Walter Scott - The Man Behind the Books. Walter Scott
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to each volume from a design by the best artists. This infers a monstrous expense, but in the present humour of the public ensures the sale. The price will be 5s. per volume, and the whole set, 32 volumes, from Waverley to Woodstock included, will be £8.
March 27. — This also was a day of labour, affording only my usual interval of a walk. Five or six sheets was the result. We now appropinque an end. My story has unhappily a divided interest; there are three distinct strands of the rope, and they are not well twisted together. “Ah, Sirs, a foul fawt,” as Captain Tommy says.
March 28. — The days have little to distinguish each other, very little. The morning study, the noontide walk, all monotonous and inclined to be melancholy; God help me! But I have not had any nervous attack. Read Tales of an Antiquary, one of the chime of bells which I have some hand in setting aringing. He is really entitled to the name of an antiquary; but he has too much description in proportion to the action. There is a capital wardrobe of properties, but the performers do not act up to their character.
March 29. — Finished volume third this morning. I have let no grass grow beneath my heels this bout.
Mr. Cadell with J. and A. Ballantyne came to dinner. Mr. and Mrs. George Pringle, new married, dined with us and old Torwoodlee. Sandy’s music made the evening go sweetly down.
March 30. — A long discourse with Cadell, canvassing his scheme. He proposes I should go on immediately with the new novel. This will furnish a fund from which may be supplied the advances necessary for the new work, which are considerable, and may reach from £4000 to £8000 — the last sum quite improbable — before it makes returns. Thus we can face the expenditure necessary to set on foot our great work. I have written to recommend the plan to John Gibson. This theme renewed from time to time during the forenoon. Dr. Clarkson dined with us. We smoked and had whisky and water after.
March 31. — The Ballantynes and Cadell left us in high spirits, expecting much from the new undertaking, and I believe they are not wrong. As for me, I became torpid after a great influx of morning visitors.
“I grew vapourish and odd,
And would not do the least right thing,
Neither for goddess nor for god —
Nor paint nor jest nor laugh, nor sing.”
I was quite reluctant to write letters, or do anything whatsoever, and yet I should surely write to Sir Cuthbert Sharp and Surtees. We dined alone. I was main stupid, indeed, and much disposed to sleep, though my dinner was very moderate.
April
April 1. — All Fools’ day, the only Saint that keeps up some degree of credit in the world; for fools we are with a vengeance. On this memorable festival we played the fool with great decorum at Colonel Ferguson’s, going to visit them in a cold morning. In the evening I had a distressing letter from Mrs. MacBarnet, or some such name, the daughter of Captain Macpherson, smothered in a great snow storm. They are very angry at the Review for telling a raw-head and bloody bones story about him. I have given the right version of the tale willingly, but this does not satisfy. I almost wish they would turn out a clansman to be free of the cumber. The vexation of having to do with ladies, who on such a point must be unreasonable, is very great. With a man it would be soon ended or mended. It really hurts my sleep.
April 2. — I wrote the lady as civilly as I could, explaining why I made no further apology, which may do some good. Then a cursed morning of putting to rights, which drives me wellnigh mad. At two or three I must go to a funeral — a happy and interesting relief from my employment. It is a man I am sorry for, who married my old servant, Bell Ormiston. He was an excellent person in his way, and a capital mason — a great curler.
April 3. — Set off at eight o’clock, and fought forward to Carlisle — a sad place in my domestic remembrances, since here I married my poor Charlotte. She is gone, and I am following faster, perhaps, than I wot of. It is something to have lived and loved; and our poor children are so hopeful and affectionate, that it chastens the sadness attending the thoughts of our separation. We slept at Carlisle. I have not forgiven them for destroying their quiet old walls, and building two lumpy things like madhouses. The old gates had such a respectable appearance once,
“When Scotsmen’s heads did guard the wall.”
Come, I’ll write down the whole stanza, which is all that was known to exist of David Hume’s poetry, as it was written on a pane of glass in the inn: —
“Here chicks in eggs for breakfast sprawl,
Here godless boys God’s glories squall,
Here Scotsmen’s heads do guard the wall,
But Corby’s walks atone for all.”
The poetical works of David Hume, Esq., might, as bookmakers know now, be driven out to a handsome quarto. Line 1st admits of a descant upon eggs roasted, boiled or poached; 2d, a history of Carlisle Cathedral with some reasons why the choir there has been proverbially execrable; 3d, the whole history of 1745 with minute memoirs of such as mounted guard on the Scotch gate. I remember the spikes the heads stood upon; lastly, a description of Corby Castle with a plan, and the genealogy of the Howards. Gad, the booksellers would give me £500 for it. I have a mind to print it for the Bannatynians.
April 4. — In our stage to Penrith I introduced Anne to the ancient Petreia, called Old Penrith, and also to the grave of Sir Ewain Cæsarias, that knight with the puzzling name, which has got more indistinct. We breakfasted at Buchanan’s Inn, Penrith, one of the best on the road, and a fine stanch fellow owned it. He refused passage to some of the delegates who traversed the country during the Radical row, and when the worthies threatened him with popular vengeance, answered gallantly that he had not lived so long by the Crown to desert it at a pinch. The Crown is the sign of his inn. Slept at Garstang, an indifferent house. As a petty grievance, my ink-holder broke loose in the case, and spilt some of the ink on Anne’s pelisse. Misfortunes seldom come single. “‘Tis not alone the inky cloak, good daughter,” but I forgot at Garstang my two breastpins; one with Walter and Jane’s hair, another a harp of pure Irish gold, the gift of the ladies of Llangollen.
April 5. — Breakfasted at Chorley, and slept at Leek. We were in the neighbourhood of some fine rock-scenery, but the day was unfavourable; besides, I did not come from Scotland to see rocks, I trow.
April 6. — Easter Sunday. We breakfasted at Ashbourne and went from thence to Derby; and set off from thence to Drycot Hall (five miles) to visit Hugh Scott. But honest Hugh was, like ourselves, on the ramble; so we had nothing to do but to drive back to Derby, and from thence to Tamworth, where we slept.
April 7. — We visited the Castle in the morning. It is inhabited by a brother-in-law of the proprietor; and who is the proprietor? “Why, Mr. Robbins,” said the fat housekeeper. This was not a name quite according with the fine chivalrous old hall, in which there was no small quantity of armour, and odds and ends, which I would have been glad to possess. “Well, but madam, before Mr. Robbins bought the place, who was the proprietor?” “Lord Charles Townshend, sir.” This would not do neither; but a genealogy hanging above the chimneypiece informed me that the Ferrars were the ancient possessors of the mansion, which, indeed, the horseshoes in the shield over the Castle gate might have intimated. Tamworth is a fine old place, neglected, but, therefore, more like hoar antiquity. The keep is round. The apartments appear to have been modernised tempore Jac. Imi*. There was a fine demipique saddle, said to have been that of James II. The pommel rose, and finished off in the form of a swan’s crest, capital for a bad horseman to hold on by.
To show Anne what was well worth seeing, we visited Kenilworth. The relentless rain only allowed us a glimpse of this memorable ruin. Well, the last time I was here, in 1815, these trophies of time were