Walter Scott - The Man Behind the Books. Walter Scott
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election, which I supposed would be as tumultuous as the Jedburgh one, but the soutars of Selkirk had got a new light, and saw in the proposed Reform Bill nothing but a mode of disfranchising their ancient burgh. Although the crowd was great, yet there was a sufficient body of special constables, hearty in their useful office, and the election passed as quietly as I ever witnessed one. I came home before dinner, very quiet. I am afraid there is something serious in Galashiels; Jeffrey is fairly funked about it, and has written letters to the authorities of Roxburghshire and Selkirkshire to caution us against making the precognitions public, which looks ill. Yet I think he would have made arrests when the soldiers were in the country. The time at which I settled at Abbotsford, Whitsunday 1811, I broke up a conspiracy of the weavers. It will look like sympathising with any renewal if another takes place just now. Incendiary letters have been sent, and the householders are in a general state of alarm. The men at Jedburgh Castle are said to be disposed to make a clean breast; if so, we shall soon know more of the matter. Lord William Graham has been nearly murdered at Dumbarton. Why should he not have brought down 50 or 100 lads with the kilts, each with a good kent in his hand fit to call the soul out of the body of these weavers? They would have kept order, I warrant you.
May 21. — Little more than my usual work and my usual exercise. I rode out through the plantations and saw the woodmen getting down what was to be felled. It seems there will be as much for sale as last year of bark: I think about £40 worth. A very nice additional pond to the sawmill has been executed. As for my Tales, they go on well, and are amusing to myself at least. The History of France is very entertaining.
May 22. — I have a letter from my friend John Thomson of Duddingston. I had transmitted him an order for the Duke of Buccleuch for his best picture, at his best price, leaving the choice of the subject and everything else to himself. He expresses the wish to do, at an ordinary price, a picture of common size. The declining to put himself forward will, I fear, be thought like shrinking from his own reputation, which nobody has less need to do. The Duke may wish a large picture for a large price for furnishing a large apartment, and the artist should not shrink from it. I have written him my opinion. The feeling is no doubt an amiable, though a false one. He is modest in proportion to his talents. But what brother of the finer arts ever approached [excellence] so as to please himself?
May 23, 24, and 25. — Worked and exercised regularly. I do not feel that I care twopence about the change of diet as to taste, but I feel my strength much decayed. On horseback my spine feels remarkably sore, and I am tired with a few miles’ ride. We expect Walter coming down for the Fife election.
[From May 25th to October 9th there are no dates in the Journal, but the entry beginning “I have been very ill” must have been made about the middle of September. “In the family circle,” says Mr. Lockhart, “he seldom spoke of his illness at all, and when he did, it was always in a hopeful strain.” “In private, to Laidlaw and myself, his language corresponded exactly with the tone of the Diary. He expressed his belief that the chances of recovery were few — very few — but always added that he considered it his duty to exert what faculties remained to him for the sake of his creditors to the very last. — ‘I am very anxious,’ he repeatedly said to me, ‘to be done one way or other with this Count Robert, and a little story about the Castle Dangerous — which also I had long in my head — but after that I will attempt nothing more, at least not until I have finished all the notes for the Novels,’“ etc.
On the 18th July he set out in company with Mr. Lockhart to visit Douglas Castle, St. Bride’s Church and its neighbourhood, for the purpose of verifying the scenery of Castle Dangerous, then partly printed, returning on the 20th.
He finished that book and Count Robert before the end of August.
In September, Mr. Lockhart, then staying at Chiefswood, and proposing to make a run into Lanarkshire for a day or two, mentioned overnight at Abbotsford that he intended to take his second son, then a boy of five or six years of age, and Sir Walter’s namesake, with him on the stage-coach.
Next morning the following affectionate billet was put into his hands: —
To J.G. LOCKHART, Esq., Chiefswood.
“DEAR DON, or Doctor Giovanni,
“Can you really be thinking of taking Wa-Wa by the coach — and I think you said outside? Think of Johnny, and be careful of this little man. Are you par hazard something in the state of the poor capitaine des dragons that comes in singing: —
‘Comment? Parbleu! Qu’en pensez vous,
Bon gentilhomme, et pas un sous’?
“If so, remember ‘Richard’s himself again,’ and make free use of the enclosed cheque on Cadell for £50. He will give you the ready as you pass through, and you can pay when I ask.
“Put horses to your carriage, and go hidalgo fashion. We shall all have good days yet.
‘And those sad days you deign to spend
With me I shall requite them all;
Sir Eustace for his friends shall send
And thank their love in Grayling Hall!’
“W.S.”
On the 15th September he tells the Duke of Buccleuch, “I am going to try whether the air of Naples will make an old fellow of sixty young again.”
On the 17th the old splendour of the house was revived. Col. Glencairn Burns, son of the poet, then in Scotland, came
“To stir with joy the towers of Abbotsford.”
The neighbours were assembled, and, having his son to help him, Sir Walter did the honours of the table once more as of yore.
On the 19th the poet Wordsworth arrived, and left on the 22d.
On the 20th, Mrs. Lockhart set out for London to prepare for her father’s reception there, and on the 23d Sir Walter left Abbotsford for London, where he arrived on the 28th.]
October
Interval.
I have been very ill, and if not quite unable to write, I have been unfit to do so. I have wrought, however, at two Waverley things, but not well, and, what is worse, past mending. A total prostration of bodily strength is my chief complaint. I cannot walk half a mile. There is, besides, some mental confusion, with the extent of which I am not perhaps fully acquainted. I am perhaps setting. I am myself inclined to think so, and, like a day that has been admired as a fine one, the light of it sets down amid mists and storms. I neither regret nor fear the approach of death if it is coming. I would compound for a little pain instead of this heartless muddiness of mind which renders me incapable of anything rational. The expense of my journey will be something considerable, which I can provide against by borrowing £500 from Mr. Gibson. To Mr. Cadell I owe already, with the cancels on these apoplectic books, about £200, and must run it up to £500 more at least; yet this heavy burthen would be easily borne if I were to be the Walter Scott I once was; but the change is great. This would be nothing, providing that I could count on these two books having a sale equal to their predecessors; but as they do not deserve the same countenance, they will not and cannot have such a share of favour, and I have only to hope that they will not involve the Waverley, which are now selling 30,000 volumes a month, in their displeasure. Something of a Journal and the Reliquiae Trotcosienses will probably be moving articles, and I have in short no fears in pecuniary matters. The ruin which I fear involves that of my King and country. Well says Colin Mackenzie: —
“Shall this desolation strike thy towers alone?
No, fair Ellandonan! such ruin ‘twill bring,
That the storm shall have power to unsettle the throne,
And thy fate shall be mixed with the fate of thy King.”
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