Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott Volume V Part 13

"The peats and turf are all to lead, What ail'd the beast to die?"

You don't mention the nature of your undertaking in your last, and in your former you spoke both of the Black Dwarf and of Triermain. I have some doubts whether the town will endure a second time the following up a well-known tale with a dramatic representation--and there is no _vis comica_ to redeem the Black Dwarf, as in the case of Dominie Sampson. I have thought of {p.148} two subjects for you, if, like the Archbishop's homilies, they do not smell of the apoplexy.

The first is a n.o.ble and very dramatic tradition preserved in Galloway, which runs briefly thus: The Barons of Plenton (the family name, I think, was ---- by Jupiter, forgot!) boasted of great antiquity, and formerly of extensive power and wealth, to which the ruins of their huge castle, situated on an inland loch, still bear witness. In the middle of the seventeenth century, it is said, these ruins were still inhabited by the lineal descendant of this powerful family. But the ruinous halls and towers of his ancestors were all that had descended to him, and he cultivated the garden of the castle, and sold its fruits for a subsistence. He married in a line suitable rather to his present situation than the dignity of his descent, and was quite sunk into the rank of peasantry, excepting that he was still called--more in mockery, or at least in familiarity, than in respect--the Baron of Plenton. A causeway connected the castle with the mainland; it was cut in the middle, and the moat only pa.s.sable by a drawbridge which yet subsisted, and which the poor old couple contrived to raise every night by their joint efforts, the country being very unsettled at the time. It must be observed that the old man and his wife occupied only one apartment in the extensive ruins, a small one adjoining to the drawbridge; the rest was waste and dilapidated.

As they were about to retire one night to rest, they were deterred by a sudden storm which, rising in the wildest manner possible, threatened to bury them under the ruins of the castle. While they listened in terror to the complicated sounds of thunder, wind, and rain, they were astonished to hear the clang of hoofs on the causeway, and the voices of people clamoring for admittance. This was a request not rashly to be granted. The couple looked out, and dimly discerned through the storm that the causeway was crowded with riders. "How many of {p.149} you are there?" demanded John.--"Not more than the hall will hold," was the answer; "but open the gate, lower the bridge, and do not keep the _ladies_ in the rain."--John's heart was melted for the _ladies_, and, against his wife's advice, he undid the bolts, sunk the drawbridge, and bade them enter in the name of G.o.d. Having done so, he instantly retired into his _sanctum sanctorum_ to await the event, for there was something in the voices and language of his guests that sounded mysterious and awful. They rushed into the castle, and appeared to know their way through all its recesses.

Grooms were heard hurrying their horses to the stables--sentinels were heard mounting guard--a thousand lights gleamed from place to place through the ruins, till at length they seemed all concentrated in the baronial hall, whose range of broad windows threw a resplendent illumination on the moss-grown court below.

After a short time, a domestic, clad in a rich but very antique dress, appeared before the old couple, and commanded them to attend his lord and lady in the great hall. They went with tottering steps, and to their great terror found themselves in the midst of a most brilliant and joyous company; but the fearful part of it was, that most of the guests resembled the ancestors of John's family, and were known to him by their resemblance to pictures which mouldered in the castle, or by traditionary description. At the head, the founder of the race, dressed like some mighty baron, or rather some Galwegian prince, sat with his lady.

There was a difference of opinion between these ghostly personages concerning our honest John. The chief was inclined to receive him graciously; the lady considered him, from his mean marriage, as utterly unworthy of their name and board. The upshot is, that the chief discovers to his descendant the means of finding a huge treasure concealed in the castle; the lady a.s.sures him that the discovery shall never avail him.--In the morning no trace can be discovered of {p.150} the singular personages who had occupied the hall. But John sought for and discovered the vault where the spoils of the Southrons were concealed, rolled away the covering stone, and feasted his eyes on a range of ma.s.sy chests of iron, filled doubtless with treasure. As he deliberated on the best means of bringing them up, and descending into the vault, he observed it began slowly to fill with water. Bailing and pumping were resorted to, and when he had exhausted his own and his wife's strength, they summoned the a.s.sistance of the neighborhood. But the vengeance of the visionary lady was perfect; the waters of the lake had forced their way into the vault, and John, after a year or two spent in draining and so forth, died broken-hearted, the last Baron of Plenton.

Such is the tale, of which the incidents seem new, and the interest capable of being rendered striking; the story admits of the highest degree of decoration, both by poetry, music, and scenery, and I propose (in behalf of my G.o.dson) to take some pains in dramatizing it. As thus;--you shall play John, as you can speak a little Scotch; I will make him what the Baron of Bradwardine would have been in his circ.u.mstances, and he shall be alternately ridiculous from his family pride and prejudices, contrasted with his poverty, and respectable from his just and independent tone of feeling and character. I think Scotland is ent.i.tled to have something on the stage to balance Macklin's two worthies.[59] You understand the dialect will be only tinged with the national dialect--not that the baron is to speak broad Scotch, while all the others talk English. His wife and he shall have one child, a daughter, suitored unto by the conceited young parson or schoolmaster of the village, whose addresses are countenanced by her mother,--and by Halbert the hunter, a youth of unknown descent. Now this youth shall be the rightful heir and representative of the English owners of the treasure, of which they had been {p.151} robbed by the baron's ancestors, for which unjust act, their spirits still walked the earth. These, with a substantial character or two, and the ghostly personages, shall mingle as they may--and the discovery of the youth's birth shall break the spell of the treasure-chamber. I will make the ghosts talk as never ghosts talked in the body or out of it; and the music may be as unearthly as you can get it. The rush of the shadows into the castle shall be seen through the window of the baron's apartment in the flat scene. The ghosts' banquet, and many other circ.u.mstances, may give great exercise to the scene-painter and dresser. If you like this plan, you had better suspend any other for the present. In my opinion it has the infinite merit of being perfectly new in plot and structure, and I will set about the sketch as soon as my strength is restored in some measure by air and exercise. I am sure I can finish it in a fortnight then. Ever yours truly,

W. SCOTT.

[Footnote 59: Sir Archy Mac-Sarcasm and Sir Pertinax Mac-Sycophant.]

About the time when this letter was written, a newspaper paragraph having excited the apprehension of two--or I should say three--of his dearest friends, that his life was in actual danger, Scott wrote to them as follows:--

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

EDINBURGH, 20th March, 1817.

MY DEAR MORRITT,--I hasten to acquaint you that I am in the land of life, and thriving, though I have had a slight shake, and still feel the consequences of medical treatment.

I had been plagued all through this winter with cramps in my stomach, which I endured as a man of mould might, and endeavored to combat them by drinking scalding water, and so forth. As they grew rather unpleasantly frequent, I had reluctant recourse to Baillie. But before his answer arrived on the 5th, I had a most violent attack, which broke up a small party at {p.152} my house, and sent me to bed roaring like a bull-calf. All sorts of remedies were applied, as in the case of Gil Blas's pretended colic, but such was the pain of the real disorder, that it outdevilled the Doctor hollow. Even heated salt, which was applied in such a state that it burned my shirt to rags, I hardly felt when clapped to my stomach. At length the symptoms became inflammatory, and dangerously so, the seat being the diaphragm. They only gave way to very profuse bleeding and blistering, which under higher a.s.sistance saved my life. My recovery was slow and tedious from the state of exhaustion. I could neither stir for weakness and giddiness, nor read for dazzling in my eyes, nor listen for a whizzing sound in my ears, nor even think for lack of the power of arranging my ideas. So I had a comfortless time of it for about a week. Even yet I by no means feel, as the copy-book hath it,

"The lion bold, which the lamb doth hold--"

on the contrary, I am as weak as water. They tell me (of course) I must renounce every creature comfort, as my friend Jedediah calls it. As for dinner and so forth, I care little about it--but toast and water, and three gla.s.ses of wine, sound like hard laws to me. However, to parody the lamentation of Ha.s.san, the camel-driver,

"The lily health outvies the grape's bright ray, And life is dearer than the usquebae--"

so I shall be amenable to discipline. But in my own secret mind I suspect the state of my bowels more than anything else. I take enough of exercise and enough of rest; but unluckily they are like a Lapland year, divided as one night and one day. In the vacation I never sit down; in the session-time I seldom rise up. But all this must be better arranged in future; and I trust I shall live to weary out all your kindness.

I am obliged to break off hastily. I trust I shall be able to get over the Fell in the end of summer, which {p.153} will rejoice me much, for the sound of the woods of Rokeby is lovely in mine ear. Ever yours,

Walter SCOTT.

TO MRS. MACLEAN CLEPHANE, OF TORLOISK, MULL.

EDINBURGH, 23d March, 1817.

MY DEAR Mrs. AND MISS CLEPHANE,--Here comes to let you know you had nearly seen the last sight of me, unless I had come to visit you on my red beam like one of Fingal's heroes, which, Ossianic as you are, I trow you would readily dispense with. The cause was a cramp in my stomach, which, after various painful visits, as if it had been sent by Prospero, and had mistaken me for Caliban, at length chose to conclude by setting fire to its lodging, like the Frenchmen as they retreated through Russia, and placed me in as proper a state of inflammation as if I had had the whole Spafields committee in my unfortunate stomach. Then bleeding and blistering was the word; and they bled and blistered till they left me neither skin nor blood. However, they beat off the foul fiend, and I am bound to praise the bridge which carried me over. I am still very totterish, and very giddy, kept to panada, or rather to porridge, for I spurned at all foreign slops, and adhered to our ancient oatmeal manufacture.[60] But I have no apprehension of any return of the serious part of the malady, and I am now recovering my strength, though looking somewhat cadaverous upon the occasion.

[Footnote 60: [On the 17th of March, Scott had written to Joanna Baillie: "Two _remarkables_ struck me in my illness: the first was, that my great wolf-dog clamored wildly and fearfully about my bed when I was very ill, and would hardly be got out of the room; the other, that when I was recovering, all acquired and fact.i.tious tastes seemed to leave me, and I could eat nothing but porridge, and listen to no better reading than a stupid Scottish diary which would have made a whole man sick."--_Familiar Letters_, vol. i. p. 421.]]

I much approve of your going to Italy by sea; indeed it is the only way you ought to think of it. I am only {p.154} sorry you are going to leave us for a while; but indeed the isle of Mull might be Florence to me in respect of separation, and cannot be quite Florence to you, since Lady Compton is not there. I lately heard her mentioned in a company where my interest in her was not known, as one of the very few English ladies now in Italy whom their acquirements, conduct, and mode of managing time, induce that part of foreign society, whose approbation is valuable, to consider with high respect and esteem. This I think is very likely; for, whatever folks say of foreigners, those of good education and high rank among them, must have a supreme contempt for the frivolous, dissatisfied, empty, gad-about manners of many of our modern belles. And we may say among ourselves, that there are few upon whom high accomplishments and information sit more gracefully.

John Kemble is here to take leave, acting over all his great characters, and with all the spirit of his best years. He played Coriola.n.u.s last night (the first time I have ventured out) fully as well as I ever saw him; and you know what a complete model he is of the Roman. He has made a great reformation in his habits; given up wine, which he used to swallow by pailfuls,--and renewed his youth like the eagles.

He seems to me always to play best those characters in which there is a predominating tinge of some overmastering pa.s.sion, or acquired habit of acting and speaking, coloring the whole man. The patrician pride of Coriola.n.u.s, the stoicism of Brutus and Cato, the rapid and hurried vehemence of Hotspur, mark the cla.s.s of characters I mean. But he fails where a ready and pliable yielding to the events and pa.s.sions of life makes what may be termed a more natural personage. Accordingly I think his Macbeth, Lear, and especially his Richard, inferior in spirit and truth. In Hamlet, the natural fixed melancholy of the prince places him within Kemble's range;--yet many delicate and sudden turns of pa.s.sion slip through his fingers. He is {p.155} a lordly vessel, goodly and magnificent when going large before the wind, but wanting the facility to go "_ready about_," so that he is sometimes among the breakers before he can wear ship. Yet we lose in him a most excellent critic, an accomplished scholar, and one who graced our forlorn drama with what little it has left of good sense and gentlemanlike feeling. And so exit he. He made me write some lines to speak when he withdraws, and he has been here criticising and correcting till he got them quite to his mind, which has rather tired me.

Most truly yours while

Walter SCOTT.

On the 29th of March, 1817, John Philip Kemble, after going through the round of his chief parts, to the delight of the Edinburgh audience, took his final leave of them as Macbeth, and in the costume of that character delivered a farewell address, penned for him by Scott.[61] No one who witnessed that scene, and heard the lines as then recited, can ever expect to be again interested to the same extent by anything occurring within the walls {p.156} of a theatre; nor was I ever present at any public dinner in all its circ.u.mstances more impressive than was that which occurred a few days afterwards, when Kemble's Scotch friends and admirers a.s.sembled around him--Francis Jeffrey being chairman, Walter Scott and John Wilson the croupiers.

[Footnote 61: See _Poetical Works_, vol. xi. p. 348 [Cambridge Ed. p. 436]. Scott's farewell for Kemble first appeared in _The Sale-Room_ for April 5, 1817; and in the introductory note James Ballantyne says: "The character fixed upon, with happy propriety, for Kemble's closing scene, was Macbeth. He had labored under a severe cold for a few days before, but on the memorable night the physical annoyance yielded to the energy of his mind. 'He was,' he said in the Green-room, immediately before the curtain rose, 'determined to leave behind him the most perfect specimen of his art which he had ever shown;' and his success was complete.

At the moment of the tyrant's death, the curtain fell by the universal acclamation of the audience. The applauses were vehement and prolonged; they ceased--were resumed--rose again--were reiterated--and again were hushed. In a few minutes the curtain ascended, and Mr.

Kemble came forward, in the dress of Macbeth (the audience by a consentaneous movement rising to receive him), to deliver his _farewell_." ... "Mr. Kemble delivered the lines with exquisite beauty, and with an effect that was evidenced by the tears and sobs of many of the audience. His own emotions were very conspicuous.

When his farewell was closed, he lingered long on the stage, as if unable to retire. The house again stood up, and cheered him with the waving of hats and long shouts of applause."]

Shortly before this time, Mr. William Laidlaw had met with misfortunes, which rendered it necessary for him to give up the lease of a farm, on which he had been for some years settled, in Mid-Lothian. He was now anxiously looking about him for some new establishment, and it occurred to Scott that it might be mutually advantageous, as well as agreeable, if his excellent friend would consent to come and occupy a house on his property, and endeavor, under his guidance, to make such literary exertions as might raise his income to an amount adequate for his comfort. The prospect of obtaining such a neighbor was, no doubt, the more welcome to "Abbotsford and Kaeside," from its opening at this period of fluctuating health; and Laidlaw, who had for twenty years loved and revered him, considered the proposal with far greater delight than the most lucrative appointment on any n.o.ble domain in the island could have afforded him. Though possessed of a lively and searching sagacity as to things in general, he had always been as to his own worldly interests simple as a child. His tastes and habits were all modest; and when he looked forward to spending the remainder of what had not hitherto been a successful life, under the shadow of the genius that he had worshipped almost from boyhood, his gentle heart was all happiness. He surveyed with glistening eyes the humble cottage in which his friend proposed to lodge him, his wife, and his little ones, and said to himself that he should write no more sad songs on _Forest Flittings_.[62]

[Footnote 62: Mr. Laidlaw has not published many verses; but his song of _Lucy's Flitting_--a simple and pathetic picture of a poor Ettrick maiden's feelings in leaving a service where she had been happy--has long been, and must ever be, a favorite with all who understand the delicacies of the Scottish dialect, and the manners of the district in which the scene is laid.]

{p.157} Scott's notes to him at this time afford a truly charming picture of thoughtful and respectful delicacy on both sides. Mr.

Laidlaw, for example, appears to have hinted that he feared his friend, in making the proposal as to the house at Kaeside, might have perhaps in some degree overlooked the feelings of "Laird Moss," who, having sold his land several months before, had as yet continued to occupy his old homestead. Scott answers:--

TO MR. W. LAIDLAW.

EDINBURGH, April 5, 1817.

MY DEAR SIR,--Nothing can give me more pleasure than the prospect of your making yourself comfortable at Kaeside till some good thing casts up. I have not put Mr. Moss to any inconvenience, for I only requested an answer, giving him leave to sit if he had a mind--and of free will he leaves my premises void and redd at Whitsunday. I suspect the house is not in good order, but we shall get it brushed up a little.

Without affectation I consider myself the obliged party in this matter--or at any rate it is a mutual benefit, and you shall have gra.s.s for a cow, and so forth--whatever you want.

I am sure when you are so near I shall find some literary labor for you that will make ends meet. Yours, in haste,

W. SCOTT.

He had before this time made considerable progress in another historical sketch (that of the year 1815) for the Edinburgh Annual Register; and the first literary labor which he provided for Laidlaw appears to have been arranging for the same volume a set of newspaper articles, usually printed under the head of _Chronicle_, to which were appended some little extracts of new books of travels, and the like miscellanies. The Edinburgh {p.158} Monthly Magazine, subsequently known by the name of its projector, Blackwood, commenced in April of this year; and one of its editors, Mr. Thomas Pringle, being a Teviotdale man and an old acquaintance of Laidlaw's, offered to the latter the care of its _Chronicle department_ also,--not perhaps without calculating that, in case Laidlaw's connection with the new journal should become at all a strict one, Scott would be induced to give it occasionally the benefit of his own literary a.s.sistance. He accordingly did not write--being unwell at the time--but _dictated_ to Pringle a collection of anecdotes concerning Scottish gypsies, which attracted a good deal of notice;[63] and, I believe, he also a.s.sisted Laidlaw in drawing up one or more articles on the subject of Scottish superst.i.tions. But the bookseller and Pringle soon quarrelled, and the Magazine a.s.suming, on the retirement of the latter, a high Tory character, Laidlaw's Whig feelings induced him to renounce its alliance; while Scott, having no kindness for Blackwood personally, and disapproving (though he chuckled over it) the reckless extravagance of juvenile satire which, by and by, distinguished his journal, appears to have easily acquiesced in the propriety of Laidlaw's determination. I insert meantime a few notes, which will show with what care and kindness he watched over Laidlaw's operations for the Annual Register.

[Footnote 63: These anecdotes were subsequently inserted in the Introduction to _Guy Mannering_.]

TO MR. LAIDLAW, AT KAESIDE.

EDINBURGH, June 16, 1817.

DEAR SIR,--I enclose you "rare guerdon," better than remuneration,--namely, a cheque for 25, for the Chronicle part of the Register. The incidents selected should have some reference to amus.e.m.e.nt as well as information, and may be occasionally abridged in the narration; but, after all, paste and scissors form your princ.i.p.al {p.159} materials.

You must look out for two or three good original articles; and, if you would read and take pains to abridge one or two curious books of travels, I would send out the volumes.

Could I once get the head of the concern fairly round before the wind again, I am sure I could make it 100 a year to you. In the present instance it will be at least 50.

Yours truly,

W. S.

TO THE SAME.