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

Abbotsford is looking pretty at last, and the planting is making some show. I have now several hundred acres thereof, running out as far as beyond the lake. We observe with great pleasure the steady rise which you make in public opinion, and expect, one day, to hail you stage-manager. Believe me, my dear Terry, always very much yours,

W. SCOTT.

P. S.--The Counsellor and both the Ballantynes are well and hearty.

On the first of December, the first series of the Tales of my Landlord appeared, and notwithstanding the silence of the t.i.tle-page, and the change of publishers, and {p.124} the attempt which had certainly been made to vary the style both of delineation and of language, all doubts whether they were or were not from the same hand with Waverley had worn themselves out before the lapse of a week.--The enthusiasm of their reception among the highest literary circles of London may be gathered from the following letter:--

TO WALTER SCOTT, ESQ., EDINBURGH.

ALBEMARLE STREET, 14th December, 1816.

DEAR SIR,--Although I dare not address you as the author of certain "Tales" (which, however, must be written either by Walter Scott or the Devil), yet nothing can restrain me from thinking it is to your influence with the author that I am indebted for the essential honor of being one of their publishers, and I must intrude upon you to offer my most hearty thanks--not divided, but doubled--alike for my worldly gain therein, and for the great acquisition of professional reputation which their publication has already procured me. I believe I might, under any oath that could be proposed, swear that I never experienced such unmixed pleasure as the reading of this exquisite work has afforded me; and if you could see me, as the author's literary chamberlain, receiving the unanimous and vehement praises of every one who has read it, and the curses of those whose needs my scanty supply could not satisfy, you might judge of the sincerity with which I now entreat you to a.s.sure him of the most complete success. Lord Holland said, when I asked his opinion--"Opinion! We did not one of us go to bed last night--nothing slept but my gout." Frere, Hallam, Boswell,[45] Lord Glenbervie, William Lamb,[46] all agree that it surpa.s.ses all the other novels. Gifford's estimate is increased at every reperusal. Heber says there are only two men in the world--Walter Scott and Lord Byron. Between you, you have given existence to a third--Ever your faithful servant,

John MURRAY.

[Footnote 45: The late James Boswell, Esq., of the Temple--second son of _Bozzy_.]

[Footnote 46: The Honorable William Lamb--now Lord Melbourne.]

To this cordial effusion Scott returned the following answer. It was necessary, since he had fairly resolved {p.125} against compromising his incognito, that he should be prepared not only to repel the impertinent curiosity of strangers, but to evade the proffered congratulations of overflowing kindness. He contrived, however, to do so, on this and all similar occasions, in a style of equivoque which could never be seriously misunderstood:[47]--

[Footnote 47: [Even such keen observers as Murray and Blackwood had their intervals of doubt regarding the authorship of the Novels. In June, 1816, Blackwood writes: "There have been various rumors with regard to Greenfield being the author, but I never paid much attention to it; the thing appeared to me so very improbable.... But from what I have heard lately, and from what you state, I now begin to think that Greenfield may probably be the author." And only a month after the date of his letter to Scott, here given, Murray writes to Blackwood:--

"I can a.s.sure you, but _in the greatest confidence_, that I have discovered the author of all these Novels to be Thomas Scott, Walter Scott's brother. He is now in Canada. I have no doubt but that Mr. Walter Scott did a great deal to the first Waverley Novel, because of his anxiety to save his brother, and his doubt about the success of the work. This accounts for the many stories about it. Many persons had previously heard from Mr.

Scott, but you may rely upon the certainty of what I have told you." By this time Blackwood is firm in the faith of Scott's authorship; but Bernard Barton writes to Murray that he has heard that James Hogg is the author of _Tales of my Landlord_, and that he has had intimation from himself to that effect; while Lady Mackintosh is informed on excellent authority that the writer is Mrs. Thomas Scott. Writing to Blackwood in February, 1817, Murray avers,--"I will believe, till within an inch of my life, that the author of _Tales of my Landlord_ is Thomas Scott."--See Smiles's _Memoir of John Murray_, vol. i. pp. 461, 473, 474.]]

TO JOHN MURRAY, ESQ., ALBEMARLE STREET, LONDON.

EDINBURGH, 18th December, 1816.

MY DEAR SIR,--I give you heartily joy of the success of the Tales, although I do not claim that paternal interest in them which my friends do me the credit to a.s.sign me. I a.s.sure you I have never read a volume of them until they were printed, and can only join with the rest of the world in applauding the true and striking portraits which they present of old Scottish manners. I do not expect implicit reliance to be placed on my disavowal, because I know very well that he who is disposed not to own a work must necessarily deny it, and that otherwise {p.126} his secret would be at the mercy of all who choose to ask the question, since silence in such a case must always pa.s.s for consent, or rather a.s.sent. But I have a mode of convincing you that I am perfectly serious in my denial--pretty similar to that by which Solomon distinguished the fict.i.tious from the real mother--and that is, by reviewing the work, which I take to be an operation equal to that of quartering the child. But this is only on condition I can have Mr. Erskine's a.s.sistance, who admires the work greatly more than I do, though I think the painting of the second Tale both true and powerful. I knew Old Mortality very well; his name was Paterson, but few knew him otherwise than by his nickname.

The first Tale is not very original in its concoction, and lame and impotent in its conclusion. My love to Gifford. I have been over head and ears in work this summer, or I would have sent the Gypsies; indeed I was partly stopped by finding it impossible to procure a few words of their language.

Constable wrote to me about two months since, desirous of having a new edition of Paul; but not hearing from you, I conclude you are still on hand. Longman's people had then only sixty copies.

Kind compliments to Heber, whom I expected at Abbotsford this summer; also to Mr. Croker and all your four o'clock visitors. I am just going to Abbotsford to make a small addition to my premises there. I have now about 700 acres, thanks to the booksellers and the discerning public. Yours truly,

Walter SCOTT.

P. S.--I have much to ask about Lord Byron if I had time.

The third canto of the Childe is inimitable. Of the last poems, there are one or two which indicate rather an irregular play of imagination.[48] What a pity that a man of such exquisite genius will not be contented {p.127} to be happy on the ordinary terms![49] I declare my heart bleeds when I think of him, self-banished from the country to which he is an honor.[50]

[Footnote 48: _Parisina_--_The Dream_--and the "Domestic Pieces," had been recently published.]

[Footnote 49: (On November 27 Scott had written to Joanna Baillie, who had just returned from a tour on the Continent:--

"All I ever longed for on the Continent was their light wines, which you do not care about, and their fine climate, which we should both value equally; and to say truth, I never saw scene or palace which shook my allegiance to Tweedside and Abbotsford, though so inferior in every respect, and though the hills, or rather braes, are just high enough 'to lift us to the storm' when the storms are not so condescending as to sweep both crest and base, which, to do them justice, is seldom the case. What have I got to send you?... Alas, nothing but the history of petty employments and a calendar of increasing bad weather. The latter was much mitigated by enjoying for a good portion of the summer the society of John Morritt, of Rokeby, who has so much of that which is delightful, both in his grave and gay moods, that he can make us forget the hillside while sitting by the fireside. His late loss has cast a general shade of melancholy over him, which renders him yet dearer to his friends, by the gentle and unaffected manner in which his natural gayety of temper gleams through it and renders it still more interesting....

"A far different object of interest, yet still of interest, checkered with pity and disapprobation, is Lord Byron, whose present situation seems to rival all that ever has been said and sung of the misfortunes of a too irritable imagination. The last part of _Childe Harold_ intimates a terrible state of mind, and with all the power and genius which characterized his former productions, the present seems to indicate a more serious and desperate degree of misanthropy. I own I was not much moved by the scorn of the world which his first poems implied, because I know it is a humor of mind which those whom fortune has spoilt by indulgence, or irritated by reverses, are apt to a.s.sume, because it looks melancholy and gentlemanlike, and becomes a bard as well as being desperately in love, or very fond of the sunrise, though he lies in bed till noon, or anxious in recommending to others to catch cold by visiting old abbeys by moonlight, which he never happened to see under the chaste moonbeam himself; but this strange poem goes much deeper, and either the Demon of Misanthropy is in full possession of him, or he has already invited ten guests, equally desperate, to the swept and garnished mansion of Harold's understanding."--_Familiar Letters_, vol. i. p. 369.)]

[Footnote 50: [This is probably the "expression of kindness" which encouraged Murray to beg Scott to review in the _Quarterly_ Byron's recently published volumes, _Childe Harold, Canto III._, and _The Prisoner of Chillon, a Dream, and Other Poems_. The request was promptly complied with, and the article appeared in the next number issued (_dated_ October, 1816),--a review full of generous, and also judicious, appreciation. For some reason, hard now to discover, unless it were the kindliness of the writer's tone towards the younger poet, some of Lady Byron's friends, among whom was Joanna Baillie, seem to have taken strong exception to the paper, and Miss Baillie wrote to Scott at some length on the matter, even animadverting upon the purely literary criticism of the reviewer. Much of the correspondence which ensued, including a characteristic letter from Lady Byron, can be found in the _Familiar Letters_ (vol. i. pp. 413-422).

Of the review, Byron writes to Murray (March 3, 1817):--

... "It seems to me (as far as the subject of it may be permitted to judge) to be _very well_ written as a composition, and ... even those who may condemn its partiality, must praise its generosity. The temptations to take another and less favorable view of the question have been so great and numerous, that, what with public opinion, politics, etc., he must be a gallant as well as a good man, who has ventured in that place and at this time to write such an article even anonymously. Such things, however, are their own reward; and I even flatter myself that the writer, whoever he may be (and I have no guess), will not regret that the perusal of this has given me as much gratification as any composition of that nature could give, and more than any other has ever given,--and I have had a good many in my time of one kind or the other. It is not the mere praise, but there is a tact and a delicacy throughout, not only with regard to me, but to others, which, as it has not been observed elsewhere, I had till now doubted, whether it could be observed anywhere." He writes a few weeks later, on learning that Scott wrote the article: ... "It cannot add to my good opinion of him, but it adds to that of myself."--_Letters and Journals of Lord Byron_ (1900), vol. iv. pp. 63, 85.]]

{p.128} Mr. Murray, gladly embracing this offer of an article for his journal on the Tales of my Landlord, begged Scott to take a wider scope, and dropping all respect for the idea of a divided parentage, to place together any materials he might have for the ill.u.s.tration of the Waverley Novels in general; he suggested in particular, that, instead of drawing up a long-promised disquisition on the Gypsies in a separate shape, whatever he had to say concerning that picturesque generation might be introduced by way of comment on the character of Meg Merrilies. What Scott's original conception had been I know not; he certainly gave his reviewal all the breadth which Murray could have wished, and, _inter alia_, diversified it with a few anecdotes of the Scottish Gypsies. But the late excellent biographer of John Knox, Dr.

Thomas M'Crie, had, in the mean time, considered the representation of the Covenanters, in the story of Old Mortality, as so unfair as to demand at his {p.129} hands a very serious rebuke. The Doctor forthwith published, in a magazine called the Edinburgh Christian Instructor, a set of papers, in which the historical foundations of that tale were attacked with indignant warmth; and though Scott, when he first heard of these invectives, expressed his resolution never even to read them, he found the impression they were producing so strong, that he soon changed his purpose, and finally devoted a very large part of his article for the Quarterly Review to an elaborate defence of his own picture of the Covenanters.[51]

[Footnote 51: Since I have mentioned this reviewal, I may as well, to avoid recurrence to it, express here my conviction, that Erskine, not Scott, was the author of the critical estimate of the Waverley Novels which it embraces--although, for the purpose of mystification, Scott had taken the trouble to transcribe the paragraphs in which that estimate is contained. At the same time I cannot but add that, had Scott really been the sole author of this reviewal, he need not have incurred the severe censure which has been applied to his supposed conduct in the matter. After all, his judgment of his own works must have been allowed to be not above, but very far under the mark; and the whole affair would, I think, have been considered by every candid person exactly as the letter about Solomon and the rival mothers was by Murray, Gifford, and the "four o'clock visitors" of Albemarle Street--as a good joke. A better joke, certainly, than the allusion to the report of Thomas Scott being the real author of Waverley, at the close of the article, was never penned; and I think it includes a confession over which a misanthrope might have chuckled: "We intended here to conclude this long article, when a strong report reached us of certain Transatlantic confessions, which, if genuine (though of this we know nothing), a.s.sign a different author to these volumes than the party suspected by our Scottish correspondents. Yet a critic may be excused seizing upon the nearest suspicious person, on the principle happily expressed by Claverhouse, in a letter to the Earl of Linlithgow. He had been, it seems, in search of a gifted weaver, who used to hold forth at conventicles: 'I sent for the webster (weaver), they brought in his _brother_ for him: though he, maybe, cannot preach like his brother, I doubt not but he is as well-principled as he, wherefore I thought it would be no great fault to give him the trouble to go to jail with the rest!'"--_Miscellaneous Prose Works_, vol. xix. pp. 85, 86.]

Before the first Tales of my Landlord were six weeks old, two editions of 2000 copies disappeared, and a third of 2000 was put to press; but notwithstanding this rapid success, which was still further continued, and the friendly relations which always subsisted between the {p.130} author and Mr. Murray, circ.u.mstances erelong occurred which carried the publication of the work into the hands of Messrs. Constable.

The author's answer to Dr. M'Crie, and his Introduction of 1830, have exhausted the historical materials on which he constructed his Old Mortality; and the origin of The Black Dwarf--as to the conclusion of which story he appears on reflection to have completely adopted the opinion of honest Blackwood--has already been sufficiently ill.u.s.trated by an anecdote of his early wanderings in Tweeddale. The latter tale, however imperfect, and unworthy as a work of art to be placed high in the catalogue of his productions, derives a singular interest from its delineation of the dark feelings so often connected with physical deformity; feelings which appear to have diffused their shadow over the whole genius of Byron--and which, but for this single picture, we should hardly have conceived ever to have pa.s.sed through Scott's happier mind.[52] All the bitter blasphemy of spirit which, from infancy to the tomb, swelled up in Byron against the unkindness of nature; which sometimes perverted even his filial love into a sentiment of diabolical malignity; all this black and desolate train of reflections must have been encountered and deliberately subdued by the manly parent of The Black Dwarf. Old Mortality, on the other hand, is remarkable as the _novelist's_ first attempt to repeople the past by the power of imagination working on materials furnished by books.

In Waverley he revived the fervid dreams of his boyhood, and drew, not from printed records, but from the artless oral narratives of his _Invernahyles_. In Guy Mannering and The Antiquary he embodied characters and manners familiar {p.131} to his own wandering youth.

But whenever his letters mention Old Mortality in its progress, they represent him as strong in the confidence that the industry with which he had pored over a library of forgotten tracts would enable him to identify himself with the time in which they had birth, as completely as if he had listened with his own ears to the dismal sermons of Peden, ridden with Claverhouse and Dalzell in the rout of Bothwell, and been an advocate at the bar of the Privy Council, when Lauderdale catechised and tortured the a.s.sa.s.sins of Archbishop Sharp. To reproduce a departed age with such minute and lifelike accuracy as this tale exhibits, demanded a far more energetic sympathy of imagination than had been called for in any effort of his serious verse. It is indeed most curiously instructive for any student of art to compare the Roundheads of Rokeby with the Bluebonnets of Old Mortality. For the rest--the story is framed with a deeper skill than any of the preceding novels: the canvas is a broader one; the characters are contrasted and projected with a power and felicity which neither he nor any other master ever surpa.s.sed; and, notwithstanding all that has been urged against him as a disparager of the Covenanters, it is to me very doubtful whether the inspiration of romantic chivalry ever prompted him to n.o.bler emotions than he has lavished on the re-animation of their stern and solemn enthusiasm.

This work has always appeared to me the Marmion of his novels.[53]

[Footnote 52: [On reading _The Black Dwarf_, Mrs. Leigh believed her brother to be the author, and wrote to him to that effect. Byron had not yet seen the book, and says in his reply: "I am not P. P. [Peter Pattieson], I a.s.sure you on my honor, and do not understand to what book you allude, so that all your compliments are quite thrown away."--Byron's _Letters and Journals_ (1900), vol. iv. p. 56.]]

[Footnote 53: [Lady Louisa Stuart, whose approbation Scott writes he values "beyond a whole wilderness of critics," says in a letter of December 5, 1816:

"[Old Mortality] is super-excellent in all its points; it breaks up fresh ground, and has all the raciness of originality. I cannot help thinking it will bear down the world before it triumphantly. As usual it makes its personages our intimate acquaintance, and its scenes so present to the eye, that, last night, after sitting up unreasonably late over it, I got no sleep, from a kind of fever of mind it had occasioned. It seemed as if I had been an eye and ear witness of all the pa.s.sages, and I could not lull the agitation into calmness. Mause and Cuddie hurried my spirits in another way; they forced me to laugh out aloud, which one seldom does alone. On a second slower reading I expect to be still better pleased, and then also I suppose I shall find out the faults. At present it has, in the Scotch phrase, 'taken me off my feet,' and I do not criticise, though I think you will believe me when I say I do not and will not flatter. One thing I regret, that like the author of _The Antiquary_, Jedediah did not add a glossary; because even I, a mongrel, occasionally paying long visits to Scotland, and hearing Girsy at Bothwell gate and Peggy Macgowan hold forth in the village,--even I, thus qualified, have found a great many words absolute Hebrew to me, and I fear the altogether English will find many more beyond their comprehension or conjecture.

But this may be remedied in another edition. I have as yet only one great attack to make, and that upon a single word; but such a word! such an anachronism!

Claverhouse says he has no time to hear _sentimental_ speeches. My dear sir! tell Jedediah that Claverhouse never heard the sound of those four syllables in his life. We are used to them; but _sentiment_ and _sentimental_ were, I believe, first introduced into the language by Sterne, and are hardly as old as I am. Let alone the Covenanters' days, I am persuaded you would look in vain for them in the works of Richardson and Fielding. Nay, the French, from whom they were borrowed, did not talk of _le sentiment_ in that sense till long after Louis XIV.'s reign. No such thing is to be found in Madame de Sevigne, la Bruyere, etc., etc., etc. At home or abroad I defy Lord Dundee ever to have met with the expression. Mr. Peter Pattieson had been reading the _Man of Feeling_, and it was a slip of his tongue, which I am less inclined to excuse than Mause's abstruse Scotch, which I duly reverence, as she did Kettledrummle's sermons, because I do not understand it.

Once more I shall be much disappointed if this work does not quickly acquire a very great reputation. I fancy Mr.

Morritt is in the secret; yet, as I am not certain, I will keep on the secure side and not mention it when I write to him, however one may long to _intercommune_ on such subjects with those likely to hold the same faith."

At the close of his reply, Scott says: "I must not forget to thank your Ladyship for your acute and indisputable criticism on the application of the word _sentimental_. How it escaped my pen I know not, unless that the word owed me a grudge for the ill will I have uniformly borne it, and was resolved to slip itself in for the express purpose of disgracing me. I will certainly turn it out the first opportunity." This was done in the second edition.--_Familiar Letters_, vol. i.

pp. 394, 400.]]

{p.132} I have disclaimed the power of farther ill.u.s.trating its historical groundworks, but I am enabled by Mr. Train's kindness to give some interesting additions to Scott's own account of this novel as a composition. The generous Supervisor visited him in Edinburgh in May, 1816, a few days after the publication of The Antiquary, carrying with him several relics which he wished to present to his collection; among others a purse that had belonged {p.133} to Rob Roy, and also a fresh heap of traditionary gleanings, which he had gathered among the tale-tellers of his district. One of these last was in the shape of a letter to Mr. Train from a Mr. Broadfoot, "schoolmaster at the clachan of Penningham, and author of the _celebrated song_ of the Hills of Galloway"--with which I confess myself unacquainted. Broadfoot had facetiously signed his communication _Clashbottom_,--"a professional appellation derived," says Mr. Train, "from the use of the birch, and by which he was usually addressed among his companions,--who a.s.sembled, not at the Wallace Inn of Gandercleuch, but at the sign of the Shoulder of Mutton in Newton-Stewart." Scott received these gifts with benignity, and invited the friendly donor to breakfast next morning. He found him at work in his library, and surveyed with enthusiastic curiosity the furniture of the room, especially its only picture, a portrait of Graham of Claverhouse. Train expressed the surprise with which every one, who had known Dundee only in the pages of the Presbyterian Annalists, must see for the first time that beautiful and melancholy visage, worthy of the most pathetic dreams of romance. Scott replied, "that no character had been so foully traduced as the Viscount of Dundee; that, thanks to Wodrow, Cruickshanks, and such chroniclers, he, who was every inch a soldier and a gentleman, still pa.s.sed among the Scottish vulgar for a ruffian desperado, who rode a goblin horse, was proof against shot, and in league with the Devil." "Might he not," said Mr. Train, "be made, in good hands, the hero of a national romance as interesting as any about either Wallace or Prince Charlie?" "He might," said Scott, "but your western zealots would require to be faithfully portrayed in order to bring him out with the right effect."[54] "And what," resumed {p.134} Train, "if the story were to be delivered as if from the mouth of _Old Mortality_? Would _he_ not do as well as _the Minstrel_ did in the Lay?" "Old Mortality!" said Scott--"who was he?" Mr. Train then told what he could remember of old Paterson, and seeing how much his story interested the hearer, offered to inquire farther about that enthusiast on his return to Galloway. "Do so by all means," said Scott; "I a.s.sure you I shall look with anxiety for your communication." He said nothing at this time of his own meeting with Old Mortality in the churchyard of Dunnottar--and I think there can be no doubt that that meeting was thus recalled to his recollection; or that to this intercourse with Mr. Train we owe the whole machinery of the Tales of my Landlord, as well as the adoption of Claverhouse's period for the scene of one of its first fictions. I think it highly probable that we owe a further obligation to the worthy Supervisor's presentation of Rob Roy's _spleuchan_.

[Footnote 54: [Scott's old friend, John Richardson, who was from the first in the secret of the Waverley Novels, was a stanch Whig, as beseemed the descendant of an old Covenanting family. Some of his ancestral traditions suggested certain pa.s.sages in _Old Mortality_, and he has recorded that during a visit to Abbotsford Scott gave him the proof sheets of the first volume to read, and how he lost a night's sleep in doing it. Twelve years later, in writing to Scott regarding _The Tales of a Grandfather_, he says that in this work,--"You have paid a debt which you owed to the manes of the Covenanters for the flattering picture which you drew of Claverhouse in _Old Mortality_."

Scott says in his reply (December, 1828): "As to Covenanters and Malignants, they were both a set of cruel and b.l.o.o.d.y bigots, and had, notwithstanding, those virtues with which bigotry is sometimes allied. Their characters were of a kind much more picturesque than beautiful; neither had the least idea either of toleration or humanity, so that it happens that, so far as they can be distinguished from each other, one is tempted to hate most the party which chances to be uppermost for the time."--See _Journal_, note, vol. ii.

p. 404.]]

The original design for the First Series of Jedediah Cleishbotham was, as Scott told me, to include four separate tales ill.u.s.trative of four districts of the country, in the like number of volumes; but, his imagination once kindled upon any theme, he could not but pour himself out freely--so that notion was soon abandoned.

{p.135} CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

Harold the Dauntless Published. -- Scott Aspires to Be a Baron of the Exchequer. -- Letter to the Duke of Buccleuch Concerning Poachers, etc. -- First Attack of Cramp in the Stomach. -- Letters to Morritt, Terry, and Mrs. Maclean Clephane. -- Story of the Doom of Devorgoil. -- John Kemble's Retirement from the Stage. -- William Laidlaw Established at Kaeside. -- Novel of Rob Roy Projected. -- Letter to Southey on the Relief of the Poor, etc. -- Letter to Lord Montagu on Hogg's Queen's Wake, and on the Death of Frances, Lady Douglas.

1817.