Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott Volume IV Part 11

TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., M. P., LONDON.

EDINBURGH, 9th July, 1814.

MY DEAR MORRITT,--I owe you many apologies for not sooner answering your very entertaining letter upon your Parisian journey. I heartily wish I had been of your party, for you have seen what I trust will not be seen again in a hurry; since, to enjoy the delight of a restoration, there is a necessity for a previous _boulevers.e.m.e.nt_ of everything that is valuable in morals and policy, which seems to have been the case in France since 1790.[54] The Duke of Buccleuch told me yesterday of a very good reply of Louis to some of his attendants, who proposed shutting the doors of his apartments to keep out the throng of people. "Open the door," he said, "to John Bull; he has suffered a great deal in keeping the door open for me."

Now, to go from one important subject to another, I must account for my own laziness, which I do by referring you to a small anonymous sort of a novel, in three volumes, Waverley, which you will receive by the mail of this day. It was a very old attempt of mine to embody some traits of those characters and manners peculiar to Scotland, the last remnants of which vanished during my own youth, so that few or no traces now remain. I had written great part of the first volume, and sketched other pa.s.sages, when I mislaid the MS., and only found it by the merest accident as I was rummaging the drawers of an old cabinet;[55] and I took the fancy of finishing it, which I did so fast, that the last two volumes were written in three weeks. I had a great deal of fun in the accomplishment of this task, though I do not expect that it will be popular in the south, as much of the humor, if there be any, is local, and some of it even professional. You, however, who are an adopted Scotchman, will find some amus.e.m.e.nt in it.

It has made a very strong impression here, and the good people of Edinburgh are busied in tracing the author, and in finding out originals for the portraits it contains. In the first case, they will probably find it difficult to convict the guilty author, although he is far from escaping suspicion. Jeffrey has offered to make oath that it is mine, and another great critic has tendered his affidavit _ex contrario_; so that these authorities have divided the Gude Town.

However, the thing has succeeded very well, and is thought highly of.

I don't know if it has got to London yet. I intend to maintain my _incognito_. Let me know your opinion about it. I should be most happy if I could think it would amuse a painful thought at this anxious moment. I was in hopes Mrs. Morritt was getting so much better, that this relapse affects me very much. Ever yours truly,

W. SCOTT.

P. S.--As your conscience has very few things to answer for, you must still burthen it with the secret of the Bridal. It is spreading very rapidly, and I have one or two little fairy romances, which will make a second volume, and which I would wish published, but not with my name. The truth is, that this sort of muddling work amuses me, and I am something in the condition of Joseph Surface, who was embarra.s.sed by getting himself too good a reputation; for many things may please people well enough anonymously, which, if they have me in the t.i.tle-page, would just give me that sort of ill name which precedes hanging--and that would be in many respects inconvenient if I thought of again trying a _grande opus_.

This statement of the foregoing letter (repeated still more precisely in the following one), as to the time occupied in the composition of the second and third volumes of Waverley, recalls to my memory a trifling anecdote, which, as connected with a dear friend of my youth, whom I have not seen for many years, and may very probably never see again in this world, I shall here set down, in the hope of affording him a momentary, though not an unmixed pleasure, when he may chance to read this compilation on a distant sh.o.r.e--and also in the hope that my humble record may impart to some active mind in the rising generation a shadow of the influence which the reality certainly exerted upon his. Happening to pa.s.s through Edinburgh in June, 1814, I dined one day with the gentleman in question (now the Honorable William Menzies, one of the Supreme Judges at the Cape of Good Hope), whose residence was then in George Street, situated very near to, and at right angles with, North Castle Street. It was a party of very young persons, most of them, like Menzies and myself, destined for the Bar of Scotland, all gay and thoughtless, enjoying the first flush of manhood, with little remembrance of the yesterday, or care of the morrow. When my companion's worthy father and uncle, after seeing two or three bottles go round, left the juveniles to themselves, the weather being hot, we adjourned to a library which had one large window looking northwards. After carousing here for an hour or more, I observed that a shade had come over the aspect of my friend, who happened to be placed immediately opposite to myself, and said something that intimated a fear of his being unwell. "No," said he, "I shall be well enough presently, if you will only let me sit where you are, and take my chair; for there is a confounded hand in sight of me here, which has often bothered me before, and now it won't let me fill my gla.s.s with a good will." I rose to change places with him accordingly, and he pointed out to me this hand which, like the writing on Belshazzar's wall, disturbed his hour of hilarity. "Since we sat down," he said, "I have been watching it--it fascinates my eye--it never stops--page after page is finished and thrown on that heap of MS., and still it goes on unwearied--and so it will be till candles are brought in, and G.o.d knows how long after that. It is the same every night--I can't stand a sight of it when I am not at my books."--"Some stupid, dogged, engrossing clerk, probably,"

exclaimed myself, or some other giddy youth in our society. "No, boys," said our host, "I well know what hand it is--'tis Walter Scott's." This was the hand that, in the evenings of three summer weeks, wrote the last two volumes of Waverley. Would that all who that night watched it had profited by its example of diligence as largely as William Menzies!

In the next of these letters Scott enclosed to Mr. Morritt the Prospectus of a new edition of the old poems of the Bruce and the Wallace, undertaken by the learned lexicographer, Dr. John Jamieson; and he announces his departure on a sailing excursion round the north of Scotland. It will be observed that when Scott began his letter, he had only had Mr. Morritt's opinion of the first volume of Waverley, and that before he closed it he had received his friend's honest criticism on the work as a whole, with the expression of an earnest hope that he would drop his _incognito_ on the t.i.tle-page of a second edition.

TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., M. P., PORTLAND PLACE, LONDON.

ABBOTSFORD, July 24, 1814.

MY DEAR MORRITT,--I am going to say my _vales_ to you for some weeks, having accepted an invitation from a committee of the Commissioners for the Northern Lights (I don't mean the Edinburgh Reviewers, but the _bona-fide_ Commissioners for the Beacons), to accompany them upon a nautical tour round Scotland, visiting all that is curious on continent and isle. The party are three gentlemen with whom I am very well acquainted, William Erskine being one. We have a stout cutter, well fitted up and manned for the service by Government; and to make a.s.surance double sure, the admiral has sent a sloop of war to cruise in the dangerous points of our tour, and sweep the sea of the Yankee privateers, which sometimes annoy our northern lat.i.tudes. I shall visit the Clephanes in their solitude--and let you know all that I see that is rare and entertaining, which, as we are masters of our time and vessel, should add much to my stock of knowledge.

As to Waverley, I will play Sir Fretful for once, and a.s.sure you that I left the story to flag in the first volume on purpose; the second and third have rather more bustle and interest. I wished (with what success Heaven knows) to avoid the ordinary error of novel writers, whose first volume is usually their best. But since it has served to amuse Mrs. Morritt and you _usque ab initio_, I have no doubt you will tolerate it even unto the end. It may really boast to be a tolerably faithful portrait of Scottish manners, and has been recognized as such in Edinburgh. The first edition of a thousand instantly disappeared, and the bookseller informs me that the second, of double the quant.i.ty, will not supply the market long.--As I shall be very anxious to know how Mrs. Morritt is, I hope to have a few lines from you on my return, which will be about the end of August or beginning of September. I should have mentioned that we have the celebrated engineer, Stevenson, along with us. I delight in these professional men of talent; they always give you some new lights by the peculiarity of their habits and studies, so different from the people who are rounded, and smoothed, and ground down for conversation, and who can say all that every other person says, and--nothing more.

What a miserable thing it is that our royal family cannot be quiet and decent at least, if not correct and moral in their deportment. Old farmer George's manly simplicity, modesty of expense, and domestic virtue, saved this country at its most perilous crisis; for it is inconceivable the number of persons whom these qualities united in his behalf, who would have felt but feebly the abstract duty of supporting a crown less worthily worn.

--I had just proceeded thus far when your kind favor of the 21st reached Abbotsford. I am heartily glad you continued to like Waverley to the end. The hero is a sneaking piece of imbecility; and if he had married Flora, she would have set him up upon the chimney-piece, as Count Borowlaski's wife used to do with him.[56] I am a bad hand at depicting a hero, properly so called, and have an unfortunate propensity for the dubious characters of Borderers, buccaneers, Highland robbers, and all others of a Robin Hood description. I do not know why it should be, as I am myself, like Hamlet, indifferent honest; but I suppose the blood of the old cattle-drivers of Teviotdale continues to stir in my veins.

I shall _not_ own Waverley; my chief reason is that it would prevent me of the pleasure of writing again. David Hume, nephew of the historian, says the author must be of a Jacobite family and predilections, a yeoman-cavalry man, and a Scottish lawyer, and desires me to guess in whom these happy attributes are united. I shall not plead guilty, however; and as such seems to be the fashion of the day, I hope charitable people will believe my _affidavit_ in contradiction to all other evidence. The Edinburgh faith now is, that Waverley is written by Jeffrey, having been composed to lighten the tedium of his late transatlantic voyage. So you see the unknown infant is like to come to preferment. In truth, I am not sure it would be considered quite decorous for me, as a Clerk of Session, to write novels. Judges being monks, Clerks are a sort of lay brethren, from whom some solemnity of walk and conduct may be expected. So, whatever I may do of this kind, "I shall whistle it down the wind, and let it prey at fortune."[57] I will take care, in the next edition, to make the corrections you recommend. The second is, I believe, nearly through the press. It will hardly be printed faster than it was written; for though the first volume was begun long ago, and actually lost for a time, yet the other two were begun and finished between the 4th June and the 1st July, during all which I attended my duty in Court, and proceeded without loss of time or hindrance of business.

I wish, for poor auld Scotland's sake,[58] and for the manes of Bruce and Wallace, and for the living comfort of a very worthy and ingenious dissenting clergyman, who has collected a library and medals of some value, and brought up, I believe, sixteen or seventeen children (his wife's ambition extended to twenty) upon about 150 a year--I say I wish, for all these reasons, you could get me among your wealthy friends a name or two for the enclosed proposals. The price is, I think, too high; but the booksellers fixed it two guineas above what I proposed. I trust it will be yet lowered to five guineas, which is a more come-at-able sum than six. The poems themselves are great curiosities, both to the philologist and antiquary; and that of Bruce is invaluable even to the historian. They have been hitherto wretchedly edited.

I am glad you are not to pay for this scrawl. Ever yours,

WALTER SCOTT.

P. S.--I do not see how my silence can be considered as imposing on the public. If I give my name to a book without writing it, unquestionably that would be a trick. But, unless in the case of his averring facts which he may be called upon to defend or justify, I think an author may use his own discretion in giving or withholding his name. Harry Mackenzie never put his name in a t.i.tle-page till the last edition of his works; and Swift only owned one out of his thousand-and-one publications. In point of emolument, everybody knows that I sacrifice much money by withholding my name; and what should I gain by it, that any human being has a right to consider as an unfair advantage? In fact, only the freedom of writing trifles with less personal responsibility, and perhaps more frequently than I otherwise might do.

W. S.

I am not able to give the exact date of the following reply to one of John Ballantyne's expostulations on the subject of _the secret_:--

"No, John, I will not own the book-- I won't, you Picaroon.

When next I try St. Grubby's brook, The A. of Wa--shall bait the hook-- And flat-fish bite as soon, As if before them they had got The worn-out wriggler

WALTER SCOTT."

Footnotes of the Chapter XXVII.

[46: The late Sir John Marjoribanks of Lees, Bart.]

[47: The inscription for this tankard was penned by the late celebrated Dr. James Gregory, Professor of the Practice of Physic in the University of Edinburgh; and I therefore transcribe it.

GUALTERUM SCOTT

DE ABBOTSFORD

VIRUM SUMMI INGENII

SCRIPTOREM ELEGANTEM

POETARUM SUI SECULI FACILE PRINCIPEM

PATRIae DECUS

OB VARIA ERGA IPSAM MERITA

IN CIVIUM SUORUM NUMERUM

GRATA ADSCRIPSIT CIVITAS EDINBURGENSIS

ET HOC CANTHARO DONAVIT

A. D. M.DCCC.XIII.]

[48: _2d King Henry IV._ Act V. Scene 3.]

[49: A good many French officers, prisoners of war, had been living on parole in Melrose, and the adjoining villages; and Mr. and Mrs. Scott had been particularly kind and hospitable to them.]

[50: The battle of Toulouse.]

[51: Sir Adam Ferguson, who had been taken prisoner in the course of the Duke of Wellington's retreat from Burgos.]

[52: The names which he particularly mentions are those of the late Matthew Weld Hartstonge, Esq., of Dublin, Theophilus Swift, Esq., Major Tickell, Thomas Steele, Esq., Leonard Macnally, Esq., and the Rev. M. Berwick.]

[53: Entertaining one night a small party of friends, Erskine read the proof sheets of this volume after supper, and was confirmed in his opinion by the enthusiastic interest they excited in his highly intelligent circle. Mr. James Simpson and Mr. Norman Hill, advocates, were of this party, and from the way in which their host spoke, they both inferred that they were listening to the first effort of some unknown aspirant. They all p.r.o.nounced the work one of the highest cla.s.sical merit. The sitting was protracted till daybreak.--(1839.)]

[54: Mr. Morritt had, in the spring of this year, been present at the first levee held at the Tuileries by Monsieur (afterwards Charles X.), as representative of his brother Louis XVIII. Mr. M. had not been in Paris till that time since 1789.]

[55: [The old writing-desk, in which, while searching for some fishing-tackle for a guest, Scott found the long-lost ma.n.u.script, was given by him to William Laidlaw, who till his death cherished with religious care all his memorials of Abbotsford. The desk is now a treasured possession of his grandson, Mr. W. L.

Carruthers, of Inverness.]]