One November afternoon in 1810,--the year in which "Waverley" was
resumed and laid aside again, to be finished off, its last two volumes
in three weeks, and made immortal in 1814, and when its author, by the
death of Lord Melville, narrowly escaped getting a civil appointment in
India,--three men, evidently lawyers, might have been seen escaping
like school-boys from the Parliament House, and speeding arm in arm
down Bank Street and the Mound, in the teeth of a surly blast of sleet.
The three friends sought the _bield_ of the low wall old Edinburgh boys
remember well, and sometimes miss now, as they struggle with the stout
west-wind.
The three were curiously unlike each other. One, "a little man of
feeble make, who would be unhappy if his pony got beyond a foot pace,"
slight, with "small, elegant features, hectic cheek, and soft hazel
eyes, the index of the quick, sensitive spirit within, as if he had the
warm heart of a woman, her genuine enthusiasm, and some of her
weaknesses." Another, as unlike a woman as a man can be; homely, almost
common, in look and figure; his hat and his coat, and indeed his entire
covering, worn to the quick, but all of the best material; what
redeemed him from vulgarity and meanness were his eyes, deep set,
heavily thatched, keen, hungry, shrewd, with a slumbering glow far in,
as if they could be dangerous; a man to care nothing for at first
glance, but, somehow, to give a second and not-forgetting look at. The
third was the biggest of the three, and though lame, nimble, and all
rough and alive with power; had you met him anywhere else, you would
say he was a Liddesdale store-farmer, come of gentle blood; "a stout,
blunt carle," as he says of himself, with the swing and stride and the
eye of a man of the hills,--a large, sunny, out-of-door air all about
him. On his broad and somewhat stooping shoulders was set that head
which, with Shakespeare's and Bonaparte's, is the best known in all the
world.
He was in high spirits, keeping his companions and himself in roars of
laughter, and every now and then seizing them, and stopping, that they
might take their fill of the fun; there they stood shaking with
laughter, "not an inch of their body free" from its grip. At George
Street they parted, one to Rose Court, behind St. Andrew's Church, one
to Albany Street, the other, our big and limping friend, to Castle
Street.
We need hardly give their names. The first was William Erskine,
afterwards Lord Kinnedder, chased out of the world by a calumny, killed
by its foul breath,--
"And at the touch of wrong, without a strife,
Slipped in a moment out of life."
There is nothing in literature more beautiful or more pathetic than
Scott's love and sorrow for this friend of his youth.
The second was William Clerk,--the _Darsie Latimer_ of "Redgauntlet";
"a man," as Scott says, "of the most acute intellects and powerful
apprehension," but of more powerful indolence, so as to leave the world
with little more than the report of what he might have been,--a
humorist as genuine, though not quite so savagely Swiftian as his
brother Lord Eldon, neither of whom had much of that commonest and best
of all the humors, called good.
The third we all know. What has he not done for every one of us? Who
else ever, except Shakespeare, so diverted mankind, entertained and
entertains a world so liberally, so wholesomely? We are fain to say,
not even Shakespeare, for his is something deeper than diversion,
something higher than pleasure, and yet who would care to split this
hair?
Had any one watched him closely before and after the parting, what a
change he would see! The bright, broad laugh, the shrewd, jovial word,
the man of the Parliament House and of the world, and, next step,
moody, the light of his eye withdrawn, as if seeing things that were
invisible; his shut mouth, like a child's, so impressionable, so
innocent, so sad: he was now all within, as before he was all without;
hence his brooding look. As the snow blattered in his face, he
muttered, "How it raves and drifts! On-ding o' snaw,--ay, that's the
word,--on-ding--" He was now at his own door, "Castle Street, No. 39."
He opened the door, and went straight to his den; that wondrous
workshop, where, in one year, 1823, when he was fifty-two, he wrote
"Peveril of the Peak," "Quentin Durward," and "St. Ronan's Well,"
besides much else. We once took the foremost of our novelists, the
greatest, we would say, since Scott, into this room, and could not but
mark the solemnizing effect of sitting where the great magician sat so
often and so long, and looking out upon that little shabby bit of sky,
and that back green where faithful Camp lies.[1]
[Footnote 1: This favorite dog "died about January, 1809, and was
buried, in a fine moonlight night, in the little garden behind the
house in Castle Street. My wife tells me she remembers the whole family
in tears about the grave, as her father himself smoothed the turf above
Camp with the saddest face she had ever seen. He had been engaged to
dine abroad that day, but apologized on account of the death of 'a dear
old friend.'"--_Lockhart's Life of Scott_.]
He sat down in his large, green morocco elbow-chair, drew himself close
to his table, and glowered and gloomed at his writing apparatus, "a
very handsome old box, richly carved, lined with crimson velvet, and
containing ink-bottles, taper-stand, etc., in silver, the whole in such
order that it might have come from the silversmith's window half an
hour before." He took out his paper, then, starting up angrily, said,
"'Go spin, you jade, go spin.' No, d---- it, it won't do:--
'My spinnin'-wheel is auld and stiff;
The rock o't wunna stand, sir;
To keep the temper-pin in tiff
Employs ower aft my hand, sir.'
I am off the fang.[2] I can make nothing of 'Waverley' to-day; I'll
awa' to Marjorie. Come wi' me, Maida, you thief." The great creature
rose slowly, and the pair were off, Scott taking a _maud_ (a plaid)
with him. "White as a frosted plum-cake, by jingo!" said he, when he
got to the street. Maida gambolled and whisked among the snow; and her
master strode across to Young Street, and through it to 1 North
Charlotte Street, to the house of his dear friend, Mrs. William Keith
of Corstorphine Hill, niece of Mrs. Keith of Ravelston, of whom he said
at her death, eight years after, "Much tradition, and that of the best,
has died with this excellent old lady, one of the few persons whose
spirits and _cleanliness_ and freshness of mind and body made old age
lovely and desirable."
[Footnote 2: Applied to a pump when it is dry and its valve has lost
its "fang."]
Sir Walter was in that house almost every day, and had a key, so in he
and the hound went, shaking themselves in the lobby. "Marjorie!
Marjorie!" shouted her friend, "where are ye, my bonnie wee croodlin
doo?" In a moment a bright, eager child of seven was in his arms, and
he was kissing her all over. Out came Mrs. Keith. "Come yer ways in,
Wattie." "No, not now. I am going to take Marjorie wi' me, and you may
come to your tea in Duncan Roy's sedan, and bring the bairn home in
your lap." "Tak' Marjorie, and it _on-ding o' snaw!_" said Mrs. Keith.
He said to himself, "On-ding--that's odd--that is the very word."
"Hoot, awa'! look here," and he displayed the corner of his plaid, made
to hold lambs,--the true shepherd's plaid, consisting of two breadths
sewed together, and uncut at one end, making a poke or _cul de sac_.
"Tak' yer lamb," said she, laughing at the contrivance; and so the Pet
was first well happit up, and then put, laughing silently, into the
plaid neuk, and the shepherd strode off with his lamb,--Maida
gambolling through the snow, and running races in her mirth.
Didn't he face "the angry airt," and make her bield his bosom, and into
his own room with her, and lock the door, and out with the warm, rosy
little wifie, who took it all with great composure! There the two
remained for three or more hours, making the house ring with their
laughter; you can fancy the big man's and Maidie's laugh. Having made
the fire cheery, he set her down in his ample chair, and, standing
sheepishly before her, began to say his lesson, which happened to be,
"Ziccotty, diccotty, dock, the mouse ran up the clock, the clock struck
wan, down the mouse ran, ziccotty, diccotty, dock." This done
repeatedly till she was pleased, she gave him his new lesson, gravely
and slowly, timing it upon her small fingers,--he saying it after
her,--
"Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven;
Alibi, crackaby, ten, and eleven;
Pin, pan, musky, dan;
Tweedle-um, twoddle-um,
Twenty-wan; eerie, orie, ourie,
You, are, out."
He pretended to great difficulty, and she rebuked him with most comical
gravity, treating him as a child. He used to say that when he came to
Alibi Crackaby he broke down, and pin-Pan, Musky-dan, Tweedle-um,
Twoddle-um made him roar with laughter. He said _Musky-Dan_ especially
was beyond endurance, bringing up an Irishman and his hat fresh from
the Spice Islands and odoriferous Ind; she getting quite bitter in her
displeasure at his ill behavior and stupidness.
Then he would read ballads to her in his own glorious way, the two
getting wild with excitement over "Gil Morrice" or the "Baron of
Smailholm"; and he would take her on his knee, and make her repeat
Constance's speeches in "King John," till he swayed to and fro, sobbing
his fill. Fancy the gifted little creature, like one possessed,
repeating,--
"For I am sick, and capable of fears,--
Oppressed with wrong, and, therefore, full of fears;
A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;
A woman, naturally born to fears."
"If thou, that bidst me be content, wert grim,
Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother's womb,--
Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious--"