The Journal of Sir Walter Scott Part 45

_June_ 26.--Well, if ever I saw such another thing since my mother bound up my head![537] Here is nine of clock strucken and I am still fast asleep abed. I have not done the like of this many a day. However, it cannot be helped. Went to Court, which detained me till two o'clock. A walk home consumed the hour to three! Wrote in the Court, however, to the Duke of Wellington and Lord Bloomfield. and that is a good job over.

I have a letter from a member of the Commission of the Psalmody of the Kirk, zealous and pressing. I shall answer him, I think.[538] One from Sir James Stuart,[539] on fire with Corfe Castle, with a drawing of King Edward, occupying one page, as he hurries down the steep, mortally wounded by the a.s.sa.s.sin. Singular power of speaking at once to the eye and the ear. Dined at home. After dinner sorted papers. Rather idle.

_June_ 27.--Corrected proofs and wrote till breakfast. Then the Court.

Called on Skene and Charles K. Sharpe, and did not get home until three o'clock, and then so wet as to require a total change. We dine at Hector Buchanan Macdonald's, where there are sometimes many people and little conversation. Sent a little chest of books by the carrier to Abbotsford.

A visit from a smart young man, Gustavus Schwab of Konigsberg; he gives a flattering picture of Prussia, which is preparing for freedom. The King must keep his word, though, or the people may chance to tire of waiting. Dined at H.B. Macdonald's with rather a young party for Colin M'Kenzie and me.

_June_ 28.--Wrote a little and corrected proofs. How many things have I unfinished at present?

Chronicles, first volume not ended.

do., second volume begun.

Introduction to ditto.

Tales of My Grandfather.

Essay on Highlands. This unfinished, owing to certain causes, chiefly want of papers and books to fill up blanks, which I will get at Abbotsford. Came home through rain about two, and commissioned John Stevenson to call at three about binding some books. Dined with Sophia; visited, on invitation, a fine old little Commodore Trunnion, who, on reading a part of Napoleon's history, with which he had himself been interested, as commanding a flotilla, thought he had detected a mistake, but was luckily mistaken, to my great delight.

"I fear thee, ancient mariner."

To be cross-examined by those who have seen the true thing is the devil.

And yet these eye-witnesses are not all right in what they repeat neither, indeed cannot be so, since you will have dozens of contradictions in their statements.

_June_ 29.--A distressing letter from Haydon; imprudent, probably, but who is not? A man of rare genius. What a pity I gave that 10 to Craig!

But I have plenty of ten pounds sure, and I may make it something. I will get 100 at furthest when I come back from the country. Wrote at proofs, but no copy; I fear I shall wax fat and kick against Madam Duty, but I augur better things.

Just as we were sitting down to dinner, Cadell burst in in high spirits with the sale of _Napoleon_[540] the orders for which pour in, and the public report is favourable. Detected two gross blunders though, which I have ordered for cancel. Supped (for a wonder) with Colin Mackenzie and a bachelor party. Mr. Williams[541] was there, whose extensive information, learning, and lively talent makes him always pleasant company. Up till twelve--a debauch for me nowadays.

_June_ 30.--_Redd up_ my things for moving,[542] which will clear my hands a little on the next final flitting. Corrected proof-sheets.

Williams told me an English bull last night. A fellow of a college, deeply learned, sitting at a public entertainment beside a foreigner, tried every means to enter into conversation, but the stranger could speak no dead language, the Doctor no living one but his own. At last the scholar, in great extremity, was enlightened by a happy "_Nonne potes loqui c.u.m digitis_?"--said as if the difficulty was solved at once.

_Abbotsford_.--Reached this about six o'clock.[543]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF ABBOTS FORD FROM THE ORDNANCE SURVEY 1858.]

FOOTNOTES:

[527] Sheridan's _Critic_, Act I. Sc, 1.

[528] "No sooner had the Sun uttered these words than Fortune, as if she had been playing on a cymbal, began to unwind her wheel, which, whirling about like a hurricane, huddled all the world into an unparalleled confusion. Fortune gave a mighty squeak, saying, 'Fly, wheel, and the devil drive thee.'"--_Fortune in her Wits_, Quevedo. English trans.

(1798), vol. iii. p. 107.

[529] Burns: "On a Scotch Bard, gone to the West Indies."

[530] _Vivian Grey_, by Benjamin Disraeli, was published anonymously in 5 vols. 12mo, 1826-7.

[531] If the reader turns to December 18, 1825, he will see that this is not the first allusion in the Journal to his "first love,"--an innocent attachment, to which we owe the tenderest pages, not only of _Redgauntlet_ (1824), but of the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ (1805), and of _Rokeby_ (1813). In all these works the heroine has certain distinctive features drawn from one and the same haunting dream. The lady was "Williamina Belches, sole child and heir of a gentleman who was a cadet of the ancient family of Invermay, and who afterwards became Sir John Stuart of Fettercairn." She married Sir William Forbes in 1797 and died in 1810.--_Life_, vol. i. p. 333; Shairp's _Memoirs of Princ.i.p.al Forbes_, pp. 4, 5, 8vo, London, 1873, where her portrait, engraved from a miniature, is given.

[532] Hugh Cleghorn had been Professor of Civil History in St. Andrews for ten years, afterwards becoming tutor to the Earl of Home, and subsequently employed by our Government in various foreign missions. A glimpse of his work is obtainable in Southey's _Life, of Dr. Andrew Bell_. Mr. Cleghorn died in 1833, aged 83.

[533] Count Paul de Remusat has been good enough to give me another view of this visit which will be read with interest:--"118 Faubourg St.

Honore, February 10, 1890.--.... My father has often spoken to me of this visit to Sir Walter Scott--for it was indeed my father, Charles de Remusat, member of the French Academy, and successively Minister of the Interior and for Foreign Affairs, who went at the age of thirty to Abbotsford, and he retained to the last days of his life a most lively remembrance of the great novelist who did not acknowledge the authors.h.i.+p of his novels, and to whom it was thus impossible otherwise than indirectly to pay any compliment. It gives me great pleasure to learn that the visit of those young men impressed him favourably. My father's companion was his contemporary and friend, M. Louis de Guizard, who, like my father, was a contributor at that time to the Liberal press of the Restoration, the _Globe_ and _La Revue Francaise,_ and who, after the Revolution of 1830, entered, as did my father likewise, upon political life. M. de Guizard was first _prefet_, then _depute_, and after 1848 became Directeur-general des Beaux Arts. He died about 1877 or 1878, after his retirement from public life."

[534] "_Woodstock_ placed upwards of 8000 in the hands of Sir Walter's creditors. The _Napoleon_ (first and second editions) produced for them a sum which it even now startles me to mention--18,000. As by the time the historical work was published nearly half of the First Series of _Chronicles of the Canongate_ had been written, it is obvious that the amount to which Scott's literary industry, from the close of 1825 to the 10th of June 1827, had diminished his debt, cannot be stated at less than 28,000. Had health been spared him, how soon must he have freed himself from all his enc.u.mbrances!"--J.G.L.

[535] See _Life_, vol. vi. p. 89. In Mr. Ballantyne's _Memorandum_, there is a fuller account of the mode in which _The Bride of Lammermoor_, _The Legend of Montrose_, and almost the whole of _Ivanhoe_ were produced, and the mental phenomenon which accompanied the preparation of the first-named work:--

"During the progress of composing _The Heart of Midlothian_, _The Bride of Lammermoor_, and _Legend of Montrose_--a period of many months--Mr.

Scott's health had become extremely indifferent, and was often supposed to place him in great danger. But it would hardly be credited, were it not for the notoriety of the fact, that although one of the symptoms of his illness was pain of the most acute description, yet he never allowed it to interrupt his labours. The only difference it produced, that I am aware of, was its causing him to employ the hand of an amanuensis in place of his own. Indeed, during the greater part of the day at this period he was confined to his bed. The person employed for this purpose was the respectable and intelligent Mr. Wm. Laidlaw, who acted for him in this capacity in the country, and I think also attended him to town.

I have often been present with Mr. Laidlaw during the short intervals of his labour, and it was deeply affecting to hear the account he gave of his patron's severe sufferings, and the indomitable spirit which enabled him to overmaster them. He told me that very often the dictation of Caleb Balderston's and the old cooper's best jokes was mingled with groans extorted from him by pains; but that when he, Mr. L., endeavoured to prevail upon him to take a little respite, the only answer he could obtain from Mr. Scott was a request that he would see that the doors were carefully shut, so that the expressions of his agony might not reach his family--'As to stopping work, Laidlaw,' he said, 'you know that is wholly out of the question.' What followed upon these exertions, made in circ.u.mstances so very singular, appears to me to exhibit one of the most singular chapters in the history of the human intellect. The book having been published before Mr. Scott was able to rise from his bed, he a.s.sured me that, when it was put into his hands, he did not recollect one single incident, character, or conversation it contained.

He by no means desired me to understand, nor did I understand, that his illness had erased from his memory all or any of the original family facts with which he had been acquainted from the period probably of his boyhood. These of course remained rooted where they had ever been, or, to speak more explicitly, where explicitness is so entirely important, he remembered the existence of the father and mother, the son and daughter, the rival lovers, the compulsory marriage, and the attack made by his bride upon the unhappy bridegroom, with the general catastrophe of the whole. All these things he recollected, just as he did before he took to his bed, but the marvel is that he recollected literally nothing else--not a single character woven by the Romancer--not one of the many scenes and points of exquisite humour, nor anything with which he was connected as writer of the work. 'For a long time I felt myself very uneasy,' he said, 'in the course of my reading, always kept on the _qui vive_ lest I should be startled by something altogether glaring and fantastic; however, I recollected that the printing had been performed by James Ballantyne, who I was sure would not have permitted anything of this sort to pa.s.s.' 'Well,' I said, 'upon the whole, how did you like it?' 'Oh,' he said, 'I felt it monstrous gross and grotesque, to be sure, but still the worst of it made me laugh, and I trusted therefore the good-natured public would not be less indulgent.' I do not think that I ever ventured to lead to this singular subject again. But you may depend upon it, that what I have said is as distinctly reported as if it had been taken down at the moment in shorthand. I should not otherwise have imparted the phenomenon at all."--_Mr. Ballantyne's MSS_.

[536] Mr. Lockhart says:--"My wife and I spent the summer of 1827 partly at a sea-bathing place near Edinburgh, and partly in Roxburghs.h.i.+re. The arrival of his daughter and her children at Portobello was a source of constant refreshment to him during June, for every other day he came down and dined there, and strolled about afterwards on the beach, thus interrupting, beneficially for his health, and I doubt not for the result of his labours also, the new custom of regular night-work, or, as he called it, serving double tides."

[537] See Swift, "Mary the cook to Dr. Sheridan."

[538] The answer is printed in the _Scott Centenary Catalogue_ by David Laing, from which the following extracts are given:--

"The expression of the old metrical translation, though homely, is plain, forcible, and intelligible, and very often possesses a rude sort of majesty, which perhaps would be ill-exchanged for mere elegance."

"They are the very words and accents of our early Reformers--sung by them in woe and grat.i.tude, in the fields, in the churches, and on the scaffold." "The parting with this very a.s.sociation of ideas is a serious loss to the cause of devotion, and scarce to be incurred without the certainty of corresponding advantages. But if these recollections are valuable to persons of education, they are almost indispensable to the edification of the lower ranks whose prejudices do not permit them to consider as the words of the inspired poetry, the versions of living or modern poets, but persist, however absurdly, in identifying the original with the ancient translation."--p. 158.

[539] Sir James Stuart, the last baronet of Allanbank.

[540] "The _Life of Bonaparte_, then, was at last published about the middle of June 1827."--_Life_, ix. 117.

[541] Archdeacon Williams, Rector of the New Edinburgh Academy from 1824 to 1847.

[542] Among the letters which Sir Walter found time to write before leaving Edinburgh, was one to congratulate his old and true friend Mrs.

Coutts on her marriage, which took place on the 16th of June. That letter has not been preserved, but it drew from her Grace the following reply:--

"My dear Sir Walter Scott,--Your most welcome letter has 'wandered mony a weary mile after me.' Thanks, many thanks for all your kind congratulations. I am a d.u.c.h.ess at last, that is certain, but whether I am the better for it remains to be proved. The Duke is very amiable, gentle, and well-disposed, and I am sure he has taken pains enough to accomplish what he says has been the first wish of his heart for the last three years. All this is very flattering to an old lady, and we lived so long in friends.h.i.+p with each other that I was afraid I should be unhappy if I did not say I _will_--yet (whisper it, dear Sir Walter) the name of Coutts--and a right good one it is--is, and ever will be, dear to my heart. What a strange, eventful life has mine been, from a poor little player child, with just food and clothes to cover me, dependent on a very precarious profession, without talent or a friend in the world! 'to have seen what I have seen, seeing what I see.' Is it not wonderful? is it true? can I believe it?--first the wife of the best, the most perfect, being that ever breathed, his love and unbounded confidence in me, his immense fortune so honourably acquired by his own industry, all at my command, ... and now the wife of a Duke. You must write my life; the History of Tom Thumb, Jack the Giant Killer, and Goody Two Shoes, will sink compared with my true history written by the Author of _Waverley_; and that you may do it well I have sent you an inkstand. Pray give it a place on your table in kind remembrance of your affectionate friend,

"HARRIETT ST. ALBANS.

"STRATTON STREET, _July 16th, 1827_."

[543] Next morning the following pleasant little billet was despatched to Kaeside:--

"My dear Mr. Laidlaw, I would be happy if you would come at _kail-time_ to-day. _Napoleon_ (6000 copies) is sold for 11,000.--Yours truly,

"_Sunday._ W.S."

--_Abbotsford Notanda_, by R. Carruthers, Edin. 1871.