THE LAST YEAR.
In the month of September, 1831, the disease of the brain which had
long been in existence must have made a considerable step in advance.
For the first time the illusion seemed to possess Sir Walter that he
had paid off all the debt for which he was liable, and that he was
once more free to give as his generosity prompted. Scott sent Mr.
Lockhart 50_l._ to save his grandchildren some slight inconvenience,
and told another of his correspondents that he had "put his decayed
fortune into as good a condition as he could desire." It was well,
therefore, that he had at last consented to try the effect of travel
on his health,--not that he could hope to arrest by it such a disease
as his, but that it diverted him from the most painful of all efforts,
that of trying anew the spell which had at last failed him, and
perceiving in the disappointed eyes of his old admirers that the magic
of his imagination was a thing of the past. The last day of real
enjoyment at Abbotsford--for when Sir Walter returned to it to die, it
was but to catch once more the outlines of its walls, the rustle of
its woods, and the gleam of its waters, through senses already
darkened to all less familiar and less fascinating visions--was the
22nd September, 1831. On the 21st, Wordsworth had come to bid his old
friend adieu, and on the 22nd--the last day at home--they spent the
morning together in a visit to Newark. It was a day to deepen alike in
Scott and in Wordsworth whatever of sympathy either of them had with
the very different genius of the other, and that it had this result in
Wordsworth's case, we know from the very beautiful poem,--"Yarrow
Revisited,"--and the sonnet which the occasion also produced. And even
Scott, who was so little of a Wordsworthian, who enjoyed Johnson's
stately but formal verse, and Crabbe's vivid Dutch painting, more than
he enjoyed the poetry of the transcendental school, must have recurred
that day with more than usual emotion to his favourite Wordsworthian
poem. Soon after his wife's death, he had remarked in his diary how
finely "the effect of grief upon persons who like myself are highly
susceptible of humour" had been "touched by Wordsworth in the
character of the merry village teacher, Matthew, whom Jeffrey
profanely calls a half-crazy, sentimental person."[59] And long before
this time, during the brightest period of his life, Scott had made the
old Antiquary of his novel quote the same poem of Wordsworth's, in a
passage where the period of life at which he had now arrived is
anticipated with singular pathos and force. "It is at such moments as
these," says Mr. Oldbuck, "that we feel the changes of time. The same
objects are before us--those inanimate things which we have gazed on
in wayward infancy and impetuous youth, in anxious and scheming
manhood--they are permanent and the same; but when we look upon them
in cold, unfeeling old age, can we, changed in our temper, our
pursuits, our feelings,--changed in our form, our limbs, and our
strength,--can we be ourselves called the same? or do we not rather
look back with a sort of wonder upon our former selves as beings
separate and distinct from what we now are? The philosopher who
appealed from Philip inflamed with wine to Philip in his hours of
sobriety, did not claim a judge so different as if he had appealed
from Philip in his youth to Philip in his old age. I cannot but be
touched with the feeling so beautifully expressed in a poem which I
have heard repeated:--
'My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirr'd,
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.
Thus fares it still in our decay,
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.'"[60]
Sir Walter's memory, which, in spite of the slight failure of brain
and the mild illusions to which, on the subject of his own prospects,
he was now liable, had as yet been little impaired--indeed, he could
still quote whole pages from all his favourite authors--must have
recurred to those favourite Wordsworthian lines of his with singular
force, as, with Wordsworth for his companion, he gazed on the refuge
of the last Minstrel of his imagination for the last time, and felt in
himself how much of joy in the sight, age had taken away, and how
much, too, of the habit of expecting it, it had unfortunately left
behind. Whether Sir Walter recalled this poem of Wordsworth's on this
occasion or not--and if he recalled it, his delight in giving pleasure
would assuredly have led him to let Wordsworth know that he recalled
it--the mood it paints was unquestionably that in which his last day
at Abbotsford was passed. In the evening, referring to the journey
which was to begin the next day, he remarked that Fielding and
Smollett had been driven abroad by declining health, and that they had
never returned; while Wordsworth--willing perhaps to bring out a
brighter feature in the present picture--regretted that the last days
of those two great novelists had not been surrounded by due marks of
respect. With Sir Walter, as he well knew, it was different. The
Liberal Government that he had so bitterly opposed were pressing on
him signs of the honour in which he was held, and a ship of his
Majesty's navy had been placed at his disposal to take him to the
Mediterranean. And Wordsworth himself added his own more durable token
of reverence. As long as English poetry lives, Englishmen will know
something of that last day of the last Minstrel at Newark:--
"Grave thoughts ruled wide on that sweet day,
Their dignity installing
In gentle bosoms, while sere leaves
Were on the bough or falling;
But breezes play'd, and sunshine gleam'd
The forest to embolden,
Redden'd the fiery hues, and shot
Transparence through the golden.
"For busy thoughts the stream flow'd on
In foamy agitation;
And slept in many a crystal pool
For quiet contemplation:
No public and no private care
The free-born mind enthralling,
We made a day of happy hours,
Our happy days recalling.
* * * * *
"And if, as Yarrow through the woods
And down the meadow ranging,
Did meet us with unalter'd face,
Though we were changed and changing;
If _then_ some natural shadow spread
Our inward prospect over,
The soul's deep valley was not slow
Its brightness to recover.
"Eternal blessings on the Muse
And her divine employment,
The blameless Muse who trains her sons
For hope and calm enjoyment;
Albeit sickness lingering yet
Has o'er their pillow brooded,
And care waylays their steps--a sprite
Not easily eluded.
* * * * *
"Nor deem that localized Romance
Plays false with our affections;
Unsanctifies our tears--made sport
For fanciful dejections:
Ah, no! the visions of the past
Sustain the heart in feeling
Life as she is--our changeful Life
With friends and kindred dealing.
"Bear witness ye, whose thoughts that day
In Yarrow's groves were centred,
Who through the silent portal arch
Of mouldering Newark enter'd;
And clomb the winding stair that once
Too timidly was mounted
By the last Minstrel--not the last!--
Ere he his tale recounted."
Thus did the meditative poetry, the day of which was not yet, do
honour to itself in doing homage to the Minstrel of romantic energy
and martial enterprise, who, with the school of poetry he loved, was
passing away.
On the 23rd September Scott left Abbotsford, spending five days on his
journey to London; nor would he allow any of the old objects of
interest to be passed without getting out of the carriage to see
them. He did not leave London for Portsmouth till the 23rd October,
but spent the intervening time in London, where he took medical
advice, and with his old shrewdness wheeled his chair into a dark
corner during the physicians' absence from the room to consult, that
he might read their faces clearly on their return without their being
able to read his. They recognized traces of brain disease, but Sir
Walter was relieved by their comparatively favourable opinion, for he
admitted that he had feared insanity, and therefore had "feared
_them_." On the 29th October he sailed for Malta, and on the 20th
November Sir Walter insisted on being landed on a small volcanic
island which had appeared four months previously, and which
disappeared again in a few days, and on clambering about its crumbling
lava, in spite of sinking at nearly every step almost up to his knees,
in order that he might send a description of it to his old friend Mr.
Skene. On the 22nd November he reached Malta, where he looked eagerly
at the antiquities of the place, for he still hoped to write a
novel--and, indeed, actually wrote one at Naples, which was never
published, called _The Siege of Malta_--on the subject of the Knights
of Malta, who had interested him so much in his youth. From Malta
Scott went to Naples, which he reached on the 17th December, and where
he found much pleasure in the society of Sir William Gell, an invalid
like himself, but not one who, like himself, struggled against the
admission of his infirmities, and refused to be carried when his own
legs would not safely carry him. Sir William Gell's dog delighted the
old man; he would pat it and call it "Poor boy!" and confide to Sir
William how he had at home "two very fine favourite dogs, so large
that I am always afraid they look too large and too feudal for my
diminished income." In all his letters home he gave some injunction to
Mr. Laidlaw about the poor people and the dogs.
On the 22nd of March, 1832, Goethe died, an event which made a great
impression on Scott, who had intended to visit Weimar on his way back,
on purpose to see Goethe, and this much increased his eager desire to
return home. Accordingly on the 16th of April, the last day on which
he made any entry in his diary, he quitted Naples for Rome, where he
stayed long enough only to let his daughter see something of the
place, and hurried off homewards on the 21st of May. In Venice he was
still strong enough to insist on scrambling down into the dungeons
adjoining the Bridge of Sighs; and at Frankfort he entered a
bookseller's shop, when the man brought out a lithograph of
Abbotsford, and Scott remarking, "I know that already, sir," left the
shop unrecognized, more than ever craving for home. At Nimeguen, on
the 9th of June, while in a steamboat on the Rhine, he had his most
serious attack of apoplexy, but would not discontinue his journey, was
lifted into an English steamboat at Rotterdam on the 11th of June, and
arrived in London on the 13th. There he recognized his children, and
appeared to expect immediate death, as he gave them repeatedly his
most solemn blessing, but for the most part he lay at the St. James's
Hotel, in Jermyn Street, without any power to converse. There it was
that Allan Cunningham, on walking home one night, found a group of
working men at the corner of the street, who stopped him and asked,
"as if there was but one death-bed in London, 'Do you know, sir, if
this is the street where he is lying?'" According to the usual irony
of destiny, it was while the working men were doing him this hearty
and unconscious homage, that Sir Walter, whenever disturbed by the
noises of the street, imagined himself at the polling-booth of
Jedburgh, where the people had cried out, "Burk Sir Walter." And it
was while lying here,--only now and then uttering a few words,--that
Mr. Lockhart says of him, "He expressed his will as determinedly as
ever, and expressed it with the same apt and good-natured irony that
he was wont to use."
Sir Walter's great and urgent desire was to return to Abbotsford, and at
last his physicians yielded. On the 7th July he was lifted into his
carriage, followed by his trembling and weeping daughters, and so taken to
a steamboat, where the captain gave up his private cabin--a cabin on
deck--for his use. He remained unconscious of any change till after his
arrival in Edinburgh, when, on the 11th July, he was placed again in his
carriage, and remained in it quite unconscious during the first two stages
of the journey to Tweedside. But as the carriage entered the valley of the
Gala, he began to look about him. Presently he murmured a name or two,
"Gala water, surely,--Buckholm,--Torwoodlee." When the outline of the
Eildon hills came in view, Scott's excitement was great, and when his eye
caught the towers of Abbotsford, he sprang up with a cry of delight, and
while the towers remained in sight it took his physician, his son-in-law,
and his servant, to keep him in the carriage. Mr. Laidlaw was waiting for
him, and he met him with a cry, "Ha! Willie Laidlaw! O, man, how often I
have thought of you!" His dogs came round his chair and began to fawn on
him and lick his hands, while Sir Walter smiled or sobbed over them. The
next morning he was wheeled about his garden, and on the following morning
was out in this way for a couple of hours; within a day or two he fancied
that he could write again, but on taking the pen into his hand, his
fingers could not clasp it, and he sank back with tears rolling down his
cheek. Later, when Laidlaw said in his hearing that Sir Walter had had a
little repose, he replied, "No, Willie; no repose for Sir Walter but in
the grave." As the tears rushed from his eyes, his old pride revived.
"Friends," he said, "don't let me expose myself--get me to bed,--that is
the only place."
After this Sir Walter never left his room. Occasionally he dropped off
into delirium, and the old painful memory,--that cry of "Burk Sir
Walter,"--might be again heard on his lips. He lingered, however, till
the 21st September,--more than two months from the day of his reaching
home, and a year from the day of Wordsworth's arrival at Abbotsford
before his departure for the Mediterranean, with only one clear
interval of consciousness, on Monday, the 17th September. On that day
Mr. Lockhart was called to Sir Walter's bedside with the news that he
had awakened in a state of composure and consciousness, and wished to
see him. "'Lockhart,' he said, 'I may have but a minute to speak to
you. My dear, be a good man,--be virtuous,--be religious,--be a good
man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie
here.' He paused, and I said, 'Shall I send for Sophia and Anne?'
'No,' said he, 'don't disturb them. Poor souls! I know they were up
all night. God bless you all!'" With this he sank into a very tranquil
sleep, and, indeed, he scarcely afterwards gave any sign of
consciousness except for an instant on the arrival of his sons. And so
four days afterwards, on the day of the autumnal equinox in 1832, at
half-past one in the afternoon, on a glorious autumn day, with every
window wide open, and the ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles
distinctly audible in his room, he passed away, and "his eldest son
kissed and closed his eyes." He died a month after completing his
sixty-first year. Nearly seven years earlier, on the 7th December,
1825, he had in his diary taken a survey of his own health in relation
to the age reached by his father and other members of his family, and
had stated as the result of his considerations, "Square the odds and
good night, Sir Walter, about sixty. I care not if I leave my name
unstained and my family property settled. _Sat est vixisse._" Thus he
lived just a year--but a year of gradual death--beyond his own
calculation.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 59: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ix. 63.]
[Footnote 60: _The Antiquary_, chap. x.]