"February 5th, 1826.--Missie was in the drawing-room, and overheard
William Clerk and me laughing excessively at some foolery or other in
the back room, to her no small surprise, which she did not keep to
herself. But do people suppose that he was less sorry for his poor
sister, or I for my lost fortune? If I have a very strong passion
in the world, it is pride; and that never hinged upon world's gear,
which was always, with me--Light come, light go."
You will not at first understand the tone of this last piece, in
which two currents of thought run counter, or, at least, one with a
back eddy; and you may think Scott did not know himself, and that his
strongest passion was not pride; and that he did care for world's gear.
Not so, good reader. Never allow your own conceit to betray you into
that extremest folly of thinking that you can know a great man better
than he knows himself. He may not often wear his heart on his sleeve
for you; but when he does, depend upon it, he lets you see deep,
and see true.
Scott's ruling passion was pride; but it was nobly set--on his honour,
and his courage, and his quite conscious intellectual power. The
apprehended loss of honour,--the shame of what he thinks in himself
cowardice,--or the fear of failure in intellect, are at any time
overwhelming to him. But now, he felt that his honour was safe; his
courage was, even to himself, satisfying; his sense of intellectual
power undiminished; and he had therefore recovered some peace of mind,
and power of endurance. The evils he could not have borne, and lived,
have not been inflicted on him, and could not be. He can laugh again
with his friend;--"but do people suppose that he was less sorry for
his poor sister, or I for my lost fortune?"
What is this loss, then, which he is grieving for--as for a lost
sister? Not world's gear, "which was always, with me, Light come,
light go."
Something far other than that.
Read but these three short sentences more, [72] out of the entries
in December and January:--
"My heart clings to the place I have created: there is scarce a tree
on it that does not owe its being to me."
"Poor Will Laidlaw--poor Tom Purdie--such news will wring your hearts;
and many a poor fellow besides, to whom my prosperity was daily bread."
"I have walked my last on the domains I have planted, sate the last
time in the halls I have built. But death would have taken them from me
if misfortune had spared them.--My poor people, whom I loved so well!"
Nor did they love him less. You know that his house was left to him,
and that his "poor people" served him until his death--or theirs. Hear
now how they served.
"The butler," says Lockhart, visiting Abbotsford in 1827, "instead
of being the easy chief of a large establishment, was now doing half
the work of the house, at probably half his former wages. Old Peter,
who had been for five-and-twenty years a dignified coachman, was now
ploughman-in-ordinary, only putting his horses to the carriage upon
high and rare occasions; and so on with all the rest that remained
of the ancient train. And all, to my view, seemed happier than they
had ever done before. Their good conduct had given every one of them
a new elevation in his own mind; and yet their demeanour had gained,
in place of losing, in simple humility of observance. The great loss
was that of William Laidlaw, for whom (the estate being all but a
fragment in the hands of the trustees and their agent) there was
now no occupation here. The cottage which his taste had converted
into a loveable retreat had found a rent-paying tenant; and he was
living a dozen miles off, on the farm of a relation in the Vale of
Yarrow. Every week, however, he came down to have a ramble with Sir
Walter over their old haunts, to hear how the pecuniary atmosphere was
darkening or brightening, and to read, in every face at Abbotsford,
that it could never be itself again until circumstances should permit
his re-establishment at Kaeside.
"All this warm and respectful solicitude must have had a preciously
soothing influence on the mind of Scott, who may be said to have
lived upon love. No man cared less about popular admiration and
applause; but for the least chill on the affection of any near and
dear to him, he had the sensitiveness of a maiden. I cannot forget,
in particular, how his eyes sparkled when he first pointed out to me
Peter Mathieson guiding the plough on the haugh. 'Egad,' said he,
'auld Pepe' (this was the children's name for their good friend),
'auld Pepe's whistling at his darg. The honest fellow said a yoking
in a deep field would do baith him and the blackies good. If things
get round with me, easy shall be Pepe's cushion.'"
You see there is not the least question about striking for wages on
the part of Sir Walter's servants. The law of supply and demand is
not consulted, nor are their wages determined by the great principle
of competition--so rustic and absurd are they; not but that they take
it on them sometimes to be masters instead of servants:--
"March 21.--Wrote till twelve, then out upon the heights, and faced
the gale bravely. Tom Purdie was not with me; he would have obliged
me to keep the sheltered ground." [73]
You are well past all that kind of thing, you think, and know better
how to settle the dispute between Capital and Labour.
"What has that to do with domestic servants?" do you ask? You think
a house with a tall chimney, and two or three hundred servants in it,
is not properly a house at all; that the sacred words, Domus, Duomo,
cannot be applied to it; and that Giotto would have refused to build
a Buzzing Tower, by way of belfry, in Lancashire?
Well, perhaps you are right. If you are merely unlucky
Williams--borrowing colossal planes--instead of true servants, it may
well be that Pepe's own whistling at his darg must be very impossible
for you, only manufactured whistling any more possible. Which are
you? Which will you be?
I am afraid there is little doubt which you are;--but there is no
doubt whatever which you would like to be, whether you know your own
minds or not. You will never whistle at your dargs more, unless you
are serving masters whom you can love. You may shorten your hours of
labour as much as you please;--no minute of them will be merry, till
you are serving truly: that is to say, until the bond of constant
relationship--service to death--is again established between your
masters and you. It has been broken by their sin, but may yet be
recovered by your virtue. All the best of you cling to the least
remnant or shadow of it. I heard but the other day of a foreman, in
a large house of business, discharged at a week's warning on account
of depression in trade,--who thereupon went to one of the partners,
and showed him a letter which he had received a year before, offering
him a situation with an increase of his salary by more than a third;
which offer he had refused without so much as telling his masters of
its being made to him, that he might stay in the old house. He was
a Scotchman--and I am glad to tell the story of his fidelity with
that of Pepe and Tom Purdie. I know not how it may be in the south;
but I know that in Scotland, and the northern Border, there still
remains something of the feeling which fastened the old French word
'loial' among the dearest and sweetest of their familiar speech;
and that there are some souls yet among them, who, alike in labour
or in rest, abide in, or will depart to, the Land of the Leal.
"Sire, moult me plaist vostre escole
Et vo noble conseil loial,
Ne du trespasser n'ay entente;
Sans lui n'aray ne bien ne mal.
Amours ce vouloir me présente,
Qui veult que tout mon appareil
Soit mis à servir soir et main
Loiauté, et moult me merveil
Comment homs a le cuer si vain
Qu'il a à fausetié réclaim."