The Complete Autobiographical Writings of Sir Walter Scott. Walter Scott
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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.”
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. 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 assembled, 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. 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. 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 pass 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.
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, 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. 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 nobody seems to care. I cannot get an answer from J. Ballantyne, whether he thinks the review on the Highlands would be a better substitution.
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. 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.