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Part III
Part III
It was in this poetic period that Scott formed his connexion with the
Ballantynes; and embarked, though under cover, largely in trade. To those who
regard him in the heroic light, and will have Vates to signify Prophet as well
as Poet, this portion of his biography seems somewhat incongruous. Viewed as
it stood in the reality, as he was and as it was, the enterprise, since it
proved so unfortunate, may be called lamentable, but cannot be called
unnatural. The practical Scott, looking towards practical issues in all
things, could not but find hard cash one of the most practical. If by any
means cash could be honestly produced, were it by writing poems, were it by
printing them, why not? Great things might be done ultimately; great
difficulties were at once got rid of, - manifold higglings of booksellers, and
contradictions of sinners hereby fell away. A printing and bookselling
speculation was not so alien for a maker of books. Voltaire, who indeed got
no copyrights, made much money by the war-commissariat, in his time; we
believe, by the victualling branch of it. St. George himself, they say, was
a dealer in bacon in Cappadocia. A thrifty man will help himself towards his
object by such steps as lead to it. Station in society, solid power over the
good things of this world, was Scott`s avowed object; towards which the
precept of precepts is that of Iago, Put money in thy purse.
Here, indeed, it is to be remarked, that perhaps no literary man of any
generation has less value than Scott for the immaterial part of his mission in
any sense: not only for the fantasy called fame, with the fantastic miseries
attendant thereon; but also for the spiritual purport of his work, whether it
tended hitherward or thitherward, or had any tendency whatever; and indeed for
all purports and results of his working, except such, we may say, as offered
themselves to the eye, and could, in one sense or the other, be handled,
looked at and buttoned into the breeches-pocket. Somewhat too little of a
fantast, this Vates of ours! But so it was: in this nineteenth century, our
highest literary man, who immeasurably beyond all others commanded the world`s
ear, had, as it were, no message whatever to deliver to the world; wished not
the world to elevate itself, to amend itself, to do this or to do that, except
simply pay him for the books he kept writing. Very remarkable; fittest,
perhaps, for an age fallen languid, destitute of faith and terrified at
scepticism? Or, perhaps, for quite another sort of age, an age all in
peaceable triumphant motion? Be this as it may, surely since Shakspeare`s time
there has been no great speaker so unconscious of an aim in speaking as Walter
Scott. Equally unconscious these two utterances: equally the sincere complete
products of the minds they came from: and now if they were equally deep? Or,
if the one was living fire, and the other was futile phosphorescence and mere
resinous firework? It will depend on the relative worth of the minds; for both
were equally spontaneous, both equally expressed themselves unencumbered by an
ulterior aim. Beyond drawing audiences to the Globe Theatre, Shakspeare
contemplated no result in those plays of his. Yet they have had results! Utter
with free heart what thy own daemon gives thee: if fire from heaven, it shall
be well; if resinous firework, it shall be - as well as it could be, or better
than otherwise!
The candid judge will, in general, require that a speaker, in so
extremely serious a Universe as this of ours, have something to speak about.
In the heart of the speaker there ought to be some kind of gospel-tidings,
burning till it be uttered; otherwise it were better for him that he
altogether held his peace. A gospel somewhat more decisive than this of
Scott`s, - except to an age altogether languid, without either scepticism or
faith! These things the candid judge will demand of literary men; yet withal
will recognise the great worth there is in Scott`s honesty if in nothing more,
in his being the thing he was with such entire good faith. Here is a
something, not a nothing. If no skyborn messenger, heaven looking through his
eyes; then neither is it a chimera with his systems, crotchets, cants,
fanaticisms, and `last infirmity of noble minds,` - full of misery, unrest and
ill-will; but a substantial, peaceable, terrestrial man. Far as the Earth is
under the Heaven does Scott stand below the former sort of character; but high
as the cheerful flowery Earth is above waste Tartarus does he stand above the
latter. Let him live in his own fashion, and do honour to him in that.
It were late in the day to write criticisms on those Metrical Romances:
at the same time, we may remark, the great popularity they had seems natural
enough. In the first place, there was the indisputable impress of worth, of
genuine human force, in them. This, which lies in some degree, or is thought
to lie, at the bottom of all popularity, did to an unusual degree disclose
itself in these rhymed romances of Scott`s. Pictures were actually painted and
presented; human emotions conceived and sympathised with. Considering what
wretched Della-Cruscan and other vamping-up of old worn-out tatters was the
staple article then, it may be granted that Scott`s excellence was superior
and supreme. When a Hayley was the main singer, a Scott might well be hailed
with warm welcome. Consider whether the Loves of the Plants, and even the
Loves of the Triangles, could be worth the loves and hates of men and women!
Scott was as preferable to what he displaced, as the substance is to
wearisomely repeated shadow of a substance.
But, in the second place, we may say that the kind of worth which Scott
manifested was fitted especially for the then temper of men. We have called
it an age fallen into spiritual languor, destitute of belief, yet terrified
at Scepticism; reduced to live a stinted half-life, under strange new
circumstances. Now vigorous whole-life, this was what of all things these
delineations offered. The reader was carried back to rough strong times,
wherein those maladies of ours had not yet arisen. Brawny fighters, all cased
in buff and iron, their hearts too sheathed in oak and triple brass, caprioled
their huge war-horses, shook their death-doing spears; and went forth in the
most determined manner, nothing doubting. The reader sighed, yet not without
a reflex solacement: "O, that I too had lived in those times, had never known
these logic-cobwebs, this doubt, this sickliness; and been and felt myself
alive among men alive!" Add lastly, that in this new-found poetic world there
was no call for effort on the reader`s part; what excellence they had,
exhibited itself at a glance. It was for the reader, not the El Dorado only,
but a beatific land of Cockaigne and Paradise of Donothings! The reader, what
the vast majority of readers so long to do, was allowed to lie down at his
ease, and be ministered to. What the Turkish bathkeeper is said to aim at with
his frictions, and shampooings, and fomentings, more or less effectually, that
the patient in total idleness may have the delights of activity, - was here to
a considerable extent realised. The languid imagination fell back into its
rest; an artist was there who could supply it with high-painted scenes, with
sequences of stirring action, and whisper to it, Be at ease, and let thy tepid
element be comfortable to thee. `The rude man,` says a critic, `requires only
to see something going on. The man of more refinement must be made to feel.
The man of complete refinement must be made to reflect.`
We named the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border the fountain from which
flowed this great river of Metrical Romances; but according to some they can
be traced to a still higher, obscurer spring; to Goethe`s Gotz von
Berlichingen with the Iron Hand; or which, as we have seen, Scott in his
earlier days executed a translation. Dated a good many years ago, the
following words in a criticism on Goethe are found written; which probably
are still new to most readers of this Review:
`The works just mentioned, Gotz and Werter, though noble specimens of
youthful talent, are still not so much distinguished by their intrinsic
merits as by their splendid fortune. It would be difficult to name two books
which have exercised a deeper influence on the subsequent literature of
Europe than these two performances of a young author; his first-fruits, the
produce of his twenty-fourth year. Werter appeared to seize the hearts of men
in all quarters of the world, and to utter for them the word which they had
long been waiting to hear. As usually happens too, this same word, once
uttered, was soon abundantly repeated; spoken in all dialects, and chanted
through all notes of the gamut, till the sound of it had grown a weariness
rather than a pleasure. Sceptical sentimentality, view-hunting, love,
friendship, suicide and desperation, became the staple of literary ware; and
though the epidemic, after a long course of years, subsided in Germany, it
reappeared with various modifications in other countries, and everywhere
abundant traces of its good and bad effects are still to be discerned. The
fortune of Berlichingen with the Iron Hand, though less sudden, was by no
means less exalted. In his own country, Gotz, though he now stands solitary
and childless, became the parent of an innumerable progeny of chivalry plays,
feudal delineations, and poetico-antiquarian performances; which, though long
ago deceased, made noise enough in their day and generation: and with
ourselves his influence has been perhaps still more remarkable. Sir Walter
Scott`s first literary enterprise was a translation of Gotz von
Berlichingen: and, if genius could be communicated like instruction, we
might call this work of Goethe`s the prime cause of Marmion and the Lady of
the Lake, with all that has followed from the same creative hand. Truly, a
grain of seed that has lighted in the right soil! For if not firmer and
fairer, it has grown to be taller and broader than any other tree; and all
the nations of the earth are still yearly gathering of its fruit.`
How far Gotz von Berlichingen actually affected Scott`s literary
destination, and whether without it the rhymed romances, and then the prose
romances of the Author of Waverley, would not have followed as they did, must
remain a very obscure question; obscure and not important. Of the fact,
however, there is no doubt, that these two tendencies, which may be named
Gotzism and Werterism, of the former of which Scott was representative with
us, have made, and are still in some quarters making the tour of all Europe.
In Germany too there was this affectionate half-regretful looking-back into
the Past; Germany had its buff-belted watch-tower period in literature, and
had even got done with it before Scott began. Then as to Werterism, had not we
English our Byron and his genus? No form of Werterism in any other country had
half the potency; as our Scott carried Chivalry Literature to the ends of the
world, so did our Byron Werterism. France, busy with its Revolution and
Napoleon, had little leisure at the moment for Gotzism or Werterism; but it
has had them both since, in a shape of its own: witness the whole `Literature
of Desperation` in our own days; the beggarliest form of Werterism yet seen,
probably its expiring final form: witness also, at the other extremity of the
scale, a noble-gifted Chateaubriand, Gotz and Werter both in one. - Curious:
how all Europe is but like a set of parishes of the same county; participant
of the self-same influences, ever since the Crusades, and earlier; - and these
glorious wars of ours are but like parish-brawls, which begin in mutual
ignorance, intoxication and boastful speech; which end in broken windows,
damage, waste and bloody noses; and which one hopes the general good sense is
now in the way towards putting down, in some measure!
But leaving this to be as it can, what it concerned us here to remark,
was that British Werterism, in the shape of those Byron Poems, so potent and
poignant, produced on the languid appetite of men a mighty effect. This too
was a `class of feelings deeply important to modern minds; feelings which
arise from passion incapable of being converted into action, which belong to
an age as indolent, cultivated and unbelieving as our own`! The `languid age
without either faith or scepticism` turned towards Byronism with an interest
altogether peculiar: here, if no cure for its miserable paralysis and languor,
was at least an indignant statement of the misery; an indignant Ernulphus`
curse read over it, - which all men felt to be something. Half-regretful
lookings in the Past gave place, in many quarters, to Ernulphus` cursings of
the Present. Scott was among the first to perceive that the day of Metrical
Chivalry Romances was declining. He had held the sovereignty for some
half-score of years, a comparatively long lease of it; and now the time seemed
come for dethronement, for abdication: an unpleasant business; which however
he held himself ready, as a brave man will, to transact with composure and in
silence. After all, Poetry was not his staff of life; Poetry had already
yielded him much money; this at least it would not take back from him. Busy
always with editing, with compiling, with multiplex official commercial
business, and solid interests, he beheld the coming change with unmoved eye.
Resignation he was prepared to exhibit in this matter; - and now behold
there proved to be no need of resignation. Let the Metrical Romance become a
Prose one; shake off its rhyme-fetters, and try a wider sweep! In the spring
of 1814 appeared Waverley; an event memorable in the annals of British
Literature; in the annals of British Bookselling thrice and four times
memorable. Byron sang, but Scott narrated; and when the song had sung itself
out through all variations onwards to the Don Juan one, Scott was still found
narrating, and carrying the whole world along with him. All bygone popularity
of chivalry-lays was swallowed up in a far greater. What `series` followed out
of Waverley, and how and with what result, is known to all men; was witnessed
and watched with a kind of rapt astonishment by all. Hardly any literary
reputation ever rose so high in our Island; no reputation at all ever spread
so wide. Walter Scott became Sir Walter Scott, Baronet, of Abbotsford; on whom
Fortune seemed to pour her whole cornucopia of wealth, honour and worldly
goods; the favourite of Princes and of Peasants, and all intermediate men. His
`Waverley series,` swift-following one on the other apparently without end,
was the universal reading; looked for like an annual harvest, by all ranks, in
all European countries.
A curious circumstance superadded itself, that the author though known
was unknown. From the first most people suspected, and soon after the first,
few intelligent persons much doubted, that the Author of Waverley was Walter
Scott. Yet a certain mystery was still kept up; rather piquant to the public;
doubtless very pleasant to the author, who saw it all; who probably had not to
listen, as other hapless individuals often had, to this or the other
long-drawn `clear proof at last,` that the author was not Walter Scott, but a
certain astonishing Mr. So-and-so; - one of the standing miseries of human
life in that time. But for the privileged Author it was like a king travelling
incognito. All men know that he is a high king, chivalrous Gustaf or Kaiser
Joseph; but he mingles in their meetings without cumber of etiquette or
lonesome ceremony, as Chevalier du Nord, or Count of Lorraine: he has none of
the weariness of royalty, and yet all the praise, and the satisfaction of
hearing it with his own ears. In a word, the Waverley Novels circulated and
reigned triumphant; to the general imagination the `Author of Waverley` was
like some living mythological personage, and ranked among the chief wonders of
the world.
How a man lived and demeaned himself in such unwonted circumstances, is
worth seeing. We would gladly quote from Scott`s correspondence of this
period; but that does not much illustrate the matter. His letters, as above
stated, are never without interest, yet also seldom or never very interesting.
They are full of cheerfulness, of wit and ingenuity; but they do not treat of
aught intimate; without impeaching their sincerity, what is called sincerity,
one may say they do not, in any case whatever, proceed from the innermost
parts of the mind. Conventional forms, due consideration of your own and your
correspondents` pretensions and vanities, are at no moment left out of view.
The epistolary stream runs on, lucid, free, gladflowing; but always, as it
were, parallel to the real substance of the matter, never coincident with it.
One feels it hollowish under foot. Letters they are of a most humane man of
the world, even exemplary in that kind; but with the man of the world always
visible in them; - as indeed it was little in Scott`s way to speak, perhaps
even with himself, in any other fashion. We select rather some glimpses of him
from Mr. Lockhart`s record. The first is of dining with Royalty or
Prince-Regentship itself; an almost official matter:
`On hearing from Mr. Croker (then Secretary to the Admiralty) that Scott
was to be in town by the middle of March (1815), the Prince said, "Let me know
when he comes, and I`ll get-up a snug little dinner that will suit him;" and
after he had been presented and graciously received at the levee, he was
invited to dinner accordingly, through his excellent friend Mr. Adam (now Lord
Chief Commissioner of the Jury Court in Scotland), who at that time held a
confidential office in the royal household. The Regent had consulted with Mr.
Adam, also, as to the composition of the party. "Let us have," said he, "just
a few friends of his own, and the more Scotch the better;" and both the
Commissioner and Mr. Croker assure me that the party was the most interesting
and agreeable one in their recollection. It comprised, I believe, the Duke of
York - the Duke of Gordon (then Marquess of Huntly) - the Marquess of Hertford
(then Lord Yarmouth) - the Earl of Fife - and Scott`s early friend, Lord
Melville. "The Prince and Scott," says Mr. Croker," were the two most
brilliant story tellers, in their several ways, that I have ever happened to
meet; they were both aware of their forte, and both exerted themselves that
evening with delightful effect. On going home, I really could not decide which
of them had shone the most. The Regent was enchanted with Scott, as Scott with
him; and on all his subsequent visits to London, he was a frequent guest at
the royal table." The Lord Chief Commissioner remembers that the Prince was
particularly delighted with the poet`s anecdotes of the old Scotch judges and
lawyers, which his Royal Highness sometimes capped by ludicrous traits of
certain ermine sages of his own acquaintance. Scott told, among others, a
story, which he was fond of telling, of his old friend the Lord Justice- Clerk
Braxfield; and the commentary of his Royal Highness on hearing it amused
Scott, who often mentioned it afterwards. The anecdote is this: Braxfield,
whenever he went on a particular circuit was in the habit of visiting a
gentleman of good fortune in the neighbourhood of one of the assize towns, and
staying at least one night, which, being both of them ardent chess-players,
they usually concluded with their favourite game. One Spring circuit the
battle was not decided at daybreak; so the Justice-Clerk said, "Weel, Donald,
I must e`en come back this gate, and let the game lie ower for the present:"
and back he came in October, but not to his old friend`s hospitable house; for
that gentleman had in the interim been apprehended on a capital charge (of
forgery), and his name stood on the Porteous Roll, or list of those who were
about to be tried under his former guest`s auspices. The laird was indicted
and tried accordingly, and the jury returned a verdict of guilty. Braxfield
forthwith put on his cocked hat (which answers to the black cap in England),
and pronounced the sentence of the law in the usual terms - "To be hanged by
the neck until you be dead; and may the Lord have mercy upon your unhappy
soul!" Having concluded this awful formula in his most sonorous cadence,
Braxfield, dismounting his formidable beaver, gave a familiar nod to his
unfortunate acquaintance, and said to him in a sort of chuckling whisper, "And
now, Donald my man, I think I`ve checkmated you for ance." The Regent laughed
heartily at this specimen of Macqueen`s brutal humour; and "I` faith, Walter,"
said he, "this old big-wig seems to have taken things as coolly as my
tyrannical self. Don`t you remember Tom Moore`s description of me at
breakfast -
"The table spread with tea and toast,
Death-warrants and the Morning Post?"
`Towards midnight the Prince called for "a bumper, with all the honours,
to the Author of Waverley"; and looked significantly, as he was charging his
own glass, to Scott. Scott seemed somewhat puzzled for a moment, but instantly
recovering himself, and filling his glass to the brim, said "Your Royal
Highness looks as if you thought I had some claim to the honours of this
toast. I have no such pretensions; but shall take good care that the real
Simon Pure hears of the high compliment that has now been paid him." He then
drank-off his claret; and joined with a stentorian voice in the cheering,
which the Prince himself timed. But before the company could resume their
seats, his Royal Highness, "Another of the same, if you please, to the Author
of Marmion, - and now, Walter my man, I have checkmated you for ance." The
second bumper was followed by cheers still more prolonged: and Scott then
rose, and returned thanks in a short address, which struck the Lord Chief
Commissioner as "alike grave and graceful." This story has been circulated in
a very perverted shape.` * * * `Before he left town he again dined at Carlton
House, when the party was a still smaller one than before, and the merriment
if possible still more free. That nothing might be wanting, the Prince sang
several capital songs.`^6
[Footnote 6: Vol. iii, pp. 340-343.]
Or take, at a very great interval in many senses, this glimpse of
another dinner, altogether unofficially and much better described. It is
James Ballantyne the printer and publisher`s dinner, in St. John Street,
Canongate, Edinburgh, on the birth-eve of a Waverley Novel:
`The feast was, to use one of James` own favourite epithets, gorgeous;
an aldermanic display of turtle and venison, with the suitable accompaniments
of iced punch, potent ale, and generous Madeira. When the cloth was drawn,
the burly praeses arose, with all he could master of the port of John Kemble,
and spouted with a sonorous voice the formula Macbeth,
"Fill full!
I drink to the general joy of the whole table!"
This was followed by "the King, God bless him!" and second came - "Gentlemen,
there is another toast which never has been nor shall be omitted in this house
of mine: I give you the health of Mr. Walter Scott, with three times three!"
All honour having been done to this health, and Scott having briefly thanked
the company, with some expressions of warm affection to their host, Mrs.
Ballantyne retired; - the bottles passed round twice or thrice in the usual
way; and then James rose once more, every vein on his brow distended; his eyes
solemnly fixed on vacancy, to propose, not as before in his stentorian key,
but with "bated breath," in the sort of whisper by which a stage-conspirator
thrills the gallery, - "Gentlemen, a bumper to the immortal Author of
Waverley!" - The uproar of cheering, in which Scott made a fashion of joining,
was succeeded by deep silence; and then Ballantyne proceeded -
"In his Lord-Burleigh look, serene and serious,
A something of imposing and mysterious" -
to lament the obscurity, in which his illustrious but too modest correspondent
still chose to conceal himself from the plaudits of the world; to thank the
company for the manner in which the nominis umbra had been received; and to
assure them that the Author of Waverley would, when informed of the
circumstance, feel highly delighted - "the proudest hour of his life," etc.,
etc. The cool, demure fun of Scott`s features during all this mummery was
perfect; and Erskine`s attempt at a gay nonchalance was still more ludicrously
meritorious. Aldiborontiphoscophornio, however, bursting as he was, knew too
well to allow the new Novel to be made the subject of discussion. Its name was
announced, and success to it crowned another cup; but after that, no more of
Jedediah. To cut the thread, he rolled out unbidden some one of his many
theatrical songs, in a style that would have done no dishonour to almost any
orchestra - The Maid of Lodi, or perhaps The Bay of Biscay, O! - or the Sweet
little cherub that sits up aloft. Other toasts followed, interspersed with
ditties from other performers; old George Thomson, the friend of Burns, was
ready, for one, with The Moorland Wedding, or Willie brew`d a peck o` maut; -
and so it went on, until Scott and Erskine, with any clerical or very staid
personage that had chanced to be admitted, saw fit to withdraw. Then the scene
was changed. The claret and olives made way for broiled bones and a mighty
bowl of punch; and when a few glasses of the hot beverage had restored his
powers, James opened ore rotundo on the merits of the forthcoming Romance.
"One chapter - one chapter only!" was the cry. After `Nav by`r Lady, nay!" and
a few more coy shifts, the proof-sheets were at length produced, and James,
with many a prefatory "hem," read aloud what he considered as the most
striking dialogue they contained.
`The first I heard so read was the interview between Jeanie Deans, the
Duke of Argyle and Queen Caroline, in Richmond Park; and, notwithstanding some
spice of the pompous tricks to which he was addicted, I must say he did the
inimitable scene great justice. At all events, the effect it produced was deep
and memorable; and no wonder that the exulting typographer`s one bumper more
to Jedediah Cleishbotham preceded his parting-stave, which was uniformly The
Last Words of Marmion, executed certainly with no contemptible rivalry of
Braham.^7
[Footnote 7: Vol. iv. pp. 166-168.]
Over at Abbotsford things wear a still more prosperous aspect. Scott is
building there, by the pleasant banks of the Tweed; he has bought and is
buying land there; fast as the new gold comes in for a new Waverley Novel, or
even faster, it changes itself into moory acres, into stone, and hewn or
planted wood.
`About the middle of February` (1820), says Mr. Lockhart, `it having been
ere that time arranged that I should marry his eldest daughter in the course
of the spring, - I accompanied him and part of his family on one of those
flying visits to Abbotsford, with which he often indulged himself on a
Saturday during term. Upon such occasions, Scott appeared at the usual hour in
court, but wearing, instead of the official suit of black, his country
morning-dress, green jacket and so forth, under the clerk`s gown` - `At noon,
when the Court broke up, Peter Mathieson was sure to be in attendance in the
Parliament Close; and, five minutes after, the gown had been tossed off; and
Scott, rubbing his hands for glee, was under weigh for Tweedside. As we
proceeded,` etc.
`Next morning there appeared at breakfast John Ballantyne, who had at
this time a shooting or hunting-box a few miles off, in the vale of the
Leader, and with him Mr. Constable, his guest; and it being a fine clear day,
as soon as Scott had read the church-service and one of Jeremy Taylor`s
sermons, we all sallied out before noon on a perambulation of his upland
territories; Maida (the hound) and the rest of the favourites accompanying
our march. At starting we were joined by the constant henchman, Tom
Purdie, - and I may save myself the trouble of any attempt to describe his
appearance, for his master has given us an inimitably true one in introducing
a certain personage of his Redgauntlet: - "He was, perhaps, sixty years old;
yet his brow was not much furrowed, and his jet-black hair was only grizzled,
not whitened, by the advance of age. All his motions spoke strength unabated;
and, though rather undersized, he had very broad shoulders, was square-made,
thin-flanked, and apparently combined in his frame muscular strength and
activity; the last somewhat impaired, perhaps, by years, but the first
remaining in full vigor. A hard and harsh countenance; eyes far sunk under
projecting eyebrows, which were grizzled like his hair; a wide mouth,
furnished from ear to ear with a range of unimpaired teeth of uncommon
whiteness, and a size and breadth which might have become the jaws of an
ogre, completed this delightful portrait." Equip this figure in Scott`s
cast-off green jacket, white hat and drab trousers; and imagine that years
of kind treatment, comfort and the honest consequence of a confidential
grieve^8 had softened away much of the hardness and harshness originally
impressed on the visage by anxious penury, and the sinister habits of a
black-fisher; - and the Tom Purdie of 1820 stands before us.
[Footnote 8: Overseer; German, graf.]
`We were all delighted to see how completely Scott had recovered his
bodily vigour, and none more so than Constable, who, as he puffed and panted
after him, up one ravine and down another, often stopped to wipe his forehead,
and remarked, that "it was not every author who should lead him such a dance."
But Purdie`s face shone with rapture as he observed how severely the
swag-bellied bookseller`s activity was tasked. Scott exclaimed exultingly,
though, perhaps, for the tenth time, "This will be a glorious spring for our
trees, Tom!" - "You may say that, Sheriff," quoth Tom, - and then lingering a
moment for Constable - "My certy," he added, scratching his head, "and I think
it will be a grand season for our buiks too." But indeed Tom always talked of
our buiks, as if they had been as regular products of the soil as our aits and
our birks. Having threaded first the Hexilcleugh and then the Rhymer`s Glen,
we arrived at Huntly Burn, where the hospitality of the kind Weird Sisters, as
Scott called the Miss Fergusons, reanimated our exhausted bibliopoles, and
gave them courage to extend their walk a little farther down the same famous
brook. Here there was a small cottage in a very sequestered situation` (named
Chiefswood), `by making some little additions to which Scott thought it might
be converted into a suitable summer residence for his daughter and future
son-in-law.` * * * `As we walked homeward, Scott being a little fatigued, laid
his left hand on Tom`s shoulder, and leaned heavily for support, chatting to
his "Sunday pony," as he called the affectionate fellow, just as freely as
with the rest of the party; and Tom put-in his word shrewdly and manfully, and
grinned and grunted whenever the joke chanced to be within his apprehension.
It was easy to see that his heart swelled within him from the moment the
Sheriff got his collar in his gripe.`^9
[Footnote 9: Vol. iv. pp. 349-353.]
That Abbotsford became infested to a great degree with tourists,
wonder-hunters, and all that fatal species of people, may be supposed.
Solitary Ettrick saw itself populous: all paths were beaten with the feet
and hoofs of an endless miscellany of pilgrims. As many as `sixteen parties`
have arrived at Abbotsford in one day; male and female; peers, Socinian
preachers, whatsoever was distinguished, whatsoever had love of distinction
in it! Mr. Lockhart thinks there was no literary shrine ever so bepilgrimed,
except Ferney in Voltaire`s time, who, however, was not half so accessible. A
fatal species! These are what Schiller calls the `flesh-flies`; buzzing swarms
of bluebottles, who never fail where any taint of human glory or other
corruptibility is in the wind. So has Nature decreed. Scott`s healthiness,
bodily and mental, his massive solidity of character, nowhere showed itself
more decisively than in his manner of encountering this part of his fate.
That his bluebottles were blue, and of the usual tone and quality, may be
judged. Hear Captain Basil Hall (in a very compressed state):
`We arrived in good time, and found several other guests at dinner. The
public rooms are lighted with oil-gas, in a style of extraordinary splendour.
The` etc. - `Had I a hundred pens, each of which at the same time should
separately write down an anecdote, I could not hope to record one half of
those which our host, to use Spenser`s expression, "welled out alway."` -
`Entertained us all the way with an endless string of anecdotes;` - `came like
a stream of poetry from his lips;` - `path muddy and scarcely passable, yet I
do not remember ever to have seen any place so interesting as the skill of
this mighty magician had rendered this narrow ravine.` - `Impossible to touch
on any theme, but straightway he has an anecdote to fit it.` - `Thus we
strolled along, borne, as it were, on the stream of song and story.` - `In the
evening we had a great feast indeed. Sir Walter asked us if we had ever read
Christabel.` - `Interspersed with these various readings were some hundreds of
stories, some quaint, some pathetical.` - `A breakfast today we had, as usual,
some 150 stories - God knows how they came in.` - `In any man so gifted - so
qualified to take the loftiest, proudest line at the head of the literature,
the taste, the imagination of the whole world!` - `For instance, he never sits
at any particular place at table, but takes` etc. etc.^10
[Footnote 10: Vol. v. pp. 375-402.]
Among such worshippers, arriving in `sixteen parties a-day,` an ordinary
man might have grown buoyant; have felt the god, begun to nod, and seemed to
shake the spheres. A slightly splenetic man, possessed of Scott`s sense, would
have swept his premises clear of them: Let no blue bottle approach here, to
disturb a man in his work, - under pain of sugared squash (called quassia) and
king`s yellow! The good Sir Walter, like a quiet brave man, did neither. He
let the matter take its course; enjoyed what was enjoyable in it; endured what
could not well be helped; persisted meanwhile in writing his daily portion of
romance-copy, in preserving his composure of heart; - in a word, accommodated
himself to this loud-buzzing environment, and made it serve him, as he would
have done (perhaps with more ease) to a silent, poor and solitary one. No
doubt it affected him too, and in the lamentable way fevered his internal
life, though he kept it well down; but it affected him less than it would have
done almost any other man. For his guests were not all of the bluebottle sort;
far from that. Mr. Lockhart shall furnish us with the brightest aspect a
British Ferney ever yielded, or is like to yield: and therewith we will quit
Abbotsford and the dominant and culminant period of Scott`s life:
`It was a clear, bright September morning, with a sharpness in the air
that doubled the animating influence of the sunshine, and all was in readiness
for a grand coursing-match on Newark Hill. The only guest who had chalked-out
other sport for himself was the stanchest of anglers, Mr. Rose; but he too was
there on his shelty, armed with his salmon-rod and landing-net, and attended
by his Hinves, and Charlie Purdie, a brother of Tom, in those days the most
celebrated fisherman of the district. This little group of Waltonians, bound
for Lord Somerville`s preserve, remained lounging about, to witness the start
of the main cavalcade. Sir Walter, mounted on Sibyl, was marshalling the order
of procession with a huge hunting-whip; and among a dozen frolicsome youths
and maidens, who seemed disposed to laugh at all discipline, appeared, each on
horseback, each as eager as the youngest sportsman in the troop, Sir Humphry
Davy, Dr. Wollaston, and the patriarch of Scottish belles-lettres, Henry
Mackenzie. The Man of Feeling, however, was persuaded with some difficulty to
resign his steed for the present to his faithful negro follower, and to join
Lady Scott in the sociable, until we should reach the ground of our battue.
Laidlaw, on a strong-tailed wiry Highlander, yclept Hoddin Grey, which carried
him nimbly and stoutly, although his feet almost touched the ground as he sat,
was the adjutant. But the most picturesque figure was the illustrious inventor
of the safety-lamp. He had come for his favourite sport of angling, and had
been practising it successfully with Rose, his travelling companion, for two
or three days preceding this; but he had not prepared for coursing fields, or
had left Charlie Purdie`s troop for Sir Walter`s on a sudden thought, and his
fisherman`s costume - a brown hat with flexible brim, surrounded with line
upon line of catgut, and innumerable fly-hooks-jack-boots worthy of a Dutch
smuggler, and a fustian surtout dabbled with the blood of salmon, made a fine
contrast with the smart jackets, white-cord breeches, and well-polished
jockey-boots of the less distinguished cavaliers about him. Dr. Wollaston was
in black; and with his noble serene dignity of counterance might have passed
for a sporting archbishop. Mr. Mackenzie, at this time in the 76th year of his
age, with a white hat turned up with green, green spectacles, green jacket,
and long brown leathern gaiters, buttoned upon his nether anatomy, wore a
dog-whistle round his neck, and had, all over, the air of as resolute a
devotee as the gay captain of Huntly Burn. Tom Purdie and his subalterns had
preceded us by a few hours with all the greyhounds that could be collected at
Abbotsford, Darnick, and Melrose; but the giant Maida had remained as his
master`s orderly, and now gambolled about Sibyl Grey, barking for mere joy
like a spaniel puppy.
`The order of march had been all settled, and the sociable was just
getting under weigh, when the Lady Anne broke from the line, screaming with
laughter, and exclaimed, "Papa, papa, I knew you could never think of going
without your pet!" Scott looked round, and I rather think there was a blush as
well as a smile upon his face, when he perceived a little black pig frisking
about his pony, and evidently a self-elected addition to the party of the day.
He tried to look stern, and cracked his whip at the creature, but was in a
moment obliged to join in the general cheers. Poor piggy soon found a strap
round its neck, and was dragged into the background; - Scott, watching the
retreat, repeated with mock pathos the first verse of an old pastoral song -
"What will I do gin my hoggie die?
My joy, my pride, my hoggie!
My only beast, I had na mae,
And wow! but I was vogie!"
-the cheers were redoubled - and the squadron moved on.
`This pig had taken, nobody could tell how, a most sentimental attachment
to Scott, and was constantly urging its pretensions to be admitted a regular
member of his tail along with the greyhounds and terriers: but, indeed, I
remember him suffering another summer under the same sort of pertinacity on
the part of an affectionate hen. I leave the explanation for philosophers; -
but such were the facts. I have too much respect for the vulgarly calumniated
donkey, to name him in the same category of pets with the pig and the hen; but
a year or two after this time, my wife used to drive a couple of these animals
in a little garden-chair, and whenever her father appeared at the door of our
cottage, we were sure to see Hannah More and Lady Morgan (as Anne Scott had
wickedly christened them) trotting from their pasture, to lay their noses over
the paling, and, as Washington Irving says of the old white-haired hedger with
the Parisian snuff-box, "to have a pleasant crack wi` the laird."^11
[Footnote 11: Vol. v. pp. 7-10. On this subject let us report an anecdote
furnished by a correspondent of our own, whose accuracy we can depend on: `I
myself was acquainted with a little Blenheim cocker, one of the smallest,
beautifulest and wisest of lap-dogs or dogs, which, though Sir Walter knew it
not, was very singular in its behaviour towards him. Shandy, so hight this
remarkable cocker, was extremely shy of strangers: promenading on Princes
Street, which in fine weather used to be crowded in those days, he seemed to
live in perpetual fear of being stolen; if any one but looked at him
admiringly, he would draw-back with angry timidity, and crouch towards his own
ladymistress. One day, a tall, irregular, busy-looking man came halting by;
the little dog ran towards him, began fawning, frisking, licking at his feet:
it was Sir Walter Scott! Had Shandy been the most extensive reader of Reviews,
he could not have done better. Every time he saw Sir Walter afterwards, which
was some three or four times in the course of visiting Edinburgh, he repeated
his demonstrations, ran leaping, frisking, licking the author of Waverley`s
feet. The good Sir Walter endured it with good humour; looked down at the
little wise face, at the silky shagcoat of snow-white and chestnut-brown;
smiled, and avoided hitting him as they went on, - till a new division of
streets or some other obstacle put an end to the interview. In fact, he was a
strange little fellow, this Shandy. He has been known to sit for hours looking
out at the summer moon, with the saddest, wistfulest expression of
countenance; altogether like a Werterean Poet. He would have been a poet, I
daresay, if he could have found a publisher. But his moral tact was the most
amazing. Without reason shown, without word spoken, or act done, he took his
likings and dislikings; unalterable; really almost unerring. His chief
aversion, I should say, was to the genus quack, above all, to the genus
acrid-quack, these, though never so clear-starched, bland-smiling and
beneficent, he absolutely would have no trade with. Their very sugar-cake was
unavailing. He said with emphasis, as clearly as barking could say it:
"Acrid-quack, avaunt!" Would to Heaven many a prime-minister and high-person
in authority had such an invaluable talent! On the whole, there is more in
this universe than our philosophy has dreamt of. A dog`s instinct is a voice
of Nature too; and farther, it has never babbled itself away in idle jargon
and hypothesis, but always adhered to the practical, and grown in silence by
continual communion with fact. We do the animals injustice. Their body
resembles our body, Buffon says; with its four limbs, with its spinal marrow,
main organs in the head, and so forth: but have they not a kind of soul,
equally the rude draught and imperfect imitation of ours? It is a strange, an
almost solemn and pathetic thing to see an intelligence imprisoned in that
dumb rude form; struggling to express itself out of that; - even as we do out
of our imprisonment; and succeed very imperfectly!`]
`There` at Chiefswood `my wife and I spent this summer and autumn of
1821; the first of several seasons which will ever dwell on my memory as the
happiest of my life. We were near enough Abbotsford to partake as often as we
liked of its brilliant and constantly varying society; yet could do so without
being exposed to the worry and exhaustion of spirit which the daily reception
of newcomers entailed upon all the family, except Sir Walter himself. But, in
truth, even he was not always proof against the annoyances connected with
suchb a style of open housekeeping. Even his temper sank sometimes under the
solemn applauses of learned dulness, the vapid raptures of painted and
periwigged dowagers, the horse-leech avidity with which underbred foreigners
urged their questions, and the pompous simpers of condescending magnates. When
sore beset at home in this way, he would every now and then discover that he
had some very particular business to attend to on an outlying part of his
estate; and, craving the indulgence of his guest over-night, appear at the
cabin in the glen before its inhabitants were astir in the morning. The
clatter of Sibyl Grey`s hoofs, the yelping of Mustard and Spice, and his own
joyous shout of reveillee under our windows, were the signal that he had burst
his toils, and meant for that day to "take his ease in his inn." On
descending, he was to be found seated with all his dogs and ours about him,
under a spreading ash that overshadowed half the bank between the cottage and
the brook, pointing the edge of his woodman`s axe, and listening to Tom
Purdie`s lecture touching the plantation that most needed thinning. After
breakfast he would take possession of a dressing-room upstairs, and write a
chapter of The Pirate; and then, having made-up and despatched his packet for
Mr. Ballantyne, away to join Purdie wherever the foresters were at work - and
sometimes to labour among them as strenuously as John Swanston - until it was
time either to rejoin his own party at Abbotsford, or the quiet circle of the
cottage. When his guests were few and friendly, he often made them come over
and meet him at Chiefswood in a body towards evening; and surely he never
appeared to more amiable advantage than when helping his young people with
their little arrangements upon such occasions. He was ready with all sorts of
devices to supply the wants of a narrow establishment; he used to delight
particularly in sinking the wine in a well under the brae ere he went out, and
hauling up the basket just before dinner was announced, - this primitive
device being, he said, what he had always practised when a young housekeeper,
and in his opinion far superior in its results to any application of ice: and
in the same spirit, whenever the weather was sufficiently genial, he voted for
dining out of doors altogether, which at once got rid of the inconvenience of
very small rooms, and made it natural and easy for the gentlemen to help the
ladies, so that the paucity of servants went for nothing.`^12
[Footnote 12: Vol. v. pp. 123, 124.]
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