SCOTT IN ADVERSITY.
With the year 1825 came a financial crisis, and Constable began to
tremble for his solvency. From the date of his baronetcy Sir Walter
had launched out into a considerable increase of expenditure. He got
plans on a rather large scale in 1821 for the increase of Abbotsford,
which were all carried out. To meet his expenses in this and other
ways he received Constable's bills for "four unnamed works of
fiction," of which he had not written a line, but which came to exist
in time, and were called _Peveril of the Peak_, _Quentin Durward_,
_St. Ronan's Well_, and _Redgauntlet_. Again, in the very year before
the crash, 1825, he married his eldest son, the heir to the title, to
a young lady who was herself an heiress, Miss Jobson of Lochore, when
Abbotsford and its estates were settled, with the reserve of
10,000_l._, which Sir Walter took power to charge on the property for
purposes of business. Immediately afterwards he purchased a captaincy
in the King's Hussars for his son, which cost him 3500_l._ Nor were
the obligations he incurred on his own account, or that of his family,
the only ones by which he was burdened. He was always incurring
expenses, often heavy expenses, for other people. Thus, when Mr.
Terry, the actor, became joint lessee and manager of the Adelphi
Theatre, London, Scott became his surety for 1250_l._, while James
Ballantyne became his surety for 500_l._ more, and both these sums had
to be paid by Sir Walter after Terry's failure in 1828. Such
obligations as these, however, would have been nothing when compared
with Sir Walter's means, had all his bills on Constable been duly
honoured, and had not the printing firm of Ballantyne and Co. been so
deeply involved with Constable's house that it necessarily became
insolvent when he stopped. Taken altogether, I believe that Sir Walter
earned during his own lifetime at least 140,000_l._ by his literary
work alone, probably more; while even on his land and building
combined he did not apparently spend more than half that sum. Then he
had a certain income, about 1000_l._ a year, from his own and Lady
Scott's private property, as well as 1300_l._ a year as Clerk of
Session, and 300_l._ more as Sheriff of Selkirk. Thus even his loss of
the price of several novels by Constable's failure would not seriously
have compromised Scott's position, but for his share in the
printing-house which fell with Constable, and the obligations of which
amounted to 117,000_l._
As Scott had always forestalled his income,--spending the
purchase-money of his poems and novels before they were written,--such
a failure as this, at the age of fifty-five, when all the freshness of
his youth was gone out of him, when he saw his son's prospects
blighted as well as his own, and knew perfectly that James Ballantyne,
unassisted by him, could never hope to pay any fraction of the debt
worth mentioning, would have been paralysing, had he not been a man of
iron nerve, and of a pride and courage hardly ever equalled. Domestic
calamity, too, was not far off. For two years he had been watching the
failure of his wife's health with increasing anxiety, and as
calamities seldom come single, her illness took a most serious form at
the very time when the blow fell, and she died within four months of
the failure. Nay, Scott was himself unwell at the critical moment, and
was taking sedatives which discomposed his brain. Twelve days before
the final failure,--which was announced to him on the 17th January,
1826,--he enters in his diary, "Much alarmed. I had walked till twelve
with Skene and Russell, and then sat down to my work. To my horror and
surprise I could neither write nor spell, but put down one word for
another, and wrote nonsense. I was much overpowered at the same time
and could not conceive the reason. I fell asleep, however, in my
chair, and slept for two hours. On my waking my head was clearer, and
I began to recollect that last night I had taken the anodyne left for
the purpose by Clarkson, and being disturbed in the course of the
night, I had not slept it off." In fact the hyoscyamus had, combined
with his anxieties, given him a slight attack of what is now called
_aphasia_, that brain disease the most striking symptom of which is
that one word is mistaken for another. And this was Scott's
preparation for his failure, and the bold resolve which followed it,
to work for his creditors as he had worked for himself, and to pay
off, if possible, the whole 117,000_l._ by his own literary exertions.
There is nothing in its way in the whole of English biography more
impressive than the stoical extracts from Scott's diary which note the
descent of this blow. Here is the anticipation of the previous day:
"Edinburgh, January 16th.--Came through cold roads to as cold news. Hurst
and Robinson have suffered a bill to come back upon Constable, which, I
suppose, infers the ruin of both houses. We shall soon see. Dined with
the Skenes." And here is the record itself: "January 17th.--James
Ballantyne this morning, good honest fellow, with a visage as black as the
crook. He hopes no salvation; has, indeed, taken measures to stop. It is
hard, after having fought such a battle. I have apologized for not
attending the Royal Society Club, who have a _gaudeamus_ on this day, and
seemed to count much on my being the præses. My old acquaintance Miss
Elizabeth Clerk, sister of Willie, died suddenly. I cannot choose but wish
it had been Sir W. S., and yet the feeling is unmanly. I have Anne, my
wife, and Charles to look after. I felt rather sneaking as I came home
from the Parliament-house--felt as if I were liable _monstrari digito_ in
no very pleasant way. But this must be borne _cum coeteris_; and, thank
God, however uncomfortable, I do not feel despondent."[51] On the
following day, the 18th January, the day after the blow, he records a bad
night, a wish that the next two days were over, but that "the worst _is_
over," and on the same day he set about making notes for the _magnum
opus_, as he called it--the complete edition of all the novels, with a new
introduction and notes. On the 19th January, two days after the failure,
he calmly resumed the composition of _Woodstock_--the novel on which he
was then engaged--and completed, he says, "about twenty printed pages of
it;" to which he adds that he had "a painful scene after dinner and
another after supper, endeavouring to convince these poor creatures" [his
wife and daughter] "that they must not look for miracles, but consider the
misfortune as certain, and only to be lessened by patience and labour." On
the 21st January, after a number of business details, he quotes from Job,
"Naked we entered the world and naked we leave it; blessed be the name of
the Lord." On the 22nd he says, "I feel neither dishonoured nor broken
down by the bad, now truly bad, news I have received. I have walked my
last in the domains I have planted--sat 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! There is just another die to
turn up against me in this run of ill-luck, i. e. if I should break my
magic wand in the fall from this elephant, and lose my popularity with my
fortune. Then _Woodstock_ and _Boney_" [his life of Napoleon] "may both go
to the paper-maker, and I may take to smoking cigars and drinking grog, or
turn devotee and intoxicate the brain another way."[52] He adds that when
he sets to work doggedly, he is exactly the same man he ever was, "neither
low-spirited nor _distrait_," nay, that adversity is to him "a tonic and
bracer."
The heaviest blow was, I think, the blow to his pride. Very early he
begins to note painfully the different way in which different friends
greet him, to remark that some smile as if to say, "think nothing
about it, my lad, it is quite out of our thoughts;" that others adopt
an affected gravity, "such as one sees and despises at a funeral," and
the best-bred "just shook hands and went on." He writes to Mr. Morritt
with a proud indifference, clearly to some extent simulated:--"My
womenkind will be the greater sufferers, yet even they look cheerily
forward; and, for myself, the blowing off of my hat on a stormy day
has given me more uneasiness."[53] To Lady Davy he writes truly
enough:--"I beg my humblest compliments to Sir Humphrey, and tell him,
Ill Luck, that direful chemist, never put into his crucible a more
indissoluble piece of stuff than your affectionate cousin and sincere
well-wisher, Walter Scott."[54] When his _Letters of Malachi
Malagrowther_ came out he writes:--"I am glad of this bruilzie, as far
as I am concerned; people will not dare talk of me as an object of
pity--no more 'poor-manning.' Who asks how many punds Scots the old
champion had in his pocket when
'He set a bugle to his mouth,
And blew so loud and shrill,
The trees in greenwood shook thereat,
Sae loud rang every hill.'
This sounds conceited enough, yet is not far from truth."[55] His dread
of pity is just the same when his wife dies:--"Will it be better," he
writes, "when left to my own feelings, I see the whole world pipe and
dance around me? I think it will. Their sympathy intrudes on my
present affliction." Again, on returning for the first time from
Edinburgh to Abbotsford after Lady Scott's funeral:--"I again took
possession of the family bedroom and my widowed couch. This was a sore
trial, but it was necessary not to blink such a resolution. Indeed I
do not like to have it thought that there is any way in which I can be
beaten." And again:--"I have a secret pride--I fancy it will be so
most truly termed--which impels me to mix with my distresses strange
snatches of mirth, 'which have no mirth in them.'"[56]
But though pride was part of Scott's strength, pride alone never
enabled any man to struggle so vigorously and so unremittingly as he
did to meet the obligations he had incurred. When he was in Ireland in
the previous year, a poor woman who had offered to sell him
gooseberries, but whose offer had not been accepted, remarked, on
seeing his daughter give some pence to a beggar, that they might as
well give her an alms too, as she was "an old struggler." Sir Walter
was struck with the expression, and said that it deserved to become
classical, as a name for those who take arms against a sea of
troubles, instead of yielding to the waves. It was certainly a name
the full meaning of which he himself deserved. His house in Edinburgh
was sold, and he had to go into a certain Mrs. Brown's lodgings, when
he was discharging his duties as Clerk of Session. His wife was dead.
His estate was conveyed to trustees for the benefit of his creditors
till such time as he should pay off Ballantyne and Co's. debt, which
of course in his lifetime he never did. Yet between January, 1826, and
January, 1828, he earned for his creditors very nearly 40,000_l._
_Woodstock_ sold for 8228_l._, "a matchless sale," as Sir Walter
remarked, "for less than three months' work." The first two editions
of _The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte_, on which Mr. Lockhart says that
Scott had spent the unremitting labour of about two years--labour
involving a far greater strain on eyes and brain than his imaginative
work ever caused him--sold for 18,000_l._ Had Sir Walter's health
lasted, he would have redeemed his obligations on behalf of Ballantyne
and Co. within eight or nine years at most from the time of his
failure. But what is more remarkable still, is that after his health
failed he struggled on with little more than half a brain, but a
whole will, to work while it was yet day, though the evening was
dropping fast. _Count Robert of Paris_ and _Castle Dangerous_ were
really the compositions of a paralytic patient.
It was in September, 1830, that the first of these tales was begun. As
early as the 15th February of that year he had had his first true
paralytic seizure. He had been discharging his duties as clerk of
session as usual, and received in the afternoon a visit from a lady
friend of his, Miss Young, who was submitting to him some manuscript
memoirs of her father, when the stroke came. It was but slight. He
struggled against it with his usual iron power of will, and actually
managed to stagger out of the room where the lady was sitting with
him, into the drawing-room where his daughter was, but there he fell
his full length on the floor. He was cupped, and fully recovered his
speech during the course of the day, but Mr. Lockhart thinks that
never, after this attack, did his style recover its full lucidity and
terseness. A cloudiness in words and a cloudiness of arrangement began
to be visible. In the course of the year he retired from his duties of
clerk of session, and his publishers hoped that, by engaging him on
the new and complete edition of his works, they might detach him from
the attempt at imaginative creation for which he was now so much less
fit. But Sir Walter's will survived his judgment. When, in the
previous year, Ballantyne had been disabled from attending to business
by his wife's illness (which ended in her death), Scott had written in
his diary, "It is his (Ballantyne's) nature to indulge apprehensions
of the worst which incapacitate him for labour. I cannot help
regarding this amiable weakness of the mind with something too nearly
allied to contempt," and assuredly he was guilty of no such weakness
himself. Not only did he row much harder against the stream of fortune
than he had ever rowed with it, but, what required still more
resolution, he fought on against the growing conviction that his
imagination would not kindle, as it used to do, to its old heat.
When he dictated to Laidlaw,--for at this time he could hardly write
himself for rheumatism in the hand,--he would frequently pause and
look round him, like a man "mocked with shadows." Then he bestirred
himself with a great effort, rallied his force, and the style again
flowed clear and bright, but not for long. The clouds would gather
again, and the mental blank recur. This soon became visible to his
publishers, who wrote discouragingly of the new novel--to Scott's own
great distress and irritation. The oddest feature in the matter was
that his letters to them were full of the old terseness, and force,
and caustic turns. On business he was as clear and keen as in his best
days. It was only at his highest task, the task of creative work, that
his cunning began to fail him. Here, for instance, are a few sentences
written to Cadell, his publisher, touching this very point--the
discouragement which James Ballantyne had been pouring on the new
novel. Ballantyne, he says, finds fault with the subject, when what he
really should have found fault with was the failing power of the
author:--"James is, with many other kindly critics, perhaps in the
predicament of an honest drunkard, when crop-sick the next morning,
who does not ascribe the malady to the wine he has drunk, but to
having tasted some particular dish at dinner which disagreed with his
stomach.... I have lost, it is plain, the power of interesting the
country, and ought, injustice to all parties, to retire while I have
some credit. But this is an important step, and I will not be
obstinate about it if it be necessary.... Frankly, I cannot think of
flinging aside the half-finished volume, as if it were a corked bottle
of wine.... I may, perhaps, take a trip to the Continent for a year or
two, if I find Othello's occupation gone, or rather Othello's
_reputation_."[57] And again, in a very able letter written on the
12th of December, 1830, to Cadell, he takes a view of the situation
with as much calmness and imperturbability as if he were an outside
spectator. "There were many circumstances in the matter which you and
J. B. (James Ballantyne) could not be aware of, and which, if you were
aware of, might have influenced your judgment, which had, and yet
have, a most powerful effect upon mine. The deaths of both my father
and mother have been preceded by a paralytic shock. My father survived
it for nearly two years--a melancholy respite, and not to be desired.
I was alarmed with Miss Young's morning visit, when, as you know, I
lost my speech. The medical people said it was from the stomach, which
might be, but while there is a doubt upon a point so alarming, you
will not wonder that the subject, or to use Hare's _lingo_, the
_shot_, should be a little anxious." He relates how he had followed
all the strict medical _régime_ prescribed to him with scrupulous
regularity, and then begun his work again with as much attention as he
could. "And having taken pains with my story, I find it is not
relished, nor indeed tolerated, by those who have no interest in
condemning it, but a strong interest in putting even a face" (? force)
"upon their consciences. Was not this, in the circumstances, a damper
to an invalid already afraid that the sharp edge might be taken off
his intellect, though he was not himself sensible of that?" In fact,
no more masterly discussion of the question whether his mind were
failing or not, and what he ought to do in the interval of doubt, can
be conceived, than these letters give us. At this time the debt of
Ballantyne and Co. had been reduced by repeated dividends--all the
fruits of Scott's literary work--more than one half. On the 17th of
December, 1830, the liabilities stood at 54,000_l._, having been
reduced 63,000_l._ within five years. And Sir Walter, encouraged by
this great result of his labour, resumed the suspended novel.
But with the beginning of 1831 came new alarms. On January 5th Sir
Walter enters in his diary,--"Very indifferent, with more awkward
feelings than I can well bear up against. My voice sunk and my head
strangely confused." Still he struggled on. On the 31st January he
went alone to Edinburgh to sign his will, and stayed at his
bookseller's (Cadell's) house in Athol Crescent. A great snow-storm
set in which kept him in Edinburgh and in Mr. Cadell's house till the
9th February. One day while the snow was still falling heavily,
Ballantyne reminded him that a motto was wanting for one of the
chapters of _Count Robert of Paris_. He went to the window, looked out
for a moment, and then wrote,--
"The storm increases; 'tis no sunny shower,
Foster'd in the moist breast of March or April,
Or such as parchèd summer cools his lips with.
Heaven's windows are flung wide; the inmost deeps
Call, in hoarse greeting, one upon another;
On comes the flood, in all its foaming horrors,
And where's the dike shall stop it?
_The Deluge: a Poem._"
Clearly this failing imagination of Sir Walter's was still a great
deal more vivid than that of most men, with brains as sound as it ever
pleased Providence to make them. But his troubles were not yet even
numbered. The "storm increased," and it was, as he said, "no sunny
shower." His lame leg became so painful that he had to get a
mechanical apparatus to relieve him of some of the burden of
supporting it. Then, on the 21st March, he was hissed at Jedburgh, as
I have before said, for his vehement opposition to Reform. In April he
had another stroke of paralysis which he now himself recognized as
one. Still he struggled on at his novel. Under the date of May 6, 7,
8, he makes this entry in his diary:--"Here is a precious job. I have
a formal remonstrance from those critical people, Ballantyne and
Cadell, against the last volume of _Count Robert_, which is within a
sheet of being finished. I suspect their opinion will be found to
coincide with that of the public; at least it is not very different
from my own. The blow is a stunning one, I suppose, for I scarcely
feel it. It is singular, but it comes with as little surprise as if I
had a remedy ready; yet God knows I am at sea in the dark, and the
vessel leaky, I think, into the bargain. I cannot conceive that I have
tied a knot with my tongue which my teeth cannot untie. We shall see.
I have suffered terribly, that is the truth, rather in body than mind,
and I often wish I could lie down and sleep without waking. But I will
fight it out if I can."[58] The medical men with one accord tried to
make him give up his novel-writing. But he smiled and put them by. He
took up _Count Robert of Paris_ again, and tried to recast it. On the
18th May he insisted on attending the election for Roxburghshire, to
be held at Jedburgh, and in spite of the unmannerly reception he had
met with in March, no dissuasion would keep him at home. He was
saluted in the town with groans and blasphemies, and Sir Walter had to
escape from Jedburgh by a back way to avoid personal violence. The
cries of "Burk Sir Walter," with which he was saluted on this
occasion, haunted him throughout his illness and on his dying bed. At
the Selkirk election it was Sir Walter's duty as Sheriff to preside,
and his family therefore made no attempt to dissuade him from his
attendance. There he was so well known and loved, that in spite of his
Tory views, he was not insulted, and the only man who made any attempt
to hustle the Tory electors, was seized by Sir Walter with his own
hand, as he got out of his carriage, and committed to prison without
resistance till the election day was over.
A seton which had been ordered for his head, gave him some relief, and
of course the first result was that he turned immediately to his
novel-writing again, and began _Castle Dangerous_ in July, 1831,--the
last July but one which he was to see at all. He even made a little
journey in company with Mr. Lockhart, in order to see the scene of the
story he wished to tell, and on his return set to work with all his
old vigour to finish his tale, and put the concluding touches to
_Count Robert of Paris_. But his temper was no longer what it had
been. He quarrelled with Ballantyne, partly for his depreciatory
criticism of _Count Robert of Paris_, partly for his growing tendency
to a mystic and strait-laced sort of dissent and his increasing
Liberalism. Even Mr. Laidlaw and Scott's children had much to bear.
But he struggled on even to the end, and did not consent to try the
experiment of a voyage and visit to Italy till his immediate work was
done. Well might Lord Chief Baron Shepherd apply to Scott Cicero's
description of some contemporary of his own, who "had borne adversity
wisely, who had not been broken by fortune, and who, amidst the
buffets of fate, had maintained his dignity." There was in Sir Walter,
I think, at least as much of the Stoic as the Christian. But Stoic or
Christian, he was a hero of the old, indomitable type. Even the last
fragments of his imaginative power were all turned to account by that
unconquerable will, amidst the discouragement of friends, and the
still more disheartening doubts of his own mind. Like the headland
stemming a rough sea, he was gradually worn away, but never crushed.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 51: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 197.]
[Footnote 52: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 203-4.]
[Footnote 53: Ibid., viii. 235.]
[Footnote 54: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 238.]
[Footnote 55: viii. 277.]
[Footnote 56: viii. 347, 371, 381.]
[Footnote 57: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, x. 11, 12.]
[Footnote 58: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, x. 65-6.]