicles of Croftangry. But Sir
Walter regretted having meddled in any way with the toyshop of literature,
and would never do so again, though repeatedly offered very large sums—nor even when the
motive of private regard was added, upon Mr Allan
Cunningham’s lending his name to one of these painted bladders.
In the same week that Mr Heath
made his proposition, Sir Walter received another which
he thus disposes of in his Diary:—“I have an invitation from Messrs Saunders and Ottley, booksellers, offering me from L.1500 to L.2000 annually to
conduct a journal; but I am their humble servant. I am too indolent to stand to that
sort of work, and I must preserve the undisturbed use of my leisure, and possess my
soul in quiet. A large income is not my object; I must clear my debts; and that is to be done by writing
things of which I can retain the property. Made my excuses accordingly.”
In January, 1828, reprints both of the Grandfather’s Tales and of the Life of Napoleon were called for; and both
so suddenly, that the booksellers would fain have distributed the volumes among various
printers in order to catch the demand. Ballantyne
heard of this with natural alarm; and Scott, in the case
of the Napoleon, conceived that his own literary character was
trifled with, as well as his old ally’s interests. On receiving
James’s first appeal that as to the Grandfather’s Stories, he wrote thus: I need scarcely add, with the
desired effect.
To Robert Cadell, Esq., Edinburgh.
“Abbotsford, 3d January, 1828. “My dear Sir,
“I find our friend James
Ballantyne is very anxious about printing the new edition of the
Tales, which I hope you
will allow him to do, unless extreme haste be an extreme object. I need not
remind you that we three are like the shipwrecked crew of a vessel, cast upon a
desolate island, and fitting up out of the remains of a gallant bark such a
cock-boat as may transport us to some more hospitable shore. Therefore, we are
bound by the strong tie of common misfortune to help each other, in so far as
the claim of self-preservation will permit, and I am happy to think the plank
is large enough to float us all.
“Besides my feelings for my own old friend and
schoolfellow, with whom I have shared good and bad weather for so many years, I
must also remember that, as in your own case, his friends have made great
exertions to support him in the printing-office, under an implied hope and
trust that these publications would take in ordinary
cases their usual direction. It is true no engagement was or could be proposed to this effect, but it was a
reasonable expectation which influenced kind and generous men, and I incline to
pay every respect to it in my power.
“Messrs Longman really keep matters a little too quiet for my
convenience. The next thing they may tell me is, that Napoleon must go to press instantly to a
dozen of printers. I must boot and saddle, off and away at a fortnight’s
warning. Now this I neither can nor will do. My character as a man of letters
is deeply interested in giving a complete revisal of that work, and I wish to
have time to do so without being hurried. Yours very truly,
W. S.”
The following specimens of his “skirmishes,” as he used to
call them, with Ballantyne, while the Fair Maid of Perth was in hand, are in
keeping with this amiable picture:
“My dear James I return the proofs of Tales, and send some leaves, copy of St Valentine’s. Pray get
on with this in case we should fall through again. When the press does not
follow me, I get on slowly and ill, and put myself in mind of Jamie
Balfour, who could run when he could not stand still. We must go on or stop altogether. Yours,” &c.
&c.
“I think you are hypercritical in your commentary. I
counted the hours with accuracy. In the morning the citizens went to Kinfauns
and returned. This puts over the hour of noon, then the dinner-hour.
Afterwards, and when the king has had his devotions in private, comes all the
scene in the court-yard. The sun sets at half-past five on the 14th February;
and if we suppose it to be within an hour of evening, it was surely time for a woman who had a
night to put over, to ask where she should sleep. This is the explanation,
apply it as you please to the text; for you who see the doubt can best clear
it. Yours truly,” &c.
“I cannot afford to be merciful to Master Oliver Proudfoot, although I am heartily
glad there is any one of the personages sufficiently interesting to make you
care whether he lives or dies. But it would cost my cancelling half a volume,
and rather than do so, I would, like the valiant Baron
of Clackmannan, kill the whole characters, the author, and the
printer. Besides, entre nous, the
resurrection of Athelstane was a botch. It
struck me when I was reading Ivanhoe over the other day.
“I value your criticism as much as ever, but the
worst is, my faults are better known to myself than to you. Tell a young beauty
that she wears an unbecoming dress, or an ill-fashioned ornament, or speaks too
loud, or commits any other mistake which she can correct, and she will do so,
if she has sense and a good opinion of your taste. But tell a fading beauty,
that her hair is getting grey, her wrinkles apparent, her gait heavy, and that
she has no business in a ball-room but to be ranged against the wall as an
ever-green, and you will afflict the poor old lady, without rendering her any
service. She knows all that better than you. I am sure the old lady in question
takes pain enough at her toilette, and gives you, her trusty suivante, enough of trouble. Yours truly,
W. S.”
These notes to the printer appear to have been written at Abbotsford
during the holidays. On his way back to Edinburgh, Sir Walter halts for a Saturday and Sunday at Arniston, and
the Diary on the second day says:—“Went to Borthwick church with the family, and
heard a well-composed, well-delivered, sensible discourse, from Mr Wright.* After sermon we looked at the old castle,
which made me an old man. The castle was not a bit older for the twenty-five years
which had passed away, but the ruins of the visiter are very apparent. To climb up
ruinous staircases, to creep through vaults and into dungeons, were not the easy
labours but the positive sports of my younger years; but I thought it convenient to
attempt no more than the access to the large and beautiful hall, in which, as it is
somewhere described, an armed horseman might brandish his lance.† This feeling of
growing inability is painful to one who boasted, in spite of infirmity, great boldness
and dexterity in such feats; the boldness remains, but hand and foot, grip and accuracy
of step have altogether failed me the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, and so I
must retreat into the invalided corps, and tell them of my former exploits, which may
very likely pass for lies. We then drove to Dalhousie, where the gallant Earl, who has done so much to distinguish the
British name in every quarter of the globe, is repairing the castle of his ancestors,
which of yore stood a siege against John of
Gaunt. I was his companion at school, where he was as much beloved by
his playmates, as he has been ever respected by his companions in arms and the people
over whom he has been deputed to exercise the authority of his sovereign. He was always
steady, wise,
* The Rev. T.
Wright, of Borthwick, is the author of various popular
works,—“The Morning and
Evening Sacrifice,” &c. &c.
† See Scott’s account of this Castle in his
Prose Miscellanies,
Vol. VII.
and generous. The old Castle of
Dalhousie—seu potius Dalwolsey was
mangled by a fellow called, I believe, Douglas, who destroyed, as
far as in him lay, its military and baronial character, and roofed it after the fashion
of a poor’s-house. Burn* is now restoring
and repairing in the old taste, and, I think, creditably to his own feeling. God bless
the roof-tree!
“We returned home by the side of the South Esk, where I had
the pleasure to see that Robert Dundas is laying
out his woods with taste, and managing them with care. His father and uncle took notice of me
when I was ‘fellow of no mark nor likelihood,’† and I am always happy
in finding myself in the old oak room at Arniston, where I have drank many a merry
bottle, and in the fields where I have seen many a hare killed.”
At the opening of the Session next day, he misses one of his dear old
colleagues of the table, Mr Mackenzie, who had long
been the official preses in ordinary of the Writers to the Signet. The Diary has a pithy
entry here:—“My good friend Colin Mackenzie proposes to
retire from indifferent health. A better man never lived—eager to serve every one—a
safeguard over all public business which came through his hands. As Deputy-keeper of
the Signet he will be much missed. He had a patience in listening to every one, which
is of infinite importance in the management of a public body; for many men care less to
gain their point, than they do to play the orator, and be listened to for a certain
time. This done, and due quantity of personal consideration being gained, the
individual orator is usually satisfied with the reasons of the civil listener, who has
suffered him to enjoy his hour of consequence.”
* William Burn, Esq.,
architect, Edinburgh.
† King Henry
IV., Act III. Sc. 2.
The following passages appear (in various ways) too curious and
characteristic to be omitted. He is working hard, alas! too hard—at the Fair Maid of Perth.
“February 17.—hard day of work, being, I
think, eight pages* before dinner. I cannot, I am sure, tell if it is worth marking down,
that yesterday, at dinnertime, I was strangely haunted by what I would call the sense of
pre-existence—viz. a confused idea, that nothing that passed was said for the first time,
that the same topics had been discussed, and the same persons had stated the same opinions
on them. It is true there might have been some ground for recollections, considering that
three at least of the company were old friends, and had kept much company together; that
is, Justice-Clerk, [Lord]
Abercromby, and I. But the sensation was so strong as to resemble what is
called a mirage in the desert, or a calenture on board of ship, when lakes are seen in the
desert, and silvan landscapes in the sea. It was very distressing yesterday, and brought to
my mind the fancies of Bishop Berkely about an ideal
world. There was a vile sense of want of reality in all I did and said. It made me gloomy
and out of spirits, though I flatter myself this was not observed. The bodily feeling which
most resembles this unpleasing hallucination is the giddy state which follows profuse
bleeding, when one feels as if he were walking on feather-beds and could not find a secure
footing. I think the stomach has something to do with it. I drank several glasses of wine,
but these only augmented the disorder. I did not find the in
vino veritas of the philosophers. Something of this insane feeling
remains to-day, but a trifle only.
* i. e., Forty pages of print,
or very nearly.
“February 20.—Another day of labour, but
not so hard. I worked from eight till three with little intermission, but only accomplished
four pages.
“A certain Mr Mackay from
Ireland called on me, an active agent, it would seem, about the reform of prisons. He
exclaims, justly I doubt not, about the state of our Lock-up House. For myself I have some
distrust of the fanaticism even of philanthropy. A good part of it arises in general from
mere vanity and love of distinction, gilded over to others and to themselves with some show
of benevolent sentiment. The philanthropy of Howard,
mingled with his ill-usage of his son, seems to have risen to a pitch of insanity. Yet
without such extraordinary men, who call attention to the subject by their own
peculiarities, prisons would have remained the same dungeons which they were forty or fifty
years ago. I do not, however, see the propriety of making them dandy places of detention.
They should be places of punishment, and that can hardly be if men are lodged better, and
fed better, than when they are at large. I have never seen a plan for keeping in order
these resorts of guilt and misery, without presupposing a superintendence of a kind which
might perhaps be exercised, could we turn out upon the watch a guard of angels. But, alas!
jailers and turnkeys are rather like angels of a different livery, nor do I see how it is
possible to render them otherwise. Quis custodiet ipsos
custodes? As to reformation, I have no great belief in it, when the
ordinary classes of culprits, who are vicious from ignorance or habit, are the subjects of
the experiment. ‘A shave from a broken loaf’ is thought as little of by the
male set of delinquents as by the fair frail. The state of society now leads to such
accumulations of humanity, that we cannot wonder if it ferment and reek like a compost
dunghill. Nature intended that population should be diffused over
the soil in proportion to its extent. We have accumulated in huge cities and smothering
manufactories the numbers which should be spread over the face of a country; and what
wonder that they should be corrupted? We have turned healthful and pleasant brooks into
morasses and pestiferous lakes,—what wonder the soil should be unhealthy? A great deal, I
think, might be done by executing the punishment of death, without a
chance of escape, in all cases to which it should be found properly applicable; of course
these occasions being diminished to one out of twenty to which capital punishment is now
assigned. Our ancestors brought the country to order by kilting
thieves and banditti with strings. So did the French when at Naples, and bandits became for
the time unheard of. When once men are taught that a crime of a certain character is
connected inseparably with death, the moral habits of a population become altered, and you
may in the next age remit the punishment which in this it has been necessary to inflict
with stern severity.
“February 21.—Last night after dinner I
rested from my work, and read the third series of Sayings and Doings, which shows
great knowledge of life in a certain sphere, and very considerable powers of wit, which
somewhat damages the effect of the tragic parts. But Theodore
Hook is an able writer, and so much of his work is well said, that it will
carry through what is indifferent. I hope the same good fortune for other folks.
“I am watching and waiting till I hit on some quaint and clever
mode of extricating, but do not see a glimpse of any one. James
B., too, discourages me a good deal by his silence, waiting, I suppose, to
be invited to disgorge a full allowance of his critical bile. But he will wait long enough,
for I am discouraged enough. Now here is the
advantage of Edinburgh. In the country, if a sense of inability once seizes me, it haunts
me from morning to night; but in town the time is so occupied and frittered away by
official duties and chance occupations, that you have not leisure to play Master Stephen, and be melancholy and gentlemanlike.* On the
other hand, you never feel in town those spirit-stirring influences—those glances of
sunshine that make amends for clouds and mist. The country is said to be the quieter life;
not to me, I am sure. In town the business I have to do hardly costs me more thought than
just occupies my mind, and I have as much of gossip and lady-like chat as consumes odd
hours pleasantly enough. In the country I am thrown entirely on my own resources, and there
is no medium betwixt happiness and the reverse.
“March 9.—I set about arranging my papers,
a task which I always take up with the greatest possible ill-will, and which makes me
cruelly nervous. I don’t know why it should be so, for I have nothing particularly
disagreeable to look at; far from it, I am better than I was at this time last year, my
hopes firmer, my health stronger, my affairs bettered and bettering. Yet I feel an
inexpressible nervousness in consequence of this employment. The memory, though it retains
all that has passed, has closed sternly over it; and this rummaging, like a bucket dropped
suddenly into a well, deranges and confuses the ideas which slumbered on the mind. I am
nervous, and I am bilious, and, in a word, I am unhappy. This is wrong, very wrong; and it
is reasonably to be apprehended that something of serious misfortune may be the deserved
punishment of this pusillanimous lowness of spirits. Strange, that
* See Ben Jonson’s
‘Every Man
in his Humour.’ Act i, Scene 3.
one who, in most things, may be said to have enough of the
‘care na by,’ should be subject to such vile weakness!—Drummond Hay, the antiquary and Lyon-herald,* came in. I
do not know any thing which relieves the mind so much from the sullens as trifling
discussions about antiquarian old womanries. It is like knitting a stocking, diverting the
mind without occupying it; or it is like, by Our Lady, a mill-dam, which leads one’s
thoughts gently and imperceptibly out of the channel in which they are chafing and boiling.
To be sure, it is only conducting them to turn a child’s mill: what signifies that?
the diversion is a relief, though the object is of little importance. I cannot tell what we
talked of.
“March 12.—I was sadly worried by the
black dog this morning, that vile palpitation of the heart—that tremor cordis—that hysterical passion which forces unbidden sighs
and tears, and falls upon a contented life like a drop of ink on white paper, which is not
the less a stain because it carries no meaning. I wrote three leaves, however, and the
story goes on.
“The dissolution of the Yeomanry was the act of the last
ministry. The present did not alter the measure, on account of the expense saved. I am, if
not the very oldest Yeoman in Scotland, one of the oldest, and have seen the rise,
progress, and now the fall of this very constitutional part of the national force. Its
efficacy, on occasions of insurrection, was sufficiently proved in the Radical time. But
besides, it kept up a spirit of harmony between the proprietors of land and the occupiers,
and made them known to and beloved by each
* W. A. Drummond Hay,
Esq. (now consul at Tangier), was at this time the deputy of his
cousin the Earl of Kinnoull, hereditary Lord
Lyon King at Arms.
other; and it gave to the young men a sort
of military and high-spirited character, which always does honour to a country. The
manufacturers are in great glee on this occasion. I wish Parliament, as they have turned
the Yeomen adrift somewhat scornfully, may not have occasion to roar them in again. ‘The eldrich knight gave up his arms With many a sorrowful sigh.’”
Sir Walter finished his novel by the end of March, and immediately set
out for London, where the last budget of proof-sheets reached him. The Fair Maid was, and continues to be highly popular,
and though never classed with his performances of the first file, it has undoubtedly
several scenes equal to what the best of them can show, and is on the whole a work of
brilliant variety and most lively interest. Though the Introduction of 1830 says a good
deal on the most original character, that of Connochar,
the reader may not be sorry to have one paragraph on that subject from the
Diary:—“December 5, 1827.—The fellow that swam the Tay,
and escaped, would be a good ludicrous character. But I have a mind to try him in the
serious line of tragedy. Miss Baillie has made her
Ethling a coward by temperament, and a hero when
touched by filial affection. Suppose a man’s nerves, supported by feelings of honour,
or say, by the spur of jealousy, sustaining him against constitutional timidity to a
certain point, then suddenly giving way, I think something tragic might be produced.
James Ballantyne’s criticism is too much
moulded upon the general taste of novels to admit (I fear) this species of reasoning. But
what can one do? I am hard up as far as imagination is concerned, yet the world calls for
novelty. Well, I’ll try my brave coward or cowardly brave
man. Valeat quantum.”
The most careful critic that has handled this Tale, while he picks many
holes in the plot, estimates the characters very highly. Of the glee-maiden, he well says;
“Louise is a delightful sketch.
Nothing can be more exquisite than the manner in which her story is partly told, and
partly hinted, or than the contrast between her natural and her professional
character;” and after discussing at some length Rothsay, Henbane, Ramorney, &c. &c. he comes to Connochar.
“This character “(says Mr Senior) “is perfectly tragic, neither too bad for
sympathy, nor so good as to render his calamity revolting; but its great merit is the
boldness with which we are called upon to sympathize with a deficiency which is generally
the subject of unmitigated scorn. It is impossible not to feel the deepest commiseration
for a youth cursed by nature with extreme sensibility both to shame and to fear, suddenly
raised from a life of obscurity and peace, to head a confederacy of warlike savages, and
forced immediately afterwards to elect, before the eyes of thousands, between a frightful
death and an ignominious escape. The philosophy of courage and cowardice is one of the
obscurest parts of human nature: partly because the susceptibility of fear is much affected
by physical causes, by habit, and by example; and partly because it is a subject as to
which men do not readily state the result of their own experience, and when they do state
it, are not always implicitly believed. The subject has been further perplexed, in modern
times, by the Scandinavian invention of the point of honour;—a doctrine which represents
the manifestation, in most cases, of even well-founded apprehension as fatal to all
nobility of character;—an opinion so little admitted by the classical world, that Homer has attributed to Hector, and Virgil to Turnus, certainly without supposing them dishonoured,
precisely the same conduct of which Sir Walter makes
suicide a consequence, without being an expiation. The result of all this has been that
scarcely any modem writers have made the various degrees of courage a source of much
variety and discrimination of character. They have given us indeed plenty of fire-eaters
and plenty of poltroons; and Shakspeare has painted
in Falstaff constitutional intrepidity unsupported by
honour; but by far the most usual modification of character among persons of vivid imagination, that in which a
quick feeling of honour combats a quick apprehension of danger, a character which is the
precise converse of Falstaff’s, has been left
almost untouched for Scott.”
I alluded, in an early part of these Memoirs (vol. ii. p. 255), to a
circumstance in Sir Walter’s conduct, which it was
painful to mention, and added, that in advanced life he himself spoke of it with a deep
feeling of contrition. Talking over this character of Connochar, just before the book appeared, he told me the unhappy fate of
his brother Daniel, and how he had declined to be
present at his funeral, or wear mourning for him. He added, “My secret motive, in
this attempt, was to perform a sort of expiation to my poor brother’s manes. I
have now learned to have more tolerance and compassion than I had in those
days.” I said he put me in mind of Samuel
Johnson’s standing bareheaded, in the last year of his life, on the
market-place of Uttoxeter, by way of penance for a piece of juvenile irreverence towards
his father. “Well, no matter” (said he), “perhaps that’s
not the worst thing in the Doctor’s story.”*
* See Croker’s
Boswell, octavo edition, Vol. v. p. 288.
CHAPTER IV. JOURNEY TO LONDON—CHARLECOTE-HALL—HOLLAND-HOUSE—CHISWICK—KENSINGTON
PALACE—RICHMOND
PARK—GILL’S-HILL—BOYD—SOTHEBY—COLERIDGE—SIR
T. ACLAND—BISHOP COPPLESTONE—MRS
ARKWRIGHT—LORD SIDMOUTH—LORD
ALVANLEY—NORTHCOTE—HAYDON—CHANTREY
AND CUNNINGHAM—ANECDOTES—LETTERS TO MR
TERRY—MRS LOCKHART—AND SIR ALEXANDER
WOOD—DEATH OF SIR WILLIAM FORBES—REVIEWS OF HAJJI BABA IN ENGLAND, AND
DAVY’SSALMONIA—ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN BEGUN—SECOND SERIES OF THE GRANDFATHER’S TALES PUBLISHED— APRIL—DECEMBER,
1828.
Sir Walter remained at this
time six weeks in London. His eldest son’s
regiment was stationed at Hampton Court; the second
had recently taken his desk at the Foreign Office, and was living at his sister’s in the Regent’s Park; he had thus
looked forward to a happy meeting with all his family—but he encountered scenes of sickness
and distress, in consequence of which I saw but little of him in general society. I shall
cull a few notices from his private volume, which, however, he now opened much less
regularly than formerly, and which offers a total blank for the latter half of the year
1828. In coming up to town he diverged a little for the sake of seeing the interesting
subject of the first of these extracts.
“April 8.—Learning from
Washington Irving’sdescription of Stratford,
that the hall of Sir Thomas Lucy, the
justice who rendered Warwickshire too hot for Shakspeare, was still extant, we went in quest of it.
“Charlecote is in high preservation, and inhabited
by Mr Lucy, descendant of the worshipful
Sir Thomas. The Hall is about three
hundred years old, a brick mansion with a gate-house in advance. It is
surrounded by venerable oaks, realizing the imagery which Shakspeare loved to dwell upon; rich verdant
pastures extend on every side, and numerous herds of deer were reposing in the
shade. All showed that the Lucy family had retained their
‘land and beeves.’ While we were surveying the antlered old hall,
with its painted glass and family pictures, Mr Lucy came
to welcome us in person, and to show the house, with the collection of
paintings, which seems valuable.
“He told me the park from which Shakspeare stole the buck was not that which
surrounds Charlecote, but belonged to a mansion at some distance, where
Sir Thomas Lucy resided at the time
of the trespass. The tradition went that they hid the buck in a barn, part of
which was standing a few years ago, but now totally decayed. This park no
longer belongs to the Lucys. The house bears no marks of
decay, but seems the abode of ease and opulence. There were some fine old
books, and I was told of many more which were not in order. How odd if a folio
Shakspeare should be found amongst them. Our early
breakfast did not permit taking advantage of an excellent repast offered by the
kindness of Mr and Mrs Lucy, the last a
lively Welshwoman. This visit gave me great pleasure; it really brought
Justice Shallow freshly before my
eyes;—the luces ‘which do become an old coat
well,’* were
* Henry IV., Act III., Scene 2.
not more plainly portrayed in his own armorials in the
hall window, than was his person in my mind’s eye. There is a picture
shown as that of the old Sir Thomas, but Mr Lucy conjectures it represents his son.
There were three descents of the same name of Thomas. The
portrait hath ‘the eye severe, and beard of formal cut,’
which fill up with judicial austerity the otherwise social physiognomy of the
worshipful presence, with his ‘fair round belly, with good capon
lined.’*
“Regent’s Park, April
17.—Made up my journal, which had fallen something behind. In this
phantasmagorial place the objects of the day come and depart like shadows. Went
to Murray’s, where I met Mr Jacob, the great economist. He is proposing
a mode of supporting the poor, by compelling them to labour under a species of
military discipline. I see no objection to it, only it will make a rebellion to
a certainty; and the tribes of Jacob will cut
Jacob’s throat.†
“Canning’s conversion from popular opinions was strangely
brought round. While he was studying in the Temple, and rather entertaining
revolutionary opinions, Godwin sent to
say that he was coming to breakfast with him, to speak on a subject of the
highest importance. Canning knew little of him, but
received his visit, and learned to his astonishment, that in expectation of a
new order of things, the English Jacobins designed to place him,
Canning, at the head of their revolution. He was much
struck, and asked time to think what course he should take—and having thought
the matter over, he went to Mr Pitt, and
made the Anti-Jacobin confession of faith, in which he persevered
* As You Like It, Act I., Scene 7.
† I believe Mr
Jacob published at this time some tracts concerning the
Poor Colonies instituted by the King of the Netherlands.
until ——. Canning
himself mentioned this to Sir W.
Knighton upon occasion of giving a place in the Charter-house of
some ten pounds a-year to Godwin’s
brother. He could scarce do less for one who had offered him the
dictator’s curule chair.
“Dined with Rogers with all my own family, and met Sharp, Lord John
Russell, Jekyll, and
others. The conversation flagged as usual, and jokes were fired like
minute-guns, producing an effect not much less melancholy. A wit should always
have an atmosphere congenial to him, otherwise he will not shine.
“April 18.—Breakfasted at
Hampstead with Joanna Baillie, and found
that gifted person extremely well, and in the display of all her native
knowledge of character and benevolence. I would give as much to have a capital
picture of her as for any portrait in the world. Dined with the Dean of
Chester, Dr Philpotts— ‘Where all above us was a solemn row Of priests and deacons—so were all below.’* There were the amiable Bishop of London (Howley), Copplestone,
whom I remember the first man at Oxford, now Bishop of Llandaff, and Dean of St
Paul’s (strongly intelligent), and other dignitaries, of whom I knew
less. It was a very pleasant day—the wigs against the wits for a guinea, in
point of conversation. Anne looked
queer, and much disposed to laugh, at finding herself placed betwixt two
prelates in black petticoats.
“April 19.—Breakfasted with
Sir George Phillips. Had his receipt
against the blossoms being injured by frost. It consists in watering them
plentifully before sunrise. This is like the mode of thawing beef. We
* Crabbe’s Tale of ‘the Dumb Orators.’
had a pleasant morning, much the better that Morritt was with us. Dined with Sir Robert Inglis, and met Sir Thomas Acland, my old and kind friend. I
was happy to see him. He may be considered now as the head of the religious
party in the House of Commons, a powerful body which Wilberforce long commanded. It is a difficult
situation; for the adaptation of religious motives to earthly policy is apt
among the infinite delusions of the human heart to be a snare. But I could
confide much in Sir T. Acland’s honour and
integrity. Bishop Bloomfield of Chester,
one of the most learned prelates of the church, also dined.
“April 22.—Sophia left this to take down poor Johnnie to Brighton. I fear—I fear—but we must
hope the best. Anne went with her
sister.
“Lockhart
and I dined with Sotheby, where we met a
large party, the orator of which was that extraordinary man Coleridge. After eating a hearty dinner,
during which he spoke not a word, he began a most learned harangue on the
Samothracian Mysteries, which he regards as affording the germ of all tales
about fairies past, present, and to come. He then diverged to Homer, whose Iliad he considered as a collection of poems by
different authors, at different times, during a century. Morritt, a zealous worshipper of the old bard,
was incensed at a system which would turn him into a polytheist, gave battle
with keenness, and was joined by Sotheby. Mr
Coleridge behaved with the utmost complaisance and temper, but
relaxed not from his exertions. ‘Zounds, I was never so bethumped with
words.’ Morritt’s impatience must have
cost him an extra sixpence worth of snuff.
“April 23.—Dined at
Lady Davy’s with Lord and Lady Lansdowne and several other fine folks—my keys were sent
to Bramah’s with my desk, so I have not had the
means of putting down matters regularly for several days. But who cares for the
whipp’d cream of London society?
“April 24.—Spent the day in
rectifying a road bill which drew a turnpike road through all the
Darnickers’ cottages, and a good field of my own. I got it put to rights.
I was in some apprehension of being obliged to address the Committee. I did not
fear them, for I suppose they are no wiser or better in their capacity of
legislators than I find them every day at dinner. But I feared for my
reputation. They would have expected something better than the occasion
demanded, or the individual could produce, and there would have been a failure.
We had one or two persons at home in great wretchedness to dinner. I was not
able to make any fight, and the evening went off as heavily as any I ever spent
in the course of my life.
“April 26.—We dined at
Richardson’s with the two
Chief Barons of England* and Scotland,† odd enough, the one being a
Scotsman and the other an Englishman—far the pleasantest day we have had. I
suppose I am partial, but I think the lawyers beat the bishops, and the bishops
beat the wits.
“April 26.—This morning I
went to meet a remarkable man, Mr Boyd of
the house of Boyd, Benfield, &
Co., which broke for a very large sum at the beginning of the war. Benfield went to the devil I believe.
Boyd, a man of very different stamp, went over to
Paris to look after some large claims which his house had
* Sir
William Alexander. †
Sir Samuel Shepherd.
on the French Government. They were such as, it seems,
they could not disavow, however they might be disposed to do so. But they used
every effort, by foul means and fair, to induce Mr Boyd to
depart. He was reduced to poverty; he was thrown into prison: and the most
flattering prospects were, on the other hand, held out to him if he would
compromise his claims. His answer was uniform. It was the property, he said, of
his creditors, and he would die ere he resigned it. His distresses were so
great, that a subscription was made amongst his Scottish friends, to which I
was a contributor, through the request of poor Will
Erskine. After the peace of Paris the money was restored, and,
faithful to the last, Boyd laid the whole at his
creditors’ disposal; stating, at the same time, that he was penniless
unless they consented to allow him a moderate sum in name of per centage, in
consideration of twenty years of exile, poverty, and danger, all of which evils
he might have escaped by surrendering their rights. Will it be believed, that a
muck-worm was base enough to refuse his consent to this deduction, alleging he
had promised to his father, on his death-bed, never to compromise this debt?
The wretch, however, was overpowered by the execrations of all around him, and
concurred, with others, in setting apart for Mr Boyd a sum
of L.40,000 or L.50,000 out of half a million. This is a man to whom statues
should be erected, and pilgrims should go to see him. He is good looking, but
old and infirm. Bright dark eyes and eyebrows contrast with his snowy hair, and
all his features mark vigour of principle and resolution.
“April 30.—We have Mr Adolphus, and his father, the celebrated lawyer, to breakfast,
and I was greatly delighted with the information of the latter. A barrister of extended practice, if he has
any talents at all, is the best companion in the world. Dined with Lord Alvanley and met Lord Fitzroy Somerset, Marquis and Marchioness of
Worcester, &c. Lord Alvanley’s
wit made this party very pleasant, as well as the kind reception of my friends
the Misses Arden.
“May 1.—Breakfasted with
Lord and Lady
Francis Gower, and enjoyed the splendid treat of hearing
Mrs Arkwright sing her own music,
which is of the highest order—no forced vagaries of the voice, no caprices of
tone, but all telling upon and increasing the feeling the words require. This
is ‘marrying music to immortal verse.’ Most people place
them on separate maintenance.*
“May 2.—I breakfasted with a
Mr ——, and narrowly escaped Mr Irving the celebrated preacher. The two
ladies of his house seemed devoted to his opinions, and quoted him at every
word. Mr —— himself made some apologies for the Millenium. He is a neat
antiquary, who thinks he ought to have been a man of letters, and that his
genius has been misdirected in
* Among other songs Mrs
Arkwright (see ante, p. 77), delighted Sir Walter with her own set of— “Farewell! Farewell!—the voice you
hear Has left its last soft tone with you, Its next must join the seaward cheer, And shout among the shouting crew,”
&c. He was sitting by me, at some distance from the lady, and
whispered as she closed, “capital words whose are they?
Byron’s I suppose, but
I don’t remember them.” He was astonished when I
told him that they were his own in the Pirate—he seemed pleased at the
moment—but said next minute—“You have distressed me—if memory
goes, all is up with me, for that was always my strong
point.”
turning towards the law. I endeavoured to combat this
idea, which his handsome house and fine family should have checked. Compare his
dwelling, his comforts, with poor Tom
Campbell’s.
“May 5.—Breakfasted with
Haydon, and sat for my head. I hope
this artist is on his legs again. The King
has given him a lift, by buying his clever picture of the Mock Election in the
King’s Bench prison, to which he is adding a second part, representing
the chairing of the member at the moment it was interrupted by the entry of the
guards. Haydon was once a great admirer and companion of
the champions of the Cockney school, and is now disposed to renounce them and
their opinions. To this kind of conversation I did not give much way. A painter
should have nothing to do with politics. He is certainly a clever fellow, but
too enthusiastic, which, however, distress seems to have cured in some degree.
His wife, a pretty woman, looked happy
to see me, and that is something. Yet it was very little I could do to help
them.*
“May 8.—Dined with Mrs Alexander of Ballochmyle: Lord and Lady
Meath, who were kind to us in Ireland, and a Scottish party,
pleasant from having the broad accents and honest thoughts of my native land. A
large circle in the evening. A gentleman came up to me and asked ‘If I
had seen the Casket, a
curious work, the most beautiful, the most highly ornamented,—and then the
editor or editress—a female so interesting,—might he ask a very great
favour?’ and
* Sir Walter had
shortly before been one of the contributors to a subscription for
Mr Haydon. The imprisonment
from which this subscription relieved the artist produced, I need
scarcely say, the picture mentioned in the Diary.
out he pulled a piece of this
pic-nic. I was really angry, and said for a subscription he might command
me—for a contributor—No. This may be misrepresented, but I care not. Suppose
this patron of the Muses gives five guineas to his distressed lady, he will
think he does a great deal, yet he takes fifty from me with the calmest air in
the world; for the communication is worth that if it be worth any thing. There
is no equalizing in the proposal.
“May 9.—Grounds of Foote’s farce of the Cozeners. Lady —— A certain Mrs
Phipps audaciously set up in a fashionable quarter of the town
as a person through whose influence, properly propitiated, favours and
situations of importance might certainly be obtained always for a
consideration. She cheated many people, and maintained the trick for months.
One trick was to get the equipages of Lord
North, and other persons of importance, to halt before her door,
as if their owners were within. With respect to most of them, this was effected
by bribing the drivers. But a gentleman who watched her closely, observed that
Charles J. Fox actually left his
carriage and went into the house, and this more than once. He was then, it must
be noticed, in the Ministry. When Mrs Phipps was blown up,
this circumstance was recollected as deserving explanation, which
Fox readily gave at Brookes’ and elsewhere. It
seems Mrs Phipps had the art to persuade him that she had
the disposal of what was then called a hyæna, that
is, an heiress—an immense Jamaica heiress, in whom she was willing to give or
sell her interest to Charles Fox. Without having perfect
confidence in the obliging proposal, the great statesman thought the thing
worth looking after, and became so earnest in it, that Mrs
Phipps was desirous to back out for fear of discovery. With this view she made confession one fine morning,
with many professions of the deepest feelings, that the hyæna had proved a
frail monster, and given birth to a girl or boy—no matter which. Even this did
not make Charles quit chase of the hyæna. He
intimated that if the cash was plenty and certain, the circumstance might be
overlooked. Mrs Phipps had nothing for it but to double
the disgusting dose. ‘The poor child,’ she said,
‘was unfortunately of a mixed colour, somewhat tinged with the
blood of Africa; no doubt Mr Fox was himself very
dark, and the circumstance might not draw attention,’ &c.
&c. This singular anecdote was touched upon by Foote,
and is the cause of introducing the negress into the Cozeners, though no express allusion to Charles
Fox was admitted. Lady —— tells me that, in
her youth, the laugh was universal so soon as the black woman appeared. It is
one of the numerous hits that will be lost to posterity.
“This day, at the request of Sir William Knighton, I sat to Northcote, who is to introduce himself in the
same piece in the act of painting me, like some pictures of the Venetian
school. The artist is an old man, low in stature, and bent with years—fourscore
at least. But the eye is quick and the countenance noble. A pleasant companion,
familiar with recollections of Sir
Joshua, Samuel Johnson,
Burke, Goldsmith, &c. His account of the last confirms all that we
have heard of his oddities.
“May 11.—Another long
sitting to the old Wizard Northcote. He
really resembles an animated mummy. Dined with his
Majesty in a very private party, five or six only being present.
I was received most kindly, as usual. It is impossible to conceive a more
friendly manner than that his Majesty used towards me. I spoke to Sir William Knighton about the dedication of
the collected novels, and he says
it will be highly well taken.*
“May 17.—A day of busy
idleness. Richardson came and
breakfasted with me, like a good fellow. Then I went to Mr Chantrey. Thereafter, about 12
o’clock, I went to breakfast the second at Lady Shelley’s, where there was a great morning party. A
young lady begged a lock of my hair, which was not worth refusing. I stipulated
for a kiss, which I was permitted to take. From this I went to the Duke of Wellington, who gave me some hints or
rather details. Afterwards I drove out to Chiswick, where I had never been
before. A numerous and gay party were assembled to walk and enjoy the beauties
of that Palladian dome. The place and highly ornamented gardens belonging to it
resemble a picture of Watteau. There is
some affectation in the picture, but in the ensemble the original looked very
well. The Duke of Devonshire received every
one with the best possible manners. The scene was dignified by the presence of
an immense elephant, who, under charge of a groom, wandered up and down, giving
an air of Asiatic pageantry to the entertainment. I was never before sensible
of the dignity which largeness of size and freedom of movement give to this
otherwise very ugly animal. As I was to dine at Holland House, I did not
partake in the magnificent repast which was offered to us, and took myself off
about five o’clock. I contrived to make a demi-toilette at Holland House,
rather than drive all the way to London. Rogers came to the dinner, which was very entertaining.
Lady Holland pressed us to stay all
night, which we did accordingly.
“May 18.—The freshness of
the air, the singing of
* The Magnum
Opus was dedicated to King
George IV.
the birds, the beautiful aspect of nature, the size of
the venerable trees, gave me altogether a delightful feeling this morning. It
seemed there was pleasure even in living and breathing without any thing else.
We (i. e.Rogers and I) wandered into a green lane, bordered with fine
trees, which might have been twenty miles from a town. It will be a great pity
when this ancient house must come down and give way to rows and crescents. It
is not that Holland House is fine as a building,—on the contrary it has a
tumble-down look; and although decorated with the bastard Gothic of James I.’s time, the front is heavy. But it
resembles many respectable matrons, who having been absolutely ugly during
youth, acquire by age an air of dignity. But one is chiefly affected by the air
of deep seclusion which is spread around the domain.
“May 19.—Dined by command
with the Duchess of Kent. I was very kindly
recognised by Prince Leopold—and presented
to the little Princess Victoria—I hope
they will change her name—the heir-apparent to the crown as things now stand.
How strange that so large and fine a family as that of his late Majesty should have died off, or decayed into
old age, with so few descendants. Prince George of
Cumberland is, they say, a fine boy about nine years old—a bit
of a Pickle. This little lady is educating with much care, and watched so
closely that no busy maid has a moment to whisper, ‘You are heir of
England.’ I suspect if we could dissect the little heart, we should find
that some pigeon or other bird of the air had carried the matter. She is fair,
like the Royal family—the Duchess herself very pleasing and affable in her
manners. I sat by Mr Spring Rice, a very
agreeable man. There were also Charles
Wynn and his lady—and the
evening, for a court evening, went agreeably off. I am commanded for two days by
Prince Leopold, but will send excuses.
“May 24.—This day dined at
Richmond Park with Lord Sidmouth. Before
dinner his Lordship showed me letters which passed between his father,
Dr. Addington, and the great
Lord Chatham. There was much of that
familiar friendship which arises, and must arise, between an invalid, the head
of an invalid family, and their medical adviser, supposing the last to be a
wise and wellbred man. The character of Lord
Chatham’s handwriting is strong and bold, and his
expressions short and manly. There are intimations of his partiality for
William, whose health seems to have been precarious
during boyhood. He talks of William imitating him in all
he did, and calling for ale because his father was recommended to drink it.
‘If I should smoke,’ he said,
‘William would instantly call for a
pipe;’ and, he wisely infers, ‘I must take care what I
do.’ The letters of the late William
Pitt are of great curiosity; but as, like all real letters of
business, they only allude to matters with which his correspondent is well
acquainted, and do not enter into details, they would require an ample
commentary. I hope Lord Sidmouth will supply this, and
have urged it as much as I can. I think, though I hate letters, and abominate
interference, I will write to him on this subject. Here I met my old and much
esteemed friend, Lord Stowell, looking very
frail and even comatose. Quantum
mutatus. He was one of the pleasantest men I ever knew.
“Respecting the letters, I picked up from those of
Pitt that he was always extremely
desirous of peace with France, and even reckoned upon it at a moment when he
ought to have despaired. I suspect this false view of the state of France (for
such it was) which in-duced the British Minister to look
for peace when there was no chance of it, damped his ardour in maintaining the
war. He wanted the lofty ideas of his father—you read it in his handwriting,
great statesman as he was. I saw a letter or two of Burke’s, in which there is an epanchement de cœur not visible in those of
Pitt, who writes like a Premier to his colleague.
Burke was under the strange hallucination that his
son, who predeceased him, was a man of greater talents than himself. On the
contrary, he had little talent, and no nerve. On moving some resolutions in
favour of the Catholics, which were ill-received by the House of Commons,
young Burke actually ran away, which
an Orangeman compared to a cross-reading in the newspapers. ‘Yesterday
the Catholic resolutions were moved, &c. but the pistol missing fire,
the villains ran off!!’”
“May 25.—After a morning of
letter-writing, leave-taking, papers destroying, and God knows what trumpery,
Sophia and I set out for Hampton
Court, carrying with us the following lions and lionesses—Samuel Rogers, Tom
Moore, Wordsworth, with
wife and daughter. “We were very kindly and properly received by
Walter and his wife, and had a very pleasant day. At parting
Rogers gave me a gold-mounted pair of glasses, which I
will not part with in a hurry. I really like S. R., and
have always found him most friendly.”
This is the last London entry; but I must mention two circumstances
that, occurred during that visit. Breakfasting one morning with Allan Cunningham, and commending one of his publications, he looked round
the table and said, “what are you going to make of all these boys,
Allan?” “I ask that question often at my
own heart,” said Allan, “and I cannot answer
it.” “What does
the eldest point to?” “The callant would fain be a soldier,
Sir Walter—and I have a half promise of a
commission in the king’s army for him; but I wish rather he could go to India,
for there the pay is a maintenance, and one does not need interest at every step to get
on.” Scott dropped the subject, but went an hour
afterwards to Lord Melville (who was now President of
the Board of Control), and begged a cadetship for young Cunningham.
Lord Melville promised to enquire if he had one at his disposal,
in which case he would gladly serve the son of honest Allan; but the
point being thus left doubtful, Scott, meeting Mr John Loch, one of the East India Directors, at dinner
the same evening, at Lord Stafford’s, applied to
him, and received an immediate assent. On reaching home at night he found a note from
Lord Melville, intimating that he had enquired, and was happy in
complying with his request. Next morning Sir Walter appeared at
Sir F. Chantrey’s breakfast table, and
greeted the sculptor (who is a brother of the angle) with—“I suppose it has
sometimes happened to you to catch one trout (which was all you thought of) with the
fly, and another with the bobber. I have done so, and I think I shall land them both.
Don’t you think Cunningham would like very well to have
cadetships for two of those fine lads?” “To be sure he
would,” said Chantrey, “and if you’ll secure
the commissions, I’ll make the outfit easy.” Great was the joy in
Allan’s household on this double good news; but I should
add, that before the thing was done he had to thank another benefactor. Lord
Melville, after all, went out of the Board of Control before he had been
able to fulfil his promise; but his successor, Lord
Ellenborough, on hearing the circumstances of the case, desired
Cunningham to set his mind at rest, and both his young men are now
prospering in the India service.
Another friend’s private affairs occupied more unpleasantly much
of Scott’s attention during this residence in
London. He learned, shortly after his arrival, that misfortunes (as foreseen by himself in
May, 1825) had gathered over the management of the Adelphi Theatre.* The following letter
has been selected from among several on the same painful subject.
To Daniel Terry, Esq. Boulogne-sur-Mer.
“London, Lockhart’s, April 15, 1828. “My dear Terry,
“I received with sincere distress your most
melancholy letter. Certainly want of candour with one’s friends is
blameable, and procrastination in circumstances of embarrassment is highly
unwise. But they bring such a fearful chastisement on the party who commits
them that he may justly expect, not the reproaches, but the sympathy and
compassion of his friends; at least of all such whose conscience charges them
with errors of their own. For my part I feel as little title, as God knows I
have wish, to make any reflections on the matter, more than are connected with
the most sincere regret on your own account. The sum at which I stand noted in
the schedule is of no consequence in the now more favourable condition of my
affairs, and the loss to me personally is the less, that I always considered
L.200 of the same as belonging to my godson; but he is young, and may not miss
the loss when he comes to be fitted out for the voyage of life; we must hope
the best. I told your solicitor that I desired he would consider me as a friend
of yours, desirous, to take as a creditor the measures which seemed best to
forward your interest. It might be inconvenient to me were I called upon to
make up such instalments of
* See ante,
vol. vi. p. 20.
the price of the theatre as are
unpaid, but of this, I suppose, there can be no great danger. Pray let me know
as soon as you can, how this stands. I think you are quite right to stand to
the worst, and that your retiring was an injudicious measure which cannot be
too soon retraced, coute qui coute. I
am at present in London with Lockhart,
who, as well as my daughter, are in deep sorrow for what has happened, as they,
as well as I on their account, consider themselves as deeply obliged to
Mrs Terry’s kindness, as well
as from regard to you. These hard times must seem still harder while you are in
a foreign country. I am not, you know, so wealthy as I have been, but L.20 or
L.30 are heartily at your service if you will let me know how the remittance
can reach you. It does not seem to me that an arrangement with your creditors
will be difficult; but for God’s sake do not temporize and undertake
burdens which you cannot discharge, and which will only lead to new
difficulties.
“As to your views about an engagement at Edinburgh I
doubt much, though an occasional visit would probably succeed. My countrymen,
taken in their general capacity, are not people to have recourse to in adverse
circumstances. John Bull is a better beast
in misfortune. Your objections to an American trip are quite satisfactory,
unless the success of your Solicitor’s measures should in part remove
them, when it may be considered as a pis-aller. As to Walter there can be no difficulty in procuring his admission to
the Edinburgh Academy, and if he could be settled with his grandfather, or
under his eye, as to domestic accommodation, I would willingly take care of his
schooling, and look after him when I am in town. I shall be anxious, indeed,
till I hear that you are once more restored to the unrestrained use of your
talents; for I am sensible how dreadfully annoying must
be your present situation, which leaves so much time for melancholy
retrospection without any opportunity of exertion. Yet this state, like others,
must be endured with patience; the furiously impatient horse only plunges
himself deeper in the slough, as our old hunting excursions may have taught us.
In general, the human mind is strong in proportion to the internal energy which
it possesses. Evil fortune is as transient as good, and if the endangered ship
is still manned by a sturdy and willing crew, why then ‘Up and rig a jury foremast, She rights, she rights, boys, we’re offshore.’ This was the system I argued upon in my late distresses, and, therefore, I
strongly recommend it to you; I beg my kindest compliments to Mrs Terry, and I hope better days may come. I
shall be here till the beginning of May; therefore we may meet; believe me,
very truly yours,
Walter Scott.”
On the afternoon of the 28th of May Sir
Walter started for the north, but could not resist going out of his way to
see the spot where “Mr William Weare, who
dwelt in Lyon’s Inn,” was murdered. His Diary says:
“Our elegant researches carried us out of the high-road and
through a labyrinth of intricate lanes, which seem made on purpose to afford strangers
the full benefit of a dark night and a drunk driver, in order to visit Gill’s
Hill, in Hertfordshire, famous for the murder of Mr
Weare. The place has the strongest title to the description of Wordsworth, ‘A merry spot ’tis said in days of yore, But something ails it now—the place is curst.’ The principal part of the house has been destroyed, and only the kitchen remains standing. The garden
has been dismantled, though a few laurels and flowering-shrubs, run wild, continue to
mark the spot. The fatal pond is now only a green swamp, but so near the house that one
cannot conceive how it was ever chosen as a place of temporary concealment for the
murdered body. Indeed the whole history of the murder, and the scenes which ensued, are
strange pictures of desperate and short-sighted wickedness. The feasting—the
singing—the murderer, with his hands still bloody, hanging round the neck of one of the
females the watch-chain of the murdered man—argue the utmost apathy. Even
Probart, the most frightened of the party, fled no farther for
relief than to the brandy bottle, and is found in the very lane, nay, at the very spot
of the murder, seeking for the weapon, and exposing himself to the view of the
passengers. Another singular mark of stupid audacity was their venturing to wear the
clothes of their victim. There was a want of foresight in the whole arrangements of the
deed, and the attempts to conceal it, which a professed robber would not have
exhibited. There was just one shade of redeeming character about a business so brutal,
perpetrated by men above the very lowest rank of life—it was the mixture of revenge,
which afforded some relief to the circumstances of treachery and premeditation. But
Weare was a cheat,* and had no doubt pillaged Thurtell, who therefore deemed he might take greater
liberties with him than with others. The dirt of the present habitation equalled its
wretched desolation, and a truculent-looking hag, who showed us the place, and received
half-a-crown, looked not unlike the natural inmate of such a mansion. She hinted as
much herself, saying the landlord had dis-
* Weare, Thurtell, and all the rest were professed
gamblers. See ante, Vol. VI. p. 330.
mantled the place, because no respectable person would live
there. She seems to live entirely alone, and fears no ghosts, she says. One thing about
this tragedy was never explained. It is said that Weare, as is the
habit of such men, always carried about his person, and between his flannel waistcoat
and shirt, a sum of ready money, equal to L.1500 or L.2000. No such money was ever
recovered, and as the sum divided by Thurtell among his
accomplices was only about L.20, he must, in slang phrase, have bucketed his palls.
“May 29.—We travelled from Alconbury
Hill to Ferry Bridge, upwards of a hundred miles, amid all the beauties of flourish and
verdure which spring awakens at her first approach in the midland counties of England,
but without any variety, save those of the season’s making. I do believe this
great north road is the dullest in the world, as well as the most convenient for the
travellers. The skeleton at Barnby Moor has deserted his gibbet, and that is the only
change I recollect.
“Rokeby, May 30.—We left Ferry Bridge-at
seven, and reached this place at past three. A mile from the house we met Morritt, looking for us. I had great pleasure in
finding myself at Rokeby, and recollecting a hundred passages of past time.
Morritt looks well and easy in his mind, which I am delighted
to see. He is now one of my oldest, and, I believe, one of my most sincere friends; a
man unequalled in the mixture of sound good sense, high literary cultivation, and the
kindest and sweetest temper that ever graced a human bosom. His nieces are much
attached to him, and are deserving and elegant, as well as beautiful young women. What
there is in our partiality to female beauty that commands a species of temperate homage
from the aged, as well as ecstatic admiration
from the young, I cannot conceive; but it is certain that a very large portion of some
other amiable quality is too little to counterbalance the absolute want of this
advantage. I, to whom beauty is, and shall henceforward be a picture, still look upon
it with the quiet devotion of an old worshipper, who no longer offers incense on the
shrine, but peaceably presents his inch of taper, taking special care in doing so not
to burn his own fingers. Nothing in life can be more ludicrous or contemptible than an
old man aping the passions of his youth.
“Talking of youth, there was a certain professor at Cambridge
who used to keep sketches of all the lads who, from their conduct at college, seemed to
bid fair for distinction in life. He showed them one day to an old shrewd sarcastic
master of arts, who looked over the collection, and then observed, ‘A promising
nest of eggs; what a pity the great part will turn out addle!’ And so they
do:—looking round amongst the young men one sees to all appearances fine flourish—but
it ripens not.
“May 31.—I have finished Napier’sWar in the Peninsula.* It is written in the spirit
of a Liberal, but the narrative is distinct and clear. He has, however, given a bad
sample of accuracy in the case of Lord Strangford,
where his pointed affirmation has been as pointedly repelled. It is evident he would
require probing. His defence of Moore is
spirited and well argued, though it is evident he defends the statesman as much as the
general. As a Liberal and a military man,
Napier finds it difficult to steer his course. The former
character calls on him to plead for the insur-
* The first volume of Colonel
Napier’s work had recently been published.
gent Spaniards; the latter induces him to palliate the cruelties
of the French. Good-even to him until next volume, which I shall long to see. This was
a day of pleasure, and nothing else.”
Next night Sir Walter rested at
Carlisle. “A sad place,” says the Diary, “in my domestic
remembrances, since here I married my poor Charlotte. She is gone, and I am following faster, perhaps, than I wot off.
It is something to have lived and loved; and our poor children are so hopeful and
affectionate, that it chastens the sadness attending the thoughts of our separation. My
books being finished, I lighted on an odd volume of the Gentleman’s Magazine, a work in which, as in a
pawnbroker’s shop, much of real curiosity and value are stowed away amid the
frippery and trumpery of those reverend old gentlewomen who were the regular
correspondents of Mr Urban.”
His companion wrote thus a day
or two afterwards to her sister*—“Early in
the morning before we started, papa took me with him to the Cathedral. This he had
often done before; but he said he must stand once more on the spot where he married
poor mamma. After that we went to the Castle, where a new showman went through the old
trick of pointing out Fergus Mac Ivor’s very
dungeon. Peveril said ‘Indeed? Are you
quite sure, sir?’ And on being told there could be no doubt, was troubled
with a fit of coughing, which ended in a laugh. The man seemed exceeding indignant: so
when Papa moved on, I whispered who it was. I wish you had seen the man’s start,
and how he stared and bowed as he
* I copy from a letter which has no date, so that I cannot
be quite sure of this being the halt at Carlisle it refers to. I once witnessed
a scene almost exactly the same at Stirling Castle, where an old soldier called
Sir Walter’s attention to the
“very dungeon” of Rhoderick
Dhu.
parted from us; and then rammed his keys into
his pocket, and went off at a hand-gallop to warn the rest of the garrison. But the
carriage was ready, and we escaped a row.”
They reached Abbotsford that night, and a day or two afterwards
Edinburgh; where Sir Walter was greeted with the
satisfactory intelligence, that his plans as to the “opus magnum” had been considered at a meeting of
his trustees, and finally approved in toto. As
the scheme inferred a large outlay on drawings and engravings, and otherwise, this decision
had been looked for with much anxiety by him and Mr
Cadell. He says, “I trust it will answer; yet who can warrant the
continuance of popularity? Old Nattali Corri,
who entered into many projects, and could never set the sails of a windmill to catch
the aura popularis, used to say he believed
that, were he to turn baker, it would put bread out of fashion. I have had the better
luck to dress my sails to every wind; and so blow on, good wind, and spin round,
whirligig.” The Corri here alluded to was an unfortunate
adventurer, who, among many other wild schemes, tried to set up an Italian Opera at
Edinburgh.
The Diary for the next month records the usual meeting at Blair-Adam
but nothing worth quoting, that was done or said, except, perhaps, these two scraps
“Salutation of two old Scottish
Lairds—‘Ye’re maist obedient hummil servant,
Tannachy-Tulloch.’—‘Your nain man, Kilspindie.’
“Hereditary descent in the Highlands. A
clergyman showed John Thomson the island of Inchmachome, on the
Port of Monteith, and pointed out the boatman as a remarkable person, the
representative of the hereditary gardeners of the Earls of Monteith, while these Earls
existed. His son, a puggish boy, follows up the theme,
—‘Feyther, when Donald MacCorkindale dees will not the
family be extinct?’—Father ‘No; I believe there is a
man in Balquhidder who takes up the succession.’”
During the remainder of this year, as I already mentioned, Sir Walter never opened his “locked book.” Whether
in Edinburgh or the country, his life was such, that he describes himself, in several
letters, as having become “a writing automaton.” He had completed, by
Christmas, the Second Series of Tales on
Scottish History, and made considerable progress in another novel—Anne of Geierstein: he had also drawn up for the
Quarterly Review his article on Mr
Morier’sHajji Baba
in England; and that delightful
one on Sir Humphry Davy’sSalmonia—which,
like those on Planting and Gardening,
abounds in sweet episodes of personal reminiscence: And, whenever he had not proof-sheets
to press him, his hours were bestowed on the opus
magnum.
A few extracts from his correspondence may supply in part this blank in
the Diary. Several of them touch on the affairs of Mr
Terry, whose stamina were not
sufficient to resist the stroke of misfortune. He had a paralytic seizure, very shortly
after the ruin of his theatre was made public. One, addressed to a dear and early friend,
Sir Alexander Wood, was written on the death of
his brother-in-law, Sir William Forbes of
Pitsligo—the same modest, gentle, and high-spirited man with whose history
Sir Walter’s had (as the Diary of 1826 tells)
been very remarkably intertwined.
To J. G. Lockhart, Esq. Regent’s Park.
“Abbotsford, July 14, 1828 “My dear L.
“I wrote myself blind and sick last week about * * * * † God forgive me for
having thought it possible that a schoolmaster should be out and out a rational
being. I have a letter from Terry—but
written by his poor wife—his former one
was sadly scrawled. I hope he may yet get better—but I suspect the shot has
gone near the heart. ‘O what a world of worlds were it, Would sorrow, pain, and sickness spare it, And aye a rowth roast-beef and claret; Syne wha would starve?’
“If it be true that Longman and Co. have offered L.1000 for a history of Ireland,
Scotland must stand at fifty per cent discount, for they lately offered me
L.500 for one of the latter country, which of course I declined. I have also
had Murray’s request to do some
biography for his new undertaking.‡ But I really can’t think of any
Life I could easily do, excepting Queen
Mary’s, and that I decidedly would not do, because my
opinion, in point of fact, is contrary both to the popular feeling and to my
own. I see, by the by, that your Life of Burns is going to press again, and therefore send you a few
letters which may be of use to you. In one of them (to that singular old
curmudgeon, Lady Winifred Constable) you
will see he plays high Jacobite, and, on that account, it is curious; though I
imagine his Jacobitism, like my own, belonged to the fancy rather than the
reason. He was, however, a great Pittite down to a certain period. There were
some passing stupid verses in the papers, attacking and defending his satire on
a certain preacher,
† These letters, chiefly addressed to
Sir Walter’s excellent friend, James Heywood Markland, Esq. (Editor
of the Chester Mysteries), were on a delicate subject connected with
the incipient arrangements of King’s College, London.
‡ Mr
Murray of Albemarle Street was at this time projecting
his Family Library, one of the many imitations of Constable’s last scheme.
whom he termed ‘an unco calf.’ In one of
them occurred these lines in vituperation of the adversary— ‘A Whig, I guess. But Rab’s a Tory, An gies us mony a funny story.’
“This was in 1787—Ever yours,
Walter Scott.”
To Robert Cadell, Esq., Edinburgh.
“Abbotsford, 4th October, 1828. “My dear Sir,
“We were equally gratified and surprised by the
arrival of the superb time-piece, with which you have ornamented our halls.
There are grand discussions where it is to be put, and we are only agreed upon
one point, that it is one of the handsomest things of the kind we ever saw, and
that we are under great obligations to the kind donor. On my part, I shall
never look on it without recollecting that the employment of my time is a
matter of consequence to you, as well as myself.*
“I send you two letters, of which copies will be
requisite for the magnum opus.
They must be copied separately. I wish you would learn from Mr Walter Dickson, with my best respects, the
maiden name of Mrs Goldie, and the proper way in which she
ought to be designated. Another point of information I wish to have is,
concerning the establishment of the King’s beadsmen or blue-gowns. Such
should occur in any account of the Chapel-Royal, to which they were an
appendage, but I have looked into Arnott
and Maitland, without being able to find
any thing. My friend, Dr Lee, will know at
once where this is to be sought for.
* The allusion is to a clock in the style of Louis Quatorze, now in the drawing-room at
Abbotsford.
“Here is a question. Burns in his poetry repeatedly states the idea of his becoming
a beggar—these passages I have. But there is a remarkable one in some of his
prose, stating with much spirit the qualifications he possessed for the
character. I have looked till I am sick, through all the letters of his which I
have seen, and cannot find this. Do you know any amateur of the Ayrshire Bard
who can point it out? It will save time, which is precious with me.*
“J. B. has
given me such a dash of criticism, that I have laid by the Maid of the Mist for a few days, but I am working
hard, mean-while, at the illustrations, so no time is lost.—Yours very truly,
Walter Scott.”
To Mrs Lockhart, Brighton.
“Abbotsford, 24th October, 1828. “My dear Sophia,
“I write to you rather than to the poor
Terrys, on the subject of their plans, which appear to
me to require reconsideration, as I have not leisure so to modify my
expressions as to avoid grating upon feelings which may be sore enough already.
But if I advise I must be plain. The plan of a cottage in this neighbourhood is
quite visionary. London or its vicinity is the best place for a limited income,
because you can get every thing you want without taking a pennyweight more of
it than you have occasion for. In the country (with us at least) if you want a
basin of milk every day, you must keep a cow—if you want a bunch of straw, you
must have a farm. But what is still worse, it seems to me that such a plan
would remove Terry out of his natural
* These queries all point to the annotation of
The Antiquary.
sphere of action. It is no easy matter, at any rate, to
retreat from the practice of an art to the investigation of its theory; but
common sense says, that if there is one branch of literature which has a chance
of success for our friend, it must be that relating to the drama. Dramatic
works, whether designed for the stage or the closet,—dramatic biography (an
article in which the public is always interested)—dramatic criticism these can
all be conducted with best advantage in London, or, rather, they can be
conducted nowhere else. In coming down to Scotland, therefore,
Terry would be leaving a position in which, should he
prove able to exert himself and find the public favourable, he might possibly
do as much for his family as he could by his profession. But then he will
require to be in book-shops and publishing houses, and living among those up to
the current of public opinion. And although poor
Terry’s spirits might not at first be up to this
exertion, he should remember that the power of doing things easily is only to
be acquired by resolution and habit, and if he really could give heart and mind
to literature in any considerable degree, I can’t see how, amidst so many
Bijoux, and Albums, and Souvenirs—not to mention daily papers, critics,
censors, and so forth—I cannot see how he could fail to make L.200 or L.300
a-year. In Edinburgh there is nothing of this kind going forwards, positively
nothing. Since Constable’s fall,
all exertion is ended in the Gude Town in the publishing business, excepting
what I may not long be able to carry on.
“We have had little Walter Terry with us. He is a nice boy. I have got him sent to
the New Academy in Edinburgh, and hope he will do well. Indeed, I have good
hopes as to them all, but the prospect of success must remain, first, with the
restoration of Terry to the power of
thought and labour, a matter which is in God’s hand; and, secondly, on the choice he shall make of a
new sphere of occupation. On these events no mortal can have influence, unless
so far as Mrs Terry may be able to exert
over him that degree of power which mind certainly possesses over body.
“Our worthy old aunt, Lady Raeburn, is gone, and I am now the eldest living person of
my father’s family. My old friend, Sir
William Forbes, is extremely ill, dying I fear, and the winter
seems to approach with more than usual gloom. We are well here, however, and
send love to Lockhart and the babies. I
want to see L. much, and hope he may make a run down at
Christmas.
“You will take notice, that all the advice I venture
to offer to the Terrys is according as matters now stand.*
Indeed, I think he is better now, than when struggling against a losing
concern, turning worse every day. With health I have little doubt he may do
well yet, and without it what can any one do? Poor Rose, he too seems to be
very badly, and so end, if I lose him, wit, talent, frolic beyond the bounds of
sobriety, all united with an admirable heart and feelings.
“Besides all other objections to Terry’s plan, the poor invalid would be
most uncomfortable here. As my guest, it was another thing; but without power
to entertain the better sort of folk, and liable from his profession to the
prejudices of our middling people, without means too of moving about, he must,
while we are not at Abbotsford, be an absolute hermit. Besides, health may be
restored so as to let him act again—regimen and quiet living do much in such
cases and he should not rashly throw up professional connexions. If they
* Mr Terry
died in London on the 22d June, 1829. His widow to whom these Memoirs have owed many of their
materials, is now (1837), married to Mr
Charles Richardson of Tulse Hill, the author of the
well-known Dictionary of the English Language, &c.
be bent on settling in Scotland, a small house in
Edinburgh would be much better than the idea of residing here.
“I have been delighted with your views of coming
back to Chiefswood next summer,—but had you not better defer that for another
year? Here is plenty of room for you all—plenty of beef and mutton—plenty of
books for L., and he should have the little parlour (the monkey-room, as
Morritt has christened it)
inviolate—and he and I move on easily without interrupting each other. Pray
think of all this, and believe that, separated as I am so much from you both
and the grandchildren, the more I can see of you all while I have eyes left to
see you with, the greater will be my pleasure. I am turning a terrible fixture
with rheumatism, and go about little but in the carriage, and round the doors.
A change of market-days, but seams will slit, and elbows will out. My general
health is excellent.—I am always, dearest, Sophia, your affectionate father,
Walter Scott.”
To Sir Alexander Wood, &c. &c. &c.,
Colinton House, Edinburgh.
“Abbotsford, Oct. 28, 1828. “My dear Sir Alexander,
“Your letter brought me the afflicting intelligence
of the death of our early and beloved friend Sir
William. I had little else to expect, from the state of health
in which he was when I last saw him, but that circumstance does not diminish
the pain with which I now reflect that I shall never see him more. He was a man
who, from his habits, could not be intimately known to many, although every
thing which he did partook of that high feeling and generosity which belongs
perhaps to a better age than that we live in. In him I feel I have sustained a
loss which no after years of my life can fill up to me. Our early friendship none knew
better than you; and you also well know that if I look back to the gay and
happy hours of youth, they must be filled with recollections of our departed
friend. In the whole course of life our friendship has been uninterrupted as
his kindness has been unwearied. Even the last time I saw him (so changed from
what I knew him) he came to town when he was fitter to have kept his room,
merely because he could be of service to some affairs of mine. It is most
melancholy to reflect that the life of a man whose principles were so
excellent, and his heart so affectionate, should have, in the midst of external
prosperity, been darkened, and I fear, I may say, shortened, by domestic
affliction. But ‘those whom He loveth, he chasteneth;’ and
the o’er-seeing Providence, whose ways are as just and kind as they are
inscrutable, has given us, in the fate of our dear friend, an example that we
must look to a better world for the reward of sound religion, active
patriotism, and extended benevolence. I need not write more to you on this
subject; you must feel the loss more keenly than any one. But there is
‘another and a better world,’ in which, I trust in God,
those who have loved each other in this transitory scene, may meet and
recognise the friends of youth, and companions of more advanced years.
“I beg my kindest compliments and sincere expression
of sympathy to Lady Wood, and to any of
the sorrowing family who may be gratified by the interest of one of their
father’s oldest friends and most afflicted survivors.
“God bless you, my dear Wood! and I am sure you will believe me
Yours in sorrow as in gladness, Walter Scott.”
To J. G. Lockhart, Esq. Brighton.
“October 30, 1828. “Dear John,
“I have a sad affliction in the death of poor
Sir William Forbes. You loved him
well, I know, but it is impossible that you should enter into all my feelings
on this occasion. My heart bleeds for his children. God help all!
“Your scruples about doing an epitome of the Life of Bony, for the Family
Library that is to be, are a great deal over delicate. My book in nine thick
volumes can never fill the place which our friend Murray wants you to fill, and which, if you don’t, some
one else will right soon. Moreover, you took much pains in helping me when I
was beginning my task, which I afterwards greatly regretted that Constable had no means of remunerating, as no
doubt he intended, when you were giving him so much good advice in laying down
his grand plans about the Miscellany. By all means do what the Emperor asks. He
is what Emperor Nap. was not, much a
gentleman, and, knowing our footing in all things, would not have proposed any
thing that ought to have excited scruples on your side. Alas, poor
Crafty! Do you remember his exultation when my
Bony affair was first proposed? Good God, I see him as
he then was at this moment—how he swelled and rolled and reddened, and
outblarneyed all blarney! Well, so be it. I hope ‘After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.’* But he has cost me many a toilsome dreary day, and drearier night, and
will cost me more yet.
“I am getting very unlocomotive—something like
* Macbeth.
an old cabinet that looks well enough
in its own corner, but will scarce bear wheeling about even to be dusted. But
my work has been advancing gaily, or at least rapidly nevertheless, all this
harvest. Master Littlejohn will soon
have three more tomes in his hand, and the Swiss story too will be ready early in the year.
I shall send you Vol. I. with wee
Johnnie’s affair. Fat
James, as usual, has bored and bothered me with his criticisms,
many of which, however, may have turned to good. At first my not having been in
Switzerland was a devil of a poser for him—but had I not the honour of an
intimate personal acquaintance with every pass in the Highlands; and if that
were not enough, had I not seen pictures and prints galore? I told him I supposed he was becoming a geologist, and afraid
of my misrepresenting the strata of some rock on which I
had to perch my Maid of the Mist, but that he should be too good a Christian to
join those humbugging sages, confound them, who are all tarred with the same
stick as Mr Whiston— ‘Who proved as sure as God’s in Gloster, That Moses was a grand impostor;’* and that at any rate I had no mind to rival the accuracy of the traveller,
I forget who, that begins his chapter on Athens with a disquisition on the formation of the Acropolis Rock. Mademoiselle de Geierstein, is now, however, in a
fair way—I mean of being married and a’ the lave o’t, and I of
having her ladyship off my hands. I have also twined off a world of not bad
balaam in the way of notes, &c., for my Magnum,
which if we could but manage the artists decently, might soon be afloat, and
will, I do think, do wonders for my extrication. I have no other news to
trouble you
* Swift.
with. It is possible the Quarterly may be quite right to take the
Anti-Catholic line so strongly; but I greatly doubt the prudence of the thing,
for I am convinced the question must and will be carried very soon, whoever may
or may not be Minister; and as to the Duke of
Wellington, my faith is constant, that there is no other man
living who can work out the salvation of this country. I take some credit to
myself for having foreseen his greatness, before many would believe him to be
any thing out of the ordinary line of clever officers. He is such a man as
Europe has not seen since Julius Cæsar;
and if Spain had had the brains to make him king, that country might have been
one of the first of the world before his death. Ever affectionately yours,
Walter Scott.”
Of the same date was the following letter, addressed to the Editor of a work, entitled, “The Courser’s Manual.” He had asked
Sir Walter for a contribution; and received
therewith the ancient Scottish ditty of “Auld Heck:”—
“Dear Sir,
“I have loved the sport of coursing so well, and
pursued it so keenly for several years, that I would with pleasure have done
any thing in my power to add to your collection on the subject; but I have long
laid aside the amusement, and still longer renounced the poetical pen, which
ought to have celebrated it; and I could only send you the laments of an old
man, and the enumeration of the number of horses and dogs which have been long
laid under the sod. I cannot, indeed, complain with the old huntsman, that— ‘——No one now, Dwells in the hall of Ivor, Men, dogs, and horses, all are dead, And I the sole survivor;’* but I have exchanged my whip for a walking-stick, my smart hack has
dwindled into a Zetland shelty, and my two brace of greyhounds into a pair of
terriers. Instead of entering on such melancholy topics, I judge it better to
send you an Elegy on ‘Bonny Heck,’ an old
Scottish poem, of very considerable merit in the eyes of those who understand
the dialect.
“The elegy itself turns upon a circumstance which,
when I kept greyhounds, I felt a considerable alloy to the sport; I mean, the
necessity of despatching the instruments and partakers of our amusement, when
they begin to make up, by cunning, for the deficiency of youthful vigour. A
greyhound is often termed an inferior species of the canine race, in point of
sagacity, and in the eyes of an accomplished sportsman it is desirable they
should be so, since they are valued for their spirit, not their address.
Accordingly, they are seldom admitted to the rank of personal favourites, I
have had such greyhounds, however, and they possessed as large a share of
intelligence, attachment, and sagacity, as any other species of dog that I ever
saw. In such cases, it becomes difficult or impossible to execute the doom upon
the antiquated greyhound, so coolly recommended by Dame Juliana Berners:— And when he comes to that yere, Have him to the tannere, For the best whelp ever bitch had At nine years is full bad.’ Modern sportsmen anticipate the doom by three years at least.
“I cannot help adding to the ‘Last Words of Bonny Heck,’ a sporting anecdote,
said to have happened in
* Wordsworth.
Fife, and not far from the residence of that famous
greyhound, which may serve to show in what regard the rules of fair play
between hound and hare are held by Scottish sportsmen. There was a coursing
club, once upon a time, which met at Balchristy, in the Province, or, as it is
popularly called, the Kingdom of Fife. The members were elderly social men,
whom a very moderate allowance of sport served as an introduction to a hearty
dinner and jolly evening. Now, there had her seat on the ground where they
usually met, a certain large stout hare, who seemed made on purpose to
entertain these moderate sportsmen. She usually gave the amusement of three or
four turns, as soon as she was put up—a sure sign of a strong hare, when
practised by any beyond the age of a leveret,—then stretched out in great
style, and after affording the gentlemen an easy canter of a mile or two, threw
out the dogs, by passing through a particular gap in an inclosure. This sport
the same hare gave to the same party for one or two seasons, and it was just
enough to afford the worthy members of the club a sufficient reason to be
alleged to their wives, or others whom it may concern, for passing the day in
the public-house. At length, a fellow who attended the hunt nefariously thrust
his plaid, or great coat, into the gap I mentioned, and poor puss, her retreat
being thus cut off, was, in the language of the dying Desdemona, ‘basely—basely murdered.’ The sport of
the Balchristy club seemed to end with this famous hare. They either found no
hares, or such as afforded only a halloo and a squeak, or such, finally, as
gave them farther runs than they had pleasure of following. The spirit of the
meeting died away, and at length it was altogether given up.
“The publican was, of course, the party most
especially affected by the discontinuance of the club, and regarded, it may be supposed, with no complacency, the
person who had prevented the hare from escaping, and even his memory. One day,
a gentleman asked him what was become of such a one, naming the obnoxious
individual. ‘He is dead, sir,’ answered mine host, with an
angry scowl, ‘and his soul kens this day whether the hare of
Balchristy got fair play or not.’
Walter Scott.”
Resuming his journal at the close of the year, he says,
“Having omitted to carry on my Diary for two or three days, I lost heart to
make it up, and left it unfilled for many a month and day. During this period nothing
has happened worth particular notice:—the same occupations,—the same amusements,—the
same occasional alternations of spirits, gay or depressed,—the same absence, for the
most part, of all sensible or rational cause for the one or the other. I half grieve to
take up my pen, and doubt if it is worth my while to record such an infinite quantity
of nothing.”
CHAPTER V. VISIT TO CLYDESDALE—JOHN GREENSHIELDS, SCULPTOR—LETTER TO
LORD ELGIN—THE WESTPORT MURDERS—EXECUTION OF
BURKE—LETTER TO MISS
EDGEWORTH—BALLANTYNE’S HYPOCHONDRIA—ROMAN
CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION CARRIED—EDINBURGH PETITION, &c.—DEATHS OF LORD
BUCHAN—MR TERRY—AND MR
SHORTREED—REV. EDWARD IRVING—ANNE OF
GEIERSTEIN PUBLISHED—ISSUE OF THE “OPUS MAGNUM” BEGUN—ITS
SUCCESS—NERVOUS ATTACK—HÆMORRHAGES—REVIEWALS ON ANCIENT SCOTTISH
HISTORY, AND PITCAIRN’S TRIALS—THIRD SERIES OF
TALES OF A GRANDFATHER, AND FIRST VOLUME OF THE SCOTTISH
HISTORY IN LARDNER’S CYCLOPÆDIA PUBLISHED—DEATH AND
EPITAPH OF THOMAS PURDIE. 1829.
Sir Walter having expressed a
wish to consult me about some of his affairs, I went down to Abbotsford at Christmas, and
found him apparently well in health (except that he suffered from rheumatism), and enjoying
the society as usual of the Fergusons, with the welcome addition of
Mr Morritt and Sir
James Stuart of Allanbank—a gentleman whose masterly pencil had often been
employed on subjects from his poetry and novels, and whose conversation on art (like that
of Sir George Beaumont and Mr Scrope), being devoid of professional pedantries and
jealousies, was always particularly delightful to him. One snowy morning, he gave us sheets
of Anne of Geierstein, extending to, I think,
about a volume and a half; and we read them together in the library, while he worked in
the adjoining room, and occasionally dropt in upon us to hear how we were pleased. All were
highly gratified with those vivid and picturesque pages, and both
Morritt and Stuart, being familiar with the
scenery of Switzerland, could not sufficiently express their astonishment at the felicity
with which he had divined its peculiar character, and outdone, by the force of imagination,
all the efforts of a thousand actual tourists. Such approbation was of course very
acceptable. I had seldom seen him more gently and tranquilly happy.
Among other topics connected with his favourite studies, Sir James Stuart had much to say on the merits and
prospects of a remarkable man (well known to myself), who had recently occupied general
attention in the North. I allude to the late John
Greenshields, a stonemason, who at the age of twenty-eight began to attempt
the art of sculpture, and after a few years of solitary devotion to this new pursuit, had
produced a statue of the Duke of York, which formed at
this time a popular exhibition in Edinburgh. Greenshields was the son
of a small farmer, who managed also a ferryboat, on my elder
brother’s estate in Lanarkshire; and I could increase the interest
with which both Sir James and Sir
Walter had examined the statue, by bearing testimony to the purity and
modesty of his character and manners. Another eminent lover of art, who had been especially
gratified by Greenshields’ work, was the Earl of Elgin. Just at this time, as it happened, the
sculptor had been invited to spend a day or two at his Lordship’s seat in Fife; but
learning, through a letter of Sir James Stuart’s, that
Sir Walter was about to visit Clydesdale,
Greenshields would not lose the chance of being presented to him
on his native spot, and left Broomhall without having finished the inspection of
Lord Elgin’s marbles. His Lordship addressed a long and interesting letter to
Sir Walter, in which he mentioned this circumstance, and besought
him, after having talked with the aspirant, and ascertained his own private views and
feelings, to communicate his opinion as to the course which might most advantageously be
pursued for the encouragement and developement of his abilities.
Sir Walter went in the middle of January to
Milton-Lockhart; there saw the sculptor in the paternal cottage, and was delighted with him
and some of the works he had on hand—particularly a statue of George IV. Greenshields then walked
with us for several hours by the river side, and among the woods. His conversation was easy
and manly, and many sagacious remarks on life, as well as art, lost nothing to the
poet’s ear by being delivered in an accent almost as broad and unsophisticated as
Tom Purdie’s. John
had a keen sense of humour, and his enjoyment of Sir Walter’s
lectures on planting, and jokes on every thing, was rich. He had exactly that way of
drawing his lips into a grim involuntary whistle, when a sly thing occurred, which the
author of Rob Roy assigns to Andrew Fairservice. After he left us
Scott said, “There is much about that man that reminds me
of Burns.” On reaching Edinburgh he
wrote as follows:—
To the Right Honourable the Earl of Elgin, &c.
&c., Broomhall, Fife.
“Edinburgh, 20th January, 1829. “My dear Lord,
“I wish I were able to pay in better value the debt
which I have contracted with your Lordship, by being the unconscious means of
depriving you of Mr Greenshields sooner
than had been meant. It is a complicated obligation, since I owe a much greater
debt to Greenshields for depriving him of an invaluable
op-portunity of receiving
the advice, and profiting by the opinions of one whose taste for the arts is
strong by nature, and has been so highly cultivated. If it were not that he may
again have an opportunity to make up for that which he has lost, I would call
the loss irreparable.
“My own acquaintance with art is so very small, that
I almost hesitate to obey your Lordship in giving an opinion. But I think I
never saw a more successful exertion of a young artist than the King’s
statue, which, though the sculptor had only an indifferent print to work by,
seems to me a very happy likeness. The position (as if in act of receiving some
person whom his majesty delighted to honour) has equal ease and felicity, and
conveys an idea of grace and courtesy, and even kindness, mixed with dignity,
which, as he never saw the original, I was surprised to find mingled in such
judicious proportions. The difficulties of a modern military or court dress,
are manfully combated; and I think the whole thing purely conceived. In a word,
it is a work of great promise.
“I may speak with more confidence of the artist than
of the figure. Mr Greenshields seems to
me to be one of those remarkable men who must be distinguished in one way or
other. He showed during my conversation with him sound sense on all subjects,
and considerable information on such as occupied his mind. His habits, I
understand, are perfectly steady and regular. His manners are modest and plain,
without being clownish or rude, and he has all the good-breeding which nature
can teach. Above all, I had occasion to remark that he had a generous and manly
disposition above feeling little slights, or acts of illiberality. Having to
mention some very reasonable request of his which had been refused by an
individual, he immediately, as if to obliterate the unfavourable impression,
hastened to mention several previous instances of
kindness which the same individual had shown to him. His mind seems to be too
much bent upon fame to have room for love of money, and his passion for the
arts seems to be unfeignedly sincere.
“The important question of how he is to direct his
efforts, must depend on the advice of his friends, and I know no one so capable
of directing him as your Lordship. At the same time, I obey your commands, by
throwing together in haste the observations which follow.
“Like all heaven-born geniuses, he is ignorant of
the rules which have been adopted by artists before him, and has never seen the
chefs-d’œuvre of
classical time. Such men having done so much without education, are sometimes
apt either to despise it, or to feel so much mortification at seeing how far
short their efforts fall of excellence, that they resign their art in despair.
I do think and hope, however, that the sanguine and the modest are so well
mixed in this man’s temper, that he will study the best models with the
hope of improvement, and will be bold, as Spencer says, without being too bold. But opportunity of such
study is wanting, and that can only be had in London. To London, therefore, he
should be sent if possible. In addition to the above, I must remark, that
Mr G. is not master of the art of tempering his clay,
and other mechanical matters relating to his profession. These he should apply
to without delay, and it would probably be best, having little time to lose,
that he should for a while lay the chisel aside, and employ himself in making
models almost exclusively. The transference of the figure from the clay to the
marble is, I am informed by Chantrey, a
mere mechanical art, excepting that some finishing touches are required. Now it
follows that Greenshields may model, I dare say, six
figures while he could only cut one in stone, and in the former practice must
make a proportional progress in the principles of his art. The knowledge of his
art is only to be gained in the studio of some sculptor of eminence. The task
which Mr G. is full of at present seems to be chosen on a
false principle, chiefly adopted from a want of acquaintance with the genuine
and proper object of art. The public of Edinburgh have been deservedly amused
and delighted with two figures in the character of Tam
O’Shanter and his drunken companion Souter Johnny. The figures were much and justly
applauded, and the exhibition being of a kind adapted to every taste, is daily
filled. I rather think it is the success of this piece by a man much in his own
circumstances, which has inclined Mr Greenshields to
propose cutting a group of grotesque figures from the Beggars’ Cantata of the same
poet. Now, in the first place, I suspect six figures will form too many for a
sculptor to group to advantage. But besides, I deprecate the attempt at such a
subject. I do not consider caricature as a proper style for sculpture at all.
We have Pan and his Satyrs in ancient
sculpture, but the place of these characters in the classic mythology gives
them a certain degree of dignity. Besides this, “the gambol has been
shown.” Mr Thom has
produced a group of this particular kind, and instead of comparing what
Greenshields might do in this way with higher models,
the public would certainly regard him as the rival of Mr
Thom, and give Mr Thom the preference, on
the same principle that the Spaniard says when one man walks first, all the
rest must be his followers. At the same time I highly approved of one figure in
the group, I mean that of Burns himself.
Burns (taking his more contemplative moments) would
indeed be a noble study, and I am convinced Mr
G. would do it nobly as, for example, when Coila describes him as gazing on a snowstorm,— ‘I saw grim Nature’s visage hoar, Strike thy young eye.’ I suppose it possible to represent rocks with icicles in sculpture.
“Upon the moment I did not like to mention to
Mr G. my objections against a scheme which was
obviously a favourite one, but I felt as I did when my poor friend John Kemble threatened to play Falstaff. In short, the perdurable character of
sculpture, the grimly and stern severity of its productions, their size too,
and their consequence, confine the art to what is either dignified and noble,
or beautiful and graceful: it is, I think, inapplicable to situations of broad
humour. A painting of Teniers is very
well it is of a moderate size, and only looked at when we choose; but a group
of his drunken boors dancing in stone, as large as life, to a grinning fiddler
at the bottom of a drawing-room would, I think, be soon found intolerable bad
company.
“I think, therefore, since Mr Greenshields has a decided call to the
higher and nobler department of his art, he should not be desirous of procuring
immediate attention by attempting a less legitimate object. I desired Mr Lockhart of Milton to state to Mr
G. what I felt on the above subject, and I repeat it to you,
that, if I am so fortunate as to agree in opinion with your Lordship, you may
exert your powerful influence on the occasion.
“I have only to add that I am quite willing to
contribute my mite to put Mr
Greenshields in the way of the best instruction, which seems to
me the best thing which can be done for him. I think your Lordship will hardly claim
another epistolary debt from me, since I have given it like a tether, which,
Heaven knows, is no usual error of mine. I am always, with respect, my dear
Lord, your Lordship’s most faithful and obedient servant,
Walter Scott.
“P. S.—I ought to mention, that I saw a good
deal of Mr Greenshields, for he
walked with us, while we went over the grounds at Milton to look out a
situation for a new house.”
Mr Greenshields saw Sir
Walter again in Clydesdale in 1831, and profited so well by these scanty
opportunities, as to produce a statue of the poet, in a sitting posture, which, all the
circumstances considered, must be allowed to be a very wonderful performance.* He
subsequently executed various other works, each surpassing the promise of the other; but I
fear his enthusiastic zeal had led him to unwise exertions. His health gave way, and he
died in April 1835, at the early age of forty, in the humble cottage where he was born.
Celebrity had in no degree changed his manners or his virtues. The most flattering
compliment he ever received was a message from Sir Francis
Chantrey, inviting him to come to London, and offering to take him into his
house, and give him all the benefits of his advice, instruction, and example. This kindness
filled his eyes with tears but the hand of fate was already upon him.
Scott’s Diary for the day on which he wrote to
Lord Elgin says:—“We strolled about Milton
on as fine a day as could consist with snow on the ground, in company with John Greenshields, the new sculptor, a sensible,
* This statue is now in the possession of Sir Walter’s publisher, Mr Cadell, 31, St Andrew’s Square,
Edinburgh.
strong-minded man. The situation is eminently beautiful; a fine
promontory round which the Clyde makes a magnificent bend. We fixed on a situation for
William’s new house where the sitting
rooms will command the upper valley; and, with an ornamental garden, I think it may be
made the prettiest place in Scotland. Next day, on our way to Edinburgh, we stopped at
Allanton to see a tree transplanted, which was performed with great ease. Sir Henry Stewart is lifted beyond the solid earth by
the effect of his book’s
success; but the book well deserves it.* He is in practice particularly anxious to keep
the roots of the trees near the surface, and only covers them with about a foot of
earth. Note.—Lime rubbish dug in among the roots of ivy
encourages it much.—The operation delayed us three hours, so it was seven before we
reached our dinner and a good fire in Shandwick Place, and we were well-nigh frozen to
death. During the excursion I walked very ill—with more pain in fact than I ever
remember to have felt—and, even leaning on John
Lockhart, could hardly get on.—Well, the day of return to Edinburgh is
come. I don’t know why, but I am more happy at the change than usual. I am not
working hard, and it is what I ought to do and must do. Every hour of laziness cries
fie upon me. But there is a perplexing sinking of the heart which one cannot always
overcome. At such times I have wished myself a clerk, quill-driving for two-pence per
page. You have at least application, and that is all that is necessary, whereas, unless
your lively faculties are awake and propitious, your application will do you as little
good as if you strained your sinews to lift Arthur’s Seat.”
* See Sir
Walter’sarticle
on Ornamental Gardening—Miscellaneous Prose Works, Vol. xxi.
On the 23d he says:—“The Solicitor* came to dine with me—we drank a bottle of Champagne, and two
bottles of claret, which, in former days, I should have thought a very sober allowance,
since, Lockhart included, there were three
persons to drink it. But I felt I had drunk too much, and was uncomfortable. The young
men stood it like young men. Skene and his wife
and daughter looked in in the evening. I suppose I am turning to my second childhood,
for not only am I filled drunk, or made stupid at least, with one bottle of wine, but I
am disabled from writing by chilblains on my fingers—a most babyish
complaint.”
At this time the chief topic of discourse in Edinburgh was the atrocious
series of murders perpetrated by a gang of Irish desperadoes, Burke, Hare, &c., in a house or
cellar of the West Port, to which they seduced poor old wayfaring people, beggar women,
idiots, and so forth, and then filled them drunk, and smothered or strangled them, for the
mere purpose of having bodies to sell to the anatomists. Sir
Walter writes on the 28th:—“Burke the
murderer, hanged this morning. The mob, which was immense, demanded Knox and Hare, but though greedy
for more victims, received with shouts the solitary wretch who found his way to the
gallows out of five or six who seem not less guilty than he. But the story begins to be
stale, insomuch that I believe a doggrel ballad upon it would be popular, how brutal
soever the wit. This is the progress of human passion. We ejaculate, exclaim, hold up
to heaven our hand, like the rustic Phœbe next
morning the mood changes, and we dance a jig to the tune which moved us to
tears.”
* John Hope, Esq.,
Solicitor-General—now Dean of the Faculty of Advocates.
A few days later, he discusses the West Port tragedy in this striking
letter. It was written in answer to one announcing Miss Fanny
Edgeworth’s marriage with Mr Lestock
Wilson:—
To Miss Edgeworth, Edgeworthstown.
“Edinburgh, Feb. 4, 1829. “My dear Miss Edgeworth,
“I have had your letter several days, and only
answer just now, not, you may believe, from want of interest in the contents,
but from the odd circumstance of being so much afflicted with chilblains in the
fingers, that my pen scrambles every way but the right one. Assuredly I should
receive the character of the most crabbed fellow from those modern sages who
judge of a man from his handwriting. But as an old man becomes a child, I must
expect, I suppose, measles and smallpox. I only wish I could get a fresh set of
teeth. To tell you the truth, I feel the advance of age more than I like,
though my general health is excellent; but I am not able to walk as I did, and
I fear I could not now visit St Kevin’s Bed. This is a great affliction
to one who has been so active as I have been, in spite of all disadvantages. I
must now have a friendly arm, instead of relying on my own exertions; and it is
sad to think I shall be worse before I am better. However, the mild weather may
help me in some degree, and the worst is a quiet pony (I used to detest a quiet
pony), or perhaps a garden-chair. All this does not prevent my sincere sympathy
in the increase of happiness, which I hope Miss
Fanny’s marriage will afford to herself, and you, and all
who love her. I have not had the same opportunity to know her merits as those
of my friends Mrs Butler and Mrs Fox; but I saw enough of her (being your
sister) when at Dublin, to feel most sincerely interested in a young person
whose exterior is so amiable. In Mr
Wilson you describe the national character of John Bull, who is not the worst of the three
nations, though he has not the quick feeling and rich humour of your
countrymen, nor the shrewd sagacity, or the romantic spirit of thinking and
adventuring which the Scotch often conceal under their apparent coldness, and
which you have so well painted in the M’Leod of your Ennui. Depend upon it, I shall find Russell Square when I go to
London, were I to have a voyage of discovery to make it out; and it will be
Mr Wilson’s fault if we do not make an intimate
acquaintance.
“I had the pleasure of receiving, last autumn, your
American friend Miss Douglas, who seems
a most ingenious person; and I hope I succeeded in making her happy during her
short visit at Abbotsford; for I was compelled to leave her to pay suit and
service at the Circuit. The mention of the Circuit brings me to the horrors
which you have so well described, and which resemble nothing so much as a wild
dream. Certainly I thought, like you, that the public alarm was but an
exaggeration of vulgar rumour; but the tragedy is too true, and I look in vain
for a remedy of the evils, in which it is easy to see this black and unnatural
business has found its origin. The principal source certainly lies in the
feelings of attachment which the Scotch have for their deceased friends. They
are curious in the choice of their sepulchre, and a common shepherd is often,
at whatever ruinous expense to his family, transported many miles to some
favourite place of burial which has been occupied by his fathers. It follows,
of course, that any interference with these remains is considered with most
utter horror and indignation. To such of their superiors as they love from
clanship or habits of dependance, they attach the same feeling. I experienced
it when I had a great domestic loss; for I learned
afterwards that the cemetery was guarded, out of good will, by the servants and
dependants who had been attached to her during life; and were I to be laid
beside my lost companion just now, I have no doubt it would be long before my
humble friends would discontinue the same watch over my remains, and that it
would incur mortal risk to approach them with the purpose of violation. This is
a kind and virtuous principle, in which every one so far partakes, that,
although an unprejudiced person would have no objection to the idea of his own
remains undergoing dissection, if their being exposed to scientific research
could be of the least service to humanity, yet we all shudder at the notion of
any who had been dear to us, especially a wife or sister, being subjected to a
scalpel among a gazing and unfeeling crowd of students. One would fight and die
to prevent it. This current of feeling is encouraged by the law which, as
distinguishing murderers and other atrocious criminals, orders that their
bodies shall be given for public dissection. This makes it almost impossible to
consign the bodies of those who die in the public hospitals to the same fate;
for it would be inflicting on poverty the penalty which, wisely or unwisely,
the law of the country has denounced against guilt of the highest degree; and
it would assuredly deprive all who have a remaining spark of feeling or shame,
of the benefit of those consolations of charity of which they are the best
objects. If the prejudice be not very liberal, it is surely natural, and so
deeply-seated, that many of the best feelings must be destroyed ere it can be
eradicated. What then remains? The only chance I see is to permit importation
from other countries. If a subject can be had in Paris for ten or twenty
francs, it will surely pay the importer who brings it to Scotland. Something
must be done, for there is
an end of the Cantabit vacuus,* the
last prerogative of beggary, which entitled him to laugh at the risk of
robbery. The veriest wretch in the highway may be better booty than a person of
consideration, since the last may have but a few shillings in his pocket, and
the beggar, being once dead, is worth ten pounds to his murderer.
“The great number of the lower Irish which have come
over here since the peace, is, like all important occurrences, attended with
its own share of good and evil. It must relieve Ireland in part of the excess
of population, which is one of its greatest evils, and it accommodates Scotland
with a race of hardy and indefatigable labourers, without which it would be
impossible to carry on the very expensive improvements which have been
executed. Our canals, our railroads, and our various public works are all
wrought by Irish. I have often employed them myself at burning clay, and
similar operations, and have found them as labourers quiet and tractable,
light-spirited, too, and happy to a degree beyond belief, and in no degree
quarrelsome, keep whisky from them and them from whisky. But most unhappily for
all parties they work at far too low a rate; at a rate, in short, which can but
just procure salt and potatoes; they become reckless, of course, of all the
comforts and decencies of life, which they have no means of procuring. Extreme
poverty brings ignorance and vice, and these are the mothers of crime. If
Ireland were to submit to some kind of poor-rate—I do not mean that of
England—but something that should secure to the indigent their natural share of
the fruits of the earth, and enable them at least to feed while others are
feasting—it would, I cannot doubt, raise the character of the lower orders, and
deprive them of that recklessness of
* Cantabit vacuus coram
latrone viator.—Juvenal.
futurity which leads them to think only of the present.
Indeed, where intoxication of the lower ranks is mentioned as a vice, we must
allow the temptation is well-nigh inevitable; meat, clothes, fire, all that men
can and do want are supplied by a drop of whisky, and no one should be
surprised that the relief (too often the only one within the wretches’
power) is eagerly grasped at.
“We pay back, I suspect, the inconveniencies we
receive from the character of our Irish importation, by sending you a set of
half-educated, cold-hearted Scotchmen to be agents and middle-men. Among them,
too, there are good and excellent characters, yet I can conceive they often
mislead their employers. I am no great believer in the extreme degree of
improvement to be derived from the advancement of science; for every study of
that nature tends, when pushed to a certain extent, to harden the heart, and
render the philosopher reckless of every thing save the objects of his own
pursuit; all equilibrium in the character is destroyed, and the visual force of
the understanding is perverted by being fixed on one object exclusively. Thus
we see theological sects (although inculcating the moral doctrines) are
eternally placing man’s zeal in opposition to them; and even in the
practice of the bar, it is astonishing how we become callous to right and
wrong, when the question is to gain or lose a cause. I have myself often
wondered how I became so indifferent to the horrors of a criminal trial, if it
involved a point of law. In like manner, the pursuit of physiology inflicts
tortures on the lower animals of creation, and at length comes to rub shoulders
against the West Port. The state of high civilisation to which we have arrived,
is perhaps scarcely a national blessing, since, while the few are improved to the highest point, the many are in proportion tantalized and degraded, and the same nation displays
at the same time the very highest and the very lowest state in which the human
race can exist in point of intellect. Here is a doctor
who is able to take down the whole clock-work of the human frame, and may in
time find some way of repairing and putting it together again; and there is Burke
with the body of his murdered countrywoman on his back, and her blood on his
hands, asking his price from the learned carcass-butcher. After all, the golden
age was the period for general happiness, when the earth gave its stores
without labour, and the people existed only in the numbers which it could
easily subsist; but this was too good to last. As our numbers grew our wants
multiplied, and here we are contending with increasing difficulties by the
force of repeated inventions. Whether we shall at last eat each other, as of
yore, or whether the earth will get a flap with a comet’s tail first, who
but the reverend Mr Irving will venture
to pronounce?
“Now here is a fearful long letter, and the next
thing is to send it under Lord Francis
Gower’s omnipotent frank.* Anne sends best compliments; she says she had the honour to
despatch her congratulations to you already. Walter and his little wife are at Nice; he is now major of his
regiment, which is rapid advancement, and so has gone abroad to see the world.
Lockhart has been here for a week or
two, but is now gone for England. I suspect he is at this moment stopped by the
snow-storm, and solacing himself with a cigar somewhere in Northumberland; that
is all the news that can interest you. Dr and Mrs Brewster are
rather getting over their heavy loss, but it is still too visible on their
brows, and that broad river lying daily before them is a
* Lord F. G.
was Secretary for Ireland, under the Duke of
Wellington’s Ministry.
sad remembrancer. I saw a brother of yours on a visit at
Allerley;* he dined with us one day and promised to come and see us next
summer, which I hope he will make good.—My pen has been declaring itself
independent this last half hour, which is the more unnatural, as it is engaged
in writing to its former mistress.†—Ever yours affectionately.
W. Scott.”
Sir Walter’s operations appear to have been
interrupted ever and anon, during January and February, 1829, in consequence of severe
distress in the household of his printer; whose warm affections were not, as in his own
case, subjected to the authority of a stoical will. On the 14th of February the Diary
says:—“The letters I received were numerous, and craved answers, yet the 3d
vol. is getting on hooly and fairly. I am
twenty leaves before the printer, but Ballantyne’s
wife is ill, and it is his nature to indulge apprehensions of the worst,
which incapacitates him for labour. I cannot help regarding this amiable weakness of
the mind with something too nearly allied to contempt.” On the
17th:—“I received the melancholy news that James
Ballantyne has lost his wife. With his domestic habits the blow is
irretrievable. What can he do, poor fellow, at the head of such a family of children? I
should not be surprised if he were to give way to despair.”
James was not able to appear at his wife’s funeral; and this
Scott viewed with something more than pity. Next morning, however,
says the Diary:—“Ballantyne came in, to my
* Allerley is the seat of Sir
David Brewster, opposite Melrose. A fine boy, one of
Sir David’s sons, had been drowned a year before
in the Tweed.
† Miss
Edgeworth had given Sir
Walter a bronze inkstand (said to have belonged to Ariosto), with appurtenances.
surprise, about twelve o’clock. He was
very serious, and spoke as if he had some idea of sudden and speedy death. He mentioned
that he had named Cadell, Cowan, young
Hughes, and his brother to be his trustees with myself. He has settled
to go to the country, poor fellow!”
Ballantyne retired accordingly to some sequestered
place near Jedburgh, and there, indulging his grief in solitude, fell into a condition of
religious melancholy, from which I think he never wholly recovered. Scott regarded this as weakness, and in part at least as wilful weakness,
and addressed to him several letters of strong remonstrance and rebuke. I have read them,
but do not possess them; nor perhaps would it have been proper for me to print them. In
writing of the case to myself, he says, “I have a sore grievance in poor
Ballantyne’s increasing lowness of heart, and I fear he
is sinking rapidly into the condition of a religious dreamer. His retirement from
Edinburgh was the worst advised scheme in the world. I in vain reminded him, that when
our Saviour himself was to be led into temptation, the first thing the Devil thought of
was to get him into the wilderness.” Ballantyne, after a
few weeks, resumed his place in the printing office; but he addicted himself more and more
to what his friend considered as erroneous and extravagant notions of religious doctrine;
and I regret to say that in this difference originated a certain alienation, not of
affection, but of confidence, which was visible to every near observer of their subsequent
intercourse. Towards the last, indeed, they saw but little of each other. I suppose,
however, it is needless to add that, down to the very last, Scott
watched over Ballantyne’s interests with undiminished attention.
I must give a few more extracts from the Diary, for the Spring Session,
during which Anne of Geierstein was finished, and the Prospectus of the Opus
Magnum issued.—Several entries refer to the final carrying of the Roman Catholic
Question. When the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel announced their intention of conceding
those claims, on which the reader has already seen Scott’s opinion, there were meetings and petitions enough in
Edinburgh as elsewhere; and though he felt considerable repugnance to acting in any such
matter with Whigs and Radicals, in opposition to a great section of the Tories, he
ultimately resolved not to shrink from doing his part in support of the Duke’s
government on that critical experiment. He wrote, I believe, several articles in favour of
the measure for the Weekly Journal; he
spoke, though shortly, at the principal meeting, and proposed one of its resolutions; and
when the consequent petition was read in the House of Commons, his name among the
subscribers was received with such enthusiasm, that Sir Robert Peel
thought fit to address to him a special and very cordial letter of thanks on that occasion.
Diary, “Feb.
23.—Anne and I dined at Skene’s, where we met Mr and Mrs George
Forbes, Colonel and
Mrs Blair, George Bell, &c. The party was a pleasant
one. Colonel Blair told us that at the commencement of the
battle of Waterloo, there was some trouble to prevent the men from breaking
their ranks. He expostulated with one man—‘Why, my good fellow, you
cannot propose to beat the French alone? You had better keep your
ranks.’ The man, who was one of the 71st, returned to his place,
saying, ‘I believe you are right, sir, but I am a man of a very hot temper.’ There was much bonhommie in the reply.
“February 24.‘Snowy
miserable morning. I corrected my proofs, and then went to breakfast with Mr
Drummond Hay, where we again met
Colonel and Mrs Blair, with Thomas Thomson. We looked over some most beautiful drawings
which Mrs Blair had made in different parts of India,
exhibiting a species of architecture so gorgeous, and on a scale so extensive,
as to put to shame the magnificence of Europe; and yet, in most cases, as
little is known of the people who wrought these wonders as of the kings who
built the Pyramids. Fame depends on literature, not on architecture. We are
more eager to see a broken column of Cicero’s villa, than all these mighty labours of barbaric
power. Mrs Blair is full of enthusiasm. She told me, that
when she worked with her pencil she was glad to have some one to read to her as
a sort of sedative, otherwise her excitement made her tremble, and burst out
a-crying. I can understand this very well. On returning home, I wrought, but
not much—rather dawdled and took to reading Chambers’sBeauties of Scotland, which would be
admirable if they were accurate. He is a clever young fellow, but hurts himself
by too much haste. I am not making too much myself I know—and I know, too, it
is time I were making it—unhappily there is such a thing as more haste and less
speed. I can very seldom think to purpose by lying perfectly idle, but when I
take an idle book, or a walk, my mind strays back to its task, out of
contradiction as it were; the things I read become mingled with those I have
been writing, and something is concocted. I cannot compare this process of the
mind to any thing save that of a woman to whom the mechanical operation of
spinning serves as a running bass to the songs she sings, or the course of
ideas she pursues. The phrase Hoc
age, so often quoted by my father, does not jump with my humour.
I cannot nail my mind to one subject of contemplation, and it is by nourishing
two trains of ideas that I can bring one into order.
“February 28.—Finished my
proofs this morning; and read part of a curious work, called Memoirs of Vidocq; a fellow who was at the
head of Buonaparte’s police. It is a
picaresque tale; in other words, a romance of
roguery. The whole seems much exaggerated, and got up; but I suppose there is
truth au fond. I came home about two
o’clock, and wrought hard and fast till now—night. I cannot get myself to
feel at all anxious about the Catholic question. I cannot see the use of
fighting about the platter, when you have let them snatch the meat off it. I
hold Popery to be such a mean and depraving superstition, that I am not sure I
could have found myself liberal enough for voting the repeal of the penal laws
as they existed before 1780. They must, and would, in course of time, have
smothered Popery; and, I confess, I should have seen the old lady of
Babylon’s mouth stopped with pleasure. But now, that you have taken the
plaster off her mouth, and given her free respiration, I cannot see the sense
of keeping up the irritation about the claim to sit in Parliament. Unopposed,
the Catholic superstition may sink into dust, with all its absurd ritual and
solemnities. Still it is an awful risk. The world is, in fact, as silly as
ever, and a good competence of nonsense will always find believers. Animal
magnetism, phrenology, &c. &c., have all had their believers, and why
not Popery? Ecod! if they should begin to make Smithfield broils, I do not know
where many an honest Protestant could find courage enough to be carbonadoed? I
should shrink from the thoughts of tar-barrels and gibbets, I am afraid, and
make a very pusillanimous martyr. So I hope the Duke
of Wellington will keep the horned beast well in hand, and not
let her get her leg over the harrows.
“March 4.—At four
o’clock arrives Mr Cadell, with
his horn charged with good news. The prospectus of the Magnum, although
issued only a week, has produced such a demand among the trade, that he thinks
he must add a large number of copies, that the present edition of 7000 may be
increased to meet the demand; he talks of raising it to 10,000 or 12,000. If
so, I shall have a powerful and constant income to bear on my unfortunate debts
for several years to come, and may fairly hope to put every claim in a secure
way of payment. Laidlaw dined with me,
and, poor fellow, was as much elated with the news as I am, for it is not of a
nature to be kept secret. I hope I shall have him once more at Kaeside to
debate, as we used to do, on religion and politics.
“March 5.—I am admitted a
member of the Maitland Club of Glasgow, a Society on the principle of the
Roxburgh and Bannatyne. What a tail of the alphabet I should draw after me were
I to sign with the indications of the different societies I belong to,
beginning with President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and ending with
umpire of the Six-feet-high Club.
“March 6.—Made some
considerable additions to the Appendix to General Preface. I am in the
sentiments towards the public that the buffoon player expresses towards his
patron— “Go tell my good Lord, said this modest young man, If he will but invite me to dinner, I’ll be as diverting as ever I can— I will, on the faith of a sinner.’ I will multiply the notes, therefore, when there is a chance of giving
pleasure and variety. There is a stronger gleam of hope on my affairs than has
yet touched on them; it is not steady or certain, but it is bright and
conspicuous. Ten years may last with me, though I have but little chance of it.
“March 7.—Sent away proofs.
This extrication of my affairs, though only a Pisgah prospect, occupies my mind more than is fitting; but without some such hopes I
must have felt like one of the victims of the wretch Burke, struggling against a smothering weight
on my bosom, till nature could endure it no longer.
“March 8.—Ballantyne, by a letter of this morning,
totally condemns Anne of
Geierstein. Third volume nearly finished—a pretty thing, truly, for
I shall be expected to do all over again. Great dishonour in this, as Trinculo says, besides an infinite loss. Sent for
Cadell to attend me to-morrow
morning, that we may consult about this business.—Peel has made his motion on the Catholic question with a speech
of three hours. It is almost a complete surrender to the Catholics, and so it
should be, for half measures do but linger out the feud. This will, or rather
ought to satisfy all men who sincerely love peace, and, therefore, all men of
property. But will this satisfy Pat, who,
with all his virtues, is certainly not the most sensible person in the world?
Perhaps not; and if not, it is but fighting them at last. I smoked away, and
thought of ticklish politics and bad novels.
“March 9.—Cadell came to breakfast. We resolved in privy
council to refer the question whether Anne of G—n be sea-worthy or not to further consideration, which,
as the book cannot be published, at any rate, during the full rage of the
Catholic question, may be easily managed. After breakfast I went to Sir William Arbuthnot’s,* and met there
a select party of Tories, to decide whether we should act with the Whigs, by
adopting their petition in favour of the Catholics. I was not free from
apprehension that the petition might be put
* This gentleman was a favourite with Sir Walter—a special point of communion
being the Antiquities of the British Drama. He was Provost of Edinburgh
in 1816-17, and again in 1822, and the King gracefully surprised him by
proposing his health, at the Banquet in the Parliament House, as
“Sir William Arbuthnot,
Baronet.”
into such language as I, at
least, should be unwilling to homologate by my subscription. The Solicitor was
voucher that they would keep the terms quite general; whereupon we subscribed
the requisition for a meeting, with a slight alteration, affirming that it was
our desire not to have intermeddled, had not the anti-Catholics pursued that
course; and so the Whigs and we are embarked in the same boat—vogue la galère.
“Went about one o’clock to the Castle, where
we saw the auld murderess Mons Meg* brought up in solemn procession to reoccupy
her ancient place on the Argyle battery. The day was cold, but serene, and I
think the ladies must have been cold enough, not to mention the Celts, who
turned out upon the occasion, under the leading of Cluny Macpherson, a fine spirited lad. Mons Meg is a monument
of our pride and poverty. The size is enormous, but six smaller guns would have
been made at the same expense, and done six times as much execution as she
could have done. There was immense interest taken in the show by the people of
the town, and the numbers who crowded the Castle-hill had a magnificent
appearance. About thirty of our Celts attended in costume: and as there was a
Highland regiment for duty, with dragoons and artillerymen, the whole made a
splendid show. The style in which the last manned and wrought the windlass
which raised Old Meg, weighing seven or eight tons, from her temporary carriage
to that which has been her basis for many years, was singularly beautiful as a
combined exhibition of skill and strength. My daughter had what might have
proved a frightful accident. Some rockets were let off, one of which lighted
upon her head, and set her bonnet on fire. She neither screamed nor ran, but
quietly per-
* See ante,
Vol. v. p. 221.
mitted Charles
Sharpe to extinguish the fire, which he did with great coolness
and dexterity. All who saw her, especially the friendly Celts, gave her merit
for her steadiness, and said she came of good blood. My own courage was not
tried, for being at some distance escorting the beautiful and lively Countess of Hopetoun, I did not hear of the
accident till it was over.
“We lunched with the regiment (73d) now in the
castle. The little entertainment gave me an opportunity of observing what I
have often before remarked the improvement in the character of the young and
subaltern officers in the army, which in the course of a long and bloody war
had been, in point of rank and manners, something deteriorated. The number of
persons applying for commissions (3000 being now on the lists) gives an
opportunity of selection; and officers should certainly be gentlemen, with a complete opening to all who can rise by merit. The
style in which duty and the knowledge of their profession are now enforced,
prevents faineants from remaining
long in the profession.
“In the evening I presided at the annual festival
of the Celtic Club. I like this Society, and willingly give myself to be
excited by the sight of handsome young men with plaids and claymores, and all
the alertness and spirit of Highlanders in their native garb. There was the
usual degree of excitation excellent dancing, capital songs, a general
inclination to please and to be pleased. A severe cold caught on the
battlements of the Castle prevented me from playing first fiddle so well as on
former occasions, but what I could do was received with the usual partiality of
the Celts. I got home fatigued and vino
gravatus about eleven o’clock. We had many guests,
some of whom, English officers, seemed both amused and surprised at our wild
ways, especially at the dancing without ladies, and the mode of drinking favourite toasts, by
springing up with one foot on the bench and one on the table, and the peculiar
shriek of applause, so unlike English cheering.
“Abbotsford, March 18.—I
like the hermit life indifferent well, nor would, I sometimes think, break my
heart, were I to be in that magic mountain where food was regularly supplied by
ministering genii, and plenty of books were accessible without the least
interruption of human society. But this is thinking like a fool. Solitude is
only agreeable when the power of having society is removed to a short space,
and can be commanded at pleasure. ‘It is not good for man to be
alone.’* It blunts our faculties and freezes our active virtues.
And now, my watch pointing to noon, I think after four hours’ work I may
indulge myself with a walk. The dogs see me about to shut my desk, and intimate
their happiness by caresses and whining. By your leave, Messrs Genii of the
Mountain, if I come to your retreat I’ll bring my dogs with me.
“The day was showery, but not unpleasant—soft
dropping rains, attended by a mild atmosphere, that spoke of flowers in their
seasons, and a chirping of birds, that had a touch of spring in it. I had the
patience to get fully wet, and the grace to be thankful for it.
“Come, a little flourish on the trumpet. Let us
rouse the Genius of this same red mountain—so called, because it is all the
year covered with roses. There can be no difficulty in finding it, for it lies
towards the Caspian, and is quoted in the Persian Tales. Well, I open my
ephemerides, form my scheme under the suitable planet, and the Genius obeys the
invitation and appears. The Gnome is a misshapen dwarf, with a huge jolter-head
like that of Boerhaave on the Bridge,† his limbs and
body
* Genesis, chap. ii. v.
18.
† This head may still be seen over a
laboratory at No. 100 of
monstrously shrunk and disproportioned. ‘Sir
Dwarf,’ said I, undauntedly, thy head is very large, and thy feet and
limbs somewhat small in proportion.’ ‘I have crammed my head, even
to the overflowing, with knowledge; and I have starved my limbs by disuse of
exercise and denial of sustenance!’ ‘Can I acquire wisdom in thy
solitary library?’ ‘Thou mayest!’ ‘On what
condition?’ ‘Renounce all gross and fleshly pleasures, eat pulse
and drink water, converse with none but the wise and learned, alive and
dead.’ ‘Why, this were to die in the cause of wisdom!’
‘If you desire to draw from our library only the advantage of seeming
wise, you may have it consistent with all your favourite enjoyments.’
‘How much sleep?’ ‘A Lapland night—eight months out of the
twelve.’ ‘Enough for a dormouse, most generous Genius—a bottle of
wine?’ ‘Two, if you please; but you must not seem to care for
them—cigars in loads, whisky in lushings—only they must be taken with an air of
contempt, a flocci-pauci-nihili-pili-fication of all
that can gratify the outward man.’ ‘I am about to ask you a serious
question—when one has stuffed his stomach, drunk his bottle, and smoked his
cigar, how is he to keep himself awake?’ ‘Either by cephalic snuff
or castle-building.’ ‘Do you approve of castle-building as a
frequent exercise?’ ‘Genius—Life were not
life without it— ‘Give me the joy that sickens not the heart, Give me the wealth that has no wings to fly.’ ‘Author.—I reckon myself one of the best
aerial architects now living, and Nil me
pœnitet.’ Genius.—‘Nec est cur te
pœniteat. Most of your novels had previously been
the South Bridge, Edinburgh.—N.B.
There is a tradition that the venerable busto in question was once
dislodged by “Colonel
Grogg” and some of his companions, and waggishly
planted in a very inappropriate position.
subjects for airy
castles.’ Author.—‘You have me—and moreover
a man derives experience from such fanciful visions. There are few situations I
have not in fancy figured, and there are few, of course, which I am not
previously prepared to take some part in.’ Genius.—‘True, but I am afraid your having fancied yourself
victorious in many a fight, would be of little use were you suddenly called to
the field, and your personal infirmities and nervous agitations both rushing
upon you and incapacitating you.’ Author.—‘My nervous agitations! down with them!— “Down down to Limbo and the burning lake! False fiend avoid!— So there ends the tale, with a hoy, with a hoy, So there ends the tale with a ho. There’s a moral—if you fail To seize it by the tail, Its import will exhale, you must know.
“March 19.—The above was
written yesterday before dinner, though appearances are to the contrary. I only
meant that the studious solitude I have sometimes dreamed of, unless practised
with rare stoicism, might perchance degenerate into secret indulgences of
coarser appetites, which, when the cares and restraints of social life are
removed, are apt to make us think, with Dr
Johnson, our dinner the most important event of the day. So much
in the way of explanation, a humour which I love not. Go to. I fagged at my
Review on Ancient Scottish
History, both before and after breakfast. I walked from one
o’clock till near three. I make it out rather better than of late I have
been able to do in the streets of Edinburgh, where I am ashamed to walk so slow
as would suit me. Indeed nothing but a certain suspicion, that once drawn up on
the beach, I would soon break up, prevents my renouncing pedestrian exer-cises altogether, for it is positive suffering, and of an
acute kind too.
“May 26.—Sent off ten pages
of the Maid of the Mist this
morning with a murrain:—But how to get my catastrophe packed into the compass
allotted for it? ‘It sticks like a pistol half out of its holster, Or rather indeed like an obstinate bolster, Which I think I have seen you attempting, my dear, In vain to cram into a small pillow-beer.’ There is no help for it—I must make a tour de
force, and annihilate both time and space.
“March 28.—In spite of the
temptation of a fine morning, I toiled manfully at the Review till two o’clock, commencing at
seven. I fear it will be uninteresting, but I like the muddling work of
antiquities, and, besides, wish to record my sentiments with regard to the
Gothic question. No one that has not laboured as I have done on imaginary
topics can judge of the comfort afforded by walking on all fours, and being
grave and dull. I dare say, when the clown of the pantomime escapes from his
nightly task of vivacity, it is his especially to smoke a pipe and be prosy
with some good-natured fellow, the dullest of his acquaintance. I have seen
such a tendency in Sir Adam Ferguson,
the gayest man I ever knew; and poor Tom
Sheridan has complained to me on the fatigue of supporting the
character of an agreeable companion.
“April 3.—Both Sir James Mackintosh and Lord Haddington have spoken very handsomely in
Parliament of my accession to the Catholic petition, and I think it has done
some good; yet I am not confident that the measure will disarm the Catholic
spleen nor am I entirely easy at finding myself allied to the Whigs even in the
instance where I agree with them This is witless prejudice, however.
“April 8.—We have the news
of the Catholic question being carried in the House of Lords, by a majority of
105 upon the second reading. This is decisive, and the balsam of Fierabras must
be swallowed.
“April 9.—I have bad news of
James Ballantyne. Hypochondria, I am
afraid, and religiously distressed in mind.
“April 18.—Corrected proofs.
I find J. B. has not returned to his
business, though I wrote to say how necessary it was. My pity begins to give
way to anger. Must he sit there and squander his thoughts and senses upon dowdy
metaphysics and abstruse theology, till he addles his brains entirely, and
ruins his business?—I have written to him again, letter third, and, I am
determined, last.
“April 20.—Lord Buchan is dead, a person whose immense
vanity, bordering upon insanity, obscured, or rather eclipsed, very
considerable talents. His imagination was so fertile, that he seemed really to
believe the extraordinary fictions which he delighted in telling. His economy,
most laudable in the early part of his life, when it enabled him, from a small
income, to pay his father’s debts, became a miserable habit, and led him
to do mean things. He had a desire to be a great man and a Mæsenas—a bon
marché. The two celebrated lawyers, his brothers,
were not more gifted by nature than I think he was, but the restraints of a
profession kept the eccentricity of the family in order. Henry Erskine was the best-natured man I ever
knew, thoroughly a gentleman, and with but one fault. He could not say no, and thus sometimes misled those who trusted him.
Tom Erskine was positively mad. I have
heard him tell a cock-and-a-bull story of having seen the ghost of his
father’s servant, John Burnet, with as much gravity
as if he believed every word he was saying. Both Henry and
Thomas were saving men, yet
both died very poor. The latter at one time possessed L.200,000; the other had
a considerable fortune. The Earl alone has died wealthy. It is saving, not
getting, that is the mother of riches. They all had wit. The Earl’s was
crack-brained, and sometimes caustic; Henry’s was of
the very kindest, best-humoured, and gayest sort that ever cheered society;
that of Lord Erskine was moody and muddish. But I never
saw him in his best days.
“April 25.—After writing a
heap of letters, it was time to set out for Lord
Buchan’s funeral at Dryburgh Abbey. The letters were
signed by Mr David Erskine, his
Lordship’s natural son; and his nephew, the young Earl, was present; but neither of them took the head of
the coffin. His Lordship’s burial took place in a chapel amongst the
ruins. His body was in the grave with its feet pointing westward. My cousin,
Maxpopple,* was for taking notice of
it, but I assured him that a man who had been wrong in the head all his life
would scarce become right-headed after death. I felt something at parting with
this old man, though but a trumpery body. He gave me the first approbation I
ever obtained from a stranger. His caprice had led him to examine Dr Adam’s class when I, a boy of twelve
years old, and then in disgrace for some aggravated case of negligence, was
called up from a low bench, and recited my lesson with some spirit and
appearance of feeling the poetry—(it was the apparition of Hector’s ghost in the Æneid)—which called forth the noble
Earl’s applause. I was very proud of this at the time. I was sad from
* William Scott,
Esq.—the present Laird of Raeburn—was commonly thus
designated from a minor possession, during his father’s lifetime.
Whatever, in things of this sort, used to be practised among the French
noblesse might be traced, till very lately, in the customs of the
Scottish provincial gentry.
another account—it was
the first time I had been among those ruins since I left a very valued pledge
there. My next visit may be involuntary. Even God’s will be done—at least
I have not the mortification of thinking what a deal of patronage and fuss
Lord Buchan would bestow on my funeral.*
Maxpopple dined and slept here with four of his
family, much amused with what they heard and saw. By good fortune, a
ventriloquist and parcel juggler came in, and we had him in the library after
dinner. He was a half-starved wretched looking creature, who seemed to have eat
more fire than bread. So I caused him to be well-stuffed, and gave him a
guinea—rather to his poverty than to his skill—and now to finish Anne of Geierstein.”
Anne of Geierstein was finished before
breakfast on the 29th of April; and his Diary mentions that immediately after breakfast he
began his Compendium of Scottish History
for Dr Lardner’sCyclopædia. We have seen that when the
Proprietors of that work, in July 1828, offered him L.500 for an abstract of Scottish
History in one volume, he declined the proposal. They subsequently offered L.700, and this
was accepted; but though he began the task under the impression that he should find it a
heavy one, he soon warmed to the subject, and pursued it with cordial zeal and
satisfaction. One volume, it by and by appeared, would never do—in his own phrase “he
must have elbow room”—and I believe it was finally settled that he should have L.1500
for the book in two volumes; of which the first was published before the end of this year.
Anne of Geierstein came out about the middle
of May; and this, which may be almost called the last work of his imaginative genius, was
received at least as well—
* See ante, vol. iv,, p.
276.
(out of Scotland, that is)—as the Fair Maid of Perth had been, or indeed as any novel of
his after the Crusaders. I partake very strongly, I am aware, in the feeling which most of
my own countrymen have little shame in avowing, that no novel of his, where neither scenery
nor character is Scottish, belongs to the same pre-eminent class with those in which he
paints and peoples his native landscape. I have confessed that I cannot rank even his best
English romances with such creations as Waverley and Old Mortality;
far less can I believe that posterity will attach similar value to this Maid of the Mist.
Its pages, however, display in undiminished perfection all the skill and grace of the mere
artist, with occasional outbreaks of the old poetic spirit, more than sufficient to remove
the work to an immeasurable distance from any of its order produced in this country in our
own age. Indeed, the various play of fancy in the combination of persons and events, and
the airy liveliness of both imagery and diction, may well justify us in applying to the
author what he beautifully says of his King René— “A mirthful man he was; the snows of age Fell, but they did not chill him. Gaiety, Even in life’s closing, touch’d his teeming brain With such wild visions as the setting sun Raises in front of some hoar glacier, Painting the bleak ice with a thousand hues.”
It is a common saying, that there is nothing so distinctive of genius as the retention, in advanced years, of the capacity to
depict the feelings of youth with all their original glow and purity. But I apprehend this
blessed distinction belongs to, and is the just reward of, virtuous genius only. In the
case of extraordinary force of imagination, combined with the habitual indulgence of a
selfish mood;—not combined, that is to say, with the genial temper of mind and thought which God and Nature design to
be kept alive in man by those domestic charities, out of which the other social virtues so
easily spring, and with which they find such endless links of interdependence;—in this
unhappy case, which none who has studied the biography of genius can pronounce to be a rare
one, the very power which heaven bestowed seems to become, as old age darkens, the sternest
avenger of its own misapplication. The retrospect of life is converted by its energy into
one wide blackness of desolate regret; and whether this breaks out in the shape of a rueful
contemptuousness, or a sarcastic mockery of tone, the least drop of the poison is enough to
paralyze all attempts at awakening sympathy by fanciful delineations of love and
friendship. Perhaps Scott has nowhere painted such
feelings more deliciously than in those very scenes of Anne of Geierstein, which offer every now and then, in some
incidental circumstance or reflection, the best evidence that they are drawn by a
grey-headed man. The whole of his own life was too present to his wonderful memory to
permit of his brooding with exclusive partiality, whether painfully or pleasurably, on any
one portion or phasis of it; and besides, he was always living over again in his children,
young at heart whenever he looked on them, and the world that was opening on them and their
friends. But above all, he had a firm belief in the future re-union of those whom death has
parted.
He lost two more of his old intimates about this time;—Mr Terry in June, and Mr
Shortreed in the beginning of July. The Diary says:—“July 9.—Heard of the death of poor Bob
Shortreed, the companion of many a long ride among the hills in quest of
old ballads. He was a merry companion, a good singer and mimic, and full of Scottish
drollery. In his company, and under his guidance, I was able to
see much of rural society in the mountains, which I could not otherwise have attained,
and which I have made my use of. He was, in addition, a man of worth and character. I
always burdened his hospitality while at Jedburgh on the circuit, and have been useful
to some of his family. Poor fellow! So glide our friends from us.* Many recollections
die with him and with poor Terry.”
His Diary has few more entries for this twelvemonth. Besides the volume
of History for Dr Lardner’s collection, he had ready for publication by December the
last of the Scottish Series of Tales of a Grandfather; and had made great progress in
the prefaces and notes for Cadell’sOpus Magnum. He had also overcome various
difficulties which for a time interrupted the twin scheme of an illustrated edition of his
Poems: and one of these in a manner so agreeable to him, and honourable to the other party,
that I must make room for the two following letters:—
“I have a commission for you to execute for me,
which I shall deliver in a few words. I am now in possession of my own
copyrights of every kind, excepting a few things in Longman’s hands, and which I am offered
* Some little time before his death, the worthy
Sheriff-substitute of Jedburgh received a complete set of his
friend’s works, with this inscription:—“To Robert Shortreed, Esq., the friend of
the author from youth to age, and his guide and companion upon many an
expedition among the Border hills, in quest of the materials of
legendary lore which have at length filled so many volumes, this
collection of the results of their former rambles is presented by his
sincere friend, Walter
Scott.”
on very fair
terms—and a fourth share of Marmion, which is in the possession of our friend Murray. Now, I should consider it a great
favour if Mr Murray would part with it at what he may
consider as a fair rate, and would be most happy to show my sense of obligation
by assisting his views and speculations as far as lies in my power. I wish you
could learn as soon as you can Mr Murray’s
sentiments on this subject, as they would weigh with me in what I am about to
arrange as to the collected edition. The Waverley Novels are doing very well
indeed.
“I put you to a shilling’s expense, as I wish
a speedy answer to the above query. I am always, with love to Sophia, affectionately yours,
Walter Scott.”
To Sir Walter Scott, Bart., Edinburgh.
“Albemarle Street, June 8, 1829. “My dear Sir,
“Mr Lockhart
has this moment communicated your letter respecting my fourth share of the
copyright of Marmion. I have
already been applied to by Messrs Constable, and by Messrs Longman, to know what sum I would sell this share for—but so
highly do I estimate the honour of being even in so small a degree the
publisher of the author of the poem—that no pecuniary consideration whatever
can induce me to part with it.
“But there is a consideration of another kind, which
until now I was not aware of, which would make it painful to me if I were to
retain it a moment longer. I mean the knowledge of its being required by the
author, into whose hands it was spontaneously resigned in the same instant that
I read his request.
“This share has been profitable to me fifty-fold
beyond what either publisher or author could have anticipated, and, therefore,
my returning it on such an occa-sion you will, I trust,
do me the favour to consider in no other light than as a mere act of grateful
acknowledgment for benefits already received by, my dear Sir, your obliged and
faithful servant,
John Murray.”
The success of the collective novels was far beyond what either
Sir Walter or Mr
Cadell had ventured to anticipate. Before the close of 1829 eight volumes
had been issued; and the monthly sale had reached as high as 35,000. Should this go on,
there was, indeed, every reason to hope that, coming in aid of undiminished industry in the
preparation of new works, it would wipe off all his load of debt in the course of a very
few years. And during the autumn (which I spent near him) it was most agreeable to observe
the effects of the prosperous intelligence, which every succeeding month brought, upon his
spirits.
This was the more needed, that at this time his eldest son, who had
gone to the south of France on account of some unpleasant symptoms in his health, did not
at first seem to profit rapidly by the change of climate. He feared that the young man was
not quite so attentive to the advice of his physicians as he ought to have been; and in one
of many letters on this subject, after mentioning some of Cadell’s good news as to the great affair, he says “I have
wrought hard, and so far successfully. But I tell you plainly, my dear boy, that if you
permit your health to decline from want of attention, I have not strength of mind
enough to exert myself in these matters as I have hitherto been doing.”
Happily Major Scott was, ere long, restored to his
usual state of health and activity.
Sir Walter himself, too, besides the usual allowance of
rheumatism, and other lesser ailments, had an attack that season of a nature which gave his family great alarm,
and which for some days he himself regarded with the darkest prognostications. After some
weeks, during which he complained of headach and nervous irritation, certain
hæmorrhages indicated the sort of relief required, and he obtained it from copious
cupping. He says in his Diary for June 3d:—“The ugly symptom still continues.
Dr Ross does not make much of it; and I think
he is apt to look grave. Either way I am firmly resolved. I wrote in the morning. The
Court kept me till near two, and then home comes I. Afternoon and evening were spent as
usual. In the evening Dr Ross ordered me to be cupped, an
operation which I only knew from its being practised by those eminent medical
practitioners the barbers of Bagdad. It is not painful; and, I think, resembles a giant
twisting about your flesh between his finger and thumb.” After this he felt
better, he said, than he had done for years before; but there can be little doubt that the
natural evacuation was a very serious symptom. It was, in fact, the precursor of apoplexy.
In telling the Major of his recovery, he says
“The sale of the Novels is pro—di—gi—ous. If it last but a few years, it will
clear my feet of old incumbrances, nay, perhaps, enable me to talk a word to our friend
Nicol Milne. ‘But old ships must expect to get out of commission, Nor again to weigh anchor with yo heave ho!’
However that may be, I should be happy to die a free man; and I am sure you will
all be kind to poor Anne, who will miss me most.
I don’t intend to die a minute sooner than I can help for all this; but when a
man takes to making blood instead of water, he is tempted to think on the possibility
of his soon making earth.”
One of the last entries in this year’s Diary gives a sketch of
the celebrated Edward Irving, who was about this time deposed from the ministry of the Church of Scotland on
account of his wild heresies. Sir Walter, describing a
large dinner party, says:—“I met today the celebrated divine and soi-disant prophet, Irving.
He is a fine-looking man (bating a diabolical squint), with talent on his brow and
madness in his eye. His dress, and the arrangement of his hair, indicated that. I could
hardly keep my eyes off him while we were at table. He put me in mind of the devil
disguised as an angel of light, so ill did that horrible obliquity of vision harmonize
with the dark tranquil features of his face, resembling that of our Saviour in Italian
pictures, with the hair carefully arranged in the same manner. There was much real or
affected simplicity in the manner in which he spoke. He rather made
play, spoke much, and seemed to be good-humoured. But he spoke with that kind
of unction which is nearly allied to cajolerie. He boasted much
of the tens of thousands that attended his ministry at the town of Annan, his native
place, till he well-nigh provoked me to say he was a distinguished exception to the
rule that a prophet was not esteemed in his own country. But time and place were not
fitting.”
Among a few other friends from a distance, Sir
Walter received this autumn a short visit from Mr Hallam, and made in his company several of the little excursions which
had in former days been of constant recurrence. Mr Hallam had with him
his son, Arthur, a young gentleman of extraordinary
abilities, and as modest as able, who not long afterwards was cut off in the very bloom of
opening life and genius. In a little volume of “Remains,” which his father has since printed for
private friends with this motto— “Vattene in pace alma beata e bella,”— there occurs a memorial of Abbotsford and Melrose, which I have pleasure in being
allowed to quote.
“STANZAS—AUGUST, 1829. “I lived an hour in fair Melrose; It was not when “the pale moonlight” Its magnifying charm bestows; Yet deem I that I “viewed it right.” The wind-swept shadows fast careered, Like living things that joyed or feared, Adown the sunny Eildon Hill, And the sweet winding Tweed the distance crowned well. “I inly laughed to see that scene Wear such a countenance of youth, Though many an age those hills were green, And yonder river glided smooth, Ere in these now disjointed walls The Mother Church held festivals, And full-voiced anthemings the while Swelled from the choir, and lingered down the echoing aisle. “I coveted that Abbey’s doom; For if, I thought, the early flowers Of our affection may not bloom, Like those green hills, through countless hours, Grant me at least a tardy waning, Some pleasure still in age’s paining; Though lines and forms must fade away, Still may old Beauty share the empire of Decay! “But looking toward the grassy mound Where calm the Douglas chieftains lie, Who, living, quiet never found, I straightway learnt a lesson high: For there an old man sat serene, And well I knew that thoughtful mien Of him whose early lyre had thrown Over these mouldering walls the magic of its tone. “Then ceased I from my envying state, And knew that aweless intellect Hath power upon the ways of fate, And works through time and space uncheck’d. That minstrel of old chivalry, In the cold grave must come to be, But his transmitted thoughts have part In the collective mind, and never shall depart. “It was a comfort too to see Those dogs that from him ne’er would rove, And always eyed him reverently, With glances of depending love. They know not of that eminence Which marks him to my reasoning sense; They know but that he is a man, And still to them is kind, and glads them all he can. “And, hence, their quiet looks confiding, Hence grateful instincts seated deep, By whose strong bond, were ill betiding, They’d risk their own his life to keep. What joy to watch in lower creature Such dawning of a moral nature, And how (the rule all things obey) They look to a higher mind to be their law and stay!”
The close of the autumn was embittered by a sudden and most unexpected
deprivation. Apparently in the fullest enjoyment of health and vigour, Thomas Purdie leaned his head one evening on the table,
and dropped asleep. This was nothing uncommon in a hard-working man; and his family went
and came about him for several hours, without taking any notice. When supper came they
tried to awaken him, and found that life had been for some time extinct. Far different from
other years, Sir Walter seemed impatient to get away
from Abbotsford to Edinburgh. “I have lost,” he writes (4th November) to
Cadell,—“my old and faithful servant—my
factotum—and am so much shocked that I
really wish to be quit of the country and safe in town. I have this day laid him in the
grave. This has prevented my answering your letters.”
The grave, close to the Abbey at Melrose, is surmounted by a modest
monument, having on two sides these inscriptions:—
IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCEOFTHE FAITHFULAND ATTACHED SERVICESOFTWENTY-TWO YEARS,AND IN SORROWFOR THE LOSS OF A HUMBLEBUT SINCERE FRIEND;THIS STONE WAS ERECTEDBY SIR WALTER SCOTT, Bart., OF ABBOTSFORD.HERE LIES THE BODYOF THOMAS PURDIE, WOOD-FORESTER,AT ABBOTSFORD,WHO DIED 29TH OCTOBER,1829,AGED SIXTY-TWO YEARS.“Thou hast been faithfulover a few things,I will make thee rulerover many things.Matthew, chap.
xxv. v. 21st.
CHAPTER VI. AUCHINDRANE, OR THE AYRSHIRE TRAGEDY—SECOND VOLUME OF THE HISTORY OF SCOTLAND—PARALYTIC SEIZURE—LETTERS ON
DEMONOLOGY, AND TALES ON THE HISTORY OF FRANCE
BEGUN—POETRY, WITH PREFACES, PUBLISHED—REVIEWAL OF
SOUTHEY’SLIFE OF
BUNYAN—EXCURSIONS TO CULROSS AND PRESTONPANS—RESIGNATION OF THE CLERKSHIP OF
SESSION—COMMISSION ON THE STUART PAPERS—OFFERS OF A PENSION AND OF THE RANK OF
PRIVY-COUNSELLOR—DECLINED—DEATH OF GEORGE IV.—GENERAL ELECTION—SPEECH
AT JEDBURGH—SECOND PARALYTIC ATTACK—DEMONOLOGY, AND FRENCH HISTORY PUBLISHED—ARRIVAL OF KING CHARLES
X. AT HOLYROOD-HOUSE—LETTER TO LADY LOUISA STUART. 1830.
Sir Walter’sreviewal of the early parts of Mr Pitcairn’sAncient Criminal Trials had, of course, much gratified
the editor, who sent him, on his arrival in Edinburgh, the proof-sheets of the Number then
in hand, and directed his attention particularly to its details on the extraordinary case
of Mure of Auchindrane, A.D. 1611. Scott was so
much interested with these documents, that he resolved to found a dramatic sketch on their
terrible story; and the result was a composition far superior to any of his previous
attempts of that nature. Indeed there are several passages in his “Ayrshire Tragedy”—especially that where the
murdered corpse floats upright in the wake of the assassin’s bark, —(an incident suggested by
a lamentable chapter in Lord Nelson’s history)
which may bear comparison with any thing but Shakspeare. Yet I doubt whether the prose narrative of the preface be not,
on the whole, more dramatic than the versified scenes. It contains, by the way, some very
striking allusions to the recent atrocities of Gill’s Hill and the West Port. This
piece was published in a thin octavo early in the year; and the beautiful Essays
on Ballad Poetry, composed with a view to a collective edition of all his
Poetical Works in small cheap volumes, were about the same time attached to the octavo
edition then on sale; the state of stock not as yet permitting the new issue to be begun.
Sir Walter was now to pay the penalty of his
unparalleled toils. On the 15th of February, about two o’clock in the afternoon, he
returned from the Parliament House apparently in his usual state, and found an old
acquaintance, Miss Young of Hawick, waiting to show him some MS.
memoirs of her father (a dissenting minister of
great worth and talents), which he had undertaken to revise and correct for the press. The
old lady sat by him for half an hour while he seemed to be occupied with her papers; at
length he rose, as if to dismiss her, but sunk down again—a slight convulsion agitating his
features. After a few minutes he got up and staggered to the drawing-room, where Anne Scott and my sister Violet Lockhart were sitting. They rushed to meet him, but he fell at all
his length on the floor ere they could reach him. He remained speechless for about ten
minutes, by which time a surgeon had arrived and bled him. He was cupped again in the
evening, and gradually recovered possession of speech and of all his faculties in so far
that, the occurrence being kept quiet, when he appeared abroad again after a short
interval, people in general do not seem to have observed any serious change. He submitted
to the utmost severity of regimen, tasting nothing but pulse and
water for some weeks, and the alarm of his family and intimate friends subsided. By and by
he again mingled in society much as usual, and seems to have almost persuaded himself that
the attack had proceeded merely from the stomach, though his letters continued ever and
anon to drop hints that the symptoms resembled apoplexy or paralysis. When we recollect
that both his father and his elder brother died of paralysis, and consider the terrible
violences of agitation and exertion to which Sir Walter had been
subjected during the four preceding years, the only wonder is that this blow (which had, I
suspect, several indistinct harbingers) was deferred so long; there can be none that it was
soon followed by others of the same description.
He struggled manfully, however, against his malady, and during 1830
covered almost as many sheets with his MS. as in 1829. About March I find, from his
correspondence with Ballantyne, that he was working
regularly at his Letters on Demonology
and Witchcraft for Murray’s Family
Library, and also on a Fourth Series of the Tales of a Grandfather—the subject being French history. Both of these books
were published by the end of the year; and the former contains many passages worthy of his
best day—little snatches of picturesque narrative and the like—in fact, transcripts of his
own familiar fireside stories. The shrewdness with which evidence is sifted on legal cases
attests, too, that the main reasoning faculty remained unshaken. But, on the whole, these
works can hardly be submitted to a strict ordeal of criticism. There is in both a
cloudiness both of words and arrangement. Nor can I speak differently of the second volume
of his Scottish History for Lardner’s Cyclopædia,
which was published in May. His very pretty reviewal of Mr
Southey’sLife and
Edition of Bunyan was done in August—about which time his recovery seems to have
reached its acmé.
In the course of the Spring Session, circumstances rendered it highly
probable that Sir Walter’s resignation of his
place as Clerk of Session might be acceptable to the Government—and it is not surprising
that he should have, on the whole, been pleased to avail himself of this opportunity.
His Diary was resumed in May, and continued at irregular intervals for
the rest of the year; but its contents are commonly too medical for quotation. Now and
then, however, occur entries which I cannot think of omitting. For example:—
“Abbotsford, May 23,
1830.—About a year ago I took the pet at my Diary, chiefly because I thought it
made me abominably selfish; and that by recording my gloomy fits, I encouraged
their recurrence, whereas out of sight, out of mind, is the best way to get rid
of them; and now I hardly know why I take it up again, but here goes. I came
here to attend Raeburn’s funeral.
I am near of his kin, my great-grandfather, Walter
Scott, being the second son or first cadet of this small family.
My late kinsman was also married to my
aunt, a most amiable old lady. He was never kind to me, and at
last utterly ungracious. Of course I never liked him, and we kept no terms. He
had forgot, though, an infantine cause of quarrel, which I always remembered.
When I was four or five years old, I was staying at Lessudden Place, an old
mansion, the abode of this Raeburn. A large pigeon-house was almost destroyed
with starlings, then a common bird, though now seldom seen. They were seized in
their nests and put in a bag, and I think drowned, or
thrashed to death, or put to some such end. The servants gave one to me, which
I in some degree tamed, and the brute of a laird seized and wrung its neck. I
flew at his throat like a wild-cat, and was torn from him with no little
difficulty. Long afterwards I did him the mortal offence to recall some
superiority which my father had lent to the laird to make up a qualification,
which he meant to exercise by voting for Lord
Minto’s interest against the Duke
of Buccleuch’s. This made a total breach between two
relations who had never been friends; and though I was afterwards of
considerable service to his family, he kept his ill humour, alleging, justly
enough, that I did these kind actions for the sake of his wife and name, not
for his benefit. I now saw him at the age of eighty-two or three deposited in
the ancestral grave; dined with my cousins, and returned to Abbotsford about
eight o’clock.
“Edinburgh, May 26.—Wrought
with proofs, &c. at the Demonology, which is a cursed business to do neatly. I must finish
it though. I went to the Court, from that came home, and scrambled on with half
writing, half reading, half idleness till evening. I have laid aside smoking
much; and now, unless tempted by company, rarely take a cigar. I was frightened
by a species of fit which I had in March [February], which took from me my
power of speaking. I am told it is from the stomach. It looked woundy like
palsy or apoplexy. Well, be what it will, I can stand it.
“May 27.—Court as usual. I am
agitating a proposed retirement from the Court. As they are only to have four
instead of six Clerks of Session in Scotland, it will be their interest to let
me retire on a superannuation. Probably I shall make a bad bargain, and get only two-thirds of the salary,
instead of three-fourths. This would be hard, but I could save between two or
three hundred pounds by giving up town residence. At any rate, jacta est alea—Sir Robert Peel and the Advocate acquiesce in
the arrangement, and Sir Robert Dundas
retires alongst with me. I think the difference will be infinite in point of
health and happiness. Yet I do not know. It is perhaps a violent change in the
end of life to quit the walk one has trod so long, and the cursed splenetic
temper which besets all men makes you value opportunities and circumstances
when one enjoys them no longer. Well ‘Things must be as they
may,’ as says that great philosopher Corporal Nym.
“June 3.—I finished my
proofs, and sent them off with copy. I saw Mr
Dickinson* on Tuesday; a right plain sensible man. He is so
confident in my matters, that, being a large creditor himself, he offers to
come down, with the support of all the London creditors, to carry through any
measure that can be devised for my behoof. Mr
Cadell showed him that we were four years forward in matter
prepared for the press. Got Heath’s Illustrations, which I dare say are finely
engraved, but commonplace enough in point of art.
“June 17.—Went last night to
Theatre, and saw Miss Fanny
Kemble’sIsabella,
which was a most creditable performance. It has much of the genius of Mrs Siddons, her aunt. She wants her beautiful
countenance, her fine form, and her matchless dignity of step and manner. On
the other hand, Miss Fanny Kemble has very expressive,
though not regular features, and what is worth
* Mr John
Dickinson of Nash-mill, Herts, the eminent papermaker.
it all, great energy mingled with and chastised by
correct taste. I suffered by the heat, lights, and exertion, and will not go
back to-night, for it has purchased me a sore headach this theatrical
excursion. Besides, the play is Mrs Beverley, and I hate to be made miserable about domestic
distress, so I keep my gracious presence at home to-night, though I love and
respect Miss Kemble for giving her active support to her
father in his need, and preventing
Covent Garden from coming down about their ears. I corrected proofs before
breakfast, attended Court, but was idle in the forenoon, the headach annoying
me much.
“Blair-Adam, June 18.—Our
meeting cordial, but our numbers diminished; the good and very clever Lord
Chief Baron [Shepherd] is returned to
his own country with more regrets than in Scotland usually attend a stranger.
Will Clerk has a bad cold, Tom Thomson is detained, but the Chief Commissioner, Admiral Adam, Sir Adam,
John Thomson and I, make an excellent concert.
“June 19.—Arose and expected
to work a little, but a friend’s house is not favourable; you are sure to
want the book you have not brought, and are, in short, out of sorts, like the
minister who could not preach out of his own pulpit. There is something
fanciful in this, and something real too. After breakfast to Culross, where the
veteran, Sir Robert Preston, showed us
his curiosities. Life has done as much for him as most people. In his
ninety-second year, he has an ample fortune, a sound understanding, not the
least decay of eyes, ears, or taste, is as big as two men, and eats like three.
Yet he too experiences the “singula
prædantur” and has lost something since I
last saw him. If his appearance renders old age tolerable, it does not make it desirable. But I
fear when death comes we shall be unwilling for all that to part with our
bundle of sticks. Sir Robert amuses himself with repairing
the old House of Culross, built by the Lord Bruce. What it
is destined for is not very evident. It is too near his own mansion of
Valleyfield to be useful as a residence, if indeed it could be formed into a
comfortable modern house. But it is rather like a banqueting-house. Well, he
follows his own fancy. We had a sumptuous cold dinner. Sir Adam grieves it was not hot, so little can
war and want break a man to circumstances. The beauty of Culross consists in
magnificent terraces rising on the sea beach, and commanding the opposite shore
of Lothian; the house is repairing in the style of James
VI. There are some fine relics of the Old Monastery, with large
Saxon arches. At Anstruther I saw with pleasure the painting, by Raeburn, of my old friend Adam Rolland, Esq., who was in the external
circumstances, but not in frolic or fancy, my prototype for Paul Pleydell.
“June 9.—Dined with the
Bannatyne, where we had a lively party. Touching the songs, an old roué must own an improvement in the
times, when all paw-paw words are omitted;—and yet, when the naughty innuendoes
are gazers, one is apt to say— ‘Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art, A good mouth-filling oath, and leave Forsooth, And such protests of petty gingerbread.’ I think there is more affectation than improvement in the new mode.”
Not knowing how poor Maida had been replaced,
Miss Edgeworth at this time offered Sir Walter a fine Irish staghound. He replies thus:—
To Miss Edgeworth, Edgeworthstown.
“Edinburgh, 23d June, 1830. “My Dear Miss Edgeworth,
“Nothing would be so valuable to me as the mark of
kindness which you offer, and yet my kennel is so much changed since I had the
pleasure of seeing you, that I must not accept of what I wished so sincerely to
possess. I am the happy owner of two of the noble breed, each of gigantic size,
and the gift of that sort of Highlander whom we call a High Chief, so I would
hardly be justified in parting with them even to make room for your kind
present, and I should have great doubts whether the mountaineers would receive
the Irish stranger with due hospitality. One of them I had from poor Glengarry, who, with all wild and fierce
points of his character, had a kind, honest, and warm heart. The other from a
young friend, whom Highlanders call MacVourigh, and
Lowlanders MacPherson of Cluny. He is a
fine spirited boy, fond of his people and kind to them, and the best dancer of
a Highland reel now living. I fear I must not add a third to Nimrod and Bran, having
little use for them except being pleasant companions. As to labouring in their
vocation, we have only one wolf which I know of, kept in a friend’s
menagerie near me, and no wild deer. Walter has some roebucks indeed, but Lochore is far off, and I
begin to feel myself distressed at running down these innocent and beautiful
creatures, perhaps because I cannot gallop so fast after them as to drown sense
of the pain we are inflicting. And yet I suspect I am like the sick fox; and if
my strength and twenty years could come back, I would become again a copy of my
namesake, remembered by the sobriquet of Walter ill
to hauld (to hold, that is). ‘But age has clawed
me in its clutch,’ and there is no remedy for increasing disability
except dying, which is an awkward score.
“There is some chance of my retiring from my
official situation upon the changes in the Court of Session. They cannot reduce
my office, though they do not wish to fill it up with a new occupant. I shall
be therefore de trop; and in these
days of economy they will be better pleased to let me retire on three parts of
my salary than to keep me a Clerk of Session on the whole; and small grief at
our parting, as the old horse said to the broken cart. And yet, though I
thought such a proposal when first made was like a Pisgah peep of Paradise, I
cannot help being a little afraid of changing the habits of a long life all of
a sudden and for ever. You ladies have always your work-basket and
stocking-knitting to wreak an hour of tediousness upon. The routine of business
serves, I suspect, for the same purpose to us male wretches; it is seldom a
burden to the mind, but a something which must be done, and is done almost
mechanically; and though dull judges and duller clerks, the routine of law
proceedings, and law forms, are very unlike the plumed troops and the tug of
war, yet the result is the same. The occupation’s gone.* The
morning, that the day’s news must all be gathered from other sources that
the jokes which the principal Clerks of Session have laughed at weekly for a
century, and which would not move a muscle of any other person’s face,
must be laid up to perish like those of Sancho in the Sierra Morena—I don’t above half like
forgetting all these moderate habits, and yet ‘Ah, freedom is a noble thing!’ as says the old Scottish
poet.† So I will cease my regrets, or lay them by to be taken
up and used as arguments of comfort, in case I do not slip my cable after all,
which is highly possible. Lockhart and
Sophia
* Othello,
Act. III., Sc. 3. † Barbour’sBruce.
have taken up their old residence at Chiefswood. They
are very fond of the place; and I am glad also my grandchildren will be bred
near the heather, for certain qualities which I think are best taught there.
“Let me enquire about all my friends, Mrs Fox, Mr and Mrs
Butler, Mrs Edgeworth,
the hospitable squire, and plan of
education, and all and sundry of the household of Edgeworthstown. I shall long
remember our delightful days—especially those under the roof of
Protestant Frank.*
“Have you forsworn merry England, to say nothing of
our northern regions? This meditated retreat will make me more certain of being
at Abbotsford the whole year; and I am now watching the ripening of those plans
which I schemed five years, ten years, twenty years ago. Anne is still the Beatrix you saw her; Walter, now major, predominating with his hussars at Nottingham
and Sheffield; but happily there has been no call to try Sir Toby’s experiment of drawing three
souls out of the body of one weaver. Ireland seems to be thriving. A friend of
mine laid out L.40,000 or L.50,000 on an estate there, for which he gets 7 per
cent; so you are looking up. Old England is distressed enough—we are well
enough here—but we never feel the storm till it has passed over our neighbours.
I ought to get a frank for this, but our members are all up mending the stops
of the great fiddle. The termination of the King’s illness is considered as inevitable, and expected
with great apprehension and anxiety. Believe me always with the greatest
regard, yours,
Walter Scott.”
On the 26th of June Sir Walter heard
of the death of
* I believe the ancestor who built the House at Edgeworthstown
was distinguished by this appellation.
King George IV. with the regret of a devoted and obliged
subject. He had received almost immediately before two marks of his Majesty’s kind
attention. Understanding that his retirement from the Court of Session was at hand,
Sir William Knighton suggested to the King that
Sir Walter might henceforth be more frequently in London, and that
he might very fitly be placed at the head of a new commission for examining and editing the
MSS. collections of the exiled Princes of the House of Stuart, which had come into the
King’s hands on the death of the Cardinal of
York. This Sir Walter gladly accepted, and contemplated
with pleasure spending the ensuing winter in London. But another proposition, that of
elevating him to the rank of Privy Counsellor, was unhesitatingly declined. He felt that
any increase of rank under the circumstances of diminished fortune and failing health would
be idle and unsuitable, and desired his friend, the Lord Chief
Commissioner, whom the King had desired to ascertain his feelings on the
subject, to convey his grateful thanks, with his humble apology.
He heard of the King’s death,
on what was otherwise a pleasant day. The Diary says—“June
27.—Yesterday morning I worked as usual at proofs and copy of my infernal Demonology, a task to which my
poverty and not my will consents. About twelve o’clock, I went to the country to
take a day’s relaxation. We (i. e. Mr Cadell, James
Ballantyne, and I) went to Prestonpans, and getting there about one,
surveyed the little village, where my aunt and I
were lodgers for the sake of sea-bathing, in 1778, I believe. I knew the house of
Mr Warroch, where we lived, a poor cottage, of which the
owners and their family are extinct. I recollected my juvenile ideas of dignity
attendant on the large gate, a black arch which lets out upon the sea. I saw the church
where I yawned under the inflictions of a Dr M’Cormack, a name in which dulness seems
to have been hereditary. I saw the links where I arranged my shells upon the turf, and
swam my little skiff in the pools. Many comparisons between the man and the boy—many
recollections of my kind aunt—of old George
Constable, who, I think, dangled after her of Dalgetty, a virtuous
half-pay lieutenant, who swaggered his solitary walk on the parade, as he called a
little open space before the same port. We went to Preston, and took refuge from a
thunder-plump in the old tower. I remembered the little garden where I was crammed with
gooseberries, and the fear I had of Blind
Harry’s Spectre of Fawdon showing his headless trunk at one of the
windows. I remembered also a very good-natured pretty girl (my Mary Duff), whom I laughed and romped with, and loved
as children love. She was a Miss Dalrymple,
daughter of Lord Westhall, a Lord of Session;
was afterwards married to Anderson of Winterfield, and her
daughter is now the spouse of my colleague,
Robert Hamilton. So strangely are our cards
shuffled. I was a mere child, and could feel none of the passion which Byron alleges, yet the recollection of this good-humoured
companion of my childhood is like that of a morning dream, nor should I greatly like to
dispel it by seeing the original, who must now be sufficiently time-honoured.
“Well, we walked over the field of battle; saw the
Prince’s Park, Cope’s Road, marked by
slaughter in his disastrous retreat, the thorn-tree which marks the centre of the
battle, and all besides that was to be seen or supposed. We saw two broadswords, found
on the field of battle, one a Highlander’s, an Andrew
Ferrara, another the dragoon’s sword of that day.* Lastly, we came
to Cockenzie, where Mr Francis Cadell, my
pub-
* The Laird of
Cockenzie kindly sent these swords next day to the armoury at
Abbotsford.
lisher’s brother, gave us a kind reception.
I was especially glad to see the mother of the
family, a fine old lady, who was civil to my aunt and me, and, I
recollect well, used to have us to tea at Cockenzie. Curious that I should long
afterwards have an opportunity to pay back this attention to her son Robert. Once more, what a kind of shuffling of the
hand dealt us at our nativity. There was Mrs F.
Cadell and one or two young ladies, and some fine fat children. I should
be “a Bastard to the Time” did I not tell our fare; we had a tiled
whiting, a dish unknown elsewhere, so there is a bone for the gastronomers to pick.
Honest John Wood, my old friend, dined with us; I
only regret I cannot understand him, as he has a very powerful memory, and much curious
information.* The whole day of pleasure was damped by the news of the King’s death; it was fully expected, indeed, as the
termination of his long illness; but he was very good to me personally, and a kind
sovereign. The common people and gentry join in their sorrows. Much is owing to kindly
recollections of his visit to this country, which gave all men an interest in
him.”
When the term ended in July the affair of Sir
Walter’s retirement was all but settled; and soon afterwards he was
informed that he had ceased to be a Clerk of Session, and should thenceforth have, in lieu
of his salary, &c. (L.1300) an allowance of L.800 per annum. This was accompanied by an
intimation from the Home Secretary that the Ministers were quite ready to grant him a
pension covering the reduction in his income. Considering himself as the bond-slave of his
creditors, he made known
* Mr Wood published a
History of the Parish of
Cramond, in 1794—an enlarged edition of Sir Robert Douglas’s Peerage of
Scotland, 2 vols. folio, in 1813—and a Life of the celebrated John Law, of Laurieston,
in 1824. In the preface to the Cramond History he describes himself as scopulis surdior Icari.
to them this proposition, and stated that it would be extremely
painful to him to accept of it; and with the delicacy and generosity which throughout
characterised their conduct towards him, they, without hesitation, entreated him on no
account to do injury to his own feelings in such a matter as this. Few things gave him more
pleasure than this handsome communication.
Just after he had taken leave of Edinburgh, as he seems to have thought
for ever, he received a communication of another sort, as inopportune as any that ever
reached him. His Diary for the 13th July says briefly—“I have a letter from a
certain young gentleman, announcing that his
sister had so far mistaken the intentions of a lame baronet nigh sixty years old, as to
suppose him only prevented by modesty from stating certain wishes and hopes, &c.
The party is a woman of rank, so my vanity may be satisfied. But I excused myself, with
little picking upon the terms.”
During the rest of the summer and autumn his daughter and I were at
Chiefswood, and saw him of course daily. Laidlaw,
too, had been restored to the cottage at Kseside; and though Tom Purdie made a dismal blank, old habits went on, and the course of life
seemed little altered from what it had used to be. He looked jaded and worn before evening
set in, yet very seldom departed from the strict regimen of his doctors, and often
brightened up to all his former glee, though passing the bottle, and sipping toast and
water. His grandchildren especially saw no change. However languid, his spirits revived at
the sight of them, and the greatest pleasure he had was in pacing Douce
Davie through the green lanes among his woods, with them clustered about him on
ponies and donkeys, while Laidlaw, the ladies, and myself, walked by,
and obeyed his directions about pruning and marking trees. After the immediate alarms of the spring, it might have been even agreeable to
witness this placid twilight scene, but for our knowledge that nothing could keep him from
toiling many hours daily at his desk, and alas! that he was no longer sustained by the
daily commendations of his printer. It was obvious, as the season advanced, that the manner
in which Ballantyne communicated with him was
sinking into his spirits, and Laidlaw foresaw, as well as myself, that
some trying crisis of discussion could not be much longer deferred. A nervous twitching
about the muscles of the mouth was always more or less discernible from the date of the
attack in February; but we could easily tell, by the aggravation of that symptom, when he
had received a packet from the Canongate. It was distressing indeed to think that he might,
one of these days, sustain a second seizure, and be left still more helpless, yet with the
same undiminished appetite for literary labour. And then, if he felt his printer’s
complaints so keenly, what was to be expected in the case of a plain and undeniable
manifestation of disappointment on the part of the public, and consequently of the
bookseller?
All this was for the inner circle. Country neighbours went and came
without, I believe, observing almost any thing of what grieved the family. Nay, this autumn
he was far more troubled with the invasions of strangers, than he had ever been since his
calamities of 1826. The astonishing success of the new editions was, as usual, doubled or
trebled by rumour. The notion that he had already all but cleared off his incumbrances
seems to have been widely prevalent, and no doubt his refusal of a pension tended to
confirm it. Abbotsford was, for some weeks at least, besieged much as it had used to be in
the golden days of 1823 and 1824; and if sometimes his guests brought animation and pleasure with them, even then the result was a legacy of
redoubled lassitude. The Diary, among a very few and far separated entries, has this:
“September 5.—In spite of Resolution, I
have left my Diary for some weeks, I cannot well tell why. We have had abundance of
travelling Counts and Countesses, Yankees, male and female, and a Yankee-Doodle-Dandy
into the bargain, a smart young Virginia-man. But we have had friends of our own also,
the Miss Ardens, young Mrs Morritt and
Anne Morritt, most agreeable visiters.
Cadell came out here yesterday with his horn
filled with good news. He calculates that in October the debt will be reduced to the
sum of L.60,000, half of its original amount. This makes me care less about the terms I
retire upon. The efforts by which we have advanced thus far are new in literature, and
what is gained is secure.”
Mr Cadell’s great hope, when he offered this
visit, had been that the good news of the Magnum might induce Sir Walter to
content himself with working at notes and prefaces for its coming volumes, without
straining at more difficult tasks. He found his friend, however, by no means disposed to
adopt such views; and suggested very kindly, and ingeniously too, by way of mezzo-termine, that before entering upon any new
novel, he should draw up a sort of catalogue raisonnée of the
most curious articles in his library and museum. Sir Walter grasped at
this, and began next morning to dictate to Laidlaw
what he designed to publish in the usual novel shape, under the title of “Reliquiæ Trottcosienses, or the Gabions of Jonathan
Oldbuck.” Nothing, as it seemed to all about him, could have suited the time
better; but after a few days he said he found this was not sufficient—that he should
proceed in it during horæ subcesivæ,
but must bend himself to the composition of a
romance, founded on a story which he had more than once told cursorily already, and for
which he had been revolving the various titles of Robert of the Isle—Count Robert de
L’Isle—and Count Robert of Paris. There
was nothing to be said in reply to the decisive announcement of this purpose. The usual
agreements were drawn out; and the Tale was begun.
But before I come to the results of this experiment, I must relieve the
reader by Mr Adolphus’s account of some more
agreeable things. The death of George IV. occasioned a
general election; and the Revolution of France in July, with its rapid imitation in the
Netherlands, had been succeeded by such a quickening of hope among the British Liberals, as
to render this in general a scene of high excitement and desperate struggling of parties.
In Teviotdale, however, all was as yet quiescent. Mr Adolphus says:
“One day, during my visit of 1830, 1 accompanied Sir Walter to Jedburgh, when the eldest son of Mr Scott of Harden (now Lord
Polwarth) was for the third time elected member for Roxburghshire. There
was no contest; an opposition had been talked of, but was adjourned to some future day.
The meeting in the Court-house, where the election took place, was not a very crowded
or stirring scene; but among those present, as electors or spectators, were many
gentlemen of the most ancient and honourable names in Roxburghshire and the adjoining
counties. Sir Walter seconded the nomination. It was the first
time I had heard him speak in public, and I was a little disappointed. His manner was
very quiet and natural, but seemed to me too humble, and wanting in animation. His air
was sagacious and reverend; his posture somewhat stooping; he rested, or rather
pressed, the palm of one hand on the head of his stick, and used a very little
gesticulation with the other. As he went on, his delivery
acquired warmth, but it never became glowing. His points, however, were very well
chosen, and his speech, perhaps, upon the whole, was such as a sensible country
gentleman should have made to an assembly of his neighbours upon a subject on which
they were all well agreed. Certainly the feeling of those present in favour of the
candidate required no stimulus.
“The new member was to give a dinner to the electors at three
o’clock. In the mean-time Sir Walter strolled
round the ancient Abbey. It amused me on this and on one or two other occasions, when
he was in frequented places, to see the curiosity with which some zealous stranger
would hover about his line of walk or ride, to catch a view of him, though a distant
one for it was always done with caution and respect; and he was not disturbed—perhaps
not displeased—by it. The dinner party was in number, I suppose, eighty or ninety, and
the festival passed off with great spirit. The croupier, Mr
Baillie of Jerviswood, who had nominated the candidate in the morning,
proposed, at its proper time, in a few energetic words, the health of Sir
Walter Scott. All hearts were ‘thirsty for the noble
pledge;’ the health was caught up with enthusiasm; and any one who looked
round must have seen with pleasure that the popularity of Sir Walter
Scott—European, and more than European as it was—had its most vigorous
roots at the threshold of his own home. He made a speech in acknowledgment, and this
time I was not disappointed. It was rich in humour and feeling, and graced by that
engaging manner of which he had so peculiar a command. One passage I remembered, for
its whimsical homeliness, long after the other, and perhaps better parts of the speech
had passed from my recollection. Mr Baillie had spoken of him as a
man pre-eminent among those who had done honour and service to Scotland. He replied that, in what he had done
for Scotland as a writer, he was no more entitled to the merit which had been ascribed
to him than the servant who scours the ‘brasses’ to the credit of having
made them; that he had perhaps been a good housemaid to Scotland, and given the country
a ‘rubbing up;’ and in so doing might have deserved some praise for
assiduity, and that was all. Afterwards, changing the subject, he spoke very
beautifully and warmly of the re-elected candidate who sat by him; alluded to the hints
which had been thrown out in the morning of a future opposition and Reform, and ended with some verses (I believe they were Burns’s, parcé
detorta), pressing his hand upon the shoulder of Mr Scott as he uttered the concluding lines, ‘But we ha’ tried this Border lad, And we’ll try him yet again.’*
“He sat down under a storm of applauses; and there were many
present whose applause even he might excusably take some pride in. His eye, as he
reposed himself after this little triumph, glowed with a hearty but chastened
exultation on the scene before him; and when I met his look it seemed to say,
‘I am glad you should see how these things pass among us.’
“His constitution had in the preceding winter suffered one of
those attacks which at last prematurely overthrew it. ‘Such a shaking hands
with death’ (I am told he said) ‘was formidable;’ but
there were few vestiges of it which might not be overlooked by those who were anxious
not to see them; and he was more cheerful than I had sometimes found him in former
years. On one of our carriage excursions, shortly after the Jedburgh dinner, his
spirits actually rose to the pitch of singing, an accomplishment I had never before
heard him exhibit except in chorus. We had been to
* See Burns’s ballad of The Five
Carlines—an election squib.
Selkirk and Bowhill, and were returning homewards in one of
those days so inspiriting in a hill country, when, after heavy rains, the summer bursts
forth again in its full splendour. Sir Walter was in
his best congenial humour. As we looked up to Carterhaugh, his conversation ran
naturally upon Tamlane and Fair Janet, and the ballad recounting their adventures; then it ran
upon the Dii agrestes, ghosts and wizards,
Border anecdotes and history, the bar, his own adventures as advocate and as sheriff;
and then returning to ballads, it fell upon the old ditty of Tom
o’ the Linn, or Thomas O’Linn, which
is popular alike, I believe, in Scotland, and in some parts of England, and of which I
as well as he had boyish recollections. As we compared versions he could not forbear,
in the gaiety of his heart, giving out two or three of the stanzas in song. I cannot
say that I ever heard this famous lyric sung to a very regular melody, but his set of
it was extraordinary.
“Another little incident in this morning’s drive is
worth remembering. We crossed several fords, and after the rain they were wide and
deep. A little, long, wise-looking, rough terrier, named Spice, which ran after us, had a cough, and as often as we came to a water,
Spice, by the special order of her master, was let into
the carriage till we had crossed. His tenderness to his brute dependants was a striking
point in the general benignity of his character. He seemed to consult not only their
bodily welfare, but their feelings, in the human sense. He was a gentleman even to his
dogs. His roughest rebuke to little Spice, when she was
inclined to play the wag with a sheep, was, ‘Ha! fie! fie!’ It must
be owned that his ‘tail’ (as his retinue of dogs was called at Abbotsford),
though very docile and unobtrusive animals in the house, were sometimes a little wild
in their frolics out of doors. One day when I was walking with Sir
Walter and Miss Scott, we passed
a cottage, at the door of which sat on one side a child, and on the other a slumbering
cat. Nimrod bounded from us in great gaiety, and the
unsuspecting cat had scarcely time to squall before she was demolished. The poor child
set up a dismal wail. Miss Scott was naturally much distressed,
and Sir Walter a good deal out of countenance. However, he put an
end to the subject by saying with an assumed stubbornness, ‘Well! the cat is
worried;’ but his purse was in his hand; Miss Scott
was despatched to the house, and I am very sure it was not his fault if the cat had a
poor funeral. In the confusion of the moment I am afraid the culprit went off without
even a reprimand.
“Except in this trifling instance (and it could hardly be
called an exception), I cannot recollect seeing Sir Walter
Scott surprised out of his habitual equanimity. Never, I believe, during
the opportunities I had of observing him, did I hear from him an acrimonious tone, or
see a shade of ill-humour on his features. In a phlegmatic person this serenity might
have been less remarkable, but it was surprising in one whose mind was so susceptible,
and whose voice and countenance were so full of expression. It was attributable, I
think, to a rare combination of qualities; thoroughly cultivated manners, great
kindness of disposition, great patience and self-control, an excellent flow of spirits,
and lastly, that steadfastness of nerve which, even in the inferior animals, often
renders the most powerful and resolute creature the most placid and forbearing. Once,
when he was exhibiting some weapons, a gentleman, after differing from him as to the
comparative merits of two sword-blades, inadvertently flourished one of them almost
into Sir Walter’s eye. I looked quickly towards him, but
could not see in his face the least sign of shrinking, or the
least approach to a frown. No one, however, could for a moment infer from this evenness
of manner and temper, that he was a man with whom an intentional liberty could be
taken; and I suppose very few persons during his life ever thought of making the
experiment. If it happened at any time that some trivial etourderie in conversation required at his hand a slight
application of the rein, his gentle explaining tone was an appeal to good taste which
no common wilfulness could have withstood.
“Two or three times at most during my knowledge of him do I
recollect hearing him utter a downright oath, and then it was not in passion or upon
personal provocation, nor was the anathema levelled at any individual. It was rather a
concise expression of sentiment than a malediction. In one instance it was launched at
certain improvers of the town of Edinburgh; in another it was bestowed very evenly upon
all political parties in France, shortly after the glorious days
of July, 1830.”
As one consequence of these “glorious days,” the
unfortunate Charles X. was invited by the English
Government to resume his old quarters at Holyrood; and among many other things that about
this time vexed and mortified Scott, none gave him more
pain than to hear that the popular feeling in Edinburgh had been so much exacerbated
against the fallen monarch (especially by an ungenerous article in the great literary organ
of the place), that his reception there was likely to be rough and insulting. Sir
Walter thought that on such an occasion his voice might, perhaps, be
listened to. He knew his countrymen well in their strength, as well as in their weakness,
and put forth this touching appeal to their better feelings, in Ballantyne’s newspaper for the 20th of October:—
“We are enabled to announce, from authority, that
Charles of Bourbon, the ex-King of
France, is about to become once more our fellow-citizen, though probably for
only a limited space, and is presently about to repair to Edinburgh, in order
again to inhabit the apartments which he long ago occupied in Holyrood House.
This temporary arrangement, it is said, has been made in compliance with his
own request, with which our benevolent Monarch immediately complied, willing to
consult, in every respect possible, the feelings of a Prince under the pressure
of misfortunes, which are perhaps the more severe, if incurred through bad
advice, error, or rashness. The attendants of the late sovereign will be
reduced to the least possible number, and consist chiefly of ladies and
children, and his style of life will be strictly retired. In these
circumstances, it would be unworthy of us as Scotsmen, or as men, if this most
unfortunate family should meet a word or look from the meanest individual
tending to aggravate feelings, which must be at present so acute as to receive
injury from insults, which mother times could be passed with perfect disregard.
“His late opponents in his kingdom have gained the
applause of Europe for the generosity with which they have used their victory,
and the respect which they have paid to themselves in moderation towards an
enemy. It would be a gross contrast to that part of their conduct which has
been most generally applauded, were we, who are strangers to the strife, to
affect a deeper resentment than those it concerned closely.
“Those who can recollect the former residence of
this unhappy Prince in our northern capital, cannot but remember the
unobtrusive and quiet manner in which his little court was then conducted; and
now, still further restricted and diminished, he may naturally expect to be
received with civility and respect by a nation whose good will he has done nothing to forfeit. Whatever may have been his errors
towards his own subjects, we cannot but remember, in his adversity, that he did
not in his prosperity forget that Edinburgh had extended her hospitality
towards him, but, at the period when the fires consumed so much of the city,
sent a princely benefaction to the sufferers, with a letter which made it more
valuable, by stating the feelings towards the city of the then royal donor. We
also state, without hazard of contradiction, that his attention to individuals
connected with this city was uniformly and handsomely rendered to those
entitled to claim them. But he never did or could display a more flattering
confidence, than when he shows that the recollections of his former asylum here
have inclined him a second time to return to the place where he then found
refuge.
“If there can be any who retain angry or invidious
recollections of late events in France, they ought to remark that the
ex-Monarch has, by his abdication, renounced the conflict into which, perhaps,
he was engaged by bad advisers; that he can no longer be the object of
resentment to the brave, but remains to all the most striking emblem of the
mutability of human affairs which our mutable times have afforded. He may say
with our own deposed Richard— ‘With mine own tears I washed away my balm, With mine own hands I gave away my crown, With my own tongue deny mine sacred state.’* He brings among us his ‘grey discrowned head;’ and in ‘a
nation of gentlemen,’ as we were emphatically termed by the very highest
authority, f it is impossible, I
* King Richard II. Act IV. Scene 1.
† This was the expression of King George IV., at the close of the first
day he spent in Scotland.
trust, to find a man mean enough to
insult the slightest hair of it.
“It is impossible to omit stating, that if angry
recollections or keen party feelings should make any person consider the exiled
and deposed Monarch as a subject of resentment, no token of such feelings could
be exhibited without the greater part of the pain being felt by the helpless
females, of whom the Duchess of
Angouleme, in particular, has been so long distinguished by her
courage and her misfortunes.
“The person who writes these few lines is leaving
his native city, never to return as a permanent resident. He has some reason to
be proud of distinctions received from his fellow-citizens; and he has not the
slightest doubt that the taste and good feeling of those whom he will still
term so, will dictate to them the quiet, civil, and respectful tone of feeling,
which will do honour both to their heads and their hearts, which have seldom
been appealed to in vain.
“The Frenchman Melinet, in mentioning the refuge
afforded by Edinburgh to Henry VI. in his
distress, records it as the most hospitable town in Europe. It is a testimony
to be proud of, and sincerely do I hope there is little danger of forfeiting it
upon the present occasion.”
The effect of this manly admonition was even more complete than the
writer had anticipated. The royal exiles were received with perfect decorum, which their
modest bearing to all classes, and unobtrusive, though magnificent benevolence to the poor,
ere long converted into a feeling of deep and affectionate respectfulness. During their
stay in Scotland, the King took more than one
opportunity of conveying to Sir Walter his gratitude for
this salutary interference on his behalf. The ladies of the royal family had a curiosity to
see Abbots-ford, but being aware of his reduced health and wealth,
took care to visit the place when he was known to be from home. Several French noblemen of
the train, however, paid him their respects personally. I remember with particular pleasure
a couple of days that the Duke of Laval Montmorency
spent with him: he was also much gratified with a visit from Marshal Bourmont, though unfortunately that came after his ailments had
much advanced. The Marshal was accompanied by the Baron
d’Haussez, one of the Polignac
Ministry, whose published account of his residence in this country contains no specimen of
vain imbecility more pitiable than the page he gives to Abbotsford. So far from
comprehending any thing of his host’s character or conversation, the Baron had not
even eyes to observe that he was in a sorely dilapidated condition of bodily health. The
reader will perceive by and by that he had had another fit only a
few days before he received these strangers; and that, moreover, he was engaged at the
moment in a most painful correspondence with his printer and bookseller.
I conclude this chapter with a letter to Lady Louisa Stuart, who had, it seems, formed some erroneous guesses about
the purport of the forthcoming Letters
on Demonology and Witchcraft. That volume had been some weeks out of hand—but,
for booksellers’ reasons, it was not published until Christmas.
To the Right Hon. Lady Louisa Stuart, care of
Lord Montagu.
“Abbotsford, October 31, 1830. “ My dear Lady Louisa,
“I come before your Ladyship for once, in the
character of Not Guilty. I am a wronged man, who deny, with Lady Teazle, the butler and the coach-horse.
Positively, in sending a blow to explode old and worn out follies, I could not think I was
aiding and abetting those of this—at least I had no purpose of doing so. Your
Ladyship cannot think me such an owl as to pay more respect to animal
magnetism, or scullology, I forget its learned name, or any other ology of the present day. The sailors have an uncouth
proverb that every man must eat a peck of dirt in the course of his life, and
thereby reconcile themselves to swallow unpalatable messes. Even so say I,
every age must swallow a certain deal of superstitious nonsense; only,
observing the variety which nature seems to study through all her works, each
generation takes its nonsense, as heralds say, with a
difference. I was early behind the scenes, having been in childhood
patient of no less a man than the celebrated Dr
Graham, the great quack of that olden day. I had, being, as
Sir Hugh Evans says, a fine sprag boy,
a shrewd idea that his magnetism was all humbug; but Dr
Graham, though he used a different method, was as much admired
in his day as any of the French fops. I did once think of turning on the modern
mummers, but I did not want to be engaged in so senseless a controversy, which
would, nevertheless, have occupied some time and trouble. The inference was
pretty plain, that the same reasons which explode the machinery of witches and
ghosts proper to our ancestors, must be destructive of the supernatural
nonsense of our own days.
“Your acquaintance with Shakspeare is intimate, and you remember why, and when it is
said, ‘He words me, girl, he words me.’ Our modern men of the day have done this to the country. They have devised
a new phraseology to convert
* Antony and
Cleopatra, Act V. Scene 2.
good into evil, and evil into good, and the ass’s
ears of John Bull are gulled with it as if
words alone made crime or virtue. Have they a mind to excuse the tyranny of
Buonaparte? why, the Lord love you, he
only squeezed into his government a grain too much of civilisation. The fault
of Robespierre was too active
liberalism; a noble error. Thus the most blood-thirsty anarchy is glossed over
by opening the account under a new name. The varnish might be easily scraped
off all this trumpery; and I think my friends the brave
Belges are like to lead to the conclusion that the old names of murder
and fire-raising are still in fashion. But what is worse, the natural connexion
between the higher and lower classes is broken. The former reside abroad and
become gradually, but certainly, strangers to their country’s laws,
habits, and character. The tenant sees nothing of them but the creditor for
rent, following on the heels of the creditor for taxes. Our Ministers dissolve
the yeomanry, almost the last tie which held the laird and the tenant together.
The best and worthiest are squabbling together, like a mutinous crew in a
sinking vessel, who make the question, not how they are to get her off the
rocks, but by whose fault she came on them. In short but I will not pursue any
further the picture more frightful than any apparition in my Demonology. Would to God I could
believe it ideal! I have confidence still in the Duke
of Wellington, but even he has sacrificed to the great deity of
humbug, and what shall we say to meaner and more ordinary minds? God avert
evil, and, what is next best, in mercy remove those who could only witness
without preventing it. Perhaps I am somewhat despondent in all this. But
totally retired from the world as I now am, depression is a natural consequence
of so calamitous a prospect as politics now present. The only probable course
of safety would be a confederacy between the good and the honest; and
they are so much divided by petty feuds, that I see little chance of it.
“I will send this under Lord Montagu’s frank, for it is no matter how long such a
roll of lamentation may be in reaching your Ladyship. I do not think it at all
likely that I shall be in London next spring, although I suffer Sophia to think so. I remain, in all my bad
humour, ever your Ladyship’s most obedient and faithful humble servant,
Walter Scott.”
CHAPTER VII. WINTER AT ABBOTSFORD—PARLIAMENTARY REFORM IN AGITATION—WILLIAM
LAIDLAW—JOHN NICOLSON—MRS
STREET—FIT OF APOPLEXY IN NOVEMBER—COUNT ROBERT OF
PARIS—A FOURTH EPISTLE OF MALAGROWTHER WRITTEN AND
SUPPRESSED—UNPLEASANT DISCUSSIONS WITH BALLANTYNE AND
CADELL—NOVEL RESUMED—SECOND DIVIDEND TO CREDITORS, AND THEIR GIFT
OF THE LIBRARY, ETC. AT ABBOTSFORD—LAST WILL EXECUTED IN EDINBURGH—FORTUNE’S
MECHANISM—LETTER ON POLITICS TO THE HON. H. F. SCOTT—ADDRESS FOR THE
COUNTY OF SELKIRK WRITTEN—AND REJECTED BY THE FREEHOLDERS—COUNTY MEETING AT JEDBURGH—SPEECH
ON REFORM—SCOTT INSULTED—MR F. GRANT’S
PORTRAIT—OCTOBER, 1830—APRIL, 1832.
The reader has already seen that Sir
Walter had many misgivings in contemplating his final retirement from the
situation he had occupied for six-and-twenty years in the Court of Session. Such a breach
in old habits is always a serious experiment; but in his case it was very particularly so,
because it involved his losing, during the winter months, when men most need society, the
intercourse of almost all that remained to him of dear familiar friends. He had besides a
love for the very stones of Edinburgh, and the thought that he was never again to sleep
under a roof of his own in his native city cost him many a pang. But he never alludes
either in his Diary or in his letters (nor do I
remember that he ever did so in conversation) to the circumstance which, far more than all
besides, occasioned care and regret in the bosom of his family. However he might cling to
the notion that his recent ailments sprung merely from a disordered stomach, they had
dismissed that dream, and the heaviest of their thoughts was that he was fixing himself in
the country just when his health, perhaps his life, might depend any given hour on the
immediate presence of a surgical hand. They reflected that the only medical practitioner
resident within three miles of him might, in case of another seizure, come too late, even
although the messenger should find him at home; but that his practice extended over a wide
range of thinly peopled country, and that at the hour of need he might as probably be half
a day’s journey off as at Melrose. We would fain have persuaded him that his library,
catalogues, and other papers had fallen into such confusion that he ought to have some
clever young student in the house during the winter to arrange them; and had he taken the
suggestion in good part, a medical student would of course have been selected. But, whether
or not he suspected our real motive, he would listen to no such plan, and his friendly
surgeon (Mr James Clarkson) then did the best he
could for us by instructing a confidential domestic, privately, in the use of the lancet.
This was John Nicolson; a name never to be mentioned
by any of Scott’s family without respect and gratitude. He had
been in the household from his boyhood, and was about this time (poor Dalgleish retiring from weak health) advanced to the chief
place in it. Early and continued kindness had made a very deep impression on this fine
handsome young man’s warm heart; he possessed intelligence, good sense, and a calm
temper; and the courage and dexterity which Sir Walter had delighted to see him display in sports and pastimes, proved
henceforth of inestimable service to the master, whom he regarded, I verily believe, with
the love and reverence of a son. Since I have reached the period at which human beings owe
so much to ministrations of this class, I may as well name by the side of
NicolsonMiss
Scott’s maid, Mrs Celia Street;
a young person whose unwearied zeal, coupled with a modest tact that stamped her one of
Nature’s gentlewomen, contributed hardly less to the comfort of Sir
Walter and his children during the brief remainder of his life.*
Affliction, as it happened, lay heavy at this time on the kind house of
Huntly-Burn also. The eldest Miss Ferguson was on
her deathbed; and thus, when my wife and I were obliged to move southwards at the beginning
of winter, Sir Walter was left almost entirely dependent on his
daughter Anne, William
Laidlaw, and the worthy domestics whom I have been naming. Mr
Laidlaw attended him occasionally as amanuensis when his fingers were
chilblained, and often dined as well as breakfasted with him: and Miss
Scott well knew that in all circumstances she might lean to
Laidlaw with the confidence of a niece or a daughter.
A more difficult and delicate task never devolved upon any man’s
friend, than he had about this time to encounter. He could not watch Scott from hour to hour above all, he could not write to his
dictation, without gradually, slowly, most reluctantly taking home to his bosom the
conviction that the mighty mind, which he had worshipped through more than thirty years of
intimacy, had lost something, and was daily losing some-
* On Sir Walter’s
death Nicolson passed into the service of
Mr Morritt at Rokeby, where he is now
butler. Mrs Street remained in my house till
1836, when she married Mr Griffiths, a respectable brewer at
Walworth.
thing more of its energy. The faculties were
there, and each of them was every now and then displaying itself in its full vigour; but
the sagacious judgment, the brilliant fancy, the unrivalled memory, were all subject to
occasional eclipse— “Along the chords the fingers stray’d, And an uncertain warbling made.” Ever and anon he paused and looked round him, like one half waking from a dream,
mocked with shadows. The sad bewilderment of his gaze showed a momentary consciousness
that, like Sampson in the lap of the Philistine, “his
strength was passing from him, and he was becoming weak like unto other men.”
Then came the strong effort of aroused will—the cloud dispersed as if before an
irresistible current of purer air—all was bright and serene as of old. And then it closed
again in yet deeper darkness.
During the early part of this winter the situation of Cadell and Ballantyne was hardly less painful, and still more embarrassing. What
doubly and trebly perplexed them was that, while the MS. sent for press seemed worse every
budget, Sir Walter’s private letters to them, more
especially on points of business, continued as clear in thought, and almost so in
expression, as formerly; full of the old shrewdness, and firmness, and manly kindness, and
even of the old good-humoured pleasantry. About them, except the staggering penmanship, and
here and there one word put down obviously for another, there was scarcely any thing to
indicate decayed vigour. It is not surprising that poor Ballantyne, in
particular, should have shrunk from the notion that any thing was amiss,—except the choice
of an unfortunate subject, and the indulgence of more than common carelessness and rapidity
in composition. He seems to have done so as he would from some
horrid suggestion of the Devil; and accordingly obeyed his natural sense of duty, by
informing Sir Walter, in plain terms, that he considered the opening
chapters of Count Robert as decidedly
inferior to any thing that had ever before come from that pen. James
appears to have dwelt chiefly on the hopelessness of any Byzantine fable; and he might
certainly have appealed to a long train of examples for the fatality which seems to hang
over every attempt to awaken any thing like a lively interest about the persons and manners
of the generation in question; the childish forms and bigotries, the weak pomps and
drivelling pretensions, the miserable plots and treacheries, the tame worn-out civilisation
of those European Chinese. The epoch on which Scott had fixed was,
however, one that brought these doomed slaves of vanity and superstition into contact with
the vigorous barbarism both of western Christendom and the advancing Ottoman. Sir
Walter had, years before, been struck with its capabilities; and who dares
to say that, had he executed the work when he sketched the outline of its plan, he might
not have achieved as signal a triumph over all critical prejudices, as he had done when he
rescued Scottish romance from the mawkish degradation in which Waverley found it?
In himself and his own affairs there was enough to alarm and perplex him
and all who watched him; but the aspect of the political horizon also pressed more heavily
upon his spirit than it had ever done before. All the evils which he had apprehended from
the rupture among the Tory leaders in the beginning of 1827 were now, in his opinion, about
to be consummated. The high Protestant party, blinded by their resentment of the abolition
of the Test Act and the Roman Catholic disabilities, seemed willing to run any risk for the
pur-pose of driving the Duke of Wellington from the helm. The general election,
occasioned by the demise of the crown, was held while the successful revolts in France and
Belgium were fresh and uppermost in every mind, and furnished the Liberal candidates with
captivating topics, of which they eagerly availed themselves. The result had considerably
strengthened the old opposition in the House of Commons; and a single vote, in which the
ultra-Tories joined the Whigs, was considered by the Ministry as so ominous, that they
immediately retired from office. The succeeding cabinet of Earl
Grey included names identified, in Scott’s view, with the wildest rage of innovation. Their first step
was to announce a bill of Parliamentary Reform on a large scale, for which it was soon
known they had secured the warm personal support of King William
IV.; a circumstance, the probability of which had, as we have seen, been
contemplated by Sir Walter during the last illness of the Duke of York. Great discontent prevailed, meanwhile, throughout
the labouring classes of many districts, both commercial and rural. Every newspaper teemed
with details of riot and incendiarism; and the selection of such an epoch of impatience and
turbulence for a legislative experiment of the extremest difficulty and delicacy—one, in
fact, infinitely more important than had ever before been agitated within the forms of the
constitution—was perhaps regarded by most grave and retired men with feelings near akin to
those of the anxious and melancholy invalid at Abbotsford. To annoy him additionally, he
found many eminent persons, who had hitherto avowed politics of his own colour, renouncing
all their old tenets, and joining the cry of Reform, which to him sounded Revolution, as
keenly as the keenest of those who had been through life considered apostles of
Republicanism. And I must also observe that, as, notwithstanding his
own steady Toryism, he had never allowed political differences to affect his private
feelings towards friends and companions, so it now happened that among the few with whom he
had daily intercourse there was hardly one he could look to for sympathy in his present
reflections and anticipations. The affectionate Laidlaw had always been a stout Whig; he now hailed the coming changes as
the beginning of a political millennium. Ballantyne,
influenced probably by his new ghostly counsellors, was by degrees leaning to a similar
view of things. Cadell, his bookseller, and now the
principal confidant and assistant from week to week in all his plans and speculations, was
a cool, inflexible specimen of the national character, and had always, I presume,
considered the Tory creed as a piece of weakness, to be pardoned, indeed, in a poet and an
antiquary, but at best pitied in men of any other class.
Towards the end of November Sir
Walter had another slight touch of apoplexy. He recovered himself without
assistance; but again consulted his physicians in Edinburgh, and by their advice adopted a
still greater severity of regimen.
The reader will now understand what his frame and condition of health
and spirits were, at the time when he received from Ballantyne a decided protest against the novel on which he was struggling
to fix the shattered energies of his memory and fancy.
To Mr James Ballantyne, Printer, Edinburgh.
“Abbotsford, 8th Dec. 1830. “My dear James,
“If I were like other authors, as I flatter myself I
am not, I should send you ‘an order on my treasurer for a hundred
ducats, wishing you all prosperity and a little more taste;’* but having never supposed
that any abilities I ever had were of a perpetual texture, I am glad when
friends tell me what I might be long in finding out myself. Mr Cadell will show you what I have written to
him. My present idea is to go abroad for a few months, if I hold together as
long. So ended the Fathers of the Novel—Fielding and Smollett—and it would be no unprofessional finish for yours,
Walter Scott.”
To R. Cadell, Esq., Bookseller, Edinburgh.
“Abbotsford, 8th Dec. 1830. “My dear Sir,
“Although we are come near to a point to which every
man knows he must come, yet I acknowledge I thought I might have put it off for
two or three years; for it is hard to lose one’s power of working when
you have perfect leisure for it. I do not view James Ballantyne’s criticism, although his kindness may
not make him sensible of it, so much as an objection to the particular topic,
which is merely fastidious, as to my having failed to please him, an anxious
and favourable judge, and certainly a very good one. It would be losing words
to say that the names are really no objection, or that they might be in some
degree smoothed off by adopting more modern Grecian. This is odd. I have seen
when a play or novel would have been damned by introduction of
Macgregors or Macgrouthers, or
others, which you used to read as a preface to Fairntosh whisky, on every
spirit shop—yet these have been wrought into heroes. James
is, with many other kindly critics, perhaps in the predicament of an honest
drunkard when crop-sick the next morning, who does not ascribe the malady to
the
* Archbishop
of Grenada in Gil Blas.
wine he has drunk, but to having tasted some particular
dish at dinner which disagreed with his stomach. The fact is, I have not only
written a great deal, but, as Bobadil
teaches his companions to fence, I have taught a hundred gentlemen to write
nearly as well, if not altogether so, as myself.
“Now, such being my belief, I have lost, it is
plain, the power of interesting the country, and ought, in justice to all
parties, to retire, while I have some credit. But this is an important step,
and I will not be obstinate about it, if necessary. I would not act hastily,
and still think it right to set up at least half a volume. The subject is
essentially an excellent one. If it brings to my friend J. B. certain prejudices not unconnected,
perhaps, with his old preceptor Mr
Whale, we may find ways of obviating this; but frankly, I cannot
think of flinging aside the half finished volume, as if it were a corked bottle
of wine. If there is a decisive resolution for laying aside Count Robert (which I almost wish I had named
Anna Comnena), I shall not easily prevail on
myself to begin another.
“I may perhaps take a trip to the Continent for a
year or two, if I find Othello’s
occupation gone, or rather Othello’sreputation.
James seems to have taken his bed
upon it—yet has seen Pharsalia. I hope your cold is getting better. I am
tempted to say as Hotspur says of his
father— ‘Zounds! how hath he the leisure to be sick?’* There is a very material consideration how a failure of Count Robert might affect the Magnum, which is a main object. So this is all at present from,
dear sir, yours, very faithfully,
Walter Scott.”
* 1 King Henry IV. Act IV. Sc. 1 .
To the Same.
“Abbotsford, 9th Dec. 1830. “My dear Cadell,
“I send you sheet B of the unlucky Count—it will do little harm to
correct it, whether we ultimately use it or no; for the rest we must do as we dow, as my mother used
to say. I could reduce many expenses in a foreign country, especially equipage
and living, which in this country I could not do so well. But it is matter of
serious consideration, and we have time before us to think. I write to you
rather than Ballantyne, because he is
not well, and I look on you as hardened against wind and weather, whereas ‘Man but a rush against Othello’s breast, And he retires.’* But we must brave bad weather as well as bear it.
“I send a volume of the interleaved Magnum. I know not whether you will carry on that
scheme or not at present. I am yours sincerely,
Walter Scott.
“P.S.—I expect Marshal Bourmont and a French Minister, Baron d’Haussez, here to-day, to my
no small discomfort, as you may believe; for I would rather be
alone.”
To the Same.
“Abbotsford, 12th Dec., 1830. “My dear Sir,
“I am much obliged for your kind letter, and have
taken a more full review of the whole affair than I was
* Othello,
Act V. Sc. 2.
able to do at first. There were many circumstances in
the matter which you and J. B. could not
be aware of, and which, if you were aware of, might have influenced your
judgment, which had, and yet have a most powerful effect upon mine. The deaths
of both my father and mother have been preceded by a paralytic shock. My father
survived it for nearly two years, a melancholy respite, and not to be desired.
I was alarmed with Miss Young’s morning visit, when,
as you know, I lost my speech. The medical people said it was from the stomach,
which might be; but while there is a doubt on a point so alarming, you will not
wonder that the subject, or, to use Hare’slingo, the shot, should be a little anxious. I restricted all my
creature comforts, which were never excessive, within a single cigar and a
small wine-glass of spirits per day. But one night last month, when I had a
friend with me, I had a slight vertigo when going to bed, and fell down in my
dressing-room, though but for one instant. Upon this I wrote to Dr Abercromby, and in consequence of his
advice, I have restricted myself yet farther, and have cut off the cigar, and
almost half of the mountain-dew. Now, in the midst of all this, I began my work
with as much attention as I could; and having taken pains with my story, I find
it is not relished, nor indeed tolerated by those who have no interest in
condemning it, but a strong interest in putting even a face upon their
consciences. Was not this, in the circumstances, a damper to an invalid,
already afraid that the sharp edge might be taken off his intellect, though he
was not himself sensible of that? and did it not seem, of course, that nature
was rather calling for repose than for further efforts in a very exciting and
feverish style of composition? It would have been the height of injustice and
cruelty to impute want of friendship
or sympathy to J. B.’s discharge of a doubtful, and
I am sensible, a perilous task. True ——‘The first bringer of unwelcome news, Hath but a losing office’—* and it is a failing in the temper of the most equal-minded men, that we
find them liable to be less pleased with the tidings that they have fallen
short of their aim than if they had been told they had hit the mark; but I
never had the least thought of blaming him, and indeed my confidence in his
judgment is the most forcible part of the whole affair. It is the consciousness
of his sincerity which makes me doubt whether I can proceed with the County Paris. I am most anxious to
do justice to all concerned, and yet, for the soul of me, I cannot see what is
likely to turn out for the best. I might attempt the Perilous Castle of
Douglas, but I fear the subject is too much used, and
that I might again fail in it. Then being idle will never do, for a thousand
reasons; all this I am thinking of till I am half sick. I wish
James, who gives such stout advice when he thinks we
are wrong, would tell us how to put things right. One is tempted to cry,
‘Wo worth thee! is there no help in thee?’ Perhaps it
may be better to take no resolution till we all meet together.
“I certainly am quite decided to fulfil all my
engagements, and, so far as I can, discharge the part of an honest man, and if
any thing can be done mean-time for the Magnum, I
shall be glad to do it.
“I trust James and you will get afloat next Saturday. You will think me
like Murray in the farce ‘I eat
well, drink well, and sleep well, but that’s all, Tom, that’s all.’† We
will wear the thing through one way
* 2 King Henry
IV. Act I. Sc. 1.
† Sir Mark
Chace in the farce of “A Roland for an Oliver.”
or other if we were once afloat, but you see all this is
a scrape. Yours truly,
W. Scott.”
This letter, Mr Cadell says,
“struck both James B. and myself with
dismay.” They resolved to go out to Abbotsford, but not for a few days,
because a general meeting of the creditors was at hand, and there was reason to hope that
its results would enable them to appear as the bearers of sundry pieces of good news.
Mean-time, Sir Walter himself rallied considerably, and
resolved, by way of testing his powers, while the novel hung suspended, to write a fourth
epistle of Malachi Malagrowther on the
public affairs of the period. The announcement of a political dissertation, at such a
moment of universal excitement, and from a hand already trembling under the misgivings of a
fatal malady, might well have filled Cadell and
Ballantyne with new “dismay,” even had they both been
prepared to adopt, in the fullest extent, such views of the dangers of our state, and the
remedies for them, as their friend was likely to dwell upon. They agreed that whatever they
could safely do to avert this experiment must be done. Indeed they were both equally
anxious to find, if it could be found, the means of withdrawing him from all literary
labour, save only that of annotating his former novels. But they were not the only persons
who had been, and then were, exerting all their art for that same purpose. His kind and
skilful physicians, Doctors Abercromby and Ross of Edinburgh, had over and over preached the same
doctrine, and assured him, that if he persisted in working his brain, nothing could prevent
his malady from recurring, ere long, in redoubled severity. He answered—“As for
bidding me not work, Molly might as well put the
kettle on the fire, and say, now,
don’t boil.” To myself, when I ventured to address him in a similar
strain, he replied, “I understand you, and I thank you from my heart, but I must
tell you at once how it is with me. I am not sure that I am quite myself in all things;
but I am sure that in one point there is no change. I mean that I foresee distinctly,
that if I were to be idle I should go mad. In comparison to this, death is no risk to
shrink from.”
The meeting of trustees and creditors took place on the 17th—Mr George Forbes (brother to the late Sir William) in the chair. There was then announced
another dividend on the Ballantyne estate of three
shillings in the pound—thus reducing the original amount of the debt to about L.54,000. It
had been not unnaturally apprehended that the convulsed state of politics might have
checked the sale of the Magnum Opus; but this does not seem to
have been the case to any extent worth notice. The meeting was numerous, and not contented
with a renewed vote of thanks to their debtor, they passed unanimously the following
resolution, which was moved by Mr (now Sir James) Gibson
Craig, and seconded by the late Mr Thomas
Allan—both, by the way, leading Whigs:—“That Sir Walter
Scott be requested to accept of his furniture, plate, linens, paintings,
library, and curiosities of every description, as the best means the creditors have of
expressing their very high sense of his most honourable conduct, and in grateful
acknowledgment for the unparalleled and most successful exertions he has made, and
continues to make for them.”
Sir Walter’s letter, in answer to the
chairman’s communication, was as follows:—
To George Forbes, Esq., Edinburgh.
“Abbotsford, December 18, 1830, “My dear Sir,
“I was greatly delighted with the contents of your
letter, which not only enables me to eat with my own spoons, and study my own
books, but gives me the still higher gratification of knowing that my conduct
has been approved by those who were concerned.
“The best thanks which I can return is by continuing
my earnest and unceasing attention—which, with a moderate degree of the good
fortune which has hitherto attended my efforts, may enable me to bring these
affairs to a fortunate conclusion. This will be the best way in which I can
show my sense of the kind and gentlemanlike manner in which the meeting have
acted.
“To yourself, my dear sir, I can only say, that good
news become doubly acceptable when transmitted through a friendly channel; and
considering my long and intimate acquaintance with your excellent brother and
father, as well as yourself and other members of your family, your letter must
be valuable in reference to the hand from which it comes, as well as to the
information which it contains.
“I am sensible of your uniform kindness, and the
present instance of it. Very much, my dear sir, your obliged humble servant,
Walter Scott.”
On the 18th, Cadell and
Ballantyne proceeded to Abbotsford, and found
Sir Walter in a placid state—having evidently been
much soothed and gratified with the tidings from Edinburgh. His whole appearance was
greatly better than they had ventured to anticipate; and deferring literary questions till
the morning, he made this gift from his
creditors the chief subject of his conversation. He said it had taken a heavy load off his
mind: he apprehended that, even if his future works should produce little money, the
profits of the Magnum, during a limited
number of years, with the sum which had been insured on his life, would be sufficient to
obliterate the remaining moiety of the Ballantyne debt: he considered
the library and museum now conveyed to him as worth at the least L.10,000, and this would
enable him to make some provision for his younger children. He said that he designed to
execute his last will without delay, and detailed to his friends all the particulars which
the document ultimately embraced. He mentioned to them that he had recently received,
through the Lord Chief Commissioner Adam, a message
from the new King, intimating his Majesty’s
disposition to keep in mind his late brother’s kind intentions with regard to
Charles Scott; and altogether his talk, though
grave, and on grave topics, was the reverse of melancholy.
Next morning, in Sir Walter’s
study, Ballantyne read aloud the political essay
which had (after the old fashion) grown to an extent far beyond what the author
contemplated when he began his task. To print it in the Weekly Journal, as originally proposed, would now be
hardly compatible with the limits of that paper: Sir Walter had
resolved on a separate publication.
I believe no one ever saw this performance but the bookseller, the
printer, and William Laidlaw; and I cannot pretend
to have gathered any clear notion of its contents, except that the panacea was the
re-imposition of the income-tax; and that after much reasoning in support of this measure,
Sir Walter attacked the principle of Parliamentary
Reform in toto. We need hardly suppose that he
advanced any objections which would seem new to the students of the de-bates in both Houses during 1831 and 1832; his logic carried no conviction to the breast
of his faithful amanuensis; but Mr Laidlaw assures me, nevertheless,
that in his opinion no composition of Sir Walter’s happiest day
contained any thing more admirable than the bursts of indignant and pathetic eloquence
which here and there “set off a halting argument.”
The critical arbiters, however, concurred in condemning the production.
Cadell spoke out; he assured Sir Walter, that from not being in the habit of reading the
newspapers and periodical works of the day, he had fallen behind the common rate of
information on questions of practical policy; that the views he was enforcing had been
already expounded by many Tories, and triumphantly answered by organs of the Liberal party;
but that, be the intrinsic value and merit of these political doctrines what they might, he
was quite certain that to put them forth at that season would be a measure of extreme
danger for the author’s personal interest: that it would throw a cloud over his
general popularity, array a hundred active pens against any new work of another class that
might soon follow, and perhaps even interrupt the hitherto splendid success of the
Collection on which so much depended. On all these points Ballantyne, though with hesitation and diffidence, professed himself to be
of Cadell’s opinion. There ensued a scene of a very unpleasant
sort; but by and by a kind of compromise was agreed to—the plan of a separate pamphlet,
with the well-known nom de guerre of Malachi, was dropt; and Ballantyne was
to stretch his columns so as to find room for the lucubration, adopting all possible means
to mystify the public as to its parentage. This was the understanding when the conference
broke up; but the unfortunate manuscript was soon afterwards committed to the flames. James Ballantyne accompanied the proof-sheet with many minute
criticisms on the conduct as well as expression of the argument: the author’s temper
gave way—and the commentary shared the fate of the text.
Mr Cadell opens a very brief account of this affair
with expressing his opinion, that “Sir Walter
never recovered it;” and he ends with an altogether needless apology for his
own part in it. He did only what was his duty by his venerated friend; and he did it, I
doubt not, as kindly in manner as in spirit. Even if the fourth Epistle of Malachi had been more like its precursors than
I can well suppose it to have been, nothing could have been more unfortunate for
Sir Walter than to come forward at that moment as a prominent
antagonist of Reform. Such an appearance might very possibly have had the consequences to
which the bookseller pointed in his remonstrance; but at all events it must have involved
him in a maze of replies and rejoinders; and I think it too probable that some of the fiery
disputants of the periodical press, if not of St Stephen’s Chapel, might have been
ingenious enough to connect any real or fancied flaws in his argument with those
circumstances in his personal condition which had for some time been darkening his own
reflections with dim auguries of the fate of Swift
and Marlborough. His reception of Ballantyne’s affectionate candour may suggest what
the effect of really hostile criticism would have been. The end was, that seeing how much
he stood in need of some comfort, the printer and bookseller concurred in urging him not to
despair of Count Robert. They assured him
that he had attached too much importance to what had formerly been said about the defects
of its opening chapters; and he agreed to resume the novel, which neither of them ever
expected he would live to finish. “If we did wrong,” says Cadell, “we did it for the best: we felt that to have spoken
out as fairly on this as we had done on the other subject, would have been to make
ourselves the bearers of a death-warrant.” I hope there are not many men who
would have acted otherwise in their painful situation.
On the 20th, after a long interval, Sir
Walter once more took up his Journal: but the entries are few and short:—e. g.
“December 20, 1830.—Vacation and
session are now the same to me. The long remove must then be looked to for the final
signal to break up, and that is a serious thought.
“A circumstance of great consequence to my habits and comforts
was my being released from the Court of Session. My salary, which was L.1300, was
reduced to L.800. My friends, before leaving office, were desirous to patch up the
deficiency with a pension. I did not see well how they could do this without being
charged with obloquy, which they shall not be on my account. Besides, though L.500
a-year is a round sum, yet I would rather be independent than I would have it.
“I had also a kind communication about interfering to have me
named a P. Counsellor. But besides that, when one is old and poor, one should avoid
taking rank, I would be much happier if I thought any act of kindness was done to help
forward Charles; and having said so much, I made
my bow, and declared my purpose of remaining satisfied with my knighthood. All this is
rather pleasing. Yet much of it looks like winding up my bottom for the rest of my
life. But there is a worse symptom of settling accompts, of which I have felt some
signs. Ever since my fall in February, it is very certain that I have seemed to speak
with an impediment. To add to this, I have the
constant increase of my lameness the thigh-joint, knee-joint, and ankle-joint. I move
with great pain in the whole limb, and am at every minute, during an hour’s walk,
reminded of my mortality. I should not care for all this, if I were sure of dying
handsomely; and Cadell’s calculations
might be sufficiently firm, though the author of Waverley had
pulled on his last nightcap. Nay, they might be even more trust-worthy, if remains and
memoirs, and such like, were to give a zest to the posthumous. But the fear is, lest
the blow be not sufficient to destroy life, and that I should linger on ‘a
driveller and a show.’
“December 24.—This morning died my old
acquaintance and good friend, Miss Bell
Ferguson, a woman of the most excellent conditions. The last two, or almost
three years, were very sickly. A bitter cold day. Anne drove me over to Huntly-Burn. I found Colonel Ferguson, and Captain John, R.
N., in deep affliction, expecting Sir
Adam hourly. I wrote to Walter
about the project of my Will.
“December 29.—Attended poor Miss Bell Ferguson’s funeral. I sat by the
Reverend Mr Thomson. Though ten years
younger than him, I found the barrier between him and me much broken down. The
difference of ten years is little after sixty has passed. In a cold day I saw poor
Bell laid in her cold bed. Life never parted with a less
effort.
“January 1, 1831.—I cannot say the
world opens pleasantly for me this new year. There are many things for which I have
reason to be thankful; especially that Cadell’s plans seem to have succeeded and he augurs that the next
two years will well-nigh clear me. But I feel myself decidedly
wrecked in point of health, and am now confirmed I have had a paralytic touch. I speak
and read with embarrassment, and even my handwriting seems to stammer. This general
failure ‘With mortal crisis doth portend, My days to appropinque an end.’* I am not solicitous about this, only if I were worthy I would pray God for a
sudden death, and no interregnum between I cease to exercise reason and I cease to
exist.
“January 5.—Very indifferent, with more
awkward feelings than I can well bear up against. My voice sunk and my head strangely
confused. When I begin to form my ideas for conversation expressions fail me, yet in
solitude they are sufficiently arranged. I incline to hold that these ugly symptoms are
the work of imagination; but, as Dr Adam
Ferguson, a firm man, if ever there was one in the world, said on such
an occasion, what is worse than imagination? As Anne was vexed and frightened, I allowed her to send
for young Clarkson. Of course he could tell but
little save what I knew before.
“January 7.—A fine frosty day, and my
spirits lighter. I have a letter of great comfort from Walter, who, in a manly, handsome, and dutiful manner, expresses his
desire to possess the library and moveables of every kind at Abbotsford, with such a
valuation laid upon them as I shall choose to impose. This removes the only delay to
making my Will.
“Jan. 8.—Spent much time in writing
instructions
* Hudibras.
for my last will and testament. Have up two boys
for shop-lifting—remained at Galashiels till four o’clock and returned starved. Could
work none, and was idle all evening—try to-morrow. Jan. 9.—Went over
to Galashiels, and was busied the whole time till three o’clock about a petty
thieving affair, and had before me a pair of gallows’-birds, to whom I could say
nothing for total want of proof, except, like the sapient Elbow, ‘thou shalt continue there, know thou, thou shalt
continue.’ A little gallows-brood they were, and their fate will catch it.
Sleepy, idle, and exhausted on this. Wrought little or none in the evening. Jan. 10.—Wrote a long letter to Henry
Scott, who is a fine fellow, and what I call a Heart of Gold. He has sound
parts, good sense, and is a true man. O, that I could see a strong party banded together
for the King and country, and if I see I can do any thing, or have a chance of it, I will
not fear for the skin-cutting. It is the selfishness of this generation that drives me mad. ‘A hundred pounds? Ha! thou hast touch’d me nearly.’
The letter here alluded to contains some striking sentences.
To Henry Francis Scott, Esq. Younger of Harden, M.
P.
“Abbotsford, 10th January, 1831. “My dear Henry,
“ * * * Unassisted by any intercourse with the
existing world, but thinking over the present state of matters with all the
attention in my power, I see but one line which can be taken by public men,
that is really open, manly, and consistent. In the medical people’s phrase, Principiis
obsta: Oppose any thing that can in principle innovate
on the Constitution, which has placed Great Britain at the head of the world,
and will keep her there, unless she chooses to descend of her own accord from
that eminence. There may, for aught I know, be with many people reasons for
deranging it; but I take it on the broad basis that nothing will be ultimately
gained by any one who is not prepared to go full republican lengths. To place
elections on a more popular foot, would produce advantage in no view whatever.
Increasing the numbers of the electors would not distinguish them with more
judgment for selecting a candidate, nor render them less venal, though it might
make their price cheaper. But it would expose them to a worse species of
corruption than that of money—the same that has been and is practised more or
less in all republics—I mean that the intellects of the people will be liable
to be besotted by oratory ad
captandum, more dangerous than the worst intoxicating
liquors. As for the chance of a beneficial alteration in the representatives,
we need only point to Preston, and other such like places, for examples of the
sense, modesty, and merit which would be added to our legislation by a
democratic extension of the franchise. To answer these doubts, I find one
general reply among those not actually calling themselves Whigs who are now too
deeply pledged to acknowledge their own rashness. All others reply by a
reference to the spirit of the people—intimating a
passive, though apparently unwilling resignation to the will of the multitude.
When you bring them to the point, they grant all the dangers you state, and
then comes their melancholy—What can we do? The fact is,
these timid men see they are likely to be called on for a pecuniary sacrifice,
in the way of income-tax or otherwise, perhaps for military service in some
con-stitutional fashion, certainly
to exert themselves in various ways, and rather than do so they will let the
public take a risk. An able young man, not too much afraid of his own voice,
nor over-modest, but who remembers that any one who can speak intelligibly is
always taken current at the price at which he estimates himself, might at this
crisis do much by tearing off the liniments with which they are daubing the
wounds of the country, and crying peace, peace, when we are steering full sail
towards civil war.
“I am old enough to remember well a similar crisis.
About 1792, when I was entering life, the admiration of the godlike system of
the French Revolution was so rife, that only a few old-fashioned Jacobites and
the like ventured to hint a preference for the land they lived in; or pretended
to doubt that the new principles must be infused into our worn-out
constitution. Burke appeared, and all
the gibberish about the superior legislation of the French dissolved like an
enchanted castle when the destined knight blows his horn before it. The
talents, the almost prophetic powers of Burke are not
needed on this occasion, for men can now argue from the past. We can point to
the old British ensign floating from the British citadel; while the tricolor
has been to gather up from the mire and blood—the shambles of a thousand
defeats—a prosperous standard to rally under. Still, however, this is a moment
of dulness and universal apathy, and I fear that, unless an Orlando should blow the horn, it might fail to
awaken the sleepers. But though we cannot do all, we should at least do each of
us whatever we can.
“I would fain have a society formed for extending
mutual understanding. Place yourselves at the head, and call yourselves sons of
St Andrew, any thing or nothing—but let there be a mutual understanding. Unite
and combine. You will be surprised to see how soon you
will become fashionable. It was by something of this kind that the stand was
made in 1791-2; vis unita fortior. I
earnestly recommend to Charles Baillie,
Johnstone of Alva, and yourself, to
lose no opportunity to gather together the opinions of your friends; especially
of your companions, for it is only among the young, I am sorry to say, that
energy and real patriotism are now to be found. If it should be thought fit to
admit peers, which will depend on the plans and objects adopted, our Chief
ought naturally to be at the head. As for myself, no personal interests shall
prevent my doing my best in the cause which I have always conceived to be that
of my country. But I suspect there is little of me left to make my services
worth the having. Why should not old Scotland have a party among her own
children? Yours very sincerely, my dear Henry,
Walter Scott.”
“Diary, January 11.—Wrote and sent off about three of my own pages in the morning,
then walked with Swanston. I tried to write
before dinner, but with drowsiness and pain in my head, made little way. A man carries
no scales about him to ascertain his own value. I always remember the prayer of
Virgil’s sailor in extremity. ‘Non jam prima peto Mnestheus, nee
vincere certo,Quanquam O!—Sed superent quibus hoc, Neptune,
dedisti!Extremes pudeat rediisse: hoc vincite, cives,Et prohibete nefas!’* We must to our oar; but I think this and another are all that even success would
tempt me to write.
“January 17.—I had written two hours,
when various
* Æneid. V,
visiters began to drop in. I was sick of
these interruptions, and dismissed Mr Laidlaw,
having no hope of resuming my theme with spirit. God send me more leisure and fewer
friends to peck it away by tea-spoonfuls.—Another fool sends to entreat an autograph,
which he should be ashamed in civility to ask, as I am to deny. I got notice of poor
Henry Mackenzie’s death. He has long
maintained a niche in Scottish literature, gayest of the gay, though most sensitive of
the sentimental.
“January 18.—Dictated to Laidlaw till about one o’clock, during which
time it was rainy. Afterwards I walked, sliding about in the mud, and very
uncomfortable. In fact, there is no mistaking the three sufficients,* and Fate is now
straitening its circumvallations around me. ‘Come what come may, Time and the hour run through the roughest day.’†
“January 19.—Mr Laidlaw came down at ten, and we wrote till one.
This is an important help to me, as it saves both my eyesight and nerves, which last
are cruelly affected by finding those who look out of the windows grow gradually darker
and darker. Rode out, or, more properly, was carried out into the woods to see the
course of a new road, which may serve to carry off the thinnings of the trees, and for
rides. It is very well lined, and will serve both for beauty and convenience.
Mr Laidlaw engages to come back to dinner, and finish two or
three more pages. Met my agreeable and ladylike neighbour, Mrs Brewster, on my pony, and I was actually ashamed to be seen by
her.
* Sir W. alludes to Mrs
Piozzi’s Tale of the Three Sufficient Warnings.
† Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 3.
‘Sir Denis Brand, and on so poor a
steed!’*
“I believe detestable folly of this kind is the very last that
leaves us. One would have thought I ought to have little vanity at this time o’
day; but it is an abiding appurtenance of the old Adam, and I
write for penance what, like a fool, I actually felt. I think the peep, real or
imaginary, at the gates of death should have given me firmness not to mind little
afflictions.”
On the 31st of January, Miss
Scott being too unwell for a journey, Sir
Walter went alone to Edinburgh, for the purpose of executing his last will.
He (for the first time in his native town) took up his quarters at a hotel; but the noise
of the street disturbed him during the night (another evidence how much his nervous system
had been shattered), and next day he was persuaded to remove to his bookseller’s
house in Athol Crescent. In the apartment allotted to him there he found several little
pieces of furniture, which some kind person had purchased for him at the sale in Castle
Street, and which he presented to Mrs Cadell.
“Here,” says his letter to Mrs
Lockhart, “I saw various things that belonged to poor No. 39. I had
many sad thoughts on seeing and handling them—but they are in kind keeping, and I was
glad they had not gone to strangers.”
There came on next day a storm of such severity that he had to remain
under this friendly roof until the 9th of February. His host perceived that he was unfit
for any company but the quietest, and had sometimes one old friend, Mr Thomson, Mr
Clerk, or Mr Skene to dinner—but no
more. He seemed glad to
* Crabbe’sBorough, Letter xiii.
see them—but they all observed him
with pain. He never took the lead in conversation, and often remained altogether silent. In
the mornings he wrote usually for several hours at Count Robert; and Mr Cadell remembers in
particular, that on Ballantyne’s reminding him
that a motto was wanted for one of the chapters already finished, he looked out for a
moment at the gloomy weather, and penned these lines— “The storm increases—’tis no sunny shower, Foster’d in the moist breast of March or April, Or such as parched summer cools his lips with. Heaven’s windows are flung wide; the inmost deeps Call in hoarse greeting one upon another; On comes the flood in all its foaming horrors, And where’s the dike shall stop it!” (The Deluge: a
Poem.)
On the 4th February, the will was signed, and attested by Nicolson, to whom Sir
Walter explained the nature of the document, adding, “I deposit it
for safety in Mr Cadell’s hands, and I
still hope it may be long before he has occasion to produce it.” Poor
Nicolson was much agitated, but stammered out a deep amen.
Another object of this journey was to consult, on the advice of
Dr Ebenezer Clarkson, a skilful mechanist, by
name Fortune, about a contrivance for the
support of the lame limb, which had of late given him much pain, as well as inconvenience.
Mr Fortune produced a clever piece of handiwork, and Sir Walter felt at first great relief from the use of it:
insomuch that his spirits rose to quite the old pitch, and his letter to me upon the
occasion overflows with merry applications of sundry maxims and verses about Fortune. “Fortes Fortuna
adjuvat”—he says—“never more sing I ‘Fortune, my Foe, why dost thou frown on me? And will my Fortune never better be? Wilt thou, I say, for ever breed my pain? And wilt thou ne’er return my joys again?’* No—let my ditty be henceforth— ‘Fortune, my Friend, how well thou favourest me! A kinder Fortune man did never see! Thou propp’st my thigh, thou ridd’st my knee of pain, I’ll walk, I’ll mount—I’ll be a man again.’”—
This expedient was undoubtedly of considerable service; but the use of
it was not, after a short interval, so easy as at first: it often needed some little
repair, too, and then in its absence he felt himself more helpless than before. Even then,
however, the name was sure to tempt some ludicrous twisting of words. A little after this
time he dictated a reviewal (never published) of a book called Robson’s British Herald; and
in mentioning it to me, he says, “I have given Laidlaw a long spell to-day at the saltires and fesses. No thanks to
me, for my machine is away to be tightened in one bit, and loosened in another. I was
telling Willie Laidlaw that I might adopt, with a slight
difference, the motto of the noble Tullibardine:—‘Furth
Fortune and file the Fetters.’”†
Of this excursion to Edinburgh, the Diary says:—“Abbotsford, February 9.—The snow became impassable, and in
Edinburgh I remained immovably fixed for ten days, never getting out of doors, save
once or twice to dinner, when I went and returned in a sedan-chair. Cadell made a point of my coming to his excellent
house, where I had no less excellent an apartment and the
* I believe this is the only verse of the old song (often
alluded to by Shakspeare and his
contemporaries) that has as yet been recovered.
† “Fill the
fetters,” in the original. No. bad motto for the Duke
of Athole’s ancestors—great predatory chiefs of the
Highland frontier.
most kind treatment; that is, no making a
show of me, for which I was in but bad tune. Abercromby and Ross had me bled
with cupping-glasses, reduced me confoundedly, and restricted me of all creature
comforts. But they did me good, as I am sure they sincerely meant to do; I got rid of a
giddy feeling, which I had been plagued with, and have certainly returned much better.
I did not neglect my testamentary affairs. I executed my last will, leaving Walter burdened with L.1000 to Sophia, L.2000 to Anne, and the same to Charles.
He is to advance them this money if they want it; if not, to pay them interest. All
this is his own choice, otherwise I would have sold the books and rattletraps. I have
made provisions for clearing my estate by my publications, should it be possible; and
should that prove possible, from the time of such clearance being effected, to be a
fund available to all my children who shall be alive or leave representatives. My
bequests must many of them seem hypothetical.
“During this unexpected stay in town I dined with the
Lord Chief Commissioner, with the Skenes twice, with Lord
Medwyn, and was as happy as anxiety about my daughter would permit me.
The appearance of the streets was most desolate; the hackney-coaches strolling about
like ghosts with four horses; the foot passengers few, except the lowest of the people.
I wrote a good deal of Count Robert, yet,
I cannot tell why, my pen stammers egregiously, and I write horridly incorrect. I
longed to have friend Laidlaw’s
assistance.
“A heavy and most effective thaw coming on, I got home about
five at night, and found the haugh covered with water; dogs, pigs, cows, to say nothing
of human beings, all that slept at the offices in danger of being drowned. They came up
to the mansion-house about midnight, with such an infernal clamour, that Anne thought we were attacked by Captain
Swing and all the Radicals.”
After this the Diary offers but a few unimportant entries during
several weeks. He continued working at the Novel, and when discouraged about it, gave a day
to his article on Heraldry: but he never omitted to spend many hours, either in writing or
in dictating something; and Laidlaw, when he came
down a few minutes beyond the appointed time, was sure to be rebuked. At the beginning of
March, he was anew roused about political affairs; and bestowed four days on drawing up an
address against the Reform Bill, which he designed to be adopted by the Freeholders of the
Forest. They, however, preferred a shorter one from the pen of a plain practical country
gentleman (the late Mr Elliott Lockhart of
Borthwickbrae), who had often represented them in Parliament: and Sir Walter, it is probable, felt this disappointment more acutely than he
has chosen to indicate in his Journal.
“February 10.—I set to work with
Mr Laidlaw, and had after that a capital
ride; my pony, little used, was somewhat frisky, but I rode on to Huntly-Burn. Began my
diet on my new regime, and like it well, especially porridge to supper. It is wonderful
how old tastes rise.—Feb. 23, 24, 25.—These three days I can
hardly be said to have varied from my ordinary. Rose at seven, dressed before
eight—wrote letters, or did any little business till a quarter past nine. Then
breakfasted. Mr Laidlaw comes from ten till one. Then take the
pony, and ride—quantum mutatus—two or three
miles, John Swanston walking by my bridle-rein
lest I fall off. Come home about three or four. Then to dinner on a single plain dish
and half a tumbler, or, by’r Lady, three fourths of a tumbler of whisky and water. Then sit till six o’clock, when
enter Mr Laidlaw again, who works commonly till eight. After this,
work usually alone till half-past ten; sup on porridge and milk, and so to bed. The
work is half done. If any one asks what time I take to think on the composition, I
might say, in one point of view, it was seldom five minutes out of my head the whole
day—in another light, it was never the serious subject of consideration at all, for it
never occupied my thoughts for five minutes together, except when I was dictating.—Feb. 27.—Being Saturday, no Mr Laidlaw came
yesterday evening, nor to-day, being Sunday.—Feb. 28.—Past ten,
and Mr Laidlaw, the model of clerks in other respects, is not come
yet. He has never known the value of time, so is not quite accurate in punctuality; but
that, I hope, will come, if I can drill him into it without hurting him. I think I hear
him coming. I am like the poor wizard, who is first puzzled how to raise the devil, and
then how to employ him. Worked till one, then walked with great difficulty and
pain.—March 5.—I have a letter from our member Whytebank, adjuring me to assist the gentlemen of the
county with an address against the Reform Bill, which menaces them with being blended
with Peebles-shire, and losing, of consequence, one-half of their functions.
Sandie Pringle conjures me not to be very nice in choosing my
epithets. Torwoodlee comes over and speaks to
the same purpose, adding, it will be the greatest service I can do the country, &c.
This, in a manner, drives me out of a resolution to keep myself clear of politics, and
let them ‘fight dog, fight bear.’ But I am too easy to be persuaded to bear
a hand. The young Duke of Buccleuch comes to visit
me also; so I promised to shake my duds, and give them a cast of my calling—fall back,
fall edge.
“March 7, 8, 9, 10.—In these four days
I drew up, with much anxiety, an address in reprobation of the Bill, both with respect
to Selkirkshire, and in its general purport. Mr
Laidlaw, though he is on t’other side on the subject, thinks it
the best thing I ever wrote; and I myself am happy to find that it cannot be said to
smell of the apoplexy. But it was too declamatory, too much like a pamphlet, and went
far too generally into opposition, to please the county gentlemen, who are timidly
inclined to dwell on their own grievances, rather than the public wrongs. Must try to
get something for Mr Laidlaw, for I am afraid I am twaddling. I do
not think my head is weakened—yet a strange vacillation makes me suspect. Is it not
thus that men begin to fail, becoming, as it were, infirm of purpose?— ——‘That way madness lies—let me shun that. No more of that.’—— Yet why be a child about it? What must be, will be.
“March 11.—This day we had our meeting
at Selkirk. I found Borthwickbrae (late member)
had sent the frame of an address, which was tabled by Mr
Andrew Lang. It was the reverse of mine in every respect. It was short,
and to the point. It only contained a remonstrance against the incorporation with
Selkirkshire, and left it to be inferred that they opposed the bill in other respects.
As I saw that it met the ideas of the meeting (six in number) better by far than mine,
I instantly put that in my pocket. But I endeavoured to add to their complaint of a
private wrong a general clause, stating their sense of the hazard of passing at once a
bill full of such violent innovations. But though Harden, Alva, and Torwoodlee voted for this measure, it was refused by
the rest of the meeting, to my disap-pointment.
I was a fool to ‘stir such a dish of skimmed milk with so honourable an
action.’* If some of the gentlemen of the press, whose livelihood is
lying, were to get hold of this story, what would they make of it? It gives me a right
to decline future interference, and let the world wag—‘Transeat cum cæteris erroribus.’ I only gave way to
one jest. A rat-catcher was desirous to come and complete his labours in my house, and
I, who thought he only talked and laughed with the servants, recommended him to go to
the head-courts and meetings of freeholders, where he would find rats in plenty.
“I will make my opinion public at every place where I shall be
called upon or expected to appear; but I will not thrust myself forward again. May the
Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this vow!”
He kept it in all its parts. Though urged to take up his pen against
the ministerial Reform Bill, by several persons of high consequence, who, of course, little
knew his real condition of health, he resolutely refused to make any such experiment again.
But he was equally resolved to be absent from no meeting at which, as Sheriff or
Deputy-Lieutenant, he might naturally be expected to appear in his place, and record his
aversion to the Bill. The first of these meetings was one of the freeholders of Roxburgh,
held at Jedburgh on the 21st of March, and there, to the distress and alarm of his
daughter, he insisted on being present, and proposing one of the Tory resolutions, which he
did in a speech of some length, but delivered in a tone so low, and with such hesitation in
utterance, that only a few detached passages were intelligible to the bulk of the audience.
* Hotspur in King
Henry IV., Act II., Scene 3.
“We are told” (said he) “on high authority, that France is
the model for us, that we and all the other nations ought to put ourselves to school
there, and endeavour to take out our degrees at the University of
Paris.*—The French are a very ingenious people; they have often tried to
borrow from us, and now we should repay the obligation by borrowing a leaf from them.
But I fear there is an incompatibility between the tastes and habits of France and
Britain, and that we may succeed as ill in copying them, as they have hitherto done in
copying us. We in this district are proud, and with reason, that the first chain-bridge
was the work of a Scotchman. It still hangs where he erected it, a pretty long time
ago. The French heard of our invention, and determined to introduce it, but with great
improvements and embellishments. A friend of my own saw the thing tried. It was on the
Seine, at Marly. The French chain-bridge looked lighter and airier than the prototype.
Every Englishman present was disposed to confess that we had been beat at our own
trade. But by and by the gates were opened, and the multitude were to pass over. It
began to swing rather formidably beneath the pressure of the good company; and by the
time the architect, who led the procession in great pomp and glory, reached the middle,
the whole gave way, and he, worthy, patriotic artist, was the first who got a ducking.
They had forgot the great middle bolt, or rather, this ingenious person had conceived
that to be a clumsy looking feature, which might safely be dispensed with, while he put
some invisible gimcrack of his own to supply its place.”——Here Sir Walter was interrupted by violent hissing and hooting from
the populace of the town, who
* See Edinburgh Review for October, 1830, p. 23.
had flocked in and occupied the greater part of the
Court-House. He stood calmly till the storm subsided, and resumed; but the friend, whose
notes are before me, could not catch what he said, until his voice rose with another
illustration of the old style. “My friends,” he said, “I am old
and failing, and you think me full of very silly prejudices; but I have seen a good
deal of public men, and thought a good deal of public affairs in my day, and I
can’t help suspecting, that the manufacturers of this new constitution, are like
a parcel of schoolboys taking to pieces a watch which used to go tolerably well for all
practical purposes, in the conceit that they can put it together again far better than
the old watchmaker. I fear they will fail when they come to the reconstruction, and I
should not, I confess, be much surprised if it were to turn out that their first step
had been to break the main-spring.”—Here he was again stopped by a confused
Babel of contemptuous sounds, which seemed likely to render further attempts ineffectual.
He, abruptly and unheard, proposed his Resolution, and then turning to the riotous
artisans, exclaimed, “I regard your gabble no more than the geese on the
green.” His countenance glowed with indignation, as he resumed his seat on
the bench. But when, a few moments afterwards, the business being over, he rose to
withdraw, every trace of passion was gone. He turned round at the door, and bowed to the
assembly. Two or three, not more, renewed their hissing; he bowed again, and took leave in
the words of the doomed gladiator, which I hope none who had joined in these insults
understood—“Moriturus vos
saluto.”
Of this meeting there is but a very slight notice in one of the next
extracts from his Diary; another of them refers to that remarkable circumstance in English
history, the passing of the first Reform Bill in the Commons, on the
22d of March, by a majority of one; and a third to the last really
good portrait that was painted of himself. This was the work of Mr Francis Grant (brother of the Laird of
Kilgraston), whose subsequent career has justified the Diarist’s
prognostications. This excellent picture, in which, from previous familiarity with the
subject, he was able to avoid the painful features of recent change, was done for his and
Sir Walter’s friend, Lady Ruthven.
“March 20.—Little of this day, but that
it was so uncommonly windy that I was almost blown off my pony, and was glad to grasp
the mane to prevent its actually happening. I began the third volume of Count Robert of Paris, which has been on
the anvil during all these vexatious circumstances of politics and health. But the blue
heaven bends over all. It may be ended in a fortnight, if I keep my scheme. But I will
take time enough. I thought I was done with politics, but it is easy getting into the
mess, but difficult, and sometimes disgraceful to get out. I have a letter from
Sheriff Oliver, desiring me to go to
Jedburgh on Monday, and show countenance by adhering to a set of propositions. Though
not well drawn, they are uncompromising enough, so I will not part company.
“March 22.—Went yesterday at nine
o’clock to the meeting; a great number present, with a mob of Reformers, who showed
their sense of propriety by hissing, hooting, and making all sorts of noises. And these
unwashed artificers are from henceforth to select our legislators. What can be expected
from them except such a thick-headed plebeian as will be ‘a hare-brained Hotspur,
guided by a whim?’ There was some speaking, but not good. I said something,
for I could not sit quiet. I did not get home till
past nine, having fasted the whole time.
“March 25.—The measure carried by a single
vote. In other circumstances one would hope for the interference of the House of Lords, but
it is all hab nab at a venture, as Cervantes says. The
worst is, that there is a popular party, who want personal power, and are highly unfitted
to enjoy it. It has fallen easily, the old constitution; no bullying Mirabeau to assail, no eloquent Maury to defend. It has been thrown away like a
child’s broken toy. Well—the good sense of the people is much trusted to; we shall
see what it will do for us. The curse of Cromwell on
those whose conceit brought us to this pass. Sed
transeat. It is vain to mourn what cannot be mended.
“March 26.—Frank Grant and his lady came
here.* Frank will, I believe, if he attends to his profession, be
one of the celebrated men of the age. He has long been well known to me as the
companion of my sons and the partner of my daughters. In youth, that is in extreme
youth, he was passionately fond of fox-hunting and other sports, but not of any species
of gambling. He had also a strong passion for painting, and made a little collection.
As he had sense enough to feel that a younger brother’s fortune would not last
long under the expenses of a good stud and a rare collection of chefs d’œuvre, he used to avow his
intention to spend his patrimony, about L.10,000, and then again to make his fortune by
the law. The first he soon accomplished. But the law is not a profession so easily
acquired, nor did Frank’s talents lie in that direction. His
passion
* Mr Francis Grant
had recently married Miss Norman, a
niece of the Duke of Rutland’s.
for painting turned out better. Connoisseurs approved of his
sketches, both in pencil and oil, but not without the sort of criticisms made on these
occasions—that they were admirable for an amateur—but it could not be expected that he
should submit to the actual drudgery absolutely necessary for a profession and all that
species of criticism which gives way before natural genius and energy of character. In
the mean-time Frank saw the necessity of doing something to keep
himself independent, having, I think, too much spirit to become a Jock the Laird’s brither drinking out the last glass of the bottle,
riding the horses which the laird wishes to sell, and drawing sketches to amuse the
lady and the children. He was above all this, and honourably resolved to cultivate his
taste for painting, and become a professional artist. I am no judge of painting, but I
am conscious that Francis Grant possesses, with much cleverness, a
sense of beauty derived from the best source, that is, the observation of really good
society, while, in many modern artists, the want of that species of feeling is so great
as to be revolting. His former acquaintances render his immediate entrance into
business completely secure, and it will rest with himself to carry on his success. He
has, I think, that degree of force of character which will make him keep and enlarge
any reputation which he may acquire. He has confidence, too, in his own powers, always
requisite for a young gentleman trying things of this sort, whose aristocratic
pretensions must be envied. March 29.—Frank
Grant is still with me, and is well pleased, I think very advisedly so,
with a cabinet picture of myself, armour and so forth, together with my two noble
stag-hounds. The dogs sat charmingly, but the picture took up some time.”
I must insert a couple of letters written about this time. That to the
Secretary of the Literary Fund, one of the most
useful and best managed charities in London, requires no explanation. The other was
addressed to the Rev. Alexander Dyce, on receiving a
copy of that gentleman’s edition of Greene’s Plays, with a handsome
dedication. Sir Walter, it appears, designed to make
Greene and Webster the subject of an article in the Quarterly Review. It is proper to observe that he had never
met their editor, though two or three letters had formerly passed between them. The little
volume which he sent in return to Mr Dyce, was “the Trial of Duncan Terig and Alexander
Macdonald,” one of the Bannatyne Club books.
To B. Nichols, Esq., Registrar of the Literary Fund,
London.
“Abbotsford, 29th March, 1831. “Sir,
I am honoured with your obliging letter of the 25th
current, flattering me with the information that you had placed my name on the
list of stewards for the Literary Fund, at which I am sorry to say, it will not
be in my power to attend, as I do not come to London this season. You, sir, and
the other gentlemen who are making such efforts in behalf of literature, have a
right to know, why a person, who has been much favoured by the public, should
decline joining an institution whose object it is to relieve those who have
been less fortunate than himself, or, in plain words, to contribute to the
support of the poor of my own guild. If I could justly accuse myself of this
species of selfishness, I should think I did a very wrong thing. But the wants
of those whose distresses and merits are known to me, are of such a nature,
that what I have the means of sparing for the relief of
others, is not nearly equal to what I wish. Any thing which I might contribute
to your Fund would, of course, go to the relief of other objects, and the
encouragement of excellent persons, doubtless, to whom I am a stranger, and
from having some acquaintance with the species of distress to be removed, I
believe I shall aid our general purpose best, by doing such service as I can to
misery which cannot be so likely to attract your eyes.
“I cannot express myself sufficiently upon the
proposal which supposes me willing to do good, and holds out an opportunity to
that effect. I am, with great respect to the trustees and other gentlemen of
the Fund, Sir, your obliged humble servant,
Walter Scott.”
To the Rev. Alexander Dyce, London.
“Abbotsford, March 31, 1831, “Dear Sir,
I had the pleasure of receiving Greene’s Plays, with which, as
works of great curiosity, I am highly gratified. If the editor of the Quarterly consents, as he probably will, I shall
do my endeavour to be useful, though I am not sure when I can get admission. I
shall be inclined to include Webster,
who, I think, is one of the best of our ancient dramatists; if you will have
the kindness to tell the bookseller to send it to Whittaker, under cover to me, care of Mr Cadell, Edinburgh, it will come safe, and
be thankfully received. Marlowe and
others I have,—and some acquaintance with the subject, though not much.
“I have not been well; threatened with a
determination of blood to the head; but by dint of bleeding and regimen, I have
recovered. I have lost, however, like
Hamlet, all habit of my exercise, and,
once able to walk thirty miles a day, or ride a hundred, I can hardly walk a
mile, or ride a pony four or five.
“I will send you, by Whittaker, a little curious tract of murder, in which a ghost is the
principal evidence. The spirit did not carry his point, however; for the
apparition, though it should seem the men were guilty, threw so much ridicule
on the whole story, that they were acquitted.*
“I wish you had given us more of Greene’s prose works. I am, with regard,
dear sir, yours sincerely,
Walter Scott.”
To resume the Diary—“March
30.—Bob Dundas† and his wife
(Miss Durham that was) came to spend a day
or two. I was heartily glad to see him, being my earliest and best friend’s son.
John Swinton, too, came on the part of an
Anti-Reform meeting in Edinburgh, who exhorted me to take up the pen, but I declined
and pleaded health, which God knows I have a right to urge. I might have urged also the
chance of my breaking down, but that would be a cry of wolf, which might very well
prove real.—April 2.—Mr Henry
Liddell, eldest son of Lord
Ravensworth, arrives here. I like him and his brother Tom very much, although they are what may be called
fine men. Henry is accomplished, is an artist and musician, and
certainly has a fine taste for poetry, though he may never cultivate it.—April 8.—This day I took leave of poor Major John Scott,‡ who, being afflicted with a
distressing asthma, has resolved
* See Scott’sLetters on Demonology, p. 371.
† Mr Dundas of
Arniston.
‡ This gentleman, a brother to the Laird of Raeburn, had made some fortune in the
East Indies, and bestowed the name of Ravenswood on a villa which he built near
Melrose. He died in 1831.
upon selling his house of Ravenswood, which he had dressed up
with much neatness, and going abroad. Without having been intimate friends, we were
always affectionate relations, and now we part probably never to meet in this world. He
has a good deal of the character said to belong to the family. Our parting with mutual
feeling may be easily supposed.”
The next entry relates to the last public appearance that the writer
ever made, under circumstances at all pleasant, in his native country. He had taken great
interest about a new line of mail-road between Selkirk and Edinburgh, which runs in view of
Abbotsford across the Tweed; but he never saw it completed.
“April 11.—This day I went with Anne, and Miss Jane
Erskine,* to see the laying of the stones of foundation for two bridges in
my neighbourhood over Tweed and the Ettrick. There were a great many people assembled. The
day was beautiful, the scene was romantic, and the people in good spirits and good-humour.
Mr Paterson of Galashiels† made a most
excellent prayer: Mr Smith‡ gave a proper
repast to the workmen, and we subscribed sovereigns a piece to provide for any casualty. I
laid the foundation-stone of the bridge over Tweed, and Mr C.
B. Scott of Woll,‖ the foundation-stone of that of Ettrick. The
general spirit of good-humour made the scene, though without parade, extremely interesting.
“April 12.—We breakfasted with the
Fergusons, after which Anne
and Miss Erskine walked up the Rhy-
* A daughter of Lord
Kinnedder’s.
† The Rev. N.
Paterson, now one of the Ministers of Glasgow.
‡ Mr John Smith of
Darnick, the builder of Abbotsford, and architect of these bridges.
‖ This gentleman died in Edinburgh on 4th February, 1831.
mer’s Glen. I could as easily have made a
pilgrimage to Rome with peas in my shoes unboiled. I drove home, and began to work about
ten o’clock. At one o’clock I rode, and sent off what I had finished. Mr Laidlaw dined with me. In the afternoon we wrote five
or six pages more. I am, I fear, sinking a little from having too much space to fill, and a
want of the usual inspiration which makes me, like the chariot-wheels of Pharaoh in the
sands of the Red Sea, drive heavily. It is the less matter if this prove, as I suspect, the
last of this fruitful family.—April 13.—Corrected proofs in the
morning. At ten o’clock began where I had left off at my romance.
Laidlaw begins to smite the rock for not giving forth the water in
quantity sufficient. I have against me the disadvantage of being called the Just, and every
one of course is willing to worry me. But they have been long at it, and even those works
which have been worst received at their first appearance, now keep their ground fairly
enough. So we’ll try our old luck another voyage. It is a close thick rain, and I
cannot ride, and I am too dead lame to walk in the house. So feeling really exhausted, I
will try to sleep a little.—My nap was a very short one, and was agreeably replaced by
Basil Hall’sFragments of Voyages. Every thing about the inside of
a vessel is interesting, and my friend B. H. has the good sense to
know this is the case. I remember when my eldest
brother took the humour of going to sea, James Watson
used to be invited to George’s Square to tell him such tales of hardships as might
disgust him with the service. Such were my poor mother’s instructions. But
Captain Watson could not by all this render a sea life disgusting
to the young midshipman, or to his brother, who looked on and listened.
Hall’s accounts of the assistance given to the Spaniards at
Cape Finisterre, and the absurd behaviour of the Junta, are highly
interesting. A more inefficient, yet a more resolved class of men than the Spaniards, were
never conceived—April 16.—Lord
Meadowbank and his son. Skene walks
with me. Weather enchanting. About one hundred leaves will now complete Robert of Paris. Query, If the last? Answer—Not knowing,
can’t say. I think it will.”——
The Captain Watson, R. N., alluded to in one of
these, extracts, was distantly related to Sir Walter’s
mother. His son, Mr John Watson
Gordon, has risen to great eminence as a painter; and his portraits of
Scott and Hogg
rank among his best pieces. That of the Ettrick Shepherd is indeed
perfect; and Sir Walter’s has only the disadvantage of having
been done a little too late. These masterly pictures are both in Mr Cadell’s possession.
CHAPTER VIII. APOPLECTIC PARALYSIS—MISS FERRIER—DR MACKINTOSH
MACKAY—SCENES AT JEDBURGH AND SELKIRK—CASTLE
DANGEROUS—EXCURSION TO DOUGLASDALE—CHURCH OF ST BRIDE’S,
ETC.—TURNER’S DESIGNS FOR THE POETRY—LAST VISITS TO
SMAILHOLM—BEMERSIDE—ETTRICK, ETC.—VISIT OF CAPTAIN BURNS—MR
ADOLPHUS—AND MR WORDSWORTH—“YARROW REVISITED,” AND SONNET ON THE EILDONS. APRIL—OCTOBER, 1831.
The next entry in the Diary is as follows:—
“From Saturday 16th April, to Sunday 24th of the same month,
unpleasantly occupied by ill health and its consequences. A distinct stroke of
paralysis affecting both my nerves and speech, though beginning only on Monday with a
very bad cold. Doctor Abercromby was brought out
by the friendly care of Cadell, but young
Clarkson had already done the needful, that
is, had bled and blistered, and placed me on a very reduced diet. Whether precautions
have been taken in time, I cannot tell. I think they have, though severe in themselves,
beat the disease; but I am alike prepared.”
The preceding paragraph has been deciphered with difficulty. The blow
which it records was greatly more severe than any that had gone before it. Sir
Walter’s friend Lord Meadowbank
had come to Abbotsford, as usual when on the Jedburgh circuit; and he would make an effort to receive the Judge in something of the old style of
the place; he collected several of the neighbouring gentry to dinner, and tried to bear his
wonted part in the conversation. Feeling his strength and spirits flagging, he was tempted
to violate his physician’s directions, and took two or three glasses of champagne,
not having tasted wine for several months before. On retiring to his dressing-room he had
this severe shock of apoplectic paralysis, and kept his bed under the surgeon’s
hands, for several days.
Shortly afterwards his eldest son and his daughter Sophia arrived at Abbotsford. It may be supposed that they
would both have been near him instantly, had that been possible; but, not to mention the
dread of seeming to be alarmed about him. Major
Scott’s regiment was stationed in a very disturbed district, and his
sister was still in a disabled state from the relics of a rheumatic fever. I followed her a
week later, when we established ourselves at Chiefswood for the rest of the season.
Charles Scott had some months before this time
gone to Naples, as an attaché to the British Embassy there. During the next six months
the Major was at Abbotsford every now and then as often as circumstances could permit him
to be absent from his Hussars.
Diary,—“April 27, 1831.—They
have cut me off from animal food and fermented liquors of every kind; and, thank God, I
can fast with any one. I walked out and found the day delightful; the woods too looking
charming, just bursting forth to the tune of the birds. I have been whistling on my
wits like so many chickens, and cannot miss any of them. I feel on the whole better
than I have yet done. I believe I have fined and recovered, and so may be thankful.—April 28, 29.—Walter made
his appearance here, well and stout, and
completely recovered from his stomach complaints by abstinence. He has youth on his
side; and I in age must submit to be a Lazarus. The medical men
persist in recommending a seton. I am no friend to these remedies, and will be sure of
the necessity before I yield consent. The dying like an Indian under tortures is no
joke; and as Commodore Trunnion says, I feel
heart-whole as a biscuit.—April 30—May
1.—Go on with Count Robert half a dozen
leaves per day. I am not much behind with my hand-work. The task of pumping my brains
becomes inevitably harder when ‘Both chain pumps are choked below;’ and though this may not be the case literally, yet the apprehension is well-nigh
as bad.—May 3.—Sophia
arrives with all the children looking well and beautiful, except poor Johnnie, who looks pale. But it is no wonder, poor
thing!—May 4.—I have a letter from Lockhart, promising to be down by next Wednesday. I
shall be glad to see and consult with Lockhart. My pronunciation
is a good deal improved. My time glides away ill employed, but I am afraid of the
palsy. I should not like to be pinned to my chair. I believe even that kind of life is
more endurable than we could suppose—yet the idea is terrible to a man who has been
active. Your wishes are limited to your little circle. My own circle in bodily matters
is narrowing daily; not so in intellectual matters but of that I am perhaps a worse
judge. The plough is nearing the end of the furrow.
“May 5.—A fleece of letters, which must
be answered I suppose,—all from persons my zealous admirers of course, and expecting a
degree of generosity, which will put to rights all their maladies, physical and mental,
and that I can make up whatever losses have been their lot,
raise them to a desirable rank, and will stand their protector and patron. I must, they
take it for granted, be astonished at having an address from a stranger; on the
contrary, I would be astonished if any of these extravagant epistles came from any one
who had the least title to enter into correspondence. My son Walter takes leave of me to-day, to return to
Sheffield. At his entreaty I have agreed to put in a seton, which they seem all to
recommend. My own opinion is, this addition to my tortures will do me no good—but I
cannot hold out against my son.
“May 6, 7, 8.—Here is a precious job. I
have a formal remonstrance from these critical people, Ballantyne and Cadell, against
the last volume of Count Robert, which is
within a sheet of being finished. I suspect their opinion will be found to coincide
with that of the public; at least it is not very different from my own. The blow is a
stunning one I suppose, for I scarcely feel it. It is singular, but it comes with as
little surprise as if I had a remedy ready, yet, God knows, I am at sea in the dark,
and the vessel leaky, I think, into the bargain. I cannot conceive that I should have
tied a knot with my tongue which my teeth cannot untie. We shall see.—I have suffered
terribly, that is the truth, rather in body than in mind, and I often wish I could lie
down and sleep without waking. But I will fight it out if I can. It would argue too
great an attachment of consequence to my literary labours to sink under critical
clamour. Did I know how to begin, I would begin again this very day, although I knew I
should sink at the end. After all, this is but fear and faintness of heart, though of
another kind from that which trembleth at a loaded pistol. My bodily strength is terribly gone; perhaps my mental too.”
On my arrival (May 10th), I found Sir
Walter to have rallied considerably; yet his appearance, as I first saw him,
was the most painful sight I had ever then seen. Knowing at what time I might be expected,
he had been lifted on his pony, and advanced about half a mile on the Selkirk road to meet
me. He moved at a footpace, with Laidlaw at one
stirrup, and his forester Swanston (a fine fellow,
who did all he could to replace Tom Purdie) at the
other. Abreast was old Peter Mathieson on horseback,
with one of my children astride before him on a pillion. Sir Walter
had had his head shaved, and wore a black silk night-cap under his blue bonnet. All his
garments hung loose about him; his countenance was thin and haggard, and there was an
obvious distortion in the muscles of one cheek. His look, however, was placid—his eye as
bright as ever—perhaps brighter than it ever was in health; he smiled with the same
affectionate gentleness, and though at first it was not easy to understand every thing he
said, he spoke cheerfully and manfully.
He had resumed, and was trying to recast, his novel. All the medical men
had urged him, by every argument, to abstain from any such attempts; but he smiled on them
in silence, or answered with some jocular rhyme. One note has this postscript a parody on a
sweet lyric of Burns’s— “Dour, dour, and eident was he, Dour and eident but-and-ben— Dour against their barley-water, And eident on the Bramah pen.” He told me that in the winter he had more than once tried writing with his own hand,
because he had no longer the same “pith and birr” that
formerly rendered dictation easy to him; but that the experiment failed. He was now
sensible he could do nothing without Laidlaw to hold
“the Bramah pen,” adding, “Willie is a kind
clerk—I see by his looks when I am pleasing him, and that pleases me.” And,
however the cool critic may now estimate Count Robert, no one who then saw the author could wonder
that Laidlaw’s prevalent feeling in writing those pages should
have been admiration. Under the full consciousness that he had sustained three or four
strokes of apoplexy or palsy, or both combined, and tortured by various attendant ailments,
cramp, rheumatism in half his joints, daily increasing lameness, and now of late gravel
(which was, though last, not least), he retained all the energy of his will, struggled
manfully against this sea of troubles, and might well have said seriously, as he more than
once both said and wrote playfully, “’Tis not in mortals to command success, But we’ll do more, Sempronius,
we’ll deserve it.”*
To assist them in amusing him in the hours which he spent out of his
study, and especially that he might be tempted to make those hours more frequent, his
daughters had invited his friend the authoress of Marriage to come out to
Abbotsford; and her coming was serviceable. For she knew and loved him well, and she had
seen enough of affliction akin to his, to be well skilled in dealing with it. She could not
be an hour in his company without observing what filled his children with more sorrow than
all the rest of the case. He would begin a story as gaily as ever, and go on, in spite of
the hesitation in his speech, to tell it with highly picturesque effect—but before he
reached the point, it would seem
* Addison’sCato.
as if some internal spring had given way—he paused,
and gazed round him with the blank anxiety of look that a blind man has when he has dropped
his staff. Unthinking friends sometimes pained him sadly by giving him the catchword
abruptly. I noticed the delicacy of Miss Ferrier on
such occasions. Her sight was bad, and she took care not to use her glasses when he was
speaking; and she affected to be also troubled with deafness, and would say,
“Well, I am getting as dull as a post; I have not heard a word since you said
so and so”—being sure to mention a circumstance behind that at which he had
really halted. He then took up the thread with his habitual smile of courtesy—as if
forgetting his case entirely in the consideration of the lady’s infirmity.
He had also a visit from the learned and pious Dr M. Mackay, then minister of Laggan, but now of
Dunoon—the chief author of the Gaelic Dictionary, then recently published under the
auspices of the Highland Society; and this gentleman also accommodated himself, with the
tact of genuine kindness, to the circumstances of the time.
In the family circle Sir Walter
seldom spoke of his illness at all, and when he did it was always in the hopeful strain. In
private to Laidlaw and myself, his language
corresponded exactly with the tone of the Diary—he expressed his belief that the chances of
recovery were few—very few—but always added, that he considered it his duty to exert what
faculties remained to him, for the sake of his creditors, to the very last. “I am
very anxious,” he repeatedly said to me, “to be done, one way or
other, with this Count Robert, and a
little story about the Castle Dangerous,
which also I had long had in my head—but after that I will attempt nothing more—at
least not until I have finished all the notes for the Novels, &c.; for, in case of
my going off at the next slap, you would naturally have to take
up that job, and where could you get at all my old wives’ stories?”
I felt the sincerest pity for Cadell and Ballantyne at this time;
and advised him to lay Count Robert aside for
a few weeks, at all events, until the general election now going on should be over. He
consented but immediately began another series of Tales on French History—which he never
completed. The Diary says:—
“May 12.—Resolved to lay by Robert of Paris, and take it up when I can
work. Thinking on it really makes my head swim, and that is not safe. Miss Ferrier comes out to us. This gifted personage,
besides having great talents, has conversation the least exigeante of any author, female at least, whom I have ever seen
among the long list I have encountered with; simple, full of humour, and exceedingly
ready at repartee; and all this without the least affectation of the blue stocking.
“May 13.—Mr, or more properly,
Dr Macintosh Mackay comes out to see me, a
simple learned man, and a Highlander who weighs his own nation justly—a modest and
estimable person. Reports of mobs at all the elections, which I fear will prove true.
They have much to answer for who, in gaiety of heart, have brought a peaceful and
virtuous population to such a pass.
“May 14.—Rode with Lockhart and Mr
Mackay through the plantations, and spent a pleasanter day than of late
months. Story of a haunted glen in Laggan. A chieftain’s daughter or cousin loved
a man of low degree. Her kindred discovered the intrigue, and punished the
lover’s presumption by binding the unhappy man, and laying him naked in one of
the large owl’s nests common in a Highland
forest. He expired in agony of course, and his mistress became distracted, roamed
wildly in the glen till she died, and her phantom, finding no repose, haunted it after
her death to such a degree, that the people shunned the road by day as well as night.
Mrs Grant tells the story with the addition,
that her husband, then minister of Laggan, formed a religious meeting in the place, and
by the exercise of public worship there overcame the popular terror of the Red Woman.
Dr Mackay seems to think that she was rather banished by a
branch of the Parliamentary road running up the glen, than by the prayers of his
predecessor. Dr Mackay, it being Sunday, favoured us with an
excellent discourse on the Socinian controversy, which I wish my friend Mr * * * had heard.—May
15.—Dr M. left us early this morning; and I rode and studied
as usual, working at the Tales of my
Grandfather. Our good and learned Doctor wishes to go down the Tweed to
Berwick. It is a laudable curiosity, and I hope will be agreeably satisfied.”
On the 18th, I witnessed a scene which must dwell painfully upon many
memories besides mine. The rumours of brick-bat and bludgeon work at the hustings of this
month were so prevalent, that Sir Walter’s family,
and not less zealously the Tory candidate for Roxburghshire himself, tried every means to
dissuade him from attending the election for that county. We thought over night that we had
succeeded, and, indeed, as the result of the vote was not at all doubtful, there was not
the shadow of a reason for his appearing on this occasion. About seven in the morning,
however, when I came down stairs intending to ride over to Jedburgh, I found he had
countermanded my horse, ordered the carriage to the door, and was
already impatient to be off for the scene of action. We found the town in a most
tempestuous state: in fact, it was almost wholly in the hands of a disciplined rabble,
chiefly weavers from Hawick, who marched up and down with drums and banners, and, then
after filling the Court-hall, lined the streets, grossly insulting every one who did not
wear the reforming colours. Sir Walter’s carriage, as it
advanced towards the house of the Shortreed family, was pelted with
stones; one or two fell into it, but none touched him. He breakfasted with the widow and
children of his old friend, and then walked to the Hall between me and one of the young
Shortreeds. He was saluted with groans and blasphemies all the way
and I blush to add that a woman spat upon him from a window; but this last contumely I
think he did not observe. The scene within was much what has been described under the date
of March 21st, except that though he attempted to speak from the Bench, not a word was
audible, such was the frenzy. Young Harden was returned
by a great majority, 40 to 19, and we then with difficulty gained the inn where the
carriage had been put up. But the aspect of the street was by that time such, that several
of the gentlemen on the Whig side came and entreated us not to attempt starting from the
front of our inn. One of them, Lieutenant R. Elliot of the Royal Navy,
lived in the town, or rather in a villa adjoining it, to the rear of the Spread Eagle.
Sir Walter was at last persuaded to accept this courteous
adversary’s invitation, and accompanied him through some winding lanes to his
residence. Peter Mathieson by and by brought the
carriage thither, in the same clandestine method, and we escaped from Jedburgh with one
shower more of stones at the Bridge. I believe there would have been a determined onset at
that spot, but for the zeal of three or four sturdy Darnickers (Joseph
Shillinglaw, carpenter, being their
Coryphæus), who had, unobserved by us, clustered themselves beside the footman in the
rumble.
The Diary contains this brief notice:—“May 18.—Went to Jedburgh greatly against the wishes of my daughters. The mob
were exceedingly vociferous and brutal, as they usually are nowadays. The population
gathered in formidable numbers—a thousand from Hawick also—sad blackguards. The day
passed with much clamour and no mischief. Henry
Scott was re-elected for the last time, I suppose. Troja fuit. I left the borough in the midst of
abuse, and the gentle hint of Burk Sir
Walter. Much obliged to the brave lads of Jeddart.”
Sir Walter fully anticipated a scene of similar violence
at the Selkirk election, which occurred a few days afterwards; but though here also, by
help of weavers from a distance, there was a sufficiently formidable display of radical
power, there occurred hardly any thing of what had been apprehended. Here the Sheriff was
at home—known intimately to every body, himself probably knowing almost all of man’s
estate by head mark, and, in spite of political fanaticism, all but universally beloved as
well as feared. The only person who ventured actually to hustle a Tory elector on his way
to the poll, attracted Scott’s observation at the moment when he
was getting out of his carriage; he instantly seized the delinquent with his own hand—the
man’s spirit quailed, and no one coming to the rescue, he was safely committed to
prison until the business of the day was over. Sir Walter had
ex officio to preside at this election,
and, therefore, his family would probably have made no attempt to dissuade him from
attending it, even had he staid away from Jedburgh. Among the exaggerated rumours of the
time, was one that Lord William Graham, the Tory candidate for Dumbartonshire, had
been actually massacred by the rabble of his county town. He had been grievously
maltreated, but escaped murder, though, I believe, narrowly. But I can never forget the
high glow which suffused Sir Walter’s countenance when he heard
the overburdened story, and said calmly, in rather a clear voice, the trace of his
calamitous affliction almost disappearing for the moment,—“Well—Lord
William died at his post— “Non aliter cineres mando
jacere meos.”*
I am well pleased that the ancient capital of the
Forest did not stain its fair name upon this miserable occasion; and I am sorry
for Jedburgh and Hawick. This last town stands almost within sight of Branksome Hall,
overhanging also sweet Teviot’s silver tide. The civilized
American or Australian will curse these places, of which he would never have heard but for
Scott, as he passes through them in some distant
century, when perhaps all that remains of our national glories may be the high literature
adopted and extended in new lands planted from our blood.
No doubt these disturbances of the general election had an unfavourable
influence on the invalid. When they were over, he grew calmer and more collected; the
surgical experiment appeared to be beneficial; his speech became, after a little time, much
clearer, and such were the symptoms of energy still about him, that I began to think a
restoration not hopeless. Some business called me to London about the middle of June, and
when I returned at the end of three weeks, I had the satisfaction to find that he had been
gradually amending.
* Martial i. 89.
But, alas, the first use he made of this partial renovation, had been
to expose his brain once more to an imaginative task. He began his Castle Dangerous—the ground-work being again an old story
which he had told in print, many years before, in a rapid manner. And now, for the first
time, he left Ballantyne out of his secret. He thus
writes to Cadell on the 3d of July:—“I
intend to tell this little matter to nobody but Lockhart. Perhaps not even to him; certainly not to J. B., who having turned his back on his old political
friends, will no longer have a claim to be a secretary in such matters, though I shall
always be glad to befriend him.”
James’s criticisms on Count Robert had wounded
him—the Diary, already quoted, shows how severely. The last visit this old ally ever paid
at Abbotsford, occurred a week or two after. His newspaper had by this time espoused openly
the cause of the Reform Bill and some unpleasant conversation took place on that subject,
which might well be a sore one for both parties, and not least, considering the whole of
his personal history, for Mr Ballantyne. Next morning, being Sunday,
he disappeared abruptly, without saying farewell; and when Scott understood that he had signified an opinion that the reading of the
church service, with a sermon from South or
Barrow, would be a poor substitute for the
mystical eloquence of some new idol down the vale, he expressed considerable disgust. They
never met again in this world. In truth, Ballantyne’s health
also was already much broken; and if Scott had been entirely himself,
he would not have failed to connect that circumstance in a charitable way with this never
strong-minded man’s recent abandonment of his own old terra firma, both religious and political. But this is a subject on
which we have no title to dwell. Sir Walter’s misgivings about himself, if I read him aright, now rendered him desirous of
external support; but this novel inclination his spirit would fain suppress and disguise
even from itself.
When I again saw him on the 13th of this month, he showed me several
sheets of the new romance, and told me how
he had designed at first to have it printed by somebody else than Ballantyne, but that on reflection, he had shrunk from
hurting his feelings on so tender a point. I found, however, that he had neither invited
nor received any opinion from James as to what he had written, but
that he had taken an alarm lest he should fall into some blunder about the scenery fixed on
(which he had never seen but once when a schoolboy), and had kept the sheets in proof until
I should come back and accompany him in a short excursion to Lanarkshire. He was anxious in
particular to see the tombs in the Church of St Bride, adjoining the site of his
“Castle Dangerous,” of which Mr Blore
had shown him drawings; and he hoped to pick up some of the minute traditions, in which he
had always delighted, among the inhabitants of Douglasdale.
We set out early on the 18th, and ascended the Tweed, passing in
succession Yair, Ashestiel, Innerleithing, Traquair, and many more scenes dear to his early
life, and celebrated in his writings. The morning was still, but gloomy, and at length we
had some thunder. It seemed to excite him vividly, and on coming soon afterwards within
view of that remarkable edifice (Drochel Castle) on the moorland ridge between Tweed and
Clyde, which was begun, but never finished, by the Regent
Morton—a gigantic ruin typical of his ambition—Sir
Walter could hardly be restrained from making some effort to reach it.
Morton, too, was a Douglas, and that name was
at present his charm of charms. We pushed on to
Biggar, however, and reaching it towards sunset, were detained there for some time by want
of post-horses. It was soon discovered who he was; the population of the little town turned
out; and he was evidently gratified with their respectful curiosity. It was the first time
I observed him otherwise than annoyed upon such an occasion. Jedburgh, no doubt, hung on
his mind, and he might be pleased to find that political differences did not interfere
every where with his reception among his countrymen. But I fancy the cause lay deeper.
Another symptom that distressed me during this journey was, that he
seemed constantly to be setting tasks to his memory. It was not as of old, when if any one
quoted a verse, he, from the fulness of his heart, could not help repeating the context. He
was obviously in fear that this prodigious engine had lost, or was losing its tenacity, and
taking every occasion to rub and stretch it. He sometimes failed, and gave it up with
miseria cogitandi in his eye. At other
times he succeeded to admiration, and smiled as he closed his recital. About a mile beyond
Biggar, we overtook a parcel of carters, one of whom was maltreating his horse, and
Sir Walter called to him from the carriage-window in
great indignation. The man looked and spoke insolently; and as we drove on, he used some
strong expressions about what he would have done had this happened within the bounds of his
sheriffship. As he continued moved in an uncommon degree, I said jokingly, that I wondered
his porridge diet had left his blood so warm, and quoted Prior’s “Was ever Tartar fierce or cruel Upon a mess of water-gruel?” He smiled graciously, and extemporized this variation of the next couplet— “Yet who shall stand the Sheriff’s force, If Selkirk carter beats his
horse?”* This seemed to put him into the train of Prior, and he repeated
several striking passages both of the Alma
and the Solomon. He was still at this
when we reached a longish hill, and he got out to walk a little. As we climbed the ascent,
he leaning heavily on my shoulder, we were met by a couple of beggars, who were, or
professed to be, old soldiers both of Egypt and the Peninsula. One of them wanted a leg,
which circumstance alone would have opened Scott’s
purse-strings, though for ex facie a sad old
blackguard; but the fellow had recognised his person, as it happened, and in asking an alms
bade God bless him fervently by his name. The mendicants went on their way, and we stood
breathing on the knoll. Sir Walter followed them with his eye, and
planting his stick firmly on the sod, repeated without break or hesitation
Prior’s verses to the historian Mezeray. That he applied them to himself was touchingly obvious, and
therefore I must copy them.
“Whate’er thy countrymen have done, By law and wit, by sword and gun, In thee is faithfully recited; And all the living world that view Thy works, give thee the praises due— At once instructed and delighted. “Yet for the fame of all these deeds, What beggar in the Invalides, With lameness broke, with blindness smitten, Wished ever decently to die, To have been either Mezeray Or any monarch he has written? * “But who shall stand his rage and force, If first he rides, then eats his horse?” Alma.
“’Tis strange, dear author, yet it true is, That down from Pharamond to Louis All covet life, yet call it pain, And feel the ill, yet shun the cure. Can sense this paradox endure? Resolve me, Cambray, or
Fontaine. “The man in graver tragic known, Though his best part long since was done, Still on the stage desires to tarry. And he who play’d the harlequin, After the jest, still loads the scene, Unwilling to retire, though weary.”
We spent the night at the Inn of Douglas Mill, and at an early hour
next morning proceeded to inspect, under the care of one of Lord
Douglas’s tenants, Mr Haddow, the Castle, the
strange old bourg, the Church, long since deserted as a place of worship, and the very
extraordinary monuments of the most heroic and powerful family in the annals of Scotland.
That works of sculpture equal to any of the fourteenth century in Westminster Abbey (for
such they certainly were, though much mutilated, by Cromwell’s soldiery) should be found in so remote an inland place,
attests strikingly the boundless resources of those haughty lords, “whose
coronet,” as Scott says, “so
often counterpoised the crown.” The effigy of the best friend of Bruce is among the number, and represents him cross-legged, as
having fallen in battle with the Saracen, when on his way to Jerusalem with the heart of
his king. The whole people of the barony gathered round the doors, and two persons of
extreme old age, one so old that he well remembered Duke Willie—that is to say, the Conqueror of
Culloden—were introduced to tell all their local legends, while Sir
Walter examined by torchlight these silent witnesses of past greatness. It
was a strange and a melancholy scene, and its recollection prompted
some passages in Castle Dangerous, which
might almost have been written at the same time with Lammermoor. The appearance of the village, too, is most truly transferred to
the novel; and I may say the same of the surrounding landscape. We descended into a sort of
crypt in which the Douglasses were buried until about a century ago,
when there was room for no more; the leaden coffins around the wall being piled on each
other, until the lower ones had been pressed flat as sheets of pasteboard, while the floor
itself was entirely paved with others of comparatively modern date, on which coronets and
inscriptions might still be traced. Here the silver case that once held the noble heart of
the Good Lord James himself, is still pointed out.
It is in the form of a heart, which, in memory of his glorious mission and fate, occupies
ever since the chief place in the blazon of his posterity:— “The bloody heart blazed in the van, Announcing Douglas’ dreaded name.” This charnel-house, too, will be recognised easily. Of the redoubted Castle itself,
there remains but a small detached fragment covered with ivy, close to the present mansion;
but he hung over it long, or rather sat beside it, drawing outlines on the turf, and
arranging in his fancy the sweep of the old precincts. Before the subjacent and surrounding
lake and morass were drained, the position must indeed have been the perfect model of
solitary strength. The crowd had followed us, and were lingering about to see him once more
as he got into his carriage. They attended him to the spot where it was waiting, in perfect
silence. It was not like a mob, but a procession. He was again obviously gratified, and
saluted them with an earnest yet placid air, as he
took his leave. He expresses in his Introduction much thankfulness for the attention of
Mr Haddow, and also of Lord Douglas’s
chamberlain, Mr Finlay, who had joined us at the Castle.
It was again a darkish cloudy day, with some occasional mutterings of
distant thunder, and perhaps the state of the atmosphere told upon Sir Walter’s nerves; but I had never before seen him so sensitive as
he was all the morning after this inspection of Douglas. As we drove over the high
table-land of Lesmahago, he repeated I know not how many verses from Winton, Barbour,
and Blind Harry, with, I believe, almost every stanza
of Dunbar’s elegy on the Deaths of the Makers
(poets). It was now that I saw him, such as he paints himself in one or two passages of his
Diary, but such as his companions in the meridian vigour of his life never saw him
“the rushing of a brook, or the sighing of the sighing of the summer breeze
bringing the tears into his eyes not unpleasantly.” Bodily weakness laid the
delicacy of the organization bare, over which he had prided himself in wearing a sort of
half stoical mask. High and exalted feelings, indeed, he had never been able to keep
concealed, but he had shrunk from exhibiting to human eye the softer and gentler emotions
which now trembled to the surface. He strove against it even now, and presently came back
from the Lament of the Makers to his Douglasses, and chanted, rather
than repeated, in a sort of deep and glowing, though not distinct recitative, his first
favourite among all the ballads,— “It was about the Lammas tide, When husbandmen do win their hay, That the Doughty Douglas bownde him to ride To England to drive a prey.”— —down to the closing stanzas, which again left him in tears, “My wound is deep—I fain would sleep Take thou the vanguard of the three, And hide me beneath the bracken bush, That grows on yonder lily lee. . . . This deed was done at the Otterburne, About the dawning of the day. Earl Douglas was buried by the brackenbush, And the Percy led captive away.”
We reached Milton-Lockhart some time before the dinner-hour, and
Sir Walter appeared among the friends who received
him there with much of his old graceful composure of courtesy. He walked about a little—was
pleased with the progress made in the new house, and especially commended my brother for having given his bridge “ribs
like Bothwell.” Greenshields
was at hand, and he talked to him cheerfully, while the sculptor devoured his features, as
under a solemn sense that they were before his eyes for the last time. My brother had taken
care to have no company at dinner except two or three near neighbours with whom
Sir Walter had been familiar through life, and whose entreaties it
had been impossible to resist. One of these was the late Mr
Elliott Lockhart of Cleghorn and Borthwickbrae—long member of Parliament for
Selkirkshire—the same whose anti-reform address had been preferred to the Sheriff’s
by the freeholders of that county in the preceding March. But, alas! very soon after that
address was accepted, Borthwickbrae (so Scott
always called him from his estate in the Forest) had a shock of paralysis as severe as any
his old friend had as yet sustained. He, too, had rallied beyond expectation, and his
family were more hopeful, perhaps, than the other’s dared to be. Sir
Walter and he had not met for a few years—not since they rode side by side, as I well remember, on a merry
day’s sport at Bowhill; and I need not tell any one who knew
Borthwickbrae, that a finer or more gallant specimen of the Border
gentleman than he was in his prime, never cheered a hunting-field. When they now met
(heu quantum mutati) each saw his own
case glassed in the other, and neither of their manly hearts could well contain itself as
they embraced. Each exerted himself to the utmost—indeed far too much, and they were both
tempted to transgress the laws of their physicians.
At night Scott promised to visit
Cleghorn on his way home, but next morning, at breakfast, came a messenger to inform us
that Borthwickbrae, on returning to his own house,
fell down in another fit, and was now despaired of. Immediately, although he had intended
to remain two days, Sir Walter drew my brother aside, and besought him
to lend him horses as far as Lanark, for that he must set off with the least possible
delay. He would listen to no persuasions. “No, William,” he said, “this is a sad warning. I must
home to work while it is called day; for the night cometh when no man can work. I put
that text, many a year ago, on my dial-stone; but it often preached in
vain.”*
We started accordingly, and making rather a forced march, reached
Abbotsford the same night. During the journey, he was more silent than I ever before found
him;—he seemed to be wrapped in thought, and was but seldom roused to take notice of any
object we passed. The little he said was mostly about Castle Dangerous, which he now seemed to feel sure he could
finish in a fortnight, though his observation of the locality must
* This dial-stone, which used to stand in front of the old
cottage, and is now in the centre of the garden, is inscribed,
ΝΥΞ ΓΑΡ
ΕΡΧΕΤΑΙ.
needs cost the rewriting of several passages in the chapters already
put into type.
For two or three weeks he bent himself sedulously to his task—and
concluded Castle Dangerous, and the
long-suspended Count Robert. By this time he
had submitted to the recommendation of all his medical friends, and agreed to spend the
coming winter away from Abbotsford, among new scenes, in a more genial climate, and above
all (so he promised), in complete abstinence from all literary labour. When Captain Basil Hall understood that he had resolved on
wintering at Naples (where, as has been mentioned, his son Charles was attached to the British Legation), it occurred to the zealous
sailor that on such an occasion as this all thoughts of political difference ought to be
dismissed, and he, unknown to Scott, addressed a letter
to Sir James Graham, then First Lord of the
Admiralty, stating the condition of his friend’s health, and his proposed plan, and
suggesting that it would be a fit and graceful thing for the King’s Government to
place a frigate at his disposal for his voyage to the Mediterranean. Sir
James replied, honourably for all concerned, that it afforded himself, and
his Royal Master, the sincerest satisfaction to comply
with this hint; and that whenever Sir Walter found it convenient to
come southwards, a vessel should be prepared for his reception. Nothing could be handsomer
than the way in which all this matter was arranged, and Scott, deeply
gratified, exclaimed that things were yet in the hands of gentlemen; but that he feared
they had been undermining the state of society which required such persons as themselves to
be at the head.
He had no wish, however, to leave Abbotsford until the approach of
winter; and having dismissed his Tales,
seemed to say to himself that he would enjoy his dear valley for the intervening weeks, draw friends about him, revisit
all the familiar scenes in his neighbourhood once more; and if he were never to come back,
store himself with the most agreeable recollections in his power, and so conduct himself as
to bequeath to us who surrounded him a last stock of gentle impressions. He continued to
work a little at his notes and prefaces, the Reliquiæ of Oldbuck, and the Sylva Abbotsfordiensis; but did not fatigue himself; and when once all
plans were settled, and all cares in so far as possible set aside, his health and spirits
certainly rallied most wonderfully. He had settled that my wife and I should dine at
Abbotsford, and he and Anne at Chiefswood, day
about; and this rule was seldom departed from. Both at home and in the cottage he was
willing to have a few guests, so they were not strangers. Mr
James (the author of Richelieu) and his lady, who this season lived at Maxpoffle, and Mr Archdeacon Williams, who was spending his vacation at
Melrose, were welcome additions, and frequently so, to his accustomed circle of the
Scotts of Harden, the Pringles of Whytbank
and Clifton, the Russells of Ashestiel, the
Brewsters, and the Fergusons. Sir Walter observed the prescribed diet, on the whole, pretty
accurately, and seemed, when in the midst of his family and friends, always tranquil,
sometimes cheerful. On one or two occasions he was even gay: particularly, I think, when
the weather was so fine as to tempt us to dine in the marble-hall at Abbotsford, or at an
early hour under the trees at Chiefswood, in the old fashion of Rose’sFête de Village. I rather
think Mr Adolphus was present at one of these, for
the time, mirthful doings; but if so, he has not recorded it in his elegant paper of
reminiscenses from which I now take my last extract:—
“In the autumn of 1831” (says Mr Adolphus) “the new shock which had fallen upon
Sir Walter’s constitution had left traces,
not indeed very conspicuous, but painfully observable; and he was subject to a
constant, though apparently not a very severe regimen as an invalid. At table, if many
persons were present, he spoke but little, I believe from a difficulty in making
himself heard, not so much because his articulation was slightly impaired, as that his
voice was weakened. After dinner, though he still sat with his guests, he forbore
drinking, in compliance with the discipline prescribed to him, though he might be seen,
once or twice in the course of a sitting, to steal a glass, as if inadvertently. I
could not perceive that his faculties of mind were in any respect obscured, except that
occasionally (but not very often) he was at a loss for some obvious word. This failure
of recollection had begun I think the year before. The remains of his old cheerfulness
were still living within him, but they required opportunity and the presence of few
persons to disclose themselves. He spoke of his approaching voyage with resignation
more than with hope, and I could not find that he looked forward with much interest or
curiosity to the new scenes in which he was about to travel.
“The menacing state of affairs in the country he was leaving
oppressed him with melancholy anticipations. In the little conversation we had formerly
had on subjects of this kind, I had never found him a querulous politician; he could
look manfully and philosophically at those changes in the aspect of society which time,
and the progress, well or ill-directed, of the human mind were uncontrollably working
out, though the innovations might not in some of their results accord with his own
tastes and opinions. But the revolutions now beginning, and the violence of word and
deed with which they were urged on, bore
heavily upon his thoughts, and gave them, when turned in this direction, a gloomy and
ominous cast. When I left him to go to London, he gave me, as a kind of parting token,
a stick, or rather club, of formidable size and figure, and, as he put it into my hand,
he could not help saying, between joke and earnest, that it might prove useful if I
were called out to assist the police in a riot. But his prevailing humour, even at this
period, was kindly, genial, and pleasurable.
“On the last day which I had the happiness to pass with him
among his own hills and streams, he appointed an excursion to Oakwood* and the Linns of Ettrick. Miss
Scott, and two other ladies, one of whom had not been in Scotland
before, were of the party. He did the honours of the country with as much zeal and
gallantry, in spirit at least, as he could have shown twenty years earlier. I
recollect, that, in setting out, he attempted to plead his hardy habits as an old
mail-coach traveller for keeping the least convenient place in the carriage. When we
came to the Linns, we walked some way up the stream, and viewed the bold and romantic
little torrent from the top of the high bank. He stood contemplating it in an attitude
of rest; the day was past when a minute’s active exertion would have carried him
to the water’s brink. Perhaps he was now for the last time literally fulfilling
the wish of his own Minstrel, that in the decay of life he might ‘Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break.’
So much was his great strength reduced, that, as he gazed upon the water, one of
his stag-hounds leaping forward to caress him had almost thrown him down;
* Oakwood is a ruined castle on the Harden estate in the
vale of Ettrick.
but for such accidents as this he cared very little. We
travelled merrily homeward. As we went up some hill, a couple of children hung on the
back of the carriage. He suspended his cudgel over them with a grotesque face of
awfulness. The brats understood the countenance, and only clung the faster.
‘They do not much mind the Sheriff,’ said he to us, with a
serio-comic smile, and affecting to speak low. We came home late, and an order was
issued that no one should dress. Though I believe he himself caused the edict to be
made, he transgressed it more than any of the party.”
I am not sure whether the Royal Academician, Turner, was at Abbotsford at the time of Mr Adolphus’s last visit; but several little
excursions, such as the one here described, were made in the company of this great artist,
who had come to Scotland for the purpose of making drawings to illustrate the scenery of
Sir Walter’s poems. On several such occasions
I was of the party—and one day deserves to be specially remembered. Sir
Walter took Mr Turner that morning, with his friend
Skene and myself, to Smailholm Crags; and it was
while lounging about them, while the painter did his sketch, that he told Mr
Skene how the habit of lying on the turf there among the sheep and lambs,
when a lame infant, had given his mind a peculiar tenderness for those animals which it had
ever since retained.* He seemed to enjoy the scene of his childhood—yet there was many a
touch of sadness both in his eye and his voice. He then carried us to Dryburgh, but excused
himself from attending Mr Turner into the inclosure. Mr
Skene and I perceived that it would be better for us to leave him alone, and
we both accompanied Tur-
See Ante, vol. i., p. 83.
ner. Lastly, we must not omit to call at
Bemerside—for of that ancient residence of the most ancient family now subsisting on
Tweedside, he was resolved there must be a fit memorial by this graceful hand. The good
laird and lady were of coarse flattered with this fondness of respect, and after
walking about a little while among the huge old trees that surround the tower, we ascended
to, I think, the third tier of its vaulted apartments, and had luncheon in a stately hall,
arched also in stone, but with well-sized windows (as being out of harm’s way) duly
blazoned with shields and crests, and the time-honoured motto, Betide, Betide—being the first words of a prophetic couplet ascribed to Thomas the Rhymer:— “Betide, betide, whate’er betide, There shall be Haigs in Bemerside.”
Mr Turner’s sketch of this picturesque Peel,
and its “brotherhood of venerable trees,” is probably familiar to most
of my readers.*
Mr Cadell brought the artist to Abbotsford, and was
also I think of this Bemerside party. I must not omit to record how gratefully all
Sir Walter’s family felt at the time, and
still remember, the delicate and watchful tenderness of Mr
Cadell’s conduct on this occasion. He so managed that the Novels just
finished should remain in types, but not thrown off, until the author should have departed;
so as to give opportunity for revising and abridging them. He might well be the bearer of
cheering news as to their greater concerns, for the sale of the Magnum had, in spite of political turbulences and
distractions, gone on successfully. But he probably strained a point to make things appear
still
* See Scott’s Poetical Works, edition 1833,
vol. v.
better than they really were. He certainly spoke so as to satisfy
his friend that he need give himself no sort of uneasiness about the pecuniary results of
idleness and travel. It was about this time that we observed Sir
Walter beginning to entertain the notion that his debts were paid off. By
degrees, dwelling on this fancy, he believed in it fully and implicitly. It was a gross
delusion—but neither Cadell nor any one else had the heart to disturb
it by any formal statement of figures. It contributed greatly more than any circumstance
besides to soothe Sir Walter’s feelings, when it became at last
necessary that he should tear himself from his land and his house, and the trees which he
had nursed. And with all that was done and foreborne, the hour when it came was a most
heavy one.
Very near the end there came some unexpected things to cast a sunset
brilliancy over Abbotsford. His son, the Major,
arrived with tidings that he had obtained leave of absence from his regiment, and should be
in readiness to sail with his father. This was a mighty relief to us all, on Miss Scott’s account as well as his, for my
occupations did not permit me to think of going with him, and there was no other near
connexion at hand. But Sir Walter was delighted indeed,
dearly as he loved all his children, he had a pride in the Major that stood quite by
itself, and the hearty approbation which looked through his eyes whenever turned on him,
sparkled brighter than ever as his own physical strength decayed. Young
Walter had on this occasion sent down a horse or two to winter at
Abbotsford. One was a remarkably tall and handsome animal, jet black all over, and when the
Major appeared on it one morning, equipped for a little sport with the greyhounds,
Sir Walter insisted on being put upon Douce
Davie, and conducted as far as the Cauldshiels loch to see the day’s work begun. He halted on the high
bank to the north of the lake, and I remained to hold his bridle, in case of any frisk on
the part of the Covenanter at the “tumult great of dogs and men.” We
witnessed a very pretty chase or two on the opposite side of the water—but his eye followed
always the tall black steed and his rider. The father might well assure Lady Davy, that “a handsomer fellow never put foot
into stirrup.”* But when he took a very high wall of loose stones, at which
every body else craned, as easily and elegantly as if it had been a
puddle in his stride, the old man’s rapture was extreme. “Look at
him,” said he, “only look at him.—Now, isn’t he a fine
fellow?”—This was the last time, I believe, that Sir Walter
mounted on horseback.
He does not seem to have written many farewell letters; but here is one
to a very old friend, Mr Kirkpatrick Sharpe. He had,
apparently, subscribed for Lodge’s splendid
book of British Portraits, and then,
receiving a copy ex dono auctoris,* sent his own
numbers, as they arrived, to this gentleman—a payment in kind for many courteous gifts and
communications of antiquarian and genealogical interest.
To Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., Prince’s
Street, Edinburgh.
“Abbotsford, September, 1831. “My Dear Charles,
“I pray you to honour me with your acceptance of the
last number of Mr
Lodge’sIllustrious Persons. My best thanks to you for the genealogy, which
com-
* Sir
Walter’s letter to Mr
Lodge’s publisher is now prefixed to that
magnificent book; the circulation of which has been, to the honour of
the public, so great, that I need not introduce the beautiful eulogium
here.
pletes a curious subject, I am just setting off for the
Mediterranean, a singular instance of a change of luck, for I have no sooner
put my damaged fortune into as good a condition as I could desire, than my
health, which till now has been excellent, has failed so utterly in point of
strength, that while it will not allow me to amuse myself by travelling,
neither will it permit me to stay at home.
“I should like to have shaken hands with you, as
there are few I regret so much to part with. But it may not be. I will keep my
eyes dry if possible, and therefore content myself with bidding you a long
(perhaps an eternal) farewell. But I may find my way home again, improved as a
Dutch skipper from a whale fishing. I am very happy that I am like to see
Malta. Always yours, well or ill—
Walter Scott.”
The same deceptive notion of his pecuniary affairs comes out in another
little note, the last I ever received from him at Chiefswood. I had meant to make a run
into Lanarkshire for a day or two to see my own relations, and spoken of carrying my
second boy, his namesake, then between five and
six years of age, with me in the stage-coach. When I mentioned this over-night at
Abbotsford, he said nothing—indeed he was at the moment a little cross with me for having
spoken against some slip he had made on the score of his regimen. Shortly after I got home
came this billet.
To J. G. Lockhart, Esq., Chiefswood.
“Dear Don or Doctor Giovanni,
“Can you really be thinking of taking Wa-Waby the coach, and I think you said
outside? Think of Johnny and be careful of this little man. Are you parhazard something in the state of the poor Capitaine des
Dragons that comes in singing,— ‘Comment? Parbleu! Qu’en pensez
vous?Bon Gentilhomme, et pas un sous.’
“If so, remember Richard’s himself again, and make free use of the
enclosed cheque on Cadell for L.50. He
will give you the ready as you pass through, and you can pay when I ask. Put
horses to your carriage and go hidalgo fashion. We shall all have good days
yet.
‘And those sad days you deign to spend With me, I shall requite them all; Sir Eustace for his friends shall
send, And thank their love in Grayling Hall.’ W. S.”*
On the 17th of September the old splendour of Abbotsford was, after a
long interval, and for the last time, revived. Captain James
Glencairn Burns, son of the poet, had come home on furlough from India, and
Sir Walter invited him (with his wife, and their
Cicerone Mr M’Diarmid of Dumfries) to spend a day under his
roof. The neighbouring gentry were assembled, and having his son to help him, Sir
Walter did most gracefully the honours of the table. As, according to him,
“a medal struck at the time, however poor, is in one respect better than any
done afterwards,” I insert some verses with which he was pleased, and which,
I believe, express the sincere feelings with which every guest witnessed this his parting
feast.
LINES WRITTEN ON TWEEDSIDE.September the 18th, 1831. A day I’ve seen whose brightness pierced the cloud Of pain and sorrow, both for great and small
* See Crabbe’sSir Eustace Grey.
A night of flowing cups, and pibrochs loud, Once more within the Minstrel’s blazon’d hall. “Upon this frozen hearth pile crackling trees; Let every silent clarshach find its strings; Unfurl once more the banner to the breeze; No warmer welcome for the blood of kings!” From ear to ear, from eye to glistening eye, Leap the glad tidings, and the glance of glee; Perish the hopeless breast that beats not high At thought beneath His roof that guest to see! What princely stranger comes?—What exiled lord From the far East to Scotia’s strand returns— To stir with joy the towers of Abbotsford, And “wake the Minstrel’s soul?”—The boy of Burns.
O, Sacred Genius! blessing on the chains, Wherein thy sympathy can minds entwine! Beyond the conscious glow of kindred veins, A power, a spirit, and a charm are thine. Thine offspring share them. Thou hast trod the land— It breathes of thee—and men, through rising tears, Behold the image of thy manhood stand, More noble than a galaxy of Peers. And He—his father’s bones had quaked, I ween, But that with holier pride his heart-strings bound, Than if his host had King or Kaiser been, And star and cross on every bosom round. High strains were pour’d of many a Border spear, While gentle fingers swept a throbbing shell; A manly voice, in manly notes and clear, Of lowly love’s deep bliss responded well. The children sang the ballads of their sires:— Serene among them sat the hoary Knight; And, if dead Bards have ears for earthly lyres, The Peasant’s shade was near, and drank delight As through the woods we took our homeward way, Fair shone the moon last night on Eildon Hill; Soft rippled Tweed’s broad wave beneath her ray, And in sweet murmurs gush’d the Huntly rill. Heaven send the guardian genius of the vale Health yet, and strength, and length of honour’d days, To cheer the world with many a gallant tale, And hear his children’s children chant his lays. Through seas unruffled may the vessel glide, That bears her Poet far from Melrose’ glen; And may his pulse be steadfast as our pride, When happy breezes waft him back again.
On the 20th Mrs Lockhart set out
for London to prepare for her father’s reception there, and for the outfit of his
voyage; and on the following day Mr Wordsworth and
his daughter arrived from Westmoreland to take
farewell of him. This was a very fortunate circumstance—nothing could have gratified
Sir Walter more, or sustained him better, if he
needed any support from without. On the 22d, all his arrangements being completed, and
Laidlaw having received a paper of instructions,
the last article of which repeats the caution to be “very careful of the
dogs”—these two great poets, who had through life loved each other well, and in
spite of very different theories as to art, appreciated each other’s genius more
justly than inferior spirits ever did either of them, spent the morning together in a visit
to Newark. Hence the last of the three poems by which Wordsworth has
connected his name to all time with the most romantic of Scottish streams. But I need not
transcribe a piece so well known as the “Yarrow Revisited.”
Sitting that evening in the library, Sir
Walter said a good deal about the singularity that
Fielding and Smollett had both been driven abroad by declining health, and never
returned—which circumstance, though his language was rather cheerful at this time, he had
often before alluded to in a darker fashion; and Mr.
Wordsworth expressed his regret that neither of those great masters of
romance appeared to have been surrounded with any due marks of respect in the close of
life. I happened to observe that Cervantes, on his last
journey to Madrid, met with an incident which seemed to have given him no common
satisfaction. Sir Walter did not remember the passage, and desired me
to find it out in the life by Pellicer which was at
hand, and translate it. I did so, and he listened with lively though pensive interest. Our
friend Allan, the historical painter, had also come
out that day from Edinburgh, and he lately told me that he remembers nothing he ever saw
with so much sad pleasure as the attitudes and aspect of Scott and
Wordsworth as the story went on. Mr
Wordsworth was at that time, I should notice though indeed his noble stanzas
tell it in but a feeble state of general health. He was moreover suffering so much from
some malady in his eyes that he wore a deep green shade over them. Thus he sat between
Sir Walter and his daughter: absit
omen but it was no wonder that Allan thought as
much of Milton as of Cervantes.
The anecdote of the young student’s raptures on discovering that he had been riding
all day with the author of Don Quixote, is
introduced in the preface for Count Robert,
and Castle Dangerous which (for I need not
return to the subject) came out at the close of November in four volumes, as the Fourth
Series of Tales of My Landlord.
The following Sonnet was, no doubt, composed by Mr
Wordsworth that same evening of the 22d September.
“A trouble, not of clouds, or weeping rain, Nor of the setting sun’s pathetic light Engendered, hangs o’er Eildon’s triple height: Spirits of power assembled there complain For kindred power departing from their sight; While Tweed, best pleased in chanting a blithe strain, Saddens his voice again, and yet again. Lift up your hearts, ye mourners! for the might Of the whole world’s good wishes with him goes; Blessings and prayers in nobler retinue Than sceptred King or laurelled Conqueror knows Follow this wondrous potentate. Be true, Ye winds of ocean, and the midland sea, Wafting your charge to soft Parthenope.”
CHAPTER IX. ROKEBY—LONDON—EPITAPH ON HELEN WALKER—PORTSMOUTH—VOYAGE
IN THE BARHAM—GRAHAM’S ISLAND—LETTER TO MR SKENE—MALTA—NOTES BY
MRS JOHN DAVY—SEPTEMBER—DECEMBER 1831.
Early on the 23d of September Sir
Walter left Abbotsford, attended by his daughter Anne, and myself, and we reached London by easy stages on the 28th, having
spent one day at Rokeby. I have nothing to mention of this journey except that,
notwithstanding all his infirmities, he would not pass any object to which he had ever
attached special interest, without getting out of the carriage to revisit it. His anxiety
(for example) about the gigantic British or Danish effigy in the churchyard at Penrith,
which we had all seen dozens of times before, seemed as great as if not a year had fled
since 1797. It may be supposed that his parting with Mr
Morritt was a grave one. Finding that he had left the ring he then usually
wore behind him at one of the inns on the road, he wrote to his friend to make enquiries
after it, as it had been dug out of the ruins of Hermitage Castle, and probably belonged of
yore to one of the “Dark Knights of Liddesdale,” and if recovered, to
keep it until he should come back to reclaim it, but, in the mean time, to wear it for his
sake. The ring, which is a broad belt of silver, with an angel holding the Heart of
Douglas, was found, and is now worn by Mr Morritt.
Sir Walter arrived in London in the midst of the
Lords’ debates on the second Reform bill, and the ferocious demonstrations of the
populace on its rejection were in part witnessed by him. He saw the houses of several of
the chief Tories, and above all, that of the Duke of
Wellington, shattered and almost sacked. He heard of violence offered to the
persons of some of his own noble friends; and having been invited to attend the christening
of the infant heir of Buccleuch, whose godfather the
King had proposed to be, on a day appointed by his
Majesty, he had the pain to understand that the ceremony must be adjourned, because it was
not considered safe for his Majesty to visit, for such a purpose, the palace of one of his
most amiable, as well as illustrious peers.
The following is part of a letter which I lately received from Sir Walter’s dear friend and kinsman, Mr Scott of Gala: “The last time I saw
Sir W. Scott was in Sussex Place, the day after he arrived
from Scotland, on his way to Italy. I was prepared for a change in his appearance, but
was not struck with so great a one as I had expected. He evidently had lost strength
since I saw him at Abbotsford the previous autumn, but his eye was good. In his
articulation, however, there was too manifest an imperfection. We conversed shortly, as
may be supposed, on his health. ‘Weakness,’ he observed,
‘was his principal complaint.’ I said that I supposed he had
been rather too fatigued with his journey to leave the house since his arrival.
‘Oh no,’ he replied, ‘I felt quite able for a drive
to-day, and have just come from the city. I paid a visit to my friend Whittaker to ask him for some book of travels
likely to be of use to me on my expedition to the Mediterranean. Here’s
old Brydone accordingly, still as good a
companion as any he could recommend.’ ‘A very agreeable one
certainly,’ I
replied.—‘Brydone’ (said he)
‘was sadly failed during his latter years. Did you ever hear of his remark
on his own works?’—‘Never.’—‘Why, his family usually
read a little for his amusement of an evening, and on one occasion he was asked if
he would like to hear some of his travels to Sicily. He assented, and seemed to
listen with much pleasure for some time, but he was too far gone to continue his
attention long, and starting up from a doze exclaimed, “that’s really a
very amusing book, and contains many curious anecdotes.—I wonder if they are all
true.”’ Sir Walter then spoke of as strange a
tale as any traveller could imagine, a new volcanic island, viz., which had appeared
very lately, and seemed anxious to see it, ‘if it would wait for
him,’ he said. The offer of a King’s ship had gratified him, and he
ascribed this very much to the exertions of Basil
Hall—‘that curious fellow’ (said he), ‘who
takes charge of every one’s business without neglecting his own, has done a
great deal for me in this matter.’ I observed that Malta would interest
him much. The history of the knights, their library, &c., he immediately entered on
keenly. ‘I fear I shall not be able to appreciate Italy as it
deserves,’ continued he, ‘as I understand little of painting, and
nothing of music.’ ‘But there are many other subjects of
interest,’ I replied, ‘and to you particularly—Naples, St Elmo,
Pæstum, La Montagna, Pompeii—in fact, I am only afraid you may have too much
excitement, the bad effects of which, I as an invalid, am too well aware of.’ I
had before this, from my own experience, ventured several hints on the necessity of
caution with regard to over-exertion, but to these he always lent an unwilling ear.
“Sir Walter often digressed
during our conversation to the state of the country, about which he seemed to have much
anxiety. I said we had no Napoleon to frighten us into good fellowship, and from want
of something to do, began fighting with each other—‘Aye’ (said he),
‘after conquering that Jupiter Scapin,
and being at the height of glory, one would think the people might be content to
sit down and eat the pudding; but no such thing.’ ‘When we’ve
paid more of the cash it has cost, they will be more content.’ ‘I doubt
it—They are so flattered and courted by Government that their appetite for power
(pampered as it is) won’t be easily satisfied now.’ When talking of
Italy, by the way, I mentioned that at Naples he would probably find a sister of
Mat. Lewis’s, Lady Lushington, wife of the English consul, a pleasant family, to whom
Lewis introduced me when there in 1817 very
kindly:—‘Ah poor Mat.!’—said he—‘he never wrote
any thing so good as the Monk—he
had certainly talents, but they would not stand much creaming.’
“The Forest and our new road (which had
cost both so much consultation) were of course touched on. The foundation of one of the
new bridges had been laid by him—and this should be commemorated by an inscription on it. ‘Well,’
said he, ‘how I should like to have a ride with you along our new road, just
opposite Abbotsford—I will hope to be able for it some day.’ Most
heartily did I join in the wish, and could not help flattering myself it might yet be possible. When we parted, he shook hands with me for some
time. He did so once more—but added firmly—‘Well, we’ll have a ride yet,
some day.’ I pleased myself with the hope that he augured rightly. But on
leaving him many misgivings presented themselves; and the accounts from the continent
served but too surely to confirm these apprehensions—never more did I meet with my
illustrious friend. There is reason I believe to be thankful that it was so— nothing could have been more painful than to witness the wreck
of a mind like his.”
During his stay, which was till the 23d of October, Sir Walter called on many of his old friends; but he accepted
of no hospitalities except breakfasting once with Sir Robert
Inglis, on Clapham Common, and once or twice with Lady Gifford at Roehampton. Usually he worked a little in
the morning at notes for the Magnum, and
he drew up, as already mentioned, the preface for the forthcoming tales of Count Robert and Castle Dangerous.
Dr Robert Ferguson, one of the family with which
Sir Walter had lived all his days in such
brother-like affection, saw him constantly while he remained in the Regent’s Park;
and though neither the invalid nor his children could fancy any other medical advice
necessary, it was only due to Ferguson that some of his seniors should
be called in occasionally with him. Sir Henry
Halford (whom Scott reverenced as the friend of
Baillie) and Dr
Holland (an esteemed friend of his own), came accordingly; and all the three
concurred in recognising certain evidence that there was incipient disease in the brain.
There were still, however, such symptoms of remaining vigour, that they flattered
themselves, if their patient would submit to a total intermission of all literary labour
during some considerable space of time, the malady might yet be arrested. When they left
him after the first inspection, they withdrew into an adjoining room, and on soon rejoining
him found, that in the interim he had wheeled his chair into a dark corner, so that he
might see their faces without their being able to read his. When he was informed of the
comparatively favourable views they entertained, he expressed great thankfulness; promised
to obey all their directions as to diet
and repose most scrupulously; and he did not conceal from them, that “he had
feared insanity and feared them.”
The following are extracts from his Diary.—“London, October 2, 1830.—I have been very ill, and if not quite unable to
write, I have been unfit to do it. I have wrought, however, at two Waverley things, but not well. A total prostration of bodily strength is my
chief complaint. I cannot walk half a mile. There is, besides, some mental confusion,
with the extent of which I am not, perhaps, fully acquainted. I am perhaps setting. I
am myself inclined to think so, and like a day that has been admired as a fine one, the
light of it sets down amid mists and storms. I neither regret nor fear the approach of
death, if it is coming. I would compound for a little pain instead of this heartless
muddiness of mind. The expense of this journey, &c. will be considerable, yet these
heavy burdens could be easily borne if I were to be the Walter
Scott I once was—but the change is great. And the ruin which I fear
involves that of my country. Well says Colin
Mackenzie— ‘Shall this Desolation strike thy towers alone? No, fair Ellandonan! such ruin ’twill bring, That the whirl shall have power to unsettle the throne, And thy fate shall be link’d with the fate of thy king.’* We arrived in London after a long journey—the weakness of my limbs palpably
increasing, and the medicine prescribed making me weaker every day. Lockhart, poor fellow, is as attentive as possible,
and I have, thank God, no pain whatever; could the decay but be so easy at last it
would be too happy. But I
* See Ballad of Ellandonan Castle in the Minstrelsy. Poetical Works, Vol. iv. p.
361.
fancy the instances of Euthanasia are not in very serious cases
very common. Instances there certainly are among the learned and the
unlearned—Dr Black, Tom Purdie. I should like, if it pleased God, to slip
off in such a quiet way, but we must take what fate sends. I have not warm hopes of
being myself again.
“Oct. 12.—Lord
Mahon, a very amiable as well as clever young man, comes to dinner with
Mr Croker, Lady
Louisa Stuart, and Sir John
Malcolm. Sir John told us a story about Garrick and his wife. The lady admired her husband greatly, but blamed him for a taste
for low life, and insisted that he loved better to play Scrub to a low-lifed audience
than one of his superior characters before an audience of taste. On one particular
occasion she was at her box in the theatre. Richard III. was the performance, and
Garrick’s acting, particularly in the night-scene, drew
down universal applause. After the play was over, Mrs G. proposed
going home, which Garrick declined, alleging he had some business
in the green-room which must detain him. In short the lady was obliged to acquiesce,
and wait the beginning of a new entertainment, in which was introduced a farmer giving
his neighbours an account of the wonders seen in a visit to London. This character was
received with such peals of applause that Mrs Garrick began to
think it exceeded those which had been so lately lavished on Richard
the Third. At last she observed her little spaniel dog was making efforts to
get towards the balcony which separated him from the facetious farmer and then she
became aware of the truth. ‘How strange,’ he said, ‘that a
dog should know his master, and a woman, in the same circumstances, should not
recognise her husband?’
“Oct. 18.—A pleasant breakfast at
Roehampton, where I met my good friend Lord
Sidmouth. On my way
back, I called to see the repairs at Lambeth, which are proceeding under the able
direction of Blore, who met me there. They are
in the best Gothic taste, and executed at the expense of a large sum, to be secured by
way of mortgage payable in fifty years, each incumbent within the time paying a
proportion of about L.4000 a-year. I was pleased to see this splendour of church
architecture returning again.
“Oct. 18.—Sophia had a small but lively party last night, as indeed she has had every
night since we were here—Lady Stafford, Lady Louisa Stuart, Lady
Montagu, Miss Montagu, Lady
Davy, Mrs M’Leod, and her
girls—Lord Montagu, Macleod, Lord Dudley, Rogers, Mackintosh.
A good deal of singing.”
Sir Walter seemed to enjoy having one or two friends to
meet him at dinner and a few more in the evenings. Those named in the last entries, came
all of them frequently—and so did Lord Melville, the
Bishop of Exeter, Lord
Ashley, Sir David Wilkie, Mr Thomas Moore, Mr
Milman, and Mr Washington Irving. At
this time the Reform Bill for Scotland was in discussion in the House of Commons. Mr Croker made a very brilliant speech in opposition to
it, and was not sorry to have it said, that he had owed his inspiration, in no small
degree, to having risen from the table at which Scott sat by his side.
But the most regular of the evening visiters was, I think, Sir
James Mackintosh. He was himself in very feeble health, and whatever might
have been the auguries of others, it struck me that there was uppermost with him at every
parting the anticipation that they might never meet again. Sir
James’s kind assiduity was the more welcome, that his appearance
banished the politics of the hour, on which his old friend’s thoughts were too apt to
brood. Their conversation, wherever it might begin, was sure to fasten ere long on
Lochaber.
When last in Edinburgh Scott had
given his friend William Burn, architect, directions
to prepare at his expense a modest monument, for the grave of Helen Walker, the original of Jeanie
Deans, in the churchyard of Irongrey. Mr Burn now
informed him that the little pillar was in readiness, and on the 18th October Sir
Walter sent him this beautiful inscription for it;—
THIS STONE WAS ERECTEDBY THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEYTO THE MEMORYOFHELEN WALKER,WHO DIED IN THE YEAR OF GOD, 1791.THIS HUMBLE INDIVIDUAL PRACTISED IN REAL LIFETHE VIRTUESWITH WHICH FICTION HAS INVESTEDTHE IMAGINARY CHARACTER OFJEANIE DEANS;REFUSING THE SLIGHTEST DEPARTUREFROM VERACITY,EVEN TO SAVE THE LIFE OF A SISTER,SHE NEVERTHELESS SHOWED HERKINDNESS AND FORTITUDE,IN RESCUING HER FROM THE SEVERITY OF THE LAW,AT THE EXPENSE OF PERSONAL EXERTIONSWHICH THE TIME RENDERED AS DIFFICULTAS THE MOTIVE WAS LAUDABLE.RESPECT THE GRAVE OF POVERTYWHEN COMBINED WITH LOVE OF TRUTHAND DEAR AFFECTION.
Next morning the Honourable Captain Henry
Duncan, R.N., who was at this time store-keeper of the Ordnance, and who had
taken a great deal of trouble in arranging matters for the voyage, called on Sir Walter to introduce to him Captain, now Sir Hugh Pigot, the commanding-officer of the Barham. The Diary says:—
“October 19.—Captain H. Duncan called with Captain Pigot, a smart-looking gentlemanlike man, who
announces his purpose of sailing on Monday. I have made my preparations for being on
board on Sunday, which is the day appointed.
“Captain Duncan told me
jocularly never to take a naval captain’s word on shore, and quoted Sir
William Scott, who used to say waggishly, that there was nothing so
accommodating on shore, but when on board, he became a peremptory lion. Henry
Duncan has behaved very kindly, and says he only discharges the wishes
of his service in making me as easy as possible, which is very handsome—too high a
compliment for me. No danger of feud, except about politics, which would be impolitic
on my part, and though it bars out one great subject of discussion, it leaves enough
besides. Walter arrives ready to sail. So what
little remains must be done without loss of time.
“I leave this country uncertain if it has got a total pardon
or only a reprieve. I won’t think of it, as I can do no good. It seems to be in
one of those crises by which Providence reduces nations to their original elements. If
I had my health, I should take no worldly fee, not to be in the bustle; but I am as
weak as water, and I shall be glad when I have put the Mediterranean between the island
and me.
“October 23.—Misty morning looks like a
yellow fog, which is the curse of London. I would hardly take my share of it for a share of
its wealth and its curiosity—a vile double-distilled fog, of the most intolerable kind.
Children scarce stirring yet, but Baby and Macao beginning their Macao notes—”
Dr Ferguson found Sir
Walter with this page of his Diary before him, when he called to pay his
farewell visit. “As he was still working at his
MSS.,” says the Doctor, “I offered to retire, but was not permitted. On
my saying I had come to take leave of him before he quitted England, he exclaimed, with
much excitement—‘England is no longer a place for an honest man. I shall not
live to find it so; you may.’ He then broke out into the details of a
very favourite superstition of his, that the middle of every century had always been
marked by some great convulsion or calamity in this island. Already the state of
politics preyed much on his mind and indeed that continued to form a part of the
delirious dreams of his last illness. On the whole, the alterations which had taken
place in his mind and person since I had seen him, three years before, were very
apparent. The expression of the countenance and the play of features were changed by
slight palsy of one cheek. His utterance was so thick and indistinct as to make it very
difficult for any but those accustomed to hear it, to gather his meaning. His gait was
less firm and assured than ever; but his power of self-command, his social tact, and
his benevolent courtesy, the habits of a life, remained untouched by a malady which had
obscured the higher powers of his intellect.”
After breakfast, Sir Walter,
accompanied by his son and both his daughters, set off for Portsmouth; and Captain Basil Hall had the kindness to precede them by an
early coach, and prepare every thing for their reception at the hotel. They expected that
the embarkation would take place next day, and the Captain had considered that his
professional tact and experience might be serviceable, which they were eminently. In
changing horses at Guilford, Sir Walter got out of his carriage, and
very narrowly escaped being run over by a stagecoach. Of all “the habits of a
life,” none clung longer to him than his
extreme repugnance to being helped in any thing. It was late before he came to lean, as a
matter of course, when walking, upon any one but Tom
Purdie; and the reader will see, in the sequel, that this proud feeling,
coupled with increasing tendency to abstraction of mind, often exposed him to imminent
hazard.
The Barham could not sail for a week. During
this interval, Sir Walter scarcely stirred from his
hotel, being unwilling to display his infirmities to the crowd of gazers who besieged him
whenever he appeared. He received, however, deputations of the literary and scientific
societies of the town, and all other visiters, with his usual ease and courtesy: and he
might well be gratified with the extraordinary marks of deference paid him by the official
persons who could in any way contribute to his ease and comfort. The First Lord of the
Admiralty, Sir James Graham, and the Secretary,
Sir John Barrow, both appeared in person, to
ascertain that nothing had been neglected for his accommodation on board the frigate. The
Admiral, Sir Thomas Foley, placed his barge at his
disposal; the Governor, Sir Colin Campbell, and all
the chief officers, naval and military, seemed to compete with each other in attention to
him and his companions. In Captain Hall’s Third
Series of Fragments of Voyages and
Travels (vol. iii. p. 280), some interesting details have long since been made
public. But it may be sufficient to say here, that had Captain
Pigot and his gallant shipmates been appointed to convey a Prince of the
Blood and his suite, more generous, anxious, and delicate exertions could not have been
made, either in altering the interior of the vessel, so as to meet the wants of the
passengers, or afterwards, throughout the voyage, in rendering it easy, comfortable, and as
far as might be, interesting and amusing.
I subjoin an extract or two from the Diary at Ports-mouth, which show how justly Dr
Ferguson has been describing Sir Walter
as in complete possession of all the qualities that endeared him to society:—
“October 24.—The girls break loose—mad
with the craze of seeing sights—and run the risk of deranging the naval officers, who
offer their services with their natural gallantry. I wish they would be moderate in
their demands on people’s complaisance. They little know how inconvenient are
such seizures. A sailor in particular is a bad refuser, and before he can turn three
times round, he is bound by a triple knot to all sorts of nonsense.
“October 27.—The girls, I regret to
see, have got a senseless custom of talking politics in all weathers, and in all sorts
of company. This can do no good, and may give much offence. Silence can offend no one,
and there are pleasanter or less irritating subjects to talk of. I gave them both a
hint of this, and bid them remember they were among ordinary strangers. How little
young people reflect what they may win or lose by a smart reflection imprudently fired
off at a venture!”
On the morning of the 29th, the wind at last changed, and the Barham got under weigh.
After a few days, when they had passed the Bay of Biscay, Sir Walter ceased to be annoyed with seasickness, and sat most
of his time on deck, enjoying apparently the air, the scenery, and above all the ship
itself, the beautiful discipline practised in all things, and the martial exercises of the
men. In Captain Pigot, Lieutenant
Walker, the physician Dr Liddell, and
I believe in many others of the officers, he had highly intelligent, as well as polished
companions. The course was often altered, for the express purpose of giving him a glimpse
of some famous place; and it was only the
temptation of a singularly propitious breeze that prevented a halt at Algiers.
On the 20th November they came upon that remarkable phenomenon, the
sudden creation of a submarine volcano, which bore, during its very brief date, the name of
Graham’s Island. Four months had elapsed since it “arose from out the azure
main” and in a few days more it disappeared. “Already,” as
Dr Davy says, “its crumbling masses were
falling to pieces from the pressure of the hand or foot.”* Yet nothing could
prevent Sir Walter from landing on it and in a letter of
the following week he thus describes his adventure; the Barham had
reached Malta on the 22d.
To James Skene, Esq. of Rubislaw, Edinburgh.
“Malta, Nov. 25, 1831. “My dear Skene,
“Our habits of non-correspondence are so firmly
established, that it must be a matter of some importance that sets either of us
a writing to the other. As it has been my lot to see the new volcano, called
Graham’s Island, either employed in establishing itself, or more likely
in decomposing itself and as it must be an object of much curiosity to many of
our brethren of the Royal Society, I have taken it into my head that even the
very imperfect account which I can give of a matter of this extraordinary kind
may be in some degree valued. Not being able to borrow your fingers, those of
the Captain’s clerk have been put in requisition for the inclosed sketch,
and the notes adjoined are as accurate as can be expected from a hurried visit.
You have a view of the island, very much
* Philosophical Transactions, May, 1834, p. 552.
as it shows at present, but nothing is more certain than
that it is on the eve of a very important change, though in what respect is
doubtful. I saw a portion of about five or six feet in height give way under
the feet of one of our companions on the very ridge of the southern corner, and
become completely annihilated, giving us some anxiety for the fate of our
friend, till the dust and confusion of the dispersed pinnacle had subsided. You
know my old talents for horsemanship. Finding the earth, or what seemed a
substitute for it, sink at every step up to the knee, so as to make walking for
an infirm and heavy man nearly impossible, I mounted the shoulders of an able
and willing seaman, and by dint of his exertions rode nearly to the top of the
island. I would have given a great deal for you, my friend, the frequent and
willing supplier of my defects; but on this journey, though undertaken late in
life, I have found, from the benevolence of my companions, that when one
man’s strength was insufficient to supply my deficiencies, I had the
willing aid of twenty if it could be useful. I have sent you one of the largest
blocks of lava which I could find on the islet, though small pieces are
innumerable. We found two dolphins, killed apparently by the hot temperature,
and the body of a robin redbreast, which seemingly had come off from the
nearest land, and starved to death on the islet, where it had neither found
food nor water. Such had been the fate of the first attempt to stock the island
with fish and fowl. On the south side the volcanic principle was still
apparently active. The perpetual bubbling up from the bottom produces a
quantity of steam, which rises all around the base of the island, and surrounds
it as with a cloak when seen from a distance. Most of these appearances struck
the other gentlemen, I believe, as well as myself; but a gentleman who has
visited the rock repeatedly, is of opinion that it is certainly
increasing in magnitude. Its decrease in height may be consistent with the
increase of its more level parts, and even its general appearance above water;
for the ruins which crumble down from the top, are like to remain at the bottom
of the ridge of the rock, add to the general size of the islet, and tend to
give the ground firmness.
“The gales of this new-born island are any thing but
odoriferous. Brimstone, and such like, are the prevailing savours, to a degree
almost suffocating. Every hole dug in the sand is filled with boiling water, or
what was nearly such. I cannot help thinking that the great ebullition in the
bay, is the remains of the original crater, now almost filled up, yet still
showing that some extraordinary operations are going on in the subterranean
regions.
“If you think, my dear Skene, that any of these trifling particulars concerning this
islet can interest our friends, you are free to communicate them either to the
Society or to the Club, as you judge most proper. I have just seen James* in full health, but he vanished like a
guilty thing, when, forgetting that I was a contraband commodity, I went to
shake him by the hand, which would have cost him ten days’ imprisonment,
I being at present in quarantine.
“We saw an instance of the strictness with which
this law is observed: In entering the harbour, a seaman was pushed from our
yard-arm. He swam strongly, notwithstanding the fall, but the Maltese boats, of
whom there were several, tacked from him, to avoid picking him up, and an
English Boat, which did take the poor man in, was condemned to ten days’
imprisonment, to reward
* James Henry Skene,
Esq., a son of Sir W.’s
correspondent, was then a young officer on duty at Malta.
the benevolence of the action. It is in the capacity of
quarantine prisoners that we now inhabit the decayed chambers of a magnificent
old Spanish palace, which resembles the pantaloons of the Don in his youth, a world too wide for his shrunk
shanks. But you know Malta, where there is more magnificence than comfort,
though we have met already many friends, and much kindness.
“My best compliments to Mrs Skene, to whom I am bringing a fairy cup made out of a
Nautilus shell—the only one which I found entire on Graham’s Island; the
original owner had suffered shipwreck. I beg to be respectfully remembered to
all friends of the Club.—Yours ever, with love to your fireside,
Walter Scott.”
At Malta Sir Walter found several
friends of former days, besides young Skene.
Mr John Hookham Frere had been resident there
for several years, as he still continues, the captive of the enchanting climate, and the
romantic monuments of the old chivalry.* Sir John
Stoddart, the Chief Judge of the island, had known the Poet ever since the
early days of Lasswade and Glenfinlas; and the Lieutenant-governor, Colonel Seymour Bathurst, had often met him under the roof
of his father, the late Earl Bathurst. Mrs Bathurst’s distinguished uncle, Sir William Alexander, some time Lord Chief-Baron of
England, happened also to be then visiting her. Captain Dawson,
husband to Lord Kinnedder’s eldest daughter,
was of the garrison, and Sir Walter felt as if he were about to meet a
daughter of his own in the Euphemia Erskine who had
so often sat upon his knee.
* See the charming “Epistle in Rhyme, from William Stewart Rose at
Brighton, to John Hookham Frere at Malta,” published with some
other pieces in 1835.
She immediately joined him, and insisted
on being allowed to partake his quarantine. Lastly, Dr John
Davy, the brother of his illustrious friend, was at the head of the medical
staff; and this gentleman’s presence was welcome indeed to the Major and Miss
Scott, as well as to their father, for he had already begun to be more
negligent as to his diet, and they dreaded his removal from the skilful watch of Dr Liddell. Various letters, and Sir
Walter’s Diary, (though hardly legible), show that he inspected with
curiosity the knightly antiquities of La Valetta, the church and monuments of St John, the
deserted palaces and libraries of the heroic brotherhood; and the reader will find that,
when he imprudently resumed the pen of romance, the subject he selected was from their
annals. He enjoyed also the society of the accomplished persons I have been naming, and the
marks of honour lavished on him by the inhabitants, both native and English.
Here he saw much of a Scotch lady, with many of whose friends and
connexions he had been intimate—Mrs John Davy, the
daughter of a brother advocate, the late Mr Archibald
Fletcher, whose residence in Edinburgh used to be in North Castle Street,
within a few doors of “poor 39.” This lady has been so good as to intrust me
with a few pages of her Family Journal;” and I am sure the reader will value a copy
of them more than any thing else I could produce with respect to Sir Walter’s brief residence at Malta:—
“Before the end of November,” says Mrs Davy, “a great sensation was produced in
Malta, as well it might, by the arrival of Sir Walter
Scott. He came here in the Barham, a frigate
considered the very beauty of the fleet, ‘a perfect ship,’ as Sir Pulteney Malcolm used to say, and in the highest
discipline. In her annals it may now be told that she carried the most gifted,
certainly the most popular author of Europe into the
Mediterranean; but it was amusing to see that the officers of the ship thought the
great minstrel and romancer must gain more addition to his fame from having been a
passenger on board the Barham, than they or she could possibly
receive even from having taken on board such a guest. Our Governor, Sir F. Ponsonby, had not returned from a visit to
England when this arrival took place, but orders had been received that all manner of
attention should be paid; that a house, carriage, horses, &c. should be placed at
Sir Walter’s disposal; and all who thought they had the
smallest right to come forward on the occasion, or even a decent pretence for doing so,
were eager to do him honour according to their notions and means.
“On account of cholera then prevailing in England, a
quarantine was at this time enforced here on all who came from thence; but instead of
driving Sir Walter to the ordinary lazaretto, some
good apartments were prepared at Fort Manuel for him and his family to occupy for the
appointed time, I believe nine days. He there held a daily levee to receive the
numerous visiters who waited on him; and I well remember, on accompanying Colonel and Mrs
Bathurst and Sir William
Alexander to pay their first visit, how the sombre landing-place of the
Marsa Muscet (the quarantine harbour), under the heavy bastion that shelters it on the
Valetta side, gave even then tokens of an illustrious arrival, in the unusual number of
boats and bustle of parties setting forth to, or returning from Fort Manuel, on the
great business of the day. But even in the case of one whom all ‘delighted to
honour,’ a quarantine visit is a notably uncomfortable thing; and when our little
procession had marched up several broad flights of steps, and we found ourselves on a
landing-place ha-ving a wide door-way
opposite to us, in which sat Sir Walter—his daughter, Major
Scott, and Mrs Dawson standing
behind and a stout bar placed across some feet in front of them, to keep us at the
legal distance—I could not but repent having gone to take part in a ceremony so formal
and wearisome to all concerned. Sir Walter rose, but seemed to do
it with difficulty, and the paralytic fixed look of his face was most distressing. We
all walked up to the bar, but there stood very like culprits, and no one seemed to know
who was to speak first. Sir W. Alexander, however, accustomed of
old to discourse from the bar, or charge from the bench, was beyond question the proper
person,—so, after a very little hesitation, he began and made a neat speech, expressing
our hopes that Sir Walter would sojourn at Malta as long as
possible. Sir Walter replied very simply and courteously in his
natural manner, but his articulation was manifestly affected, though not I think quite
so much so as his expression of face. He wore trousers of the Lowland small-checked
plaid, and sitting with his hands crossed over the top of a shepherd’s-looking
staff, he was very like the picture painted by Leslie, and engraved for one of the Annuals,—but when he spoke, the
varied expression, that used quite to redeem all heaviness of features, was no longer
to be seen. Our visit was short, and we left Mr
Frere with him at the bar on our departure. He came daily to see his
friend, and passed more of his quarantine-time with him than any one else. We were told
that between Mr Frere’s habitual absence of mind, and
Sir Walter’s natural Scotch desire to shake hands with
him at every meeting, it required all the vigilance of the attendant genii of the
place, to prevent Mr F. from being put into quarantine along with
him.
“Sir Walter did not accept the house provided for him by the Governor’s order, nor any of the various private
houses which, to Miss Scott’s great
amusement, were urgently proffered for his use by their owners—but established himself,
during his stay, at Beverley’s Hotel, in Strada Fonente. Our house was
immediately opposite to this one, divided by a very narrow street; and I well remember,
when watching his arrival on the day he took Pratique, hearing the sound of his voice
as he chatted sociably to Mr Greig (the inspector of quarantine),
on whose arm he leaned while walking from the carriage to the door of his hotel—it
seemed to me that I had hardly heard so home-like a sound in this strange land, or one
that so took me back to Edinburgh and our own North Castle Street, where, in passing
him as he walked up or down with a friend, I had heard it before so often. Nobody was
at hand at the moment for me to show him to but an English maid, who not having my
Scotch interest in the matter, only said, when I tried to enlighten her as to the event
of his arrival—‘Poor old gentleman, how ill he looks.’ It showed how
sadly a little while must have changed him, for when I had seen him last in Edinburgh,
perhaps five or six years before, no one would have thought of calling him ‘an
old gentleman.’ At one or two dinner-parties, at which we saw him within the week
of his arrival, he did not seem at all animated in conversation, and retired soon; for
he seemed resolutely prudent as to keeping early hours; though he was unfortunately
careless as to what he ate or drank, especially the latter—and, I fear, obstinate when
his daughter attempted to regulate his diet.
“A few days after his arrival in Malta he accepted an
invitation from the garrison to a ball—an odd kind of honour to
bestow on a man of letters suffering from paralytic illness, but extremely charac-teristic of the taste of this place. It
was, I believe, well got up, under the direction of the usual master of Malta
ceremonies, Mr Walker, an officer of artillery; and every thing
was done that the said officer and his colleagues could do to give it a sentimental, if
not a literary cast. The decorations were laboriously appropriate. Sir Walter entered (having been received at the door by a
deputation of the dignitaries of the island) to the sound of Scotch music; and as it
was held in the great room of the Auberge de Provence,formerly one of the festal halls
of the Knights of Malta, it was not a bad scene—if such a gaiety was to be inflicted at
all.
“A day or two afterwards, we gladly accepted an invitation
brought to us by Miss Scott, to dine quietly
with him and two or three officers of the Barham at his hotel;
and I thought the day of this dining so white a one as to mark
it especially in a little note-book the same evening. I see it stands dated December
the 4th, and the little book says. ‘Dined and spent the evening of this day with
Sir Walter Scott. We had only met him before at
large dinner-parties. At home he was very much more happy, and more inclined to talk.
Even now his conversation has many characteristics of his writings. There is the same
rich felicitous quotation from favourite writers—the same happy introduction of old
traditionary stories,—Scotch ones especially,—in a manner as easy, and evidently quite
unprepared. The coming in of a young midshipman, cousin of his
(Scott by name), to join the party, gave occasion to his
telling the story of ‘Muckle Mouthed Meg,’* and to
his describing the tragicomical picture drawn from that story by Mr C. K. Sharpe, which I remem-
* See ante, vol. I. p.
350.
bered to have seen at Abbotsford. At dinner he spoke a good deal
of Tom Sheridan, after telling a bon mot of his in illustration of something that
was said; and seemed amused at a saying of Mr
Smyth (of Cambridge), respecting that witty and volatile pupil of his,
‘that it was impossible to put knowledge into him, try it as you
might.’ ‘Just,’ said Sir Walter,
‘like a trunk that you are trying to over-pack, but it won’t do, the
things start out in your face.’ On joining us in the drawing-room after
dinner Sir Walter was very animated, spoke much of Mr Frere, and of his remarkable success, when quite a
boy, in the translation of a Saxon
ballad.* This led him to ballads in general, and he gravely lamented his
friend Mr Frere’s heresy in not esteeming highly enough that
of ‘Hardyknute.’ He
admitted that it was not a veritable old ballad, but ‘just old
enough,’ and a noble imitation of the best style. In speaking of Mr
Frere’s translations, he repeated a pretty long passage from his
version of one of the Romances of the Cid (published in the Appendix to Southey’s quarto), and seemed to
enjoy a spirited charge of the knights therein described as much as he could have done
in his best days, placing his walking-stick in rest like a lance, to ‘suit the
action to the word.’ Miss Scott says, she has not
seen him so animated, so like himself, since he came to Malta, as on this evening.
“Sunday Morning, December 5, (as my
said little note book proceeds to record)—Sir Walter
spent chiefly in St John’s Church, the beautiful temple and burying-place of the
knights, and there he was much pleased and interested. On Monday the 6th he dined at
the
* See ante, vol. ii.
p. 21.
Chief-Justice, Sir John Stoddart’s, when I believe he partook
too freely of porter and champagne for one in his invalid state. On Tuesday morning
(the 7th), on looking from one of our windows across the street, I observed him sitting
in an easy-chair in the parlour of his hotel, a book in his hand, and apparently
reading attentively: his window was wide open, and I remember wishing much for the
power of making a picture of him just as he sat. But about 11 o’clock Miss Scott came over to me, looking much frightened,
and saying that she feared he was about to have another paralytic attack. He had, she
said, been rather confused in mind the day before, and the dinner-party had been too
much for him. She had observed that on trying to answer a note from the Admiral that
morning, he had not been able to form a letter on the paper, and she thought he was now
sitting in a sort of stupor. She begged that Dr
Davy would visit him as soon as possible, and that I would accompany
him, so that he might not suppose it a medical visit, for to all such he had an utter
objection. I sent for Dr D. instantly, and the moment he returned
we went together to the hotel. We found Sir Walter sitting near a
fire, dressed, as I had seen him just before, in a large silk dressing-gown, his face a
good deal flushed, and his eyes heavy. He rose, however, as I went up to him, and,
addressing me by my mother’s name, “Mrs
Fletcher,” asked kindly whether I was quite
recovered from a little illness I had complained of the day before, and then walked to
a table on the other side of the room, to look at some views of the new Volcano in the
Mediterranean, which, by way of apology for our early visit, we had carried with us.
With these he seemed pleased; but there was great indistinctness in his manner of
speaking. He soon after sat down, and began, of his own accord, to converse with Dr Davy on the work he was then
engaged in—the Life of Sir
Humphry—saying that he was truly glad he was thus engaged, as he did not
think justice had been done to the character of his friend by Dr Paris. In speaking of the scientific distinction
attained by Sir Humphry, he said, ‘I
hope, Dr Davy, your mother lived to see it. There must have
been such great pleasure in that to her.’ We both remember with much
interest this kindly little observation; and it was but one of many that dropt from him
as naturally at the different times we met, showing that, ‘fallen’ as
‘the mighty’ was, and ‘his weapons of war perished,’ the
springs of fancy dried up, and memory on most subjects much impaired, his sense of the
value of home-bred worth and affection was in full force. His way of mentioning
‘my son Charles, poor
fellow,’ whom he was longing to meet at Naples or ‘my own
Tweed-side,’ which in truth he seemed to lament ever having quitted was
often really affecting. Our visit together on this morning was of course short, but
Dr Davy saw him repeatedly in the course of the same day.
Leeches were applied to his head, and though they did not give immediate relief to his
uncomfortable sensations, he was evidently much better next morning, and disposed to
try a drive into the country. Some lameness having befallen one of the horses provided
for his use, I, at his request, ordered a little open carriage of ours to the door
about 12 o’clock, and prepared to accompany him to St Antonio, a garden residence
of the Governor’s, about two miles from Valetta, then occupied by Mr Frere, whose own house at the Pieta was under
repair. It was not without fear and trembling I undertook this little drive—not on
account of the greatness of my companion, for assuredly he was the most humane of
lions, but I feared he might have some new seizure of illness, and that I should be
very helpless to him in such a case. I
proposed that Dr D. should go instead; but, like most men when
they are ill or unhappy, he preferred having womankind about
him,—said he would ‘like Mrs Davy
better;’ so I went. The notices of his ‘carriage talk,’ I
give exactly as I find them noted down the day after—omitting only the story of
Sir H. Davy and the Tyrolese rifle, which I put on record
separately for my husband, for insertion in his book.*
“My little note-book of December 9 says—The day was very
beautiful (like a good English day about the end of May) and the whole way in going to St
Antonio he was cheerful, and inclined to talk on any matter that was suggested. He admired
the streets of Valetta much as we passed through them, noticing particularly the rich
effect of the carved stone balconies, and the images of saints at every corner, saying
several times ‘this town is really quite like a dream.’ Something
(suggested I believe by the appearances of Romish superstition on all sides of us) brought
him to speak of the Irish of whose native character he expressed a high opinion; and spoke
most feelingly of the evil fate that seemed constantly to attend them. Some link from this
subject (I do not exactly know what for the rattling progress of our little vehicle over
ill-paved ways, and his imperfect utterance together, made it difficult to catch all his
words) brought to his recollection a few fine lines from ‘O’Connor’s child,’ in the passage ‘And ranged, as to the judgment seat, My guilty, trembling brothers round’— which he repeated with his accustomed energy, and then
* See Dr
Davy’sMemoirs of his brother, vol. I. p. 506,—for the account of
Speckbacker’s rifle now in the Armoury at
Abbotsford.
went on to speak of Campbell,
whom, as a poet, he honours. On my saying something of
Campbell’s youth at the publication of his first poem, he
said, ‘Aye, he was very young—but he came out at once, ye may say, like the Irish
rebels, a hundred thousand strong.’
“There was no possibility of admiring the face of the country
as we drove along after getting clear of the city gates; but I was pleased to see how
refreshing the air seemed to Sir Walter—and perhaps
this made him go back, as he did, to his days of long walks, over moss and moor, which
he told me he had often traversed at the rate of five-and-twenty miles a-day, with a
gun on his shoulder. He snuffed with great delight the perfume of the new oranges,
which hung thickly on each side as we drove up the long avenue to the court-yard, or
stableyard rather, of St Antonio—and was amused at the Maltese untidiness of two or
three pigs running at large under the trees. ‘That’s just like my friend
Frere,’ he said,
‘quite content to let pigs run about in his orange-groves.’ We
did not find Mr Frere at home, and therefore drove back without
waiting. Among some other talk, in returning, he spoke with praise of Miss Ferrier as a novelist, and then with still higher
praise of Miss Austen. Of the latter he said,
‘I find myself every now and then with one of her books in my hand.
There’s a finishing-off in some of her scenes that is really quite above
every body else. And there’s that Irish lady, too—but I forget every
body’s name now’—‘Miss
Edgeworth,’ I said—‘Ay, Miss Edgeworth,
she’s very clever, and best in the little touches, too. I’m sure, in that
children’s story’—(he meant ‘Simple Susan,’) ‘where the
little girl parts with her lamb, and the little boy brings it back to her again,
there’s nothing for it but just to put down the book, and cry.’ A
little afterwards, he said, ‘Do you know Moore?—he’s a
charming fellow—a perfect gentleman in society;—to use a sporting phrase, there’s
no kick in his gallop.’
“As we drew near home, I thought him somewhat fatigued—he was
more confused than at first in his recollection of names—and we drove on without saying
any thing. But I shall not forget the kindly good humour with which he said, in getting
out at his hotel door ‘Thank ye, for your kindness—your charity, I may say—to
an old lame man—farewell!’ He did not seem the worse of his little
exertion this day; but, thenceforward, was prudent in refusing all dinner
invitations.
“On Friday (December 10th), he went, in company with Mr Frere, to see Citta Vecchia. I drove over with a
lady friend to meet them at the church there. Sir
Walter seemed pleased with what was shown him, but was not animated. On
Saturday the 11th he drove out twice to see various things in Valetta. On Monday
morning the 13th, I saw him for the last time, when I called to take leave of Miss Scott. Dr
Davy accompanied him, in the course of the following morning, to see
Strada Stretta—the part of the city in which he had been told the young Knights of
Malta used to fight their duels, when such affairs occurred. In quitting the street,
Sir Walter looked round him earnestly, and said, ‘It
will be hard if I cannot make something of this.’ On that day, Tuesday
morning, December 14th, he and his party went again on board the Barham, and sailed for Naples.”
CHAPTER X. RESIDENCE AT NAPLES—EXCURSIONS TO PÆSTUM, POMPEII, ETC.—LAST ATTEMPTS IN
ROMANCE—SIR WILLIAM GELL’S MEMORANDA—DECEMBER, 1831—APRIL,
1832.
On the 17th of December the Barham
reached Naples, and Sir Walter found his son Charles ready to receive him. The quarantine was cut short
by the courtesy of the King of Naples, and the
travellers established themselves in an apartment of the Palazzo Caramanico.
Here again the British Minister, Mr Hill (now
Lord Berwick), and the English nobility and gentry
then residing in Naples, did whatever kindness and respect could suggest for Sir Walter; nor were the natives, and their visitants from
foreign countries, less attentive. The Marquis of
Hertford, the Hon. Keppel Craven, the
Hon. William Ashley and his lady, Sir George Talbot, the venerable Matthias, (author of “The Pursuits of Literature,”) Mr Auldjo (celebrated for his ascent of Mount Blanc), and
Dr Hogg, a medical gentleman who has since
published an account of his travels in the East appear to have, in their various ways,
contributed whatever they could to his comfort and amusement. But the person of whom he saw
most was the late Sir William Gell, who had long been
condemned to live in Italy by ailments and infirmities not dissimilar to his own.
Sir William, shortly after Sir Walter’s
death, drew up a memoir of their
intercourse, which will, I believe, be considered as sufficient for this period.
Before I introduce it, however, I may notice that Sir Walter, whenever he appeared at the Neapolitan Court,
which he did several times, wore the uniform of a brigadier-general in the ancient Body
Guard of Scotland; a dress of light green, with gold embroidery, assigned to those Archers by George IV. at the
termination of his northern progress in 1822. I have observed this circumstance alluded to
with a sort of sneer. The truth is, Sir Walter had ordered the dress
for the christening of the young Buccleuch; but at any
rate, the machinery now attached to his lame limb, would have made it impossible for him to
appear in breeches and stockings, as was then imperative on civilians.
Further, it was on the 16th of January that Sir
Walter received the intelligence of his grandson’s death. His Diary of
that date has simply these words:—“Poor Johnny
Lockhart! This boy is gone whom we have made so much of. I could not
have borne it better than I now do, and I might have borne it much worse.—I went to the
Opera in the evening to see this amusement in its birth-place, which is now so widely
received over Europe.”
At first Sir Walter busied himself
chiefly about forming a collection of Neapolitan and Sicilian ballads and broadsides; and
Mr Matthias seems to have been at much pains in
helping this. But alas, ere he had been long in Naples, he began, in spite of all
remonstrances, to give several hours every morning to the composition of a new novel,
“The Siege of Malta;” and during his stay he
nearly finished both this and a shorter tale, entitled “Bizarro.” He also relaxed more and more in his
obedience to the regimen of his physicians, and thus applied a
twofold stimulus to his malady.
Neither of these novels will ever, I hope, see the light; but I venture
to give the foundation of the shorter one, as nearly as I can decipher it from the
author’s Diary, of which it occupies some of the last pages.
“DEATH OF IL BIZARRO.
“This man was called, from his wily but inexorable
temper, Il Bizarro. He was captain of a
gang of banditti, whom he governed by his own authority, till he increased them
to 1000 men, both on foot and horseback, whom he maintained in the mountains of
Calabria, between the French and Neapolitans, both of which he defied, and
pillaged the country. High rewards were set upon his head, to very little
purpose, as he took care to guard himself against being betrayed by his own
gang, the common fate of those banditti who become great in their vocation. At
length a French colonel, whose name I have forgot, occupied the country of
Bizarro, with such success, that he
formed a cordon around him and his party, and included him between the folds of
a military column. Well-nigh driven to submit himself, the robber with his
wife, a very handsome woman, and a child of a few months old, took post one day
beneath an old bridge, and by an escape almost miraculous, were not perceived
by a strong party whom the French maintained on the top of the arch. Night at
length came without a discovery, which every moment might have made. When it
became quite dark, the brigand, enjoining the strictest silence on the female
and child, resolved to start from his place of shelter, and as he issued forth,
kept his hand on the child’s throat. But as, when they began to move, the
child naturally cried, its father in a rage tightened his gripe so
relentlessly, that the poor infant never offended more in the same manner.
“His wife had never been very fond of him, though he
trusted her more than any who approached him. She had been originally the wife
of another man murdered by her second husband, which second marriage she was
compelled to undergo, and to affect at least the conduct of an affectionate
wife. In their wanderings she alone knew where he slept. He left his men in a
body upon the top of an hill, round which they set watches. He then went apart
into the woods with his wife, and having chosen a lair in an obscure and deep
thicket, there took up his residence for the night. A large Calabrian dog, his
constant attendant, was then tied to a tree at some distance to secure his
slumbers, and having placed his carabine within reach of his arm, he consigned
himself to such sleep as belongs to his calling. By such precautions he had
secured his rest for many years.
“But after the death of the child, the measure of
his offence towards the unhappy mother was full to the brim, and her thoughts
became determined on revenge. One evening he took up his quarters with the
usual precautions, but without the usual success. He had laid his carabine near
him, and betaken himself to rest, when his partner arose from his side, and ere
he became sensible that she had clone so, she seized his carabine, and
discharging it in his bosom, ended at once his life and his crimes. She
finished her work by cutting off the brigand’s head, and carrying it to
the principal town of the province, where she delivered it to the police, and
claimed the reward attached to his head, which was paid accordingly. This
female still lives, a stately, dan-gerous looking woman,
yet scarce ill thought of, considering the provocation.
“The dog struggled extremely to get loose on hearing
the shot. Some say the female shot it; others that, in its rage, it very nearly
gnawed through the stout young tree to which it was tied. He was worthy of a
better master.
“The distant encampment of the band was disturbed by
the firing of the Bizarro’s carabine at midnight. They ran through the
woods to seek the captain, but finding him lifeless and headless, they became
so much surprised, that many of them surrendered to the government, and
relinquished their trade. Thus the band of the Bizarro, as it lived by his spirit, was broken up by his death.
“Among other stories respecting the cruelty of this
bandit, I heard this. A French officer, who had been active in the pursuit of
him, fell into his hands, and was made to die the death of Saint
Polycarp that is, the period being the middle of summer, he was
flayed alive, and, being smeared with honey, was exposed to all the intolerable
insects of a southern sky. The corps were also informed where they might find
their officer, if they thought proper to send for him. As more than two days
elapsed before the wretched man was found, nothing save miserable relics were
discovered. I do not warrant these stories, but such are told currently.”
Here is another—taken, I believe, from one of the rude pamphlets in his
collection.
“There was a farmer of an easy fortune, and who might be
supposed to leave to his daughter, a very pretty girl, and an only child, a fortune
thought in the village to be very considerable. She was, under the hope of sharing such a prize, made up to by a
young man in the neighbourhood, handsome, active, and of good character. He was of that
sort of persons who are generally successful among women, and this girl was supposed to
have encouraged his addresses; but her father, on being applied to, gave him a direct
and positive refusal. The gallant resolved to continue his addresses in hopes of
overcoming the obstacle by his perseverance, but the father’s opposition seemed
only to increase by the lover’s pertinacity. At length, as the farmer walked one
evening, smoking his pipe, upon the terrace before his door, the lover unhappily passed
by, and, struck with the instant thought that the obstacle to the happiness of his life
was now entirely in his own power, he rushed upon the father, pierced him with three
mortal stabs of his knife, and made his escape to the mountains.
“What was most remarkable was, that he was protected against
the police, who went, as was their duty, in quest of him, by the inhabitants of the
neighbourhood, who afforded him both shelter and such food as he required, looking on
him less as a wilful criminal than an unfortunate man, who had been surprised by a
strong and almost irresistible temptation; so congenial at this moment is the love of
vengeance to an Italian bosom, and, though chastised in general by severe punishment,
so much are criminals sympathized with by the community.”
I now insert the Neapolitan part of Sir
William Gell’s Memoranda.
“Every record of the latter days of those who, by
their actions or their talents, have excited the admira-tion and occupied the attention of their contemporaries, has been thought
worthy of preservation, and I feel, on that account, a melancholy pleasure in
complying with the request that I would furnish such anecdotes of Sir Walter Scott as my short intimacy with that
illustrious personage may have afforded. The reason assigned in the letter,
which I received from one of the family on the subject, was, that I was his
‘latest friend,’ and this appeared to me as strong a motive as if I
could have been called his earliest acquaintance.
“I had met Sir
Walter at Stanmore Priory many years ago, when on a visit to the
late Marquis of Abercorn, where he read one
of the earliest of his poetical productions; but I had no farther personal
communication with him till his arrival at Naples. I was induced to call on him
at the Palazzo Caramanico, at the desire of a mutual friend, on the 5th of
January, 1832, and it is probable that our mutual infirmities, which made us
suitable companions in excursions, contributed in a great degree to the
intimacy which immediately took place between us. On the following evening I
presented to him Mr Keppel Craven, whose
Tour in the South of Italy
he had just read with pleasure. From this time I was constantly in the habit of
receiving, or calling for Sir Walter in the morning, and
usually accompanied him to see any of the remarkable objects in the
neighbourhood of Naples. The Lago d’Agnano was among the first places
visited, and he was evidently quite delighted with the tranquil beauty of the
spot, and struck particularly by the sight of the leaves yet lingering on the
trees at so advanced a period of the winter, and the appearance of summer yet
maintained by the meadows and copses surrounding the lake. It quickly recalled
to his mind a lake in Scotland, which he immediately began to describe. I
afterwards found that his only pleasure in seeing new places arose from the poetical
ideas they inspired, as applicable to other scenes with which his mind was more
familiar.
“Mr Craven
accompanied us on horseback in this excursion, and Sir
Walter learning that he was writing a second volume, giving an
account of a journey in the Abbruzzi, kindly observed, that he thought he could
be of use to him in the publication of it, adding, ‘I think I may,
perhaps, be able to give his pancake a toss.’
“On the 10th of January, I accompanied him to
Pozzuoli, and the late Mr Laing Meason
was of the party. Here we succeeded in getting Sir
Walter placed upon a heap of ruins, whence he might see the
remains of the Thermae, commonly called the Temple of Serapis. His observation
was, that we might tell him any thing, and he would believe it all, for many of
his friends, and particularly Mr
Morritt, had frequently tried to drive classical antiquities, as
they were called, into his head, but they had had always found his
‘skull too thick.’
“It was with great risk that he could be brought to
any point of difficult access, for though he was so lame, and saw how easily I
arrived by submitting to be assisted or carried, it was generally impossible to
persuade him to commit himself to the care of the attendants.
“When Sir Walter
was presented at Court, the King received
him with marked attention, and insisted on his being seated, on account of his
infirmity. They both spoke, and the by-standers observed, that His Majesty
mentioned the pleasure he had received from reading the works of his visiter.
Sir Walter answered in French, but not in a clear tone
of voice; and he afterwards observed, that he and the King parted mutually
pleased with the interview, considering that neither had
heard one word of what was uttered by the other.
“On the 17th of January I took Sir Walter to dine with the venerable
Archbishop of Tarentum, a prelate in his 90th year,
but yet retaining his faculties unimpaired, and the warmer feelings of youth,
with well-known hospitality. The two elders seemed mutually pleased with the
interview, but the difficulties of language were opposed to any very agreeable
conversation.
“On the 26th of January I attended Sir Walter in a boat, with several friends, to the
ruins of a Roman villa, supposed by Mr Hamilton and
others, to have been that of Pollio, and situated upon a
rock in the sea at the extremity of the promontory of Posilipo. It was by no
means the recollection of Pollio that induced Sir Walter
to make this excursion. A story existed that out of an opening in the floor of
one of the rooms in this villa, a spectre robed in white occasionally appeared,
whence the place had acquired the name of La Casa degli
Spiriti, and none had presumed to inhabit it. The fact was, that
a third story had been built upon the Roman ruins, and this being only
inhabited by paupers, had fallen into decay, so as to endanger one angle of the
fabric, and the police, for fear of accident, had ordered that it should remain
untenanted. The house is situated upon a rock projecting into the sea, but
attached on one side to the mainland. An entrance for a boat has been left in
the basement story, and it is probable that a sort of open court, into which
the sea enters at the back of the house, and in which is the staircase, was
constructed for the purpose of cooling the apartments in the heat of summer, by
means of the perpetual heaving and sinking of the ocean which takes place even
in the calmest weather. The staircase was too much ruined for Sir Walter to ascend
with safety, but he appeared satisfied with what he saw, and took some interest
in the proofs which the appearance of the opus reticulatum,
high up in the external walls, afforded of the antiquity of the place.*
“On the 9th of February Sir
Walter went to Pompeii, where, with several ladies and gentlemen
at that time resident in Naples, I accompanied him. I did not go in the same
carriage, but arriving at the street of the Tombs, found him already almost
tired before he had advanced 100 yards. With great difficulty I forced him to
accept the chair in which I was carried, supplying its place with another for
myself, tied together with cords and handkerchiefs. He thus was enabled to pass
through the city without more fatigue, and I was sometimes enabled to call his
attention to such objects as were the most worthy of remark. To these
observations, however, he seemed generally nearly insensible, viewing the whole
and not the parts, with the eye, not of an antiquary, but a poet, and
exclaiming frequently ‘The city of the Dead,’ without any
other remark. An excavation had been ordered for him, but it produced nothing
more than a few bells, hinges, and other objects of brass, which are found
every day. Sir Walter seemed to view, however, the
splendid mosaic, representing a combat of the Greeks and Persians, with more
interest, and, seated upon a table whence he could look down upon it, he
remained some time to examine it. We dined at a large table spread in the
Forum, and Sir Walter was cheerful and pleased. In the
evening he was a little tired, but felt no bad effects from the excursion to
the City of the Dead.
“In our morning drives, Sir Walter always noticed
* There is an interesting Essay on this Roman
Villa, by Mr Hamilton, in the
Transactions of the Royal Society of
Literature for 1837.
a favourite dog of mine, which was usually in the
carriage, and generally patted the animal’s head for some time, saying,
‘poor boy—poor boy.’ ‘I have got at
home,’ said he, ‘two very fine favourite dogs, so large that
I am always afraid they look too handsome and too feudal for my diminished
income. I am very fond of them, but they are so large it was impossible to
take them with me.’ My dog was in the habit of howling when loud
music was performing, and Sir Walter laughed till his eyes
were full of tears, at the idea of the dog singing ‘My
Mother bids me bind my hair,’ by the tune of which the animal
seemed most excited, and which the kind-hearted baronet sometimes asked to have
repeated.
“I do not remember on what day, during his
residence at Naples, he came one morning rather early to my house, to tell me
he was sure I should be pleased at some good luck which had befallen him, and
of which he had just received notice. This was, as he said, an account from his
friends in England, that his last works, Robert of Paris and Castle
Dangerous, had gone on to a second edition. He told me in the
carriage that he felt quite relieved by his letters, ‘for,’
said he, ‘I could have never slept straight in my coffin till I had
satisfied every claim against me.’ ‘And now,’
added he to the dog, ‘my poor boy, I shall have my house, and my
estate round it, free, and I may keep my dogs as big and as many as I
choose, without fear of reproach.’
“I do not recollect the date of a certain
morning’s drive, on which he first communicated to me that he had already
written, or at least advanced far in a romance, on the subject of Malta, a part
of which, he said, laughingly, he had put into the fire by mistake for other
papers, but which he thought he had rewritten better than before. He asked me
about the island of Rhodes, and told me, that, being relieved from debt, and no longer forced to write for money, he
longed to turn to poetry again, and to see, whether in his old age, he was not
capable of equalling the rhymes of his youthful days. I encouraged him in this
project, and asked why he had ever relinquished poetry. ‘Because
Byronbet
me,’ said he, pronouncing the word, beat,
short.* I rejoined, that I thought I could remember by heart about as many
passages of his poetry as of Lord Byron’s; and to
this he replied, ‘that may be, but he bet me
out of the field in the description of the strong passions, and in
deep-seated knowledge of the human heart; so I gave up poetry for the
time.’ He became from that moment extremely curious about Rhodes,
and having chosen for his poetical subject the chivalrous story of the slaying
of the dragon by De Gozon and the
stratagems and valour with which he conceived and executed his purpose, he was
quite delighted to hear that I had seen the skeleton of this real or reported
dragon, which yet remains secured by large iron staples to the vaulted roof of
one of the gates of the city.
“Rhodes became at this time an object of great
importance and curiosity to him, and as he had indulged in the idea of visiting
it, he was somewhat displeased to learn how very far distant it lay from Corfu,
where he had proposed to pass some time with Sir
Frederick Adam, then Lord High Commissioner in the Ionian
Islands.
“I must not omit stating that at an early period
of his visit to Naples, an old English manuscript of the Romance of Sir Bevis of Hampton, existing in the
Royal library, had attracted his attention, and he had resolved on procuring a
copy of it, not, I think, for himself, but for a friend in Scotland, who was
already possessed of
* The common Scotch pronunciation is not unlike
what Sir W. G. gives.
another edition. When Sir
Walter visited the library at the Museum, the literati of Naples
crowded round him to catch a sight of so celebrated a person, and they showed
him every mark of attention in their power, by creating him Honorary Member of
their learned societies. Complimentary speeches were addressed to him in Latin,
of which, unfortunately, he did not comprehend one word, on account of the
difference of pronunciation, but from the confession of which he was saved by
the intervention of Mr Keppel Craven who
attended him. The King of Naples, teaming
his wish to copy the book, ordered it to be sent to his house, and he employed
a person of the name of Sticchini, who, without
understanding a word of English, copied the whole in a character as nearly as
possible the fac-simile of the original. Sticchini was
surprised and charmed with Sir Walter’s kindness and
urbanity, for he generally called him to breakfast, and sometimes to dinner,
and treated him on all occasions in the most condescending manner. The
Secretary was not less surprised than alarmed on seeing his patron not
unfrequently trip his foot against a chair and fall down upon the floor, for he
was extremely incautious as to where or how he walked. On these occasions,
while the frightened Sticchini ran to assist him,
Sir Walter laughed very goodhumouredly, refused all
help, and only expressed his anxiety lest his spectacles should have been
broken by the accident.* Sir Walter wished, during his
stay at Naples, to procure several Italian books in his particular department
of study. Among other curiosities he thought he had traced Mother Goose, if not to her origin at Naples, at
least to a remote period of antiquity in Italy. He succeeded in purchasing a
considerable number of
* The spectacles were valued as the gift of a
friend and brother poet. See ante, p. 136.
books in addition to his
library, and took the fancy to have them all bound in vellum.
“Sir Walter had
heard too much of Pæstum to quit Naples without seeing it, and we
accordingly formed a party in two carriages to go there, intending to sleep at
La Cava, at the villa of my much respected friend Miss Whyte, a lady not less esteemed for every good quality,
than celebrated for the extraordinary exertions of benevolence on the occasion
of the murder of the Hunt family at Pæstum. Hearing
of this fatal affair, and being nearer than any other of her compatriots to the
scene, this lady immediately endeavoured to engage a surgeon at La Cava to
accompany her to the spot. No one, however, could be found to venture into the
den of the murderers, so that she resolved to go alone, well provided with
lint, medicines, and all that could be useful to the wounded persons. She
arrived, however, too late to be of use; but Sir Walter
expressed the greatest desire to make the acquaintance of so admirable a
person, and it was settled that her hospitable villa should receive and lodge
us on our way to Pæstum. La Cava is 25 miles from Naples, and as it was
necessary to feed the horses, I was in hopes of showing Sir
Walter the amphitheatre of Pompeii while they ate their corn.
The day, however, being rainy, we gave up the amphitheatre, and halted at the
little tavern immediately below Pompeii. Here being obliged to remain, it was
thought advisable to eat, and I had an opportunity of witnessing the
hospitality which I had always heard distinguished Sir
Walter, for, after we had finished, not only the servants were
fed with the provisions he had brought, but the whole remainder was distributed
to the poor people who had been driven into the tavern by the rain. This
liberality unfortunately oc-casioned a deficit on the
following day, when the party started without provision for the solitudes of
Pæstum.
“Near Nocera I pointed out a tower situated upon a
high mountain, and guarding a pass by which a very steep and zig-zag road leads
toward Amain. I observed that it was possible that if the Saracens were ever
really seated at Nocera dai Pagani, this tower might have been at the confines
of the Amalfitan Republic, and have been their frontier against the Mahometans.
It was surprising how quickly he caught at any romantic circumstance, and I
found, in a very short time, he had converted the Torre di Ciunse, or Chiunse,
into a feudal residence, and already peopled it with a Christian host. He
called it the Knight’s Castle, as long as it remained in sight, and soon
after transferred its interest to the curious little towers, used for
pigeon-shooting, which abound in the neighbourhood, though they were on the
other side of the road.
“From La Cava, the party proceeded the next day to
Pæstum, setting out early in the morning; but I did not accompany
Sir Walter on that journey, and
consequently only know that, by good luck, he found eggs and other rustic fare
near the Temples, and returned, after a drive of fifty-four miles, very much
fatigued, to a late dinner. He was, however, completely restored by the
night’s rest, and we visited on the following day the splendid
Benedictine Monastery of La Trinità della Cava, situated about three miles
from the great road, and approached through a beautiful forest of chestnuts,
spreading over most picturesque mountains. The day was fine, and Sir
Walter really enjoyed the drive; and the scenery recalled to his
mind something of the kind which he had seen in Scotland, on which he repeated
the whole of the ballad of Jock of
Hazledean with great emphasis, and in a clear voice. At the
Convent we had taken care to
request, that what is termed a Pontifical Mass should be sung in his presence,
after which he was taken with much difficulty, and twice falling, through the
long and slippery labyrinths of that vast edifice, and up several very tedious
staircases to the apartments containing the archives. Here the curious MSS. of
the Convent were placed before him, and he seemed delighted with an ancient
document in which the names of Saracens as well as Christians appear either as
witnesses or principals; but he was chiefly struck with a book containing
pictures of the Lombard Kings, of which, through the kindness of Doctor Hogg, he afterwards possessed copies by
a young Neapolitan painter who had chanced to be on the spot. On the whole,
Sir Walter was more pleased with the Monastery of La
Cava than with any place to which I had the honour to accompany him in Italy;
the site, the woods, the organ, the size of the Convent, and, above all, the
Lombard Kings, produced a poetical feeling; and the fine weather so raised his
spirits, that in the forest he again recited Jock of
Hazledean by my desire, after a long repetition from his favourite
poem of Hardyknute.
“On the following day we returned to Naples, but
Sir Walter went in his own carriage, and
complained to me afterwards that he had never been able to discover the
‘Knight’s Tower,’ it being, in fact, only visible by turning
back to a person travelling in that direction. He expressed himself at all
times much delighted with our amiable hostess, Miss
Whyte, remarking very justly that she had nothing cold about her
but her house, which being in the mountains, is, in fact, by no means eligible
at that season of the year.
“In one of our drives, the subject of Sir Walter’s, perhaps, most popular romance, in which Lady Margaret Bellenden defends the Castle of
Tillietudlem, was men-tioned as having been translated
into Italian under the title of ‘The Scottish
Puritans,’ of which he highly approved. I told him how strange
the names of the places and the personages appeared in their Italian garb, and
remarked that the Castle was so well described, and seemed so true a picture,
that I had always imagined he must have had some real fortress in view. He said
it was very true; for the Castle he had visited, and had fallen so much in love
with it, that he wanted to live there. He added a joke with regard to his
having taken his hat off when he visited this favourite spot, remarking, that
as the Castle had been uncovered for many centuries, he himself might be
uncovered for an hour. It had, said Sir Walter,
‘no roof, no windows, and not much wall. I should have had to make
three miles of road, so before the affair was settled I got
wiser.’*
“On the third of April, I accompanied Sir Walter to Pozzuoli and to Cumae. We had a
party of nine or ten ladies and gentlemen, and agreed to dine at the inn at
Pozzuoli, on our way back. I explained to Sir Walter the
common history of all the objects which occurred on the road; and the account
of Monte Nuovo, which rose in one night to its present elevation, destroying
the village of Tre Pergole, and part of the Lucrine Lake, seemed particularly
to strike his poetical imagination. There is a point in going toward the Arco
Felice, whence, at a turn of the road, a very extensive and comprehensive view
is obtained of the Lake of Avernus. The Temple of Apollo, the Lucrine Lake, the
Monte Nuovo, Baiæ, Misenum, and the sea, are all seen at once; and here I
considered it my duty, in quality of Cicerone, to
* See the account of Scott’s early visit to Craignethan Castle, ante Vol. I. p. 306. By the way, the name Tillietudlem is evidently taken from that of the
ravine under the old castle of Lanark—which town is near Craignethan.
This ravine is called Gillytudlem.
enforce the knowledge of the
localities. He attended to the names I repeated; and when I asked whether he
thought himself sure of remembering the spot, he replied that he had it
perfectly in his mind. I found, however, that something in the place had
inspired him with other recollections of his own beloved country, and the
Stuarts, for on proceeding, he immediately repeated in
a grave tone, and with great emphasis— ‘Up the craggy mountain, and down the mossy glen, We canna gang a milking, for Charlie and his men.’
“I could not help smiling at this strange
commentary on my dissertation upon the Lake of Avernus.”
While at Naples, Sir Walter wrote
frequently to his daughter Sophia, Mr Cadell, Mr
Laidlaw, and myself. Some of these letters were of a very melancholy cast;
for the dream about his debts being all settled was occasionally broken; and probably it
was when that left him that he worked hardest at his Novels—though the habit of working had
become so fixed that I may be wrong in this conjecture. In general, however, these last
letters tell the same story of delusive hopes both as to health and wealth, of satisfaction
in the resumption of his pen, of eagerness to be once more at Abbotsford, and of
affectionate anxiety about the friends he was there to rejoin. Every one of those to
Laidlaw has something about the poor people and the dogs. One to
myself conveyed his desire that he might be set down for “something as handsome as
I liked” in a subscription then thought of for the Ettrick Shepherd—who that spring visited London, and was in no respect
improved by his visit. Another to my wife bade her purchase a grand pianoforte which he wished to present to Miss Cadell, his
bookseller’s daughter. The same generous spirit was shown in many other
communications.
I must transcribe one of Sir
Walter’s letters from Naples. It was addressed to Mrs Scott of Harden, on the marriage of her daughter Anne to Charles
Baillie, Esq., a son of her neighbour in the country, Mr Baillie of Jerviswoode.
To Mrs Scott of Harden.
“Naples, Palazzo Caramanico, 6th March, 1832.
“My dearest Mrs
Scott,—Your kind letter of 8th October, addressed to Malta,
reached me only yesterday with a number of others which had been tarrying at
Jericho till their beards grew. This was in one respect inconvenient, as I did
not gain the benefit of your advice with regard to my travels, which would have
had a great influence with me. Moreover, I did not learn the happy event in
your own family till a newspaper told it me by accident long ago. But as my
good wishes are most sincere, it is of less consequence when they reach the
parties concerned, and I flatter myself I possess so much interest with my
young friends as to give me credit for most warmly wishing them all the
happiness which this auspicious event promises. The connexion must be in every
respect agreeable to the feelings of both families, and not less so to those of
a former generation, provided they are permitted, as I flatter myself, to take
interest in the affairs of this life.
“I envied your management of the pencil when at
Malta, as frequently elsewhere; it is quite a place made to be illustrated; by
the way, I have got an esquisse of Old Smailholm Tower from the pencil of
Mr Turner. Besides the other
advantages of Malta, it possesses John Hookham Frere, who is one of the
most entertaining men I know, and with whom I spent much of my time.
“Although I rather prefer Malta, I have no reason
to complain of Naples. The society is very numerous and gay, and somewhat too
frivolous for my time of life and infirmities; however, there are exceptions;
especially poor Sir William Gell, a very
accomplished scholar, who is lamer than I am, and never out of humour, though
worried perpetually by the gout, which he bears with the greatest complaisance.
He is engaged in vindicating, from the remains of the various public works in
Italy, the truth, which Bryant and
others have disputed, concerning the Roman History, as given by Livy and other authors, whom it has been of late
fashionable to discredit. The Dilletante Society have, greatly to their credit,
resolved to bring out this interesting book.
“It has been Carnival time, and the balls are
without number, besides being pelted to death with sugar-plums, which is quite
the rage. But now Lent is approaching to sober us after all our gaiety, and
every one seems ashamed of being happy, and preparing to look grave with all
his might.
“I should have said something of my health, but
have nothing to say, except that I am pretty well, and take exercise regularly,
though as Parson Adams says, it must be of
the vehicular kind. I think I shall never ride or walk again. But I must not
complain, for my plan of paying my debts, which you know gave me so much
trouble some years since, has been, thank God, completely successful; and, what
I think worth telling, I have paid very near L.120,000, without owing any one a
halfpenny—at least I am sure this will be the case by midsummer. I know the
laird will give me much joy on this occasion, which, considering the scale upon
which I have accomplished it, is a great feat. I
wish I were better worthy the kindness of the public; but I am at least
entitled to say ‘’Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.’
Also some industry and some steadiness were necessary. I believe, indeed,
I made too great an exertion, but if I get better, as seems likely, it is
little enough for so happy a result. The young people have been very happy
which makes me think that about next spring I will give your young couple a
neighbourly dance. It will be about this time that I take the management of my
affairs again. You must patronise me.
“My love to Henry, as well as to the young couple. He should go and do
likewise. Your somewhat ancient, but very sincere friend,
Walter Scott.”
CHAPTER XI. DEATH OF GOETHE—ROME—MEMORANDA BY SIR W.
GELL AND MR EDWARD CHENEY—JOURNEY TO FRANKFORT—THE
RHINE STEAM-BOAT—FATAL SEIZURE AT NIMEGUEN—ARRIVAL IN LONDON—JERMYN
STREET—EDINBURGH—ABBOTSFORD—DEATH AND BURIAL— APRIL-SEPTEMBER,
1832.
His friend Sir Frederick
Adam had urgently invited Sir Walter to
visit the Ionian Islands, and he had consented to do so. But Sir
Frederick was suddenly recalled from that government, and appointed to one
in India, and the Greek scheme dropt. From that time his companions ceased to contend
against his wishes for returning home. Since he would again work, what good end could it
serve to keep him from working at his own desk? And as their entreaties, and the warnings
of foreign doctors, proved alike unavailing as to the regulation of his diet, what
remaining chance could there be on that score, unless from replacing him under the eye of
the friendly physicians whose authority had formerly seemed to have due influence on his
mind? He had wished to return by the route of the Tyrol and Germany, partly for the sake of
the remarkable chapel and monuments of the old Austrian princes at Inspruck, and the feudal
ruins upon the Rhine, but chiefly that he might have an interview with Goethe at Weimar. That poet died on the 22d of March, and
the news seemed to act upon Scott exactly as
the illness of Borthwickbrae had done in the August
before. His impatience redoubled: all his fine dreams of recovery seemed to vanish at
once—“Alas for Goethe!” he exclaimed,
“but he at least died at home—Let us to Abbotsford.” And he quotes
more than once in his letters the first hemistick of the line from Politian with which he had closed his early memoir of
Leyden “Grata quies Patriæ.”
When the season was sufficiently advanced, then, the party set out,
Mr Charles Scott having obtained leave to
accompany his father; which was quite necessary, as his elder brother had already been
obliged to rejoin his regiment. They quitted Naples on the 16th of April, in an open
barouche, which could at pleasure be converted into a bed.
It will be seen from some Memoranda about to be quoted, that Sir Walter was somewhat interested by a few of the objects
presented to him in the earlier stages of his route. The certainty that he was on his way
home for a time soothed and composed him; arid amidst the agreeable society which again
surrounded him on his arrival in Rome, he seemed perhaps as much of himself as he had ever
been in Malta or in Naples. For a moment even his literary hope and ardour appear to have
revived. But still his daughter entertained no doubt, that his consenting to pause for even
a few days in Rome, was dictated mainly by consideration of her natural curiosity.
Sir William Gell went to Rome about the same
time; and Sir Walter was introduced there to another accomplished
countryman, who exerted himself no. less than did Sir William, to
render his stay agreeable to him. This was Mr Edward
Cheney—whose family had long been on terms of very strict intimacy with the
Maclean Clephanes of Torloisk, so that
Sir Walter was ready to regard
him at first sight as a friend. I proceed to give some extracts from these
gentlemen’s memoranda.
“At Rome” (says Gell) “Sir Walter
found an apartment provided for him in the Casa Bernini. On his arrival, he
seemed to have suffered but little from the journey; though I believe the
length of time he was obliged to sit in a carriage had been occasionally the
cause of troublesome symptoms. I found him, however, in very good spirits, and
as he was always eager to see any spot remarkable as the scene of particular
events recorded in history, so he was keenly bent on visiting the house where
Benvenuto Cellini writes that he
slew the Constable of Bourbon with a bullet
fired from the Castle of St Angelo. The Chevalier
Luigi Chiaveri took him to the place, of which, though he
quickly forgot the position, he yet retained the history firmly fixed in his
mind, and to which he very frequently recurred.
“The introduction of Mr
Cheney was productive of great pleasure to Sir Walter, as he possessed at that moment the
Villa Muti, at Frescati, which had been for many years the favourite residence
of the Cardinal of York, who was Bishop
of Tusculum.
“Soon after his arrival I took Sir Walter to St Peter’s, which he had
resolved to visit, that he might see the tomb of the last of the Stuarts. I
took him to one of the side doors, in order to shorten the walk, and by great
good fortune met with Colonel Blair and
Mr Phillips, under whose protection he accomplished
his purpose. We contrived to tie a glove round the point of his stick, to
prevent his slipping in some degree, but to conduct him was really a service of
danger and alarm, owing to his infirmity and total want of caution. He has been
censured for not having frequently visited the treasures of the Vatican but by
those only who were unacquainted with the difficulty
with which he moved. Days and weeks must have been passed in this immense
museum, in order to have given him any idea of its value, nor do I know that it
would have been possible for him to have ascended the rugged stairs, or to have
traced its corridors and interminable galleries, in the state of reduced
strength and dislike to being assisted under which he then laboured.
“On the 8th of May we all dined at the Palace of
the Duchess Torlonia with a very large
company. The dinner was very late and very splendid, and from the known
hospitality of the family it was probable that Sir
Walter, in the heat of conversation, and with servants on all
sides pressing him to eat and drink, as is their custom at Rome, might be
induced to eat more than was safe for his malady. Colonel Blair, who sat next him, was requested to take care
that this should not happen. Whenever I observed him, however, Sir
Walter appeared always to be eating; while the Duchess, who had
discovered the nature of the office imposed on the Colonel, was by no means
satisfied, and after dinner observed that it was an odd sort of friendship
which consisted in starving one’s neighbour to death when he had a good
appetite, and there was dinner enough.
“It was at this entertainment that Sir Walter met with the Duke and Duchess
of Corchiano, who were both well read in his works, and
delighted to have been in company with him. This acquaintance might have led to
some agreeable consequences had Sir
Walter’s life been spared, for the Duke told him he was
possessed of a vast collection of papers, giving true accounts of all the
murders, poisonings, intrigues, and curious adventures of all the great Roman
families during many centuries, all which were at his service to copy and
publish in his own way as historical romances, only disguising the names, so
as not to compromise the credit of the
existing descendants of the families in question. Sir
Walter listened to the Duke for the remainder of the evening,
and was so captivated with all he heard from that amiable and accomplished
personage, that at one moment he thought of remaining for a time at Rome, and
at another he vowed he would return there in the ensuing winter. Whoever has
read any of these memoirs of Italian families, of which many are published and
very many exist in manuscript, will acknowledge how they abound in strange
events and romantic stories, and may form some idea of the delight with which
Sir Walter imagined himself on the point of pouncing
upon a treasure after his own heart.
“The eldest son of the Torlonia family is the
possessor of the castle of Bracciano, of which he is duke. Sir Walter was anxious to see it, and cited some
story, I think of the Orsini, who once were lords of the
place. We had permission to visit the castle, and the steward had orders to
furnish us with whatever was requisite. We set off on the 9th of May,
Sir Walter as usual coming with me, and two ladies and
two gentlemen occupying his carriage. One of these last was the son of the
Duke of Sermoneta, Don Michelangelo
Gaetani, a person of the most amiable disposition, gentlemanly
manners, and most remarkable talents. Sir Walter, to whom
he had paid every attention during his stay at Rome, had conceived a high
opinion of him, and, added to his agreeable qualities, he had a wonderful and
accurate knowledge of the history of his own country during the darker ages.
The Gaetani figured also among the most ancient and most
turbulent of the Roman families during the middle ages, and these historical
qualities, added to the amenity of his manners, rendered him naturally a
favourite with Sir Walter.
“We arrived at Bracciano, twenty-five miles from
Rome, rather fatigued with the roughness of an old Roman road, the pavement of
which had generally been half destroyed, and the stones left in disorder on the
spot. He was pleased with the general appearance of that stately pile, which is
finely seated upon a rock, commanding on one side the view of the beautiful
lake with its wooded shores, and on the other overlooking the town of
Bracciano. A carriage could not easily ascend to the court, so that Sir Walter fatigued himself still more, as he was
not content to be assisted, by walking up the steep and somewhat long ascent to
the gateway. He was struck with the sombre appearance of the Gothic towers,
built with the black lava which had once formed the pavement of the Roman road,
and which adds much to its frowning magnificence. In the interior he could not
but be pleased with the grand suite of state apartments, all yet habitable, and
even retaining in some rooms the old furniture and the rich silk hangings of
the Orsini and Odescalchi. These
chambers overlook the lake, and Sir Walter sat in a window
for a long time, during a delightful evening, to enjoy the prospect. A very
large dog, of the breed called Danish, coming to fawn upon him, he told it he
was glad to see it, for it was a proper accompaniment to such a castle, but
that he had a larger dog at home, though may be not so good-natured to
strangers. This notice of the dog seemed to gain the heart of the steward, and
he accompanied Sir Walter in a second tour through the
grand suite of rooms, each, as Sir Walter observed, highly
pleased with the other’s conversation, though as one spoke French and the
other Italian, little of it could be understood. Toward the town, a range of
smaller apartments are more convenient, except during the heats of summer, than
the great rooms for a small party, and in these we dined and found chambers for
sleeping. At night we had tea
and a large fire, and Sir Walter conversed cheerfully. Some of the party went
out to walk round the battlements of the castle by moonlight, and a ghost was
talked of among the usual accompaniments of such situations. He told me that
the best way of making a ghost was to paint it with white on tin, for that in
the dusk, after it had been seen, it could be instantly made to vanish, by
turning the edge almost without thickness towards the spectator.
“On coming down next morning I found that Sir Walter, who rose early, had already made
another tour over part of the Castle with the steward and the dog. After
breakfast we set out on our return to Rome; and all the way his conversation
was more delightful, and more replete with anecdotes than I had ever known it.
He talked a great deal to young Gaetani who sat on the
box, and he invited him to Scotland. He asked me when I thought of revisiting
England, and I replied, that if my health permitted at a moment when I could
afford it, I might perhaps be tempted in the course of the following summer.
‘If the money be the difficulty,’ said the kind-hearted
baronet, ‘don’t let that hinder you; I’ve L.300 at your
service, and I have a perfect right to give it you, and nobody can complain
of me, for I made it myself.’
“He continued to press my acceptance of this sum,
till I requested him to drop the subject, thanking him most gratefully for his
goodness, and much flattered by so convincing a proof of his desire to see me
at Abbotsford.
“I remember particularly a remark, which proved
the kindness of his heart. A lady requested him to do something which was very
disagreeable to him. He was asked whether he had consented. He replied,
‘Yes.’ He was then questioned why he had agreed to do
what was so inconvenient to him.
‘Why,’ said he, ‘as I am now good for nothing else,
I think it as well to be good-natured.’
“I took my leave of my respected friend on the
10th May, 1832. I knew this great genius and estimable man but for a short
period; but it was at an interesting moment, and being both invalids, and
impressed equally with the same conviction that we had no time to lose, we
seemed to become intimate without passing through the usual gradations of
friendship. I remembered just enough of Scottish topography and northern
antiquities in general to be able to ask questions on subjects on which his
knowledge was super-eminent, and to be delighted and edified by his
inexhaustible stock of anecdotes, and his curious and recondite erudition; and
this was perhaps a reason for the preference he seemed to give me in his
morning drives, during which I saw most of him alone. It is a great
satisfaction to have been intimate with so celebrated and so benevolent a
personage; and I hope, that these recollections of his latter days, may not be
without their value, in enabling those who were acquainted with Sir Walter in his most brilliant period, to
compare it with his declining moments during his residence in Italy.”
Though some of the same things recur in the notes with which I am
favoured by Mr Cheney, yet the reader will pardon
this and even be glad to compare the impressions of two such observers. Mr
Cheney says:—
“Delighted as I was to see Sir Walter Scott, I remarked with pain the ravages disease had
made upon him. He was often abstracted, and it was only when warmed with his
subject that the light blue eye shot from
under the pent-house brow with the fire and spirit that recalled the
Author of Waverley.
“The first of May was appointed for a visit to
Frescati; and it gave me great pleasure to have an opportunity of showing
attention to Sir Walter without the
appearance of obtrusiveness.
“The Villa Muti, which belonged to the late
Cardinal of York, has, since his
death, fallen into the hands of several proprietors; it yet retains, however,
some relics of its former owner. There is a portrait of Charles I., a bust of the Cardinal, and another
of the Chevalier de St George. But,
above all, a picture of the fête
given on the promotion of the Cardinal in the Piazza de S. S. Apostoli (where
the palace in which the Stuarts resided still bears the name of the Palazzo del
Pretendente) occupied Sir Walter’s attention. In
this picture he discovered, or fancied he did so, the portraits of several of
the distinguished followers of the exiled family. One he pointed out as
resembling a picture he had seen of Cameron of Lochiel,
whom he described as a dark, hard-featured man. He spoke with admiration of his
devoted loyalty to the Stuarts. I also showed him an ivory head of
Charles I., which had served as the top of
Cardinal York’s walking stick. He did not fail
to look at it with a lively interest.
“He admired the house, the position of which is of
surpassing beauty, commanding an extensive view over the Campagna of Rome; but
he deplored the fate of his favourite princes, observing that this was a poor
substitute for all the splendid palaces to which they were heirs in England and
Scotland. The place where we were suggested the topic of conversation. He was
walking, he told me, over the field of Preston, and musing on the unlooked-for
event of that day, when he was suddenly startled by the sound of the
minute-guns pro-claiming the death of George IV. Lost in the thoughts of ephemeral glory
suggested by the scene, he had forgotten, in the momentary success of his
favourite hero, his subsequent misfortunes and defeat. The solemn sound, he
added, admonished him of the futility of all earthly triumphs; and reminded him
that the whole race of the Stuarts had passed away, and was now followed to the
grave by the first of the rival house of Brunswick who had reigned in the line
of legitimate succession.
“During this visit Sir
Walter was in excellent spirits; at dinner he talked and
laughed, and Miss Scott assured me she
had not seen him so gay since he left England. He put salt into his soup before
tasting it, smiling as he did so. One of the company said, that a friend of his
used to declare that he should eat salt with a limb of
Lot’s wife. Sir Walter
laughed, observing that he was of Mrs
Siddons’ mind, who, when dining with the Provost of
Edinburgh, and being asked by her host if the beef were too salt, replied, in
her emphatic tones of deep tragedy, which Sir Walter
mimicked very comically, ‘Beef cannot be too salt for me, my lord.’
“Sir Walter,
though he spoke no foreign language with facility, read Spanish as well as
Italian. He expressed the most unbounded admiration for Cervantes, and said that the ‘novelas’ of that
author had first inspired him with the ambition of excelling in fiction, and
that, until disabled by illness, he had been a constant reader of them. He
added, that he had formerly made it a practice to read through the ‘Orlando’ of Boiardo, and the ‘Orlando’ of Ariosto, once every year.
“Of Dante he
knew little, confessing he found him too obscure and difficult. I was sitting
next him at dinner, at Lady Coventry’s, when this conversation
took place. He added, with a smile, ‘it is mortifying that
Dante seemed to think nobody worth being sent to
hell but his own Italians, whereas other people had every bit as great
rogues in their families, whose misdeeds were suffered to pass with
impunity.’ I said that he, of all men, had least right to make
this complaint, as his own ancestor, Michael
Scott, was consigned to a very tremendous punishment in the
twentieth canto of the Inferno.
His attention was roused, and I quoted the passage— ‘Quell’ altro, che nei fianchi & cosi
poco,Michele Scotto fu,
che veramenteDelle magiche frode seppe il gioco.’ He seemed pleased, and alluded to the subject more than once in the course
of the evening.
“One evening when I was with him, a person called
to petition him in favour of the sufferers from the recent earthquake at
Foligno. He instantly gave his name to the list with a very handsome
subscription. This was by no means the only occasion on which I observed him
ready and eager to answer the calls of charity.
“I accompanied Sir
Walter and Miss Scott one
morning to the Protestant burial-ground. The road to this spot runs by the side
of the Tyber, at the foot of Mount Aventine, and in our drive we passed several
of the most interesting monuments of ancient Rome. The house of the
Tribune Rienzi, and the temple of Vesta, arrested his
attention. This little circular temple, he said, struck him more than many of
the finer ruins. Infirmity had checked his curiosity. ‘I walk with
pain,’ he said, ‘and what we see whilst suffering makes
little impression on us; it is for this reason that much of what I saw at
Naples, and which I should have en-joyed ten years
ago, I have already forgotten.’ The Protestant burying-ground
lies near the Porta S. Paolo, at the foot of the noble pyramid of
Caius Cestius. Miss Scott was
anxious to see the grave of her friend, Lady Charlotte
Stopford. Sir Walter was unable to walk,
and while my brother attended
Miss Scott to the spot, I remained in the carriage
with him. ‘I regret,’ he said, ‘that I cannot go.
It would have been a satisfaction to me to have seen the place where they
have laid her. She is the child of a Buccleuch; he, you know, is my chief, and all that comes
from that house is dear to me.’ He looked on the ground and
sighed, and for a moment there was a silence between us.
“We spoke of politics, and of the reform in
Parliament, which at that time was pending. I asked his opinion of it; he said
he was no enemy to reform—‘If the machine does not work well, it must be
mended—but it should be by the best workmen ye have.’
“He regretted not having been at Holland House as
he passed through London. ‘Lord
Holland,’ he said, ‘is the most agreeable
man I ever knew; in criticism, in poetry, he beats those whose whole study
they have been. No man in England has a more thorough knowledge of English
authors, and he expresses himself so well, that his language illustrates
and adorns his thoughts, as light streaming through coloured glass
heightens the brilliancy of the objects it falls upon.’
“On the 4th of May he accepted a dinner at our
house, and it gave my brother and myself
unfeigned satisfaction to have again the pleasure of entertaining him. We
collected a party to meet him, and amongst others I invited Don Luigi
Santa Croce, one of his most ardent admirers, who had long
desired an introduction. He is a man of much ability, and has played his part
in the political changes of his country. When I presented him to Sir
Walter, he bade me tell him, for he speaks no English, how long
and how earnestly he had desired to see him, though he had hardly dared to hope
it. ‘Tell him,’ he added, with warmth, ‘that in
disappointment, in sorrow, and in sickness, his works have been my chief
comfort; and while living amongst his imaginary personages, I have
succeeded for a moment in forgetting the vexations of blighted hopes, and
have found relief in public and private distress.’ The
Marchesa Loughi, the beautiful sister of Don
Michele Gaetani, whom I also presented to him this evening,
begged me to thank him, in her name, for some of the most agreeable moments of
her life. ‘She had had,’ she said, ‘though young,
her share of sorrows, and in his works she had found not only amusement,
but lessons of patience and resignation, which she hoped had not been lost
upon her.’ To all these flattering compliments, as well as to the
thousand others that were daily showered upon him, Sir
Walter replied with unfeigned humility, expressing himself
pleased and obliged by the good opinion entertained of him, and delighting his
admirers with the good-humour and urbanity with which he received them.
Don Luigi talked of the plots of some of the novels,
and earnestly remonstrated against the fate of Clara
Mowbray, in St
Ronan’s Well. ‘I am much obliged to the gentleman for
the interest he takes in her,’ said Sir
Walter, ‘but I could not save her, poor thing—it is
against the rules—she had the bee in her bonnet.’ Don
Luigi still insisted. Sir Walter replied,
‘No; but of all the murders that I have committed in that way, and
few men have been guilty of more, there is none that went so much to my
heart as the poor Bride of Lammermoor;
but it could not be helped—it is all true.’
“Sir Walter
always showed much curiosity about the Constable Bourbon. I said that a suit of
armour belonging to him was preserved in the Vatican. He eagerly asked after
the form and construction, and enquired if he wore it on the day of the capture
of Rome. That event had greatly struck his imagination. He told me he had
always had an idea of weaving it into the story of a romance, and of
introducing the traitor Constable as an actor. Cæsar Borgia was also a character whose vices and whole
career appeared to him singularly romantic. Having heard him say this, I begged
Don Michele Gaetani, whose ancestors had been
dispossessed of their rich fiefs by that ambitious upstart, to show
Sir Walter a sword, now in the possession of his
family, which had once belonged to Borgia. The blade,
which is very long and broad, is richly ornamented, and the arms of the
Borgias are inlaid upon it, bearing the favourite
motto of that tremendous personage. ‘Aut Cæsar, aut
nihil.’ Sir Walter examined it with
attention, commenting on the character of Borgia, and
congratulating Don Michele on the possession of a relic
doubly interesting in his hands.
“I continued a constant visiter at his house
whilst he remained in Rome, and I also occasionally dined in his company, and
took every opportunity of conversing with him. I observed with extreme
pleasure, that he accepted willingly from me those trifling attentions which
his infirmities required, and which all would have been delighted to offer. I
found him always willing to converse on any topic. He spoke of his own works
and of himself without reserve; never, however, introducing the subject nor
dwelling upon it. His conversation had neither affectation nor restraint, and
he was totally free from the morbid egotism of some men of genius. What
surprised me most, and in one too who had so long been the object of universal
admiration, was the unaf-fected
humility with which he spoke of his own merits, and the sort of surprise with
which he surveyed his own success. That this was a real feeling none could
doubt. The natural simplicity of his manner must have convinced the most
incredulous. He was courteous and obliging to all, and towards women there was
a dignified simplicity in his manner that was singularly pleasing. He would not
allow even his infirmities to exempt him from the little courtesies of society.
He always endeavoured to rise to address those who approached him, and once
when my brother and myself accompanied him in his drive, it was not without
difficulty that we could prevail on him not to seat himself with his back to
the horses.
“I asked him if he meant to be presented at the
Vatican, as I knew that his arrival had been spoken of, and that the Pope had
expressed an interest about him. He said he respected the Pope as the most
ancient sovereign in Europe, and should have great pleasure in paying his
respects to him, did his state of health permit it. We talked of the ceremonies
of the Church. He had been much struck with the benediction from the balcony of
St Peter’s. I advised him to wait to see the procession of the Corpus
Domini, and to hear the Pope ‘Saying the high, high mass, All on St Peter’s day.’ He smiled, and said those things were more poetical in description than in
reality, and that it was all the better for him not to have seen it before he
wrote about it—that any attempt to make such scenes more exact injured the
effect without conveying a clearer image to the mind of the reader—as the
Utopian scenes and manners of Mrs
Radcliffe’s Novels captivated the imagination more than
the most laboured descriptions, or the greatest historical accuracy.
“The morning after our arrival at Bracciano, when
I left my room, I found Sir Walter already
dressed, and seated in the deep recess of a window which commands an extensive
view over the lake and surrounding country. He speculated on the lives of the
turbulent lords of this ancient fortress, and listened with interest to such
details as I could give him of their history. He drew a striking picture of the
contrast between the calm and placid scene before us, and the hurry, din, and
tumult of other days.
“Insensibly we strayed into more modern times. I
never saw him more animated and agreeable. He was exactly what I could imagine
him to have been in his best moments. Indeed I have several times heard him
complain that his disease sometimes confused and bewildered his senses, while
at others he was left with little remains of illness, except a consciousness of
his state of infirmity. He talked of his Northern journey, of Manzoni, for whom he expressed a great
admiration, of Lord Byron, and lastly of
himself. Of Lord Byron he spoke with admiration and
regard, calling him always ‘poor
Byron.’ He considered him, he said, the only
poet we have had since Dryden, of
transcendent talents, and possessing more amiable qualities than the world in
general gave him credit for.
“In reply to my question if he had never seriously
thought of complying with the advice so often given him to write a tragedy, he
answered ‘Often, but the difficulty deterred me—my turn was not
dramatic.’ Some of the mottoes, I urged, prefixed to the chapters
of his novels, and subscribed ‘old play,’ were eminently in the
taste of the old dramatists, and seemed to ensure success. ‘Nothing so
easy,’ he replied, ‘when you are full of an author, as
to write a few lines in his taste and style; the difficulty is to keep it
up—besides,’ he added,
‘the greatest success would be but a spiritless imitation, or, at
best, what the Italians call a centone from Shakspeare. No author has ever had so much cause to be
grateful to the public as I have. All I have written has been received with
indulgence.’
“He said he was the more grateful for the
flattering reception he had met with in Italy, as he had not always treated the
Catholic religion with respect. I observed, that though he had exposed the
hypocrites of all sects, no religion had any cause to complain of him, as he
had rendered them all interesting by turns. Jews, Catholics, and Puritans had
all their saints and martyrs in his works. He was much pleased with this.
“He spoke of Goethe with regret; he had been in correspondence with him
before his death, and had purposed visiting him at Weimar in returning to
England, I told him I had been to see Goëthe the year
before, and that I had found him well, and though very old, in the perfect
possession of all his faculties. ‘Of all his faculties!’ he
replied; ‘it is much better to die than to survive them, and better
still to die than live in the apprehension of it; but the worst of
all,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘would have been to have
survived their partial loss, and yet to be conscious of his
state.’—He did not seem to be, however, a great admirer of some of
Goethe’s works. Much of his popularity, he
observed, was owing to pieces which, in his latter moments, he might have
wished recalled. He spoke with much feeling. I answered that he must derive great consolation in the reflection that his own
popularity was owing to no such cause. He remained silent for a moment, with
his eyes fixed on the ground; when he raised them, as he shook me by the hand,
I perceived the light blue eye sparkled with unusual moisture. He added,
‘I am drawing near to the close of my
career; I am fast shuffling off the stage. I have been perhaps the most
voluminous author of the day; and it is a comfort to
me to think that I have tried to unsettle no man’s faith, to corrupt
no man’s principle, and that I have written nothing which, on my
death-bed, I should wish blotted.’ I made no reply; and while we
were yet silent, Don Michele Gaetani joined us, and we
walked through the vast hall into the court of the castle, where our friends
were expecting us.
“After breakfast, Sir
Walter returned to Rome. The following day he purposed setting
out on his northern journey. It was Friday. I was anxious that he should
prolong his stay in Rome; and reminding him of his superstition, I told him he
ought not to set out on the unlucky day. He answered, laughing,
‘Superstition is very picturesque, and I make it at times stand me
in great stead; but I never allow it to interfere with interest or
convenience.’
“As I helped him down the steep court to his
carriage, he said, as he stepped with pain and difficulty, ‘This is a
sore change with me. Time was when I would hunt and shoot with the best of
them, and thought it but a poor day’s sport when I was not on foot
from ten to twelve hours; but we must be patient.’
“I handed him into his carriage; and in taking
leave of me, he pressed me, with eager hospitality, to visit him at Abbotsford.
The door closed upon him, and I stood for some moments watching the carriage
till it was out of sight, as it wound through the portal of the Castle of
Bracciano.
“Next day, Friday, May 11, Sir Walter left Rome.
“During his stay there he had received every mark
of attention and respect from the Italians, who in not crowding to visit him were deterred only by their
delicacy and their dread of intruding on an invalid. The use of villas,
libraries, and museums was pressed upon him. This enthusiasm was by no means
confined to the higher orders. His fame, and even his works, are familiar to
all classes—the stalls are filled with translations of his novels, in the
cheapest forms; and some of the most popular plays and operas have been founded
upon them. Some time after he left Italy, when I was travelling in the
mountains of Tuscany, it has more than once occurred to me to be stopped in
little villages, hardly accessible to carriages, by an eager admirer of
Sir Walter, to enquire after the health
of my illustrious countryman.”
The last jotting of Sir
Walter’s Diary—perhaps the last specimen of his handwriting—records
his starting from Naples on the 16th of April. After the 11th of May the story can hardly
be told too briefly.
The irritation of impatience, which had for a moment been suspended by
the aspect and society of Rome, returned the moment he found himself on the road, and
seemed to increase hourly. His companions could with difficulty prevail on him to see even
the Falls of Terni, or the Church of Santa Croce at Florence. On the 17th, a cold and
dreary day, they passed the Apennines, and dined on the top of the mountains. The snow and
the pines recalled Scotland, and he expressed pleasure at the sight of them. That night
they reached Bologna, but he would see none of the interesting objects there—and next day,
hurrying in like manner through Ferrara, he proceeded as far as Monselice. On the 19th he
arrived at Venice; and he remained there till the 23d; but showed no
curiosity about any thing except the Bridge of Sighs and the adjoining dungeons—down into
which he would scramble, though the exertion was exceedingly painful to him. On the other
historical features of that place—one so sure in other days to have inexhaustible
attractions for him—he would not even look; and it was the same with all that he came
within reach of—even with the fondly anticipated chapel at Inspruck—as they proceeded
through the Tyrol, and so onwards, by Munich, Ulm, and Heidelberg, to Frankfort. Here (June
5) he entered a bookseller’s shop; and the people seeing an English party, brought
out among the first things a lithographed print of Abbotsford. He said, “I know
that already, sir,” and hastened back to the inn without being recognised.
Though in some parts of the journey they had very severe weather, he repeatedly wished to
travel all the night as well as all the day; and the symptoms of an approaching fit were so
obvious, that he was more than once bled, ere they reached Mayence, by the hand of his
affectionate domestic.
At this town they embarked, on the 8th June in the Rhine steam-boat;
and while they descended the famous river through its most picturesque region, he seemed to
enjoy, though he said nothing, the perhaps unrivalled scenery it presented to him. His eye
was fixed on the successive crags and castles, and ruined monasteries, each of which had
been celebrated in some German ballad familiar to his ear, and all of them blended in the
immortal panorama of Childe Harold. But so
soon as he resumed his carriage at Cologne, and nothing but flat shores, and here and there
a grove of poplars and a village spire were offered to the vision, the weight of misery
sunk down again upon him. It was near Nimeguen, on the evening of the 9th, that he
sustained an-other serious attack of apoplexy,
combined with paralysis. Nicolson’s lancet
restored, after the lapse of some minutes, the signs of animation; but this was the
crowning blow. Next day he insisted on resuming his journey, and on the 11th was lifted
from the carriage into a steam-boat at Rotterdam.
He reached London about six o’clock on the evening of Wednesday
the 13th of June. Owing to the unexpected rapidity of the journey, his eldest daughter had had no notice when to expect him; and
fearful of finding her either out of town, or unprepared to receive him and his attendants
under her roof, Charles Scott drove to the St
James’s hotel in Jermyn Street, and established his quarters there before he set out
in quest of his sister and myself. When we reached the hotel, he recognised us with many
marks of tenderness, but signified that he was totally exhausted; so no attempt was made to
remove him further, and he was put to bed immediately. Dr
Ferguson saw him the same night, and next day Sir Henry Halford and Dr Holland saw
him also; and during the next three weeks the two former visited him daily, while
Ferguson was scarcely absent from his pillow. The Major was soon on the spot. To his children, all
assembled once more about him, he repeatedly gave his blessing in a very solemn manner, as
if expecting immediate death, but he was never in a condition for conversation, and sunk
either into sleep or delirious stupor upon the slightest effort.
Mrs Thomas Scott came to town as soon as she heard
of his arrival, and remained to help us. She was more than once recognised and thanked.
Mr Cadell too arrived from Edinburgh, to render
any assistance in his power. I think Sir Walter saw no
other of his friends except Mr John Richardson, and
him only once. As usual, he woke up at the sound of a familiar voice, and made an attempt to put forth his hand, but it dropped powerless, and
he said, with a smile, “Excuse my hand.” Richardson
made a struggle to suppress his emotion, and, after a moment, got out something about
Abbotsford and the woods, which he had happened to see shortly before. The eye brightened,
and he said, “How does Kirklands get on?” Mr
Richardson had lately purchased the estate so called on the Teviot, and
Sir Walter had left him busied with plans of building. His friend
told him that his new house was begun, and that the Marquis of
Lothian had very kindly lent him one of his own, meantime, in its vicinity.
“Ay, Lord Lothian is a good man,” said
Sir Walter; “he is a man from whom one may receive a
favour, and that’s saying a good deal for any man in these days.” The
stupor then sank back upon him, and Richardson never heard his voice
again. This state of things continued till the beginning of July.
During these melancholy weeks great interest and sympathy were
manifested. Allan Cunningham mentions that, walking
home late one night, he found several working-men standing together at the corner of Jermyn
Street, and one of them asked him, as if there was but one deathbed in London, “Do
you know, sir, if this is the street where he is lying?” The enquiries both
at the hotel and at my house were incessant; and I think there was hardly a member of the
royal family who did not send every day. The newspapers teemed with paragraphs about
Sir Walter; and one of these, it appears, threw out
a suggestion that his travels had exhausted his pecuniary resources, and that if he were
capable of reflection at all, cares of that sort might probably harass his pillow. This
paragraph came from a very ill-informed, but, I daresay, a well-meaning quarter. It caught
the attention of some members of the then Government; and, in consequence, I received a
private communication, to the effect that, if
the case were as stated, Sir Walter’s family had only to say
what sum would relieve him from embarrassment, and it would be immediately advanced by the
Treasury. The then Paymaster of the Forces, Lord John
Russell, had the delicacy to convey this message through a lady with whose
friendship he knew us to be honoured. We expressed our grateful sense of his politeness,
and of the liberality of the Government, and I now beg leave to do so once more; but his
Lordship was of course informed that Sir Walter Scott was not situated
as the journalist had represented.
Dr Ferguson’s memorandum on Jermyn Street will
be acceptable to the reader. He says:—
“When I saw Sir Walter he
was lying in the second floor back-room of the St James’s Hotel, in Jermyn
Street, in a state of stupor, from which, however, he could be roused for a moment by
being addressed, and then he recognised those about him, but immediately relapsed. I
think I never saw any thing more magnificent than the symmetry of his colossal bust, as
he lay on the pillow with his chest and neck exposed. During the time he was in Jermyn
Street he was calm but never collected, and in general either in absolute stupor or in
a waking dream. He never seemed to know where he was, but imagined himself to be still
in the steam-boat. The rattling of carriages, and the noises of the street sometimes
disturbed this illusion, and then he fancied himself at the polling booth of Jedburgh,
where he had been insulted and stoned.
“During the whole of this period of apparent helplessness,
the great features of his character could not be mistaken. He always exhibited great
self-possession, and acted his part with wonderful power when-ever visited, though he relapsed the next moment into the stupor from which strange
voices had roused him. A gentleman stumbled over a chair in his dark room;—he
immediately started up, and though unconscious that it was a friend, expressed as much
concern and feeling as if he had never been labouring under the irritability of
disease. It was impossible even for those who most constantly saw and waited on him in
his then deplorable condition, to relax from the habitual deference which he had always
inspired. He expressed his will as determinedly as ever, and enforced it with the same
apt and good-natured irony as he was wont to use.
“At length his constant yearning to return to Abbotsford
induced his physicians to consent to his removal, and the moment this was notified to
him it seemed to infuse new vigour into his frame. It was on a calm, clear afternoon of
the 7th July, that every preparation was made for his embarkation on board the
steam-boat. He was placed on a chair by his faithful servant Nicolson, half-dressed, and loosely wrapt in a quilted
dressing-gown. He requested Lockhart and myself
to wheel him towards the light of the open window, and we both remarked the vigorous
lustre of his eye. He sat there silently gazing on space for more than half an hour,
apparently wholly occupied with his own thoughts, and having no distinct perception of
where he was or how he came there. He suffered himself to be lifted into his carriage,
which was surrounded by a crowd, among whom were many gentlemen on horseback, who had
loitered about to gaze on the scene.
“His children were deeply affected, and Mrs Lockhart trembled from head to foot and wept
bitterly. Thus surrounded by those nearest to him, he alone was unconscious of the
cause or the depth of their grief, and while yet alive seemed to be carried to his
grave.”
On this his last journey Sir Walter
was attended by his two daughters, Mr Cadell, and
myself—and also by Dr James Watson, who (it being impossible for
Dr Ferguson to leave town at that moment) kindly
undertook to see him safe at Abbotsford. We embarked in the James
Watt steam-boat, the master of which (Captain John
Jamieson), as well as the agent of the proprietors, made every arrangement in
their power for the convenience of the invalid. The Captain gave up for Sir
Walter’s use his own private cabin, which was a separate erection, a
sort of cottage, on the deck; and he seemed unconscious, after laid in bed there, that any
new removal had occurred. On arriving at Newhaven, late on the 9th, we found careful
preparations made for his landing by the manager of the Shipping Company (Mr
Hamilton); and Sir Walter, prostrate in his carriage,
was slung on shore, and conveyed from thence to Douglas’s hotel, in St Andrew’s
Square, in the same complete apparent unconsciousness. Mrs Douglas had
in former days been the Duke of Buccleuch’s
housekeeper at Bowhill, and she and her husband had also made the most suitable provision.
At a very early hour on the morning of Wednesday the 11th, we again placed him in his
carriage, and he lay in the same torpid state during the first two stages on the road to
Tweedside. But as we descended the vale of the Gala he began to gaze about him, and by
degrees it was obvious that he was recognising the features of that familiar landscape.
Presently he murmured a name or two—“Gala Water, surely—Buckholm—Torwoodlee.”
As we rounded the hill at Ladhope, and the outline of the Eildons burst on him, he became
greatly excited, and when turning himself on the couch his eye caught at length his own
towers, at the distance of a mile, he sprang up with a cry of delight. The river being in
flood we had to go round a few miles by Melrose bridge, and
during the time this occupied, his woods and house being within prospect, it required
occasionally both Dr Watson’s strength and mine, in addition to
Nicolson’s, to keep him in the carriage.
After passing the bridge the road for a couple of miles loses sight of Abbotsford, and he
relapsed into his stupor; but on gaining the bank immediately above it, his excitement
became again ungovernable.
Mr Laidlaw was waiting at the porch, and assisted us
in lifting him into the dining-room, where his bed had been prepared. He sat bewildered for
a few moments, and then resting his eye on Laidlaw, said,
“Ha! Willie Laidlaw! O man, how often have I thought of
you!” By this time his dogs had assembled about his chair—they began to fawn
upon him and lick his hands, and he alternately sobbed and smiled over them, until sleep
oppressed him.
Dr Watson having consulted on all things with Mr Clarkson and his father, resigned the patient to them, and returned to London. None of them
could have any hope, but that of soothing irritation. Recovery was no longer to be thought
of: but there might be Euthanasia.
And yet something like a ray of hope did break in upon us next
morning. Sir Walter awoke perfectly conscious where he
was, and expressed an ardent wish to be carried out into his garden. We procured a Bath
chair from Huntly-Burn, and Laidlaw and I wheeled
him out before his door, and up and down for some time on the turf, and among the rose-beds
then in full bloom. The grandchildren admired the new vehicle, and would be helping in
their way to push it about. He sat in silence, smiling placidly on them and the dogs their
companions, and now and then admiring the house, the screen of the garden, and the flowers
and trees. By and by he con-versed a
little, very composedly, with us—said he was happy to be at home—that he felt better than
he had ever done since he left it, and would perhaps disappoint the doctors after all.
He then desired to be wheeled through his rooms, and we moved him
leisurely for an hour or more up and down the hall and the great library: “I have
seen much,” he kept saying, “but nothing like my ain house—give me
one turn more!” He was gentle as an infant, and allowed himself to be put to
bed again, the moment we told him that we thought he had had enough for one day.
Next morning he was still better: after again enjoying the Bath chair
for perhaps a couple of hours out of doors, he desired to be drawn into the library, and
placed by the central window, that he might look down upon the Tweed. Here he expressed a
wish that I should read to him, and when I asked from what book, he said—“Need you
ask? There is but one.” I chose the 14th chapter of St
John’s Gospel; he listened with mild devotion, and said when I had done,
“Well, this is a great comfort—I have followed you distinctly, and I feel as
if I were yet to be myself again.” In this placid frame he was again put to
bed, and had many hours of soft slumber.
On the third day Mr Laidlaw and
I again wheeled him about the small piece of lawn and shrubbery in front of the house for
some time, and the weather being delightful, and all the richness of summer around him, he
seemed to taste fully the balmy influences of nature. The sun getting very strong, we
halted the chair in a shady corner, just within the verge of his verdant arcade around the
court-wall; and breathing the coolness of the spot, he said, “read me some amusing
thing—read me a bit of Crabbe.” I
brought out the first volume of his old favourite that I could lay hand on, and turned to
what I remembered as one of his most favourite passages in
it—the description of the arrival of the Players in the Borough. He listened with great
interest, and also, as I soon perceived, with great curiosity. Every now and then he
exclaimed, “Capital—excellent—very good—Crabbe has lost
nothing” and we were too well satisfied that he considered himself as hearing
a new production, when, chuckling over one couplet, he said, “Better and
better—but how will poor Terry endure these
cuts?” I went on with the poet’s terrible sarcasms upon the theatrical
life, and he listened eagerly, muttering, “Honest
Dan!” “Dan won’t like
this.” At length I reached those lines, “Sad happy race! soon raised and soon depressed, Your days all passed in jeopardy and jest: Poor without prudence, with afflictions vain, Not warned by misery, nor enriched by gain.”
“Shut the book,” said Sir
Walter,—“I can’t stand more of this—it will touch Terry to the very quick.”
On the morning of Sunday the 15th he was again taken out into the
little pleasaunce, and got as far as his favourite terrace-walk
between the garden and the river, from which he seemed to survey the valley and the hills
with much satisfaction. On re-entering the house, he desired me to read to him from the New
Testament, and after that he again called for a little of Crabbe; but whatever I selected from that poet seemed to be listened to as
if it made part of some new volume published while he was in Italy. He attended with this
sense of novelty even to the tale of Phoebe
Dawson, which not many months before he could have repeated every line of, and
which I chose for one of these readings, because, as is known to every one, it had formed
the last solace of Mr Fox’s deathbed. On the
contrary his recollection of whatever I read from the Bible appeared to be lively; and in
the afternoon when we made his grandson,
a child of six years, repeat some of Dr Watts’
hymns by his chair, he seemed also to remember them perfectly. That evening he heard the
Church service, and when I was about to close the book, said “why do you omit the
visitation for the sick?”—which I added accordingly.
On Monday he remained in bed and seemed extremely feeble; but after
breakfast on Tuesday the 17th he appeared revived somewhat, and was again wheeled about on
the turf. Presently he fell asleep in his chair, and after dozing for perhaps half an hour,
started awake, and shaking the plaids we had put about him from off his shoulders, said,
“This is sad idleness. I shall forget what I have been thinking of, if I
don’t set it down now. Take me into my own room, and fetch the keys of my
desk.” He repeated this so earnestly that we could not refuse; his daughters
went into his study, opened his writing-desk, and laid paper and pens in the usual order,
and I then moved him through the hall and into the spot where he had always been accustomed
to work. When the chair was placed at the desk, and he found himself in the old position,
he smiled and thanked us, and said, ‘Now give me my pen and leave me for a little
to myself.’ Sophia put the pen into
his hand, and he endeavoured to close his fingers upon it, but they refused their office—it
dropped on the paper. He sank back among his pillows, silent tears rolling down his cheeks;
but composing himself by and by, motioned to me to wheel him out of doors again. Laidlaw met us at the porch, and took his turn of the
chair. Sir Walter, after a little while, again dropt
into slumber. When he was awaking, Laidlaw said to me
“Sir Walter has had a little repose.”
“No, Willie,” said he “no repose for
Sir Walter but in the grave.” The tears again rushed
from his eyes. “Friends,” said he, “don’t let me expose myself—get me to bed—that’s the only
place.”*
With this scene ended our glimpse of daylight. Sir Walter never, I think, left his room afterwards, and hardly his bed,
except for an hour or two in the middle of the day; and after another week he was unable
even for this. During a few days he was in a state of painful irritation—and I saw realized
all that he had himself prefigured in his description of the meeting between Crystal Croftangry and his paralytic friend. Dr Ross came out from Edinburgh, bringing with him his
wife, one of the dearest nieces of the Clerk’s Table.
Sir Walter with some difficulty recognised the Doctor—but, on
hearing Mrs Ross’s voice, exclaimed at once
“Isn’t that Kate
Hume?” These kind friends remained for two or three days
with us. Clarkson’s lancet was pronounced
necessary, and the relief it afforded was, I am happy to say, very effectual.
After this he declined daily, but still there was great strength to be
wasted, and the process was long. He seemed, however, to suffer no bodily pain, and his
mind, though hopelessly obscured, appeared, when there was any symptom of consciousness, to
be dwelling, with rare exceptions, on serious and solemn things; the accent of the voice
grave, sometimes awful, but never querulous, and very seldom indicative of any angry or
resentful thoughts. Now and then he imagined himself to be administering justice as
Sheriff; and once or twice he seemed to be ordering Tom
Purdie about trees. A few times also, I am sorry to say, we could perceive
that his fancy was at Jedburgh—and Burk Sir
* As this is the last time I name Mr Laidlaw, I may as well mention, that this most excellent and
amiable man is now factor on the estate of Sir Charles
Lockhart Ross, Bart, of Balnagowan, in Ross-shire.
Walter escaped him in a melancholy tone. But
commonly whatever we could follow him in was a fragment of the Bible (especially the
Prophecies of Isaiah, and the Book of Job)—or some petition in
the litany—or a verse of some psalm (in the old Scotch metrical version) or of some of the
magnificent hymns of the Romish ritual, in which he had always delighted, but which
probably hung on his memory now in connexion with the church services he had attended while
in Italy. We very often heard distinctly the cadence of the Dies
Iræ; and I think the very last stanza that we could
make out, was the first of a still greater favourite.— “Stabat Mater dolorosa, Juxta crucem lachrymosa, Dum pendebat Filius.”
All this time he continued to recognise his daughters, Laidlaw, and myself, whenever we spoke to him—and received
every attention with a most touching thankfulness. Mr
Clarkson, too, was always saluted with the old courtesy, though the cloud
opened but a moment for him to do so. Most truly might it be said that the gentleman
survived the genius.
After two or three weeks had passed in this way, I was obliged to
leave Sir Walter for a single day, and go into Edinburgh
to transact business, on his account, with Mr Henry Cockburn (now
Lord Cockburn), then Solicitor-General for
Scotland. The Scotch Reform Bill threw a great burden of new duties and responsibilities
upon the Sheriffs; and Scott’s Sheriff-substitute, the Laird of Raeburn, not having been regularly educated for
the law, found himself incompetent to encounter these novelties, especially as regarded the
registration of voters, and other details connected with the recent enlargement of the
electoral franchise. Under such circumstances, as no one but the Sheriff could appoint another Substitute,* it became necessary for Sir
Walter’s family to communicate the state he was in in a formal manner
to the Law Officers of the Crown; and the Lord Advocate (Mr
Jeffrey), in consequence, introduced and carried through Parliament a short
bill (2 and 3 William IV.cap 101), authorizing the Government to appoint anew Sheriff of
Selkirkshire, “during the incapacity or non-resignation of Sir Walter
Scott.” It was on this bill that the Solicitor-General had
expressed a wish to converse with me; but there was little to be said, as the temporary
nature of the new appointment gave no occasion for any pecuniary question; and, if that had
been otherwise, the circumstances of the case would have rendered Sir
Walter’s family entirely indifferent upon such a subject. There can be
no doubt, that if he had recovered in so far as to be capable of executing a resignation,
the Government would have considered it just to reward thirty-two years’ faithful
services by a retired allowance equivalent to his salary—and as little that the Government
would have had sincere satisfaction in settling that matter in the shape most acceptable to
himself. And perhaps (though I feel that it is scarcely worth while) I may as well here
express my regret that a statement highly unjust and injurious should have found its way
into the pages of some of Sir Walter’s preceding biographers.
These writers have thought fit to insinuate that there was a want of courtesy and respect
on the part of the Lord Advocate, and the other official persons connected with this
arrangement. On the contrary, nothing could be more handsome and delicate than the whole of
their conduct in it; Mr Cockburn could not have entered into the case
with greater feeling and tenderness, had it concerned a brother of his own; and when
Mr Jeffrey introduced his bill in the House of Commons, he used
language so graceful and touching, that
both Sir Robert Peel and Mr Croker went across the House to thank him cordially for it.
Perceiving, towards the close of August, that the end was near, and
thinking it very likely that Abbotsford might soon undergo many changes, and myself, at all
events, never see it again, I felt a desire to have some image preserved of the interior
apartments as occupied by their founder, and invited from Edinburgh for that purpose
Sir Walter’s dear friend, William Allan whose presence, I well knew, would even
under the circumstances of that time be nowise troublesome to any of the family, but the
contrary in all respects. Mr Allan willingly complied, and executed a
series of beautiful drawings, which may probably be engraved hereafter. He also shared our
watchings, and witnessed all but the last moments. Sir Walter’s
cousins, the ladies of Ashestiel, came down frequently, for a day or two at a time; and did
whatever sisterly affections could prompt, both for the sufferer and his daughters.
Miss Barbara Scott (daughter of his uncle Thomas), and Mrs Scott of Harden
did the like.
As I was dressing on the morning of Monday the 17th of September,
Nicolson came into my room, and told me that his
master had awoke in a state of composure and consciousness, and wished to see me
immediately. I found him entirely himself, though in the last extreme of feebleness. His
eye was clear and calm—every trace of the wild fire of delirium extinguished.
“Lockhart,” he said
“I may have but a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good man—be
virtuous—be religious—be a good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you
come to lie here.”—He paused, and I said, “Shall I send for
Sophia and Anne?”—“No,” said he,
“don’t disturb them. Poor souls! I know they were
up all night—God bless you all.”—With this he sunk into a very tranquil
sleep, and, indeed, he scarcely afterwards gave any sign of consciousness, except for an
instant on the arrival of his sons. They, on learning that the scene was about to close,
obtained anew leave of absence from their posts, and both reached Abbotsford on the 19th.
About half-past one p.m., on the 21st of September, Sir Walter breathed his last, in the presence of all his
children. It was a beautiful day—so warm that every window was wide open—and so perfectly
still, that the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the
Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around the bed, and his eldest
son kissed and closed his eyes.
No sculptor ever modelled a more majestic image of repose:— Κειτο μέγας
μεγαλωστί,
λελασμένος
ίπποσυνάων
Almost every newspaper that announced this event in Scotland, and many
in England, had the signs of mourning usual on the demise of a king. With hardly an
exception, the voice was that of universal, unmixed grief and veneration.
It was considered due to Sir
Walter’s physicians, and to the public, that the nature of his malady
should be distinctly ascertained. The result was, that there appeared the traces of a very
slight mollification in one part of the substance of the brain.*
* “Abbotsford, Sept. 23, 1832. This
forenoon, in presence of Dr Adolphus Ross,
from Edinburgh, and my father, I proceeded
to examine the head of Sir Walter Scott.
“On removing the upper part of the cranium, the vessels on
the surface of the brain appeared slightly turgid, and on cutting into the brain
the cineritious substance was found of a darker hue than natural, and a greater
than usual quantity of serum in the ventricles. Excepting these appearances, the
right hemisphere seemed
His funeral was conducted in an unostentatious manner, but the
attendance was very great. Few of his old friends then in Scotland were absent, and many,
both friends and strangers, came from a great distance. His old domestics and foresters
made it their petition that no hireling hand might assist in carrying his remains. They
themselves bore the coffin to the hearse, and from the hearse to the grave. The
pall-bearers were his sons, his son-in-law, and his little grandson; his cousins,
Charles Scott of Nesbitt, James Scott of
Jedburgh (sons to his uncle Thomas),
William Scott of Raeburn, Robert Rutherford, Clerk to the Signet, Colonel (now Sir James) Russell of Ashestiel,
William Keith (brother to Sir
Alexander Keith of Ravelstone), and the chief of his family, Hugh
Scott of Harden, now Lord Polwarth.
When the company were assembled, according to the usual Scotch
fashion, prayers were offered up by the very Reverend Dr
Baird, Principal of the University of Edinburgh, and by the Reverend Dr David Dickson, minister of St
Cuthbert’s, who both expatiated in a very striking manner on the virtuous example of
the deceased.
The court-yard and all the precincts of Abbotsford were crowded with
uncovered spectators as the procession was arranged; and as it advanced through Darnick and
Melrose, and the adjacent villages, the whole population appeared at their doors in like
manner, almost all in black. The train of carriages extended, I understand,
in a healthy state, but in the left, in the choroid plexus, three distinct,
though small hydatids were found; and on reaching the corpus striatum it was
discovered diseased—a considerable portion of it being in a state of
ramolissement. The blood-vessels were in a healthy state. The brain was not
large and the cranium thinner than it is usually found to be.
J. B.
Clarkson.” over more than a mile—the Yeomanry followed in great numbers on
horseback—and it was late in the day ere we reached Dryburgh. Some accident, it was
observed, had caused the hearse to halt for several minutes on the summit of the hill at
Bemerside—exactly where a prospect of remarkable richness opens, and where Sir Walter had always been accustomed to rein up his horse.
The day was dark and lowering, and the wind high.
The wide enclosure at the abbey of Dryburgh was thronged with old and
young; and when the coffin was taken from the hearse, and again laid on the shoulders of
the afflicted serving-men, one deep sob burst from a thousand lips. Mr Archdeacon Williams read the Burial Service of the
Church of England; and thus, about half-past five o’clock in the evening of Wednesday
the 26th September, 1832, the remains of Sir Walter
Scott were laid by the side of his wife in the sepulchre of his
ancestors—“in sure and certain hope of the resurrection
to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall
change our vile body that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the
mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.”
CHAPTER XII. CONCLUSION.
We read in Solomon, “The heart
knoweth his own bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his
joy;” and a wise poet of our own time thus beautifully expands the saying: “Why should we faint and fear to live alone, Since all alone, so Heaven has willed, we die, Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own, Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh?”* Such considerations have always induced me to regard with small respect, any attempt
to delineate fully and exactly any human being’s character. I distrust, even in very
humble cases, our capacity for judging our neighbour fairly; and I cannot but pity the
presumption that must swell in the heart and brain of any ordinary brother of the race,
when he dares to pronounce, ex Cathedrâ, on
the whole structure and complexion of a great mind, from the comparatively narrow and
scanty materials which can by possibility have been placed before him. Nor is the
difficulty to my view lessened,—perhaps it is rather increased, when the great man is a
great artist. It is true that many of the feelings common to our nature can only be
expressed adequately, and that some of the finest of them can only be express-
* See
Keble’sChristian Year, p. 261.
ed at all, in the language of art; and more especially in the
language of poetry. But it is equally true, that high and sane art never attempts to
express that for which the artist does not claim and expect general sympathy; and however
much of what we had thought to be our own secrets he ventures to give shape to, it becomes,
I can never help believing, modest understandings to rest convinced that there remained a
world of deeper mysteries to which the dignity of genius would refuse any utterance.
I have therefore endeavoured to lay before the reader those parts of
Sir Walter’s character to which we have
access, as they were indicated in his sayings and doings through the long series of his
years making use, whenever it was possible, of his own letters and diaries rather than of
any other materials; but refrained from obtruding almost any thing of comment. It was my
wish to let the character develope itself: and conscious that I have wilfully withheld
nothing that might assist the mature reader to arrive at just conclusions, I am by no means
desirous of drawing out a detailed statement of my own. I am not going to “peep and
botanize” upon his grave. But a few general observations will be forgiven, perhaps
expected.
I believe that if the history of any one family in upper or middle life
could be faithfully written, it might be as generally interesting, and as permanently
useful, as that of any nation, however great and renowned. But literature has never
produced any worthy book of this class, and probably it never will. The only lineages in
which we can pretend to read personal character far back, with any distinctness, are those
of kings and princes, and a few noble houses of the first eminence; and it hardly needed
Swift’s biting satire to satisfy the
student of the past, that the very highest pedigrees are as uncertain as the very lowest. We flatter the reigning monarch, or
his haughtier satellite, by tracing in their lineaments the mighty conqueror or profound
legislator of a former century. But call up the dead, according to the Dean’s
incantation, and we might have the real ancestor in some chamberlain, confessor, or
musician.
Scott himself delighted, perhaps above all other books,
in such as approximate to the character of good family histories,—as for example, Godscroft’sHouse of Douglas and Angus, and the Memorie of the Somervilles,—which last is, as far as I
know, the best of its class in any language; and his reprint of the trivial “Memorials of the Haliburtons,” to
whose dust he is now gathered, was but one of a thousand indications of his anxiety to
realize his own ancestry to his imagination. No testamentary deed, instrument of contract,
or entry in a parish register seemed valueless to him, if it bore in any manner, however
obscure or distant, on the personal history of any of his ascertainable predecessors. The
chronicles of the race furnished the fire-side talk to which he listened in infancy at
Smailholm, and his first rhymes were those of Satchels. His physical infirmity was reconciled to him, even dignified
perhaps, by tracing it back to forefathers who acquired famousness in their own way, in
spite of such disadvantages. These studies led by easy and inevitable links to those of the
history of his province generally, and then of his native kingdom. The lamp of his zeal
burnt on brighter and brighter amidst the dust of parchments; his love and pride vivified
whatever he hung over in these dim records, and patient antiquarianism, long brooding and
meditating, became gloriously transmuted into the winged spirit of national poetry.
Whatever he had in himself he would fain have made out a hereditary claim for. He often spoke both seriously and sportively on the subject.
He had assembled about him in his “own great parlour,” as he called
it—the room in which he died—all the pictures of his ancestors that he could come by; and
in his most genial evening mood he seemed never to weary of perusing them. The Cavalier of
Killiecrankie, brave, faithful, learned, and romantic old “Beardie,” a determined but melancholy countenance,
was never surveyed without a repetition of the solitary Latin rhyme of his Vow. He had, of
course, no portraits of the elder heroes of Harden to lecture upon; but a skilful hand had
supplied the same wall with a fanciful delineation of the rough wooing of
“Meikle-mouthed Meg;” and the only historical picture, properly so called, that
he ever bespoke was to be taken (for it was never executed) from the Raid o’ the
Redswire, when “The Laird’s Wat, that worthy man, Brought in that surname weel beseen; And The Rutherfords with great renown, Convoyed the town o’ Jedbrugh out.” The ardent but sagacious “goodman of
Sandyknowe” hangs by the side of his father, “Bearded
Wat;” and often, when moralizing in his latter day over the doubtful
condition of his ultimate fortunes, Sir Walter would
point to “Honest Robin,” and say, “Blood will
out:—my building and planting was but his buying the hunter before he stocked his
sheep-walk over again.” “And yet,” I once heard him say,
glancing to the likeness of his own staid calculating father, “It was a wonder,
too for I have a thread of the attorney in me.” And so, no doubt, he had; for
the “elements” were mingled in him curiously, as well as “gently.”
An imagination such as his, concentrating its daydreams on things of
this order, soon shaped out a world of its own to which it would fain accommodate the real
one. The love of his country became indeed a passion; no knight ever tilted for his
mistress, more willingly than he would have bled and died, to preserve even the airiest
surviving nothing of her antique pretensions for Scotland. But the Scotland of his
affections had the clan Scott for her kernel. Next and almost equal to
the throne was Buccleuch. Fancy rebuilt and most prodigally
embellished the whole system of the social existence of the middle ages, in which the
clansman (whereever there were clans) acknowledged practically no sovereign, but his chief.
The author of “the Lay” would
rather have seen his heir carry the Banner of Bellenden gallantly at a foot-ball match on
Carterhaugh, than he would have heard that the boy had attained the highest honours of the
first university in Europe. His original pride was to be an acknowledged member of one of
the “honourable families” whose progenitors had been celebrated by Satchels for following this banner in blind obedience to
the patriarchal leader; his first and last worldly ambition was to be himself the founder
of a distinct branch; he desired to plant a lasting root, and dreamt not of personal fame,
but of long distant generations rejoicing in the name of “Scott
of Abbotsford.” By this idea all his reveries—all his aspirations—all his plans and
efforts, were overshadowed and controlled. The great object and end only rose into clearer
daylight, and swelled into more substantial dimensions, as public applause strengthened his
confidence in his own powers and faculties; and when he had reached the summit of universal
and unrivalled honour, he clung to his first love with the faith of a Paladin. It is easy
enough to smile at all this; many will not understand it, and some
who do may pity it. But it was at least a different thing from the modern vulgar ambition
of amassing a fortune and investing it in land. The lordliest vision of acres would have
had little charm for him, unless they were situated on Ettrick or Yarrow, or in —“Pleasant Tiviedale Fast by the river Tweed”— somewhere within the primeval territory of “the Rough Clan.”
His worldly ambition was thus grafted on that ardent feeling for blood
and kindred, which was the great redeeming element in the social life of what we call the
middle ages; and—though no man estimated the solid advantages of modern existence more
justly than he did when, restraining his fancy, he exercised his graver faculties on the
comparison—it was the natural effect of the studies he devoted himself to and rose by, to
indispose him for dwelling on the sober results of judgment and reason in all such matters.
What a striking passage that is in one of his letters now printed, where he declines to
write a biography of Queen Mary, “because
his opinion was contrary to his feeling!” But he confesses the same of his
Jacobitism; and yet how eagerly does he seem to have grasped at the shadow, however false
and futile, under which he chose to see the means of reconciling his Jacobitism with
loyalty to the reigning monarch who befriended him? We find him, over and over again,
alluding to George IV. as acquiring a title,
de jure on the death of the poor
Cardinal of York! Yet who could have known
better, that whatever rights the exiled males of the Stuart line ever possessed, must have
remained entire with their female descendants?
The same resolution to give imagination her scope, and always in favour
of antiquity, is the ruling principle and charm of all his best writings; and he indulged
and embodied it so largely in his buildings at
Abbotsford, that to have curtailed the exposition of his fond untiring enthusiasm on that
score, would have been like omitting the Prince in a cast of Hamlet. So also with all the details of his hospitable
existence, when he had fairly completed his “romance in stone and
lime;”—every outline copied from some old baronial edifice in Scotland—every
‘roof and window blazoned with clan bearings, or the lion rampant gules, or the heads
of the ancient Stuart kings. He wished to revive the interior life of the castles he had
emulated—their wide open joyous reception of all comers, but especially of kinsmen, allies,
and neighbours—ballads and pibrochs to enliven flowing bowls and quaighs—jolly hunting fields in which yeoman and gentleman might
ride side by side—and mirthful dances, where no Sir Piercy
Shafton need blush to lead out the miller’s daughter. In the brightest
meridian of his genius and fame, this was his beau
ideal. All the rest, however agreeable and flattering, was but
“leather and prunella” to this. There was much kindness surely in such
ambition:—in spite of the apparent contradiction in terms, was there not really much
humility about it?
To this ambition we owe the gigantic monuments of Scott’s genius; and to the kindly feelings out of which
his ambition grew, grew also his fatal connexion with merchandise. The
Ballantynes were his old schoolfellows;—and the reader has had
means to judge whether, when once embarked in their concerns, he ever could have got out of
them again, until rude calamity, at one blow, broke the meshes of his entanglement. I need
not recur to that sad and complicated chapter. Nor, perhaps, need I offer any more
speculations, by way of explaining, and reconciling to his previous and subsequent history
and demeanour, either the mystery in which he had chosen to wrap his
commercial connexions from his most intimate friends, or the portentous carelessness with
which he abandoned these matters to the direction of negligent and inefficient colleagues.
And yet I ought, I rather think, to have suggested to certain classes of my readers, at a
much earlier stage, that no man can be called either to the English or the Scottish Bar,
who is known to have any direct interest in any commercial undertaking of any sort; and
that the body of feelings or prejudices in which this regulation originated—(for though
there might be sound reason for it besides, such undoubtedly was the main source)—prevailed
in Scotland in Sir Walter’s youth, to an extent of which the
present generation may not easily form an adequate notion. In the minds of the
“northern noblesse de la robe,” as
they are styled in Redgauntlet, such
feelings had wide and potent authority; insomuch that I can understand perfectly how
Scott, even after he ceased to practise at the bar, being still a
Sheriff, and a member of the Faculty of Advocates, should have shrunk very sensitively from
the idea of having his alliance with a trading firm revealed among his comrades of the
gown. And, moreover, the practice of mystery is, perhaps of all practices, the one most
likely to grow into a habit; secret breeds secret; and I ascribe, after all, the long
silence about Waverley to the matured
influence of this habit, at least as much as to any of the motives which the author has
thought fit to assign in his late confessions.
But was there not, in fact, something that lay far deeper than a mere
professional prejudice?
Among many things in Scott’s
Diaries, which cast strong light upon the previous part of his history, the reluctance
which he confesses himself to have always felt
towards the resumption of the proper appointed task, however willing, nay eager, to labour
sedulously on something else, can hardly have escaped the reader’s notice. We know
how gallantly he combated it in the general—but these precious Diaries themselves are not
the least pregnant proofs of the extent to which it very often prevailed—for an hour or two
at least, if not for the day.
I think this, if we were to go no farther, might help us somewhat in
understanding the neglect about superintending the Messrs
Ballantynes’ ledgers and bill books; and, consequently, the rashness
about buying land, building, and the like.
But to what are we to ascribe the origin of this reluctance towards
accurate and minute investigation and transaction of business of various sorts, so
important to himself, in a man possessing such extraordinary sagacity, and exercising it
every day with such admirable regularity and precision, in the various capacities of the
head of a family—the friend—the magistrate—the most distinguished citizen of
Edinburgh—beyond all comparison the most distinguished member of society that figured in
his time in his native kingdom?
The whole system of conceptions and aspirations, of which his early
active life was the exponent, resolves itself into a romantic idealization of Scottish
aristocracy. He desired to secure for his descendants (for himself he had very soon
acquired something infinitely more flattering to self-love and vanity) a decent and
honourable middle station—in a scheme of life so constituted originally, and which his
fancy pictured as capable of being so revived, as to admit of the kindliest personal
contact between (almost) the peasant at the plough, and the magnate with revenues rivalling
the monarch’s. It was the patriarchal—the clan system that he
thought of; one that never prevailed even in Scotland, within the historical period that is
to say, except in the Highlands, and in his own dear Borderland. This system knew nothing
of commerce—as little certainly of literature beyond the raid-ballad of the wandering
harper,— “High placed in hall—a welcome guest.” His filial reverence of imagination shrunk from marring the antique, if barbarous,
simplicity. I suspect that at the highest elevation of his literary renown—when princes
bowed to his name, and nations thrilled at it—he would have considered losing all that at a
change of the wind as nothing, compared to parting with his place as the Cadet of Harden
and Clansman of Buccleuch, who had, no matter by what means, reached
such a position, that when a notion arose of embodying ‘a
Buccleuch legion,’ not a Scott in the
Forest would have thought it otherwise than natural for Abbotsford
to be one of the field-officers. I can, therefore, understand that he may have, from the
very first, exerted the dispensing power of imagination very liberally, in virtually
absolving himself from dwelling on the wood of which his ladder was to be constructed.
Enough was said in a preceding chapter of the obvious fact, that the author of such a
series of romances as his must have, to all intents and purposes, lived more than half his
life in worlds purely fantastic. In one of the last obscure and faltering pages of his
Diary he says, that if any one asked him how much of his thought was occupied by the novel
then in hand, the answer would have been, that in one sense it never occupied him except
when the amanuensis sat before him, but that in another it was never five minutes out of
his head. Such, I have no doubt, the case had always been. But I must be excused from doubting whether, when the substantive
fiction actually in process of manufacture was absent from his mind, the space was often or
voluntarily occupied (no positive external duty interposing) upon the real practical
worldly position and business of the Clerk of Session, of the Sheriff,—least of all of the
printer or the bookseller.
The sum is, if I read him aright, that he was always willing, in his
ruminative moods, to veil, if possible, from his own optics the kind of machinery by which
alone he had found the means of attaining his darling objects. Having acquired a perhaps
unparalleled power over the direction of scarcely paralleled faculties, he chose to exert
his power in this manner. On no other supposition can I find his history intelligible;—I
mean, of course, the great obvious and marking facts of his history; for I hope I have
sufficiently disclaimed all pretension to a thorough-going analysis. He appears to have
studiously escaped from whatever could have interfered with his own enjoyment—to have
revelled in the fair results, and waved the wand of obliterating magic over all besides;
and persisted so long, that (like the sorcerer he celebrates) he became the dupe of his own
delusions.
It is thus that (not forgetting the subsidiary influence of
professional Edinburgh prejudices) I am inclined, on the whole, to account for his
initiation in the practice of mystery—a thing, at first sight, so alien from the frank,
open, generous nature of a man, than whom none ever had or deserved to have more real
friends.
The indulgence cost him very dear. It ruined his fortunes—but I can
have no doubt that it did worse than that. I cannot suppose that a nature like his was
fettered and shut up in this way without suffering very severely from the “cold
obstruction.” There must have been a continual
“insurrection” in his “state of man;” and, above all, I doubt not
that what gave him the bitterest pain in the hour of his calamities, was the feeling of
compunction with which he then found himself obliged to stand before those with whom he
had, through life, cultivated brotherlike friendship, convicted of having kept his heart
closed to them on what they could not but suppose to have been the chief subjects of his
thought and anxiety, in times when they withheld nothing from him. These, perhaps, were the
“written troubles” that had been cut deepest into his brain. I think they were,
and believe it the more, because it was never acknowledged.
If he had erred in the primary indulgence out of which this sprang, he
at least made noble atonement.
During the most energetic years of manhood he laboured with one prize
in view; and he had just grasped it, as he fancied, securely, when all at once the vision
was dissipated: he found himself naked and desolate as Job. How he
nerved himself against the storm—how he felt and how he resisted it—how soberly, steadily,
and resolvedly he contemplated the possibility of yet, by redoubled exertions, in so far
retrieving his fortunes, as that no man should lose by having trusted those for whom he had
been pledged—how well he kept his vow, and what price it cost him to do so, all this the
reader, I doubt not, appreciates fully. It seems to me that strength of character was never
put to a severer test than when, for labours of love, such as his had hitherto almost
always been—the pleasant exertion of genius for the attainment of ends that owed all their
dignity and beauty to a poetical fancy—there came to be substituted the iron pertinacity of
daily and nightly toil in the discharge of a duty, which there was nothing but the sense of
chivalrous honour to make stringent.
It is the fond indulgence of gay fancy in all the previous story that
gives its true value and dignity to the voluntary agony of the sequel, when, indeed, he
appears —“Sapiens, sibique imperiosus;Quem neque pauperies, neque mors, neque vincula terrent;Responsare cupidinibus, contemnere honores,Fortis; et in seipso totus, teres atque rotundus,Externi ne quid valeat per læve morari;In quem manca ruit semper Fortuna.” The attentive reader will not deny that every syllable of this proud ideal has been justified to the letter. But though he boasted of stoicism, his
heroism was something far better than the stoic’s; for it was not founded on a
haughty trampling down of all delicate and tender thoughts and feelings. He lays his heart
bare in his Diary; and we there read in characters that will never die, how the sternest
resolution of a philosopher may be at once quickened and adorned by the gentlest impulses
of that spirit of love, which alone makes poetry the angel of life. This is the moment in
which posterity will desire to fix his portraiture. It is then, truly, that “He sits, ’mongst men, like a descended god; He hath a kind of honour sets him off More than a mortal seeming.” But the noble exhibition was not a fleeting one; it was not that a robust mind
elevated itself by a fierce effort for the crisis of an hour. The martyrdom lasted with his
days; and if it shortened them, let us remember his own immortal words,— “Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife, To all the sensual world proclaim— One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name.”
For the rest, I presume, it will be allowed that no human character,
which we have the opportunity of studying with equal minuteness, had
fewer faults mixed up in its texture. The grand virtue of fortitude, the basis of all
others, was never displayed in higher perfection than in him; and it was, as perhaps true
courage always is, combined with an equally admirable spirit of kindness and humanity. His
pride, if we must call it so, undebased by the least tincture of mere vanity, was
intertwined with a most exquisite charity, and was not inconsistent with true humility. If
ever the principle of kindliness was incarnated in a mere man, it was in him; and real
kindliness can never be but modest. In the social relations of life, where men are most
effectually tried, no spot can be detected in him. He was a patient, dutiful, reverent son;
a generous, compassionate, tender husband; an honest, careful, and most affectionate
father. Never was a more virtuous or a happier fireside than his. The influence of his
mighty genius shadowed it imperceptibly; his calm good sense, and his angelic sweetness of
heart and temper, regulated and softened a strict but paternal discipline. His children, as
they grew up, understood by degrees the high privilege of their birth; but the profoundest
sense of his greatness never disturbed their confidence in his goodness. The buoyant play
of his spirits made him sit young among the young; parent and son seemed to live in
brotherhood together; and the chivalry of his imagination threw a certain air of courteous
gallantry into his relations with his daughters, which gave a very peculiar grace to the
fondness of their intercourse. Though there could not be a gentler mother than Lady Scott, on those delicate occasions most interesting to
young ladies, they always made their father the first confidant.
To the depth of his fraternal affection I ascribe, mainly, the only
example of departure from the decorum of polished manners which a keen observer of him
through life ever witnessed in him, or my own
experience and information afford any trace of. Injuries done to himself no man forgave
more easily—more willingly repaid by benefits. But it was not so when he first and
unexpectedly saw before him the noble person who, as he
considered things at the time, had availed himself of his parliamentary privilege to cast a
shade of insult upon the character of his next and best-loved brother.
But perhaps the most touching evidence of the lasting tenderness of
his early domestic feelings was exhibited to his executors, when they opened his
repositories in search of his testament, the evening after his burial. On lifting up his
desk, we found arranged in careful order a series of little objects, which had obviously
been so placed there that his eye might rest on them every morning before he began his
tasks, These were the old-fashioned boxes that had garnished his mother’s toilette, when he, a sickly child, slept in
her dressing-room—the silver taper-stand which the young advocate had bought for her with
his first five-guinea fee—a row of small packets inscribed with her hand, and containing
the hair of those of her offspring that had died before her—his father’s snuff-box and etui-case—and more things of the like sort,
recalling “The old familiar faces.” The same feeling was apparent in all the arrangement of his private apartment.
Pictures of his father and mother were the only ones in his dressing-room. The clumsy
antique cabinets that stood there, things of a very different class from the beautiful and
costly productions in the public rooms below, had all belonged to the furniture of
George’s Square. Even his father’s rickety washing-stand, with all its cramped
appurtenances, though exceedingly unlike what a man of his very scrupulous habits would
have selected in these days, kept its ground. The whole place seemed
fitted up like a little chapel of the lares.
Such a son and parent could hardly fail in any of the other social
relations. No man was a firmer or more indefatigable friend. I know not that he ever lost
one; and a few, with whom, during the energetic middle stage of life, from political
differences or other accidental circumstances, he lived less familiarly, had all gathered
round him, and renewed the full warmth of early affection in his later days. There was
enough to dignify the connexion in their eyes; but nothing to chill it on either side. The
imagination that so completely mastered him when he chose to give her the rein, was kept
under most determined control when any of the positive obligations of active life came into
question. A high and pure sense of duty presided over whatever he had to do as a citizen
and a magistrate; and as a landlord, he considered his estate as an extension of his
hearth.
Of his political creed, the many who hold a different one will of
course say that it was the natural fruit of his poetical devotion to the mere prejudice of
antiquity; and I am quite willing to allow that this must have had a great share in the
matter—nd that he himself would have been as little ashamed of the word prejudice as of the word antiquity. Whenever Scotland
could be considered as standing separate on any question from the rest of the empire, he
was not only apt, but eager to embrace the opportunity of again rehoisting, as it were, the
old signal of national independence; and I sincerely believe that no circumstance in his
literary career gave him so much personal satisfaction as the success of Malachi Malagrowther’s Epistles. He confesses,
however, in his Diary, that he was aware how much it became him to summon calm reason to battle imaginative prepossessions on this
score; and I am not aware that they ever led him into any serious practical error. He
delighted in letting his fancy run wild about ghosts and witches and horoscopes—but I
venture to say, had he sat on the judicial bench a hundred years before he was born, no man
would have been more certain to give juries sound direction in estimating the pretended
evidence of supernatural occurrences of any sort; and I believe, in like manner, that had
any Anti-English faction, civil or religious, sprung up in his own time in Scotland, he
would have done more than any other living man could have hoped to do, for putting it down.
He was on all practical points a steady, conscientious Tory of the school of William Pitt; who, though an anti-revolutionist, was
certainly any thing but an anti-reformer. He rejected the innovations, in the midst of
which he died, as a revival, under alarmingly authoritative auspices, of the doctrines
which had endangered Britain in his youth, and desolated Europe throughout his prime of
manhood. May the gloomy anticipations which hung over his closing years be unfulfilled! But
should they be so, let posterity remember that the warnings, and the resistance of his and
other powerful intellects, were probably in that event the appointed means for averting a
catastrophe in which, had England fallen, the whole civilized world must have been
involved.
Sir Walter received a strictly religious education under
the eye of parents, whose virtuous conduct was in unison with the principles they desired
to instil into their children. From the great doctrines thus recommended he appears never
to have swerved; but he must be numbered among the many who have incurred considerable risk
of doing so, in consequence of the rigidity with which Presbyterian
heads of families, in Scotland, were used to enforce compliance with various relics of the
puritanical observance. He took up, early in life, a repugnance to the mode in which public
worship is conducted in the Scottish Establishment; and adhered to the sister Church, whose
system of government and discipline he believed to be the fairest copy of the primitive
polity, and whose litanies and collects he reverenced as having been transmitted to us from
the age immediately succeeding that of the Apostles. The few passages in his Diaries, in
which he alludes to his own religious feelings and practices, show clearly the sober,
serene, and elevated frame of mind in which he habitually contemplated man’s
relations with his Maker; the modesty with which he shrunk from indulging either the
presumption of reason, or the extravagance of imagination, in the province of Faith; his
humble reliance on the wisdom and mercy of God; and his firm belief that we are placed in
this state of existence, not to speculate about another, but to prepare ourselves for it by
active exertion of our intellectual faculties, and the constant cultivation of kindness and
benevolence towards our fellow-men.
But his moral, political, and religious character has sufficiently
impressed itself upon the great body of his writings. He is indeed one of the few great
authors of modern Europe who stand acquitted of having written a line that ought to have
embittered the bed of death. His works teach the practical lessons of morality and
Christianity in the most captivating form—unobtrusively and unaffectedly. And I think it is
not refining too far to say, that in these works, as well as his whole demeanour as a man
of letters, we may trace the happy effects—(enough has already been said as to some less
fortunate and agreeable ones)—of his having written
throughout with a view to something beyond the acquisition of personal fame. Perhaps no
great poet ever made his literature so completely ancillary to the objects and purposes of
practical life. However his imagination might expatiate, it was sure to rest over his home.
The sanctities of domestic love and social duty were never forgotten; and the same
circumstance that most ennobles all his triumphs, affords also the best apology for his
errors.
I have interwoven in these pages some record of whatever struck myself
as pre-eminently acute in the critical essays bestowed on Scott’s works by his contemporaries; but I have little doubt that the
best of these essays will in due time be collected together, and accompany, in extenso, a general edition of his writings. From
the first, his possession of a strong and brilliant genius was acknowledged; and the extent
of it seems to have been guessed by others, before he was able to persuade himself that he
had claim to a place among the masters of literature. The ease with which he did every
thing deceived him; and he probably would never have done himself any measure of justice,
even as compared with those of his own time, but for the fact, which no modesty could long
veil, that whatever he did became immediately “the
fashion”—the object of all but universal imitation. Even as to this, he was
often ready to surmise that the priority of his own movement might have been matter of
accident; and certainly nothing can mark the humility of his mind more strikingly than the
style in which he discusses, in his Diary, the pretensions of the pigmies that swarmed and
fretted in the deep wake of his mighty vessel. To the really original writers among his
contemporaries he did full justice; no differences of theory or taste had the least power
to disturb his candour. In some cases he rejoiced in feeling and
expressing a cordial admiration, where he was met by, at best, a cold and grudging
reciprocity: and in others, his generosity was proof against not only the private belief,
but the public exposure of envious malignity. Lord Byron
might well say that Scott could be jealous of no one; but the
immeasurable distance did not prevent many from being jealous of him.
His propensity to think too well of other men’s works sprung, of
course, mainly from his modesty and good-nature; but the brilliancy of his imagination
greatly sustained the delusion. It unconsciously gave precision to the trembling outline,
and life and warmth to the vapid colours before him. This was especially the case as to
romances and novels; the scenes and characters in them were invested with so much of the
“light within,” that he would close with regret volumes which,
perhaps, no other person, except the diseased glutton of the circulating library, ever
could get half through. Where colder critics saw only a schoolboy’s hollowed turnip
with its inch of tallow, he looked through the dazzling spray of his own fancy, and
sometimes the clumsy toy seems to have swelled almost into “the majesty of buried
Denmark.”
These servile imitators are already forgotten, or will soon be so; but
it is to be hoped that the spirit which breathes through his works may continue to act on
our literature, and consequently on the character and manners of men. The race that grew up
under the influence of that intellect can hardly be expected to appreciate fully their own
obligations to it: and yet if we consider what were the tendencies of the minds and works
that, but for his, must have been unrivalled in the power and opportunity to mould young
ideas, we may picture to ourselves in some measure the magnitude of the debt we owe to a perpetual succession, through thirty years,
of publications unapproached in charm, and all instilling a high and healthy code; a
bracing, invigorating spirit; a contempt of mean passions, whether vindictive or
voluptuous; humane charity, as distinct from moral laxity as from unsympathizing austerity;
sagacity too deep for cynicism, and tenderness never degenerating into sentimentality:
animated throughout in thought, opinion, feeling, and style, by one and the same pure
energetic principle—a pith and savour of manhood; appealing to whatever is good and loyal
in our natures, and rebuking whatever is low and selfish.
Had Sir Walter never taken a direct
part in politics as a writer, the visible bias of his mind on such subjects must have had a
great influence; nay, the mere fact that such a man belonged to a particular side would
have been a very important weight in the balance. His services, direct and indirect,
towards repressing the revolutionary propensities of his age were vast—far beyond the
comprehension of vulgar politicians.
On the whole I have no doubt that, the more the details of his
personal history are revealed and studied, the more powerfully will that be found to
inculcate the same great lessons with his works. Where else shall we be taught better how
prosperity may be extended by beneficence, and adversity confronted by exertion? Where can
we see the “follies of the wise” more strikingly rebuked, and a
character more beautifully purified and exalted in the passage through affliction to death?
I have lingered so long over the details that I have, perhaps, become, even from that
circumstance alone, less qualified than more rapid surveyors may be to seize the effect in
the mass. But who does not feel that there is something very invigorating as well as
elevating in the contemplation? His character seems to belong to some elder and stronger period than ours; and, indeed, I cannot help likening it to the
architectural fabrics of other ages, which he most delighted in, where there is such a
congregation of imagery and tracery, such endless indulgence of whim and fancy, the sublime
blending here with the beautiful, and there contrasted with the grotesque,—half, perhaps,
seen in the clear daylight, and half by rays tinged with the blazoned forms of the
past—that one may be apt to get bewildered among the variety of particular impressions, and
not feel either the unity of the grand design, or the height and solidness of the
structure, until the door has been closed upon the labyrinth of aisles and shrines, and you
survey it from a distance, but still within its shadow.
And yet as, with whatever admiration his friends could not but regard
him constantly when among them, the prevailing feeling was still love and affection, so is
it now, and so must ever it be, as to his memory. It is not the privilege of every reader
to have partaken in the friendship of a great and good man; but
those who have not may be assured, that the sentiment, which the near homely contemplation
of such a being inspires, is a thing entirely by itself, —“Not another comfort like to this Succeeds in unknown fate.”
And now to conclude.—In the year 1832, France and Germany, as well as
Britain, had to mourn over their brightest intellects. Goethe shortly preceded Scott, and
Cuvier followed him: and with these mighty
lights were extinguished many others of no common order—among the rest Crabbe and Mackintosh.
Many of those who had been intimately connected with Scott in various ways soon also followed him. James Ballantyne was already on his deathbed when he heard
of his great friend and patron’s death. The
foreman of the printing-house, a decent and faithful man, who had known all their secrets,
and done his best for their service, both in prosperous and adverse times, by name
M’Corkindale, began to droop and pine, and
died too in a few months. James Hogg, the
Ettrick Shepherd, must also be mentioned. He died on the 21st of November,
1835; but it had been better for his fame had his end been of earlier date, for he did not
follow his best benefactor until he had insulted his dust. Lastly, I observe, as this sheet
is passing through the press: the death of the Rev. George
Thomson—the happy “Dominie Thomson” of the
happy days of Abbotsford. He died at Edinburgh on the 8th of January, 1838.
Miss Anne Scott received at Christmas, 1832, a grant
of L.200 per annum from the privy purse of King William
IV. But her name did not long burden the pension list. Her constitution had
been miserably shattered in the course of her long and painful attendance, first on her
mother’s illness, and then on her father’s; and perhaps reverse of fortune, and
disappointments of various sorts connected with that, had also heavy effect. From the day
of Sir Walter’s death, the strong stimulus of duty
being lost, she too often looked and spoke like one “Taking the measure of an unmade grave.” After a brief interval of disordered health, she contracted a brain fever which
carried her off abruptly. She died in my house in the Regent’s Park on the 25th June,
1833, and her remains are placed in the New Cemetery in the Harrow Road.
The adjoining grave holds those of her nephew John Hugh Lockhart, who died 15th Dec. 1831; and also
those of my wife Sophia, who expired after a long
illness, which she bore with all possible meekness and fortitude, on
the 17th of May, 1837. The clergyman who read the funeral service over her was her
father’s friend, and hers, and mine, the Rev. Henry Hart
Milman, one of the Prebendaries of Westminster; and a little incident which
he happened to observe during the prayers suggested to him some verses, which he
transmitted to me the morning after, and which the reader will not, I believe, consider
altogether misplaced in the last page of these memoirs of her father.
“Stanzas—May 22, 1837. “Over that solemn pageant mute and dark, Where in the grave we laid to rest Heaven’s latest, not least welcome guest, What didst thou on the wing, thou jocund lark! Hovering in unrebuked glee, And carolling above that mournful company? “O thou light-loving and melodious bird, At every sad and solemn fall Of mine own voice, each interval In the soul-elevating prayer, I heard Thy quivering descant full and clear— Discord not inharmonious to the ear! “We laid her there, the
Minstrel’s darling child. Seem’d it then meet that, borne away From the close city’s dubious day, Her dirge should be thy native woodnote wild; Nursed upon nature’s lap, her sleep Should be where birds may sing, and dewy flowerets weep? “Ascendedst thou, air-wandering messenger! Above us slowly lingering yet, To bear our deep, our mute regret; To waft upon thy faithful wing to her The husband’s
fondest last farewell, Love’s final parting pang, the unspoke, the unspeakable? “Or didst thou rather chide with thy blithe voice Our selfish grief that would delay Her passage to a brighter day; Bidding us mourn no longer, but rejoice That it hath heavenward flown like thee, That spirit from this cold world of sin and sorrow free? “I watched thee, lessening, lessening to the sight, Still faint and fainter winnowing The sunshine with thy dwindling wing, A speck, a movement in the ruffled light, Till thou wert melted in the sky, An undistinguished part of the bright infinity. “Meet emblem of that lightsome spirit thou! That still wherever it might come, Shed sunshine o’er that happy home. Her task of kindliness and gladness now Absolved, with the element above Hath mingled, and become pure light, pure joy, pure love.”
There remain, therefore, of Sir
Walter’s race only his two sons, Walter, his successor in the baronetcy, Major in the 15th Regiment of
Hussars—and Charles, a clerk in the office of her
Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; with two children left by their
sister Sophia, a boy and a girl.
Shortly after Sir Walter’s
death, his sons and myself, as his executors, endeavoured to make such arrangements as were
within our power for completing the great object of his own wishes and fatal exertions. We
found the remaining principal sum of the Ballantyne
debt to be about L.54,000. L.22,000 had been insured upon his life; there were some monies
in the hands of the Trustees, and Mr Cadell very
handsomely offered to advance to us the balance, about L.30,000, that we might without
further delay settle with the body of creditors. This was effected
accordingly on the 2d of February, 1833; Mr Cadell accepting as his
only security the right to the profits accruing from Sir
Walter’s copyright property and literary remains, until such time as
this new and consolidated obligation should be discharged. I am afraid, however,
notwithstanding the undiminished sale of his works, especially of his Novels, his executors
can hardly hope to witness that consummation, unless, indeed, it should please the
Legislature to give some extension to the period for which literary property has hitherto
been protected; a bill for which purpose has recently been laid on the table of the House
of Commons by Mr Sergeant Talfourd.
Besides his commercial debt, Sir
Walter left also one of L.10,000, contracted by himself as an individual,
when struggling to support Constable in December,
1825, and secured by mortgage on the lands of Abbotsford. And, lastly, the library and
museum, presented to him in free gift by his creditors in December, 1830, were bequeathed
to his eldest son, with a burden to the extent of L.5000, which sum he designed to be
divided between his younger children, as already explained in an extract from his Diary.
His will provided that the produce of his literary property, in case of its proving
sufficient to wipe out the remaining debt of Messrs
Ballantyne, should then be applied to the extinction of these mortgages; and
thereafter, should this also be accomplished, divided equally among his surviving family.
Various meetings were held soon after his death with a view to the
erection of monuments to his memory, and the records of these meetings, and their results,
are adorned by many of the noblest and most distinguished names both of England and of
Scotland. In London, the Lord Bishop of Exeter,
Sir Robert Peel, and Sir John Malcolm took a prominent part as speakers: in Edinburgh, the Duke of
Buccleuch, the Marquis of Lothian, the
Earl of Dalhousie, the Earl of Roseberry, Lord Jeffrey
(then Lord-Advocate for Scotland), and Professor
Wilson.
In Glasgow the subscription amounted to about L.1200 and a pillar is
now rising in the chief square of that city, which had been previously adorned with statues
of its own most illustrious citizens, Sir John
Moore, and James Watt.
The subscription for a monument at Edinburgh, reached the sum of
L.6000; but the committee have not as yet made their selection from the plans submitted to
them.
The English subscription amounted to somewhere about L.10,000; but a
considerable part of this was embezzled by a young person rashly appointed to the post of
secretary, who carried it with him to America, where he soon afterwards died.
The noblemen and gentlemen who subscribed to this English fund had
adopted a suggestion—(which originated, I believe, with Lord
Francis Egerton and the Honourable John Stuart
Wortley)—that, in place of erecting a cenotaph in Westminster Abbey, or a
statue or pillar elsewhere, the most suitable and respectful tribute that could be paid to
Sir Walter’s memory would be to discharge all
the incumbrances upon Abbotsford, and entail the House, with its library and other articles
of curiosity collected by him, together with the lands which he had planted and
embellished, upon the heirs of his name for ever. The sum produced by the subscription,
however, proved inadequate to the realization of such a scheme; nor has it as yet been
definitely fixed in what manner the actual fund shall be applied.
I understand, however, the most probable arrangement will be, that the
money in the hands of the committee (between £7000 and £8000) shall be employed
to liquidate the debt upon the library and museum, and whatever is
over, towards the mortgage on the lands: which would enable the present Sir Walter Scott to secure, in the shape originally
desired, the permanent preservation at least of the house and its immediate appurtenances,
as a memorial of the tastes and habits of the founder. The poet’s ambition to endow a
family sleeps with him. But I still hope his successors may be, as long as any of his blood
remains, the honoured guardians of that monument. The result of what was at least a
generous and graceful design forsi altro cantera.
The most successful portraitures of Sir Walter
Scott have been mentioned incidentally in the course of these Memoirs. It
has been suggested, since the closing chapter went to press, that a complete list of the
authentic likenesses ought to have been given; but the Editor regrets to say, that this is
not in his power. He has reason to believe that several exist which he has never seen. The
following catalogue, however, includes some not previously spoken of.
I. A very good miniature of Sir
Walter, done at Bath, when he was in the fifth or sixth year of his age, was
given by him to his daughter Sophia, and is now in
my possession—the artist’s name unknown. The child appears with long flowing hair,
the colour a light chestnut—a deep open collar, and scarlet dress. It is nearly a profile;
the outline wonderfully like what it was to the last; the expression of the eyes and mouth
very striking—grave and pensive.
II. The miniature sent by Scott to
Miss Carpenter, shortly before their marriage in
1797 (see vol. I. p. 279), is in the possession of the present Sir Walter. It is not a good work of art, and I know not who executed it.
The hair is slightly powdered.
III. The first oil painting, done for Lady
Scott in 1805, by Saxon, was, in
consequence of repeated applications for the purpose of being engraved, transferred by her
to Messrs Longman & Co., and is now in their
house in Paternoster Row. This is a very fine picture, representing, I have no doubt, most
faithfully, the author of the Lay of the Last
Minstrel. Length, three quarters—dress, black—hair, nut-brown—the favourite
bull-terrier Camp leaning his head on the knee of his master.
The companion portrait of Lady Scott is at Abbotsford.
IV. The first picture by Raeburn was done in 1808 for Constable, and passed, at the sale of his effects, into the hands of the
Duke of Buccleuch. Scott is represented at full length sitting by a ruined wall, with Camp at his feet—Hermitage Castle and the mountains of Liddesdale
in the background. This noble portrait has been repeatedly engraved: it forms the
frontispiece to the first of these volumes. Dress, black—Hessian boots.
V. The second full length by Raeburn (done a year later) is nearly a repetition of the former; but the
painter had some new sittings for it. Two greyhounds (Douglas
and Percy) appear in addition to Camp, and the background gives the valley of the Yarrow, marking the period of
Ashestiel and Marmion. This piece is at
Abbotsford.
VI. A head in oils by Thomas Phillips,
R.A., done in 1818 for Mr
Murray, and now in Albemarle Street. The costume was, I think, unfortunately
selected—a tartan plaid and open collar. This gives a theatrical air to what would
otherwise have been a very graceful representation of Scott in the 47th year of his age. Mr Phillips (for
whom Scott had a warm regard, and who often visited him at Abbotsford)
has caught a true expression not hit upon by any of his brethren: a smile of gentle
enthusiasm. The head has a vivid resemblance to Sir
Walter’s eldest daughter, and also to his grandson, John Hugh Lockhart. A copy of this picture was added by
the late Earl Whitworth to the collection at Knowle.
VII. A head sketched in oil by Geddes—being one of his studies for a picture of the finding of the
Scottish Regalia in 1818—is in the possession of Sir James
Stewart of Allanbank, Baronet. It is nearly a profile—boldly drawn.
VIII. The unrivalled portrait (three-quarters) by Sir Thomas Lawrence, painted for King George IV., in 1820, and now in the Corridor at Windsor Castle. See
vol. IV., p. 360. The engraving, by Robinson, is
masterly.
IX. A head by Sir Henry
Raeburn—the last work of his hand—was done in 1822 for Lord Montagu, and is at Ditton Park: a massive, strong likeness, heavy at
first sight, but which grows into favour upon better acquaintance—the eyes very deep and
fine. This picture has been well engraved in mezzotinto.
X. A small three-quarters, in oil, done at Chiefswood, in August 1824,
by the late Gilbert Stewart New-ton, R. A., and presented by him to Mrs
Lockhart. This pleasing picture gives Sir
Walter in his usual country dress—a green jacket and black neckcloth, with a
leathern belt for carrying the forester’s axe round the shoulders. It is the best
domestic portrait ever done. A copy of it, in Mr
Murray’s possession, was engraved for Finden’s “Illustrations of Byron.”
XI. A half-length, painted by C. R.
Leslie, R. A. in 1824, for Mr Ticknor
of Boston, New England, is now in that gentleman’s possession. I never saw this
picture in its finished state, but the beginning promised well, and I am assured it is
worthy of the artist’s high reputation. It has not been engraved—in this country I
mean—but a reduced copy of it furnished an indifferent print for one of the Annuals.
XII. A small head was painted in 1826 by Mr Knight, a young artist, patronised by Terry. See vol. VI., p. 186. This juvenile production, ill-drawn and feeble
in expression, was engraved for Mr Lodge’s
great work!
XIII. A half-length by Mr Colvin
Smith, of Edinburgh, done in January 1828, for the artist’s uncle,
Lord Gillies. I never admired this picture; but
it pleased many, perhaps better judges. Mr Smith executed no less than
fifteen copies for friends of Sir Walter; among others,
the Lord Bishop of Llandaff, the Lord Chief-Commissioner Adam, and John Hope, Esq., Dean of the Faculty of Advocates.
XIV. A half-length done by Mr John
Graham in 1829, for the Royal Society of Edinburgh, in whose chambers it now
is: Not destitute of merit; but much inferior to that of Miss Anne Scott, by the same hand, in the drawing-room at
Abbotsford.
XV. An excellent half-length portrait, by John Watson Gordon, of Edinburgh, done in March, 1830, for Mr Cadell. See this volume, p. 276. Scott is represented sitting, with both hands resting on his
staff—the stag-hound Bran on his left. The engraving in vol. 33
of the Waverley novels does no
justice to this picture.
XVI. The cabinet picture, with armour and staghounds, done by
Francis Grant, for Lady
Ruthven, in 1831. See this volume, p. 268. This interesting piece has never
been engraved.
XVII. I am sorry to say that I cannot express much approbation of the
representation of Sir Walter, introduced by Sir David Wilkie in his picture of “The Abbotsford Family;” nor indeed are any of the likenesses
in that beautiful piece (1817) at all satisfactory to me, except only that of Sir Adam Ferguson, which is perfect. This is at Huntly
Burn.
XVIII. XIX. XX. Nor can I speak more favourably either of the head of
Scott, in Wilkie’s “Arrival of George IV. at
Holyrood,” (1822) or of that in William
Allan’s picture of “The Ettrick
Shepherd’s House-heating,” (1819.) Allan has
succeeded better in his figure of “The Author of Waverley in his
Study;” this was done shortly before Sir
Walter’s death.
XXI. Mr Edwin Landseer, R.A.,
has recently painted a full-length portrait, with the scenery of the Rhymer’s Glen;
and his familiarity with Scott renders this almost as
valuable as if he had sat for it. This beautiful picture is in the gallery of Mr Wells.
Two or three drawings were done at Naples; but the friends who
requested Sir Walter to sit, when labouring under
paralysis, were surely forgetful of what was due to him and to themselves; and, judging by
the lithographed prints, the results were in every point of view utterly worthless.
I have already (Vol. II., p. 183) given better evidence than my own as
to the inimitable bust done by Sir Francis Chantrey
in 1820, and now in the library at Abbotsford. Previous to Sir
Walter’s death, the niche which this now occupies held a cast of the
monumental effigy of Shakspeare, presented to him by
George Bullock, with an elegant stand,, having
the letters W. S. in large relievo on its front. Anxiety to place the
precious marble in the safest station induced the poet’s son to make the existing
arrangement the day after his father’s funeral. The propriety of the position is
obvious: but in case of misrepresentation hereafter, it is proper to mention that it was
not chosen by Sir Walter for an image of himself.
I am sorry to find that in my account of this work (vol.; IV. p. 362),
I had fallen into sundry mistakes, from adopting, rashly, statements previously printed by
other biographers. I also regret having omitted to mention that Sir Francis sculptured, in 1828, a bust possessing the character of a
second original. This is now, I am rejoiced to say, in the gallery of Sir Robert Peel at Drayton; and the following letter,
besides correcting my other errors, supplies the most authentic history of its execution:
To the Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel, Bart.
Whitehall.
“Belgrave Place, 26th January, 1838. “Dear Sir Robert,
“I have much pleasure in complying with your request to note down such facts as remain on my memory
concerning the bust of Sir Walter Scott
which you have done me the honour to place in your collection at Drayton Manor.
“My admiration of Scott, as a poet and a man, induced me, in the year 1820, to
ask him to sit to me for his bust—the only time I ever recollect having asked a
similar favour from any one. He agreed; and I stipulated that he should
breakfast with me always before his sittings and never come alone, nor bring
more than three friends at once, and that they should all be good talkers. That
he fulfilled the latter condition you may guess, when I tell you, that on one
occasion, he came with Mr Croker,
Mr Heber, and the late Lord Lyttleton. The marble bust produced from
these sittings was moulded; and about forty-five casts were disposed of among
the poet’s most ardent admirers. This was all I had to do with plaster
casts. The Bust was pirated by Italians; and England and Scotland, and even the
Colonies, were supplied with unpermitted and bad casts to the extent of
thousands—in spite of the terror of an act of Parliament.
“I made a copy in marble from this Bust for the
Duke of Wellington; it was sent to
Apsley House in 1827, and it is the only duplicate of my Bust of Sir Walter that I ever executed in marble.
“I now come to your Bust of Scott. In the year 1828 I proposed to the poet to present the
original marble as an Heir-Loom to Abbotsford, on condition that he would allow
me sittings sufficient to finish another marble from the life for my own
studio. To this proposal he acceded; and the Bust was sent to Abbotsford
accordingly, with the following words inscribed on the back:—‘This
Bust of Sir Walter Scott was made in 1820 by Francis Chantrey, and presented by the sculptor to the poet, as a
token of esteem, in 1828.’
“In the months of May and June in the same year,
1828, Sir Walter fulfilled his promise; and
I finished, from his face, the marble bust now at Drayton Manor—a better
sanctuary than my studio—else I had not parted with it. The expression is more
serious than in the two former Busts, and the marks of age more than eight years deeper.
“I have now, I think, stated all that is worthy of
remembering about the Bust, except that there need be no fear of piracy, for it
has never been moulded. I have the honour to be, dear sir, your very sincere
and faithful servant,
F. Chantrey.”
Sir Walter’s good nature induced him to sit, at
various periods of his life, to other sculptors of inferior standing and reputation. I am
not aware, however, that any of their performances but two ever reached the dignity of
marble. The one of these, a very tolerable work, was done by Mr
Joseph about 1822, and is in the gallery of Mr
Burn Callander, at Prestonhall, near Edinburgh. The other was modelled by
Mr Laurence Macdonald in the unhappy winter of
1830. The period of the artist’s observation would alone have been sufficient to
render his efforts fruitless. His Bust may be, in point of execution, good; but he does not
seem to me to have produced what any friend of Sir Walter’s will
recognise as a likeness.
The only statue as yet done, is that by John Greenshields, in freestone. This, considering all the circumstances
(see this volume, p. 167), is certainly a most meritorious work; and I am well pleased to
find that it has its station in Mr Cadell’s
premises in St Andrew’s Square, Edinburgh, under the same roof
with the greater part of the original MSS. of Sir Walter’s Poems
and Romances. The proprietor might adopt the inscription for Bacon’s effigy at St Alban’s, and carve on the pedestal
Sic Sedebat.
APPENDIX.CHRONOLOGICAL LISTOF THE PUBLICATIONS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.
⁂ For Miscellaneous References to
these Works in the preceding Volumes, see the accompanying Index of Proper Names. This
list is by no means presented as a complete one.
1796—(Ætat 23.) Translations from the German of Bürger—William
and Helen, and The Wild Huntsman, &c., Vol. I., pp. 235, 246, 316 1799—(28.) Goetz Von Berlichingen, a Tragedy from the German of
Goethe, 8vo, I. 294—297The House of Aspen, a Tragedy, I. 299, 337. II.
113Ballad of Glenfinlas, I. 303 ———Eve of St John, ib. ———The Grey Brothers, I. 304 ———The Fire King, from the German, I. 304,
316 1802—(31.) Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,
vols. I & II, 8vo, I. 31-2 1803—(Ætat 32.) Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,
vol. III, I. 371, 378 Review of Southey’sAmadis of
Gaul, I. 383 ———Sibbald’s Chronicle of Scottish Poetry, ib. ———Godwin’s Life of Chaucer, ib. ———Ellis’s Ancient English Poetry, ib. ———Life and Works of Chatterton, ib. 1804—(33.) Sir Tristrem, the Metrical Romance of, by Thomas the
Rhymer, I. 415 1805—(34.) The Lay of the Last Minstrel, 4to,
II. 22 36 Review of Todd’s Edition of Spenser, II.
51 ———Godwin’sFleetwood, ib. ———Report concerning Ossian, II. 52 ———Johnes’ Translation of Froissart, ib. ———Colonel Thornton’sSporting
Tour, ib. ———Works on Cookery, ib. Song, The Bard’s Incantation, II.
72 1806—(35.) Review of Herbert’sPoems and
Translations, II. 112 ———Selections of Metrical Romances, ib. ———The Miseries of Human Life, ib.Ballads and Lyrical Pieces, 8vo, ib.Sir Henry Slingsby’s and Captain
Hodgson’s Memoirs, with Notes, 8vo, II. 113 1808—(37.) Marmion, 4to, II. 136—159Life and Works of John Dryden, with
Notes, 18 vols. 8vo, II. 160—169Strutt’sQueenhoo Hall, a Romance,
4 vols. 12mo, II. 171Captain George Carleton’s Memoirs, 8vo, II.
171, 2Sir Robert Cary, Earl of Monmouth’s, Memoirs, 8vo, ib. 1809—(Ætat 38.) Somer’s Collection of Tracts, 13
vols. 4to, (completed in 1812), II. 170, 256 Review of Cromek’sReliques of
Burns, II. 247 ———Southey’sChronicle of the Cid,
ib. ———Sir John Carr’sTour in
Scotland, ib.Sir Ralph Sadler’s Life, Letters, and State
Papers, 3 vols. 4to, II. 255, 6 1810—(39.) English Minstrelsy, 2 vols. 12mo, II. 287The Lady of the Lake, 4to, II. 290—305Miss Seward’sLife and Poetical
Works, 3 vols. post 8vo, II. 328Essay on Scottish Judicature, II, 333—336 1811—(40.) Vision of Don Roderick, 4to, II. 341 351 Imitations—The Inferno of Altisidora—The Poachers—The Resolve, &c. II. 351, 353Secret History of the Court of King James I., 2 vols., 8vo, II. 353 1812—(41.) Rokeby, 4to, III.
33—45 1813—(42.) The Bridal of Triermain, 12mo, III. 45—53 1814—(43.) Account of the Eyrbiggia Saga, III. 114Life and Works of Jonathan Swift,
D.D., 19 vols., 8vo, III. 120Waverley, 3 vols., 12mo, III. 124, 296—306Essay on Chivalry, III. 125 ———The Drama, ib.Memorie of the Sommervilles, 2 vols., 8vo, III.
316Rowlands’ “The letting of humours blood
in the head vaine,” small 4to, ib. 1815—(Ætat 44.) The Lord of the Isles, 4to, III. 295—325Guy Mannering, 3 vols. 12mo, III. 321—333The Field of Waterloo, 8vo, III. 379—386 Song, On lifting up the Banner, &c. III.
391—399 1816 (45.) Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk,
8vo, IV. 1The Antiquary, 3 vols. 12mo, IV. 5—15Edinburgh Annual Register for 1814,
Historical department, IV. 26Tales of my Landlord, First Series, 4
vols, 12mo. The Black Dwarf and Old
Mortality, IV. 30—39 1817—(46.) Harold the Dauntless, 12mo, IV. 40The Sultan of Serendib, IV. 41Kemble’s Farewell Address, IV. 61Edinburgh Annual Register, 1815,
Historical department, IV. 80 Introduction to “The Border Antiquities, 2 vols.4to,”
IV. 80 Song, “The Sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill,” IV. 83Rob Roy, 3 vols. 12mo, IV. 106—109 1818—(47.) Account of the Scottish Regalia, IV. 115 Review of Kirkton’s Church History, IV.
121 ———Shelley’sFrankenstein, IV. 121 Ballad, “The Battle of Sempach,” ib.Tales of my Landlord, Second Series, 4
vols. 12mo. The Heart of Mid-Lothian, IV.
176 Review of Gourgaud’s Narrative, IV.
209 ———Maturin’s “Women, or Pour et
Contre,” IV. 209 ———Childe Harold, Canto IV. 210 Article for Jamieson’s edition of Capt. Burt’s Letters, IV. 220 Provincial Antiquities of Scotland,
4to, ib.1819—(Ætat 48.) Ballad of “The Noble Moringer,” IV.
260Sketch of the Character of Charles Duke of Buccleuch, IV. 270Tales of my Landlord, Third Series, 4
vols. 12mo, the Bride of Lammermoor, and Legend of Montrose, IV. 257, 272Memorials of the Haliburtons, 4to, IV.
297Patrick Carey’sTrivial Poems and
Triolets, 4to, ib.Ivanhoe, 3 vols. post 8vo, IV. 336, 340—344 1820—(49.) The Visionary, 3 Nos. 12mo, IV. 345The Monastery, 3 vols. 12mo, IV. 360The Abbot, 3 vols.
12mo, V. 19—26Lives of the Novelists, V. 30, 135 1821—(50.) Kenilworth, 3 vols. post 8vo, V. 28, 49Account of the Coronation of King George IV. V.
88Franck’sNorthern Memoirs—The Contemplative Angler, V. 134Chronological Notes on Scottish Affairs, 1680—1701, from the
Diary of Lord Fountainhall, 4to, V. 134The Pirate, 3 vols. post 8vo, V. 150 1822—(51.) Gwynne’sMemoirs of the Civil Wars,
1653—4, V. 69Halidon Hill, V.
159, 168, 174, 286Macduff’s Cross, V. 168, 286The Fortunes of Nigel, 3 vols post
8vo. V. 138, 143, 169Poetry contained in the Waverley Novels, V.
172 1823—(52.) Peveril of the Peak, 4 vols. post 8vo,
V. 245—253Quentin Durward, 3 vols. post 8vo,
V. 253, 279Essay on Romance, V.
284St Ronan’s Well, 3 vols. post
8vo, V. 315 1824—(Ætat 53). Redgauntlet, 3 vols. post 8vo, V.
319Swift’s Life and Works, 19 vols. Second edition, V. 320Tribute to the Memory of Lord Byron, ib. 1825—(54.) Tales of the Crusaders, 4 vols. post
8vo. The Betrothed. The Talisman, VI. 33 Introduction and Notes to Memoirs of Madame Larochejaquelin, VI. 179 Review of Pepys’Diary, VI. 179, 215 1826—(55.) Letters of Malachi Malagrowther, VI. 242, passim, 266Woodstock, 3 vols. post 8vo,
VI. 283, 308—312. VII. 44 Review of the Life of J. P. Kemble and
Kelly’sReminiscences, VI. 294 ———Galt’sOmen, VI. 263, 307, 323 1827—(56.) Review of Mackenzie’sLife and Works of
John Home, VII. 12, 29, 30 ———Hoffman’s Novels, ib.Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, 9 vols.
post 8vo. VII. 39, 42, 44Chronicles of the Canongate, First
Series, 2 vols. post 8vo. The Two Drovers, the Highland Widow, and the Surgeon’s
Daughter, VII. 82, 87Miscellaneous Prose Works, first collected, 6 vols. 8vo, VII. 46Essay on the Planting of Waste Lands, VII.
47Reply to General Gourgaud, VII. 63Essay on Ornamental Gardening, VII. 89Memoir of George Bannatyne, ib.Tales of a Grandfather, First Series,
3 vols. 18mo, VII. 92 1828—(Ætat 57.) Essay on Moliere. VII. 98Two Religious Discourses, ib.
107Chronicles of the Canongate, Second
Series, 3 vols. post 8vo. The Fair Maid of Perth,
VII. 119Tales of a Grandfather, Second Series,
3 vols. 18mo, VII. 146 Review of Hajji Baba in England, ib.Sir Humphry Davy’sSalmonia, ib. 1829—(58.) Anne of Geierstein, 3 vols. post 8vo,
VII. 191History of Scotland, vol. I. 12mo, for
Lardner’s Cyclopedia, ib.Tales of a Grandfather, Third Series,
3 vols. 18mo, ib.Waverley Novels, with the New
Introductions and Notes, Vol. I. to VIII. (continued monthly), VII.
194—197 1830—(59.) Review of Pitcairn’s Ancient Criminal Trials, VII. 202The Doom of Devorgoil, and
Auchindrane, ib.Essays on Ballad Poetry, ib. 203Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft,
18mo, for Murray’s Family Library, ib.
204 Tales of a Grandfather, Fourth Series.
History of France, 3 vols. 18mo, ib.History of Scotland, Vol. II. 12mo,
for Lardner’s Cyclopedia, ib. Review of Southey’sLife of John
Bunyan, ib. 205 1831—(60.) Tales of my Landlord, Fourth Series, 4
vols. post 8vo. Count Robert of Paris, and Castle Dangerous, VII. 310
INDEX OF PROPER NAMES. Abbeville, vi. 367,381. Abbot, Mr, Comedian, iv. 30; vi. 55. ‘Abbot, The,’ 3 vols. iii, 376, n.; v. 19-26. Abbotsford, i, 61, 178, 284; ii. 355, 378, 404; iii. 1, flitting to, passim; 49, .63, 64, 75, 177, 178, 272, 273, 308, 311, 313, 388; iv. 30, 81, 100,
129, 138, 185, passim, 220, 255, passim, 303,
321, 339, 349, passim, 358, 375, 376; v. 1, passim, 14, 122, 145, 148, 162, 167, 171, 220, 230, passim, 240, 271, 277, 292, 299, 311, 320, passim, 337, 348,
374, passim, vi. 2, 87, 96, 133, 184, n, 223, 238, 246, 367; vii.
53, 57, 58, 90, 148, 217, 386, 393, 407. Abbotsford Club, v. 260. Abbotsford Hunt, v. 14, 145; vi. 121. Abercorn, Marquis of, ii. 118, 154, 266; iii. 70, 74, n. Abercorn, Marchioness of, ii. 118, 265. Abercromby, George, now Lord, 1, 50, 55, 146, 150, 153, n, 189, n, 207; vi. 140, 209,
328; vii. 1 14. Abercrombie, Dr, vi. 275; vii. 261, 277. Aberdeen, iii. 138. —— Advocates, vi. 262. ——, Lord ii, 118; iii. 104, 368. Absalom and Achitophel,iii. 7; vi. 371. Abud and Co., vi. 350; vii. 83, 84, 87. Acland, Sir Thomas, vii. 126. Adam, Dr Alexander, 1, 31, &c., 92, 94, 96, 110. ——, William Lord Chief Commissioner, 1, 391, n.; iii. 341, 343,
344; iv. 252, 273, 310; v. 21, passim, 80, 175, 188, 261; vi. 40,
194, 251, 298, 323, 340; vii. 14, 208, 213. ——, Admiral, vi. 251, 341; vii. 14, 17, 208. ——, Mrs, vi. 341. ——, Sir Charles, v. 22. ——, Sir Frederick, iii. 354; vi. 340, 342; vii. 98, 99. ——, John Esq., vi. 194. Addington, Dr, vii. 135. Adolphus, Mr, vii 128. ——, J. L. Esq. v. 293; vii. 52, 129, 219, 299. Extracts from his Memoranda, ib; his
Letters on the Waverley Novels, v. 103, 121. Africa, ii. 13; vi. 285. Aiken, Miss (Mrs Barbauld), i. 235. Ainslie, Mr Robert, i. 173. Albania, a poem, ii. 364. Albums, vii. 124, Alconbury Hill, vii. 142. Alexander II., King of Scotland, iii. 263. —— III. King, iii. 275. ——Emperor of Russia, iii. 369. vi. 373. ——Mrs of Ballochmyle, vii.130. ——Sir William, Lord Chief Baron, iii. 107; vii. 127. Allan, Mr Thomas, vii. 245. ——, Mr William, iv. 159, 245; v. 7, 162, 165; vi. 158, 234; vii. 310, 393. Allanton, vii. 168. Allerley, vii. 176. Alnwick Castle, vii. 79. ‘Altisidora, Inferno of,’ ii. 352. Alvanley, Lord, vii. 129. ——. Lady, iii. 2, 372; vi. 303. ——, Letter to, iii. 2. Amelia, Princess, ii. 322. America, iii. 320; vi. 362. Americans, vi. 362. American Tourists, iv. 199. —— Tragedy, iv. 195. Amiens, vi. 380, 381. Anderson, Bailie, Selkirk, iv. 307. —— Mr, Rispan, iii. 208, 217,218. —— Mrs, of Winterfield, vii. 214. Angelo, Michael, vi. 234. Anglesea, Marquis of, v. 93; vii. 29. Angouleme, Duchess of, vii. 227. Anne, Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth, i. 3. Anne of Geierstein, vii. 146, 149, 155, 160, 177, 182, 188, 191. Anstruther, Philip, vii. 47. —— Sir Robert, ib. Ancient Scottish History, vii. 187, 188. Antiquaries, Scottish Society of, i. 150. n. “Antiquary, The” 3 vols. i. 149, 150, 176, n.; iv. 5, 15; v. 25; vii. 149. Antoinette, Marie, vi. 377. Apology for Tales of Terror, i. 317, 319. Appenines, the, vii. 379. Appleby Castle, vi. 353. Apprentices, Edinburgh, ii. 391. Apreece, Mrs, now Lady Davy, ii. 310, 403. Arbroath, iii. 137-8, 188, 245. Arbuthnot, Mr, iv. 367. —— Mrs, vi. 386. —— Sir William, vii. 182. Ardens, Misses, vii. 129, 218. Argyle, Dukes of, iii. 254, 256, 257, 261. —— Earl of (1685), vii. 69. —— Stone, the, vii. 69. Arkwright, Mrs, vii. 77, 129. Armada, Invincible, iii. 177. ——, Spanish Vessel, iii. 253, 272, 306. Armadale, Lord, iii. 196, 197, 206. Armstrong, Johnnie, i. 406; ii. 269, n.; iii. 18. Arniston, vii. 112. Arran, Island, iii. 274-276. Artois, Count of, ii. 51. Ashestiel, ii. 3, 7, passim; ii. 25, 60, 116, 184, 249, 293, 295,
356, 361, 363, 378; iii. 1; vi. 284. Ashley, Lord, vi. 373. Atholl Crescent (Edinburgh), vi. 136. Athol, Duke of, ii. 280. Atkinson, Mr, iv. 79, 255; v. 167, 234, passim, 264, 277. Auchindrane or the Ayrshire Tragedy,’ vii. 202. Auchinleck, Lord, ii. 317,318. ‘Auld Robin Gray,’ ballad of, v. 397. Austen, Miss, Novels, v. 158, n.; vi. 264, 281. B. Baikie, Mr, of Tankerness, iii. 158, 190. Baillie, Mr, of Jerviswood, vii. 220. Baillie, Joanna, ii. 101, 175, 179, 244, 289, 307, 364; iii. 4, 7, 333, 334; iv. 96,
372; v. 156, 285; vi. 384; vii. 119, 125. Letters to, ii. 175, 192, 268, 276, 270, 310,
320, 360, 364, 365, 370, 388, 392; iii. 37, 49, 51, 94, 103, 364, 388; iv. 96, 215, 217; v.
79, 157, 287, 291, 309, 332, 335; vi. 82. Letters from, ii. 363, 365. ‘Family Legend,’ ii. 268, 273, 311; iii. 256, 339.
‘Jane de Montfort,’ ii. 278. ‘Plays on the Passions,’ i. 337; ii.
101, 366. Baillie, Dr Matthew, ii. 101,322. —— Miss Agnes, ii. 193. Bainbridge, Mr George, v. 351; vii. 6. Baird, Sir David, v. 50. ——, Very Reverend Principal, vii. 395. Balchristy Club, vii. 158. Balfour, Jamie, vii. 110. ‘Ballads and Lyrical Pieces,’ ii. 113. ‘Ballad Poetry, Essays on,’ vii. 203. Ballantyne, Mr Alexander, vi. 298. —— Mr James, i, 116, 155, 249, 317,319, 343, 348, 371; ii. 15, 16, 37, 96, 120, 197,
215, 225, 268, 273, 275, 292, 306; iii. 6, 33, 38, 55, 61, 62, 69, 70, 72, 303, 317, 327,
329, 352, 374, 382; iv. 22, 107, 159, 165, 258, 276; v. 149, 173, 315, 368, 371, n.; vi. 20, 32, 33, 107, 109, passim, 166,
167, 177, 190, 213, 217, 243, 294, 297,312, 342; vii. 88, 110, 116, 153, 176, 182, 189,
213, 217, 235, 246. 289, 418. ——, Letters to, i. 319, 371; ii. 43, 120, 356; iii. 41,44,56,61, 66, 74, 93; iv. 22, 67,
106, 184, 258 (poetical), 368; vi. 312; vii. 110. ——, Letters from, i. 348, 329; iii. 303; v. 74. —— James, and Co., printers, ii. 37-45, 50, 113, 247, 273, 301 iii. 72, passim, 92; v. 173; vi. 112, 216, 223, 308; vii. 93. —— Mrs James, vii. 176. —— Mr John, i. 116; ii. 196, 223, 243, 247, 275, 333, 395; iii. 55, 56, 59, 62, 69, 71,
90, 124, 295, 323, 351, 382 iv. 14, 16, 68, 168, passim, 258, passim, 350, passim;
v. 28, passim, 74, passim; vi. 110, 113, passim. Ballantyne, Mr John, Letters to, iii. 55, 59, 60, 65, 66, 69, 70, 72, 73, 76, 133, 296,
322, 323; iv. 19, 20, 66, 67, 82, n., 181, 285, 286; Diary of, v.
77. —— John, and Co., publishers, ii. 233, 247, 275-6, 287,291, 328, 332;. iii. 55, 73, passim, 295, 321, passim; vi. 112, 113. —— Mrs John, v. 135. ——‘s Novelists’ Library, ‘Lives of the
Novelists,’ v. 30, 75, 135. Bankes, Mr William, vi. 132. Bannatyne Club, i. 391, n; v. 256, passim; vii. 14, 99, 209. Bard’s Incantation, The, ii. 72. Barnard Castle, ii. 380, 382, 384, 385, n; iii. 38. Barnby Moor, vii. 142. Baronetcy, iv. 211, 360, 365. Barrington Shute, Bishop of Durham, iii. 14. Barrington, Mrs vii. 77. Barrow, Sir John, vii. 323. Bath, visited by Sir Walter Scott, i. 20, 84. Bathurst, Earl of iv. 348. Battle of Agincourt, iii. 347; vi. 292. —— Barrossa, ii. 340. —— Bannockburn, iii. 204, 326. —— The Boyne, vi. 51. —— Busaco, ii. 324. —— Culloden, vi. 229. —— Glenlivet, iii. 139. —— Jena, vi. 347. —— Largs, iii.^217, 275. —— Melrose, ii. 355. —— Navarino, vii. 90. —— Prestonpans, vi. 230. —— Sherriffmuir, vi. 294. —— Tholouse, iii. 117, 334. Battle of Waterloo, iii. 346, 357, 373; vii. 178. Bayley, Isaac Esq. vi. 8, 9, 18. ——, Mrs, vi. 11. Beacon, The Newspaper affair of, v. 152. Beatson, Captain, ii. 370. Beattie of Meikledale, i. 36. Beauclerk, Lady Charlotte, vi. 137. Beaumont and Fletcher, ii. 19, 252, 331; iii. 58, 59, 322. Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Lover’s Progress” vi. 158. Beaumont, Sir George, iii. 338; vi. 211; vii. 6, death of, 24, 160. Beck, Anthony, vii. 73. Begbie, W. Murder of, iii. 53; vii. 20. Belfast, vi. 48. —— Steamer, vi. 43. Bell, Sir Charles, iii. 347. ——, George Esq., vii. 178. ——, George Joseph Esq., iii. 347. ——, Mr John, surgeon, 1, 236. Bellamy, Anne, vi. 154. Bell Rock Light-House, iii. 137, 242. Bend-Leather, ii. 362. Bentinck, Lady Frederick, vi. 81. Beresford, Marshal, vii. 72. ——, Sir John, vii. 72. Berguer, W. Lionel, v. 368. Berkley, Bishop, vii. 114. Bernadotte, Marshal, iii. 97; vii. 31. Berri, Duchess of, vi. 377. ——, Duke of, iv. 356. ——, Mad. de, vi. 377. Bertram, Tragedy of, iii. 310, 312. Berwick, Lord, vii. 340. —— Rev. M. iii. 121, n. Betty, Master, ii. 123, 126. Bindley, Mr, ii. 92. Bingfield’s, Captain, Travels, iii. 313. Birmingham knife, iii. 373. Birrell, Mr, vi. 9. ‘Bizarro,’ death of, vii. 342. Black, Dr., professor of chemistry, i. 14, 233. Blackburne, Mr, ii. 5, 76, 78, 254. ‘Black Dwarf, the,’ iv. 20, 23, 30-39. Blackeney, Mr, v. 272, 349. Black Hussars, iii. 349. ‘—— of Literature,’ iv. 23; vi. 225. Blacklock, Dr, i. 136, 139. Blackwood, Mr William, iii. 323, 324; iv. 18, 22, 185, n.; v.
315; vi. 225, 244, 255, 307, 323, 363, n. ——’s Magazine, iv. 64, 209, n. 210; v. 251; vi. 363, n. Blair, Colonel, and Mrs, vii. 178, 179. —— Dr Hugh, i. 29, n. —— Lord President, ii. 342. Blair-Adam, vi. 40, 324, 340, vii. 208. Club, v. 22; vi. 323; vii. 47, 208. —— Drummond, i. 208. Blake, Right Honourable Anthony, vi. 52, 71. Bloomfield, Bishop of London, vii. 126. Blore, Mr Edward, iv. 28; v. 122. Blucher, Marshal, iii. 370, 372; vi. 373. Blytheswood Park, vii. 69. ‘Boar, two-legged’, vi. 12. Bodleian, Library, vi. 391. Boerhaave, Dr, i. 10; vii. 185. Bogie, Mr. v. 164, 241; vi. 293. Boiardo, i. 46, 121. Boldside, v. 13. Boltfoot, William of Harden, i. 65, 190; iii. 354. ‘Bonnets of Bonnie Dundee,’ v. 297; vi. 170, 173, 179. Bolton, Mr, v. 99. Bolton, Colonel, Storrs, vi. 62, 78, 79. Boothby, Sir Brook, vi. 163. —— Sir William, passim ‘Border Antiquities of Scotland,’ iv. 80. Borolaski, Count, iii. 131. Borthwick, vii. 112. —— Castle, vii. 112. Boswell, Sir Alexander of Auchinleck, iv. 159; v. 153, 179; vi. 168. —— James, ii. 317 Bothwell Castle, i. 305, lines on, passim —— Earl of, iii. 164. Boufflers, Mad. de, vi. 380. Bourgoin, Mademoiselle, vi. 368. Bourmont, Marshal, vii. 228. Bower, John, iv. 89; v. 311. Bowes Castle, vi. 353. Bowles, Mr, iii. 140. Boyd, Mr, of Boyd, Benfield, and Co., vii. 127. —— John, Esq. of Broadmeadows, vi. 337. Boyle, Right Honourable David, Lord Justice Clerk, i. 55, 153. n; v. 94; vi. 130, 133,
141; vii. 114. Bradford, Sir Thomas, iv. 324. Braham, Mr, iii. 330; iv. 169. ‘Brambletye House,’ Novel of, vi. 355, 357. Braxfield, Lord Justice Clerk, iii. 341, 342. Breadalbane, Earl of (1715), iii. 261. Brewster, Sir David, iii. 59; v. 47; vi. 337; vii. 175. ‘Bridal of Triermain,’ iii. 9, 10,43, n. 44-53, 114, 127. ‘Bride of Lammermoor,’ iv.257, 258, 264, n. 272. Bridges, Mr David, iv. 172, 245, n. Brinkley, Dr, Dublin, vi. 56. Brisbane, Sir Thomas, iv. 314, 323. British Museum, ii. 118. —— Novelists, passim ii. 173, 201. See Ballantyne’s British
Novelists. —— Poets, contemplated edition of, ii. 44, 49. Broadfoot, Mr, iv. 37. Brougham, Henry, now Lord, ii. 157, 158, 201. Broughton’s Saucer, i. 178, 179. Brown’s, Mrs, Lodgings, North St David Street, vi. 297, 313, 324, 329. Bruce, James of Kinnaird, ii. 59. —— John, Professor of Logic, i. 43, 129. —— John, piper, iv. 191, 244. —— Michael, vi. 152. —— Robert, Esq., iii. 350, 372. —— King Robert, iii. 33, 204, 259, 260, 272, 309, 310, 325. Bruhl, Count, i. 234, 247. Brummell, Beau, iv. 11, n. Brunswicker, iii. 349. Brunton, Rev. Dr, iii. 23, 24, 246. Brussels, iii. 347, 354, 357. Brydone, Mrs Patrick, vi. 170. Bubbly Jock, iii. 314. Buccaneers, vi. 202. Buccleuch, Henry, third Duke of, i. 293, 317; ii. 9, 83, 87, 90, 388, 391, 392; vi. 339. —— Charles, fourth Duke of, ii. 178; iii. 26, 39, 69, 76, 95, 114, 126, 162, 293, 295,
399; iv. 47, 206, 222, 235, 267, 294; vi. 100, 254, 339. —— —— letters to, iii. 77, 83, 279, 283, 288, 356, 399; iv. 47, 49, 81, 98, 110, 111,
242. —— —— letters from, iii. 79,286. —— Harriet, Duchess of, iii. 95, 114, 293, 295; death of, iii. 208, 278, 283, 292; vi.
339. Buccleuch, Walter, fifth Duke of, i. 104, n.; iv. 269, 357; v.
71, 163, 165, 178, 201, 272, 349; vi. 210, 254, 283, 338. Legion, iv. 319. Buchan, Earl of, i. 150, n., 171; iv. 276; vii. 189. —— Dr James, i. 28, 92; vi. 133. Buchanan, George, iii. 25, his History of Scotland, i. 42, 129. —— of Cambusmore, i. 208. —— H. M’Donald, Esq. of Drummakiln, ii. 105, 248, 250; iv. 159; vi. 144, 166, 380,
n.; vii. 87. —— Miss M. of Drummakiln, vi. 126, 144, 209. Buckingham, Duchess of, vi. 358. Buller, Lady Eleanor, Llangollen, vi. 76. Bullock, George, iv. 28, 29, n., 140, 141, 256. ——‘s Museum, iii. 201. Buonaparte, Lucien Charlemagne, ii. 351. —— Napoleon, ii. 227, 341; iii. 20, 36, 89, 103, 115,-passim,
346, 360, passim, 380; vi. 251, 382; vii. 31, 66, 230. ‘Buonaparte, Scott’s Life of,’ iii. 346;
vi. 32, passim, 39, 87, 108, 147, 182, 238, 283, 290, 317, 318, 320,
332, 336, 342, 352, 379, 382; vii. 30, 36, 39, 42, 60, 63, 93, 109, 154. Burdett, Sir Francis, ii. 261. Burger’s Leonore, translations from, i. 135-6, 235, 245, 316; vii. 374, n. Burke, Edmund, vii. 136. —— the murderer, vii. 169, 175, 182. Burleigh House, vi. 354. Burn, William, Esq., vii. 113, 320. Burney, Dr, vi. 388. Burnet, John, Esq., ii. 285. Burns, Robert, i. 2, 46, 110, ., 136, 138, 252; ii. 307; iii. 65, 99, 297; vi. 212, 358;
vii. 149, 161, 165. Lockhart’s Life of, vii. 147. —— Captain James Glencairn, vii. 307. Burrell, ‘a little Jew animalcule,’ i. 125, 126. Burt’s Letters from the North,’ iv. 220. Bury, Lady Charlotte, i. 292, 339; vi. 358. Bute Island, iii. 275, 276. —— Marquis of, iii. 276. Butler, Mr and Mrs, vii. 170, 212. Byron, Lord, i. 65, 145, 292; ii. 117, 250, 252, 308, n., 394,
397, 404; iii. 3, 34, 43, n., 290, n., 327,
passim, 339, 373, 389; iv. 10, 33, 147, 163; v. 150, 383, 402;
vi. 74, 91, 94, 107, 108, 123, 129, 131, 132, 168, 212, 340, 342, 343, 393; vii. 8, 27, 58.
Letters to, ii. 398, 402; iii. 98, 330, 339. Letter from, ii. 401. His Cain,’ v. 150.
‘Childe Harold,’ ii. 394, 397, 398, 402; iii. 3, 34, 44, 329. ‘Hours of
Idleness,’ ii. 251. ‘English Bards,’ &c., ii. 250, 398, 401.
Giaour,’ iii. 100,328, 329, 330. Bride of Abydos,’ iii. 329.
‘Parasina,’ iii. 329. Lord, ‘Tribute to the Memory of,’ v. 320. Lady, iv. 95, 96. C. Caberfae, iii. 318, 319. Cadell, Mr Robert, ii. 202, n., 292, 357; iii. 33, 57; iv. 184;
v. 28, 45, 144, 254; vi. 137, 138, 166, 167, 168, 175, n., 192, 196,
199, 214, 236, 263, 311, 342; vii. 60, 80, 93, 145, 167, n., 177,
180, 182, 196, 207, 213, 215, 218, 235, 238, 246, passim, 259, 289, 303, 381, 421. Cadell, Mr Robert, letters to, v. 144; vii. 109, 148, 239, 241. ——extracts from his Memoranda, iii. 57, 58, 59, n. —— Mrs, senior, vii. 215. —— Hew Francis, Esq., vii. 214. —— Mrs H. F., vii. 215. Cadyow Castle, i. 341, 364. Caernarvon, Earl of, ii. 9. ‘Caleb Williams,’ i. 250. Caledonian Canal, iii. 255. Caliph Vathek, vi. 384. Callender, Mr Burn, vii. 431. Callander, ii. 388. Cambridge, iii. 350; iv. 377; v. 351; vii. 143. Cambusmore, i. 209, 218; ii. 250. Camerons,’ The, iii. 256. Campbell, Sir Archibald, of Succoth, i. 120. ——Sir Colin, iii. 260; vii. 323. —— of Shawfield, iii. 264. —— Mr A. of Blytheswood, vii. 69. ——of Lochnell, iii. 258. —— Reverend Principal, ii. 242. —— Captain, iii. 354. —— Thomas, i. 341; ii. 45, 307, 352; iii. 396; iv. 87, n., 93;
vi. 325, 326. —— Mr Alexander, i. 52. n. 114. —— Mr, Missionary, iii. 195, 198. —— ‘a sly rogue,’ vi. 181. —— Lady Charlotte, i. 371. See Lady Charlotte Bury/ —— Miss of Silvercraigs, i. 4. —— lives of the Admirals, v. 83. Canada, iii, 300. Canning, Right Hon. George, i. 331, 333, n.; ii. 98, 109, 205, 214, 217, n. 219, n. 236, 246, 249, 251, 257, passim, 265, 305, 379, 406; iii.
36, 279, 345; v. 48, 212, 358; vi. 12, 78, 80, 248, 253, 365, 388, 390; vii. 28, passim—death and character of, 50; vii. 124. Canning, Right Hon. George, Letters from, ii. 109, 263, 346; vi. 61. Cape Wrath, iii. 207, 217-19, 254. ‘Carey’s, Patrick, Trivial Poems and Triolets,’ iii. 30, 31; iv. 297,
299. Caribs, feasts of the, vii. 4. Carlisle, iii. 381; vii. 144—in 1745, vi. 369. Carleton House, iii. 49, 340, 343. ——, Memoirs of Captain George, ii. 171. —— Carlyle, Dr. iv. 146. —— Mr Thomas, vii. 28. Caroline, Princess of Wales, ii. 100, 117.—Queen, iv. 356, 382; vi. 361; vii. 33, 51. Carpenter, Miss, i. 266, passim. Letters to Scott, 271, 284. —— J. C., i. 267, 278. Charpentier, Madame, i. 267, 278. —— Charles, i. 267, 273, 379; ii. 359; (Letter to), iv. 211. Carrick, iii. 310. —— Witch, iii. 306. Carron, River, ii. 316. Carterhaugh, vii. 222. —— Foot-ball match, iii. 391, 395. Cartwright, Dr, i. 139. Cary, Earl of Monmouth, Memoirs of, ii. 171. Castlemilk, ii. 2. Castle Street, No. 39, i. 286; ii. 343, 348; iii. 75, 128, 331; iv. 148, passim; vi. 237, 264, 313, 326, den (study);
iv. 148; Library, 149; Sunday dinners, 158; vii. 258. Castle Forbes, vi. 135. Castlereagh, Lord, ii. 257, passim; iii. 368, 369, 372; vi. 372;
vii. 33, 51. —— Lady, iii. 371. ‘Castle Dangerous,’ vii. 243,289, 310. Cathcart, Lord, iii. 104, 368, 369. —— Robert, Esq., ii. 357. Catholic Emancipation, ii. 134; vi. 18, 65, 70, 85; vii. 32, 136, 156, 178, 180, 182,
188. Catholicism, iii. 335; vi. 84; vii. 180. Catholic Church Hymns, iii. 25. Catrail, The, i. 333; ii. 7, 359; vi. 121; vii. 46. Cauldshiels Loch, iii. 63, 233, 318. Cave, Mr, iii. 123. ——Rob Roy’s, iv. 80. Cay, John, Esq., vi. 144. —— Robert Hodgson, Esq., i. 237. Celtic Society, v. 47, 69, 193, passim; vi. 202; vii. 184. Cervantes, iii. 302. Chaldee, MS.,iv. 127. Chalmers, Mr Alexander, ii. h 45. —— George, Esq., i. 8. —— George, Esq., of London, i. 24, 253, 346. Chambers, Mr Robert, i. 78; vii. 179. Chancery, a Master in, vi. 324. Chantrey, Sir Francis, ii. 183; iv. 361, passim; v. 36, 62, 98,
102; vi. 235; vii. 133, 137, 164, 167. Letter to Sir Robert Peel, 429. Chapel-Royal, vii. 148. Charlecote Hall, vii. 123. Charles I., King of England, ii. 395; iii. 105; vi, 365. —— II., vi. 365. Charles X., of France, i. 130; iii. 125,w.; v. 359; vii. 224. —— XII., of Sweden, iii, 180; iv. 324, 355. —— Stewart, Prince (1745), iii. 220, 261; vi. 229; vii. 93. Charletone, vii. 47. Charlotte, Queen, iv. 210; vi. 361. Charon’s boat, iii. 215. Chatham, Lord, vii. 135. Chaucer, vi. 188. Cheney, Mr Edward, vii. 362; his Journal at Rome, 363379. Chestnuts, Spanish, iii. 6. Chester, Dean of (1830), vii. 125. ‘Chevy Chace,’ i. 182, 351; ii. 55. Chiefswood, v. 123, passim; vi. 89, 102, 163, 184, 216, 326, 335;
vii. 53, 152, 212, 216. Chillingham Castle, i. 182. Chisholm, Bishop, iii. 257. —— Mr, iv. 268. ‘Chivalry, Essay on,’ iii. 125. Christmas-Day, vi. 173. ‘Chronicles of the Canongate, First Series,’ vi.
265, 305, 311, 317, 322, 327, 336, 355; vii. 44, 82, 87. —— Second Series, vii. 88, 93. —— of England, ii. 50. Church of England service, v. 390; vii. 414. —— of Scotland, vii. 102, 414. Churnside, Mrs, i. 103. Cicero ‘De Oratore,’ quoted, vi. 298. Cigars, vi. 130, 197, 333; vii. 186. Clackmannan, Baron of, vii. 111. Clapperton and Denham’s Journey in Africa, vi. 285. Clarence, Duke of, vii. 21, 29. Clarendon’s History, ii. 50; v. 146. Clarke, Dr., musical composer, i. 53. Clarke, Rev. D. J. S., ii. 407; iii. 80. —— letter from, iii. 80; letter to, 84. Clarkson, Dr. Ebenezer, Selkirk, iv. 358; vii. 88, 259, 390. —— James, Esq. Melrose, vi.178; vii. 233, 277, 394. Classics Variorum, v. 328. Claverhouse, Graham of, Viscount Dundee, ii. 49, 133, 134, 369; iv. 35, n.; vi. 170. Cleirs, the, i. 214. Cleeve, Rev. Mr, i. 21. Clerk Colvin,’ ballad, iii. 194. Clephane, Mrs M’Lean, of Torloisk, ii. 318; iii. 249, 299; iv. 59, 159; vii. 69.
Letters to, iv. 59, 281. —— Miss M’Lean, iii. 347; letter from, 299. Clerk, Sir George, vii. 35. —— Esq., James, R.N., i. 148, 170, 193. —— Sir John, i. 50, 149. —— Esq. John, of Eldin, i, 149. —— John, Lord Eldin, i. 150; ii. 105; iv. 364; v. 261. —— Esq., William, i. 50, 55, 58, 59, 60, 127, 146, 147, passim,
153, n., 156-7, passim, 184, 202, 205, passim, 343; ii. 362; iv. 159, 273, 343; v. 22; vi. 124, 209, 247,
251, 323; vii. 13, 60, 62. Letters to,i. 157, 166, 169, 181,188, 191; vii. 60, 258. —— Lady, i, 50. —— Mrs Elizabeth, vi. 191. Clifford, Esq., Arthur, ii. 256. —— Tixall Poetry, i. 332. Club The, i. 153. Members of, 153, n. —— the Friday, ii. 286. Members of, ib, n.; v. 260. Clyde, The, vii. 69, 168. —— Frith of, iii. 274; vi. 54. —— Falls of, vii. 69. Cochrane, Sir Alexander, i. 148. ‘Cock-a-Pistol,’ vi. 216 Cockburn, Sir George, vi. 359. —— Henry, now Lord, iv. 156; vii. 8, 9, 13, 107, 391, 392. Cockburn, Esq., Robert, vi. 135, 137. —— Mrs, i. 9, 86-88, 97, 122; ii. 358. Cockenzie, vii. 214. Cohen, Mr, v. 244; vi. 364. Coleridge, S. T. i. 351, 406; ii. 235, 245, 301, 325; iii. 179; iv. 132, 193; v. 379;
vii. 126. —— ‘Christabel,’ ii. 23; v. 379. College Commission, vi. 345, 348. Collyer, Mr, vi. 134, 157. Colonsay, Island, ii. 315, n.; iii. 264, 265. Colquhoun, John Campbell, Esq. of Kellermont (Lord Advocate), i. 245; ii. 202, 237; iii.
277. Complaynt of Scotland, i. 337. Compton, Earl of, iii. 347. Coningsburgh Castle, ii. 381, 387. Constable, Mr Archibald, i. 63, n. 323, 415; ii. 45,114, 130,
170, 174, 195, 198, passim, 215, 222, 225, 275, 291, 329, 357; iii.
56, 58, 59, 61, 65, 73, 76, 90, 72, 120, 123, 124, 295, 296, 322, 324; iv. 15, 68, 108,
159, 170, passim, 220, 257, 351, passim, 369;
v. 27, 135, 147, 168, 172, 235, 261, 279, 328; vi. 28, passim, 104,
109, passim, 146, 167, 168, 172, 174, passim,
185, 190, 193, 196, 199, 203, 217, 263, 292, 311, death and character: vii. 48, 164. ——, Letters to, ii. 291; in. 90; v. 254, 255, 262, 328, 344. ——, Letter from, v. 169. ——, Archibald and Co., i. 415; ii. 35, 113, 200, (Letter to, 220 Letter from, 221,) 232, 235, 357; iii. 56. Letter to, 351, vi. 104, passim, 130, 178, 191, 203, 213, 214, 216, 219, 223, 238, 242, 257,
281, 307, 308, 318; vii. 93, 94, 150, 195. Constable’s Miscellany, vi. 28, 119, 150, 168, 173, 176, 179; vii. 50, 154. ——, Mr David, v. 245. ——, George Esq., i. 24, n, 90, 150, 247; vii. 214. —— Lady Winfred, vii. 147. Cooke, George Frederick, iii. 50. Cooper, Mr (the American novelist) vi. 376, 379, 380. Copplestone, Dr, Bishop of Landaff, vii. 125. Copy-Rights, iii. 107; iv. 221; v. 147, 168, 279; vi. 196; vii. 93, 194. Corehouse Castle, v, 133, 304; vii. 6970. Cork City, vi. 74, 182. Cormorants, iii. 193, 194, 216. Corra Linn, vii. 69. Corri, Nattali, vii. 145. Coulter, William, Lord Provost, ii. 269, n; vi. 287. Coursers’ Manual The, Letter to the Editor of, vii. 156. Court of Session, ii. 102, 337, 354; iii. 5; vi. 319; vii. 205, 206, 211, 213, 215. Coutts, Mrs, vi. 96102, 137, 199, 359. Covenanters, i. 375; ii. 135, 235, 369. Count Robert of Paris, vii. 219, 236, passim, 310. Cowan, Mr Alexander, vi. 257; vii. 93, 177. Cowper, William, i. 375. ‘Cozeners, The,’ a farce, vii. 131. Crabbe, Rev. George, ii. 352; iii. 22, 29, 31; v. 195, passim,
334; vii. 6, 387, 418. Crabbe, Letters from, iii. 22, 24, 26. —— Letters to, iii. 24, 26. Craig, Mr George, v. 35. —— Sir James Gibson, ii. 282; vii. 245. Craighall, i. 208. Craignethan Castle, i. 306. Crampton, Mr Surgeon-General, vi. 57, 58, 71. ‘Cranbourne Chace,’ v. 187. Cranston, George, Lord Corehouse, i. 146; ii. 23; v. 132, 304; vi. 318; vii. 69. ——, Miss, Countess of Furgstall, i. 235. Letter to Scott, i, 240, 286. Cranstoun, Henry, Esq.. v. 130, 304. Crichton, Tarn, vi. 339. Croker, J. W. Esq., ii. 246; iii. 87, 88, 340, 341; iv. 115; vi. 225, 267, 359, 383,
386, 387, 389; vii. 29,31. Letters to, iv. 115, 116, 348; v. 154, 217; vi. 271; vii. 318. ——, Letters from, v. 217; vi. 269. ——‘s Edition of Boswell, ii. 310. Scott’s Notes to, 315 318. ——, Mr Crofton, vi. 360. Cromwell, Oliver, ii. 318, 384, 385; vi. 47, 365. Crowe, Professor, ii. 79. Cumberland, Prince George of, vii. 134. ——, Richard, ii. 230; vi. 188. Cumbray Islands, iii. 275, 276; vii. 69. Cumming, the Red, iii. 259. Cunningham, Allan, iv. 362, passim; v, 36, 98, passim; vi. 363, 385; vii. 108, 136. ——, Letters to, v. 36, 39, 59. Cumnor Hall, poem of, i. 134. Curie, Mr, of Yetbyre, i. 18. ——, Mrs, vi. 187. ‘Curse of Moy,’ ballad of, ii. 287, 290. Curtis, Sir William, v. 204. Cuthbertson, John. iii. 7. Cutler, Sir John, vi. 183. Cuvier, Baron, vii. 418. Cyril Thornton, vii. 10. D. ‘Daft Days,’ iv. 217. Dalgetty, Captain, i. 23. Dalgleish, vi. 248, 293. Dalhousie, Earl of, i. 120; iii. 113; vii. 112. —— Castle, vii. 112. Dalkeith, Charles, Earl of, i. 317, 327; ii. 8, 41, 69, 259, 341. Letter to, ii. 93 ——. Letter from, ii. 342. See Duke of Buccleuch. ——, Harriet, Countess of, ii. 22, 24, 69, 109, 153, 154, 375. Letter to, ii. 375. See Duchess of Buccleuch. —— House, iii. 114. Dalry, iii. 260, 263. Dalrymple, Miss, vii. 214. Dalzell, Mr A. Professor of Greek, i. 40. Dance of Death,’ iii. 381. Danish Captain, vi. 140. —— Seamen, iii. 179. Dante, i. 46. D’Arblay, Mad., vi. 388. Darnick, iv. 346; vii. 127, Darwin, Dr, i. 374. D’Avenant, William, vi. 233. Davidoff, Count, vi. 134, 157, 172, 321. Davidson, ‘Captain, (the Hedger,’) v. 145. —— Mr James, i. 196. iv. 3. —— Mr John, i. 24, n. —— Rev. Dr, i, 108. —— Professor, Robert, i. 153, n. Davy, Sir Humphrey, ii. 404; iii. 319, n., 338, 376; v. 7, passim, 308; vi. 4, 53, 57; vii. 337. —— Dr John, vii. 329. ——, Mrs John, ib Diary at Malta, 319-339. Davy, Lady H., vii. 126. Letters to, vi. 2,221. ——‘’s ‘Salmonia,’ vii. 146. Debating Societies, i. 146, 152. Defoe, Daniel, ii. 172, n.; iii. 58; vi. 357. Demonology, vii. 58. See ‘Letters on.’ Denham, General Sir James —— Stewart, of Coltness, vi. 229. Denham’s Journey in Africa, vi. 316. Denniston, Mr Galloway, iii. 307, 308. Dennistoun, Mrs, of Colgrain, v. 33. D’Escars, Duchess of, vi, 363. Despard, Colonel, v. 62. Dessein’s Hotel, Calais, vi. 381, passimn. Devonshire, Duke of, v. 92; vi. 67, 221, 378; vii. 133. Diary of Lord Byron, vi. 108. —— of Sir Walter Scott, 1814, iii. 136, 1825; vi. 108, 122, passim. Dibdin, Rev. Thomas Frognal, v. 257. Letter from, v. 257. Letters to, v. 257, 258. Dick, Dr, iv. 281. —— ‘ o’ the Cow,’ ballad of, i. 197. Dickinson, Mr John, vii. 207. Dickson, Admiral, i. 11. —— Rev. Dr David, vii. 395. —— Mr Walter, vii. 148. —— Miss, i. 119. Diel of Littledean, i. 18. Dodds, Mrs Margaret, i. 150. Dog-fish, iii. 191. Doig, Mr Sylvester, ii. 44. Don, river, i. 397. —— of Newton, Sir Alexander, iv. 159, 198,292; vi. 171, 232, 289, 291, 296. —— Lady Dowager, vi. 202. Donaldson, Hay, Mr, v. 42, 229. Donegal Lord, iii. 268. ‘Doom of Devorgoil, The,’ iv. 53; v. 286; vi.
201; vii. 202. Don Quixote, i. 19, 130,414; ii. 132; iii. 163, n.; 231. See ‘Sancho Panza.’ ‘Don Roderick, Vision of,’ ii. 339, 341, 351;
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45-51, 73, 75, passim, 98, 118, 160, 169, 256; iii. 121. —— John, i. 315; ii. 308, n; ii. 346, 394; iii. 7, 87, 88, 279. s Virgil, ii. 81. Poems,
78, passim, 304. Translations, 98. Prefaces, Fables, &c., 162,
passim, 351. Dubisson, Mr, ii. 344. Dublin, vi. 40, 51, 55, 75. Dudley, Earl of, vi. 309, 383; vii. 91. Duff, Esq., Adam, iii. 136, 141, 157, 169, 174, 184, passim, 205,
273. ‘Duff, Mary,’ vii. 214. Dumergues, ii. 244. Dumergue, M. Charles, i. 372. —— Miss, iii. 333; iv. 23, 286, 360; vi. 4, 134, 364, 383. Duncan, Admiral, Lord, vi. 350, n. —— Captain Henry, vii. 320. —— Rev. Dr, of Mertoun,i. 19. —— Mrs, of Mertoun, i. 83. —— Col. William, i. 19. —— Mr, Lerwick, iii. 142, 149, 156. Dundalk, vi. 51. Dundas, Lord, iii. 144, 146, 159, 161, 193. —— Sir David, vi. 41. —— Sir Robert, of Beechwood, ii. 105; vi. 128, 140, 257; vii. 87, 207. —— —— letter to, vi. 266. —— Right Hon. Robert, Lord —— Chief Baron, ii. 379; iv. 336. —— Right Hon. William, i. 318, 324, 338; ii. 34, 83; iii. 108, 340. —— Dundas, Arniston, Mrs, iv. 309, 322; vi. 167. —— Right Hon. Robert. See Lord Melville. —— Robert, Esq., vi. 146, 167; vii. 17, 113; vii. 273. —— Hon. Robert, vi. 348. Dundee, Viscount, ii. 49, 133, 134, 369; iv. 35; vi. 170. Dunfermline, v. 234. Dunlop, Mr, Cape Wrath, iii. 217. —— Miss, of Dunlop, ii. 249. Dunnottar Castle, i. 210, 361; iii. 269. Duns Scotus, i. 152, 157,203. Dunstaffnage Castle, ii. 311, iii. 256, passim, 278. Dunton, John, iii. 116. Dunvegan Castle, iii. 223, passim, 231, 250. Durham, vii. 71. Bishop of (Van Mildert), vii. 72, 73. Durham Garland, iii. 309, 316, 332, 405, 414. Dutch seamen, iii. 182. ‘Duty, Madam,’ vi. 283, 290, 330, 349. Dyce, Rev. Alex. vii. 272. Dymocke, Mr, v. 93. E. Eagles, iii. 219. Eddystone Lighthouse, iii. 242. Edgeworth, Miss, ii. 253; iii. 104, 124, 303; iv. 287; v. 157, 276, 290, passim; vi. 10, 39, 58,65, 82, 281, 209. Letters to, iii. 303; iv.
287; v. 178, 306, 328, 340; vii. 170, 209. ——‘Harry and Lucy,’ vi. 83. ——’s Education,’ vi. 83. —— Miss Fanny, vii. 170. —— Miss Sophia, v. 276, 305, 340. —— Miss Harriet, v. 276, 340. —— Richard Lovell, Esq., vi. 58. Edgeworthstown, vi. 58-65; vii. 212. Effingham, Earl of, i. 389, 396. Egg Island, iii. 239, 241. —— Cave of, iii. 239, 276. Egglestone Abbey, ii. 387; iii. 15, 42. Egypt, Pyramids of, iii. 32. Edinburgh Annual Register, ii. 201, 215, 224, 228, 332, 341, 352, 357, 405; iii. 29, 53,
56, 58, 61, 135; iv. 26, 64, 80. ‘—— Apprentices,’ ii. 391. —— Assurance Company, vi. 160. ‘Gazette Extraordinary,’ iv. 209. —— Light Horse, i. 259, 384; ii. 2, 47; iii. 369. —— Review, i. 383, 414; ii. 18, 26, 29, 52, 98, n., 124, 131,
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304; v. 125, 156, 208, passim, n., 229; vi.
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174, 286; vi. 201. Hamilton, Lord Archibald, ii. 173. —— Captain and Mrs, vi. 326, 337. —— Rev. G. of Hoy, iii. 201 . —— Duke of, i. 341; iii. 275; vi. 100, —— Lady, i. 124. —— Lady Anne, i. 340. —— Lady, now Lady J. H. Dalrymple, vi. 350. —— Robert, Esq., iii. 136, 157, 157, n., 174, passim, 265, 273. —— Mrs Robert, vii. 214. —— of Wishaw, i. 193. Hardyknute, ballad of, i. 19, 83; iii. 336. Harmony Hall,’ iv. 168. ‘Harold the Dauntless,’ iii. 10, 43, n.; iv. 40. Harper, Mr, iv. 331. Hartstonge, M. W., Esq., iii. 121, w.; iv. 288. —— Letters to, iv. 288, 316; vi. 53, 56. Harwich, iii. 350. Hastings, Marquis of, vi. 185. D’Haussez, Baron, vii. 228. Hawick, vii. 288. Hawkwood, Sir John, v. 254, 254, n. Hay, Mr D. R., v. 323. —— Sir John, vi. 154. —— M. A. Drummond, Esq., vii. 118,179. Haydon, Mr, vii. 130. Hayley, William, i. 375. Hayman, Mrs, ii. 100, 117. ‘Heart of Mid-Lothian,’ iv. 176, passim; v. 219. Heath, Mr Charles, vii. 107,108. Heber, Reginald, Bishop of Calcutta, i. 374; ii. 212; vi. 391. Heber, Richard, Esq., i. 322, 327, 373, 376, 412; ii. 75, 202, 212; iv. 364; v. 103. ‘Heck, Auld,’ vii. 156. Helvellyn, ii. 71. ‘Hector of Germany,’ a Tragedy, vi. 333. Hemans, Mrs, v. 287, 288, 332. Henderson, Alexander, Esq., of Eildon Hall, v. 392, 400. —— Mr John, the Tragedian, v. 186. Hermand, Lord, vi. 150. Hermitage Castle, i. 194, 197, 327, 343. Hertford, Marquis of, iii. 80, 83, 341. —— Letter from, 81. —— Letter to, passim Hexham, i. 190, 192. —— Duke of, i. 192. Hibbert, Dr, vi. 160. Highlands of Scotland, i. 133, 139, 207; ii. 51, 53, 56, passim,
254, 297, n., 309; vii. 155. Highlanders, Scottish, v. 191, 200, 206; vi. 43, 235, 301, 369. Highlander, anecdote of a, iii. 356. Highland Clans (badges), v. 186, 215. —— Society of Scotland, ii. 56; v. 303. ‘Highland Widow, The,’ vi. 305, 327; vii. 82. ‘High Life below Stairs,’ vii. 20. Hill, Dr John, Professor of Greek, i. 40. Hinves, David, iii. 298, n. Histories of Scotland, v. 273, 274. ‘History of Scotland,’ for Lardner’s
Cyclopaedia, vii. 147, 191, 194. Hobhouse, Esq., J. Cam, v. 85; vi. 132. Hodgson, Dr F., vi. 391. Hoffman’s Novels, vii. 1.2. Hogarth, Mr George, iv. 165; vi. 192, 252. Hogg, James, the Ettrick Shepherd, i. 328, 371, 407, passim; 11.
3, n., 8, 9, 59, 101, 177, 179, 375; iii. 43, n., 99, 290, 293, 295, 391-394, 398; iv. 75, 76, 98, 234; v. 9, n., 16, 84, passim, 116, 228, 305, 317; vi. 159, 238, 298;
vii. 35, 419. Letters to Sir Walter Scott, i. 409; ii. 9, 363; iii. 393. Letter to the
Duchess of Buccleuch, iii. 293. his ‘Mountain Bard,’ i. 409; ii. 101, 177.
‘Forest Minstrel,’ ii. 375, 377. ‘Queen’s Wake,’ iii. 99.
‘Poetic Mirror,’ iii. 392. —— Robert, vi. 375, n. —— Robert junr., vii. 39. —— Letter from, passim Hogmanay, iv. 218; v. 385. Hohenlinden, vii. 77. Holcroft, Thomas, i. 249. Holland, iii. 102. Holland House, ii. 95; iii. 3; vii. 133 —— Lord, ii. 282, n., 284-6. —— Lady, vii. 133. —— Dr, vi. 364; vii. 316, 381. Home, Earl of, iii. 394. —— George, of Wedderburn, Esq.,ii. 84, 87, 251, 354. —— John, author of Douglas, i. 23, 139, 20.8. ——, Life and Works of vii. 12, 29. Hood, Sir Samuel, ii. 372. —— Lady, ii. 372; iii. 21, 292, 319. Hook, Mr Theodore, v. 217; vi. 26, 383, 386; vii. 116. Hooles’ Tasso, i. 38, 46; vi. 317. Holdsworth, Mr, v. 264. Hope, Charles, Lord-President, iv. 325; vi. 141. —— Captain Charles, R.N., iv.25. —— James, Esq., i. 28; vi. 133. —— John, Esq., vi. 146, 161, 163, 249; vii. 29, 169. —— Sir John, vi. 135, 192; vii. 17. —— Lady Charlotte, vi. 167. Hopetoun, Earl of, i. 124; v. 214. —— Countess of, vii. 184. Horner, Esq. Francis, ii. 157, 158. Home’s Pool, i. 404. ‘House of Aspen, the,’ i. 299, 337; ii. 113; vii.
108. Horton, Mr Wilmot, vi. 359, 362, 364. —— Mrs, vi. 364, 390. Howard, John, vii. 115 —— Lord, v. 93. Howison, William, iii. 30; v. 287. Howley, Dr, Archbishop of Canterbury, ii. 245; vii. 125. Hughes, Dr, v. 354; vi. 363, 390. —— Mrs, v. 354; vi. 209. —— John, Esq., v. 366. —— junr., Mr John, vii. 177. Hume, David (the historian), ii. 379; iii. 380, 381. ——, David, now Baron, i. 58, 59, 184, 237; ii. 104; iii. 131; vi. 267, 336. ——, Mr Joseph, iv. 159, 251, 356. ——, Mr Joseph, M. P. vi. 278, 383. Hunter, Alex. Gibson, Esq. of Blackness, ii. 195, 218, 220, 221, 222, 291; iii. 56; vi.
176, n. ——, Tibbie, i. 82, 83. Huntly, Marquis of, iii. 341; iv. 371. Huntly, Lady, iv. 371. Hurst, Robinson, and Co. v. 255; vi. 104, 119, 130, 139, 167, 175, 178, 191, 192, 213,
216, 223, 238, 281, 292; vii. 86, 95. Huskisson, Wm. Esq., vi. 177, 248, 390. ‘Hutchinson’s History of Durham,’ ii. 385. Huxley, Lieut.-Col. i. 13. n.; iv. 311, 383. Hyndford, Family of, vii. 87. I. ‘Inferno of Altisidora,’ ii. 352. Inglis, Sir R. H. vi. 364; vii. 126, 316. Iona, ii. 312, 314; iii. 243, 247. Ireland, iii. 265, passim. ——, vi. 64, 66, 72, 82, 84, 124, 126; vii. 173, 212. ——, Excursion to, vi. 39. Irving, Alexander, Professor of Civil Law, i. 58. ——, Rev. Edward, vii. 105, 129, 175, 197, 198. ——, John, Esq. i. 45, 50, 55, 92, 121, 122, 127, 145, 153, n. ——, Washington, iii. 377, 399; iv. 87. Extracts from his ‘Abbotsford and
Newstead,’ iii. 377, 399; iv. 88. Itterberg, Count, vii. 30. ‘Ivanhoe, 3 vols.’ iv. 258, 279, 315, 336,
340-344; vii. 111. —— (Paris Theatre), vi. 370. J. Jacob, William, Esq. vii. 125. James, G. P. R., Esq., i. 103. Jameson, Rev. Dr John, iii. 129, 132; vi. 331; ‘Bruce and Wallace,’ iii.
129, 132; History of the Culdees,’ ii. 332. Jamieson, Mr Robert, ii. 59, 73; iii. 114; iv. 220. ——, Captain John, vii. 385. Jardine, Sir Henry, vi. 19, 192. Jarvie, Bailie Nicol, vi. 297; vii. 19. Jedburgh, i. 166, 168, 188, 192; vi. 290, 296, 345; vii. 219, 285. ‘Jeddart fee,’ i. 214. Jeffrey, Francis, now Lord, i. 178, 383; ii. 26, 27, 98; ii. 110, 131, 132, 146, 149,
156, 157, 218, 219, 286, 296, 352, 390, 393, 403; iii. 16, 45, 123, 126, 301, 302; iv. 209;
v. 261; vi. 135, 253; vii. 13, 36, 100, 392. ——, Letter from, ii. 46. Jenkinson, Lord Liverpool, i. 263. Jenkyns, Dr Richard, vi. 392. Jenyns, Soame, i. 133. Jesuits, vi. 375. Jews, vi. 139, 350; vii. 86. Jobson, Mrs, Lochore, vi. 3, 11, 19. Miss, of Lochore, v. 394; vi. 1-4. See Mrs Walter Scott. Johnson, Dr Samuel, i. 72, 133, 139; ii. 122, 161, 163, 172, 174, 186, 285, 315, passim; iii. 123; vi. 129, 197, 282, 388; vii. 121. ——’s ‘Vanity of Human Wishes,’ ii. 307, n. Johnstone, the Chevalier, vi. 230. ——, John (Irish), iv. 169; v. 79; vi. 19. 3 ——, J. Hope, Esq., vi. 340. Johnston, Mr Robert, iv. 373. Jollie, James, Esq., vi. 192, n., 203. Jones, Paul, i. 140. Joseph, Mr, vii. 431. Judicature, Essay on Scottish,’ ii. 333-336. Juvenal,’ Gifford’s, vii. 22. K. Kames, Lord, i. 208. Kean, Edmund, iv. 30, 169. ‘Keepsake, The,’ (1828), vii. 107. Keith of Ravelstone, i. 89, 122. —— of Ravelstone, Mrs, v. 136, 184, 190. —— Dr, iv. 335. —— Mrs Murray, iv. 139; vi. 305; vii. 82. Kemble, John Philip, i. 213; ii. 266, 267; iii. 50, 312; iv. 60, 61, n., 169; v. 260: vi. 21, 166. ——’s ‘Farewell Address,’ iv. 61. —— Life of, reviewed, vi. 265, 294. —— Mr Charles, vii. 208. —— Mrs, J. P. vi. 27. —— Miss Fanny, vii. 207. —— Stephen, vii. 77. ‘Kenilworth, 3 vols,’ v. 28, 49, 413. —— Castle, iii. 373. Kent, Duchess of, vii. 134. Kerr, Mr John, of Glasgow, ii. 177, . —— Lord Robert, vi. 135. —— Charles of Abbotrule, i. 194, 218, 265,315. Killiecrankie, iii. 49. Kinloch of Kinloch, vi. 328. Kinnedder, Lord. See William Erskine. Kinniburgh, Mr, vi. 345. Knight, Mr, vi. 186, 193. Knighton, Sir William, vi. 150, 254, 358, 361; vii. 125, 132, 213. Knox, William, vi. 152, 153. —— Dr, vii. 169. Kyle, Dr Bishop of Cork, vi. 51. L. ‘Lady of the Lake,’ The, i, 208; ii. 52, 58, 250,
287, 305, 322, 348, 373, 401; iii. 12, 41, 44, 57. Laidlaw, Mr William, i. 197, 328, 404, 408; iii. 393; iv. 62, 63, n. 94, 202, 257, 376; v. 8, 12, 67, 125, 284; vi. 92, 166, 203, 207, 210, 287, 371; vii. 34,
80, 181, 216, 217; 234, 238, 247, 257, passim, 386, 389, 390, n. Laidlaw, Mr William, Letters to, iv. 63, 65, 66, 102, 103, 123, 125, 129, 135, 329, 347,
348, 370. —— (Laird Nippy), ii. 186, 248. Laing, Mr David, v. 261. —— Malcolm, Esq., i. 237; iii. 184, 188, 204. Lamb, Mr Charles, v. 9, n. Landor, Mr Walter Savage, ii. 142. ‘Landscape Gardening,’ Essay on, i. 115; v.
18,303. Lang, Bailie, Selkirk, iv. 307. Landseer, Mr, vi. 235. La Rochejaquelin, vi. 173, 179. Lansdowne, Lord, ii. 89; vii. 30, 121. Laudamy and Calamy, iii. 14. Lauder, Sir Thomas Dick, Bart., v. 135. Lauderdale, Earl of, ii. 91, 95, 281, n. 284; vii. 30. ‘Laureatship,’ iii. 75, passim, 94, 100, 340. Lauriston, Marquis de, vi. 380. Laval-Montmorency, Duke of, vii. 228. Law, Mr Louis, vi. 380, n. Lawrence, Sir Thomas, iv. 360; v. 172; vi. 362, 363, 364, 383, 384, 389; vii. 71. ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ i. 162, 365, 372; ii.
14, passim, 22, 36, 143, passim, 401; iii.
41, 44. Leather-bend, ii. 362. Lee, Rev. Dr, vii. 148. ‘Legend of Montrose,’ iv. 258, 272. Leopold, Prince, iv. 302, 306; v. 379; vii. 134. Lerwick, iii. 142, passim, 166, 182, 189, 197. Leslie, Mr C. R. vi. 186, 235. Leslie, Professor, ii. 224. Lessly, Bishop of Ross, v. 274. Lessudden, vi. 331. ‘Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft,’ i. 313;
iii. 228, n.; vii. 58, 204, 213, 228. Leven, Earl of, ii. 194. Lewis, M. G., i. 290, passim, his Tales of Wonder, ib (Letter to Scott, 291), 316, 361; iii. 299; vi. 128, 154. Leyden, Dr John, i. 66, n. 67, 322, passim, 333, passim, 344, 359-368, 370, 405; ii 80, 92, 197,
216, 371-375; iii. 264; vi. 326. ——, Letter to, ii, 371. Liddell, Hon. Henry, vii. 73, 273. ——, Miss, vii. 77. Lindsay, Lady Anne, v. 397. Limerick, vi. 68. Little’s Poems, ii. 77. Llangollen, vi. 75. Liverpool, Lord, ii. 258. ——, Lord, vi. 389; vii. 28. Loch, Mr John, vii. 137. Katrine, i. 143, 208; ii. 180, 292; iii. 49, 234. Lochore, vi. 2, 7, 40, 341, 359, n.; vii. 210. Locker, E. H., Esq., vi. 364. Lockhart, John Gibson, Esq., iv. 245, 370, 378; v. 318, 368; vi. 16, 19, 42, 85, 123,
131, 141, 144, 145, 146, 151, 166, 186, 222, 254, 286, 291, 302, 322, 336, 350, 355, 383,
385; vii. 45, 126, 139, 151, 152, 154, 160, 168, 175, 211; vii. 306. ——, Letters to, iv. 245, n., 283, 373; v. 252, 370; vi. 215, 216;
vii. 29, 30, 73, 107, 146, 194, 306. ——, Letters from, vi. 49, 53, 76. ——, John Hugh, v. 51, 162, 292, 340, 367; vi. 19, 144, 162, 218, 263, 265, 273, 276, 282, 285,
322, 356, 362; vii. 36, 46, 126, 155, 341, 419. Lockhart, Mrs J. G., iv. 374, 378; v. 32, 51, 82, 125, 161, 212, 291, 300, 310, 328; v.
52; vi. 49, 76, 122, 144, 145, 151, 162, 166, 218, 221, 263, 276, 285, 292, 302, 322, 336,
350, 355, 383; vii. 45, 96, 126, 136, 211, 258, 261, 309, 384, 389, 419. ——, Letters to, iv. 371; v. 52; vi. 49, 53; vii. 144, 149. ——, William, Esq., vii. 161, 166, 168. ——, Miss Violet, vii. 203. ——‘s Life of Burns, vii., 147. ‘Lodge’s Portraits,’ vii. 305, 427. Londonderry, Lord, v. 93, 213. ——, Marquis of, vii. 72. Longman, Mr T. N. i. 363; ii. 276. ——, and Co., i. 370, 380; ii. 19, 22; 35, 112, 114; iii. 75, 84, 322-324, 329, 351; iv.
171, 359, 368; v. 19, 27; vi. 290; vii. 110, 147, 191, 194. Lonsdale, Earl of, vi. 79. ‘Lord of the Isles, The,’ ii. 310; iii. 63, 92,
235, 293, 325, passim, 340. Lorn, Marquis of, i. 339. Lothian, Marquis of, vii. 72, 77, 382. Louis XVIII., iii. 120, 126. Louisa, Princess, v. 175. Lovat, Simon, Lord, iii. 230. Lowe, Sir Hudson, vii. 59, 66. Lucy, Mr, of Charlecote, vii. 123. Lundie, John, iii. 13. Lushington, Mr, vii. 100. Luttrel, Mr, vi. 359. M. Macallister, Mr, of Strathaird, iii. 236-238. ——‘s Cave, iii. 214, 236, 248. Macauley, Mrs, i. 124. Macdonald, Ranald, Esq., of Staffa, ii. 309-311, 314, 318; iii. 251. —— Mr Lawrence, vii. 431. Marshal, vi. 376, 379. —— Reginald, of the Isles, iii. 246. Macdonell of Glengarry, iv. 4; v. 200; vi. 235, 282; vii. 210. —— Dr, Dublin, vi. 56. M’Crie, Rev. Dr Thomas, iv. 34. MacCulloch of Ardwell, i. 13, n. —— Mr David, iii. 65 n. M’Diarmid, Capt. iii. 143, 146. —— Mr John, Dumfries, vii. 307. MacDougals of Makerstoun, i. 4, 16, 68, passim, 155, 188. MacDougal, Sir H. Hay, of Makerstoun, iv. 188, 314, 323; v. 48. ‘Macduff’s Cross,’ v. 23, 168, 187, 286. Macfarlane, John, of Kirkton, Esq., i. 204. Mackay, Charles (‘Bailie Nicol Jarvie’), iv. 227; v. 79, passim, 217; vii. 19, 20. —— Letter to, iv. 228. Dr M’Intosh, vii. 283. —— Mrs, vi. 275. Mackean, James, tried for murder, i. 256. Mackenzie, Colin, Esq., of Portmore, i. 95, 371; ii. 105, 152, 224, 283; vi. 17, 133,
192, 196, 240, 248, 250, 259; vii. 87, 113. —— Letter from, ii. 152. —— Henry, Esq., i. 39, 203, 289, 224; iii. 133, 190, 292, 304; v. 7, passim; vi. 142, 147, 148, 153; ‘Life and Works of John Home,’ vii. 12, 29. Mackenzie, Lord, vi. 319, 346. Miss Hannah, ii. 312, 314. Mackinlay, John, iii. 308, 316. Mackinnon, Will. Alex., Esq., ii. 312. Mackintosh, Sir James, i. 373; ii. 45, 298, n.; vi. 228; vii.
188, 319, 418. —— Letter from, vi. 228. MacCorkindale, Donald, vii. 146. —— Mr Daniel, Printer, vii. 419. M’Lean, Sir Allan, ii. 315, n. —— Mr Donald, i. 217. Maclean, Mr, Iona, iii. 243. Macleod of Harris, iii. 222. —— of Macleod, iii. 226, 240, passim, 231. Macnally, Leonard, Esq., iii. 121, n. M’Nab of M’Nab, vii. 14. M’Naught, Rev. Mr, of Girthon, i. 224-228. MacNeill, Hector, ii. 228. Macniel of Colonsay, iii. 247, 265. Macpherson of Cluny, vii. 183, 210. ——’s Ossian, ii. 55, 58; iii. 230. ——‘s Homer, ii. 57. Macqueen of Braxfield, Lord Justice-Clerk, i. 186, 187. See
Braxfield. Magee, Archbishop, vi. 51. Magic Mirror,’ iii. 30. Mahon, Lord, vii. 318. Maitland Club, v. 269; vii. 181. Maida, epitaph on, v. 367. Malachi Malagrowther, Letters of, vi. 225, 242, passim, 262, 297,
328, 345. —— Correspondence on, passim 266-274. Malcolm, General John, iii. 17. —— Sir John, ii. 374; iii. 17, n., 106, 368; iv. 162; vi. 387; vii. 318. Malta, vii. 318. Mandrin, the Smuggler, vi. 207. Manners, Mr Alex., ii. 243. Marjoribanks, David, Esq., iii. 136, 169, 174, 184, 188, 203, 221. —— John,i. 119. —— Sir John, Bart., iii. 113, 136. Markland, James Heywood, Esq., vii. 147, n. Marlborough, Duke of, iii. 118. ’Marmion,’ ii. 113, 114, 122, 136, 159, 181, 399,
401; iii. 12, 41, 44; vii. 195. Mary, Queen of Scots, vi. 126, 159; vii. 93, 147. —— Queen of England, vi. 365. Mathews, Mr Charles, Comedian, ii. 197, 274; iii. 336, 373; v. 175, 179; vi. 10, 159,
168. —— junior, vi. 188, 189. Mathieson, Peter, ii. 10; iii. 64, n.; iv. 157, 187, 276, 350; v.
198; vi. 9, 106, 296; vii. 80, 81, 281, 286. Matrimony, offers of, vi. 343; vii. 216. Maturin, Rev. C. R. ii. 155; iii. 93, 310, 312; vi. 56. —— Letter to, iv. 132. Maxwell, Mr, Aros, iii. 254. ——, a Novel, v. 217. Maxpoffle, vii. 190. Meadowbank, (1st) Lord, i. 214. —— (2d) Lord, vii. 17, 277. Meason, Gilbert Laing, Esq., iii. 188. Meath, Lord and Lady, vii. 130. Meigle, i. 209. Melrose, i. 403; v. 178, passim, 275, 285. —— Railway, v. 393. —— Abbey, i. 71, 80, 403; ii. 359, 403; iii. 7, 245; iv. 96; vi. 93, 201. —— Stanzas to, vii. 199. Melville, Lord (Henry D. Dundas), i. 317; ii. 83, 84, 90, 93, 96, 99, 106, 260, 262,
281, n., 283, 284. (Death of, ii. 342); iii. 27; vi. 161, 249. —— Lord (Robert Dundas), i. 92, n., 318; ii. 205, 258, 259, 337,
405; iii. 27, 341; iv. 185, passim, 300, 321, 371; v. 87; vi. 128,
133, 140, 142, 258, 266, passim, 290, 328, 345, 348, 383; vii. 29,
50, 137. Menzies, Hon. William, iii. 128. —— Miss, i. 170. Methodists, iii. 335; vi. 205. Milch-cow, iii. 90. Miller, Mr Archibald, i. 153, n. —— John, Esq., ii. 320. —— Sir William, Lord Glenlee, i. 189. —— Mr William, ii. 114, 160, 291. —— Miss, ii. 191, Milman, Rev. H. H., vii. 419. Milne, Nicol, iv. 303, 331; vii. 196. Nicol, jun. iv, 331, n. Milton, vi. 157. Portrait of, vi. 354. Milton-Lockhart, vii. 162, 166, 167. ‘Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,’ 3 vols. i.
195, 254, 318, 322, 342, passim, 371, 378; ii. 287, 327; v. 165. Minto, Earl of, (1st) ii. 90, 94, 216, 374; vi. 170. ——, Earl of, (2d) vi. 170, 330. ——, Lady, passim Mitchell, Rev. James, Wooler, i. 105, passim, 239. Mitford, Miss, iii. 43, n. Moira, Earl of, ii. 46, 91, 92, 94. Moliere, Essay on, vii. 98. Moore, Judge, Lamberton, vi. 66. ——, Thomas, Esq. ii. 296, 398; iii. 44, 335, 342; vi. 57, 91, 128, 131, 159, 362, 363;
vii. 136. Extracts from his Journal at Abbotsford, vi. 91. Letter from, vi. 72. Letters to,
vi. 73, 90. ——’s ‘Two Penny Post Bag,’ iii. 44. ——, Sir John, ii. 227, 236-7, 254, 344, 351; vii. 143. ‘Monastery, The,’ 3 vols. iv. 350, 358, 360; v.
20, 303. Moncrieff Wellwood, Bart., Rev. Sir Henry, v. 361. Mons Meg, i. 350; v. 221; vi. 155; vii. 183. Montague House, ii. 99. ——, Lord, iv. 76; vi. 209. ——, Letters to, iv. 76, 206, 231, 267, 270, 306, 319, 356; v. 41, 47, 70, 82, 86, 162,
165, 181, 183, 185, 187, 269, 270, 272, 345, 351, 372. Monteith of Carstairs, Mr H., iv. 356. Monteath, Esq. C. G. S. of Closeburn, i. 153, n. Montgomery, Mr James, v. 335. Montrose, Duke of, ii. 250, 283. Marquis of, ii. 294, 395. —— Sword of, v. 190, 231. Monypenny, Alexander, Esq. vi. 192, n. 240. —— David, Lord Pitmilly, i. 120, 153, n. More, John Shanks, Esq. vi. 318. —— Mrs, Dunluce, iii. 270, —— Mrs Hannah, vi. 322, M. Moreau, General, vi. 376. Morgan, Lady O’Donnel, vi. 264. Morning Chronicle, ii. 155, Letter to, v. 371. Morpeth, Lord, vi. 373, 378. Morritt, John B. Saurey, Esq. of Rokeby, ii. 32, n, 179, passim,
231, 244, 247, 248, 287, 343, 397; iii. 10, 16, 40, 43, 45, 91, 163, n, 297, 319, n. 401; iv. 8; vi. 209, 309, 353; vii. 126, 142, 152, 160, 312. ——, Letters to, ii.231, 287, 318, 340, 343, 351, 378, 397; iii. 5. 16, 18,20, 38, 91,
112, 115, 125, 129, 290, 314, 317, 379, 401; iv. 8, 23, 42, 57, 84, 112, 181, 204, 212; vi.
62, 80, 219; vii. 37. ——, Letters from, ii. 382; iii. 11, 297. ——, Mrs, ii. 180, 182, 289, 290; iii. 19, 72, 96, 112, 117, 130, 292, 314, 320, 374,
379, Death of, 401. ——, Mrs John, vi. 65. ——, Mrs, vii. 218. ——, Miss Anne, vii. 218. Mortham Tower, ii. 381, 383. Mowat, Mr, Lerwick, iii. 147, 152, 163, 164. Mundell, Mr Alexander, ii. 87. Murray, John, of Broughton, i. 179, 180. ——, Alexander, Esq. of Broughton, vi. 15. ——, Colonel, 18th Hussars, iv. 290, 295, 299, 376. ——, Lord George (1745), vi. 230. ——, Sir George, vi. 52. ——, Sir Gideon, of Elibank, i. 68, 349. ——, Mr John, London, ii. 114, 171, 173, 200, passim, 243, 247,
397, 398, 401; iii. 323, 324, 337, 351; iv. 31; v. 87; vi. 107, 131, 132; vii. 147, 154,
194. ——, Letters from, iv. 31; vii. 195. Letters to, iv. 32, 136; v. 150. ——, John A., Esq. vi. 247, 253; vii. 13, 14. Murray, Sir Patrick, of Ochtertyre, i. 146, 150, 153, n.; vi.
209. ——, Patrick, Esq. of Simprim, i. 146, 153, n. 209; v. 23; vi.
248. ——, W., Esq. of Henderland, vii. 13. ——, Mr William H., Theatre-Royal, Edinburgh, iv. 169, 227, 254; v. 204, 231, 317; vi.
26; vii. 16, 20. ‘My Aunt Margaret’s Mirror,’ Tale of, vii.
88, 108. N. ‘Nameless Glen,’ iii. 63. Napier, Francis, Lord, i . 384; ii. 1, 2; v. 269, n. ——’s. Colonel, Hist, of the Peninsular War, vii. 143. —— M’Vey, Esq. vii. 12. Naples, vii. 340. Naylor, Sir George, iv. 298. Neidpath Castle, i. 407. Nelson, Lord, vii. 203. Newark Castle, ii. 24. Newton House, i. 207. —— Lord, vii. 93. —— G. Stewart, R.A., vi. 72, 186, 235. Nicol, George, i. 345. —— Rev. Principal, vi. 348. —— W. of the High School Edinburgh, i. 32, 110, n. Nichols, Mr B., Letter to, vii. 271. Nicolson, Wm. Bishop of Carlisle, i. 268. —— Capt. R.N., iii. 147. Nicholson, John, vii. 233, 259, 381, 393-4. Mrs Sarah, iv. 23. ——, Miss Jane, i. 268, 273. ‘Noble Moringer, The,’ ballad of, iv. 260, 264,
273. Northampton, Marquis of, iii. 347. Marchioness of, iii. 299, 347; vii. 69. Northcote, Mr, vii. 132. Northern Antiquities, Illustrations of, iii. 114. Nations, Scott’s Essay on the Manners and Customs of, i. 173. Northumberland, Duke of, vii. 78. Duchess of, vii. 78. Noss, Cradle of, iii. 149, 150, 279. Novelists, British, ii. 173, 201. O. O’Callagan, Sir Robert, vi. 141. O’Connell, Daniel, vi. 81. —— Mr, Killarney, vi. 70, 72. Ogilvie, Thomas Elliot, Esq., of Chesters, v. 48. —— Honourable Mrs, i. 78. ‘Old Mortality,’ ii. 68; iv. 30-39. O’Neill, Miss, iv. 30; v. 391. ‘Opus Magnum.’ See Waverley
Novels. Orange, Prince of, iii. 370. Orkney Islands, i. 404; iii. 184, passim, 195, 202, 205, 290, n. —— Islanders, iii. 191, 195, 197, 201, 204. —— Earls of, iii. 158, 159, 167, 169, 184, 188. Orleans, Duke of, vi. 374. ‘Ornamental Gardening,’ Essay on, vii. 89. Orra,’ Miss Baillie’s Tragedy, ii. 366. Ossian, i. 36, 253; ii. 53, 58; iii. 32, 230. Oxford, i. 374, 377; ii. 80, 212; iii. 34. vi. 390,391. Owen, Mr, i. 395. P. Palgrave, Mr, vi. 364. Paoli, General, ii. 317. ‘Parenthesis The,’ ii. 379. Paris, iii. 118, 367, 377; vi. 367. Park, Mr Archibald, ii. 11, 14. —— Mungo, ii. 10-14, 59. Parr, Dr Philopatris, ii. 253. Paterson, Peter, Old Mortality, i. 210. Paul Jones, i. 140. ‘Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk,’ iii. 349,
351, 379, 404; iv. 1. Paul, Sir G. O., ii. 312, 315, 319. ‘Patrick Fleming,’ Song of, v. 53. Pearson, Paul, iii. 246. Peel, Sir Robert, v. 202.; vi. 52, 290, 345, 386, 389, 390; vii. 31, 178, 182, 207, 429. —— Letter from, v. 215. Peerages, Jacobite, v. 222. Pembroke, Earl of, vi. 211. Peninsular War, ii. 226, 236, 249, 253, 339, 396; iii. 36. ‘Penny Chap Books,’ i. 121. Penruddock, iii. 50. Pepys’ Diary, ii. 296; iii. 122, 179, 191, 201, 215, 291. Perceval, Right Hon. Spencer, ii. 258, 262, 405. —— Mrs Spencer, iii. 227, n. Percy, Bishop of Dromore, i. 330. ——’s ‘Reliques of Ancient Poetry,’ i. 38, 116, 250, 381. Perrot, Sir John, iii. 269. Peters, John, iii. 208, 237. ——’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, iv. 282. ‘Peveril of the Peak,’ 4 vols. v. 149, 168, 173,
229, 242, 245-253. Philip, De Commines, v. 254. Philips, Major, iii. 118. Phillips, Sir George, vii. 125. Philpotts, Dr, now Bishop of Exeter, vi. 90; vii. 71,
125. Phipps, Mrs, vii. 131. ‘Picaroon,’ iii. 64, 133. Pichegru, General, vi. 376. Pict, iii. 195. Pigot, Sir Hugh, vii. 320. ‘Pilot, The,’ a drama, vii. 361. —— a novel, v. 341; vi. 361. Pindar, Peter, vii. 23. Pinkerton, John, i. 346; iii. 51; his ‘History of Scotland,’ v. 274. ‘Pirate, The,’ 3 vols. i. 149; v. 124, 126, 143,
150; vii. 129. Pitcairn, Dr, i. 4. ——‘s ‘Ancient Criminal Trials,’ iii. 160, n.;
v. 261; vii. 202. Pitmilly, Lord, vi. 240. See Mony penny. Pitt, Right Hon. William, ii. 34, 83, 84, 87, 157; iii. 108; vii. 124, 135, 136. Planting, v. 385. ‘Of Waste Land, Essay on,’ vii. 47. Platoff (Hetman), iii. 369; vi. 373. Playfair, Professor, ii. 157. Plenton, Baron of, iv. 54. Plummer, Andrew, of Middlestead, i. 317; ii. 15, 16, 17. Plunkett, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, vi. 51, 57, 71, 137, n. ‘Poacher, The,’ ii. 352. Poetical Works of Scott, new edition,
vii. 97, 194, 203. ‘Poetry contained in the Waverley Novels,’ v. 172. Poets, British, projected edition of, ii. 44, 49. Pole, Mr, vi. 197. Polier, Baron de, iv. 324. Political Alarms, iv. 318, passim, 335. ‘Polydore,’ Howison’s poem of, iii. 29; v. 287. Ponsonby, The Hon. Dr,vi.53. ——, Miss, Llangollen, vi. 76. Pontopiddon’s ‘History of Norway,’ iii. 162. Pope, Alexander, ii. 77, 308, n.; iii. 27, 121; vi. 61, 99, 240;
his Homer, i. 26; ii. 303, iii. 27. ‘Popular Poetry, and Imitations of the Ancient
Ballad,’ Essays on, i. 130, 135, 235, 302, 342; ii. 21, n.; vii. 203. Porchester, Lord, ii. 9. Portland, Duke of, ii. 256-8. Portraits of Sir Walter Scott, vii. 424. Pozzo Di Borgo, vi. 350, 368, 370, 379. Prætorium, i. 149. Preston, Sir Robert, vii. 208. Prestonpans, i. 23, 49, 89; vii. 213. Preston Tower, vii. 214. ——, Battle-field, i. 49; vii. 214. Price, Mr, iii. 51. Pringle, Sir John, ii. 317. —— Mark, Esq., of Clifton, i. 4; iv. 260. —— of Crichton, i. 4. —— Mr, of Torwoodlee, ii. 72; iv. 203, 318; vii. 7. —— Alex., Esq. of Whytbank, ii. 152; iii. 350, 369, 372; iv. 349; vi. 158. —— Mr Thomas, iv. 64; vi. 363. Prior, Mat., ii. 77, 79, 253. Prisons, Reform of, vii. 115. ‘Private Letters of the 17th Century,‘ v. 138. Privy Counsellor, vii. 213. ‘sage,’ vi. 343. ‘Prose Works, Miscellaneous,’ 6 vols. 8vo, vii.
46. ‘Provincial Antiquities of Scotland,’ iv. 220. Proctor, Peter, Esq., i. 212. Purdie, Charles, v. 7, 12. —— Thomas, ii. 10; iii. 7, 51, 324, 378; iv. 187, 192, 261, 305, 350, passim; v. 8, 124, 296, 321, 396, 398; vi. 17, 166, 187, 191, 275, 277, 282, 292,
375, n.; vii. 9, 162. Death and Monument, vii. 200. Pye, H. J., iii. 81, 87. Purgstall, Countess, v. 129. —— Letter to, v. 130. Q. Quaighs, iv. 162, 189. Quarterly Review, ii. 204, passim, 237, 243, 247, 253, 254, 302,
381; iii. 45, 302, 325; iv. 34, 210; v. 150, 158, n.; vi. 179, 265,
294; vii. 89, 98, 146, 156. Queenhoo-hall, a Romance,’ ii. 171. Queensberry, Marquis of, iii. 69, 95. ‘Quentin Durward,’ 3 Vols., v. 149, 229, 237,
253, 279. R. Radcliffe, Dr, iii. 61. —— Mrs, vi. 206. Rae, Mr Clestrom, iii. 197, passim, 206. Sir David, Lord Eskgrove, i. 214. Sir William, Bart., i. 120, 153, n.; iii. 369; iv. 222, 313; v.
128; vi. 133, 192, 209, 254; vii. 29, 30, 207. Raeburn, Sir Henry, ii. 183, 221; iv. 235, 245; v. 162, 165, 215; vi. 321; vii. 209. —— Lady (Scott), vi. 331; vii. 151. ‘Ragman’s Roll,’ the, i. 391. Ramsay, Allan, i. 138; his ‘Evergreen,’ i. 26; ‘Tea Table
Miscellany,’ i. 18, 83. —— Rev. E. B., vi. 302, 303. —— James, i. 49, 169. —— John, Esq., of Ochtertyre, i. 208. —— Letter to Scott, i. 252. Rattrays of Craighall, i. 208. Ravensworth, Lord and Lady, vii. 70. —— Castle, passim Ravishment,’ the, vi. 369, 371, 375. Reay, Lord, iii. 207, 208, 214, 217, 218. Redon, Baron, i. 153. ‘Redgauntlet,’ 3 vols., i. 161, v. 149, 319; vi.
57. Rees, Mr Owen, ii. 36, 50; iii. 324; iv. 304; vi. 358. ‘Refreshing the Machine,’ iii. 315, 321. Regalia of Scotland, iv. 111, passim, 115. Regent, Prince (George IV.), ii. 396, 397, 400, 402; iii. 75, passim, 94, 108, 113, 188, 338, passim, 345. ‘Reivers’ Wedding,’ ballad of the, i. 353. ‘Religious Discourses, Two,’ vii. 98, 107. Reliquiæ Trottcosienses, vii. 218. ‘Resolve, The,’ lines, ii. 352. Reston, Lord, vi. 246. See David Douglas. Reviewals by Sir Walter Scott. See the
Chronological List of his Publications. Reynolds, Sir Joshua, vi. 128, 354, n. Rhine, the, iii. 104; vii. 380. Rice, Mr Spring, vii. 134. ‘Rich Auld Willie’s Farewell,’ i. 349. Richardson, Mr Charles, vii. 151. —— Dr, of Belfast, iii. 268, 292. —— John, Esq., London, ii. 284; iii. 104; iv. 225, 368, 372; vi. 86; vii. 127, 133, 381. —— Letters to, ii. 284; iii. 104; iv. 225, 297. —— Samuel, i. 39.; vi. 112. Riddell-House, iv. 263. —— Major, iii. 294. —— Thomas, of Comiston, vi. 292. Ritson, Joseph, i. 330, 346, 359, 400, 413; ii. 74. 75, 80. Robertson, Esq., Patrick, v. 251, 317; vii. 17, 20. Robertson, Principal, i. 108; ii. 317; iii. 37; vi. 170. Robespierre, vii. 230. Robin Hood, iii. 27, 51. Robinson Crusoe, iii. 105. Robison, Mr, now Sir John, v. 265. ‘ROB ROY,’ 3 vols. iv. 67-69, 106-9; v. 26, 79, 204. —— Drama of, iv. 140, 227. ——’s gun, ii. 395. iv. 68; Rogers, Esq. Samuel, i. 93,373; iii. 102, 338; vi. 359, 362, 384, 387; vii. 125, 133,
136. ‘Rokeby,’ a Poem, i. 162; ii. 366, n.; 378, passim; iii. 5, 9, passim, 33, 45, 91, 293. —— Park, ii. 247, 248, 289, 309, 379; iii. 2, 12, 15, 72, 96, 374; vi. 353; vii. 142,
312. Rolland, Esq., Adam, vii. 209. Rollo, Lord, vi. 253. ‘Romance, Essay on,’ v. 284. Rome, city of, vii. 362, passim. ‘in the Nineteenth Century,’ i. 119. Romilly, Sir Samuel, iii. 106, 107. Rose, William Stewart, Esq., i. 373; ii. 34, 118, 119, 180; iii. 64, n., 163, n., 298; v. 7, 175, 187, 296; vi. 131, 132, 359;
vii. 151. Rosebank, i. 128, 153, 166; ii. 5, 6, 37. Ross, Mr, collector, Lerwick, iii. 146, 163, 164. —— Dr Adolphus, viii. 197, 261 . Rosslyn, Countess of, ii. 109, 376. Rothschild, vi. 309, Roubilliac, vi. 53. Rousseau, vi. 131, 132. Rowland’s ‘Letting of Humours,’ &c. iii. 316. Roxburgh Castle, i. 39. Club, iii. 4; v. 256, passim. Roxburgh, John, Duke of, i. 346; ii. 135. Royal Literary Society, v. 56, 86; vii. 34. Society of Edinburgh, i. 203: v. 46; vi. 147. Russell, Claud, Esq., i. 92, 266, n.; iii. 133. —— Dr, v. 312. —— Lord John, vii. 125, 383. —— Mr John, v. 361. —— General Sir James, of Ashestiel, i. 221; ii. 3, 363; vi. 143, 157, 182, 184, 185,
284. —— Professor, i, 189. —— Miss, iv. 337. —— Miss Anne, vi. 183. Rutherford, Andrew, Esq., vii. 13. —— Dr Daniel, i. 10, 108, 128, 139, 371; iv. 319, 327, 333. —— Dr John, i. 10, 15. —— Mr John, of Edgerston, iv. 309. —— Mr Robert, vi. 143. —— Anne, mother of Sir Walter Scott, i. 10, 77, 78, 108, 154, 164, 176, 180, 371; vi.
197. Death of, iv. 327. —— Letters to, i. 154, 268, 299. —— Miss Janet, i. 10. —— Miss Christian, i. 10, 139, 219, 237; ii. 294; iii. 352; iv. 319, 333; vi. 198.
Letters to, i. 219, 222, 238, 272. Rutland, Duke of, v. 171. Rutt, Dr, vi. 182. S. ‘Sadler’s, Sir Ralph, Life, Letters, and State
Papers,’ 3 vols., 4 to, ii. 170, 171, 255-6. Safety Lamp, iii. 376. St Albans, Duke of, vi. 96, 137. St Andrews, vii. 47, 82. Saint Columba, Island, ii. 315, 319. Columba, ii. 320. ‘Saint Ronan’s Well,’ 3 vols., i. 150; v. 149, 285, 297, 311, 315; vi. 312. St Ronan’s Club, v. 317. ‘—— Valentines Eve.’ See Fair Maid of Perth. Sale Room, The,’ iv. 42. Saltoun, Lord, iii. 140. Sancho, Panza, ii. 322; iii. 98, 398; vi. 280; vii. 211. Sandford, Bishop, ii. 188, n. Sands, Mr Hastings, v. 409. Sandy-Knowe. See Smailholme. Saunders and Ottley, Messrs, vii. 108. ‘Sayings and Doings,’ Hook’s, vii. 116. Scarlett, Captain, vi. 167. Schiller’s Tragedy of The Robbers, i. 205. Scotland, Histories of, v. 273, 274. Scott, Walter, Cognom ‘Beardie,’ great grandfather of Sir Walter Scott, i. 3, 69, 70; iv. 323, 382;
vii. 400. —— Robert, grandfather of Sir —— Walter, i. 5, 72, 73, 83, 84; vii. 400. —— Walter, father of Sir —— Walter Scott, i. 7, 50, 53, n. 56, 77, 106, 132, 151, 164,
180, 184. —— Letters from 187, 222, 268. —— Death of, 299; ii. 355; vi. 151; vii. 400. Mrs, mother of Sir Walter. See Anne Rutherford. Scotts, Brothers of Sir Walter Scott, (1). Robert, ii. 53 n. 149.
(2). Major John, i. 12; ii. 378. (3). 352, 401; iv. 5, 8; vi. 151. (4). Thomas, i. 13, 79,
216, 223, 301, 371; ii. 39, 115, 216, 279, passim; iii. 93, 300; iv.
5, 34, n. 104, 311; v. 275, 382, n. Letters
to, ii. 178, 216, 282, 284; iii. 93, 300; iv. 5, 7, 312, 332, 377. (5). Daniel, i. 13; ii.
4, 5, 78, 254-255; vii. 121. Scott, Anne, Sister of Sir Walter, i. 12, 286, 301. Scott, Mrs Walter, afterwards Lady Scott, i. 283, passim, 301,
390, 399, 408-9; ii. 7, 60, 61, 70, 71, 149, 180, 192, 244, 250, 272, 289, 306, 311, 323,
339, 379; iii. 1, 36, 54, 75, 111, 113, 117, 285, 289, 314, 318, 333, 352, 374; iv. 326,
329, 332, 335, 337, 339; v. 10, 212, 311; vi. 15, 96, 101, 151, 163, 197, 208, 249, 261,
265, 277, 278, 282, 291, passim, 297; death of, 298-9, 305, 318,
324, 337, 344, n. 351; vii. 144, 410. —— Major, now Sir Walter, eldest son of Sir Walter Scott, ii. 188, n. 269, n., 306-7, 381; iii. 12, 19, 114, 317, 403; iv.
25, 30, 203, 219, 253, 273, 279, passim, 297, 313, 372, 374, 378; v.
45, 50, 162, 175, 180, 291, 394; vi. 1, 5, 24, 40, 51, 58, 81, 85, 131, 141, 149, 151, 182,
184, n. 204, 239, 298, 303, 304, 332, 336, 340, 342; vii. 87, 136,
175, 196, 210, 252, 261, 278, 304, 322, 381, 421. —— Letters to, iv. 289, 293, 295, 299, 303, 309, 320, 323, 326, 376; v. 32, 53, 54, 62,
63, 65, 66, 68, 175, 211, 232; vi. 15, 18, 40; vii. 196. —— Charles, youngest son of Sir Walter, ii. 188, n; iv. 30, 251, 256, 296, 325, 349,
372, 378; v. 31, 55, 180, 212, 291, 333, 360; vi. 41, 141, 151, 258, 286, 302, 307, 342,
347, 361, 385, 390, 391; vii. 91, 96, 122, 247, 261, 340, 362. Letters to, v. 33, 43, 64,
144, 366. —— Miss Sophia, eldest daughter of Sir Walter, ii. 188, n. 244,
248, 250, 306, 311; iii. 12, 19, 114, 318, 390; iv. 243, 251, 256, 278, 326, 374. See Mrs J. G. Lockhart. Scott, Miss Anne, youngest daughter of Sir Walter, ii. 188, n; iv. 202, 372; v. 9, 212;
vi. 42, 50, 61, 85, 123, 151, 166, 278, 299, passim, 304, 309, 335,
350, 393; vii. 6, 85, 144, 175, 178, 183, 203, 223; vii. 258, 261, 274, 419. ——, Mrs Walter, now Lady Scott, iv. 199, 306; vi. 4, 19, 20, 24, 42, 58, 65, 81, 85,
182, 204, 336, 340; vii. 136, 175. Letters to, iv. 367; vi. 5, 11. —— Thomas. See Scotts, Brothers of Sir Walter Scott. ——, Mrs Thomas (sister-in-law of Sir Walter), iii. 64, 65, n.;
vi. 392; vii. 381. ——, Captain Robert, of Rosebank, uncle of Sir Walter, i. 22, 73, 128, 153, 167, 216,
371; ii. 5. ——, Letters to,i. 172; ii. 249. ——, Thomas, uncle of Sir Walter, i.,17, 73, 74, 90. ——, Miss Janet, aunt of Sir Walter, i. 19, 34. ——, Walter (nephew of Sir Walter), i. 13; iv. 378; v. 177, 212. ——, Jessie, niece of Sir Walter, afterwards Mrs Huxley, i. 13, n. ——, Anne, niece of Sir Walter, i. 13, n.; vi. 295. ——, Eliza, niece of Sir Walter, i. 13, n. —— Miss Barbara, Cousin of Sir Walter i. 34; vii. 393. ——, Captain Walter (Satchells) History of the name of Scott, i. 63; vii. 399. ——, Sir William, i. 3, 68, 349. Scott, Lord, ii. 153, 154, 376. —— Charles of Know-South, i. 74; ii. 296. —— Walter of Scots-hall, iii. 142. —— Sir John, iii. 161. —— Captain Hugh, v. 234. —— Lady Frances, i. 305. —— Lady Anne, iii. 287. —— Miss Jennie, Sandy-Knowe, i. 83, 86, 90; Kelso, 115. —— Lady Charlotte, v. 189. ——s of Harden, i. 3, 64, 65, 67, passim, 74, 190, 248; vii. 400. —— Hugh, of Harden, now Lord Polwarth, i. 234, 304; ii. 2; iv. 49; vi. 283, 289; vii.
219. —— Mrs, of Harden, i. 246, 248; vi. 16, 283, 289. —— Letters to, ii. 342; vii. 358. —— Henry, Esq., vi. 289, 290, 295, 323; vii. 52, 219, 253. —— Letter to, vii. 253. —— Lady Diana of Harden, i. 248, death of, vii. 48. —— Lady Anne Maria, vi. 335. —— Miss Eliza, vi. 283. ——s of Raeburn, i. 3, 4, passim, 16, 17, n. 63, 67, passim, 74, 154; vi. 292; vii. 87, 205. —— William, Esq., of Raeburn, i. 232; vii. 191. —— Major John, vii. 273. —— John of Gala, iii. 336, 350, 372, 374, 380; iv. 188, 318; v. 309, 345, 400; vi. 121,
168; vii. 313. Letter to, v. 375. —— of Darnlee, Dr, iv. 188, 260, 347. ——s, of Scotstarvet, iii. 160, 282. —— of Danesfield, i. 17. —— Mr George, ii. 14. Scott, Mary, the Flower of Yarrow, i. 3, 66, 67. Scots Magazine, The, i. 408; ii. 5, 239; iii. 124, 325. Scottish judicature, Essay on, ii. 333, 336. Sculpture, vii, 104. Scrope, William, Esq., vi. 185. 189, 211, 236; vii. 6, 160. Seaforth, Francis, Lord, iii. 318, 319, n. ‘Secret History of the Court of King James I.’, (vi.) iii. 353. Selkirk, Earl of, i. 55. Selkirk, Souters of, iii. 394, passim. Seton Castle, i. 49. Seward, Anna, i. 346, 347, 349, 374, 386; ii. 27, 53, 121, 123, 277, 328. Death of, ii.
275. Letters to, i. 349, 352, 374, 385; ii. 27,123. ‘Poetical Works,’ ii. 275,
277, 328. ‘Correspondence,’ ii. 275, 277, 320. Shakspeare, i. 35, 36, 50, 128, 203, 297; iii. 245; vi. 30, 88, 201, 233, 381, 382; vii.
120, 123. Shandy, Reverend Mr, vi. 297. Shandwick Place, Edinburgh, vi. 17; vii. 89, 168. Sharp, Sir Cuthbert, vii. 76. Sharpe, Archbishop, Allan’s Picture of, v. 162. —— Charles Kirkpatrick, Esq., ii. 137, 228; iv. 159; vi. 124, 125, 236; vii. 184, 305.
Letters to, ii. 229; vii. 305. —— Mr Richard, iii. 338; vi. 341, 359, 364; vii. 125. Shelley, Sir John, iv. 292. ——, Lady, vii. 133. ——, Pierce Byshe, vi. 131. Shepherd, Sir Samuel, i. 391, n.; v. 22, 69, 80, 261; vi. 167,
298, 323; vii. 127, 208. ‘Shepherd’s Tale, The,’ i. 307. Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, iv. 362; vi. 189. ——, Thomas, vii. 189. Shillinglaw, Mr Joseph, Darnick, v. 322; vii. 286. Shortreed, Mr John Elliot, i. 195, n. —— Mr Robert, i. 194, 271; iv. 241; v. 16, 315, 343; vi. 290, 345; vii. 193, 194. ——, Letter to, iv. 272. ——, Mr Thomas, vi. 345. Shrewsbury, Staff,’ i. 149. Sibbald (for John, read), James, i. 46. Siddons, Mrs, i. 211, 213; ii. 266, passim, 396; vii. 207. ——, Mr Henry, ii. 267-271, 274-5, 322; vi. 21, 26. ——, Mrs Henry, ii. 271. Sidmouth, Lord, ii. 90, 95; iv. 211; vii. 135, 318. ——, Letters to, v. 57, 85. Sidonia, Duke of Medina, 177. Sinclair, Sir John, ii. 168, 381. His ‘Code of Health,’ vi. 45. ‘Sir John Chiverton,’ Novel of, vi. 355. ‘Sir Marmaduke Maxwell,’ a drama, v. 59. ‘Sir Tristrem,’ i. 331, 372, 415; ii. 19, 168. Six-feet-high Club, vii. 181. Skene, James, Esq., of Rubislaw, i. 82, 92, 257; ii. 61-70 117; iii. 374; iv. 159, 306,
342; v. 253; vi. 144, 184, 192, 199, 213, 244; vii. 13, 258, 302. Letters to, ii. 60; vii.
325. ——, Mr James Henry, vii. 327. ——, Mrs, vi. 144, 184, 262; vii. 13, 89. Skye, Isle of, iii. 214, 225, 231, passim. John of. See John Bruce. Slingsby, Sir Henry, Memoirs of, ii. 113. Smailholme Tower, i. 5-15, 79, 80, 82, 154, 303-4, 416. Smith, Dr Adam, i. 28. ——, Mr Horace, vi. 355, 357. ——, John, Darnick, vi. 379. ——, Mr John, Glasgow, iv. 80. ——, Mr William, M.P., iv. 71. ——, Reverend Sidney, i. 383; ii. 157. 158. ——, Mrs, Case of, vii. 25. ——, Miss, Tragedian, ii. 266; iii. 2. Smollet, Captain, vi. 141. ——, Tobias, iii. 89, 302. Smowe, Uam, Cave of, iii. 209, 248. Solitude, vii. 185. ‘Somers’ Lord, Collection of Tracts,’ 13
vols. 4to, ii. 170, to 256, 287-8; iii. 75. Somerset, Lord Charles, vi. 3fi3,??. ——, Lord Fitzroy, vii. 129. Somerville, Rev. Dr, Jedburgh, i. 253; vi. 346. —— John, Lord, ii. 65, 403; iii. 352; iv. 310. —— Samuel, iv. 330. ‘Somervilles, Memorie of The,’ 2 vols. 8vo, iii.
316; vii. 399. Song, ‘The Sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill,’ iv. 83. Sotheby, Mr, ii. 101, 102, 245; vi. 364; vii. 126. Southey, Dr, ii, 301. —— Dr Robert, i. 158, 407, ii. 72, 74, 124, 127, 141, 249, 298, 303, 333, 405; iii, 29,
88, 100; iv. 70, 235, 354; vi. 78, 322. Letters to, ii. 128, 130, 134, 233, 236, 299, 328,
405; iii. 86, 88, 118; iv. 70, 237, 354, 358. Southey’s ‘Life of Cowper,’ ii. 141. ‘Kehama,’ ii. 299, 302.
‘History of Brazil,’ ii. 300. ‘Carmen Triumphale,’ iii, 118.
‘Madoc,’ ii. 58, 124. Southey’s Ode on the King’s Visit to
Scotland, v. 357. ‘Peninsular War,’ vi. 359. ‘Life of Bunyan,’ vii.
205. Spencer, Earl of, i. 346; ii. 85, 91, 93, 94. —— W. R. vi. 373; vii. 10. Stael, Madame de, iii. 105. Staffa, ii. 312, 319, 326; iii. 135, 247, 249, 265, 272. Stafford, Marquis of, vii. 137. —— Marchioness of, iii. 6; vi. 160, 384. Stalker, Mr, i. 21. Stanfield, Philip, i. 261; v. 295. Stanhope, Col. James, vii. 68. ——, Lady Hester, ii. 34, 94. Stark, Mr, architect, ii. 378; iii. 98, 311. Statue of Sir Walter Scott, vii. 167, n., 431. Steam-Engine, iii. 376; v. 81; vi. 83. Steele, Thomas, Esq., iii. 121, n. Stirling’s, Earl of, ‘Recreations with the Muses,’ i. 62, n. Steven, Rev. W. of Rotterdam, i. 96, n. Stevenson, John, vi. 115, 259. ——, Messrs, Oban, iii. 263. ——, Robert, Esq. iii. 130, 136, 149, 165, 166, 169, 174, 179, 195, 196, 213, 217, 219,
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