“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.

288

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

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-

JULY, 1823.

289

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-

290

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

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.

LETTER TO JOANNA BAILLIE.

291

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.

“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

294

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

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

MR ADOLPHUS’S MEMORANDA.

295

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.

296

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

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.”

MR ADOLPHUS’S MEMORANDA.

297

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.

298

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

“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

MR ADOLPHUS—AUGUST, 1823.

299

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.

300

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

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,

MR ADOLPHUS—AUGUST, 1823.

301

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.

302

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

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

ALLANTON—SEPTEMBER, 1823.

303

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.”

“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

LETTER TO MISS EDGEWORTH.

307

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.

* 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.

308

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

“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.

LETTER TO MISS BAILLIE.

309

Believe me ever, dear Miss Edgeworth, yours, with the greatest truth and respect,

“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

310

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

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

LETTER TO TERRY.

311

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,

“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

312

LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

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

DECEMBER, 1823.

313

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,