At the close of this year (1837) the Scenic Annual appeared, containing four pieces of Campbell’s own, notably his ‘Cora Linn, or The Falls of Clyde,’ which he had written while in Glasgow the previous summer. Evidently he had some doubts about the dignity of accepting the editorship of this work, which was issued by Colburn merely to use up some old plates. ‘You will hear me much abused,’ he says, ‘but as I get £200 for writing a sheet or two of paper it will take a deal of abuse to mount up to that sum.’ One cannot help recalling how Scott scorned to write for the Keepsake, but Scott’s ideas of self-respect were very different from those of Campbell. In January 1838 Campbell intimates that he is busy on a popular edition of Shakespeare for Moxon. Needless to say, it was a good-for-nothing production. It is, however, a point in his favour that he had the grace to be ashamed of it. He said he had done it hurriedly, though with the right feeling. ‘What a glorious fellow Shakespeare must have been!’ he exclaimed, when talking about the book. ‘Walter Scott was fine, but had a worldly twist. Shakespeare must have been just the man to live with.’ This hint at Scott’s worldliness is sufficiently amusing, to say the least, in view of Campbell’s own sordid ambitions.
On the 10th of March he tells how he has been corresponding with the Queen. He had got his poems and his ‘Letters from the South’ bound with as much gilt as would have covered the Lord Mayor’s coach—the bill was £6—and having sent the volumes to Windsor, they were, as such things always are, ‘graciously accepted.’ For an avowed democrat Campbell made an unaccountable outcry about this ‘honour,’ which produced nothing more substantial than an autograph portrait of Her Majesty. In truth, with all his good sense, he could be very foolish on occasion. He was one of the spectators at the coronation of the Queen in Westminster Abbey this year—later on he was presented at Court by the Duke of Argyll—and he declares that she conducted herself so well during the long and fatiguing ceremony, that he ‘shed tears many times.’ Why anyone should shed tears because a royal lady behaves herself becomingly would have been a puzzle for Lord Dundreary. But Campbell was given to blubbering on every conceivable and inconceivable pretext. Once when he went to visit Mrs Siddons he was ‘overcome, even to tears, by the whole meeting’; and we hear of him crying like a child when drawing up some papers on behalf of the despoiled Poles. What tears are ‘manly, sir, manly,’ as Fred Bayham has it, may sometimes be difficult to decide, but there can be no question about the unmanly character of much of Campbell’s snivelling.
In July he paid another visit to Scotland, this time in connection with family affairs. Mrs Dugald Stewart died while he was in Edinburgh, and one more link binding him to the past was broken. Returning to his lonely chambers, he reports himself as working from six in the morning till midnight, a treadmill business which he unblushingly admits to be due to sheer avarice. ‘The money! the money!’ he exclaims; ‘the thought of parting with it is unthinkable, and pounds sterling are to me “dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.”’ He calls himself spendthrift—as wretched and regular a miser as ever kept money in an old stocking; and finds an excuse for himself only in the fact that he is getting more interested in public charities. His principal literary work was now a Life of Petrarch. Archdeacon Coxe had left a biography uncompleted, and Campbell agreed to finish it for £200. He found it, however, so stupid that he decided to write a Life of Petrarch himself, though he frankly allowed that until quite recently he had something like an aversion to Petrarch because of the monotony of his amatory sonnets, and his wild, semi-insane passion for Laura. He had nothing but pity for a man who could be in love for twenty years with a woman who was a wife and a prolific mother to boot. The Life of Petrarch occupied him until the spring of 1840. It was a sorry performance, and may be dismissed without further remark. Campbell had neither the sympathy with the Italian poet nor the intimate knowledge of his life and work which were requisite in his biographer, and the book is simply what he called it himself—a mere piece of manufacture.
Very little of importance had happened while he was engaged on this production. There were visits to Brighton and to Ramsgate in search of health; and another link had been severed by the death of Alison, his ‘mind’s father.’ He had projected a small edition of his poems as a resource for his closing years, and in November 1839 Moxon had thrown off ten thousand copies in double column, to be sold at two shillings each. Of original lyrical work nothing of any note was produced, the pieces including ‘My Child Sweetheart,’ ‘Moonlight,’ and ‘The Parrot.’ In September 1840 he was at Chatham for the launch of a couple of warships, when he made a speech and wrote his lines on ‘The Launch of a First-rate.’ Campbell had a patriotic partiality for the navy, and liked to hear about the exploits of seamen, but his speech on this occasion was a great deal better than the verses which followed it.
Feeling more than ever the cheerlessness of his chambers, he now made another expensive change of residence. He longed for the comforts of a home, and with his niece, Margaret, the daughter of his deceased brother, Alexander Campbell, whom he brought from Glasgow to superintend his domestic arrangements, he leased the house No. 8 Victoria Square, Pimlico, about which he spoke to everybody as a child speaks about a new toy. He removed in the spring of 1841; but he had not been long in occupation when he fell ill and went off suddenly to Wiesbaden. Beattie says he would not abide strictly by regimen, and to his other complaints was now added an attack of rheumatism. At Wiesbaden he met Hallam, the historian, ‘a most excellent man, of great acuteness and of immense research in reading,’ but no other notability seems to have crossed his path. He benefited greatly by the waters and baths, and at Ems even managed to write the ballad of ‘The Child and Hind,’ the story of which, printed in a Wiesbaden paper, plagued him so that he could not help rhyming. This piece was obviously meant as an imitation of the old ballad, but it is as little successful as such imitations usually are.
Reaching London once more, he sat down contented—for the time being—at his own fireside; and in November he writes of his intention to live now as a gentleman poet. He was highly pleased with his niece. She was ‘well-principled and amiable,’ a ‘nice, comfortable housekeeper,’ and a ‘tolerable musician.’ Some people jeered at her for her scruples about going to the play, but Campbell allowed nothing to be said in her hearing that might alarm her pious feelings. He taught her French and Greek, engaged the best masters for her general education, and spared no expense in books. His affectionate feelings towards her are well expressed in the lines beginning ‘Our friendship’s not a stream to dry,’ and a more tangible token of his regard was shown at his death, when he left her nearly the whole of his property.
He had now been busy for some time with ‘The Pilgrim of Glencoe,’ and the poem was published, with other short pieces, in February 1842. It fell still-born from the press. Some zealous admirer said it ought to have been as good as a bill at sight, but alack! the bill was found to be unnegotiable. The publisher made strenuous exertions to obtain a hearing for the poem, but all to no purpose. The public would not be roused from their indifference, and ‘The Pilgrim of Glencoe’ sunk at once into the shades of oblivion.
Campbell was manifestly unprepared for such a reverse. He had expected a quick and profitable return from the book, and had entered into heavy responsibilities, which now threatened his independence. One cannot help remarking again upon the mystery of these continued money difficulties. There was no reason why Campbell should be everlastingly in financial straits. He had his pension, he had been uncommonly lucky in the matter of legacies, he enjoyed property to the extent of £200 a year, and the profits of his work besides. There ought now to have been less cause than ever for pleading poverty. That there were difficulties is, however, abundantly evident, from the fact that he precipitately resolved to dispose of his house and retire to some retreat where he could live cheaply and await the advances of old age. London, he protested, was no longer the place for him. His friends, too, observed that his constitution was visibly failing: he walked with a feeble step, and his face wore an expression of languor and anxiety.
Under these disquieting conditions he made his will, and began to look about for the ‘remote corner.’ In the meantime he was preparing still another edition of his collected poems, which he intended to publish by subscription. He says that for several years past the sale of his books had been steadily going down, so that his poems, which had yielded him on an average £500 per annum, would not now bring him much more than a tenth of that amount. By keeping the book in his own hands he expected to make a goodly sum. But the experiment failed. The subscriptions dribbled in only at rare intervals, and some money having come to him from the death of his eldest and only surviving sister in March 1843, as well as a little legacy from Mr A’Becket, the new edition, like its predecessors, passed into the hands of Mr Moxon. The volume was a handsome one of four hundred pages, with fifty-six vignettes by leading artists. It had a not inconsiderable sale, and brought a substantial addition to Campbell’s exchequer.