Walter Scott - The Man Behind the Books. Walter Scott
of them as they possibly could. But they had wellnigh overdone it. This being Teind Wednesday must be a day of leisure and labour. Sophia has got a house, 25 Pall Mall. Dined at home with Lady Scott and Anne.
December 22. — I wrote six of my close pages yesterday, which is about twentyfour pages in print. What is more, I think it comes off twangingly. The story is so very interesting in itself, that there is no fear of the book answering. Superficial it must be, but I do not disown the charge. Better a superficial book, which brings well and strikingly together the known and acknowledged facts, than a dull boring narrative, pausing to see further into a millstone at every moment than the nature of the millstone admits. Nothing is so tiresome as walking through some beautiful scene with a minute philosopher, a botanist, or pebble-gatherer, who is eternally calling your attention from the grand features of the natural scenery to look at grasses and chucky-stones. Yet, in their way, they give useful information; and so does the minute historian. Gad, I think that will look well in the preface. My bile is quite gone. I really believe it arose from mere anxiety. What a wonderful connection between the mind and body!
The air of “Bonnie Dundee” running in my head to-day, I [wrote] a few verses to it before dinner, taking the keynote from the story of Clavers leaving the Scottish Convention of Estates in 1688-9. I wonder if they are good. Ah! poor Will Erskine! thou couldst and wouldst have told me. I must consult J.B., who is as honest as was W.E. But then, though he has good taste too, there is a little of Big Bow-wow about it. Can’t say what made me take a frisk so uncommon of late years, as to write verses of freewill. I suppose the same impulse which makes birds sing when the storm seems blown over.
Dined at Lord Minto’s. There were Lord and Lady Ruthven, Will Clerk, and Thomas Thomson, — a right choice party. There was also my very old friend Mrs. Brydone, the relict of the traveller, and daughter of Principal Robertson, and really worthy of such a connection — Lady Minto, who is also peculiarly agreeable — and her sister, Mrs. Admiral Adam, in the evening.
December 23. — The present Lord Minto is a very agreeable, wellinformed, and sensible man, but he possesses neither the high breeding, ease of manner, nor eloquence of his father, the first Earl. That Sir Gilbert was indeed a man among a thousand. I knew him very intimately in the beginning of the century, and, which was very agreeable, was much at his house on very easy terms. He loved the Muses, and worshipped them in secret, and used to read some of his poetry, which was but middling.
Tom Campbell lived at Minto, but it was in a state of dependence which he brooked very ill. He was kindly treated, but would not see it in the right view, and suspected slights, and so on, where no such thing was meant. There was a turn of Savage about Tom though without his blackguardism — a kind of waywardness of mind and irritability that must have made a man of his genius truly unhappy. Lord Minto, with the mildest manners, was very tenacious of his opinions, although he changed them twice in the crisis of politics. He was the early friend of Fox, and made a figure towards the end of the American war, or during the struggles betwixt Fox and Pitt. Then came the Revolution, and he joined the Anti-Gallican party so keenly, that he declared against Addington’s peace with France, and was for a time, I believe, a Wyndhamite. He was reconciled to the Whigs on the Fox and Grenville coalition; but I have heard that Fox, contrary to his wont, retained such personal feelings as made him object to Sir Gilbert Elliot’s having a seat in the Cabinet; so he was sent as Governor-General to India — a better thing, I take it, for his fortune. He died shortly after his return, at Hatfield or Barnet, on his way down to his native country. He was a most pleasing and amiable man. I was very sorry for his death, though I do not know how we should have met, for the contested election in 1805 [in Roxburghshire] had placed some coldness betwixt the present Lord and me. I was certainly anxious for Sir Alexander Don, both as friend of my most kind friend Charles, Duke of Buccleuch, and on political accounts; and those thwartings are what men in public life do not like to endure. After a cessation of friendship for some years, we have come about again. We never had the slightest personal dispute or disagreement. But politics are the blowpipe beneath whose influence the best cemented friendships too often dissever; and ours, after all, was only a very familiar acquaintance.
It is very odd that the common people at Minto and the neighbourhood will not believe to this hour that the first Earl is dead. They think he had done something in India which he could not answer for — that the house was rebuilt on a scale unusually large to give him a suite of secret apartments, and that he often walks about the woods and crags of Minto at night, with a white nightcap, and long white beard. The circumstance of his having died on the road down to Scotland is the sole foundation of this absurd legend, which shows how willing the vulgar are to gull themselves when they can find no one else to take the trouble. I have seen people who could read, write, and cipher, shrug their shoulders and look mysterious when this subject was mentioned. One very absurd addition was made on occasion of a great ball at Minto House, which it was said was given to draw all people away from the grounds, that the concealed Earl might have leisure for his exercise. This was on the principle in the German play, where, to hide their conspiracy, the associates join in a chorus song.
We dined at home; Mr. Davidoff and his tutor kept an engagement with us to dinner notwithstanding the death of the Emperor Alexander. They went to the play with the womankind; I stayed at home to write.
December 24. — Wrote Walter and Jane, and gave the former an account of how things had been in the money market, and the loan of £10,000. Constable has a scheme of publishing the works of the Author of W[averley] in a superior style, at £1, 1s. volume. He says he will answer for making £20,000 of this, and liberally offered me any share of the profit. I have no great claim to any, as I have only to contribute the notes, which are light work; yet a few thousands coming in will be a good thing — besides the P[rinting] Office. Constable, though valetudinary, and cross with his partner, is certainly as good a pilot in these rough seas as ever man put faith in. His rally has put me in mind of the old song: —
“The tailor raise and shook his duds,
He gar’d the BILLS flee aff in cluds,
And they that stayed gat fearfu’ thuds —
The tailor proved a man, O.”
We are for Abbotsford to-day, with a light heart.
Abbotsford, December 25. — Arrived here last night at seven. Our halls are silent compared to last year, but let us be thankful — when we think how near the chance appeared but a week since that these halls would have been ours no longer. Barbarus has segetes? Nullum numen abest, si sit prudentia. There shall be no lack of wisdom. But come — il faut cultiver notre jardin. Let us see: I will write out the “Bonnets of Bonnie Dundee”; I will sketch a preface to La Rochejacquelin for Constable’s Miscellany, and try about a specimen of notes for the W[averley Novels]. Together with letters and by-business, it will be a good day’s work.
“I make a vow,
And keep it true.”
I will accept no invitation for dinner, save one to Newton-Don, and Mertoun tomorrow, instead of Christmas Day. On this day of general devotion I have a particular call for gratitude!!
My God! what poor creatures we are! After all my fair proposals yesterday, I was seized with a most violent pain in the right kidney and parts adjacent, which, joined to deadly sickness which it brought on, forced me instantly to go to bed and send for Clarkson. He came and inquired, pronouncing the complaint to be gravel augmented by bile. I was in great agony till about two o’clock, but awoke with the pain gone. I got up, had a fire in my dressing-closet, and had Dalgleish to shave me — two trifles, which I only mention, because they are contrary to my hardy and independent personal habits. But although a man cannot be a hero to his valet, his valet in sickness becomes of great use to him. I cannot expect that this first will be the last visit of this cruel complaint; but shall we receive good at the hand of God, and not receive evil?
December 27th. — Slept twelve hours at a stretch, being much exhausted. Totally without pain to-day, but uncomfortable from the effects of calomel, which, with me at least, is like the assistance of an auxiliary army, just one degree more tolerable than the enemy it chases away. Calomel