THE COMPLETE SHORT STORIES OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. Walter Scott
bound to keep regular and distinct books, which are to be balanced annually. Now, on looking at the import of this legal instrument, as well as the missive which it corroborated, and the prior communications between the parties, whom would an unbiassed reader suppose to have been the partner most benefited by this concern in time past, — whom to be the person most likely to have trespassed upon its credit, and embarrassed its resources?’
How did Mr. James Ballantyne perform his part of this contract? From January 1822 to May 1826, when the affairs were wound up, he was entitled to have drawn in all about £1750. He drew in all £7581, 15s. 5d. Of whose money? Assuredly not his own.
For Mr. Lockhart’s explanation of the Vidimus, and of the refuter’s construction and distortion of certain important items which go a long way towards accounting for the great increase in the accommodation bills, and show how improperly, and with what an appearance of wilful error, certain receipts and charges have been fixed upon Scott, which might with as much justice have been fixed upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or the Bank of Scotland, we must refer our readers to the pamphlet itself, and merely state these general results: That in 1823, the accommodations of James Ballantyne and Co. amounted to £36,000; that there is no shadow or scrap of evidence to show that any of these accommodation bills had been issued for Scott’s private purposes; that it is made a matter of charge in the Refutation pamphlet that in 1826 they had increased to £46,000; that we now find that of this additional £10,000 Mr. James Ballantyne himself pocketed (calculating interest) more than £8000, and that all the expenses of stamps and renewals have to be charged against the remaining £2000; finally, that Scott, who is asserted to have ruined these Ballantynes by his ambition to become a landed proprietor, invested in all, up to June 1821, £29,083 in the purchase of land, having received since 1811 an official income of £1600 per annum, and gained, as an author, £80,000. Let any plain, unprejudiced man, who has learnt that two and two make four, and who has moved in the world in the ordinary pursuits of life, put these facts together, read this correspondence with acknowledgments of error and misconduct on the part of the Messrs. Ballantyne repeated from day to day and urged from year to year — let him examine these transactions, and find that in every one which is capable of explanation now the parties are in their graves, the extravagance, thoughtlessness, recklessness, and wrong have been upon the part of these pigmies, and the truest magnanimity and forbearance on the side of the giant who upheld them, and under the shadow of whose protection they gradually came to lose sight of their own stature, and to imagine themselves as great as he — let any man divest himself of that lurking desire to carp and cavil over the actions of men who have raised themselves high above their fellows, which unhappily seems inherent in human nature, and bring to this subject but the calmest and most plodding consideration of facts and probabilities — and say whether it is possible to arrive at any conclusion but that Messrs. Ballantyne and the Messrs. Ballantyne’s descendants owe a deep and lasting debt of gratitude to Sir Walter Scott as the originator of all the name, fame, and fortune they may possess, or to which they can ever aspire — and that this attempt to blacken the memory of the dead benefactor of their house would be an act of the basest and most despicable ingratitude, were it not one of the most puling and drivelling folly.
That Mr. James Ballantyne did not know at what time Abbotsford had ceased to stand ‘between him and ruin,’ — that he did not know, and well know, that Sir Walter Scott had made the settlement of it which he did upon his son’s marriage, is next to impossible. All Edinburgh rung with it for days; the topic was canvassed in every bookseller’s shop and discussed at every street corner; gossips carried it from door to door; advocates discoursed upon it in loquacious groups in the outer house; and the very boys at the High School bandied it from mouth to mouth. To Professor Wilson, Mr. Sheriff Cay, Mr. Peter Robertson, all the known men and women of Edinburgh, and all the unknown men and women also, it was notorious as the existence of Arthur’s Seat or Holyrood. Is it to be believed that Mr. James Ballantyne alone, shut up in his printing-office in solitary admiration of his old critiques on Mrs. Siddons or his improvements in Scott’s romances, was in ignorance of the fact while it resounded through the city from end to end, or that he could have remained so for the space of nine long months? The insinuations put forth by the trustees and son of the late Mr. James Ballantyne respecting his marriage, and his throwing his wife’s portion into the partnership fund at Scott’s command, are no less monstrous. How stands this fact? Why, that but for Scott’s kindness and goodness he never could have contracted it. — ‘ I fear I am in debt for more than all I possess — to a lenient creditor, no doubt; but still the debt exists.’ — ‘I am, dejure et de facto, wholly dependent on you.’ — ’All, and more than all, belonging ostensibly to me, is, I presume, yours.’
‘God be praised that, after all your cruel vexations, you know the extent of your loss. It has been great, but few men have such resources.’ Such are the terms in which Mr. James Ballantyne addresses his ‘dear friend and benefactor’ when, being deep in love as well as in debt, he solicits that aid from his lenient creditor, which, after all the cruel loss and vexation, the latter did not withhold.
Ruin! ruin brought upon the Ballantynes by Scott — by Scott, who aided and assisted them at every turn, from the first hour when he found Mr. James Ballantyne, a poor and struggling tradesman in a small Scotch town, down to those later days when the same patronage and notice enabled him to affect criticism and taste, Shakespeare and the Musical Glasses, and to get a good business — which would have been a better one if he had minded it — and to leave it to this very son, who is made to talk about his father having cast his bread upon the waters, and so forth, in a style not unworthy of Mr. James Ballantyne’s own extravagant solemnity! Ruin! Where are the signs and tokens of this ruin? Are they discernible in the position of Mr. James Ballantyne at any one time after he had fluttered, butterfly-like, into Edinburgh notoriety through the influence of Scott, but for whom he would have lived and died a grub at Kelso? Are they manifest in the present condition of his son, who has acquired and inherited an honourable trade which he will do well to stick to, disregarding the promptings of weak and foolish friends? Good God! How much of the profits of the last edition of the Waverley Novels has gone to the schooling, apprenticing, boarding, lodging, washing, clothing, and feeding of this very young man, and in how different a manner would he have been schooled, apprenticed, boarded, lodged, washed, clothed, and fed, without them!
There is nothing in the whole of these transactions, which, to our mind, casts the smallest doubt or suspicion upon Sir Walter Scott, save in one single particular. His repeated forgiveness of his careless partners, and his constant and familiar association with persons so much beneath a man of his transcendent abilities and elevated station, lead us to fear that he turned a readier ear than became him to a little knot of toad-eaters and flatterers.
II
[September 29, 1839]
It is not our intention to administer to the diseased craving after notoriety so conspicuous in ‘ the trustees and son of the late Mr. James Ballantyne,’ by noticing this pamphlet1 of theirs at any length, or entering into a minute examination of its details. Its general character may be described in a very few words.
1 Reply to Mr. Lockhart’s Pamphlet, entitled ‘The Ballantyne Humbug Handled.’ By the authors of a ‘ Refutation of the Misstatements and Calumnies contained in Mr. Lockhart’s Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., respecting the Messrs. Ballantyne.’ Longman and Co.
From first to last there is visible throughout it, the same want of understanding of their own position, the same confounding of Mr. James Ballantyne with Sir Walter Scott, the same preposterous and inflated notions that the Ballantynes are great public characters, the same stilted imitation of the man who played the cock to Garrick’s Hamlet, which these gentlemen have before displayed, and upon which we have already had occasion to observe. The major part of the contradictions which are given to Mr. Lockhart are founded upon partial statements of documents to which the contradicting parties only have access, and which may very possibly be susceptible of different or wider construction; other contradictions are based upon mere inferences and assumptions, than which none of Mr. Lockhart’s are less probable, while many are more so; on other points loose denials are hazarded, or pretended indifference
shown, when there are, both living and accessible,