Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott Volume VI Part 7

The first letter the young Cornet received from his father after mounting his "rattle-traps" was the following:--

TO CORNET WALTER SCOTT, 18TH HUSSARS, CORK.

ABBOTSFORD, August 1, 1819.

DEAR WALTER,--I was glad to find you got safe to the hospitable quarters of Piccadilly, and were put on the way of achieving your business well and expeditiously. You would receive a packet of introductory letters by John Ballantyne, to whom I addressed them.

I had a very kind letter two days ago from your Colonel.[51] Had I got it sooner it would have saved some expense in London, but there is no help for it now. As you are very fully provided with all these appointments, you must be particular in taking care of them, otherwise the expense of replacing them will be a great burden. Colonel Murray seems disposed to show you much attention.

He is, I am told, rather a reserved man, which indeed is the manner of his family. You will, therefore, be the more attentive to what he says, as well as to answer all advances he may make to you with cordiality and frankness; for if you be shy on the one hand, and he reserved on the other, you cannot have the benefit of his advice, which I hope and wish you may gain. I shall be guided by his opinion respecting your allowance: he stipulates that you shall have only two horses (not to be changed without his consent), and on no account keep a gig. You know of old how I detest that mania of driving wheel-barrows up and down, when a man has a handsome horse, and can ride him. They are both foolish and expensive things, and, in my opinion, are only fit for English bagmen--therefore gig it not, I pray you.

In buying your horses you will be very cautious. I see Colonel Murray has delicacy about a.s.sisting you directly in the matter--for he says very truly that some gentlemen make a sort of traffic in horse-flesh--from which his duty and inclination equally lead him to steer clear. But he will take care that you don't buy any that are unfit for service, as in the common course they must be approved by the commandant as _chargers_. Besides which, he will probably give you some private hints, of which avail yourself, as there is every chance of your needing much advice in this business. Two things I preach on my own experience: _1st_, Never to buy an aged horse, however showy. He must have done work, and, at any rate, will be unserviceable in a few years. _2dly_, To buy rather when the horse is something low in condition, that you may the better see all his points. Six years is the oldest at which I would purchase. You will run risk of being jockeyed by knowing gentlemen of your own corps parting with their _experienced_ chargers to _oblige_ you. Take care of this. Any good-tempered horse learns the dragoon duty in wonderfully short time, and you are rider enough not to want one quite broke in. Look well about you, and out into the country.

Excellent horses are bred all through Munster, and better have a clever young one than an old regimental brute foundered by repeated charges and bolts. If you see a brother-officer's horse that pleases you much, and seems reasonable, look particularly how he stands on his forelegs, and for that purpose see him in the stable. If he s.h.i.+fts and shakes a little, have nothing to say to him. This is the best I can advise, not doubting you will be handsomely excised after all. The officer who leaves his corps may be disposing of good horses, and perhaps selling reasonable.

One who continues will not, at least should not, part with a good horse without some great advantage.

You will remain at Cork till you have learned your regimental duty, and then probably be despatched to some outquarter. I need not say how anxious I am that you should keep up your languages, mathematics, and other studies. To have lost that which you already in some degree possess--and that which we don't practise we soon forget--would be a subject of unceasing regret to you hereafter. You have good introductions, and don't neglect to avail yourself of them. Something in this respect your name may do for you--a fair advantage, if used with discretion and propriety. By the way, I suspect you did not call on John Richardson.

The girls were very dull after you left us; indeed the night you went away, Anne had hysterics, which lasted some time. Charles also was down in the mouth, and papa and mamma a little grave and dejected. I would not have you think yourself of too great importance neither, for the greatest personages are not always long missed, and to make a bit of a parody,--

"Down falls the rain, up gets the sun, Just as if Walter were not gone."

We comfort ourselves with the hopes that you are to be happy in the occupation you have chosen, and in your new society. Let me know if there are any well-informed men among them, though I don't expect you to find out that for some time. Be civil to all, till you can by degrees find out who are really best deserving.

I enclose a letter from Sophia, which doubtless contains all the news. St. Boswell's Fair rained miserably, and disappointed the misses. The weather has since been delightful, and harvest advances fast. All here goes its old round--the habits of age do not greatly change, though those of youth do. Mamma has been quite well, and so have I--but I still take calomel. I was obliged to drink some claret with Sir A. Don, Sir John Sh.e.l.ley, and a funny little Newmarket quizzy, called Cousins, whom they brought here with them the other day, but I was not the worse. I wish you had Sir J. S. at your elbow when you are buying your horses--he is a very knowing man on the turf. I like his lady very much. She is perfectly feminine in her manners, has good sense, and plays divinely on the harp; besides all which, she shoots wild boars, and is the boldest horsewoman I ever saw. I saw her at Paris ride like a lapwing, in the midst of all the aide-de-camps and suite of the Duke of Wellington.

Write what your horses come to, etc. Your outfit will be an expensive matter; but once settled, it will be fairly launching you into life in the way you wished, and I trust you will see the necessity of prudence and a gentlemanlike economy, which consists chiefly in refusing one's self trifling indulgences until we can easily pay for them. Once more, I beg you to be attentive to Colonel Murray and to his lady. I hear of a disease among the moorfowl. I suppose they are dying for grief at your departure.

Ever, my dear boy, your affectionate father,

WALTER SCOTT.

[Footnote 51: The then commandant of the 18th Hussars was Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. Henry Murray, brother to the Earl of Mansfield.]

TO THE SAME.

7th August, 1819.

DEAR WALTER,--... I shall be curious to know how you like your brother-officers, and how you dispose of your time. The drills and riding-school will, of course, occupy much of your mornings for some time. I trust, however, you will keep in view drawing, languages, etc. It is astonis.h.i.+ng how far even half an hour a day regularly bestowed on one object, will carry a man in making himself master of it. The habit of dawdling away time is easily acquired, and so is that of putting every moment either to use or to amus.e.m.e.nt.

You will not be hasty in forming intimacies with any of your brother-officers, until you observe which of them are most generally respected, and likely to prove most creditable friends.

It is seldom that the people who put themselves hastily forward to please are those most worthy of being known. At the same time you will take care to return all civility which is offered, with readiness and frankness. The Italians have a proverb, which I hope you have not forgot poor Pierrotti's lessons so far as not to comprehend, "_Volto sciolto e pensieri stretti_." There is no occasion to let any one see what you exactly think of him; and it is the less prudent, as you will find reason, in all probability, to change your opinion more than once.

I shall be glad to hear of your being fitted with a good servant.

Most of the Irish of that cla.s.s are scapegraces--drink, steal, and lie like the devil. If you could pick up a canny Scot, it would be well. Let me know about your mess. To drink hard is none of your habits; but even drinking what is called a certain quant.i.ty every day, hurts the stomach, and by hereditary descent yours is delicate. I believe the poor Duke of Buccleuch laid the foundation of that disease which occasioned his premature death in the excesses of Villars's regiment; and I am sorry and ashamed to say, for your warning, that the habit of drinking wine, so much practised when I was a young man, occasioned, I am convinced, many of my cruel stomach complaints. You had better drink a bottle of wine on any particular occasion, than sit and soak and sipple at an English pint every day.

All our bipeds are well. Hamlet had an inflammatory attack, and I began to think he was going mad, after the example of his great namesake, but Willie Laidlaw bled him, and he has recovered.

p.u.s.s.y is very well. Mamma, the girls, and Charlie, join in love.

Yours affectionately,

W. S.

P. S.--Always mention what letters of mine you have received, and write to me whatever comes into your head. It is the privilege of great boys when distant that they cannot tire papas by any length of detail upon any subject.

TO THE SAME.

ABBOTSFORD, 13th August, 1819.

MY DEAREST WALTER,--I am very much obliged to Colonel Murray for the trouble he has taken on your behalf. I hope he has received the letter which I wrote to him a fortnight since under Mr.

Freeling's cover. It enclosed a parcel of letters to you. I took the liberty of asking his advice what allowance you should have to a.s.sist you. You know pretty well my circ.u.mstances and your own, and that I wish you to be comfortable, but not in any respect extravagant; and this for your own sake, and not for that of money, which I never valued very much, perhaps not so much as I ought to have done. I think by speaking to Colonel Murray you may get at his opinion, and I have so much trust in your honor and affection as to confide in your naming your own allowance.

Meantime, lest the horse should starve while the gra.s.s grows, I enclose a cheque upon Messrs. Coutts for 50, to accompt of your first year's allowance. Your paymaster will give you the money for it I dare say. You have to endorse the bill, _i. e._, write your name on the back of it.

All concerned are pleased with your kind tokens of remembrance from London. Mamma and I like the caricatures very much. I think, however, scarce any of them shows the fancy and talent of old Gilray: he became insane, I suppose by racking his brain in search of extravagant ideas, and was supported in his helpless condition by the woman who keeps the great print-shop in St.

James's Street, who had the generosity to remember that she had made thousands by his labor.

Everything here goes on in the old fas.h.i.+on, and we are all as well as possible, saving that Charles rode to Lawrence fair yesterday in a private excursion, and made himself sick with eating gingerbread, whereby he came to disgrace.

Sophia has your letter of the 4th, which she received yesterday.

The enclosed will help you to set up shop and to get and pay whatever is necessary. I wish we had a touch of your hand to make the parties rise in the morning, at which they show as little alertness as usual.

I beg you will keep an account of money received and paid. Buy a little book ruled for the purpose, for pounds, s.h.i.+llings, and pence, and keep an account of cash received and expended. The balance ought to be cash in purse, if the book is regularly kept.

But any very small expenses you can enter as "Sundries, 0: 3: 6," which saves trouble.

You will find this most satisfactory and useful. But, indeed, arithmetic is indispensable to a soldier who means to rise in his profession. All military movements depend upon calculation of time, numbers, and distance.

Dogs all well--cat sick--supposed with eating birds in their feathers. Sisters, brother, and mamma join in love to the "poor wounded hussa-a-r;"--I dare say you have heard the song; if not, we shall send it for the benefit of the mess. Yours affectionately,

WALTER SCOTT.

P. S.--Yesterday, _the 12th_, would, I suppose, produce some longings after the Peel heights.

In the following letter to Mr. Richardson, we see Scott busied about certain little matters of heraldic importance which had to be settled before his patent of baronetcy could be properly made out. He also alludes to two little volumes, which he edited during this autumn--the Memorials of the Haliburtons, a thin quarto (never published)--and the poems of Patrick Carey, of which he had given specimens some years before in the Annual Register.

TO JOHN RICHARDSON, ESQ., FLUDYER STREET, WESTMINSTER.

ABBOTSFORD, 22d August, 1819.

MY DEAR RICHARDSON,--I am sorry Walter did not get to your kind domicile. But he stayed but about five or six days in London, and great was his haste, as you may well suppose. He had a world of trink.u.ms to get, for you know there goes as much to the man-millinery of a young officer of hussars as to that of an heiress on her bridal day. His complete equipage, horses not included, cost about 360, and if you add a couple of blood horses, it will be 200 more, besides the price of his commission, for the privilege of getting the hardness of his skull tried by a brick-bat at the next meeting of Radical Reformers. I am not much afraid of these folks, however, because I remember 1793 and 1794, when the same ideas possessed a much more formidable cla.s.s of the people, being received by a large proportion of farmers, shopkeepers, and others, possessed of substance. A mere mob will always be a fire of loose straw; but it is melancholy to think of the individual mischief that may be done. I did not find it quite advisable to take so long a journey as London this summer. I am quite recovered; but my last attack was of so dreadful a nature, that I wish to be quite insured against another--_i. e._, as much as one can be insured against such a circ.u.mstance--before leaving home for any length of time.

To return to the vanities of this world, from what threatened to hurry me to the next: I enclose a drawing of my arms, with the supporters which the heralds here a.s.sign me. Our friend Harden seems to wish I would adopt one of his Mer-maidens, otherwise they should be both Moors, as on the left side. I have also added an impression of my seal. You can furnish Sir George Naylor with as much of my genealogy as will serve the present purpose. I shall lose no time in connecting myself by a general service with my grand-uncle, the last Haliburton of Dryburgh Abbey, or Newmains, as they call it. I spoke to the Lyon-office people in Edinburgh. I find my entry there will be an easy matter, the proofs being very pregnant and accessible. I would not stop for a trifling expense to register my pedigree in England, as far as you think may be necessary, to show that it is a decent one. My ancestors were brave and honest men, and I have no reason to be ashamed of them, though they were neither wealthy nor great.

As something of an antiquary and genealogist, I should not like there were any mistakes in this matter, so I send you a small note of my descent by my father and my paternal grandmother, with a memorandum of the proofs by which they may be supported, to which I might add a whole cloud of oral witnesses. I hate the being suspected of fis.h.i.+ng for a pedigree, or bolstering one up with false statements. How people can bring themselves to this, I cannot conceive. I send you a copy of the Haliburton MS., of which I have printed twenty for the satisfaction of a few friends. You can have any part of them copied in London which ought to be registered. I should like if Sir George Naylor would take the trouble of looking at the proofs, which are chiefly extracts from the public records. I take this opportunity to send you also a copy of a little amateur-book--Carey's Poems--a thoroughbred Cavalier, and, I think, no bad versifier. Kind compliments to Mrs. Richardson. Yours, my dear Richardson, most truly,

WALTER SCOTT.