The Complete Autobiographical Writings of Sir Walter Scott. Walter Scott
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straight ridges everywhere adopted in place of the old circumflex of twenty years ago. Three horses, however, or even four, are often seen in a plough yoked one before the other. Ill habits do not go out at once. We slept at Grantham, where we met with Captain William Lockhart and his lady, bound for London like ourselves.
[Biggleswade,] October 16. — Visited Burleigh this morning; the first time I ever saw that grand place, where there are so many objects of interest and curiosity. The house is magnificent, in the style of James I.‘s reign, and consequently in mixed Gothic. Of paintings I know nothing; so shall attempt to say nothing. But whether to connoisseurs, or to an ignorant admirer like myself, the Salvator Mundi, by Carlo Dolci, must seem worth a King’s ransom. Lady Exeter, who was at home, had the goodness or curiosity to wish to see us. She is a beauty after my own heart; a great deal of liveliness in the face; an absence alike of form and of affected ease, and really courteous after a genuine and ladylike fashion.
We reached Biggleswade tonight at six, and paused here to wait for the Lockharts. Spent the evening together.
[Pall Mall,] October 17. — Here am I in this capital once more, after an April-weather meeting with my daughter and Lockhart. Too much grief in our first meeting to be joyful; too much pleasure to be distressing — a giddy sensation between the painful and the pleasurable. I will call another subject.
Read over Sir John Chiverton and Brambletye House — novels in what I may surely claim as the style
“Which I was born to introduce —
Refined it first, and show’d its use.”
They are both clever books; one in imitation of the days of chivalry; the other (by Horace Smith, one of the authors of the Rejected Addresses) dated in the time of the Civil Wars, and introducing historical characters. I read both with great interest during the journey.
I am something like Captain Bobadil who trained up a hundred gentlemen to fight very nearly, if not altogether, as well as myself. And so far I am convinced of this, that I believe were I to publish the Canongate Chronicles without my name (nom de guerre, I mean) the event would be a corollary to the fable of the peasant who made the real pig squeak against the imitator, while the sapient audience hissed the poor grunter as if inferior to the biped in his own language. The peasant could, indeed, confute the long-eared multitude by showing piggy; but were I to fail as a knight with a white and maiden shield, and then vindicate my claim to attention by putting “By the Author of Waverley” in the title, my good friend Publicum would defend itself by stating I had tilted so ill, that my course had not the least resemblance to my former doings, when indisputably I bore away the garland. Therefore I am as firmly and resolutely determined that I will tilt under my own cognisance. The hazard, indeed, remains of being beaten. But there is a prejudice (not an undue one neither) in favour of the original patentee; and Joe Manton’s name has borne out many a sorry gun-barrel. More of this tomorrow.
Expense of journey, £4100
Anne, pocket-money, 500
Servants on journey, 200
Cash in purse (silver not reckoned), 200
£5000
This is like to be an expensive journey; but if I can sell an early copy of the work to a French translator, it should bring me home.
Thank God, little Johnnie Hoo, as he calls himself, is looking well, though the poor dear child is kept always in a prostrate posture.
October 18. — I take up again my remarks on imitators. I am sure I mean the gentlemen no wrong by calling them so, and heartily wish they had followed a better model; but it serves to show me veluti in speculo my own errors, or, if you will, those of the style. One advantage, I think, I still have over all of them. They may do their fooling with better grace; but I, like Sir Andrew Aguecheek, do it more natural. They have to read old books and consult antiquarian collections to get their knowledge; I write because I have long since read such works, and possess, thanks to a strong memory, the information which they have to seek for. This leads to a dragging-in historical details by head and shoulders, so that the interest of the main piece is lost in minute descriptions of events which do not affect its progress. Perhaps I have sinned in this way myself; indeed, I am but too conscious of having considered the plot only as what Bayes calls the means of bringing in fine things; so that in respect to the descriptions, it resembled the string of the showman’s box, which he pulls to show in succession Kings, Queens, the Battle of Waterloo, Bonaparte at Saint Helena, Newmarket Races, and White-headed Bob floored by Jemmy from town. All this I may have done, but I have repented of it; and in my better efforts, while I conducted my story through the agency of historical personages, and by connecting it with historical incidents, I have endeavoured to weave them pretty closely together, and in future I will study this more. Must not let the background eclipse the principal figures — the frame overpower the picture.
Another thing in my favour is, that my contemporaries steal too openly. Mr. Smith has inserted in Brambletye House whole pages from Defoe’s Fire and Plague of London.
“Steal! foh! a fico for the phrase —
Convey, the wise it call!”
When I convey an incident or so, I am at as much pains to avoid detection as if the offence could be indicted in literal fact at the Old Bailey.
But leaving this, hard pressed as I am by these imitators, who must put the thing out of fashion at last, I consider, like a fox at his last shifts, whether there be a way to dodge them, some new device to throw them off, and have a mile or two of free ground, while I have legs and wind left to use it. There is one way to give novelty: to depend for success on the interest of a wellcontrived story. But woe’s me! that requires thought, consideration — the writing out a regular plan or plot — above all the adhering to one — which I never can do, for the ideas rise as I write, and bear such a disproportioned extent to that which each occupied at the first concoction, that (cocksnowns!) I shall never be able to take the trouble; and yet to make the world stare, and gain a new march ahead of them all!!! Well, something we still will do.
“Liberty’s in every blow;
Let us do or die!”
Poor Rob Burns! to tack thy fine strains of sublime patriotism! Better take Tristram Shandy’s vein. Hand me my cap and bells there. So now, I am equipped. I open my raree-show with
Ma’am, will you walk in, and fal de ral diddle?
And, sir, will you stalk in, and fal de ral diddle?
And, miss, will you pop in, and fal de ral diddle?
And, master, pray hop in, and fal de ral diddle?
Query — How long is it since I heard that strain of dulcet mood, and where or how came I to pick it up? It is not mine, “though by your smiling you seem to say so.” Here is a proper morning’s work! But I am childish with seeing them all well and happy here; and as I can neither whistle nor sing, I must let the giddy humour run to waste on paper.
Sallied forth in the morning; bought a hat. Met S[ir] W[illiam] K[nighton], from whose discourse I guess that Malachi has done me no prejudice in a certain quarter; with more indications of the times, which I need not set down. Sallied again after breakfast, and visited the Piccadilly ladies. Saw Rogers and Richard Sharp, also good Dr. and Mrs. Hughes, also the Duchess of Buckingham, and Lady Charlotte Bury, with a most beautiful little girl. [Owen] Rees breakfasted, and agreed I should have what the Frenchman has offered for the advantage of translating Napoleon, which, being a hundred guineas, will help my expenses to town and down again.
October 19. — I rose at my usual time, but could not write; so read Southey’s History of the Peninsular War. It is very good indeed, — honest English principle in every line; but there are many prejudices, and there is a tendency to augment a work already too long by saying all that can be said of the history of ancient times appertaining to every place mentioned. What care we whether Saragossa be derived from Caesarea Augusta? Could he have proved it to be Numantium, there would have been a concatenation accordingly.
Breakfasted