All at Huntly Burn well and hearty, and most kind in their attentions during our late turmoils. Bauby[28] came over to offer her services as sick-nurse, and I have drunk scarce anything but delicious ginger-beer of Miss Bell's brewing, since my troubles commenced. They have been, to say the least, damnable; and I think you would hardly know me. When I crawl out on Sibyl Grey, I am the very image of Death on the pale horse—lanthorn-jawed, decayed in flesh, stooping as if I meant to eat the pony's ears, and unable to go above a footpace. But although I have had, and must expect, frequent relapses, yet the attacks are more slight, and I trust I shall mend with the good weather. Spring sets in very pleasantly, and in a settled fashion. I have planted a number of shrubs, etc., at Huntly Burn, and am snodding up the drive of the old farmhouse, enclosing the Toftfield, and making a good road from the parish road to your gate. This I tell you to animate you to pick up a few seeds both of forest trees, shrubs, and vegetables; we will rear them in the hot-house, and divide honorably. Avis au lecteur. I have been a good deal entrusted to the care of Sophia, who is an admirable sick-nurse. Mamma has been called to town by two important avocations: to get a cook—no joking matter,—and to see Charles, who was but indifferent, but has recovered. You must have heard of the death of Joseph Hume, David's only son. Christ! what a calamity!—just entering life with the fairest prospects—full of talent, and the heir of an old and considerable family—a fine career before him: all this he was one day, or rather one hour—or rather in the course of five minutes—so sudden was the death—and then—a heap of earth. His disease is unknown; something about the heart, I believe; but it had no alarming appearance, nothing worse than a cold and sore throat, when convulsions came, and death ensued. It is a complete smash to poor David, who had just begun to hold his head up after his wife's death. But he bears it stoutly, and goes about his business as usual. A woeful case. London is now out of the question with me; I have no prospect of being now able to stand the journey by sea or land; but the best is, I have no pressing business there. The Commie[29] takes charge of Walter's matters—cannot, you know, be in better hands; and Lord Melville talks of gazetting quam primum. I will write a long letter very soon, but my back, fingers, and eyes ache with these three pages. All here send love and fraternity. Yours ever most truly,
Walter Scott.
P. S.—By the bye, old Kennedy, the tinker, swam for his life at Jedburgh, and was only, by the sophisticated and timid evidence of a seceding doctor, who differed from all his brethren, saved from a well-deserved gibbet. He goes to botanize for fourteen years. Pray tell this to the Duke, for he was
"An old soldier of the Duke's,
And the Duke's old soldier."
Six of his brethren, I am told, were in court, and kith and kin without end. I am sorry so many of the clan are left. The cause of quarrel with the murdered man was an old feud between two gypsy clans, the Kennedies and Irvings, which, about forty years since, gave rise to a desperate quarrel and battle on Hawick Green, in which the grandfathers of both Kennedy, and Irving whom he murdered, were engaged.
In the next of these letters there is allusion to a drama, on the story of The Heart of Mid-Lothian, of which Mr. Terry had transmitted the MS. to Abbotsford—and which ultimately proved very successful. Terry had, shortly before this time, become the acting manager of the Haymarket Theatre.
TO D. TERRY, ESQ., HAYMARKET, LONDON.
Abbotsford, 18th April, 1819.
Dear Terry,—I am able (though very weak) to answer your kind inquiries. I have thought of you often, and been on the point of writing or dictating a letter, but till very lately I could have had little to tell you of but distress and agony, with constant relapses into my unhappy malady, so that for weeks I seemed to lose rather than gain ground, all food nauseating on my stomach, and my clothes hanging about me like a potato-bogle,[30] with from five or six to ten hours of mortal pain every third day; latterly the fits have been much milder, and have at last given way to the hot bath without any use of opiates; an immense point gained, as they hurt my general health extremely. Conceive my having taken, in the course of six or seven hours, six grains of opium, three of hyoscyamus, near 200 drops of laudanum—and all without any sensible relief of the agony under which I labored. My stomach is now getting confirmed, and I have great hopes the bout is over; it has been a dreadful set-to. I am sorry to hear Mrs. Terry is complaining; you ought not to let her labor, neither at Abbotsford sketches nor at anything else, but to study to keep her mind amused as much as possible. As for Walter, he is a shoot of an Aik,[31] and I have no fear of him: I hope he remembers Abbotsford and his soldier namesake.
I send the MS.—I wish you had written for it earlier. My touching, or even thinking of it, was out of the question; my corrections would have smelled as cruelly of the cramp as the Bishop of Grenada's homily did of the apoplexy. Indeed I hold myself inadequate to estimate those criticisms which rest on stage effect, having been of late very little of a play-going person. Would to Heaven these sheets could do for you what Rob Roy has done for Murray; he has absolutely netted upwards of £3000: to be sure, the man who played the Bailie made a piece of acting equal to whatever has been seen in the profession. For my own part, I was actually electrified by the truth, spirit, and humor which he threw into the part. It was the living Nicol Jarvie: conceited, pragmatical, cautious, generous, proud of his connection with Rob Roy, frightened for him at the same time, and yet extremely desirous to interfere with him as an adviser: the tone in which he seemed to give him up for a lost man after having provoked him into some burst of Highland violence, "Ah Rab! Rab!" was quite inimitable. I do assure you I never saw a thing better played. It is like it may be his only part, for no doubt the Patavinity and knowledge of the provincial character may have aided him much; but still he must be a wonderful fellow; and the houses he drew were tremendous.