Life of Sir Walter Scott, with Abbotsford Notanda

by Robert Chambers; Robert Carruthers

Allowing himself little rest for the indulgence of grief, he quickly resumed, or rather hardly interrupted his usual employments. Between the 12th of June and the 12th of August he wrote the fourth volume of Napoleon, besides a portion of his novel. Thus he wrought all the summer, and part of the autumn, till it was found necessary that he should pay a visit to London and Paris, in order to consult documents necessary for Napoleon. This journey occupied six weeks, and perhaps was useful as a rally to his spirits. It is hardly necessary to say that, with high and low, wherever he went, he was an object of as cordial admiration and interest as ever. The king, the Duke of Wellington, and many other eminent persons, paid him marked attentions. In France, he was treated with no less distinction. Public papers in both countries were placed at his disposal without reserve; and in London he obtained an assurance that his second son, Charles, would be employed in the diplomatic department.

Till the failure of Messrs Constable and Company, the Waverley secret was kept inviolate, though intrusted, as he has himself acknowledged, to a considerable number of persons. The inquiries which took place into the affairs of the house rendered it no longer possible to conceal the nature of its connection with Sir Walter Scott; and he now accordingly stood fully detected as the Author of Waverley, though he did not himself think proper to make any overt claim to the honour. It may be mentioned that, at the time of the failure, Sir Walter was in possession of bills for the novel of Woodstock, of which but a small part had as yet been written. A demand was made by the creditors of Messrs Constable and Company upon the creditors of Sir Walter Scott, for the benefits of this work, when it should be made public. But the author, not reckoning this either just or legal, was resolved not to comply. The bills, he said, were a mere promise to pay; since, then, he had only promised to write, and they to pay, he would simply not write, and then the transaction would fall to the ground. On the claim being farther pressed, he said: ‘The work is in my head, and there it shall remain.’ The question, however, was eventually submitted to arbitration, and decided in favour of the creditors of the author, for whose behoof the work was soon after published.

The fact of the authorship continued to waver between secrecy and divulgement till the 23d of February 1827, when Sir Walter presided at the first annual dinner of the Edinburgh Theatrical Fund Association, in the Assembly Rooms. There Lord Meadowbank, in proposing the health of the chairman, used language to the following effect: ‘It was no longer possible, consistently with the respect to one’s auditors, to use upon this subject terms either of mystification, or of obscure or indirect allusion. The clouds have been dispelled; the darkness visible has been cleared away; and the Great Unknown—the Minstrel of our native land—the mighty Magician who has rolled back the current of time, and conjured up before our living senses the men and manners of days which have long passed away, stands revealed to the hearts and the eyes of his affectionate and admiring countrymen.’ Sir Walter, though somewhat taken by surprise, immediately resolved to throw off the mantle, which was getting somewhat tattered. ‘He did not think,’ he said, ‘that, in coming here to-day, he would have the task of acknowledging before three hundred gentlemen a secret which, considering that it was communicated to more than twenty people, had been remarkably well kept. He was now before the bar of his country, and might be understood to be on trial before Lord Meadowbank as an offender; yet he was sure that every impartial jury would bring in a verdict of Not Proven. He did not now think it necessary to enter into the reasons of his long silence. Perhaps caprice had a great share in it. He had now to say, however, that the merits of these works, if they had any, and their faults were entirely imputable to himself.’ [Here the audience broke into an absolute shout of surprise and delight.] ‘He was afraid to think on what he had done. “Look on’t again I dare not.” He had thus far unbosomed himself, and he knew that it would be reported to the public. He meant, then, seriously to state that, when he said he was the author, he was the total and undivided author. With the exception of quotations, there was not a single word written that was not derived from himself, or suggested in the course of his reading. The wand was now broken, and the rod buried. His audience would allow him further to say, with Prospero: “Your breath has filled my sails.”’

The spring of 1827 was past, and summer had gone to June, ere Scott’s great task was completed. He then finished the last volume of his Life of Napoleon, which he had been engaged upon for about two years, but had actually written in scarcely more than a twelvemonth of continuous time. The paper and print of the first and second editions, in nine volumes, brought the creditors £18,000—an amount of gain, in relation to amount of labour, unexampled in the history of literature, and which will probably have no parallel for ages to come. The book was unfortunate in its excessive length; and, written in such haste, it could not be expected to be very perfect, either in style or in facts. Yet it made a tolerably fair impression on the public, and it has since rather advanced than receded in public esteem. The contrast between the manner of its composition and that of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon’s works, is startling. All of these narratives were the study and the production of years. It had never till now entered the head of man to think of a great historical task being executed in a twelvemonth. The last-century historians filed and polished their writings sentence by sentence—Scott did not once reperuse the matter which had flowed from his pen. And all this labour had been performed in the midst of grief and shaken health, and without interfering with official duties, one of which called for several hours a day during five months of the twelve.

LATER EXERTIONS.

Immediately on concluding Napoleon, he commenced another historical work, his delightful Tales of a Grandfather; presenting a selection of the most striking points from the Scottish chroniclers, in a style designed to suit the intelligence of his descendant, ‘Hugh Littlejohn.’ This he carried on alternately with his Chronicles of the Canongate, the first series of which appeared early in the ensuing winter, and was well, though not brilliantly received. He underwent at this period some harassment from a Jewish London house, holding one of Constable and Company’s bills for £2000. With a view to forcing payment by some means, they threatened Scott with arrest; and he actually contemplated at one moment resorting to that sanctuary (Holyrood), in which he placed his imaginary hero, Chrystal Croftangry. At length the vexation was taken off his head by Sir William Forbes, the leading member of a banking company who were amongst his chief creditors. This generous man paid the sum out of his own pocket, without letting Scott suppose but that it was arranged for by the body of creditors. It is pleasant to know that Scott unconsciously underwent several obligations of this nature on the part of other old friends. The first series of the Tales of a Grandfather appeared before the end of 1827, and was hailed with more rapture than any work of his for several years. This was the date of another happy circumstance of a more important kind. The copyrights of his novels and of a large proportion of his poetical writings being presented for sale by Constable and Company’s creditors, a purchase of them was made for £8500, on the part of his own creditors as half-sharers, while the other half belonged to Mr Robert Cadell, a member of Constable’s late house, now independently in business. It was designed that the novels should be republished by Cadell in a comparatively cheap form, with notes and prefaces by the author, and certain trinkets of embellishment, such as—according to his own phrase—elderly beauties are supposed to require. It was hoped that the share of profits due to his creditors would tell materially to the reduction of the debts; and this hope was more than realised. Meanwhile, a first dividend was paid to these gentlemen from the aggregate gains of Scott’s pen during the two past years, amounting very nearly to the unheard-of sum of £40,000. Such were the first-fruits of that hardy industry which he had determined to exert for the redemption of his credit and good name.

Scott’s conduct and demeanour towards his old associates in business affairs become a matter of some importance, as it too often happens that commercial adversity introduces wrath into such fraternities. It is pleasant to relate, that even towards Mr Constable, who had been the cause of so much loss, he maintained a friendly bearing. He did not, indeed, shut his eyes to the new view he had obtained of Mr Constable’s character as a man of business; but though he could trust no longer, he was far from hardening his heart. One thing he felt sorely—his last advance for Constable when in the jaws of ruin. Nor was it a soothing circumstance that the bookseller had endeavoured to get his credit for £20,000 more, which would have only been an additional loss at the speedy and inevitable day of reckoning. Still, he was willing to regard all this as only the effect of sanguine calculations; and accordingly all his expressions regarding the fallen publisher, both in his diary and his letters, are of a mild and even kindly tenor. Mr Cadell, on the other hand, had secured Sir Walter’s esteem and confidence by an honest warning which he gave as to the above £20,000. From the first, he determined to befriend this member of the late house in preference to the other. With regard to James Ballantyne, Scott told him, on the very day when ruin was declared, that he would never forsake him. Mr Ballantyne now conducted business on his own account, and was honoured with the steady friendship and patronage of his old schoolfellow, as of yore.

On the other hand, the conduct of Scott’s immediate dependants had been highly creditable. Deeply attached, in consequence of his long-enduring kindness, all were anxious to remain, if possible, about his person. His butler, Dalgleish, said he would take any or no wages, but go he would not. His coachman, Peter Matheson, went to work with his horses at the plough, glad to the core that he was allowed to remain at Abbotsford on such terms.

The spring of 1828 gave the world The Fair Maid of Perth, his last popular novel. He then indulged in a little relaxation, by spending a few weeks in London, in the enjoyment of Mr and Mrs Lockhart’s society, as well as that of many attached friends. We have at this time a valuable addition to that testimony to his temper which the second last paragraph affords. He had some years before engaged his credit for £1200 in favour of his friend Daniel Terry the actor, who was then undertaking the management of the Adelphi Theatre. Being now informed of the ruin of Mr Terry’s affairs, he wrote him a letter, in which the following passage occurs: ‘For my part, I feel as little title, as God knows I have the wish, to make any reflections on the matter, beyond the most sincere regret on your own account. The sum for which I stand noted in the schedule is of no consequence in the now more favourable condition of my affairs.... I told your solicitor that I desired he would consider me as a friend of yours, desirous to take, as a creditor, the measures which seemed best to forward your interest.’ These are precious things to put into a biography; but they do not exhaust the list. Even while drudging so hard for the means of diminishing his own encumbrances, he is found pretty frequently composing and giving away a paper for the benefit of some unfortunate man of letters, little regarding, perhaps, the strict merits of the object of his bounty. One of the most remarkable of these benefactions consisted in his allowing the publication of two religious discourses for the benefit of a young man endeared to him by misfortune as well as merit. This publication yielded £250, a sum which few other literary men would allow to pass from their own pockets in such a manner.

A great part of his time was now taken up with the new writing connected with the popular edition of his works; yet before the end of 1828 he had advanced a good way with a new novel, the ground of which he laid in Switzerland, notwithstanding his being acquainted with the scenery of that country only by description and engravings. His mind was now in a more cheerful mood regarding his affairs than it had been since the dreadful January 1826; and if he had been free of various ailments, inclusive of rheumatism, caught from a damp bed in France, he might have enjoyed his life in the country almost as heartily as ever. Suffer as he might, perseverance at his desk was a fixed principle with him. Of this we have a striking trait in his finishing Anne of Geierstein before breakfast one morning, and commencing, as soon as the meal was over, a new work, a History of Scotland, for Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopædia.