Walter Scott - The Man Behind the Books. Walter Scott
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women pegged up the whole day
“In the worst inn’s worst room”
for the whole twentyfour hours without interruption. They manage the matter otherwise in France, where ladies are the lords of the ascendant. I returned from my visit to my solitary work and solitary meal. I eked out the last two hours’ length by dint of smoking, which I find a sedative without being a stimulant.
March 18. — I like the hermit life indifferent well, nor would, I sometimes think, break my heart, were I to be in that magic mountain where food was regularly supplied by ministering genii, and plenty of books were accessible without the least intervention of human society. But this is thinking like a fool. Solitude is only agreeable when the power of having society is removed to a short space, and can be commanded at pleasure. “It is not good for man to be alone.” It blunts our faculties and freezes our active virtues. And now, my watch pointing to noon, I think after four hours’ work I may indulge myself with a walk. The dogs see me about to shut my desk, and intimate their happiness by caresses and whining. By your leave, Messrs. Genii of the Mountain library, if I come to your retreat I’ll bring my dogs with me.
The day was showery, but not unpleasant — soft dropping rains, attended by a mild atmosphere, that spoke of flowers in their seasons, and a chirping of birds that had a touch of Spring in it. I had the patience to get fully wet, and the grace to be thankful for it.
Come! a leetle flourish on the trumpet. Let us rouse the genius of this same red mountain, so called because it is all the year covered with roses. There can be no difficulty in finding it, for it lies towards the Caspian, and is quoted in the Persian tales. Well, I open my Ephemerides, form my scheme under the suitable planet, and the genie obeys the invocation and appears.
Genie is a misshapen dwarf, with a huge jolterhead like that of Boerhave on the Bridge, his limbs and body marvellously shrunk and disproportioned.
“Sir Dwarf,” said I, undauntedly, “thy head is very large, and thy feet and limbs somewhat small in proportion.”
Genie. “I have crammed my head, even to the overflowing, with knowledge; I have starved my limbs by disuse of exercise and denial of sustenance!”
Author. “Can I acquire wisdom in thy solitary library?”
G. “Thou mayest!”
A. “On what conditions?”
G. “Renounce all gross and fleshly pleasure, eat pulse and drink water, converse with none but the wise and learned, alive and dead!”
A. “Why, this were to die in the cause of wisdom.”
G. “If you desire to draw from our library only the advantage of seeming wise, you may have it consistent with all your favourite enjoyments!”
A. “How much sleep?”
G. “A Lapland night — eight months out of the twelve!”
A. “Enough for a dormouse, most generous Genius. — A bottle of wine?”
G. “Two, if you please; but you must not seem to care for them — cigars in loads, whisky in lashings; but they must be taken with an air of contempt, a floccipaucinihilipilification of all that can gratify the outward man.”
A. “I am about to ask you a serious question — When you have stuffed your stomach, drunk your bottle, smoked your cigar, how are you to keep yourself awake?”
G. “Either by cephalic snuff or castle-building!”
A. “Do you approve of castle-building as a frequent exercise?”
G. “Life were not life without it!
‘Give me the joy that sickens not the heart,
Give me the wealth that has no wings to fly.’“
A. “I reckon myself one of the best aërial architects now living, and nil me pænitet hujus.”
G. “Nec est cur te pæniteat; most of your novels have previously been subjects for airy castles.”
A. “You have me — and moreover a man of imagination derives experience from such imaginary situations. There are few situations in which I have not in fancy figured, and there are few, of course, which I am not previously prepared to take some part in.”
G. “True, but I am afraid your having fancied yourself victorious in many a fight would be of little use were you suddenly called to the field, and your personal infirmities and nervous agitations both rushing upon you and incapacitating you.”
A. “My nervous agitations! — away with thee! Down, down to Limbo and the burning lake! False fiend, avoid!”
So there ends the tale,
With a hey, with a hoy,
So there ends the tale,
With a ho.
There is a moral. If you fail
To seize it by the tail,
Its import will exhale,
You must know.
March 19. — The above was written yesterday before dinner, though appearances are to the contrary. I only meant that the studious solitude I have sometimes dreamed of, unless practised with rare stoicism and privation, was apt to degenerate into secret sensual indulgences of coarser appetites, which, when the cares and restraints of social life are removed, are apt to make us think, with Dr. Johnson, our dinner the most important event of the day. So much in the way of explanation — a humour which I love not. Go to.
My girls returned from Edinburgh with full news of their bal paré.
March 20. — We spent this day on the same terms as formerly. I wrought, walked, dined, drank, and smoked upon the same pattern.
March 21. — To-day brought Mrs. Dempster and her sister-in-law. To dinner came Robert Dundas of Arniston from the hunting-field, and with him Mr. Dempster of Skibo, both favourites of mine. Mr. Stuart, the grand-nephew of my dear friend Lady Louisa, also dined with us, together with the Lyons from Gattonside, and the day passed over in hospitality and social happiness.
March 22. — Being Sunday, I read prayers to our guests, then went a long walk by the lake to Huntly Burn. It is somewhat uncomfortable to feel difficulties increase and the strength to meet them diminish. But why should man fret? While iron is dissolved by rust, and brass corrodes, can our dreams be of flesh and blood enduring? But I will not dwell on this depressing subject. My liking to my two young guests is founded on “things that are long enough ago.” The first statesman of celebrity whom I personally knew was Mr. Dempster’s granduncle, George Dempster of Dunnichen, celebrated in his time, and Dundas’s father was, when Lord Advocate, the first man of influence who showed kindness to me.
March 23. — Arrived to breakfast one of the Courland nobility, Baron A. von Meyersdorff, a fine, lively, spirited young man, fond of his country and incensed at its degradation under Russia. He talked much of the orders of chivalry who had been feudal lords of Livonia, especially the order of Porte Glaive, to which his own ancestors had belonged. If he report correctly, there is a deep principle of action at work in Germany, Poland, Russia, etc., which, if it does “not die in thinking,” will one day make an explosion. The Germans are a nation, however, apt to exhaust themselves in speculation. The Baron has enthusiasm, and is well read in English and foreign literature. I kept my state till one, and wrote notes to Croker upon Boswell’s Scottish tour. It was an act of friendship, for time is something of a scarce article with me. But Croker has been at all times personally kind and actively serviceable to me, and he must always command my best assistance. Then I walked with the Baron as far as the Lake. Our sportsmen came in good time to dinner, and our afternoon was pleasant.
March 24. — This morning our sportsmen took leave, and their ladykind (to renchérir on Anthony a-Wood and Mr. Oldbuck) followed after breakfast,