Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart.
Walter Scott to Robert Southey, 4 April 1819
“Abbotsford, 4th April, 1819.
“Tidings, from you must be always acceptable, even
were the bowl in the act of breaking at the fountain—and my health is at
present very totterish. I have gone through a cruel
succession of spasms and sickness, which have terminated in a special fit of
the jaundice, so that I might sit for the image of Plutus, the god of specie, so far as complexion goes. I shall
like our American acquaintance the
better that he has sharpened your remembrance of me, but he is also a wondrous
fellow for romantic lore and antiquarian research, considering his country. I
have now seen four or five well-lettered Americans, ardent in pursuit of
knowledge, and free from the ignorance and forward presumption which
distinguish many of their countrymen. I hope they will inoculate their country
with a love of letters, so nearly allied to a ![]()
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desire of
peace and a sense of public justice, virtues to which the great Transatlantic
community is more strange than could be wished. Accept my best and most sincere
wishes for the health and strength of your latest pledge of affection. When I
think what you have already suffered, I can imagine with what mixture of
feelings this event must necessarily affect you; but you need not to be told
that we are in better guidance than our own. I trust in God this late blessing
will be permanent, and inherit your talents and virtues. When I look around me,
and see how many men seem to make it their pride to misuse high qualifications,
can I be less interested than I truly am, in the fate of one who has uniformly
dedicated his splendid powers to maintaining the best interests of humanity? I
am very angry at the time you are to be in London, as I must be there in about
a fortnight, or so soon as I can shake off this depressing complaint, and it
would add not a little, that I should meet you there. My chief purpose is to
put my eldest son into the army. I could have wished he had chosen another
profession, but have no title to combat a choice which would have been my own
had my lameness permitted. Walter has
apparently the dispositions and habits fitted for the military profession, a
very quiet and steady temper, an attachment to mathematics and their
application, good sense and uncommon personal strength and activity, with
address in most exercises, particularly horsemanship.
“—I had written thus far last week when I was
interrupted, first by the arrival of our friend Ticknor with Mr
Cogswell, another well-accomplished Yankee (by the by, we have them
of all sorts, e.g. one Mr **********, rather a fine man,
whom the girls have christened, with some humour, the Yankee Doodle Dandie.)
They have had Tom Drum’s entertainment, for I have
been seized with ![]()
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one or two
successive crises of my cruel malady, lasting in the utmost anguish from eight
to ten hours. If I had not the strength of a team of horses I could never have
fought through it, and through the heavy fire of medical artillery, scarce less
exhausting—for bleeding, blistering, calomel, and ipecacuanha have gone on
without intermission—while, during the agony of the spasms, laudanum became
necessary in the most liberal doses, though inconsistent with the general
treatment. I did not lose my senses, because I resolved to keep them, but I
thought once or twice they would have gone overboard, top and top-gallant. I
should be a great fool, and a most ungrateful wretch, to complain of such
inflictions as these. My life has been, in all its private and public
relations, as fortunate perhaps as was ever lived, up to this period; and
whether pain or misfortune may lie behind the dark curtain of futurity, I am
already a sufficient debtor to the bounty of Providence to be resigned to it.
Fear is an evil that has never mixed with my nature, nor has even unwonted good
fortune rendered my love of life tenacious; and so I can look forward to the
possible conclusion of these scenes of agony with reasonable equanimity, and
suffer chiefly through the sympathetic distress of my family.
——“Other ten days have passed away, for I would not
send this Jeremiad to teaze you, while its termination seemed doubtful. For the
present,
‘The game is done—I’ve won, I’ve won, Quoth she, and whistles thrice.’* |
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I am this day, for the first time, free from the relics of my disorder,
and, except in point of weakness, perfectly well. But no broken-down hunter had
ever so many ![]()
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sprung sinews, whelks, and
bruises. I am like Sancho after the doughty
affair of the Yanguesian Carriers, and all through the unnatural twisting of
the muscles under the influence of that Goule the cramp.
I must be swathed in Goulard and Rosemary spirits—probatum est.
“I shall not fine and renew a lease of popularity
upon the theatre. To write for low, ill-informed, and conceited actors, whom
you must please, for your success is necessarily at their mercy, I cannot away
with. How would you, or how do you think I should, relish being the object of
such a letter as Kean* wrote t’other day to a poor author, who, though a pedantic blockhead,
had at least the right to be treated like a gentleman by a copper-laced,
twopenny tear-mouth, rendered mad by conceit and success? Besides, if this
objection were out of the way, I do not think the character of the audience in
London is such that one could have the least pleasure in pleasing them. One
half come to prosecute their debaucheries so openly, that it would degrade a
bagnio. Another set to snooze off their beef-steaks and port wine; a third are
critics of the fourth column of the newspaper; fashion, wit, or literature
there is not; and, on the whole, I would far rather write verses for mine
honest friend Punch and his audience. The
only thing that could tempt me to be so silly, would be to assist a friend in
such a degrading task who was to have the whole profit and shame of it.
“Have you seen decidedly the most full and methodized
collection of Spanish romances (ballads) published by the industry of Depping (Altenburgh, and Leipsic), 1817? It is
quite delightful. Ticknor had set me
agog to see it, without affording me any hope it could be had in
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London, when by one of these fortunate
chances which have often marked my life, a friend, who had been lately on the
Continent, came unexpectedly to enquire for me, and plucked it forth
par maniere de cadeau. God
prosper you, my dear Southey, in your
labours; but do not work too hard—experto
crede. This conclusion, as well as the confusion of my
letter, like the Bishop of Grenada’s
sermon, savours of the apoplexy. My most respectful compliments attend
Mrs S. Yours truly,
“P.S. I shall long to see the conclusion of the
Brazil history,
which, as the interest comes nearer, must rise even above the last noble
volume. Wesley you alone can touch;
but will you not have the hive about you? When I was about twelve years
old, I heard him preach more than once, standing on a chair, in Kelso
churchyard. He was a most venerable figure, but his sermons were vastly too
colloquial for the taste of Saunders.
He told many excellent stories. One I remember, which he said had happened
to him at Edinburgh. ‘A drunken dragoon (said
Wesley) was commencing an assertion in military
fashion, G—d eternally d——n me, just as I was passing. I touched the poor
man on the shoulder, and when he turned round fiercely, said calmly, you
mean God bless you.’ In the mode of telling
the story he failed not to make us sensible how much his patriarchal
appearance, and mild yet bold rebuke, overawed the soldier, who touched his
hat, thanked him, and, I think, came to chapel that evening.”
Charles Bucke (1781-1846)
English poet and miscellaneous writer involved in a bitter controversy with the actor
Edmund Kean regarding Bucke's play
The Italians, or, The Fatal
Accusation: a Tragedy (1819).
Joseph Green Cogswell (1786-1871)
American bibliographer; he was professor of geology at Harvard, editor of the
New York Review, and superintendent of the Astor Library.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of
Biographia Literaria (1817),
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.
Georges Bernard Depping (1784-1853)
Franco-German historian, author of
Les Juifs dans le Moyen Age
(1834); he wrote for the
New Monthly Magazine.
Edmund Kean (1787-1833)
English tragic actor famous for his Shakespearean roles.
Bryan Waller Procter [Barry Cornwall] (1787-1874)
English poet; a contemporary of Byron at Harrow, and friend of Leigh Hunt and Charles
Lamb. He was the author of several volumes of poem and
Mirandola, a
tragedy (1821).
Sir Walter Scott, second baronet (1801-1847)
The elder son and heir of Sir Walter Scott; he was cornet in the 18th Hussars (1816),
captain (1825), lieut.-col. (1839). In the words of Maria Edgeworth, he was
“excessively shy, very handsome, not at all literary.”
Edith Southey [née Fricker] (1774-1837)
The daughter of Stephen Fricker, she was the first wife of Robert Southey and the mother
of his children; they married in secret in 1795.
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).
George Ticknor (1791-1871)
American author and Harvard professor of modern languages who travelled extensively in
Europe 1815-19.
John Wesley (1703-1791)
English clergyman and author; with George Whitefield he was a founder of
Methodism.
