Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott Volume VI Part 2

_From the painting by Sir D. Macnee_]

Chiefly, my facetious friend, was I enamored of the very lively representation of Bailie Nicol Jarvie, in so much that I became desirous to communicate to thee my great admiration thereof, nothing doubting that it will give thee satisfaction to be apprised of the same. Yet further, in case thou shouldst be of that numerous cla.s.s of persons who set less store by good words than good deeds, and understanding that there is a.s.signed unto each stage-player a special night, called a benefit (it will do thee no harm to know that the phrase cometh from two Latin words, _bene_ and _facio_), on which their friends and patrons show forth their benevolence, I now send thee mine in the form of a five-ell web (_hoc jocose_, to express a note for 5), as a meet present for the Bailie, himself a weaver, and the son of a worthy deacon of that craft. The which propine I send thee in token that it is my purpose, business and health permitting, to occupy the central place of the pit on the night of thy said beneficiary or benefit.

Friend Mackay! from one, whose profession it is to teach others, thou must excuse the freedom of a caution. I trust thou wilt remember that, as excellence in thine art cannot be attained without much labor, so neither can it be extended, or even maintained, without constant and unremitted exertion; and further, that the decorum of a performer's private character (and it gladdeth me to hear that thine is respectable) addeth not a little to the value of his public exertions.

Finally, in respect there is nothing perfect in this world,--at least I have never received a wholly faultless version from the very best of my pupils--I pray thee not to let Rob Roy twirl thee around in the ecstasy of thy joy, in regard it oversteps the limits of nature, which otherwise thou so sedulously preservest in thine admirable national portraiture of Bailie Nicol Jarvie.--I remain thy sincere friend and well-wisher,

JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM.

CHAPTER XLIV

Recurrence of Scott's Illness. -- Death of the Duke of Buccleuch.

-- Letters to Captain Ferguson, Lord Montagu, Mr. Southey, and Mr. Shortreed. -- Scott's Sufferings while Dictating the Bride of Lammermoor. -- Anecdotes by James Ballantyne, Etc. -- Appearance of the Third Series of Tales of My Landlord. -- Anecdote of the Earl of Buchan.

1819

It had been Scott's purpose to spend the Easter vacation in London, and receive his baronetcy; but this was prevented by the serious recurrence of the malady which so much alarmed his friends in the early part of the year 1817, and which had continued ever since to torment him at intervals. The subsequent correspondence will show that afflictions of various sorts were acc.u.mulated on his head at the same period:--

TO THE LORD MONTAGU, DITTON PARK, WINDSOR.

EDINBURGH, 4th March, 1819.

MY DEAR LORD,--The Lord President tells me he has a letter from his son, Captain Charles Hope, R. N., who had just taken leave of our High Chief, upon the deck of the Liffey. He had not seen the Duke for a fortnight, and was pleasingly surprised to find his health and general appearance so very much improved. For my part, having watched him with such unremitting attention, I feel very confident in the effect of a change of air and of climate. It is with great pleasure that I find the Duke has received an answer from me respecting a matter about which he was anxious, and on which I could make his mind quite easy. His Grace wished Adam Ferguson to a.s.sist him as his confidential secretary; and with all the scrupulous delicacy that belongs to his character, he did not like to propose this, except through my medium as a common friend. Now, I can answer for Adam, as I can for myself, that he will have the highest pleasure in giving a.s.sistance in every possible way the Duke can desire; and if forty years' intimacy can ent.i.tle one man to speak for another, I believe the Duke can find nowhere a person so highly qualified for such a confidential situation. He was educated for business, understands it well, and was long a military secretary;--his temper and manners your Lords.h.i.+p can judge as well as I can, and his worth and honor are of the very first water. I confess I should not be surprised if the Duke should wish to continue the connection even afterwards, for I have often thought that two hours' letter-writing, which is his Grace's daily allowance, is rather worse than the duty of a Clerk of Session, because there is no vacation. Much of this might surely be saved by an intelligent friend, on whose style of expression, prudence, and secrecy, his Grace could put perfect reliance. Two words marked on any letter by his own hand would enable such a person to refuse more or less positively--to grant directly or conditionally--or, in short, to maintain the exterior forms of the very troublesome and extensive correspondence which his Grace's high situation entails upon him. I think it is Monsieur le Duc de Saint-Simon who tells us of one of Louis XIV.'s ministers _qu'il avoit la plume_--which he explains by saying that it was his duty to imitate the King's handwriting so closely, as to be almost undistinguishable, and make him on all occasions _parler tres n.o.blement_. I wonder how the Duke gets on without such a friend. In the mean time, however, I am glad I can a.s.sure him of Ferguson's willing and ready a.s.sistance while abroad; and I am happy to find still further that he had got that a.s.surance before they sailed, for tedious hours occur on board of s.h.i.+p, when it will serve as a relief to talk over any of the private affairs which the Duke wishes to entrust to him.

I have been very unwell from a visitation of my old enemy, the cramp in my stomach, which much resembles, as I conceive, the process by which _the deil_ would make one's _king's-hood_ into a _spleuchan_,[16] according to the anathema of Burns.

Unfortunately, the opiates which the medical people think indispensable to relieve spasms, bring on a habit of body which has to be counteracted by medicines of a different tendency, so as to produce a most disagreeable see-saw--a kind of pull-devil, pull-baker contention, the field of battle being my unfortunate _praecordia_. I am better to-day, and I trust shall be able to dispense with these alternations. I still hope to be in London in April.

I will write to the Duke regularly, for distance of place acts in a contrary ratio on the mind and on the eye: trifles, instead of being diminished, as in prospect, become important and interesting, and therefore he shall have a budget of them. Hogg is here busy with his Jacobite songs. I wish he may get handsomely through, for he is profoundly ignorant of history, and it is an awkward thing to read in order that you may write.[17] I give him all the help I can, but he sometimes poses me. For instance, he came yesterday, open mouth, inquiring what great dignified clergyman had distinguished himself at Killiecrankie--not exactly the scene where one would have expected a churchman to s.h.i.+ne--and I found, with some difficulty, that he had mistaken Major-General Canon, called, in Kennedy's Latin Song, _Canonicus Gallovidiensis_, for the canon of a cathedral. _Ex ungue leonem._ Ever, my dear Lord, your truly obliged and faithful

WALTER SCOTT.

[Footnote 16: _King's-Hood_--"The second of the four stomachs of ruminating animals." JAMIESON.--_Spleuchan_--The Gaelic name of the Highlander's tobacco-pouch.]

[Footnote 17: "I am sure I produced two volumes of Jacobite Relics, such as no man in Scotland or England could have produced but myself."

So says Hogg, _ipse_--see his _Autobiography_, 1832, p. 88. I never saw the Shepherd so elated as he was on the appearance of a very severe article on this book in the _Edinburgh Review_; for, to his exquisite delight, the hostile critic selected for _exceptive_ encomium one "old Jacobite strain," namely, _Donald M'Gillavry_, which Hogg had fabricated the year before. Scott, too, enjoyed this joke almost as much as the Shepherd.]

Before this letter reached Lord Montagu, his brother had sailed for Lisbon. The Duke of Wellington had placed his house in that capital (the Palace _das Necessidades_) at the Duke of Buccleuch's disposal; and in the affectionate care and cheerful society of Captain Ferguson, the invalid had every additional source of comfort that his friends could have wished for him. But the malady had gone too far to be arrested by a change of climate; and the letter which he had addressed to Scott, when about to embark at Portsmouth, is endorsed with these words: "_The last I ever received from my dear friend the Duke of Buccleuch.--Alas! alas!_" The princ.i.p.al object of this letter was to remind Scott of his promise to sit to Raeburn for a portrait, to be hung up in that favorite residence where the Duke had enjoyed most of his society. "My prodigious undertaking," writes his Grace, "of a west wing at Bowhill, is begun. A library of forty-one feet by twenty-one is to be added to the present drawing-room. A s.p.a.ce for one picture is reserved over the fireplace, and in this warm situation I intend to place the Guardian of Literature. I should be happy to have my friend Maida appear. It is now almost proverbial, 'Walter Scott and his Dog.'

Raeburn should be warned that I am as well acquainted with my friend's hands and arms as with his nose--and Vand.y.k.e was of my opinion. Many of R.'s works are shamefully finished--the face studied, but everything else neglected. This is a fair opportunity of producing something really worthy of his skill."

I shall insert by and by Scott's answer--which never reached the Duke's hand--with another letter of the same date to Captain Ferguson; but I must first introduce one, addressed a fortnight earlier to Mr.

Southey, who had been distressed by the accounts he received of Scott's health from an American traveller, Mr. George Ticknor of Boston--a friend, and worthy to be such, of Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton Irving.[18]

The Poet Laureate, by the way, had adverted also to an impudent trick of a London bookseller, who shortly before this time announced certain volumes of Grub Street manufacture, as "A New Series of the Tales of my Landlord," and who, when John Ballantyne, as the "agent for the Author of Waverley," published a declaration that the volumes thus advertised were not from that writer's pen, met John's declaration by an audacious rejoinder--impeaching his authority, and a.s.serting that nothing but the personal appearance in the field of the gentleman for whom Ballantyne pretended to act, could shake his belief that he was himself in the confidence of the true Simon Pure.[19] This affair gave considerable uneasiness at the time, and for a moment the dropping of Scott's mask seems to have been p.r.o.nounced advisable by both Ballantyne and Constable. But he was not to be worked upon by such means as these. He calmly replied, "The author who lends himself to such a trick must be a blockhead--let them publish, and that will serve our purpose better than anything we ourselves could do." I have forgotten the names of the "tales," which, being published accordingly, fell still-born from the press. Mr. Southey had likewise dropped some allusions to another newspaper story of Scott's being seriously engaged in a dramatic work--a rumor which probably originated in the a.s.sistance he had lent to Terry in some of the recent highly popular adaptations of his novels to the purposes of the stage; though it is not impossible that some hint of the _Devorgoil_ matter may have transpired. "It is reported," said the Laureate, "that you are about to bring forth a play, and I am greatly in hopes it may be true; for I am verily persuaded that in this course you might run as brilliant a career as you have already done in narrative--both in prose and rhyme;--for as for believing that you have a double in the field--not I! Those same powers would be equally certain of success in the drama, and were you to give them a dramatic direction, and reign for a third seven years upon the stage, you would stand alone in literary history. Indeed already I believe that no man ever afforded so much delight to so great a number of his contemporaries in this or in any other country. G.o.d bless you, my dear Scott, and believe me ever yours affectionately, R. S." Mr. Southey's letter had further announced his wife's safe delivery of a son; the approach of the conclusion of his History of Brazil; and his undertaking of the Life of Wesley.

[Footnote 18: [In _The Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor_ will be found some interesting notes regarding his visits to Castle Street, and two days spent at Abbotsford in March, 1819.]]

[Footnote 19: June, 1839.--A friend has sent me the following advertis.e.m.e.nt from an Edinburgh newspaper of 1819:--

TALES OF MY LANDLORD.

"The Public are respectfully informed, that the Work announced for publication under the t.i.tle of 'TALES OF MY LANDLORD, Fourth Series, containing _Pontefract Castle_,' is not written by the Author of the First, Second, and Third Series of TALES OF MY LANDLORD, of which we are the Proprietors and Publishers.

ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO."]

TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ., KESWICK.

ABBOTSFORD, 4th April, 1819.

MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--Tidings from you must be always acceptable, even were the bowl in the act of breaking at the fountain--and my health is at present very _totterish_. I have gone through a cruel succession of spasms and sickness, which have terminated in a special fit of the jaundice, so that I might sit for the image of Plutus, the G.o.d of specie, so far as complexion goes. I shall like our American acquaintance the better that he has sharpened your remembrance of me, but he is also a wondrous fellow for romantic lore and antiquarian research, considering his country.

I have now seen four or five well-lettered Americans, ardent in pursuit of knowledge, and free from the ignorance and forward presumption which distinguish many of their countrymen. I hope they will inoculate their country with a love of letters, so nearly allied to a desire of peace and a sense of public justice--virtues to which the great Transatlantic community is more strange than could be wished. Accept my best and most sincere wishes for the health and strength of your latest pledge of affection. When I think what you have already suffered, I can imagine with what mixture of feelings this event must necessarily affect you; but you need not to be told that we are in better guidance than our own. I trust in G.o.d this late blessing will be permanent, and inherit your talents and virtues. When I look around me, and see how many men seem to make it their pride to misuse high qualifications, can I be less interested than I truly am in the fate of one who has uniformly dedicated his splendid powers to maintaining the best interests of humanity? I am very angry at the time you are to be in London, as I must be there in about a fortnight, or so soon as I can shake off this depressing complaint, and it would add not a little that I should meet you there. My chief purpose is to put my eldest son into the army. I could have wished he had chosen another profession, but have no t.i.tle to combat a choice which would have been my own had my lameness permitted. Walter has apparently the dispositions and habits fitted for the military profession, a very quiet and steady temper, an attachment to mathematics and their application, good sense, and uncommon personal strength and activity, with address in most exercises, particularly horsemans.h.i.+p.

--I had written thus far last week when I was interrupted, first by the arrival of our friend Ticknor with Mr. Cogswell, another well-accomplished Yankee--(by the bye, we have them of all sorts, _e. g._, one Mr. ****, rather a fine man, whom the girls have christened, with some humor, the Yankee Doodle _Dandie_). They have had Tom Drum's entertainment, for 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, and through the heavy fire of medical artillery, scarce less exhausting--for bleeding, blistering, calomel, and ipecacuanha have gone on without intermission--while, during the agony of the spasms, laudanum became necessary in the most liberal doses, though inconsistent with the general treatment. 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 private and public relations, as fortunate perhaps as was ever lived, up to this period; and whether pain or misfortune may lie 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 that has never mixed with my nature, nor has even unwonted good fortune rendered my love of life tenacious; and so I can look forward to the possible conclusion of these scenes of agony with reasonable equanimity, and suffer chiefly through the sympathetic distress of my family.

--Other ten days have pa.s.sed away, for I would not send this Jeremiad to tease you, while its termination seemed doubtful. For the present,

"The game is done--I've won, I've won, Quoth she, and whistles thrice."[20]

I am this day, for the first time, free from the relics of my disorder, and, except in point of weakness, perfectly well. But no broken-down hunter had ever so many sprung sinews, whelks, and bruises. I am like Sancho after the doughty affair of the Yanguesian Carriers, and all through the unnatural twisting of the muscles under the influence of that _Goule_, the cramp. I must be swathed in Goulard and Rosemary spirits--_probatum est_.

I shall not fine and renew a lease of popularity upon the theatre. To write for low, ill-informed, and conceited actors, whom you must please, for your success is necessarily at their mercy, I cannot away with. How would you, or how do you think I should relish being the object of such a letter as Kean[21] wrote t'other day to a poor author, who, though a pedantic blockhead, had at least the right to be treated as a gentleman by a copper-laced, twopenny tearmouth, rendered mad by conceit and success? Besides, if this objection were out of the way, I do not think the character of the audience in London is such that one could have the least pleasure in pleasing them. One half come to prosecute their debaucheries, so openly that it would degrade a bagnio. Another set to snooze off their beef-steaks and port wine; a third are critics of the fourth column of the newspaper; fas.h.i.+on, wit, or literature, there is not; and, on the whole, I would far rather write verses for mine honest friend Punch and his audience. The only thing that could tempt me to be so silly, would be to a.s.sist a friend in such a degrading task who was to have the whole profit and shame of it.

Have you seen decidedly the most full and methodized collection of Spanish romances (ballads) published by the industry of Depping (Altenburgh and Leipsic), 1817? It is quite delightful.

Ticknor had set me agog to see it, without affording me any hope it could be had in London, when by one of these fortunate chances which have often marked my life, a friend, who had been lately on the Continent, came unexpectedly to inquire for me, and plucked it forth _par maniere de cadeau_. G.o.d prosper you, my dear Southey, in your labors; but do not work too hard--_experto crede_. This conclusion, as well as the confusion of my letter, like the Bishop of Grenada's sermon, savors of the apoplexy. My most respectful compliments attend Mrs. S.

Yours truly,

WALTER SCOTT.

P. S.--I shall long to see the conclusion of the Brazil history, which, as the interest comes nearer, must rise even above the last n.o.ble volume. Wesley you alone can touch; but will you not have the hive about you? When I was about twelve years old, I heard him preach more than once, standing on a chair, in Kelso churchyard. He was a most venerable figure, but his sermons were vastly too colloquial for the taste of Saunders. He told many excellent stories. One I remember, which he said had happened to him at Edinburgh. "A drunken dragoon," said Wesley, "was commencing an a.s.sertion in military fas.h.i.+on, G--d eternally d--n me, just as I was pa.s.sing. I touched the poor man on the shoulder, and when he turned round fiercely, said calmly, you mean _G.o.d bless you_." In the mode of telling the story he failed not to make us sensible how much his patriarchal appearance, and mild yet bold rebuke, overawed the soldier, who touched his hat, thanked him, and, I think, came to chapel that evening.

[Footnote 20: These lines are from Coleridge's _Ancient Mariner_.]

[Footnote 21: The reader will find something about this actor's quarrel with Mr. Bucke, author of _The Italians_, in Barry Cornwall's _Life of Kean_, vol. ii. p. 178.]

TO ROBERT SHORTREED, ESQ., SHERIFF-SUBSt.i.tUTE, ETC., JEDBURGH.

ABBOTSFORD, 13th April, 1819.

DEAR BOB,--I am very desirous to procure, and as soon as possible, Mrs. Shortreed's excellent receipt for making yeast.

The Duke of Buccleuch complains extremely of the sour yeast at Lisbon as disagreeing with his stomach, and I never tasted half such good bread as Mrs. Shortreed has baked at home. I am sure you will be as anxious as I am that the receipt should be forwarded to his Grace as soon as possible. I remember Mrs.