A History of Booksellers, the Old and the New

by Henry Curwen

Immediately after the election Wilson returned to Elleray to recruit; and here an event happened which not only shows his natural impetuosity, but which might have been of very serious consequence, and, as a version of the story has recently appeared in “Barham’s Life,” it may not be altogether out of place to give the correct version here.

Lord M——r and three Oxford friends, one of whom had just been ordained, had started in their own coach upon a rollicking tour homewards; their journey, even in those free-and-easy times, was marked by a blackguardism of conduct almost unparalleled.

At York they halted for a few days—few because the inhabitants would stand their presence no longer, and, after paying £150 for their hotel bills, and for the Vandalism they had committed in the town, they drove on to Windermere, and put up at the Ferry Hotel. Here they stayed for nearly four days, disporting themselves like Yahoos. Wilson, as is well known, was “Admiral of the Windermere Fleet,” and chanced, while they were in the neighbourhood, to hold a regatta, giving his friends a tea at Ullock’s Hotel, Bowness, when the amusements of the day were over.

Hither the travelling adventurers came by water; at the landing stage, however, one of the number, seeing a fisherman washing his nets in the lake, crept behind him, and with a shove and a hoarse laugh sent him into the water. Westmoreland blood is not easily cooled, and the peasant, seizing his attacker, ducked him within an inch of his life. Nothing daunted the other three proceeded to the hotel, and entered a room where tea was laid out for a large party; to knock the tray over, to pull the cloth off, to dance upon the tea-pot till it was flattened, and the crockery till it was smashed into a thousand smithereens, was, of course, only the work of an instant. Hearing the clatter, Mrs. Wilson hurried downstairs, and Lord M——r, mistaking her for the landlady, seized her by the neck, and tried to ravish a kiss. At this critical moment the Professor entered—one blow “from the shoulder” laid the noble lord at his feet; then, like a genuine old heathen warrior, placing one foot upon the neck of the prostrate wretch—“if you other two scoundrels are not out of this room in an instant, I’ll squeeze the man’s breath out of his body.” They heard—and fled. Wilson, in a fury of excitement, took boat to Belle Isle, and urged Mr. Curwen to act as his friend. Mr. Curwen represented that Lord M——r was utterly beneath contempt—that no professor of moral philosophy had ever been engaged in a cause of honour; that all his friends had been representing him as a quiet, orderly man—in fact, brought forward a thousand arguments which might have been of the utmost weight to a reasonable being—but not just at present to Wilson; he flung out of the room, crossed the lake, and sought a gallant naval officer, Captain Br——, who, a true Sir Lucius O’Trigger, said the matter was in good hands, and looked up his pistols. They adjourned to Elleray to wait the expected challenge: but on the evening of the following day, getting tired of inaction, they set out on a drive to see why the storm did not commence. Further search was endless. Lord M——r and his friends had taken to their coach and fled; they could not, however, get their horses out of the stables until they had paid an hotel bill of £120 and £20 to the landlord of Ullock’s Hotel for damages. Thus the affair ended happily, and Wilson was able to return peaceably to Edinburgh to fulfil his new duties.

Few men ever undertook so important a charge with so little preparation. “But there was,” says one who listened to him, “a genius in Wilson; there was grandeur in his conceptions, and true nobility in the tone and spirit of his lectures. I can compare them to nothing save the braying of the trumpet that sent a body of high-bred cavalry against the foe. ‘Charge! and charge home!’ Wilson’s action upon the better and more pure-minded of his pupils was pre-eminently beneficial. His lectures deeply influenced their characters for humanity, for unselfishness, for high and honourable resolve to fight the battle of life; like the old Danish hero ‘to dare nobly, to will strongly, and never to falter in the path of duty.’ Such was Wilson’s creed; and, till 1850, when he was found stricken down in his private room, ten minutes after the class hour, he astonished and delighted all that was intellectual in Edinburgh by these, aptly termed, ‘volcanic lectures on ethics.’”

Much work, however, had to be gone through before that date; his private fortune had been lost some years back by the failure of a house of business, and he was one of those men whom, the more work is thrown on them the more they are able to go through with.

In 1822 appeared the first specimen of his power as a novelist in the “Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life,” which went rapidly through edition after edition; and in the March of this year appeared also the first number of the Noctes Ambrosianæ—a curt dialogue between the editor and Ensign O’Doherty; it was not for seventeen numbers that Wilson, almost sorry, commenced that wonderful series that became one of the literary wonders of the day; and for thirteen years as Christopher North he continued to delight the world, and it is as Christopher North, in his shooting-jacket, with gun or fishing-rod, by the lochs or by the moors, amid the scenery which he has so marvellously limned, and the emotions to which he has given utterance, that he will be remembered to all time.

In 1824 we see that Carlyle gets his first pleasant encouragement in Maga, and Moir’s most famous production, the “Autobiography of Mansie Wauch,” appears. Moir—a young surgeon of only nineteen when he first appeared in the pages of the original Edinburgh Monthly Magazine—had at once attracted the attention of William Blackwood—“a man,” says Moir’s biographer, “of rare sagacity, courage, and persevering energy.” As “Delta,” in the pages of Maga, the popularity of Moir’s softer and sweeter pieces was very great; and when “Mansie” appeared, “there were districts,” says Aird again, “where country clubs, waiting impatiently for the magazine, met monthly as soon as it was issued, and had ‘Mansie’ read aloud by one of their number, amid explosions of congregated laughter.”

Lockhart, too, had since his marriage been wielding his pen as freely as ever. “Valerius” and “Adam Blair” had both been successful ventures for Blackwood; and were succeeded in 1822 by the “Spanish Ballads,” which have so much of the true ring of original poetry about them, that Lockhart’s friends always regretted that he did not devote his time more exclusively to the composition of some original poetical work. In 1825 the editorship of the Quarterly was offered him, and Blackwood lost one of his earliest and strongest supporters. Shortly after this the other satirical spirit of the periodical—Billy Maginn—also moved southward.

But Blackwood was too firmly established now to dread the loss of any single contributor save one. The famous Noctes were, in reality, only just commencing; and there it is that the character of the Ettrick Shepherd most shines—vicariously, however, for his popularity is chiefly due to the piquancy and vitality with which the genius of Wilson endowed him. Whatever is best in the national genius of Scotland, in humour, poetry, imagination, and fervour, are poured forth in the quaint and broad language of the Shepherd. But enough of the Noctes; are they not still familiar volumes upon the tables of all who read?