The Country of Sir Walter Scott

by Charles S. Olcott

HOUSE OF THE FAIR MAID OF PERTH

James I and James II made important additions to Falkland, and James V, who found it in a ruinous condition, made many extensive repairs and additions. It was here that the latter king died of a broken heart, at the early age of thirty-two. A few moments before his death, when informed of the birth of his daughter, Mary, who became the Queen of Scots, he exclaimed prophetically, referring to the crown, 'It cam' wi' a lass and it'll gang wi' a lass.' Mary herself visited the castle annually for five or six years, before her marriage with Darnley and spent many happy days there. Her son, James VI, also made it his residence and was living there at the time he was enticed away in the 'Gowrie Conspiracy.' The last king to visit the palace was Charles II, who came for a stay of several days, after his coronation at Scone in 1651. Later the troops of Cromwell occupied the place, and its historical interest ceased soon afterward.

'The Fair Maid of Perth' was finished in the spring of 1828. When the author laid down his pen, it was to mark the real close of the Waverley Novels. True, others were yet to be written, but they were the work of a broken man, and failed to come up to Scott's high standard. It is one of the marvels of literature that a novel so attractive and interesting as 'The Fair Maid' could be produced under circumstances so distracting and painful. No one places it in the same rank as 'Guy Mannering' and 'Ivanhoe,' yet it was popular at the time of publication and has always been regarded as entirely worthy of the reputation of the 'Great Wizard.' The indomitable will of the master was still able to hold his matchless imagination to its task, though the days of its power were now numbered.

CHAPTER XXX
THE CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATE AND OTHER TALES

The remaining tales of the Waverley Novels require only brief mention. There is but little in them of the 'Country of Sir Walter Scott,' and scarcely more of the author himself. They are the final efforts of a man whose extraordinary buoyancy of youthful spirit is at last beginning to sink beneath a burden too great for human endurance. To begin at fifty-five the uninspiring task of 'paying for dead horses' the vast sum of £117,000, an amount which few men are able to earn by honest labour in all the days of their lives, required a superb courage which only Scott's high sense of honour could have sustained. Scarcely had the resolve been made when a second crushing blow fell with a force more stunning than the first. His beloved wife, the companion of thirty years, was taken away at the hour of his greatest need. She who could relieve the tedium of his toil by slipping quietly into the room to see if the fire burned, or to ask some kind question, was no longer present to comfort him. He felt a paralyzing sense of loneliness and old age, which even the devotion of his daughter Anne could not relieve. To continue the awful grind of writing for money—for something which he could not enjoy nor save for any cherished purpose, but must surrender at once to others—required an almost superhuman exertion of will power. His health began to fail. Headaches and insomnia, added to rheumatism, caused him great distress. His early lameness became intensified and made walking so painful that he had to abandon what had been his favourite form of exercise. The once vigorous frame had prematurely worn out under the strain imposed upon it. Scott had become an aged man at less than threescore years. Yet in these years of disappointment, grief, and physical pain he produced an amount of work of which an ordinary man might well be proud had it represented a lifetime of toil. From 1826, the year of Constable's failure, to 1831, this man of iron will produced no less than forty[[1]] volumes, besides fifteen important reviews, essays, etc., and in addition supervised the publication of his complete prose writings and the Waverley Novels, preparing for the latter a series of exhaustive introductions and notes.

I have anticipated a little by devoting a separate chapter to 'The Fair Maid of Perth' which appeared as the Second Series of the 'Chronicles of the Canongate' in 1828. The 'First Series' was published in 1827 and comprised 'The Two Drovers,' 'The Highland Widow,' and 'The Surgeon's Daughter.' To many the chief interest lies in the Introduction. When the work was first projected, Scott thought of preserving his incognito by conceiving the tales to be the work of one Chrystal Croftangry, an elderly gentleman who had taken quarters for a time within the Sanctuary, as the immediate vicinity of Holyrood was called. Here, as in the famous Alsatia of London, debtors were safe from arrest. Scott at one time feared that the importunities of a certain relentless creditor might force him to take refuge in the Sanctuary. On November 1, 1827, he made this entry in his Journal: 'I waked in the night and lay two hours in feverish meditation ... I suppose that I, the Chronicler of the Canongate, will have to take up my residence in the Sanctuary, unless I prefer the more airy residence of the Colton Jail, or a trip to the Isle of Man.' Fortunately this creditor was silenced by Scott's generous friend, Sir William Forbes, who privately paid the claim out of his own pocket.[[2]]

There is much in Mr. Croftangry's lengthy biography to remind one of Sir Walter himself. He finds pleasure in visiting the Portobello sands to see the cavalry drill, suggesting at once the young quartermaster of the Edinburgh Volunteers, who rode a black charger up and down the sands while he composed some of the most spirited stanzas of 'Marmion.' He delights to spend the wet mornings with his book and the pleasant ones in strolling upon the Salisbury Crags—just as Walter, the high-school boy and college student loved to do. In Mrs. Bethune Baliol, the genial old lady who assists Mr. Croftangry in his literary speculations, we have a kindly reference to a dear friend of the author—Mrs. Murray Keith, who died at eighty-two years of age, 'one of the few persons whose spirits and cleanliness, and freshness of mind and body made old age lovely and desirable.'

The volume is still more interesting because it contains Scott's first printed acknowledgment of the authorship of the Waverley Novels and gives an insight into some of the original suggestions of both characters and scenery. It also contains an account of the Theatrical Fund Dinner held in Edinburgh in February, 1827, in which Scott was publicly referred to as the author of the Waverley Novels and acknowledged in the presence of three hundred gentlemen the secret which he had hitherto confided to only twenty.