J. G. Lockhart: Life of Walter Scott

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

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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.

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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.”

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

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which of the two either men or women look their best.

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

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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.

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.

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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.

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

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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 Murray The 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

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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.

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

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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.

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William Shakespeare (1564-1616) The Bard of Avon.

Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe (1781-1851) Scottish poet, painter, editor, antiquary, and eccentric; he edited James Kirkton's Secret and True History of the Church of Scotland (1817) with elaborate notes mocking his author.

James Skene of Rubislaw (1775-1864) A life-long friend of Sir Walter Scott, who dedicated a canto of Marmion to him.

Jane Skene (1787-1862) The daughter of Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo (1739-1806); in 1806 she married James Skene. Both Skenes were friends of Sir Walter Scott.

Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) Scottish physician and man of letters; author of the novels Roderick Random (1747) and Humphry Clinker (1771).

Robert Southey (1774-1843) Poet laureate and man of letters whose contemporary reputation depended upon his prose works, among them the Life of Nelson, 2 vols (1813), History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (1823-32) and The Doctor, 7 vols (1834-47).

Alexander Stewart of Invernahyle (1707 c.-1795) Jacobite officer befriended by young Walter Scott, who recast his story in Waverley.

Daniel Terry (1789-1829) English actor; after a career in provincial theater made his London debut in 1812. A close friend of Walter Scott, he performed in theatrical adaptations of Scott's novels.

George Thomson (1757-1851) Scottish music publisher and friend of Robert Burns who solicited poems from Byron; issued A Select Collection of Original Scotish Airs (1793).

Thomas Thomson (1768-1852) Scottish lawyer and man of letters; he was one of the projectors of the Edinburgh Review and succeeded Sir Walter Scott as president of the Bannatyne Club (1832-52).

Thomas Thomson (1773-1852) Friend of James Mill and professor of chemistry at the University of Glasgow; he contributed to the Quarterly Review.

Margaret Woffington [Peg] (1720-1760) Irish-born actress, daughter of a brick-layer, she was celebrated for the Shakespearian roles she performed in London.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) With Coleridge, author of Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.

Frederick Henry Yates (1797-1842) English actor and theater manager educated at Charterhouse; he performed with Charles Kemble and was a partner of Charles Mathews in the Adelphi Theatre (1825-35).

Edinburgh Annual Register. 19 vols (1808-1826). Edited by Walter Scott; it was a perennial money-sink for the Ballantyne concern.

John Wilson Croker (1780-1857) The Life of Samuel Johnson, including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. A new Edition, with numerous Additions and Notes. 5 vols (London: J. Murray, 1831). Boswell's Life of Johnson with new material by John Wilson Croker.

John Dryden (1631-1700) Fables Ancient and Modern; translated into Verse, from Homer, Ovid, Boccace, & Chaucer: with Original Poems. (London: Jacob Tonson, 1700). Dryden's last major work.

John Fletcher (1579-1625) Love's Pilgrimage. (London: Humphrey Robinson, 1647).

John Fletcher (1579-1625) “The Lovers' Progress” in Fifty Comedies and Tragedies, written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. (London: J. Martyn, 1679). A tragicomedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger.

George Hogarth (1783-1870) Musical History, Biography, and Criticism: being a General Survey of Music, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time. (London: J. W. Parker, 1835).

Sir Walter Scott, baronet (1771-1832) Waverley: or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since. 3 vols (Edinburgh: Constable, 1814). Scott's first historical novel, set against the backdrop of the Jacobite rising of 1745.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) Julius Caesar. (London: 1623). Written c. 1599, first printed in the first folio.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) Macbeth. (London: 1623). Shakespeare's comedy was first printed in the first folio.

Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. 3 vols (London: W. Johnston, 1771). A comic epistolary novel.

Robert Southey (1774-1843) “The Holly Tree” in Morning Post. (17 December 1798). Reprinted in the first volume of Southey's Annual Anthology.

Robert Southey (1774-1843) “Queen Orraca” in Edinburgh Annual Register. (Edinburgh: 1808). Ballad stanzas signed “Southey.”

Robert Southey (1774-1843) Thalaba the Destroyer. 2 vols (London: T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1801). A fantastic mythological tale, in irregular verse, set in the middle east.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) “Laodamia” in Poems by William Wordsworth. 2 vols (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1815). Composed 1814.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) “Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle” in Poems in Two Volumes. 2 vols (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807).

INFORMATION FROM TEI HEADER

Source Description:

Author: Lockhart, J. G. (John Gibson), 1794-1854

Title: Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. 7 vols (Edinburgh: Robert Cadell, 1837).

Electronic Edition:

Series: Lord Byron and his Times: http://lordbyron.org

Encoding Description: Any dashes occurring in line breaks have been removed. Obvious and unambiguous compositors’ errors have been silently corrected.

Markup and editing by: David Hill Radcliffe

Completed January 2011

Publication Statement:

Publisher: Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities, Virginia Tech

Availability: Published under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License