Edinburgh Under Sir Walter Scott

by W. T. Fyfe

Personal Anecdotes of Scott—Washington Irving—The Minister's Daughter—J. G. Lockhart—His Introduction to Scott—Annual Register—39 Castle Street—Scott's 'Den'—Animal Favourites.

In the autumn of 1817 Washington Irving, with whose History of New York by Knickerbocker Scott had been greatly charmed, paid a visit to Abbotsford, and received a hearty welcome. One of the anecdotes told by Irving of this visit may be given here, as illustrating the beautiful courtesy and fine sympathetic feeling with which it was Scott's nature to treat sterling worth and generosity of mind in whatever rank he discovered it. Irving tells how William Laidlaw and his wife came to dinner one day, accompanied by a lady friend. He observed with some curiosity that this by no means extraordinary person, who was middle-aged and only remarkable for her intellectual qualities, was treated by their host with particular attention and courtesy. The occasion was in fact a specially pleasant one, and the company were made to feel that they were cherished guests. On their leaving, Scott, to Irving's great delight, launched into hearty praise of the lady visitor. The daughter of a Scottish minister, who died in debt, she had been left an orphan and destitute. She had at once faced the situation with a brave heart, and though her education was not great, she set up a school for young children, which soon proved in its way a success. But she made her own concerns a secondary object. By submitting to all sorts of privation, she managed to pay off all her father's debts, determined that no slighting word or evil feeling might humble his memory. And this was not all. To the martyr's self-sacrifice she added a divine benevolence. To some who once had been kind to her father and were now fallen on evil days, she did all the service she could by teaching their little ones without reward or fee. Happily her memory is green in the eulogy of the great neighbour to whom she was a kindred spirit: 'She's a fine old Scotch girl, and I delight in her more than in many a fine lady I have known, and I have known many of the finest.'

It was in the following year, in May 1818, that John Gibson Lockhart, then a young barrister with pronounced literary leanings, was first introduced to Scott. It was the moment when, as the great biographer himself has eloquently put it, 'Scott's position was, take it for all in all, what no other man had ever won for himself by the pen alone. His works were the daily food, not only of his countrymen, but of all educated Europe. His society was courted by whatever England could show of eminence. Station, power, wealth, beauty, and genius, strove with each other in every demonstration of respect and worship, and—a few political fanatics and envious poetasters apart—wherever he appeared in town or country, whoever had Scotch blood in him, "gentle or simple," felt it move more rapidly through his veins when he was in the presence of Scott.' But in the midst of this blaze of glory, and while he was dreaming dreams of fortune and family pride, what was it that struck the most keen-eyed of critics when he first saw his hero? Only the plain easy modesty, the kindness of heart which pervaded every word, tone, and gesture, the simple qualities which made him 'loved more and more' by his earliest friends. It was at the house of Mr. Home Drummond, a grandson of Lord Kames, that the meeting took place. Like every other literary aspirant, Lockhart was astonished and gratified by the cordiality and kindly appreciation of the elder writer. 'When the ladies' (he says) 'retired from the dinner-table, I happened to sit next him; and he, having heard that I had lately returned from a tour in Germany, made that country and its recent literature the subject of some conversation. In the course of it, I told him that when, on reaching the inn at Weimar, I asked the waiter whether Goethe was then in the town, the man stared as if he had not heard the name before; and that, on my repeating the question, adding Goethe der grosse Dichter, he shook his head as doubtfully as before—until the landlord solved our difficulties, by suggesting that perhaps the traveller might mean "Herr Geheimer-Rath (Privy Councillor) von Goethe."—Scott seemed amused with this and said, "I hope you will come one of these days and see me at Abbotsford; and when you reach Selkirk or Melrose, be sure you ask even the landlady for nobody but the Sheriff." I mentioned how much any one must be struck with the majestic beauty of Goethe's countenance—the noblest certainly by far that I have ever yet seen—"Well," said he, "the grandest demi-god I ever saw was Dr. Carlyle, minister of Musselburgh, commonly called Jupiter Carlyle, from having sat more than once for the king of gods and men to Gavin Hamilton—and a shrewd, clever old carle was he, no doubt, but no more a poet than his precentor. As for poets, I have seen, I believe, all the best of our own time and country—and though Burns had the most glorious eyes imaginable, I never thought any of them would come up to an artist's notion of the character, except Byron."'

Soon after this Lockhart was, on Scott's recommendation, invited by the Ballantynes to take Scott's place in working up the historical part of their Annual Register. Thus they met pretty frequently during the ensuing summer session, a circumstance to which we owe Lockhart's very complete and first-hand description of Scott's working 'den' at 39 Castle Street and of his social life at this period. The den was a small square back-room behind the dining parlour. It looked out upon a dull back-yard with a small square of turf. The walls of the room were lined with books, mostly stately folios and quartos beautifully kept, as befitted a lover of books. There was one massive table, on which was his own desk, and one opposite for an occasional amanuensis. On the top lay his law papers, while his MSS., letters, and proof-sheets were under his hand on the desk below. Before the desk stood his large elbow-chair, and there were only two other chairs in the room. Beside the window was a pile of green tin boxes, on the top of which was a fox's tail mounted on a handle of old silver and used for dusting the top of a book as occasion required. He had a ladder for scaling the high shelves, which is described as 'low, broad, well carpeted, and strongly guarded with oaken rails.' His living companions in his den were usually a venerable tom-cat called Hinse, which had a liking for the top of the ladder, and the noble stag-hound Maida, whose lair was on the hearth-rug. 'I venture to say' (Lockhart remarks) 'that Scott was never five minutes in any room before the little pets of the family, whether dumb or lisping, had found out his kindness for all their generation.'

In conversation among his friends, Scott was always natural, sensible, and good-humoured. His ideal society, as we have seen, was the simple but high-toned friendliness, with courtly attention to old manners and customs of the social board—the ways of the old-fashioned generation before 1800, when Edinburgh society still took its tone from the Scottish aristocracy and gentry. After this period Edinburgh table-talk and manners were led by the lawyers. Men shone in society by contests of dialectics, brilliant disquisitions, 'such as might be transferred without alteration to the pages of a critical review.' Scott was of another world from this. He admired the dexterity and skill displayed, but he was not tempted to take part. It lacked the touch of nature which would have made him acknowledge kin. So everybody else was satisfied, and Scott was not displeased. The great poet, the writer of conversations which had heightened the gaiety of millions, was perfectly content to be considered inferior as a table-companion to 'this or that master of luminous dissertation or quick rejoinder, who now sleeps as forgotten as his grandmother.' To appreciate, it is necessary to know something and to sympathise. The persons who called Scott's conversation 'common-place' were practically comparing the Waverley Novels to Dugald Stewart's lectures, and would have denounced Shakespeare for making up his Hamlet out of popular quotations. It was 'ignorance, madam, pure ignorance,' without the wit to acknowledge, and in many cases political prejudice was also present. To one of the latter Lockhart heard Lord Cockburn nobly reply: 'I have the misfortune to think differently from you; in my humble opinion, Walter Scott's sense is a still more wonderful thing than his genius.' Nothing could be better: a noble and excellent saying. And to similar effect in his Memorials he testifies that scarcely even in his novels was Scott more striking or delightful than in society; where his halting limb, the bur in the throat, the heavy cheeks, the high Goldsmith-forehead, the unkempt locks, and general plainness of appearance, with the Scotch accent and stories and sayings, all graced by gaiety, simplicity, and kindness, made a combination most worthy of being enjoyed.

CHAPTER LV

Scotland Edinburgh Society—Lockhart's Opinion—Scott's Drives in Edinburgh—Love of Antiquities—The Sunday Dinners at 39 Castle Street—The Maclean Clephanes—Erskine, Clerk, C. K. Sharpe, Sir A. Boswell, W. Allan,—Favourite Dishes.

Ignorant prejudice gradually disappeared. The charm of Scott's conversation was found to be as great, in fact the same, as that of his writings. Mingling with and wishing to emulate London society, Edinburgh great folks came to understand that social intercourse ought to aim at enjoyment and relaxation, not at the display of alleged wit and amateur disquisitions on speculative themes. Then they discovered that Scott's easy, natural humour, his ever-ready and picturesque descriptions, his quaint old-world sayings and diverting sketches and anecdotes, nay, his very prejudices, always honest and so very lovable when understood to their foundation, were unique treasures even from the narrowest point of view. This was what all, long before 1818, recognised whose opinion was worth considering. But Lockhart, who had the best means of knowing, as being himself 'one of them,' says that even then the old theory, that Scott's conversation was 'commonplace,' lingered on in the general opinion of the city, especially among the smart praters of the Outer House. Of course it was the cue of these praters to differ from their elders, and few of them, after all, had perhaps enjoyed what they made a boast of affecting to depreciate. Lockhart, who was certainly in the Whig sense the strongest intellect that ever adorned Edinburgh, both enjoyed and appreciated. And fortunately for us minores, he has told what he saw and rejoiced in. He says: 'It was impossible to listen to Scott's oral narrations, whether gay or serious, or to the felicitous fun with which he parried absurdities of all sorts, without discovering better qualities in his talk than wit—and of a higher order; I mean especially a power of vivid painting—the true and primary sense of what is called Imagination. He was like Jacques—though not a "Melancholy Jacques"; and "moralised" a common topic into a "thousand similitudes." Shakespeare and the banished Duke would have found him "full of matter." He disliked mere disquisitions in Edinburgh, and prepared impromptus in London; and puzzled the promoters of such things sometimes by placid silence, sometimes by broad merriment. To such men he seemed common-place—not so to the most dexterous masters in what was to some of them almost a science; not so to Rose, Hallam, Moore, or Rogers,—to Ellis, Mackintosh, Croker, or Canning.'

When in Edinburgh, Scott's only formal outing was an afternoon drive in an open carriage, sometimes to Blackford Hill, or Ravelston, and so home by Corstorphine, sometimes to Portobello, keeping as close as possible to the sea. An old man who died last year (1905) used to tell how, when he was a boy, he remembered Scott alighting and coming some distance across a field to speak a few kind words to him and ask after his parents, in whom he took an interest. When he went home, his mother told him about the great man and bade her son remember that day, for if he lived to be an old man, he would be proud to talk of it to his children's children. As he drove through the city, it was Scott's greatest enjoyment to gaze and muse upon its natural beauties, and especially its remaining antiquities. He would often make a long circuit in order, as Lockhart observed, 'to spend a few minutes on the vacant esplanade of Holyrood, or under the darkest shadows of the Castle rock, where it overhangs the Grassmarket, and the huge slab that still marks where the gibbet of Porteous and the Covenanters had its station. His coachman knew him too well to move at a Jehu's pace amidst such scenes as these. No funeral hearse crept more leisurely than did his landau up the Canongate or the Cowgate; and not a queer tottering gable but recalled to him some long-buried memory of splendour or bloodshed, which, by a few words, he set before the hearer in the reality of life. His image is so associated in my mind with the antiquities of his native place, that I cannot now revisit them without feeling as if I were treading on his gravestone.'

But of all pleasant memories of the Master well-beloved, the most delightful to conjure up is that of the good Clerk as host at the Sunday 'dinner without the silver dishes,' as he was wont to call it. It was always a gathering of dear and long-cherished friends. All were delighted to meet, and all were prepared to be happy. Gladdest of all was their host, who came into the room 'rubbing his hands, his face bright and gleesome, like a boy arriving at home for the holidays, his Peppers and Mustards gambolling about his heels, and even the stately Maida grinning and wagging his tail in sympathy.' Most of the intimates who came to these parties have already been mentioned. There was Mrs. Maclean Clephane, with whom Scott would playfully dispute on the subject of Ossian. Her daughters would accompany her, to delight all, especially Scott, with the poetry and music of their native isles. They had made him their guardian by their own choice, and were loved for their own sakes. The eldest was that Lady Crompton with whom, as he tells in the Journal, he travelled to Glasgow in September 1827, and had 'as pleasant a journey as the kindness, wit, and accomplishments of my companion could make it.' When they reached Glasgow, they met, at the Buck's Head, Mrs. Maclean Clephane and her two daughters. He mentions that after dinner the ladies sang, 'particularly Aunt Jane, who has more taste and talent than half the people going with great reputations on their backs.' Then there were the Skenes, the Macdonald Buchanans, and all the nieces and nephews of the Clerks' table alliance. 'The well-beloved Erskine,' says Lockhart, 'was seldom absent; and very often Terry or James Ballantyne came with him—sometimes, though less frequently, Constable. To say nothing of such old cronies as Clerk, Thomson, and Kirkpatrick Sharpe.' It was of his boyhood's friend and mentor, Clerk, that Scott said he feared he would leave the world little more than the report of his fame. It was his opinion, as well as that of other competent judges, that he had never met a man of greater powers than Clerk. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe was also regarded by Scott very highly, and is sketched in a lively page in the Journal, 1825. His effeminacy of voice, his clever and fanciful drawings—which he was too aristocratic to use for increasing his small income—his odd curiosity for scandal centuries old, made Sharpe a very remarkable figure. 'My idea is' (says Scott) 'that C. K. S. with his oddities, tastes, satire, and high aristocratic feelings, resembles Horace Walpole—perhaps in his person also, in a general way.'