Walter Scott - The Man Behind the Books. Walter Scott
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one a stupid uninquiring clown — one a learned and worthy, but superstitious divine. In the third place, the book turns on this hinge, and cannot want it. But I will try to insinuate the refutation of Aldiboronti’s exception into the prefatory matter.
From the 19th January to the 2d February inclusive is exactly fifteen days, during which time, with the intervention of some days’ idleness, to let imagination brood on the task a little, I have written a volume. I think, for a bet, I could have done it in ten days. Then I must have had no Court of Session to take me up two or three hours every morning, and dissipate my attention and powers of working for the rest of the day. A volume, at cheapest, is worth £1000. This is working at the rate of £24,000 a year; but then we must not bake buns faster than people have appetite to eat them. They are not essential to the market, like potatoes.
John Gibson came to tell me in the evening that a meeting to-day had approved of the proposed trust. I know not why, but the news gives me little concern. I heard it as a party indifferent. I remember hearing that Mandrin testified some horror when he found himself bound alive on the wheel, and saw an executioner approach with a bar of iron to break his limbs. After the second and third blow he fell a-laughing, and being asked the reason by his confessor, said he laughed at his own folly which had anticipated increased agony at every blow, when it was obvious that the first must have jarred and confounded the system of the nerves so much as to render the succeeding blows of little consequence. I suppose it is so with the moral feelings; at least I could not bring myself to be anxious whether these matters were settled one way or another.
February 4. — Wrote to Mr. Laidlaw to come to town upon Monday and see the trustees. To farm or not to farm, that is the question. With our careless habits, it were best, I think, to risk as little as possible. Lady Scott will not exceed with ready money in her hand; but calculating on the produce of a farm is different, and neither she nor I are capable of that minute economy. Two cows should be all we should keep. But I find Lady S. inclines much for the four. If she had her youthful activity, and could manage things, it would be well, and would amuse her. But I fear it is too late a week.
Returned from Court by Constable’s, and found Cadell had fled to the sanctuary, being threatened with ultimate diligence by the Bank of Scotland. If this be a vindictive movement, it is harsh, useless, and bad of them, and flight, on the contrary, seems no good sign on his part. I hope he won’t prove his father or grandfather at Prestonpans: —
“Cadell dressed among the rest,
Wi’ gun and good claymore, man,
On gelding grey he rode that day,
Wi’ pistols set before, man.
The cause was gude, he’d spend his blude
Before that he would yield, man,
But the night before he left the corps,
And never faced the field, man.”
Harden and Mrs. Scott called on Mamma. I was abroad. Henry called on me. Wrote only two pages (of manuscript) and a half to-day. As the boatswain said, one can’t dance always nowther, but, were we sure of the quality of the stuff, what opportunities for labour does this same system of retreat afford us! I am convinced that in three years I could do more than in the last ten, but for the mine being, I fear, exhausted. Give me my popularity — an awful postulate! — and all my present difficulties shall be a joke in five years; and it is not lost yet, at least.
February 5. — Rose after a sound sleep, and here am I without bile or anything to perturb my inward man. It is just about three weeks since so great a change took place in my relations in society, and already I am indifferent to it. But I have been always told my feelings of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, enjoyment and privation, are much colder than those of other people.
“I think the Romans call it stoicism.”
Missie was in the drawingroom, and overheard William Clerk and me laughing excessively at some foolery or other in the back-room, to her no small surprise, which she did not keep to herself. But do people suppose that he was less sorry for his poor sister, or I for my lost fortune? If I have a very strong passion in the world, it is pride, and that never hinged upon world’s gear, which was always with me — Light come, light go.
February 6. — Letters received yesterday from Lord Montagu, John Morritt, and Mrs. Hughes — kind and dear friends all — with solicitous inquiries. But it is very tiresome to tell my story over again, and I really hope I have few more friends intimate enough to ask me for it. I dread letter-writing, and envy the old hermit of Prague, who never saw pen or ink. What then? One must write; it is a part of the law we live on. Talking of writing, I finished my six pages, neat and handsome, yesterday. N.B. At night I fell asleep, and the oil dropped from the lamp upon my manuscript. Will this extreme unction make it go smoothly down with the public?
Thus idly we “profane the sacred time”
By silly prose, light jest, and lighter rhyme.
I have a song to write, too, and I am not thinking of it. I trust it will come upon me at once — a sort of catch it should be. I walked out, feeling a little overwrought. Saw Constable and turned over Clarendon. Cadell not yet out of hiding. This is simple work. Obliged to borrow £240, to be refunded in spring, from John Gibson, to pay my nephew’s outfit and passage to Bombay. I wish I could have got this money otherwise, but I must not let the orphan boy, and such a clever fellow, miscarry through my fault. His education, etc., has been at my expense ever since he came from America.
February 7. — Had letters yesterday from Lady Davy and Lady Louisa Stuart, two very different persons. Lady Davy, daughter and co-heiress of a wealthy Antigua merchant, has been known to me all my life. Her father was a relation of ours of a Scotch calculation. He was of a good family, Kerr of Bloodielaws, but decayed. Miss Jane Kerr married first Mr. Apreece, son of a Welsh Baronet. The match was not happy. I had lost all acquaintance with her for a long time, when about twenty years ago we renewed it in London. She was then a widow, gay, clever, and most actively ambitious to play a distinguished part in London society. Her fortune, though handsome and easy, was not large enough to make way by dint of showy entertainments, and so forth. So she took the blue line, and by great tact and management actually established herself as a leader of literary fashion. Soon after, she visited Edinburgh for a season or two, and studied the Northern Lights. One of the best of them, poor Jack Playfair, was disposed “to shoot madly from his sphere,” and, I believe, asked her, but he was a little too old. She found a fitter husband in every respect in Sir Humphry Davy, to whom she gave a handsome fortune, and whose splendid talents and situation as President of the Royal Society gave her naturally a distinguished place in the literary society of the Metropolis. Now this is a very curious instance of an active-minded woman forcing her way to the point from which she seemed furthest excluded. For, though clever and even witty, she had no peculiar accomplishment, and certainly no good taste either for science or letters naturally. I was once in the Hebrides with her, and I admired to observe how amidst sea-sickness, fatigue, some danger, and a good deal of indifference as to what she saw, she gallantly maintained her determination to see everything. It marked her strength of character, and she joined to it much tact, and always addressed people on the right side. So she stands high, and deservedly so, for to these active qualities, more French I think than English, and partaking of the Creole vivacity and suppleness of character, she adds, I believe, honourable principles and an excellent heart. As a lion-catcher, I could pit her against the world. She flung her lasso (see Hall’s South America) over Byron himself. But then, poor soul, she is not happy. She has a temper, and Davy has a temper, and these tempers are not one temper, but two tempers, and they quarrel like cat and dog, which may be good for stirring up the stagnation of domestic life, but they let the world see it, and that is not so well. Now in all this I may be thought a little harsh on my friend, but it is between my Gurnal and me, and, moreover, I would cry heartily if anything were to ail my little cousin, though she be addicted to rule the Cerulean atmosphere. Then I suspect the cares of this as well as other empires overbalance its pleasures. There must be difficulty in being always in the right humour to hold a court. There are usurpers to be encountered, and insurrections to be put down, an incessant