Walter Scott - The Man Behind the Books. Walter Scott
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Solitude’s a fine thing for work, but then you must lie by like a spider, till you collect materials to continue your web. Began Simond’s Switzerland — clever and intelligent, but rather conceited, as the manner of an American Frenchman. I hope to knock something out of him though.
July 7. — Williams seems in uncertainty again, and I can’t guess what he will be at. Surely it is a misery to be so indecisive; he will certainly gain the ill word of both parties and might have had the good word of all; and, indeed, deserves it. We received his resignation to-day, but if the King’s College are disposed to thrive, they will keep eyes on this very able man.
July 8. — Hard work in the Court, the sederunts turn long and burthensome. I fear they will require some abridgment of vacation.
[From July 8, 1828, to January 10, 1829, there are no entries in the Journal.]
1829 — January
Having omitted to carry on my Diary for two or three days, I lost heart to make it up, and left it unfilled for many a month and day. During this period nothing has happened worth particular notice. The same occupations, the same amusements, the same occasional alternations of spirits, gay or depressed, the same absence of all sensible or rational cause for the one or the other. I half grieve to take up my pen, and doubt if it is worth while to record such an infinite quantity of nothing, but hang it! I hate to be beat, so here goes for better behaviour.
January 10. — I resume my task at Abbotsford. We are here alone, except Lockhart, on a flying visit. Morritt, his niece, Sir James Stuart, Skene, and an occasional friend or two, have been my guests since 31st December. I cannot say I have been happy, for the feeling of increasing weakness in my lame leg is a great affliction. I walk now with pain and difficulty at all times, and it sinks my soul to think how soon I may be altogether a disabled cripple. I am tedious to my friends, and I doubt the sense of it makes me fretful.
Everything else goes off well enough. My cash affairs are clearing, and though last year was an expensive one, I have been paying debt. Yet I have a dull contest before me which will probably outlast my life. If well maintained, however, it will be an honourable one, and if the Magnum Opus succeed, it will afford me some repose.
January 11. — I did not write above a page yesterday; most weary, stale, and unprofitable have been my labours. Received a letter I suppose from Mad. T. — — , proposing a string of historical subjects not proper for my purpose. People will not consider that a thing may already be so well told in history, that romance ought not in prudence to meddle with it.
The ground covered with snow, which, by slipperiness and the pain occasioned by my lameness, renders walking unpleasant.
January 12. — This is the third day I have not walked out, pain and lameness being the cause. This bodes very ill for my future life. I made a search yesterday and to-day for letters of Lord Byron to send to Tom Moore, but I could only find two. I had several others, and am shocked at missing them. The one which he sent me with a silver cup I regret particularly. It was stolen out of the cup itself by some vile inhospitable scoundrel, for a servant would not have thought such a theft worth while.
My spirits are low, yet I wot not why. I have been writing to my sons. Walter’s majority was like to be reduced, but is spared for the present. Charles is going on well I trust at the Foreign Office, so I hope all is well.
Loitered out a useless day, half arranging half disarranging books and papers, and packing the things I shall want. Der Abschiedstag ist da.
January 13. — The day of return to Edinburgh is come. I don’t know why, but I am more happy at the change than usual. I am not working hard, and it is what I ought to do, and must do. Every hour of laziness cries fie upon me. But there is a perplexing sinking of the heart which one cannot always overcome. At such times I have wished myself a clerk, quill-driving for twopence per page. You have at least application, and that is all that is necessary, whereas unless your lively faculties are awake and propitious, your application will do you as little good as if you strained your sinews to lift Arthur’s Seat.
January 14, [Edinburgh]. — Got home last night after a freezing journey. This morning I got back some of the last copy, and tugged as hard as ever did soutar to make ends meet. Then I will be reconciled to my task, which at present disgusts me. Visited Lady Jane, then called on Mr. Robison and instructed him to call a meeting of the Council of the Royal Society, as Mr. Knox proposes to read an essay on some dissections. A bold proposal truly from one who has had so lately the boldness of trading so deep in human flesh! I will oppose his reading in the present circumstances if I should stand alone, but I hope he will be wrought upon to withdraw his essay or postpone it at least. It is very bad taste to push himself forward just now. Lockhart dined with us, which made the evening a pleasant but an idle one. Well! I must rouse myself.
“Awake! Arise, or be for ever fallen.”
January 15. — Day began with beggars as usual, and John Nicolson has not sense to keep them out. I never yield, however, to this importunity, thinking it wrong that what I can spare to meritorious poverty, of which I hear and see too much, should be diverted by impudent importunity. I was detained at the Parliament House till nearly three by the great case concerning prescription, Maule v. Maule. This was made up to me by hearing an excellent opinion from Lord Corehouse, with a curious discussion in apicibus juris. I disappointed Graham of a sitting for my picture.
I went to the Council of the Royal Society, which was convened at my request, to consider whether we ought to hear a paper on anatomical subjects read by Mr. Knox, whose name has of late been deeply implicated in a criminal prosecution against certain wretches, who had murdered many persons and sold their bodies to professors of the anatomical science. Some thought that our declining to receive the paper would be a declaration unfavourable to Dr. Knox. I think hearing it before Mr. Knox has made any defence (as he is stated to have in view) would be an intimation of our preference of the cause of science to those of morality and common humanity. Mr. Knox’s friends undertook to deal with him about suffering the paper to be omitted for the present, while adhuc coram judice lis est.
January 16. — Nothing on the roll to-day, so I did not go to the Parliament House, but fagged at my desk till two.
Dr. Ross called to relieve me of a corn, which, though my lameness needs no addition, had tormented me vilely. I again met the Royal Society Council. Dr. Knox consents to withdraw his paper, or rather suffers the reading to be postponed. There is some great error in the law on the subject. If it was left to itself many bodies would be imported from France and Ireland, and doubtless many would be found in our hospitals for the service of the anatomical science. But the total and severe exclusion of foreign supplies of this kind raises the price of the “subjects,” as they are called technically, to such a height, that wretches are found willing to break into “the bloody house of life,” merely to supply the anatomists’ table. The law which, as a deeper sentence on the guilt of murder, declares that the body of the convicted criminal should be given up to anatomy, is certainly not without effect, for criminals have been known to shrink from that part of the sentence which seems to affect them more than the doom of death itself, with all its terrors here and hereafter. On the other hand, while this idea of the infamy attending the exposition of the person is thus recognised by the law, it is impossible to adopt regulations which would effectually prevent such horrid crimes as the murder of vagrant wretches who can be snatched from society without their being missed, as in the case of the late conspiracy. For instance, if it was now to be enacted, as seems reasonable, that persons dying in hospitals and almshouses, who die without their friends claiming their remains, should be given up to the men of science, this would be subjecting poverty to the penalty of these atrocious criminals whom law distinguishes by the heaviest posthumous disgrace which it can inflict. Even cultivated minds revolt from the exposure on an anatomical table, when the case is supposed to be that of one who is dear to them. I should, I am conscious,