Antiquary_, perhaps, of all his works, the one in which there is most
of the current matter of his own mind. It was scarcely published
before he had designed his _Tales of My Landlord_, the first series
of which came out, as by a new author, in December, and was at once
hailed with all the applause accorded to its predecessors, and set down
as another offshoot of the same tree. Early in 1817 appeared _Harold
the Dauntless_, which, not bearing his name, and being even a greater
failure than any of his recent poems, formed the last of that class
of his publications. The public might now, perhaps, have had a more
rapid succession of novels from his pen, if he had not thought proper
to write the historical part of his _Annual Register_, in a vain hope
to float that unfortunate work into popularity. As it was, he produced
this year his novel of _Rob Roy_, which came out at New Year 1818,
and experienced a brilliant reception. So great was his sense of the
encouragement extended to these novels, that in 1817 he made purchase
of an addition to his property, involving an outlay of no less than
£10,000. Just to shew, however, how much generosity towards others was
mixed with the no way mean ambition of Scott, his prime object here was
to secure a residence for his old school-friend, Adam Ferguson, and
his sisters, whom he was eager to plant near his own fireside. On his
concluding a rather hasty bargain for this estate, Ferguson expressed
his surprise and concern at seeing him exert so little pains to cheapen
it. ‘Never say a word about it,’ said Scott; ‘it will just answer you
and the ladies exactly; and it’s only scribbling a little more nonsense
some of these mornings, to pay anything it costs me more than enough.’
From calculations of this kind, Scott is understood to have bought
nearly the whole of his landed property at a very large percentage
above its actual value.
From this time till the close of 1825--a space of eight
years--prosperity reigned unchecked over the life of Scott. His novels
of _The Heart of Mid-Lothian_, _The Bride of Lammermoor_, _The Legend
of Montrose_, _Ivanhoe_, _The Monastery_, _The Abbot_, _The Pirate_,
_Kenilworth_, _The Fortunes of Nigel_, _Peveril of the Peak_, _Quentin
Durward_, _St Ronan’s Well_, _Redgauntlet_, and the _Tales of the
Crusaders_, streamed from his pen with a rapidity as wonderful as their
general merits were great. The public read with delight, and Scott was
happy to pipe to a dance which led to such solid results for his own
benefit. Generally, the first burst of sale called for ten thousand
copies, after which the books continued to go off in large numbers in
handsome collective reprints. It is odd after all, since Scott had
shewed a desire to increase his gains by being his own printer and
publisher, that he gave these books to be published by Constable, or
whatever other person, on the principle of a division of the profits--a
plan far too favourable to the tradesman, considering that the works
were sure to sell with little aid from that quarter. A more grasping
author would have given them to be published on commission, and thus
realised the whole profit excepting a fraction. The only deduction
he made from this liberality to the actual publisher consisted in
its being a point with him that the Ballantynes should have a share
of that portion of the profits--a mere grace on his part towards men
for whom he entertained a friendship. In 1819, Messrs Constable and
Company agreed to give him, for the copyright of the novels published
up to that time, and certain shares of poetical copyrights, the sum
of £12,000. Two years later, the same booksellers purchased for £5000
the copyright of four succeeding novels--little more than a year’s
work--from which the author had already drawn £10,000. After another
similar interval, the author received five thousand guineas for other
four novels, which likewise had previously yielded him half-profits.
Scott spoke of these sums with triumph and pleasure, as wonderful
prices for what he was pleased to call his _yeld kye_--that is, cows
which have ceased to give milk. Such a result of successful authorship
was a surprising novelty in its day. Nor was the author alone blessed
by the pecuniary productiveness of the Waverley Novels. We find the
Edinburgh theatrical manager realising £3000 by the brilliant run of
the drama formed from _Rob Roy_. A painter gets £300 for sketches to
illustrate a section of the tales.
If we reflect on the facility with which Scott could write these
inimitable novels--devoting to them merely the mornings of a life full
of other business and of amusement--we can hardly be surprised to learn
that he thought nothing of entering into engagements with Constable and
Company for producing four novels, not one line of which had then been
written, nor even the leading theme determined on. Nor was it wonderful
that he should have gradually been tempted to build additions to his
house on Tweedside till it became the architectural romance which it
now is, and fitted to receive and entertain a large assortment of
company.
The house of Abbotsford, where Sir Walter Scott chiefly spent the last
twenty years of his life, may be assumed as the centre of a great part
of that region which we have styled _his_. This ‘romance in stone and
lime,’ as some Frenchman termed it, is situated on the south bank of
the Tweed, at that part of its course where the river bursts forth
from the mountainous region of the forest into the more open country
of Roxburghshire, two or three miles above the abbey of Melrose, and
six-and-thirty from Edinburgh. Though upon a small scale, the Gothic
battlements and turrets have a good effect, and would have a still
better, if the site of the house were not somewhat straitened by the
bank rising above it, and by the too close neighbourhood of the public
road. Descriptions of the house, with its armoury, its library, its
curiosities, and other particular features, have been given in so many
different publications, that no repetition here is necessary. The
house, if it be properly preserved, will certainly be perused by future
generations as only a different kind of emanation of the genius of this
wonderful man; though, preserve it as you will, it will probably be, of
all his works, the soonest to perish.
All around Abbotsford, and what gave it a great part of its value in
his eyes, are the scenes commemorated in Border history, and tradition,
and song. The property itself comprises the spot on which the last
feudal battle was fought in this part of the country. The abbeys of
Melrose and Dryburgh, the latter of which now contains the revered
dust of the minstrel; the Eildon Hills, renowned in the annals of
superstition; Selkirk, whose brave burghers won glory in the field
where so much was lost by others, namely, at Flodden; Ettrick Forest,
with its lone and storied dales; and Yarrow, whose stream and ‘dowie
dens’ are not to be surveyed without involuntary poetry--are all in
the near neighbourhood of the spot. The love, the deep, heartfelt love
which Scott bore to the land which contains these places, was such as
no stranger can appreciate. It was a passion absorbing many others
which might have been expected to hold sway over him, and it survived
to the last.
Scott was social and good-natured; to see him and his mansion was an
object of ambition to half the public, including the highest persons in
the land. He was thus led, during the seven months of the year which
he spent in the country, to be the host of so many persons of every
kind, that his wife spoke of the house as a hotel in all but the name.
Not that he would have voluntarily indulged in any undue expense on
this account, if he had been in limited circumstances; but believing
himself to be able to afford it, benevolence gave her irresistible
dictate that he should thus make himself the servant of the public,
even at the expense of much personal inconvenience to himself and his
family. It is stated in Mr Lockhart’s biography that sixteen uninvited
parties came in one day to Abbotsford. These would pass quickly away;
but fashionable tourists, some of them of high rank, came in scarcely
smaller shoals, to stay one or two days. A lady reports to us, from the
conversation of Miss Anne Scott, the younger daughter of Sir Walter,
that on one occasion there were _thirteen ladies’-maids_ in the house.
In 1820, Scott was made a baronet. The honour was unsolicited, and he
considered himself as accepting it, partly because it was gratifying
to his family, and partly with a view to the interests of his eldest
son, who had entered a hussar regiment. If he had any enjoyment of the
honour in his own breast, it probably arose from no common worldly
vanity, but from its touching on some string of romantic feeling
amongst those to which we owe his delightful works. Though now a
_laird_ and a man of title, as well as the head idol in the temple of
the intellect-worshippers of his time, he was no whit different from
what he had been in his younger days, when content with love and a
cottage at Lasswade. His personal tastes and habits, his bearing to his
friends, his familiarity with the poor and lowly, remained the same.
As Wilkes is said to have never been a Wilkite, so Scott never, to
any appearance, joined the opinion which the world entertained about
him as an author. He spoke of his labours in this manner to Southey:
‘Dallying with time--tossing my ball and driving my hoop.’ Such men as
Davy and Watt he considered as the true honour of his age and country.
At home, in the bosom of his family, when the world would let him
alone, he was the most simple and kindly of associates. As he walked
about his grounds, he conversed freely and easily with his servants and
the peasantry, amongst whom he was an object of the deepest reverence
and affection. Often would this illustrious man work half a day at the
felling of trees in his woods, beside several workmen, trying which
could cut down one with the fewest blows, and laughing heartily when
he was victor. He delighted to walk in the evening towards the house
of an aged servant, that he might hear the psalm which the old man
was raising with his wife, as they conducted their evening devotions.
One of his retinue said to a visitor one day: ‘Sir Walter speaks to
every man as if they were blood-relations.’ It was not a condescending
kind of talk he indulged in with these people. He entered into their
feelings and tastes, and, speaking their own homely dialect, witched
them out of the idea that a master or a laird was before them.
The year 1822 was a somewhat memorable one in Scott’s life, on account
of the concern he had to take in the arrangements necessary on the
occasion of the king’s visit to Scotland. The external character of
this piece of pageantry was much determined by that revival of national
and medieval associations which the novels had effected. Everywhere we
were reminded of the Stuarts in Holyrood, and the plaided clansmen on
their mountains. Feelings due towards the romantic kings of an elder
day were expended, often ludicrously, on the battered beau of Carlton
House and St James’s Street. Amidst the delirium of the time, the man
chiefly concerned in giving it a peculiar character, moved in perfect
possession of his wonderful powers of management, dictating or advising
in the principal doings, and attending to the minutest details of many
of them. The king afterwards expressed, both formally and in private,
his deep sense of obligation to Scott for what he had done to make this
visit pass off well. The affair is interesting for the proof it gives
of the business genius of Scott, and his qualifications for the affairs
of the world. Assuredly never was high imagination united with so many
of the soberest mental qualities as in his instance.
His qualifications as a man of the world shone in various functions
which he consented to assume about this time, as the presidency of
the Royal Society of Edinburgh, that of an antiquarian book-printing
association called the Bannatyne Club, the chairmanship of an oil-gas
factory, and so forth. He had no inclination to thrust himself into
such situations, but having been drawn into them, he set about the
business which they involved with all the requisite zeal, and with a
marvellous amount of skill, good temper, and judgment. The common-sense
and sagacity which he exhibited in the performance of these duties,
form, perhaps, a greater distinction between Scott and the generality
of literary men than even his transcendent genius.
Sir Walter, as has been stated, had strong Conservative leanings, in
which respect he sometimes unfortunately went beyond the dictates
of prudence. In 1820, he endeavoured to prove the absurdity of the
popular excitement in favour of a more extended kind of parliamentary
representation, by three papers which he inserted in the _Edinburgh
Weekly Journal_ newspaper, under the title of ‘The Visionary.’ However
well intended, these were not by any means happy specimens of political
disquisition. The truth is, Sir Walter, with all his high literary
gifts, did not possess the art of concocting a short essay, either on
politics or on any moral or general topic. He appears, moreover, to
have been in a great measure ignorant of the arguments and strength
of his political opponents. He treats them as if they were in the
mass a set of simple and uninformed people, led away by a few raving
demagogues; and his attempt, accordingly, appears nearly as ridiculous
as it might be to address grown men with the arguments which prevail
only with children. Some months afterwards, it was deemed necessary
by a few of the Tory gentlemen and lawyers, to establish a newspaper
in which the more violent of the radical prints should be met upon
their own grounds, and reprisals made for a long course of insults
which had hitherto been endured with patience. To this association Sir
Walter subscribed, and, by means partly furnished upon his credit, a
weekly journal was commenced under the title of _The Beacon_. As the
scurrilities of this print inflicted much pain in very respectable
quarters, and finally led to the death of one of the writers in a
duel, it sunk, after an existence of a few months, amidst the general
execrations of the community. Sir Walter Scott, though he probably
never contemplated, and perhaps was hardly aware of the guilt of
_The Beacon_, was loudly blamed for his connection with it. It must
be allowed, in extenuation of his offence, that the whole affair was
only an experiment, to try the effect of violent argument on the Tory
side, and that, if it did not exceed the warmth of the radical prints,
there was nothing abstractly unfair in the attempt. On the other hand,
a party who stand in the light of governors, and who, in general,
are placed in comfortable circumstances, assume violence with a much
worse grace than the multitudinous plebeians, who are confessedly in a
situation from which complaint and irritation are almost inseparable.
[SIR WALTER AND MR R. CHAMBERS.
In his preface to the new edition of the _Traditions of Edinburgh_
(1869), Mr R. Chambers gives the following account of the manner in
which he became acquainted with Scott. ‘When not out of my teens,
I attracted some attention from Sir Walter Scott, by writing for
him and presenting him (through Mr Constable) a transcript of the
songs of the _Lady of the Lake_, in a style of peculiar caligraphy’
[resembling small print], ‘which I practised for want of any way of
attracting the notice of people superior to myself. When George IV.,
some months afterwards, came to Edinburgh’ [August 1822], ‘good Sir
Walter remembered me, and procured for me the business of writing the
address of the Royal Society of Edinburgh to His Majesty, for which I
was handsomely paid. Several other learned bodies followed the example,
for Sir Walter was the arbiter of everything during that frantic time,
and thus I was substantially benefited by his means.
‘According to what Mr Constable told me, the great man liked me, in
part, because he understood I was from Tweedside. On seeing the earlier
numbers of the _Traditions_’ [1823] ‘he expressed astonishment as to
“where a boy got all the information.” But I did not see or hear from
him till the first volume had been completed. He then called upon me
one day, along with Mr Lockhart. I was overwhelmed with the honour,
for Sir Walter was almost an object of worship to me. I literally
could not utter a word. While I stood silent, I heard him tell his
companion that Charles Sharpe was a writer in the _Traditions_. A few
days after this visit, Sir Walter sent me, along with a kind letter, a
packet of manuscript, consisting of sixteen folio pages, in his usual
close hand-writing, and containing all the reminiscences he could at
that time summon up of old persons and things in Edinburgh. Such a
treasure to me! And such a gift from the greatest literary man of the
age to the humblest! Is there a literary man of the present age who
would scribble as much for any humble aspirant? Nor was this the only
act of liberality of Scott to me. When I was preparing a subsequent
work, _The Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, he sent me whole sheets of his
recollections, with appropriate explanations. For years thereafter, he
allowed me to join him in his walks home from the Parliament House, in
the course of which he freely poured into my greedy ears anything he
knew regarding the subjects of my studies. His kindness and good-humour
on these occasions were untiring. I have since found, from his journal,
that I had met him on certain days when his heart was overladen with
woe. Yet, his welcome to me was the same. After 1826, however, I saw
him much less frequently than before, for I knew he grudged every
moment not spent in thinking and working on the fatal tasks he had
assigned to himself for the redemption of his debts.’
It was in one of their walks through the Old Town that Scott pointed
out the place of his birth to my brother; also the little old school
in Hamilton’s Entry, where he had received some of his rudimentary
instruction. On another occasion, he shewed him the house once occupied
by Dr Daniel Rutherford at the foot of Hyndford’s Close, where he
had often been when a boy. It is a fine antique edifice, reputed to
have been the residence of the Earl of Selkirk in 1742. Latterly, it
has undergone some changes, with a new entrance from the Mint Close,
and forms the residence of a Roman Catholic clergyman, in connection
with a neighbouring chapel. Sir Walter communicated to Robert a
curious circumstance connected with this old mansion. ‘It appears
that the house immediately adjacent was not furnished with a stair
wide enough to allow a coffin being carried down in decent fashion.
It had, therefore, what the Scottish law calls a _servitude_ upon Dr
Rutherford’s house, conferring the perpetual liberty of bringing the
deceased inmates through a passage into that house, and down its stair
into the lane.’]
LATER NOVELS, AND LIFE OF NAPOLEON.
Scott had at this time the appearance of a respectable elderly
country-gentleman. Tall, robust, and rather handsome in person, he was
deformed by the shortness of his right limb, the foot of which only
touched the ground at the toes, while he rocked from side to side on
the support of a stout walking-cane, which he moved along with the
foot, and put down at the same time. While living in town, he wore
a common black suit; in the country, he had gray trousers, a short
green jacket, and a white hat. The public is made familiar with his
face by numberless portraits; it is only necessary to mention, that at
this time it was ruddy with the glow of health, and at the same time
somewhat venerable from his thin gray hair. The countenance and quick
gray eye usually had a common-world expression, but of a benevolent
kind. All was changed, however, when he told anything serious, or
recited a piece of ballad poetry; he then seemed to become a being of a
totally different grade and sphere.
It has been hinted that Scott’s eldest son, Walter, had become an
officer in a hussar regiment. This youth, in 1825, wedded a young
heiress, Miss Jobson, much to the satisfaction of his father, who,
in the marriage-contract, placed against the young lady’s fortune a
settlement of the estate of Abbotsford upon his son, reserving only his
own liferent. He declared that he thus parted with the property of his
lands with more pleasure than he ever derived from the acquisition or
possession of them. He at the same time expended £3500 in purchasing a
company for his son. It was now that the great poet might be considered
as at the height of his fortunes. His career had hitherto been an
almost uninterrupted series of prosperous and happy events; he had
risen from the briefless barrister to the head of the literary world,
a title, and the possession of a landed fortune, with the prospect
of leaving a race of gentry to follow him. Alas! even while thus
triumphantly exalted, the ground was hollow beneath his feet, and a sad
prostration was approaching.
Keeping this reverse for its proper place, it is proper here to
mention that the novels had fallen off somewhat in popularity since
_The Monastery_. The author was not made aware of this fact; but he
nevertheless felt the necessity of varying his themes as much as
possible, in order to preserve the public favour. Hence his shifting
ground to England and France, and his attempt, in _St Ronan’s Well_,
to depict the society of the modern world. Latterly, he bethought him
that history was a field of some promise, and he was disposed to enter
it. It was now (June 1825) that Mr Constable, moved by some examples
of popular publishing in London, adopted the idea that that trade
had never been conducted on right principles, seeing that it sought
customers only in the more affluent classes, while the masses were
left to regard books as luxuries beyond their reach. He projected a
periodical issue of volumes, at a comparatively low price, to consist
of reprints of approved copyright works belonging to his house, mingled
with original works; and claiming and obtaining the support of Scott,
it was arranged that the Waverley Novels should reappear in this cheap
form, alternated at starting with the volumes of a _Life of Napoleon
Bonaparte_, to be composed for the purpose by the same author. Thus
was Scott set down, in 1825, to the history of one whose career he had
beheld, while it lasted, with the strongest sentiments of reprobation
and hatred, feeling, as he did, that the French emperor was the public
enemy of England in the first place, and all Europe in the second. It
was at first intended that the work should consist of four volumes, or
less than a half of what it ultimately became.
Just before going seriously into his task, he paid a visit to his son
in Ireland, where he was received and entertained with the greatest
enthusiasm by all classes--to his own surprise, as he had regarded
the Irish as not a reading people. He had not reflected that there
is such a thing as lionising great authors on the strength of their
fame, and without any but a superficial acquaintance, if so much,
with their writings. The contrast between the elegant mansions of the
gentry in which he lived, with the misery of the houses of the general
population, awoke painful feelings in his mind; but, upon the whole,
he much enjoyed his tour in Ireland. In the latter part of this year,
a second domestic change took place. His eldest daughter, Sophia, had
been married in 1820 to Mr J. G. Lockhart, a young barrister, whose
talents in literature have been fully acknowledged by the public.
Hitherto, the young couple had lived in his immediate neighbourhood,
both in town and country. He delighted in the ballads which Mrs
Lockhart sang to him with the accompaniment of her harp; he found Mr
Lockhart a useful adviser in literary matters, and a most agreeable
companion; and he felt the tenderest interest in their eldest child,
called John Hugh, or, familiarly, ‘Hugh Littlejohn,’ whose fatal
delicacy of constitution only heightened the affection he was otherwise
fitted to excite. In consequence of an offer of the editorship of the
_Quarterly Review,_ Mr Lockhart removed to London with his family,
by which Scott’s family circle was of course much contracted. This,
however, was but a trifling evil compared with others which were about
to befall the hitherto fortunate author of _Waverley_.
PECUNIARY MISFORTUNES.