DISTRACTIONS AND AMUSEMENTS AT ABBOTSFORD.
Between 1814 and the end of 1825, Scott's literary labour was
interrupted only by one serious illness, and hardly interrupted by
that,--by a few journeys,--one to Paris after the battle of Waterloo,
and several to London,--and by the worry of a constant stream of
intrusive visitors. Of his journeys he has left some records; but I
cannot say that I think Scott would ever have reached, as a mere
observer and recorder, at all the high point which he reached directly
his imagination went to work to create a story. That imagination was,
indeed, far less subservient to his mere perceptions than to his
constructive powers. _Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk_--the records of
his Paris journey after Waterloo--for instance, are not at all above
the mark of a good special correspondent. His imagination was less the
imagination of insight, than the imagination of one whose mind was a
great kaleidoscope of human life and fortunes. But far more
interrupting than either illness or travel, was the lion-hunting of
which Scott became the object, directly after the publication of the
earlier novels. In great measure, no doubt, on account of the mystery
as to his authorship, his fame became something oppressive. At one
time as many as _sixteen_ parties of visitors applied to see
Abbotsford in a single day. Strangers,--especially the American
travellers of that day, who were much less reticent and more
irrepressible than the American travellers of this,--would come to him
without introductions, facetiously cry out "Prodigious!" in imitation
of Dominie Sampson, whatever they were shown, inquire whether the new
house was called Tullyveolan or Tillytudlem, cross-examine, with open
note-books, as to Scott's age, and the age of his wife, and appear to
be taken quite by surprise when they were bowed out without being
asked to dine.[40] In those days of high postage Scott's bill for
letters "seldom came under 150_l._ a year," and "as to coach parcels,
they were a perfect ruination." On one occasion a mighty package came
by post from the United States, for which Scott had to pay five pounds
sterling. It contained a MS. play called _The Cherokee Lovers_, by a
young lady of New York, who begged Scott to read and correct it, write
a prologue and epilogue, get it put on the stage at Drury Lane, and
negotiate with Constable or Murray for the copyright. In about a
fortnight another packet not less formidable arrived, charged with a
similar postage, which Scott, not grown cautious through experience,
recklessly opened; out jumped a duplicate copy of _The Cherokee
Lovers_, with a second letter from the authoress, stating that as the
weather had been stormy, and she feared that something might have
happened to her former MS., she had thought it prudent to send him a
duplicate.[41] Of course, when fame reached such a point as this, it
became both a worry and a serious waste of money, and what was far
more valuable than money, of time, privacy, and tranquillity of mind.
And though no man ever bore such worries with the equanimity of Scott,
no man ever received less pleasure from the adulation of unknown and
often vulgar and ignorant admirers. His real amusements were his trees
and his friends. "Planting and pruning trees," he said, "I could work
at from morning to night. There is a sort of self-congratulation, a
little tickling self-flattery, in the idea that while you are pleasing
and amusing yourself, you are seriously contributing to the future
welfare of the country, and that your very acorn may send its future
ribs of oak to future victories like Trafalgar,"[42]--for the day of
iron ships was not yet. And again, at a later stage of his
planting:--"You can have no idea of the exquisite delight of a
planter,--he is like a painter laying on his colours,--at every moment
he sees his effects coming out. There is no art or occupation
comparable to this; it is full of past, present, and future enjoyment.
I look back to the time when there was not a tree here, only bare
heath; I look round and see thousands of trees growing up, all of
which, I may say almost each of which, have received my personal
attention. I remember, five years ago, looking forward with the most
delighted expectation to this very hour, and as each year has passed,
the expectation has gone on increasing. I do the same now. I
anticipate what this plantation and that one will presently be, if
only taken care of, and there is not a spot of which I do not watch
the progress. Unlike building, or even painting, or indeed any other
kind of pursuit, this has no end, and is never interrupted; but goes
on from day to day, and from year to year, with a perpetually
augmenting interest. Farming I hate. What have I to do with fattening
and killing beasts, or raising corn, only to cut it down, and to
wrangle with farmers about prices, and to be constantly at the mercy
of the seasons? There can be no such disappointments or annoyances in
planting trees."[43] Scott indeed regarded planting as a mode of so
moulding the form and colour of the outward world, that nature herself
became indebted to him for finer outlines, richer masses of colour,
and deeper shadows, as well as for more fertile and sheltered soils.
And he was as skilful in producing the last result, as he was in the
artistic effects of his planting. In the essay on the planting of
waste lands, he mentions a story,--drawn from his own experience,--of
a planter, who having scooped out the lowest part of his land for
enclosures, and "planted the wood round them in masses enlarged or
contracted as the natural lying of the ground seemed to dictate," met,
six years after these changes, his former tenant on the ground, and
said to him, "I suppose, Mr. R----, you will say I have ruined your
farm by laying half of it into woodland?" "I should have expected it,
sir," answered Mr. R----, "if you had told me beforehand what you were
going to do; but I am now of a very different opinion; and as I am
looking for land at present, if you are inclined to take for the
remaining sixty acres the same rent which I formerly gave for a
hundred and twenty, I will give you an offer to that amount. I
consider the benefit of the enclosing, and the complete shelter
afforded to the fields, as an advantage which fairly counterbalances
the loss of one-half of the land."[44]
And Scott was not only thoughtful in his own planting, but induced his
neighbours to become so too. So great was their regard for him, that
many of them planted their estates as much with reference to the
effect which their plantations would have on the view from Abbotsford,
as with reference to the effect they would have on the view from
their own grounds. Many was the consultation which he and his
neighbours, Scott of Gala, for instance, and Mr. Henderson of Eildon
Hall, had together on the effect which would be produced on the view
from their respective houses, of the planting going on upon the lands
of each. The reciprocity of feeling was such that the various
proprietors acted more like brothers in this matter, than like the
jealous and exclusive creatures which landowners, as such, so often
are.
Next to his interest in the management and growth of his own little
estate was Scott's interest in the management and growth of the Duke
of Buccleuch's. To the Duke he looked up as the head of his clan, with
something almost more than a feudal attachment, greatly enhanced of
course by the personal friendship which he had formed for him in early
life as the Earl of Dalkeith. This mixture of feudal and personal
feeling towards the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch continued during
their lives. Scott was away on a yachting tour to the Shetlands and
Orkneys in July and August, 1814, and it was during this absence that
the Duchess of Buccleuch died. Scott, who was in no anxiety about her,
employed himself in writing an amusing descriptive epistle to the Duke
in rough verse, chronicling his voyage, and containing expressions of
the profoundest reverence for the goodness and charity of the Duchess,
a letter which did not reach its destination till after the Duchess's
death. Scott himself heard of her death by chance when they landed for
a few hours on the coast of Ireland; he was quite overpowered by the
news, and went to bed only to drop into short nightmare sleeps, and to
wake with the dim memory of some heavy weight at his heart. The Duke
himself died five years later, leaving a son only thirteen years of
age (the present Duke), over whose interests, both as regarded his
education and his estates, Scott watched as jealously as if they had
been those of his own son. Many were the anxious letters he wrote to
Lord Montague as to his "young chief's" affairs, as he called them,
and great his pride in watching the promise of his youth. Nothing can
be clearer than that to Scott the feudal principle was something far
beyond a name; that he had at least as much pride in his devotion to
his chief, as he had in founding a house which he believed would
increase the influence--both territorial and personal--of the clan of
Scotts. The unaffected reverence which he felt for the Duke, though
mingled with warm personal affection, showed that Scott's feudal
feeling had something real and substantial in it, which did not vanish
even when it came into close contact with strong personal feelings.
This reverence is curiously marked in his letters. He speaks of "the
distinction of rank" being ignored by both sides, as of something
quite exceptional, but it was never really ignored by him, for though
he continued to write to the Duke as an intimate friend, it was with a
mingling of awe, very different indeed from that which he ever adopted
to Ellis or Erskine. It is necessary to remember this, not only in
estimating the strength of the feeling which made him so anxious to
become himself the founder of a house within a house,--of a new branch
of the clan of Scotts,--but in estimating the loyalty which Scott
always displayed to one of the least respectable of English
sovereigns, George IV.,--a matter of which I must now say a few words,
not only because it led to Scott's receiving the baronetcy, but
because it forms to my mind the most grotesque of all the threads in
the lot of this strong and proud man.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 40: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 387.]
[Footnote 41: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, v. 382.]
[Footnote 42: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, iii. 288.]
[Footnote 43: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vii. 287-8.]
[Footnote 44: Scott's _Miscellaneous Prose Works_, xxi. 22-3.]