Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott Volume V Part 22

In truth, it was impossible to listen to Scott's oral narrations, whether gay or serious, or to the felicitous fun with which he parried absurdities of all sorts, without discovering better qualities in his talk than _wit_--and of a higher order; I mean especially a power of _vivid painting_--the true and primary sense of what is called _Imagination_. He was like Jaques--though not a "Melancholy Jaques;"

and "moralized" a common topic "into a thousand similitudes."

Shakespeare and the banished Duke would have found him "full of matter." He disliked mere disquisitions in Edinburgh, and prepared _impromptus_ in London; and puzzled the promoters of such things sometimes by placid silence, sometimes by broad merriment. To such men he seemed _commonplace_--not so to the most dexterous masters in what was to some of them almost a science; not so to Rose, Hallam, Moore, or Rogers,--to Ellis, Mackintosh, Croker, or Canning.

Scott managed to give and receive such great dinners as I have been alluding to, at least as often as any other private gentleman in Edinburgh; but he very rarely accompanied his wife and daughters to the evening a.s.semblies, which commonly ensued under other roofs--for {p.249} _early to rise_, unless in the case of spare-fed anchorites, takes for granted _early to bed_. When he had no dinner engagement, he frequently gave a few hours to the theatre; but still more frequently, when the weather was fine, and still more, I believe, to his own satisfaction, he drove out with some of his family, or a single friend, in an open carriage; the favorite rides being either to the Blackford Hills, or to Ravelston, and so home by Corstorphine; or to the beach of Portobello, where Peter was always instructed to keep his horses as near as possible to the sea. More than once, even in the first summer of my acquaintance with him, I had the pleasure of accompanying him on these evening excursions; and never did he seem to enjoy himself more fully than when placidly surveying, at such sunset or moonlight hours, either the ma.s.sive outlines of his "own romantic town," or the tranquil expanse of its n.o.ble estuary. He delighted, too, in pa.s.sing, when he could, through some of the quaint windings of the ancient city itself, now deserted, except at mid-day, by the upper world. How often have I seen him go a long way round about, rather than miss the opportunity of halting for a few minutes on the vacant esplanade of Holyrood, or under the darkest shadows of the Castle rock, where it overhangs the Gra.s.smarket, and the huge slab that still marks where the gibbet of Porteous and the Covenanters had its station. His coachman knew him too well to move at a Jehu's pace amidst such scenes as these. No funeral hea.r.s.e crept more leisurely than did his landau up the Canongate or the Cowgate; and not a queer tottering gable but recalled to him some long-buried memory of splendor or bloodshed, which, by a few words, he set before the hearer in the reality of life. His image is so a.s.sociated in my mind with the antiquities of his native place, that I cannot now revisit them without feeling as if I were treading on his gravestone.

Whatever might happen on the other evenings of the {p.250} week, he always dined at home on Sunday, and usually some few friends were then with him, but never any person with whom he stood on ceremony. These were, it may be readily supposed, the most agreeable of his entertainments. He came into the room rubbing his hands, his face bright and gleesome, like a boy arriving at home for the holidays, his Peppers and Mustards gambolling about his heels, and even the stately Maida grinning and wagging his tail in sympathy. Among the most regular guests on these happy evenings were, in my time, as had long before been the case, Mrs. Maclean Clephane of Torloisk (with whom he agreed cordially on all subjects except the authenticity of Ossian), and her daughters, whose guardian he had become, at their own choice.

The eldest of them had been for some years married to the Earl Compton (now Marquis of Northampton), and was of course seldom in the north; but the others had much of the same tastes and accomplishments which so highly distinguished the late Lady Northampton; and Scott delighted especially in their proficiency in the poetry and music of their native isles. Mr. and Mrs. Skene of Rubislaw were frequent attendants--and so were the Macdonald-Buchanans of Drumakiln, whose eldest daughter, Isabella, was his chief favorite among all his _nieces_ of the Clerk's table--as was, among the _nephews_, my own dear friend and companion, Joseph Hume, a singularly graceful young man, rich in the promise of hereditary genius, but, alas, cut off in the early bloom of his days. The well-beloved Erskine was seldom absent; and very often Terry or James Ballantyne came with him--sometimes, though less frequently, Constable. Among other persons who now and then appeared at these "dinners without the silver dishes," as Scott called them, I may mention--to say nothing of such old cronies as Mr. Clerk, Mr. Thomson, and Mr. Kirkpatrick Sharpe--Sir Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck, who had all his father _Bozzy's_ cleverness, good-humor, {p.251} and joviality, without one touch of his meaner qualities,--wrote Jenny dang the Weaver, and some other popular songs, which he sang capitally--and was moreover a thorough bibliomaniac; the late Sir Alexander Don of Newton, in all courteous and elegant accomplishments the model of a cavalier; and last, not least, William Allan, R. A., who had shortly before this time returned to Scotland from several years of travel in Russia and Turkey. At one of these plain hearty dinners, however, the company rarely exceeded three or four, besides the as yet undivided family.

Scott had a story of a topping goldsmith on the Bridge, who prided himself on being the mirror of Amphitryons, and accounted for his success by stating that it was his invariable custom to set his own stomach at ease, by a beefsteak and a pint of port in his back-shop, half an hour before the arrival of his guests. But the host of Castle Street had no occasion to imitate this prudent arrangement, for his appet.i.te at dinner was neither keen nor nice. Breakfast was his chief meal. Before that came, he had gone through the severest part of his day's work, and he then set to with the zeal of Crabbe's Squire Tovell--

"And laid at once a pound upon his plate."

No fox-hunter ever prepared himself for the field by more substantial appliances. His table was always provided, in addition to the usually plentiful delicacies of a Scotch breakfast, with some solid article, on which he did most l.u.s.ty execution--a round of beef--a pasty, such as made Gil Blas's eyes water--or, most welcome of all, a cold sheep's head, the charms of which primitive dainty he has so gallantly defended against the disparaging sneers of Dr. Johnson and his bear-leader.[109] A huge brown loaf flanked his elbow, and it was placed upon a broad wooden trencher, that he might cut and come again with the bolder knife. Often did the _Clerks' {p.252} coach_, commonly called among themselves _the Lively_--which trundled round every morning to pick up the brotherhood, and then deposited them at the proper minute in the Parliament Close--often did this lumbering hackney arrive at his door before he had fully appeased what Homer calls "the sacred rage of hunger;" and vociferous was the merriment of the learned _uncles_, when the surprised poet swung forth to join them, with an extemporized sandwich, that looked like a ploughman's luncheon, in his hand. But this robust supply would have served him in fact for the day. He never tasted anything more before dinner, and at dinner he ate almost as sparingly as Squire Tovell's niece from the boarding-school,--

--"Who cut the sanguine flesh in frustums fine, And marvelled much to see the creatures dine."

[Footnote 109: See Croker's _Boswell_ (edit. 1831), vol.

iii p. 38.]

The only dishes he was at all fond of were the old-fas.h.i.+oned ones to which he had been accustomed in the days of Saunders Fairford; and which really are excellent dishes,--such, in truth, as Scotland borrowed from France before Catherine de' Medici brought in her Italian _virtuosi_ to revolutionize the kitchen like the court. Of most of these, I believe, he has in the course of his novels found some opportunity to record his esteem. But, above all, who can forget that his King Jamie, amidst the splendors of Whitehall, thinks himself an ill-used monarch unless his first course includes _c.o.c.ky-leeky_?

It is a fact, which some philosophers may think worth setting down, that Scott's organization, as to more than one of the senses, was the reverse of exquisite. He had very little of what musicians call an ear; his smell was hardly more delicate. I have seen him stare about, quite unconscious of the cause, when his whole company betrayed their uneasiness at the approach of an overkept haunch of venison; and neither by the nose nor the palate could he distinguish corked wine from sound. He could never tell Madeira from sherry,--nay, an Oriental friend having sent him a b.u.t.t of _sheeraz_, when he {p.253} remembered the circ.u.mstance some time afterwards, and called for a bottle to have Sir John Malcolm's opinion of its quality, it turned out that his butler, mistaking the label, had already served up half the bin as _sherry_. Port he considered as physic: he never willingly swallowed more than one gla.s.s of it, and was sure to anathematize a second, if offered, by repeating John Home's epigram:--

"Bold and erect the Caledonian stood, Old was his mutton, and his claret good; Let him drink port, the English statesman cried-- He drank the poison, and his spirit died."

In truth, he liked no wines except sparkling champagne and claret; but even as to this last he was no connoisseur; and sincerely preferred a tumbler of whiskey-toddy to the most precious "liquid ruby" that ever flowed in the cup of a prince. He rarely took any other potation when quite alone with his family; but at the Sunday board he circulated the champagne briskly during dinner, and considered a pint of claret each man's fair share afterwards. I should not omit, however, that his Bordeaux was uniformly preceded by a small libation of the genuine _mountain dew_, which he poured with his own hand, _more majorum_, for each guest--making use for the purpose of such a multifarious collection of ancient Highland _quaighs_ (little cups of curiously dovetailed wood, inlaid with silver) as no Lowland sideboard but his was ever equipped with--but commonly reserving for himself one that was peculiarly precious in his eyes, as having travelled from Edinburgh to Derby in the canteen of Prince Charlie. This relic had been presented to "the wandering Ascanius" by some very careful follower, for its bottom is of gla.s.s, that he who quaffed might keep his eye the while upon the dirk hand of his companion.

The sound of music (even, I suspect, of any sacred music but psalm-singing) would be considered indecorous {p.254} in the streets of Edinburgh on a Sunday night; so, upon the occasions I am speaking of, the harp was silent, and Otterburne and The Bonnie House of Airlie must needs be dispensed with. To make amends, after tea in the drawing-room, Scott usually read some favorite author for the amus.e.m.e.nt of his little circle; or Erskine, Ballantyne, or Terry, did so, at his request. He himself read aloud high poetry with far greater simplicity, depth, and effect, than any other man I ever heard; and in Macbeth or Julius Caesar, or the like, I doubt if Kemble could have been more impressive. Yet the changes of intonation were so gently managed, that he contrived to set the different interlocutors clearly before us, without the least approach to theatrical artifice. Not so the others I have mentioned; they all read cleverly and agreeably, but with the decided trickery of stage recitation. To them he usually gave the book when it was a comedy, or, indeed, any other drama than Shakespeare's or Joanna Baillie's. Dryden's Fables, Johnson's two Satires, and certain detached scenes of Beaumont and Fletcher, especially that in The Lover's Progress, where the ghost of the musical innkeeper makes his appearance, were frequently selected. Of the poets, his contemporaries, however, there was not one that did not come in for his part. In Wordsworth, his pet pieces were, I think, the Song for Brougham Castle, the Laodamia, and some of the early sonnets; in Southey, Queen Orraca, Fernando Ramirez, the Lines on the Holly Tree--and, of his larger poems, the Thalaba. Crabbe was perhaps, next to Shakespeare, the standing resource; but in those days Byron was pouring out his spirit fresh and full: and, if a new piece from his hand had appeared, it was sure to be read by Scott the Sunday evening afterwards, and that with such delighted emphasis as showed how completely the elder bard had kept all his enthusiasm for poetry at the pitch of youth, all his admiration of genius, free, pure, and unstained by the least drop of literary {p.255} jealousy. Rare and beautiful example of a happily const.i.tuted and virtuously disciplined mind and character!

Very often something read aloud by himself or his friends suggested an old story of greater compa.s.s than would have suited a dinner-table--and he told it, whether serious or comical, or, as more frequently happened, part of both, exactly in every respect in the tone and style of the notes and ill.u.s.trations to his novels. A great number of his best oral narratives have, indeed, been preserved in those parting lucubrations; and not a few in his letters. Yet very many there were of which his pen has left no record--so many, that, were I to task my memory, I could, I believe, recall the outlines at least of more than would be sufficient to occupy a couple of these volumes. Possibly, though well aware how little justice I could do to such things, rather than think of their peris.h.i.+ng forever, and leaving not even a shadow behind, I may at some future day hazard the attempt.

Let me turn, meanwhile, to some dinner-tables very different from his own, at which, from this time forward, I often met Scott. It is very true of the societies I am about to describe, that he was "among them, not of them;" and it is also most true that this fact was apparent in all the demeanor of his bibliopolical and typographical allies towards him whenever he visited them under their roofs--not a bit less so than when they were received at his own board; but still, considering how closely his most important worldly affairs were connected with the personal character of the Ballantynes, I think it a part, though neither a proud nor a very pleasing part, of my duty as his biographer, to record my reminiscences of them and their doings in some detail.

James Ballantyne then lived in St. John Street, a row of good, old-fas.h.i.+oned, and s.p.a.cious houses, adjoining the Canongate and Holyrood, and at no great distance from his printing establishment. He had married a few {p.256} years before the daughter of a wealthy farmer in Berwicks.h.i.+re--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,[110] and another intimate friend or two, and when James Ballantyne was content to appear in his own true and best colors, the kind head of his family, the respectful but honest schoolfellow of Scott, the easy landlord of a plain, comfortable table. But when any great event was about to take place in the business, especially on the eve of a new novel, there were doings of a higher strain in St. John Street; and to be present at one of those scenes was truly a rich treat, even--if not especially--for persons who, like myself, had no more _knowledge_ than the rest of the world as to the authors.h.i.+p of Waverley. Then were congregated about the printer all his own literary allies, of whom a considerable number were by no means personally familiar with "THE GREAT UNKNOWN:"--who, by the way, owed to him that widely adopted t.i.tle;--and He appeared among the rest with his usual open aspect of buoyant good-humor--although it was not difficult to trace, in the occasional play of his features, the diversion it afforded him to watch all the procedure of his swelling confidant, and the curious neophytes that surrounded the well-spread board.

[Footnote 110: George Hogarth, Esq., W. S., brother of Mrs. James Ballantyne. This gentleman is now well known in the literary world; especially by a History of Music, of which all who understand that science speak highly.

[He was the father-in-law of Charles d.i.c.kens, and for many years a musical and dramatic critic in London.]]

The feast was, to use one of James's own favorite epithets, {p.257} _gorgeous_; an aldermanic display of turtle and venison, with the suitable accompaniments of iced punch, potent ale, and generous Madeira. When the cloth was drawn, the burly preses arose, with all he could muster of the port of John Kemble, and spouted with a sonorous voice the formula of Macbeth:--

"Fill full!

I drink to the general joy of the whole table!"

This was followed by "The King, G.o.d bless him!" and second came--"Gentlemen, there is another toast which never has been nor shall be omitted in this house of mine--I give you the health of Mr.

Walter Scott with three times three!" All honor having been done to this health, and Scott having briefly thanked the company with some expressions of warm affection to their host, Mrs. Ballantyne retired; the bottles pa.s.sed round twice or thrice in the usual way; and then James rose once more, every vein on his brow distended, his eyes solemnly fixed upon 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 b.u.mper to the immortal Author of Waverley!_" The uproar of cheering, in which Scott made a fas.h.i.+on of joining, was succeeded by deep silence, and then Ballantyne proceeded--

"In his Lord Burleigh look, serene and serious, A something of imposing and mysterious"--

to lament the obscurity in which his ill.u.s.trious but too modest correspondent still chose to conceal himself from the plaudits of the world, to thank the company for the manner in which the _nominis umbra_ had been received, and to a.s.sure them that the Author of Waverley would, when informed of the circ.u.mstance, feel highly delighted--"the proudest hour of his life," etc., etc. The cool, demure fun of Scott's features during all this mummery was perfect; and Erskine's attempt at a gay _nonchalance_ was still more ludicrously meritorious. Aldiborontiphoscophornio, {p.258} however, bursting as he was, knew too well to allow the new novel to be made the subject of discussion. Its name was announced, and success to it crowned another cup; but after that, no more of Jedediah. To cut the thread, he rolled out unbidden some one of his many theatrical songs, in a style that would have done no dishonor to almost any orchestra--The Maid of Lodi--or perhaps, The Bay of Biscay, O!--or The Sweet Little Cherub that Sits up Aloft. Other toasts followed, interspersed with ditties from other performers;--old George Thomson, the friend of Burns, was ready, for one, with The Moorland Wedding, or Willie Brew'd a Peck o' Maut;--and so it went on, until Scott and Erskine, with any clerical or very staid personage that had chanced to be admitted, saw fit to withdraw. Then the scene was changed. The claret and olives made way for broiled bones and a mighty bowl of punch; and when a few gla.s.ses of the hot beverage had restored his powers, James opened _ore rotundo_ on the merits of the forthcoming romance. "One chapter, one chapter only," was the cry. After "_Nay, by'r Lady, nay!_" and a few more coy s.h.i.+fts, the proof sheets were at length produced, and James, with many a prefatory hem, read aloud what he considered as the most striking dialogue they contained.

The first I heard so read was the interview between Jeanie Deans, the Duke of Argyle, and Queen Caroline, in Richmond Park; and notwithstanding some spice of the pompous tricks to which he was addicted, I must say he did the inimitable scene great justice. At all events, the effect it produced was deep and memorable, and no wonder that the exulting typographer's _one b.u.mper more to Jedediah Cleishbotham_ preceded his parting stave, which was uniformly The Last Words of Marmion, executed certainly with no contemptible rivalry of Braham.

What a different affair was a dinner, although probably including many of the same guests, at the junior partner's! He in those days retained, I think, no private {p.259} apartments attached to his auction-rooms in Hanover Street, over the door of which he still kept emblazoned "John Ballantyne and Company, Booksellers." At any rate, such of his entertainments as I ever saw Scott partake of, were given at his villa near to the Frith of Forth, by Trinity;--a retreat which the little man had named "Harmony Hall," and invested with an air of dainty voluptuous finery, contrasting strikingly enough with the substantial citizen-like snugness of his elder brother's domestic appointments. His house was surrounded by gardens so contrived as to seem of considerable extent, having many a shady tuft, trellised alley, and mysterious alcove, interspersed among their bright parterres. It was a fairy-like labyrinth, and there was no want of pretty Armidas, such as they might be, to glide half-seen among its mazes. The sitting-rooms opened upon gay and perfumed conservatories, and John's professional excursions to Paris and Brussels in quest of objects of _virtu_, had supplied both the temptation and the means to set forth the interior in a fas.h.i.+on that might have satisfied the most fastidious _pet.i.te maitresse_ of Norwood or St. Denis. John, too, was a married man: he had, however, erected for himself a private wing, the accesses to which, whether from the main building or 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 one of them. His dinners were in all respects Parisian, for his wasted palate disdained such John Bull luxuries as were all in all with James. The piquant pasty of Strasburg or Perigord was never to seek; and even the _piece de resistance_ was probably a boar's head from Coblentz, or a turkey ready stuffed with truffles from the Palais Royal. The pictures scattered among John's innumerable mirrors were chiefly of theatrical subjects--many of them portraits of beautiful actresses--the same Peg Woffingtons, Bellamys, Kitty Clives, and so forth, that {p.260} found their way in the sequel to Charles Mathews's gallery at Highgate. Here that exquisite comedian's own mimicries and parodies were the life and soul of many a festival, and here, too, he gathered from his facetious host not a few of the richest materials for his _at homes_ and _monopolylogues_. But, indeed, whatever actor or singer of eminence visited Edinburgh, of the evenings when he did not perform several were sure to be reserved for Trinity. Here Braham quavered, and here Liston drolled his best--here Johnstone, and Murray, and Yates mixed jest and stave--here Kean revelled and rioted--and here the Roman Kemble often played the Greek from sunset to dawn. Nor did the popular _cantatrice_ or _danseuse_ of the time disdain to freshen her roses, after a laborious week, amidst these Paphian arbors of Harmony Hall.

Johnny had other tastes that were equally expensive. He had a well-furnished stable, and followed the foxhounds whenever the cover was within an easy distance. His horses were all called after heroes in Scott's poems or novels; and at this time he usually rode up to his auction on a tall milk-white hunter, yclept _Old Mortality_, attended by a leash or two of greyhounds,--Die Vernon, Jenny Dennison, and so forth, by name. The featherweight himself appeared uniformly, hammer-in-hand, in the half-dress of some sporting club--a light gray frock, with emblems of the chase on its silver b.u.t.tons, white cord breeches, and jockey-boots in Meltonian order. Yet he affected in the pulpit rather a grave address; and was really one of the most plausible and imposing of the Puff tribe. Probably Scott's presence overawed his ludicrous propensities; for the poet was, when sales were going on, almost a daily attendant in Hanover Street, and himself not the least energetic of the numerous compet.i.tors for Johnny's uncut _fifteeners_, Venetian lamps, Milanese cuira.s.ses, and old Dutch cabinets. Maida, by the way, was so well aware of his master's {p.261} habits, that about the time when the Court of Session was likely to break up for the day, he might usually be seen couched in expectation among Johnny's own _tail_ of greyhounds at the threshold of the mart.

It was at one of those Trinity dinners this summer that I first saw Constable. Being struck with his appearance, I asked Scott who he was, and he told me--expressing some surprise that anybody should have lived a winter or two in Edinburgh without knowing, by sight at least, a citizen whose name was so familiar to the world. I happened to say that I had not been prepared to find the great bookseller a man of such gentlemanlike and even distinguished bearing. Scott smiled, and answered, "Ay, Constable is indeed a grand-looking chield. He puts me in mind of Fielding's apology for Lady b.o.o.by--to wit, that Joseph Andrews had an air which, to those who had not seen many n.o.blemen, would give an idea of n.o.bility." I had not in those days been much initiated in the private jokes of what is called, by way of excellence, _the trade_, and was puzzled when Scott, in the course of the dinner, said to Constable, "Will your Czarish Majesty do me the honor to take a gla.s.s of champagne?" I asked the master of the feast for an explanation. "Oh!" said he, "are you so green as not to know that Constable long since dubbed himself _The Czar of Muscovy_, John Murray, _The Emperor of the West_, and Longman and his string of partners _The Divan_?" "And what t.i.tle," I asked, "has Mr. John Ballantyne himself found in this new _almanach imperial_?"--"Let that flee stick to the wa'," quoth Johnny: "When I set up for a bookseller, The Crafty christened me _The Dey of Alljeers_--but he now considers me as next thing to dethroned." He added, "His Majesty the autocrat is too fond of these nicknames. One day a partner of the house of Longman was dining with him in the country, to settle an important piece of business, about which there occurred a good deal of difficulty. 'What fine {p.262} swans you have in your pond there!' said the Londoner, by way of parenthesis.--'Swans!' cried Constable; 'they are only geese, man. There are just five of them, if you please to observe, and their names are Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown.' This skit cost The Crafty a good bargain."

It always appeared to me that James Ballantyne felt his genius rebuked in the presence of Constable: his manner was constrained, his smile servile, his hilarity elaborate. Not so with Johnny: the little fellow never seemed more airily frolicsome than when he capered for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the Czar.[111] I never, however, saw those two together, where, I am told, the humors of them both were exhibited to the richest advantage--I mean at the dinners with which Constable regaled, among others, his own circle of literary serfs, and when "Jocund Johnny" was very commonly his croupier. There are stories enough of practical jokes upon such occasions, some of them near akin to those which the author of Humphrey Clinker has thought fit to record of his own suburban villa, in the most diverting of young Melford's letters to Sir Watkin Philips. I have heard, for example, a luculent description of poor _Allister Campbell_, and another drudge of the same cla.s.s, running a race after dinner for a new pair of breeches, which Mr. David Bridges, tailor in ordinary to this northern potentate,--himself a wit, a virtuoso, and the croupier on that day in lieu of Rigdum,--had been instructed to bring with him, and display before the threadbare rivals. But I had these pictures from John Ballantyne, and I dare say they might be overcharged. That Constable was a most bountiful and generous patron to the ragged tenants of Grub Street, there can, however, be no doubt: and as {p.263} little that John himself acted on all occasions by them in the same spirit, and this to an extent greatly beyond what prudence (if he had ever consulted that guide in anything) would have dictated.

[Footnote 111: "Now, John," cried Constable, one evening after he had told one of his best stories, "now, John, is that true?" His object evidently was, in Iago's phrase, _to let down the pegs_; but Rigdum answered gayly, "True, indeed! Not one word of it!--any blockhead may stick to truth, my hearty--but 't is a sad hamperer of genius."]

When I visited Constable, as I often did at a period somewhat later than that of which I now speak, and for the most part in company with Scott, I found the bookseller established in a respectable country gentleman's seat, some six or seven miles out of Edinburgh, and doing the honors of it with all the ease that might have been looked for had he been the long-descended owner of the place; there was no foppery, no show, no idle luxury, but to all appearance the plain abundance and simple enjoyment of hereditary wealth. His conversation was manly and vigorous, abounding in Scotch anecdotes of the old time, which he told with a degree of spirit and humor only second to his great author's.

No man could more effectually control, when he had a mind, either the extravagant vanity which, on too many occasions, made him ridiculous, or the despotic temper, which habitually held in fear and trembling all such as were in any sort dependent on his Czarish Majesty's pleasure. In him I never saw (at this period) anything but the un.o.btrusive sense and the calm courtesy of a well-bred gentleman. His very equipage kept up the series of contrasts between him and the two Ballantynes. Constable went back and forward between the town and Polton in a deep-hung and capacious green barouche, without any pretence at heraldic blazonry, drawn by a pair of sleek, black, long-tailed horses, and conducted by a grave old coachman in plain blue livery. The Printer of the Canongate drove himself and his wife about the streets and suburbs in a snug machine, which did not overburthen one powerful and steady cob; while the gay auctioneer, whenever he left the saddle for the box, mounted a bright blue dogcart, and rattled down the Newhaven road with two high-mettled steeds, prancing _tandem_ before him, and {p.264} most probably--especially if he was on his way to the races at Musselburgh--with some "sweet singer of Israel" flaming, with all her feathers, beside him. On such occasions, by the bye, Johnny sometimes had a French horn with him, and he played on it with good skill, and with an energy by no means prudent in the state of his lungs.

The Sheriff told with peculiar unction the following anecdote of this spark. The first time he went over to pick up curiosities at Paris, it happened that he met, in the course of his traffickings, a certain brother bookseller of Edinburgh, as unlike him as one man could well be to another--a grave, dry Presbyterian, rigid in all his notions as the buckle of his wig. This precise worthy having ascertained John's address, went to call on him, a day or two afterwards, with the news of some richly illuminated missal, which he might possibly be glad to make prize of. On asking for his friend, a smiling _laquais de place_ informed him that _Monsieur_ had gone out, but that _Madame_ was at home. Not doubting that Mrs. Ballantyne had accompanied her husband on his trip, he desired to pay his respects to _Madame_, and was ushered in accordingly. "But oh, Mr. Scott!" said, or rather groaned, the austere elder, on his return from this modern Babylon, "oh, Mr. Scott, there was nae Mrs. John yonder, but a painted Jezebel sittin' up in her bed, wi' a wheen impudent French limmers like hersel', and twa or three whiskered blackguards, takin' their collation o' knickknacks and champagne wine! I ran out o' the house as if I had been shot. What judgment will this wicked warld come to! The Lord pity us!" Scott was a severe enough censor in the general of such levities, but somehow, in the case of Rigdumfunnidos, he seemed to regard them with much the same toleration as the naughty tricks of a monkey in the "Jardin des Plantes."

Why did Scott persist in mixing up all his most important {p.265} concerns with such people as I have been describing? I asked himself that question too unceremoniously at a long subsequent period, and in due time the reader shall see the answer I received; but it left the main question, to my apprehension, as much in the dark as ever. I shall return to the sad subject hereafter more seriously; but in the mean time let it suffice to say, that he was the most patient, long-suffering, affectionate, and charitable of mankind; that in the case of both the Ballantynes he could count, after all, on a sincerely, nay, a pa.s.sionately devoted attachment to his person; that, with the greatest of human beings, use is in all but unconquerable power; and that he who so loftily tossed aside the seemingly most dangerous a.s.saults of flattery, the blandishment of dames, the condescension of princes, the enthusiasm of crowds--had still his weak point, upon which two or three humble besiegers, and one unwearied, though most frivolous underminer, well knew how to direct their approaches. It was a favorite saw of his own, that the wisest of our race often reserve the average stock of folly to be all expended upon some one flagrant absurdity.

{p.266} CHAPTER XLII.

Publication of the Heart of Mid-Lothian. -- Its Reception in Edinburgh and in England. -- Abbotsford in October. -- Melrose Abbey, Dryburgh, etc. -- Lion-hunters from America.

-- Tragedy of the Cherokee Lovers. -- Scott's Dinner to the Selkirks.h.i.+re Yeomen.

1818.

Hoping to be forgiven for a long digression, the biographer willingly returns to the thread of Scott's story. The Heart of Mid-Lothian appeared, as has been mentioned, before the close of June, 1818, and among the letters which he received soon afterwards from the friends by this time in the secret, there is one which (though I do not venture to name the writer) I am tempted to take the liberty of quoting:[112]--

[Footnote 112: [This letter was written August 11, by Lady Louisa Stuart, and it appears in its original and complete form in _Familiar Letters_, vol. ii. p. 18. To the end of her long life, the writer was somewhat influenced by the feeling prevailing in her youth as to the loss of caste suffered by women of good social position who appeared in print. Writing to Mrs. Lockhart after her father's death, and enclosing some of his letters, Lady Louisa says: "If Mr. Lockhart wishes to insert any of these, I will beg not to be named. It is not that I am not proud enough of having been honored with _his_ regard, but I never yet saw my name in print, and hope I never shall." Mr. Lockhart evidently in part overcame this objection.]]

"Now for it, dear Mr. Scott. I can speak to the purpose, as I have not only read it myself, but am in a house where everybody is tearing it out of each other's hands, and talking of nothing else. So much for its success--the more flattering, because it overcomes a prejudice. People were beginning to say the author would wear himself out; it was going on too {p.267} long in the same key, and no striking notes could possibly be produced. On the contrary, I think the interest is stronger here than in any of the former ones--(always excepting my first-love Waverley)--and one may congratulate you upon having effected what many have tried to do, and n.o.body yet succeeded in, making the perfectly good character the most interesting. Of late days, especially since it has been the fas.h.i.+on to write moral and even religious novels, one might almost say of some of the wise good heroines, what a lively girl once said to [me] of her well-meaning aunt--'Upon my word she is enough to make anybody wicked.' And though beauty and talents are heaped on the right side, the writer, in spite of himself, is sure to put agreeableness on the wrong; the person from whose errors he means you should take warning, runs away with your secret partiality in the mean time. Had this very story been conducted by a common hand, Effie would have attracted all our concern and sympathy--Jeanie only cold approbation.

Whereas Jeanie, without youth, beauty, genius, warm pa.s.sions, or any other novel-perfection, is here our object from beginning to end. This is 'inlisting the affections in the cause of virtue' ten times more than ever Richardson did; for whose male and female pedants, all-excelling as they are, I never could care half so much as I found myself inclined to do for Jeanie before I finished the first volume....

"You know I tell you my opinion just as I should do to a third person, and I trust the freedom is not unwelcome. I was a little tired of your Edinburgh lawyers in the introduction; English people in general will be more so, as well as impatient of the pa.s.sages alluding to Scotch law throughout. Mr. Saddletree will not entertain them. The latter part of the fourth volume unavoidably flags to a certain degree; after Jeanie is happily settled at Roseneath, we have no more to wish for. But the chief fault I have to find relates to the reappearance and shocking fate of the boy. I hear on all sides, 'Oh, I do not like that!' I cannot say what I would have had instead; but I do not like it either; it is a lame, huddled conclusion. I know you so well in it, by the bye!--you grow tired yourself, want to get rid of the story, and hardly care how. Sir George Staunton finishes his career very fitly; he ought not to die in his bed, and for Jeanie's sake one would not have him hanged. {p.268} It is unnatural, though, that he should ever have gone within twenty miles of the Tolbooth, or shown his face in the streets of Edinburgh, or dined at a public meeting, if the Lord Commissioner had been his brother. Here ends my _per contra_ account. The opposite page would make my letter too long if I entered equally into particulars.

Carlisle and Corby Castles in Waverley did not affect me more deeply than the prison and trial scenes. The end of poor Madge Wildfire is also most pathetic. The meeting at Muschat's Cairn tremendous. Dumbiedikes and Rory Bean are delightful. And I shall own that my prejudices were secretly gratified by the light in which you place [Uncle] John of Argyle, whom Mr. c.o.xe so ran down to please Lord Orford. You have drawn him to the very life. I heard so much of him in my youth, so many anecdotes, so often 'as the Duke of Argyle used to say'--that I really believe I am almost as good a judge as if I had seen and lived with him.... [My beloved mother] has told me, that when she married, [in 1737, the very time], he was still remarkably handsome; with manners more graceful and engaging than she ever saw in any one else; the most agreeable person in conversation, the best teller of a story. When fifty-seven thus captivates eighteen, the natural powers of pleasing must be extraordinary. You have likewise colored Queen Caroline exactly right--but I was bred up in another creed about Lady Suffolk, of whom, as a very old deaf woman, I have some faint recollection. [My mother] knew her intimately, and never would allow she had been the King's mistress, though she owned it was currently believed. She said he had just enough liking for her to make the Queen very civil to her, and very jealous and spiteful; the rest remained always uncertain at most, like a similar scandal in our days, where I, for one, imagine love of seeming influence on one side, and love of lounging, of an easy house and a good dinner on the other, to be all the criminal pa.s.sions concerned.

However, I confess, [my mother] had that in herself which made her not ready to think the worst of her fellow-women.

"Did you ever hear the history of John, Duke of Argyle's marriage, and constant attachment, before and after, to a woman not handsomer or much more elegant than Jeanie Deans, though very unlike her in understanding? I can give it you, if you {p.269} wish it, for it is at my fingers' ends. [I was so much the youngest of a numerous family that I had no playfellow, and for that reason listened with all my ears to the grown people's conversation, most especially when my mother and the friends of her youth got upon old stories; nor did I lose my taste for them when I grew old enough to converse with her on equal terms, and enquire into particulars.] Now I am [an] ancient [tabby] myself, I should be a great treasure of anecdote to anybody who had the same humor,--but I meet with few who have. They read vulgar tales in books, Wraxall, and so forth, what the footmen and maids only gave credit to at the moment, but they desire no farther information. I dare swear many of your readers never heard of the Duke of Argyle before. 'Pray, who was Sir Robert Walpole,' they ask me, 'and when did he live?'--or perhaps--'Was not the great Lord Chatham in Queen Anne's days?'[113]

[Footnote 113: In 1827, Lady Louisa wrote for Caroline, Lady Scott, a great-granddaughter of the duke, _Some Account of John, Duke of Argyle, and his Family_. This delightful memoir was first printed (privately) in 1863.

It was published in 1899, in _Selections from the Ma.n.u.scripts of Lady Louisa Stuart_.]

"[Amongst the persons most pleased here is Lady Charlotte Lindsay. She has the true North humor, and love of humor, and she does enjoy it heartily. They] have, to help [them], an exemplification on two legs in [their] country apothecary, whom you have painted over and over without the honor of knowing him; an old, dry, arguing, prosing, obstinate Scotchman, very shrewd, rather sarcastic, a st.u.r.dy Whig and Presbyterian, _tirant un peu sur le democrate_.

Your books are birdlime to him, however; he hovers about the house to obtain a volume when others have done with it. I long to ask him whether Douce Davie was any way _sib_ to him. He acknowledges he would not _now_ go to Muschat's Cairn at night for any money--he had such a horror of it 'sixty years ago' when a laddie. But I am come to the end of my fourth page, and will not tire you with any more scribbling....