| [ 202 ] |
Sir Walter’s reviewal of the early parts of Mr Pitcairn’s Ancient Criminal Trials had, of course, much gratified
the editor, who sent him, on his arrival in Edinburgh, the proof-sheets of the Number then
in hand, and directed his attention particularly to its details on the extraordinary case
of Mure of Auchindrane, A.D. 1611. Scott was so
much interested with these documents, that he resolved to found a dramatic sketch on their
terrible story; and the result was a composition far superior to any of his previous
attempts of that nature. Indeed there are several passages in his “Ayrshire Tragedy”—especially that where the
murdered corpse floats upright in the wake of the assassin’s bark,
| APOPLEXY OR PARALYSIS—FEBRUARY, 1830. | 203 |
Sir Walter was now to pay the penalty of his
unparalleled toils. On the 15th of February, about two o’clock in the afternoon, he
returned from the Parliament House apparently in his usual state, and found an old
acquaintance, Miss Young of Hawick, waiting to show him some MS.
memoirs of her father (a dissenting minister of
great worth and talents), which he had undertaken to revise and correct for the press. The
old lady sat by him for half an hour while he seemed to be occupied with her papers; at
length he rose, as if to dismiss her, but sunk down again—a slight convulsion agitating his
features. After a few minutes he got up and staggered to the drawing-room, where Anne Scott and my sister Violet Lockhart were sitting. They rushed to meet him, but he fell at all
his length on the floor ere they could reach him. He remained speechless for about ten
minutes, by which time a surgeon had arrived and bled him. He was cupped again in the
evening, and gradually recovered possession of speech and of all his faculties in so far
that, the occurrence being kept quiet, when he appeared abroad again after a short
interval, people in general do not seem to have observed any serious change. He submitted
to the
| 204 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
He struggled manfully, however, against his malady, and during 1830
covered almost as many sheets with his MS. as in 1829. About March I find, from his
correspondence with Ballantyne, that he was working
regularly at his Letters on Demonology
and Witchcraft for Murray’s Family
Library, and also on a Fourth Series of the Tales of a Grandfather—the subject being French history. Both of these books
were published by the end of the year; and the former contains many passages worthy of his
best day—little snatches of picturesque narrative and the like—in fact, transcripts of his
own familiar fireside stories. The shrewdness with which evidence is sifted on legal cases
attests, too, that the main reasoning faculty remained unshaken. But, on the whole, these
works can hardly be submitted to a strict ordeal of criticism. There is in both a
cloudiness both of words and arrangement. Nor can I speak differently of the second volume
of his Scottish History for Lardner’s Cyclopædia,
which was published in May.
| MAY—1830. | 205 |
In the course of the Spring Session, circumstances rendered it highly probable that Sir Walter’s resignation of his place as Clerk of Session might be acceptable to the Government—and it is not surprising that he should have, on the whole, been pleased to avail himself of this opportunity.
His Diary was resumed in May, and continued at irregular intervals for the rest of the year; but its contents are commonly too medical for quotation. Now and then, however, occur entries which I cannot think of omitting. For example:—
“Abbotsford, May 23,
1830.—About a year ago I took the pet at my Diary, chiefly because I thought it
made me abominably selfish; and that by recording my gloomy fits, I encouraged
their recurrence, whereas out of sight, out of mind, is the best way to get rid
of them; and now I hardly know why I take it up again, but here goes. I came
here to attend Raeburn’s funeral.
I am near of his kin, my great-grandfather, Walter
Scott, being the second son or first cadet of this small family.
My late kinsman was also married to my
aunt, a most amiable old lady. He was never kind to me, and at
last utterly ungracious. Of course I never liked him, and we kept no terms. He
had forgot, though, an infantine cause of quarrel, which I always remembered.
When I was four or five years old, I was staying at Lessudden Place, an old
mansion, the abode of this Raeburn. A large pigeon-house was almost destroyed
with starlings, then a common bird, though now seldom seen. They were seized in
their nests and put in a bag, and I think
| 206 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“Edinburgh, May 26.—Wrought with proofs, &c. at the Demonology, which is a cursed business to do neatly. I must finish it though. I went to the Court, from that came home, and scrambled on with half writing, half reading, half idleness till evening. I have laid aside smoking much; and now, unless tempted by company, rarely take a cigar. I was frightened by a species of fit which I had in March [February], which took from me my power of speaking. I am told it is from the stomach. It looked woundy like palsy or apoplexy. Well, be what it will, I can stand it.
“May 27.—Court as usual. I am
agitating a proposed retirement from the Court. As they are only to have four
instead of six Clerks of Session in Scotland, it will be their interest to let
me retire on a superannuation. Probably I shall make a bad bargain, and get
| DIARY—JUNE, 1830. | 207 |
“June 3.—I finished my proofs, and sent them off with copy. I saw Mr Dickinson* on Tuesday; a right plain sensible man. He is so confident in my matters, that, being a large creditor himself, he offers to come down, with the support of all the London creditors, to carry through any measure that can be devised for my behoof. Mr Cadell showed him that we were four years forward in matter prepared for the press. Got Heath’s Illustrations, which I dare say are finely engraved, but commonplace enough in point of art.
“June 17.—Went last night to Theatre, and saw Miss Fanny Kemble’s Isabella, which was a most creditable performance. It has much of the genius of Mrs Siddons, her aunt. She wants her beautiful countenance, her fine form, and her matchless dignity of step and manner. On the other hand, Miss Fanny Kemble has very expressive, though not regular features, and what is worth
* Mr John Dickinson of Nash-mill, Herts, the eminent papermaker. |
| 208 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“Blair-Adam, June 18.—Our meeting cordial, but our numbers diminished; the good and very clever Lord Chief Baron [Shepherd] is returned to his own country with more regrets than in Scotland usually attend a stranger. Will Clerk has a bad cold, Tom Thomson is detained, but the Chief Commissioner, Admiral Adam, Sir Adam, John Thomson and I, make an excellent concert.
“June 19.—Arose and expected
to work a little, but a friend’s house is not favourable; you are sure to
want the book you have not brought, and are, in short, out of sorts, like the
minister who could not preach out of his own pulpit. There is something
fanciful in this, and something real too. After breakfast to Culross, where the
veteran, Sir Robert Preston, showed us
his curiosities. Life has done as much for him as most people. In his
ninety-second year, he has an ample fortune, a sound understanding, not the
least decay of eyes, ears, or taste, is as big as two men, and eats like three.
Yet he too experiences the “singula
prædantur” and has lost something since I
last saw him. If his appearance renders old
| DIARY—JUNE, 1830. | 209 |
“June 9.—Dined with the Bannatyne, where we had a lively party. Touching the songs, an old roué must own an improvement in the times, when all paw-paw words are omitted;—and yet, when the naughty innuendoes are gazers, one is apt to say—
‘Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art, A good mouth-filling oath, and leave Forsooth, And such protests of petty gingerbread.’ |
Not knowing how poor Maida had been replaced, Miss Edgeworth at this time offered Sir Walter a fine Irish staghound. He replies thus:—
| 210 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“Nothing would be so valuable to me as the mark of kindness which you offer, and yet my kennel is so much changed since I had the pleasure of seeing you, that I must not accept of what I wished so sincerely to possess. I am the happy owner of two of the noble breed, each of gigantic size, and the gift of that sort of Highlander whom we call a High Chief, so I would hardly be justified in parting with them even to make room for your kind present, and I should have great doubts whether the mountaineers would receive the Irish stranger with due hospitality. One of them I had from poor Glengarry, who, with all wild and fierce points of his character, had a kind, honest, and warm heart. The other from a young friend, whom Highlanders call MacVourigh, and Lowlanders MacPherson of Cluny. He is a fine spirited boy, fond of his people and kind to them, and the best dancer of a Highland reel now living. I fear I must not add a third to Nimrod and Bran, having little use for them except being pleasant companions. As to labouring in their vocation, we have only one wolf which I know of, kept in a friend’s menagerie near me, and no wild deer. Walter has some roebucks indeed, but Lochore is far off, and I begin to feel myself distressed at running down these innocent and beautiful creatures, perhaps because I cannot gallop so fast after them as to drown sense of the pain we are inflicting. And yet I suspect I am like the sick fox; and if my strength and twenty years could come back, I would become again a copy of my namesake, remembered by the sobriquet of Walter ill to hauld (to hold, that is). ‘But age has clawed me in its clutch,’ and there is no remedy for increasing disability except dying, which is an awkward score.
| LETTER TO MISS EDGEWORTH. | 211 |
“There is some chance of my retiring from my official situation upon the changes in the Court of Session. They cannot reduce my office, though they do not wish to fill it up with a new occupant. I shall be therefore de trop; and in these days of economy they will be better pleased to let me retire on three parts of my salary than to keep me a Clerk of Session on the whole; and small grief at our parting, as the old horse said to the broken cart. And yet, though I thought such a proposal when first made was like a Pisgah peep of Paradise, I cannot help being a little afraid of changing the habits of a long life all of a sudden and for ever. You ladies have always your work-basket and stocking-knitting to wreak an hour of tediousness upon. The routine of business serves, I suspect, for the same purpose to us male wretches; it is seldom a burden to the mind, but a something which must be done, and is done almost mechanically; and though dull judges and duller clerks, the routine of law proceedings, and law forms, are very unlike the plumed troops and the tug of war, yet the result is the same. The occupation’s gone.* The morning, that the day’s news must all be gathered from other sources that the jokes which the principal Clerks of Session have laughed at weekly for a century, and which would not move a muscle of any other person’s face, must be laid up to perish like those of Sancho in the Sierra Morena—I don’t above half like forgetting all these moderate habits, and yet
‘Ah, freedom is a noble thing!’ |
| 212 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“Let me enquire about all my friends, Mrs Fox, Mr and Mrs Butler, Mrs Edgeworth, the hospitable squire, and plan of education, and all and sundry of the household of Edgeworthstown. I shall long remember our delightful days—especially those under the roof of Protestant Frank.*
“Have you forsworn merry England, to say nothing of our northern regions? This meditated retreat will make me more certain of being at Abbotsford the whole year; and I am now watching the ripening of those plans which I schemed five years, ten years, twenty years ago. Anne is still the Beatrix you saw her; Walter, now major, predominating with his hussars at Nottingham and Sheffield; but happily there has been no call to try Sir Toby’s experiment of drawing three souls out of the body of one weaver. Ireland seems to be thriving. A friend of mine laid out L.40,000 or L.50,000 on an estate there, for which he gets 7 per cent; so you are looking up. Old England is distressed enough—we are well enough here—but we never feel the storm till it has passed over our neighbours. I ought to get a frank for this, but our members are all up mending the stops of the great fiddle. The termination of the King’s illness is considered as inevitable, and expected with great apprehension and anxiety. Believe me always with the greatest regard, yours,
On the 26th of June Sir Walter heard of the death of
* I believe the ancestor who built the House at Edgeworthstown was distinguished by this appellation. |
| DIARY—JUNE, 1830. | 213 |
He heard of the King’s death,
on what was otherwise a pleasant day. The Diary says—“June
27.—Yesterday morning I worked as usual at proofs and copy of my infernal Demonology, a task to which my
poverty and not my will consents. About twelve o’clock, I went to the country to
take a day’s relaxation. We (i. e. Mr Cadell, James
Ballantyne, and I) went to Prestonpans, and getting there about one,
surveyed the little village, where my aunt and I
were lodgers for the sake of sea-bathing, in 1778, I believe. I knew the house of
Mr Warroch, where we lived, a poor cottage, of which the
owners and their family are extinct. I recollected my juvenile ideas of dignity
attendant on the large gate, a black arch which lets out upon the sea. I saw the church
where I yawned under the inflictions of a Dr
| 214 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“Well, we walked over the field of battle; saw the Prince’s Park, Cope’s Road, marked by slaughter in his disastrous retreat, the thorn-tree which marks the centre of the battle, and all besides that was to be seen or supposed. We saw two broadswords, found on the field of battle, one a Highlander’s, an Andrew Ferrara, another the dragoon’s sword of that day.* Lastly, we came to Cockenzie, where Mr Francis Cadell, my pub-
* The Laird of Cockenzie kindly sent these swords next day to the armoury at Abbotsford. |
| JUNE—1830. | 215 |
When the term ended in July the affair of Sir Walter’s retirement was all but settled; and soon afterwards he was informed that he had ceased to be a Clerk of Session, and should thenceforth have, in lieu of his salary, &c. (L.1300) an allowance of L.800 per annum. This was accompanied by an intimation from the Home Secretary that the Ministers were quite ready to grant him a pension covering the reduction in his income. Considering himself as the bond-slave of his creditors, he made known
* Mr Wood published a History of the Parish of Cramond, in 1794—an enlarged edition of Sir Robert Douglas’s Peerage of Scotland, 2 vols. folio, in 1813—and a Life of the celebrated John Law, of Laurieston, in 1824. In the preface to the Cramond History he describes himself as scopulis surdior Icari. |
| 216 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
Just after he had taken leave of Edinburgh, as he seems to have thought for ever, he received a communication of another sort, as inopportune as any that ever reached him. His Diary for the 13th July says briefly—“I have a letter from a certain young gentleman, announcing that his sister had so far mistaken the intentions of a lame baronet nigh sixty years old, as to suppose him only prevented by modesty from stating certain wishes and hopes, &c. The party is a woman of rank, so my vanity may be satisfied. But I excused myself, with little picking upon the terms.”
During the rest of the summer and autumn his daughter and I were at
Chiefswood, and saw him of course daily. Laidlaw,
too, had been restored to the cottage at Kseside; and though Tom Purdie made a dismal blank, old habits went on, and the course of life
seemed little altered from what it had used to be. He looked jaded and worn before evening
set in, yet very seldom departed from the strict regimen of his doctors, and often
brightened up to all his former glee, though passing the bottle, and sipping toast and
water. His grandchildren especially saw no change. However languid, his spirits revived at
the sight of them, and the greatest pleasure he had was in pacing Douce
Davie through the green lanes among his woods, with them clustered about him on
ponies and donkeys, while Laidlaw, the ladies, and myself, walked by,
and obeyed his directions about pruning and marking trees. After the immediate alarms
| AUTUMN—1830. | 217 |
All this was for the inner circle. Country neighbours went and came
without, I believe, observing almost any thing of what grieved the family. Nay, this autumn
he was far more troubled with the invasions of strangers, than he had ever been since his
calamities of 1826. The astonishing success of the new editions was, as usual, doubled or
trebled by rumour. The notion that he had already all but cleared off his incumbrances
seems to have been widely prevalent, and no doubt his refusal of a pension tended to
confirm it. Abbotsford was, for some weeks at least, besieged much as it had used to be in
the golden days of 1823 and 1824; and if sometimes his guests brought animation
| 218 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“September 5.—In spite of Resolution, I have left my Diary for some weeks, I cannot well tell why. We have had abundance of travelling Counts and Countesses, Yankees, male and female, and a Yankee-Doodle-Dandy into the bargain, a smart young Virginia-man. But we have had friends of our own also, the Miss Ardens, young Mrs Morritt and Anne Morritt, most agreeable visiters. Cadell came out here yesterday with his horn filled with good news. He calculates that in October the debt will be reduced to the sum of L.60,000, half of its original amount. This makes me care less about the terms I retire upon. The efforts by which we have advanced thus far are new in literature, and what is gained is secure.”
Mr Cadell’s great hope, when he offered this
visit, had been that the good news of the Magnum might induce Sir Walter to
content himself with working at notes and prefaces for its coming volumes, without
straining at more difficult tasks. He found his friend, however, by no means disposed to
adopt such views; and suggested very kindly, and ingeniously too, by way of mezzo-termine, that before entering upon any new
novel, he should draw up a sort of catalogue raisonnée of the
most curious articles in his library and museum. Sir Walter grasped at
this, and began next morning to dictate to Laidlaw
what he designed to publish in the usual novel shape, under the title of “Reliquiæ Trottcosienses, or the Gabions of Jonathan
Oldbuck.” Nothing, as it seemed to all about him, could have suited the time
better; but after a few days he said he found this was not sufficient—that he should
proceed in it during horæ subcesivæ,
but must bend himself to the composition of a
| JEDBURGH, 1830. | 219 |
But before I come to the results of this experiment, I must relieve the reader by Mr Adolphus’s account of some more agreeable things. The death of George IV. occasioned a general election; and the Revolution of France in July, with its rapid imitation in the Netherlands, had been succeeded by such a quickening of hope among the British Liberals, as to render this in general a scene of high excitement and desperate struggling of parties. In Teviotdale, however, all was as yet quiescent. Mr Adolphus says:
“One day, during my visit of 1830, 1 accompanied Sir Walter to Jedburgh, when the eldest son of Mr Scott of Harden (now Lord
Polwarth) was for the third time elected member for Roxburghshire. There
was no contest; an opposition had been talked of, but was adjourned to some future day.
The meeting in the Court-house, where the election took place, was not a very crowded
or stirring scene; but among those present, as electors or spectators, were many
gentlemen of the most ancient and honourable names in Roxburghshire and the adjoining
counties. Sir Walter seconded the nomination. It was the first
time I had heard him speak in public, and I was a little disappointed. His manner was
very quiet and natural, but seemed to me too humble, and wanting in animation. His air
was sagacious and reverend; his posture somewhat stooping; he rested, or rather
pressed, the palm of one hand on the head of his stick, and used a very little
gesticulation with the other. As he went on,
| 220 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“The new member was to give a dinner to the electors at three
o’clock. In the mean-time Sir Walter strolled
round the ancient Abbey. It amused me on this and on one or two other occasions, when
he was in frequented places, to see the curiosity with which some zealous stranger
would hover about his line of walk or ride, to catch a view of him, though a distant
one for it was always done with caution and respect; and he was not disturbed—perhaps
not displeased—by it. The dinner party was in number, I suppose, eighty or ninety, and
the festival passed off with great spirit. The croupier, Mr
Baillie of Jerviswood, who had nominated the candidate in the morning,
proposed, at its proper time, in a few energetic words, the health of Sir
Walter Scott. All hearts were ‘thirsty for the noble
pledge;’ the health was caught up with enthusiasm; and any one who looked
round must have seen with pleasure that the popularity of Sir Walter
Scott—European, and more than European as it was—had its most vigorous
roots at the threshold of his own home. He made a speech in acknowledgment, and this
time I was not disappointed. It was rich in humour and feeling, and graced by that
engaging manner of which he had so peculiar a command. One passage I remembered, for
its whimsical homeliness, long after the other, and perhaps better parts of the speech
had passed from my recollection. Mr Baillie had spoken of him as a
man pre-eminent among those who had done honour and service to Scotland.
| ADOLPHUS—AUTUMN, 1830. | 221 |
‘But we ha’ tried this Border lad, And we’ll try him yet again.’* |
“He sat down under a storm of applauses; and there were many present whose applause even he might excusably take some pride in. His eye, as he reposed himself after this little triumph, glowed with a hearty but chastened exultation on the scene before him; and when I met his look it seemed to say, ‘I am glad you should see how these things pass among us.’
“His constitution had in the preceding winter suffered one of those attacks which at last prematurely overthrew it. ‘Such a shaking hands with death’ (I am told he said) ‘was formidable;’ but there were few vestiges of it which might not be overlooked by those who were anxious not to see them; and he was more cheerful than I had sometimes found him in former years. On one of our carriage excursions, shortly after the Jedburgh dinner, his spirits actually rose to the pitch of singing, an accomplishment I had never before heard him exhibit except in chorus. We had been to
* See Burns’s ballad of The Five Carlines—an election squib. |
| 222 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“Another little incident in this morning’s drive is
worth remembering. We crossed several fords, and after the rain they were wide and
deep. A little, long, wise-looking, rough terrier, named Spice, which ran after us, had a cough, and as often as we came to a water,
Spice, by the special order of her master, was let into
the carriage till we had crossed. His tenderness to his brute dependants was a striking
point in the general benignity of his character. He seemed to consult not only their
bodily welfare, but their feelings, in the human sense. He was a gentleman even to his
dogs. His roughest rebuke to little Spice, when she was
inclined to play the wag with a sheep, was, ‘Ha! fie! fie!’ It must
be owned that his ‘tail’ (as his retinue of dogs was called at Abbotsford),
though very docile and unobtrusive animals in the house, were sometimes a little wild
in their frolics out of doors. One day when
| ADOLPHUS—AUTUMN, 1830. | 223 |
“Except in this trifling instance (and it could hardly be
called an exception), I cannot recollect seeing Sir Walter
Scott surprised out of his habitual equanimity. Never, I believe, during
the opportunities I had of observing him, did I hear from him an acrimonious tone, or
see a shade of ill-humour on his features. In a phlegmatic person this serenity might
have been less remarkable, but it was surprising in one whose mind was so susceptible,
and whose voice and countenance were so full of expression. It was attributable, I
think, to a rare combination of qualities; thoroughly cultivated manners, great
kindness of disposition, great patience and self-control, an excellent flow of spirits,
and lastly, that steadfastness of nerve which, even in the inferior animals, often
renders the most powerful and resolute creature the most placid and forbearing. Once,
when he was exhibiting some weapons, a gentleman, after differing from him as to the
comparative merits of two sword-blades, inadvertently flourished one of them almost
into Sir Walter’s eye. I looked quickly towards him, but
could not see in his
| 224 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“Two or three times at most during my knowledge of him do I recollect hearing him utter a downright oath, and then it was not in passion or upon personal provocation, nor was the anathema levelled at any individual. It was rather a concise expression of sentiment than a malediction. In one instance it was launched at certain improvers of the town of Edinburgh; in another it was bestowed very evenly upon all political parties in France, shortly after the glorious days of July, 1830.”
As one consequence of these “glorious days,” the unfortunate Charles X. was invited by the English Government to resume his old quarters at Holyrood; and among many other things that about this time vexed and mortified Scott, none gave him more pain than to hear that the popular feeling in Edinburgh had been so much exacerbated against the fallen monarch (especially by an ungenerous article in the great literary organ of the place), that his reception there was likely to be rough and insulting. Sir Walter thought that on such an occasion his voice might, perhaps, be listened to. He knew his countrymen well in their strength, as well as in their weakness, and put forth this touching appeal to their better feelings, in Ballantyne’s newspaper for the 20th of October:—
| CHARLES X.—1830. | 225 |
“We are enabled to announce, from authority, that Charles of Bourbon, the ex-King of France, is about to become once more our fellow-citizen, though probably for only a limited space, and is presently about to repair to Edinburgh, in order again to inhabit the apartments which he long ago occupied in Holyrood House. This temporary arrangement, it is said, has been made in compliance with his own request, with which our benevolent Monarch immediately complied, willing to consult, in every respect possible, the feelings of a Prince under the pressure of misfortunes, which are perhaps the more severe, if incurred through bad advice, error, or rashness. The attendants of the late sovereign will be reduced to the least possible number, and consist chiefly of ladies and children, and his style of life will be strictly retired. In these circumstances, it would be unworthy of us as Scotsmen, or as men, if this most unfortunate family should meet a word or look from the meanest individual tending to aggravate feelings, which must be at present so acute as to receive injury from insults, which mother times could be passed with perfect disregard.
“His late opponents in his kingdom have gained the applause of Europe for the generosity with which they have used their victory, and the respect which they have paid to themselves in moderation towards an enemy. It would be a gross contrast to that part of their conduct which has been most generally applauded, were we, who are strangers to the strife, to affect a deeper resentment than those it concerned closely.
“Those who can recollect the former residence of
this unhappy Prince in our northern capital, cannot but remember the
unobtrusive and quiet manner in which his little court was then conducted; and
now, still further restricted and diminished, he may naturally expect to be
received with civility and respect by a nation whose good
| 226 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
“If there can be any who retain angry or invidious recollections of late events in France, they ought to remark that the ex-Monarch has, by his abdication, renounced the conflict into which, perhaps, he was engaged by bad advisers; that he can no longer be the object of resentment to the brave, but remains to all the most striking emblem of the mutability of human affairs which our mutable times have afforded. He may say with our own deposed Richard—
‘With mine own tears I washed away my balm, With mine own hands I gave away my crown, With my own tongue deny mine sacred state.’* |
* King Richard II. Act IV. Scene 1. † This was the expression of King George IV., at the close of the first day he spent in Scotland. |
| CHARLES X.—1830. | 227 |
“It is impossible to omit stating, that if angry recollections or keen party feelings should make any person consider the exiled and deposed Monarch as a subject of resentment, no token of such feelings could be exhibited without the greater part of the pain being felt by the helpless females, of whom the Duchess of Angouleme, in particular, has been so long distinguished by her courage and her misfortunes.
“The person who writes these few lines is leaving his native city, never to return as a permanent resident. He has some reason to be proud of distinctions received from his fellow-citizens; and he has not the slightest doubt that the taste and good feeling of those whom he will still term so, will dictate to them the quiet, civil, and respectful tone of feeling, which will do honour both to their heads and their hearts, which have seldom been appealed to in vain.
“The Frenchman Melinet, in mentioning the refuge afforded by Edinburgh to Henry VI. in his distress, records it as the most hospitable town in Europe. It is a testimony to be proud of, and sincerely do I hope there is little danger of forfeiting it upon the present occasion.”
The effect of this manly admonition was even more complete than the
writer had anticipated. The royal exiles were received with perfect decorum, which their
modest bearing to all classes, and unobtrusive, though magnificent benevolence to the poor,
ere long converted into a feeling of deep and affectionate respectfulness. During their
stay in Scotland, the King took more than one
opportunity of conveying to Sir Walter his gratitude for
this salutary interference on his behalf. The ladies of the royal family had a curiosity to
see Abbots-
| 228 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
I conclude this chapter with a letter to Lady Louisa Stuart, who had, it seems, formed some erroneous guesses about the purport of the forthcoming Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft. That volume had been some weeks out of hand—but, for booksellers’ reasons, it was not published until Christmas.
“I come before your Ladyship for once, in the
character of Not Guilty. I am a wronged man, who deny, with Lady Teazle, the butler and the coach-horse.
Positively, in sending a blow to explode old and worn
| LETTER TO LADY L. STUART—1830. | 229 |
“Your acquaintance with Shakspeare is intimate, and you remember why, and when it is said,
‘He words me, girl, he words me.’ |
* Antony and Cleopatra, Act V. Scene 2. |
| 230 | LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. |
| LETTER TO LADY L. STUART—1830. | 231 |
“I will send this under Lord Montagu’s frank, for it is no matter how long such a roll of lamentation may be in reaching your Ladyship. I do not think it at all likely that I shall be in London next spring, although I suffer Sophia to think so. I remain, in all my bad humour, ever your Ladyship’s most obedient and faithful humble servant,
| ≪ PREV | NEXT ≫ |
