Walter Scott - The Man Behind the Books. Walter Scott
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went off very indifferently. Letter from Ballantyne wanting me to write about absentees. But I have enough to do without burning my fingers with politics.
July 27. — Up and at it this morning, and finished four pages. An unpleasant letter from London, as if I might be troubled by some of the creditors there, when going to town to get materials for Nap. I have no wish to go, — none at all. I would even like to put off my visit, so far as John Lockhart and my daughter are concerned, and see them when the meeting could be more pleasant. But then, having an offer to see the correspondence from St. Helena, I can make no doubt that I ought to go. However, if it is to infer any danger to my personal freedom, English wind will not blow on me. It is monstrous hard to prevent me doing what is certainly the best for all parties.
July 28. — I am wellnigh choked with the sulphurous heat of the weather — or I am unwell, for I perspire as if I had been walking hard, and my hand is as nervous as a paralytic’s. Read through and corrected St. Ronan’s Well. I am no judge, but I think the language of this piece rather good. Then I must allow the fashionable portraits are not the true thing. I am too much out of the way to see and remark the ridiculous in society. The story is terribly contorted and unnatural, and the catastrophe is melancholy, which should always be avoided. No matter; I have corrected it for the press.
The worthy Lexicographer left us to-day. Somewhat ponderous he is, poor soul! but there are excellent things about him.
Action and Reaction — Scots proverb: “the unrest (i.e. pendulum) of a clock goes aye as far the ae gait as the t’other.”
Walter’s account of his various quarters per last despatch. Query if original: —
“Loughrea is a blackguard place
To Gort I give my curse;
Athlone itself is bad enough,
But Ballinrobe is worse.
I cannot tell which is the worst,
They’re all so very bad;
But of all towns I ever saw,
Bad luck to Kinnegad.”
Old Mr. Haliburton dined with us, also Colonel Russell. What a man for fourscore or thereby is Old Haly — an Indian too. He came home in 1785.
July 29. — Yesterday I wrought little, and light work, almost stifled by the smothering heat. To-day I wrought about half task in the morning, and, as a judgment on me I think for yesterday’s sloth, Mr. H. stayed unusually late in the forenoon. He is my friend, my father’s friend, and an excellent, sensible man besides; and a man of eighty and upwards may be allowed to talk long, because in the nature of things he cannot have long to talk. If I do a task to-day, I hope to send a good parcel on Monday and keep tryst pretty well.
July 30. — I did better yesterday than I had hoped for — four instead of three pages, which, considering how my time was cut up by prolonged morning lounging with friend Haly, was pretty fair. I wrote a good task before eleven o’clock, but then my good friends twaddled and dawdled for near two hours before they set off. The time devoted to hospitality, especially to those whom I can reckon upon as sincere good friends, I never grudge, but like to “welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.” By my will every guest should part at halfpast ten, or arrange himself to stay for the day.
We had a long walk in a sweltering hot day. Met Mr. Blackwood coming to call, and walked him on with us, so blinked his visit — gratias, domine!! Asked him for breakfast tomorrow to make amends. I rather overwalked myself — the heat considered.
July 31st. — I corrected six sheets and sent them off, with eight leaves of copy, so I keep forward pretty well. Blackwood the bookseller came over from Chiefswood to breakfast, and this kept me idle till eleven o’clock. At twelve I went out with the girls in the sociable, and called on the family at Bemerside, on Dr. and Mrs. Brewster, and Mr. Bainbridge at Gattonside House. It was five ere we got home, so there was a day dished, unless the afternoon does something for us. I am keeping up pretty well, however, and, after all, visitors will come, and calls must be made. I must not let Anne forego the custom of wellbred society.
August
August 1. — Yesterday evening did nothing for the idlesse of the morning. I was hungry; eat and drank and became drowsy; then I took to arranging the old plays, of which Terry had brought me about a dozen, and dipping into them scrambled through two. One, called Michaelmas Term, full of traits of manners; and another a sort of bouncing tragedy, called the Hector of Germany, or the Palsgrave. The last, worthless in the extreme, is, like many of the plays in the beginning of the seventeenth century, written to a good tune. The dramatic poets of that time seem to have possessed as joint-stock a highly poetical and abstract tone of language, so that the worst of them often remind you of the very best. The audience must have had a much stronger sense of poetry in those days than now, since language was received and applauded at the Fortune or at the Red Bull, which could not now be understood by any general audience in Great Britain. This leads far.
This morning I wrote two hours, then out with Tom Purdie, and gave directions about thinning all the plantations above Abbotsford properly so called. Came in at one o’clock and now set to work. Debout, debout, Lyciscas, debout. Finished four leaves.
August 2. — Well; and to-day I finished before dinner five leaves more, and I would crow a little about it, but here comes Duty like an old housekeeper to an idle chambermaid. Hear her very words: —
DUTY. — Oh! you crow, do you? Pray, can you deny that your sitting so quiet at work was owing to its raining heavily all the forenoon, and indeed till dinner-time, so that nothing would have stirred out that could help it, save a duck or a goose? I trow, if it had been a fine day, by noon there would have been aching of the head, throbbing, shaking, and so forth, to make an apology for going out.
Egomet IPSE. — And whose head ever throbbed to go out when it rained, Mrs. Duty?
DUTY. — Answer not to me with a fool-born jest, as your poor friend Erskine used to say to you when you escaped from his good advice under the fire of some silly pun. You smoke a cigar after dinner, and I never check you — drink tea, too, which is loss of time; and then, instead of writing me one other page, or correcting those you have written out, you rollick into the woods till you have not a dry thread about you; and here you sit writing down my words in your foolish journal instead of minding my advice.
EGO. — Why, Mrs. Duty, I would as gladly be friends with [you] as Crabbe’s tradesman fellow with his conscience; but you should have some consideration with human frailty.
DUTY. — Reckon not on that. But, however, goodnight for the present. I would only recommend to you to think no thoughts in which I am not mingled — to read no books in which I have no concern — to write three sheets of botheration all the six days of the week per diem, and on the seventh to send them to the printer. Thus advising, I heartily bid you farewell.
EGO. — Farewell, madam (exit Duty) and be d — d to ye for an unreasonable bitch! “The devil must be in this greedy gled!” as the Earl of Angus said to his hawk; “will she never be satisfied?” I believe in my soul she is the very hag who haunted the merchant Abudah.
I’ll have my great chest upstairs exorcised, but first I’ll take a nap till supper, which must take place within ten minutes.
August 3. — Wrote half a task in the morning. From eleven till halfpast eight in Selkirk taking precognitions about a row, and came home famished and tired. Now, Mrs. Duty, do you think there is no other Duty of the family but yourself? Or can the Sheriff-depute neglect his Duty, that the author may mind his? The thing cannot be; the people of Selkirk must have justice as well as the people of England books. So the two Duties may go pull caps about it. My conscience is clear.
August 4. —