“KENILWORTH”
Sir Walter went to London for the Coronation of George IV. Others, “the non est tanti men,” might sneer, he said, at such pageants, might be “crucified to them”—as the Covenanting Laird of Brodie prayed to be crucified to the glories of the Lord Mayor’s Show—but Scott defended “the natural and unaffected pleasure which men like me receive from sights of splendour and sounds of harmony.” The Coronation wholly pleased him, but for the error of the Champion, who used a Highland target, “instead of a three-cornered or beater shield, which, in time of tilt, was suspended round the neck.” Scott had made the Highland target too fashionable: hence the heresy of the Champion. Scott was recognized by the Scots Greys with cries of “God bless Sir Walter,” and was allowed to pass on foot through the tabooed space which they guarded on the outside of the Abbey. At this time was executed the bust of Scott by Chantrey, no doubt by far the best representation of the man. Raeburn, as Scott remarked, painted him as “a somewhat chowder-headed” person. Indeed no portrait caught the vivacity of his changeful expression, all, except the bust, are more or less “chowder-headed.”
Before John Ballantyne’s death Scott had begun Kenilworth. Constable appears to have suggested The Armada as a subject, and to have collected many rare Elizabethan books for Sir Walter’s use. Then he preferred the title of The Nunnery, while Scott’s fancy went back to his favourite lines in Meikle’s ballad, and to the title of Cumnor Hall. But he chose Kenilworth, to please Constable. His motto, “No scandal about Queen Elizabeth,” directed his course. Though a patriotic Scot, he was too chivalrous to avenge on Queen Elizabeth the wrongs of Mary Stuart. By the most daring of anachronisms he deserted the real period of the affair of Amy Robsart, when scandal, not unprovoked, about Elizabeth was rife in the popular mouth and in every Court of Europe (1560). In the mystery of Amy Robsart’s death, Scott had a psychological subject. Leicester and Amy had been married, not secretly but publicly, in the reign of Edward VI. During that of Mary Tudor a strong attachment sprang up between Elizabeth and Leicester, then Lord Robert Dudley. On Elizabeth’s accession to the throne she loaded her favourite and Master of the Horse with unprecedented honours. Dudley was ever at Court, his wife lived retired at Cumnor Hall, and it was now said that she had a fatal disease, now that attempts were being made to poison her.
“KENILWORTH”
Meanwhile the triumphant Scottish Protestants, with the leader of the conquered Catholics, Archbishop Hamilton, were united for once in proposing that the Queen of England should marry the next heir to the throne of Scotland, the Earl of Arran, a Protestant, the friend of Knox. But, not to speak of other reasons, the favour of Dudley with Elizabeth stood in the way. Cecil spoke of the danger of Lady Robert Dudley in the gloomiest terms, to the Spanish ambassador. To the English agent in Scotland, Randolph, Cecil wrote a letter, which has been destroyed, but which chilled Randolph’s heart. The death of Darnley was not more clearly foreseen, in 1567, than the death of Dudley’s wife in 1560. Then, a few days after Cecil’s letter to Randolph, news of Lady Robert’s death came to Windsor. How she died no man knows to this day. The verdict of the coroner’s jury, an open verdict apparently, cannot be discovered. Amy had sent all her household except two or three ladies to a fair at Abingdon. Their story was that, on returning, they found their mistress lying dead, with a broken neck, at the foot of a flight of stairs. She had suddenly left her ladies, who made no inquiries, and now she was dead. Elizabeth told an envoy of her ambassador at Paris that there had been “an attempt” at Cumnor Hall, but that none of Leicester’s retainers was present. We know no more, but Mr. Froude, by a misunderstanding of the evidence, made it seem almost impossible to doubt that Elizabeth had what could not be guiltless foreknowledge of the catastrophe. This is an error; this is not warranted by the evidence. The behaviour of Dudley, again, on receiving the news of his wife’s death, was that of an innocent man: he did all that he could to secure an investigation without favour.
So the case stands, and Sir Walter might have avenged Mary Stuart by showing that Elizabeth was in no better position, as regards the death of Amy, than is Mary as regards the death of Darnley. But Scott rejected the temptation: he chose to say that Dudley’s marriage was a secret, and unknown to Elizabeth, and by keeping Amy alive for many years after her death, he contrived a meeting between the unconscious rivals, the Queen and the bride, at the festivals of Kenilworth. Such is his audacious handling of the facts, and he has given Elizabeth a more dignified part than she was wont to play, where Leicester was concerned: he has made her a right royal lady. She is magnificent in the meeting with Amy, and in her challenge of Leicester. The novel has thus always been a favourite in England, and there are even critics who put this romance based on bookwork before the best of all in which Scott delineates the manners best known to him, those of his own countrymen. Yet the novel is far better than many other critics admit. Amy is a spirited, lovely, and interesting heroine. Leicester is flattered, but the portrait is fine. The village humours, and the ruffianly soldier of fortune, Mike Lambourne, are very happily handled. Varney comes as near Iago in his resolute wickedness as it was in the power of Scott to go; and there is good in Flibbertigibbet, though we see too much of him; and more good in Tony Fire the Faggot, though Tony’s character, in real life, appears to have escaped censure: his epitaph, at least, is alive to testify to that, though the rewards heaped by Leicester on the occupant of Cumnor Hall “do something smack.”
CHAPTER VI
NOVELS, FINANCIAL RUIN, DEATH
This period was the zenith of Scott’s apparent prosperity. Five thousand guineas were given, or were to be given, by Constable for the remaining copyright of Ivanhoe, The Monastery, The Abbot, and Kenilworth. “Scott must have reckoned on clearing £30,000 at least in the course of a couple of years, by the novels written within such a period,” says Lockhart. Constable granted bills for four unnamed and unimagined “works of fiction,” and they proved to be Peveril, Quentin Durward, St. Ronan’s Well, and Redgauntlet. Scott’s eldest son was now in an expensive cavalry regiment; his second son was preparing for the University, Abbotsford was growing in extent and expense, and Scott was keeping open house. Lockhart, then living in the tiny neighbouring cottage of Chiefswood, was a man who did not suffer bores gladly, and he saw Abbotsford full of bores of all kinds—inquisitive foreigners, University prigs, condescending great people, and local lairds with their families. He reckoned that at least a sixth of the peerage of England passed through Abbotsford, and all the distinguished people of Scotland! With these came obscure citizens of Edinburgh, old college mates and office mates of Scott: “These were welcome guests, let who might be under that roof,” and Scott “contrived to make them all equally happy, with him, with themselves, and with each other.”
He was the genius of hospitality: he lavished his time on his guests, who had him with them for the whole of the day, except when he rode early to Chiefswood and wrote The Pirate on a bureau which remains in the cottage. He seemed the idlest of men, while scores of essays, and letters not to be counted, in addition to the novels, flowed from his pen in the unbroken hours of early morning. Only his extraordinary strength and buoyancy could enable him to be at once the most lavish host and the most prolific writer of his age, perhaps of any age. Merely to “refresh the machine” he was writing these admirable imitations of the correspondence of the sixteenth century which he called “Private Letters.” They might have deceived the elect of Antiquarians, but they could not have been popular with the public, though one character was a bona roba, an unaccustomed apparition in Sir Walter’s work. He threw the Letters aside, in his last days he fancied that he had