for speculation, the consequence of which was, that, towards the close
of the latter year, a scarcity of money began to be generally felt. A
tightening of this kind always of course tells severely upon men who
have been keeping up their trade by means of fictitious bills; and of
this class it now appeared were Archibald Constable and Company. The
leading member of this firm had been fortunate in the proprietorship
of the _Edinburgh Review,_ and the publishing of many of the works of
Scott. Naturally grand in his ideas, and of an aspiring temper, at the
same time that he despised, and in practice wholly overlooked, common
mercantile calculations, he had come to conduct business in a manner
which usually leads to ruin. We have seen that the bookselling concern
of Scott (John Ballantyne and Company) was indebted to him for some
important assistance in enabling it to wind up; the printing concern
(James Ballantyne and Company) was also indebted to him for a vast
amount of business; while Scott, more personally, was so imprudent as
to take bill payments from him for works as yet unwritten, that he
might help out his equally imprudent purchases of land. By these means,
it came about very naturally that the name of James Ballantyne and
Company--that is, Sir Walter Scott--was lent to Constable and Company
for the raising of large sums amongst the banks. Scott, venerating
the supposed sagacity of Constable, recked not of the danger of
this traffic. Constable himself, inflated with a high sense of the
literary property and stock which he held, regarded himself as a rich
man, notwithstanding the large borrowings to which he condescended.
James Ballantyne, venerating both, easy of nature, and unprepared by
education or habit to keep a rigid supervision over business matters,
gave no alarm regarding the immense compromise of his own and his
friend’s name.
These explanations serve so far; for what more is necessary, it must,
we fear, be admitted that the whole group of persons concerned in
the poems and novels, including the mighty Magician himself, were
naturally enough intoxicated to a certain degree by a literary success
so infinitely exceeding all precedent. All of them, excepting James
Ballantyne, had lived in an expensive manner. Scott himself had gone
in this respect a good way beyond what prudence dictated, though it
is also very certain that if his writings had been published under
reasonably favourable circumstances for the realisation of profit, he
might have bought land, and kept house as he did, without injury to
anybody. All, moreover, had been culpably negligent about accounts
and bargainings--Scott ridiculously so, to his own injury, as there
appears no good reason for his dividing the six or eight thousand
pounds realised by the first issues of his novels with his booksellers,
to whom a commission on sales would have been remuneration sufficient.
There was, however, at that time a much more loose and heedless fashion
in most business affairs than now prevails, and this requires that
some allowance should be made with regard to individual cases. So it
was that one of the firmest, and, generally speaking, most sagacious
men of his time, discovered, in the course of January 1826, that he
was involved in obligations far exceeding the extent of his whole
fortune--was, in short, a ruined man.
On the 18th December 1825, fearing bad news of Constable’s affairs, he
says, in a diary which he kept, and surely few more touching words have
ever fallen from any man’s pen: ‘Men will think pride has had a fall.
Let them indulge their own pride in thinking that my fall will make
them higher, or seem so at least. I have the satisfaction to recollect
that my prosperity has been of advantage to many, and to hope that some
at least will forgive my transient wealth, on account of the innocence
of my intentions, and my real wish to do good to the poor. Sad hearts,
too, at Darnick and in the cottages of Abbotsford. I have half resolved
never to see the place again. How could I tread my hall with such a
diminished crest?--how live a poor indebted man, where I was once the
wealthy, the honoured? I was to have gone there on Saturday, in joy and
prosperity, to receive my friends. My dogs will wait for me in vain.
It is foolish--but the thoughts of parting from these dumb creatures
have moved me more than any of the painful reflections I have put down.
Poor things! I must get them kind masters. There may be yet those who,
loving me, may love my dog, because it has been mine. I must end these
gloomy forebodings, or I shall lose the tone of mind with which men
should meet distress. I feel my dogs’ feet on my knees--I hear them
whining and seeking me everywhere. This is nonsense, but it is what
they would do could they know how things may be.’
The evil day had not yet come in all its reality. Mr Constable went to
London, to endeavour to raise money on the copyrights he possessed, in
order to put over the difficulties. Moderate-minded men of the present
day read, as of something belonging to a different state of society,
of this ‘Napoleon of the realms of print’ seriously expecting to raise
one or two hundred thousand pounds on the pledge of his copyrights,
one large section of which afterwards, at a fair auction, brought only
£8500; his whole property being such as only in the long-run to pay 2s.
9d. a pound upon debts amounting to £256,000. Having utterly failed in
raising money on any terms amongst those who deal in it, he induced
Scott to advance him ten thousand, which the Laird of Abbotsford was
only able to do by acting upon a right he had reserved in his son’s
marriage-contract to borrow that sum on the security of his estate,
for the benefit of his younger children. And this last sacrifice for
Mr Constable he afterwards, very naturally, grudged more than all the
rest. It was on the 17th of January that Scott finally ascertained the
ruin of his affairs. ‘It was hard, after having fought such a battle,’
as he says in his diary; but he sustained the first shock with Roman
firmness. His resolution was immediately taken, to accept of no grace
from his creditors beyond time. ‘God grant me health and strength,’
he said in deep solemnity to his several friends, ‘and I will yet pay
every man his due.’ To those marvellous powers which he had exerted for
the purpose of buying land and keeping state, he trusted for the means
of clearing off the tremendous encumbrance which had fallen upon him.
At the same time, _state_ was to be given wholly up. He resolved to
sell his house in Edinburgh--‘dear 39’--and use a common lodging while
obliged to attend his duties in the Court of Session. At other times
he would join his family in strict retirement at Abbotsford, which
obviously could have been put to no better use. There was no bravado in
all this--nothing but a good, sound, honest resolution to redeem the
painful obligations into which his imprudence had hurried him. In the
same frame of mind, he declined many offers of money made to him by
friends.
He was engaged at the time of his misfortunes in writing the _Life of
Bonaparte_, taking up his new novel of _Woodstock_ at intervals, by
way of relief. These tasks he continued with steady perseverance in
the midst of all his distresses. Even on the day which brought him
assurance of the grand catastrophe, he resumed in the afternoon the
task which had engaged him in the morning. There was more triumph over
circumstances here than might be supposed, for he had lately begun to
feel the first touches of the infirmities of age--age, to which ease,
not hard work, is naturally appropriate. His sleep was now less sound
than it had been; his eyesight was failing; and, above all, he felt
that backwardness of the intellectual power which is inseparable from
years. The will, however, was green as ever, and, under the prompting
of an honourable spirit, it did its work nobly. Doggedly, doggedly did
this glorious old man rouse himself from his melancholy couch, and set
to his task at an hour when gaiety has little more than sought his.
Firmly did he keep to his desk during long hours, till he could satisfy
himself that he had done his utmost. The temptations of society, the
more insinuating claims of an overworked system for rest, were alike
resolutely rejected. The world must ever hear with wonder, that between
the third day after his bankruptcy and the fifteenth day thereafter,
he had written a volume of _Woodstock_, although several of these days
had been spent in comparative vacancy, to allow the imagination time
for brooding. He believed that, for a bet, he could have written this
volume _in ten days_! Just a fortnight after his final breach with
fortune, he says in his journal: ‘I have now no pecuniary provisions
to embarrass me, and I think, now the shock of the discovery is past
and over, I am much better off on the whole.... I shall be free of a
hundred petty public duties imposed on me as a man of consideration--of
the expense of a great hospitality--and, what is better, of the waste
of time connected with it. I have known in my day all kinds of society,
and can pretty well estimate how much or how little one loses by
retiring from all but that which is very intimate.... If I could see
those about me as indifferent to the loss of rank as I am, I should
be completely happy. As it is, time must salve that sore, and to time
I trust it.’ With such philosophy could Scott regard his reverses,
even in the very crisis of their occurrence, and yet from many other
passages we find a keen sensibility to the circumstances of his
downfall. It was rectitude of mind, and not stoicism, which enabled him
to rise above his misfortunes. Nothing, indeed, of sensibility appeared
in his external demeanour, even to his children. To them, as to the
world, it must have been a lost secret, but for his diary.
The obligations of James Ballantyne and Company--that is, of Sir Walter
Scott--were finally ascertained to amount to £117,000, of which only
£46,000 were the proper liabilities of his company.
Early in spring, the ministry made an effort to correct the unsound
state of things which had led to the late fatal mania, by attempting to
pass a bill for the limitation of bank circulation. It was determined
to suppress all notes under five pounds. In Scotland, where there is
a vast faith in the utility of one-pound bank-notes, and no other
circulation is so much liked, this measure was very unpopular. By the
banks, it was regarded as fraught with ruin to their interests. Scott,
who had disapproved of some recent changes affecting old Scottish
institutions, and whose mind, serene as it was, perhaps required some
kind of vent for its own vexations, was led to take a strong, perhaps
exaggerated view of this question, under which he wrote three letters,
in the character of Malachi Malagrowther, originally published in a
newspaper, afterwards as a pamphlet. His great humour and fund of
droll anecdote gave wings to this production, and helped to rouse
the Scottish people to an attitude of resistance, to which, in the
long-run, the ministry gave way. The affair presented Scott in a
new light--namely, as one setting himself up against authority, and
appealing to popular sentiment on the adverse side. The public was
somewhat surprised; the ministers, some of whom were his friends, felt
hurt at opposition from such a quarter; and there was actually some
dryness between him and Lord Melville for a short time. The explanation
is, that Scott never was a servile friend of power, but one only as
far as his view of what was good for the country led him; and there
was a manliness and independence in his character which admitted of
no hesitation about a course, when he saw only men on the one side,
and the land of his birth on the other. It is gratifying to think that
Scott lost no friendship by his conduct on this occasion, beyond a
temporary coldness on the part of a few persons.
The novel of _Woodstock_ came rapidly to completion, and, early in
April, the first edition of it was sold in the printed sheets for
£8228, in itself a proof that the author might have all along had a
better market for his works if he had chosen. This was a cheering
omen of what he was to do for his creditors. Removing at the close
of the winter session to Abbotsford, he continued there his habits
of application with unabated vigour, although, as appears from the
diary, not without some battlings between duty and inclination. The
daily amount of work he set to himself in the writing of Napoleon’s
life was four sheets of manuscript a day, making about twenty-four
of the printed pages. We find him on one occasion finishing this
before noon--a surprising effort, considering that reference to his
authorities or materials must have often been necessary during the
progress of the work. At the same time he commenced another work of
fiction, a series of tales entitled _Chronicles of the Canongate_, for
he felt the one task as a relief to the other.
He now of course received no company at his rural retreat. Only a few
intimate friends of his neighbourhood occasionally joined the family
circle. It was a melancholy spring to one whose life in the country
had hitherto been a constant holiday. To add to his griefs, the health
of his wife had sunk to a low pitch. His kind-hearted Charlotte died
on the 16th of May, of water in the chest, the end being somewhat
accelerated by the late disasters. Scott, absent at the moment on duty
in Edinburgh, quickly hurried home. The event itself, and the grief of
his younger daughter on the occasion, powerfully affected him. He thus
communes with himself in his journal: ‘It would have been inexpressibly
moving to me as a stranger--what was it, then, to the father and the
husband! For myself, I scarce know how I feel--sometimes as firm as the
Bass Rock, sometimes as weak as the water that breaks on it. I am as
alert at thinking and deciding as I ever was in my life. Yet, when I
contrast what this place now is with what it has been not long since, I
think my heart will break. Lonely, aged, deprived of my family--all but
poor Anne; an impoverished, an embarrassed man, deprived of the sharer
of my thoughts and counsels, who could always talk down my sense of
the calamitous apprehensions which break the heart that must bear them
alone. Even her foibles were of service to me, by giving me things to
think of beyond my weary self-reflections.’
Allowing himself little rest for the indulgence of grief, he quickly
resumed, or rather hardly interrupted his usual employments. Between
the 12th of June and the 12th of August he wrote the fourth volume of
_Napoleon_, besides a portion of his novel. Thus he wrought all the
summer, and part of the autumn, till it was found necessary that he
should pay a visit to London and Paris, in order to consult documents
necessary for _Napoleon_. This journey occupied six weeks, and
perhaps was useful as a rally to his spirits. It is hardly necessary
to say that, with high and low, wherever he went, he was an object
of as cordial admiration and interest as ever. The king, the Duke of
Wellington, and many other eminent persons, paid him marked attentions.
In France, he was treated with no less distinction. Public papers in
both countries were placed at his disposal without reserve; and in
London he obtained an assurance that his second son, Charles, would be
employed in the diplomatic department.
Till the failure of Messrs Constable and Company, the Waverley secret
was kept inviolate, though intrusted, as he has himself acknowledged,
to a considerable number of persons. The inquiries which took place
into the affairs of the house rendered it no longer possible to
conceal the nature of its connection with Sir Walter Scott; and he now
accordingly stood fully detected as the Author of _Waverley_, though he
did not himself think proper to make any overt claim to the honour. It
may be mentioned that, at the time of the failure, Sir Walter was in
possession of bills for the novel of _Woodstock_, of which but a small
part had as yet been written. A demand was made by the creditors of
Messrs Constable and Company upon the creditors of Sir Walter Scott,
for the benefits of this work, when it should be made public. But the
author, not reckoning this either just or legal, was resolved not to
comply. The bills, he said, were a mere promise to pay; since, then,
he had only promised to write, and they to pay, he would simply not
write, and then the transaction would fall to the ground. On the claim
being farther pressed, he said: ‘The work is in my head, and there
it shall remain.’ The question, however, was eventually submitted to
arbitration, and decided in favour of the creditors of the author, for
whose behoof the work was soon after published.
The fact of the authorship continued to waver between secrecy and
divulgement till the 23d of February 1827, when Sir Walter presided at
the first annual dinner of the Edinburgh Theatrical Fund Association,
in the Assembly Rooms. There Lord Meadowbank, in proposing the health
of the chairman, used language to the following effect: ‘It was no
longer possible, consistently with the respect to one’s auditors, to
use upon this subject terms either of mystification, or of obscure
or indirect allusion. The clouds have been dispelled; the _darkness
visible_ has been cleared away; and the Great Unknown--the Minstrel
of our native land--the mighty Magician who has rolled back the
current of time, and conjured up before our living senses the men and
manners of days which have long passed away, stands revealed to the
hearts and the eyes of his affectionate and admiring countrymen.’ Sir
Walter, though somewhat taken by surprise, immediately resolved to
throw off the mantle, which was getting somewhat tattered. ‘He did
not think,’ he said, ‘that, in coming here to-day, he would have the
task of acknowledging before three hundred gentlemen a secret which,
considering that it was communicated to more than twenty people, had
been remarkably well kept. He was now before the bar of his country,
and might be understood to be on trial before Lord Meadowbank as an
offender; yet he was sure that every impartial jury would bring in a
verdict of _Not Proven_. He did not now think it necessary to enter
into the reasons of his long silence. Perhaps caprice had a great
share in it. He had now to say, however, that the merits of these
works, if they had any, and their faults were entirely imputable to
himself.’ [Here the audience broke into an absolute shout of surprise
and delight.] ‘He was afraid to think on what he had done. “Look on’t
again I dare not.” He had thus far unbosomed himself, and he knew that
it would be reported to the public. He meant, then, seriously to state
that, when he said he was the author, he was the total and undivided
author. With the exception of quotations, there was not a single word
written that was not derived from himself, or suggested in the course
of his reading. The wand was now broken, and the rod buried. His
audience would allow him further to say, with Prospero: “Your breath
has filled my sails.”’
The spring of 1827 was past, and summer had gone to June, ere Scott’s
great task was completed. He then finished the last volume of his _Life
of Napoleon_, which he had been engaged upon for about two years, but
had actually written in scarcely more than a twelvemonth of continuous
time. The paper and print of the first and second editions, in nine
volumes, brought the creditors £18,000--an amount of gain, in relation
to amount of labour, unexampled in the history of literature, and
which will probably have no parallel for ages to come. The book was
unfortunate in its excessive length; and, written in such haste, it
could not be expected to be very perfect, either in style or in facts.
Yet it made a tolerably fair impression on the public, and it has
since rather advanced than receded in public esteem. The contrast
between the manner of its composition and that of Hume, Robertson,
and Gibbon’s works, is startling. All of these narratives were the
study and the production of years. It had never till now entered the
head of man to think of a great historical task being executed in a
twelvemonth. The last-century historians filed and polished their
writings sentence by sentence--Scott did not once reperuse the matter
which had flowed from his pen. And all this labour had been performed
in the midst of grief and shaken health, and without interfering with
official duties, one of which called for several hours a day during
five months of the twelve.
LATER EXERTIONS.
Immediately on concluding _Napoleon_, he commenced another historical
work, his delightful _Tales of a Grandfather_; presenting a selection
of the most striking points from the Scottish chroniclers, in a style
designed to suit the intelligence of his descendant, ‘Hugh Littlejohn.’
This he carried on alternately with his _Chronicles of the Canongate_,
the first series of which appeared early in the ensuing winter, and
was well, though not brilliantly received. He underwent at this period
some harassment from a Jewish London house, holding one of Constable
and Company’s bills for £2000. With a view to forcing payment by some
means, they threatened Scott with arrest; and he actually contemplated
at one moment resorting to that sanctuary (Holyrood), in which he
placed his imaginary hero, Chrystal Croftangry. At length the vexation
was taken off his head by Sir William Forbes, the leading member of a
banking company who were amongst his chief creditors. This generous
man paid the sum out of his own pocket, without letting Scott suppose
but that it was arranged for by the body of creditors. It is pleasant
to know that Scott unconsciously underwent several obligations of
this nature on the part of other old friends. The first series of
the _Tales of a Grandfather_ appeared before the end of 1827, and
was hailed with more rapture than any work of his for several years.
This was the date of another happy circumstance of a more important
kind. The copyrights of his novels and of a large proportion of his
poetical writings being presented for sale by Constable and Company’s
creditors, a purchase of them was made for £8500, on the part of his
own creditors as half-sharers, while the other half belonged to Mr
Robert Cadell, a member of Constable’s late house, now independently
in business. It was designed that the novels should be republished
by Cadell in a comparatively cheap form, with notes and prefaces by
the author, and certain trinkets of embellishment, such as--according
to his own phrase--elderly beauties are supposed to require. It was
hoped that the share of profits due to his creditors would tell
materially to the reduction of the debts; and this hope was more than
realised. Meanwhile, a first dividend was paid to these gentlemen
from the aggregate gains of Scott’s pen during the two past years,
amounting very nearly to the unheard-of sum of £40,000. Such were the
first-fruits of that hardy industry which he had determined to exert
for the redemption of his credit and good name.
Scott’s conduct and demeanour towards his old associates in business
affairs become a matter of some importance, as it too often happens
that commercial adversity introduces wrath into such fraternities. It
is pleasant to relate, that even towards Mr Constable, who had been the
cause of so much loss, he maintained a friendly bearing. He did not,
indeed, shut his eyes to the new view he had obtained of Mr Constable’s
character as a man of business; but though he could trust no longer, he
was far from hardening his heart. One thing he felt sorely--his last
advance for Constable when in the jaws of ruin. Nor was it a soothing
circumstance that the bookseller had endeavoured to get his credit for
£20,000 more, which would have only been an additional loss at the
speedy and inevitable day of reckoning. Still, he was willing to regard
all this as only the effect of sanguine calculations; and accordingly
all his expressions regarding the fallen publisher, both in his diary
and his letters, are of a mild and even kindly tenor. Mr Cadell, on
the other hand, had secured Sir Walter’s esteem and confidence by an
honest warning which he gave as to the above £20,000. From the first,
he determined to befriend this member of the late house in preference
to the other. With regard to James Ballantyne, Scott told him, on the
very day when ruin was declared, that he would never forsake him. Mr
Ballantyne now conducted business on his own account, and was honoured
with the steady friendship and patronage of his old schoolfellow, as of
yore.