novels, financial ruin, death
this period was the zenith of scott’s apparent prosperity. five thousand guineas were given, or were to be given, by constable for the remaining copyright of ivanhoe, the monastery, the abbot, and kenilworth. “scott must have reckoned on clearing £30,000 at least in the course of a couple of years, by the novels written within such a period,” says lockhart. constable granted bills for four unnamed and unimagined “works of fiction,” and they proved to be peveril, quentin durward, st. ronan’s well, and redgauntlet. scott’s eldest son was now in an expensive cavalry regiment; his second son was preparing for the university, abbotsford was growing in extent and expense, and scott was keeping open house. lockhart, then living in the tiny neighbouring cottage of chiefswood, was a man who did not suffer bores gladly, and he saw abbotsford full of bores of all kinds—inquisitive foreigners, university prigs, condescending great people, and local lairds with their families. he reckoned that at least a sixth
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of the peerage of england passed through abbotsford, and all the distinguished people of scotland! with these came obscure citizens of edinburgh, old college mates and office mates of scott: “these were welcome guests, let who might be under that roof,” and scott “contrived to make them all equally happy, with him, with themselves, and with each other.”
he was the genius of hospitality: he lavished his time on his guests, who had him with them for the whole of the day, except when he rode early to chiefswood and wrote the pirate on a bureau which remains in the cottage. he seemed the idlest of men, while scores of essays, and letters not to be counted, in addition to the novels, flowed from his pen in the unbroken hours of early morning. only his extraordinary strength and buoyancy could enable him to be at once the most lavish host and the most prolific writer of his age, perhaps of any age. merely to “refresh the machine” he was writing these admirable imitations of the correspondence of the sixteenth century which he called “private letters.” they might have deceived the elect of antiquarians, but they could not have been popular with the public, though one character was a bona roba, an unaccustomed apparition in sir walter’s work. he threw the letters aside, in his last days he fancied that he had
abbotsford.
photo by valentine & sons. dundee.
“the beacon”
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finished them, and that they were a valuable asset. in fact, he turned from them and began nigel, a romance of the same period, apparently before he had brought the pirate to a close.
that “splendid romance,” as lockhart calls it, based on scott’s visit to the orcades in 1814, was published in december 1821. though the fair and dark sisters, minna and brenda, were popular, and cleveland himself had a vogue, the humours of the udaler and of the agriculturist were not enjoyed, and norna of the fitful head, a kind of civilized ulrica, was never much appreciated.
it is not necessary here to enter into the details about a luckless tory newspaper, the beacon, which had scott’s support, but was conducted in an amateur and bludgeonly fashion, in spite of his advice. there was nothing but blundering and bad language, and scott declined to see the paper. yet he was one of its early supporters, and there is evidence suggesting (i have not seen this evidence) that he was nearly involved in a duel, while his friend, sir alexander boswell of auchinleck, was unfortunately shot in an affair arising out of a successor to the beacon. “i have kept lockhart out of this scrape, in which some of the young men are knee deep,” writes sir walter. “i hope,” he wrote to lockhart, after auchinleck’s duel, “that this catastrophe will end the species of per
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sonal satire and abuse which has crept into our political discussions. the lives of brave and good citizens were given them for other purposes than to mingle in such unworthy affrays.”
nigel was published in may 1822, and constable, who was in london, saw people reading it, in macaulay’s fashion, as they walked along the streets. the ship which carried the edition arrived on a sunday, by monday 7,000 copies had been dispersed. so constable asked scott to write a trifle, like the poem of halidon hall (for which he paid £1,000) every quarter: every poem to be on a battle. lockhart thought that constable’s brain was “well nigh unsettled.” quite unsettled, if he expected the public to buy £4,000 worth of battle poetry every year, while the press was producing 30,000 volumes of peveril of the peak. ballantyne’s press was turning out at this date 145,000 volumes of works by scott, and constable was about buying an estate called balniel. yet, all the while, the old £12,000, the price for a set of copyrights, had not been and never was fully paid. there seems to have been the slenderest metallic basis for waggon loads of bills, which all concerned looked on as being as good as bullion.
“nigel”
the fortunes of nigel (may 1822) was the last novel written by scott before his labours produced an ominous change in his health. it is, no
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doubt, as lockhart says, in the first rank of his romances. the story is vécu: scott had lived as long among the dramas, pamphlets, histories, and documents of the late elizabethan and the jacobean times, as in any part of our history, and his scottish types of character he knew by heart. all that jacobean comedy, mainly the play of ben jonson, could tell him, he had fresh in his memory, or could “bring out with a wet finger.” hence the brilliance and vivacity of the street scenes, the rufflers in alsatia, the scenes at court, and at the ordinary. he caught the moment when the heavy-hilted broad sword of the scottish sire was becoming the long rapier of the scottish son. in gentle king jamie he had a model of which the grotesque absurdity needed pruning rather than exaggeration, and of all scott’s many portraits of kings, the slobbering trotting figure of james is the most truthful and the most comic. these moralists who denounce dissimulation and incontinence, baby charles and steenie, are delicately touched: ritchie moniplies is a worthy pendant to andrew fairservice: the prentices are as excellent as the bullies and the old miser with his stern daughter in alsatia: the whole life of jacobean london is placed before us as vividly as the life of georgian edinburgh in the heart of midlothian. the “hero,” too, the unheroic hero, is, for once, a living and
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even realistic character. the ancestral puritanism of nigel degenerates into the cautious gambling of “the sparrow hawk,” who plays with prentices for small sums, and takes care to leave off a winner. nobody can deny that this is a natural metamorphosis, though the effect is to make us rather detest nigel. he is supposed to throw off his mean vice, but he cannot be styled amiable. george heriot is a better kind of man, and ritchie is as superior to his master, morally, as strap to roderick random. the young women of the tale, the pretty daughter of the goldsmith, and the mysterious lady, do not distinguish themselves among scott’s young women. but the book is certainly in the foremost rank.
visit of george iv
the visit of george iv to edinburgh, with the death of erskine, slain by a calumny at which most men would have laughed, put a strain upon scott, in july and august 1822, from which he never recovered. the toil of organizing the reception of the first crowned king of england who had visited scotland since 1650 fell upon sir walter. scott was, in great part, the cause of the royal visit, and his whole strength was given to organizing success. there was “a grand terryfication” (dramatization in the manner of terry the actor) “of the holyrood chapters in waverley.” the highlanders were much to the front, “all plaided and
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plumed in their tartan array,” and the fat white legs of george iv appeared under the once forbidden philabeg. his majesty, a man of vivid imagination, conceived himself to be a true stuart, come to his own again; and scott, himself in the campbell tartan and trews, appears to have accepted him in that romantic character. he himself was the baron bradwardine of the hour, and we know how the baron sat down on a glass which had touched the lips of his most sacred majesty, and cut himself rather badly. in the sultry weather he “had to arrange everything, from the ordering of a procession to the cut of a button,” and he had also to amuse the perplexed old poet crabbe, who seized on this frantic moment for a visit to a nation which he did not understand.
in one light the visit of george was very well. it reconciled the furious feuds which had raged around the beacon, and it was a proof that scotland, at last, was content with the hanoverian in the disguise of the stuart dynasty. the highland chiefs were anxious about their precedence, which is said to have depended on the station occupied by each clan at bannockburn, a point probably to be decided on the extremely diverse traditions of the clan bards or sennachies. scott, aided by general stewart of garth, the historian of the highland regiments, was the montrose who brought harmony
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among the clans, no easy task where glengarry and clanranald were at odds about the chiefship of the macdonalds, and cluny and mackintosh were not of one mind as to the headship of clan chattan. be it remarked that, when in tartans, scott wore the trews, not the philabeg. glengarry, whether in the philabeg or not, rode in the procession, followed by “tail,” pedestrians. the king, and sir william curtis, a stout dignitary of london town, both wore the royal stuart tartans, invented, it was said, for prince charles. no stuart king, of course, had ever worn the highland costume, except in expeditions beyond the highland line. these amusing pageantries were “making every brain dizzy but his own,” when the death of erskine, the mild, quiet, timid man who had been his dearest friend, fell upon scott.
the main results of “the right royal row,” as scott called it, were that, by his suggestion, the attainders of 1715 and 1745 were redressed, and that scott, pursued to abbotsford by crowds of guests, appears to have suffered from a slight seizure of an apoplectic kind. “i have not been very well,” he wrote to terry in november, “a whoreson thickness of blood, and a depression of spirits arising from the loss of friends ... have annoyed me much, and peveril will, i fear, smell of the apoplexy.” this, says lockhart, is the first allusion
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to sir walter’s fatal malady, the malady which had caused the death of his father. lockhart suspected that he had sustained and concealed slight attacks of this nature. the machine was showing signs of overwork, which appear in the straggling peveril of the peak with its missed opportunities. yet quentin durward was in progress in company with peveril, and there is no smell of the apoplexy in that stirring tale, which made scott’s fortune in france. the pictures of louis xi, of his strange funereal servitors, of the delightful le balafré, a pendant of dugald dalgetty, with the bustling events of the story, have won popularity, though the romance, at first, was received with little enthusiasm. perhaps this coldness, or a relapse into commonsense, made constable announce that he would enter into no more bargains for books not only unchristened but unborn. the novels were appearing in uniform collected editions: the market was glutted. scott thought of a set of dialogues on “superstitious” beliefs, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and witchcraft, as an alternative to romance. but the public was, by this time, solely devoted to fiction. quentin durward, too, began to sell in the old way, and scott postponed his dealings with things
on the margin grey
’twixt the soul’s life and day.
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scott had written no novel of contemporary society since the antiquary, and laidlaw, on the eildon hill above melrose, suggested a romance of the little town, in the actual year, 1823. the hint resulted in st. ronan’s well (december 1823); the scene is not melrose, but the spa of innerleithen on the upper tweed. the plot of st. ronan’s well was paralyzed by the prudery of james ballantyne. a mischance on the part of the heroine was suppressed, to please james, consequently there is no reason in life for clara’s ruined brain, or for anything else that is essential to the progress and conclusion of the narrative. there is a similar error, caused by a remonstrance from jeffrey, in dombey and son, where the conduct of edith towards mr. carker is inexplicable, as it is perfectly clear, from a passage which dickens vainly tried to explain away, that edith had been mr. carker’s mistress. the third or fourth rate society of the spa may be true to nature, but is neither convincing nor amusing, and meg dods cannot cover the multitude of sins of confusion in st. ronan’s well. miss edgeworth wrote that the author of the last thirty pages of the book should be “carbonadoed,” and, practically, james ballantyne would have been the sufferer, for he was the only begetter of the “incredible and unaccountable conclusion.”
“redgauntlet”
meanwhile a very different romance, the last of
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scott’s before ruin fell on him, was in progress, redgauntlet. in redgauntlet we may surely say that scott has found himself again, at his best, or very nearly at his best. the form of narrative, partly told in letters, as by richardson, is no longer popular, and we are not sorry when the author deserts it. the plot of the story is rather baffling, and, as the tale goes on, we almost forget our curiosity as to why darsie latimer should not go near the english border. the reason, when we do learn it, is far fetched, darsie was not worth all that mechanism of intrigue. but the pictures of old edinburgh life about 1763, of scott’s own father as the elder fairford, with his good heart, and his “pernickety” ascetic lawyer’s ways, is delightful. peter peebles, the litigant maddened by law and drink, is pathetic no less than humorous; if the legal business appears dull, it is, none the less, or perhaps the more, balzacian, supposing balzac to have had the humour of dumas. the quakers are borrowed from what scott saw, in boyhood, of a quaker household at kelso. excellent is geddes’s nonresisting courage, and his shamefaced pride in his armorial bearings, the ged, or pike, the freebooter of fresh water. the scene of salmon spearing on the solway flats is a description of a sport dear to scott as pursued in a boat on tweed. things like huge snow-shoes were used in my boy
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hood, the spearman stood erect above the water, one foot in each wooden shoe, he could spear a fish between them, and the exercise demanded much gift of balance, and a cool head, while the torches flared above the swift black running waters. green-mantle again recalls the manteau vert of scott’s youth. he borrowed the horse-shoe frown of old redgauntlet from the face of the wicked witch, the sister of the wizard, major weir, in the legend given by sinclair, in “satan’s invisible world disclosed,” and he also borrowed thence the name of the jackanapes in “wandering willie’s tale.” the scenes in the mysterious redgauntlet’s cottage are as good romance as those in the provost’s house at dumfries, with the story of “pate in peril” are good comedy. the brokenhearted nanty ewart is full of an original pathos not common in scott; his story of his own life of miserable adventure, with the foreknowledge of his doom, is a masterpiece, and as a masterpiece “the fallen and faded ascanius” of the tale, prince charles, the battered stately wanderer, with the despotic mistress, was universally accepted.
“redgauntlet”
there is evidence that the prince really did pursue his fleeting vision of a crown into england, in 1763, and was actually seen by murray, the actor, a friend of scott’s, then a boy. when the prince was in england, in disguise, there is always a com
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plete break in his correspondence, and i find such a gap at this period. he still had a few adherents, and would stray across the channel to see and frighten them, and slip back again to his hermit life at bouillon. miss walkinshaw, the original of the lady who accompanies him in the tale, had forsaken him at the date of the romance, and she was not a fair but a dark beauty. there is a mournful grace in charles’ last good-bye to the few jacobite gentry who surround him in the novel when “there was an end of an auld song.” the romance “contains perhaps more of the author’s personal experiences than any other, or even than all of them put together.” as for “wandering willie’s tale,” the corrections and admirable additions in the proof sheets show p. 118 that this chef d’oeuvre, unlike “the rest of them,” was written with all the care that it deserved. if it has anything to be called a rival, that rival is mr. stevenson’s story of about the same period, in the latest dusk of the day of the covenant, thrawn janet. but there is no rivalry—scott’s legend is unapproachable.
there was but this one novel in 1824; if scott’s advisers concealed from him the relative slackness of his sales, they did not hesitate to warn him against “over-cropping.” he wrote his tribute to byron, on the news of the poet’s death, and he
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worked at a new edition of his swift. as a director of the edinburgh academy, founded in this year, scott remarked that he did not love his country better than truth, and that dr. johnson was not wholly wrong when he said that, in learning, “every scot had a mouthful and none had a bellyful.” boys were now to learn greek earlier, and to learn more greek than in his own days at the high school. in fact the new school has produced some grecians of merit and distinction in its eighty years of existence. scott did not tell the boys that of greek he had less than shakespeare, and he despised the contemptible clamour over his own famous brace of false quantities in the two elegiac lines for the epitaph of his deerhound maida. one of the false quantities, after all, was the fault of a transcriber who wrote “jaces” in place of “dormis”; that transcriber was james ballantyne. “we could have written as good longs and shorts as the english, if it had not been for the—covenant,” an old gentleman used to say, but porson opened buchanan on a false quantity, and surely dr. pitcairn erred when he began his famous epitaph on dundee (admirably englished into poetry by dryden)—“ultime scotorum.” yet he could hardly write ultime pictorum, and so save his prosody at the expense of his ethnology.
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the first and last ball
“surely if sir walter scott be not a happy man, which he seems truly to be, he deserves to be so,” wrote basil hall at abbotsford in the christmas of 1824. january 7, 1825, saw “the first regular ball given at abbotsford—and the last.” as in marmion,
it was his blithest and his last.
the occasion of the festivity was the wedding of scott’s eldest son, a young cavalry officer “of strict and even severe principles,” to a miss jobson, of lochore, “with a fortune of £50,000 in land.” the name of jobson is neither suggestive of wealth nor of heraldic additions to the quarterings of the scotts. sir walter speaks of his daughter-in-law with unconcealed affection; she was a pretty, shy, candid, innocent girl, in the manner of rose bradwardine. the lovers lately wed crossed to ireland, where the regiment was quartered, and whither scott himself went for a holiday later in 1825. scott now backed the credit of his friend, the actor manager terry, for £1,250, plus £500 guaranteed by james ballantyne. whoever lends a friend money for the purposes of his business is absolutely certain to see no more of the coins, and to lend terry money, terry being a manager and lessee of a theatre, was laying the longest possible odds on a hopeless horse. like steenie denouncing incon
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tinence, and baby charles reproving dissimulation, scott read terry a lecture against raising money by bills and discounts, a ruinous system, he declared, very wisely, which was assiduously practised by constable, and ballantyne & co.
“napoleon”
constable now had a new project, which lockhart describes with infinite humour. we have mentioned evidence given before a parliamentary commission, to the effect that libraries ceased to be formed about the time when waverley appeared (1814). the same evidence showed that real books had never prospered since cheap little volumes of boiled down information, the tinned meats of the intellectual life, were introduced. it was constable who now introduced them. he came out to abbotsford enormously big with a project. he unloaded himself of a packet, the annual schedule of assessed taxes. from the items of taxes paid on many things which profit not, such as hair powder, he inferred, justly, that the british public spent money on every thing conceivable, except books. hundreds of thousands of people had obviously plenty of money, and in the article of books alone did they economize. scott remarked that all down tweed were the houses of lairds of whom none spent £10 yearly on literature. of course they did not, and of course they do not, and never will. one extravagance our countrymen and country
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-women avoid, as they would the devil, and that is buying a book. they are like the highland crofter who was implored to give at least five shillings to the “sustentation fund,” and for the salvation of his immortal part. “me give five shillings to save my soul! i haena five shillings to buy mysel’ tobacco!”
constable admitted that the gentry were content with a magazine, and, at most, a subscription to a circulating library. but he would produce books so cheap and good that even the gentry would buy them. to the sanguine soul of the projector this seemed a splendid speculation, though even he did not think of sinking to a sixpenny price. monthly volumes at half-a-crown or three-and-sixpence were in his eye, as if the public could afford to give nearly forty shillings annually for books. the public “has not time,” setting the pecuniary extravagance aside, to read twelve volumes yearly. however scott accepted the golden dream, and proposed a short life of napoleon. it grew into ten tomes of constable’s miscellany, and was mainly written after sir walter’s ruin, in eighteen months. a critic mentions a dozen people then alive in england, including carlyle, who could have done a better life of napoleon. perhaps they could have done it, “if they had the mind,” but certainly they could not have done it better
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than scott, in eighteen months. constable provided about a hundred volumes of le moniteur, and quantities of printed works, as materials, while mss. were collected. but no life written at that time could be satisfactory; most documents were inaccessible, and scott made great use of second-hand authorities. though the book won £18,000 for sir walter’s creditors, and though it is very readable, the task work (and few forms of drudgery are so tedious as history writing in a hurry) did not suit scott, and adds nothing to his reputation.
ruin
the ballantyne firm
meanwhile he wrote the betrothed, which ballantyne discouraged, and the talisman, a work as pleasing to boyhood as ivanhoe. we all have been fond of coeur de lion, and hated conrad de montserrat, and adored saladin. the book was amazingly popular, and woodstock was undertaken next, and finished when the evil days began. scott now made a pleasant tour in ireland, and visited wordsworth on his homeward way. the two poets eternally quoted the bard of rydal, but not the most distant allusion was made by either, says lockhart, to the verses of the minstrel of the forest. on returning to abbotsford it was a sad sight for lockhart to see sir walter “read, note, and index with the pertinacity of some pale compiler in the british museum,” for the napoleon,
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and rising from his toil, “not radiant and buoyant,” but with an aching brow and weary eyes. lockhart himself was leaving scotland for london, and the editorial chair of the quarterly review. the shadows were thickening in the prison house, and the health of scott’s grandson, lockhart’s son, was of all the shadows the deepest. there were to be no more happy summers in the cottage of chiefswood—the scene, many years later, of happiness cujus pars fui. in november 1825, lockhart, in london, wrote a long letter to scott on rumours unfavourable to constable’s solvency. he anticipated nothing worse for scott than the loss of the price of woodstock. returning to chiefswood, he received a letter of warning, and showed it to scott, who made a night journey to see constable, who reassured him. lockhart now suspected that scott was deeply concerned in his publisher’s affairs. on november 20 scott began his famous journal, now published in full. on december 22 he wrote bonny dundee, new words to an old tune, accompanying ribald words, in which the town, not the viscount of dundee, is “bonny.” “i wonder if the verses are good,” scott notes, and laments poor will erskine—“thou couldst and wouldst have told me.” the song is his latest and not least splendid tribute to claverhouse, and rings across the empire with its
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“cavalry canter.” on christmas day scott wrote, “i have a particular call for gratitude.” “thus does fortune banter us.” the earliest notes of 1826 show scott already anxious about the money affairs of ballantyne and constable. they also (january 5) show him “much alarmed” by a sudden attack of agraphia, impotence to write the words he would. he explained this as the result of an anodyne, for his old complaint had returned with its cruel agonies. on january 11 there is “anxious botheration about the money market.” on january 14 there comes a mysterious letter from constable, then in london, where he made to lockhart wild proposals for advances of huge sums by scott. on january 16, in edinburgh, the blow fell. “hurst and robinson let a bill come back upon constable.” nevertheless scott dined with mr. skene of rubislaw, whose little daughter, recently dead at a great age, regretted by all who knew her, was a child friend and consoler of sir walter. next day came james ballantyne “with a face as black as the crook”: ballantyne & co. must suspend payment. scott at once consulted mr. john gibson, w.s., and, as he would not consent to be made bankrupt, his affairs were put under trustees, acting for the creditors. if bankrupt, his financial position would improve, his future gains would be his own. but he at once braced himself
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to pay off everybody, pledging brain and life to that colossal task. he did not as yet know the full extent of his losses.
by the admission of one of ballantyne’s trustees, the books of the firm, eleven years later, were still unbalanced. into the affair of the bills and counter bills between ballantyne and constable, whereby, according to lockhart, scott’s business debts were doubled, it is not possible to go in this place. ballantyne’s representatives regarded the whole story as the result of a confusion in the mind of lockhart. but lockhart’s source was mr. cadell, the partner of constable, and mr. cadell, in 1837, stood by his guns, and sent confirmatory documents. “john ballantyne suggested the double bills!”[7] scott never blamed james ballantyne, who owed to him, he said, his difficulties in the present as well as his prosperity in the past. but the books of the firm were never balanced! without balance-sheets, and there were none, how could scott know the amount of his liabilities? but, again, why did he not extort accounts from the lazy james? lockhart himself meted out the blame to all concerned, as far as his knowledge, instructed by mr. cadell, enabled him to do. he was blamed by the press for making precisely the statements which he never made. scott, to his
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own loss, insisted on employing james ballantyne alone as his printer after 1826. but he transferred his publishing business from constable to cadell, with good reason. constable “was all spectral together.” as late as 1851 lockhart wrote that “the details of scott’s commercial perplexities remain in great measure inexplicable.” scott himself (january 29) writes: “constable’s business seems unintelligible ... neither stock nor debt to show. no doubt trading almost entirely on accommodation is dreadfully expensive.” so scott had just warned terry!
“woodstock”
from his old rival, sir william forbes, from the royal bank, from an unknown person, offering £30,000, scott had many proffers of assistance. but he took the whole debt, £117,000, on his own shoulders, he borrowed from no man, he lived retired, and worked at woodstock steadily throughout the days which brought job’s messengers of ruin. “i experience a sort of determined pleasure,” he said to skene, “in confronting the very worst aspect of this sudden reverse....” his mind was free from the awful apprehension caused by his attack of agraphia. “few have more reason to feel grateful to the disposer of all than i have.” any spleen which scott may have felt, he worked off in malachi malagrowther’s letters, a criticism of an effort made by his own party to
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dethrone the scot’s one pound note, the palladium of the ancient kingdom.
on march 15 scott left his house in castle street for the last time. ha til mi tulidh—“i return no more!” the words are those of the lament of macleod’s second-sighted piper, foreseeing his own fall in the rout of moy (1746). at abbotsford he finished woodstock on march 26. the book sold for £8,228, a first instalment of the sisyphean task of payment.
tastes differ, but to myself woodstock seems to possess great merits. considering the circumstances in which it was written, it is a wonderful book. cromwell is not the conventional hypocrite of the then current estimate: he is a religious man, something of a mystic, involved in politics, and displaying the habitual “jesuitry” of political religious men. wildrake is a tipsy cavalier of the best, and of the best in his song for king charles. the various puritan officers, and their various conduct in face of the poltergeist, or noisy devil of woodstock, are excellently discriminated. scott never could remember where he read that “funny joe of oxford” confessed to being the poltergeist, nor have i been able to discover his source. my earliest trace of the explanation is in joseph taylor’s apparitions (1815, second edition). taylor gives us funny joe collins, his pulvis fulminans,
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and all the rest of it, almost in the same words as scott’s, who must have possessed taylor’s book. but who goes bail for funny joe? if he did make a confession, how did it escape dr. plot, whose natural history of oxfordshire is one of scott’s authorities? what joe collins may or may not have said is not evidence, but what does common sense care for evidence, when an explanation is wanted?
health of lady scott
the plot of woodstock was unconsciously annexed by thackeray in esmond. his charming but historically absurd james iii is charles ii, laughing and running after every girl, and making love to the sister and mistress of the two good royalists who protect him. lockwood and his sweetheart, in esmond, are jocelyn and his sweetheart in woodstock. james iii is a more favoured lover than his uncle, and beatrix outshines all the women of scott, but scott’s is the invention of the situation, down to the king’s offer of a duel. it is an astonishing case of unconscious appropriation—and improvement at the expense of the character of james, “the best of kings and men,” but the least humorous. i profess myself an admirer of trusty tompkins, that unworthy independent; of corporal humgudgeon; of the noble sir henry lee; and of his hound bevis; of wildrake, of the mise en scène, of cromwell, in short of woodstock
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in general. but these opinions are the accidents of personal likings, beyond which criticism, however it may disguise them, never finds it easy to go.
scott now began the chronicles of the canongate, with cadell for publisher. constable was “spectral”: he had tried to borrow large sums from scott, “after all chance of recovery was over,” says lockhart. but to the sanguine constable it could not seem that all chance was over. long ago he had bought hunter out of his business at a vast over-estimate, from which he never recovered. to act thus was in his nature; we must not suppose him to have been in any degree dishonest. the chronicles and napoleon now went on together, while (may 2) scott “almost despaired” of his wife’s recovery from illness. “still she welcomes me with a smile, and insists she is better.” she could not take leave of him, when he was obliged to leave abbotsford for dingy lodgings in edinburgh. on may 15 he heard of the death of lady scott. “i am deprived of the sharer of my thoughts and counsels.... she is sentient and conscious of my emotions somewhere—somehow; where, we cannot tell, how, we cannot tell; yet i would not at this moment resign the mysterious yet certain hope that i shall see her in a better world, for all that this world can give me.
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” he writes of his lonely study: “poor charlotte would have been in the room half a score of times to see if the fire burned, and ask a hundred kind questions.” such were the relations of husband and wife. he turned to his story of the highland widow: there was “no rest for sir walter.” “i will not be dethroned by any rebellious passion that raises its standard against me.”
scott visited london and paris, partly in the interests of his napoleon. in february 1827, at a dinner to william murray, the actor, he acknowledged what could no longer be concealed, his authorship of the novels. by june 10, 1827, the “millstone” of napoleon was off his back. he and his amanuensis had been used to work from six in the morning to six in the evening, without interruption except for meals. no doubt there might have been better historians of the world’s greatest genius, but who else would have worked a twelve hours’ day—and all for the sake of duty and honour? lockhart computes that twelve months were occupied in the writing. between the end of 1825 and the june of 1827, scott had written off £28,000 of his debts. to wipe them out, not to produce an impeccable biography, was his aim, it must be admitted, but we must remember that his general health was now very bad, with insomnia and severe headaches.
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gourgaud
august 1827 brought news that general gourgaud was indignant about scott’s remarks on him in his napoleon. scott had told what he found in our state papers: “i should have been a shameful coward if i had shunned using them.” gourgaud had already fought ségur, the brilliant historian of the moscow expedition. it may be that gourgaud’s information given to the english government, about napoleon in st. helena, was a “blind,” not a betrayal: one does not suspect his loyalty. scott rejected this excuse, as convicting gourgaud of falsehood, “when giving evidence upon his word of honour.” scott was ready to give him a meeting: chose his old friend, clerk, as his second, and saw that napoleon’s own pistols, which he possessed, were in order. “i will not baulk him, jackie! he shall not dishonour the country through my sides, i can assure him.” “the courage of bards,” according to a gaelic proverb, is a minus quantity. scott was not to justify the proverb: if he did not fight, he said, he would “die the death of a poisoned rat in a hole, out of mere sense of my own degradation.”
mr. hutton is severe on scott for this unchristian conduct. probably, at the same date, and in similar circumstances, mr. hutton would have been found “on the sod.” the ideas of the age made fighting unavoidable, and, as for the sin,
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scott would rather trust his soul with god than his honour to men, as jeanne d’arc said, after leaping from her prison tower, that she would rather commit her soul to god than her honour to the english. gourgaud made “a fiery rejoinder” to scott’s plain and invincible statement of his case. scott did not reply in any way, he did not challenge gourgaud, who himself had chivalry enough, or good sense enough, to send no cartel. in fact one does not see how he could escape from his dilemma. he had betrayed his master, or he had been guilty of a dubious stratagem.
“the fair maid of perth”
scott thought of taking sanctuary in holyrood precincts from, not gourgaud, but a hebrew creditor named abud, who insisted on receiving at once the full measure of his due. sir william forbes settled the affair privately, and scott did not need to dwell where his hero, croftangry, abides, in the chronicles of the canongate, now published. the autobiographical part, in croftangry, is as excellent as it is melancholy. the book was well received, and the fair maid of perth, the last of his good novels, was begun. the pictures of burgess life, and of the distracted court, are excellent. poor oliver proudfute is a good comic character with a tragic end. the fighting smith, with his love of poetry and romance, is a most original and sympathetic person, and simon the glover is as
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good as a father, citizen, and friend, as sir patrick charteris is in the quality of knightly provost. the fair maid, when she deigns to be natural, is very natural indeed; the clan fight is one of the best in fiction, and in conachar, who “has drunk the milk of the white doe,” his foster mother, scott expiates his extreme harshness to a ne’er-do-well brother, who had shown the white feather in the west indies. this harshness he bitterly repented. with the terrible true story of the duke of rothesay’s doom, with ramorny and bonthron and dwining for villains, with the studies of the good helpless roi fainéant, albany, douglas, and poor louise, and with the scene of the chief’s funeral, the fair maid of perth abounds in merits, pressed down and running over. even father clement (whom scott does not quite like), with the fanaticism that attended the reformation from the first, and with a touch of “jesuitry,” is well drawn, and how excellent is the glover’s account of what he liked in the father’s sermons, his denunciations of the rabble and the nobles, and his appreciation of the scottish middle class—absurdly said to have been a creation of john knox. commerce, not religion, made the burghs and the burghers, who liked to listen to father clement, “proving, as it seemed to me, that the sole virtue of our commonweal, its strength, and its estimation, lay among
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the burgher craft of the better class, which i received as comfortable doctrine, and creditable to the town.”
scott ends with commendations of father clement, but he liked the man no more than he says that simon glover did. as a politician, he was even unscrupulously opposed to catholics, as being under priestly dominion no less than the covenanters were under preachers’ dominion. he would have no imperium in imperio. but, in his novels, the old faith is spoken of so tenderly that george borrow frequently and intemperately accuses him of betraying souls to the
lady in babylon bred,
addicted to flirting and dressing in red.
he regarded our victory at navarino as very well, but our policy as on the level of what that of the turks would have been, had they sent a plenipotentiary to regulate our behaviour towards the irish catholics.
the december of 1827 saw the publication of the tiny square volumes of the tales of a grandfather, addressed to lockhart’s son, “master hugh littlejohn.” they had an appropriate result: the small boy dirked his brother (not seriously) with a pair of scissors, and requested scott
sir walter scott.
after a painting by sir thomas lawrence.
“tales of a grandfather”
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to write no more about civilization, “he dislikes it extremely.” one remembers how tiresome were the chapters on civilization, except that on the feudal system. of the little that the world used to know about scottish history, three-quarters were learned from the tales of a grandfather. necessarily much more “scientific” information has since been acquired, and mr. fraser tytler’s history is a monument of impartial industry. but scott, as impartial as tytler, gives us the cream of the anecdotes and semi-historical legends, which are what everybody ought to know. he does not disdain the garrulous pitscottie, and the lively memoirs of sir james melville, these pillars of “history, as she is wrote,” and ought not, scientifically speaking, to be written any longer.
yet there are senses in which the tales of a grandfather are scientifically composed. there is little science in writing books so dull that no mortal can read them, and this reef ahead of the modern pedant scott successfully avoids. he lets “the violet of a legend blow” in periods of the utmost aridity, he “loads every reef,” however granitic, with the gold of every anecdote that reveals the character of individuals or of the time. if a scrap of ballad illustrates his topic, he has that scrap in his wallet. thus the great montrose fought for a sacred cause, the wretched lord lewis gordon,
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an unworthy leader of a clan of soldiers, fought from caprice. the ballad verse runs,
if you with lord lewis go,
you’ll get reif and prey enough,
if you with montrose go,
you’ll get grief and wae enough—
hard won victories and forced marches. scott’s treatment of that battlefield of rival sentimentalists, kirk and cavalier—the time of the civil war and the restoration—is marked by lucidity, conciseness, and impartiality. any boy of ten can understand it if he pleases, and the writer flatters neither presbyterian nor king’s man.
“traitor scot”
i quote what he says about the surrender of the king to the english by the scots at newcastle. the position of the scots commissioners was perplexing, whether they deliberately lured charles to come to them or not. they could not keep him in scotland: they would have had to fight england, and to defy the preachers who rode them. they could not safely let charles embark secretly at tynemouth, as sir walter suggests: the prospect of a king over the water was agreeable neither to the english nor to the covenanters. but, says scott, “even if the scots had determined that the exigencies of the times, and the necessity of pre
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serving the peace betwixt england and scotland, together with their engagements with the parliament of england, demanded that they should surrender the person of their king to that body, the honour of scotland was intimately concerned in so conducting the transaction that there should be no room for alleging that any selfish advantage was stipulated by the scots as a consequence of giving him up. i am almost ashamed to write that this honourable consideration had no weight.
“the scottish army had a long arrear of pay due to them from the english parliament, which the latter had refused, or at least delayed to make forthcoming. a treaty for the settlement of these arrears had been set on foot; and it had been agreed that the scottish forces should retreat into their own country, upon payment of two hundred thousand pounds, which was one half of the debt finally admitted. now, it is true that these two treaties, concerning the delivery of the king’s person to england and the payment by parliament of their pecuniary arrears to scotland, were kept separate, for the sake of decency; but it is certain that they not only coincided in point of time, but bore upon and influenced each other. no man of candour will pretend to believe that the parliament of england would ever have paid this considerable sum, unless to facilitate their obtaining possession of the
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king’s person; and this sordid and base transaction, though the work exclusively of a mercenary army, stamped the whole nation of scotland with infamy. in foreign countries they were upbraided with the shame of having made their unfortunate and confiding sovereign a hostage, whose liberty or surrender was to depend on their obtaining payment of a paltry sum of arrears; and the english nation reproached them with their greed and treachery, in the popular rhyme,—
traitor scot
sold his king for a groat.
“the scottish army surrendered the person of charles to the commissioners for the english parliament, on receiving security for their arrears of pay, and immediately evacuated newcastle, and marched for their own country. i am sorry to conclude the volume with this mercenary and dishonourable transaction; but the limits of the work require me to bring it thus to a close.”
“tales of a grandfather”
by their covenant, as interpreted by their preachers, the scots had brought themselves to this pass, and the only course open to them which was not conspicuously base they did not take. a nation is judged by the rulers whom it accepts, and though not a man in a hundred, north of tweed,
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approved the course (so a contemporary tells us), “the whole nation of scotland was stamped with infamy.” scott does not prefer scotland to truth, but he does misrepresent, by defect of information, the effectual cause of argyll’s death. he did not die merely because he expressed, in letters to monk, “a zeal for the english interest.” he gave information as to the movements of the forces that stood for his king, and were commanded by his own son. writing for the instruction of the young scott laid aside all cavalier sentiment and prejudice; in the opinion of m. amédée pichot, he wrote as a whig. but the whigamores have never welcomed him as an ally. even to-day a student who “has no time” cannot gain so rapid and so correct a view of scottish history from any book as he will find in the tales of a grandfather.
sir walter’s next task was the magnum opus, the preparation of a literary history of the work of his life, especially of the novels and poems. that history took the shape, not wholly fortunate, of new introductions and new notes. they are of the most genial interest, but perhaps it would have been wiser to write the literary history in separate volumes, than to clog the authors’ favourite edition with so much prefatory matter that the modern reader is frightened away, believing that he will never survive to read the romance in each case.
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the format and typography of the volumes were excellent, the plates were not better than most illustrations and rather worse than some. cadell had bought in the copyright at £8,500 on the luckiest of days for sir walter’s creditors. now it was that scott, having no money to give to a reverend mr. gordon, gave him the copyright of two sermons which he had already written for him, at a moment when he feared that gordon was too ill and nervous to write sermons for himself. gordon sold the copyright for £250. scott disliked appearing as a lay preacher, but good nature carried the day. he would not, however, again oblige james ballantyne, who pleaded for the life of oliver proudfute, in the fair maid of perth. to please james he had ruined st. ronan’s well, he had brought back athelstane in ivanhoe from the dead, and that was enough, and more than enough.
the “journal”
the year 1829 saw the completion of anne of geierstein, but as the author of anne’s being frankly damned her, i am not inclined to plead in her favour, leaving her advocacy to mr. saintsbury, who places anne “on a level with anything and above most things later than the pirate.” to deem anne on a level with redgauntlet, or even with woodstock, and the fair maid of perth, seems, in lethington’s words, “a devout imagination.” my friend, mr. saintsbury, in
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deed speaks here of anne “as a mere romance,” not counting “the personal touches which exalt redgauntlet and the introduction to the chronicles.” but what is there in anne that comes home to us like nanty ewart, wandering willie, and peter peebles? no scot can doubt that sir walter is at his best in the bounds of “his ain countrie,” this was an inevitable limitation of his genius.
the journal of the early months of 1829 shows scott in good spirits, pleased with solitude, when he is alone, but only if solitude does not mean lack of access to human company. in a little sportive dialogue with a geni, or djinn, he confesses to all his old delight in building castles in the air. “you need not repent,” says the djinn, “most of your novels have previously been subjects for airy castles.” this means that, rapidly as the novels were written, they, or many of them, had long simmered in the author’s imagination: he had lived, he remarks, in the scenes and adventures which he describes. among other things, he now wrote, for croker’s boswell’s johnson, notes on the great doctor’s scottish tour. busy as sir walter was, his time and work were still at the disposal of others. but some of these invaluable notes went astray in the post, and never were recovered. he wrote a short history of scotland,
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for the encyclopaedia of thackeray’s victim, dr. lardner, and a review article to raise a sum of money for the ever unlucky gillies, who visited abbotsford in autumn, and noted one convenience “very rare,” he says, in country houses. in every room was abundance of pen, ink, and paper.
paralysis
in edinburgh, at the levee of the commissioner to the general assembly, scott met edward irving. “i could hardly keep my eyes off him while we were at table. he put me in mind of the devil disguised as an angel of light, so ill did that horrible obliquity of vision harmonize with the dark tranquil features of his face, resembling that of our saviour in italian pictures, with the hair carefully arranged in the same manner.... he spoke with that kind of unction which is nearly allied to cajolerie....” in fact scott liked irving no more than he liked father clement. he had a great distrust of “enthusiasm” in religion, but irving was not the quack whom scott clearly suspected him of being. other quacks, in his opinion, were the two brothers, then calling themselves “hay allan,” but later, “john and charles stuart,” sons of a son of prince charles by his wife. these gentlemen possessed a ms. called vestiarium scoticum, giving an account of the tartans of the border as well as of the highland clans, tartans otherwise unknown. there
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were two mss., one, never seen of men, of the sixteenth century, another, still extant, of the eighteenth century. this ms. remains a mystery. i believe that neither in ink nor paper is there any trace of falsity, while the style is certainly beyond the powers of imitation possessed by the two brothers, in whose antiquarian probity scott had no belief.
scott’s friends were dying around him, shortreed of the liddesdale rambles, and tom purdie. haec poena diu viventibus! his diary flags in july, and is not reopened till may 1830. scott read and reviewed that thrilling book, pitcairn’s criminal trials. it was published by the bannatyne club, of which scott was the animating spirit; for the roxburghe club he edited and presented the story of the master of sinclair, and his slaying of the shaws of greenock (1708). he dramatized the tale, from pitcairn, of the auchendrane tragedy, the series of murders by the two mures. there is much of spirit, fancy, and vigorous verse in the ayrshire tragedy, but the topic inevitably lacked dramatic interest.
it was on february 15, 1831, that the long threatened blow of paralysis fell on sir walter. he was alone, with a lady, examining her father’s manuscripts, when his face altered, he fell into a chair, but with the instinct of courtesy, contrived
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to stagger from the room and fell in the drawing-room, where his daughter anne and lockhart’s sister, violet, happened to be.[8] he presently recovered speech, and, when he went abroad again, people observed no change. but he knew his own case. none the less, he toiled on at his letters on demonology, a work well worth reading, though marked by failing powers. that astonishing person, professor wilson, instantly attacked scott, making the shepherd in noctes ambrosianae speak of “sir walter wi’ his everlasting anecdotes, nine out o’ ten meaning naething, and the tenth itsel’ as auld as eildon hill.” wilson also assailed the letters: there was a great deal of mr. hyde in his composition, an element which broke out in furious attacks on old friends. yet he never estranged lockhart.
scott declared that he felt no mental feebleness, and hoped that by 1835 he might clear off his debts; he had just paid £15,000 towards that end. he received a kind of proposal of marriage from a woman of rank, through her brother: he was told that he might hope! but he confided to his journal that he did not hope to wed “a grim grenadier.” his creditors restored to him his
evil days
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books, plate, furniture, and collection of works of art and curios, which he valued at £10,000. he resigned his clerkship in november 1830, receiving a pension of £840. the change was unfortunate, as it gave him more time for overwork. meanwhile, every letter from ballantyne about his new novels betrayed its effect in nervous twitchings at the mouth. cadell, to give him rest, suggested the composition of an anecdotic catalogue of his curiosities, “the gabions of jonathan oldbuck.” a glance at the opening of the ms., with its paralytic writing and examples of agraphia, shows how desperate was his mental and bodily condition for a short while.
yet he was now thinking of castle dangerous, and he wrote a tory pamphlet which, his advisers saw, showed ignorance of the political situation. the pamphlet was dropped, but his advisers had a struggle before they carried their point. “sir walter never recovered it,” says mr. cadell. i have no heart to speak of his political apprehensions and sufferings. what he feared was the overthrow of society; what he endured from popular insult and even violence is too familiarly known. certain excited and rude artisans had no more respect than wilson for an old friend, the glory of the border. scott never forgot the scene, it
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haunted his dying hours. he acknowledged to a distinct stroke of paralysis in april 1831, and cadell and ballantyne remonstrated against the conclusion of count robert of paris.
how amazing was the humour that supported his unconquerable courage! his letters—for example one of october 31, to lady louisa stuart, on “animal magnetism,” show him in full force of intellect. he had an attack in november, and laidlaw, his amanuensis for count robert of paris, observed unmistakable signs of the end. he was bidden to drink water only, and to abandon writing. so he notes, in a parody of burns:—
dour, dour, and eident was he,
dour and eident, but and ben,
dour against their barley water,
and eident on the bramah pen.[9]
in july scott began castle dangerous, and paid his last visit to the tombs of the douglases. the country people received him gladly, following him in a procession. i must quote what lockhart says about the close of this day, spent beside the graves of that stern and haughty race who had been, now the savers, now the betrayers, of their country.
sir walter scott.
from the painting by sir edwin landseer, r.a.
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at the douglas graves
“it was again a darkish, cloudy day, with some occasional mutterings of distant thunder, and perhaps the state of the atmosphere told upon sir walter’s nerves; but i had never before seen him so sensitive as he was all the morning after this inspection of douglas. as we drove over the high tableland of lesmahago he repeated i know not how many verses from winton, barbour, and blind harry, with, i believe, almost every stanza of dunbar’s elegy on the deaths of the makers (poets). it was now that i saw him, such as he paints himself in one or two passages of his diary, but such as his companions in the meridian vigour of his life never saw him—‘the rushing of a brook, or the sighing of the summer breeze, bringing the tears into his eyes not unpleasantly.’ bodily weakness laid the delicacy of the organization bare, over which he had prided himself in wearing a sort of half-stoical mask. high and exalted feelings, indeed, he had never been able to keep concealed, but he had shrunk from exhibiting to human eye the softer and gentler emotions which now trembled to the surface. he strove against it even now, and presently came back from the lament of the makers to his douglases, and chanted, rather than repeated, in a sort of deep and glowing, though not dis
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tinct recitative, his first favourite among all the ballads—
“it was about the lammas tide,
when husbandmen do win their hay,
that the doughty douglas bownde him to ride
to england to drive a prey,
down to the closing stanzas, which again left him in tears—
“my wound is deep—i fain would sleep—
take thou the vanguard of the three,
and hide me beneath the bracken-bush
that grows on yonder lily lee ...
this deed was done at the otterburne,
about the dawning of the day.
earl douglas was buried by the bracken-bush,
and the percy led captive away.”
voyage to italy
the new whig government put a ship of war at the service of their great antagonist. he was to visit italy, and cadell kept the type of his two last tales set up; they were revised and altered in scott’s absence abroad. one incident in count robert of paris, an incident terribly expressive of the author’s condition, was expunged. sir walter felt the consolatory delusion that he had succeeded in his task, that his debts were paid. the last autumn at abbotsford was full of the charm of
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sunset. turner came, and painted abbotsford on a tea tray, at a picnic. young walter scott came, a joy to his father’s eyes, “a handsomer fellow never put foot into stirrup.” wordsworth, too, was there, as his verses on yarrow testify, and his noble sonnet—
a trouble, not of clouds or weeping rain.
on the voyage to italy scott still was writing, the journal, letters, the tale of il bizarro, the novel of the knights of malta; the manuscript is still the old closely serried manuscript, but the handwriting is wofully altered. i am informed that many passages are full of the old spirit, but care has been taken that this work shall never appear as a “literary curiosity.”
at naples scott heard of goethe’s death. “at least he died at home. let us to abbotsford!” the party, with mr. charles scott, passed on to rome. at lake avernus, which, says lockhart, is like a highland loch, scott repeated—
we daurna go a’ milking
for charlie and his men.
the classic scene reminded him of his dear hills. at rome, with great difficulty, he visited the tomb
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of james iii. (so his epitaph proclaims him,) and of prince charles and the cardinal duke of york; the latest minstrel stood by the dust of the last of the royal line. the rest “can hardly be told too briefly,” says lockhart.
in passing through germany, scott wrote what his son charles endorses as “the last letter written by my dear father.” it is a brief note of courtesy to arthur schopenhauer, the famous philosopher, regretting that he was too unwell to receive schopenhauer’s visit. the note is clearly written and well expressed. it is in the laing mss. in edinburgh university library. once again scott wrote, or tried to write, in the packet boat crossing the channel. pen and ink were borrowed for him from mrs. sherwood, the author of the fairchild family.
the end
the sufferer reached london on june 13, 1832. on july 7 he took ship for leith. on july 11 he travelled by carriage to abbotsford, waking from his torpor as they drove down gala water, past torwoodlee. arrived, his dogs welcomed him, and “he alternately sobbed and smiled over them till sleep oppressed him.” in his last days he was heard to murmur passages from the bible, the litany, the scottish metrical psalms, and the stabat mater dolorosa. it was on september 17
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that he bade lockhart “be a good man, my dear, be virtuous, be religious, be a good man.” on the twenty-first “he breathed his last in the presence of all his children. it was a beautiful day—so warm that every window was wide open—and so perfectly still that the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around the bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes.”
he sleeps, with lockhart at his feet, where the sound of the border water fills the roofless aisles of the abbey of dryburgh.
* * * *
“good-night, sir walter!”
scott had given his life to pay his debts. of these he actually repaid about £70,000 between 1826 and 1832. the rest was wiped away by his copyrights, through the spirited and judicious management of mr. cadell, by the exertions of lockhart as editor, and by the profits of lockhart’s life of scott. as to the later fortunes of sir walter’s family, but one of his grandchildren survived; she married mr. hope scott, the eminent barrister, and was the mother of the honourable mrs. maxwell-scott, an only child, spes exigua et extrema. this lady has evinced the an
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cestral love of history in her works, the tragedy of fotheringhay, in her essays, entitled the making of abbotsford, and in her recent brief book on jeanne d’arc. one of her sons has done honour to the houses of maxwell and scott by his distinguished services in the war in south africa. thus the long descended name of the great cadet of harden has not vanished from the border.
