| 132 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
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
| APPRENTICESHIP TO HIS FATHER. | 133 |
| 134 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
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—
| APPRENTICESHIP TO HIS FATHER. | 135 |
|
‘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’s Lusiad:—at all events,
* Life of Scott, by Mr Allan, p. 53. |
| 136 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
‘Amid the strings his fingers stray’d, And an uncertain warbling made,’ |
‘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
| ROBERT BURNS. | 137 |
‘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.’ |
“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
| 138 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“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!
| INVERNAHYLE. | 139 |
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,
| 140 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
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-
| INVERNAHYLE. | 141 |
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
| 142 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
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
| HIGHLAND EXCURSIONS. | 143 |
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. |
| 144 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
I dwell on this matter, because it was always his favourite tenet, in
contradiction to what he called the
| CIVIC LAW CLASS. | 145 |
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-
| 146 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
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-
| WILLIAM CLERK OF ELDIN. | 147 |
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;
| 148 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
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.”*
* “Dinna steer him,” says Hobbie Elliot; “ye may think Elshie’s |
| WILLIAM CLERK, &c. | 149 |
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.”†
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. |
| 150 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
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. |
| WILLIAM CLERK, &c. | 151 |
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. |
| 152 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
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
| DEBATING CLUBS. | 153 |
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. |
| 154 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
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.
“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. |
| ROSEBANK—BALLANTYNE. | 155 |
“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,
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
| 156 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
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
| COLONEL GROGG AND DUNS SCOTUS. | 157 |
“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,
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
| 158 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
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
| EARLY CORRESPONDENCE. | 159 |
| 160 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
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;
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|
* All Scott’s letters to the friend here alluded to are said to have perished in an accidental fire. |
| THE LADY GREEN MANTLE. | 161 |
|
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,
| 162 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
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
| FIRST LOVE. | 163 |
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
| 164 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
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
| FIRST LOVE. | 165 |
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