A trifling piece, The Inferno of Altesidora, contained verses in the manner of Crabbe, Moore, and himself; these are excellent imitations, and, with a lyric, The Resolve, in the manner of the Caroline poets, justify the opinion that Scott would have been a formidable satirist had he chosen to attack Byron and the Whigs in the manner and measure of Pope.
As Scott had now a near prospect of a salary of £1,300 a year, for his hitherto unpaid labours as Clerk of Session, he yielded to the fatal temptation of purchasing a small estate on Tweedside. This purchase was really an antiquarian extravagance; he wished to add to his collection the field of the last great Border clan battle, fought in 1526 between the clans of Scott and Ker, including the stone called Turn Again, where an Elliot checked the pursuit by spearing Ker of Cessford. The two farms which he bought were styled Cartley or Clarty Hole, and Kaeside, “a bare haugh and a bleak bank,” said Scott, and there was an ugly little farmhouse at Clarty Hole, rechristened Abbotsford, in memory of the monks of Melrose. It is not a good site, lying low, close to the existing public road, and the proprietor had not the charter for salmon fishing in the pools beneath his house. But the property was all “enchanted land,” rich in legends and Border memories of Thomas of Ercildoune and of battles, while Scott often cast longing eyes on the adjacent Faldonside, once the home of Andrew Ker, the most ruffianly of Riccio’s murderers, and on the perfect little peel tower of Darnick. Washington Irving says that Scott spoke to him of a project of buying Smailholme Tower. Like almost all Scots for many centuries, the Sheriff longed to be a landed man; his lease of Ashestiel was ended, and, above all, the land which he now purchased was rich in antiquarian interest. So he collected farms, began to rebuild the house of Clarty Hole, and entered on his private Moscow expedition, the Making of Abbotsford. The first farm purchased was dear at the £4,000 which was its price. Meanwhile, a source which, in our day, would have proved a mine of gold to Scott, was by him unworked. He would not dramatize his poems, or, later, his novels, for the stage, and every adventurer made prize of them.
“ROKEBY”
Early in 1812 Scott began Rokeby, a poem on the home of his friend Morritt, and in May he “flitted” in a gipsy-like procession from Ashestiel to Abbotsford. But Childe Harold appeared before Rokeby; Scott disliked the popular misanthropy of The Childe, but privately declared it to be “a poem of most extraordinary power, which may rank its author with our first poets.” Scott burned the whole of his first draft of Rokeby (canto 1), because “I had corrected the spirit out of it.” Meanwhile Scott and Byron became correspondents, in a tone, to quote Lockhart, “of friendly confidence equally honourable to both these great competitors, without rivalry, for the favour of the literary world.” Of Rokeby, which appeared in the last days of 1812, Scott said that it was a “pseudo romance of pseudo chivalry,” though he liked the beautiful lyrics interspersed through the poem, and rather piqued himself on the character of the outlaw Bertram, who has won the applause of Mr. Swinburne. The scene of Rokeby is English, and of the characters Lockhart says that, in a prose romance “they would have come forth with effect hardly inferior to any of all the groups Scott ever created.” Scott told Miss Edgeworth that Matilda was drawn from “a lady who is now no more,” his lost love, and that most of the other personages “are mere shadows.” The poet never left much for his critics to say in the way of disapproval.
The poem, enfin, was in no way a success. Mocking birds of song had wearied the public of Scott by endless imitation.
Most can raise the flowers now,
For all have got the seed,
And now again the people
Call it but a weed.
Scott himself was imitating himself in The Bridal of Triermain, to “set a trap for Jeffrey,” who was expected to take Erskine for the author. He was boyishly reckless of his reputation; he easily resigned the lists when Byron “beat him,” as he says, and in the year 1813 was harassed by “the ignoble melancholy of pecuniary embarrassment.”
A crisis had come in the affairs of Ballantyne & Co. The interest, for us, lies in the light which the crisis throws on the character of Scott. We have seen that a friend wrote, at the time of his disappointment in love, about Scott’s “violent” and “ungovernable” character, while Scott himself refers to “the family temper” as rather volcanic. The late Mr. W. B. Scott, too, considered it worth while to tell the world in his Memoirs, that, as a boy, he once heard Scott swear profane in a printer’s office. The truth of the matter seems to be that Scott had a large share of the family temper in boyhood, when he suffered from serious illnesses, and that he was capable of relapses in his overworn later years. But in the full health and vigour of his manhood, he mastered his temper admirably.
BALLANTYNE TROUBLES
He was at Abbotsford, at Drumlanrig with the Duke of Buccleuch, and at other country houses remote from Edinburgh, in the July and August of 1813. He was disturbed by frequent letters from John Ballantyne, always at the very last moment demanding money to save the existence of the firm, and always concealing the exact state of financial affairs. John was like the proverbial spendthrift who never can be induced to give his benevolent kinsfolk a full schedule of his debts. Thus harassed and menaced with ruin, Scott wrote letters which are models of tact and temper. He only asked to be told “in plain and distinct terms” how affairs really stood, and to be told in good time. But John was as unpunctual and untrustworthy as Scott was punctual and placable. He would not write explicitly, he always sent unexpected demands, and it was only certain that he was keeping others back. Scott had not an hour of peace and safety, and he told Ballantyne as much, “in charity with your dilatory worship.” “Were it not for your strange concealments, I should anticipate no difficulty in winding up these matters.” Lockhart says that he would as soon have hanged his favourite dog as turned John Ballantyne adrift. The conclusion of the matter was that the Ballantyne publishing company found a haven in the capacious bosom of Constable, who believed in the Star of Scott, advanced some £4,000, and took off the sinking ship the useless burden of the valueless books.