CHAPTER LIX.
Scott's original contract with Murray was to write four tales, each of a single-volume length, 0 and he supplied The Black Dwarf to this pattern, but his tale of Claverhouse expanded till it sufficed for the other three.
John Murray read The Black Dwarf, and felt dubious. He showed it to Gifford, the Quarterly editor, who said whoever had written it had written a poor thing. Murray sent this discouraging opinion on to Blackwood, who agreed, with an increased emphasis. He went to see James, who was secretly, if not openly, of the same opinion. Blackwood wanted James to induce the unknown author to write the latter part of the book again. He even sketched what he thought that ending should be. James said he would see what he could do. But what about the cost of resetting? Blackwood said he felt so strongly about it that he was willing for that to be charged to him. James went to see Scott, who resented Blackwood's suggested alterations. He said he would see them damned before he would change a word. With an author's proverbial perversity, he thought the Black Dwarf to be an example of his best work. Not like - ? Of course, it wasn't like anything else he had written. Wasn't it understood that he was to write in a new way? James said diffidently that everyone agreed that it began well. The trouble was that it became lifeless before it died.
But Scott still answered after the manner of Pilate. What he had written, he had written. It was a very powerful study No, he wouldn't change anything.
So that was that, and there was no more to be said. Fortunately, Murray read Old Mortality, and felt better. In spite of its dull-sounding title, he saw that he had got a good thing. A historical novel of a new kind. Was there no end to Scott's wizardry? He wrote to him with congratulations.
Scott was not to be hooked with that bait. What were the Tales of my Landlord to him? If Murray liked, he would demonstrate his independence of them by writing a review for the Quarterly. Everyone would recognise that a man would not cut up his own children. Even Solomon knew that.
There was laughter in Albermarle Street when this letter came. Gifford was taken into consultation. Then Murray replied. Why should Scott confine himself to reviewing the Tales of my Landlord? Why not deal with the Waverley novels?
Scott wrote back, and agreed, on condition that William Erskine, who thought better of those novels than he did himself, should lend a hand. So, in a short time, it was done. No-one who engaged in the correspondence could doubt the authorship of the novels. Scott might admit nothing, but he did not write in the tone and manner in which he would certainly have done had he been dealing with work which was genuinely not his. People were agreeably mystified rather than deceived. Everybody said that they knew - and yet there was just that little pleasant flavour of doubt, which the review helped to maintain when it had been a dying thing. The novels were not over-praised, but Scott (or Erskine in his name) discussed them intelligently. It was excellent advertising. Excellent copy for the Quarterly also. The money for the article was well-earned, and doubtless Erskine had a liberal share.
And the second experiment in anonymity was as great a success as the first. The position of Old Mortality relatively to the whole gallery of Scott's romances has been a matter on which differences of opinion have been expressed at later periods, but its first reception was a chorus of praise, in which the only note of discord came from those who asserted that the Covenanters were not represented fairly. It was a contention which an impartial judgement will hardly sustain. Indeed, as a work of pure imagination, the book suffers from Scott's desire to be historically accurate, and exactly fair. It may be said that it is too romantic for history, and too historical for romance. The character of Claverhouse is well drawn, but Scott is too anxious to draw it. Instead of leaving it to reveal itself, a method in which he had an almost incomparable ability, whether in prose or verse, it must be explained, even self-explained at times, and there are occasions when Claverhouse talks like a stuffed dummy in consequence. Yet in narrative power, in force and realism, the book was a new thing in historical fiction: it had humour also, which is the one added excellence in Scott's prose romances, which his lyrical ones rarely attempt. It is no wonder that it had high praise, and a large sale.
Almost immediately after the publication of Old Mortality and the Black Dwarf, the anonymous author of the Bridal of Triermain issued another poem, Harold the Dauntless. Constable published it. It had been hanging about for years. It contained parts which lovers of Scott's poetry would be sorry to lose. It contained others that he could have had little pleasure to write. He must have been glad to have it off his hands. Its sales were not such as to induce the kind of boasting that gives exact figures. It is enough to say that they were quite good.
CHAPTER LX.
Enter Boswell. It is the spring of 1817, and a public dinner of farewell is being given to John Henry Kemble, who has completed a series of Shakespearian performances at the Edinburgh theatre. Jeffrey is in the chair, Scott and John Wilson are the after-dinner speakers. Lockhart is a young lawyer among the guests. All his life he could not remember anything 'more impressive' than that dinner, though he does not say why or how. Doubtless Scott spoke well, as he would when he was among friends, and con amore to the subject with which he dealt. Doubtless, he said the right word to the young lawyer, as he to him. He had good spirits. He did not seem an ill man. Yet he had been ill all the winter, at intervals, with attacks which might seize him at any moment. One had been so severe that he had been laid up for a month, and 'as weak as water' when he wrote to Morritt afterwards to explain why he had not done so earlier. There had been intense pains, culminating in inflammatory symptoms 'about the diaphragm', for which he had been bled and blistered with great severity, and burnt with hot salt, and he believed that these measures, 'under higher assistance' had saved his life. It was a condition which would be met by prompt operation today. It would have been cure or Will. In those days doctors fought it with such knowledge as they had, and by such methods as experience warranted or tradition required, which are disparaged now. Yet it is fair to observe that their patient lived. His remaining blood continued to course through his body, and it was a body in which the spirit was unbroken and unafraid. Friends might be anxious for him, and in correspondence he might admit that the symptoms were of a dangerous kind - Baillie had been frank about that - and his own account is that when the severe symptoms had subsided: "I could neither stir for weakness and giddiness, nor read for dazzling in my eyes, nor listen for a whizzing sound in my ears, nor even think for lack of the power of arranging my ideas. So I had a comfortless time of it for about a week." Yet as he lay, he had dreams. He would win more with his pen from those neighbours who had no love for the land they owned. He would yet make fair woodlands of those barren neglected hills. And he would build a house more fitting than this cramped cottage to be the centre of the loveliness that would one day surround it. "I will pull down my barns and build greater." And no voice answered him with "Thou fool" in the night, for another dream was to come true.
So when he was strong enough to walk, and before the pain returned, as it surely would, he marked out the foundations of Abbotsford.
It was at this time that William Laidlaw came to Kaeside. Farming had been difficult during the war. It became impossible afterwards, except for those who had stored capital which they could afford to lose. William Laidlaw gave up the fight. His farm was sold up. Scott, in the midst of his illness, had another worry on his mind, more acute than any question of how matters were going at the Canongate works, or with the bill-discounting account at Sir William Forbes and Co's bank. With whatever may be happening in those directions, he can deal when he gets about again. And, as a matter of fact, things went well enough. The prestige that those anonymous novels had brought made credit easier: the money they brought made it less necessary to obtain: their printing kept the works busier than ever before, and brought a humble prosperity into many homes. But Scott's worry was of a different kind. How, without appearance of charity, could he help Willie Laidlaw, as helped he must surely be? It was by the mercy of Heaven that he had bought that land at Kaeside, with the little house upon it which the tenant, Moss, was due to vacate at Whitsuntide. So he wrote to Moss to know whether it were really convenient to him to leave (for we cannot turn a man out of his home simply because his lease is over), and on receiving a reply that Moss had arranged to go, he used his diplomatic persuasion to induce William Laidlaw to bring his family there.
So it was arranged, and Scott, thinking to aid others, gave good help to himself in the end, as men often do. In Edinburgh, Constable watched with an angry contempt while Blackwood started a magazine. Pringle, Blackwood's new editor, asked Scott for his help. Scott was too busy for that - and too ill. But he could get his friend Laidlaw to write a good article on gypsies for the first number, with others to follow. So it was agreed. The article was written in Scott's bedroom, Scott dictating anecdotes, as the intervals of pain allowed, from his memory's endless store. He discovered thus that he could write by dictation, and that Laidlaw was a sympathetic amanuensis, which he put to a good use at a future time.
He got better as the summer approached. He designed a new Waverley novel, concerning which he instructed John Ballantyne to open negotiations with Constable. Constable proposed that he should come to Abbotsford, and discuss the contract with Scott himself. Scott agreed to that, but preferred that John should be present. He sent this note to Hanover Street:
"Abbotsford.
Saturday, May 3, 1817
Dear John,
I shall be much obliged to you to come here with Constable on Monday, as he proposes a visit, and it will save time. By the way, you must attend that the usual quantity of stock is included in the arrangement - this is £600 - for 6,000 copies. My sum is £1,700 payable in May - a sound advance, by'r Lady, but I think I am entitled to it, considering what I have turned off hitherto on such occasions.
I make a point of your coming with Constable, health allowing.
Yours truly,
W. S."
On the following Tuesday, John sent this letter on to James, with another note scribbled upon its foot:
"Half-past 3 o'clock Tuesday.
Dear James, - I am this moment returned from Abbotsford, with entire and full success. Wish me joy. I shall gain about £600 - Constable taking, my share of stock also. The title is Rob Roy, by the author of Waverley!!! Keep this letter for me.
J. B."
James did keep the letter and returned it to John, for the latter pasted it into a book in which he kept correspondence of importance, and he wrote beneath it at a later date: "N.B. I did gain about £1,200. J.B."
Many years later, Constable still had a clear recollection of that Monday evening at Abbotsford, and of how they sat together in the garden after dinner, when their business was done. He did not often find Scott so genial to him in his attitude, so readily confidential about his plans. He even gave way about the title, which he rarely would. The book was to be about Rob Roy. Constable, with a sound commercial instinct, said that its subject should be its title also. You couldn't do better than call the book by the Highland bandit's name. Scott always liked titles which meant little until the book had been read. But on this occasion he gave way.
John proposed bringing Rob Roy's old gun out of the house, and firing a salute in honour of the christening of the new book. Scott vetoed that, saying it would explode. Constable jibed at John: 'What put drawing at sight into your head?'
Constable's pleasantries were apt to be of that kind. He once spoiled a business deal by mentioning that he had named five geese after Longman and his four partners. He knew something about long-dated bills himself, and was destined to know more.
Scott saw that John resented the jest, and was quick to interpose a request that he should give them the Cobbler of Kelso. John was famous among his friends as an entertainer, having a quick wit, and an exceptional power of dramatic mimicry. Scott and he had watched this cobbler when they were schoolboys together. He had a favourite blackbird, to which he would talk while it sang. John could imitate his high cracked voice and the blackbird's song about equally well. Lockhart says that he could do these imitations 'with wonderful skill'. It is the witness of a man who disliked John, caricatured him without mercy, and libelled him without scruple, and he is not likely to be overgenerous in his praise.
So peace was restored, and, in the morning, Constable and John travelled back to Edinburgh together.
As to John's £600 of estimated commission - which became £1,200 - we may agree that he was well paid, without accepting Lockhart's comment that 'he had no more trouble about the selling or publishing of Rob Roy than his own Cobbler of Kelso.' He adds that 'one must admire his adroitness in persuading Constable, during their journey back to Edinburgh, to relieve him of that fraction of his own old stock, with which his unhazardous share in the new transaction was burdened. Scott's kindness continued as long as John Ballantyne lived, to provide for him a constant succession of similar advantages at the same easy rate; and Constable, from deference to Scott's wishes, and from views of bookselling policy, appears to have submitted to this heavy tax on his most important ventures.'
But he obstinately refuses to see that Scott did not arrange these liberal commissions for John as his friend, but as his literary agent, in which capacity John seems to have shown some efficiency as well as zeal. Anyway, he pleased Scott, who was most concerned.
If they were able to arrange that this remuneration should be paid out of the publishers' share of the profits, it is a method to which no literary agent need object, and which all authors would approve today.
CHAPTER LXI.
The winter of 1816-17 was one of confused prosperity and want, with much unemployment, and consequently suffering, both in urban and rural districts. It is outside the scope of this book to attempt analyses either of the causes or conditions of this industrial chaos, but we have to notice, that, even through the severity of his own illness, and the pressure of work which was upon him during his intervals of recovery, Scott's correspondence shows that sympathy for those who suffered was preoccupying his mind continually; that he took upon himself the burden of relieving it in his own neighbourhood as a matter of course, and in a wholesale manner; and that in considering and facing its problems he showed a practical sagacity which a further century of experience, and an endless literature of sociology, does not enable us to excel, or perhaps equal, today.
In the course of a long letter to Robert Southey on May 9th, 1817, he deals with some severity with a scheme of employment upon public works which had been brought into operation in Edinburgh supported by a fund which had been raised through the private generosity of its citizens, and administered by a voluntary committee, and this criticism deserves the greater attention because it is sympathetic to all concerned. He recognises the generosity that has impulsed the project, and the 'yet more praise-worthy because most difficult exertions of those who superintend,' yet he thinks that the result has been 'full as much mischief as good'.
The scheme was organised on the reasonable premise that it must not be made sufficiently attractive to draw men away from other employment, or indifferent to obtaining it, and the scale of remuneration was fixed somewhat below the standard rates that were then current, with the addition of a compassionate allowance to those who had families. Scott observed the consequence to be that the scheme was regarded "partly as charity, which is humiliating," and "partly as an imposition in taking their labour below value," while there was a further opinion that it was 'a sort of half-pay, not given them for work, but to prevent rebellion,' and the consequence of these attitudes was the worst slacking that he had ever seen.
He remarks that it would be unreasonable to expect too much, because 'an individual always manages his own concerns better than those of the country can be managed,' which is an obvious truth that some of us are still unwilling to recognise, or to apply; but he lays down as a basic necessity of relief plans that they should be so contrived that the labourer will 'bring his heart and spirit to the work,' and he tells in some detail how he had contrived to reach this result.
When that winter came, there were about thirty men living around Abbotsford who were without employment, and he offered work to all of them in clearing, draining and planting the land he had bought. He says explicitly that it was not to be regarded as an act of charity on his part, for the work needed to be done, and it had been his ultimate purpose to carry it out; but he had thought of it as a gradual labour of many years, and the money had been very hard to find. We can easily believe that. Even for his income, and even if the printing and publishing enterprise had ceased, for the moment, to drain his purse, the support of thirty families month by month must have strained his resources, as he admits (without complaint) that it did: and the work on which the men were employed was not such as would bring any immediate return. But when his 'honest neighbours' were in need, what choice had he?
But he bears witness to a spirit the very opposite of that which prevailed at the relief works in Edinburgh. He had been shrewd enough to stipulate for piece-work wherever possible, and just enough to be careful that men should not undertake it, under the stress of want, at a price which would not give a fair wage for a good week's work. He observes that in a piece-work bargain it is always necessary to watch that 'the undertakers, in their anxiety for employment, do not take the job too cheap'.
Probably men recognised that his action, as he modestly says, was 'not altogether selfish,' and responded in the right way. There had been no slacking at Abbotsford.
At about the same time as he was corresponding with Southey on these matters, he was expressing himself to Morritt with a very radical vigour concerning the state of the artisans of Yorkshire and Lancashire, where the introduction of machinery was bringing fortunes to many manufacturers while the hand-workers starved, or were obliged to accept work at such wages as were offered, which were often no better than a subsistence minimum. He says truly that a Poor Law charity is no remedy for such conditions. Personally, he would go to any length to change them, even to the approval of a tax on manufacturers, to be levied according to the number of work-people they employed, and handed over to those whom they exploited, which even the Radical Committee at Manchester might have accepted as a sufficiently drastic remedy.
We have another view of his attitude regarding the obligations of those who control wealth or land in his correspondence at this time with his friend the Duke of Buccleuch, regarding the conduct of certain 'young blackguards' of Selkirk. The Duke's property included some beautiful and extensive woodlands on the banks of the Yarrow, and he had thrown the walks through these woods open to the inhabitants of Selkirk - and the inhabitants of Selkirk were destroying the woods. The Duke wrote to Scott in evident anger, requiring him, in his office as Sheriff, to bring the culprits to justice, and expressing his intention of withdrawing a privilege which was being so grossly abused. There had, apparently, been some violent clash between the depredators and Hudson, the Duke's forester, for Scott alludes to the trouble as 'the disagreeable affair of Tom Hudson', in his reply.
As Sheriff, as a life-long friend, as a landowner himself in a smaller way, Buccleuch evidently assumed his sympathy and co-operation, and so far as the apprehension and punishment of those who transgressed were concerned, he received explicit assurances in reply. Neither was sympathy lacking: Scott can imagine 'hardly anything more exasperating' than the way in which the Duke's generosity had been received. But he will give no support to the threat that the privilege shall be withdrawn because some have abused it.
'I think,' He writes 'your Grace will be inclined to follow this up only for the purpose of correction, not that of requital. They are so much beneath you, and so much in your power, that this would be unworthy of you - especially as all the inhabitants of the little country town must necessarily be included in the punishment. After all, those who look for anything better than ingratitude from the uneducated and unreflecting mass of a corrupt population must always be deceived; and the better the heart is that has been expanded towards them, their wants, and their wishes, the deeper is the natural feeling of disappointment. But it is our duty to fight on, doing what good we can. . . . "
He added a suggestion that the Duke might reach his purpose by an opposite road, if he would 'distinguish by any little notice such Selkirk people working with you as have their families under good order'.
That was his counsel to another, which is always easy to give. He showed how he would act himself on a later occasion, when people who were going to Selkirk began to trespass across the 'very centre' of his Abbotsford grounds, finding that they could shorten the distance by that invasion. He told Tom Purdie to put up a notice at the place where the trespassers entered. Tom did his best, but he spelt with an independent spirit. 'The Rod to Selkirk ' was the legend which ended the difficulty. You cannot trespass where you are invited to come. Scott told Captain Basil Hall that he would never prosecute a man for trespass, under any circumstances: he added that he had never known anyone to break his fences, or damage his growing trees.
It was while Scott was writing to Morritt his opinion of those who exploited the labour of the poor that the news reached him that a shot had been fired at the Prince Regent, and he added a footnote to his letter: "I hear the Prince Regent has been attacked and fired at. Since he was not hurt (for I should be sincerely sorry for my fat friend), I see nothing but good luck to result from this assault. It will make him a good manageable boy, and, I think, secure you a quiet session of Parliament."
CHAPTER LXII.
The remainder of 1817 was mainly spent on the writing of Rob Roy, varied by a volume of Border Antiquaries, and a substantial portion of the Annual Register, in the publication of which Scott continued with a stubborn determination that would not admit defeat. He visited Loch Lomond and Glasgow to refresh his memory of the scenes with which the novel would largely deal, and when Washington Irving saw him at Abbotsford in August, he found him in apparently vigorous health, but the attacks of "cramp in the stomach" recurred at frequent intervals, and beyond a restricted diet, the physicians appear to have concentrated their prescriptions rather upon relief of pain than any radical cure. He was taking opium to render endurable the recurrent bouts of pain.
Yet, all the time, he was planning for the future with unabated courage. He laid the foundations of the house which he had resolved to build: he arranged the purchase of the adjoining house of Topsfield, with considerable additional land, and was able to offer it as a home to Adam Fergusson, his friend from boyhood, who now retired from the army on half pay, and came to reside there with his sisters. The name of the house was changed to Huntley Burn. The purchase brought into Scott's possession the whole field of the Battle of Melrose, and Thomas the Rhymer's Glen. It gave him more excuse to find occupation for William Laidlaw as steward of the estate, a position which was gradually established, though Scott appears to have found difficulty during the first year in advancing pretexts for the payments which he knew that Laidlaw's family required, and in overcoming his friend's reluctance; for he wrote to him in November arguing that 'this same account of Dr. and Cr. which fills up so much time in the world, is comparatively of very small value . . . it would be very silly in either of us to let a cheque twice a year of £25 make a difference between us. . . .
It is customary to represent Scott's purchases of land as an imprudent folly, but it is difficult to accept this view without reservations, especially if we look at things as they were, with no more recognition of the future than he himself could have had at the time. In itself, to create large sums of money by the writing of novels, and to invest them in landed properties is a road to affluence rather than to financial disaster. By purchasing Huntley Burn, and letting it to the Fergussons, he did not only gratify friends and obtain good neighbours. He got good tenants also, and the investment seems to have been sound enough.
But the foundations of the new house at Abbotsford foretold an expenditure that would increase with the years; the planting of the bare lands he bought might have a far-sighted wisdom, and might bring good wages into many homes where the pinch of poverty might otherwise have been felt, but was not of an immediately remunerative character; the obligations of hospitality as he understood them were an unceasing drain; and the cheques that William Laidlaw was so reluctant to take, the cheques for Weber at the York asylum, the cheques for the support of Daniel's nameless child, they are only those at which we have happened to glance among - how many? - others, that diminished his resources in a score of directions. Money would always be to him a power, not to hoard but to use. It was the chivalrous ideal by which he would live or die.
It may be said that even the purchase of freehold property was an imprudence, if not an impropriety, while money was owing from many borrowings on bills that were being indefinitely renewed. But, even on this point, there may be material misapprehension. The printing business was still being carried on with a good deal of capital which was provided by the bankers, or other commercial channels, and Scott was leaving it largely to the management of James Ballantyne with an easy - if we are to believe Lockhart, a too-easy - mind. But the successive sales of stock, and some of the large sums that Scott had been making by his pen, had been so applied that all the John Ballantyne bills which had been placed among friends, even those which Morritt had so freely offered to finance, appear to have been taken up. Only the overdraft on the Duke's guarantee was still outstanding, and as he finished Rob Roy, and felt that he had well earned the value of Constable's advances, he determined upon a bold move which would close the chapter of the publishing business for ever. He instructed John Ballantyne to open negotiations with Constable for a second series of Tales of my Landlord to be ready by the following midsummer.
"I have hungered and thirsted," he wrote to John, "to see the end of those shabby borrowings among friends; they have all been wiped out, except the good Duke's £4,000 - and I will not suffer either new offers of land or anything else to come in the way of that clearance. I expect that you will be able to arrange this resurrection of Jedediah, so that £5,000 shall be at my order."
That John had justified this confidence is shown by a note which Scott wrote to Buccleuch on January 7th, 1818: "I have the great pleasure of enclosing the discharged bond which your Grace stood engaged in on my account."
In fact, John had, in Lockhart's contention, gone far beyond his instructions. The details of the event, and Lockhart's comments upon them, in view of the charges which he made against John in regard to his conduct of the previous negotiation, are sufficiently curious to deserve the investigation of a separate chapter.
CHAPTER LXIII
Constable was in a good temper with himself and the world, and especially with his Abbotsford bargains. He had believed in Rob Roy. The Highland outlaw was a good subject for a novel, and one which he had been confident would be suitable to the author's genius. He liked it none the less because he had named it himself. James Ballantyne had been enthusiastic about the chapters as they had come into his hands. Constable could be bold, as we know, and he was usually bold at the right time. Now he adventured a first edition of 10,000 copies - an enormous quantity at that time - and the public bought them at once. He had to order the printing of 3,000 more. Rob Roy was going to earn a huge profit for its publisher, and much more for its author than the £1,700 which Constable had advanced already. It was a novel rich alike in background, in incident, and in character; and in Diana it had a more vivacious heroine than those of Scott's prose imaginations had so far been. Probably we may thank Charlotte for that. As Matilda is Williamina Stuart, fencing between her friendship with Walter Scott, and her growing love for Willie Forbes, Diana is with equal certainty, and bolder, clearer delineation, the Charlotte Charpentier that Walter Scott and Adam Fergusson first saw riding upon the Westmorland Hills.
Scott may be the poet of action, the novelist of adventure: to a superficial survey he may appear to be occupied with material things, but, in fact, his is a dream-world in which there is no physical dominance, and little physical reality. It is a world in which only spiritual values are taken seriously. To a generation saturated with the prolonged osculations of Hollywood, and avid for Warwick Deeping's sentimental hysteria. Scott's reticences are inexplicable both in kind and degree. Diana Vernon's gay fortitude gives way for an instant, as she leans from her horse in the darkness, and a tear falls on her lover's face. . . . You can't get much kick out of that! Perhaps not. But it may be your loss, all the same.
Scott's illness may have had its share in the tone and quality which divided Rob Roy from his earlier novels. Physical weakness and periods of convalescent exhaustion may clarify mental processes, and give leisure for imagination which it would otherwise lack. Anyway, the fact stood that Rob Roy was another evidence of variety in what might well seem to be an inexhaustible power, and from which, in fact, still further varieties of excellence, including the two greatest of the Waverley novels, were yet to come.
John was right in thinking that Constable would be keen to deal, and he planned a coup after his own heart. Scott had instructed John to procure £5,000. He had not specified how it was to be obtained, whether by further sales of stock, or by a contract for novels alone, but he had said definitely that Constable was to have the first offer. That being so, we can imagine how the purity of Lockhart's soul is shocked by the way in which John carried out his instructions. It is true that he did not approach any other publishers, and in the end he made a good bargain with Constable. He also got Scott the £5,000, and a good bit more. His sin was that he did not go straight to Constable and say: "I'm instructed to sell you the next series of Tales of my Landlord. Scott wants £5,000. Will you give it, and, if so, what for ?" Instead of that he just talked about the new series of the Tales on which Scott was engaged. The last had been published by Murray and Blackwood. Instead of John going to Constable, an anxious Constable came to him. What were the terms on which Scott would give him the preference for the Tales, so that he should become his exclusive publisher? John invited him to bid high. It was not a question now of taking part of the John Ballantyne stock. It must be finally cleared. If Constable would do that, he could have the Tales on the usual profit-sharing terms. The wholesale value of the remaining stock was placed at £5,270.
Constable gave way. The stock was carted to his own premises. He signed the usual series of bills. There was the necessary interview at the bank. Constable's name stood high in the banking world of Edinburgh in 1814. So did that of Scott. The bills were discounted, and Buccleuch's guarantee was handed back.
Constable had bought a large stock of publications, on the realisation of which he would almost certainly lose. But in view of the profits which he was making from the Waverley novels, he could afford to do so. It was worth a large risk, even the certainty of a large loss, to draw Scott definitely into his own orbit, outside that of Blackwood and Murray - the two men in the trade whom he hated most: the two who had the impudence to bring out magazines in competition with his.
Lockhart is censorious over this transaction. He says that John had "acquitted himself with a species of dexterity not contemplated in his commission". He sheds a tear on Constable's desk concerning the unsaleable nature of that stock. On a previous occasion he asserts that John could easily have sold the whole stock to any of the publishers concerned, and that he deliberately betrayed his employer's interests for his own ends when he failed to make a sufficient effort to do so. Now he does the very thing that he was blamed for not attempting earlier, and which he was accused of scheming to avoid, and he is wrong again. Lockhart's path of righteousness is very narrow for John.
The accusation is, of course, utter nonsense in itself, as well as being destructive of that which had been made before. Scott's instructions to his agent were obviously confidential, and it was no part of his duty - might, indeed, have been a definite betrayal - to communicate them to Constable. He carried these instructions out both in letter and spirit, obtained what Scott required, and deserved, and doubtless received, his thanks.
Scott's letter of instructions leaves much latitude for negotiating how the required sum was to be obtained, but, in view of the profit-sharing system now in vogue between Constable and himself, he can scarcely have expected to secure immediate control of £5,000 without such a deal as John Ballantyne made.
Anyway, the stock was gone, and the firm of John Ballantyne & Co. had come to a final end. Scott reckoned that by nursing the stock, and the method of realisation which he had adopted, he had not merely avoided loss, but had closed his account with a final profit of about £1,000. His reckoning may not have been such as would be considered a satisfactory basis for an accountant's certificate, and the results, in any event, were due to his own value as an author rather than the intrinsic merits of the stock which he had been so largely responsible for creating. The credibility of such a result depends upon the way in which the Hanover Street expenses had been discharged, and the directions in which the heavy costs of bill-renewing had been debited. There would be other questions, such as that of the final adjustments of the loan to James at the start, which would affect the figure, but, considering the quantity of stock which had been dealt with by the John Ballantyne firm, if they finally secured a 10%, margin of profit upon the whole, it is not an impossible result. And, in any case, the printing office had had its usual scale of profit upon that immense turnover.
It had been an enormous blunder, and, whether by its own inevitability or John's mismanagement, it had brought Scott to the threshold of ruin on at least two occasions. But, as he posted back the Duke's guarantee, he could feel that, by his own energy and ability, as well as by his genius as a novelist, he had first sustained, and afterwards redeemed the position. For years he had thought of it as, at the best, a source of almost ruinous loss, and now, at last, it was a chapter in his life which was closed; and, almost miraculously, he was £1,000 to the good. Now he had only to write a couple more novels for Constable, and he would be a few thousand pounds more on the right side. Even if James were losing money at the Canongate works (which he did not suppose) he could hardly be doing so as fast as that. If Scott looked forward to the future with a confident courage, we may think that few men had a better right.
Yet we may observer that he had received a very large total during the last year in the form of Constable's bills. They had been easily discounted. Constable's name was good. His bills were always met to the day. He was the Napoleon of the trade. And the fact that he was making a fortune out of Scott's novels was not likely to make him less able to meet his obligations. Yet it is a fact that if he should fail, Scott might be called upon to repay all the money which the banks had given him so readily against the publisher's signature. It was a remote - it might seem an absurdly remote - possibility. It was a risk which the banks would take for a small percentage, and they usually knew what they were doing. It was no more than a business risk, such as all might take at times. But that Scott was not careless, even in regard to such remote contingencies, was shown by that instruction to John last year to see that Longman's own bill, rather than Constable's substitute, should be paid over to him.
CHAPTER LXIV
It was in August of this year (1817) that Washington Irving called at Abbotsford. He had a note of introduction from Thomas Campbell, which he sent down to the house with his card, and a line upon it saying he was on his way to inspect Melrose Abbey, and would it be convenient for Mr. Scott to receive a visit from him in the course of the morning? He sat in his chaise on the highroad above the house - 'a vineclad cottage' he called it - waiting for the reply, and Scott came out himself, walking vigorously though lamely along the path, with the help of a heavy stick. Irving did not know of, nor apparently guess, those bouts of illness which were wearing down his strength at this time. He called out heartily how was Tom Campbell, before he reached the side of the chaise. Dogs frisked round him, greyhound and setter. Maida, the great staghound, walked gravely behind. Mr. Irving must come in and have breakfast. Mr. Irving excused himself. He had had it already. Then another would do no harm. It will be remembered that Scott had a habit of breaking the back of the day's work before breakfast. It was a late meal. Mr. Irving had a full programme to get through that day. It had been early with him.
He was soon in the breakfast room, meeting Mrs. Scott and the four children, who were all there. Sophia was nearly eighteen, with much of her father's intelligence, much of her mother's vivacity. Walter, two years younger. Anne, a girl of fourteen, quieter than her sister, Mr. Irving thought. Perhaps shyer would be the better word. And there was Charles, not yet twelve who was delegated to show Melrose to the visitor later in the morning, a duty which often fell upon him on behalf of the Abbotsford guests. It was a family which was seldom separated as yet. Its affections were strong and close. Scott had given up teaching the boys Latin since they left Ashestiel, but he had engaged George Thomson, the son of the minister of Melrose, as a tutor, and by this time, like Miss Miller, he was almost one of the household. He was a natural athlete, who was still good at single-stick or on horse-back, though he had a wooden leg - the result of a violent accident in boyhood, concerning the cause of which he had always maintained silence, so that the culprit had gone free.
Mr. Irving, thinking to stay hours, found that it would be days. Scott said the country could not be read like a newspaper, in a single morning. There would be a walk on the hills for the afternoon, and up the Yarrow tomorrow, and a drive to Melrose next day.
In the afternoon, Scott took him up to the hills. Irving says that he looked round in a "mute surprise". The hills were not very high: they were very bare. Scott saw that he was not greatly impressed. Irving paid an adroit compliment in the assurance that it had a greater charm to him than any English scenery, because of the mantle of romance in which Scott himself had clothed it. But that was no consolation to Scott. He loved that land far more than his own fame.
"It may be pertinacity," said he at length; "but to my eye, these grey hills, and all this wild border country, have beauties peculiar to themselves. I like the very nakedness of the land; it has something bold, and stern, and solitary about it. When I have been for some time in the rich scenery about Edinburgh, which is like ornamented garden land, I begin to wish myself back again among my own honest grey hills; and if I did not see the heather, at least once a year, I think I should die!"
They made Mr. Irving one of the family that evening, sitting in the room, now 'half drawing-room, half study,' where Scott had once worked in the window with a curtain behind his back. Now he read Mallory to the family for an evening recreation.
In the morning, wakened by the sound of voices, Mr. Irving looked out through a window of honeysuckle, to see Scott, already about directing the labour of the new house that he had commenced to build. Later in the day, he saw the old quarry at Kaeside, from which Scott was getting his own stone for his own house, and learnt incidentally that when he had been abroad he had brought back presents for all the men he employed, that each might know that he had not been out of his thoughts.
He left at length, marvelling not merely at the unexpected hospitality he had had from one who was of so great a fame, but at the appearance of leisure which Scott, in spite of his immense industry, was able to show to the world. Yet the burden of such entertainment fell very heavily upon him, and upon the whole family, as the years passed. Those who came with letters of introduction were always received as expected guests, and even those who made a merely unmannered intrusion upon the privacy of the home sometimes came off better than they deserved. It was a year later that Lockhart observed such an incident, when, on returning with Scott from a visit to Dryburgh, they found two American callers of another pattern. They had arrived from Selkirk earlier in the day, enquired for Mr. Scott, and shown such annoyance when told that he was out that the servant had asked if they would like to speak to his mistress. They accepted this offer, and had so conducted themselves as to convey the impression to Charlotte that they were visitors of importance, so that she had entertained them for lunch, and she and the girls had had them on their hands all day. When Scott returned for dinner with his guests, they met him on his own doorstep with such assurance that he would have welcomed them in the presumption that Charlotte knew who they were, but suspicion had been a growing plant in her mind, especially since they had annoyed her by enquiring first as to Mr. Scott's age, and then what was her own? Now she interposed to suggest that they would like to take the opportunity of presenting their letters of introduction. The gentlemen said they had none. They were travelling on their own merits. Scott said politely that it was a long walk to Melrose, and the day was advancing: it would be wrong to detain them further. Visibly reluctant, they went.
Scott listened with amusement to Charlotte's indignant comments, and laughed her annoyance away. But his own mind was uneasy; he remarked that no traveller of respectability could ever be at a loss for such an introduction as would ensure his best hospitality. Half-an-hour after he broke out with: "Hang the Yahoos, Charlotte - but we should have bid them stay dinner." And then later to Captain Fergusson he was on the same subject in the local dialect: "For a' that, the loons would hae been nane the waur o' their kail."
CHAPTER LXV.
It is at this time that Lockhart's previous introduction to Scott was improved into a personal acquaintance, and Scott conquered the young lawyer of literary predelictions, as he conquered all who came under the immediate influence of his personality.
Lockhart, in his facile journalistic style, becomes almost lyrical in his praise:
"At this moment, his position, take it for all in all, was, I am inclined to believe, what no other man had ever won for himself by the pen alone. His works were the daily food, not only of his country-men, but of all educated Europe. His society was courted by whatever England could shew of eminence. Station, power, wealth, beauty, and genius, strove with each other in every demonstration of respect and worship, and - few political fanatics and envious poetasters apart - wherever he appeared in town or country: whoever had Scotch blood in him, 'gentle or simple', felt it move more rapidly through his veins when he was in the presence of Scott. To descend to what many looked on as higher things, he considered himself, and was considered by all about him, as rapidly consolidating a large fortune: - the annual profits of his novels alone had, for several years, been not less than £10,000 his domains were daily increased - his castle was rising - and perhaps few doubted that ere long he might receive from the just favour of his Prince some distinction in the way of external rank, such as had seldom before been dreamt of as the possible consequences of a mere literary celebrity. It was about this time that the compiler of these pages first had the opportunity of observing the plain easy modesty which had survived the many temptations of such a career; and the kindness of heart pervading, in all circumstances, his gentle deportment, which made him the rare, perhaps the solitary, example of a man signally elevated from humble beginnings, and loved more and more by his earliest friends and connections, in proportion as he had fixed on himself the homage of the great and the wonder of the world."
It was at the dinner table of Mr. Hall Drummond that Lockhart found himself next to the man who had the greatest reputation of any of the nation to which they both belonged, and experienced "a cordiality which I had not been prepared to expect from one filling a station so exalted".
Scott did not spread the feathers of his own genius for a young man to admire. He led the conversation to Mr. Lockhart's own opinions and experiences, as his way had been from a child. Mr. Lockhart had been in Germany, in Weimar. He had seen Goethe. He had plenty to tell which Scott was pleased to hear. When they left the table, Lockhart had been told that he would be expected one day at Abbotsford. Scott had added him mentally to that innumerable list of the young men of Edinburgh who were interested in literature, and for whom it was mere routine for him to provide.
A few days later Lockhart received a letter from Messrs. James Ballantyne & Co. It appeared that Mr. Scott's 'various avocations' had prevented him from writing the usual historical summary of the year for the Edinburgh Register, 1816, which would be due for publication in the autumn. It would be agreeable both to Mr. Scott and themselves if Mr. Lockhart would undertake it on this occasion.
We may suppose that he did not hesitate in accepting this opportunity. He saw Scott several times in connection with it while he was in Edinburgh, usually in the library behind the dining-room at North Castle Street, where Weber had once produced his pistols, and where Maida (who used to accompany his master on all the migrations between the city and Abbotsford) would now be stretched at the side of his chair, or rise to strike the door with an imperious paw if he required Scott to open it for his exit, when the cat would come down from his high security at the ladder-top to take the vacated place at his master's side. . . . But, however intimate he may become, Lockhart warns us to expect no exposures of private confidence from him.
"I never thought it lawful," he remarks in his sententious manner, "to keep a journal of what passes in private society, so that no one need expect from the sequel of this narrative any detailed record of Scott's familiar talk. What fragments of it have happened to adhere to a tolerably retentive memory, and may be put into black and white without wounding, any feelings which my friend, were he alive, would have wished to spare, I shall introduce as the occasion suggests or serves. But I disclaim on the threshold anything more than this; and I also wish to enter a protest once for all against the general fidelity of several literary gentlemen who have kindly forwarded to me private lucubrations of theirs, designed to Boswellise Scott, and which they may probably publish hereafter. To report conversations fairly, it is a necessary pre-requisite that we should be completely familiar with all the interlocutors, and understand thoroughly all their minutest relations, and points of common knowledge and common feeling, with each other. He who does not must be perpetually in danger of misinterpreting sportive allusions into serious statement; and the man who was only recalling, by some jocular phrase or half-phrase, to an old companion, some trivial reminiscence of their boyhood or youth, may be represented as expressing, upon some person or incident casually tabled, an opinion which he had never framed, or if he had, would never have given words to in any mixed assemblage - not even among what the world calls friends at his own board. In proportion as a man is witty and humorous, there will always be about him and his a widening maze and wilderness of cues and catchwords, which the uninitiated will, if they are bold enough to try interpretation, construe, ever and anon, egregiously amiss - not seldom into arrant falsity. For this one reason to say nothing of many others, I consider no man justified in journalising what he sees and hears in a domestic circle where he is not thoroughly at home; and I think there are still higher and better reasons why he should not do so where he is.
It is an admirable sentiment, and though most of us could have said it more clearly in fewer words, we will not quarrel with it for that. Lockhart's style is his own, and has been admired. The qualification that the bounds of decency are only to be observed towards those whose feelings the one of whom we are writing would not wish to wound is a subtlety of ethics which we must not turn aside to explore. It is sufficient to observe that Lockhart forgot either his own resolution, or that both James and John Ballantyne were Scott's lifelong friends.
Yet Lockhart probably did have his conscious reticences and reservations, for he was a man who would see much, and overhear more. He was one of those who live in their surroundings, who are more conscious of their environment than themselves. Sight or sound or scent - he would be alert to every assault upon his senses, of whatever kind. Those who live in themselves, in the resources of their intellects, or the riches of their imaginations, tend to lose, or at least omit to exercise, the acuteness of their physical senses, except by an exertion of conscious will. Scott puzzled Lockhart in these ways. He was less quickly conscious than others of the approach of a haunch of overkept venison: could not (or so Lockhart accuses him) tell corked wine from sound, either by scent or taste. Lockhart thought him deficient in appreciation of music, concerning which we may come to a consideration of his own testimony.
He went out little in the evenings while in Edinburgh at this period of intermittent illness, unless it were occasionally to the theatre, or more often for a drive, if the weather were favourable. Now or then, he gave or attended a formal dinner. On Sundays it was customary to invite three or four intimate friends to dinner en famille, with whom the evening would be spent informally in reading and conversation. Scott sometimes read aloud on these occasions, and Lockhart, who was often one of the party, says that he read 'high poetry with far greater simplicity, depth, and effect, than any other man I ever heard'. His favourite selections were from Shakespeare, Crabbe, Joanna Baillee, Dryden, Johnson; occasional scenes from Beaumont and Fletcher; and, among contemporary poets, Wordsworth and Southey were conspicuous, and all Byron as it was published. James Ballantyne was frequently a member of the Sunday gatherings, and took his share in the readings; Constable less frequently. John Ballantyne is not mentioned.
But Lockhart saw something of John, if it were not in Scott's drawing-room at North Castle Street. The dual occupations of auctioneer, and literary agent to the best-seller of the day, appeared to have brought prosperity to John at this period. He was often abroad, making search in France or Belgium for the antique treasures which his sale-room offered. He had lived with his family on the premises in Hanover Street in the days when his salary had been £300 from a publishing business which did not pay: now, he had a villa by Trinity, near to the Firth of Forth, which he had 'invested with an air of dainty voluptuous finery'. It had gardens, not extensive in themselves, but so contrived as to conceal their limitations with 'trellised alley and mysterious alcove, interspersed among their bright parterres'. John Ballantyne was a small man, and had chosen a wife of a larger size, as small men frequently do. Lockhart makes this difference the basis for one of the quaintest innuendoes likely to be discovered in any biography. He says: "he had erected for himself a private wing, the access to which, whether from the main building or from the bosquet, were so narrow that it was physically impossible for the handsome and portly lady who bore his name to force her person through any of them."
It was as a guest that Lockhart observed and was able to record this sinister peculiarity. He went out to dinner, and Scott and Constable were there also. He did not ascertain, or does not record, whether a maid-servant was kept specially slimmed to enter the private wing, or whether John cleaned it himself. But, of course, it may never have been cleaned at all.
The house which Scott made momentarily respectable by his presence had mirrors also, and portraits of actresses - Peg Woffington among them, and Kitty Clive. "Every actor or singer of eminence" who visited Edinburgh would be invited to its "Paphian arbours". "Here Braham quavered, and here Liston drolled his best - here Johnstone and Murray and Yates mixed jest and stave - here Keen revelled and rioted - and here the Roman Kemble often played the Greek from sunset to dawn." It is a dreadful tale. Lockhart sometimes gives us figures which we are able to check, with surprising results. But we can check nothing here. Once again, we must believe what we will.
But if we doubt John's depravity, Lockhart has a supporting anecdote. John, as we know, went to Paris on business. Paris, as we know, is a singularly wicked place. A certain Calvinistic bookseller of Edinburgh also had to go there on business, had John's address (how carelessly given!) and called upon him about buying a book. John was out, but the bookseller was invited to see 'madame' and taken up to a room where a lady was in bed, and several others - men and women - were there also. Shamelessly, they ate and drank. The good bookseller 'ran out o' the house as if I had been shot. What judgement: will this wicked world come to! The Lord pity us!'
Scott was not complaisant to vicious follies, and Lockhart was puzzled because he laughed at this joke.
In the intervals of squeezing into his private wing, John was fond of riding to hounds. When he went to his Princes Street auction room, he rode on a milk-white hunter, and ascended the rostrum in the half-dress of a sporting club - 'a light-grey frock, with emblems of the chase on its silver buttons, white cord breeches Land jockey-boots in Meltonian order'. John's greyhounds used to come into Edinburgh behind the hunter, and Maida knew so well his master's habit of attending John's sales when the Court of Session rose, that he would go in advance to join the other dogs where they waited outside the auction rooms.
When John drove, he drove tandem, mounted on a bright-blue dogcart. That is about the last of his sins at this period. It is a slightly redeeming feature that his horses were named after Scott's novels, and his dogs after characters therein.
We may recognise Lockhart as a picturesque rather than an impartial witness, and still conclude that John Ballantyne's heirs were unlikely to live in idleness on anything he would leave.
Of James Ballantyne, whose acquaintance Lockhart made practically at the same time through his visits to North Castle Street he gives a widely different account. It appears that James invited him to his own house almost immediately they met, and he accepted the opportunity. He gives this description:
"James Ballantyne then lived in St. John Street, a row of good, old-fashioned, and spacious houses. adjoining the Canongate and Holyrood, and at no great distance from his printing establishment. He had married a few years before the daughter of a wealthy farmer in Berwickshire - a quiet, amiable woman of simple manners and perfectly domestic habits: a group of fine young children were growing up about him: and he usually, if not constantly, had under his roof his aged mother, his and his wife's tender care of whom it was most pleasing to witness. As far as a stranger might judge, there could not be a more exemplary household, or a happier one; and I have occasionally met the poet in St. John Street when there were no other guests but Erskine, Terry, George Hogarth, and another intimate friend or two, and when James Ballantyne was content to appear in his own true and best colours, the kind head of his family, the respectful but honest school-fellow of Scott, the easy landlord of a plain comfortable table."
George Hogarth, a lawyer by profession, a man of reputed culture and author of a History of Music, was James's brother-in-law. At Scott's invitation, he had drawn up the documents which had released James from the partnership liabilities to clear the way for his sister's marriage; Scott's selection of him being good evidence of the liberality of his treatment of James, and of a personal confidence which he had no reason to regret.
Lockhart's account of James in this instance is not free from the usual tone of contempt, and the phrase "respectful but honest" may deserve a smile, yet it is not unkindly, nor derogatory in its broader outlines. The fact is that, in his treatment of James, there is such recurrent inconsistency that it would be easy to select half-a-dozen passages by which it would appear that James was of admirable character and exceptional abilities, and half-a-dozen others which give an opposite evidence. There is none of this inconsistency in the treatment of John. He is attacked on every possible occasion, and accused of every possible delinquency. If a stone can be flung in his direction, neither improbability nor inconsistency will be allowed to prevent its flight.
The cause of this difference may be that Lockhart always disliked John - and it is a likely guess that John was not fond of him. But Lockhart received hospitality and kindness from James during these years of prosperity, when their sequel was an unguessed, and would have seemed an incredible thing, and the impressions formed at that time will not leave his mind. The result is that while he caricatures John with a steady merciless consistency, that leaves him at last with the aspect of a monkey rather than a man, his James Ballantyne is neither successful caricature nor consistent portrait. It is at the worst an impossibility, at the best a blur.
It is also worth notice that while his bitterest representations of John were contained in the original Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott, he was comparatively reticent or restrained in his attacks upon the elder brother, until his accuracy in what he had said was intemperately challenged by the James Ballantyne Trustees, when he made the random counter-charges of a cornered man.
Lockhart's opportunities of observing James were not limited to the semi-domesticity of a private dinner party. He was invited to the christening dinner of the new novel which came out at this midsummer, to get which Constable had taken the whole of that Hanover Street stock. It was the Heart of Midlothian. Scott had given about six months of work as continuous as his health had allowed, and with little else to distract his mind. If Constable had paid high, he had got good value returned.
Now there was a congregation of Edinburgh celebrities, literary and social, at the printer's house, to welcome another novel by the author for whom James had invented the title of the Great Unknown.
Lockhart can describe a feast, and especially its drinking features, in a spirit which Dickens himself might not think unworthy. The turtle and venison were 'aldermanic' on this occasion: the ale was 'potent', the Madeira 'generous'. Scott Was present, quietly amused, and watchful of that thin cloak of incognito which he would not drop. There was the usual loyal toast, as the solid fare (or what was left of it) was removed, and then one that, James said: "shall never be omitted in a house of mine - that of Mr. Walter Scott".
When this had been drunk, and Scott briefly replied "with some expressions of warm affection" to James, Mrs. Ballantyne retired, 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". It is a little difficult to understand how or why James distended so many veins when he spoke in a low voice, but, otherwise, the scene is realistic enough, with the 'cool demure fun' on Scott's face as he joins in the applause and listens to James returning thanks for the anonymous author, who would experience 'the proudest hour in his life' when informed of the reception which the toast had met.
And then James, too adroit to let discussion arise in Scott's presence from that hilarious assembly, started a song 'in a style which would have done no dishonour to almost any orchestra', and so the convivial evening went on with song and wine until Scott and Erskine, with any other 'clerical or very staid personage that had chanced to be admitted, saw fit to withdraw'.
That was the signal for claret and olives to be cleared away. Broiled bones took their place, with a 'mighty bowl' of punch, and after James had had several glasses of this beverage (but Lockhart may not have been in a condition to count accurately at this hour, and we need not take this aspersion too seriously) he was persuaded to read from the proof sheets the dialogue in the new novel which he thought best of all.
In this atmosphere, James read in such a style that 'the effect it produced was deep and memorable', the scene in Richmond Park between Jennie Deans, the Duke of Argyle, and Queen Caroline. We may agree that James made a good choice.
And after that they all drank again to the Great Unknown, and James recited the last words of Marmion (which was the closing ritual on these occasions) and everyone went home as best they could - and the Heart of Midlothian was published when they woke up, or perhaps earlier.
CHAPTER LXVI.
The Court of Session rose, and Scott, whose health had shown some improvement during the summer days, went back to Abbotsford to superintend the building of his new house, with the happy knowledge that the Heart of Midlothian had exceeded even his own successes. He had a genius which rose to its opportunities. Perhaps no great writer of fiction has been so dependent upon the spiritual qualities of the tale which he has to tell. To Scott, a poor theme meant a poor novel, but a poor theme would always be, and was particularly at this period of physical weakness, an unlikely choice.
It is a common superficial folly to represent him as the novelist of pageant rather than reality, of silk and steel, or even of pasteboard and tinsel; but here a young woman comes to us in a peasant's shawl, without wealth, without beauty, without intellect or culture, and by simple force of character, by the spirit in which she faces tragedy, she reduces those decorations of life to their essential triviality. If she were with us in the flesh today, she would be a woman, through the revelation of Scott's genius, that all would delight to honour. And so real is her presentation that it seems idle to say that she had less objective reality than any of those of her own time whose records are so much less vivid in actuality. We may tell ourselves that John Porteous lived, but that Jeanie Deans is an invented character, but we are not convinced. We feel that it is a fundamental falsehood. If God had not first created Jeanie Deans, the genius of Scott would have been unable to do so afterwards. She is the spirit of the Lowland peasant at its noblest possibility, as only Scott could have understood and revealed it. For Scott's mind searched everywhere for nobility. If he found it most easily in the glamour of the past, he did not therefore cease to seek, or fail to find it, in the life around him.
The Heart of Midlothian might well be received with enthusiasm in Edinburgh. It was the last and greatest chapter in the epic series of verse and prose by which its author revealed Scotland to herself, as well as to the outer world.
Leaving the loud chorus of applause with which the book was received, he went back to Abbotsford, to another dream of less enduring nobility - the house which he had designed in his mind, and which, had it been possible, he would doubtless have built with his own hands. But the days when he had made the dining-table for Lasswade, even the days when he had laboured among the masons on the first alterations at Abbotsford, were gone now, and for ever. Yet though he could not labour himself he had contrived that the house should be, as far as possible, the work of his neighbours' brains, and his neighbours' hands. He discovered talents of mason and carpenter among the local work-people which, under his directions, rendered him comparatively independent of imported assistance. Now one wing of it approached completion. In a few weeks it would be possible to migrate to some of the new rooms. The expense of building was heavy, and that of furnishing was Still to come. They would have been heavy even had Scott been one to make hard bargains, which was not his way. There must be a deal with Constable for another book. There would be no difficulty about that. Especially not now that there was no more old stock for disposal, and with this last book being so great a success. He must contract at once for ten thousand copies. That would mean good profits for the author, and good printing orders for the Canongate works. The old money troubles were over now - surely over for ever. But for this battle against ill-health, the recurrence of this terrible internal pain, the skies would have been of unbroken blue. . .
In September, Mr. Cadell came to Abbotsford. Being Constable's partner, he was in the secret of the authorship of the novels. He found Scott in better health. He was so busy upon the house-building, and the plantations, and the laying out of the new gardens, that Cadell wondered when he had time to think. But he said that he did that in the mornings, before he rose, and while he dressed, and if he would write for a few hours afterwards, the words came quickly enough. There would be no difficulty about another novel - no difficulty, and no delay. The subject had been chosen last year, before he had realised that Midlothian would be so long a tale. There would be no difficulty about the contract either. Everything went smoothly now that the nightmare of the stock was an ended dream.
Scott was building a new dyke at this time to keep back the Tweed at times of flood from his lower land. He had built one before, but it had been swept away in a night. He was building more strongly now. We do not make the same mistake twice, be it in conflict with financial forces or river flood. . . . Not the same, perhaps. But the wrong roads are many, and are most easily taken when we are oversure of the way.
Scott was laying out a new bowling green also, with a quiet seat for himself, where he might rest in the evening hours. He had chosen that spot because it was near the window of the room where Peter Mathieson, the coachman, had evening prayers with his family when the day's work was done. Lockhart thought that Scott was not fond of music. He was not an expert in the gymnastics of sound. He agreed about that. He was always quick to agree as to his own deficiencies. But he liked to sit by himself where he could hear the singing of the evening psalm from Peter's window.
It was early in the following month that he gave a dinner to half-a-dozen friends to celebrate the opening of the new diningroom. It was not yet ready for occupation, and the meal was laid in the little room in the cottage, into which all must be crowded as best they could, but there was to be dancing afterwards in the new room, which would be lit up for the first time.
The significance of the occasion was increased by the fact that two of the guests had been friends of Scott's boyhood days, with whom he had kept up an intimacy of correspondence, but whom he had not seen for many years. These were Lord Melville (he had been Lord Melville's son in the old days), and Captain Adam Fergusson, so long abroad in the wars, and now to be settled with his sisters at Huntley Burn, whom Charlotte remembered also as Scott's companion of the happy days of Gilsland when first they met. Scott of Gala came also and other neighbours not too distant to return home when the evening's celebration was over, for the guest-rooms of Abbotsford were still unready for occupation, and the accommodation of the old house was very limited, both above and below. But the little separate cottage, called the chapel, had two bedrooms, and Scott had heard that young Lockhart and John Wilson were taking holiday at Windermere, and had written to them to stop at Abbotsford on the way back, and to be there by October 8th, for their own good.
His object was to introduce them to Lord Melville who, as he told them once, was 'the great giver of good things' at Parliament House, and whom it might be of advantage to them to know. It was a time when careers - or at least, their opportunities - were largely dependent upon such patronage.
Now they walked with the older men round the plantations, and by the half-built dyke, and watched Maida forget his dignity to join the terriers in useless chasing of the fleeter hares that swarmed on the unploughed land.
Fourteen or fifteen people had to be accommodated in a room that ten would crowd, but Charlotte managed it somehow, so that space was left for the servants to wait, and Lockhart (who was critical of such things) approved both service and company. He had not previously seen Scott in such buoyant spirits, nor been present at a gayer dinner.
It was eaten to the sound of John Bruce's bagpipes. John of Skye was a hedger-and-ditcher who had found service at Abbotsford, and Scott, learning that he could play the pipes, had dressed him in full Highland costume for this occasion. Now he paraded outside the window, and added music to the merriment within.
There was a turret already risen at the western end of the half-built mansion, and after dinner those who were young and vigorous, and such of the elders as did not know what they were about to do, accepted Scott's invitation to ascend it for the enjoyment of the moonlit view. He led the way himself, though he must apologise for the stairs, which were dark and narrow and very steep, and there were enough who followed to crowd the little platform, and look down upon the beauty of the moonlight-softened scene, and the distant ruin of Melrose, clear and white against the dark background of the Eildon hills . . . and the piper played Lochaber no more from the shadows beneath the tower.
After that, there was dancing in the new dining-room, for which the piper played, and there were none but joined, except Scott himself and the lame tutor Thomson, who must stand aside and look on. After that there was a song or two: Johnnie Cope from Captain Fergusson, and Kenmure's on and awa' from the girls, and then they must all join hands in a circle for the final chorus:
And after that they went home.
Lockhart, sleeping in the 'chapel' bedroom, was waked before seven by the sound of his host's voice. He looked out through the latticed window to see Scott and Tom Purdie in conference. They had a rough sketch of the 'Blue Bank' at Toftfield - a field of clay that Scott was resolved to drain. He was up no later for the merriment of the night before. He did not seem like a sick man.
When he came in to breakfast two hours later he ate well of kippered salmon, and cut freely at the brown loaf which was beside his plate. Those who saw him at breakfast might think him to be a man of great appetite, but, in fact, doing some hours' work before it, as his way was, he had come to make breakfast the principal meal of the day. Lockhart had noticed in Edinburgh, (where his breakfast appetite may not have been equal to that of Abbotsford) how little he ate at dinner, and how singularly little (to Lockhart's mind) he seemed to care what it might be.
The post-bag came in while the breakfast proceeded, with a weight of contents which caused Lord Melville to wonder what was happening at the moment, but Scott said that it was no more than the usual infliction. He had good friends who helped him with the franking of envelopes, and the post-office was kind, but his bill for letters alone was £150 a year, and as to parcels - he told a tale in illustration against himself.
He had carelessly opened a parcel one morning, never doubting that it was franked - for who in his senses would send such a weight of matter unless under that customary protection? - and had been appalled to find that it was a MS. play from a lady in New York who thought that, if he would write a prologue and do a few other necessary things, he might place it with Constable to her great advantage - and, of course, with the manager at Drury Lane. A hurried glance at the cover showed that he had been debited £5 odd by the Post Office for this parcel, but he had broken the seal, and there was no more to be said.
Yet, in spite of this lesson, he was equally careless with another parcel a fortnight later, to find to his horror that it was a second copy of the same play. The lady had considered the risks of tempest and the uncertainties of our earthly life, and had sent a second copy to make sure that her treasure should not be lost. . . .
So Scott dispersed his guests to such pleasures as the country gave, and disappeared with his morning correspondence till one o'clock, when he emerged with a dozen letters written in his own hand for the post, and a coach-parcel addressed to James, which an urchin at the toll-gate fielded as they drove out to see Melrose in the afternoon, and carried into the adjoining pot-house, to wait the coach. The careful Lockhart considered how thin was the disguise of the Great Unknown, which might be exposed by any unscrupulous stranger who should break the seal of one of those daily parcels which were so randomly handled. . . . And how many might be willing to do it - or even to steal such a priceless packet! - of the endless tourists who lounged around Abbotsford and Melrose now? For they had driven past two loaded chaises, drawn up at the gate, and waiting for a glimpse of Scott if he should be coming out, and at the side of the road (it being before the era of photography) there were men who sketched. . . . But Scott left Lockhart to do the worrying. His day's work was done. He threw the packet to the urchin who may have caught so many before, and drove on to Melrose and Dryburgh Abbey to show his guests what their beauties were.
CHAPTER LXVII.
Charles Charpentier was dead. He had died in his Indian exile, leaving a wife, but no children. He left considerable property - spoken of as £30,000 to £40,000 - to his wife during her life, and then to his sister's children. Scott thought of this money with some satisfaction. It was an added security for his children, if the inspiration of his novels should cease, and his income with it. He felt that he would embark on his dreams of improving Abbotsford with more confidence than before. But he did not want the children to take the news in the wrong way. He would not have them overvalue money, or the power it brings. He suggested that their mother had the first right. So she had, they said generously; she could have all if she would.
Scott thought he could provide for their mother himself, but he was pleased by the way they spoke. They could not know that that money would never be more than a mirage to them. None of them would see it. Charles Charpentier's widow would outlive them all. But who could have guessed that then?
Charlotte had not seen her brother since he sailed for India twenty years ago. We might think that his death would mean little to her. But she did not feel it like that. He had been her one link with a dead past - a past that was private to her own mind. His letters had been the one thing that kept it alive. Now it was utterly gone. The home in southern France that was a childhood's dream. Her dead parents. Her only brother, who was dead now. She had no relative left alive. There had been an uncle - a colonel in the Russian army - but news of him had ceased many years ago. Doubtless he was dead.
Walter could not console her now, for they were people - it was a life - he had never known. Now it was so utterly gone, and these memories that none could share - it was like being dead while you still lived. For with all the gay courage with which she had faced the changes of life, Charlotte knew that she was an exile here. She would be exiled from his memory when he was dead. He might have no complaint of her, or she of him, but afterwards it would always be said that he had not chosen the right wife. She did not care (overmuch) for his books, though she had a great pride in all that he did. She did not pretend to care for the derivation of a burn's name. Why should she ? She was a daughter of southern France. Of a land she would never see. With memories that there was no-one alive to share. For two days she lay taking consolation from none. Scott wrote about it to Morritt on the third day. He understood well enough. It was a grief that he saw that he could not share. He had never seen her brother. That was the cry of her distress. What could such a death be to him?
But on that day she had regained her courage, her self-control. She was coming downstairs again.
Biography is most often unfair to those whose lives surrounded the genius on which it dwells. They are the furniture of his life. It is intolerable that they should disturb or frustrate it. They should understand what they are for. They are thrust into a publicity which they have done nothing to challenge, and they are regarded only in relation to an orbit which is not theirs. It is obvious that their own lives should be subordinated to that of the genius who was their parent, or whom they married or bore. If they fall short of understanding that, they are execrated for the failures which they are shown to be.
But Charlotte did not fail. She married a man of a foreign race, and a poet of genius, which is a sufficiently difficult combination for any woman to undertake. She was handicapped by the fact that he had contracted an earlier love which he could never - which, indeed, he did not desire to forget. Yet she did not fail him in any way. She gave him pleasure and peace. She showed no jealousy of his genius, which is a common experience of such marriages. She showed no jealousy of his very numerous women friends. She ruled his home well, and in the spirit which he preferred. In her own sphere, she was as generous as he. She was loyal to him in every circumstance and relation of life.
She had her reward in a love which grew closer as the years passed, and a comradeship which was no less real because there were some things which they did not fully share. She made a very fortunate marriage, and requires no sympathy. But she requires a more difficult thing - justice, which she has not had.
CHAPTER LXVIII.
The thought of Charles Charpentier's fortune, which might be his children's at any time, may have encouraged Scott to regard his substantial professional income, and the almost fantastic profits that his novels brought, as money which he could spend with a freer hand than he would otherwise have done, but he was not insensible of the future, nor reckless in regard to his present commitments.
It may have been owing to the extent of his current expenditure upon the building of the new house, to which it is commonly attributed, that he now entered into a negotiation with Constable regarding the copyrights which he had retained in his own name; but it is more probable that it was induced by consideration of the uncertainty of his own life, and a desire to lease his estate in a settled form. Cramp in the stomach did not sound a very formidable name to give the seizures to which he had become intermittently liable, and he had survived several already. He had found that, as soon as it had time to take effect, opium would do much to deaden the pain. He was not one to give way to morbid fears. The moment that the symptoms ceased, he would be his usual buoyant resolute self. But his courage was of the kind that would look facts in the face, and he knew that he was weakening and ageing under these attacks, that were always recurring and for which no-one could offer him any radical cure.
It is most probable that he looked death in the face when he made the bargain with Constable which was expressed in a formal bond, the terms of which were agreed in December, and which was executed in February, 1819.
Up to this date, he had retained all or part of the copy rights of some of the poems, and part of the copyright of some of the novels. Now he made them over to Constable for a total consideration of £12,000. The money was not to be paid at once, and the copyrights were not to be legally assigned until, or as far as, the money was paid. Scott protected himself in this way, even against the possibility of Constable's insolvency, of which no-one thought at that time. But it was a definite undertaking to buy at a settled price. It removed that portion of his estate from the hazards of incompetent bargaining, or a change of literary fashion which might reduce their value. Scott was adventurous by disposition, and immensely generous both by principle and inclination, but he never showed lack of business ability in regard to any matter which engaged his attention seriously.
He had had separate occasion to review the solidity of his financial position during the last few months owing to an intimation which had come to him some months earlier with the usual initial informality, that the Prince-Regent would be pleased to confer on him the rank of baronet, if he would be pleased to accept it. His correspondence shows that he was dubious about this distinction, which he was clear-sighted enough to see would be a burden rather than an advantage financially, not only to himself, but potentially to his children. There was a prolonged delay before he gave such a reply that the invitation could be formally issued, but in the end he accepted, as men usually do.
But though he signified his acceptance, the actual assumption of the honour was delayed, for, as the winter had come, the attacks of illness had resumed their violence, and increased their frequency. He spent these months in Edinburgh as usual, and continued his duties of Clerk of Session as often as heath allowed; he was even seen at the theatre more than once, where Rob Roy was performed in February, and had a run of forty-one nights, but his condition was such that he delayed the commencement of the projected novels, contenting himself with historical and antiquarian essays in his better intervals, and when the Court rose in March, and he was able to leave for Abbotsford, his state of health was a subject of anxious conversation among his friends.
He went home with the resolution that the novels - for he had more than one in his mind at this time - should not be longer delayed, let his health be what it would. He called on Laidlaw's services again to take down from his dictation, and then on John Ballantyne also. John left his business in Princes Street, and the pleasure (whatever it might be) of squeezing through the narrow door in his Trinity villa, to spend long periods at Abbotsford at his patron's call.
It seems an expensive method of dictating, but the day of professional stenographers had not come. The writing had to be rapid and accurate, for Scott would dictate fast, especially when he came to a passage of dialogue, or a scene of special animation, and it must be intelligently transcribed.
John said that he used to start in the morning with a dozen pens laid out for use, so that he should not risk having to pause to mend a quill when the narration was in full flow. Scott lay on a couch at this time, the sentences of dictation often broken with groans of pain, but there were times (John said) when he would forget his physical weakness in the excitement of climax, and pace rapidly up and down the room as he dictated, in the different voices of the characters, the conversation which he conceived.
Toward the end of the vacation, Lockhart had an invitation to spend a few days at Abbotsford, and rode out with John, who had warned him of the rapid change which illness had made since he had seen Scott only a few weeks before, but he found it to be far more than he had supposed. His clothes hung loosely on a frame that had lost its flesh, his face was haggard and yellow, his hair, which had been slightly tinged with grey, had turned almost snow-white during those weeks of agony.
But his eyes had even more than their old brilliancy, his greeting was cordial, his spirits good. He came to the table at dinner, though his diet was rice-pudding only, with toast and water to follow. He talked of his illness as a battle that he had fought and won. He said that there had been a time when he had feared that it was affecting his brain, and he had tried whether he could translate an old German ballad, as a test to reassure himself. They could see what he had done. Sophia went for the script. . . . She and William Laidlaw had taken it down between them during one day of incessant pain. He read the Noble Morringer. It is a wonderful translation, by any standard, worthy to be placed among the best of his ballads. It has a gaiety of tone which is an amazement for a composition under such conditions. When he found that his guests praised it freely, he said it should go into the new Register.
Certainly, his illness had not weakened his mind. But he had tired visibly as he read the poem, and he said he would go to bed. Later, when the family were retiring, his illness returned acutely, and Dr. Scott was hastily summoned. For some hours his groans could be heard even at some distance from the house. The only 'remedy' that was attempted at this stage was hot baths, with opium to relieve the pain.
Lockhart resolved that he would leave in the morning. It was no time to inflict a guest on that house. But as he was dressing, before seven, Scott tapped on his door, and came in, looking better than the night before. He said he mustn't think of leaving, for after last night he was sure of three days' respite at least. He wanted to ride out, to get rid of that accursed laudanum. He would finish his morning's dictation to John, and they would all go to Selkirk together. Not do twenty miles after last night? He had done forty under similar circumstances a week ago. There was an election on, and Buccleuch, who was ill and gone abroad with Adam Fergusson, was relying upon him to see it through.
So, by eleven o'clock they set off, John on the milk-white steed of which we have heard before, and Scott on Sybil Grey, an active cob, on which he cantered briskly to catch up his companions after telling them to ride forward when he stopped at the Sheriff's office in Selkirk.
Thin and white-haired he might be, but he seemed in good health enough as they rode by Philliphaugh, and he must describe the battle when Montrose was beaten at last. For he was busy on A Legend of Montrose as well as the Bride of Lammermuir, and would have them both ready for publication by midsummer, unless he were a dead man before that.
And the next day they rode out again over Bowden Moor and beyond, canvassing doubtful voters, as he had promised to do, and with results with which he was well content.
And the day after that, having done with the election, they went over the Eildon hills and within sight of Smailholm Tower, and elsewhere, and that night he had the cramp, as they called it, again, though not so badly as before. And Lockhart left him next morning dictating to John, and talking cheerfully of what he would do when he was in Edinburgh; but his own thought was that he might have seen Scott for the last time.
A few days later Scott had the news that Buccleuch was dead at Lisbon, and he wrote to Fergusson, who was bringing home his remains: "I have had another eight days' visit of my disorder, which has confined me chiefly to my bed. It will perhaps shade off into a mild chronic complaint - if it returns frequently with the same violence, I shall break up by degrees, and follow my dear chief. I thank God I can look at this possibility without much anxiety, and without a shadow of fear."
He wrote to Southey also, a long letter commenced on April 4th, in the course of which he said:
"I have gone through a cruel succession of spasms and sickness. . . . I have been seized with one or two successive crises of my cruel malady, lasting in the utmost anguish from eight to ten hours. If I had not the strength of a team of horses, I could never have fought through it. . . . I did not lose my senses, because I resolved to keep them, but I thought once or twice they would have gone overboard, top and top-gallant. I should be a great fool, and a most ungrateful wretch, to complain of such inflictions as these. My life has been, in all its public and private relations, as fortunate perhaps as was ever lived up to this period; and whether pain or misfortune may be behind the dark curtain of futurity, I am already a sufficient debtor to the bounty of Providence to be resigned to it. Fear is an evil which has never mixed with my nature, nor has even unwonted good fortune rendered my love of life tenacious. . . ."
But there is an undated postscript to this letter which says:
"Another ten days have passed away, for I would not send this Jeremiad to tease you, while its termination seemed doubtful. For the present
He travelled back to Edinburgh for the new Session, but an attempt to return to his duties at the Court proved beyond his capacity. He was in bed there for several weeks: still in bed when the new novels were published, and those who read them supposed them to be the last that he would ever write.
The knowledge of his condition had spread by this time wherever a newspaper penetrated through the world that knew him. The two tales were received in the atmosphere of this consciousness, and would have escaped any severity of criticism had they been much worse than they were. They were good enough, but we have to forget Scott at his best before we can praise them freely. They are both significantly short, and the genius of Scott at his best needed a large canvas. A Legend of Montrose does not rise to its opportunities. Under other circumstances of composition, it might have been one of his greatest novels. The Bride of Lammermuir has always been a disputed book. To some it is dull and unreal; others have placed it high, or even highest on the list of Scott's romances. Probably, preference for the species of tale it tells has deranged their judgement. But the doubt is the condemnation. Had it been written with the intellectual vigour and imagination of the Heart of Midlothian, its tragedy would have left no doubt in our minds. It was composed under such conditions that its author read it without memory of its contents, and turning each page in fear of what nonsense he might discover upon the next. He fortified himself with the thought that he could trust James not to have let anything dreadful pass, and he ended with the thought that it might do well enough with a friendly public. In this verdict he showed sounder judgement than some who have praised it since. Had it been the work of an unknown author, it is doubtful whether it would have attained popularity, or been remembered at all today. It may be easy to find points on which we can praise it, but the truth is a better thing.
The fact was that the severity of his illness had been too great to enable him to imagine with continuous power. Previously, it had had the effect of giving him an increased leisure for composition, perhaps an increased consciousness of the spiritual values of life. Hence the Heart of Midlothian. Now he had been too ill, and too exhausted, for successful effort. The determination that the books should be written had carried him through, but this obstinate courage had
and the results are as we see them to be.
There had been times during their composition when his own resolute courage had thought it better to face the fact that he could not live, than to continue the struggle. Sophia remembered one evening in June when he called the family together, thinking that he would not live through the night, and addressed them in words of confident faith and exhortation, telling them to leave him at last that he might "turn his face to the wall". But after that he slept very long, and the next day the doctors spoke with a new hope. They thought that there was a change in his condition, to whatever weakness he had been reduced. They spoke of a crisis past.
Passers-by glanced at the house in North Castle Street with its muffled knocker from day to day expecting to see a house of death, but he did not die. When the session ended, he was well enough, and we can suppose how willing, to be moved to Abbotsford. The attacks did not return with their old severity. Very slowly he was regaining strength. He had already commenced a new novel before he returned to Abbotsford, where the masons were still at work, and the house grew, as did the plantations round it.
CHAPTER LXIX.
As Scott's health came slowly back in the summer days, he dictated a new novel to Laidlaw - not that which he had commenced in the period of severe illness. He was dissatisfied, uncertain, about that. He had thrown it aside. A new and fortunate imagination had invaded his mind.
He might be weak and unable to get about for more than a few hours of the day, but he was buoyant of mood and clear of brain. He knew that he was doing a good thing. James thought the same. There was a growing enthusiasm in the Canongate office as the chapters came, one by one, on the coach from Abbotsford, and were prepared for the press.
In fact, as his health returned, Scott approached the peak of prosperity and reputation. It was a height such as few can even approach, and from which it would not be easy to fall.
Yet during this year, when his own sun rose higher, as though it would never set, the shadows of the mutability of earthly things fell thickly across his path. For twenty years, strong affection and settled judgement had combined to keep his children closely around him. Now Walter must go. At seventeen, he was gazetted ensign to the 18th Hussars, stationed in Ireland. Sophia's interest in John Lockhart, and his in her, pointed to another separation that could not long be delayed. The home that had been founded in the Lasswade cottage was commencing to break apart. These were signs of a new flowering, rather than the falling of ruined leaves, but December brought its sorrows of a different kind. Vigorous and clear of intellect to the last, Scott's mother died. Her half-brother, Dr. Rutherford died. Her half-sister, Christian Rutherford, died. All within three weeks. Christian had been sister to Scott, rather than aunt. There was a close affection between them of forty years. He had griefs enough this December when Ivanhoe came out, and the flame of his reputation rose to its fullest height.
His own health was largely restored by this time, and he had even thought to mount a battle-charger again. For the unrest in the industrial districts of Scotland had become so great that the talk of revolution was in every mouth. Volunteer regiments for the preservation of public order were being raised in all parts of the country. Scott of Abbotsford and Scott of Gala consulted together for the peace of their own district. There were a hundred names sent in of men in his neighbourhood who would join a sharpshooter regiment if he would act as its colonel. Then the political skies cleared for the time, and the project was put aside. Scott had ordered a charger of the kind he rode in the old Yeomanry days, though he cancelled this before an actual purchase took place.
As to the novel, being of a new kind, he had been bent on the adventure of another anonymity. For this reason it had been printed in a new setting, on better paper than had been used for the Waverley series. It was to be a three-volume publication, at the increased price of 10/- each - thirty shillings the set. And he was so sure of success on this occasion, name or no name, that he had stipulated for the first edition to by larger than ever.
At the last moment, Constable had protested against the folly of anonymous publication, and Scott had given way, but he was probably right in thinking that it would have made no difference. England had welcomed the Scottish novels, but not as she welcomed Ivanhoe. They had had immense sales, but not such as were now recorded. Twelve thousand sets at thirty shillings - eighteen thousand pounds the public handed to the trade for these books, and demanded more.
There will always be those who dispute pre-eminence between Ivanhoe and the novels of Scottish life, in which the element of imagination is less, and that of observation more. It is a problem without solution, because they have different excellences of which there can be no common standard of measurement. We may discuss it till we tire, but praise and preference will go together at last.
There have been those who have criticised Ivanhoe because it is not an accurate portrait of life in England in the days of King John. They have also said that Cedric was not a man's name. Perhaps not: but it is now. Minds of that order will think that the Scottish novels are of a better kind.
But there are others to whom that order of criticism has no meaning. To them, if it could be shown that King John or Richard had never lived, that there had never been such a time at all, Ivanhoe would be even a greater wonder than it is now.
From whatever materials, Scott has created a living world. It is the marvel of his genius that he had made three separate successes, of which no two include or imply the third. The author of the Lady of the Lake had produced a poem of the highest order, and his place in the world's literature was secure over all changes of fashion, while the language lasts, but he might have written that poem and been incapable of producing The Heart of Midlothian. Similarly, the author of that novel had won his rank in the realms of fiction, but it contains no evidence that its author could project his imagination into the atmosphere in which Ivanhoe is conceived.
It is equally true that the author of these three works of highest imagination might have been incapable of such lyrics as are scattered among them and his other romances in verse and prose, and had he published these lyrics and ballads separately as the whole work of his life, he would have won a place in English poetry which would have been both high and secure. And by this four-fold strength he is entrenched upon the heights, beyond the challenge of mediocrity.
It has been objected that the plot of Ivanhoe would have been more interesting had its hero and Rebecca defied their environment, and eloped together. It would certainly have made it nearer to the pattern of tale which is approved today; but to Scott it would have been an impossible thing for a hero to do, being without heroism. We say that we must be true to ourselves and, it we cannot be true to others, it may be all that remains. It is the last ditch. But Scott's ideals were different. For a man to break faith with a woman who loves him, and whom he is pledged to marry, may be prudent, for all its baseness. It may even be wise. But it would not have occurred to Scott to call it a romantic action.
There are details in the plot of the novel which outrage probability. They belong to the possibilities which are as unlikely as truth itself, which the careful novelist should avoid. They belong to Scott's method of constructing his plots en route. A different habit would have prepared the Templar for his final exit with some earlier evidence of a bad heart.
The resurrection of Athelstan was James Ballantyne's contribution, and an evidence of Scott's complaisancy. But we may doubt whether he would have been so complaisant had he not enjoyed exercising the ingenuity which the alteration required.
The book does not depend upon plot, but upon the splendour and vividness of its scenes and characters. A reader accustomed to let a dozen modern novels drift every month across the mind's surface, leaving no trace, would find it hard to read the scene in Friar Tuck's hut and forget it with the same facility.
CHAPTER LXX.
Ivanhoe was followed within less than three months by another novel which will not endure comparison. The Monastery had been commenced with, or before, Ivanhoe, and continued intermittently. A few chapters had been set in type even before the publication of: the other novel. They were set in the usual style of the Waverley series, as it was intended that this should be announced as the next novel by that author, while Ivanhoe should be put forward as the work of a new candidate for public favour, 'Lawrence Templeton'. That idea had been abandoned, but it was too late, even had it been desirable, to arrange to bring out the Monastery in the ornate style of Ivanhoe, and at its higher price. Longmans had the London publishing of this book. Constable could not complain. He was making a small fortune out of Ivanhoe, for which there was a sustained demand. Longmans could place important printing orders with James, which he was glad to have. They could not be entirely ignored.
But the book itself failed, as it deserved to do. It had a large sale, but those who read it were not pleased. It had good features, of course, as anything which Scott wrote would be sure to have, but in its broad effect it was dull, and, at times, silly; it was an immense contrast to Ivanhoe. Constable may have been well content that it had Longman's name on the cover. He had his own idea as to the next book that Scott should write for him. It should be about the Armada. Scott so far agreed that he said he would give him a book about Elizabeth. But the scene must be Kenilworth. Scott liked to work either by pure imagination, or on scenes that he knew. He had inspected Kenilworth twice - the second time with some care. He had a tale in his mind. It should be called Cumnor Hall. Constable said, why not call it Kenilworth? James objected that that would ruin the best book ever written. Worth a kennel! What a name! But Scott sided with Constable. Kenilworth it should be. Constable almost felt that he was writing these anonymous Waverley novels himself. He had named one of them previously. Now he had suggested a period and christened the book as well. There was only the remaining detail of writing it, which Scott could attend to quite competently. He promised that it should be out before the end of the year. But before he began it, he must go up to London for the formal acceptance of the title which had been offered him more than a year ago by the Regent who was now King. And he must be back before April was over, for Sophia was to be married to John Lockhart, and Scott shared the superstitious objection to a marriage in May.
He planned to visit London as soon as the Court rose, and before then there must be a hurried weekend visit to Abbotsford, for he had a vacant secluded cottage on his property, beyond Huntley Burn, which could be improved into a summer residence for John and Sophia. They would commence on a slender income, which does young people no harm, but he would do nothing to hinder the marriage. His own observation of life was too sound, his own experience too bitter, for there to be any doubt of that.
It was probably the first weekend that the weather had permitted that six-hours drive to Abbotsford, with any probability that they would be able to inspect the cottage on the following day, for the winter had been one of exceptional severity, with a depth of snow which forbade all rural occupations, and had lain unthawed during the previous month.
For on January 19th, Scott had been writing his letter of instructions to Laidlaw, which seems to have been a weekly custom when he was in Edinburgh, unless he could get down for the weekend, and had sent him £60 for current expenses, with this concluding paragraph:
"It makes me shiver in the midst of superfluous comforts to think of the distress of others. £10 of the £60 I wish you to distribute among our poorer neighbours so as may best aid them. I mean not only the actually indigent, but those who are in our phrase 'ill aff'. I am sure Dr. Scott will assist you with his advice in this labour of love. I think part of the wood-money, too, should be given among the Abbotstown folk if the storms keep them off work, as is like."
And a week later he sent another cheque for £50, with an added note of anxiety as to the condition of the people around Abbotsford under such climatic conditions. "Do not let the poor bodies want for a £5 or even a £10 more or less." It is clear that it would never be easy for Walter Scott to be rich while there was a need around him that was unrelieved.
The allusion to the 'wood-money' in the first letter is interesting, because it shows how early this fund had been instituted. Several years later he explained to Captain Basil Hall that his energetic and systematic forestry had resulted in the production of large quantities of fire-wood which he would willingly have given, but that he had doubted the wisdom of . . . general charity. ("I very, very rarely" he had assured Captain Hall, "give anything away"!) So he had put a nominal price on the timber, which people really liked better. They carted it off without any uncomfortable feeling of obligation, and the money they left behind was paid into a fund which was handed over to Dr. Scott, with private instructions to charge against it his attendances upon Scott's poorer neighbours, so that they might have equal advantages with the most affluent.
But the snow had gone, and the weather was fine enough on this Saturday afternoon in February when he came to Court with his weekend clothes under his gown; and when the morning's work was over, the carriage was waiting outside, with Peter on the box, and as many of the family as it would hold, beside himself and John and Sophia, crowded inside, and they drove off to Abbotsford. . . .
The next morning, John Ballantyne and Constable rode in to breakfast. Business still seemed to be flourishing with John, and his spirits were as irrepressible as ever, though he had the look of a sick man. He was very thin, and had trouble with his lungs. But he was of the usual ceaseless activity, and the expenses of his Trinity residence had not prevented him taking a hunting-box in the Leader valley, near Abbotsford, to which Constable came as his guest.
As to John's sources of income at this time, we get some light in a letter which Scott wrote to him during the previous autumn, when young Walter went up to London to get his officer's outfit, and Scott had been too ill to go with him. John was in London at that time: looking round for articles that he could buy cheaply and auction at higher prices in Edinburgh, and with a probable eye upon the publishers also, on behalf of the printing business.
Walter was staying with Miss Dumergue, and Scott would like John to look after him while in London, where he would be strange and shy, and particularly to oversee the cost of his outfit, some of the items of which seemed needless in themselves or extortionate in their cost. Scott adds that he wants John back in Edinburgh as soon as possible. He is short of money, and wants to fix up the contract for Ivanhoe, which is nearing completion, and he hints that if John is not on the spot to handle the negotiation it may not be easy to get that liberal percentage for him which Constable had been accustomed to pay.
John's regular business was that of an auctioneer of antiques and curios, in which he had established himself with substantial success, but he was also making a good income as Scott's literary agent, and in return for those easily-earned commissions, Scott regarded him - and he was evidently more than willing to be regarded - as at his disposal for any matter, business or private, in which he required his aid, whether it were to negotiate a printing order in London, or to act as his amanuensis at Abbotsford.
Now John drove in for breakfast in the early winter dawn. He was like Scott in preferring a horse to a carriage-seat, but he had Constable as his guest, and the publisher was a man of a different build. The day's programme had been arranged before the parties left Edinburgh, and John had fixed a place and time where his groom would meet him with Old Mortality, that milk-white hunter of which we have heard already.
But, being Sunday, Scott must first read prayers, and one of Jeremy Taylor's sermons, to guests and household, and then, while it was still before noon, the whole party set out for the two-mile walk to the cottage which was to be the young couple's future home, taking Huntley Burn on the way.
Two miles is not far, but it was a rough road. There were hillocks to be climbed, and ravines to be descended, and Scott, lame and still half-invalid though he might be, set a pace which was far from easy for the corpulent city publisher to maintain beside him. Lockhart remembered Constable stopping to wipe his forehead with the remark that it wasn't every author who should lead him a dance like that.
Indeed, Lockhart remembered all the events of that day very vividly, as well he might; it was a happy occasion for him, in itself and in that which it promised for future days, and though we may suppose that Sophia had her share of attention, it did not prevent the words of others being heard, the actions of others being recorded, in a retentive memory.
They stopped at Huntley Burn, where the Misses Fergusson comforted Constable with a good lunch, and then went on to inspect the cottage, and hold counsel upon the alterations which would be needed, and which Tom Purdie who was of the party (with the inevitable dogs - even Maida had come down to weekend at Abbotsford) received instructions to put in hand.
It may have been the happy association of the day which caused Lockhart to describe John Ballantyne's part in a manner which, though not free from the element of caricature which was probably unavoidable with him towards those whom he disliked, is none the less convincing because it is almost kindly.
"Johnny Ballantyne, a projector to the core, was particularly zealous about this embryo establishment. Foreseeing that he should have had walking enough ere he reached Huntley Burn, his dapper little Newmarket groom had been ordered to fetch Old Mortality thither, and now, mounted on his fine hunter, he capered about us, looking pallid and emaciated as a ghost, but as gay and cheerful as ever, and would fain have been permitted to ride over hedge and ditch to mark out the proper line of the future avenue. Scott admonished him that the country-people, if they saw him at such work, would take the whole party for heathens; and clapping spurs to his horse, he left us. "The devil's in the body," quoth Tom Purdie; "he'll be ower every yett atween this and Turn-again, though it be the Lord's day. I wadna wonder if he were to be ceeted before the Session." - "Be sure, Tam," cries Constable, "that you egg on the Dominie to blaw up his father - I wouldna grudge a hundred miles o'gait to see the ne'er-do-weel on the stool, and neither I'll be sworn, would the Sheriff." "Na, na," quoth the Sheriff, "we'll let sleeping dogs be, Tam."
It is a curious sidelight on the Scottish sabbatarianism of the period that it should have been considered even a half-jocular possibility that a visitor might be disciplined by the local minister for the crime of jumping gates on his host's estate. The Dominie was, of course, George Thomson, the tutor of the Scott boys, who was a son of the Melrose minister of that name.
It is significant that, in this one-day truce of his post-mortem animosities, Lockhart gives us a more convincing portrait of John Ballantyne than in any dozen of the onslaughts which he makes upon him. He is a 'projector to the core', alert with suggestions for the alterations of cottage and garden, though they are nothing to him, and with an irrepressible activity, even though he looked the sick man that he surely was. We get a glimpse of the sanguine spirit, the desire to do, to create, the restless irrepressible audacities, which, joined to a fine capacity for personal loyalty and a genuine love of art or beauty in any form, endeared him to Scott, who was an exceptionally sane judge of his fellow-men, and explain the words he spoke as, a year later, he walked away from John Ballantyne's grave: "I feel as if there would be less sunshine for me from this day forth".
But now John rode his own way, and the rest of the party walked back to Abbotsford, the young couple gay with hope, happy in the coming idyll of their own lives, and Scott, conscious that his strength would never last again as once it did, leaning on Tom Purdie's shoulder - his "Sunday pony" he took to calling him in these days - as he must learn to do increasingly in the years to come.
CHAPTER LXXI.
It was in the month following this expedition to Abbotsford that Scott at last went up to London to formally receive the title which was to be conferred upon him, Charlotte remaining in Scotland to superintend the preparations for Sophia's wedding, which had been fixed for the end of April, and for which Scott had, of course, undertaken to return.
It may not have been without weariness for him to experience, and it would surely be wearisome to record, the glittering crowds among whom he feasted and talked, and who jostled each other for introductions to the greatest poet and (who could doubt the authorship of those novels now?) the greatest novelist of the day. The letters which he wrote during this period are of the usual pattern, full of interest in the well-being of those he loved, gently protesting at times that fuller news was not sent to him, discussing presents promised or to be thought of, and ballasted with anecdotes and comment which is always shrewd, and almost always kindly.
He wrote to James of a sharp quarrel which had arisen between the houses of Longmans and Constable, regarding the terms on which his novels were to be marketed, in regard to which he had resolutely refused to take sides; he added that he would not willingly place his novels otherwise than with Constable now, except for one reason. "Had we not been controlled by the narrowness of discount, I would put nothing past him." It is an evident deduction that Scott had as many of Constable's bills on his hands, after the completion of the Ivanhoe deal, as he could find channels in which to discount them. The Monastery, coming out so soon after, could only be productive of immediate money by placing it with another publisher. That there should be need to consider such a point, after the sum obtained for Ivanhoe, is evidence of how closely expenditure followed the footsteps of income, unless it were the case that Constable was already finding it necessary to renew older bills as they fell due, in which case Scott would have an increased weight of these documents for his bankers to carry, of which there is no evidence at this period, though it is likely enough. But, in observing this, it is fair to remember that Scott was printer as well as author. Publishers paid with long-dated bills for the books themselves, at this period, as well as for the author's copyright, so that money had to be raised on these documents for the heavy wages-lists and other outlays that the printing of these large editions required. Under such circumstances, it might seem no more than prudence to obtain some variety in the signatures upon these long-dated documents.
"You say nothing of John," Scott added, in a postscript to this letter, "yet I am anxious about him." John's friends seem to have been more alarmed than he was himself by the physical symptoms of recent months.
In a letter to Charlotte of about the same date, Scott mentions his plan of completing Abbotsford on a scale appropriate to the new dignity he had undertaken, which would furnish him "with a handsome library, and you with a drawing-room and better bedroom, with good bedrooms for company, etc. It will cost me a little hard work to meet the expense, but I have been a good while idle".
The 'idleness' must have been that of last year's illness. It had not been of recent months. Ivanhoe had been published in December: the Monastery in March, when this letter was written. Two more novels were planned to be out before the year should end. Beside Constable's pet idea, Kenilworth, Scott was already resolved upon a sequel to the Monastery. His reason was characteristic. It is usually the most popular books for which sequels are written - and they usually fail: Scott was going to write a sequel now because he recognised the book to be a failure, and he would not admit defeat. It was not that he thought the public verdict perverse, and hoped to bring it to his own view. His correspondence shows that he agreed. The Monastery was an uninteresting book. Very well. He was not going to admit failure. He would continue the tale, and turn defeat into victory. It was a decision which reason hesitates to approve. It was magnificent, but it was not war.
The decision to enlarge the Abbotsford plans was unfortunate, as we can see now. It was not the cost of the building alone, it was the entertaining of the ceaseless visitors who would come from all parts of the world during the next five years, and be entertained in Scott's unstinting way - unstinting, not only of money but of his own priceless time - which would be made possible by those added rooms. All this was involved: and adequate or more than adequate as Scott's income might appear to be for all possible demands that might be made upon it, yet it was a fact that money was being spent very promptly as it came in: it was a fact that the publishers' payments were in the form of bills for which Scott might be able to obtain cash, but which cash he would be liable to be called upon to refund if at any time they should fail, which is always a commercial possibility, however remote it may seem: it was a fact that the printing business, however active and prosperous it might now be, was working on a capital which was supported by bills in the same way: and it was a fact also that the printing business was largely occupied in production of Scott's own books, which did not make its prosperity any the less real while the publishers met their engagements to it, but did place Scott in the added jeopardy that, if these publishers should fail, he stood to lose not only as author, but as printer also. It did not increase the probability of such an event, but it doubled the severity of its consequences, if it should occur.
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