Your faithful servant,
JOHN MURRAY.
After the burning of the manuscript Sir Walter Scott wrote in his diary:
"It was a pity that nothing save the total destruction of Byron's
Memoirs would satisfy his executors; but there was a reason—premat nox
alta."
Shortly after the burning of the Memoirs, Mr. Moore began to meditate writing a Life of Lord Byron; "the Longmans looking earnestly and anxiously to it as the great source of my means of repaying them their money." [Footnote: Moore's Memoirs, iv. 253.] Mr. Moore could not as yet, however, proceed with the Life, as the most important letters of Lord Byron were those written to Mr. Murray, which were in his exclusive possession. Lord John Russell also was against his writing the Life of Byron.
"If you write," he wrote to Moore, "write poetry, or, if you can find a good subject, write prose; but do not undertake to write the life of another reprobate [referring to Moore's "Life of Sheridan">[. In short, do anything but write the life of Lord Byron." [Footnote: Moore's Memoirs, v. 51.]
Yet Moore grievously wanted money, and this opportunity presented itself to him with irresistible force as a means of adding to his resources. At length he became reconciled to Mr. Murray through the intercession of Mr. Hobhouse. Moore informed the Longmans of the reconciliation, and, in a liberal and considerate manner, they said to him, "Do not let us stand in the way of any arrangements you may make; it is our wish to see you free from debt; and it would be only in this one work that we should be separated." It was in this way that Mr. Moore undertook to write for Mr. Murray the Life of Lord Byron. Mr. Murray agreed to repay Moore the 2,000 guineas he had given for the burned Memoirs and £2,000 extra for editing the letters and writing the Life, and Moore in his diary says that he considered this offer perfectly liberal. Nothing, he adds, could be more frank, gentleman-like, and satisfactory than the manner in which this affair had been settled on all sides.
CHAPTER XVII
SCOTT'S NOVELS—BLACKWOOD AND MURRAY
The account of Mr. Murray's dealings with Lord Byron has carried us considerably beyond the date at which we left the history of his general business transactions, and compels us to go back to the year 1814, when, as is related in a previous chapter, he had associated himself with William Blackwood as his Edinburgh agent.
Blackwood, like Murray, was anxious to have a share in the business of publishing the works of Walter Scott—especially the novels teeming from the press by "The Author of 'Waverley.'" Although Constable and the Ballantynes were necessarily admitted to the knowledge of their authorship, to the world at large they were anonymous, and the author still remained unknown. Mr. Murray had, indeed, pointed out to Mr. Canning that "Waverley" was by Walter Scott; but Scott himself trailed so many red herrings across the path, that publishers as well as the public were thrown off the scent, and both Blackwood and Murray continued to be at fault with respect to the authorship of the "Waverley Novels."