The autumn and winter, however, brought returns of her malady, and her medical attendants said that she must expect such attacks, in which she acquiesced, saying, “no doubt I must.” A confinement of some weeks to her bed-room, was found so irksome, that she gladly had recourse to an ottoman couch bed, on which she could recline, and receive her visitors, as she said, “in state.”
The “Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott” were published at this time, and with deepest interest did Mrs. Opie peruse these records of one whom she had so much honoured and admired. Among her papers is one containing some remarks upon them, written shortly after, from which we select a few passages.
No pages of fiction, not even his own, ever excited in me more deep interest than did the sixth and seventh volumes of the Memoirs. I knew he was aware while writing his journal, that it would one day meet the eye of the world, and that therefore it must have been written with caution and under some restraint; yet, it had to me the charm of unfettered ingenuousness. There is through the whole of it a mournful reality, which I could not read without intense sympathy. It is a remarkable circumstance that he should have begun it almost at the time when he first had reason to suspect that his commercial engagements might possibly involve him in difficulties.
I own that in spite of the drollery, the bursts of jollity and mirth, the wit, the humour, and all its pleasing variety, the journal is rarely divested to me of the signs of secret suffering. It reminds me of the royal castle at Baden Baden, where all is splendour and gay decorations above, while beneath lie the deep dark dungeons, concealed from the eye of day, telling of the terrors of the secret tribunal.
After that awful year, 1825, marked in the commercial world by the ruin of thousands, the diary becomes more a work of art, through which nature still forces itself. He writes gaily, but feels more and more joylessly. Never after 1826 and ’27, could any one fancy it, in my opinion at least, the journal of a happy man. Certainly he was not warmed by his own brilliancy, nor enlivened by his own pleasantries; and though it was a relief to him to write his journal, and it might be an accurate transcript of his own sad feelings, there was “a lower deep,” a deeper current still, which he did not allow any human eye to penetrate, that was bearing him on its fatal tide, to imbecility and death.
I may be wrong, but I believe Sir Walter Scott’s horrible dread of the trials hanging over him and others, had an instantaneous effect on his mind, and that his judgment was impaired, and his power of self-control gone, while his imagination and invention remained in full vigour.
Judgment is the quality which enables us “to decide on the propriety, or impropriety of an action,” and had not Sir Walter’s judgment been weakened, he never could have sinned so much against propriety, (to use the gentlest word,) as to pen down so many oaths in his diary; but had the irritation of the moment led him so to err, he would have effaced the offensive words, and regretted his want of self-government, if his power of judgment had not been obscured. It his said he never swore with his tongue, but in his Journal he frequently swore with his pen, wounding alike the pious and the refined.
But, as I attribute this fault to an impaired judgment and a weakened power of self command, the consequences of his bitter trials, my conviction of the depth of his religious feelings remains undiminished. He somewhere says, that such was his fear of “becoming an enthusiast,” that he was very careful over “the state of his mind,” (or words to that effect,) whenever, while in a time of affliction, he was in “communion with his God”—a proof that such communion was well known to him; and I humbly trust that “lower deep” to which I have alluded, was illumined and cheered by that blessed influence which devotion is permitted to shed over the broken and supplicating heart. The satisfaction with which he listened to the Scriptures, his strong desire to have them read to him in his last days, and his parting words to his son-in-law, are chiefly valuable as indications of previous religious convictions, surviving, though in a shattered state, the wreck of mind; and are precious as are the broken pieces of carving from off some fine marble column in ruins, because they give evidence of its perfection in former days.
Early in 1839 Mrs. Opie visited her beloved friends at Northrepps, and on her return wrote:—
I had a pleasant journey home; found my page waiting with a fly, a fire in my chamber, and a “Sally-Lunn” cake and tea ready, and the last number of Nickleby, such a treat! besides the Evening Chronicle, full of amusing speeches. I have much enjoyed my visit to you;