Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart.
Sir Walter Scott to Joanna Baillie, 11 July 1823
“Edinburgh, July 11, 1823.
“Your kind letter, my dear friend, heaps coals of
fire on my head, for I should have written to you, in common gratitude, long
since; but I waited till I should read through the Miscellany with some attention, which
as I have not yet done, I can scarce say much to the purpose, so far as that is
concerned. My own production sate in the porch like an evil thing, and scared
me from proceeding farther than to hurry through your compositions, with which
I was delighted, and two or three others. In my own case, I have almost a
nervous reluctance to look back on any recent poetical performance of my own. I
may almost say with Macbeth,—
“I am afraid to think what I have done. Look on’t again I dare not.” |
![]()
But the best of the matter is, that your purpose has been so
satisfactorily answered and great reason have you to be proud of your influence
with the poem-buyers as well as the poem-makers. By the by, you know your
request first set me a hammering on an old tale of the
Swintons, from whom, by the mother’s side, I am
descended, and the tinkering work I made of it warmed the heart of a cousin* in
the East Indies, a descendant of the renowned Sir Allan,
who has sent his kindred poet by this fleet not a butt of sack, but a pipe of
most parti- * George
Swinton, Esq. (now of Swinton) was at this time
Secretary to the Council in Bengal. |
![]()
![]()
| 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-![]()
![]()
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 ![]()
![]()
| 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.
“Abbotsford, July 18. ——
“I have, for the first time these several years,
my whole family united around me, excepting Lockhart, who is with his yeomanry, but joins us to-morrow.
Walter is returned a fine steady
soldier-like young man from his abode on the Continent, and little
Charles, with his friend
Surtees, has come from Wales, so
that we draw together from distant quarters. When you add Sophia’s baby, I assure you my wife
and I look very patriarchal. The misfortune is, all this must be soon over,
for Walter is admitted one of the higher class of
students in the Military College, and must join against the 1st of August.
I have some chance, I think, when he has had a year’s study, of
getting him upon the staff in the Ionian islands, which I should greatly
prefer to his lounging about villages in horse-quarters; he has a strong
mathematical turn, which promises to be of service in his profession;
little Charles is getting steadily on with his
learning—but to what use he is to turn it I scarce know yet.—I am very
sorry indeed that the doctor is
complaining—he whose life has been one course of administering help and
comfort to others, should not, one would think, suffer himself; but such
are the terms on which we hold our gifts—however valuable to others, they
are sometimes less available to ourselves. I sincerely hope this will find
him better, and Mrs Baillie easier
in proportion. When I was subject a little to sore throats, I cured myself
of that tendency by spunging my throat, breast, and shoulders every morning
with the coldest water I could ![]()
| 292 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. | |
![]()
get; but this is rather
a horse remedy, though I still keep up the practice. All here, that is,
wives, maidens, and bachelors bluff, not forgetting little
John Hugh, or, as he is popularly styled,
Hugh Littlejohn, send loving remembrances to you
and
Mrs Agnes. Ever, dear
Mrs Joanna, most truly yours,
Agnes Baillie (1760-1861)
The daughter of the Scottish cleric James Baillie and elder sister of the poet Joanna
Baillie with whom she lived in Hampstead for many decades.
Joanna Baillie (1762-1851)
Scottish poet and dramatist whose
Plays on the Passions
(1798-1812) were much admired, especially the gothic
De Montfort,
produced at Drury Lane in 1800.
Matthew Baillie (1761-1823)
Physician and brother of Joanna Baillie; as successor to the anatomist William Hunter he
treated the pedal deformities of both Walter Scott and Lord Byron.
Sophia Baillie [née Denman] (1771-1845)
The daughter of the obstetrician Thomas Denman and sister of Lord Denman; in 1791 she
married the physician Matthew Baillie, brother of Joanna Baillie.
Robert Burns (1759-1796)
Scottish poet and song collector; author of
Poems, chiefly in the
Scottish Dialect (1786).
Harriet Butler [née Edgeworth] (1801-1889)
The daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Frances Ann Beaufort; in 1826 she married
the Rev. Richard Butler, dean of Clonmacnoise.
Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849)
Irish novelist; author of
Castle Rackrent (1800)
Belinda (1801),
The Absentee (1812) and
Ormond (1817).
Francis Egerton, first earl of Ellesmere (1800-1857)
Poet, statesman, and Tory MP; a younger son the second marquess of Stafford, he was
educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, was chief secretary for Ireland (1828-30), and
translated Goethe and Schiller and contributed articles to the
Quarterly
Review.
Catherine Maria Fanshawe (1765-1834)
English poet, the second daughter of the courtier John Fanshawe (1738-1816); her poetry
was posthumously collected and published by William Harness in 1865.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832)
German poet, playwright, and novelist; author of
The Sorrows of Young
Werther (1774) and
Faust (1808, 1832).
Felicia Dorothea Hemans [née Browne] (1793-1835)
English poet; author of
Tales, and Historic Scenes (1819),
Records of Woman (1828), and other volumes. She was much in demand
as a contributor to the literary annuals.
William Howison (1796 c.-1829 fl.)
Scottish writer and translator, the brother of John Howison (1797-1859); he was a friend
of John Gibson Lockhart and writer for
Blackwood's Magazine.
John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854)
Editor of the
Quarterly Review (1825-1853); son-in-law of Walter
Scott and author of the
Life of Scott 5 vols (1838).
John Hugh Lockhart (1821-1831)
The first child of John Gibson Lockhart and his wife Sophia, for whom Sir Walter Scott
wrote
Tales of a Grandfather (1828-1831).
Charles Scott (1805-1841)
The younger son of Sir Walter Scott; educated at Oxford, he pursued a career in diplomacy
and died in Tehran.
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.”
William Sotheby (1757-1833)
English man of letters; after Harrow he joined the dragoons, married well, and published
Poems (1790) and became a prolific poet and translator,
prominent in literary society.
Sir Stephenson Villiers Surtees (1803-1868)
The son of John Surtees; he was educated at University College, Oxford and called to the
Bar from the Inner Temple; he was chief justice of Mauritius (1835).
George Swinton (d. 1854)
The fifth son of John Swinton of Swinton; he was chief secretary to the governor of
Bengal.
