THE WIZARD'S FAREWELL TO ABBOTSFORD
On March 5, 1817, at Castle Street, in the midst of a merry
dinner-party, Scott was seized with a sudden illness--the first
since his childhood. The disorder was cramp in the stomach of an
unusually severe type. From Gillies's 'Recollections' we learn
that, although disabled and compelled to retire to his room, he
was unwilling that the festivity of the evening should be broken
up, and actually sent a message to Mrs. Siddons that nothing would
do him so much good as to hear her sing. He would, he said, be all
right in the morning. But the illness lasted a week, and was more
serious than had been anticipated. It was, indeed, the first of a
series of such paroxysms, which for years visited him periodically,
and from which he never absolutely recovered. Probably the best
index to his feelings at this period is found in what may be
described as the most pathetically poetic verses he ever penned.
He was at Abbotsford, battling with depression and melancholy,
and seldom without a sense of pain. On the bare height above
Cauldshiels, with its then magnificent prospect of Melrose and the
open valley of the Tweed, hemmed in on the west by the Selkirkshire
uplands, he wrote, on one lovely autumn evening, these exquisite
lines--exquisite because expressing the deepest passion of his soul
at the moment:
'The sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill,
In Ettrick's vale, is sinking sweet;
The westland wind is hush and still--
The lake lies sleeping at my feet.
Yet not the landscape to mine eye
Bears those bright hues that once it bore,
Though evening with her richest dye
Flames o'er the hills of Ettrick's shore.
'With listless look along the plain
I see Tweed's silver current glide,
And coldly mark the holy fane
Of Melrose rise in ruin'd pride.
The quiet lake, the balmy air,
The hill, the stream, the tower, the tree--
Are they still such as once they were,
Or is the dreary change in me?
'Alas! the warp'd and broken board,
How can it bear the painter's dye!
The harp of strain'd and tuneless chord,
How to the minstrel's skill reply!
To aching eyes each landscape lowers,
To feverish pulse each gale blows chill,
And Araby's or Eden's bowers
Were barren as this moorland hill.'
[Illustration: MELROSE ABBEY FROM THE MEADOWS]
'Merrily swim we, the moon shines bright;
There's a golden gleam on the distant height;
There's a silver shower on the alders dank
And the drooping willows that wave on the bank.
I see the Abbey, both turret and tower--
It is all astir for the vesper hour;
The monks for the chapel are leaving each cell,
But where's Father Philip, should toll the bell?'
The 'change' in himself was visible enough. He was worn almost to
a skeleton, and sat on his horse slanting, as if unable to hold
himself upright. His dress was threadbare and disordered, his
countenance meagre, haggard, and of the deadliest olive brown.
Afterwards, a single season blanched his hair snow-white. The last
days of the Last Minstrel seemed to have come. Lockhart parted on
one occasion with 'dark prognostications' that it was for the last
time. Scott, too, despaired of himself. Calling his children about
his bed, he took leave of them with solemn tenderness, adding,
'For myself, my dears, I am unconscious of ever having done any
man an injury, or omitted any fair opportunity of doing any man a
benefit. I well know that no human life can appear otherwise than
weak and filthy in the eyes of God; but I rely on the merits and
intercession of our Redeemer.' 'God bless you!' he again said to
each of them, laying his hand on their heads. 'Live so that you may
all hope to meet each other in a better place hereafter.' Presently
he fell into a profound slumber, and on awaking, the crisis was
seen to be over. A gradual re-establishment of health followed.
Of the 'Bride of Lammermoor,' and 'Ivanhoe,' written under the
most adverse circumstances, whilst he still suffered acutely, one
is surprised to find both romances in the very front rank of his
creations. He was under opiates, more or less, when the 'Bride'
was on the stocks, dictating nearly the whole of it to Laidlaw
and John Ballantyne. It is a most curious fact psychologically,
for of its characters, scenes, humour, and all that connected him
with the authorship of the story, he recollected nothing. A more
extraordinary incident literature has not known.[14] But work
which cut him short in the end was the saving of his life in this
instance. The mind was a constant conquest over the weaker physical
framework. 'It is my conviction,' he declared to Gillies, 'that
by a little more hearty application you might forget, and lose
altogether, the irritable sensations of an invalid, and I don't,
in this instance, preach what I have not endeavoured to practise.
Be assured that if pain could have prevented my application to
literary labour, not a page of "Ivanhoe" would have been written;
for, from beginning to end of that production, which has been
a good deal praised, I was never free from suffering. It might
have borne a motto somewhat analogous to the inscription which
Frederick the Great's predecessor used to affix to his attempts
at portrait-painting when he had the gout: "Fredericus I., _in
tormentis_ pinxit." Now, if I had given way to mere feelings and
ceased to work, it is a question whether the disorder might not
have taken deeper root, and become incurable. The best way is,
if possible, to triumph over disease by setting it at defiance,
somewhat on the same principle as one avoids being stung by boldly
grasping a nettle.'
By 1820 he was enjoying tolerably good health, with no cramp
recurrences for a time. But in 1823, when busy with 'Peveril,'
an arresting hand laid itself upon Scott in the shape of a
slight stroke of apoplexy. As a matter of fact, and as Lockhart
suspected, this was only one of several such shocks which he had
been carefully concealing. '"Peveril" will, I fear, smell of the
apoplexy,' he afterwards admitted. Hence, no doubt, 'Peveril's'
dulness'. He rallied, notwithstanding, and up to Christmas, 1825,
his health was excellent. But from 1826--the year of his crowning
sorrows--the record of Scott's life reads like a long martyrdom.
Rheumatism, hallucinations, strange memory lapses, began to steal
from Scott all the little joy that was left. On February 5, 1830,
the blow fell which, like Damocles' sword, had been hanging over
him for years. It fell with unmistakable meaning. It was his first
real paralytic seizure--long dreaded, long expected. On his return
from the Parliament House, in his usual health, he found an old
friend waiting to consult him about a memoir of her father which
he had promised to revise for the press. Whilst examining the MS.
the stroke came, a slight contortion passing over his features. In
a minute or two he rose, staggered to the drawing-room, where were
Miss Anne Scott and Miss Lockhart, but fell to the floor speechless
and insensible. A surgeon quickly at hand cupped him, after the
old-fashioned treatment for such complaints. By night, speech had
returned, and in a day or two he had resumed his Court duties. But
he was never the same again. People in general did not remark any
difference. Doctors and patient, however, knew well enough that it
was the beginning of the end. Both his parents had succumbed to
paralysis, and 'considering the terrible violence and agitation
and exertion,' says Lockhart, 'to which he had been subjected
during the four preceding years, the only wonder is that this blow
was deferred so long; there can be none that it was soon followed
by others.'
Still he plodded on. Even with half a brain he should not 'lag
superfluous on the stage.' And heedless of innumerable warnings,
he was at his desk day after day, writing and dictating by turns.
He now resigned his Clerkship, on an £800 a year allowance,
surrendered his Edinburgh house, and settled permanently at
Abbotsford, lonely and desolate, an old man before his time, but
indomitable to the core. There he commenced 'Count Robert of
Paris,' the penultimate of his published tales. But the mighty
machinery of his mind moved not as of yore. Like Samson, his
strength had departed. He was now as other men. By November he
suffered from a second stroke, and wrote in his Diary for January:
'Very indifferent, with more awkward feelings than I can well bear
up against. My voice sunk, and my head strangely confused.' But a
worse shock was coming. Cadell pronounced the 'Count' a complete
failure. Yet he struggled to recast it. To crown all, he went to
the 'hustings'--a hardened anti-Reform Billite. At Jedburgh, as
Lockhart tells, the crowd saluted him with blasphemous shouts of
'Burke Sir Walter!'[15]--the unkindest cut of all, which haunted
him to the end. By July he had begun 'Castle Dangerous,' and in
the middle of the month, accompanied by Lockhart, he started for
Lanarkshire to refresh his memory for the setting of his new story.
They ascended the Tweed by Yair, Ashestiel, Elibank, Innerleithen,
Peebles, Biggar, places all dear to his heart and celebrated in
his writings. Crowds turned out to welcome him. Everywhere he was
received with acclamation and the deepest respect. At Douglas the
travellers inspected the old Castle, the ruin of St. Bride's, with
the monuments and tombs of the 'most heroic and powerful family
in Scottish annals.' At Milton-Lockhart, the seat of Lockhart's
brother, Scott met his old friend Borthwickbrae. Both were
paralytics. Each saw his own case mirrored in the other. They had a
joyous--too joyous a meeting, with startling results to the older
invalid. On returning to Cleghorn, another shock laid him low, and
he was despaired of. When the news reached Scott, he was bent on
getting home at once. 'No, William,' he said to his host, urging
him to remain, 'this is a sad warning; I must home to work while it
is called to-day, for the night cometh when no man can work. I put
that text many years ago on my dial-stone, but it often preached in
vain.'
[Illustration: JEDBURGH ABBEY]
'The sacred tapers' lights are gone,
Gray moss has clad the altar stone,
The holy image is o'erthrown,
The bell has ceased to toll;
The long ribb'd aisles are burst and shrunk,
The holy shrines to ruin sunk;
Departed is the pious monk--
God's blessing on his soul!'
Returned, he finished 'Count Robert' and 'Castle Dangerous.'
Both novels were really the fruit of a paralytic brain. The
'Magnum Opus,'[16] too, proposed by Cadell (a huge success),
engaged much of his attention. But Sir Walter's work was done.
At length, doctors' treatment doing him little good, from his
constant determination to be at his desk, it was decided, not
without difficulty, that Scott should spend the winter of 1831 in
Italy, where his son Charles was attached to the British Legation
at Naples. On September 22 all was in readiness. A round of
touching adieus, one or two gatherings of old friends, the final
instructions to Laidlaw, and Scott quitted Abbotsford practically
for ever. He returned, to be sure, but more a dead man than a
living one. Of his journey to London (meeting again with Moore,
Milman, Croker, Wilkie, and Washington Irving) there is no need to
write, nor of the Italian tour--Malta, Naples, Rome,[17] Florence,
Venice--for which, no matter the brilliance of their associations,
he exhibited but a mere passive interest. His heart was in the
homeland. _Its_ voices had the strongest appeal for him; an exile
song rang in his ears:
'Hame! hame! hame! O hame fain wad I be!
O hame! hame! hame! to my ain countrie.'
Not a little of the scenery reminded him of Scotland--Edinburgh,
the Eildons, Cauldshiels, Abbotsford. A peasant's lilt recalled the
melodies of the Border, and pathetically he repeated some lines
from 'Jock o' Hazeldean' and his boyhood's 'Hardyknute.' When, on
March 22, he heard of Goethe's death, whom he hoped to visit, he
exclaimed: 'Alas for Goethe! but he at least died at home; let us
to Abbotsford!' Then, by-and-by, the return journey was begun, viâ
Switzerland, the Tyrol, Munich, Heidelberg, to Frankfort and the
Rhine. At Nimeguen, on June 9, he had another attack of apoplexy,
combined with paralysis. It was the crowning blow. By the 13th,
London was reached, and in the St. James's Hotel, Jermyn Street
(now demolished), he lay for three weeks in a state of supreme
stupor. Allan Cunningham was in London then, and tells of the
extraordinary interest and sympathy which Scott's illness evoked.
Walking home late one night, he found a number of working men
standing at the corner of Jermyn Street, one of whom asked him,
as if there had been only one deathbed in London: 'Do you know,
sir, if this is the street where _he_ is lying?' 'Abbotsford!'
was his cry in the more lucid intervals that came to him. All its
summer beauty seemed to be standing out before him, and to beckon
him northwards. On July 7 he was carried on board the _James Watt_
steamer, accompanied by Lockhart, Cadell, a medical man--Dr. Thomas
Watson--and his two daughters. The Forth was reached on the 9th,
and the next two days--the last in his 'own romantic town'--were
passed, as all the voyage had been, in a condition of absolute
unconsciousness. On the 11th, at a very early hour of the morning,
Scott was lifted into his carriage for the final journey homewards.
During the first part of the drive he remained torpid, until the
veil lifted somewhat at Gala Water. Strange that, after oblivion
so profound and prolonged, he should open his eyes and regain
a measure of consciousness just here, amid landscapes the most
familiar to him in the world. Some good angel must have touched
him then. A mere coincidence! Perhaps! But there are more things
in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. 'Gala
Water, surely--Buckholm--Torwoodlee,' he murmured. When he saw the
Eildons--
'Three crests against the saffron sky,
Beyond the purple plain,
The kind remembered melody
Of Tweed once more again'--
he became greatly excited, and in crossing Melrose Bridge, his
'nearest Rialto,' as he called it, he could hardly be kept in the
carriage. Abbotsford, a mile ahead, was soon reached. Laidlaw--a
big lump in his throat, we may be sure--was waiting at the
door, and assisted to carry his dying master and friend to the
dining-room, where his bed had been prepared. He sat bewildered for
a moment or two, then, resting his eyes on Laidlaw, as if trying
to recollect, said immediately, 'Ha, Willie Laidlaw! O man, how
often have I thought of _you_!' By this time his dogs were around
his chair, fawning on him, and licking his hands. Then, indeed,
he knew where he was. Between sobs and tears he tried to speak to
them, and to stroke them as of yore. But the body, no less than the
brain, was exhausted, and gentle sleep closed his eyelids, like
a tired child, once more in his own Abbotsford. He lingered for
some weeks, alternating between cloud and sunshine--mostly cloud.
One day the longing for his desk seized him, and he was wheeled
studywards, but the palsied fingers refused their office, and he
sank back, assured at last that the sceptre had departed. Lockhart
and Laidlaw were now his constant attendants. Both read to him
from the New Testament. 'There is but one Book,' Scott said, and
it 'comforted' him to listen to its soothing and hope-inspiring
utterances. Then the cloud became denser. At last delirium and
delusion prostrated him, and he grew daily feebler. Now he thought
himself administering justice as the Selkirkshire 'Shirra'; anon
he was giving Tom Purdie orders anent trees. Sometimes, his fancy
was in Jedburgh, and the words, 'Burke Sir Walter,' escaped him in
a dolorous tone. Then he would repeat snatches from Isaiah, or the
Book of Job, or some grand rugged verse torn off from the Scottish
Psalms, or a strain sublimer still from the Romish Litany:
'Dies iræ, dies illa,
Solvet sæclum in favilla.'
'As I was dressing on the morning of September 17,' says Lockhart,
'Nicolson came into my room and told me that his master had awoke
in a state of composure and consciousness, and wished to see me
immediately. I found him entirely himself, though in the last
extreme of feebleness. His eye was clear and calm--every trace of
the wild fire of delirium extinguished. "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 sunk 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. About half-past one p.m., on
September 21, Sir Walter Scott breathed his last, in the presence
of all his children. It was a beautiful day--so warm that every
window was wide open, and so perfectly still that the sound of all
others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed
over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around the
bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes.'
He died a month after completing his sixty-first year. On December
7, 1825, almost seven years earlier, we find him taking a survey
of his own health in relation to the ages reached by his parents
and other members of the family, and then setting down in his Diary
the result of his calculations, '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._' His prophecy
was fulfilled. He lived just a year--but a year of gradual
death--beyond his anticipations. His wish, too, was fulfilled;
for he died practically free of debt. The sale of his works, the
insurance of his life, and a sum advanced by Cadell, completely
cleared his engagements.[18]
On September 26--a Wednesday--Sir Walter was buried. Services at
Abbotsford, after the simple fashion of the Scottish Kirk, were
conducted by the Revs. Principal Baird, of Edinburgh University,
Dr. Dickson, of St. Cuthbert's, and the minister of Melrose. The
courtyard and all the precincts of Abbotsford were crowded with
uncovered spectators as the procession (over a mile in length)
was arranged. And as it advanced through Darnick and Melrose, and
the villages on the route, the whole population appeared at their
doors in like manner, almost all in black. From Darnick Tower[19] a
broad crape banner waved in the wind, and the Abbey bell at Melrose
rang a muffled peel. At Leaderfoot the Tweed was crossed for the
last time. Thence there is a somewhat steep ascent to Gladswood
and Bemersyde. On the crest of the road overlooking the 'beautiful
bend' the hearse came to a curious halt, at the very spot where
Scott was accustomed to rein up his horses. It was no 'accident,'
as Lockhart imagines. For one of the horses was Sir Walter's own,
and must have borne him many a time hither. Hence the explanation
of an incident which, strangely enough, seems to have puzzled
Lockhart, and was long regarded with a sort of superstitious awe.
It was late in the day--about half-past five--before the memorable
procession reached Dryburgh. The wide enclosure was thronged with
old and young. Peter Mathieson, Laidlaw, and others of Scott's
servants carried the plain black coffin to the grave within St.
Mary's aisle, where it was lowered by his two sons, his son-in-law,
and six of his cousins, Archdeacon Williams reading the Burial
Service of the Church of England. And thus the remains of Sir
Walter Scott--our Scottish Shakespeare--were laid by the side of
his wife in the sepulchre of his fathers, 'in sure and certain
hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus
Christ.'
[Illustration: LEADERFOOT BRIDGE]
'Sing Ercildoune and Cowdenknowes,
Where Homes had ance commanding;
And Drygrange, with the milk-white yowes,
'Twixt Tweed and Leader standing.'
LOCKHART AND ABBOTSFORD