Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott Volume V Part 1

Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott.

Volume V.

by John Gibson Lockhart.

{p.001} CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

Progress of the Lord of the Isles. -- Correspondence with Mr. Joseph Train. -- Rapid Completion of the Lord of the Isles. -- "Refreshing the Machine." -- "Six Weeks at a Christmas." -- Publication of the Poem, -- And of Guy Mannering. -- Letters to Morritt, Terry, and John Ballantyne. -- Anecdotes by James Ballantyne. -- Visit to London. -- Meeting with Lord Byron. -- Dinners at Carlton House.

1814-1815.

By the 11th of November, then, The Lord of the Isles had made great progress, and Scott had also authorized Ballantyne to negotiate among the booksellers for the publication of a second novel. But before I go further into these transactions, I must introduce the circ.u.mstances of Scott's first connection with an able and amiable man, whose services were of high importance to him, at this time and ever after, in the prosecution of his literary labors. Calling at Ballantyne's printing-office while Waverley was in the press, he happened to take up a proof sheet of a volume ent.i.tled "Poems, with notes ill.u.s.trative of traditions in Galloway and Ayrshire, by Joseph Train, Supervisor of Excise at Newton-Stewart." The sheet contained a ballad on an Ayrshire tradition, about a certain "Witch of Carrick," whose skill in the black art was, it seems, instrumental in the destruction {p.002} of one of the scattered vessels of the Spanish Armada. The ballad begins:--

"Why gallops the palfrey with Lady Dunore?

Who drives away Turnberry's kine from the sh.o.r.e?

Go tell it in Carrick, and tell it in Kyle-- Although the proud Dons are now pa.s.sing the Moil,[1]

On this magic clew, That in fairyland grew, Old Elcine de Aggart has taken in hand To wind up their lives ere they win to our strand."

[Footnote 1: The Mull of Cantyre.]

Scott immediately wrote to the author, begging to be included in his list of subscribers for a dozen copies, and suggesting at the same time a verbal alteration in one of the stanzas of this ballad. Mr.

Train acknowledged his letter with grat.i.tude, and the little book reached him just as he was about to embark in the lighthouse yacht. He took it with him on his voyage, and, on returning home again, wrote to Mr. Train, expressing the gratification he had received from several of his metrical pieces, but still more from his notes, and requesting him, as he seemed to be enthusiastic about traditions and legends, to communicate any matters of that order connected with Galloway which he might not himself think of turning to account; "for," said Scott, "nothing interests me so much as local anecdotes; and, as the applications for charity usually conclude, the smallest donation will be thankfully accepted."

Mr. Train, in a little narrative with which he has favored me, says, that for some years before this time he had been engaged, in alliance with a friend of his, Mr. Denniston, in collecting materials for a History of Galloway; they had circulated lists of queries among the clergy and parish schoolmasters, and had thus, and by their own personal researches, acc.u.mulated "a great variety of the most excellent materials for that purpose;" but that, from the hour of his correspondence with Walter Scott, he "renounced every idea of authorship for {p.003} himself," resolving, "that thenceforth his chief pursuit should be collecting whatever he thought would be most interesting to _him_;" and that Mr. Denniston was easily persuaded to acquiesce in the abandonment of their original design. "Upon receiving Mr. Scott's letter," says Mr. Train, "I became still more zealous in the pursuit of ancient lore, and being the first person who had attempted to collect old stories in that quarter with any view to publication, I became so noted, that even beggars, in the hope of reward, came frequently from afar to Newton-Stewart, to recite old ballads and relate old stories to me." Erelong, Mr. Train visited Scott both at Edinburgh and at Abbotsford; a true affection continued ever afterwards to be maintained between them; and this generous ally was, as the prefaces to the Waverley Novels signify, one of the earliest confidants of that series of works, and certainly the most efficient of all the author's friends in furnishing him with materials for their composition. Nor did he confine himself to literary services: whatever portable object of antiquarian curiosity met his eye, this good man secured and treasured up with the same destination; and if ever a catalogue of the museum at Abbotsford shall appear, no single contributor, most a.s.suredly, will fill so large a s.p.a.ce in it as Mr. Train.[2]

[Footnote 2: [Joseph Train was born in 1779, at Gilminscroft, Sorn, Ayrshire, where his father was grieve and land-steward. The boy was apprenticed at an early age to a weaver in Ayr, but, notwithstanding the narrowness of his circ.u.mstances, and a very imperfect education, he even then showed a love of learning and a pa.s.sion for antiquarian lore. From 1799 to 1802 he served in the Ayrshire militia. While the regiment was stationed at Inverness, he became a subscriber to Currie's edition of Burns, and his colonel, Sir David Hunter-Blair, seeing the volumes at the bookseller's, was surprised to learn that they had been ordered by one of his men. Greatly pleased thereat, Sir David had the books handsomely bound and sent to Train, free of charge; and later obtained for him an appointment in the Excise in the Ayr district. He was a faithful and efficient officer, but owing to the then prevalent custom of giving the higher places in the Excise to Englishmen, all Scott's efforts for the advancement of his friend were unavailing; he remained supervisor till he went on the retired list in 1836. In 1829 Train was admitted a member of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries. Though the death of Scott made a sad blank in his life, his interest in his favorite studies continued to the end. The latter part of his life was spent in a cottage at Castle Douglas, where he was visited shortly before his death by James Hannay, who found him in a little parlor, crowded with antiquities of interest and value,--the antiquary, "a tall old man, with an autumnal red in his face, hale looking, and of simple, quaint manners." (See _Household Words_, July 10, 1853.) Train's last extended works were an _Historical and Statistical Account of the Isle of Man, with a view of its peculiar customs and popular superst.i.tions_ (1845); and a study of a local religious sect in _The Buchanites from First to Last_ (1846); but he was an occasional contributor to various periodicals.

He died December 1, 1852.]]

{p.004} His first considerable communication, after he had formed the unselfish determination above mentioned, consisted of a collection of anecdotes concerning the Galloway gypsies, and "a local story of an astrologer, who calling at a farmhouse at the moment when the goodwife was in travail, had, it was said, predicted the future fortune of the child, almost in the words placed in the mouth of John MacKinlay, in the Introduction to Guy Mannering." Scott told him, in reply, that the story of the astrologer reminded him of "one he had heard in his youth;" that is to say, as the Introduction explains, from this MacKinlay; but Mr. Train has, since his friend's death, recovered a rude _Durham_ ballad, which in fact contains a great deal more of the main fable of Guy Mannering than either his own written, or MacKinlay's oral edition of the _Gallovidian_ anecdote had conveyed; and--possessing, as I do, numberless evidences of the haste with which Scott drew up his beautiful Prefaces and Introductions of 1829, 1830, and 1831--I am strongly inclined to think that he must in his boyhood have read the Durham Broadside or Chapbook itself--as well as heard the old serving-man's Scottish version of it.

However this may have been, Scott's answer to Mr. Train proceeded in these words:--

I am now to solicit a favor, which I think your interest {p.005} in Scottish antiquities will induce you readily to comply with. I am very desirous to have some account of the present state of _Turnberry Castle_--whether any vestiges of it remain--what is the appearance of the ground--the names of the neighboring places--and, above all, what are the traditions of the place (if any) concerning its memorable surprise by Bruce, upon his return from the coast of Ireland, in the commencement of the brilliant part of his career. The purpose of this is to furnish some hints for notes to a work in which I am now engaged, and I need not say I will have great pleasure in mentioning the source from which I derive my information. I have only to add, with the modest importunity of a lazy correspondent, that the sooner you oblige me with an answer (if you can a.s.sist me on the subject), the greater will the obligation be on me, who am already your obliged humble servant,

W. SCOTT.

The recurrence of the word _Turnberry_, in the ballad of Elcine de Aggart, had of course suggested this application, which was dated on the 7th of November. "I had often," says Mr. Train, "when a boy, climbed the brown hills, and traversed the sh.o.r.es of Carrick, but I could not sufficiently remember the exact places and distances as to which Mr. Scott inquired; so, immediately on receipt of his letter, I made a journey into Ayrshire to collect all the information I possibly could, and forwarded it to him on the 18th of the same month." Among the particulars thus communicated, was the local superst.i.tion, that on the anniversary of the night when Bruce landed at Turnberry from Arran, the same meteoric gleam which had attended his voyage reappeared, unfailingly, in the same quarter of the heavens. With this circ.u.mstance Scott was much struck. "Your information," he writes on the 22d November, "was particularly interesting and acceptable, especially that which {p.006} relates to the supposed preternatural appearance of the fire, etc., which I hope to make some use of." What use he did make of it, if any reader has forgotten, will be seen by reference to stanzas 7-17 of the 5th Canto of the Poem; and the notes to the same Canto embody, with due acknowledgment, the more authentic results of Mr. Train's pilgrimage to Carrick.

I shall recur presently to this communication from Mr. Train; but must pause for a moment to introduce two letters, both written in the same week with Scott's request as to the localities of Turnberry. They both give us amusing sketches of his buoyant spirits at this period of gigantic exertion;--and the first of them, which relates chiefly to Maturin's Tragedy of Bertram, shows how he could still contrive to steal time for attention to the affairs of brother authors less energetic than himself.

TO DANIEL TERRY, ESQ.

ABBOTSFORD, November 10, 1814.

MY DEAR TERRY,--I should have long since answered your kind letter by our friend Young, but he would tell you of my departure with our trusty and well-beloved Erskine, on a sort of a voyage to Nova Zembla. Since my return, I have fallen under the tyrannical dominion of a certain Lord of the Isles. Those Lords were famous for oppression in the days of yore, and if I can judge by the posthumous despotism exercised over me, they have not improved by their demise.

The _peine forte et dure_ is, you know, nothing in comparison to being obliged to grind verses; and so devilish repulsive is my disposition, that I can never put my wheel into constant and regular motion, till Ballantyne's devil claps in his proofs, like the hot cinder which you Bath folks used to clap in beside an unexperienced turnspit, as a hint to be expeditious in his duty. O long life to the old hermit of Prague, who never saw pen and ink!--much happier in {p.007} that negative circ.u.mstance than in his alliance with the niece of King Gorboduc.

To talk upon a blither subject, I wish you saw Abbotsford, which begins this season to look the whimsical, gay, odd cabin, that we had chalked out. I have been obliged to relinquish Stark's plan, which was greatly too expensive. So I have made the old farmhouse my _corps de logis_, with some outlying places for kitchen, laundry, and two spare bedrooms, which run along the east wall of the farm-court, not without some picturesque effect. A perforated cross, the spoils of the old kirk of Galashiels, decorates an advanced door, and looks very well. This little sly bit of sacrilege has given our spare rooms the name of _the chapel_. I earnestly invite you to a _pew_ there, which you will find as commodious for the purpose of a nap as you have ever experienced when, under the guidance of old Mrs. Smollett, you were led to St. George's, Edinburgh.

I have been recommending to John Kemble (I dare say without any chance of success) to peruse a MS. Tragedy of Maturin's author of Montorio: it is one of those things which will either succeed greatly or be d.a.m.ned gloriously, for its merits are marked, deep, and striking, and its faults of a nature obnoxious to ridicule. He had our old friend Satan (none of your sneaking St. John Street devils, but the arch-fiend himself) brought on the stage bodily. I believe I have exorcised the foul fiend--for, though in reading he was a most terrible fellow, I feared for his reception in public. The last act is ill contrived. He piddles (so to speak) through a cullender, and divides the whole horrors of the catastrophe (though G.o.d wot there are enough of them) into a kind of drippity-droppity of four or five scenes, instead of inundating the audience with them at once in the finale, with a grand "_gardez l'eau_." With all this, which I should say had I written the thing myself, it is grand and powerful; the language most animated and poetical; and the characters {p.008} sketched with a masterly enthusiasm.

Many thanks for Captain Richard Falconer.[3] To your kindness I owe the two books in the world I most longed to see, not so much for their intrinsic merits, as because they bring back with vivid a.s.sociations the sentiments of my childhood--I might almost say infancy. Nothing ever disturbed my feelings more than when, sitting by the old oak table, my aunt, Lady Raeburn, used to read the lamentable catastrophe of the ship's departing without Captain Falconer, in consequence of the whole party making free with lime-punch on the eve of its being launched. This and Captain Bingfield,[4] I much wished {p.009} to read once more, and I owe the possession of both to your kindness.

Everybody that I see talks highly of your steady interest with the public, wherewith, as I never doubted of it, I am pleased but not surprised. We are just now leaving this for the winter: the children went yesterday. Tom Purdie, Finella, and the greyhounds, all in excellent health; the latter have not been hunted this season!!! Can add nothing more to excite your admiration. Mrs. Scott sends her kind compliments.

W. SCOTT.

[Footnote 3: "_The Voyages, Dangerous Adventures, and Imminent Escapes of Capt. Rich. Falconer._ Containing the Laws, Customs, and Manners of the Indians in America; his shipwrecks; his marrying an Indian wife; his narrow escape from the Island of Dominico, etc.

Intermixed with the Voyages and Adventures of Thomas Randal, of Cork, Pilot; with his Shipwreck in the Baltick, being the only man that escap'd. His being taken by the Indians of Virginia, etc. And an Account of his Death. The Fourth Edition. London. Printed for J.

Marshall, at the Bible in Gracechurch Street. 1734."

On the fly-leaf is the following note, in Scott's handwriting: "This book I read in early youth. I am ignorant whether it is altogether fict.i.tious and written upon De Foe's plan, which it greatly resembles, or whether it is only an exaggerated account of the adventures of a real person. It is very scarce, for, endeavoring to add it to the other favorites of my infancy, I think I looked for it ten years to no purpose, and at last owed it to the active kindness of Mr. Terry. Yet Richard Falconer's adventures seem to have pa.s.sed through several editions."]

[Footnote 4: "_The Travels and Adventures of William Bingfield, Esq._, containing, as surprizing a Fluctuation of Circ.u.mstances, both by Sea and Land, as ever befel one man. With an Accurate Account of the Shape, Nature, and Properties of that most furious, and amazing Animal, the Dog-Bird. Printed from his own Ma.n.u.script. With a beautiful Frontispiece. 2 vols. 12mo.

London: Printed for E. Withers, at the Seven Stars, in Fleet Street. 1753." On the fly-leaf of the first volume Scott has written as follows: "I read this scarce little _Voyage Imaginaire_ when I was about ten years old, and long after sought for a copy without being able to find a person who would so much as acknowledge having heard of William Bingfield or his Dog-birds, until the indefatigable kindness of my friend Mr. Terry, of the Haymarket, made me master of this copy. I am therefore induced to think the book is of very rare occurrence."

[In consequence of these Notes, both Falconer and Bingfield have been recently reprinted in London.--(1839.)]]

The following, dated a day after, refers to some lines which Mr.

Morritt had sent him from Worthing.

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

ABBOTSFORD, November 11, 1814.

MY DEAR MORRITT,--I had your kind letter with the beautiful verses. May the Muse meet you often on the verge of the sea or among your own woods of Rokeby! May you have spirits to profit by her visits (and that implies all good wishes for the continuance of Mrs. M.'s convalescence), and may I often, by the fruits of your inspiration, have my share of pleasure! My Muse is a Tyranness, and not a Christian queen, and compels me to attend to longs and shorts, and I know not what, when, G.o.d wot, I had rather be planting evergreens by my new old fountain. You must know that, like the complaint of a fine young boy who was complimented by a stranger on his being a smart fellow, "I am sair halded down by _the bubbly jock_." In other words, the turkey c.o.c.k, at the head of a family of some forty or fifty infidels, lays waste all my shrubs. In vain I remonstrate with Charlotte upon these occasions; she is in league with the hen-wife, the natural protectress of these pirates; and I have only the inhuman consolation that I may one day, like a cannibal, eat up my enemies. This is but dull fun, but what else have I to tell you about? It {p.010} would be worse if, like Justice Shallow's Davy, I should consult you upon sowing down the headland with wheat. My literary tormentor is a certain Lord of the Isles, famed for his tyranny of yore, and not unjustly. I am bothering some tale of him I have had long by me into a sort of romance. I think you will like it: it is Scottified up to the teeth, and somehow I feel myself like the liberated chiefs of the Rolliad, "who boast their native philabeg restored." I believe the frolics one can cut in this loose garb are all set down by you Sa.s.senachs to the real agility of the wearer, and not the brave, free, and independent character of his clothing. It is, in a word, the real Highland fling, and no one is supposed able to dance it but a native. I always thought that epithet of Gallia _Braccata_ implied subjugation, and was never surprised at Caesar's easy conquests, considering that his Labienus and all his merry men wore, as we say, bottomless breeks.

Ever yours,

W. S.

Well might he describe himself as being hard at work with his Lord of the Isles. The date of Ballantyne's letter to Miss Edgeworth (November 11), in which he mentions the third Canto as completed; that of the communication from Mr. Train (November 18), on which so much of Canto Fifth was grounded; and that of a note from Scott to Ballantyne (December 16, 1814), announcing that he had sent the last stanza of the poem: these dates, taken together, afford conclusive evidence of the fiery rapidity with which the three last Cantos of The Lord of the Isles were composed.

He writes, on the 25th December, to Constable that he "had corrected the last proofs, and was setting out for Abbotsford to refresh the machine." And in what did his refreshment of the machine consist?

Besides having written within this year the greater part (almost, I believe, the whole) of the Life of Swift--Waverley--and {p.011} The Lord of the Isles--he had given two essays to the Encyclopaedia Supplement, and published, with an Introduction and notes, one of the most curious pieces of family history ever produced to the world, on which he labored with more than usual zeal and diligence, from his warm affection for the n.o.ble representative of its author. This inimitable Memorie of the Somervilles came out in October; and it was speedily followed by an annotated reprint of the strange old treatise, ent.i.tled "Rowland's letting off the humours of the blood in the head vein, 1611." He had also kept up his private correspondence on a scale which I believe never to have been exemplified in the case of any other person who wrote continually for the press--except, perhaps, Voltaire; and, to say nothing of strictly professional duties, he had, as a vast heap of doc.u.ments now before me proves, superintended from day to day, except during his Hebridean voyage, the still perplexed concerns of the Ballantynes, with a watchful a.s.siduity that might have done credit to the most diligent of tradesmen. The "machine" might truly require "refreshment."

It was, as has been seen, on the 7th of November that Scott acknowledged the receipt of that communication from Mr. Train which included the story of the Galloway astrologer. There can be no doubt that this story recalled to his mind, if not the Durham ballad, the similar but more detailed corruption of it which he had heard told by his father's servant, John MacKinlay, in the days of George's Square and Green-breeks, and which he has preserved in the introduction to Guy Mannering, as the groundwork of that tale. It has been shown that the three last Cantos of The Lord of the Isles were written between the 11th of November and the 25th of December; and it is therefore scarcely to be supposed that any part of this novel had been penned before he thus talked of "refreshing the machine." It is quite certain that when James Ballantyne wrote to Miss Edgeworth on the {p.012} 11th November, he could not have seen one page of Guy Mannering, since he in that letter announces that the new novel of his nameless friend would depict manners _more ancient_ than those of 1745. And yet it is equally certain, that before The Lord of the Isles was _published_, which took place on the 18th of January, 1815, two volumes of Guy Mannering had been not only written and copied by an amanuensis, but printed.

Scott thus writes to Morritt, in sending him his copy of The Lord of the Isles:--

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

EDINBURGH, 19th January, 1815.

MY DEAR MORRITT,--I have been very foolishly putting off my writing until I should have time for a good long epistle; and it is astonishing what a number of trifles have interfered to prevent my commencing on a great scale. The last of these has been rather of an extraordinary kind, for your little friend Walter has chose to make himself the town talk, by taking what seemed to be the small-pox, despite of vaccination in infancy, and inoculation with the variolous matter thereafter, which last I resorted to by way of making a.s.surance double sure. The medical gentleman who attended him is of opinion that he _has_ had the real small-pox, but it shall never be averred by me--for the catastrophe of Tom Thumb is enough to deter any thinking person from entering into a feud with the cows. Walter is quite well again, which was the princ.i.p.al matter I was interested in. We had very nearly been in a bad sc.r.a.pe, for I had fixed the Monday on which he sickened, to take him with me for the Christmas vacation to Abbotsford. It is probable that he would not have pleaded headache when there was such a party in view, especially as we were to shoot wild ducks one day together at Cauldshiels Loch; and what the consequence of such a journey might have been, G.o.d alone knows.

{p.013} I am clear of The Lord of the Isles, and I trust you have your copy. It closes my poetic labors upon an extended scale: but I dare say I shall always be dabbling in rhyme until the _solve senescentem_. I have directed the copy to be sent to Portland Place. I want to shake myself free of Waverley, and accordingly have made a considerable exertion to finish an odd little tale within such time as will mystify the public, I trust--unless they suppose me to be Briareus. Two volumes are already printed, and the only persons in my confidence, W. Erskine and Ballantyne, are of opinion that it is much more interesting than Waverley. It is a tale of private life, and only varied by the perilous exploits of smugglers and excis.e.m.e.n. The success of Waverley has given me a spare hundred or two, which I have resolved to spend in London this spring, bringing up Charlotte and Sophia with me. I do not forget my English friends--but I fear they will forget me, unless I show face now and then.

My correspondence gradually drops, as must happen when people do not meet; and I long to see Ellis, Heber, Gifford, and one or two more. I do not include Mrs. Morritt and you, because we are much nearer neighbors, and within a whoop and a holla in comparison. I think we should come up by sea, if I were not a little afraid of Charlotte being startled by the March winds--for our vacation begins 12th March.

You will have heard of poor Caberfae's death? What a pity it is he should have outlived his promising young representative. His state was truly pitiable--all his fine faculties lost in paralytic imbecility, and yet not so entirely so but that he perceived his deprivation as in a gla.s.s darkly. Sometimes he was fretful and anxious because he did not see his son; sometimes he expostulated and complained that his boy had been allowed to die without his seeing him; and sometimes, in a less clouded state of intellect, he was sensible of, and lamented his loss in its full extent. These, indeed, are {p.014} the "fears of the brave, and follies of the wise,"[5] which sadden and humiliate the lingering hours of prolonged existence. Our friend Lady Hood will now be Caberfae herself. She has the spirit of a chieftainess in every drop of her blood, but there are few situations in which the cleverest women are so apt to be imposed upon as in the management of landed property, more especially of an Highland estate. I do fear the accomplishment of the prophecy, that when there should be a deaf Caberfae, the house was to fall.[6]