The Life of Sir Walter Scott: A Biography. S. Fowler Wright
of that day was a treasured thing. A sentimentalist might have washed it twice. But the incident is profoundly significant of the strain of unpractical ideality which is observable in the Scott family from generation to generation. If spiritual and material values clash, the material goes carelessly to the gutter, or is flung there to the flinger’s loss.
We are reminded of the younger Walter’s refusal (afterwards bitterly repented) to stand by his brother Daniel’s dis-honoured grave, or of his conception of the parting of Douglas and Marmion. When Murray entered the lawyer’s room, we may be sure that he was not met with an outstretched hand.
At the time, the boy reacted differently, though in an equally characteristic way. Awake in his mother’s dressing-room, or reading surreptitiously by the light of her bedroom fire, he may have heard the cup scatter its fragments upon the pavement of the silent Square. Anyway, he learned what had occurred. He discovered that his father’s picturesque indignation had not extended to the saucer from which the cup had been lifted to desecration. He added it to the accumulation of his private relics. The same ironic fate led the saucer to a prolonged existence and the cup to a violent end.
Did Murray of Broughton hear the cup crash on the pavement as he entered his sedan-chair? Did he understand its significance? It would be pleasant to think he did.
CHAPTER XI.
The Faculty of Advocates required, as a condition of admission to the Bar, a course of study which could not be less than two years, the first being occupied with Roman and the second with Scottish Law. Walter Scott’s twentieth and twenty-first years were almost entirely occupied with these studies, and on July 6th, 1792, about a month before his twenty-first birthday, he passed the final examination with honours, as did William Clerk at the same time, the two friends acquiring the right to practice, and assuming the gown in public, five days later together.
Walter may have seen little of Williamina during these two years, and she may have given him no very decided encouragement, but the determination to win her, distant as it might be, and doubtful as it might seem to others, had become the strongest motive that ruled his life. For the first time, he bears witness of himself without qualification that he had applied himself to study “with stern, steady, and undeviating industry”. It was a discipline which cannot have been easily self-imposed, to one of his alert mind and varied interests. It was not only poetry and literature which must be repressed. He had been making obstinate attempts to paint (William Clerk painted with ease and skill) and would not readily admit that he could not reach artistic expression through this medium. He had endeavoured to understand music, for which he had not more than an elementary appreciation. He had actually had a singing-master at one time, (if Robert could sing, why not he?) and, curiously enough, the singing-master was better satisfied with his efforts in this direction than were his other auditors.
There was a reason for that. Alexander Campbell, who taught him, had some private financial troubles which, Scott recorded afterwards, “I could relieve, if I could not remove”. What he was able to do at that early age, by monetary or legal assistance, is not clear, but it won a measure of gratitude which would not admit that the young man was unable to sing if he wished to do so.
Lady Cumming, who lived next door at George’s Square, was under no such obligation, and her opinion differed. She sent in a jocularly sarcastic note of expostulation. Would Mr. Scott kindly cease flogging his sons at precisely the same hour each day? She had no doubt the punishment was deserved, but the noise was dreadful.... After that, we may suppose that the songs ceased.
But now poetry and history, painting and music, were alike discarded, at the call of ambition, and the memory of Williamina’s eyes. And Williamina at Invermay, though she might give some thought to the young lawyer-lover, whom her mother favoured so strongly, was giving others to Willie Forbes of Pitsligo, the heir of the banker-baronet, Sir William Forbes, who also loved, or might be persuaded to love her. And far south, born in a French town, and now living in London) was a dark, vital, vivacious girl, who had her own dreams, and who could give Walter love and loyalty of a good kind, if they should ever meet, which it was millions to one that they never would. Is it all law? Or all chance? Call it as we will, we may still ask, do we weave it ourselves, or is it the dancing pattern of a Creator’s dream? Seeing no more of the future than others do, Walter Scott followed a lying light, and toiled at the law.
To give him quiet time for his studies, it had been found possible to allot a semi-basement room at George’s Square to his sole use. The home was already breaking apart. Robert had gone by the sea’s way. John could only be home on rare occasions. Walter need not sleep in the dressing-room now. His father’s health no longer permitted the entertaining which had done so much for the business, and brought so many diverse people in earlier years under a child’s all-observant eyes. Only intimate friends now enter the quieter rooms. There is Dr. Rutherford—not Anne’s father, who came once to give the wisdom of his advice to save the life of a palsied child—it is Anne’s brother who is the Dr. Rutherford of today. And Christian Rutherford comes rather frequently: she is Anne’s half-sister, the child of her father’s second wife, a clever, even brilliant girl, so much younger than Anne that she is like a sister to Walter, though he must call her aunt.
Tom and Daniel complete the family, with the invalid sister who has her mother’s name, and who now has difficult moods, which call for the patience of others. She is passionately attached to Walter, her favourite brother, and the one (as it is easy to guess) who is most understanding of the tragic isolation in which her spirit still survives in the fire-wrecked body....
Walter found a natural pleasure in the first living-room that he could call his own. It was here that Francis Jeffrey came to visit him, after hearing him read an essay on ballads at the Speculative Club, and found it crowded with ‘dingy’ books which overflowed the shelves and must be piled on the floor, and ornamented with Broughton’s saucer, and an old Lockaber axe and claymore that Alexander had given him, a cabinet of collected coins, and other accumulations. It is significant of the growing freedom of Walter’s life, and the atmosphere of the quietening home, that he took this unexpected and welcome visitor out, and gave him a dinner at a neighbouring tavern.
The fact that William Clerk and he commenced the two years’ study for the Bar at the same time, drew them into a closer intimacy at this period, as Walter’s absorption in his work tended to loosen the ties which he had formed with others. William lived at the end of Prince’s Street, about two miles away, and they made a compact to meet alternately at each other’s house in the early mornings (Sundays excepted) to undergo a system of mutual examinations upon an agreed portion of the range of study that was before them. Walter did his part, but he waited vainly on the mornings when his friend should have appeared at George’s Square. Lockhart’s paragon would not leave his bed. They did not fall out over the discovery-of these “fetters of indolence”, neither did the plan fall through. It was characteristic of the mingled determination and complaisance of Scott’s character that he agreed to do all the walking. Before seven every morning, be the weather what it might, he would be hammering on the door in Prince’s Street, prepared to examine his friend, and to be himself examined, upon the self-set reading of yesterday. The severe discipline of this method endured (apart from the usual vacations) for the two years of study. It is not surprising that they both passed with honours. We have nothing beyond Lockhart’s imagination to support the suggestion that William persuaded Walter to undertake these examinations. There is better evidence of the debt which was owed to Walter by his lazier friend. The fact may still be that William brushed his clothes better than Walter up to the close of Walter’s nineteenth year, after which there was a dead heat in the measure of this activity. It may even be true that, at the earlier period, William was rather uppish to Walter in allusions to his superior neatness. The evidence is not easy to find, but it is a point on which we may be content that Lockhart shall have his way. Had this tireless biographer understood how to thin out the forest of facts amid which he wandered, some of his best trees might have been better grown.
There can be no doubt that Lockhart had a sincere admiration for Scott, both for his literary genius, and his personal character. He had a real affection also for an older man of most lovable attributes who was his wife’s father, and his own friend. In intimacy, in admiration, in many personal qualifications,