At the moment when ruin faced him he found himself suddenly in the
possession of a great income from an unexpected source. In 1805 he had
written, almost at a sitting, an instalment of a story of the uprising
of 1745 in a futile attempt to restore the exiled Stuart, Charles
Edward, to the throne. In 1814 he completed the story and published
it anonymously under the title of "Waverley." The novel was written in
what the oarsmen call a "spurt"; not because the novelist was writing
carelessly at breakneck speed for immediate income, but because he
was a tremendous worker and more concerned with the general movement
and human interest of the story in hand than with the details of its
workmanship. To immense energy of mind and body Scott united patience
and methodical habits of work, as he added to a romantic imagination
keen interest in the business of life and in the smallest detail of
practical affairs. His appetite for facts was as marked as his capacity
for sentiment. Scott had breadth and vigor rather than delicacy of
imagination; that is one reason why he is out of fashion at a time
when men want to know not only what people do but why and how they do
it. He saw men and events in the rough; he was interested in striking
historical incidents and events, in strongly-marked characters, in
actions rather than in moods. In a word, Scott was a writer who took
the world as he found it, and described it as he saw it, without
any strong desire to reform it. He was a Tory in politics, a strong
adherent of an ordered society; a good, sound man not haunted by
misgiving and questioning about the general order of things.
Scott's novels were literally poured out during fifteen wonderful
years; and even then the broken man could still apply the whip to his
exhausted and crippled brain. The popular success of the novels was
unprecedented in the history of literature. It is estimated that Scott
earned with his pen not less than three-quarters of a million dollars.
The earlier stories were the best: "The Antiquary," "Old Mortality,"
"Rob Roy," "Heart of Midlothian," "Guy Mannering." These were followed
by the series of semi-historical novels with their brilliant historical
portraits: "Ivanhoe," the most popular though by no means the best of
Scott's stories, "The Monastery," "The Abbot," "Kenilworth," "Quentin
Durward," "The Bride of Lammermoor," "The Talisman."
[Illustration: THE EMPTY CHAIR, ABBOTSFORD
From the painting by Sir W. Allan, R. A., in the Royal Collection]
The defects of these novels and those which came later have been
clearly pointed out since the analytical novel and the novel of purpose
have come into vogue. Scott did not command the constructive skill of
even the second-rate novelist of today; he was often an awkward builder
and clumsy in putting his materials together in a coherent whole; his
style is often loose and diffuse; he dealt largely with the outside
of the spectacle of living; his women have no magic of loveliness,
no mystery of temperament, though they sometimes stand out with great
distinctness; his heroes are rarely heroic, they are often commonplace.
Scott was the chronicler of feudalism, the primitive social order of
the clan, of an aristocratic society. He was as little interested
in Democracy as was Shakespeare; and largely for the same reason:
his age was not anti-democratic, it had not reached the democratic
stage. Bagehot, the famous English critic, put his limitations under
two heads: he gives us the stir of the world but not its soul, and he
leaves the abstract intellect unreported.
His vital interest in the moving spectacle of life has given us an
almost unrivalled report of that world, and of a great group of men and
women whose careers, as Scott reports them, have the reality of fact
and the dramatic interest of fiction. Jeanie Deans, Madge Wildfire,
Diana Vernon, Meg Merrilies, Wandering Willie, Andrew Fairservice,
and a crowd of their companions, are more alive today, after a century
has passed, than most of the people whose names are in the telephone
directories.
Scott was a man of the kind men love to remember. His faults of nature
are as obvious as his faults of art; but his splendid vitality makes
them trivial. He was large hearted, frank, generous, honorable; he made
life seem more noble by the richness of his nature and his splendid
courage. His career was as romantic in achievement and vicissitude as
his most striking novel. In 1826, when he was fifty-five years old, the
two business houses in which he was a partner failed, with obligations
amounting to nearly six hundred thousand dollars. Scott had recently
spent large sums on the enlargement of Abbotsford, in settling his sons
in life, and for other people; and he held the bills of Constable for
four novels to be written in the future; the novels were written, but
the bills were not honored. Four months after the failure Lady Scott
died, and Scott's health was breaking. Two days after the failure he
resumed work on "Woodstock," and set himself to pay the debt of half
a million dollars. In two years he earned for his creditors nearly two
hundred thousand dollars, the major part of which came from the sales
of "Woodstock" and "The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte." If his brain had
not given out he would have discharged the entire indebtedness in a
few years. Working with a disabled brain but with heroic resolution,
he wrote "Count Robert of Paris" and "Castle Dangerous." In five years
more than three hundred thousand dollars had been paid; meantime he had
had a stroke of paralysis. After a second stroke, when "Count Robert"
was practically finished, the publishers objected to the work in the
last volume. "The blow is a stunning one," wrote the broken man. "God
knows I am at sea in the dark, and the vessel leaky.... I often wish I
could lie down and sleep without waking. But I will fight it out if I
can." And he fought it out; he died on July 12, 1832, and on February
21, 1833, the creditors were paid in full. Never was a heroic fight
more nobly won.
On his death-bed Scott called his son-in-law Lockhart, who was to tell
the story of his life in one of the great biographies, to his bedside.
"I have but a minute to speak to you," he said. "My dear, be a good
man.... Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie
here."
[Illustration: THE GRAVE OF SCOTT
At Dryburgh Abbey, Scotland]