Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott Volume I Part 9

[Footnote 66: Mr. Edmonstone died 19th April, 1840.--(1848.)]

Mr. Clerk says that he had been struck from the first day he entered the Civil Law cla.s.s-room with something odd and remarkable in Scott's appearance; what this something was he cannot now recall, but he remembers telling his companion some time afterwards that he thought he looked like a _hautboy player_. Scott was amused with this notion, as he had never touched a musical instrument of any kind; but I fancy his friend had been watching a certain noticeable but altogether indescribable play of the upper lip when in an abstracted mood. He rallied Walter, he says, during one of their first evening walks together, on the slovenliness of his dress: he wore a pair of corduroy breeches, much glazed by the rubbing of his staff, which he immediately flourished--and said, "They be good enough for drinking in--let us go and have some oysters in the Covenant Close."

Convivial habits were then indulged among the young men of Edinburgh, whether students of law, solicitors, or barristers, to an extent now happily unknown; and this anecdote recalls some striking hints on that subject which occur in Scott's brief Autobiography. That he partook profusely in the juvenile baccha.n.a.lia of that day, and continued to take a plentiful share in such jollities down to the time of his marriage, are facts worthy of being distinctly stated; for no man in mature life was more habitually averse to every sort of intemperance.

He could, when I first knew him, swallow a great quant.i.ty of wine without being at all visibly disordered by it; but nothing short of some very particular occasion could ever induce him to put this strength of head to a trial; and {p.131} I have heard him many times utter words which no one in the days of his youthful temptation can be the worse for remembering:--"Depend upon it, of all vices, drinking is the most incompatible with greatness."

The liveliness of his conversation--the strange variety of his knowledge--and above all, perhaps, the portentous tenacity of his memory--riveted more and more Clerk's attention, and commanded the wonder of all his new allies; but of these extraordinary gifts Scott himself appeared to be little conscious; or at least he impressed them all as attaching infinitely greater consequence--(exactly as had been the case with him in the days of the Cowgate Port and the kittle nine steps)--to feats of personal agility and prowess. William Clerk's brother, James, a midshipman in the navy, happened to come home from a cruise in the Mediterranean shortly after this acquaintance began, and Scott and the sailor became almost at sight "sworn brothers." In order to complete his time under the late Sir Alexander Cochrane, who was then on the Leith station, James Clerk obtained the command of a lugger, and the young friends often made little excursions to sea with him. "The first time Scott dined on board," says William Clerk, "we met before embarking at a tavern in Leith--it was a large party, mostly midshipmen, and strangers to him, and our host introducing his landsmen guests said, 'My brother you know, gentlemen; as for Mr.

Scott, mayhap you may take him for a poor lamiter, but he is the first to begin a row, and the last to end it;' which eulogium he confirmed with some of the expletives of Tom Pipes."[67] When, many years afterwards, Clerk read The Pirate, he was startled by the resurrection of a hundred traits of the table-talk of this lugger; but the author has since traced {p.132} some of the most striking pa.s.sages in that novel to his recollection of the almost childish period when he hung on his own brother Robert's stories about Rodney's battles and the haunted _keys_ of the West Indies.

[Footnote 67: "Dinna steer him," says Hobbie Elliot; "ye may think Elshie's but a lamiter, but I warrant ye, grippie for grippie, he'll gar the blue blood spin frae your nails--his hand's like a smith's vice."--_Black Dwarf_, chap. xvii.]

One morning Scott called on Clerk, and, exhibiting his stick all cut and marked, told him he had been attacked in the streets the night before by three fellows, against whom he had defended himself for an hour. "By Shrewsbury clock?" said his friend. "No," said Scott, smiling, "by the Tron." But thenceforth, adds Mr. Clerk, and for twenty years after, he called his walking stick by the name of "Shrewsbury."

With these comrades Scott now resumed, and pushed to a much greater extent, his early habits of wandering over the country in quest of castles and other remains of antiquity, his pa.s.sion for which derived a new impulse from the conversation of the celebrated John Clerk of Eldin,[68] the father of his friend. William Clerk well remembers his father telling a story which was introduced in due time in The Antiquary. While he was visiting his grandfather, Sir John Clerk, at Dumcrieff, in Dumfriesshire, many years before this time, the old Baronet carried some English virtuosos to see a supposed Roman camp; and on his exclaiming at a particular spot, "This I take to have been the Praetorium," a herdsman who stood by answered, "Praetorium here Praetorium there, I made it wi' a slaughter spade."[69] Many traits of the elder Clerk were, his son has no doubt, embroidered on the character of George Constable in the composition of Jonathan Oldbuck.

The old gentleman's enthusiasm, for antiquities was often played on by these young friends, but more effectually by his eldest son, John Clerk (Lord Eldin), who, having a great genius for art, used to amuse himself with manufacturing mutilated heads, which, after being buried for a convenient time in the {p.133} ground, were accidentally discovered in some fortunate hour, and received by the laird with great honor as valuable accessions to his museum.[70]

[Footnote 68: Author of the famous Essay on dividing the Line in Sea-fights.]

[Footnote 69: Compare _The Antiquary_, chap. iv.]

[Footnote 70: The most remarkable of these _antique heads_ was so highly appreciated by another distinguished connoisseur, the late Earl of Buchan, that he carried it off from Mr. Clerk's museum, and presented it to the Scottish Society of Antiquaries--in whose collection, no doubt, it may still be admired.]

On a fishing excursion to a loch near Howgate, among the Moorfoot Hills, Scott, Clerk, Irving, and Abercromby spent the night at a little public-house kept by one Mrs. Margaret Dods. When St. Ronan's Well was published, Clerk, meeting Scott in the street, observed, "That's an odd name; surely I have met with it somewhere before."

Scott smiled, said, "Don't you remember Howgate?" and pa.s.sed on. The name alone, however, was taken from the Howgate hostess.

At one of their drinking bouts of those days William Clerk, Sir P.

Murray, Edmonstone, and Abercromby, being of the party, the sitting was prolonged to a very late hour, and Scott fell asleep. When he awoke, his friends succeeded in convincing him that he had sung a song in the course of the evening, and sung it extremely well. How must these gentlemen have chuckled when they read Frank Osbaldistone's account of his revels in the old hall! "It has even been reported by maligners that I sung a song while under this vinous influence; but as I remember nothing of it, and never attempted to turn a tune in all my life, either before or since, I would willingly hope there is no actual foundation for the calumny."[71]

[Footnote 71: _Rob Roy_, chap. xii.]

On one of his first long walks with Clerk and others of the same set, their pace, being about four miles an hour, was found rather too much for Scott, and he offered to contract for three, which measure was thenceforth considered as the legal one. At this rate they often continued to wander from five in the morning till eight in the {p.134} evening, halting for such refreshment at mid-day as any village alehouse might afford. On many occasions, however, they had stretched so far into the country, that they were obliged to be absent from home all night; and though great was the alarm which the first occurrence of this sort created in George's Square, the family soon got accustomed to such things, and little notice was taken, even though Walter remained away for the better part of a week. I have heard him laugh heartily over the recollections of one protracted excursion, towards the close of which the party found themselves a long day's walk--thirty miles, I think--from Edinburgh, without a single sixpence left among them. "We were put to our shifts," said he; "but we asked every now and then at a cottage door for a drink of water; and one or two of the good-wives, observing our worn-out looks, brought forth milk in place of water--so with that, and hips and haws, we came in little the worse." His father met him with some impatient questions as to what he had been living on so long, for the old man well knew how scantily his pocket was supplied. "Pretty much like the young ravens," answered he; "I only wished I had been as good a player on the flute as poor George Primrose in The Vicar of Wakefield. If I had his art I should like nothing better than to tramp like him from cottage to cottage over the world."--"I doubt," said the grave Clerk to the Signet, "I greatly doubt, sir, you were born for nae better than a _gangrel sc.r.a.pe gut_." Some allusions to reproaches of this kind occur in the Memoir; and we shall find others in letters subsequent to his admission at the Bar.[72]

[Footnote 72: After the cautious father had had further opportunity of observing his son's proceedings, his wife happened one night to express some anxiety on the protracted absence of Walter and his brother Thomas. "My dear Annie,"

said the old man, "Tom is with Walter this time; and have you not yet perceived that wherever Walter goes, he is pretty sure to find his bread b.u.t.tered on both sides?"--_From Mrs.

Thomas Scott._--(1839.)]

The debating club formed among these young friends at {p.135} this era of their studies was called _The Literary Society_; and is not to be confounded with the more celebrated Speculative Society, which Scott did not join for two years later. At _The Literary_ he spoke frequently, and very amusingly and sensibly, but was not at all numbered among the most brilliant members. He had a world of knowledge to produce; but he had not acquired the art of arranging it to the best advantage in a continued address; nor, indeed, did he ever, I think, except under the influence of strong personal feeling, even when years and fame had given him full confidence in himself, exhibit upon any occasion the powers of oral eloquence. His antiquarian information, however, supplied many an interesting feature in these evenings of discussion. He had already dabbled in Anglo-Saxon and the Norse Sagas: in his Essay on Imitations of Popular Poetry, he alludes to these studies as having facilitated his acquisition of German:--But he was deep especially in Fordun and Wyntoun, and all the Scotch chronicles; and his friends rewarded him by the honorable t.i.tle of _Duns Scotus_.

A smaller society, formed with less ambitious views, originated in a ride to Pennycuik, the seat of the head of Mr. Clerk's family, whose elegant hospitalities are recorded in the Memoir. This was called, by way of excellence, _The Club_, and I believe it is continued under the same name to this day. Here, too, Walter had his sobriquet; and--his corduroy breeches, I presume, not being as yet worn out--it was _Colonel Grogg_.[73]

[Footnote 73: "The members of _The Club_ used to meet on Friday evenings in a room in Carrubber's Close, from which some of them usually adjourned to sup at an oyster tavern in the same neighborhood. In after-life, those of them who chanced to be in Edinburgh dined together twice every year, at the close of the winter and summer sessions of the Law Courts; and during thirty years, Sir Walter was very rarely absent on these occasions. It was also a rule, that when any member received an appointment or promotion, he should give a dinner to his old a.s.sociates; and they had accordingly two such dinners from him--one when he became Sheriff of Selkirkshire, and another when he was named Clerk of Session.

The original members were, in number, nineteen--viz., _Sir Walter Scott_, Mr. William Clerk, Sir A. Ferguson, Mr. James Edmonstone, Mr. George Abercromby (Lord Abercromby), Mr. D.

Boyle (now Lord Justice-Clerk), Mr. James Gla.s.sford (Advocate), Mr. James Ferguson (Clerk of Session), Mr. David Monypenny (Lord Pitmilly), Mr. Robert Davidson (Professor of Law at Glasgow), Sir William Rae, Bart., Sir Patrick Murray, Bart., _David Douglas_ (Lord Reston), Mr. Murray of Simprim, Mr. Monteith of Closeburn, _Mr. Archibald Miller_ (son of Professor Miller), _Baron Reden_, a Hanoverian; the Honorable _Thomas Douglas_, afterwards Earl of Selkirk,--and John Irving. Except the five whose names are _underlined_, these original members are all still alive."--_Letter from Mr.

Irving_, dated 29th September, 1836.]

Meantime {p.136} he had not broken up his connection with Rosebank; he appears to have spent several weeks in the autumn, both of 1788 and 1789, under his uncle's roof; and it was, I think, of his journey thither, in the last named year, that he used to tell an anecdote, which I shall here set down--how shorn, alas, of all the accessories that gave it life when he recited it. Calling, before he set out, on one of the ancient spinsters of his family, to inquire if she had any message for Kelso, she retired, and presently placed in his hands a packet of some bulk and weight, which required, she said, very particular attention. He took it without examining the address, and carried it in his pocket next day, not at all to the lightening of a forty miles' ride in August. On his arrival, it turned out to contain one of the old lady's pattens, sealed up for a particular cobbler in Kelso, and accompanied with fourpence to pay for mending it, and special directions that it might be brought back to her by the same economical conveyance.

It will be seen from the following letter, the earliest of Scott's writing that has fallen into my hands, that professional business had some share in this excursion to Kelso; but I consider with more interest the brief allusion to a day at Sandy-Knowe:--

TO {p.137} MRS. SCOTT, GEORGE'S SQUARE, EDINBURGH.

(_With a parcel._)

ROSEBANK, 5th September, 1788.

DEAR MOTHER,--I was favored with your letter, and send you Anne's stockings along with this: I would have sent them last week, but had some expectations of a private opportunity. I have been very happy for this fortnight; we have some plan or other for every day. Last week my uncle, my cousin William,[74] and I, rode to Smailholm, and from thence walked to Sandy-Knowe Craigs, where we spent the whole day, and made a very hearty dinner by the side of the Orderlaw Well, on some cold beef and bread and cheese: we had also a small case-bottle of rum to make grog with, which we drank to the Sandy-Knowe bairns, and all their connections. This jaunt gave me much pleasure, and had I time, I would give you a more full account of it.

The fishing has been hitherto but indifferent, and I fear I shall not be able to accomplish my promise with regard to the wild ducks. I was out on Friday, and only saw three. I may probably, however, send you a hare, as my uncle has got a present of two greyhounds from Sir H. MacDougall, and as he has a license, only waits till the corn is off the ground to commence coursing. Be it known to you, however, I am not altogether employed in amus.e.m.e.nts, for I have got two or three clients besides my uncle, and am busy drawing tacks and contracts,--not, however, of marriage. I am in a fair way of making money, if I stay here long.

Here I have written a pretty long letter, and nothing in it; but you know writing to one's friends is the next thing to seeing them. My love to my father and the boys, from, Dear Mother, your dutiful and affectionate son,

WALTER SCOTT.

[Footnote 74: The present Laird of Raeburn.]

It {p.138} appears from James Ballantyne's _memoranda_, that having been very early bound apprentice to a solicitor in Kelso, he had no intercourse with Scott during the three or four years that followed their companionship at the school of Lancelot Whale; but Ballantyne was now sent to spend a winter in Edinburgh, for the completion of his professional education, and in the course of his attendance on the Scots Law cla.s.s, became a member of a young Teviotdale club, where Walter Scott seldom failed to make his appearance. They supped together, it seems, once a month; and here, as in the a.s.sociations above mentioned, good fellowship was often pushed beyond the limits of modern indulgence. The strict intimacy between Scott and Ballantyne was not at this time renewed,--their avocations prevented it,--but the latter was no uninterested observer of his old comrade's bearing on this new scene. "Upon all these occasions," he says, "one of the princ.i.p.al features of his character was displayed as conspicuously as I believe it ever was at any later period. This was the remarkable ascendency he never failed to exhibit among his young companions, and which appeared to arise from their involuntary and unconscious submission to the same firmness of understanding, and gentle exercise of it, which produced the same effects throughout his after-life.

Where there was always a good deal of drinking, there was of course now and then a good deal of quarrelling. But three words from Walter Scott never failed to put all such propensities to quietness."

Mr. Ballantyne's account of his friend's peace-making exertions at this club may seem a little at variance with some preceding details.

There is a difference, however, between encouraging quarrels in the bosom of a convivial party, and taking a fair part in a _row_ between one's own party and another. But Ballantyne adds, that at _The Teviotdale_, Scott was always remarkable for being the most temperate of the set; and if the club consisted chiefly {p.139} of persons, like Ballantyne himself, somewhat inferior to Scott in birth and station, his carefulness both of sobriety and decorum at their meetings was but another feature of his unchanged and unchangeable character--_qualis ab incepto_.

At one of the many merry suppers of this time Walter Scott had said something, of which, on recollecting himself next morning, he was sensible that his friend Clerk might have reason to complain. He sent him accordingly a note apologetical, which has by some accident been preserved, and which I am sure every reader will agree with me in considering well worthy of preservation. In it Scott contrives to make use of _both_ his own club designations, and addresses his friend by another of the same order, which Clerk had received in consequence of comparing himself on some forgotten occasion to Sir John Brute in the play. This characteristic doc.u.ment is as follows:--

TO WILLIAM CLERK, ESQ.

DEAR BARONET,--I am sorry to find that our friend Colonel Grogg has behaved with a very undue degree of vehemence in a dispute with you last night, occasioned by what I am convinced was a gross misconception of your expressions. As the Colonel, though a military man, is not too haughty to acknowledge an error, he has commissioned me to make his apology as a mutual friend, which I am convinced you will accept from yours ever,

DUNS SCOTUS.

Given at Castle Duns, Monday.

I should perhaps have mentioned sooner that when first _Duns Scotus_ became _the Baronet's_ daily companion, this new alliance was observed with considerable jealousy by some of his former inseparables of the writing office. At the next annual supper of the clerks and apprentices, the _gaudy_ of the chamber, this feeling showed itself {p.140} in various ways, and when the cloth was drawn, Walter rose and asked what was meant. "Well," said one of the lads, "since you will have it out, you are _cutting_ your old friends for the sake of Clerk and some more of these dons that look down on the like of us."

"Gentlemen," answered Scott, "I will never _cut_ any man unless I detect him in scoundrelism; but I know not what right any of you have to interfere with my choice of my company. If any one thought I had injured him, he would have done well to ask an explanation in a more private manner. As it is, I fairly own, that though I like many of you very much, and have long done so, I think William Clerk well worth you all put together." The senior in the chair was wise enough to laugh, and the evening pa.s.sed off without further disturbance.

As one effect of his office education, Scott soon began to preserve in regular files the letters addressed to him; and from the style and tone of such letters, as Mr. Southey observes in his Life of Cowper, a man's character may often be gathered even more surely than from those written by himself. The first series of any considerable extent in his collection includes letters dated as far back as 1786, and proceeds, with not many interruptions, down beyond the period when his fame had been established. I regret, that from the delicate nature of the transactions chiefly dwelt upon in the earlier of these communications, I dare not make a free use of them; but I feel it my duty to record the strong impression they have left on my own mind of high generosity of affection, coupled with calm judgment, and perseverance in well-doing, on the part of the stripling Scott. To these indeed every line in the collection bears pregnant testimony. A young gentleman, born of good family, and heir to a tolerable fortune, is sent to Edinburgh College, and is seen partaking, along with Scott, through several apparently happy and careless years, of the studies and amus.e.m.e.nts {p.141} of which the reader may by this time have formed an adequate notion. By degrees, from the usual license of his equal comrades, he sinks into habits of a looser description--becomes reckless, contracts debts, irritates his own family almost beyond hope of reconciliation, is virtually cast off by them, runs away from Scotland, forms a marriage far below his condition in a remote part of the sister kingdom--and, when the poor girl has made him a father, then first begins to open his eyes to the full consequences of his mad career. He appeals to Scott, by this time in his eighteenth year, "as the truest and n.o.blest of friends," who had given him "the earliest and the strongest warnings," had a.s.sisted him "the most generously throughout all his wanderings and distresses," and will not now abandon him in his "penitent lowliness of misery," the result of his seeing "virtue and innocence involved in the punishment of his errors." I find Scott obtaining the slow and reluctant a.s.sistance of his own careful father--who had long before observed this youth's wayward disposition, and often cautioned his son against the connection--to intercede with the unfortunate wanderer's family, and procure, if possible, some mitigation of their sentence. The result is that he is furnished with the scanty means of removing himself to a distant colony, where he spends several years in the drudgery of a very humble occupation, but by degrees establishes for himself a new character, which commands the anxious interest of strangers;--and I find these strangers, particularly a benevolent and venerable clergyman, addressing, on his behalf, without his privacy, the young person, as yet unknown to the world, whom the object of their concern had painted to them as "uniting the warm feelings of youth with the sense of years"--whose hair he had, "from the day he left England, worn next his heart." Just at the time when this appeal reached Scott, he hears that his exiled friend's father has died suddenly, and, after all, intestate; he has actually been {p.142} taking steps to ascertain the truth of the case at the moment when the American despatch is laid on his table. I leave the reader to guess with what pleasure Scott has to communicate the intelligence that his repentant and reformed friend may return to take possession of his inheritance.

The letters before me contain touching pictures of their meeting--of Walter's first visit to the ancient hall, where a happy family are now a.s.sembled--and of the affectionately respectful sense which his friend retained ever afterwards of all that he had done for him in the season of his struggles. But what a grievous loss is Scott's part of this correspondence! I find the comrade over and over again expressing his admiration of the letters in which Scott described to him his early tours both in the Highlands and the Border dales: I find him prophesying from them, as early as 1789, "one day your pen will make you famous,"--and already, in 1790, urging him to concentrate his ambition on a "history of the clans."[75]

[Footnote 75: All Scott's letters to the friend here alluded to are said to have perished in an accidental fire.]

This young gentleman appears to have had a decided turn for literature; and, though in his earlier epistles he makes no allusion to Scott as ever dabbling in rhyme, he often inserts verses of his own, some of which are not without merit. There is a long letter in doggerel, dated 1788, descriptive of a ramble from Edinburgh to Carlisle--of which I may quote the opening lines, as a sample of the simple habits of these young people:--

"At four in the morning, I won't be too sure, Yet, if right I remember me, that was the hour, When with Fergusson, Ramsay, and Jones, sir, and you, From Auld Reekie I southward my route did pursue.

But two of the dogs (yet G.o.d bless them, I said) Grew tired, and but set me half way to La.s.swade, While Jones, you, and I, Wat, went on without flutter, And at Symonds's feasted on good bread and b.u.t.ter; Where I, wanting a sixpence, you lugged out a shilling, And paid for me too, though I was most unwilling.

We {p.143} parted--be sure I was ready to snivel-- Jones and you to go home--I to go to the devil."

In a letter of later date, describing the adventurer's captivation with the cottage maiden whom he afterwards married, there are some lines of a very different stamp. This couplet at least seems to me exquisite:--

"Lowly beauty, dear friend, beams with primitive grace, And 't is innocence' self plays the rogue in her face."