The Journal of Sir Walter Scott Part 18

Hurst and Robinson, the Yorks.h.i.+re tykes, have failed after all their swaggering, and Longman and Co. take _Woodstock_. But if _Woodstock_ and _Napoleon_ take with the public I shall care little about their insolvency, and if they do not, I don't think their solvency would have lasted long. Constable is sorely broken down.

"Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart That's sorry yet for thee."[255]

His conduct has not been what I deserved at his hand, but, I believe that, walking blindfold himself, he misled me without _malice prepense_.

It is best to think so at least, unless the contrary be demonstrated. To nourish angry pa.s.sions against a man whom I really liked would be to lay a blister on my own heart.

_April_ 25.--Having fallen behind on the 23d, I wrought pretty hard yesterday; but I had so much reading, and so many proofs to correct, that I did not get over the daily task, so am still a little behind, which I shall soon make up. I have got _Nap._, d--n him, into Italy, where with bad eyes and obscure maps, I have a little difficulty in tracing out his victorious chess-play.

Lady Scott was better yesterday, certainly better, and was sound asleep when I looked in this morning. Walked in the afternoon. I looked at a hooded crow building in the thicket with great pleasure. It is a shorter date than my neighbour Torwoodlee[256] thought of, when he told me, as I was bragging a little of my plantations, that it would be long ere crows built in them.

_April_ 26.--Letters from Walter and Lockharts; all well and doing well.

Lady S. continues better, so the clouds are breaking up. I made a good day's work yesterday, and sent off proofs, letters, and copy this morning; so, if this fine day holds good, I will take a drive at one.

There is an operation called putting to rights--_Scottice_, _redding up_--which puts me into a fever. I always leave any attempt at it half executed, and so am worse off than before, and have only embroiled the fray. Then my long back aches with stooping into the low drawers of old cabinets, and my neck is strained with staring up to their attics. Then you are sure never to get the thing you want. I am certain they creep about and hide themselves. Tom Moore[257] gave us the insurrection of the papers. That was open war, but this is a system of privy plot and conspiracy, by which those you seek creep out of the way, and those you are not wanting perk themselves in your face again and again, until at last you throw them into some corner in a pa.s.sion, and then they are the objects of research in their turn. I have read in a French Eastern tale of an enchanted person called _L'homme qui cherche_, a sort of "Sir Guy the Seeker," always employed in collecting the beads of a chaplet, which, by dint of gramarye, always dispersed themselves when he was about to fix the last upon the string. It was an awful doom; transmogrification into the Laidleyworm of Spindlestaneheugh[258] would have been a blessing in comparison. Now, the explanation of all this is, that I have been all this morning seeking a parcel of sticks of sealing wax which I brought from Edinburgh, and the "_Weel Brandt and Vast houd_"[259] has either melted without the agency of fire or barricaded itself within the drawers of some cabinet, which has declared itself in a state of insurrection. A choice subject for a journal, but what better have I?

I did not quite finish my task to-day, nay, I only did one third of it.

It is so difficult to consult the maps after candles are lighted, or to read the Moniteur, that I was obliged to adjourn. The task is three pages or leaves of my close writing per diem, which corresponds to about a sheet (16 pages) of _Woodstock_, and about 12 of _Bonaparte_, which is a more comprehensive page. But I was not idle neither, and wrote some _Balaam_[260] for Lockhart's _Review_. Then I was in hand a leaf above the tale, so I am now only a leaf behind it.

_April_ 27.--This is one of those abominable April mornings which deserve the name of _Sans Cullotides_, as being cold, beggarly, coa.r.s.e, savage, and intrusive. The earth lies an inch deep with snow, to the confusion of the wors.h.i.+ppers of Flora. By the way, Bogie attended his professional dinner and show of flowers at Jedburgh yesterday. Here is a beautiful sequence to their _floralia_. It is this uncertainty in April, and the descent of snow and frost when one thinks themselves clear of them, and that after fine encouraging weather, that destroys our Scottish fruits and flowers. It is as imprudent to attach yourself to flowers in Scotland as to a caged bird; the cat, sooner or later, snaps up one, and these--_Sans Cullotides_--annihilate the other. It was but yesterday I was admiring the glorious flourish of the pears and apricots, and now hath come the killing frost.[261]

But let it freeze without, we are comfortable within. Lady Scott continues better, and, we may hope, has got the turn of her disease.

_April_ 28.--Beautiful morning, but ice as thick as pasteboard, too surely showing that the night has made good yesterday's threat.

Dalgleish, with his most melancholy face, conveys the most doleful tidings from Bogie. But servants are fond of the woful, it gives such consequence to the person who communicates bad news.

Wrote two letters, and read till twelve, and then for a stout walk among the plantations till four. Found Lady Scott obviously better, I think, than I had left her in the morning. In walking I am like a spavined horse, and heat as I get on. The flouris.h.i.+ng plantations around me are a great argument for me to labour hard. "_Barbarus has segetes?_" I will write my finger-ends off first.

_April_ 29.--I was always afraid, privately, that _Woodstock_ would not stand the test. In that case my fate would have been that of the unfortunate minstrel trumpeter Maclean at the battle of Sheriffmuir--

"By misfortune he happened to fa', man; By saving his neck His trumpet did break, And came off without music at a', man."[262]

J.B. corroborated my doubts by his raven-like croaking and criticising; but the good fellow writes me this morning that he is written down an a.s.s, and that the approbation is unanimous. It is but Edinburgh, to be sure; but Edinburgh has always been a harder critic than London. It is a great mercy, and gives encouragement for future exertion. Having written two leaves this morning, I think I will turn out to my walk, though two hours earlier than usual. Egad, I could not persuade myself that it was such bad _Balaam_ after all.

_April_ 30.--I corrected this morning a quant.i.ty of proofs and copy, and dawdled about a little, the weather of late becoming rather milder, though not much of that. Methinks Duty looks as if she were but half-pleased with me; but would the Pagan b.i.t.c.h have me work on the Sunday?

FOOTNOTES:

[234] Ben Jonson's _Every Man in his Humour_, Act IV, Sc. 5.

[235] The reader will understand that the Novel was sold for behoof of James Ballantyne & Co.'s creditors, and that this sum includes the cost of printing the first edition as well as paper.--J.G.L.

[236] Eident, _i.e._ eagerly diligent.--J.G.L.

[237] These lines slightly altered from Logan.--J.G.L.

[238] Lippened, _i.e._ relied upon.--J.G.L.

[239] 2 _King Henry VI_., Act IV. Sc. 10, slightly varied.

[240] In a letter of the same day he says--"My interest, as you might have known, lies Windsor way."--J.G.L.

[241] William Coulter, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, died in office, April 1810, and was said to have been greatly consoled on his deathbed by the prospect of so grand a funeral as must needs occur in his case.--Scott _used to take him off_ as saying, at some public meeting, "Gentlemen, though doomed to the trade of a stocking-weaver, I was born with the soul of a _Sheepio_" (Scipio).

[242] _Quarterly Review_, No. 66: Lockhart's review of Sheridan's Life.

[243] It is interesting to read what James Ballantyne has recorded on this subject.--"Sir Walter at all times laboured under the strangest delusion, as to the merits of his own works. On this score he was not only inaccessible to compliments, but even insensible to the truth; in fact, at all times, he hated to talk of any of his productions; as, for instance, he greatly preferred Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley's _Frankenstein_ to any of his own romances. I remember one day, when Mr. Erskine and I were dining with him, either immediately before or immediately after the publication of one of the best of the latter, and were giving it the high praise we thought it deserved, he asked us abruptly whether we had read _Frankenstein_. We answered that we had not. 'Ah,' he said, 'have patience, read _Frankenstein_, and you will be better able to judge of----.' You will easily judge of the disappointment thus prepared for us. When I ventured, as I sometimes did, to press him on the score of the reputation he had gained, he merely asked, as if he determined to be done with the discussion, 'Why, what is the value of a reputation which probably will not last above one or two generations?' One morning, I recollect, I went into his library, shortly after the publication of the _Lady of the Lake_, and finding Miss Scott there, who was then a very young girl, I asked her, 'Well, Miss Sophia, how do you like the _Lady of the Lake_, with which everybody is so much enchanted?' Her answer was, with affecting simplicity, 'Oh, I have not read it. Papa says there's nothing so bad for young girls as reading bad poetry.' Yet he could not be said to be hostile to compliments in the abstract--nothing was so easy as to flatter him about a farm or a field, and his manner on such an occasion plainly showed that he was really open to such a compliment, and liked it. In fact, I can recall only one instance in which he was fairly cheated into pleasure by a tribute paid to his literary merit, and it was a striking one. Somewhere betwixt two and three years ago I was dining at the Rev. Dr. Brunton's, with a large and accomplished party, of whom Dr. Chalmers was one. The conversation turned upon Sir Walter Scott's romances generally, and the course of it led me very shortly afterwards to call on Sir Walter, and address him as follows--I knew the task was a bold one, but I thought I saw that I should get well through it--'Well, Sir Walter,' I said, 'I was dining yesterday, where your works became the subject of very copious conversation.' His countenance immediately became overcast--and his answer was, 'Well, I think, I must say your party might have been better employed.' 'I knew it would be your answer,'--the conversation continued,--'nor would I have mentioned it, but that Dr. Chalmers was present, and was by far the most decided in his expressions of pleasure and admiration of any of the party.' This instantly roused him to the most vivid animation. 'Dr. Chalmers?' he repeated; 'that throws new light on the subject--to have produced any effect upon the mind of such a man as Dr. Chalmers is indeed something to be proud of. Dr. Chalmers is a man of the truest genius. I will thank you to repeat all you can recollect that he said on the subject.' I did so accordingly, and I can recall no other similar instance."--_James Ballantyne's MS._

[244] For the life led by many of the _detenus_ in France before 1814, and for anecdotes regarding Sir Alexander Don, see Sir James Campbell of Ardkinglas' _Memoirs_, 2 vols. 8vo, London 1832, vol. ii. chaps. 7 and 8.

[245] Hugh Scott of Harden, afterwards (in 1835) Lord Polwarth--succeeded by his son Henry, in 1841.

[246] Henry Jas. Scott, who succeeded to the Barony of Montagu on the demise of his grandfather, the Duke of Montagu, was the son of Henry, 3d Duke of Buccleuch. At Lord M.'s death in 1845 the Barony of Montagu expired.

[247] Henry Scott, afterwards Lord Polwarth.

[248] Slightly altered from Pope's _Eloisa to Abelard_.

[249] The Catalogue of Criminals brought before the Circuit Courts at one time was termed in Scotland the Portuous Roll. The name appears to have been derived from the practice in early times of delivering to the judges lists of Criminals for Trials _in Portu_, or in the gateway as they entered the various towns on their circuit ayres.--Chambers's _Book of Scotland_, p. 310.

Jamieson suggests that the word may have come from "Porteous" as originally applied to a Breviary, or portable book of prayers, which might easily be transferred to a portable roll of indictments.

[250] _Quarterly Review_, No. 66, Pepys' _Diary_.

[251] _Twelfth Night_, Act II. Sc. 3.

[252] See Froissart's account of the Battle of Crecy, Bk. i. cap. 129.

[253] _Merry Wives of Windsor_, Act iv. Sc. 1.

[254] See Goldsmith's Comedy, Act III.

[255] _King Lear_, Act III. Sc. 2.

[256] James Pringle, Convener of Selkirks.h.i.+re for more than half a century. For an account of the Pringles of Torwoodlee, see Mr. Craig Brown's _History of Selkirks.h.i.+re_, vol. i. pp. 459-470.

[257] "_The Insurrection of the Papers--a Dream_." _The Twopenny Post-Bag_, 12mo, London, 1812.

[258] The well-known ballads on these two North-country legends were published by M.G. Lewis and Mr. Lambe, of Norham. "Sir Guy," in the _Tales of Wonder_, and "The Worm," in Ritson's _Northumberland Garland_.--See Child's _English and Scottish Ballads_, 8 vols. 12mo, Boston, 1857, vol. i. p. 386.

[259] _Fyn Segellak wel brand en vast houd_: old brand used by sealing-wax makers.

[260] _Balaam_ is the cant name in a Newspaper Office for asinine paragraphs, about monstrous productions of Nature and the like, kept standing in type to be used whenever the real news of the day leaves an awkward s.p.a.ce that must be filled up somehow.--J.G.L.

[261] _Henry VIII._ Act III. Sc. 2.

[262] Ritson, _Scottish Songs_, xvi.