The Journal of Sir Walter Scott Part 41

APRIL.

_April_ 1.--The proofs are not to be found. Applications from R.P.

G[illies]. I must do something for him; yet have the melancholy conviction that nothing will do him any good. Then he writes letters and expects answers. Then they are bothering me about writing in behalf of the oil-gas light, which is going to the devil very fast. I cannot be going a-begging for them or anybody. Please to look down with an eye of pity--a poor distressed creature! No, not for the last morsel of bread.

A dry ditch and a speedy death is worth it all.

_April_ 2.--Another letter from R.P.G. I shall begin to wish, like S., that he had been murthered and robbed in his walks between Wimbledon and London. John [Archibald] Murray and his young wife came to dinner, and in good time. I like her very much, and think he has been very lucky.

She is not in the vaward of youth, but John is but two or three years my junior. She is pleasing in her manners, and totally free from affectation; a beautiful musician, and willingly exerts her talents in that way; is said to be very learned, but shows none of it. A large fortune is no bad addition to such a woman's society.

_April_ 3.--I had processes to decide; and though I arose at my usual hour, I could not get through above two of five proofs. After breakfast I walked with John Murray, and at twelve we went for Melrose, where I had to show the lions. We came back by Huntly Burn, where the carriage broke down, and gave us a pretty long walk home. Mr. Scrope dined with his two artists, and John [Thomson?]. The last is not only the best landscape-painter of his age and country, but is, moreover, one of the warmest-hearted men living, with a keen and unaffected feeling of poetry. Poor fellow! he has had many misfortunes in his family. I drank a gla.s.s or two of wine more than usual, got into good spirits, and _came from Tripoli_ for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the good company. I was in good fooling.

_April_ 4.--I think I have a little headache this morning; however, as Oth.e.l.lo says, "That's not much." I saw our guests go off by seven in the morning, but was not in time to give them good-bye.

"And now again, boys, to the oar."

I did not go to the oar though, but walked a good deal.

_April_ 5.--Heard from Lockhart; the Duke of W[ellington] and Croker are pleased with my historical labours; so far well--for the former, as a soldier said of him, "I would rather have his long nose on my side than a whole brigade." Well! something good may come of it, and if it does it will be good luck, for, as you and I know, Mother Duty, it has been a rummily written work. I wrote hard to-day.

_April_ 6.--Do. Do. I only took one turn about the thicket, and have nothing to put down but to record my labours.

_April_ 7.--The same history occurs; my desk and my exercise. I am a perfect automaton. _Bonaparte_ runs in my head from seven in the morning till ten at night without intermission. I wrote six leaves to-day and corrected four proofs.

_April_ 8.--Ginger, being in my room, was safely delivered in her basket of four puppies; the mother and children all doing well. Faith! that is as important an entry as my Journal could desire. The day is so beautiful that I long to go out. I won't, though, till I have done something. A letter from Mr. Gibson about the trust affairs. If the infernal bargain with Constable go on well, there will be a pretty sop in the pan to the creditors; 35,000 at least. If I could work as effectually for three years more, I shall stand on my feet like a man.

But who can a.s.sure success with the public?

_April_ 9.--I wrote as hard to-day as need be, finished my neat eight pages, and, notwithstanding, drove out and visited at Gattonside. The devil must be in it if the matter drags out longer now.

_April_ 10.--Some incivility from the Leith Bank, which I despise with my heels. I have done for settling my affairs all that any man--much more than most men--could have done, and they refuse a draught of 20, because, in mistake, it was 8 overdrawn. But what can be expected of a _sow_ but a _grumph_? Wrought hard, hard.

_April_ 11.--The parks were rouped for 100 a year more than they brought last year. Poor Abbotsford will come to good after all. In the meantime it is _Sic vos non vobis_--but who cares a farthing? If _Boney_ succeeds, we will give these affairs a blue eye, and I will wrestle stoutly with them, although

"My _banks_ they are covered with _bees_,"[500]

or rather with wasps. A very tough day's work.

_April_ 12.--_Ha-a-lt_--as we used to say, my proof-sheets being still behind. Very unhandsome conduct on the part of the Blucher[501] while I was lauding it so profusely. It is necessary to halt and close up our files--of correspondence I mean. So it is a chance if, except for contradiction's sake, or upon getting the proof-sheets, I write a line to-day at _Boney_. I did, however, correct five revised sheets and one proof, which took me up so much of the day that I had but one turn through the courtyard. Owing to this I had some of my flutterings, my trembling exies, as the old people called the ague. Wrote a great many letters--but no "copy."

_April_ 13.--I have sometimes wondered with what regularity--that is, for a shrew of my impatient temper--I have been able to keep this Journal. The use of the first person being, of course, the very essence of a diary, I conceive it is chiefly vanity, the dear pleasure of writing about the best of good fellows, Myself, which gives me perseverance to continue this idle task. This morning I wrote till breakfast, then went out and marked trees to be cut for paling, and am just returned--and what does any one care? Ay, but, Gad! I care myself, though. We had at dinner to-day Mr. and Mrs. Cranstoun (Burns's Maria of Ballochmyle[502]), Mr. Bainbridge and daughters, and Colonel Russell.

_April_ 14.--Went to Selkirk to try a fellow for an a.s.sault on Dr.

Clarkson--fined him seven guineas, which, with his necessary expenses, will amount to ten guineas. It is rather too little; but as his income does not amount to 30 a year, it will pinch him severely enough, and is better than sending him to an ill-kept jail, where he would be idle and drunk from morning to night. I had a dreadful headache while sitting in the Court--rheumatism in perfection. It did not last after I got warm by the fireside.

_April_ 15.--Delightful soft morning, with mild rain. Walked out and got wet, as a sovereign cure for the rheumatism. Was quite well, though, and scribbled away.

_April_ 16.--A day of work and exercise. In the evening a letter from L[ockhart], with the wonderful news that the Ministry has broken up, and apparently for no cause that any one can explain. The old grudge, I suppose, betwixt Peel and Canning, which has gone on augmenting like a crack in the side of a house, which enlarges from day to day, till down goes the whole. Mr. Canning has declared himself fully satisfied with J.L., and sent Barrow to tell him so. His suspicions were indeed most erroneous, but they were repelled with no little spirit both by L. and myself, and Canning has not been like another Great Man I know to whom I showed demonstrably that he had suspected an individual unjustly. "It may be so," he said, "but his mode of defending himself was offensive."[503]

_April_ 17.--Went to dinner to-day to Mr. Bainbridge's Gattonside House, and had fireworks in the evening, made by Captain Burchard, a good-humoured kind of Will Wimble.[504] One nice little boy announced to us everything that was going to be done, with the importance of a prologue. Some of the country folks a.s.sembled, and our party was enlivened by the squeaks of the wenches and the long-protracted Eh, eh's! by which a Teviotdale tup testifies his wonder.

_April_ 18.--I felt the impatience of news so much that I walked up to Mr. Laidlaw, surely for no other purpose than to talk politics. This interrupted _Boney_ a little. After I returned, about twelve or one, behold Tom Tack; he comes from Buenos Ayres with a parcel of little curiosities he had picked up for me. As Tom Tack spins a _tough yarn_, I lost the morning almost entirely--what with one thing, what with t'other, as my friend the Laird of Raeburn says. Nor have I much to say for the evening, only I smoked a cigar more than usual to get the box ended, and give up the custom for a little.

_April_ 19.--Another letter from Lockhart.[505] I am sorry when I think of the goodly fellowship of vessels which are now scattered on the ocean. There is the Duke of Wellington, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Melville, Mr. Peel, and I wot not who besides, all turned out of office or resigned! I wonder what they can do in the House of Lords when all the great Tories are on the wrong side of the House. Canning seems quite serious in his views of helping Lockhart. I hope it will come to something.

_April_ 20.--A surly sort of day. I walked for two hours, however, and then returned chiefly to _Nap_. Egad! I believe it has an end at last, this blasted work. I have the fellow at Plymouth, or near about it.

Well, I declare, I thought the end of these beastly big eight volumes was like the end of the world, which is always talked of and never comes.

_April_. 21.--Here is a vile day--downright rain, which disconcerts an inroad of bairns from Gattonside, and, of course, annihilates a part of the stock of human happiness. But what says the proverb of your true rainy day--

"'Tis good for book, 'tis good for work, For cup and can, or knife and fork."

_April_ 22.--Wrote till twelve o'clock, then sallied forth, and walked to Huntly Burn with Tom; and so, look you, sir, I drove home in the carriage. Wrought in the afternoon, and tried to read _De Vere_, a sensible but heavy book, written by an able hand--but a great bore for all that.[506] Wrote in the evening.

_April 23._--Snowy morning. White as my shirt. The little Bainbridges came over; invited to see the armoury, etc., which I stood showman to.

It is odd how much less cubbish the English boys are than the Scotch.

Well-mannered and sensible are the southern boys. I suppose the sun brings them forward. Here comes six o'clock at night, and it is snowing as if it had not snowed these forty years before. Well, I'll work away a couple of chapters--three at most will finish _Napoleon_.

_April 24._--Still deep snow--a foot thick in the courtyard, I dare say.

Severe welcome to the poor lambs now coming into the world. But what signifies whether they die just now, or a little while after to be united with salad at luncheon-time? It signifies a good deal too. There is a period, though a short one, when they dance among the gowans, and seem happy. As for your aged sheep or wether, the sooner they pa.s.s to the Norman side of the vocabulary the better. They are like some old dowager ladies and gentlemen of my acquaintance,--no one cares about them till they come to be _cut up_, and then we see how the tallow lies on the kidneys and the chine.

_April 25._--Snow yet, and it prevents my walking, and I grow bilious. I wrote hard though. I have now got _Boney_ pegg'd up in the knotty entrails of Saint Helena, and may make a short pause.

So I finished the review of John Home's works, which, after all, are poorer than I thought them. Good blank verse and stately sentiment, but something lukewarmish, excepting Douglas, which is certainly a masterpiece. Even that does not stand the closet. Its merits are for the stage; but it is certainly one of the best acting plays going. Perhaps a play, to act well, should not be too poetical.

There is a talk in London of bringing in the Marquis of Lansdowne, then Lauderdale will perhaps come in here. It is certain the old Tory party is down the wind, not from political opinions, but from personal aversion to Canning. Perhaps his satirical temper has partly occasioned this; but I rather consider emulation as the source of it, the head and front of the offending. Croker no longer rhymes to joker. He has made a good _coup_, it is said, by securing Lord Hertford for the new administration. D.W. calls him their viper. After all, I cannot sympathise with that delicacy which throws up office, because the most eloquent man in England, and certainly the only man who can manage the House of Commons, is named Minister.[507]

_April_ 26.--The snow still profusely distributed, and the surface, as our hair used to be in youth, after we had played at some active game, half black, half white, all in large patches. I finished the criticism on Home, adding a string of Jacobite anecdotes, like that which boys put to a kite's tail. Sent off the packet to Lockhart; at the same time sent Croker a volume of French tracts, containing _La Portefeuille de Bonaparte_, which he wished to see. Received a great cargo of papers from Bernadotte, some curious, and would have been inestimable two months back, but now my siege is almost made. Still my feelings for poor Count Itterburg,[508] the lineal and legitimate, make me averse to have much to do with this child of the revolution.

_April_ 27.--This hand of mine gets to be like a kitten's scratch, and will require much deciphering, or, what may be as well for the writer, cannot be deciphered at all. I am sure I cannot read it myself. Weather better, which is well, as I shall get a walk. I have been a little nervous, having been confined to the house for three days. Well, I may be disabled from duty, but my tamed spirits and sense of dejection have quelled all that freakishness of humour which made me a voluntary idler.

I present myself to the morning task, as the hack-horse patiently trudges to the pole of his chaise, and backs, however reluctantly, to have the traces fixed. Such are the uses of adversity.

_April_ 28.--Wrought at continuing the Works, with some criticism on Defoe.[509] I have great aversion, I cannot tell why, to stuffing the "Border Antiquities" into what they call the Prose Works.

There is no encouragement, to be sure, for doing better, for n.o.body seems to care. I cannot get an answer from J. Ballantyne, whether he thinks the review on the Highlands would be a better subst.i.tution.

_April_ 29.--Colonel and Captain Ferguson dined here with Mr. Laidlaw. I wrote all the morning, then cut some wood. I think the weather gets too warm for hard work with the axe, or I get too stiff and easily tired.

_April_ 30.--Went to Jedburgh to circuit, where found my old friend and schoolfellow, D. Monypenny.[510] Nothing to-day but a pack of riff-raff cases of petty larceny and trash. Dined as usual with the Judge, and slept at my old friend Mr. Shortreed's.

FOOTNOTES:

[500] See Shenstone's _Pastoral Ballad_, Part ii., Hope.

[501] The coach to Edinburgh.

[502] See "The Braes of Ballochmyle;" Currie's _Burns_, vol. iv. p. 294.

[503] The conduct of the _Quarterly_ at this time was in after years thus commented upon by John Wilson.

"_North._--While we were defending the principles of the British const.i.tution, bearding its enemies, and administering to them the knout, the _Quarterly Review_ was meek and mum as a mouse.