The Journal of Sir Walter Scott Part 94

[467] Wordsworth notes that on placing the volume in his daughter's hand, Sir Walter said, "I should not have done anything of this kind but for your father's sake; they are probably the last verses I shall ever write."--Knight's _Wordsworth_, vol. iii. p. 201.

[468] Lord Brougham.

[469] The introductory address to _Count Robert of Paris_ bears the date October 15th, 1831.

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

[471] See Moore's edition of _Byron's Works_, vol. vii. pp. 43-44, note.

[472] Scott's views received strong confirmation a few days later at Bristol, where the authorities, through mistaken humanity, hesitated to order the military to act.

[473] At Malta, accordingly, we find Sir Walter making inquiry regarding this Arabian conjurer, and writing to Mr. Lockhart, on Nov. 1831, in the following terms:--

"I have got a key to the conjuring story of Alexandria and Grand Cairo.

I have seen very distinct letters of Sir John Stoddart's son, who attended three of the formal exhibitions which broke down, though they were repeated afterwards with success. Young Stoddart is an excellent Arabian scholar--an advantage which I understand is more imperfectly enjoyed by Lord Prudhoe and Colonel Felix. Much remains to be explained, but the boldness of the attempt exceeds anything since the days of the Automaton chess-player, or the Bottle conjurer. The first time Shakespeare was evoked he appeared in the complexion of an Arab. This seems to have been owing to the first syllable of his name, which resembled the Arabian word _Sheik_, and suggested the idea of an Arabian chief to the conjurer. A gentleman named Galloway has bought the secret, and talks of being frightened. There can be little doubt that, having so far interested himself, it would become his interest to put the conjurer more up to the questions likely to be asked. So he was more perfect when consulted by Lord Prudhoe than at first, when he made various blunders, and when we must needs say _falsum in uno falsum in omnibus_. As all this will come out one day, I have no wish to mingle in the controversy.... There are still many things to explain, but I think the mystery is unearthed completely."

See also Lane's _Egyptians_ for an account of what appears to be the same man in 1837. Also _Quarterly Review_, No. 117, pp. 196-208, for an examination of this "Magic Mirror" exhibition.

[474] A h.o.a.rd of seventy-eight chessmen found in the island of Lewis in 1831. The greater number of the figures were purchased for the British Museum, and formed the subject of a learned dissertation by Sir Frederick Madden; see _Archaeologia,_ xxiv. Eleven of these very interesting pieces fell into the hands of Scott's friend, C.K. Sharpe, and afterwards of Lord Londesborough. More recently these identical pieces were purchased for the Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh, where they now are. See _Proc. Soc. Antiq.,_ vol. xxiii.

[475] Sir John Malcolm, who was at this time M.P. for Launceston. His last public appearance was in London, at a meeting convened for the purpose of raising a monument of his friend Sir Walter, and his concluding words were, that when he himself "was gone, his son might be proud to say that his father had been among the contributors to that shrine of genius." Sir John was struck down by paralysis on the following day, and died in May 1833.

[476] The celebrated Brahmin philosopher and theist; born in Bengal about 1774, died at Stapleton Grove, near Bristol, September 27, 1833.

[477] Sir Walter's fears for the country were also shared by some of the wisest men in it. The Duke of Wellington, it is well known, was most desponding, and he antic.i.p.ated greater horror from a convulsion here than in any other European nation.

Talleyrand said to the Duke during the Reform Bill troubles, "Duke of Wellington, you have seen a great deal of the world. Can you point out to me any one place in Europe where an old man could go to and be quite sure of being safe and dying in peace?"--Stanhope _Notes_, p. 224.

[478] See Mr. Charles Cowan's privately printed _Reminiscences_ for Scott's recollections of his visit to Portsmouth in 1816, and his stories, of the wonders he had seen, to the little boy at his side.

[479] Compare Froude's _History_, vol. iv. p. 424.

[480] Mr. Horace Smith, one of the authors of _Rejected Addresses_.

[481] An anonymous novel, published some years earlier in 4 vols. 12mo.

[482] Cowper's Monody.

NOVEMBER.

_November_ 1.--The night was less dismal than yesterday, and we hold our course, though with an unfavourable wind, and make, it is said, about forty miles progress. After all, this sort of navigation recommends the steamer, which forces its way whether the breeze will or no.

_November_ 2.--Wind as cross as two sticks, with nasty squalls of wind and rain. We keep dodging about the Lizard and Land's End without ever getting out of sight of these interesting terminations of Old England.

Keep the deck the whole day though bitter cold. Betake myself to my berth at nine, though it is liker to my coffin.

_November_ 3.--Sea-sickness has pretty much left us, but the nights are far from voluptuous, as Lord Stowell says. After breakfast I established myself in the after-cabin to read and write as well as I can, whereof this is a bad specimen.

_November_ 4.--The current unfavourable, and the s.h.i.+p pitching a great deal; yet the vessel on the whole keeps her course, and we get on our way with hope of reaching Cape Finisterre when it shall please G.o.d.

_November_ 5.--We still creep on this petty pace from day to day without being able to make way, but also without losing any. Meanwhile, _Frohlich!_ we become freed from the nausea and disgust of the sea-sickness and are chirruping merrily. Spend the daylight chiefly on deck, where the sailors are trained in exercising the great guns on a new sort of carriage called, from the inventor, Marshall's, which seems ingenious.

_November_ 6.--No progress to-day; the s.h.i.+p begins to lay her course but makes no great way. Appet.i.te of the pa.s.sengers excellent, which we amuse at the expense of the sea stock. Cold beef and biscuit. I feel myself very helpless on board, but everybody is ready to a.s.sist me.

_November_ 7.--The wind still holds fair, though far from blowing steadily, but by fits and variably. No object to look at--

"One wide water all around us, All above us one 'grey' sky."[483]

There are neither birds in the air, fish in the sea, nor objects on face of the waters. It is odd that though once so great a smoker I now never think on a cigar; so much the better.

_November_ 8.--As we begin to get southward we feel a milder and more pleasing temperature, and the wind becomes decidedly favourable when we have nearly traversed the famous Bay of Biscay. We now get into a sort of trade wind blowing from the East.

_November_ 9.--This morning run seventy miles from twelve at night. This is something like going. Till now, bating the rolling and pitching, we lay

"... as idle as a painted s.h.i.+p Upon a painted ocean."

_November_ 10.--Wind changes and is both mild and favourable. We pa.s.s Cape Ortegal, see a wild cl.u.s.ter of skerries or naked rocks called Berlingas rising out of the sea like M'Leod's Maidens off the Isle of Skye.

_November_ 11.--Wind still more moderate and fair, yet it is about eleven knots an hour. We pa.s.s Oporto and Lisbon in the night. See the coast of Portugal: a bare wild country, with here and there a church or convent. If it keeps fair this evening we [make] Gibraltar, which would be very desirable. Our sailors have been exercised at a species of sword exercise, which recalls many recollections.

_November_ 12.--The favourable wind gets back to its quarters in the south-west, and becomes what the Italians call the Sirocco, abominated for its debilitating qualities. I cannot say I feel them, but I dreamt dreary dreams all night, which are probably to be imputed to the Sirocco. After all, it is not an uncomfortable wind to a Caledonian wild and stern. Ink won't serve.

_November_ 13.--The wind continues unaccommodating all night, and we see nothing, although we promised ourselves to have seen Gibraltar, or at least Tangiers, this morning, but we are disappointed of both. Tangiers reminded me of my old Antiquarian friend Auriol Hay Drummond, who is Consul there.[484] Certainly if a human voice could have made its hail heard through a league or two of contending wind and wave, it must have been Auriol Drummond's. I remember him at a dinner given by some of his friends when he left Edinburgh, where he discharged a n.o.ble part "self pulling like Captain Crowe 'for dear life, for dear life' against the whole boat's crew," speaking, that is, against 30 members of a drunken company and maintaining the predominance. Mons Meg was at that time his idol. He had a sort of avarice of proper names, and, besides half a dozen which were his legitimately, he had a claim to be called _Garvadh_, which uncouth appellation he claimed on no very good authority to be the ancient name of the Hays--a tale. I loved him dearly; he had high spirits, a zealous faith, good-humour, and enthusiasm, and it grieves me that I must pa.s.s within ten miles of him and leave him unsaluted; for mercy-a-ged what a yell of grat.i.tude would there be! I would put up with a good rough gale which would force us into Tangiers and keep us there for a week, but the wind is only in gentle opposition, like a well-drilled spouse. Gibraltar we shall see this evening, Tangiers becomes out of the question. Captain says we will lie by during the night, sooner than darkness shall devour such an object of curiosity, so we must look sharp for the old rock.

_November_ 14.--The horizon is this morning full of remembrances. Cape St. Vincent, Cape Spartel, Tarifa, Trafalgar--all spirit-stirring sounds, are within our ken, and recognised with enthusiasm both by the old sailors whose memory can reinvest them with their terrors, and by the naval neophytes who hope to emulate the deeds of their fathers. Even a non-combatant like myself feels his heart beat faster and fuller, though it is only with the feeling of the unworthy boast of the substance in the fable, _nos poma natamus_.

I begin to ask myself, Do I feel any symptoms of getting better from the climate?--which is delicious,--and I cannot reply with the least consciousness of certainty; I cannot in reason expect it should be otherwise: the failure of my limbs has been gradual, and it cannot be expected that an infirmity which at least a year's bad weather gradually brought on should diminish before a few mild and serene days, but I think there is some change to the better; I certainly write easier and my spirits are better. The officers compliment me on this, and I think justly. The difficulty will be to abstain from working hard, but we will try. I wrote to Mr. Cadell to-day, and will send my letter ash.o.r.e to be put into Gibraltar with the officer who leaves us at that garrison. In the evening we saw the celebrated fortress, which we had heard of all our lives, and which there is no possibility of describing well in words, though the idea I had formed of it from prints, panoramas, and so forth, proved not very inaccurate. Gibraltar, then, is a peninsula having a tremendous precipice on the Spanish side--that is, upon the north, where it is united to the mainland by a low slip of land called the neutral ground. The fortifications which rise on the rock are innumerable, and support each other in a manner accounted a model of modern art; the northern face of the rock itself is hewn into tremendous subterranean batteries called the hall of Saint George, and so forth, mounted with guns of a large calibre. But I have heard it would be difficult to use them, from the effect of the report on the artillerymen. The west side of the fortress is not so precipitous as the north, and it is on this it has been usually a.s.sailed. It bristles with guns and batteries, and has at its northern extremity the town of Gibraltar, which seems from the sea a thriving place, and from thence declines gradually to Cape Europa, where there is a great number of remains of old caverns and towers, formerly the habitation or refuge of the Moors. At a distance, and curving into a bay, lie Algeciras, and the little Spanish town of Saint Roque, where the Spanish lines were planted during the siege.[485] From Europa Point the eastern frontier of Gibraltar runs pretty close to the sea, and arises in a perpendicular face, and it is called the back of the rock. No thought could be entertained of attacking it, although every means were used to make the a.s.sault as general as possible. The efforts sustained by such extraordinary means as the floating batteries were entirely directed against the defences on the west side, which, if they could have been continued for a few days with the same fury with which they commenced, must have worn out the force of the garrison. The a.s.sault had continued for several hours without success on either side, when a private man of the artillery, his eye on the floating batteries, suddenly called with ecstasy, "She burns, by G----!";[486] and first that vessel and then others were visibly discovered to be on fire, and the besiegers' game was decidedly up.

We stood into the Bay of Gibraltar and approached the harbour firing a gun and hoisting a signal for a boat: one accordingly came off--a man-of-war's boat--but refused to have any communication with us on account of the quarantine, so we can send no letters ash.o.r.e, and after some pourparlers, Mr. L----, instead of joining his regiment, must remain on board. We learned an unpleasant piece of news. There has been a tumult at Bristol and some rioters shot, it is said fifty or sixty. I would flatter myself that this is rather good news, since it seems to be no part of a formed insurrection, but an accidental scuffle in which the mob have had the worst, and which, like Tranent, Manchester, and Bonnymoor, have always had the effect of quieting the people and alarming men of property.[487] The Whigs will find it impossible to permit men to be plundered by a few blackguards called by them the people, and education and property probably will recover an ascendency which they have only lost by faintheartedness.

We backed out of the Bay by means of a current to the eastward, which always runs thence, admiring in our retreat the lighting up the windows in the town and the various barracks or country seats visible on the rock. Far as we are from home, the general lighting up of the windows in the evening reminds us we are still in merry old England, where in reverse of its ancient law of the curfew, almost every individual, however humble his station, takes as of right a part of the evening for enlarging the scope of his industry or of his little pleasures. He trims his lamp to finish at leisure some part of his task, which seems in such circ.u.mstances almost voluntary, while his wife prepares the little meal which is to be its legitimate reward. But this happy privilege of English freemen has ceased. One happiness it is, they will soon learn their error.

_November_ 15.--I had so much to say about Gibraltar that I omitted all mention of the Strait, and more distant sh.o.r.es of Spain and Barbary, which form the extreme of our present horizon; they are highly interesting. A chain of distant mountains sweep round Gibraltar, bold peaked, well defined, and deeply indented; the most distinguishable points occasionally garnished with an old watch-tower to afford protection against a corsair. The mountains seemed like those of the first formation, liker, in other words, to the Highlands than those of the South of Scotland. The chains of hills in Barbary are of the same character, but more lofty and much more distant, being, I conceive, a part of the celebrated ridge of Atlas.

Gibraltar is one of the pillars of Hercules, Ceuta on the Moorish side is well known to be the other; to the westward of a small fortress garrisoned by the Spaniards is the Hill of Apes, the corresponding pillar to Gibraltar. There is an extravagant tradition that there was once a pa.s.sage under the sea from the one fortress to the other, and that an adventurous governor, who puzzled his way to Ceuta and back again, left his gold watch as a prize to him who had the courage to go to seek it.

We are soon carried by the joint influence of breeze and current to the African side of the straits, and coast nearly along a wild sh.o.r.e formed of mountains, like those of Spain, of varied form and outline. No churches, no villages, no marks of human hand are seen. The chain of hills show a mockery of cultivation, but it is only wild heath intermingled with patches of barren sand. I look in vain for cattle or flocks of sheep, and Anne as vainly entertains hopes of seeing lions and tigers on a walk to the sea-sh.o.r.e. The land of this wild country seems to have hardly a name. The Cape which we are doubling has one, however--the Cape of the Three Points. That we might not be totally disappointed we saw one or two men engaged apparently in ploughing, distinguished by their turbans and the long pikes which they carried.

Dr. Liddell says that on former occasions he has seen flocks and shepherds, but the war with France has probably laid the country waste.

_November_ 16.--When I waked about seven found that we had the town of Oran twelve or fourteen miles off astern. It is a large place on the sea-beach, near the bottom of a bay, built close and packed together as Moorish [towns], from Fez to Timbuctoo, usually are. A considerable hill runs behind the town, which seems capable of holding 10,000 inhabitants.

The hill up to its eastern summit is secured by three distinct lines of fortification, made probably by the Spanish when Oran was in their possession; latterly it belonged to the State of Algiers; but whether it has yielded to the French or not we have no means of knowing. A French schooner of eighteen guns seems to blockade the harbour. We show our colours, and she displays hers, and then resumes her cruise, looking as if she resumed her blockade. This would infer that the place is not yet in French hands. However, we have in any event no business with Oran, whether African or French. Bristol is a more important subject of consideration, but I cannot learn there are papers on board. One or two other towns we saw on this dreary coast, otherwise nothing but a hilly coast covered with s.h.i.+ngle and gum cistus.

_November_ 17.--In the morning we are off Algiers, of which Captain Pigot's complaisance afforded a very satisfactory sight. It is built on a sloping hill, running down to the sea, and on the water side is extremely strong; a very strong mole or causeway enlarges the harbour, by enabling them to include a little rocky island, and mount immense batteries, with guns of great number and size. It is a wonder, in the opinion of all judges, that Lord Exmouth's fleet was not altogether cut to pieces. The place is of little strength to the land; a high turreted wall of the old fas.h.i.+on is its best defence. When Charles V. attacked Algiers, he landed in the bay to the east of the town, and marched behind it. He afterwards reached what is still called the Emperor's fort, a building more highly situated than any part of the town, and commanding the wall which surrounds it. The Moors did not destroy this.

When Bourmont landed with the French, unlike Charles V., that general disembarked to the westward of Algiers, and at the mouth of a small river; he then marched into the interior, and, fetching a circuit, presented himself on the northern side of the town. Here the Moors had laid a simple stratagem for the destruction of the invading army. The natives had conceived they would rush at once to the fort of the Emperor, which they therefore mined, and expected to destroy a number of the enemy by its explosion. This obvious device of war was easily avoided, and General Bourmont, in possession of the heights, from which Algiers is commanded, had no difficulty in making himself master of the place. The French are said now to hold their conquests with difficulty, owing to a general commotion among the Moorish chiefs, of whom the Bey was the nominal sovereign. To make war on these wild tribes would be to incur the disaster of the Emperor Julian; to neglect their aggressions is scarcely possible.