Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott Volume V Part 10

TO MR. JOHN BALLANTYNE.

DEAR JOHN,--I have the pleasure to enclose Murray's acceptances. I earnestly recommend to you to push, realizing as much as you can.

"Consider weel, gude man, We hae but borrowed gear; The horse that I ride on, It is John Murray's mear."

Yours truly,

W. SCOTT.

I know not how much of the tale of The Black Dwarf had been seen by Blackwood, in St. John Street, before he concluded this bargain for himself and his friend Murray; but when the closing sheets of that novel {p.113} reached him, he considered them as by no means sustaining the delightful promise of the opening ones. He was a man of strong talents, and, though without anything that could be called learning, of very respectable information--greatly superior to what has, in this age, been common in his profession; acute, earnest, eminently zealous in whatever he put his hand to; upright, honest, sincere, and courageous. But as Constable owed his first introduction to the upper world of literature and of society in general to his Edinburgh Review, so did Blackwood his to the Magazine, which has now made his name familiar to the world--and at the period of which I write, that miscellany was unborn; he was known only as a diligent antiquarian bookseller of the old town of Edinburgh, and the Scotch agent of the great London publisher, Murray. The abilities, in short, which he lived to develop, were as yet unsuspected--unless, perhaps, among a small circle; and the knowledge of the world, which so few men gather from anything but painful collision with various conflicting orders of their fellow-men, was not his. He was to the last plain and blunt; at this time I can easily believe him to have been so to a degree which Scott might look upon as "ungracious"--I take the epithet from one of his letters to James Ballantyne. Mr. Blackwood, therefore, upon reading what seemed to him the lame and impotent conclusion of a well-begun story, did not search about for any glossy periphrase, but at once requested James Ballantyne to inform the unknown author that such was his opinion. This might possibly have been endured; but Blackwood, feeling, I have no doubt, a genuine enthusiasm for the author's fame, as well as a just tradesman's anxiety as to his own adventure, proceeded to suggest the outline of what would, in his judgment, be a better upwinding of the plot of The Black Dwarf, and concluded with announcing his willingness, in case the proposed alteration were agreed to, that the whole expense of cancelling {p.114} and reprinting a certain number of sheets should be charged to his own account. He appears to have further indicated that he had taken counsel with some literary person, on whose taste he placed great reliance, and who, if he had not originated, at least approved of the proposed process of recasting. Had Scott never possessed any such system of inter-agency as the Ballantynes supplied, he would, among other and perhaps greater inconveniences, have escaped that of the want of personal familiarity with several persons, with whose confidence,--and why should I not add?--with the innocent gratification of whose little vanities--his own pecuniary interests were often deeply connected. A very little personal contact would have introduced such a character as Blackwood's to the respect, nay, to the affectionate respect, of Scott, who, above all others, was ready to sympathize cordially with honest and able men, in whatever condition of life he discovered them. He did both know and appreciate Blackwood better in after-times; but in 1816, when this communication reached him, the name was little more than a name, and his answer to the most solemn of go-betweens was in these terms, which I sincerely wish I could tell how Signior Aldiborontiphoscophornio translated into any dialect submissible to Blackwood's apprehension:--

DEAR JAMES,--

I have received Blackwood's impudent proposal. G---- d---- his soul! Tell him and his coadjutor that I belong to the Black Hussars of Literature, who neither give nor receive criticism. I'll be cursed but this is the most impudent proposal that ever was made.

W. S.[39]

[Footnote 39: _May_, 1839. Since this book was first published, I have received from the representatives of Mr. Blackwood several doc.u.ments which throw light on the transaction here mentioned. It will be apparent from one of those I am about to quote, that Blackwood, before he sent his message to Jedediah Cleishbotham, had ascertained that no less a person than Mr. Gifford concurred in his opinion--nay, that James Ballantyne himself took the same view of the matter. But the reader will be not less amused in comparing the "Black Hussar's" missive in the text, with the edition of it which actually reached Blackwood--and which certainly justifies the conjecture I had ventured to express.

TO WILLIAM BLACKWOOD, ESQ.

EDINBURGH, 4th October, 1816.

MY DEAR SIR,--Our application to the author of _Tales of my Landlord_ has been anything but successful; and in order to explain to you the reason why I must decline to address him in this way in future, I shall copy his answer _verbatim_:--

"My respects to our friends the Booksellers. I belong to the Death-head Hussars of Literature, who neither _take_ nor _give_ criticism. I am extremely sorry they showed my work to Gifford, nor would I cancel a leaf to please all the critics of Edinburgh and London; and so let that be as it is: They are mistaken if they think I don't know when I am writing ill, as well as Gifford can tell me. I beg there may be no more communications with critics."

Observe--that I shall at all times be ready to convey anything from you to the author in a written form, but I do not feel warranted to interfere farther.

Yours very truly,

J. BALLANTYNE.

TO JAMES BALLANTYNE, ESQ.

EDINBURGH, 5th October, 1816.

MY DEAR SIR,--I am not a little vexed at having ventured to suggest anything to the author of the _Tales of my Landlord_, since I find he considers it in the light of _sutor ultra crepidam_. I never had for one moment the vanity to think, that from any poor remark of mine, or indeed of any human being, he would be induced to blot one line or alter a single incident, unless the same idea occurred to his own powerful mind. On stating to you what struck me, and finding that your opinion coincided with mine, I was induced to request of you to state it to the author, in order that he might be aware that the expense of cancelling the sheets was no object to me. I was the more anxious to do this, in case the author should have given you the MS. of this portion of the work sooner than he intended, in order to satisfy the clamoring for it which I teased you with. I trust the author will do me the justice to believe that it is quite impossible for any one to have a higher admiration of his most extraordinary talents; and speaking merely as a bookseller, it would be quite unnecessary to be at the expense of altering even one line, although the author himself (who alone can be the proper judge) should wish it, as the success of the work must be rapid, great, and certain.

With regard to the first volume having been shown to Mr.

Gifford, I must state in justification of Mr. Murray, that Mr. G. is the only friend whom he consults on all occasions, and to whom his most secret transactions are laid open. He gave him the work, not for the purpose of criticism, but that as a friend he might partake of the enjoyment he had in such an extraordinary performance. No language could be stronger than Mr. Gifford's, as I mentioned to you; and as the same thing had occurred to Mr. G. as to you and me, you thought there would be no harm in stating this to the author.

I have only again to express my regret at what has taken place, and to beg you will communicate this to the author in any way you may think proper.

Yours, etc.,

W. BLACKWOOD.

(A much fuller and more accurate knowledge of this whole transaction, than that possessed by Lockhart, can be gathered from the annals of the two great publishing houses concerned in it;--Smiles's _Memoir of John Murray_ (vol. i. chap. xviii.), and Mrs. Oliphant's _William Blackwood and his Sons_ (vol. i. pp. 56-92), especially from the latter work, in which the whole incident is set in its proper light. Notwithstanding the heavy preliminary tax for unsalable books from the Ballantynes' "wretched stock," neither publisher seems to have had a moment's doubt as to the acceptance of the offer of the ostensibly anonymous Work of Fiction, though they were much fretted by the delays, uncertainties, and mysteries attending the matter. "One in business must submit to many things, and swallow many a bitter pill, when such a man as Walter Scott is the object in view," writes Blackwood to Murray,--the bitterness being largely the dealing with James Ballantyne. "John I always considered as no better than a swindler, but James I put some trust and confidence in. You judged him more accurately." ... And on another occasion,--"Except my wife, there is not a friend whom I dare advise with. I have not ventured to mention the business to my brother on account of the cursed mysteries and injunctions of secrecy connected with it.

I know he would blame me for engaging in it, for he has a very small opinion of the Ballantynes." Apart from the vexations attending their office as intermediaries, for which the Ballantynes were only partially responsible, this shrewd, if irritated, observer appears to have formed opinions of the brothers as business men, in some respects not differing greatly from those held by Lockhart in later days.

The delight of the two publishers in at last receiving the MS. of _The Black Dwarf_ and the manner in which it pa.s.sed into the hands of Constable, even before the stipulated 6000 copies were disposed of,--it must be owned he treated his rivals somewhat unhandsomely, finally severing them from Scott's literary career,--are fully set forth by the historian of the House of Blackwood. With her "one cannot but feel that this was one of those tragically insignificant circ.u.mstances which so often shape life apart from any consciousness of ours. Probably ruin would never have overtaken Sir Walter had he been in the steady and careful hands of Murray and Blackwood, for it is unlikely that even the glamour of the great Magician would have turned heads so reasonable and sober.")]

{p.115} While these volumes were in progress, Scott found time to make an excursion into Perthshire and Dumbartonshire, {p.116} for the sake of showing the scenery, made famous in The Lady of the Lake and Waverley, to his {p.117} wife's old friends, Miss Dumergue and Mrs.

Sarah Nicolson,[40] who had never before been in Scotland. The account which he gives of these ladies' visit at Abbotsford, and this little tour, in a letter to Mr. Morritt, shows the "Black Hussar of Literature" in his gentler and more habitual mood.

[Footnote 40: The sister of Miss Jane Nicolson.--See _ante_, vol. i. p. 248. Vol. ii. p. 82.]

TO J. B. S. MORRITT, ESQ., M. P., ROKEBY PARK.

ABBOTSFORD, 21st August, 1816.

MY DEAR MORRITT,--I have not had a moment's kindly leisure to answer your kind letter, and to tell how delighted I shall be to see you in this least of all possible dwellings, but where we, nevertheless, can contrive a pilgrim's quarters and the warmest welcome for you and any friend of your journey;--if young Stanley, so much the better. Now, as to the important business with the which I have been occupied: You are to know we have had our kind hostesses of Piccadilly upon a two months' visit to us. We owed them so much hospitality, that we were particularly anxious to make Scotland agreeable to the good girls. But, alas, the wind has blown, and the rain has fallen, in a style which beats all that ever I remembered. We accomplished, with some difficulty, a visit to Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond, and, by dint of the hospitality of Cambusmore and the Ross, we defied bad weather, wet roads, and long walks. But the weather settled into regular tempest, when we settled at Abbotsford; and, though the natives, accustomed to bad weather (though not at such a time of year), contrived to brave the extremities of the season, it only served to increase the dismay of our unlucky visitors, who, accustomed only to Paris and London, expected _fiacres_ at the Milestane Cross, and a pair of oars at the Deadman's Haugh.

Add to this a strong disposition to _commerage_, when there was no possibility of gratifying it, and a {p.118} total indisposition to scenery or rural amus.e.m.e.nts, which were all we had to offer--and you will pity both hosts and guests. I have the gratification to think I fully supported the hospitality of my country. I walked them to death, I talked them to death, I showed them landscapes which the driving rain hardly permitted them to see, and told them of feuds about which they cared as little as I do about their next-door news in Piccadilly. Yea, I even played at cards, and as I had Charlotte for a partner, so ran no risk of being scolded, I got on pretty well. Still the weather was so execrable, that, as the old drunken landlord used to say at Arroquhar, "I was perfectly ashamed of it;" and, to this moment, I wonder how my two friends fought it out so patiently as they did. But the young people and the cottages formed considerable resources. Yesterday they left us, deeply impressed with the conviction, which I can hardly blame, that the sun never shone in Scotland,--which that n.o.ble luminary seems disposed to confirm, by making this the first fair day we have seen this month--so that his beams will greet them at Longtown, as if he were determined to put Scotland to utter shame.

In you I expect a guest of a different calibre; and I think (barring downright rain) I can promise you some sport of one kind or other. We have a good deal of game about us; and Walter, to whom I have resigned my gun and license, will be an excellent attendant. He brought in six brace of moor-fowl on the 12th, which had (_si fas est diceri_) its own effect in softening the minds of our guests towards this unhappy climate. In other respects things look melancholy enough here. Corn is, however, rising, and the poor have plenty of work, and wages which, though greatly inferior to what they had when hands were scarce, a.s.sort perfectly well with the present state of the markets. Most folks try to live as much on their own produce as they can, by way of fighting off distress; and though speculating {p.119} farmers and landlords must suffer, I think the temporary ague-fit will, on the whole, be advantageous to the country. It will check that inordinate and unbecoming spirit of expense, or rather extravagance, which was poisoning all cla.s.ses, and bring us back to the sober virtues of our ancestors. It will also have the effect of teaching the landed interest, that their connection with their farmers should be of a nature more intimate than that of mere payment and receipt of rent, and that the largest offerer for a lease is often the person least ent.i.tled to be preferred as a tenant. Above all, it will complete the destruction of those execrable quacks, terming themselves land-doctors, who professed, from a two days' scamper over your estate, to tell you its const.i.tution,--in other words its value,--acre by acre.

These men, paid according to the golden hopes they held out, afforded by their reports one princ.i.p.al means of deceiving both landlord and tenant, by setting an ideal and extravagant value upon land, which seemed to ent.i.tle the one to expect, and the other to offer, rent far beyond what any expectation formed by either, upon their own acquaintance with the property, could rationally have warranted. More than one landed gentleman has cursed, in my presence, the day he ever consulted one of those empirics, whose prognostications induced him to reject the offers of substantial men, practically acquainted with the _locale_.

Ever, my dear Morritt, most truly yours,

Walter SCOTT.

In October, 1816, appeared the Edinburgh Annual Register, containing Scott's historical sketch of the year 1814--a composition which would occupy at least four such volumes as the reader has now in his hand.[41] Though executed with extraordinary rapidity, the sketch is as clear as spirited; but I need say no more of it here, as the author travels mostly over the same ground again in his Life of Napoleon.

[Footnote 41: [Referring to the edition of 1839, in ten volumes.]]

{p.120} Scott's correspondence proves, that during this autumn he had received many English guests besides the good spinsters of Piccadilly and Mr. Morritt. I regret to add, it also proves that he had continued all the while to be annoyed with calls for money from John Ballantyne; yet before the 12th of November called him to Edinburgh, he appears to have nearly finished the first Tales of my Landlord. He had, moreover, concluded a negotiation with Constable and Longman for a series of Letters on the History of Scotland: of which, however, if he ever wrote any part, the MS. has not been discovered. It is probable that he may have worked some detached fragments into his long-subsequent Tales of a Grandfather.[42] The following letter shows likewise that he was now busy with plans of building at Abbotsford, and deep in consultation on that subject with an artist eminent for his skill in Gothic architecture,--Mr. Edward Blore:--

[Footnote 42: [Scott says in a letter to John Murray, written October 20, 1814: "In casting about how I might show you some mark of my sense of former kindness, a certain MS. History of Scotland in _Letters to my Children_ has occurred to me, which I consider as a desideratum; it is upon the plan of _Lord Lyttelton's Letters_, as they are called." Nearly a year later he returns to the subject, and says: "I intend to revise my letters on Scottish History for you, but I will not get to press till November, for the country affords no facilities for consulting the necessary authorities. I hope it may turn out a thing of some interest, though I rather intend to keep to its original purpose as a book of instruction to children." These references seem to show that the work may have been further advanced than Lockhart supposed. The announcement of the proposed book by Constable and Longman naturally excited the indignation of Blackwood and Murray, as is shown in a vigorous letter from the Edinburgh to the London publisher, blaming equally the Ballantynes and Constable.--See _Memoirs of John Murray_, vol. i. pp.

245, 246, 462.]]

TO DANIEL TERRY, ESQ.

November 12, 1816.

MY DEAR TERRY,--I have been shockingly negligent in acknowledging your repeated favors; but it so happened, that I have had very little to _say_, with a great {p.121} deal to _do_; so that I trusted to your kindness to forgive my apparent want of kindness, and indisputable lack of punctuality. You will readily suppose that I have heard with great satisfaction of the prosperity of your household, particularly of the good health of my little namesake and his mother. G.o.dmothers of yore used to be fairies; and though only a G.o.dfather, I think of sending you, one day, a _fairy_ gift--a little drama, namely, which, if the audience be indulgent, may be of use to him. Of course, you will stand G.o.dfather to it yourself: it is yet only in embryo--a sort of poetical Hans in Kelder--nor am I sure when I can bring him forth; not for this season, at any rate. You will receive, in the course of a few days, my late _whereabouts_ in four volumes: there are two tales--the last of which I really prefer to any fict.i.tious narrative I have yet been able to produce--the first is wish-washy enough. The subject of the second tale lies among the old Scottish Cameronians--nay, I'll tickle ye off a Covenanter as readily as old Jack could do a young Prince; and a rare fellow he is, when brought forth in his true colors. Were it not for the necessity of using Scriptural language, which is essential to the character, but improper for the stage, it would be very dramatic. But of all this you will judge by and by. To give the go-by to the public, I have doubled and leaped into my form, like a hare in snow: that is, I have changed my publisher, and come forth like a maiden knight's white shield (there is a conceit!) without any adhesion to fame gained in former adventures (another!) or, in other words, with a virgin t.i.tle-page (another!)--I should not be so light-hearted about all this, but that it is very nearly finished and out, which is always a blithe moment for Mr.

Author. And now to other matters. The books came safe, and were unpacked two days since, on our coming to town--most ingeniously were they stowed in the legs of the very handsome stand for Lord Byron's vase, with which our {p.122} friend George Bullock has equipped me. I was made very happy to receive him at Abbotsford, though only for a start; and no less so to see Mr. Blore, from whom I received your last letter. He is a very fine young man, modest, simple, and unaffected in his manners, as well as a most capital artist. I have had the a.s.sistance of both these gentlemen in arranging an addition to the cottage at Abbotsford, intended to connect the present farmhouse with the line of low buildings to the right of it. Mr. Bullock will show you the plan, which I think is very ingenious. He has promised to give it his consideration with respect to the interior; and Mr. Blore has drawn me a very handsome elevation, both to the road and to the river. I expect to get some decorations from the old Tolbooth of Edinburgh, particularly the cope-stones of the doorway, or lintels, as we call them, and a _niche_ or two--one very handsome indeed! Better get a niche _from_ the Tolbooth than a niche _in_ it, to which such building operations are apt to bring the projectors. This addition will give me: first, a handsome boudoir, in which I intend to place Mr. Bullock's Shakespeare,[43] with his superb cabinet, which serves as a pedestal. This opens into the little drawing-room, to which it serves as a chapel of ease; and on the other side, to a handsome dining-parlor of 27 feet by 18, with three windows to the north, and one to the south,--the last to be Gothic, and filled with stained gla.s.s. Besides these commodities, there is a small conservatory or greenhouse; and a study for myself, which we design to fit up with ornaments from Melrose Abbey. Bullock made several casts with his own hands--masks, and so forth, delightful for cornices, etc.

[Footnote 43: A cast from the monumental effigy at Stratford-upon-Avon--now in the library at Abbotsford--was the gift of Mr. George Bullock, long distinguished in London as a collector of curiosities.

This ingenious man was, as the reader will see in the sequel, a great favorite with Scott.]

Do not let Mrs. Terry think of the windows till little {p.123} Wat is duly cared after.[44] I am informed by Mr.

Blore that he is a fine thriving fellow, very like papa.

About my armorial bearings: I will send you a correct drawing as I can get hold of Blore; namely--of the scutcheons of my grandsires on each side, and my own. I could detail them in the jargon of heraldry, but it is better to speak to your eyes by translating them into colored drawings, as the sublime science of armory has fallen into some neglect of late years, with all its mascles, buckles, crescents, and boars of the first, second, third, and fourth.

[Footnote 44: Mrs. Terry had offered the services of her elegant pencil in designing some windows of painted gla.s.s for Scott's armory, etc.]

I was very sorry I had no opportunity of showing attention to your friend Mr. Abbot, not being in town at the time. I grieve to say that neither the genius of Kean nor the charms of Miss O'Neill could bring me from the hillside and the sweet society of Tom Purdie. All our family are very well--Walter as tall nearly as I am, fishing salmon and shooting moor-fowl and blackc.o.c.k, in good style; the girls growing up, and, as yet, not losing their simplicity of character; little Charles excellent at play, and not deficient at learning, when the young dog will take pains.