Walter Scott - The Man Behind the Books. Walter Scott
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is sold for £8228 in all, ready money — a matchless sum for less than three months’ work. If Napoleon does as well, or near it, it will put the trust affairs in high flourish. Four or five years of leisure and industry would, with [such] success, amply replace my losses, and put me on a steadier footing than ever. I have a curious fancy: I will go set two or three acorns, and judge by their success in growing whether I will succeed in clearing my way or not. I have a little toothache keeps me from working much to-day, besides I sent off, per Blucher, copy for Napoleon, as well as the d — d proofs.
A blank forenoon! But how could I help it, Madam Duty? I was not lazy; on my soul I was not. I did not cry for half holiday for the sale of Woodstock. But in came Colonel Ferguson with Mrs. Stewart of Blackhill, or hall, or something, and I must show her the garden, pictures, etc. This lasts till one; and just as they are at their lunch, and about to go off, guard is relieved by the Laird and Lady Harden, and Miss Eliza Scott — and my dear Chief, whom I love very much, though a little obsidional or so, remains till three. That same crown, composed of the grass which grew on the walls of besieged places, should be offered to visitors who stay above an hour in any eident person’s house. Wrote letters this evening.
April 4. — Wrote two pages in the morning. Then went to Ashestiel in the sociable, with Colonel Ferguson. Found my cousin Russell settled kindly to his gardening and his projects. He seems to have brought home with him the enviable talent of being interested and happy in his own place. Ashestiel looks worst, I think, at this period of the year; but is a beautiful place in summer, where I passed nine happy years. Did I ever pass unhappy years anywhere? None that I remember, save those at the High School, which I thoroughly detested on account of the confinement. I disliked serving in my father’s office, too, from the same hatred to restraint. In other respects, I have had unhappy days — unhappy weeks — even, on one or two occasions, unhappy months; but Fortune’s finger has never been able to play a dirge on me for a quarter of a year together.
I am sorry to see the Peel-wood, and other natural coppice, decaying and abridged about Ashestiel —
‘The horrid plough has razed the green,
Where once my children play’d;
The axe has fell’d the hawthorn screen,
The schoolboy’s summer shade.’
There was a very romantic pasturage called the Cow-park, which I was particularly attached to, from its wild and sequestered character. Having been part of an old wood which had been cut down, it was full of copse — hazel, and oak, and all sorts of young trees, irregularly scattered over fine pasturage, and affording a hundred intricacies so delicious to the eye and the imagination. But some misjudging friend had cut down and cleared away without mercy, and divided the varied and sylvan scene, which was divided by a little rivulet, into the two most formal things in nature — a thriving plantation, many-angled as usual, and a park laid down in grass; wanting therefore the rich graminivorous variety which Nature gives its carpet, and having instead a braird of six days’ growth — lean and hungry growth too — of ryegrass and clover. As for the rill, it stagnates in a deep square ditch, which silences its prattle, and restrains its meanders with a witness. The original scene was, of course, imprinted still deeper on Russell’s mind than mine, and I was glad to see he was intensely sorry for the change.
April 5. — Rose late in the morning, past eight, to give the cold and toothache time to make themselves scarce, which they have obligingly done. Yesterday every tooth on the right side of my head was absolutely waltzing. I would have drawn by the half dozen, but country dentists are not to be lippened to. To-day all is quiet, but a little swelling and stiffness in the jaw. Went to Chiefswood at one, and marked with regret forty trees indispensably necessary for paling — much like drawing a tooth; they are wanted and will never be better, but I am avaricious of grown trees, having so few.
Worked a fair task; dined, and read Clapperton’s journey and Denham’s into Bornou. Very entertaining, and less botheration about mineralogy, botany, and so forth, than usual. Pity Africa picks up so many brave men, however. Work in the evening.
April 6. — Wrote in the morning. Went at one to Huntly Burn, where I had the great pleasure to hear, through a letter from Sir Adam, that Sophia was in health, and Johnnie gaining strength. It is a fine exchange from deep and aching uncertainty on so interesting a subject, to the little spitfire feeling of “Well, but they might have taken the trouble to write”; but so wretched a correspondent as myself has not much to say, so I will just grumble sufficiently to maintain the patriarchal dignity.
I returned in time to work, and to receive a shoal of things from J.B. Among others, a letter from an Irish lady, who, for the beaux yeux, which I shall never look upon, desires I will forthwith send her all the Waverley Novels, which are published, with an order to furnish her with all others in course as they appear, which she assures me will be an era in her life. She may find out some other epocha.
April 7. — Made out my morning’s task; at one drove to Chiefswood, and walked home by the Rhymer’s Glen, Mar’s Lee, and Haxell-Cleugh. Took me three hours. The heath gets somewhat heavier for me every year — but never mind, I like it altogether as well as the day I could tread it best. My plantations are getting all into green leaf, especially the larches, if theirs may be called leaves, which are only a sort of hair, and from the number of birds drawn to these wastes, I may congratulate myself on having literally made the desert to sing. As I returned, there was, in the phraseology of that most precise of prigs in a white collarless coat and chapeau bas, Mister Commissary Ramsay — ”a rather dense inspissation of rain.” Deil care.
“Lord, who would live turmoiled in the Court,
That might enjoy such quiet walks as these?”
Yet misfortune comes our way too. Poor Laidlaw lost a fine prattling child of five years old yesterday.
It is odd enough — Iden, the Kentish Esquire, has just made the ejaculation which I adopted in the last page, when he kills Cade, and posts away up to Court to get the price set upon his head. Here is a letter come from Lockhart, full of Court news, and all sort of news, — best is his wife is well, and thinks the child gains in health.
Lockhart erroneously supposes that I think of applying to Ministers about Charles, and that notwithstanding Croker’s terms of pacification I should find Malachi stick in my way. I would not make such an application for millions; I think if I were to ask patronage it would [not] be through them, for some time at least, and I might have better access.
April 8. — We expect a raid of folks to visit us this morning, whom we must have dined before our misfortunes. Save time, wine, and money, these misfortunes — and so far are convenient things. Besides, there is a dignity about them when they come only like the gout in its mildest shape, to authorise diet and retirement, the nightgown and the velvet shoe; when the one comes to chalkstones, and the other to prison, though, there would be the devil. Or compare the effects of Sieur Gout and absolute poverty upon the stomach — the necessity of a bottle of laudanum in the one case, the want of a morsel of meat in the other.
Laidlaw’s infant, which died on Wednesday, is buried to-day. The people coming to visit prevent my going, and I am glad of it. I hate funerals — always did. There is such a mixture of mummery with real grief — the actual mourner perhaps heart-broken, and all the rest making solemn faces, and whispering observations on the weather and public news, and here and there a greedy fellow enjoying the cake and wine. To me it is a farce full of most tragical mirth, and I am not sorry (like Provost Coulter) but glad that I shall not see my own. This is a most unfilial tendency of mine, for my father absolutely loved a funeral; and as he was a man of a fine presence, and looked the mourner well, he was asked to every interment of distinction. He seemed to preserve the list of a whole bead-roll of cousins, merely for the pleasure of being at their funerals, which he was often asked to superintend, and I suspect had sometimes to pay for. He carried me with him as often as he could to these mortuary ceremonies; but feeling I was not, like him, either useful or ornamental, I escaped as often as I could.
I saw the poor child’s funeral from a distance. Ah, that