The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, Volumes I & II.

[7] To please the king, Canning appointed the Duke of Clarence as first Lord of the Admiralty, but Greville says it was a most judicious stroke of policy, and nothing served so much to disconcert his opponents. Lord Melville had held the office from March 25, 1812, to April 13, 1827. The Duke resigned in the following year.—See Croker's Correspondence, vol. i. pp. 264 (letter to Blomfield), 427, 429; also ante, vol. i. p. 262. Lord Melville was President of the India Board in the Duke of Wellington's administration in 1828, and again First Lord from Sept. 17 of the same year until Nov. 22, 1830.

[8] The Rev. William Stephen Gilly, D.D., Vicar of Norham, author of Narrative of an Excursion to the Mountains of Piemont, 1823; Researches among the Vaudois or Waldenses, 1827-31.

[9] See Raine's St. Cuthbert, 4to, Durham, 1828.

[10] See Danvers in First Series of Sayings and Doings.

[11] The Merry Devil of Edmonton, a play by "T.B.," which has also been attributed to Anthony Brewer.

[12] Right Hon. Thomas Francis Kennedy, M.P. for Ayr Burghs, 1818-34. Died at the age of ninety at Dalquharran in 1879.

[13] This powerful drama, entitled Witchcraft: a Tragedy in Prose, was suggested, as the author says in her preface, by reading a scene in The Bride of Lammermoor.

[14] Did Constable ruin Scott, as has been generally supposed? It is right to say that such a charge was not made during the lifetime of either. Immediately after Scott's death Miss Edgeworth wrote to Sir James Gibson-Craig and asked him for authentic information as to Sir Walter's connection with Constable. Sir James in reply stated that to his personal knowledge Mr. Constable had, in his anxiety to save Scott, about 1814 [1813], commenced a system of accommodation bills which could not fail to produce, and actually did produce, the ruin of both parties. To another correspondent, some years later, he wrote still more strongly (Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 457).

Scott appears to have been aware of the facts so far, as he says to Laidlaw, in a letter of December 16, 1825, "The confusion of 1814 is a joke to this ... but it arises out of the nature of the same connection which gives, and has given, me a fortune;" and Mr. Lockhart says that the firm of J.B. & Co. "had more than once owed its escape from utter ruin and dishonour" through Constable's exertions.—Life, vol. v. p. 150.

On reading the third volume of Constable's Memoirs (3 vols. 8vo, 1873), one cannot fail to see that all the three parties—printer, publisher, and author—were equal sharers in the imprudences that led to the disaster in 1826. Whether Mr. Constable was right in recommending further advances to the London house is doubtful; but if it was an error of judgment, it was one which appears to have been shared by Mr. Cadell and Mr. James Ballantyne. It must be admitted that the three firms were equally culpable in maintaining for so many years a system of fictitious credit. Constable, at least, from a letter to Scott, printed in vol. iii. p. 274, had become seriously alarmed as early as August 8, 1823.

That Constable was correct in his estimate of the value of the literary property has been shown by the large sums realised from the sale of Scott's works since 1829; and that his was the brain ("the pendulum of the clock" as Scott termed it) to plan is also shown by the fact that the so-called "favourite" edition, the magnum opus, appears to have been Constable's idea (Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 255), although, according to the Annual Register of 1849, Mr. Cadell claimed the merit of a scheme which he had "quietly and privately matured."

[15] Thomas Thomson, Depute-Clerk Register for Scotland under Lord Frederick Campbell.

[16] Johnson's Epitaph on Claude Phillips.

[17] Right Hon. Joseph Planta (son of Joseph Planta, Principal Librarian of the British Museum from 1799) was at this time one of the Secretaries to the Treasury. He died in 1847.

[18] Personal Memoirs by P.L. Gordon, 2 vols. 8vo, Lond. 1830.

[19] General David Stewart of Garth, author of Sketches of the Highlanders. 2 vols. 8vo, Edin. 1822. General Stewart died in St. Lucia in 1829. Sir Walter said of him that no man was "more regretted, or perhaps by a wider circle of friends and acquaintance."

[20] Resulting in the duel of 21st September 1809.—See Croker's Correspondence, vol. i. p. 20; and Life, vol. iii. ch. xix.

[21] Afterwards Lord Polwarth.

[22] Persian chitty = a short note.

[23] Letters to Richard Heber, Esq., containing Critical Remarks on the Series of Novels beginning with "Waverley," and an Attempt to ascertain their Author. 8vo, London, 1821.

[24] They were published under the title Ancient Ballads and Songs, 2 vols. 8vo, 1828.

[25] The Forester's Guide and Profitable Planter, reviewed in the Quarterly, Oct. 1827. See also "On Planting Waste Lands," in Misc. Prose Works, vol. xxi. pp. 1-76.

[26] Daughter of Mrs. Maclean Clephane, and afterwards Marchioness of Northampton.

[27] Scott's indorsation of this letter is characteristic—"Prodigious, bold request, Tom Thumb."

[28] Among the documents laid before Scott in the Colonial Office, when he was in London at the close of 1826, "were some which represented one of Bonaparte's attendants at St. Helena, General Gourgaud, as having been guilty of gross unfairness, giving the English Government private information that the Emperor's complaints of ill-usage were utterly unfounded, and yet then and afterwards aiding and assisting the delusion in France as to the harshness of Sir Hudson Lowe's conduct towards his captive. Sir Walter, when using these remarkable documents, guessed that Gourgaud might be inclined to fix a personal quarrel on himself; and there now appeared in the newspapers a succession of hints that the General was seriously bent on this purpose. He applied as Colonel Grogg would have done forty years before to The Baronet" [W. Clerk].—Life, vol. ix. pp. 142-3.

A short time previously Gourgaud had had a quarrel with Count Ségur regarding the latter's History of the Russian Campaign, to which he wrote a reply in 1825, and then fought a duel with the author in support of his allegations. In Scott's case, however, it came to nothing beyond a paper war, which Sir Walter declined to prolong, leaving the question to be decided by the general public. It is due to Gourgaud to state that on two occasions he saved Napoleon's life, though his subsequent information to the British Government did not tend to increase his popularity with the Bonapartists. He died at Paris in his sixty-ninth year on July 25th, 1852.

[29] Life, vol. i. pp. 47, 155-156.

[30] The Planters' Guide, by Sir Henry Seton Steuart.

[31] In the North British Review, No. 82, there is an extremely interesting sketch of this learned Peerage lawyer. He died in his 85th year, in 1864, at his country seat, Kirklands in Roxburghshire, which he had purchased by Sir Walter's advice.

The following amusing narrative of what took place on Tweedside when these two old friends were in their prime is given in Mr. Richardson's own words:—

"On a beautiful morning in September 1810 I started with Sir Walter from Ashiestiel. We began nearly under the ruins of Elibank, and in sight of the 'Hanging Tree.' I only had a rod, but Sir Walter walked by my side, now quoting Izaak Walton, as, 'Fish me this stream by inches,' and now delighting me with a profusion of Border stories. After the capture of numerous fine trout, I hooked something greater and unseen, which powerfully ran out my line. Sir Walter got into a state of great excitement, exclaiming, 'It's a fish! It's a fish! Hold up your rod! Give him line!' and so on. The rod, which belonged to one of his boys, broke, and put us both into great alarm; but I contrived, by ascending the steep bank and holding down the rod, still to give play to the reel, till, after a good quarter of an hour's struggle, a trout, for so it turned out to be, was conducted round a little peninsula. Sir Walter jumped into the water, seized him, and threw him out on the grass. Tom Purdie came up a little time after, and was certainly rather discomposed at my success. 'It will be some sea brute,' he observed; but he became satisfied that it was a fine river-trout, and such as, he afterwards admitted, had not been killed in Tweed for twenty years; and when I moved down the water, he went, as Sir Walter afterwards observed, and gave it a kick on the head, exclaiming, 'To be ta'en by the like o' him frae Lunnon!'"

[32] James Byers, 1733-1817.

[33] Anne Scott of Harden, afterwards wife of Lord Jerviswoode, and Elizabeth of Colonel Charles Wyndham.

[34] James Hope, W.S., Scott's school-fellow, died in Edinburgh 14th November 1842.

[35] Greville, vol. i. pp. 110-113.

[36] Sir W. Rae, who was Lord Advocate from 1819 to 1830.

[37] See letter to Duke of Buccleuch on James Hogg at p. 40.

[38] No. 10 Walker Street.

[39] Scott's unwearied interest in James Hogg, despite the waywardness of this imaginative genius, is one of the most beautiful traits in his character. Readers of Mr. Lockhart's Life, do not require to be reminded of the active part he took in promoting the welfare of the "Ettrick Shepherd" on many occasions, from the outset of their acquaintance in 1801 until the end of his life.

Hogg was a strange compound of boisterous roughness and refinement in expression, and these odd contrasts surprised strangers such as Moore and Ticknor. The former was shocked, and the latter said his conversation was a perpetual contradiction to the exquisite delicacy of Kilmeny.

The critics of the day, headed by Professor Wilson, declared he was Burns's rival as a song-writer, and his superior in anything relating to external nature! indeed they wrote of him as unsurpassed by poet or painter in his fairy tales of ancient time, dubbing him Poet Laureate to the Queen of Elfland; and yet his unrefined manner tempted these friends to speak of him familiarly as the greatest hog in all Apollo's herd, or the Boar of the Forest, etc. etc.

Wordsworth, however, on November 21, 1835, when his brother bard had just left the sunshine for the sunless land, wrote from his heart the noble lines ending—

"Death upon the Braes of Yarrow
Closed the Poet Shepherd's eyes."

[40] Another, sister Georgiana, married General the Honourable Sir Alexander Hope, G.C.B., grandfather of Mrs. Maxwell Scott.

[41] Chronicles of the Canongate. First Series, ending with the story of The Surgeon's Daughter.

[42] Mr. Lockhart justly remarks that this entry "paints the man in his tenderness, his fortitude, and happy wisdom."

[43] Charles Rose Ellis had been created Baron Seaford in 1826.

[44] See Cromek's Reliques of Burns, p. 210.

[45] "The Duke was then making a progress in the North of England, to which additional importance was given by the uncertain state of political arrangements; the chance of Lord Goderich's being able to maintain himself as Canning's successor seeming very precarious, and the opinion that his Grace must soon be called to a higher station than that of Commander of the Forces, which he had accepted under the new Premier, gaining ground every day. Sir Walter, who felt for the great Captain the pure and exalted devotion that might have been expected from some honoured soldier of his banners, accepted this invitation, and witnessed a scene of enthusiasm with which its principal object could hardly have been more gratified than he was."—Life, vol. ix. pp. 156-7.

[46] See Correspondence of Princess Lieven and Earl Grey for Lord Grey's opinion, vol. i. p. 60.

[47] Dr. William Van Mildert had been appointed to the See of Durham in 1826 on the death of Dr. Shute Barrington. He died in 1836.

[48] Admiral Sir John Beresford had some few years before this commanded on the Leith Station—when Sir Walter and he saw a great deal of each other—"and merry men were they."—J.G.L.

[49] An eye-witness writes:—"The manner in which Bishop Van Mildert proceeded on this occasion will never be forgotten by those who know how to appreciate scholarship without pedantry, and dignity without ostentation. Sir Walter had been observed throughout the day with extraordinary interest—I should say enthusiasm. The Bishop gave his health with peculiar felicity, remarking that he could reflect upon the labours of a long literary life, with the consciousness that everything he had written tended to the practice of virtue, and to the improvement of the human race."—Hon. Henry Liddell. Life, vol. ix. p. 160.

[50] Histoire de la guerre de la Péninsule sous Napoléon, etc. Publiée par Madame la Comtesse Foy. Paris, 4 vols. 8vo, 1827. See Croker, vol. i. p. 352.

[51] This story is told also in Lord Stanhope's Conversations with the Duke of Wellington. 8vo, London, 1888, p. 54.

[52] The present generation are apt to forget the enormous sums spent in Parliamentary elections; e.g., Mme. de Lieven tells Earl Grey (Cor. ii. p. 215) that Lord Ravensworth's neighbour, the Duke of Northumberland, will subscribe £100,000 towards the election of 1831.

[53] Hugh, third Duke of Northumberland.

[54] Dr. Bethell, who had been tutor to the Duke of Northumberland, held at this time the See of Gloucester.—J.G.L.

[55] Launcelot Brown, 1715-1782.

[56] A quarto volume, containing 39 etchings (privately printed in 1823), still preserved at Abbotsford.

[57] Mr. Archdeacon Singleton.—J.G.L.

[58] Stanhope's Notes, p. 24; and Croker, vol. ii. p. 233.

[59] From Stratford-on-Avon.

[60] For the utilisation of this story, see Fair Maid of Perth, published in the following year.

[61] See M.G. Lewis's Journal of a West Indian Proprietor. 8vo, Lond., 1834, p. 47; and Introduction to Fair Maid of Perth, p. 16.

[62] On the 13th of October Sir Walter had received a letter from "one who had in former happy days been no stranger," and on turning to the signature he found to his astonishment that it was from Lady Jane Stuart, with whom he had had no communication since the memorable visit he had made to Invermay in the autumn of 1796. The letter was simply a formal request on behalf of a friend for permission to print some ballads in Scott's handwriting which were in an album that had apparently belonged to her daughter, yet it stirred his nature to its depths. The substance of his reply may be gathered from the second letter, which he had just read before making this sad entry in his Journal.—Lady Jane tells him that she would convey to him the Manuscript Book

—,"as a secret and sacred Treasure, could I but know that you would take it as I give it without a drawback or misconstruction of my intentions;"

and she adds—

"Were I to lay open my heart (of which you know little indeed) you would find how it has and ever shall be warm towards you. My age [she was then seventy-four] encourages me, and I have longed to tell you. Not the mother who bore you followed you more anxiously (though secretly) with her blessing than I! Age has tales to tell and sorrows to unfold."

As is seen by his Journal Sir Walter resumed his personal intercourse with his venerable friend on November 6th and continued it until her death, which took place in the winter of 1829.—Ante, vol. i. p. 404, and Life, vol. i. pp. 329-336.

[63] Kirn, the feast at the end of the harvest in Scotland.

[64] The correspondence of Robert, second Marquis of Londonderry, was edited by his brother in 1850, but there was no memoir published until Alison wrote the Lives of Lord Castlereagh and Sir Charles Stewart, Second and Third Marquesses of Londonderry. 3 vols. 8vo, Edinburgh, 1861.

[65] Holyrood remained an asylum for civil debtors until 1880, when by the Act 43 & 44 Victoria, cap. 34 imprisonment for debt was abolished. For description of bounds see Chronicles of the Canongate, p. 7. (vol. xli.).

[66] The book was published during November, under the following title, Chronicles of the Canongate (First Series). By the author of Waverley, etc.—SIC ITUR AD ASTRA, motto of Canongate arms. In two vols. The Two Drovers, The Highland Widow, The Surgeon's Daughter. Edinburgh, printed for Cadell and Co., and Simpkin Marshall. London 1827.

The introduction to this work contains sketches of Scott's own life, with portraits of his friends, unsurpassed in any of his earlier writings; for example, what could be better than the description of his ancestors the Scotts of Raeburn, vol. xli. p. 61:—

"They werena ill to them, sir, and that is aye something; they were just decent bien bodies. Ony poor creature that had face to beg got an awmous and welcome; they that were shamefaced gaed by, and twice as welcome. But they keepit an honest walk before God and man, the Croftangrys, and as I said before, if they did little good, they did as little ill. They lifted their rents and spent them; called in their kain and eat them; gaed to the kirk of a Sunday, bowed civilly if folk took aff their bannets as they gaed by, and lookit as black as sin at them that keepit them on."

[67] Mrs. Wilson, landlady of the inn at Fushie, one stage from Edinburgh,—an old dame of some humour, with whom Sir Walter always had a friendly colloquy in passing. I believe the charm was, that she had passed her childhood among the Gipsies of the Border. But her fiery Radicalism latterly was another source of high merriment.—J.G.L.

[68] The "new hare" was this: "It transpired in the very nick of time, that a suspicion of usury attached to these Israelites without guile, in a transaction with Hurst and Robinson, as to one or more of the bills for which the house of Ballantyne had become responsible. This suspicion, upon investigation, assumed a shape sufficiently tangible to justify Ballantyne's trustees in carrying the point before the Court of Session; but they failed to establish their allegation."—Life, vol. ix. pp. 178-9.

[69] A favourite domestic at Abbotsford, whose name was never to be mentioned by any of Scott's family without respect and gratitude.—Life, vol. x. p. 3.

[70] Lady Jane Stuart's house was No. 12 Maitland Street, opposite Shandwick Place. Mrs. Skene told Mr. Lockhart that at Sir Walter's first meeting with his old friend a very painful scene occurred, and she added—"I think it highly probable that it was on returning from this call that he committed to writing the verses, To Time, by his early favourite."—Life, vol. ix, p. 183.

The lines referred to are given below—

Friend of the wretch oppress'd with grief.
Whose lenient hand, though slow, supplies
The balm that lends to care relief,
That wipes her tears—that checks her sighs!

'Tis thine the wounded soul to heal
That hopeless bleeds for sorrow's smart,
From stern misfortune's shaft to steal
The barb that rankles in the heart.

What though with thee the roses fly,
And jocund youth's gay reign is o'er;
Though dimm'd the lustre of the eye,
And hope's vain dreams enchant no more.

Yet in thy train come dove-eyed peace,
Indifference with her heart of snow;
At her cold couch, lo! sorrows cease,
No thorns beneath her roses grow.

O haste to grant thy suppliant's prayer,
To me thy torpid calm impart:
Rend from my brow youth's garland fair,
But take the thorn that's in my heart.

Ah! why do fabling poets tell
That thy fleet wings outstrip the wind?
Why feign thy course of joy the knell,
And call thy slowest pace unkind?

To me thy tedious feeble pace
Comes laden with the weight of years;
With sighs I view morn's blushing face,
And hail mild evening with my tears.

mdash;Life, vol. i. pp. 334-336.

[71] Sir William Forbes crowned his generous efforts for Scott's relief by privately paying the whole of Abud's demand (nearly £2000) out of his own pocket—ranking as an ordinary creditor for the amount; and taking care at the same time that his old friend should be allowed to believe that the affair had merged quietly in the general measures of the trustees. In fact it was not until some time after Sir William's death (in the following year) that Sir Walter learned what he had done.—Life, vol. ix. p. 179.

[72] St. Valentine's Day or Fair Maid of Perth.

[73] A Royal Commission, of which Sir Walter was a member, had been appointed in 1826 to visit the Universities of Scotland. At the suggestion of Lord Aberdeen, a hundred guinea prize had been offered for the best essay on the national character of the Athenians. This prize, which excited great interest among the Edinburgh students, was won by John Brown Patterson, and ordered to be read before the Commissioners, and the other public bodies, with the result described by Sir Walter. It was read on the 17th November before a distinguished audience.

[74] Sir William Rae's house, in Liberton parish, near Edinburgh.

[75] From the old song Andrew and his Cutty Gun.

[76] Sir James Gibson-Craig, one of the Whig leaders, and a prominent advocate of reform at the end of last century.

[77] Gillespie was tried at Aberdeen before Lord Alloway on September 26, and sentenced to be executed on Friday, 16th November 1827.

[78] Slightly altered from Macbeth, Act II. Sc. 2.

[79] Lady Elizabeth Montagu, daughter of George Duke of Montagu.

[80] Saladin's shroud, which was said to have been displayed as a standard "to admonish the East of the instability of human greatness."—GIBBON.

[81] The belief in the existence of the 'Water Cow' is not even yet extinct in the Highlands. In Mr. J.H. Dixon's book on Gairloch, 8vo, 1886, it is said the monster lives or did live in Loch na Beiste! Some years ago the proprietor, moved by the entreaties of the people, and on the positive testimony of two elders of the Free Church, that the creature was hiding in his loch, attempted its destruction by pumping and running off the water; this plan having failed owing to the smallness of the pumps, though it was persevered in for two years, he next tried poisoning the water by emptying into the loch a quantity of quick lime!!—Whatever harm was thus done to the trout none was experienced by the Beast, which it is rumoured has been seen in the neighbourhood as late as 1884 (p. 162). This transaction formed an element in a case before the Crofters' Commission at Aultbea in May 1888.

[82] Daughter of Alexander, fourth Duke of Gordon.

[83] Lord Dudley, then Secretary of State for the Foreign Department, was an early friend of Scott's. He had been partly educated in Edinburgh, under Dugald Stewart's care.

[84] The Duchess of Bedford's eldest son.

[85] My Aunt Margaret's Mirror.

[86] Sir Walter need have expressed no surprise at this architect's desire to pull down the old house of Lauriston! The present generation can judge of Mr. Burn's appreciation of ancient Architecture by looking at the outside of St. Giles, Edinburgh.—It was given over to his tender mercies in 1829, a picturesque old building, and it left his hands in 1834 a bit of solid well-jointed mason-work with all Andrew Fairservice's "whigmaleeries, curliewurlies, and open steek hems" most thoroughly removed!—Rob Roy, vol. viii. pp. 29-30. Fortunately the tower and crown were untouched, and the interior, which was injured in a less degree, has, through the liberality and good taste of the late William Chambers, been restored to its original stateliness.

[87] See Ethwald, Plays on the Passions, vol. ii., Lond. 1802.

[88] Alluding to an entry in the Journal, that he had expended 30s. in the purchase of the Theatre of God's Judgment, 1612, a book which is still in the Abbotsford Library.

[89] See note to May 30, 1827, vol. i. p. 398.

[90] Burns's lines To a Mouse.

[91] Ante, p. 60. The book had only been published two months. "The Second Series," when published in the following year, contained St. Valentine's Eve, or the Fair Maid of Perth; the two stories objected to, viz.: My Aunt Margaret's Mirror and the Laird's Jock appeared in the Keepsake of 1828, and were afterwards included in vol. xli. of the Magnum Opus.

[92] The Garrick papers were published under the title Private Correspondence, of David Garrick, illustrated with notes and Memoir. 2 vols. 4to, London, 1831-32. [Edited by James Boaden.]

[93] Afterwards Judge in the Court of Session under the title of Lord Jerviswoode.

[94] A few days later, however, the following reply was sent:—"Dear Gordon,—As I have no money to spare at present, I find it necessary to make a sacrifice of my own scruples to relieve you from serious difficulties. The enclosed will entitle you to deal with any respectable bookseller. You must tell the history in your own way as shortly as possible. All that is necessary to say is that the discourses were written to oblige a young friend. It is understood my name is not to be put in the title-page, or blazed at full length in the preface. You may trust that to the newspapers.

"Pray do not think of returning any thanks about this; it is enough that I know it is likely to serve your purpose. But use the funds arising from this unexpected source with prudence, for such fountains do not spring up at every place of the desert. I am, in haste, ever yours most truly, Walter Scott"—Life, vol. ix. p. 205.

FOOTNOTES.